The Paper Princess

Chapter Six

They were waiting in the wings, waiting to go on stage, waiting for the Season to begin.

London's curiosity about this new princess had not yet been satisfied. Princess Felicity's servants had announced to all callers that Her Majesty had no intention of meeting any social engagements until the start of the Season.

Felicity wanted to be well prepared and to have her servants thoroughly coached. For very few of them were real servants. On their journey to London, John Tremayne had sought out the local candidates for the “royal” household. All, except the butler, had been found guilty of minor crimes, usually caused by near-starvation. The promise of a good home, wages, and an escape from prison had bound them all to secrecy. But they had to be trained. Housemaids and chambermaids were easily dealt with. The cook, a motherly widow whose only crime had been to steal a loaf of bread, had to have time to learn to produce large banquets, and she, in turn, had to train the kitchen staff. The butler, an ex-burglar turned religious maniac, had been chosen by John, who had found him emerging from prison after having served his sentence. That he had not been hanged was a miracle. It was his appearance that had struck John immediately. He was fat and pompous and had a cold and quelling eye. Apart from the fact that the new butler, Mr. Spinks, was apt to treat John Tremayne as if he were an angel specially sent down from heaven to rescue him, Spinks studied his new duties assiduously and soon showed a talent for running the household. He was apt to fall to his knees and pray loudly when upset, but so very little upset him these days that Felicity felt they could well put up with this little eccentricity.

They had been very lucky. They had not even had to search for a town house. On their journey toward London, a lord who had heard of their arrival in his area had promptly offered them the hospitality of his country mansion, and, on their departure, had insisted they take the keys to his town house in Chesterfield Gardens, Mayfair, saying that he did not intend to visit London during the next Season, and the house would otherwise be standing empty.

John Tremayne found illiteracy an increasing disadvantage and so, with Felicity's permission, he visited the Fleet Prison until he found a suitable schoolmaster, paid his debts, brought him back to Chesterfield Gardens, and set him up as resident tutor. The schoolmaster's name was Mr. Paul Silver. He was a thin, scholastic gentleman in his fifties with a head of beautifully fine, silver hair to match his name.

Felicity and Miss Chubb often donned their men's disguises and went out to walk about London and stare in awe at all the marvelous goods in the shop windows. After the quiet of the Cornish coast, London was a bewildering kaleidoscope of movement and color and noise. Light curricles and phaetons darted here and there like elegant boats surmounting the rapids of the London streets. Heavy stagecoaches rumbled along Piccadilly, but even their majestic sound was almost drowned out by the grumbling roar of the brewers’ sledges and the government lottery sledges, grating over the cobbled streets. Carts piled high with fruit and vegetables from the nurseries of Kensington headed through the West End on their way to Covent Garden market.

Then there were so many varieties of street performers. Felicity saw, after walking along only a very short stretch of Oxford Street, a man with a dancing bear and a drum; an organ grinder with his monkey perched on his shoulder; a man with a trumpet announcing in a hoarse voice between fanfares that a six-headed cow could be seen for only two pennies; a pretty girl in a spangled dress who danced to a tambourine; and three acrobats throwing one another about.

It was all this whirling excitement of being in the capital that eased Felicity's guilty conscience. The boredom of those long, empty days in Mr. Palfrey's scrubbed and polished castle seemed even more horrible in retrospect than even Mr. Palfrey himself. She had not read the newspapers but had gathered from Mr. Silver, the tutor, who read most of them, that the story of her “death” had even reached the London papers, with a subsequent short paragraph saying that a memorial service had been held, during which Mr. Palfrey had been seen to weep copiously. “More onions,” thought Felicity cynically.

The famous London jewelers, Rundell and Bridge, had heard of Princess Felicity. Not only had they bought some of the jewels for a fair sum, but had embarrassed Felicity dreadfully by sending her a present of an exquisite turquoise and gold necklace. She had had a dressmaker's dummy made of her figure and sent to the top dressmakers. Felicity did not want them to call at Chesterfield Gardens and gossip about herself and her staff until she felt they were all coached and ready for closer scrutiny.

But as the novelty of London began to die down, Felicity would often find herself thinking of Lord Arthur. He was thirty-one, she discovered, and had never married. Although he had the reputation of being a hardened bachelor, it evidently did not deter the debutantes and their mamas from hoping that one day he would drop the handkerchief. She knew she was bound to meet him during the forthcoming Season, and that thought sent little shivers of anticipation through her body.

It was Mr. Silver's job, apart from his teaching duties, to study the social columns and compile a list for Felicity of all the people she ought to entertain, along with a list of eligible bachelors.

She was looking down the latest list he had compiled one day when she said with a little laugh, “I see a Mr. Charles Godolphin here. I have met him and I hope to goodness he does not recognize me and only thinks the similarity in looks between the princess and a certain Miss Channing is extraordinary. But I see no mention of his friend, Lord Arthur Bessamy.”

“Ah, no,” said Mr. Silver, reaching for a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and popping them on his nose. “Let me see… I have my old lists somewhere about. I struck him off about a month ago. Yes. Here we are. Lord Arthur Bessamy became engaged to Miss Martha Barchester of Hapsmere Manor in Suffolk.”

“I would have thought,” said Felicity in a voice that to her own surprise trembled a little, “that Lord Arthur would never marry.”

“So did everyone else,” said Mr. Silver. “There is a piece about him here. I find the more scandalous newspapers a great source of information. He bought a place near Hapsmere Manor last winter. You see, as the younger son of a duke, he has money but no responsibilities or lands, and heretofore evidently lived only in town. But he appears to have decided to settle in the country. The Barchesters are his neighbors. A very suitable marriage. The Barchesters are a very old family-Norman, I believe.” He broke off and looked up in surprise. Felicity had gone.

Felicity went quickly to her room and put on her male disguise. Then she slipped out of the house and walked rapidly in the direction of Hyde Park. A pale sun was shining, and the air was sweet with the heavy smell of hawthorn blossom. It was the fashionable hour, and carriages flew past round the ring with their elegant occupants, the ladies wearing the thinnest of muslins despite the chill of the spring day.

She stood watching them, thinking she did not really belong anywhere. She would never return to Tregarthan Castle, and yet she felt she did not belong in this world of giggling, overly sensitive ladies who practiced how to faint with as much assiduity as they practiced the pianoforte. And the men, with their flicking handkerchiefs and their fussy mannerisms, their rouged faces and cynical assessing eyes, repelled her.

And then a thought struck Felicity, a thought that seemed to lighten her depression. “I do not need to marry. I can enjoy one Season, go to all the balls and parties, and perhaps even see the Prince Regent. And then I can sell some more jewels, and dear Miss Chubb and I can retire somewhere quiet in the country and settle down.” It was a very comforting thought, and only a little nagging wonder about this Miss Barchester came into her mind to diffuse that comfort. What was she like, this paragon, who had succeeded where so many others had failed?

Miss Martha Barchester was like a Byzantine ivory. She had a long, thin, calm face and a long, thin, flat-chested body. Her thick brown hair was parted at the center and combed back into two wings to frame her white face. She was twenty-nine years old. Even her parents wondered what it was about this rather terrifying daughter of theirs that had attracted Lord Arthur.

It had taken a magic potion to make Titania wake from her sleep and fall in love with an ass. But at a certain stage in their lives, even the most hardened rakes and confirmed bachelors need no magic to make them fall in love with the first woman they see. All at once, they are simply hit with an overwhelming desire to get married. The period is usually brief and violent, and they usually emerge from it to find themselves married to a woman they do not know the first thing about.

And so it was with Lord Arthur. First had come the desire for a home and lands. Those being acquired, it followed that he must have a hostess for his home, and a mother for his heirs.

He had to confess to himself that he thought very often about Felicity Channing. He felt he had escaped from the folly that can often lead gentlemen of mature years to propose to chits barely out of the schoolroom. Perhaps the attraction Miss Barchester held for him was that she was everything Felicity was not. She was cool and poised, and never made a sudden or hurried movement or appeared to be swayed by any vulgar emotion whatsoever.

Farming was Lord Arthur's new interest and consuming passion. He felt it would be wonderful to return in the evenings to such a calm and stately creature as Miss Barchester. Their wedding was to take place the following year in the local church. On the acceptance of his proposal, Lord Arthur had taken Miss Barchester in his arms and kissed her. Her kiss had been cool, and her lips had been tightly compressed. But because his physical outdoors activities had taken care of his more earthy feelings, Lord Arthur saw nothing wrong in her virginal response. Ladies were not expected to be passionate anyway.

Dolph, calling on a visit a week before the Season was due to begin, thought his friend looked remarkably well- healthy, happy, and a trifle pompous. Lord Arthur drove him out round the estates and the village, and everywhere forelocks were tugged by men, and women curtsied.

“Quite feudal down here,” remarked Dolph, privately thinking that all this adulation was not doing his rather arrogant friend one little bit of good. “Don't know but what I don't prefer that independent lot down in Cornwall.”

“Cornwall!” said Lord Arthur sharply. “Have you been there recently?”

“No, never been back,” said Dolph, casting Lord Arthur a sideways glance. “M'uncle wrote to say he was crushed down with that girl, Felicity Channing's death, although I suppose it's only the gout as usual. Seems Mr. Palfrey has restored his reputation. Of late he's had whole fleets of boats dragging all around the coast for a sign of the bodies.”

“Dear me,” said Lord Arthur. “Left it a bit late, hasn't he?”

“Well, he says he won't rest until Felicity has had a Christian burial. The locals say he must have been fond of her after all.”

“I wonder,” said Lord Arthur.

“Talking of Miss Felicity, I had the most awful shock t'other week.”

“See a ghost?”

“Yes, how did you guess! Have you heard of the Princess Felicity of Brasnia?”

“Of where? My dear Dolph, there is no such country.”

“There is. Everyone's heard of it. Somewhere around Russia.” Dolph waved a chubby hand to the east. “As I was saying, all London has been abuzz with talk of this princess. You know, her beauty is said to be rare and her jewels magnificent. She has been in residence all winter, but no one had seen her. But last week, she went out driving for the first time. What a sensation! People fighting and screaming to get a look at her. At first, I didn't see her face, I was so knocked back with the idea of someone wearing a diamond tiara in the middle of Hyde Park during the day. Then I looked at her properly and nearly dropped down in a faint. I could swear I was looking at Miss Felicity Channing.”

Lord Arthur let the reins drop, and the horses slowed to an amble. “And…?” he prompted.

“I rode straight up to her carriage and, like a fool, I cried, ‘Miss Felicity! You are alive!’ She had one of those double glasses, and she raised it at me and looked at me with such hauteur that I nearly sank. ‘You were saying somezink?’ she asked, and of course, I realized all at once it was not Miss Felicity at all. How could it be? I stammered out my apologies, and she bowed her beautiful little head with those fantastic diamonds flashing and burning, and she said, ‘We are giffink a rout on the tenth. You come?’ I gave her my card and swore that nothing would keep me away. I'm the envy of all the fellows. Everyone desperately fighting to see if they can get an invite, sending presents and poems, and lying in wait outside her door. Duffy Gordon-Pomfret even slept on her doorstep, but her butler, a most odd man, came out, shook him awake, read him the parable of the talents, then told him if he had nothing better to do with his time, he might be better employed in finding a job of work. Work!” said Dolph, shaking his head in amazement.

“I would like to attend that rout,” said Lord Arthur slowly.

“I'm sure you would,” said Dolph gleefully. “But you can't. All of London wants to get through her door.”

“When did you plan to return to London?”

“Well, unless you're going to throw me out, I meant to get back around the eighth to collect a new suit of evening clothes from the tailor.”

“Call on Princess Felicity,” said Lord Arthur, “and tell her your friend, Lord Arthur Bessamy, wishes to meet her, and see what she says. I shall take you back to London myself.”

Dolph looked huffy. It was not often he was invited to a rout from which his rich and elegant friend was excluded. Then his face lightened. “I'll ask,” he said cheerfully. “But she's bound to refuse. Now, when am I to meet your beloved?”

“If you mean Miss Barchester, then say so,” said Lord Arthur curtly. “This afternoon, at four, for tea.”

Dolph could not believe his eyes when he was introduced to Miss Barchester. He thought she looked as if one of the marble statues on the terrace of her home had come to life. She even had thick white eyelids and a small thinlipped curved smile.

Lord Arthur, teacup in hand, was standing by the fireplace talking to Mr. Barchester. Mr. Barchester was a plump, rounded man with a jolly face, and his wife, dressed in chintz, looked like an overstuffed sofa. How two such cheerful individuals could have produced the pale and chilly Martha Barchester was beyond Dolph. He found that lady was eyeing him with a gray, cold look. Her gaze dropped from his face and fastened on the area of shirt that was bulging out from under his waistcoat. Dolph always felt his clothes took on a nasty life of their own the minute they left the hands of his valet. His waistcoats tried to move up to his chin, his shirts separated themselves from his breeches, the strings at the knees of his breeches untied themselves, and the starch left all his cravats a bare half an hour after he had put them on.

His teacup rattled in the saucer as Miss Barchester began to speak. “Our fashions become more extreme, do you not think, Mr. Godolphin?”

“I… I…” bleated Dolph.

“Yes, it is bad enough when the ladies adopt styles of semi-nudity and wear their waistlines up around their armpits. Now,I have my waistline in the right place. I never follow fashion. Fashion followsme. ”

“Indeed,” said Dolph. “I fear London fashion cannot have had a chance to see you, Miss Barchester, for all the ladies adopt the high waistline.”

“Are you contradicting me by any chance, Mr. Godolphin?”

“No, no. I…”

“Good. Male fashions are every bit as ridiculous. Why do you think so many men aspire to be Beau Brummells when they do not possess either his air or figure?” Her pale eyes fastened again on Dolph's area of shirt.

“Blessed if I know,” said Dolph crossly.

“London fashions,” pursued Miss Barchester, “are distasteful to me.”

“Then, it's as well you ain't in London,” pointed out Dolph. He took a swig of tepid tea and eyed her over the rim of his cup.

“But I shall be. I am thinking of persuading Mama and Papa to take me for a few weeks. I aim to… how do the vulgar put it?…cut a dash. ”

Dolph looked at her curiously. Could she be funning? Or was her vanity so great that she really thought she could impress society?

But she was his best friend's fiancée. He forced himself to be gallant. “Well, by Jove, Miss Barchester, the ladies of London will be agog to see the fair charmer who has stolen the heart of such a hardened bachelor as Lord Arthur.”

“Exactly,” said Miss Barchester sweetly.

Dolph blinked in amazement. This engagement to one of the most eligible men in the country had quite gone to Miss Barchester's head. What on earth did Arthur see in the creature?

At that moment Lord Arthur strolled over to join them. “You are making me jealous, the pair of you,” he teased. “I saw you, rattling away there like old friends.”

Miss Barchester at his arrival on the scene became quiet and submissive. The wings of her brown hair shone softly in the candlelight, and the smooth drapery of her old-fashioned gown fell in straight lines from her waist to the floor like a medieval garment. She kept her eyes demurely lowered.

“By George!” thought Dolph, alarmed. “Arthur thinks he's got himself a meek, old-fashioned wife.”

At least Lord Arthur could be counted on not to ask his friend's opinion of Miss Barchester or discuss her in any way. And that was a mercy. For Dolph knew he would be hard put to it to think of anything good to say about her.

On the road home, he remembered the princess's rout and at the same time decided to do his uttermost to secure Lord Arthur an invitation. Anyone who saw the fairy-tale princess could never look with any complacency on such an antidote as Martha Barchester.

Mr. Palfrey told his butler, Anderson, to tell the boatmen to be ready to set off at dawn the next day. The search must go on.

Anderson bowed and then went off to confide in Mrs. Jessop, not for the first time, that they had been mistaken in Mr. Palfrey. He must have loved Miss Felicity very much the way he searched and searched for her poor body.

Once he had gone, Mr. Palfrey darted to the door of the library and turned the key in the lock. Lovingly, he spread the castle blueprints out on the table before him.

In her haste, Miss Chubb had forgotten to shut the door of the priest's hole properly. Some months after Felicity's “death,” Mr. Palfrey, in one of his feverish hunts for the jewels, had noticed the crack in the wall and had discovered the hiding place. And that is how he had found the plans. He had searched the priest's hole thoroughly and had found the high ledge and the clean square in the dust that showed that a large box had recently rested on it.

From there he had deduced Felicity must have had the jewels in hiding and had taken them with her. It stood to reason that she would not have dared run away without any money. So the Channing jewels must have gone to the bottom of the ocean and, at least they, unlike the bodies, could not have been carried out to sea.

That was the reason he had the sea under the part of the cliff where they had gone over, searched each day so thoroughly.

He rolled up the plans and decided there were really no more undiscovered hiding places outside the priest's hole and the hidden staircase.

He would go to sleep early so as to be ready to continue the search early in the morning.

As soon as a red stormy dawn lit the heaving gray sea, Mr. Palfrey was there in an open boat piloted by the yeoman who had shied a piece of turf at him, but who now respected this man who had proved his love for the lost girl. Mr. Palfrey had grappling irons and various contrivances for hooking down into the water. It was the lowest tide they had had for some months, and Mr. Palfrey saw with rising excitement that there was an almost uncovered stretch of sand at the base of the rock. “Over there!” he cried to the yeoman, Mr. Godfrey.

“Better be careful,” shouted Mr. Godfrey as the open boat scraped its keel on the sand. “Won't be much time.”

“The spade! The spade!” shrieked Mr. Palfrey excitedly to one of the other men. “No, no. Give it to me. I shall dig myself.”

“Look the way he do dig!” exclaimed Mr. Godfrey. “He'll cut any corpse in half, spearing down like that.”

They waited patiently, watching Mr. Palfrey's feverish efforts, half-amused, half-touched.

Then Mr. Palfrey felt his spade clink against something. He threw the spade aside, and, kneeling down on the watery strip of sand, began to scrape at it with his fingers.

With a triumphant cry, he held up a necklace. The fierce red sun shone on it and it burned with all the fire of priceless rubies.

Mr. Palfrey gave a hysterical laugh. “The Channing jewels!” he shouted. “I have found them. Oh, God, at last. After all these weary days of searching.”

The men in the boat watched him, stricken. “You mean,” said Mr. Godfrey at last, “that that's what you was looking for all along? You didn't give a rap for Miss Felicity.”

But Mr. Palfrey, ecstatic with delight, turned the flashing stones this way and that.

Then a cloud covered the red sun. It took all the light out of the day. It took all the fire from the sea.

And the necklace in Mr. Palfrey's hand turned into cheap glass, as if the Cornish pixies had played some hellish trick on him.

He had betrayed himself. The men in the boat looked at him with eyes of stone.

Mr. Godfrey seized the oars and shoved off.

“You can't leave me,” shouted Mr. Palfrey. “The tide has turned.”

“Then, swim, you liddle ferret,” shouted back Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. Palfrey stood there until the boat had disappeared round the point. Then, shivering and whimpering and cursing Felicity under his breath, he began to swim.

It was as well he remembered the secret staircase-for the castle was under siege by angry locals at the front. It would be a long time before he dared poke his nose out of doors again.

On the eighth of April, Mr. Godolphin had a very odd audience with Princess Felicity of Brasnia. For he did not see her.

He was ushered into a stately drawing room by an unnerving sort of butler who fixed Dolph's tubby figure with a haughty look, and said, “Make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof,” before bowing and stalking out.

A terrifyingly massive woman, with a hand outstretched, came down the room toward him. She was dressed from head to foot in black velvet. “I am Madame Chubiski,” she announced.

Dolph bowed. “I am come to see Her Royal Highness.”

“Vot is eet you vish?” said Madame Chubiski.

“I wish to speak to Princess Felicity about it, if I may.”

“What is it?” came a light young voice from behind a carved screen in the corner. Madame Chubiski waved an imperious hand, and Dolph approached the screen cautiously.

“I am come to beg a favor, ma'am,” he said timidly. Then he thought of Martha Barchester, and his voice strengthened. “My friend, Lord Arthur Bessamy, would be deeply honored it you could manage to issue him an invitation to your rout.”

There was a long silence, and Dolph felt almost as if the temperature in the room had dropped by several degrees. He turned about and smiled winningly at Madame Chubiski, who glowered back.

At last, the princess's voice came to him very faintly from behind the screen. “Yes,” it said on a little sigh. “He may come.”

“Thank you,” said Dolph, bowing to the screen.

“You've got what you want, young man, so take your leave,” growled a robust English accent behind him. Dolph started. But there was still only Madame Chubiski in the room-who had sounded so foreign only a moment before.

But he felt he had better leave quickly before the princess changed her mind.

When he had gone, Miss Chubb said ruefully, “Did you really have to give him an invitation?”

“Yes, this way Lord Arthur will not suspect anything,” said Felicity, emerging from behind the screen. “Besides, there will be such a crush, the poor man will have difficulty in seeing me at all! And I am supposed to be dead, remember? You know, Miss Chubb, I am so tired of this silly accent I have to affect, and your own is beginning to come and go alarmingly. Why do we not start to speak proper English-and praise our good Mr. Silver for effecting the transformation?”

“Good idea,” sighed Miss Chubb. “Do you know. I live in terror of being confronted by some fool who claims to speak Brasnian!”