So while they waited their turn, Alice and her adopted daughter May waited in the shadows of the ante-room.
Out of the three girls, Portia was the first to be presented. On her arrival at the door to the audience chamber a gentleman-in-waiting lifted her train off her arm and spread it out carefully behind her. As he did so Aunt Tattie repinned her tiara which to her horror she discovered had all but fallen off while a card bearing Portia’s full name was given to a lord-in-waiting who then passed it to the Lord Chamberlain who in turn announced the name.
As soon as she was announced Portia walked slowly forward across the audience chamber which was packed with courtiers and attendants towards a slightly raised dais upon which stood the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Queen having long since given up presiding over Drawing Rooms, grateful to do so since she was well known to hate all such public appearances. The Prince of Wales on the other hand loved these occasions since it offered him the chance to cast his ever-interested eye over the new Season’s collection of women, although no doubt he would have enjoyed himself even more had not his wife also been in attendance. As it was he was said to make his pleasure known to any beauty who pleased him, regardless of the presence of the princess by his side.
Portia of course was unable to take in any of the sight which should have greeted her since protocol decreed she should walk towards the Presence with eyes downcast before curtseying in the approved manner, very deeply and slowly with the head very nearly touching the floor. This Portia executed perfectly. As she rose her grace drew a favourable comment from the princess. Portia then withdrew slowly and elegantly backwards all the way to another door still with her eyes cast down, at which point as she herself reached her moment of exit the next presentee was announced and that moment of distraction gave Portia the opportunity to steal a quick look at the scene. When she did she was astonished but none the less delighted to see that behind the Prince of Wales, and staring directly at her and smiling, stood the handsome and elegant figure of Lord Childhays.
‘Excellent, dearest child,’ Aunt Tattie said as they made their way back down the long corridor leading from the audience chamber. ‘You conducted yourself perfectly.’
‘And you look wonderful, Aunt Tattie,’ Portia replied. ‘Extremely patrician if I may say so.’
‘You may indeed, dearest,’ Aunt Tattie replied. ‘I have always been very fond of that particular adjective.’
Emily was the next of the trio to be announced. She had first to endure a long wait during which her nerves became worse and worse, thanks entirely to Daisy’s non-stop litany of woes and doom-laden forebodings, a litany which became positively vindictive when Daisy realized she was not going to be the last to be presented.
‘Lady Emily Persse, your Royal Highnesses,’ the Lord Chamberlain announced and Emily, relieved that the moment had come at last and that she would soon be through it and out the other side, momentarily forgot all her strict training and almost bounced her way into the chamber, like some gorgeous filly let out for its first run of the day. She did however remember to keep her eyes trained on the floor, which meant that she missed seeing the huge smile of delight on the Prince of Wales’s face as he watched this delightful creature advance. Daisy, however, did not and when she saw it she was in two minds, not knowing whether to be pleased with her protégée or jealous. When she heard the prince remark in French as was his habit on Emily’s quite exceptional looks and character she soon decided on the latter emotion, particularly when her ex-lover did not look even once in her own direction.
Yet despite all this Daisy found she was greatly relieved that Emily had managed to get through the ritual without mishap, up to and including their inch by inch retreat in reverse out of the audience chamber.
‘Hoorah,’ Emily whispered as she and Daisy began to make their departure down the long picture-lined corridor. ‘At least that bit’s over anyway.’
‘Yes,’ Daisy replied a little crisply. ‘Vat bit is over, fank heavens.’
‘And I didn’t fall down after all.’
‘No you did not, Emily. Fank heavens for vat as well. You did however I fink hold the curtsey a mite too long.’
‘I’m quite sure I did, Lady Evesham,’ Emily replied, with a sudden glint of Irish fury in her emerald green eyes. ‘But then, que voulez vous? It would have been totally impossible for me to have completed everything right in your eyes. As a matter of fact you have had so few hopes of me, patron, to be quite truthful it was all I could do to stop myself from falling over on purpose right in front of their Royal Highnesses!’
At which, and gathering her train up over her arm once more, Emily cantered gaily off down the corridor ahead of Daisy who for once in her life was left without anything to say by way of reply.
She had wanted to wait to see what the reaction to the appearance of May Danby might be, but seeing the flurry of impertinence which Emily’s successful Drawing Room had suddenly thrown out, Daisy was a little apprehensive as to what the girl might do next. It would not do to have her creating some sort of scandal within the hallowed walls of the royal palace, so when she had recovered some of her composure and much as she hated the indignity of hurrying anywhere none the less Daisy hastened to catch her errant protégée before she did something they might both regret. As she did so the Lord Chamberlain announced the name of the last of the presentees, and as Miss May Danby entered the chamber the audience turned as one, almost as if they knew what they were going to see before she entered the Presence.
Those who were lucky enough to be present still talk of the moment and can describe the looks on the faces of the bystanders, the courtiers and their Royal Highnesses as if the images were imprinted on their collective memory. Everyone present recalls that there was quite literally a collective gasp from those gathered in the chamber, excluding of course their Royal Highnesses who simply looked. But then as they say there are looks and there are looks, and the look the Prince of Wales was bestowing on this most beautiful of young creatures who was slowly making her way towards him could have been that of an astronomer discovering a whole new galaxy, while the impact of May’s beauty was made even more apparent by the Princess of Wales’s expression which looked as if it had been chiselled out of the coldest of marbles. As May sank into a curtsey of which any prima ballerina would have been proud, his Royal Highness was heard to remark, Ah, mais Mademoiselle Danby est vraiment en plein beauté, while his wife was heard to say nothing whatsoever. Some bystanders, not ingénus but diehards at the game, found themselves so moved by this young woman’s grace, beauty and above all presence that the men found they had an irresistible urge to applaud (which of course they did not) while many of the women found themselves almost on the verge of tears (which was how they remained). Even so none could deny the charge that was now in the atmosphere as May rose from her curtsey, accompanied by her mother whose sweet but somewhat plain looks had been totally transformed by the wonderful gown Herbert Forrester had insisted she had made for her by Mr Worth and by the priceless tiara the loan of which he had managed to arrange.
As May and her mother reversed in perfect unison out of the audience chamber the Prince of Wales still watched, as indeed did the entire court and in utter silence, too, a silence which lasted until several moments after the doors of the audience chamber were closed on the last debutante of the day.
After the royal party had left the chamber one of the more senior ladies-in-waiting turned to a younger one by her side to comment on the outstanding looks of the last presentee.
‘I do so agree,’ the younger lady-in-waiting whose name was Lady Patrycia ffitch-Heyes replied. ‘What made her so outstanding, however, was that she seemed to have a completely different presence to all the other gels. Almost an aura, one would say. It really was most remarkable. As if she had a calling.’
* * *
Although those whose patrons had experienced the ritual of Drawing Rooms before had been warned to expect nothing other than an immediat
e return home after the presentation was over none of them expected the aftermath to be quite as anti-climactic as it was. True to Aunt Tattie’s remark to the onlooker in the Mall not a bite to eat was on offer nor even a drink nor the refreshment of an ice cream. There was simply another round of queueing to undergo, first for the ladies’ cloakrooms and then for their carriages, the return of which given the numbers present took an age. Even so it was only the middle of the afternoon by the time the debutantes were returned to their homes, and as a consequence they all felt nothing finally but a sense of disappointment. There they all were, dressed in their very finest and looking at their most beautiful, but with nowhere to go and nothing to do until the evening.
‘Ve Prince of Wales intends to change all vis, vat I know because he told me,’ Daisy informed Emily when they arrived back in Brook Street. ‘He finds it as absurd as I do vat one is returned home at the deadest hour of ve day wiff absolutely noffing to do whatsoever. He says he is going to make the presentations later, followed by a proper reception at ve palace after which one may take off one’s fevvers and veils and go straight on to a ball in one’s magnificent new gown. Vat way he says everyone will know one has been to court and vose who have been will be able to celebrate.’
‘I should think so too,’ Emily agreed. ‘I have never known such an utterly dull affair. And now will you look at us? We shall have to sit around here for the next – what? Two or three hours before it’s time to go to whatever ball it is this evening, for it’s certainly not worth the bother of getting undressed only to get all dressed up again.’
‘I trust vat is only a temporary aberration, Emily?’ Daisy enquired of her protégée’s lapse into her native brogue. ‘We know we cannot have you boggin’ it in public.’
‘You don’t like the Irish at all, do you Lady Evesham?’
‘Every Irishman, ve saying goes, has a potato in his head.’
‘And every Englishman a marble.’
‘Vat’s as maybe.’ Daisy laughed uneasily. ‘But ven one does not marry an Englishman for his conversation, Emily. One marries him for what he has in his pocket. Now I am going to my boudoir and I suggest vat you do ve same. And be ready to leave for dinner at six o’clock prompt, please.’
Rather than go to her room and sit there with nothing to do, Emily wandered into the library where she passed some of the time in reading. The rest she spent in contemplation of what she had read, namely some of the poems of Matthew Arnold and particularly a poem called ‘Self-Dependence’. The lines which arrested her and finally caused her to stop reading and consider her present existence were these:
Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.
A CALLING CARD
Lady Patrycia ffitch-Heyes sent a servant round to the Danbys’ residence in Park Lane the morning after the Drawing Room with a card which said she would like to call privately on the Honourable Mrs Danby as soon as it would be convenient. The servant waited while Alice Danby wrote a reply saying that Lady Patrycia’s suggestion that they might take tea that very afternoon would be perfectly convenient and that she looked forward to making her acquaintance.
For the first ten or so minutes of their meeting the two ladies passed the time conversing about the success of the presentation and the quality of this Season’s debutantes. Lady Patrycia then brought the conversation around to May in particular, first of all commenting on the remarkable impression she had made at the palace and then quoting more or less word for word what she and her fellow lady-in-waiting had remarked after the ceremony.
Alice Danby was too intelligent and refined a woman to allow anything of the effect her visitor’s words were having on her to show, instead she merely let it be known that she took such a remark as a compliment. Lady Patrycia expressed herself happy that Mrs Danby had been complimented by her observation and then fell to silence for a moment to sip her tea.
‘Even so, Mrs Danby,’ she said after a moment, placing her cup and saucer down beside her. ‘Would you not say yourself that your daughter does have a most particular presence, and one which does not just emanate from her beauty but from as it were her spirit? Personally one felt simply from watching her and being in the same room, that the gel has something almost spiritual about her. As if she had been raised in a place of sanctity.’
‘It is very hard to say anything about my daughter, Lady Patrycia,’ Alice replied. ‘You must understand I cannot pass comment on what I am told are her exceptional attributes without sounding as though I were soliciting praise.’
‘Charming,’ Lady Patrycia remarked with a smile. ‘Your modesty becomes you and all the more because your daughter is certainly the most beautiful young woman to be presented in living memory. No one would blame you for feeling proud. Certainly had I produced such an exquisite creature I should find it very difficult to be as self-effacing as you. The painting above the writing desk—’ Lady Patrycia turned slightly to one side to look at the picture again. ‘Would that be your husband? I understand he was in the Blues, the very uniform which I note the subject of the painting to be wearing.’
‘Yes, that is indeed my husband. It was painted the year before he was injured and had to retire.’
‘How sad.’ Lady Patrycia returned her gaze now to Alice, on whom she let it dwell for a significant moment before smiling. ‘Strange, is it not? How appearances often skip an entire generation. Sometimes even two generations. My daughter also looks entirely unlike either her father or myself, but is an almost exact replica of her great-grandmother. After whom would you say your beautiful daughter takes? For she has the colouring and aspect of neither you nor your husband.’
‘Most people say she takes after her father and his own mother, Lady Patrycia,’ Alice replied, only thankful that she was not holding her tea cup for she would surely have betrayed her nerves. ‘It is always a difficulty with girls, do you not think? When they resemble their father few women can see it.’
‘Hmmm,’ Lady Patrycia murmured, taking another slow and deliberate look at the portrait of Charles Danby and then at the portrait on the other side of the room of Alice Danby herself. ‘I understand exactly what you are saying, Mrs Danby, but you know I still cannot see it.’
Alice was granted a small moment to think before she spoke when the maid stepped in and poured their visitor another cup of tea, filling in a gap that had left Alice quite honestly floundering. She could not understand why she had been so honoured with a visit from the lady-in-waiting.
She was soon to find out.
‘I understand you have a residence in the north,’ Lady Patrycia ventured. ‘It really is the most beautiful part of the country, is it not?’
‘You are familiar with it, Lady Patrycia?’
‘I have a cousin who has a house in Cumberland and I go every summer to stay with her and her family. She married a Catholic and they have five children, three boys and two girls. The girls both go to St Philomena’s Convent near Whernside.’
‘Yes?’ Alice said steadily, now fully cognizant of the purpose of the visit.
‘Yes,’ Lady Patrycia replied. ‘Where your daughter is now a nun.’
‘Yes.’
‘Your only daughter, Mrs Danby.’
‘May is adopted, Lady Patrycia. I see no shame in that.’
‘There is none, Mrs Danby. None whatsoever. I never said there was, that was never my intention. I simply said that your true daughter is now a nun.’
This was something for which Alice was not altogether prepared, even though she had always maintained there was a possibility someone would either know or find out the truth of the matter. Herbert Forrester had flatly disagreed and said there could be no possible connection between an obscure little convent in the Yorkshire Dales and the grand Society circles in London. Even if anyone did dig up the truth, he asked – so what? Thanks to Mother Nature May was beautiful, and thanks to him she was rich. What more could some brainless aristocratic young blood wa
nt in a wife? In return Alice had tried to explain that London Society had its own fixed rules and attitudes, and they did not look kindly on adoption, believing that there was every chance of taking a cuckoo into one’s nest since one knew nothing about the parentage. Besides that, however good the family into which the child was received may be, it would not have that family’s blood, and when it came to the begats blood was everything. Good blood was good blood, bad was bad, and unknown blood was even worse.
‘You may cross that bridge when and if you come to it,’ Herbert had insisted. ‘But you can bet your last farthing on it, Mrs Danby, there is no way word could get out. After all, the convent is a Catholic institution, and I doubt if you’ll come across many Micks at your grand Society dos.’
‘Very well,’ Alice said finally to the lady-in-waiting after she had given herself time to think. ‘What exactly is it you want?’
‘I want your help, Mrs Danby, that is what I want,’ her visitor replied. ‘We can both help each other, to, shall we say, our mutual benefit?’
* * *
The two of them talked for well over an hour, Alice issuing strict orders that at no cost were they to be disturbed once tea had been cleared away. As soon as it was apparent that Lady Patrycia had indeed not come to bury May and herself, but to help them, Alice was able to relax. The story was a long and complicated one, and much concerned as are all such stories with the past.
But more specifically the story returned to Daisy Lanford, as she then was.
‘She had a liaison with my husband,’ the lady-in-waiting admitted. ‘Now I know as well as you do, Mrs Danby, that for most gentlemen and for a great many ladies too the fun starts once one has got married. But my husband and myself were really very happy, do you see. Ours was a love match and neither of us strayed nor even ever thought of straying. But by misfortune after I gave birth to our second child I was unwell for many months and my husband sent me to recuperate in Cumberland at my cousin’s house. It was then I am afraid that he succumbed. (Never leave a man, even for a few seconds, Mrs Danby, they just cannot help themselves I am afraid.) The affair was only brief and I would most certainly have forgiven him had I known at the time, or indeed afterwards. The birth of babies is a difficult time, and whatever the circumstances men can find themselves on the sidelines, or feeling so, and that is as bad. As I say, had I known, I would have forgiven my darling John, but I did not know, and it seems that the guilt came to prey on him, and finally John induced himself into such a state of shame, he drove his fly down to the south coast and threw himself off Beachy Head.’
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