CHAPTER
Fifteen
It is a conundrum,” Carson said as he and Douglas talked over the situation in the boardinghouse parlor. True to her word, Miss Rolland had secured Douglas an invitation to the charity ball.
“What’s the conundrum?” Hal asked, coming through the door in time to hear Carson’s remark. He was carrying a small pork pie, which he began eating as soon as he’d plopped down in one of the chairs. Hal often frequented the pie seller whose cart was located at the end of their street. Sometimes Douglas thought his friend single-handedly kept the vendor in business.
“Don’t let Mrs. Taylor see you eating that in here,” Carson cautioned.
Hal took a moment to enjoy a bite of his pie, his mouth turned up in a satisfied smile, and then swallowed before answering. “Today’s Thursday. Our dear landlady always goes to her friend’s house for tea on Thursday. Besides, if she fed us properly, I wouldn’t be needin’ to look elsewhere for more food, now, would I?” He took another bite. “What’s the conundrum?” he asked again, his mouth half-full.
“Shaw has to learn to dance in order to successfully woo Miss Penelope Rolland,” Carson said, summing up the problem.
“Has to finally learn to dance,” Hal corrected. “It’s not like we haven’t been trying to teach him these past two years.” He pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped a pie crumb from the corner of his mouth.
Douglas groaned, rubbing his forehead. He’d overcome so many challenges that were harder than dancing. A veritable mountain of them. Why was this one thing so impossible for him to master? He’d even taken dancing lessons for six months. That had ended when the dancing master finally declared there was nothing he could do for Douglas, saying in a rather supercilious tone that some men were simply born without the capability to dance. He’d suggested that Douglas only attend parties where suitable excuses were available for not dancing, such as billiards or card games.
Douglas had a feeling, though, that even if such pursuits were available at Lord Tilney’s ball, Miss Rolland wasn’t the type to take no for an answer. Visions of treading all over her feet filled his thoughts. What if he broke one of her toes? That would put an abrupt end to his chances with her.
“Don’t lose heart,” Hal said between more mouthfuls of pie. “How much time do we have?”
“The ball is in two weeks,” Carson answered. Douglas was still shaking his head, wondering how he was going to get out of this.
“We’re in luck, then,” Hal declared. “There’s a tea dance at Ally Pally on Saturday. There’s always a congenial crowd, and the music’s good. Plus, my Mamie’s a right good dancer. I’ll bet she could teach you what you need to know.”
“No!” Douglas blurted.
The Ally Pally, or Alexandra Palace, was in fact an entire entertainment complex. Located on an expansive hill just north of London, the “palace” housed a theater and other meeting rooms. The grounds also boasted a race course, cricket and bicycling grounds, a lake, and a pleasure garden. Hundreds of people flocked there daily. There was no way Douglas was going to subject himself to dancing lessons in the middle of a crowded dance floor.
He had spoken with such vehemence that his friends sat looking at him in surprise. He cleared his throat. “It wouldn’t do any good. Six months with the dancing master proved that.”
“Ah, but sometimes the ladies can teach you something you might not learn otherwise,” Hal replied, speaking with the air of a sage.
“Aren’t you worried about me dancing with your ladylove?” Douglas teased.
“Not at all. She’s too sensible to fall for the likes of you—a handsome bloke on his way up in the world. She has no delusions of grandeur. She knows she’s better off settling for me.”
Douglas raised his brows. “That’s some compliment.”
Hal grinned. “I give her those kinds of compliments all the time. She likes it.” Having finished off his pie, he wiped his hands with his handkerchief. “So what do you say?”
“Absolutely not. Thank you for the offer, but it couldn’t possibly work. Besides, I have something else to do that day.”
“Which is?”
Douglas scrambled for an excuse. “Well, there’s . . . work. Mr. Carnegie has agreed to meet with me in Liverpool in a few weeks. I need to be prepared.”
“What are you going to do about the dancing?” Carson asked.
“I’ll make up some excuse.” He thought back to the dancing master’s remarks about finding a diversion. What could he do or say to avoid dancing with Miss Rolland without disappointing her? He snapped his fingers. “I’ll say I twisted my ankle while riding and the doctor says to rest it for a few weeks. Perhaps even a month.” By then, perhaps, he might have secured her undying regard. After that, the rest would take care of itself.
“You’re going to lie to her?” Carson said, looking appalled.
Carson was the sort of chap who never strayed from the belief that honesty was the best policy. Typically, this described Douglas, too. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
He said with grim determination, “I’ll deliberately fall off that horse if I have to.”
“Is that your new penknife?” Archie asked.
Alice had placed the new knife on the edge of her desk closest to Archie’s to ensure he saw it. She’d noticed his gaze on it several times, but he hadn’t said anything until now. Alice had been waiting for him to mention it.
Nodding, she picked it up. “I bought it at that shop on the Strand you told me about. The man was very helpful, just as you said he’d be.” She held out the knife. “Would you like to see it?”
Archie took it and looked it over. “It’s a good brand,” he said, reading the name painted on the metal handle. “May I test it?”
“Yes, please do. I’d like very much to get your opinion. I believe he sold me a good knife, but I don’t know enough about these things to be sure.”
To Alice, her words sounded like pandering, similar to that story in the spinster book about the widow who suddenly forgot how to send a telegram. But in fact, it was true. This was one area where Alice did not have much experience. At least she could be honest about it, and the words still had the desired effect. Archie looked pleased that she’d consulted his expert opinion.
“I can tell you if it’s any good.” He opened the blade and scrutinized it, then tried it out on one of his pencils. “It’s acceptable,” he said, setting his pencil carefully back in the holder with the others. He gave the knife back to Alice. “I might have chosen one with more weight in the handle, but this is good for a woman, I think.”
“That’s what the shopkeeper told me,” Alice said, trying not to roll her eyes. The clerk had had the same condescending attitude toward women that Archie had.
Alice considered this the end of her experiment with Archie. Hopefully the goodwill she’d gained from it would remain, which would make the whole endeavor worth it. She was unlikely ever to use that knife, except perhaps from time to time when Archie was watching. She’d just have to be careful to use her pencil-sharpening device only when he wasn’t around.
One sign that Archie’s agreeableness was going to last—at least for today, at any rate—occurred a short while later when Alice prepared to go on her lunch break.
“You can leave those with me,” he said, pointing toward a stack of messages to be sent out. “There hasn’t been too much incoming today, so I’ll probably have some time.”
Alice thought her jaw was going to hit the floor. Archie never volunteered to do extra work. Especially not outgoing messages. Many of them needed to be encoded before sending, and he was generally too lazy to go through the extra effort of thumbing through the codebook to find the needed words. That was why he preferred to work the incoming messages. With those, he could simply write down verbatim what came in and give the messages to Mavis to decode as she typed them up.
“Are you sure?” Alice said, blinking in surprise.
He frowned at her. “Do you think I’ll get something wrong?” he accused. The business with the pencils had eased some of his surliness, but it hadn’t changed his basic nature. He still got testy far too easily.
“No, no, of course not.” Alice handed him the messages. “Thank you.”
Still marveling, she collected the food she’d brought for lunch and the current issue of the Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review that she planned to read while eating. She glanced at Douglas’s office as she walked by, but the door was closed. He’d only been out twice all morning, and those times he’d seemed distracted about something. Alice thought he might be worried about a complicated legal issue that had arisen with a shipment in customs. Perhaps when she got back from lunch, she’d check to see if there was anything she could do to help collect the required information to take to the customs house.
As she passed Mavis’s desk, Mavis put out a hand to draw her over. “How did you get him to start being nice to you?” she whispered, pointing toward Archie.
“Always appeal to their conceit,” Alice said. Smiling, she went out to enjoy her lunch.
Realizing he’d been reading the same sentence for a quarter of an hour and its meaning still hadn’t registered in his brain, Douglas finally dropped the paper onto the desk and leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his eyes as though they were somehow to blame, when he knew the problem went deeper.
With the amount of work he had to do, it was foolish to allow something as simple as a dance to derail him. Realistically, he’d always known that if he aspired to rise in society, he would have to conquer this issue. Now he was at the point of do or die. He had to find a solution.
Despite his earlier declarations to his friends, he was still undecided about what to do. Feigning injury was the coward’s way out. On the other hand, attempting the dance would have as much chance of success as the Charge of the Light Brigade.
As he generally considered himself to be a man of integrity, Douglas also contemplated the more honest route of simply admitting to Miss Rolland that he couldn’t dance. Perhaps he was overestimating how she would react to that news. Maybe it would make no difference to her. On the other hand, even if she snubbed him, it would be a setback but not the end of the world.
“No,” Douglas said. He stood up and began pacing his office. If there was one thing he hated, it was admitting defeat. He wasn’t ready to do that yet.
He paused at his window, which opened onto the street behind the building. He noticed Alice McNeil coming out of the little lane that ran alongside the office. The lane where he’d overheard her berating Archie Clapper. He chuckled at the memory. It provided a much-needed bit of cheer after the morning he’d wasted fretting.
Alice had a newspaper tucked under her arm, and she carried a small oilcloth parcel that probably contained food. He wondered if she was planning to eat her lunch at the nearby church, which had a small park attached. Workers in the area often sat on the benches under the trees to eat their midday meal. Douglas had sat out there himself a number of times, especially if he was mulling over a problem. It was a rare and pleasant little patch of green in the city’s maze of brick and stone.
Maybe a touch of fresh air would be good for him, too. It might clear his brain. He grabbed his hat and went out.
He bought a hand pie and an apple from a street vendor, then made his way to the church park. Sure enough, Alice sat there, absorbed in her reading as she munched on a piece of cheese.
“May I join you?”
She looked up, surprised, then smiled when she saw the food he was holding. “I see you are eating a clerk’s lunch today, Mr. Shaw,” she teased.
“Never hurts to economize.” He took a seat next to her on the bench. “What are you reading?”
“It’s the Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review.”
By now, Douglas knew enough about her reading preferences that he wasn’t surprised at her choice. The journal was filled with technical articles, mostly about advances in machinery and other updates in the field of telegraphy. He liked that Alice had a hunger to learn new things. He was the same way. Even so, he found the journal could be dry reading sometimes, aside from an occasionally humorous anecdote. “That doesn’t seem terribly suitable for light lunchtime reading.”
“Oh, but the article I’m reading is fascinating!” she replied. “It’s about the future of telephone service in England. I think you’d be interested to read it—especially given the number of times I’ve heard you mention to Mr. Henley that we ought to get one installed.”
“Have I been that obvious?” he joked, and they shared a smile. He really did like how Alice picked up on things at the office. “One day I might actually get him to agree to it. I’m certain the telephone will be hugely important to our business in the future.”
“The article discusses how the government will be taking over licensing and operation. It’s going to be run by the postal service, like the telegraph service is now.”
“So I’ve heard.” He frowned. “I believe that’s a terrible idea. It will cause England to lag behind. There are so many technical issues yet to be worked out. Private industry always solves those problems faster than the government.”
“Yes, there’s been an ongoing debate about it.” She grinned. “The letters section of the journal has gotten quite heated.”
Douglas noticed the pleasant way her face lit up when talking about something that interested her. She looked particularly nice today. Perhaps it was due to the pretty blue scarf she was wearing. A gentle breeze ruffled the nearby trees, and he thought about how refreshing it was to be sitting outside on such a nice day, discussing a topic that was intriguing, relevant, and potentially vital to their business.
He sat back on the bench and began to unwrap his pie. “Care to tell me more about it?”
“Certainly,” she replied, looking pleased that he’d asked. As they ate, Alice shared highlights from the article. After summing up the main points, she added, “The article notes that there is an upcoming lecture in London on this very topic. The speaker has been involved in the installation of telephone exchanges all over England, almost from the beginning. I definitely plan to go.”
“That lecture is bound to be filled with useful information. I believe I’ll go, too.” Douglas said this without hesitation, genuinely enthused at the idea. He turned toward Alice as he spoke. Their eyes met, and suddenly there was a moment of silence. A long moment of silence. The ease with which they’d been conversing stalled into something unexpectedly awkward.
Sometimes he forgot that Alice was a woman—which was absurd, because he never really forgot it. It was just that so often it didn’t seem to matter. But of course, in other ways it did matter a great deal. He couldn’t just casually offer to go with her someplace, as he would with Carson or Hal.
“I’m not trying to intrude on your plans, by any means,” he hastily assured her, leaning back to put more distance between them. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
She blinked and turned her head, breaking their eye contact. He waited, unsure what to do next, while she seemed to be collecting herself.
After a moment she shrugged and said casually, “It’s a public lecture. Open to anyone. I think it’s important that we stay current with all technical developments when it comes to communications. After all, that is critical to a firm such as Henley and Company. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“So it is.” He took a breath, relieved that she hadn’t gotten the wrong idea.
“My friend Mrs. Bennington will be going with me,” Alice continued. “She’s interested in the telephone, too, although strictly from a user’s point of view.”
She said this last part with a smile, which seemed to indicate that the discomfort of a moment ago had cleared. Douglas still felt there was something different in the air between them, but it didn’t necessarily strike him as negative, only as, well, different.
“I take it Mrs. Bennington is not employed as a telegrapher?”
“Oh no. She’s not employed at all. She’s supported by a rich husband.”
There was a note of dismissal in Alice’s voice, the same he had heard that day in the filing room when she’d talked about her sister’s marriage. She really did seem dead set against the idea.
“Does getting married generally stop a woman’s interest in learning?” he inquired with a smile.
“Well, I do get Lucy to go with me to the monthly lectures at the Ladies’ Improvement Society in Bloomsbury, so there’s that.”
It was another playful dig at her friend’s expense.
“That sounds like a lofty title for an organization,” Douglas said.
Alice shrugged. “It covers topics of general interest but nothing terribly advanced or technical. I’m hoping this lecture on the telephone will have more detailed scientific information.”
“Where is the lecture to be held?” he asked.
“It’s going to be at the Alexandra Palace on Saturday afternoon.”
Douglas gulped. Of all the places for it to be. And on the very day of the tea dance. It brought him back to the reason he’d stepped outside in the first place—to forget about the problem of the Tilneys’ ball. Amazingly, he had forgotten about it. Until now.
For a few panicked moments, he thought about changing his mind. But then he reasoned that he wasn’t likely to run into Hal. After all, Saturday was the busiest day of the week there, as thousands of Londoners made the most of their half holiday. The lecture would be held inside, while the tea dance would be at the outdoor pavilion on the other side of the grounds. It would be simple enough to come and go without getting anywhere close to the dancing.
“If I happen to see you there, perhaps the three of us can sit together,” Alice suggested.
“Yes, that’s a fine idea.”
That solved the problem. They were going together but not going together. It was very simple, and there was nothing at all untoward about it.
Gathering her things, Alice rose from the bench. Douglas followed suit, preparing to go with her, but she paused, saying hesitantly, “Perhaps we shouldn’t return to work together. I wouldn’t want the, er, office gossips to get the wrong idea.”
She’d used the plural, but Douglas was sure Alice was referring to only one person: Archie Clapper. It was wise of her to exercise caution. He nodded. “In fact, there is an errand I need to do at the bank. I may as well take care of that now.”
They parted ways, with Douglas heading toward the bank while Alice went toward the office. Even if nothing had changed in regard to his problems, he was grateful for this time with her. It had been a pleasant and much-needed diversion.
Unlike the dance at the Tilneys’, he was certain the lecture at Ally Pally was something he was going to enjoy.
When Alice returned to the office, she noticed that Archie’s previous good mood seemed to have evaporated. Also, the stack of outgoing messages was back on her desk.
“Did you not have time to send these after all?” she asked.
“No,” he said, giving her a dark look. “Too busy.”
From the way he said it, she guessed the real reason was simply that he’d changed his mind. “Well, thank you anyway for the offer. I’ll get to those now.”
“Did you have an enjoyable lunch?” He said it like an accusation.
“Yes, very enjoyable!” His attitude couldn’t dampen her enthusiasm.
The half hour she and Douglas had spent conversing had been . . . well, electrifying. There was no one outside of her father and brothers with whom she could have had such a stimulating conversation. Given that they were in Ancaster, her opportunities were few and far between.
Her smile had the effect of deepening Archie’s frown. What had caused the change? In an effort to distract him from whatever was bothering him, she said, “I was reading the Telegraphic Journal. There is an interesting article about telephones in there. On my way back, I even paused to look into that new telephone exchange they’ve just opened up on our street.”
That was true. She’d had a brief but interesting conversation with the manager there and was looking forward to telling Douglas about it later.
Impulsively, she extended the journal toward Archie. “Would you care to borrow it?”
He accepted it with a nod, although he was still looking at her with suspicion. When he left for his lunch break a few minutes later, he took the journal with him.
Once he was gone, Alice went over to Mavis. “Were there a lot of incoming messages while I was away?”
“No,” Mavis said, confirming Alice’s suspicions. “It’s too bad, because Mr. Clapper was acting strangely the whole time and having work to do might have helped.”
“What do you mean by ‘acting strangely’?”
“After you left, he got up and looked out that window to the lane. Did you walk that way?”
“Mr. Shaw left a few minutes after that, and I saw Mr. Clapper get up again and look out the window. Then he just sat at his desk and glowered for the rest of the hour.”
Alice let out a sigh of frustration. Her efforts to thwart the office gossip had been to no avail. She went to her desk and began sending the messages, trying to take her mind off Archie Clapper and his penchant for seeing the worst in everything.
She was surprised, therefore, that when Archie returned, he seemed to be in much better humor.
He gave the journal back to her. “Thank you. That was very interesting.” He gave her a smile that she gauged was sincere, though it looked so odd on his face that she was tempted to avert her gaze.
She went back to work, still puzzled, but deciding things had somehow turned out all right. Even if Archie’s brand of friendliness made her instinctively cringe.