Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  ‘A beautiful girl like you could do so much better,’ he concluded, definitively.

  Mabel attempted a feeble smile. ‘I don’t know, sir. I just want to do my job properly.’ Bring it back to work, that was the safest option. All the other stuff seemed unfathomable.

  ‘Indeed,’ he replied. ‘I’m sure you do, and you are.’ He stood looking at Mabel, fixing her with his piercing blue eyes that were simultaneously knowing, and enticing.

  Mabel’s skin prickled with sweat but along with the embarrassment was a frisson of something else, something indefinable, but not unpleasant.

  ‘I must get back to my duties,’ she muttered, hastily. ‘Goodbye.’

  She didn’t breathe freely again until she was safely in the servants’ quarters of the house, where Mac would never stray. He’d made her feel awkward, and excited, and strange all at the same time, and the encounter had left her discombobulated in a way she couldn’t explain. Mac – and Lady Cardburn – had said she could do better than a servant and of course there were stories of those who worked below stairs catching the eye of a dashing gentlemen from above stairs – usually someone foreign, and not bound by English class distinctions. But they were rare. And Mabel wasn’t looking for anyone other than Archie, anyway. He was so sweet. She was beginning to understand that she loved him.

  On her way into the house, Mrs Bustle told her that her ladyship needed her for something, so Mabel only had time to take her coat and the present to her bedroom before attending to her duties. Later, her chores done for the day, she went back to her room, her candle throwing delicate shadows on the walls. The electricity supply hadn’t been extended to servants’ rooms.

  As soon as she opened the door, she saw it. A parcel wrapped in glossy pink paper and tied with an enormous bow was lying on her bed. Mabel’s mouth fell open in astonishment. Who on earth had given her such an elaborate looking present and not only that but had it delivered to her room?

  Plumping down onto the mattress, curiosity drew her to pick up the surprise gift before Archie’s. She handled it carefully, examining its pink beauty, turning it around and around in her hands. Undoing the meticulously knotted ribbon and unfolding the paper so as not to tear it, she extracted a long rectangular box. Inside was an impossibly elegant pair of cream kid-leather gloves in her exact size. There was a note tucked between them.

  To Mabel,

  A small gift to wish you a very happy twentieth birthday and to thank you for all you do for my daughter.

  I will be abroad for a while, but I hope to see you wearing and enjoying these on my return. They will be some improvement on those cotton ones you have now.

  With warm wishes,

  Mac

  Mabel’s heart skipped a beat. A birthday gift from Mac? But why? She fondled the gloves, feeling their softness, examining the exquisite workmanship. They must have cost a lot of money; everything about them exuded luxury and expense. And they were, as he had pointed out, a world away from her black cotton ones. She was not sure, though, that she’d ever be able to wear them – it was very important that a lady’s maid never outdid her mistress, unthinkable that she should have nicer garments than her. But oh, they were lovely, things of indisputable beauty and quality.

  Mabel put them on and took them off again. Thank goodness her hands were no longer blemished and swollen the way they had been in the Brampton Square days, but were now smooth and dainty once more; these were gloves for well-kept hands. No one in Hawthorn Road had ever had such gloves as this – not her mother, nor herself and most likely not Katharine, either, for all her success.

  In a daze, Mabel painstakingly rewrapped the gloves in their tissue paper and replaced them in the box. She would take them out and look at them every day, even if she couldn’t wear them.

  Only then did she remember Archie’s package. Inside the brown paper wrapping she found a book, in French: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. It was brand new, the pages uncut, the embossed cover faultlessly displaying an engraving of a beautiful woman holding up a looking glass to appraise her own reflection. Archie must have saved for ages to buy this; books were expensive, ones in foreign languages even more so, and hard to find, too.

  Mabel sat for a long time considering the two gifts. Both were lovely, chosen with such care especially for her. Both were undeserved. And both aroused powerful and conflicting emotions that she could not make sense of.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  London, 1906

  The next day, a new footman stood alongside Arthur in the marbled hallway. He was shorter by a few inches, and there was no similarity between the two men.

  Mabel’s eyes flitted between the mismatched pair as she walked with her ladyship to the front door, trying to hide the horror and astonishment on her face. She was sure she caught a smirk on Arthur’s face.

  Where on earth was Archie? Was he ill? He must be ill. How ill? Fevered thoughts hurled themselves around Mabel’s mind so that she could hardly concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

  The new footman escorted them to the carriage.

  ‘Thank you, Algernon,’ said Alexandra as he helped her in.

  Algernon? Who was this man and where had he come from?

  Mabel felt sick. She was desperate to find out what had happened to Archie, but too full of dread to ask.

  Lady Cardburn answered her unspoken question. ‘You are wondering what has become of Archie,’ she said, bluntly.

  Mabel nodded, mutely. The capacity for speech eluded her.

  ‘He has been sacked. I believe he’s gone back to County Durham. Or is it Northumberland he’s from? I forget.’

  Mabel’s mouth fell open in shock and disbelief. Sacked?

  ‘It was found that he had stolen some money,’ continued Lady Cardburn. ‘I sent him to make some purchases and he forged an invoice in order to keep several pounds for himself. Of course, he had to be dismissed immediately.’ She pursed her lips in righteous disapproval.

  Mabel gulped. She had forgotten how to breathe.

  ‘He’s lucky we didn’t have him arrested,’ Lady Cardburn added, ‘but my father insisted that we just send him away with a warning. He’s sure he’ll never do such a thing again.’ She folded her hands decisively upon her lap. ‘I must say I was surprised. I had never seen an ounce of dishonesty in Archie, nor thought he was capable of it. He didn’t seem the sort.’ She looked expectantly at Mabel as if waiting for a contribution on this topic.

  Tears pricked behind Mabel’s eyes and she forced them back. Lady Cardburn must not see her cry.

  ‘No, my lady,’ she muttered. ‘He didn’t.’

  Lady Cardburn smiled sympathetically and reached across to Mabel, patting her hand gently. ‘You will be upset,’ she said, kindly. ‘We had only just discussed that you and Archie – that you were fond of each other. That you had an – arrangement.’

  Mabel nodded, not trusting herself to speak. How could she have been so taken in by Archie? He must have stolen the money to buy the book for her birthday. She’d wondered how he could afford it but never thought he’d stoop to theft. She had totally misjudged him. And even worse – had he thought of her as the sort of girl who would only be impressed by an expensive gift? When nothing could be further from the truth. He hadn’t needed to give her anything to win her affection. He had already had it.

  ‘Well, least said, soonest mended,’ intoned Alexandra, decisively, interrupting the whirling tornado of Mabel’s thoughts. ‘It’s a good thing you and he didn’t get even more deeply involved.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  The desolation that engulfed Mabel only intensified over the next couple of days. A heavy band settled around her chest and pulled tighter and tighter with every hour. She would find herself looking out for Archie, resplendent in his scarlet livery, and then suddenly remember that he was gone, and why.

  In her bedroom, she looked at the gloves and the book, her birthday presents, as she sewed a loose button onto a blouse. She
was convinced that it was all her fault, that something about herself had made Archie commit the crime. The tension and stress transferred to her hands and the sewing thread, stretched too taut, snapped. It felt like the violent breaking of Mabel’s heart. Archie must have been so ashamed he had not even tried to contact her, to explain himself. That could only be because there was no reasonable explanation to excuse what he had done. Angrily, Mabel threw the blouse onto her dressing table and buried her face in her pillow. Life seemed full of insuperable mysteries and challenges and her whole body ached with the pain of loss.

  However much she was hurting, though, she had to do her job. In some ways, she was glad to be kept busy by Lord and Lady Cardburn’s schedule as they embarked on a flurry of entertaining. It prevented her from dwelling on what had happened. Below stairs, in the privacy of the servants’ hall, there was plenty of moaning about the extra work involved in the fashion of serving dinners à la russe, where every course was brought in separately and dished up to each guest by the staff, rather than the old way of à la française where everything was put onto the table at the same time and diners helped themselves. But Mabel didn’t care how hard she had to toil. Usually, it was because she loved the glamour and the buzz, seeing the guests dressed up to the nines, smelling of divine perfumes and sporting the latest hairstyles. Now, though, she couldn’t care less about what anyone was saying or wearing but threw herself into her work as a way to stop herself ruminating on Archie’s absence.

  On the evening before one of the dinners, Mabel was doing her ladyship’s hair when the bedroom door opened. She paused, shocked. No one entered a lady’s boudoir without invitation – not even her husband. In the mirror’s reflection, Mabel saw Alexandra’s friend Anna Lawless march over the threshold. Miss Lawless, it was said in the servants’ hall, was an example of that radical breed of women, a suffragette. Mabel was utterly in awe of her; she was so suave and confident and outspoken – totally different from most of Lady Cardburn’s other friends, and from Lady Cardburn herself, who never overstepped the mark but was the model Edwardian lady. Mabel’s mother Mary would have called Anna ‘modern’ because she rarely observed the formalities – or perhaps something even less complimentary, if she heard the way she sometimes swore.

  ‘Oh, I am so fed up,’ cried Anna, flumping down onto the chaise longue with an almighty sigh.

  Mabel continued her hairdressing, pretending she was invisible, as a good lady’s maid should.

  Lady Cardburn, her back turned to Anna, regarded her through the mirror.

  ‘Poor thing,’ she said, benignly. She was used to indulging Anna’s mercurial moods. ‘What is the problem?’

  ‘It’s Dennis,’ said Anna, flatly. She took a cigarette from her purse, put it into an elaborate ivory holder and lit it, taking a long drag and exhaling the smoke in a hazy cloud that floated around her like mist in the early morning.

  ‘And what has he done to fall out of favour with you now?’

  Mabel wasn’t entirely sure what the relationship between Miss Lawless and Dennis Whitfield was. They weren’t married, but Anna talked of him so often that they must be officially courting.

  ‘He’s only gone to Ceylon, hasn’t he,’ Anna responded, grumpily. ‘And left me all alone just when there’s a ball or a party every night of the week and two on a Saturday!’

  ‘Outrageous!’ Lady Cardburn was smiling, holding back a laugh.

  ‘Oh you, you’re not sympathetic at all. Just because boring old Henry Cardburn never goes anywhere further than his club on the Mall. You have no idea what it’s like, constantly being deserted.’

  ‘Hardly deserted, darling,’ interjected Alexandra. ‘And I’m sure he gave you something lovely to remember him by.’

  Anna turned up her nose and gave a disparaging sniff. ‘Diamond earrings. But time is more valuable than money, is it not?’

  Lady Cardburn avoided Mabel’s eyes in the mirror. ‘I think that depends on who you are,’ she said, carefully. ‘But anyway – you haven’t told me why he’s shipped out to Ceylon. Business, I suppose?’

  ‘Some exhibition about rubber,’ Anna replied, yawning. ‘About as boring as it sounds, I should say. It’s being held in the Royal Botanic Gardens somewhere unpronounceable – Peradeniya? Pterodactyl? I don’t know.’

  They both laughed.

  Mabel, who had been daydreaming and not taking much notice, pricked up her ears at the mention of rubber. She wondered what it had to do with Ceylon, when Katharine had told her that rubber came primarily from the Amazon or, to a lesser extent, the Congo.

  ‘Perhaps if you showed a little more interest in his business affairs, he’d include you more? Take you with him?’ suggested Lady Cardburn with a mischievous grin.

  ‘Oh no!’ Anna threw her cigarette stub into an ebony ashtray on a side table. She stood up and stretched, her body long and languid, sinuous like a cat. Mabel found her movements fascinating, so controlled and contained.

  ‘Why would I want that? What interest do I have in a mouldy old display of plantation rubber? They say it’s going to wipe out the Amazon, but really, who cares?’

  Mabel gulped a sharp intake of breath. Wipe out the Amazon? That meant Katharine. And, she supposed, Mac. But Anna couldn’t be serious. It was impossible to think that anything could destroy the all-powerful Mac. Losing her concentration momentarily, she dropped a lock of Alexandra’s hair across her face.

  ‘Careful, Mabel.’ The reprimand was sharp. Lady Cardburn hated it when anyone’s focus was less than total.

  ‘Sorry, my lady,’ mumbled Mabel. She wanted to hear more about the rubber, this threat to her sister’s livelihood, was hoping Anna would oblige.

  ‘No, I’m not going on a long boat journey with my terrible sea legs for any money. Of course, for Dennis it’s really a chance to hobnob with his chums from the City in more exotic climes. Goodness knows what else he gets up to.’

  Anna gave a snort of derision, sat back down on the chaise longue and lit another cigarette.

  Mabel waited, breath held, for further information. She was sure that the two women would be able to sense how intensely she was following their conversation.

  ‘You are terrible,’ laughed Alexandra. ‘I’m sure he’s the model of sobriety and rectitude wherever he is. And no Eastern beauty could rival you, in any case.’

  Anna inclined her head gracefully in acceptance of the compliment. She leant back and blew smoke rings into the air. Mabel watched in admiration, wishing she had half the sophistication and poise of this alarmingly exciting woman.

  ‘Let’s just hope Dennis makes enough money in this new venture that he can come back and marry me and keep me in the manner to which I am accustomed!’

  Lady Cardburn gave a snort of derision. ‘Unlike Henry, who’s never made a penny in his life. Thank God father is as rich as he is and happy to share it. Or we’d be on the poverty line.’

  Mabel just managed to stop the pin she was working with stabbing into Alexandra’s scalp. The idea that anyone in Hanover Terrace had any notion of what the poverty line looked like was preposterous. She wanted them to stop waffling on about money and go back to talking about rubber.

  Alexandra obliged, briefly. ‘You’re right, though. My father also says the future of rubber is in the East. I think he’s investing.’

  Mabel coughed to hide her gasp of astonishment. She waited desperately for more. But that conversation was over.

  Anna went to the window to look out. ‘By the way,’ she pondered out loud, ‘I was sorry not to see your handsome second footman at the door. He was such a gentle giant, always so unbearably polite and deferential. What happened to him?’

  Mabel’s heart turned over. It was becoming hard to maintain an innocuous expression in the midst of so many revelations.

  Lady Cardburn shrugged. ‘There was a little problem, so he had to be let go. That’s all.’

  Mabel wondered why Alexandra didn’t want to go into details but was secretly grateful.
She couldn’t bear to hear it all being picked over, wanted to forget all about it.

  ‘Shame,’ Anna responded, eventually. ‘There was something rather attractive about him, wasn’t there? The strong and silent type. Don’t you ever lust after a touch of rough?’

  Frozen in disbelief, Mabel bit down hard on her cheek to stop herself from saying something. How could Anna make fun of Archie like that? And so crude! She felt Alexandra’s displeasure in the sudden rigidity of her shoulders.

  ‘Anna! Please behave yourself,’ Alexandra reprimanded her friend, her voice sharp and uncompromising. ‘You go too far sometimes.’

  Anna laughed. But she didn’t mention Archie again.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, changing the subject seamlessly, ‘I can’t go gallivanting to Ceylon because I’m far too busy with the WSPU. I know you say you can’t join, what with being titled and all of that old-fashioned stuff, but I so wish you could. We’d have such fun! I honestly think we should dump all this Lord and Lady, Duke and Duchess nonsense, become a republic like France or America.’

  Mabel’s disappointment at the dropping of the rubber conversation, and her pain at the discussion of Archie, was immediately replaced by fascination at Anna’s dismissal of the class system that underpinned the whole of British society. She had never heard anyone express such revolutionary views so openly. Lady Cardburn stiffened again.

  ‘Really, Anna.’ Alexandra’s voice was cold. ‘You need to know when to stop with your rebellious notions. Mess around with votes for women if you must – but please leave the rest of us alone. You have no idea what such careless talk could unleash.’

  Here she paused and Mabel could tell she was trying to give silent ‘not in front of the servants’ messages to Anna. Normally she’d have spoken in French if she didn’t want to be understood. But Mabel knew more French than she did, after all these years of diligent study at the Working Women’s College. Mabel suppressed the urge to giggle. It was nice to have at least one thing over these two rich women, even though she liked Alexandra, who had been good to her. And Anna’s crazy notions were intriguing but so unlikely ever to come to pass as to be hardly worth bothering about.