CHAPTER 11 #2
“Lovely, lovely.” Dr. Lewis escorted Mrs. Davies back to the settee and kissed her hand. “Thank you, my dear. Thank you both.”
“It’s a pleasure to play such a fine instrument, Doctor.”
“It’s all the better for being played. Now . . .” Dr. Lewis looked around. “Ladies and gentlemen, has everyone a glass?” When the company murmured in the affirmative, he turned to Owen Lloyd and lifted his port. “A toast: to the work of the missions, sir, and to all who labor in them.”
“Hear, hear, Brother,” Lady Aldridge said. She and the doctor sipped, and the company followed suit.
“Now, Mister Lloyd.” Dr. Lewis settled into his chair. “Will you tell us more about the Chinese girl you and Mrs. Davies shelter?”
The clergyman set down his glass and glanced at his sister. She nodded.
“I only wish . . . I wish Jin’s ordeal were unique, but such girls are to be found all around our empire and beyond. They are a smaller part of a larger problem we Britons choose to ignore, although numbers don’t tell the whole story. Women suffer a particularly abject form of degradation.”
Lady Aldridge asked, “What is the larger story, Mister Lloyd?”
“That a ‘coolie’ system has replaced enslaved labor. Even as we speak, ships that are little better than the slavers of a generation ago carry their human cargoes around the world.”
“Good Lord,” she said. “I thought such horrors were long past.”
“Our mission in Hong Kong has tracked the trade for the last decade. Ten, perhaps as much as twenty percent die on the journey in a modern form of slavery. From disease, most often, but mutinies are frequent and savagely suppressed. Suicides add to the toll.”
“This is appalling,” Dr. Lewis said. “After all the efforts of the abolitionists?”
“Parliament needs another William Wilberforce,” Tennant said.
Mr. Lloyd nodded. “Tens of thousands labor under sham contracts on sugar plantations in the Caribbean. And as for poor girls like Jin, brokers promise them marriage and a better life, but in the end . . .” Mister Lloyd’s voice caught. “I’m sorry. This isn’t a platform or my pulpit. Forgive me.”
“Only one thing surprises me,” Tennant said. “That my case involves girls so far from our shores. There is plenty of prey closer to home. Impoverished girls from the slums of St. Giles or Whitechapel. Shopgirls and servants, as well.”
Tennant realized at once he’d put a foot wrong. The quality of the atmosphere changed. Mr. Lloyd and his sister wore polite expressions, but Doctor Lewis and Lady Aldridge looked stricken.
Julia said, “What is it, Grandfather . . . Aunt Caroline?”
After a pause, Lady Aldridge answered. “We’re remembering Lizzie Sullivan, Julia. Your first nursery maid.”
Doctor Lewis sighed. “Let me tell the story, Caroline, although Richard and Mister Lloyd know its general outlines all too well. It happened in the spring of that terrible year. . . .”
Lady Aldridge looked at the Lloyds. “My brother refers to the year his son and daughter-in-law, Julia’s parents, were lost at sea. They were sailing home from America aboard the President.”
“Lizzie Sullivan . . . she came to us from an agency that placed serving girls from Ireland in respectable households. After a few months, a woman enticed her with promised employment in a West End shop.”
“Oh, she was clever, that woman,” Lady Aldridge said. “She befriended the girl as she sat in the park with Julia in her pram. The woman told Lizzie she could earn three times as much as a dressmaker’s assistant.”
Dr. Lewis said, “A year later, Lizzie returned to us, pregnant. The shop was a fiction. She’d been taken to a house, drugged, and . . . they shamed the poor girl into continuing, saying who would believe a ruined girl.”
“The whole procedure was diabolical, Andrew.”
“Lizzie thought she had no choice but to stay. They turned her out when she became pregnant and was no longer useful.”
Tennant asked, “Did you inform the police?”
Dr. Lewis nodded. “But they offered us little hope.”
“The next part of the story is mine,” Lady Aldridge said.
“My sister-in-law and I went to Lizzie’s priest for advice.
He suggested a Catholic home run by nuns for unmarried mothers.
When we took her there, we made it clear to the Mother Superior that we would welcome Lizzie back after the birth of her child. ”
“That was the last we saw of her,” Dr. Lewis said. “We were told she went to a home for girls in Ireland. That she’d given birth there and worked in a convent as a laundress.”
Lady Aldridge lifted her chin. “The Mother Superior rebuffed our request for more information because we were not Lizzie’s family. A letter to Bishop Griffiths in London produced a polite but firm refusal to answer our questions.”
“I had no idea,” Julia said. “I don’t even remember Lizzie.”
“My dear niece, you were not yet three years old.”
Tennant said, “I wish I could say that Lizzie’s ordeal was a case of abduction, plain and simple. But so long as the age of consent in Britain is twelve years old—”
“Monstrous.”
“I agree, Lady Aldridge. It becomes a war of accusations. A girl of twelve or older says she was taken by force. Her abductor claims she is a ‘fallen woman’ who came looking for work.”
“A child of twelve . . . Lord, forgive us our sins.” A brief silence followed Mr. Lloyd’s prayer.
“This has ended as a somber evening,” Dr. Lewis finally said. “As host, perhaps I should apologize.”
“My dear brother, we are two doctors, a missionary, a policeman, and I daresay Mrs. Davies has seen a thing or two in this world. Mister Lloyd, Richard, I thank you for your candor. Now, I am not so young as I was. I will say good night and borrow my niece to take me to my carriage.”
Julia smiled at her aunt and took her arm.
“My brother won’t admit he tires easily,” Mrs. Davies said, “so we’ll also say our good nights. Thank you for a lovely evening.”
“The music made it especially memorable,” Julia said. “Such a poignant song. It is a gift to find oneself in the place just right.”
Mrs. Davies smiled. “It helped me in a time of indecision. I had to bow and bend for things to come ’round right. Isn’t that true, Owen?”
“Indeed,” Lloyd said, opening the door for Julia and his sister. “And if he were here, my brother-in-law would agree.”
When the door closed, Dr. Lewis asked, “One last drink, Richard? While we wait for Julia to return.”
Tennant shook his head and lifted his glass. “I’ll finish this and be on my way.”
“My boy, I mean no criticism of the police. We had very little to tell them about Lizzie’s ordeal.”
“Jin’s rescue is the rare happy ending.” Tennant drank the last of his whiskey and stood just as Julia returned.
“It’s late for hailing a cab, so I’ve asked Ogilvie to drive you home.”
“That was kind of you, sir.” Tennant lent his arm and helped Dr. Lewis to his feet and into the hallway. Julia and the inspector watched her grandfather climb slowly up the stairs. He waved good night from the landing.
Julia sighed. “I worry about him. But it’s a relief to have a fierce Scotswoman on the watch while I’m not here. I believe Mrs. Ogilvie was a hawk in another life.”
Julia took Tennant’s arm and headed toward the front door. “I enjoyed tonight. They’re an attractive pair, Mrs. Davies and her brother. I mean in every way. Good, kindly people who draw you to them.”
“I agree.”
“Mrs. Davies . . . I’d like to know her better.” Julia opened the front door and stopped. “Richard . . .”
He turned and looked at her. Her back was to the hall lamplight, and her face shadowed so that he couldn’t read the expression in her eyes.
“I was thinking about that song, ‘Simple Gifts.’ Do you ever think . . . do you wonder if it’s possible to . . .” She shook her head.
“I think and wonder all the time. Perhaps things are simpler than you believe.”
“Richard, I . . .”
Something unspoken seemed to tremble on her lips. He wanted to trace his finger along their edges, take her in his arms in answer to her unfinished questions. He took a step closer.
Then the coach driven by Mister Ogilvie rattled to a stop. Damnation. So, instead of doing the thing he desired, he raised her hand to his lips and wished her good night.
* * *
Mary Allingham was late on the first Monday morning in April, and she’d kept Laura Herford waiting in her carriage for ten minutes.
Mary flew down the walkway of Blenheim Lodge, carrying her hat and muff. A footman trailed behind with her paint box.
She dropped onto the seat across from her friend. “I’m sorry, Laura.” The servant handed Mary the box. “Oh, thank you, Alfred.” He closed the door. “It took me ages to find the Royal Academy’s invitation card. And now I’ve made us late!”
“No matter. Better, in fact. The first varnishing day is bedlam, and we’ll miss the opening crush.” Laura eyed Mary’s box. “Are you planning on repainting?”
“I came prepared. I’m always one highlight short of perfection.”
Laura said, “Leave your muff behind in the carriage. Some oaf with a careless brush might streak paint on it.”
“You’re probably right. The calendar says it’s the first of April, but it feels like winter.”
Mary pulled off her muff and stroked its sable before laying it aside. It had been her brother’s last Christmas gift. He’d bought a pair, and both she and Louisa cherished them.
Charles. If only he were here to share the day.
Thirty minutes later, Laura’s coachman avoided the Monday morning traffic and let them out on the far side of Trafalgar Square. They walked across the plaza and mounted the four wide steps of the National Gallery. Mary felt dwarfed by the portico’s soaring Corinthian columns.
Porters in the foyer handed out Royal Academy catalogs and answered questions. Mary decided the guides came in two varieties: twinkling ones and grave. She had drawn the former, while the man assisting Laura had the funereal mien of an undertaker.