The Ghost and Lady Alice

by Marion Chesney

  All at once they were in the midst of a choking, blinding cloud and Alice gasped for breath.

  “Stap me vitals!” exclaimed the Duke. “A London fog. We shall descend my dear and try to look for landmarks.”

  They sailed down, the Duke trying to keep toward the river, glimpses of which occasionally flashed up through the suffocating fog.

  At last, “The Monument,” he said. “Not long now. Ah, there is St. Paul's. We must float nearly at street level and hope that should anyone see us they will think themselves drunk!”

  “Where are we bound?” asked Alice.

  “To an hotel, my sweet. The Harland in St. James's. It is as dull and respectable as ever it was. I am thine uncle child. The Comte de Sous-Savaronne, tu comprends, hein? Uncle Gervase to you. Our baggage is already ensconced in our rooms. We shall dine, like the respectable couple we are and, then, while you sleep, I shall haunt the empty houses of the fashionable quarter so that we shall be prepared to rent a suitable establishment as soon as we have the money.

  “Odd's Fish, ‘tis well the nights are long, or I should be hard put to do any business for you. Ah, we are here. At least, I hope we are. This cursed fog does alter things so. We descend now. At least in this murk we shall be able to land at the very door without occasioning comment.”

  They landed gently on the pavement. By the feeble lights of two parish lamps, Alice could dimly make out the brick facade of the Harland Hotel.

  The Duke tucked her arm firmly in his own and together they made their entrance into the hushed foyer of the hotel.

  A long looking glass on the wall faced them as they walked in and for one split second Alice did not recognize herself as the modish young lady reflected in the glass.

  For some reason, The Duke did not assume a French accent, speaking in his usual impeccable drawling English and leaving the hotel staff to make what they would of it.

  He was an imposing and commanding figure, and as he drew off his York tan gloves, his many rings flashed in the candlelight. The manager of the hotel himself was there to conduct them to their suite on the first floor.

  It consisted of a pretty sitting room decorated in apple-green and rose. A few bands of fog had managed to penetrate the room, but a large log fire crackled on the hearth with a table for two set in front of it. Two bedrooms led from the sitting room.

  “As you see,” said the portly little manager, rubbing his hands, “I have Monsieur Le Comte and milady's bags unpacked and your supper is to be served here as you requested.”

  Alice nervously opened her mouth to gush forth her thanks but the Duke quelled her with a stern look and nodded pleasantly to the manager, requested his name, learned it was Mr. Perfect, looked mildly amused and firmly bid the manager good evening.

  “Now we can be comfortable,” said the Duke, rubbing his hands in front of the fire.

  “Take off thy mantle, child. Thou lookst frozen to the bone.”

  Alice shyly removed her pelisse and bonnet, feeling unaccountably nervous at being alone with him in these strange surroundings.

  Two footmen entered followed by Mr. Perfect, the manager. They laid several covered dishes on the table and then stood back. The Duke waved them away. “We will serve ourselves,” he said. “Do not come back until I send for you.”

  “There is so much to arrange,” ventured Alice when the manager and servants had left.

  “We will come about,” he said, smiling at her in a way that left her breathless.

  It was a silent meal. The Duke, usually talkative, seemed strangely preoccupied. As soon as they had finished, he rang for the dishes to be cleared and, when that was achieved, started to shrug himself into his many-caped coat.

  “Where are you going?” asked Alice in dismay.

  “Out. Haunting. I must find you a house.”

  “I shall come with you.”

  “Ah, no, that you will not. You will stay here and warm yourself at the fire and then put yourself to bed.”

  “It is only seven o'clock in the evening,” said Alice, but he was already rummaging through the box of jewels and selecting some of the finest pieces. “Mayhap, I shall find a sale for these at this hour,” he said, speaking more to himself than to Alice.

  And then, quite suddenly, he was gone.

  Alice looked wistfully at the spot where he had last been. Everything was being set in action—and so soon. She had hoped they might have at least one last evening together.

  She began to consider what her life would be without him and felt filled with dread. She would have a household and an army of servants to rule. She would have some female companion to launch her into the terrifying society of London, a companion who might one day see beneath the thin disguise of French aristocrat, to the shivering scullery maid underneath.

  And what if the ghost's identity were discovered? Did they still burn witches?

  Alice moved over to an easy chair beside the fire and tried to relax, but frightened thought after frightened thought chased around in her brain.

  Fretting and anxious and worried, she waited until two in the morning, but still he did not return.

  At last, tired out, she undressed and chose one of the bedrooms and wearily climbed into bed.

  Outside lay smoky London, unknown, menacing ... and lonely.

  FOUR

  “My dear Alice, you must be guided by me. Your uncle commanded me to mould your taste. How are we to impress the ton an you don't do as I say?” said Miss Emily Snapper intensely.

  Alice turned slowly in front of the looking glass and stared at her reflection with resignation. “If you say so,” she rejoined in a dead voice. Privately Alice thought the lemon-colored sarsenet dress trimmed with a vast quantity of artificial roses and white lace drapery and fastened down the front with topaz snaps, too fussy and aging. Her once glossy black hair was teased and frizzled into a top-heavy style. But, as in all other things, she knew that her companion, Miss Snapper, would have the last word.

  Alice was preparing to depart for the opening ball of the London Season, to be held at the Duchess of Courtland's town house in Gloucester Square. For Alice, Comtesse de la Valle-Chenevix was accepted everywhere. The redoubtable Miss Snapper had seen to that.

  Alice had hardly seen the Duke in the last seven days before he had disappeared for good. He had arranged the rental of a pretty house in Manchester Square, banked a great deal of money for her, arranged a man of business for her, servants were hired, furnishings bought and, finally, the formidable Miss Snapper hired as companion.

  Miss Snapper was of the untitled aristocracy and came from an impoverished Surrey family which the Duke had known in their palmy days of the last century, and had felt obliged to supply a home to this last relic of the family. In that she knew everyone and was acceptable everywhere, was beyond question. The Duke had in his whirlwind of activity failed to notice that she was too intense and managing a spinster to be companion to such a young and such a green girl.

  To Alice, it seemed as if she were never allowed to be alone with him. Miss Snapper was always present. She was a thin, angular woman in her thirties with a bony chest, snapping black eyes, a thin mouth which covered a row of sharp little teeth, dusty red hair and a conversational style which consisted of a series of denouncements.

  She adored the Duke with an almost embarrassing passion of which he was quite oblivious, and any time Alice shyly tried to hint that she might like to be alone with her uncle, Miss Snapper would bare her sharp little teeth and simper, “Why, Alice dear. You are so quiet, I declare I cannot hear a word you say. Now you must run along and leave us old people to discuss your future.”

  And so, Alice's timid and awkward farewell to her “uncle” was made under the avid stare of Miss Snapper. For nights, she had cried to him with all her mind to come back but as the shadows lengthened, no shimmering figure came through the wall, no light mocking drawl came to her ears, and her eyes grew dull and heavy with nights of crying.

  There had
been, at one time, a real Lady Alice de la Valle-Chenevix, that Alice knew, for the Duke had gone to great lengths to furnish her with an authentic background. The family had been wiped out in the terrors of the French Revolution, with the exception of a baby girl who had gone unaccountably missing. He had coached Alice well in the history of her “family,” and she had been prepared for all questions.

  But the members of society she had so far met had accepted her at face value and were totally uninterested in her background. At first, she had found it hard to maintain a French accent morning, noon and night, but soon it became her natural speech and her accent was pronounced “charming” by the forgiving ton who had every reason to hate the French—for weren't they at war with the monsters?

  On the day the Duke had left, the news of Wellington's victory at Ciudad Rodrigo had resounded through the streets. While Napoleon had turned his attention to Russia, the great Duke of Wellington had won this major battle, thereby kicking open the door into Spain which was held by Napoleon's vast armies. England had gone mad with joy at the news. The mail coaches outside the General Post Office in Lombard Street had been decked with laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons and had gone thundering out through the trunk roads of England to bear the glad news to every corner.

  At Vauxhall, rousing songs like “Hearts of Oak” and “Scots Wha’ Hae” sounded in the night air. Napoleon no longer seemed the omnipotent ogre he had appeared in the years before when it had seemed at one time that he would surely land in England, and nurses had terrified the children to sleep, singing:

  “Baby, baby, naughty baby,

  Hush you squalling thing, I say;

  Hush your squalling, or it may be

  Bonaparte may pass this way.

  “Baby, baby, he's a giant,

  Tall and black as Rouen steeple;

  And he dines and sups, rely on't,

  Every day on naughty people.”

  But Alice was as uninterested in the war as she had been when she had toiled in the kitchens of the Hall. She read a great deal whenever she could and, then, in the evenings, dully allowed herself to be dressed like a doll by the energetic Miss Snapper and promenaded to breakfasts and fêtes champêtre and Venetian dinners and routs, each one seeming the same to Alice.

  Her lack of interest in London society made her seem a very aloof little aristocrat. She was not besieged with admirers desirous of dancing with her as she sat meekly beside Miss Snapper and dreamed away the evenings thinking of her lost Duke.

  Her skin had lost its translucence, and her step, its spring. She danced heavily, often treading on her partner's toes and not even being aware she was doing so.

  London cobbled, odoriferous, and yet the acme of ordered and mannered beauty, was the stage across which Alice numbly floated. Controlled since the Great Fire by Building Acts which laid down the ceiling heights, types of materials and numbers of stories to be used in every class of street, London spread out in street after street of exquisitely proportioned houses of brown and gray brick with their unadorned faces of freestone sash, the same neat white pillars on either side of their pedimented doors.

  It had been a long hard winter followed by a brief, icy, squally spring.

  At long last, on this very eve of the London Season, the weather had decided to favor the top ten thousand by turning warm and balmy. A pale green sky stretched high above Manchester Square. In hundreds of bedrooms nearby, young ladies were getting ready to plunge into the Marriage Market and emerge with a husband. What other ambition was there for a properly brought up young miss? Orchestras tuned up, hothouse flowers were banked against walls, elegant suppers prepared, flambeaux lit—and hearts trembled with excitement as girls armed themselves for the all-important battle to come with all their weapons at the ready—fan, smelling salts and seductive smile.

  But for Alice, each evening as the blue shadows gathered at the end of the streets and the lamplighter made his rounds with his oil can, was another little death, as night after night she lost hope that he would come.

  She felt sad and tired and badly dressed and Miss Snapper irritated her beyond reason. Now the fact that Miss Snapper was beginning to irritate the meek Alice should have been a sign to the girl that she was slowly coming back to life. But she was unaware of this and simply began to tap her foot as Miss Snapper's intense voice grated in her ears.

  “You must sparkle a little more, Alice. You want animation. You should not be vulgar, of course, and put yourself forward. Your so dear uncle would agree with me, I am sure. We both know what is best for you.”

  “My uncle,” said Alice with a rare flash of spirit, “would not approve of your calling me by my Christian name instead of my title.”

  Miss Snapper studied this spark of rebellion with avid interest and then proceeded to stamp it out.

  “Tish, child,” she cried, tripping forward and winding one long bony arm around Alice's waist. “Are we not the dearest of friends? Don't I dote on you? You are frightened because it is the opening ball of the Season. But you shall come about. Let us descend to the drawing room and await the carriage. What think you of my gown?”

  “Very fine,” said Alice in a flat voice. She actually thought it would surely be better if they exchanged gowns, Miss Snapper's sprig muslin being more suited to a young girl, and Alice's ornate ballgown being more flattering on a woman of mature years and sallow complexion.

  As they descended the elegant curved staircase into the small tiled hall, and thence through into the green and gold drawing room with its fashionably backless sofas and striped upholstery, Alice suddenly felt some thing strange happening to her mind. It was as if a great black weight of despair had been lifted from it. All at once, she knew her ghost was dead to her, that he no longer thought of her. She felt empty and light, a feeling which persisted right to the august doors of the Duchess of Courtland's town house where the flambeaux hissed and flared in their iron brackets against the wall.

  Alice was vividly aware of being alive, vividly conscious of each sight and scent, of the splendor of the gowns and jewels, of the tantalizingly sweet strains of a waltz drifting across the warm air.

  She was young and would be pretty again once she had crept from under the domineering shadow of her companion. There were many handsome men about. Why had she not noticed them before?

  Alice sat sedately enough beside Miss Snapper, but her large eyes had begun to sparkle and there was a delicate blush on her cheeks.

  “I say,” said Lord Harold Webb, raising his quizzing glass, “ain't that the little Frenchie who was at Haversham's ball?”

  His friend, Harold Russell, followed his gaze and then sniggered. “Damme, if it ain't,” he said cheerfully. “Pon rep, you was bosky that night. Said to me she and her friend melted through the wall.”

  “Stow it,” said Webb brutally, an angry expression marring his handsome features. “Pretty little chit, all the same. Tell you what. Ask her for a dance. Bound to be impressed.”

  Lord Harold Webb was very handsome, being fair with dark brown eyes and a high complexion. He was tall and well built and his clothes had been tailored by the hand of a master. He had been complimented on his good looks since the day he was born. He was possessed of a handsome fortune and he delighted in the pleasures of the London Season, for he knew he was much sought after. The fact that men, with the exception of his unlovely friend Mr. Russell, did not seem to seek his company much, held no sway with the ladies who appeared to adore him one and all.

  He had several times been on the point of popping the question but had always drawn back at the last minute. For the lady of his choice always seemed ... well ... too independent and not conscious enough of the great favor that he was about to bestow on her.

  Mr. Russell's restless gaze had swung away from Alice, but Webb continued to stare. Alice looked up and saw his eye, hideously enlarged by the quizzing glass, glaring at her from the other side of the ballroom and gave an involuntary chuckle.

  Th
at was when Harold Webb moved forward to ask her to dance.

  Relieved of the depression which had been darkening her days, Alice danced as lightly as she had at the ball with the Duke, and talked just as lightly in her charming French accent. She did not hear a word Lord Harold addressed to her. She was pleasurably conscious of the envious glances she was receiving from the other debutantes and experienced a heady feeling of success for the first time.

  “Making a cake of yourself over Frenchie,” sneered Mr. Russell when Webb had at last reluctantly surrendered Alice to her next partner.

  “Her name,” said Webb stiffly, “is Alice, Comtesse de la Valle-Chenevix and I'll thank you to refer to that gel with respect in future, Harry.”

  “So! Here we go again,” laughed Harry. “All set for the altar and then you get cold feet at the last minute. I don't see me ever being your best man. What's so special about this Comtesse? Them French émigrés are ten a penny.”

  “She has a feminine sweetness unusual in our modern gel,” said Webb pompously. “The lady I would wish to be my wife should be someone pliant, who could be moulded...”

  “Bullied, rather,” said Harry.

  “Nonsense. Everyone knows the male is the superior sex. Women with too much to say for themselves do not make good wives.”

  “Funny how the female of the species don't seem to have got hold of that idea,” mocked Harry. “Your Comtesse may have other interests.”

  “Other than me?” said Lord Harold, his fine eyes sparkling with amazement. “My dear chap, no woman wishes for any other man an she is blessed with my company.”

  That did, in fact, seem to be the case, although Harry thought to himself that no woman had really been in his friend's company long enough to find the pompous ass who lay underneath that handsome exterior. Harry did not really like Lord Harold Webb, but one had to have a companion, and no one else seemed anxious to fill that role.

  Alice's newfound animation had attracted more than Lord Harold Webb to her side, and Miss Snapper sat with the chaperones and watched Alice with flat, black eyes. It was the first time that Miss Snapper had been made to feel the paid companion she actually was, for usually a very meek and mild Alice sat at her side throughout the evening, only rarely being asked to dance.