Lights, Laughter and a Lady

Chapter One ~ 1898-1

Chapter One ~ 1898“Have you paid off all the debts, Mr. Mercer?” the Honourable Minella Clinton-Wood asked. The elderly man sitting opposite her hesitated before he replied,

“The house, the furniture, the horse and, of course, the estate, which has been sold off bit by bit, have covered practically all of them, Miss Minella.”

“How much is left?”

“Approximately,” answered Mr. Mercer, of Mercer, Conway and Mercer, “one hundred and fifty pounds.”

Minella drew in her breath and, when she did not speak, he continued,

“I have taken it upon myself to keep aside one hundred pounds for you.”

“Should you do that?”

“It is what I insist on doing. After all you cannot live on air and I know you have not yet decided on which of your relations you would prefer to live with.”

The expression on Minella s face was very revealing as she responded,

“As you are aware, Mr. Mercer, that is very difficult. Papa did not have many relatives, and Mama’s are all in Ireland and I have not met any of them.”

“I thought,” Mr. Mercer said quietly, “that you would live with your aunt, Lady Banton, in Bath.”

Minella sighed deeply.

“I suppose that is eventually just what I shall have to do, unless I can find some sort of employment.”

Mr. Mercer looked at her sympathetically.

He had met Lord Heywood’s widowed sister, who was older than he was and knew that she was not only in ill health but was one of those people who was always complaining and finding fault with everything and everyone.

In fact the last time he had come in contact with her he had said to his wife,

“I don’t believe that Lady Banton has ever said a nice thing about anyone in her life.”

“I suppose, poor dear,” his wife had replied, “she thinks that life has treated her badly and, of course, it had all started with her being excessively plain.”

Mr. Mercer had laughed.

But he thought now, looking at the girl opposite him, that her being so exquisitely lovely would not make her aunt feel any kinder towards her.

He leant across the desk, which had already been sold to pay for its late owner’s debts, to say,

“Surely there is someone else you could go to? What about that charming cousin who used to come here some years ago and ride with your father and then after your mother died helped him to entertain the guests at one of his shooting parties?”

“You must mean Cousin Elizabeth,” Minella said. “She married and is in India with her husband. She has not written to me so I presume she does not know that Papa is dead.”

“Could you not live with her?” Mr. Mercer asked.

Minella shook her head.

“I am certain that she would not welcome my imposing on her in India and you know as well as I do, Mr. Mercer, that I could not afford the fare.”

Because the one hundred pounds that he had put aside for her would not last forever, Mr. Mercer admitted silently to himself that this was the truth.

Yet he was deeply concerned as to what would happen to the girl he had known since she was a child and who had grown lovelier year by year with nobody to admire her in the quiet, unfashionable County of Huntingdonshire.

Lord Heywood had often complained,

“Why my ancestors settled in this benighted hole, God only knows! I can only imagine that the house attracted them for there is nothing else.”

It was in fact a most attractive seventeenth century Manor House and, as Lady Heywood had always said, it was comparatively easy to run.

But there was nothing in Huntingdonshire to attract the sophisticated friends whom Lord Heywood enjoyed having around him except for himself.

There was no doubt that Roy Heywood was born to be the centre of an admiring throng. He had a vitality and a charm about him that was irresistible.

Minella was not surprised when after her mother died her father was constantly being invited to parties in every other part of the country except for where they lived.

There the County gentlefolk seldom gave parties anyway.

Because she was too young to accompany her father even if anyone had wanted her, she had been obliged to stay at home in The Manor and wait for his return.

Sometimes it would be a long wait, but she had learnt to be pretty well self-sufficient and was quite happy as long as she had horses to ride.

Until the end of last year she had been very busy being educated.

“For Heaven’s sake,” her father had said to her, “stuff a little knowledge into your head! You are going to be very beautiful, my darling, but that is not enough.”

“Enough for what?” Minella asked.

“Enough to keep a gentleman amused, attracted and in love with you forever,” her father answered.

“The way you loved Mama?” Minella asked.

“Exactly,” her father replied. “Your mother always intrigued and amused me and I never missed anybody or anything else as long as we were together.”

This was not entirely true, for Minella could remember times when he had expressed disgust and irritation because they had no money.

He hated not being able to whisk her mother off to London, to go to theatres and balls and meet people who were as gay as themselves.

Even so The Manor had always seemed full of sunshine and laughter until her mother had died.

It had been a desperately cold winter and, however many logs were piled onto the fire, the house always seemed to have a damp chill about it.

Alice Heywood’s cough had become worse and worse until finally, unexpectedly and without warning, it turned to pneumonia and within two weeks she was dead.

To Minella it was as if her whole world had crashed about her ears and she knew that her father felt just the same.

When the funeral was over, he had said violently in a voice she had never heard from him before,

“I cannot stand it, I cannot stay here thinking your mother will walk into the room at any moment.”

He had left that same evening and Minella knew that he had gone to London to try to erase the memory of her mother and the happiness they had known in the past, which haunted her as well.

From that moment on her father had changed.

Not that he had become morose, gloomy and introspective, as another man might have done. Instead he had gone back to the raffish, devil-may-care self that he had been before he married.

Because he did not want to think of the wife he had lost, there were now inevitably other women in his life.

He did not talk about them, but perceptively Minella was aware of them and there were letters, some of them scented and some of them written in a flowery, extravagant uneducated hand.

Some he tore up and threw away as if they were of no interest to him, but others he read carefully.

Then a little later, as if he did not want Minella to find him out, he would say casually,

“I have some business to see to in London. I think I will catch the morning train. I will not be away for long – ”

“I shall miss you, Papa.”

“I shall miss you too, my poppet, but I will be back by the end of the week.”

But at the end of the week there would be no sign of him and when he did return Minella had the feeling that it was not because he wanted to see her but because he did not dare spend any more money.

Even so she did not realise until he had died that he had spent so much or had so many unpaid debts.

Roy Heywood, who, as many of his friends often said, was as strong as a horse, had died by a quirk of fate that seemed quite inexplicable.

He came home late one night and, as soon as she saw him, Minella realised that he had not only had an amusing time in London but a somewhat debauched one.

She had grown to know by the lines under her father’s eyes and also his general air of dissipation that he had been to too many parties and had had far too little sleep.

Alcohol in excess had never agreed with him and he was, she was sure, compared to his friends quite abstemious.

But then when he had told her in his more expansive moments about the parties he went to, she had learnt that champagne flowed like water and the claret he drank with his friends at the Club was exceptionally good.

The combination invariably somewhat affected his health until the fresh air, the exercise he took and the plain food they had at The Manor restored him to his natural buoyancy.

On this occasion, as soon as he had walked into The Manor, looking, Minella thought, dashingly raffish but at the same time not well, he held out his hand to her and she saw that it was wrapped in a bloodstained handkerchief.

“What has ‒ happened, Papa?”

“I caught my hand by mistake on a piece of loose wire, or it was something like that, on the door of the railway carriage. It is damned painful and you had better do something about it.”

“Of course, Papa.”

Minella bathed his hand gently and saw that there was a nasty jagged cut going deep into the flesh.

She could not help wondering if he had been a little unsteady when he had caught the train. Perhaps he had staggered or fallen in a way that he would never have done at other times.

Her father was always so agile on his feet and he was usually so healthy that, if he hurt himself out riding or in any other way, she always expected him to heal quicker than anybody else would have done.

So she was very perturbed the next morning when she saw that, despite her ministrations of the night before, his hand was now swollen and beginning to fester.

Although her father said that it was all nonsense and quite unnecessary, she sent for the doctor.

He had not thought it serious, but gave her a disinfectant salve to use on it, which she applied exactly following his instructions.

However, Lord Heywood’s hand grew much worse and at the end of the week he was in excruciating pain.

By the time he had seen a surgeon it was too late.

The poison had spread all over his body and only the drugs that made him unconscious prevented him from screaming out with agony.

It had all happened so quickly that it was difficult for Minella to realise that it was really true.

Only when her father had been buried in the quiet little churchyard beside her mother did Minella realise that she was now completely alone.

At first, having no idea of the financial mess that her father had left behind him, she had thought that she could stay on at The Manor and perhaps try to farm a part of the estate that was not already let to tenants.

It was Mr. Mercer who disillusioned her and made her understand that such plans were only daydreams.

The Manor itself was mortgaged and so was at least half the land.

By the time that the mortgages had been paid and she had seen the huge accumulation of debts that her father owed in London, she faced the truth.

She was not only alone but penniless.

Now, looking across the desk at the Solicitor, she said,

“I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Mercer, for all your kindness. I have given you a great deal of work and I only hope you have paid yourself a proper fee as well as everybody else.”

“Don’t worry about that, Miss Minella,” Mr. Mercer replied. “Both your father and your mother were very kind to me when they first came to live here and it was through your father that I acquired a great many new clients for my small and not very impressive family firm.”

Minella smiled.

“Papa always wanted to help everybody.”

“That is right,” Mr. Mercer replied, “and I think that was one of the reasons why his creditors did not press him as hard as they might have done. Every one of them expressed deep and sincere regrets to me that he should have died so suddenly.”

As this was such a moving tribute to her father, Minella felt the tears come into her eyes. Then she said, “Papa always told me that, when he could afford to take me off to London, perhaps next year, his friends would look after me and give me a wonderful time.”