When the maid had finished Charlotte picked up her letter again.
The exhibition opens next Thursday, the 18th, at the Royal Photographic Society. The Queen is coming to open the show. There are around four hundred prints on display, and it may surprise you to hear some of my work has been selected. My godmother tells me that this is a great honour and has suggested that I should invite my friends to the opening.
I realise that you must be very busy with your duties as the Empress’s pilot, but as you are in one of the pictures to be exhibited, I thought it might be interesting for the spectators to see whether my lens has done justice to the original.
Charlotte wondered whether that last sentence was too obvious an appeal, so she added,
It is a pity that I cannot extend the invitation to Tipsy, who I am sure will be much in demand as a photographic model. I am writing to the Melton party and to Captain Hartopp, and I hope that some of them will find the time to make the journey. I wonder if the prospect of a Royal encounter might tempt Augusta away from her trousseau preparations?
I hope that you are making a good recovery from your injury and that it won’t interfere with your plans for the Grand National. You see I remember our conversation …
Charlotte paused, wondering if this sounded too significant. She wanted Bay to know that her feelings had not changed, without writing anything that would sound like a reproach. Casting her mind back over their brief courtship, she tried to think of something that would remind him of their past intimacy. She thought of the last time she had seen Bay, standing on the steps of Melton laughing with Fred and Captain Hartopp. Picking up her pen again she wrote,
… and your promise to tell me the story of how Captain Hartopp came to be called Chicken. I will be most disappointed if you do not enlighten me. Even if it is an indelicate story I promise not to get the vapours. We women are stronger than you think.
Hoping very much to see you at the exhibition, and certainly at Fred and Augusta’s wedding,
I remain your friend and photographer,
Charlotte Baird
Having read the letter through twice, once silently and once aloud, alert to any suggestion of missishness, she sealed it and addressed it to Captain Middleton, Easton Neston, Northamptonshire. She then quickly wrote to Lady Crewe to beg for the loan of Grace, and to Lady Lisle, Augusta and Chicken Hartopp to invite them to the exhibition.
As she placed the letters in the Japanese bowl in the hallway that Lady Dunwoody used as a post tray, the doorbell rang and Caspar walked in, shaking the snow from his ulster like a wet dog. He began talking the moment he walked through the door.
‘Carlotta mia, have you heard the news? Your pictures. Unanimous decision. Everyone agog. You are the youngest contributor by far.’ He seized her hands and whirled her around for a moment. Charlotte laughed. His delight was clearly genuine and she was touched.
‘Aunt Celia told me. I am delighted, of course, but I can’t help feeling like an imposter. My photography is just a hobby, I feel embarrassed to be compared to professionals like you.’
Caspar gripped her by the forearms and pretended to shake her.
‘Shame on you, Miss Baird, for the crime of false modesty. If you have a talent, why not revel in it instead of protesting against it? Are you are afraid of being unladylike?’
‘Not at all,’ said Charlotte, pushing him away. ‘If I had been afraid of that, I would be painting watercolours of highland scenes and making pictures out of shells.’
‘Then you should be proud of your accomplishments. I am delighted that my pictures will be hanging next to yours.’
The faint note of reproach made Charlotte realise that she had forgotten to ask Caspar about his pictures. Quickly, she added, ‘Your portfolio is outstanding, I expect the committee wanted to select everything.’
Caspar smiled, mollified. ‘They have taken ten pictures. Not bad for an American interloper.’
‘Now who is being falsely modest? You know that you are the equal of anyone here. The society’s members must be beside themselves with jealousy.’
‘I believe there have been mutterings. Some members tried to exclude me because I was not British, but Lady D would have none of it. She told them that photography was an international medium and that they should celebrate excellence wherever it came from.’ As Caspar said this he stuck out his chest to suggest Lady Dunwoody in full flow.
‘I hope they chose the picture of your friend. The one with the grapes,’ said Charlotte.
To her surprise, Caspar’s shoulders dropped, his buoyancy gone.
‘Abraham will hang before the Queen of England, a woman he had never heard of,’ he said quietly, brushing a snowflake from the sleeve of his coat.
Charlotte saw the pain in his face. She remembered the photograph he had taken of a pile of stones in the desert that was Abraham’s gravestone. For all his ebullience, Caspar was, she realised, still in mourning. Even though there was no black band on his sleeve, he obviously felt Abraham’s loss as keenly as if it had been a close relative. She tried to soothe him.
‘But as your friend, he would have been so happy to have done you this service.’
‘No doubt. He was a generous boy. He would have been delighted to make me famous.’ Caspar took a yellow silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the snow off his moustache. ‘No, I am the one who minds that he is to be hung before strangers who know nothing more of him than the image I have presented. All they can see is what I have put before them – a savage with a bunch of grapes.’
‘But that’s not true! Anyone could see that he has a great soul. I did. You aren’t so great a photographer that you can give your subject a character they don’t have,’ Charlotte protested.
‘Perhaps.’ He folded up the yellow silk square carefully and put it back in his pocket. ‘But even if they don’t see what a remarkable person he was, he will still hang there as an example of my photographic skill.’
Smiling ruefully he continued. ‘I do have scruples, just not enough of them. Abraham will become a plate in the Illustrated London News and I will sigh a little as I cash the cheque.’
To end this exchange Caspar began to look through the letters in the Japanese bowl. Charlotte would have protested but she was relieved that his sudden fit of melancholy seemed to have passed. It struck her that Caspar’s high spirits, the torrent of chatter and jokes, was something he turned on to mask his true feelings. It made her like him more, as she knew how hard it was sometimes to disguise the most painful thoughts.
As she watched him flick through the heavy white envelopes, she could see him trying to work himself back to his normal playful pitch. When he spoke, his voice was light again.
‘I see you have been busy – these are in your hand, are they not?’ He took one out and sniffed it. ‘No perfume, Carlotta? Not even for your billet-doux to the handsome captain?’
‘Do I look like the sort of girl who sends letters smelling of violets? Lady Dunwoody suggested that I invite some people to the opening, and I have, of course, obeyed her instructions.’
Caspar made a mock bow. ‘Lady Dunwoody must be obeyed, certainly, but I wonder if perhaps in this case you might want to consider—’
He broke off as Lady Dunwoody herself burst through the green baize door that led to the servants’ hall. She was dressed to go out and fizzing with impatience. She barked at Charlotte, ‘Have you forgotten that the carriage is ordered for eleven? The hanging committee meets at twelve. You have exactly two minutes to get ready, Charlotte. I have no intention of being late.’
In the rush and confusion as Charlotte tried to adjust her hat to the least unbecoming angle, find her gloves and button up her boots, she forgot to ask Caspar what he had been about to say before her godmother had interrupted them. Rushing through the hall and down the steps, she didn’t even glance at the letters in the blue and white Japanese bowl.
At eleven-thirty the butler collected the letters as he did three times a day
and took them to his pantry. There he selected seven penny stamps from his postage book and stuck them to the letters, using a specially moistened pad. The butler did not think it was his place to use his own saliva. After recording the number of stamps used and the destinations of the letters – despite her bohemian leanings, Lady Dunwoody was never vague about household accounts – the butler put the household correspondence in a red velvet bag embroidered with a D. Then he called the footman whose job it was to take the letters to the new red pillar box on the Kensington Road. Despite the snow, the footman was not only the only person converging on the letter box in order to catch the midday collection. There was another footman from Holland House, a maid from Leighton House and a boot boy belonging to the Burne Jones household. The post box had only been there since the new year, so there was still some novelty about watching the letters disappear into its shiny red maw. Sometimes the footman would read out the addresses on the letters in an imitation of an aristocratic accent for the delectation of the Leighton House parlourmaid, who was the reason that he never shirked this particular chore, but today the snow was falling too thickly. Lady Dunwoody’s footman watched as the parlourmaid deposited the Leighton House correspondence and then did the same, taking care that the snow did not fall on the envelopes and make the ink run.
Charlotte had not sealed her letter with wax. She had used one of the new envelopes that used dried xanthan gum to stick the flaps together. This made it much easier for the Foreign Office agent whose job it was to intercept all mail to the imperial household at Easton Neston. As it contained no reference to foreign policy that he could detect, he noted its contents in the ledger put aside for this purpose, resealed it and sent it on so that it was loaded onto the 4.10 to Northampton.
The letter was delivered to Easton Neston at seven a.m. the next morning where it was steamed open again, this time by Baron Nopsca, who had made it his business to know everything about the Empress’s new favourite. He found its contents marginally more interesting than the Foreign Office man. Although his English was far from fluent, he knew enough to understand that this was a letter from a woman, who if not a mistress was certainly more than a friend. This did not surprise him as he had already assessed Captain Middleton as ein galant and a herzensbrecher; his only concern was for the happiness of his mistress. For a moment he thought of destroying the letter; the Empress would not be happy about the Captain going to London to visit another woman. In Austria he would not have hesitated to burn the letter, but then in Vienna no woman would be foolish enough to write publicly to the Empress’s favourite while he was in residence. After a moment of reflection Nospca decided that there was no need to interfere; the attachment between his mistress and the Captain was too new and too mutually exciting. It would have to be an exceptional woman to summon the Englishman away from the Austrian Empress. He scanned the letter again and decided that there was nothing to fear.
As he got to the mention of Chicken Hartopp, the Baron sighed. Only an Englishman, he thought, would be named after a fowl.
The Monkey’s Paw
Countess Festetics had given Bay a flask of schnapps as they rode out that morning. ‘I think you must have need of this,’ she said.
The flask was now empty and for the first time in his hunting career Bay was longing for the chase to end. Every bump, every stumble made his shoulder throb. He needed his good hand to hold the reins so he couldn’t use his whip, which made it hard to keep up with the Empress. She was leading the field on one of the new hunters that she had bought at Waddesdon from the Rothschilds. She had bought five horses in all and Bay had made a tidy commission. The blue roan called Liniment, was everything a great hunter should be and showed no sign of flagging after a long day on soft ground, but now Bay was regretting his gift for spotting a good horse.
After clearing one particularly high fence Bay heard her say to Count Esterhazy in English so that he could understand, ‘Aren’t you jealous of my English Pegasus, Count? You have to admit that the Captain was right about English hunters.’
‘The Captain is certainly good at picking winners,’ said Esterhazy, also in English.
The Empress did not hear Esterhazy’s reply as she had already gone ahead to the next fence, but Bay did. Despite the throbbing in his shoulder he made himself smile at the Count and said, ‘If you change your mind about English horses, I would be happy to find some for you.’
‘Thank you for your kind offer, Captain Middleton, but I don’t think that I need your assistance to choose my horses.’
Bay’s smile did not falter. ‘I’m always happy to help if you change your mind.’
Count Esterhazy gave him the very smallest inclination of the head, somewhere between a nod and a gesture of distaste.
‘Too kind. But unlike the Empress, I never change my mind.’ He turned his head to look at the Empress wheeling round the edge of the field on the blue roan. ‘I believe I am keeping you from your duties, Captain Middleton.’
Bay gave Tipsy a nudge with his spurs. When he drew alongside Sisi, she turned her head and frowned.
‘There you are,’ she said.
* * *
At the end of the day, the Empress had a carriage to take her home. Normally Bay would have hacked home on Tipsy but he knew he was at the end of his strength. Reluctantly he climbed into the closed carriage, with the Empress, Liechtenstein and Esterhazy. Esterhazy was sitting next to the Empress so he had to take the seat next to Liechtenstein, who shrank into the corner as Bay sat down. The Austrians chatted away in German, the two men doing their best to ignore Bay. The Empress smiled at him from time to time, but she did not insist on speaking English. Bay closed his eyes and instantly fell asleep.
A searing jolt of pain woke him up with a start. Lichtenstein must have poked him in his bad shoulder. To his surprise he saw that the three others were laughing at him.
Sisi said, ‘Don’t be angry with Felix, Captain Middleton. You were snoring a little loudly, and I asked him to wake you up. I had forgotten about your bad shoulder. Forgive me.’
Bay smiled as broadly as he could. ‘I am the one who should be asking forgiveness. To disturb you with my snoring, that is a heinous crime. I deserve the most severe punishment.’
‘It is a good thing we are not in Austria, Captain Middleton, as then your punishment really would be severe,’ said Count Esterhazy. ‘There no courtier would dream of falling asleep in the presence of royalty.’
‘How fortunate, then, that we are in England,’ said Bay evenly.
‘Yes, it is so nice to be here and not in Vienna where everybody takes etiquette so seriously,’ said Sisi. ‘Everyone must be allowed their frailties. I would have left you to sleep but you were making such a noise that we could hardly hear ourselves talk.’ She laughed and Bay could see that she was enjoying teasing him in front of the others, so he forced himself to laugh too.
‘And why are you so weary, I wonder, Captain? What are you doing at night that means that you fall asleep in the day?’ Sisi said. Bay saw the merest glimpse of her tongue as she licked her lips.
‘It can be difficult sometimes to fall asleep in a strange house, Ma’am. Even one as welcoming as Easton Neston.’
‘Perhaps you should consider staying somewhere else,’ said the Count.
Bay met his gaze without flinching. It was a direct challenge; both men waited to see how the Empress would react. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glinted. Picking up her fan, she tapped Esterhazy on the arm, harder than was strictly necessary.
‘Do I need to remind you that the Captain is my guest? I have asked him to stay and I will be the one to ask him to leave. We may be in England, but you are an Austrian, and as you were so quick to remind Captain Middleton, a courtier knows the penalty for being rude to royalty. By insulting him you have insulted me. Please apologise at once.’
‘I apologise to you, Kaiserin, unreservedly,’ said the Count. ‘Perhaps I did not understand your feelings completely. But you cannot expe
ct me to apologise to this, this…’ he was spitting out his words now, ‘this groom.’
Bay recoiled from the force of his anger, but he had had years of experience dealing with people who thought themselves superior to him; he knew that the most effective response was deflation. So he smiled affably, the smile of a cavalry officer dealing with a drunken soldier.
‘No need to apologise, old man. No need at all. No offence meant, I am sure, and none taken. I don’t think either of us would want to embarrass Her Majesty with a petty squabble. That may be the way you do things in Austria, but an English gentleman does not give way to his feelings in the presence of a lady, let alone a queen.’
Sisi clapped her hands.
‘Bravo, Bay Middleton. We are not in Vienna now, Count.’
Esterhazy saw that he had been outmanoeuvred. Subsiding into his corner, he was silent for the rest of the journey.
* * *
Nopsca was on the steps to greet them, with a footman holding tumblers of negus on a salver. Bay took his and drained it in one gulp. The quarrel with Esterhazy had unsettled him. He did not enjoy being the focus of so much hostility.
Nopsca was distributing the day’s letters to Esterhazy and Liechtenstein. The Empress’s correspondence was set out in a red morocco casket. Nopsca murmured something about the Crown Prince and the Empress started to go upstairs. Bay, who did not want to be left alone with the Austrians, made to follow her when the Baron called him back.
‘One moment, Captain Middleton. There is a letter for you too.’
Surprised, Bay took the letter. Not recognising the handwriting, he put it in the pocket of his coat and had just put his foot on the first marble tread when the whole hall was pierced by a shriek that made the crystals of the great chandelier rattle. A quick grey shape jumped from the top of the balustrade at the top of the staircase onto the stairs and started to bounce from step to step, chattering as it did so. As the creature came nearer to him Bay saw that it was a monkey about the size of a terrier, wearing a red waistcoat with gold braid and a golden collar round its neck.
The Fortune Hunter Page 26