Susie (13 page)

He walked back into the study and motioned them to sit down.

“I’d prefer to stand, my lord,” said Thomson anxiously, “for you’re not going to like what you’re going to hear.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, Thomson.”

“Very well, my lord, but we’d rather stand. It’s about the smuggling.”

“Go on.”

“It was nothing really to do with my lady, my lord. We started the contraband business away back in the old earl’s day, during his second marriage. See, like we told Lady Blackhall, our wages have remained the same for the past twenty years, and the old earl, he preferred to let us make a bit at smuggling rather than pay us any more. Now, Lady Susie, she found out by accident. She seemed to think it was a bit of a game. She’s just a romantic young girl, my lord.

“But she saved our necks when the excisemen came calling, and we pleaded with her to say nothing to you. But we couldn’t none of us stand by and let her take the blame.”

Giles sat as if turned to stone.

“And if she did kill Lady Felicity,” put in Mrs. Wight stoutly, “then good luck to her, for her ladyship treated my young lady something crool, that she did, always sneering and tormenting and worritting her.”

“Lady Felicity’s death was an accident,” said Giles. “I discovered that this evening.”

There was a long silence.

“I suppose,” said Thomson, clearing his throat, “that you’ll be wishing to call the authorities and have us turned over?”

“No,” said Giles abruptly. “Good God, no! I have caused enough misery this evening. You will cease this trade, and all your wages will be reviewed and increased accordingly. Now, please go and leave me alone!”

Thomson and Mrs. Wight were only too grateful to escape and spread the glad news among the other servants.

Giles sat in the library for a long time.

Then he went slowly back to the ballroom to make his second announcement of the evening.

“I must have been insane,” he told his startled audience. “Lady Susie is guiltless. She is no murderess, nor yet a smuggler. I have made a ghastly mistake.”

Harry Carruthers stepped smartly up to Giles and blacked his eye, and Giles socked him on the mouth. Various drunken young men decided to settle old scores there and then. The Countess of Murr tottered into the buffet, picked up a large blancmange, and emptied it over her husband’s gray head, shouting, “Who’s a frozen-faced old muffin now, you old goat?”

Harriet Blane-Tyre, overcome with champagne and excitement, allowed herself to be led off to a dark spot of the grounds and seduced by a very unfashionable and almost penniless young man. Cecily Winthrope threw her arms around the second fiddle and told him she loved him madly. Over in the buffet, the Earl of Murr retaliated by tipping jelly down his wife’s august cleavage, cheered on by a group of wild young men who all seemed to have black eyes, bleeding noses, and torn shirt frills.

Giles fled from the scene as soon as he could and ran to the top of the keep.

Susie’s bedroom and sitting-room doors were wide open. A glance was enough to assure him that all her clothes were gone. A faint aroma of Paradis hung in the still, empty room to mock his folly, and down below, the best of England’s aristocracy crunched among the broken glass, threw cakes and lobster patties at each other, and had a perfectly splendid time.

Under a full moon, Lady Matilda’s antique carriage lumbered on its way to London with the indefatigable Lady Matilda knitting in one corner and Susie, dry-eyed and white-faced, in the other.

On the opposite seat sat a grim and disapproving Carter. They were bound for Susie’s parents’ home in Camberwell, and Carter did not like that one bit.

Behind the carriage trotted an evil-looking horse called Dobbin. Every time the carriage stopped, he tried to stave in the back of it with his hooves just to pass the time, but the occupants of the carriage were too wrapped up in their own thoughts to care whether he succeeded.

Susie sat in a dry ache of physical and mental misery. Nothing had hurt her so badly before, neither the death of her husband nor the death of Lady Felicity. This time she felt she was mourning her own death; the death of all that was young and romantic and free and tender and fresh.

She sat in numb misery as the miles slipped by and the sky grew paler and paler, until an angry red sun rose above the horizon of the black Essex marshes.

But to those who live in fantasies, a special release from pain is granted, a release denied to the poor souls who have grown to maturity, left their childhood dreams behind, and stared reality straight in the eye.

Down in the black pit of Susie’s abject misery, a little dream began to take root, grow, and blossom. By the time the weary horses had stopped at a large posthouse to allow the night travelers some much-needed rest, it was in full flower.

Lady Matilda had said roundly that Giles had been talking a lot of codswallop about murder and would come to his senses in the morning. But Susie decided that she would be arrested for murder and hauled off to Newgate Prison.

She would stand in the dock at the Old Bailey, with her head thrown back and her veil thrown back, and she would bravely out-stare the accusing eyes of Giles across the courtroom. “Prisoner at the bar,” said the judge (stab-stab-stab)—for the judge was none other than Basil Bryant—“How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” said Susie in a loud, clear voice, while across the court Giles gnashed his teeth in rage. The evidence would mount against her. A wicked smile would play across Giles’s evil lips. At the last breathtaking moment a surprise witness—an old tramp or somebody like that—would be rushed in. He would have seen the whole thing. She would be acquitted. The bells would ring, and the people would cheer. Basil would severely reprimand Giles. FAMOUS PHILANDERER, GILES, EARL OF BLACKHALL, TRIES TO RUIN HEIRESS, the headlines would scream, and as he left the court the angry mob would tear him to pieces.

By the time Carter put Susie to bed at the inn, a gentle smile was playing across her mistress’s lips, and Susie fell asleep with the roar of the London mob, crying for Giles’s blood, sounding comfortably in her ears.

The Camberwell visit was a disaster from almost the start. After Mrs. Burke had enjoyed all the neighbors staring at a real, live countess, she began to nourish a deep-seated resentment for Carter. Right at the start the lady’s maid had said in chilly accents that it was not her place to do Mrs. Burke’s hair or to help her dress. Mrs. Burke had said rather incoherently that an unwilling servant was like an adder nourished in one’s bosom, to which Carter had replied with a disdainful sniff.

Lady Matilda was an added disappointment, in that she did not look like a lady with her trailing old-fashioned clothes and endless pieces of sewing and knitting. She had ensconced herself in the most comfortable armchair in the front parlor, from which she had refused to budge, and listened in to all Mrs. Burke’s talks with her friends.

Dr. Burke had found his little girl changed into an elegant lady he did not know in the slightest. He too began to build up a resentment. With all her fortune, Susie had not supplied one penny to the household, and her mad entourage was costing him a small fortune. Her coachman and two footmen—or rather Lady Matilda’s—had had to be supplied with accommodation at a nearby alehouse. The stabling and fodder for the horses all had to be paid for.

He had hinted, he had suggested, he had pleaded downright poverty, and his dreamy daughter had not appeared to have listened to one word he said.

In despair, he finally faced her with the problem outright. He called her into his study and, telling her to sit down, swung his swivel chair around from his desk to face her.

“My dear Susie,” he began, stroking his beard. “You are my daughter.”

“Yes,” replied his daughter in a vague way.

“You must honor and obey your father and mother.”

“Yes,” said Susie, yawning.

“Your mother and I are very poor people, very poor indeed.”

“Oh!”

“Listen, Susie,” said her father, moving into the attack. “I cannot afford to go on paying for your guest and your servants.”

“Why didn’t you say so, Papa?” said Susie infuriatingly. “I shall give you money.”

Dr. Burke visibly brightened. “How much?” he asked eagerly.

“Present me with the bills,” said Susie, “and I will take them to Mr. Jasper, my man of business.”

This practical approach did not suit the doctor at all. He wanted more than the mere payment of the household bills.

“Look, Susie,” he said earnestly. “You are a very rich girl. Don’t you think it unfair that your poor father should still have to work for a living?”

“I might have done,” replied Susie fairly, “if you and Mama had not told me so many times that your work was God’s business. Healing the sick and all that,” she added helpfully.

Dr. Burke put a quaver in his voice. “I am a very old man Susie.…”

“You are younger than my late husband,” put in Susie with a tinge of acid in her young voice.

Her father stared at her in exasperation. “Are you going to give me any money or not?” he demanded.

“Oh, yes,” said Susie calmly. “I shall see Mr. Jasper this very day.”

“I shall come with you,” said Dr. Burke, rubbing his hands gleefully. “You must leave these money matters to us men of the world.”

“No,” said Susie flatly. “I have discovered I am quite clever when it comes to handling money. The money is mine, Papa, and I feel I have earned it in ways you could never begin to imagine.”

Dr. Burke turned an embarrassed color of puce. He thought she was hinting at unmentionable sexual matters, and so he let her escape. He did not know the earl had leapt to his death before anything interesting had happened.

Mr. Jasper was delighted to see Susie. He had invested her fortune wisely and told her with pride that it had almost doubled. He readily agreed to settle a large amount on Susie’s parents, a gesture that gladdened his old-fashioned heart.

Then, settling back in his chair and carefully putting the tips of his fingers together, he asked Susie why she had left Blackhall Castle.

Susie told him, beginning calmly enough and ending up in a heavy and refreshing burst of tears. Mr. Jasper removed his pince-nez, sent a clerk to fetch tea, and patted Susie on the shoulder in a clumsy but reassuring way.

“It’s a miracle nothing about this got into the newspapers,” he said. “Has young Giles gone mad?”

“I don’t know,” wailed Susie. “I never want to see him again.”

“And are you happy at Camberwell?”

Susie dried her tears and looked at him and then said slowly, “I don’t think I am. Is it very terrible, Mr. Jasper, not to like one’s own parents?”

“No, only very natural,” said Mr. Jasper, smiling. “In time, as you grow older, you will learn to forgive them for their idiosyncracies. Ah, tea, the cup that cheers, as the poet says. Now, drink up, my lady, and tell me more of Camberwell itself. Is your parents’ house
large
enough for all of you?”

“Not really,” said Susie. “And does it sound very snobbish of me?—but it all seems so poky and dark.”

“You are a young lady of fortune and title,” said Mr. Jasper, hitching his chair closer.

“You should be taking your place in society and going to all the balls and parties. Lady Matilda could chaperon you and, as a young widow, you would have much more freedom than, say, a debutante.”

“But I don’t know how to get into society,” said Susie.

“You
are
in,” said Mr. Jasper cynically. “You have a title, a fortune, and you’re young and marriageable. All you need is to set up your establishment somewhere in the West End. Rent a place first, and then we will look around for something to buy. I could arrange everything for you, servants and all. It is my job, you know. I extract quite a large fee from your income, you know, but I like to earn it.”

“Very well, then,” said Susie, seeing a whole new world opening in front of her. Hope began to spring anew. She would go to balls and parties, and she would soon forget Giles, soon lose this terrifying lost, black ache inside her body.

Giles had easily discovered Susie’s whereabouts from the servants. After all, he was about to raise their wages, so they were anxious to oblige him in every way they could. They reasoned that he was really in love with Susie and would probably marry her, so they weren’t being disloyal to the girl who had saved them from the excisemen.

Instead of rushing to lay his apology at her feet, Giles sent a messenger with a brief note, expressing his apologies in stilted sentences, which sounded slightly offensive, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. Susie, crying over it, did not know that she was reading the final draft of about fifty torn-up letters and hours of mental anguish.

Giles felt his first duty lay with his guests. His family honor was at stake. He had landed in this mess by allowing his feelings to rule his head. He had behaved disgracefully. His ball had been worse than an undergraduate rag.

His noble guests were soothed on the following day by extravagant presents, gold cigarette cases for the men and gold watches for the ladies, and by the news that the
real
ball was to take place that very evening.

It was, however, a restrained party of guests now assembled again in the ballroom under the striped marquee. Giles worked with a will. He danced with all the wallflowers; he kept as many men out of the bar as possible. The fireworks display, which had fortunately been overlooked in the drunken revels of the night before, was set alight to gasps of admiration from the party. The highlight of the evening’s entertainment was a guest appearance of that celebrated opera star, Yvette Duval, whose soaring, perfect notes acted on the troubled souls of the guests like a blessing. Madame Duval had been rushed down by special train from London that very day and bribed with an enormous fee to perform, but Giles reflected it was worth every penny. The Earl of Murr hugged his wife and asked her in more gentle tones than she had ever heard him use before to forgive him.

Harriet Blane-Tyre took the bull by the horns and told the young man who had stolen her virginity that she would be obliged if he would forget about the whole silly thing, at which news he was much relieved, having parted with his own virginity in the process and not enjoyed a minute of it.