Lady of Spirit

by Edith Layton

  Her next morning’s activities decided, Miss Dawkins sat upon her bed again, and leaning over her dressing table, began to compose an encouraging letter to her mama, filled with all the brilliant job possibilities she was considering. She’d already written and given Mama to understand that since she’d not decided as yet, it would be best to write to her in care of the Misses Parkinson, for she’d known that if she’d divulged her present address her mama would have fainted on the spot. She was describing a splendid illusionary position of companion to a kindly widow that she’d been offered, when she heard, incredibly, a tapping upon her door.

  Victoria waited a moment to be sure her ears were not playing tricks, and a second longer to be sure it was not the wind. Then she took the two steps to her door and said at once, before whoever it was changed his mind, “Who is it?”

  “Ah, miss,” a very youthful voice replied hesitantly, “our mum was wishful to know if you’d care to come next door and have a bite of dinner with us, us being neighbors and all.”

  Victoria paused only long enough to promise the deity her future strict obedience to all the commandments and any others he might have thought up since and cared to add, she was so stunned and grateful, and then she drew the door open.

  There was, she remembered, a large and confusing family, comprising mostly children, occupying what Mrs. Rogers euphemistically called a “two-room suite” just down the hall from her, between the consumptive old man’s room and the old woman who wore three sweaters, as she had come to think of the other tenants who dwelt on her floor. This lad who stood before her in her doorway looked oddly familiar, until Victoria realized that she must have seen him a dozen times, along with his siblings, as they flashed up and down the long stairwells as they went about their business, as frequently and effortlessly as though the stairs bore them along on silent, swiftly moving runners.

  He was about eleven or twelve years of age, she decided, as she thanked him and then threw a shawl over her shoulders to do courtesy to the invitation. The wise blue eyes in his thin face declared he was done with childhood, in the manner of all the older children who dwelt in this midden, but by his size and smooth face it was obvious he was not yet near to manhood. He had pale skin and light fair hair, damp and obviously combed so recently that it still bore regular even furrows from a comb’s teeth. He was dressed neatly if shabbily in threadbare nankeens, frequently darned hose, and a jacket that his thin wrists eloquently declared no longer fitting.

  “My mum,” he said conversationally as he led Victoria down the dim hall, after reminding her to bolt her door behind her, and waiting courteously for her to do so, “isn’t feeling up to par just now. So she’s having a bit of lie-down in the other room, but,” he said at once, as gallant and cool as though he were handing her into a castle rather than his shabby attic rooms, “we’d be pleased at your company, and my mum says to go ahead with dinner, and p’raps she’ll see you later on.”

  The room Victoria entered seemed at first stare to be filled entirely with children. But that was because it was such a small room, and the children were so similar in appearance. There were, she saw after only seconds, only three others: another boy, both a little darker and smaller than her escort, an even smaller girl, blond and fair as her bigger brother, and when the doll the child had thrown over her shoulder wriggled and cooed, it could be seen that it was an infant of indeterminate age and gender.

  The other children stood very silent and large-eyed and seemed to be awaiting Victoria’s judgment of them, so she said at once, “How do you do, I am Victoria Dawkins, and you…?”

  As her escort, who promptly named himself Alfie Johnson, introduced her along the line to his siblings Bobby, Sally, and then, dismissively, to Baby, Victoria began to take note of the other features of the room. Mrs. Johnson might be sleeping in the other room, but this one obviously served as bedroom as well, for there were two sad little heaped-up mounds of coats and shawls serving as bedclothes on the floor that still clearly bore the imprints of small curled-up bodies, and as Victoria watched, Baby was deposited in a wooden crate lined with similar castoffs that was on one end of the long table where dinner had been set out.

  For all her attempts at politeness, Victoria’s gaze was relentlessly drawn over the heads of her youthful hosts to that promised repast. A ragged but surprisingly complete cornucopia of a cold collation awaited her. The cracked dishes bore an assortment of foodstuffs, a wealth of victuals, an oddly lavish sampling of all that she had coveted this morning at the market: bowls of stew, assorted breads, slabs of fried fish, several pasties, half-puddings and whole ones, and a truly prodigious array of cakes and sweet breads and cookies.

  The children remained very still, and seeing only one chair, Victoria was about to ask where she ought to sit, when she saw one particular item of food upon the table that caused the words to catch in her throat. There was no mistaking it. She’d gazed so long and hard at it this morning, it had precipitated such a maelstrom of feeling, that she didn’t doubt she’d see it in her dreams for all her days. But tonight, certainly, there was no mismarking that peculiar jagged crack in its crust, that odd pattern of soot on its browned side where it had kissed the paving stones. Seeing that damaged mutton pasty was like seeing the face of an old lover who had never loved in return; it was embarrassingly unforgettable.

  “Aye,” her escort, Alfie, said, grinning at her reaction, “thought you’d remember it. Well, it’s yours, miss,” he said expansively, “and it’s only fair. For you saw it first. I wouldn’t have twigged to it without you. And that one at least, not like the rest of this lot, took no planning at all to bring in. Naw, it wasn’t no trouble to me at all in the getting, and never the least danger to me once it was in m’ pocket.”

  “But that is to say,” Victoria gasped, bewildered, “do you mean to imply that half of this…feast is stolen?”

  “’Course not!” Alfie snapped, looking so wounded she could have bitten her tongue off in dismay at her rash accusation. “’Alf of it nicked indeed!” He sneered. “Do you think I’m a flat? Why, every blessed bit of it is!”

  3

  The gentleman was shown into the sitting room just as though such a thing happened every day. It had actually been decades since any male had adorned the room, though his hostess’s manner did not reflect that, and centuries since anyone entitled to the name “gentleman” had entered the premises, though his hostess never had any idea of that at all. For had she known any such gentleman had ever crossed her threshold before, doubtless she would have given herself airs and become insufferable toward those few neighbors she spoke with.

  But Mrs. Rogers was to enjoy no such felicity; she was, after all, no historian. She hadn’t an inkling that her lodging house had once been owned by no less a personage than a baron. That gentleman, however, had been dust for some three hundred years and had dwelt in the house when it had been located in what was then the suburbs of London. That had also been in a bygone time when noblemen commonly came to the district for sociability and conversation, rather than for low amusements and a chance to acquire some interesting diseases along with the several vices that were now the only thing they ever sought here.

  This gentleman, however, did not have the look of a man seeking pleasures, strange or otherwise, and certainly he would have been hard pressed to find any of any sort in Mrs. Rogers’ establishment. Instead, it was reasonable to assume that he’d come, just as he’d said, to speak with a lodger, one Miss Dawkins. But it wasn’t propriety then which sent Mrs. Rogers puffing up the stairs she’d not climbed in years to fetch the girl down, nor was it an attempt to keep her house’s name virtuous which decided her against sending the gentleman, who was after all not only much younger than herself but obviously in fine physical fettle, straight up to her tenant’s bedchamber. It was the fact that in all her fancies she’d always imagined opening her sitting room to such a visitor.

  For Mrs. Rogers entertained, as do all mortals, dreams of grandeur,
even though she’d never been daring enough to dream of ever actually entertaining such a perfect vision of a Corinthian, or rather, as she babbled to her hapless neighbors for months after, such a complete swell, and if what was printed on his card was to be believed, an ’onest-to-gawd earl, no less.

  Dreams of glory aside, there was also the practical consideration that she’d not have a prayer of hearing a word passed between her lodger and the gentleman if he was to go upstairs to meet with Miss Dawkins, but if a body was clever enough to crouch right outside the door to the sitting room during the encounter, she’d be likely catch every syllable uttered.

  If houses can be said to possess ancestral auras—and there are those who say brick and mortar can collect more than grime over the centuries, even to the point of absorbing spiritual essences—then it was possible that the walls of the sitting room sighed with gratitude when the visitor stepped across its doorsill. For this was obviously a gentleman of the Quality who paced its narrow confines. It was undoubtedly a nob of the first stare whose impatient black gaze took in the room in all its threadbare splendor in one cursory glance, and then turned his back to the door and gazed out through the yellowed lace panels which mercifully obscured the view to the street.

  Even if it were possible that subsequent, socially inferior occupants of the house had also left traces of their less affluent and well-bred ectoplasms in the wood and plaster warp of the room, it still might be said that all the several spirits would be at peace with this particular visitor. For the Earl of Clune had only come into his honors a year previously, and moreover, had never expected or wished to achieve his noble state. He’d been a mere “Mister” Colin Haverford for the previous seven-and-twenty years of his life, although anyone who’d ever known him would argue that the gentleman had never been “mere” at any time in his existence. Still, an earl to the title born and raised might not have undertaken the mission he had. But even as the hands that were folded behind his broad, immaculately tailored back were not yet accustomed to idleness, so too this gentleman was not yet in the habit of sending others to do his bidding, and would never think of leaving affairs of conscience for others to resolve.

  However, his young cousin, Lord Malverne, perhaps because titled since his christening, obviously had no such compunctions. The earl scowled as he thought of his feckless young relative. A week had passed since young Theo had come raging into his study complaining at the injustice of the fact that the crass interference of his mama had lost some innocent governess her livelihood. Until that moment the earl hadn’t thought much of the young sprig of fashion he seemed to have inherited along with his honors and properties when he’d come into his own title.

  Colin Haverford had become head of what he’d always considered to be a singularly unpleasant family at the same moment that he’d acceded to the earldom. He’d known of their existence, of course, and had met with them now and again where it hadn’t been possible for them to avoid him, at funerals and weddings, but they’d not tossed him a look when there had been four persons between himself and the title, and in all, he’d been glad of it. But with the title had come responsibilities, both moral and legal. And since it rapidly became apparent that Theo’s mama saw her son only through rose-colored glasses, just as she’d once viewed her ideal, his father, the young baron who’d died too soon for her to discover otherwise, and his uncle, her brother, saw him only, as he saw all else, through the bottom of a wineglass, it seemed someone must take on some responsibility for him growing to a decent manhood. Lady Malverne was old-fashioned enough to believe in the absolute authority of the head of the family. And since the new earl was appalled to discover that the lady’s idea of manhood was only noblemanhood, he accepted the unpleasant duty as the lad’s mentor with the same resignation with which he’d accepted all else about his new position.

  He’d taken some time with the lad, and so had been tremendously pleased that day to find that Theo seemed actually to be concerned that his actions had caused some innocent underling distress. He’d been gratified that the young lord appeared aggrieved when he’d learned that a governess who’d penned a love note in a foreign language for him had lost her position due to a misunderstanding of the favor. He’d been, however, far less than charmed when he’d finally discovered that the entire incident had taken place some five weeks past, and had, as the young villain had casually admitted after interrogation, quite slipped his mind because of the splendid mill he’d gone to, the races he’d attended, and the new roan he’d had his eye on, until that very morning, when something said at breakfast had reminded Mama, and she’d gloated over it all over again.

  It had taken time for the concept that five wageless weeks could be a matter of life or death to a servant to sink into Lord Malverne’s privileged head, but the hope for the lad, his relative thought, was that once the message had come clear, he’d been on fire to find the poor old soul and right matters for her once again. Nothing would do but he must seek her out, reimburse her for time lost, and help find her a new position. For even he could understand that a person, however humble, might not wish to be reemployed in an establishment she’d been peremptorily and unjustly bounced out of, however matters might now be explained to everyone’s satisfaction.

  As the earl had some notion of young Theo’s attention span, and since after he’d made the inquiries Theo had no idea of going about, he’d also known the sort of neighborhood the unfortunate governess’s employment counselors said she now resided in, he’d decided to accompany the lad on his mission of mercy. One look at the rapt expression on the youth’s face as they’d driven through the noisome streets had convinced him of his wisdom in the matter. If Theo had gone alone it was very possible he might never have returned, or if he had, it might have been with the sort of problems, or at the least, parasites, that the noble Malvernes had never encountered. Slumming with cronies might bring Theo to some dicey straits, but these streets were ones where few young sporting gents, however lively, ever ventured alone. After all, it was thrills and pleasure the youth of the Quality were after, not actual suicide.

  The earl had also privately thought that Theo might have a hard time of it when he did find the rejected governess. The poor old lady he said he sought might have been so abjectly grateful and embarrassingly servile in her delight at having been found and vindicated that she could have brought too much of the wrong sort of attention to the lad from others in the area who had their own grievances against rich and thoughtless young gentlemen and their treatment of helpless females. Or she might still be so angry and swollen with insult and the sort of smoldering rage that proper old females who have nothing else to their names subsist upon, that she could have also caused Theo harm or brought some sort of indignity upon him when he finally located her and tried to mend matters.

  The last thing the earl had expected of the journey was that it would cause him sleepless nights. But the wretched cast-off aged governess, Miss Dawkins, it transpired, was one of the loveliest young creatures his wondering eyes had ever chanced upon in all his wandering. When Theo had voiced his unheard shout and leaped down to the street and the earl had seen whom he’d accosted, there was even a mad moment when he’d thought the lad as overwhelmed by the girl’s beauty as he was, but, being younger, was unable to control himself and his desires. Then when the glowing girl had grown pale and that charming face had blanched and become wide-eyed with terror as Theo accosted her, the earl had known that whatever the reason for the incident, it must be stopped at once. He’d then been so overwhelmed by the revelation that this graceful beauty was the pedantic old governess Theo had been seeking that he’d stood by, leveled by amazement as he’d not been in years, mute as a callow boy himself, while Theo proceeded to thoroughly muddy matters further, insult the girl more profoundly, and embarrass her into flight.

  It was that, and the fact that only this morning the earl had learned that Theo had once again confused good intentions with good works, and had neglected to foll
ow up on the matter in all the past weeks’ time, that caused the barely suppressed anger so apparent in the earl’s dark face. But if he’d been completely successful in his attempts at concealing his chagrin, if he’d been less tense, if he’d been all asmile and charming when he’d come to call here, Mrs. Rogers mightn’t have believed him for a moment, and certainly never for long enough to allow him into her house, much less her beloved sitting room. For true gentlemen, she knew, with the surety of someone who has always been downtrodden, do not chat up commoners, nor spare a grin for those they deem beneath them. Nor, she thought with the unswerving devotion to distinctions of class of the truly oppressed, as she huffed up the last steps and held her hand to her wide and wildly thumping bosom before she rattled Miss Dawkins’ door, should they.

  And so it was that she demanded that Miss Dawkins descend to greet her guest at once, with no further delay. Because when the young woman heard it was a gentleman, and a real one at that, come to call on her, she hesitated, she prevaricated, she almost refused at once. Then Mrs. Rogers, with all the authority vested in her as proprietress of Miss Dawkins’ last refuge, lost all her patience with such revolutionary behavior. It was a nob, a nobleman, that were cooling ’is ’eels, she shouted, and as Mrs. Rogers lived and had trouble breathing after all those flights of stairs, Miss Dawkins would receive him or receive her marching orders. Visions of whatever errand the gentleman was embarked upon being far less ominous than her landlady’s present glittering eye. Miss Dawkins, being wise as she was hesitant, capitulated. She descended with as much grace as was possible, with Mrs. Rogers hard on her heels, panting and crowding and prodding her all the way down the stairs.