The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  She laughed, and Leonie coloured slightly. She did not think of herself as beautiful, although to be truthful she did not think of herself as ugly either, because that would be plum stupid.

  ‘I am such a plain Jane, I shall doubtless spend all Season on a spindly chair and then be taken home to Somerset to help look after the house, consigned to one of those little sewing rooms that the upper maids use in winter, and allowed out only to help pick and bottle jams and conserves in summer.

  ‘But never mind. I am sure I do not, for the very idea of marriage sometimes seems to me to be rather horrible. I have seldom met a really happy married woman, excepting my stepmother of course, but then she is the exception to most things. She is beautiful and clever and kind, and that is more than you can say of most people. But all this is by the by, and how selfish of me to rattle on when I see this poor child is still not conscious. Oh dear, so the ice did not work the miracle, in this case?’

  The nurse was still as tall and blonde and beautifully turquoise of eye as Mercy remembered her from a few days before, but now as she stood on the other side of the bed shaking her head she was also clearly miserable.

  ‘I tried what you suggested, but it was to no avail. I am afraid, Miss Cordel, she is dying by inches, as Lady Angela and the doctors agreed only this morning. Apparently there is nothing to be done now, except to wait, but not, alas, in hope.’

  Mercy’s large, honest, innocent eyes fell on the young girl lying on the bed, and as they did so she could suddenly see the truth of what Leonie Lynch had just said. She had not seen much of death, but she had seen enough to know that there was a look that came upon people, as if they were already not there. It was like watching someone gradually, little by little, disappearing into the distance, until they were at last – gone.

  Looking across at the young nurse, Mercy could see now that while she herself had been a witness to death some few times before – even helping to lay out her own mother – Leonie was feeling helpless and frightened by what she was witnessing.

  ‘I will stay with you until the end,’ Mercy told her, immediately understanding the scene before her.

  Together the two girls sat in sad, sorrowful silence on either side of the poor young mannequin’s bed, each holding one of her hands, until eventually, as the afternoon light faded into four o’clock, the poor innocent on the bed gave one little last gasp, a few little quick breaths, and then was gone from what for her had, undoubtedly, been a sorrowful world.

  ‘Oh – God rest her!’

  ‘I will help you.’ Mercy looked across at the nurse, who was standing staring down at the bed as if she could not believe what she had just seen. Mercy knew just how she felt, although she herself was quite calm, having witnessed such a scene before. ‘It’s all right, I know what to do. I have had a little nursing experience, on my father’s estate in Somerset. You would be surprised how much goes wrong in the country – or perhaps you would not,’ she added, turning away to help fetch such things as she knew would be necessary.

  After informing Lady Angela of the demise of her patient and the unhappy necessity of calling the undertakers, Leonie expected Mercy to go. Instead, she turned to Leonie and said quietly, ‘Why don’t you fetch your cloak and come with me to a tea room near here? We have Clarice with us, she will see we are not disturbed. It will be perfectly proper, and no-one will miss me until dinner. I can change in a second into an evening gown with Clarice’s help, so it will not be of great matter if we have twenty minutes of some sort of refreshment together, will it?’

  Leonie was grateful, but never more than when she walked into the tea room and saw other people sitting behind pretty china eating cakes and scones and chatting. Life was still life. There were still such things as tea and cake, and gossip, and fashionable accessories, and maids who sat at tables by the door and sipped tea and ate buns while their mistresses ate cake.

  ‘My stepmother would not wish us to be here, but there it is. Sometimes there are events which necessitate refreshment, and somehow ...’

  Mercy looked firmly at her new friend and Leonie tried to smile, although feeling very low indeed, and only really able to see the face of the poor young girl on the bed.

  ‘I somehow feel it is my fault,’ she confessed in a low voice. ‘That I could have done more.’

  Having ordered tea for all of them, Clarice included, Mercy said firmly, ‘We all feel that, I assure you. There always seems to be something that we could have done more, that we should have done more, but the truth is that there is no such thing as “more”, only what has been done. That is the acceptance that has to be faced, I think.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Seventeen, eighteen at the end of June.’

  ‘You talk as if you were much older.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Mercy agreed ingenuously. ‘My brother Henry used to say I talked old when I was born. As a matter of fact I think it is more to do with having grown up in such an isolated place as Somerset – having to be so much on my own. I think that helps one to grow up quickly. Also, I was always with older people when I was young, and that makes you older too, I find.’

  Leonie thought back to Eastgate Street and her mother, and all those grey-faced creatures in the workhouse she had passed so often, sitting, row upon row upon row, not moving until they were brought their filthy gruel, and then how they grabbed at their bowls and ate faster than any starving animal.

  ‘I think growing up in London is ageing too,’ she said, after a moment, and she could not help thinking how different in every way their two childhoods must have been.

  ‘Of course it is. London is so very direct, is it not? You pass beggars and fashionable ladies and great carriages and the poor carts almost at the same moment, but no-one feels responsible for each other, do they? That is the first thing I noticed when that poor girl fell and hit her head – no-one was willing to be responsible for her, and no-one – aside from you and Lady Angela of course – was even a little bit interested, whereas in Somerset someone would have tried to take an interest – although, thinking back, perhaps not always. But at all events, I know I would!’

  ‘Did you find any of her family? She must have some relations, do you not think?’

  Mercy stared across the table at Leonie.

  ‘Well,’ she said sagely, ‘she must have once had, but I have asked a little bit – of Clarice, as a matter of fact – and she has told me that all the fashion houses, to which she has been accompanying my stepmother for many seasons now, are always taking up young girls, too young girls, who are usually...’

  She paused and sipped her tea, not quite knowing what to say, not wanting to shock her companion, knowing that country life had made her more than a little earthy.

  ‘They are usually “fallen”,’ Leonie put in, matter of fact and straightforward as always, this also being a side effect of her upbringing in Eastgate Street. ‘I too have made my own enquiries, of Mrs Dodd, my godmother, you know? She has known Madame Chloe all her life, and it seems there is little to be done. Madame Chloe merely provides employment for these girls, when and if she can, during the Season. There is little else she could do. She is not a rich woman, and really without people like herself the girls would be in a poorhouse. It seems that they are actually seduced into their way of life by wicked women who offer them dresses and then dope them and pass them on to young aristocratic gentlemen. Afterwards they are thrown aside and have to take work wherever they can find it. Sometimes they simply go on with that same way of life – and well you may know the rest. It is most unfortunate.’

  Mercy did not like to say so, but having not been brought up in Eastgate Street she did not ‘know the rest’. But she thought she could guess, because fallen women were fallen women, and everyone knew what happened to fallen women, they died of excesses. Or took to drinking gin, or had babies and had to give them up to foundling hospitals, and that kind of thing. It was all very sad and, as Leonie said, most unfortunate.


  ‘I always think it could happen to any of us, do you know that?’

  Mercy stared at Leonie. She had such a beautiful face, such delicate features all brought together in one extraordinary, fascinating whole by her wondrous turquoise eyes. It was a pleasure to stare at her, even though Mercy was actually staring for quite other reasons.

  ‘That is a very – honest thing to say. An extraordinarily honest thing to say, Miss Lynch.’

  Leonie nodded in agreement, because it was.

  ‘I know, I know. But it is true, is it not? Any of us can be led astray. Sometimes it is by the dresses, and sometimes it is by something even more powerful.’

  ‘I do not think, with all my best will, and all my best imagination, that I could be led astray by dresses.’ Mercy smiled with sudden impishness. ‘But that is because I am not really worth dressing! I always think I am a little bit like one of those unfortunate house owners who, try as they may with furniture and paintings, with marble statues and gilding, and with plasterwork of the most exquisite kind, can not make their houses look any better than they are. Really, they are better not to try, just to leave them unvarnished and plain.’

  ‘You have honesty and kindness that is far better than beauty,’ Leonie told Mercy, feeling oddly sorry for her. ‘Beauty is just something you are born with, and goes quite soon too, I hear! Better to be kind than beautiful.’

  ‘Not,’ her new friend confided, ‘alas, when it comes to the marriage mart, or even just finding partners in the ballroom. I am very much afraid that beauty is the first lure there.’

  ‘And the second?’

  Mercy indicated to the waitress that she should take their tea bill to Clarice, who had charge of her money.

  ‘The second, Miss Lynch, has everything to do with that which Clarice is even now handling on both our behalfs!’

  They both rose from their seats, Leonie with an anxious look to the clock.

  ‘I must not be late back.’

  ‘I hope I will not have got you into trouble. I always seem to be getting people into trouble, I don’t know why.’

  Leonie smiled suddenly, probably for the first time that afternoon. She liked this small, slim young girl with the wry manner. She was not at all like most of her type. She did not make Leonie Lynch from Eastgate Street feel as if she was from a different class, or inferior in any way, as some young women could not wait to do. She had no airs and graces. Rather the reverse – she seemed to think that everyone in the world was vastly more interesting than herself.

  ‘Oh, and I should tell you I will be happy to pay for the young girl’s funeral, Miss Lynch, not just her stay at Sister Angela’s Nursing Home.’ As Leonie followed her outside to the street, she added, ‘I could not bear her to go to such a terrible end as a pauper’s grave, not after seeing her that morning, so fresh-seeming, so young. You see, I have such a conscience about the whole thing. I fear she must have fainted because she was starving. I will pay for a service and the funeral. It is the least I can do, since I will be wearing the dresses which the poor child was forced by circumstances to model. If you send to this address’ – she scribbled on a piece of paper from her maid’s bag as they stood outside in the now rainy street – ‘I will come whenever it is arranged. I rather fear, you see, that despite the work she was being paid to do she might actually have been starving.’

  Clarice shot a large black umbrella up over both of their heads as they stood talking on the pavement and Leonie took up this point.

  ‘You are quite right, Miss Cordel. She was starving, and that is why she died. She had nothing in her to help her regain consciousness – the doctors said as much to Lady Angela. Her flesh was literally hanging from her bones, the way one sometimes sees horses in the back streets. Too awful, don’t you think?’

  Mercy’s kind young face saddened at this, and the expression in her eyes grew sombre.

  ‘It does not bear thinking about, does it? I shall come whenever you send to me for the funeral. It is important, I always think, that no-one should go to their grave unmourned, particularly not such a young person. Au revoir, Miss Lynch!’

  She turned and gave a wave which seemed suddenly, for no reason that Leonie could think, to have a hint of both courage and sadness in it.

  * * *

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Her stepmother stood at the top of the staircase resplendent in a yellow evening gown, with a wide black velvet ribbon studded with diamonds at her throat. Evening gloves, exquisite hand-made evening shoes, the whole adding up to a look that spelt style, breeding, class, money, power, influence – everything indeed that the poor young girl whom Mercy had just seen through her last moments on earth had not, and would not ever have had.

  ‘Thank heavens anyway that you had the sense to take Clarice with you, wherever you were, or your reputation would be ruined for ever!’

  Mercy looked up at her stepmother. She was so beautiful.

  ‘You look wonderful, Step-maman!’ she told her.

  Lady Violet smiled, radiantly, at Mercy’s words. It was as if a thousand electric lights had come on at once, and were lighting up the hall.

  ‘Well, at any rate, all is well.’

  Suddenly she did not seem to want to know where her stepdaughter had been, and no longer had any interest, which was probably just as well.

  ‘You dine in again tonight with Lord Marcus. I know you find him vastly entertaining, as everyone does.’

  As she passed her Mercy thought how funny that was, for possibly the only amusement to be had from Lady Violet’s brother was the very fact that he was unamusing. However tired out by the events of the day, she said nothing, but went on up to her bedroom, wishing in some strange way that she was back at Sister Angela’s Nursing Home, where such things would seem not just superfluous, but faintly ridiculous.

  She must change for dinner, but as she did so, with Clarice in close attendance, she was less interested in being entertained – or not – by Lord Marcus (who to her way of thinking seemed to be using her father’s house in order to save on his own expenditure) than in thinking of her new friend. Mercy knew that her stepmother would not approve of such a friendship. She would say that Miss Lynch was not quite the thing, and steer Mercy towards some more suitable acquaintance with another girl about to step out into her first Season, but Mercy could not agree. She was resolved to be firm about this new friendship. She did not care that Leonie was perhaps not of the same upbringing, or of the same background. She knew she was good, and that surely was all that mattered?

  The note said, It is all arranged. Come at eleven o’clock on Wednesday – tomorrow – when I will meet you at the Church of the Holy Angels, East Sheen. The vicar leaves much to be desired, but he has agreed there will be music. LL

  There was not a shred of what the old Cordel great aunts and uncles would have called ‘a goer’ in Mercy’s blood. She was, and would always remain, she knew, within the moral and mental outlines of her upbringing, but overriding all this was a sense of realism.

  Long before she really knew about such things as deprivation, she was aware that there was a whole world, and a rather more important one perhaps, that moved and lived outside the small Society in which the Prince of Wales and his set revolved around each other in what sometimes seemed – to Mercy anyway – to be a constant, wearying, fashionable dance.

  And so, having read Leonie’s hand-written note, she hurriedly made arrangements for Clarice and herself to leave the following morning free for the mannequin’s funeral, forgetting that she had also agreed, long before, to be ‘looked over’ by the Dowager Duchess of Clanborough, a formidable woman who was keen to meet Mercy as she had an elderly unmarried son whom she had long been trying to pass off on some unsuspecting debutante.

  In their haste to rearrange everything, however, Clarice and Mercy forgot to take the note with them, hurrying off in a hansom cab to collect Leonie Lynch before going on to the service in East Sheen.

  Inevitably, an hou
r after they left in such a hurry, the Dowager arrived as arranged and Mercy was sent for by her stepmother. Her room was found to be empty but the note was discovered by a housemaid, who brought it – with a somewhat excited expression – to the attention of Lady Violet, who, having read it herself, was forced to exercise the most exquisite self-control, as for a few terrible hours she lived with the idea that her stepdaughter might have run off to get married to some appallingly unsuitable personage. It did not occur to her that Mercy had in reality gone to attend the funeral of an unknown mannequin.

  Although they could not have known it, as they crossed the park in a hansom together, Leonie and Mercy passed Dorinda riding out on her new brilliantly coloured, hair-matching, liver chestnut mare. They might have given her a glance, but certainly no more, for the Park that morning was crowded with the fashionable, and the less fashionable, not to mention the demi-monde, all anxious to be seen by each other and everyone else at their sparkling seasonal best. For in May and June London was the best place to be, and everyone, all over the world, knew it. The Empire was still the Empire and the world worshipped the English, for both their style and their elan, and nowhere were those qualities to be seen to a greater degree than in those months of early summer in London.

  But as the hansom pulled over the river and turned right along the side of it, making its spanking clip-clop way out past elegant Regency houses to where various dukes and other noblemen kept up their shooting lodges, and Richmond Park lay basking in the early morning sunshine, and on towards a small church which stood conveniently not far from the main cemeteries that served the city, both girls’ thoughts centred on the less than fashionable occasion ahead of them.

  ‘Good morning, good morning.’ The vicar was in brusque mood, and Mercy was very glad that she was wearing her best clothes – new clothes, as it happened. They were clothes such as the poor girl had no doubt often modelled; smartly fashionable for mourning, black close-fitted jacket, wide skirt, the whole set off by an immense hat.