A Christmas Hope: A Novel Read online

  “What’s happened?” he said more gently. “Are you hurt?”

  “No!” Creighton shook his head violently. “No … not … not much. But I think she’s dead …”

  Lambert Foxley looked as if he had been struck. “What? What are you talking about? You are drunk!” But it was a faint protest, made without conviction. He was beginning to understand that something terrible must have happened.

  Now Verena Foxley was fighting her way through the bystanders, her head high, her elegant face twisted with fear. She looked first at her son then her husband.

  “Creighton! Oh, my heaven! Are you injured? Lambert, call a doctor!” She turned angrily toward Foxley.

  “He’s all right,” he said sharply. “Someone else is hurt … a woman …”

  Martin Crostwick emerged from the crowd. He was small, neat, and seemingly in control of things.

  “Come now, Creighton, tell us who is hurt and where. Take a deep breath and tell us what happened.”

  The words were given in a tone of command, and in spite of his father’s clear resentment, Creighton turned to Crostwick.

  “This woman …,” he began, his voice harsh with emotion. “I don’t know who she is or how she got in here, but she and that … oaf Tregarron were quarreling over something. He struck her, and she fell back then came forward at him, fists flying. He struck her again. We … we tried to stop him, but he was drunk out of his wits, and very strong. He was … completely beyond control. We tried to pull him off her, but I think … I think she’s dead.”

  There was a moment of horrified silence.

  Several of the women cried out with gasps or sobs.

  Verena Foxley stood white and motionless as if she were turned to marble.

  “Someone should call a doctor.” Claudine broke the silence, moving forward to stand in front of Creighton, demanding his attention. “In the meantime, take me to this young woman. I have some experience dealing with injuries. I may be able to help.”

  Creighton stared at her.

  While she waited for him to collect his wits, she thought rapidly about what might be of use. She grasped some clean linen napkins off the nearest table then a bucket of half-melted ice and a bottle of whiskey. If there were wounds to be cleaned, surgical spirit would be better, but whiskey would have to do.

  “What are you …?” Verena stammered.

  Claudine ignored her. “Show me!” she said loudly and curtly to Creighton. “Now!”

  Lambert Foxley called out something after her, his voice raised and angry, but she took no notice. If a woman was badly hurt, the sooner she was given whatever help was possible, the better.

  Creighton led the way toward the terrace where Claudine had been an endless hour ago. He stumbled at the steps and put out his hand to steady himself against the doorjamb. He came face-to-face with Cecil Crostwick, who was pale and whose light brown hair was tousled. His shirt cuffs were also stained with bright scarlet blood.

  Claudine was accustomed to both injury and disease at the clinic. Even so, she felt a stab of alarm. She pushed Creighton out of the way and brushed past Cecil and then Ernest Halversgate, who was standing almost in his shadow.

  A young woman lay on her back on the terrace paving. Her fair hair was coming out of its pins; her dress was torn and the skirts all over the place. Worse than that, the bodice was crooked, half off one shoulder, and ruined by deep scarlet splashes of blood. Her face, bruised and swollen, under the caked blood, was ashen.

  Dai Tregarron was kneeling beside her, a ripped-off length of her petticoat in his hands as he tied it around her arm tightly to stop the bleeding. Relief flushed his face as he saw Claudine. He straightened up and stepped back.

  Ignoring him, she kneeled beside the girl and reached for her neck with the back of her hand to find a pulse. After a second or two she found it, but it was erratic, and she knew it could stop at any moment.

  She took a cloth and dipped it in the ice bucket then began gently to wipe away some of the worst of the blood and dirt, looking for the other source of the bleeding apart from the wound already bound.

  There were several cuts but none of them deep. Very gently, afraid of what she would find, she put her fingers to the back of the girl’s head, searching for the wetness of blood, the sponginess of shattered bone.

  The main wounds seemed to be the gash in her upper arm and another just below the elbow, as if she had tried to fend off a blow from something sharp enough to tear her flesh.

  Claudine used the whiskey liberally and did the best she could with the napkins to make bandages at least adequate to stop the bleeding until the girl could be treated professionally.

  She turned to see Lambert and Verena Foxley hovering nearby.

  “Has anyone sent for a doctor?” she said somewhat peremptorily.

  “Yes, of course,” Lambert replied with something of his usual self-control. “And the police.”

  She had not thought of the police, but of course he was right. They must be notified. She looked around, and it was then that she realized Dai Tregarron had gone.

  Cecil Crostwick and Ernest Halversgate shot quick glances at each other. Creighton Foxley was standing close to his father.

  “Who is she?” Claudine asked, still on her knees beside the girl.

  Cecil gave a helpless shrug. “Tregarron called her Winnie.” He looked at Ernest again. “We don’t really know her.”

  “I thought he said Winnie Briggs, but I’m not certain,” Creighton added.

  Lambert Foxley swore under his breath. “What on earth is a woman like this doing here, Creighton?”

  “I don’t know,” Creighton said defensively. “Tregarron brought her. You’d better ask whoever invited him. It all …” He gulped. “It all erupted out of nothing. One moment everything was good-natured, the next she and Tregarron were screaming at each other. We tried to stop it. He was really vicious, and we were afraid it was going to get ugly, but it was all so quick.” He looked at the other two young men for support.

  “He was totally drunk,” Cecil said bitterly. “The man’s a lunatic.”

  Claudine was overwhelmed with a wave of disappointment. Perhaps Wallace was right and she was a naïve fool.

  She could do nothing more for the girl, at least for the moment. She climbed to her feet feeling heavy and awkward. No one moved to assist her.

  “We should take her inside,” she said to Foxley. “She’ll freeze out here.”

  “Where on earth should we put her?” Verena asked, her eyes wide, as if the idea were made in bad taste.

  “Somewhere warm,” Claudine replied. “What about the housekeeper’s sitting room? There’ll be a fire there.”

  “I can’t ask the Giffords’ housekeeper to give up her sitting room to a … a woman off the street!” Verena exclaimed.

  Claudine raised her eyebrows very high. “I was assuming that they would tell her, not ask her,” she said very coolly. She expected a blistering reply but was angry enough not to care.

  Verena’s face flamed, but she turned in her tracks and stalked back into the great room. A few moments later, the butler came out with two footmen to carry the still-unconscious young woman.

  Fortunately the doctor came within the next ten minutes, but it was a full half hour after that before the police arrived. They were led by a Sergeant Green, a soft-spoken man in his early forties who looked as if he had been on arduous duty all day and had expected to be home at his own hearth by this hour. Nevertheless, he was even tempered and conducted the questioning of the guests with courtesy.

  The conclusion he came to was exactly what Claudine had feared it would be, but she could say nothing that would make it any different. Winnie Briggs had joined the party, either from a nearby establishment or off of the street, at the invitation of Dai Tregarron. Nobody else knew her, and unfortunately—but perhaps very wisely for his own survival—Tregarron had fled the scene. No one knew where he had gone.

  Creighton Foxley, Cecil Cros
twick, and Ernest Halversgate were all agreed that Winnie and Dai had quarreled violently. He had attacked her, and—in spite of the efforts of all three of the other young men to prevent him—he had seriously injured her.

  She was removed to a hospital for the poor. Sergeant Green, having noted the Welshman’s description, ordered that Tregarron be searched for throughout the neighborhood and arrested on sight.

  In the dark, and in some distress and confusion, the party broke up and the guests departed.

  “He should never have been invited,” Wallace said angrily as their carriage jolted over the cobbles on the way home. “I can’t imagine what Gifford was thinking of. The very best he could have got away with was a most unpleasant and unnecessary degree of vulgarity. Tregarron is a boor, and everyone knows it.”

  Claudine said nothing. She felt wretched about the whole affair. After her concern for the poor girl, the deepest hurt was her disillusionment in Dai Tregarron. Of course, he drank too much; he had not denied it himself, when they had spoken. But violence toward someone totally unable to defend herself was a completely different matter. Of what value was any poetic talent, no matter how beautiful, if you were capable of inflicting such pain on another human?

  Perhaps she should have defended Forbes Gifford—or Oona, if it really was she who had invited Tregarron—but she knew it was pointless. In the early days of their marriage she had argued with Wallace, attempting to show him a kinder or more reasonable side to the things that angered him. Looking back, it was surprising how long it had taken her to realize such arguing was futile, at least with him.

  “I expect it was Oona,” Wallace went on. “Nobody really knows where she came from before marrying Forbes.”

  His condescension stung Claudine. She liked Oona Gifford, as much as she could like someone she hardly knew. In a sense, she was also an outsider. Without thinking, Claudine sprang to her defense.

  “That is an unfair assumption,” she said quickly. “She would hardly invite an unmarried man to an important Christmas party without consulting her husband, especially a man who was known to drink.”

  Wallace was startled. A magnificent carriage passed them, and in the sudden brilliance of its lamps she saw the surprise in his face. Then the darkness closed in on them again.

  “Then you clearly know her better than I do,” he said tartly.

  “I know any woman better than you do,” she retorted before thinking. She knew that it would have been far wiser to have given a softer, possibly also less accurate, answer. But it was too late to withdraw it.

  “Well, even if Gifford allowed it, you still seem to be saying that where judgment of men is concerned, Oona Gifford is a fool,” he said coldly. “Hardly a necessary comment, Claudine. I had noticed. I think, if you recall, that was my original observation.”

  She was too hurt to retreat. “You remarked that Oona must’ve invited Tregarron, because we don’t know anything about her past,” she pointed out. “But you can’t know that any more than I do. Therefore your conclusion that she is a poor judge of character is flawed.”

  “Rubbish! I thought Gifford had more sense, anyway.” He dismissed the matter as finished.

  “Or possibly Forbes has sufficient charity to extend his hospitality a little more widely at Christmas.” She would not let it go so easily.

  “Then he should have extended it to us.” He glared at her. “And not ruined a perfectly good party by embarrassing his guests with the presence of a man like Tregarron, not to mention one of Tregarron’s … street women. I don’t know what morality is coming to these days.”

  She thought to herself that there was an enormous amount about morality and human nature that he did not know—an infinity of it—but this time she did not say so.

  They reached home in grim silence, dismissed the coachman and footman, and went into the house. After the cool night air, the warmth of the house was physically pleasing, but she felt no sense of comfort at all.

  Wallace picked up the subject again as they crossed the hall to go upstairs.

  “Even at Christmas it seems we can no longer expect to see the values of a Christian society,” he remarked, a step behind her.

  She stopped abruptly, and he trod on the train of her gown. “I suppose you have been too busy with your wretched clinic even to have noticed,” he added.

  “You are standing on my skirt,” she told him.

  He stepped back, his face flushed with annoyance. It was clear in his eyes that he had no intention of apologizing. “I didn’t expect you to stop at the bottom of the stairs. Am I to be obliged to walk around you if I wish to go to bed?”

  “I thought you were about to explain Christian standards of hospitality to me, and I wished to pay it the attention it is due, rather than stand with my back to you,” she answered, meeting his gaze.

  “At this time of night?” he said incredulously. “Sometimes, Claudine, I wonder if you are quite sane. I don’t know why the subject needs explaining at all.”

  “Because I was under the impression that Christian hospitality was meant to include all kinds of people, not just those we find most comfortable. I remember a number of occasions in the Bible where the Pharisees criticized Christ for dining with sinners.”

  His face flushed a dull red. “You are not Christ, Claudine, in spite of your charitable work for Mrs. Monk’s regrettable clinic for … sinners, if you choose to use the word. You already spend more than enough of your time dealing with them. It is damaging your sense of values. At least other women might learn from such an experience, and place even more price on their own blessings. It does not seem to have had that fortunate effect on you. Perhaps you should direct your spare time toward other pursuits, for the foreseeable future.”

  That blow was deadly. It crushed her completely into silence. She turned, and picking up the front of her skirts so she did not trip, she walked up the stairs, her heart pounding, each step feeling like a small mountain. She loved her work at the clinic. It had saved her from despair. She had begun it at a time in her life when the future spread before her like a long, gray plain stretching forever into the coming night.

  She had offered her help, expecting to be given the genteel tasks of mending linen or making lists, and finding no reward in it but that of variety from her usual, desperately repetitive social routines. Instead she had found herself cooking in giant saucepans for dozens of hungry and sick women off the streets, even cleaning floors and heaving laundry around. She had used physical strength she was not aware she possessed, working past the point of what she had thought was exhaustion. She was caring for people in all circumstances, giving practical and emotional comfort without thought of herself—as she would have done for the children she had never had. Her mother had always called her selfish and incomplete. At last that was untrue, and the clinic had made it so. If Wallace took that from her, he would be robbing her of the most valuable part of her life. She should have kept her opinions of Christianity, and the Giffords, to herself.

  Even now it would not be too late to apologize. Wallace was always pleased when she did that. But the words stuck in her throat, and she went up to bed in silence.

  She did not sleep well, and when she woke in the morning she realized it was rather later than she had intended. She drank the morning tea her maid brought her, and dressed in a plain dark skirt and jacket. It looked a little drab, especially on a gray day, but it suited her mood. She thought about her few minutes on the terrace with Tregarron, the passion in his words, the blanket of stars above them, and the music of the party softened beyond the doors. It had been no more than a colored veil drawn deceptively over the hard outlines of reality. If such a man could beat a young woman to death, what were his wild words worth? No more than any other pretty lie. In fact, less, because they had passed so close to being a greater truth.

  Perhaps it was a good thing she had overslept. At least Wallace was gone and she ran no risk of plunging again into last night’s unpleasantness.


  She ate breakfast, though she wasn’t hungry; it was simply a wise thing to begin the day with a decent meal. She had just finished when the kitchen maid, Ada, came into the room. She was a pretty girl, in a dark, unusual kind of way, and Claudine rather liked her.

  “Good morning, Ada,” she said pleasantly. “You look worried. Is something wrong?”

  Ada lifted her chin a little, as if preparing to face a danger. “Ma’am, there was a man come late last night, cold an’ ’ungry. I gave ’im some bread an’ a cup o’ tea an’ let ’im sleep in the stable, up in the ’ayloft where ’e wouldn’t be seen. I give ’im bread an’ tea this morning, but ’e looks that wretched, can I give ’im an egg or two before ’e moves on?”

  Claudine felt a sudden warmth spring up inside her. Wallace would be furious if he knew, but this girl had exercised compassion anyway, trusting that Claudine would back her.

  “Yes, of course you can,” she said quickly. “And perhaps a little bacon as well. As long as he doesn’t disturb the horses, he’s no trouble to us.”

  “ ’E in’t no trouble to the ’orses, ma’am,” Ada assured her gratefully. “In fact, ’e were good with ’em. Maybe ’e’s a tinker, or such. ’E’s real dark, like ’e could be one ov ’em, a foreigner, you know?”

  “I’m glad you took care of him, Ada. Thank you,” Claudine said sincerely. “It’s a wretched time of year to be homeless.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you. ’E looked scared, like somebody were after ’im.” She turned to go.

  “Ada!” Claudine said suddenly. “Is he hurt?”

  “I dunno, ma’am. You think I should ask ’im?”

  “No, thank you, I think I’ll do that myself.” She rose from the table and followed Ada into the kitchen. When the hard-boiled eggs and the bacon between two slices of toast were ready, Claudine took them out to the stable herself. If the man was hurt, or sick, it was very likely she had the ability to help. Since she had worked at the clinic she had learned a lot about people who were destitute, ate too little, and lived on the street.