‘I do not mean to cry,’ she hiccoughs. ‘Do not look at me, sir, I beg you – oh, pay me no mind.’
He cannot think what to say, and there is nothing to do but decently avert his eyes from her evident embarrassment, all the while patting her arm and hazarding expressions of bland comfort. ‘I know,’ he says, ‘I know, ’tis a hard thing to maintain oneself in this world. A very hard thing,’ until she wilts altogether, her back bent and her head in her hands, and her shoulders heave with awful sobs. ‘There, there,’ he whispers, placing his hand more firmly upon her sleeve. And while she does not raise her head, and her tears fall afresh into her lap, her hand creeps out from beneath the tumble of her hair, and rests, trembling, upon his own.
EIGHTEEN
There is a knock and the secretary of Mr Hammond, whose house party has been so sadly spoilt, puts his head around. ‘Mrs Chappell,’ he says, and bows. ‘What news?’
‘None,’ she grunts. ‘And there’ll be none until I have finished interviewing my girl.’
‘So make haste,’ he says, darting a quick look at Elinor’s tear-stained face. ‘You must appreciate a situation of this sort is most distressing for all involved: not the atmosphere one wants, for a celebration. Puts a bad taste in the mouth.’
‘It is hardly on me,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘I have lost a valuable asset.’
‘Quite so, quite so. But we will be expecting our money back.’
‘Money?’ quavers Elinor.
‘Yes, miss,’ says the secretary. ‘Two hundred guineas. I’ve a good mind to ask for the entire sum returned, for there is no coming back from this: the week is ruined.’
‘Now, now, no need, no need,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘It may seem so now, but I shall send another girl – this will be swiftly forgotten, I assure you, there is nothing like a little music and revelry to restore good humour to any party.’
‘Two hundred guineas?’ asks Elinor in stupefaction.
‘Vulgar, Elinor!’ snaps Mrs Chappell. ‘The money is the thing of least significance.’
‘A hundred up front for her, a hundred for you,’ says the secretary. ‘And the same sum to be paid again if the thing went off to my master’s satisfaction, which of course it has not. Well, I shall leave you to decide between yourselves how this may be made good,’ and he brisks away.
As the door clicks to behind him, Nell turns to Mrs Chappell for verification, wiping her eyes with her knuckles. ‘I had not thought it would be so much. Were we to see any of it?’
‘The cost of living is very high,’ says Mrs Chappell.
‘Well! But two hundred apiece, surely you—’
‘And it is brought no lower when girls make off with clothes that do not belong to them,’ the bawd continues. ‘What dress did you say it was? The white, with spangles? That alone cost me five guineas. Then petticoats, fifteen shillings; stockings, half a crown; then stays and shoes and shawl and pockets – what was in her pockets, by the by? Coins, I’ll wager – to say nothing of her jewellery … it all comes to well over ten guineas’ worth of apparel she has stole from me. Twice that, perhaps.’
‘Oh, come, not stole,’ says Elinor.
‘Then what? She has taken what is not hers. Those clothes were my own property. Oh, this is a beast of a situation we find ourselves in: Polly was an excellent earner, and an asset to the house. How could you have let her get away?’
‘I!’ Elinor trembles. ‘I never would have if I had known!’
‘And I shall never find her on my own.’ Mrs Chappell rests her chin on her fist. ‘If she has made her way into the streets she may as well be lost for ever.’ Then she raises her head to meet Elinor’s eye. ‘But with this man Hammond’s aid … his father knows every constable in London.’
‘What are you going to do?’ quails Elinor. She wants very badly to go home. Oh, Pol, you have brought great trouble upon us.
‘Light a fire under them,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘Oh, dear! Don’t start so! I mean figuratively. Have him come back in; I know how to persuade him to find her.’
Nell totters to the door, rather numb, and finds the secretary helping himself to the hothouse grapes piled without. When he comes back into the room, Mrs Chappell has drawn herself very upright: only Elinor sees the way her right arm, propped on the table, trembles to support her pose.
‘Here, sir,’ the bawd barks, ‘tell this to your master: that I hold him responsible for the loss of an excellent servant.’
‘Oh, when they wish to go, they find a way.’
‘She has never expressed a desire to leave before. She was always quite content; Miss Bewlay here can vouch for that.’ Elinor nods weakly, and Mrs Chappell continues. ‘I cannot help wondering whether something untoward happened to her here.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘There is also the matter of the items of valuable clothing she fled with, which it is reasonable to expect him to replace.’
‘You cannot propose this is my master’s responsibility.’
‘Why not? It is due to his negligence that she has vanished.’
The secretary is baffled. ‘Now, madam, she is your employee …’
She holds up her hand. ‘I am not done speaking! I expect from Mr Hammond the full account owing on her; by which I do not mean only the cost of the items she took with her, or the sum he agreed to pay for her, but also the debts she ran up with me. Perhaps you do not apprehend that since this young woman came into my care two years since, I have clothed her and fed her, and trained her in every one of the arts that so delighted your master. You think all that can be effected at no cost to myself? You think I do this for the fun of it? Four hundred pounds I have invested in Miss Campbell’s care and education, and not a penny of it has she paid back. So how will I recoup it?’ Apprehending his expression, she shrugs. ‘One of your young bloods would demand no less if I had mislaid one of his racehorses. How is’t different?’
They stare at one another: the severity in Mrs Chappell’s face is startling, her mouth hardened to a mere crease in her face, her small eyes very bright. Elinor, daring to turn to the secretary, perceives that he is not entirely composed; he turns his face away too quickly, and makes for the door. When he reaches it, and his hand is safely on its knob, he says, ‘She is a servant.’ Then, growing in bravery as he swings it open and sets one foot into the hall, ‘Not even that. A whore. And if she has robbed you, well, you should have expected no more of her.’
Mrs Chappell does not so much as twitch. ‘The debt is your master’s,’ she says coolly.
‘Do you risk making an enemy of him? He knows the men who wink their eye at your disorderly house …’
‘On whose authority do you threaten me?’ she asks. ‘I am protected. Always have been.’
‘I would not be so certain,’ he says.
‘If you can restore her to me, I shall have nothing at all to pursue,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘You tell your master that. It may yet all come to naught.’
Elinor’s heart is in her mouth as he closes the door behind him. She turns to the abbess, who leans more deeply upon the table, and closes her eyes briefly. ‘He was extremely displeased.’
‘Pah! And what does it signify? He don’t make the rules.’ She mops her brow with her scrap of handkerchief. ‘All the great men know they are bound to please me more than I am to please them; there ain’t a bawd in St James’s who matches the service I provide. We are safe.’
‘But what if—’
‘No ifs!’ Mrs Chappell’s joints ache, and her chest is heavy. She admits to herself that this to-do has agitated her more than it might have were she a younger woman. Is it possible I have overshot myself? she wonders. I am not as nimble in my mind as once I was. ‘Polly!’ she sighs. ‘I would not have thought it of her. Well, she was always saucy – never as biddable as I would have liked – but to have stole from me! Stole a gown! I would not have thought that of her at all.’