‘I know,’ said his wife, ‘so poor Giles has to lie for her. And, dear, I do sometimes wonder whether you should spend so much of your precious time teaching that child.’
‘I’m not sure it isn’t the most useful thing I do,’ said her husband. ‘She’s a very unusual creature. If she were a man, I would seriously expect her to come out as a philosopher or even a great preacher. Why, what’s the matter?’
His wife had dissolved into laughter. ‘Oh, my dear, you are so comic,’ she cried. ‘Our little Caroline! For pity’s sake, never let Sophie or Giles know what you think; the poor child would never live it down. But at least the secret of her birth seems safe enough, thank goodness.’
‘That widowed cousin of yours, Mrs Thorpe, who bore the child and went away to die? Shame on me for telling such lies!’
‘What a storm that was,’ said his wife, remembering. ‘By the time the bridge had been replaced and we were back in touch with the world again, we could have said anything we pleased. So at least Caroline will not have the slur of illegitimacy to contend with.’
‘And yet I wonder if I have done right,’ said her husband. ‘I, in my position, to start such a tale of a cock and a bull. Dr Mancroft would never leave teasing me about it, but what else could I do?’
‘Ah, poor Dr Mancroft,’ she said. ‘We miss him sadly. Though, mind you, I like young Dr Thornton who has taken his place.’
‘And so does our Sophie.’
‘Sophie? At her age? Giles, you’re joking me.’
‘She’s old for her age, my love.’ He changed the subject. ‘And so is little Caroline in some ways. I wish I saw her future clear. To tell you the vulgar truth I half hoped the Duke was come to make some arrangement about a settlement for her.’
‘Lord knows the allowance he gives you for her is small enough, with the cost of living rising so, but I doubt if that young man ever thinks beyond the pleasures of the day, and his two ladies. I liked the look of the Duchess,’ she went on thoughtfully. ‘She had a good face, didn’t you think? Not so beautiful as Mrs Winterton, but much kinder.’
‘Mrs Winterton could charm the birds off the trees,’ he said.
‘Don’t tell me she’s put her spell on you too!’ She was not quite joking.
‘I’m an old fogey, my dear.’ But they both knew it was not quite an answer.
Another week passed, and Mr Trentham had to rebuke Caroline for inattention in her Latin lesson. ‘You have never failed to do your preparation before,’ he said reproachfully. ‘What’s the matter, Caroline?’ And was appalled when she burst into tears. ‘Why, Caro?’ A woman’s tears always confounded him and he longed for his wife. ‘What is it?’
‘They’re never coming back,’ she sobbed. ‘She was like one of the angels in your picture, and she smelled like the summer garden, and she’s never coming back. She said she’d always wanted a little girl like me.’
Mr Trentham was profoundly disturbed.
‘I really believe the poor child has fallen in love with that mother of hers,’ he told his wife later. ‘Bother the woman. What business had she making up to her if she had no intention of doing anything more about it.’
‘That woman would make up to anyone,’ said Mrs Trentham. ‘I doubt she can help herself. And very likely she meant to come back, but the Duke would not be bothered. I’m afraid little Caroline was a sad disappointment to him. I suppose he expected a charmer like her mother and didn’t even notice how much she favours him, poor child. As for Caroline, she will just have to make the best of things.’ She rose and surveyed her middle-aged reflection in the glass over the chimneypiece. ‘Have we done so badly by the child?’ she asked. ‘That she falls in love with the first pretty stranger she meets?’
‘Not a stranger. Her own mother. I suppose there is an instinct in these things. And, my dear, you must not be making comparisons, nor yet blaming yourself. You know as well as I do that the boot was on the other foot at first.’
‘Yes, I neglected you all shamefully for her, did I not? I find it hard to believe, looking back. Well, I am paid for it now.’
Caroline waited in vain for any word from her beautiful new friend, and gradually the visit receded, to become part of the dream world where she spent more and more of her time as Sophie and her friends progressed from hide and seek and ponies, to the enthralling subject of young men.
Two years later, just before Christmas, a smiling carrier delivered a huge parcel at the rectory door. ‘One of your young ladies has a friend, and no mistake,’ he told the maid who opened to him. ‘All the way from London, it’s come, and cost a mint, just in the carrying.’
‘It’s for Caroline.’ Mr Trentham read the direction.
‘An unknown admirer?’ Just home from Cambridge, Giles was very much the young man of the world. ‘Let’s see what he’s sent you, Caro.’
‘Nonsense,’ said his father. ‘We don’t want that kind of talk in this house, Giles.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. Only funning.’ He was helping Caroline to unwrap the sacking from round the parcel. ‘Don’t you just hope it is books, Caro, but I am afraid it is not heavy enough. Ah, here’s a note. Perfumed!’ He handed it over and went on with his unravelling.
Caroline’s hand trembled as she broke the seal. ‘A present from London for my little friend in Llanfryn,’ she read out.
‘Is it from the Duchess?’ asked Sophie, awestruck.
‘I can’t read the name.’ Caroline gave the note to Mr Trentham.
‘No,’ he told her. ‘It’s from the other lady who came. Mrs Winterton. What has she sent you, I wonder?’
‘There we are.’ Giles removed the last piece of sacking and handed the oddly shaped parcel to Caroline.
‘A doll!’ exclaimed Sophie, as the last of the wrappings fell away. ‘She thinks you a baby, Carrie, and I don’t wonder.’
For Caroline had burst into a passion of angry tears.
Later, Mrs Trentham made Caroline write a letter of thanks to the beautiful lady she had thought like an angel. It was slow, painful work. The first three attempts were condemned out of hand.
‘Caroline, use your imagination!’ said Mrs Trentham impatiently at last. ‘Mrs Winterton meant it kindly when she sent you the doll. You must not let her see that you do not like it.’
‘But it’s not true to say I do,’ wailed Caroline.
In the end, Giles dictated her answer to her. ‘It is the most beautiful doll I ever saw,’ the letter began. ‘And that’s true enough,’ said Giles, ‘since you never saw one like it before. And now, all you have to do is say something friendly. Like, “Happy Christmas,” or “I hope you are well,” or something about your studies.’
‘She’d not care,’ said Caroline mournfully. ‘Not if she sent me a present like that.’ She took up the pen, and wrote in her careful hand:
Dear Madam
I thank you many times for remembering me, and hope you will be very happy this Christmas, and always.
She wrote her first poem that night, a very gloomy one, and it made her feel a little better, though she was to blush over it in years to come.
Giles went back to Cambridge soon afterwards, and time drifted on quietly at Llanfryn. Sophie put up her hair, longed for balls, and refused to study with her father any more, concentrating instead on ladylike accomplishments. The music master had washed his hands of Caroline after her third lesson.
‘It is of no use at all, ma’am.’ He was a lively Welshman very much in demand for miles around. ‘For the other young ladies I teach, I can be doing something. I cannot give them voices, but I can teach them to play so that it will not be being an actual pain to hear them. But this one, no. I am sorry. I will not be wasting my time on her.’
‘Oh, very well,’ said Mrs Trentham. ‘You will just have to work harder at your drawing, Caroline, that is all.’
‘But I cannot draw either,’ said Caroline. ‘Please, ma’am, may I not spend the lesson hours at the studies for which Mr Trentham thinks I
have some talent. I know he cannot spare any more of his own time for me, but if I could just have the use of the books, in my own room where it is quiet, I might be able to prepare myself…’ She stammered to a halt.
‘Prepare yourself? For what, child?’ Mrs Trentham had been surprised and shocked by the use of ‘ma’am’ instead of ‘mamma’, and her tone was more abrupt than she intended.
The pale face flushed crimson. ‘To earn my living. I know how dear everything is since this war has gone on so long, and I can’t seem to help it that I am always hungry. You have been so good to me, always, and I am ashamed to be such a charge on you. Just as soon as I can, I mean to go as a pupil teacher, perhaps at a school in Hereford, if Mr Trentham could recommend me to one? So you see, the more I study, the sooner they will take me.’
‘But, my dear child.’ Mrs Trentham was appalled. ‘We have always looked upon you as one of our own.’
‘Yes, but I’m not,’ said Caroline with her usual daunting forthrightness. ‘And since Papa and Mamma left me no money, I must think how I am to make my way in the world, and, truly ma’am, I shall like to be a teacher, since it is but a different way of studying, which is what I love best of all. So, please, will you speak to Mr Trentham for me, and find out how soon he thinks I will be fit to begin?’
‘Very well, my dear.’ Mrs Trentham’s conscience was pricking her horribly. ‘And in the meantime, you may certainly study in your room while Sophie is having her lessons, though I am afraid you will find it cold without a fire.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind that,’ said Caroline.
‘We should have thought of this sooner,’ said Mr Trentham when his wife consulted him in the privacy of their room that night. ‘Poor little Caroline, what a deal of thinking she must have been doing. I am sure Sophie never bothers about the cost of living. Still less Giles.’ He sighed. ‘Did you tell her about the allowance the Duke pays me for her?’
‘My dear, how could I?’
‘And yet she must be told. I noticed, on Sunday, that she refused a second helping of roast beef, and I know how she loves it. Do you really think she is trying to be as little charge on us as possible?’
‘My dear, I am afraid so.’
‘Something has gone sadly wrong,’ he said.
‘My fault. I am afraid I have let there be a difference between her and our children. Do you know—’ she had not meant to tell him this ‘—she called me “ma’am” today, instead of “mamma” as she used to. I’m so ashamed…’
‘And you used to dote on her so.’ He did not mean it as a reproach.
‘Yes, I did. And then that woman came, and not one of you all had eyes for anyone else. And Caroline pining for her after she’d gone, like a lovesick baby, and you saying it was no wonder; she could charm the birds off the trees.’
‘I?’ He knew they had come to the heart of the matter.
‘Yes, you!’ She was crying now, tears long pent up. ‘You, who hardly think me worth a glance, since that woman came. The old woman who orders your meals and darns your socks. Do you think I did not mind it to see you ogling that strumpet? Giles, too! He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And now just look at the way he dotes on Caroline. Sometimes I think we made a great mistake when we took that child in!’
‘But what else could we have done, my dear?’ He was appalled at her increasing note of hysteria. He had jibbed at telling her of Dr Mancroft’s warning that she must not bear another child. No wonder if she had felt herself neglected. But what could he do?
Her voice rose. ‘Must do what the great Duke wishes. He and his leman. Must bring up his bastard, even at the expense of our own children. Must…must…must…’ She broke into hysterical laughter, and he rang urgently for Nurse Bramber.
Calling later that afternoon, Dr Thornton recommended rest and quiet. ‘She’s at a difficult time of her life,’ he told Mr Trentham. ‘Some megrims, some little fancies, are to be expected. Women must be indulged at these times. It will pass, I am sure, but in the meantime an easy life, as little anxiety as possible. I am sure there is no cause for real alarm.’
Spring came early that year. In their secluded valley, celandines yielded to primroses and daffodils, and the river ran so full of snow water that Caroline could hear its murmuring voice from her bedroom. Lambs frisked in the tiny, odd-shaped fields the farmer had won back from scrub on the hills, and Caroline spent as much time as she could out of doors, watching her beloved garden come to life. Picking white violets down by the yew hedge, she had a new happiness. Mr Trentham had brought her back a book from Hereford the last time he went there on parish business. It was called Lyrical Ballads and she found some of the poems in it strange, dull stuff, but there was one called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner that was pure magic. She was learning it by heart, stanza by stanza, and as she picked the tiny, hidden flowers, she murmured to herself:
And now there came both mist and snow
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high came floating by,
As green as emerald.
She had enough violets now for the vase by Mrs Trentham’s bed, and turned to hurry back to the house, as the shadow of an April cloud moved across the hills. The shower caught her on the terrace, and she was laughing with happiness and shaking raindrops out of her hair when she bounced in at the back door of the house.
‘Hush, child.’ Nurse Bramber met her in the hall. ‘The doctor’s here.’
‘Dr Thornton? To see Sophie?’
‘No.’ The red face was set in odd downward lines, and Caroline thought she looked like a witch in a story. ‘He’s with Mrs Trentham. She’s had a bad turn.’
‘I’m sorry.’ A shadow like an April cloud passed over Caroline’s mind, but they were getting used to Mrs Trentham’s bad turns, and she went quietly away to her bedroom and went on learning her magic lines:
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
The doctor came again next day, found Mrs Trentham still in bed and shook his head gravely, urging her to exert herself. ‘I am counting on you young nurses to look after her and give her mind a more cheerful turn.’ His smile was for Sophie. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow and see how she goes on.’
‘Or how Miss Sophie does,’ said Nurse Bramber, turning to her when he was safe out of earshot. ‘I saw you down the orchard, with young Mr Staines the squire’s boy this morning, miss!’
‘Pish!’ said Sophie. ‘If you tell Papa, I’ll kill you!’
The apple trees blossomed, tossing pink and white through the valleys, and the familiar, beloved potpourri of scents was building up in the garden. Caroline forgot the need to study and fit herself to be a pupil teacher in the dreamy happiness of lying in the hammock in the orchard reciting to herself:
Oh happy living things! No tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware.
Mrs Trentham had made one of her surprise recoveries on being invited to take Sophie to dine with Dr Thornton and his rich mother. It was a most unusual event and had been tacitly recognised as such, with a great deal of running from glass to glass and changing of caps and ribbons. Caroline, too young to go with them, was enjoying the rare luxury of being entirely alone. She had eaten her dinner in solitary state, with Miss Burney’s Evelina propped beside her on the table, as a barrier against Nurse Bramber’s conversation. Now Evelina had dropped on to the dry grass and she was lying somewhere on the edge of dream, trying to see how far she could get in reciting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and wishing Mr Trentham had not stopped buying books. He had always been used to bring something back from his visits to Hereford, finery for his wife and Sophie, and a book, as he would laughingly say, for him and Caroline. But that had been before Giles had gone to Cambridge, before the farmers had started looking so gl
um and the question of the tithes they paid the vicarage had become such a vexed one. They did not talk much about the long war with France at the vicarage, because talk of it tended to bring on Mrs Trentham’s bad turns.
She had almost had one over The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and her husband had hastened to explain that it had been a present from the rural dean who had thought it sad stuff himself. Caroline sighed and picked up the battered old Latin grammar she had also brought out with her. It had Giles Trentham, His Book written in a bold hand on the first page, and she enjoyed following Giles’ marginal notes as she struggled with the third declension. But Latin was much harder to learn than Mr Coleridge’s poem. Her mind was beginning to wander already:
Instead of a cross, the albatross
About my neck was hung.
She had written a ballad herself, the last time she had been left alone in the house. It was about a lone lady, who travelled the world on a white horse being kind to the poor.
And still she wore, about her hair
A shimmering veil of silk.
But she had not been able to find a rhyme for silk, and had torn it up next day, and then regretted bitterly the waste of a good sheet of paper. Silk…milk…bilk would not do, nor would ilk because she did not precisely know what it meant, and meaning was very important to her.
A bee buzzed above her head; pigeons cooed; the book fell from her hand. She slept lightly, soothed by the small sounds of summer. The creak of the back gate waked her. Who would come into the orchard by the steep short cut from the road? She sat up quickly, swung down her feet and smoothed her braided hair with an automatic gesture bred by many scoldings. Then, jumping to her feet, ‘Giles! What in the world? How did you get here?’
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 3