Talk of the Town (3 page)

“Well, Arthur wouldn’t care for it either.”

“Pooh! I don’t suppose you much cared to be divorced. He could have made it a separation, as he didn’t wish to remarry, and saved you a lot of disgrace.”

“But then I could never have married Mr. Eglinton, and, really, he was quite amusing, too, though not the fine figure of a man Arthur was. But there is another problem as well. I have no style for writing. I just jotted my notes down any old higgledy-piggledy way. You know what a mess they are. I can’t spell, and never know where to put semi-colons and all those dots and dashes real writers use. I always found writing very confusing.”

“Mr. Colburn must have some sort of a person who will dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s.”

“Oh well, I can do that much myself.”

“Aunt Effie, you goose! I didn’t mean... But never mind. I am fairly good at a semi-colon myself and will give you a hand while I am here. We have nothing else to do. It will be great fun.”

“What a flat time I am showing you, when you are ready to tackle writing to get the days in.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. Oh, do it! You had the feeling something was going to happen, and this is the first thing that has promised any excitement.”

“Well,” Effie said, considering the matter. “I’ll just write Mr. Colburn a little note asking if he would care to drop around and discuss it. I’ll let him know what kind of a book we have in mind, and if he isn’t interested in that, I shan’t do it. You must help me with the note, Daphne. Put in some of those semi-colons, and a few commas, too, so he won’t think I’m illiterate.”

The note was written with pertinent punctuation, Mr. Colburn came two days later, and it was very pleasant to at last have a caller. He was a small, dandified gentleman with pink cheeks and a fringe of brindled hair. He took to Effie immediately and she liked him also, having been deprived of all masculine company but servants for a year. In fact, he stayed so long Daphne began to wonder whether there wasn’t some romance in the air. But his main concern was to urge a little livelier story on Mrs. Pealing than she intended. He did not insist on any record of the divorce, however, and before he left they had come to an understanding that she would begin her book immediately, to be ready for publication within the year.

Mr. Colburn intended to pay many calls at Upper Grosvenor Square and lure the unsuspecting lady into greater revelations than she had any intention of making. She couldn’t be as straight-laced about her past as she let on. And there might be a bit of lovemaking to be done as well, in the way of business and pleasure. With luck, he’d get a hand on those memoirs himself and do a proper job once she came to trust him.

Through a friend in the newspaper business he managed to get an article inserted in a social column mentioning that Mrs. Pealing, with all her other names, was to publish her memoirs. Neither Mrs. Pealing nor Daphne Ingleside saw the notice, but it was read by those whose chief literature was the social columns and received with joy or dismay, depending on past dealings with the author.

A certain Lady Elizabeth Thyrwite read it and turned pale. “That woman! I hoped—thought she was dead!” she said to herself and dropped the paper to the floor, trembling. Her husband, Sir Lawrence Thyrwite, was a Member of Parliament and making great strides in his career. After having sat with the Tories for twenty years, speaking in the House three times, and never voting against his party, he was in line for promotion. He was a pillar of rectitude, his one lapse from virtue having occurred the year before their marriage, when he, in common with every other gentleman in London at the time, had thrown his heart at Mrs. Pealing’s (then the widowed Mrs. Eglinton’s) feet.

It was being discussed that he was to be given a folio in the Cabinet. It was within an inch of his grasp, and now this! If that woman published how Larry had begged her to marry him, had broken his engagement to a Miss Marmon, a stupid little chit who had only ever got hold of him by letting on that she was related to the Sussex Marmons (and it was no such a thing)—if she told the world how he had a ring-round fight with his family, and threatened to renounce his inheritance, he would be ruined! Such unwise, unpolitical, unministerial behaviour!

All that was past and forgotten when he had had the good taste and luck to fall in love with herself, after being turned down by Mrs. Eglinton. Not a whisper of an opera dancer or an actress had sullied his name from that moment on, and it was too bad for a Mrs. Pealing to ruin a man’s life for cheap sensationalism and a bit of money. She must be stopped, and Sir Lawrence must not go near her to do it, for he still had a loose-lipped smile on those rare occasions when her name arose. Dickie, Lady Elizabeth’s brother, must be sent as emissary to buy off the hussy. Lawrence must not hear a word of it. If anyone mentioned the matter to him, he would be met with innocent looks; Larry was such a ninny he would be only surprised and not shaking in his boots as he ought to be, for he still claimed that Effie had a heart of gold and wouldn’t harm a fly.

Dickie was quite a different matter. Though he was only a younger brother, he was wide awake on all suits. No one would pull a trick on Richard. Lady Elizabeth was accustomed to apply to him in all her various difficulties, and he had never let her down yet.

Whether it was getting a job for Larry’s brother or a ticket for a play when she had cancelled her box for the Season or a safe seat in Parliament for Larry when his own was in jeopardy, Dickie always came through. He was very tyrannical, of course, and insisted that you follow his orders to the letter; but, really, he was very efficient and exactly the right person to handle this touchy business. He would certainly be ready to help on this occasion, for he had the greatest dislike of low persons who would spread gossip. He was very proper in all of his dealings and very discreet in those that weren’t so proper. As the nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury— Mama’s brother—he was aware that propriety was expected of him. He could be taken as a model of decorous behaviour.

Richard Percival, the Duke of St. Felix, duly received a hastily scribbled note from his sister requesting his immediate attendance on her. Accustomed to the minor matters that Bess considered urgent, he tossed the note on a table and reminded himself to drop in the next day. In other households, similar plans were afoot to drop in on Mrs. Pealing, who sat all unaware, smiling over her memoirs and reading aloud a paragraph here and there to Daphne, who was busy with a pencil ticking off likely items for inclusion in the book. At eleven they retired and had the last night of easy sleep either was to have for the next several weeks.

Their door knocker started banging early the next day. Who should drop in but Lady Pamela Thurston of the pawned diamonds. Effie hadn’t seen her in over twenty years but recognized her at once. Lady Pamela’s face had sagged half an inch, but the hair was the same insouciant shade of pinkish-orange, achieved with the same dye that had first wrought the minor miracle a quarter of a century before. There was no one else in London with hair the shade of Pamela’s.

“Pamela Thurston, I declare!” Effie exclaimed, and her blue eyes opened wide in shock. “Where have you come from after all these years?”

“Effie, is it you!” Lady Pamela asked. The blue hair was not so easily recognized, nor the full pink cheeks. The surroundings were so altogether different from what Mrs. Eglinton used to enjoy. The carpet underfoot was positively thread-bare and the drapes tatty. All was seen in one room-encircling gaze, then the eyes went back to Mrs. Pealing.

“To be sure it is. Wouldn’t you have known me, Pamela?”

“I would have known her!” Lady Pamela replied, pointing to Daphne, and then she laughed, a deep, throaty gurgle. How good it was to hear the sound of laughter again. “The spit and image of you, Effie. I had no idea you had a daughter.”

“This is my niece,” Effie said, and made the introduction.

Daphne realized she was in the presence of a life previously unknown to her. The hair, the furs, the perfume, the polish—all were new. Wealth and self-confidence exuded from Lady Pamela. Here at last was a creature from the enchanted kingdom of Aunt Effie-land, and Daphne waited with baited breath to hear her speak on. All that she heard was a great deal of senseless chatter of “Do you remember?” this one and that one. She was disappointed, but at length some sense began to emerge from the chatter. “And I said to Sammie when I saw the notice in the Observer—you remember my darling Sammie—’Effie Eglinton! Why, I didn’t know she was still in London! I must pay her a call.’ And then I remembered—dear Effie, you must think me the most mindless person the good Lord ever created, but not till that very instant did I remember your having got my diamond necklace back from the pawn shop for me twenty-five years ago. I never paid you back a penny. Five hundred pounds, wasn’t it?”

“I do believe it was. Yes, five hundred wasn’t it, Daphne? We were reading of it in my memoirs last night,” Effie said.

Lady Pamela shot a sharp look through narrowed eyes at dear Mrs. Pealing.

“Yes, five hundred pounds twenty-five years ago, when it was worth so much more,” Daphne replied, smiling as sweetly as their caller.

“And interest, of course, at five percent, just like in the funds,” Pamela returned. “Well, I’ll make it twelve hundred pounds, love. Will that do?” She scribbled out a cheque as she spoke.

“Oh my, I never thought to see a penny of it,” Effie said happily.

“And it won’t be mentioned in the book you’re writing, Effie? Sammie never did know about that year I lost all the money gambling, and I managed to save back every penny of it.” A good many other things Sammie didn’t know remained unmentioned, for Lady Pamela was not sure Mrs. Pealing knew of them either. “Do you remember how Georgiana was always losing at loo?” she laughed.

“Why, Pamela, it’s not that kind of a book,” Effie said on the brink of offence. “I wouldn’t mention dear Georgiana, and she in her grave.”

“Oh, no, I’m sure it’s not, but you won’t mention me all the same?”

“What is there to mention?” Effie replied in mindless delight as the cheque was handed over to her. “You don’t owe me anything now, Pamela. We’re even, so let’s forget it. Have a glass of wine.”

The glass of wine was drunk up with a haste not usually achieved on a morning visit; and with a great sigh of relief, Lady Pamela was off to report to a few worried friends that Effie was very manageable, but you had to pay up with interest. Lady Pamela’s friends consulted their bank books and investments and sat down to compute interest for twenty-five years at five percent.

“What did that lady mean, she saw the notice in the Observer?” Daphne asked after she had admired the cheque.

“What notice? She didn’t mention anything about a notice,” Effie answered.

Daphne had already perceived that her aunt was not quite as bright as she might be and went off to peruse the Observer for the notice. After much searching she found the note in the social column and fell to wondering. Lady Pamela had been worried and had made a point of not having her debt mentioned. She had come here to pay so Auntie wouldn’t mention it in her book, Daphne soon deduced. What a horrid mind!

While she was finishing her conjecture, there was another caller announced and a Major Deitweiller came in. After the merest mention of surprise at seeing Effie’s name in the paper after so many years, his business, too, soon emerged. He owed her a thousand pounds for the purchase of his commission in the Army and now, as a respectable, well-to-do major, he wished to repay the loan. He did not mention interest, nor did Daphne nor Effie. He paid a thousand in cash and left very soon afterwards, with the casual mention that he supposed her having helped him all those years ago would not be in the book. His wife—he had married a Miss Norton from Warwick, one of the Nortons—didn’t know of his lowly beginnings, he laughed nervously.

“Oh, no, it is more of a book of travel,” Effie smiled. “Though, as I'll have been looking through my memoirs these past days, a good many stories from London occur to me that might make interesting reading. Do you remember, Major, that young Harcourt fellow who used to chum around with you? He joined up at the same time as yourself.” He had also joined up through the same financial arrangement as Deitweiller, though it was not said. “He was dangling after Lord Severn’s girl and had a pretty little actress on the side.”

“Yes, I see him often,” Deitweiller said. “He plans to come to call on you shortly, Ma’am.”

“That’s good. I look forward to seeing him.”

“I’ll tell him, Mrs. Pealing. Good day.” Harcourt was informed of the matter, and sold his team of greys and his wife’s pearls to raise the wind.

“He was in a bit of a hurry,” Effie said to her niece. “I was just going to remind him of the night Harcourt rode his horse up the front steps and into my hallway, but I suppose I shouldn’t relate such a story as that in the book. He is a Colonel now, and stands very high on his dignity, I daresay. Funny to think of all those young bucks having risen so high in the world and not a brain to speak of among the lot of them.”

Before they sat down to lunch they had a third caller—a Mr. Munro—coming to repay Effie a debt of two hundred pounds for some matter she had forgotten long since and was sure she had not bothered to record in her memoirs. She remembered Munro, but not why he insisted he owed her two hundred pounds.

“Was there ever such a thing, Daphne?” she chirped merrily. “Twenty-four hundred pounds in one morning coming at us out of the blue. All my old friends remembering me and coming to pay what they owe. None of them knew where I was living, and that is why they haven’t been to call sooner. It was that notice in the paper that has brought them back to me. How happy I am I decided to write it after all. Didn’t I tell you I had a feeling things would happen? My feelings are never wrong. It’s a fact. I am not clever, but I feel things before they happen."

“Do you think it is just friendship that brings them back?” Daphne asked. Her own opinion was growing stronger with each visit that it was fear of revelation in the book that brought them.