Sally

by M C Beaton

  “Has it ever occurred to you that you are eccentric?” asked Sally curiously.

  His fingers flew over the wool. “Eccentric? No. I’m a very ordinary chap. Oh, you mean the knitting? Well, it keeps my mind off that wretched girl I’m in love with, and I never really care what people think of me anyway.”

  He blinked before Sally’s sudden dazzling smile.

  As far as Sally was concerned, he could knit until doomsday. He had said he loved her.

  “The train’s slowing,” she said, rubbing at the window with her hand. “Oh, dear!”

  “Oh, dear what?”

  “I can’t seem to see a thing.”

  He put down his knitting and leaned across her to look out through the cleared space she had made in the condensation on the glass.

  “It’s snowing a blizzard. What odd weather! It’s only the beginning of December. We don’t usually get weather like this until February. And this is one of the worst blizzards I can remember. Why don’t you join me in the dining car? It’s about time for lunch.”

  Sally gladly agreed, for his proximity as he leaned over her was doing strange things to her senses.

  They made their way along the corridor of the train, which was only creeping along through the roaring, blinding snowstorm.

  Sally felt suddenly shy as she faced the marquess across the small table, with its snowy napkin and little lace-covered table lamp, in the dining compartment. “I thought you would have your own carriage and dining room,” she said.

  “No. I don’t bother with that unless I’m taking a lot of guests down for the weekend. Now, we’re going to have a lot to drink and go back to the compartment and sleep like logs, because it’s going to take us absolutely hours to get to Bath.”

  So he ordered sherries for them before the meal, a good bottle of hock with the fish, a surprisingly excellent Château Lafite with the braised filet of mutton, a bottle of sauterne with the Nesselrode pudding, and port with the Stilton and he entertained Sally throughout the meal by inventing mad letters from fictitious readers and demanding her replies.

  The dining car gradually emptied, other passengers staring curiously at the giggling old lady and the handsome young man.

  When they finally went back to their compartment, the train gave a great protesting lurch, a high dismal whistle, and came to a stop.

  The marquess took out his handkerchief and rubbed the window. The train had stopped between the shelter of two high embankments.

  “Wait here,” said the marquess, “and I’ll find out what has happened.”

  After a short time he was back. “I’m afraid we can’t go any further. On the other side—out of the shelter of these embankments—the line’s completely blocked. There is no heating. We are stranded here until the storm stops and someone digs us out.”

  “What shall we do?” asked Sally.

  “Sleep,” he said curtly. He sat down beside her after lifting his heavy fur coat down from the rack. “We’ll put this over us and be snug as bugs.”

  He suited the action to the words and slid an arm around Sally with easy familiarity, feeling the little old lady’s body begin to tremble slightly.

  “You’re cold,” he said, rubbing her shoulders sympathetically while Sally bit back a moan. “There! Just lean back on my shoulder and you’ll soon be as warm as anything.”

  It was fortunate for Sally that she had drunk so much at lunchtime. Despite all the tumultuous and disturbing emotions his proximity aroused in her, Sally soon fell into a heavy sleep.

  The marquess held Aunt Mabel’s slim body against his own, feeling a surge of affection for this strange old lady who did not behave like an old lady at all, and who had an enchanting, infectious laugh, just like a young girl’s.

  He awoke briefly as a railway official came in to light the oil lamp, and then drifted off to sleep again, lulled by the noise of the storm.

  When he at last awoke completely it was to find that the storm had apparently ceased and that the train was slowly moving forward again.

  Faint smells of food were drifting in from the nearby dining car, and the marquess found to his amazement that he was feeling hungry again. His mouth felt dry and sour after all he had drunk at luncheon. He gave Aunt Mabel a little shake, and she came awake immediately, looking up at him through her spectacles with those large, youthful gray eyes, which were so like the eyes of the mysterious girl who had gate-crashed his mother’s home and had stolen nothing valuable except his heart.

  Dinner was a silent affair. The marquess’s senses seemed to be picking up a strange feeling of unease from Aunt Mabel, and he remembered that the old dear had had quite a crush on him on her visit and probably still had. Amazing! He wondered how old she was. She was so very, very wrinkled, and her skin had a dead and lifeless look. Only her eyes seemed young.

  By silent consent they drank very little at dinner. Neither felt like talking, and it was a very subdued pair who eventually returned to the compartment.

  The marquess resumed his knitting, and Sally asked him to lift down her suitcase for her, and, extracting a bundle of letters and a notebook, she proceeded to work on her correspondence.

  The train did not lurch into Bath station until one in the morning. The roads to the palace were blocked, and the inns and hotels were full. In despair, the marquess at last found a room for them at the Pelican, an old coaching inn on the outskirts of town, and returned to the station, where he had left Aunt Mabel in front of the fire in the ladies’ waiting room, to tell her the good news.

  “One room,” exclaimed Sally faintly.

  “I had to say you were my mother,” explained the marquess. “For Heaven’s Sake, behave like a sensible woman. We must have somewhere to sleep. I am tired and stiff, and I am damned if I am spending the night in this station.”

  “But surely they know your mother?”

  “No. New management. Hurry up and stop staring at me. We’ve got to walk, and it’s quite a way. I’ll help you as much as I can.”

  Sally meekly allowed herself to be helped through the snow-covered streets, reflecting that she would have needed his help even if she had been allowed to behave in a manner befitting her real age. The snow had frozen into high, powdery drifts, creating a frozen world, a white, mysterious world, through which they moved silently. The hems of Sally’s dress and mantle were becoming soaked despite the light, powdery snow, and her feet were absolutely frozen.

  At last they reached the Pelican, which had been built around the seventeenth century and was full of stairs up and stairs down, Toby jugs, armor, and old-world objets d’art made in Birmingham in the hope of attracting some of those American tourists who were supposed to like that sort of thing. The Pelican was originally a coaching inn, but its trade had been taken away by the railway.

  Sally was treated with all the deference given to a duchess, although the landlord, who had been about to offer Her Grace tea, was somewhat startled when the marquess said firmly that his mother would like a bottle of brandy sent up to her room.

  The marquess had sent one of the inn servants back to the station to collect their suitcases and suggested they sit in front of the fire until their belongings arrived.

  Sally was now feeling sleepy again and nervous at the same time.

  The room was very small, shadowed, and cosy, lit by a pair of candles stuck in brass candlesticks on the high velvet-draped mantel. The bed was a four-poster and very small, either having been made in an age when the average Briton was stunted, or when they preferred to sleep bolt upright like the French aristocracy to prevent congestion of the lungs.

  Sally slowly swirled the brandy around in her glass, reflecting that she had drunk enough since she left London to last a lifetime.

  The brandy on top of all she had had before took immediate effect, and her sleepiness increased, while her nervousness began to ebb a little.

  “Where will you sleep, my lord?” asked Sally, staring at the leaping flames of a small coal fire.
/>   “Here, of course.”

  “Here! Where? In the chair?”

  “Don’t be silly. In bed.”

  Well, he was paying for the room, after all. “Then I shall sleep in my chair,” said Sally.

  “Aunt Mabel,” he said testily. “I know you are very young at heart, but at times you are ridiculous. I must remind you that you are old enough to be my grandmother, and my intentions toward you are strictly honorable. We shall both share the bed, just as I would do with my own mother, old as I am, if she should find herself in the same predicament.”

  “Of course,” said Sally hurriedly. “I didn’t think—didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, then what did you think and mean?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sally stupidly. “I’m tired.”

  The servant arriving with their luggage stopped conversation for a while. Then the marquess rose to his feet. “I shall leave you to change, Aunt Mabel. I shall go downstairs and wander about. Don’t be long.”

  When he left the room Sally fairly scrambled out of her clothes and into a long flannel nightgown that buttoned high to the throat and had long tight sleeves.

  The heat from the fire did not seem to reach as far as the bed, and the sheets felt icy-cold. Some thoughtful servant had put a stone hot water bottle at the foot of the bed, but it was as red-hot as the bed was icy, and Sally almost burned her feet. She lay staring up at the chintz bed canopy until the marquess returned. He entered the room quietly, without looking at the bed, and blew out the candles. She closed her eyes tightly, hearing the rustle as he undressed.

  The bed creaked as he climbed in, and she moved as far to the edge as she could.

  “Good night, Aunt Mabel,” came a soft, mocking voice out of the darkness.

  “Good night, my lord,” replied Sally miserably. What would Aunt Mabel advise a girl to do in this situation? Sally closed her eyes wearily. If anyone wrote to me about this, she thought, telling me that they had pretended to be an old woman and had, due to inescapable circumstances, ended up in bed with the Marquess of Seudenham, pretending to be his mother, I would simply think some poor girl was deranged and tear it up!

  The clock on the mantel gave an asthmatic cough and chimed out four o’clock, and a coal fell on the hearth. But despite her turmoil of emotions, Sally fell asleep, determined to be the first to wake.

  However it was the marquess who woke first. He climbed gently from the bed and, walking to the window, opened the curtains. Sun blazed down on a white world. It shone into the little room and onto the face of the sleeping Aunt Mabel.

  The marquess looked down at her as she lay sleeping—and then looked closer, his eyes suddenly sharp and suspicious.

  The glaring light was shining full on Aunt Mabel’s rubber wrinkles, shining through them, making them transparent, so that underneath them, like a sleeping beauty, lay the young face of Sally Blane.

  He bent closer. At the edge of Aunt Mabel’s shaggy eyebrows gleamed a little shining trail.

  “Gum arabic,” he muttered. She was very heavily asleep. He gently pushed the white wig and stared at the line of soft nut-brown hair exposed underneath.

  All at once he knew he had found his impostor. And yet, in some mad way, he knew she was Aunt Mabel, who answered letters to Home Chats. He suddenly could think of several very enjoyable ways of punishing her for her deception, but he decided to behave himself instead and to go out and assess the state of the roads.

  By the time Sally descended timidly to the inn dining room, the marquess cheerfully informed her that he had telephoned the palace for a carriage, as the roads were clear. Sally dropped her eyes before his mocking blue gaze. She had put on a hat with a heavy veil, and he watched with great amusement as she tried to eat her breakfast of bacon and eggs without raising it.

  “That’s very decorative,” he said at last.

  “What is, my lord?”

  “Those fascinating little bits of egg and bacon that are sticking to the edge of your veil. Are you trying to set a new fashion?”

  “No,” Sally mumbled, raising her veil and wondering what had put him in this mood. He seemed extremely elated. His eyes were shining and followed her every movement until she became so nervous that her teeth rattled against her teacup.

  Several times she opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again.

  When the carriage arrived, he tenderly helped her into it, holding her elbow—it seemed to Sally—in an unnecessarily firm grip.

  “How long do you plan to stay?” he asked as the carriage lurched over the snowy ruts.

  “As short a time as possible,” said Sally. “I mean—I have to get back to London in, say, two days.”

  “Two days? After all your ordeal in getting here? How can you bear to tear yourself away from my fascinating company so soon?”

  “I don’t know,” mumbled Sally, wondering what had come over him.

  Suddenly apprehensive, she fished in her reticule and produced a small steel mirror and studied her reflection. The aged face of Aunt Mabel stared back at her.

  “You look very well,” said the marquess. “Quite the thing. No one would guess from your innocent face, Aunt Mabel, that you had just spent the night in bed with me.”

  “My lord! Really!” Sally threw him such an outraged glance that he was momentarily taken aback and wondered whether he had made some awful mistake. Then he remembered the nutbrown hair under the wig and smiled at her shocked face.

  “You are such a charming, fascinating, and irresistible woman,” he said, “that you quite turn my poor head.”

  “You are talking rubbish,” said Sally in her most Aunt Mabelish manner. “I liked you better when you were knitting.”

  He smiled at that, but did not make any more remarks, and to Sally’s relief he contented himself with looking out of the window at the passing scene.

  Sally snuggled into the carriage rugs, leaned her head back against the squabs, and pretended to go to sleep so as to avoid any further conversation.

  But soon pretense became a reality, and she did not awaken until the carriage was crunching over the snowy gravel in front of Banjahar Palace.

  Her old room was still there waiting for her. The duchess was mildly glad to see her, but explained that all the problems seemed to have been solved, since Miss Wyndham was not to marry Paul after all. She went on to say that it was such a shame that Aunt Mabel had missed the ball, because Paul had seemed quite smitten with Lady Cecily Trevelyn, who would have been eminently suitable but—alas!—it had come to nothing.

  Apart from Sally, the only other house guests this time were the Honorable Freddie and Mrs. Stuart.

  Mrs. Stuart was passing through the hall as Sally was following the housekeeper taking Sally up to her room. She bestowed a grotesque wink on Sally, and Sally tried to control a shudder of distaste. The woman was quite mad.

  Once in the sanctuary of her sitting room, Sally heaved a sigh of relief. She began to think that she might be able to escape with grace. Instinctively she felt the duchess had lost interest in Aunt Mabel. Even Sally knew that it was quite usual for strange people to be taken up by society. But unless they actually belonged, they were quickly dropped.

  The sky outside was turning milky white. Sally looked at it anxiously as she removed her hat. Surely it could not snow again. It was no use staying to be near the marquess when every encounter only made matters worse.

  A footman scratched at the door and announced that luncheon was being served in the small dining room.

  Sally quickly changed into a depressing gray wool frock with purple embroidery, straightened her wig, and went downstairs with a quickly beating heart.

  “My darling,” cried the marquess gaily as she entered the dining room. “Come and sit next to me and hold my hand.”

  The duchess dropped her spoon in her soup and stared at her son with her mouth open. The Honorable Freddie let out a snigger, opened his mouth to comment on the marquess’s outlandish behavior on the tr
ain, remembered Flossie and Boat Race night, and shut it again.

  Sally gingerly sat down next to the marquess, who gently took her hand, turned it over, and pressed a warm kiss into its palm.

  “Freud has a name for it,” announced the duke from the other end of the table. “Something about pussycats.”

  “Oedipus complex,” snapped Mrs. Stuart.

  “I don’t like the Greeks,” said the duchess, feeling on firm ground. “You never know what they’re going to get up to. Now, take Priscilla Forbes-Bennet in Athens in 1902. A waiter! At the Grande Bretagne of all things. Is that what this eddy-thing is about?”

  “Not quite,” said Mrs. Stuart nastily. “It means you are either in love with your mother or a woman old enough to be your mother.”

  The duchess sat bolt upright in her chair, rigid with shock and disapproval. “The trouble with all this awful nonsense,” she said severely, “is that it appeals to repressed people with minds like sewers. Paul, you are simply behaving like a clown. Aunt Mabel! Drink your soup.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said Sally, who had turned quite pink under her wrinkles. She took a hurried mouthful of Brown Windsor soup—and choked. The soup was burning hot.

  The marquess patted her on the back.

  “Can’t you keep your hands off her?” asked the duke, with interest. “I know what it feels like, dear boy, but it’s neither the time nor place.”

  Tears of pain and embarrassment started into Sally’s eyes, and the marquess decided she had suffered enough—for the moment—and turned to his father and began to talk about the latest improvements in synthetic fertilizers.

  I don’t care, thought Sally wildly. I’ve got to escape directly after lunch. He’s guessed. Somehow, he’s guessed.

  “I say, this soup tastes funny,” said the Honorable Freddie plaintively. “I—”

  A startled look came onto his face, and he clutched at his chest while they all stared at him. An amazed look crossed his face, and with a little gurgling sound, he dropped his head in his soup, and his soul rose from the Brown Windsor and departed to the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.