Honoria Or The Safety 0f The Frying Pan

by Catherine Bowness

  After a quarter of a century complaining about the burdensome nature of pleasing others, she had thought that pleasing only herself would have been nothing short of wonderful. She had been convinced that a slight change of name, along with the acquisition of a recently deceased husband and an appearance as much at variance with her old one as she could achieve without wearing a wig or dyeing her hair, would have ensured her privacy.

  She had been right. No one took the least interest in her. Her privacy was undisturbed but she found, to her surprise, that she was both bored and – from time to time – lonely. She had never had a superfluity of friends – her profession had made that more or less impossible - but she had been close to one for a number of years. She had even, in what she had feared at the time was a weak moment, invited Mrs Farley to accompany her to Vienna and had been relieved when her friend had declined, saying that she was too old to up sticks and move halfway across Europe but perhaps she would pay a visit in the summer.

  Mrs Farley had made no attempt to dissuade Cassie from fleeing London; she could see the sense in her friend avoiding the ignominy of her former protector’s desertion and the pain contingent upon seeing his new wife, radiant with happiness, in possession of him.

  She had – although she was much afraid that her behaviour just before she left London might have driven him away – recently acquired one other friend. Lord Furzeby, a widower some ten years her senior, had suggested she spend a repairing lease in Paris or Rome while the scandal died down. She had rejected both those cities on account of their having been the sites of her early forays into the demi-monde; they reeked of hideous memories which she had no wish to revive. Vienna, on the other hand, was entirely unknown to her.

  In spite of her conviction that she had hated almost every moment of her life as a Bird of Paradise – not one she had chosen but into which she had been forced – she found that the reality of a life led entirely to please herself was, although at first delightfully liberating, rapidly becoming tedious. Fearful of meeting someone she knew from the past and of people discovering her story and thus forcing her back into the life she was determined to abandon, she made no attempt to enter Viennese society but lived in a sort of miserable isolation in her little house. Her only forays outside her own front door consisted of a daily walk in the Prater, which she made sure to take early in the morning before any fashionable people had risen from their beds.

  She had arrived in June when the weather was hot and the sun shone almost every day. Now it was December and snow had begun to fall with some regularity so that, often, when she awoke and drew back the curtains, it was to see a fine crystalline covering laid over everything. It was astonishingly beautiful and the muffled sound of carriage wheels outside the windows held a sort of romance which was new to her. Looking out of the window in the early morning, the streets seemed as though renewed every day but she was discovering that, no matter how charming one’s house nor how magical one’s surroundings, it was not altogether agreeable to speak to no one but one’s servants from dawn until dusk. She was afraid that she might die of boredom before Mrs Farley ventured to visit.

  This particular morning, she decided that, although she had already been to the Prater earlier, she must make another excursion if she were not to go mad before nuncheon, a meal which she insisted upon eating although it was not one the Viennese favoured.

  Of course, she could wander round the shops instead but she had no desire to buy anything and was, in any event, at something of a disadvantage on account of being unable to speak more than a few words of German; those she had acquired sufficed to inform the servants of her plans – none – and what she wished them to serve for dinner. This last required a very particular vocabulary and, although she was beginning – painfully and mortifyingly slowly – to acquire it, she was usually obliged to go down to the kitchen and be shown various foodstuffs. Staring at a quantity of raw ingredients was not, she had discovered, a great deal of help for the showing was always accompanied by long and – it seemed to her – involved descriptions of how the food would be cooked, which sauces would accompany it and which vegetables or fruits might be served with it. Although she listened carefully – and even took a notebook with her to the kitchen where she wrote down the important words – she still found that she had little idea of what would eventually arrive at her table. Some of it was delicious but, although she dared not tell the cook for fear of upsetting him, the greater proportion was not at all to her taste. She supposed that this was the Viennese way of cooking and she wished that she had had the forethought to employ a French cook, whose dishes she did not doubt she would have found both more recognisable and more palatable.

  She rang the bell and indicated to the manservant who answered it that she wished to go out.

  “Gnädige Frau,” he said, bowing from the waist, as though, she thought, she had been an archduchess.

  She nodded grandly and sailed out of the room and up the narrow stairs to her bedchamber where she guessed her maid would be sent to help her dress in the copious furs that were required in this extreme climate.

  She was right and she had barely reached her room when there was a discreet knock upon the door and the maid – a pretty young girl – entered and enquired, Cassie guessed, how she might assist the Gnädige Frau.

  Once buttoned into the soft and comforting warmth of furs, with her golden curls safely enclosed within a matching hat and her feet buttoned into delightfully warm boots, Cassie sallied forth into the sunshine. The sun blazed from a brilliant sky and the dazzle from the still partially snow-covered pavements caused her to blink. She had not been outside in the brightness of full daylight for some time.

  She set off in the direction of the Prater, it being somewhere she could find with ease as well as a place where she did not expect anyone to speak to her. It seemed pleasantly warm in the sun and she thought that she would find a bench and watch the children playing; no doubt their shrill voices would soon irritate her and make her happy to scuttle back to the safety of her little house.

  She had not been sitting long and she was still enjoying watching the children when one of them – a little boy of about six or seven, she judged – threw a ball towards a man, whom she took to be his father – missed and hit her full on the nose.

  She gasped and clapped her hands to her face as the pain exploded. The man ran up at once and began to address her in rapid German. The boy followed, also apologising and looking terrified. She saw his little face, the large eyes wide and beginning to fill with tears, and lowered her hands. She observed with horror that they were covered in blood and indeed felt it running, in a disturbingly warm stream, from her nose to her lips.

  “It is all right,” she said in a somewhat muffled tone. “It is nothing – just the shock.” They understood her no more than she understood them but no doubt inferred her meaning from the tone of her voice.

  The man attempted to staunch the flow of blood with a handkerchief which he drew from his pocket. She took it from him, holding it to her nose and tilting her head back in an attempt to stop the blood coursing down her face and dripping into her lap.

  “Nein, nein!!” the man cried, taking hold of her head with firm hands and bending it down so that the blood dripped over her hands again.

  “Oh, pray do not – let me go – I am afraid I shall faint – all this blood!” Cassie begged.

  “The blood – yes,” the man agreed, understanding the word that was so similar in both languages and attempting to reassure her. “Do not be afraid,” he added in heavily accented English, looking round the park frantically and beginning to call authoritatively for someone, she presumed a doctor, to come to their aid. The child stood, horrified, just behind his father.

  The very thought of needing a doctor made Cassie fear that she would bleed to death; every sort of horror overcame her until, with a sigh, she did faint, falling sideways upon the bench with the man hanging over her, also white-faced, and the child beginning
to sob.

  On to this scene came a man on horseback although Cassie, still unconscious, did not see him arrive or hear what passed between the two men.

  When she regained her senses, she was immediately conscious of extreme pain in her nose, groaned and cried piteously, “Oh, oh! It hurts so much!”

  The gentleman on the horse had wheeled his animal and was in the very act of applying his heels to the creature’s sides when he heard these words. He pulled up at once, exclaiming, “You are English! Dear lady, I am about to ride off to fetch a doctor but I do not think you need be too concerned – it looks to me as though the bleeding is already stopping. Noses bleed quite dreadfully, you know,” he added reassuringly.

  “You speak English!” she cried on a note of relief. “I am sure I do not need a doctor – what could he do? As you say, it is not bleeding so much now, is it?” As she spoke, she withdrew the handkerchief from her nose and looked up at him for confirmation, keeping her own eyes well away from the bloodstained linen.

  She presented an alarming sight, although fortunately she could not see herself; she was almost as white as the snow apart from the now darkening gash of blood obscuring the lower half of her face.

  The English gentleman – for it seemed he was English – at least he spoke that language with ease - dismounted.

  “Your nose may be broken,” he said gently, bending down to examine it. “I think it would be wise to consult a doctor for he may be able to set it for you.”

  “Oh!” she said, afflicted by a new fear. “Could he prevent it looking like a – like …” Her voice trailed off as she began to envision the true calamity of what had happened. For a woman who had depended upon her beauty to earn a living for more than twenty years, the thought of having to face the world with a mutilated nose was almost more horrifying than imminent death would have been.

  “Yes, I should think so,” the gentleman said, smiling at her. “If you can bear to sit here for another few minutes, I will fetch my own doctor in a carriage. He can take a look at you and we will both escort you home. Do you live nearby?”

  “Yes,” she said and named the street where her house was. “But it is not far - I daresay I can walk back now. I do not think I shall faint again.”

  The English gentleman nodded and explained the matter to the other man. After a brief conversation, he said, “This man expresses enormous sorrow for your injury, Madam, and says he would consider it a privilege if you would allow him to walk beside you so that, if you should come over faint again, he can catch you. His name is Graf von Krems. We both agree that the sooner you are safe in the warmth of your own home the better.”

  “Yes; if he does not mind, I would be most grateful for his company,” Cassie said. The man had been kind and she did not want to stumble home by herself. Also, if he came to her door, she could perhaps get him to explain to her servants what had occurred.

  The English gentleman introduced himself. “My name is Waldron,” he said, “and I am attached to the British embassy here. I will bring the doctor as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you,” she said with touching gratitude.

  Waldron bowed, took back his horse from the boy, mounted it and rode off back towards the gates.

  “Gnädige Frau?” von Krems asked, bending towards her and holding out his hand.

  “Ja, Danke,” Cassie agreed, employing two of the no more than fifty German words at her disposal.

  She allowed him to raise her to her feet, steady her and tuck one hand into his arm. He spoke to the boy, who fell in at once behind them, and the trio set off, rather shakily, in the wake of the Englishman.

  By the time they reached Cassie’s house she had regained some of her strength and confidence. Her nose was no longer bleeding although it still hurt abominably. She wondered if it was as mashed upon her face as a rotten apple – certainly she could not breathe through it but was obliged to walk along the road with her mouth open, looking, she was certain, idiotic as well as monstrous.

  The door was opened by the footman who took one look at her and turned white.

  “Am I so horrifying?” she asked on a note of despair but, since nobody understood her, no one replied.

  The Count bowed and was all for leaving her in the tender care of her servants but she invited him to come in, bending to the little boy to suggest he might like a cake and a drink of milk. She managed both these nouns in a rather staccato manner as though she had been an extremely small child taking her first steps into language but both the man and the child understood her. The man smiled and accepted. The child looked even more frightened but his little mouth flickered into a polite smile when his father spoke to him.

  Cassie nodded at her butler, who had appeared from the nether regions of the house, and repeated the words ‘Milch’ and ‘Kuchen’ with what she hoped was a ‘speaking’ glance at the child. “Kaffee oder Wein?” she asked the man.

  When he decided on coffee, she nodded at the butler again and led the way into the small saloon on the ground floor where she usually sat. It was prettily furnished and warm, the fire flickering brightly in the grate. Gesturing to her guests to sit down, she shrugged off the fur coat and seated herself in her usual chair, the bloodstained handkerchief still held to her nose, more now in order to conceal the hideous injury than to stem the flow of blood.

  Her maid, Lisl, arrived before the refreshments and began on a paean of commiseration, accompanied, Cassie guessed, by suggestions as to treatment. She looked hopefully between the man and the maid and von Krems began to speak, no doubt explaining the nature of the injury as well as how she had come by it. She heard the word, ‘Arzt’ and ‘Der Engländer’ and assumed that he was telling the maid that a doctor had been summoned and that it would be wise to await his prognosis before embarking on any treatment.

  The maid dropped him a little curtsey, offered further commiserations to her mistress, picked up the fur coat, the bloodied muff and the hat which Cassie was holding out. She ruffled the child’s hair and offered him some advice too, which clearly relieved some of his tension for he smiled a little in response.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning was spent by Lady Charles and the two young women in a minute – and ultimately depressing - examination of their wardrobes.

  “We shall be obliged to postpone our visit to the assembly rooms for a se’nnight,” her ladyship said at last, her face, which had been growing increasingly harassed, relaxing as she reached this conclusion. “Our gowns are quite horridly dowdy; we cannot make a first appearance in such poor attire.”

  “Oh, but I cannot bear to wait a whole week,” Helen exclaimed. “Can we not contrive something with a few strips of lace and some ribbons?”

  “Very well,” her ladyship agreed, to Helen’s surprise. “You can spend the rest of the afternoon on the enterprise but I cannot promise that I shall consider the result acceptable and, if I do not, I forbid you – on pain of never taking you to the assembly rooms - to indulge in a fit of the vapours. I am prepared to take you shopping next week to look for something that’s more the crack.”

  But Helen was afraid that, if they did not go at once, the impetus induced by Frank’s arrival and intervention would dissipate, another excuse would be found and they would never go. “I want to go tomorrow and, if it means wearing an old dress, I am sure I do not care. We could buy some new ones for our next visit.”

  “Pray do not count upon there being a next visit,” her ladyship snapped, the harassed expression returning. “It would be excessively unwise for you to assume that such carryings-on will become a weekly occurrence.”

  “Oh, pray, Mama – I am so looking forward to it.”

  “Then you will not mind looking forward to it for another week.”

  When her ladyship had left the room, the two girls set to with a will. They decided that their basic dresses should be a pair of white muslins which were several years old but still - more or less - fitted and could easily be made a little more
dashing by the careful addition of some lace around the neck and a few bunches of ribbons.

  Having instituted a search for suitable embellishments, they eventually found enough lace for the necklines of both gowns and sat down to sew it into position.

  “I daresay lace is quite out of fashion,” Helen observed in a dispirited tone as she pushed her needle into the soft material.

  “Perhaps we will start a new trend for it,” Honoria suggested, not very seriously. “So far as I can see from La Belle Assemblée, fashions come and go quite rapidly.”

  She jumped up, casting her dress to the floor, and began to leaf through a pile of old copies of the magazine. She soon found a picture of someone wearing a gown amply trimmed with lace and showed it to Helen.

  “It is a different sort of lace,” Helen complained.

  “Well, so it is, but I cannot see that it signifies. It would look very odd if we were all dressed identically. And, look, if we cut up some ribbon and tie it into little bows, we can sew some around the neck, one on each of the sleeves and a few around the hem. Which colour would you like? There is a quantity of this sky blue as well as the pink. I think we should each stick to one colour, do not you? It might look as though we had done it ourselves – which of course we will have but it would surely be better if people did not immediately guess - if we had pink and blue ribbons on the same dress.”

  “I would like the blue,” Helen said.

  Honoria handed her the strands of blue ribbon, picked up her dress and set herself once more to the task of attaching the lace. She did not enjoy needlework and, being naturally impatient, finished hers long before Helen did.