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It was the purest modern miracle of forward-moving social thought which permitted that I, on a chilly, halflit day in earliest winter, should extend to my most intimate acquaintance a friendly invitation to dine out. It was that same advancement of social feeling which permitted her to accept.
In my mother’s youth such a thing would have been unthinkable: one young lady extending to another an invitation to dine in public? No respectable female would have dared. To be sure, if one were obliged to travel there was always, in hotel accommodation, the redoubtable necessity of a public meal, but special dining rooms had historically been made available for such a purpose and were always safely sequestered from the importuning presence of unattached men. For a woman to freely engage the company of a female companion for a meal taken publicly? To dine in view of others as men did, with no chaperone required? It was unthinkable.
Even a woman such as my mother, who was always more wont than many to press her nose against the glass which delineated the boundary between her world and that of her contemporaneous menfolk, would have known her limitations when she met them. That social stricture which abjured the public appearance of gently-reared women in the masculine environs of a public dining establishment was onesuch, I do not doubt.
But now, with mere days separating human society from the close of the old century and the advent of the new, all manner of progress was upon us. A young lady was capable of commanding a table in a public establishment for her exclusive use, or that of herself and her female companion. So did I propose to do, and directly my guest issued her acceptance I quit my comfortable lodgings at the Professional Women’s Club and ventured out into the most public thoroughfares of London and that most public and previously unseemly of venues, from the perspective of an unchaperoned lady: a restaurant.
I arrived at the establishment in advance of my guest, and bore with equanimity the cautious scrutiny of the scrupulously respectable maître d'hôtel. I had, in fact, dined at that location twice previously, but on both occasions I had been in the company of my brother. His unquestionably masculine presence had safeguarded my respectability, so naturally I had suffered no similar inspection. Now, bereft of the virtuous safeguard of Sherlock’s maleness—and long and loud might he laugh, to hear the onetime burden of his company and guardianship so described—I was subject to a more discerning and painstaking evaluation, and had in anticipation gowned myself accordingly.
For the occasion of my public dinner I had made myself resplendent in a sombre richness of ochre velvet, silk and red fox-fur. Mine being a luxurious if not opulent winter costume, tailored to complement my not-inconsiderable height, it was bound to communicate to any discerning onlooker certain proofs of that respectability which is imbued by a fateful combination of birth, breeding and solvency.
It is true that none of these traits which would gain me what I sought were of my own making; they were qualities with which the hazard of birth alone had endowed me, and they were those same gifts of chance which would earn me entrance to the establishment I sought. We might, as a society, have advanced so far as to permit that a lady of certain calibre might dine publicly with her male guardian in absentia, but we had not yet gained such ground as would permit the social code which deemed me a lady in the first place to be likewise bundled away in a basket, per the final fate of some dusty once-crowned head, post application of the guillotine. Unjust, unquestionably, but what promise holds the dawn of any new century, after all, if not the offer of more time in which to correct those wrongs which social motion has not yet so accelerated as to set to rights? Clinging as we Britons yet were to the crowned heads of Europe and whatever respectability their gift of lands to ancestors long rotted might have endowed us, I made much of the position to which I had rightful claim, the better to secure that claim which had so recently been made accessible to one of my position.
My accents and address of the maître d'hôtel, in partnership with the costume that so clearly marked me as one not merely of means, but of discreet good taste as well, conspired to fully allay his every fear that I might menace the hallowed grounds of his restaurant with unseemly behaviour. Alas, I am human enough that I found myself most irrationally pleased when it was communicated to me, by way of an invitation to follow the slightly-built, supercilious little man across the floor to a charming if unobtrusively-placed table, that I had passed muster. Confound that most perplexing and obsequious aspect of human nature, the desire to meet with the approval of strangers!
It must also be confessed that I had dressed myself on this occasion with no lesser goal than doing precisely that. Although I have lately adopted as my signature style a neat, understated mode of dress which has a distinctly professional and not altogether unmasculine air about it, for this public appearance I had foregone originality in favour of strict adherence to convention. My costume played a principal role in inducing the vigilant gatekeeper of that establishment to perceive me as one unlikely to bring shame or ignominy to darken those august halls. Add to that the fact that my brother Sherlock, more than customarily burdened with discretion at the most peculiar times, had clearly neglected to regale the poor man with any relevant tales on the occasion of our prior visit, and my success was all but assured.
Of course it could not escape my notice that although my own appearance, with my unusual height and memorable profile, might have given some pause, the same could not be said of my intended companion. Lady Cecily, when she arrived some minutes thereafter in a rush of cold city air, silver foxfur and cerulean wool, was the very image of forgotten summer skies and clean sunshine lighting a path from the door to the podium. There she was received with an awe that had been decidedly absent from my own reception, and was enjoined, with all reverence and servility, to follow the gentleman so privileged as to lead her to my table.
Farthest thing from being stung by the discrepancy in our reception, I could not even fault the man’s good taste. Who, on meeting Lady Cecily, could not help but wish to prostrate themselves at those dainty feet? How could I scorn any man for the very weakness which was my own?
My guest, duly escorted, sank gracefully to the chair opposite me, her face alight, and launched at once into effusive greeting.
“Enola!” Lady Cecily was so warm and familiar in her address that it did not matter how often I heard my name on her lips; I could not fail to be flustered by it. “How pleased I was to hear from you. I do not think our paths have crossed since I last quit the city. Tell me, pray, where have you been keeping yourself?”
Anticipating that this greeting might be at least in part for the benefit of any parties seated close enough to overhear, I denied that I had held myself in custody in any particular fashion, but did allow, to my sincere regret, that it had been some weeks, perhaps even months, since last our paths had crossed.
“And through no design of mine,” Lady Cecily said firmly, as though she had been called upon by a magistrate to account for her role in our separation, when in fact the opposite was more like to be the case. At any event, listeners-in and lookers-on notwithstanding, I felt it incumbent upon me to protest.
“It can hardly be said to be a design on my part, either. Indeed, I communicated with you by means of our agreed-upon cipher only last month.”
At this so public recollection of a published intimacy, the very nature of which had rendered the cipher rather more than usually necessary by virtue of the content of my correspondence, I had the not-inconsiderable satisfaction of observing my lady’s lovely face colour a most becoming, rosy pink.
“It is to be hoped the cipher was as sound as my own efforts to solve it gave me cause to believe,” she murmured. I permitted myself the very faintest of smiles, though I have no doubt the effect of that expression was to render me redolent of my elder brothers at their most supercilious.
“As I have not yet got myself called up on charges of licentious behaviour,” I said lightly, “or worse, one may safely presume that the cipher I employed on that particular occasion remains mercifully unbroken.”
Lady Cecily, still as pink as a rose on a summer’s day, and brightening the dining room all the more fetchingly in consequence, lifted her gaze to hold my own. The quiet boldness of that simple gesture heated my own blood to such a degree that I began to wonder if there might not have been something in it after all: that peculiar historic insistence on forbidding ladies access to environments for public dining. There was something about the public space we occupied, at least on this occasion, which drove me to aspire to environs that were, instead, entirely private.
To reorient us from the more pleasurable distractions afforded us by our reunion, I recalled myself sternly to its initial inspiration.
“It was when I beheld your latest commercial endeavour that I knew we must reunite. Too long a time has passed since our last meeting, if you can have launched yourself on an entire career and I know nothing of it until it is staring me in the face over breakfast.”
At this declaration, Lady Cecily professed herself astonished.
“A career? How arrived you at the belief that I have embarked on such a venture?”
This, I thought, was hardly fair. She knew altogether too well the nature of my work, and my brother’s. There had been a time when she knew of my work even better than my brother had known it himself. And certainly, there had been between that time and this more than ample opportunity for us to learn each other as well as either could have wished (another degree of understanding from which Sherlock remained, insofar as I knew, mercifully excluded). Almost reproachfully, I drew a much-compressed sheet of newsprint from my string bag and cast it down, smearily, on the table between us.
“I speak of your career in political caricature, and a well-suited one it surely is. You have done remarkable work here.”
Lady Cecily regarded the image I had produced in such a peculiar way that I could hardly credit her purpose in so doing. She did not acknowledge the work as her own; instead she looked almost as if she meant to do the opposite. Rather more sharpishly than is my customary address of her, I hastened to forestall any such foolish endeavour.
“Surely you do not intend to deny to my face that this is your own handiwork. For I will denounce you as a liar should you make the attempt, pain me though it would to do so.”
Lady Cecily, her eyes still fixed on the damning little caricature that stared up at us from the page of a newspaper which enjoyed moderate circulation in the city and surrounding areas, darkened from rose-petal pink to rose-petal red.
“I would not dissemble to you, Enola, but I can hardly sit here, in a public place, and claim such a depiction as my own.”
“Whyever not?” I asked, much astonished. “It is clearly your artistry.”
“Mark you, I have not signed it as such.”
“I observed as much, naturally, though I cannot imagine why. It is a monstrously clever bit of work.”
I did not flatter her in so saying, but spoke only perfect truth. Cecily’s enterprising pen had captured the flaws of an up-and-coming politician with biting accuracy. She possesses the artist’s gift of true insight, and she is too beautifully honest and frank in her nature to dissemble. These traits had never been in clearer evidence than in the form of the little figure she had sketched for the circular of that politician: she had not flattered his vanities but made much of his physical deficits, and quite cunningly too, so that they seemed likewise to amplify his deficits of character.
How I came to know the work for her own (for as she herself had noted moments before, she had not signed it with her own name) was something of a mystery even to myself. I suppose it is that knack by which one might know the sound of a voice, except in this instance it had been the timbre of Cecily’s pen which had struck me so forcefully that I could not mistake its origin.
“You cannot seriously say such a thing,” she decided. “Not to me. Enola, of course you must know why I did not sign it.”
I knew, of course, all the conventional reasons why she should not, but I suppose it had not actually occurred to me that Lady Cecily might still deem herself bound by those conventions. Certainly it had been my considerable pleasure to see her loosed, on various occasions, from all other manner of social convention. Indeed I had enjoyed the privilege of unbinding her from a few of them myself, and did not recall her uttering, on those occasions, any specific complaint.
I confessed as much to her, in terms suited for our setting, and though I made every effort to preserve the lightness and ease of my manner some deeper truth of my disappointment must have betrayed itself, for she regarded me with such warm, gentle apology that I felt almost ashamed of my own disappointment in her.
“We cannot all cheek convention with such ready confidence as Enola Holmes.” Even in making this declaration she managed to imbue her words with a warmth and fondness that defied my every latent impulse to take umbrage at her reticence. “Some of us are yet too cowed by vestiges of family propriety to put our names to . . . well.” She cast a faintly proud smile down at her handiwork. “Such craft.”
“Craft it is, without question,” I concurred, and took pleasure in the answering sight of hers. My lady is not too modest to enjoy the sound of my praise. She put a fingertip, discreetly gloved, to the newsprint, and a beguiling smile tilted the corner of her ever-delightful mouth.
“I have thoroughly assassinated his character, you must admit.”
“He is the assassin of his own character,” I countered. “You have only documented the murder.”
“That you can so defend me even when you do not understand—no, pray, do not deny it.” She leaned across the table to capture my hand in her own. “I see it in your face. Even hearing my reasons as you have, you would still have me put my name to this image and claim it as my own, because you are bold and at your ease in a way that I cannot yet be, and all my reason for caution is of no more consequence to you than the ephemera of a nightmare from which you have long since woken.”
I was tempted to remind her of all that I knew lay within her: not merely the passions in whose study we had of some intermittent frequency been jointly apprenticed, but also, of even longer-standing intimacy than our preferred intimacies of late, that strength of character and courage of conviction I had seen in her from the very earliest days of our acquaintance. I knew her, I longed to remind her, and could see no cause to prevent that the world should know her to. For everything I knew of her, I loved.
Surely any person of even meanest sense, on seeing her as I did, could not help but love her too.
However, to my great regret, I perceived that endeavouring to explain myself to her in this manner could be of little profit in the conversation as it now progressed. Indeed she was smiling at me warmly, if sadly, and gave my hand a gentle little squeeze before she retreated, quiet and poised, to her own side of the table.
“I am not Enola Holmes,” she said. “I am . . . my own sort of thing, is all. And I hope you will not grudge me that.”
I looked from the bright, smiling countenance of my dining companion to the satirical workings of her pen, immortalised in the pages of the periodical whose editors had been canny enough to perceive her talent. I looked thence once more into her dear face, and found my answer there.
“I could never,” I said, quite truthfully, “grudge you the fact that you are yourself. To the contrary,” and I hoped she could hear in my voice the full weight and truth of what I meant by it, “it is what I love about you best of all.”
It was not an apology, nor was it meant to be, for where Lady Cecily is concerned I cannot regret anything save every minute spent out of her presence, but she relaxed beneath the words all the same. It was as though in so speaking I had loosed some tension within her, and she was now at ease once more.
I could hardly begrudge her that.
With her leave, I made sign to the waiter that we were ready to order, and did so. Then, setting my lady’s unsigned artwork to one side, I smiled at her, and she at me, and we talked of other things.
I could not pretend to have fully rid myself of the desire to see my lady step properly and publicly into that sphere which her talent alone, to make no mention of the sober persistence with which she honed it, deemed her right, but neither could I dream of forcing her thereto ere she was properly ready to occupy it. Let Lady Cecily come to terms with herself in her own good time, and grant me only the privilege of witness when that time should arrive.
There is a whole new century in the offing, after all.
We’ve time enough remaining to make the most of it.