by Joan Aiken
“Eh—what’s that? Didn’t quite catch. Brandy, do you say?”
“No, ma’am, I am FANNY, your daughter-in-law.”
“Daughter-in-law? Where’s Emma, then? The girls’ mother?”
“She has—has died, ma’am, I fear. I am Thomas’s new wife.”
“His new wife? Eh, yes, he did say something about her. I disremembered it.” The old lady slanted a look at Fanny under her eyelids in which slyness, apprehension, and timidity seemed equally mixed; then, after a moment, she brought from under the covers, and extended, a thin, yellow, blotched claw which was visibly trembling; Fanny took it in a firm clasp and smiled at Thomas’s mother as reassuringly as she could.
“I do hope that you will be happy with us, ma’am; I will try my best to see that you are so, I promise.”
Did the old lady hear? It was difficult to be sure. Her faded eyes had a restless, wandering, agitated stare; they hardly dwelt on Fanny but were off around the room, like those of some animal that finds itself in a trap. Indeed the predominating element in her character was fear—fear of the people with whom she had to deal, of her husband, her son, the nurse, her daughter-in-law—she feared all, trusted none. Only one person had not inspired fear in her, and he was dead.
“Thank you, dear, thank you,” she murmured vaguely now, apprehending that some response was expected from her. “Seems strange—poor dear Emma—married to Thomas for so long—now all gone and forgotten—Eh, dear me!”
Fanny pulled up the little straight-backed padded nursing chair, which had been bought for her by direction of Dr. Chilgrove, but which she had instructed Tess to take up for the old lady, and sat down on it.
“I hope we shall soon see you out of bed, ma’am, and coming downstairs among us,” she said.
“Eh, dear? No, no, Thomas would never allow it, never hear of it,” said the old lady, with a fearful glance toward the door.
“Thomas is out all day, ma’am,” Fanny said coaxingly. “And I am persuaded that it would be better for you to take the air, now and again—we may procure you a basket chair, you know, and Jem bootboy can push you in it—or at least you could come and sit in the parlor. Will you not do that? Did you not walk out of doors where you lived before, in the Isle of Wight?”
“Eh? Yes, out all the time—shops, circulating library—haberdashers,” replied the old lady when the question had been repeated a couple of times. She showed, now, a gleam of pleasure and intelligence as she made the reply, confirming, had she but known it, all her son’s worst fears about her spendthrift habits.
“What should I call you, ma’am?—for Thomas, I am afraid, omitted to tell me your married name—I know it is not Paget.”
This question, however, appeared too complicated for the old lady; she frowned, shaking her head so perplexedly that her nightcap almost fell off, and Fanny had to help her retie the strings over her scanty white hair, which was scraped back into a plait.
“Well, I will call you Mother—may I do that? For my own mother died at my birth, so I never had the comfort of one and shall be glad to do so now.”
It was plain, however, that most of the comforting would have to be on the other side, but a nod presently indicated that the purport of these words had found its way into the old lady’s bewildered mind and she timidly returned Fanny’s clasp.
“What can I do for you now?” Fanny inquired. “Shall I read to you—or is there any service I can render you?”
This question, also, took some time to penetrate, but presently, when it did, the old lady intimated that she would be glad to have her back rubbed, for it was paining her severely after the long, unaccustomed ferry and coach journey, or, as she herself put it, “It do fairly give me the jip, dearie.”
Fanny who, due to her advanced pregnancy, frequently suffered from pain in her own back, had every sympathy with this request and had been gently massaging her mother-in-law’s lower spine for seven or eight minutes, and making such simple conversation as occurred to her, when there was a brisk step on the stair, a clink of crockery, and the door was unceremoniously thrust open.
“Lord! I’m sorry, I’m sure, ma’am—I’d no notion that anybody was in the room,” said the newcomer, dumping a tray with a basin of bread and milk on the table, and she went on, addressing the old lady in a loud cheerful voice as if she had been a small child. “There we are, then, missus, all right and tight! Nice breakfast for you! You just set up in bed and eat it as quick as you can. Why, fancy that—has Mrs. Paget here been a-rubbing of you—that was monstrous kind, now, wasn’t it! Fancy your demeaning yourself to do such a thing, ma’am!” and she darted a glance at Fanny that was half-scornful, half-condescending.
Fanny, quietly removing herself from the bedside, said that she would intrude no longer but asked the nurse to let her know if anything lacked in her own quarters or the sickroom. From the somewhat contemptuous smile bestowed on her, she inferred that it had already been made abundantly plain that all orders and supplies must be expected from the master of the house or Mrs. Strudwick, and her own insignificant role had evidently been conveyed to the nurse, who, however, curtsied slightly and said missus was very kind and obliging, but nothing was needed.
“Lord bless you, I daresay the old lady won’t be a mite of trouble,” she added with a smiling, disdainful glance toward the bed, where the lady in question was already avidly gulping down bread and milk. “Biddable as a lamb, she do seem, compared with some I’ve had charge of.”
“Indeed? You appear young to have had such wide experience,” Fanny replied politely. “I am afraid I have not been told your name, Miss—?”
“Baggot, ma’am—Miss Lily Baggot,” said the nurse with a simper. “Mercy, yes, I’ve seen a-many into their coffins, my name is well known in Gosport, I promise you—Cap’n Paget knew what he was about when he hired me to come and take charge of the old lady. I’ll take famous care of you, shan’t I, Missus What’s-Your-Name,” Nurse Baggot went on, removing the empty bowl from her patient so briskly—indeed before the old lady was quite ready to part with it—that a small quantity of milk was spilled on the sheet. “Tt, tt, missus, we shall have to be carefuller than that, shan’t we?” she observed, playfully slapping the wrist of her patient, who flinched back in alarm. “No spilling on sheets, ma’am, or Master’ll be that put out! Now then, here’s the hot water; I’ll just wash your face and get you all redd up for the day.”
Fanny, at this hint, was about to withdraw, but from the doorway inquired softly, on an afterthought:
“Nurse, can you tell me my mother-in-law’s name? I know it is not Paget, for she married again after my husband’s father died.”
“Ay, but master don’t care for her other name,” the nurse said with a grin. “He gave word as we were to call her Missus Paget here; and it don’t make any odds to her, for the old girl’s as deaf as a post, you could call her Mrs. Punchinello and she’d never know any different—would you, dear?” she added as she vigorously hoisted the old lady up in bed, propped her with a bolster, and removed her nightcap.
Fanny took herself slowly and thoughtfully downstairs. She was not sure that she liked Mrs. Baggot, who had a high color, a mass of tightly curled glossy black hair, sharp dark eyes holding a somewhat predatory expression, a wide mouth that smiled a great deal, displaying two gold teeth, without giving the impression of real good nature, a buxom hourglass figure, and an arm like a leg of mutton. Doubtless the nurse was strong and capable at her job, but Fanny wondered, rather doubtfully, whether she could be trusted to be altogether kind to the old lady. However so long as Thomas’s mother was frequently visited by other members of the family and spent a fair proportion of her time downstairs, it should be possible to ensure that her treatment continued all it ought to be.
Now Fanny recalled that one of her original motives in paying the visit had been to discover whether by any chance her mother-in-law possessed
a clock she did not immediately need that might be spared for the use of Tess. Having now observed the simplicity of the old lady’s appointments, Fanny doubted the utility of this errand but was turning to retrace her steps when she encountered Mrs. Lily Baggot coming down with the empty breakfast bowl.
“Not that it ain’t Tess’s job to fetch it,” remarked the nurse with a kind of cheerful irritability, “but a body can wait half the morning for her—and meanwhile there’s nowhere to lay so much as a hairpin.”
“Do you by any chance know if my mother-in-law has such a thing as a spare timepiece—to save my troubling her again?” Fanny inquired, thinking how strange and grasping the request must sound.
“Lord bless you, no, ma’am! Master stopped off in Chichester yesterday and sold all her trunks full of bits to an auctioneer,” said Mrs. Baggot carelessly, going on down the stairs. “He said there was no space for her to bring more’n a couple of gowns here, and no need, either, for she’d not be stirring out o’doors, there’s none as knows her in this town, and she might as well keep her chamber. All he kept back was a few trinkets, as much as’d go into a dressing case, but her household gear was sold off—no sense in keeping a passel of old, worn things as’d only remind her of times gone past, he said.” And Mrs. Baggot bustled off with a flounce of her striped poplin skirts.
Fanny returned to her own chamber and took a pair of unworn silk stockings from her drawer. She had been saving them for some special occasion, but it seemed unlikely that such an occasion would ever arrive, and she felt no particular pang at parting from them.
Downstairs, ten minutes later, Fanny was putting on her shabby pelisse when she was startled to hear the nurse say to Mrs. Strudwick:
“Did master come back from Shoreham? I must speak to him.”
“Ay, he came back; he’s in his garden room. But no one’s allowed to disturb him there, not nohow.”
“Well, he’s going to hear from me,” said the nurse, and swung, on her heel.
“Don’t blame me if you come back with a flea in your ear!” Mrs. Strudwick called after her.
Aghast, Fanny watched through the drawing-room window as Mrs. Baggot marched down the yew walk and rapped on the door of the garden room. This was a small stone building about fifty yards away from the house, at the northern end of the yew walk. It had been built so as to overlook the valley and commanded a magnificent view from the window on the valley side. Fanny had gathered that the lady for whom the Hermitage had been built, Madame Reynard, had used the little place for a summerhouse and (so rumor suggested) a rendezvous in which to meet her lover, Lord Egremont, who had visited her by means of an underground passage leading from a vault under the building to Petworth House. The passage was there still but Thomas had had its door nailed shut and the trap door to the vault secured with a padlock. He himself used the garden house as a study and workroom. Here he did the mill’s accounts and went through a good deal of press gang business also, for the impress rendezvous in the town was merely a dismal little room hired from the Bull Inn. Members of his household were strictly forbidden to enter the garden room at any time (except for Jem bootboy, who was periodically summoned to make up the fire) and Fanny would not have dreamed of setting foot in the place. Indeed she carefully avoided that end of the yew walk unless certain that Thomas was away from home. To see Mrs. Baggot imperiously rap on the door and then open it, plainly without even waiting for a summons, turned Fanny pale with fright. She lingered, petrified, expecting to see the nurse come flying out with scarlet cheeks the very next minute, but, astonishingly, this did not occur, and the door was closed. Possibly she was discussing with Thomas some medical aspect of his mother’s condition.
It occurred to Fanny that now would be an advantageous time for her own errand, while Thomas’s attention was otherwise engaged, and she went quietly out by the back door and along a brick-laid path which skirted along the edge of the shrubbery, beyond the view of the garden-house windows. Thomas had been persuaded by Mrs. Socket that there would be nothing improper in Fanny’s going unescorted to the Rectory, since a path led there from the Hermitage garden, crossing a disused graveyard, so that it was possible to walk from one house to the other without setting foot in the public street. Unfortunately the door through the wall that led into the graveyard was situated in the corner directly beside the garden house, and Thomas was only too likely, if he saw Fanny setting off in that direction, to demand why she was going and find plenty of reasons to prove that her errand was unnecessary and trivial. On this occasion she really did not know what she could tell him if he discovered her… But luckily the blind was drawn over the garden-room window and she was able to slip past unobserved, through the door, and into the graveyard, where she drew a breath of thankfulness.
Any time now spent away from Thomas seemed like a holiday. While he was at home his eye seemed to follow and oppress her wherever she went, whatever she did. He could not, these days, lay claim to her in bed, for it was too close to the birth of her child, but because of this sexual abstinence (enjoined by Dr. Chilgrove) his spirit loomed all the more heavily. In one way Fanny dreaded the baby’s birth, because, once that was over, there would be nothing to prevent Thomas from resuming his marital rights.—She really did not know how she was going to bear that, but hoped and prayed that God would send her the necessary strength and endurance.—On the whole, though, she looked forward to the baby. It will give me something of my own, she thought optimistically; one small province in which I am the authority; forgetting, in her inexperience, what terrible importance Thomas attached to this event, this child who was to be the perpetuation of his image. Secretly, Fanny would have preferred that the baby should be a girl; she felt that she could understand a girl better, manage her better; hardly guessing at the disgrace that would await her should she produce a fourth daughter.
When she arrived at the Rectory she was dismayed to see that a harnessed pony and trap waited on the neatly raked gravel sweep by the front door. Evidently Mrs. Socket was just going out, for she appeared in the doorway wearing an old blue velvet riding dress and cloak and a silk and whalebone calash to protect her cap.
“Aha, you are come in a good hour, my dear!” she exclaimed, however, on seeing Fanny. “I am just about to try my new equipage, and you can come with me!”
“New equipage, ma’am?”
“Why, yes, Lord Egremont has given it to me—is he not a love? The kindest man in the world, I do believe. Hearing that the old pony was almost past work, what must he do but give me this beautiful dapple-gray animal and a charming new cabriolet to go with it. Will you not come for a drive in it, my dear?”
“Oh!” Fanny was immensely tempted; the thought of going out for a drive, having a chance to get a glimpse of the countryside, which as yet she hardly knew, on such a charming spring day, was just what she needed to refresh her spirits. But, remembering the certain intensity of Thomas’s disapproval, she said forlornly:
“It is exceedingly kind of you, ma’am, but I believe I must not. Thomas does not like me to go abroad in—in my condition. He thinks it immodest.”
“What, is that ogreish husband of yours putting his foot down again? Fiddle-dee-dee, my dear! A drive is just what you need—your cheeks are by far too pale. In any case, Captain Paget could find nothing to cavil at on this excursion, for I am not going through the streets but merely into Petworth Park. So you may accompany me without the slightest anxiety. Nobody will see you. And furthermore I will wrap you in a shawl so that your condition is not observable. Pringle, help Mrs. Paget into the carriage.”
Thus urged—indeed, almost ordered—Fanny had not the heart to refuse. Comfortably swathed, she settled in beside Mrs. Socket, who, an accomplished driver, took the reins, while Pringle accompanied them, riding beside on the old pony—“Just to open the gates, like,” as he put it.
“What he means is that he is not going to let me out of his sight until
he is sure of the new pony’s manners,” Mrs. Socket cheerfully remarked. “But I am very sure that Lord Egremont would not bestow on us any animal that was not guaranteed sweet-tempered and biddable beyond the ordinary—he knows what Martin is like as a driver, Lord Egremont has the very highest regard for my husband, and no intention of letting him break his neck.”
Fanny looked about her with lively interest as they drove up the Rectory lane, trotted a few yards northward along the London road, then turned left through a gateway in an immensely high wall and threaded their way among the outbuildings of Petworth House. They passed a farrier’s forge, a coach house, a couple of cart sheds, and what looked like servants’ cottages with neat little vegetable gardens. A man was walking through one of these. He glanced up at the sound of hoofs and, recognizing Fanny, gave her a flashing smile.
“You know Lord Egremont’s gardener?” inquired Mrs. Socket, a little surprised, as they went on.
“Why, yes—that is—I have spoken to him; he was to have worked for my husband but—but Thomas found him too independent.”
“Of course—I recollect.” Without further allusion to this episode, Mrs. Socket went on, “Now here, you see, we pass under the pleasure gardens of Petworth House; this tunnel leads us directly into the park.”
Fanny had been somewhat exercised in mind as to whether they might run any risk of encountering the inmates of Petworth House—the very last thing Thomas would wish for her, she knew full well; so she was much relieved to find they had such an inconspicuous means of ingress to the park. They drove under a stone archway and along a tunnel wide and high enough to allow a horse and carriage to pass through; it was about thirty yards long and brought them into a sunken driveway which terminated at a wrought iron gate. Mrs. Socket had driven rather slowly through the tunnel; now they discovered that Andrew Talgarth had been walking behind them; he quickly made his way past Pringle on the cob and opened the gate for them, touching his cap to Mrs. Socket and giving Fanny another smile. As he closed the gate behind them he said a few words to Pringle, who, coming up beside them, said: