The Jane Austen Society (ARC)
Page 16
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chawton, Hampshire
January 10, 1946
Adeline Grover was walking along the main village road in the direction of the Great House, pulling her dark grey wool coat tighter against the sharp winter wind, surprised to see small batches of snowdrops randomly peeking out their heads along the roadside a full month ahead of schedule. She was still peering down at the flowers when she heard her name called out.
She looked up to see Liberty Pascal waving at her from a few yards away.
“Adeline, it’s been so long—how are you?” the woman asked with the slightly exaggerated manner that Adeline recalled so well from their college days together as teacher and nurse trainees.
“Liberty, what on earth are you doing here, of all places?” Adeline stopped walking and they stepped to the side of the road together. She noticed that Liberty looked extremely well, her striking ginger hair enhanced by the shade of lipstick she had chosen to wear, which in turn matched the healthful flush of her cheeks.
“I just accepted a new position here!”
“Really? With whom?” Adeline hadn’t heard of any new doctors opening practice in the village or even in nearby Alton.
“Dr. Benjamin Gray.”
“Really,” Adeline said again. “I didn’t know.”
“You’re a patient of his, right? Oh, I am so sorry, Adeline—about the baby. So awful. You must be beside yourself.”
More than one downside of this recent hire by Dr. Gray was starting to quickly dawn on Adeline. “Yes, I’ve been a patient of his for a long time now. Although recently I have been thinking of making a change.” This was not altogether true, but Adeline’s mouth was sometimes faster than her thoughts, and she had learned to trust the gut instincts behind such outbursts.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I know Dr. Gray speaks so highly of you.”
The idea of Dr. Gray and Liberty Pascal discussing Adeline behind her back, whether about her health or otherwise, was making her suddenly and distinctly uncomfortable.
“I can tell I am going to like it here,” Liberty was energetically babbling on. “I had no idea it was so quaint. You never said, you cagey thing. Although you did choose to come back here to teach, so I guess that says something.”
“How is Dr. Gray?” Adeline asked as casually as possible. “I haven’t seen him since the Christmas Eve service for the village, in the little parish church.”
“Oh, I know the one. Adorable. We pass it on our way to see Mr. Knight. I was just there actually, giving him his bath. Sad old man, quite near the end. Starting to lose his wits, although he has no idea of course. Benjamin—I mean Dr. Gray—seems to be the only one that can manage him. The daughter looks pretty useless if you ask me.”
Adeline inwardly congratulated herself on remembering Liberty’s loose tongue and remarkable lack of discretion and told herself this was as good a reason as any to try to find a new doctor. She found it interesting that, as with Harriet Peckham, Dr. Gray persisted in hiring such outspoken and formidable women.
“Listen, Liberty, it’s actually a good thing we ran into each other. Would you be so kind as to let Dr. Gray know about my plans to make a change? Like I said, I’ve been meaning to tell him for a while now.”
“Of course, Adeline. Anything to help you out right now. Be well, okay dear?” Liberty reached out and gave Adeline a big hug, then walked off in the opposite direction.
Adeline continued on her way home. Running into Liberty Pascal, of all people, had done nothing to improve her mood for the day, and she would be glad to get back to the solitude and privacy of her little house. She was not due to see Dr. Gray again for a few more weeks, when the Jane Austen Society was scheduled to have its second meeting. She was glad of that—Liberty would tell him Adeline’s plans shortly, and he might wonder about them, but hopefully this business would be all done and forgotten by the next time they met.
Adeline was crouching in her front garden a few hours later, digging up the ground to belatedly plant some tulip bulbs, clearing the dead fall brush to showcase her own little patches of snowdrops, when she heard the front oak gate swing open on its creaky, fallen hinges. She stood up to her full height as Dr. Gray approached.
He had an unusual look of concern on his face—he was usually good at hiding his feelings, so much so that she often found herself spending a large part of their time together just trying to make him crack.
“You are well?” he asked abruptly.
She leaned both hands on the old wooden handle of her shovel and looked directly at him in surprise. “Yes, tolerably. Are you?”
He started to pace about the garden path, which divided just before her into a long oval before resuming its redbrick march to her red front door. She was standing within the oval-shaped patch of ground, which was surrounded by a low box hedge that Samuel had planted for her as a wedding present less than a year ago.
Dr. Gray continued to pace about distractedly on the other side of the hedge, pulling dead twigs off some of the hawthorn bushes and then mindlessly throwing the sticks onto the ground.
“I see you’ve hired Liberty Pascal,” Adeline finally spoke up. “She’s an old classmate of mine, from college. A real force of nature, that one—she should have you whipped into shape in no time.”
“What on earth does that mean?” he asked with a jerk of his head.
“Nothing in particular. She’s just hard to resist. French lineage and all that.”
Dr. Gray took off his right glove and rubbed his jaw with the exposed hand. “Adeline, why are you firing me as your doctor?”
“I’m not firing you.” She pushed the shovel deeper into the ground until it was standing upright on its own.
“Really. What do you call it then?”
“Does it matter?”
“Is this about the medicine?”
Adeline looked at him in pure shock. She had been honestly struggling to figure out why he was so upset, and now the full implication of his words struck her hard.
“The medicine . . . that you gave me . . . that medicine?” Her words came out slowly, as she tried to process his obvious anger at her.
“Is it because I won’t give you any more of it?”
“Dr. Gray!” Her eyes lit up with such fury, he immediately regretted saying it. “Are you honestly standing there accusing me of being an addict of some kind? Of switching doctors so I can get more drugs? You, of all people?”
Dr. Gray removed his other glove and shoved both of them deep into his coat pockets in visible frustration. Looking about for somewhere to sit, he spied an overturned clay urn under a crab-apple tree and went and plonked himself down on it.
“Well?” Adeline persisted in her anger.
Dr. Gray sat staring at the ground about him, at the dead leaves and dried seedheads of last summer’s hydrangea and allium blossoms. He could see that keeping up with the garden must have come to a crashing standstill for Adeline amidst the terrible events of last fall. He thought about the broken front gate, and all the yardwork to be done about them, and how only a widow could find herself with such a house and property to manage all on her own.
“You need someone to help you out around here,” he answered her instead, trying to regain some verbal command of the situation now spiralling out of his feeble control, as things so often seemed to do whenever he was near her.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Look, I’m very sorry if I guessed wrong just now—but I felt it incumbent upon me, as your physician, to make sure there was nothing going on. Nothing of that kind, at least.”
“Dr. Gray, I had hoped you would know me well enough to know that I would never get out of control like that.”
He looked up at her. “Unfortunately, it can happen to the best of us. I know that for a fact. Look, I am sorry, but I had to ask. I had to know that I had asked the question at least, no matter how much it upset you.”
“How brave you are.”
“Adeline, is it anything else I’ve done?”
“Not at all. I just—it’s a new year, you know? And we’re going to be working together again, with the society, and it’s probably a good idea to keep some things separate.”
Dr. Gray wasn’t sure he believed any of this. “But I am Adam’s doctor as you well know, and Miss Knight’s, too. I am a professional, after all. . . .” But his words struck even him as strangely disingenuous, and he let his voice trail off.
“I know that. Look, really, it’s nothing in particular. I just feel like it’s . . . it’s time for a change.” Adeline was grasping for a way to end this conversation. She had never seen Dr. Gray angry or distrustful of her before, not even in the slightest. She was not liking it one little bit, nor how angry he was making her feel in return.
“Who will you go to then, for care?”
She hadn’t thought this through yet—he had caught her so off-guard.
“Um, Dr. Westlake—Howard Westlake—the surgeon who operated on me, over at the Alton Hospital.”
This answer seemed to only perturb Dr. Gray even more. “You put greater confidence in him then, is that it?”
“Not at all. I just think it might be easier, to start fresh with someone not from the village. Not so, um, intimately connected with my case.”
The image of her bloodstained white lace nightgown suddenly flashed through Dr. Gray’s head. For the first time he appreciated that they might have shared too much—that they might not be able to go back to what they were before.
“Yes, of course, fine then,” he finally relented. “It’s whatever you think best.”
He got up to head back towards the front gate, then turned to her one last time. “Do you think I could send Adam round, to fix that gate for you? I am not at all handy like that, as everyone well knows.”
She shrugged. “Whatever you think best.”
He noted her choice of words, mimicking his own just now—as if to say that she could be just as disingenuous as him.
“I’ll see you in a few weeks then, at the next society meeting, if not before?”
She shrugged again. She was still a little angry with him. She wondered just how lost he thought she must be, how much in need of saving. It would never have occurred to her that he might be projecting his own struggles onto her grief-stricken state. Would never have occurred to her that, between the two of them, he was the one most in need of salvation.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Chawton, Hampshire
January 15, 1946
Frances sat on the faded chintz sofa in the Great Hall across from Andrew Forrester. Josephine, Evie, and Charlotte stood behind the sofa, at Frances’s request. She was hoping that her father had provided gifts in his will for the household staff in recognition of all their service, particularly during these last several difficult years.
Dr. Gray was also in the room, standing with his back against the front window, just off to the right of Miss Knight. Andrew had confidentially asked him to attend the reading of the will as Mr. Knight’s personal physician.
Andrew cleared his throat. He could not look Frances directly in the eyes—for years now he rarely could. In her eyes he always saw not just the crushing disappointment, but the self-recrimination as well. The sense that she had, through her own passivity and weakness, allowed this life before her to happen. That it might not have been inevitable after all.
Andrew started to read. “‘I, James Edward Knight, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby on this fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord 1945’”—Frances’s head shot up from staring at her lap—“‘declare this to be my last will and testament, and revoke all former wills and testaments made by me. I declare Andrew Forrester, Esquire, solicitor in the town of Alton, County of Hampshire, to act as executor of my estate, and hereby bequeath the totality of that estate, with exclusions set out hereafter, to my closest living male relative on the British continent.”
Andrew heard one of the younger servants standing behind Frances gasp, then be quickly swatted by someone, most likely the elderly cook, Josephine.
Frances simply continued to sit there, silent. Andrew could feel her eyes still on him as he read, but forced himself not to look back at her. This was no time to start doing that.
“‘The aforementioned exclusions include, firstly, the steward’s cottage on Winchester Road in Chawton, and the adjoining triangular-shaped parcel of 2.3 acres of land contained by the redbrick wall and rear hornbeam hedge, as set out on the attached survey.’”
“I’m surprised he didn’t drag himself out there and measure it in feet himself,” muttered Josephine angrily.
“‘This property shall be the residence of my only surviving child, Frances Elizabeth Knight, until the time of her death or any arm’s length disposition of the cottage, whichever should occur the earlier, at which time the right to residence shall revert back to the estate. I also bequeath to my daughter a living allowance of two thousand pounds annually, for so long as that amount can be generated by the estate without exceeding five percent of its gross annual revenue. I have set out in the attached schedule the required rates in reduction of this allowance according to any year-over-year decline in the gross revenue of the estate.’”
Andrew had always found these last two terms to be the most unnecessarily punitive and cruel in a particularly mean-spirited document. Two thousand pounds was just enough for Frances to enjoy some of the nicer comforts in life, but not one whit more. And none of it was guaranteed as long as the estate continued to lose money as it had been doing, and at an alarmingly increasing rate. It was anyone’s guess as to how much the estate would be further decimated by the death taxes that would now be owing.
Andrew saw, out of the corner of his eye, the young house girl Evie make some kind of motion to Dr. Gray, then go and lean against the mantel of the mammoth stone fireplace with her head bowed down.
“‘Finally, in recognition of their support and care of me in my final years, I bequeath the following gifts: an annual stipend of fifty pounds to Miss Josephine Barrow, and annual stipends of twenty pounds each to Miss Evie Stone and Miss Charlotte Dewar.’”
Andrew cleared his throat one last time and said, while folding the paper back up in his white-knuckled grasp, “‘This document has been signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of the following witnesses and at my request, being Mr. Andrew Forrester, Esquire, of Alton, Hampshire, and Miss Harriet Peckham of Chawton, Hampshire.”
There was a terrible, awkward silence in the room. Everyone knew that Miss Frances should be the first, if any, to talk, yet everyone knew that she would not say a word.
Finally, Dr. Gray came over to stand next to Andrew, who remained sitting on the sofa. “Miss Frances, Mr. Forrester asked me to be here today for several reasons. You must have questions about your father’s state of mind at the time of execution only two months past.”
Frances silently shook her head. After a few seconds, she looked up at Dr. Gray and smiled bitterly. “To the end, my father knew exactly what he was doing.”
Everyone else in the room was taken aback. It was the most assertive and complete statement they had heard her make in years.
“He may have done, but there are grounds, just so you know. If you want to pursue—”
Frances stood up and put her right hand slightly out as if to stop him. “No, I don’t want to pursue anything. It is what it is. The care he received from the staff has been recognized. That is what I cared about most.”
After all the distress of the past two days, this was too much for old Josephine to bear. She could be heard behind them sniffling into her handkerchief, before hustling the two house girls out of the room alongside her.
“Frances—Miss Knight—wait,” Andrew finally said, and he stood up, too. “As executor, in my experien
ce it may take some time to determine the legitimate heir. During that time, you will be permitted to reside in the Great House and—who knows—perhaps beyond that. Should the courts not be able to determine the proper male heir within a reasonable time, you can petition to inherit on the grounds of being Mr. Knight’s immediate next of kin.”
Frances shook her head dejectedly. “I really can’t think about any of that right now. Just prepare a landlord notice to the tenants in the steward’s cottage—I will take the first available flat at the least amount of inconvenience to any of them.”
Dr. Gray stepped forward. “I know that Louisa Hartley is planning to move to Bath soon, to be nearer her son once her recent surgery has healed.”
“Fine,” Frances said flatly. “If Mr. Forrester could please make the legal arrangements. And thank you, gentlemen, both of you, for delivering this news. It cannot have been easy.”
She left the room. Dr. Gray went and shut the drawing-room door behind her, then he and Andrew both slumped back down onto the sofa.
“Good God,” sighed Dr. Gray.
Andrew opened his lawyer’s bag and shoved the will inside before angrily snapping the straps shut.
“She was always pathologically stoical,” Dr. Gray added. “Even as children—remember?”
“I hope stoic is the right word for it. I shudder to think what else one might call it at this point.”
Dr. Gray had a sudden realization. “So this is why you were so concerned about joining the society. . . . I’d never have guessed. If it’s any consolation, not once did you betray knowing any of this. Your legal advice, as always, was irreproachable. Still, it seems so ironic that the old man would tie up the cottage in this way, given our own recent plans for it. We haven’t even had a chance yet to run that ad in The Times.”
Andrew got up and walked over to the sideboard, turning his back to Dr. Gray. “I’m not sure how coincidental any of this was.”
“How so?”
“Ben, why did you fire Miss Peckham in the end?”