The American Boy (34 page)

The arrival of the tea things at seven o'clock brought a moment's relief. Here at last was something to do. With the best will in the world, though, we could not take tea for ever. Soon that uncomfortable silence descended upon the room once more, punctuated by brief spurts of speech. Even Miss Carswall fell silent.

“Half-past eight o'clock,” said Mr Carswall, reverting to a subject that had been touched upon many times that evening. “That would not be unreasonably early, I believe.”

“Papa,” cried Miss Carswall, “no one you would want to speak to would be there so early.”

“But should we not send for the coach? That will take a little time. We should want a place by the fire, after all.”

“The only people there would be tradesmen and their families,” his daughter replied tartly, for her upbringing had given her a finer notion of gentility than her sire. “They will still be tuning the fiddles! You may depend upon it, everyone else will dine much later and therefore come later.”

Carswall grumbled, Miss Carswall protested; but I knew from the way Miss Carswall's feet were tapping on the carpet that secretly she longed to be in the Assembly Rooms. In the end she and her father compromised on nine o'clock and they sent for the coach.

The hands of Mr Carswall's watch crept around the dial until the noises inside the house and in the street made it clear that the Carswalls would not suffer the ignominy of being the first people at the ball. A few minutes before the hour, Mrs Frant's dress rustled as she rose to her feet. I pushed back my chair.

“Pray do not disturb yourself, Mr Shield.” She raised her voice, addressing the Carswalls and Mrs Lee: “I – that is, I find the excitement of the day has tired me out. You will forgive me if I retire?”

I held the door for her. As she passed me, no more than a few inches away, I felt the familiar pull, as iron filings to a powerful magnet. She looked up, and for an instant I thought – I hoped – that she had felt it too. Then she smiled up at me, wished me a quiet goodnight and slipped away.

“Poor Sophie,” Miss Carswall said, moving to the window, drawn by the sound of carriages arriving. “So mortifying not to be able to enjoy oneself – and the poor love will be in mourning for months and months.” She parted the folds of heavy curtains and peered into the street. “Oh!”

“What is it?” Carswall asked.

“It is snowing. Look – great big flakes like saucers.”

“There! What did I tell you? We should never have come.”

“You must not let it prey on your mind, Papa. Ten to one the snow won't settle. Everyone says it is milder today. Besides, here we have warmth, food, society and comfortable beds. If the worst should come to the worst and we are snowed in, not that we shall be, it would at least be in agreeable circumstances.” She glanced outside again. “Look at the press of carriages! Oh – there is ours pulling up at the door! Would it not be heaven if we reached the Bell just after the Ruispidges? Then we might encounter them in the passage, and enter with them. It would look very well, would it not? It would seem as if we were come together.”

Mrs Lee suddenly emerged from her torpor. “My dear, you must wear your wrap when we go out in the passage at the Bell. The draughts are most dangerous. Oh, I do hope they have swept the floor properly this time – after the last ball, the hem of my dress was quite black with dust. And it was the passage to blame, I am sure of it.”

Miss Carswall stood on tiptoe and twirled, admiring herself in the mirror between the windows. “Thank heavens I bought this wrap. It sets off the colour of the dress to perfection.” In the brackets flanking the mirror the candle flames seemed to nod in agreement.

I murmured, “It matches your eyes, too, Miss Carswall, if I may say so.”

She looked at me, her face grave as a nun's but her eyes sparkling. “You are too kind, sir,” she said softly.

“My gloves, my gloves,” cried Mr Carswall. “Who has taken them?”

“I believe I see them on the arm of your chair, sir,” I said.

“I hope there will still be a place by the fire,” croaked Mrs Lee. “If only we had not waited so long.”

At last the three of them were gone and I was alone. I listened to their voices and footsteps fading on the stairs and in the hall. The front door closed. Silence flowed into the parlour. I sat down at the table again and turned a page of the newspaper.

I tried to read. But the newspaper bored me. I was aware of noises outside the room – the hurrying of servants' feet, the ebb and flow of carriages in the street below, raised voices, and distant snatches of music. Miss Carswall was right. There is nothing so sad as sitting alone and listening to the sounds of others enjoying themselves in society.

I was not sleepy. I could have gone out and settled in the corner of a taproom or a coffee house but I was not in the mood for company. Instead, I fetched pen and paper and settled down to write overdue letters to Edward Dansey and Mr Rowsell.

I must have written for well over an hour. I could be entirely frank, of course, with neither man, though for different reasons. But there was plenty of matter for my pen in describing the splendours of Monkshill-park and the characters of its principal inhabitants. I was nearing the end of the second letter when there came a tap on the door. I looked up, expecting a maidservant. Instead it was Sophia Frant, still in the dress she had worn at dinner.

“I beg your pardon, Mr Shield,” she said hurriedly in a voice that was not altogether steady. “I hope I do not disturb you.”

“I am entirely at your service, ma'am.”

“I wish to consult with you on a matter of – of some delicacy.”

I drew up a chair to the fire. “Pray sit down.”

“A moment ago, I happened to go to one of the windows in our chamber,” she began in a low voice. “The sashes were rattling, and I wished to wedge them. The window on that side overlooks the lane running up to Westgate-street. I looked down, and I saw a woman.” She hesitated. “I – I must request you to treat this as a confidence, Mr Shield.”

“Of course, ma'am.”

“I knew I might rely on you.” She was calmer now, fully in control of herself. “The fact of the matter is this: a shaft of light fell across the lane from a doorway of a tavern, and it showed the face of the woman. It was Mrs Johnson.”

“But I thought she was with the Ruispidges, at the assembly.”

“So did I. But wait, there is more. Mrs Johnson was wearing a cloak with a hood. But the hood had fallen backwards from her head. She did not have a cap, and her hair was quite loose, falling in disarray to her shoulders. I – I watched her walking up to Westgate-street. She swayed from side to side, and once she slipped and nearly fell. A man came out of the tavern and put his hand on her arm and she pushed him away. Then she turned the corner and I saw her no more. And the man followed her.”

“She is indisposed?” It was my turn to pause. “Or –?”

“Or something worse,” Mrs Frant finished for me. “It is possible that she entered the house once I lost sight of her. I went to the chamber set aside for her – it is just along the passage from ours. Her luggage is come but there was no sign of her. Not that I thought it likely, because we would have heard her knocking on the door.”

“Might she be below-stairs?”

“No, she is not – I rang for the maid and asked if she had seen Mrs Johnson this evening. I pretended I had a message for her – I did not like to say the truth. I do not know whether the people here are trustworthy. And if Mrs Johnson is not herself …” Her voice died away.

“No,” I said. “I understand your drift, ma'am. May I suggest that I go in search of Mrs Johnson? It will not take me a moment to fetch my hat and greatcoat. The part of the building where I am lodged has a separate flight of stairs that runs down to a side entrance. I am sure I could slip out without attracting attention.”

“Let us hope so.” Mrs Frant stood up. “I am infinitely obliged to you, Mr Shield. If you allow me two minutes.”

“Madam – you cannot accompany me.”

“Why not?”

“It would not be fitting. If you were seen –”

She was already at the door. “I shall not be seen.”

“It is still snowing, ma'am.”

“A little snow will not harm me. I too have a cloak with a hood. You must be sensible of Mrs Johnson's feelings if she were to suspect that a man were pursuing her at this time of night. Especially if her wits are at all disordered.”

“But she knows me.”

“She does not know you well. No, Mr Shield, my mind is quite made up. I shall be perfectly safe under your protection. And if we find – when we find – Mrs Johnson, she need feel no uneasiness at being accosted by a lady.”

As to time, Mrs Frant was as good as her word. Hooded and cloaked, with a pair of pattens in her hand, she met me in the passage. We passed no one as we threaded our way across the upper floors of the house to the flight of stairs that descended to the lobby and side door. Impatient to be gone, she lead the way down to the dingy hall, which was lit by a solitary lamp.

The door was bolted, not locked. It opened on to a narrow alley on the other side of the house from the lane with the tavern. Mrs Frant slipped on her pattens and took my arm. We picked our way through the gloom to the lights of Westgate-street.

People were still abroad. The paved footways on either side were covered with a feathery layer of snow; the cobbles of the pitching were coated with rutted, partly frozen slush. We saw no one resembling Mrs Johnson in either direction.

“Let us walk up towards the crossroads,” Mrs Frant suggested. “If she did not call in at the house, we must assume she went in that direction.”

So we set off, looking into the dark mouths of doorways and alleys, glancing into brightly lit taprooms, examining every passer-by. We did not speak. The hood of Mrs Frant's cloak was across her face, so nothing was visible of her except a pair of eyes. I feared she might fall, for there were patches of black ice concealed beneath the powdering of snow. I listened anxiously to the sound of her pattens clinking and scraping on the pavement, ready to hold her more tightly if she should slip.

We passed St Nicholas's Church. A few yards beyond was another of the city's principal inns, the King's Head on the corner of Three Cocks-lane. Two servants loitered in the doorway, no doubt waiting to light their masters home. They were smoking and, despite the cold, had the air of men who were at their leisure. I asked if they had seen a lady in the last quarter of an hour, not in the best of health, perhaps, and wearing a long cloak.

“Hear that, Joe? The gent here's looking for a lady.” He poked the stem of his pipe towards Mrs Frant, waiting some yards away with her back to us. “Another lady.”

Joe chuckled. “Ain't we all? Could be in luck. Plenty of ladies tonight. If you ain't too particular.”

I felt in my pocket and produced a shilling. “A lady in a cloak. She came up from the lane beyond Fendall House. You know where I mean?” The shilling was on the palm of my hand and I let the light fall on it from the lantern beside the door. “She is not well – we are looking for her.”

Joe scooped the shilling from my hand. “Aye, sir. There was a skirt come up from there – ill, you say? I'd say she was lushy. Slipped on some ice, fell on her arse in the gutter, and let fly like a trooper.”

“Which way did she go?”

“They went up Westgate.”

“
They
?” said Mrs Frant just behind me. “She was not alone?”

“No, ma'am.” Joe studied her and would have come closer if I had not taken a step forward to prevent him. “A gent come running up from behind when she fell down, and he helped her up and gave her his arm.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don't know. Big fellow. Well set-up. I expect you'd know him, sir, eh? I expect he's one of her friends as well.”

There was no mistaking the impudence, though it was phrased in such a way that there was no objecting to it either. The shilling had not been enough to buy respect as well as information.

Mrs Frant took my arm again and we hurried down the street which sloped gently upwards to the ancient crossroads at the centre of the city. A burst of ribald laughter followed us.

“Loathsome men,” she murmured.

“Not loathsome,” I said. “Merely ordinary.”

I felt her hand tighten on my arm but she said no more. I knew she was upset. Joe and his fellow servants might indeed be ordinary men, but they were not ordinary men of the type with which she was familiar. It shocked her to discover that Mrs Johnson had sunk to become a figure of fun, a drunken woman to be ridiculed when she fell on the street rather than helped to her feet; a woman whose morals were perhaps suspect in all matters – at least in the opinion of those ordinary men.

The snowflakes still floated silently down from the great darkness of the sky, though less urgently than before. It was as cold as charity. We hurried onwards as fast as we dared. We reached the crossroads, and lingered for a moment on the corner by the Tolsey, the building where the city's business was transacted.

“What shall we do?” Mrs Frant said. “She might be anywhere. Should we go on?”

“But in which direction?”

“I fear for her safety.”

“At least she is not alone.”

“Some companions may prove worse than solitude.”

“I think we should retrace our steps,” I said. “Is it not more likely that they turned into one of the alleys we passed? Or went into one of the inns or alehouses?”

Mrs Frant shivered. “We cannot abandon her. We must try something. Anything might have happened to her. Should we not find a constable?”

“If we cannot find her, then we must.”

“I shudder to think of the scandal.”

“Listen,” I said.