beautiful lady all dressed up to go shopping.
Off I sailed, thus, graciously, like a heavenly blue ship amid London’s sooty maelstrom. Soldiers, scullery-maids, clerks and clerics, a blind beggar led by a barefoot child, a one-armed greybeard with his Victoria’s Cross prominently displayed, a fuzzy-haired slum woman selling corn-plasters, gentlemen tipping their top-hats, paper-boys dotted red with skin eruptions, a ragged little girl hoarse from selling apples, an inky scholar with shoulders narrow, sloped and lopsided from carrying books—such was the grimy, motley crowd through which I strolled as if through a meadow of dark daisies.
At a genteel gait I approached the cab-stand, scanning its ranks while appearing, I hoped, only to gaze about me with idle superiority. I had no idea how I was going to find the cab I wanted, for I had not seen the driver’s face, and I had no clear memory of the vehicle itself—they all looked so much the same! On the way hither I had taken pencil and paper in hand, attempting a sketch, but had produced only a blur except for the horse, which came out rather nice—I adore horses—so there I sat like a child drawing a picture of Black Beauty? Really, Enola. Disappointed in myself, I thought that perhaps when I arrived on the spot I might recognise the cab if it were there.
Too many perhapses, mights, and ifs.
I saw nothing at all familiar among the ranks of cabs.
On a nearby pavement, however, directly in my path, stood a pair of figures all too familiar to me: my brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock.
I am ashamed to say that the sight of them sent my mental faculties, along with my heartbeat, into temporary abeyance. I halted.
But then, as often happens at such moments, my mother’s voice chided from within my own mind. Nonsense, Enola. You will do very well on your own.
The oft-spoken, well-remembered words starched my spine. Collecting my wits, I started walking again.
Luckily, engrossed in what appeared to be a most animated conversation, Sherlock and Mycroft had not yet observed me. They stood approximately at the place where I had previously encountered—and booted—Mycroft. Dressed much as he had been that day, that robust gentleman appeared unharmed by the experience. Sherlock, however, while impeccable in his black broadcloth city suit, wore upon his right foot a carpet-slipper, and leaned heavily upon a cane.
Carefully in control of my pace and bearing, I soodled along, head up, hat fetchingly cocked, parasol aloft, making sure that I stood out like a blue beacon among the throng— a beautiful lady who wants the whole world to give her its covert glance —so as not to be seen. How ironic, to conceal oneself by being looked at, but there it was: my brothers had no interest in women; observing a paragon of fashionable feminine pulchritude approaching, they would give her not a second glance.
And so it proved. As I passed them, like automatons they touched their hat-brims without pausing in their conversation. “…cannot be allowed to go on,” Mycroft was saying in his usual pompous manner. “You were much remiss, Sherlock, to let her go blithely on her errant way.”
“I beg to differ. She seemed far from blithe.”
Indeed? My distress had showed, apparently. Although what point Sherlock was trying to make I know not, for I heard no more, continuing on my “errant” way.
And disciplining my mind to focus on the task at hand: trying to find the cab in which Lady Cecily had disappeared.
But I still did not recognise anything familiar in the ranks before me.
Nearly at the end of the cab-stand, and out of sight of my brothers, I halted, took a deep breath, and turned to survey the scene one more time. Without any pleasing result, except that I found the humble brown gaze of a cab-horse looking back at me.
A big, placid dun horse. On impulse—for his was the most honest greeting I had received in many a day—I stepped to his head and patted his cheekbone
Off I sailed, thus, graciously, like a heavenly blue ship amid London’s sooty maelstrom. Soldiers, scullery-maids, clerks and clerics, a blind beggar led by a barefoot child, a one-armed greybeard with his Victoria’s Cross prominently displayed, a fuzzy-haired slum woman selling corn-plasters, gentlemen tipping their top-hats, paper-boys dotted red with skin eruptions, a ragged little girl hoarse from selling apples, an inky scholar with shoulders narrow, sloped and lopsided from carrying books—such was the grimy, motley crowd through which I strolled as if through a meadow of dark daisies.
At a genteel gait I approached the cab-stand, scanning its ranks while appearing, I hoped, only to gaze about me with idle superiority. I had no idea how I was going to find the cab I wanted, for I had not seen the driver’s face, and I had no clear memory of the vehicle itself—they all looked so much the same! On the way hither I had taken pencil and paper in hand, attempting a sketch, but had produced only a blur except for the horse, which came out rather nice—I adore horses—so there I sat like a child drawing a picture of Black Beauty? Really, Enola. Disappointed in myself, I thought that perhaps when I arrived on the spot I might recognise the cab if it were there.
Too many perhapses, mights, and ifs.
I saw nothing at all familiar among the ranks of cabs.
On a nearby pavement, however, directly in my path, stood a pair of figures all too familiar to me: my brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock.
I am ashamed to say that the sight of them sent my mental faculties, along with my heartbeat, into temporary abeyance. I halted.
But then, as often happens at such moments, my mother’s voice chided from within my own mind. Nonsense, Enola. You will do very well on your own.
The oft-spoken, well-remembered words starched my spine. Collecting my wits, I started walking again.
Luckily, engrossed in what appeared to be a most animated conversation, Sherlock and Mycroft had not yet observed me. They stood approximately at the place where I had previously encountered—and booted—Mycroft. Dressed much as he had been that day, that robust gentleman appeared unharmed by the experience. Sherlock, however, while impeccable in his black broadcloth city suit, wore upon his right foot a carpet-slipper, and leaned heavily upon a cane.
Carefully in control of my pace and bearing, I soodled along, head up, hat fetchingly cocked, parasol aloft, making sure that I stood out like a blue beacon among the throng— a beautiful lady who wants the whole world to give her its covert glance —so as not to be seen. How ironic, to conceal oneself by being looked at, but there it was: my brothers had no interest in women; observing a paragon of fashionable feminine pulchritude approaching, they would give her not a second glance.
And so it proved. As I passed them, like automatons they touched their hat-brims without pausing in their conversation. “…cannot be allowed to go on,” Mycroft was saying in his usual pompous manner. “You were much remiss, Sherlock, to let her go blithely on her errant way.”
“I beg to differ. She seemed far from blithe.”
Indeed? My distress had showed, apparently. Although what point Sherlock was trying to make I know not, for I heard no more, continuing on my “errant” way.
And disciplining my mind to focus on the task at hand: trying to find the cab in which Lady Cecily had disappeared.
But I still did not recognise anything familiar in the ranks before me.
Nearly at the end of the cab-stand, and out of sight of my brothers, I halted, took a deep breath, and turned to survey the scene one more time. Without any pleasing result, except that I found the humble brown gaze of a cab-horse looking back at me.
A big, placid dun horse. On impulse—for his was the most honest greeting I had received in many a day—I stepped to his head and patted his cheekbone
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