The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  Liz Wyndham sat down by Fanny and said, “Now I mean to make the most of your visit! I have been so much wishing that I could make your acquaintance, do you know! For the two previous occupants of your house were my dearest friends, and I miss them sadly. I feel that Fate must have intended us to meet.”

  “Oh, did you know my husband’s cousin Juliana? I have so much wanted to know what she was like. She must be the kindest creature!” Filled with curiosity, Fanny forgot to be on her guard and was soon chattering away unrestrainedly.

  She could not help being charmed by Liz Wyndham’s friendly, caressing ways and ingenuous directness.

  “Will your husband be very angry if he hears that you have been allowed to meet me?” she inquired straightforwardly. And when Fanny, blushing and distressed, admitted that she could hardly imagine the depth of Thomas’s ire and outrage, Liz said, “Well, I am sorry for it, for your sake, because that makes him sound such a disagreeable, narrow-minded man, and I pity you deeply at being obliged to live with him. Is he very disagreeable?”

  “Oh yes—very,” sighed Fanny from the bottom of her heart. “You cannot conceive how disagreeable.”

  “Poor Fanny! Well, you must just conceal this visit from him. Nobody wishes to be involved in deceit, it is so tedious and vulgar, but these mean, ill-judging puritanical characters force it upon us. What concern is it of his, pray, if George and I choose to remain unmarried?”

  Fanny could not help wondering why they did so, but delicacy prevented her from asking; however Liz continued as if the question had been visible in her face: “Really we prefer it, my dear, because it removes the necessity of entertaining such dismal, prune-faced, quizzy persons as your husband; and there is no lack of the other sort, I promise you! We have more friends than we can contrive to see. We have had Mr. Fox here, times out of number, and Mr. Creevey; the Seftons, and half the Melbourne clan—it is true Creevey complains about the damp sheets and the servants’ free-spokenness, but he returns again and again. Prinney, too, used to be a great friend of George’s, but these days he is grown too fat and lazy to come over from Brighton.”

  Fanny could only gaze, wide-eyed, at this recital of great names.

  “The truth is,” Liz went on reflectively, “that George is not partial to the married state. The thought of it makes him nervous. He was engaged once to the most beautiful girl in England—Lady Maria Waldegrave—oh, a diamond of the first water!—but he cried off. That was nine years ago. I do not think he will marry now. There is something about the stiff decorum and formality of wedlock that does not sit with him. If he were married we would have to spend half our time at Egremont House in Piccadilly and give grand dinners to the ton and spend hours worrying about who takes in whom to dine, and whether barons’ younger sons walk in before viscounts’ elder daughters. Here we see only our friends, comfortably, as we choose. George has offered to marry me, it is true, but I have said no any number of times; what would be the use now? That would not make his sons legitimate, which would be the only practical consideration. And George does not give a rap for that; let his brother William’s son get the title, he says. The boys will be sufficiently provided for in a practical way.”

  Fanny was astonished at this novel view of marriage and lay gazing wonderingly at her hostess.

  “But your husband,” Liz went on. “You say he is anxious for an heir?”

  “Oh, indeed yes, ma’am—”

  “I wish you will call me Liz, child—everybody does! And may I not call you Fanny?”

  Strangely, at this casual invitation to intimacy, Fanny gave an involuntary sob.

  “What is the matter, my love?” Liz was greatly concerned and came to pet and comfort her with a rustle of muslins and a waft of delicious fragrance. “Do I tire you? Is my chatter oversetting you? Had you rather be left alone?”

  “Oh no, ma’am—dear Liz—it is just—I know my husband will never, never allow us to be friends—so what is the use of our even learning each other’s names?”

  Liz Wyndham puckered up her broad, smooth brow.

  “Well, as to that—who knows? Perhaps we may contrive to meet somehow. And then, your husband is not a young man, after all. He was married before, was he not?”

  “Oh, yes. I have three stepdaughters, two of them older than myself.”

  “Disgusting,” said Liz with indignation. “What was he thinking of, to marry a child of your age?” And she immediately answered her own questions. “He wanted a young, healthy wife who would provide him with a son. Strange, is it not, how men will always be wanting what they have not got? Once he has an heir, two to one but he will never look at the boy twice in a day, or care what becomes of him—witness George with his four!”

  “Four, ma’am—I thought you said three?”

  “Ah, but he had a son and daughter by another lady, you see—my great friend Elise Reynard, who lived in the Hermitage before your husband’s cousin. Indeed George built it for her.”

  “Oh, the French lady who died?”

  “That one, yes.” Liz fell silent a moment.

  Fanny found herself wholly confused by the Earl of Egremont’s relationships but resolved not to ask any more questions on what was evidently a sad theme.

  “So your husband wishes for a son,” Liz resumed presently in her meditative manner. “Well then, for your own sake, dear Fanny, I hope that you succeed in providing him with one.”

  “Oh, so do I!” Fanny shivered at the thought of Thomas’s disappointment if the baby proved to be a female. “Disappointment” would hardly be the word for it, she thought.

  “Does he abuse you in bed?” Liz said with a sudden, very penetrating look. Fanny gasped and turned white. She had not expected ever to divulge to a living soul the anguish that she went through behind the closed door of her bedroom; to have her painful secret thus calmly brought into the open gave her an almost physical shock.

  “I—I cannot—I cannot talk about it. No, not even to you,” she said, when she was a little collected.

  “Poor child.” Liz looked at her compassionately. “You do not think that talking would help?”

  Fanny shook her head.

  “You see,” she managed after a moment or two, “I should begin to pity myself. If I were to talk about it. And that would never do.”

  Liz stood up and began pacing hastily about on the handsome Exeter carpet. Her round, smiling face was clouded; she turned and looked perplexedly at Fanny.

  “Perhaps—if you present him with a boy—he will be better to you. Do you think?”

  “Very likely,” Fanny said without confidence. “But if I should bear him a girl—”

  “If you do bear him a girl—Have you no one to turn to? Your father, your family?”

  “No. Papa is dead. And my sisters must live with relatives. Poor things, they have no money; they are all unmarried.”

  “Anybody would think we women were slaves!” Liz burst out. Then she laughed at herself. “Listen to me! I am so lucky—who am I to complain? But, oh, it makes my blood boil! Well, there is nothing for it, my dear—if matters become too bad at home, you must run away to us! Come to Petworth House. We would look after you charmingly, I promise you.”

  “Good—good heavens!” Fanny stammered. “But, ma’am—but, Liz, only consider! It is not to be thought of! My husband could sue through the courts for my return—”

  “And expose himself to all that scandal and gossip? I am sure that kind of man would die rather than do so.”

  Fanny did not believe that Liz’s estimate of Thomas was at all correct; she thought he would fight, most tenaciously, for anything he considered his right, at whatever cost.

  “Oh, I never, never could do such a thing,” she sighed. “But thank you for making the offer. It was very kind in you.”

  “Oh well,” Liz said optimistically, “it is odds but he’ll die soon,
of falling from his horse; or one of those poor fellows that he caused to be impressed will escape from the navy and come home to shoot him through the head. Or some such thing. And then you will be a comfortable and well-established widow, and we shall be able to see each other as often as we wish, and I shall find a charming second husband for you. So do not be too downhearted!”

  She smiled at Fanny, who did her best to smile back, and, feeling a little recovered by now, she mustered up spirit to put a timid request.

  “Ma’am—dear Liz—Mrs. Socket and I are so much beholden to your brave gardener for running out and catching our horse’s bridle—he incurred a great risk of being dashed against the wall—might I, would it be possible just to see him for a moment and thank him? Mrs. Socket’s groom I frequently see, but I am not at all likely to encounter the other man again—”

  “Andrew Talgarth? Of course you may thank him,” agreed Liz Wyndham, rising to pull at a bell rope. “I am very glad you asked it, for I am desirous of doing so myself. He is such an excellent young man! George has the very highest opinion of him—thinks he will become another Repton—and is in the habit of asking his views on all manner of topics, so I daresay it was no surprise to him that it was Andrew Talgarth who ran forward and stopped the horse.—Oh, Towson, will you discover where Andrew Talgarth is, if you please, and have him sent here? Mrs. Paget wishes to thank him for her rescue.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I believe Talgarth is in the library, ma’am. I will have him sent here directly.”

  Fanny was somewhat amazed to hear that Lord Egremont’s gardener was to be found in the library; Liz, however, explained.

  “Talgarth is forever reading Tusser, or Lawson, or The Gardener’s Labyrinth, or some such work, and he has even learned enough Latin from the boys’ tutor to study Pliny on the art of gardening; George encourages him to make use of our books. After all, as George says, what is a library for, if not to provide instruction for one’s household?”

  While Fanny was reflecting that there was no end to Lord Egremont’s unexpected qualities, Andrew Talgarth made his appearance. It was plain that his curly black hair had been hastily disciplined with a wet comb; otherwise he looked much as Fanny remembered him from their first meeting in the Hermitage garden: brown-faced, weather-beaten, grave, but with a latent smile in his very blue eyes. He stood in the doorway, neither bashful nor overeager, and said politely:

  “You sent for me, ma’am?”

  “Mrs. Paget here wished to thank you for saving her life,” his mistress said. “And I, too, wish to commend you, Andrew. You are a brave fellow! I should not have liked to jump at that horse’s bridle as you did—I should have been too afraid of being pulled onto those iron spikes!”

  “Ah, Your Ladyship don’t carry the weight that I do!” the gardener answered, his serious face breaking up into the smile that Fanny remembered. She stretched out her hand to him, saying softly:

  “I am very sorry that you did not continue working for us at the Hermitage, Talgarth; I was greatly distressed at—at what happened. But it was certainly lucky for me that you were in the park today! And I can see that there are better opportunities for you here. I am so deeply obliged to you for your bravery.”

  “It was nothing, ma’am. I am glad to have been of use,” Talgarth replied quietly. He bowed over her hand, touched his forehead, and left the room again, his soft tread making hardly any sound on the carpet.

  “Imagine being his wife,” sighed Liz, looking after him.

  “Oh? Is he married?”

  “No, he is not, and it always amazes me, for I am sure dozens of girls in Petworth are on the catch for him. My own maid, Clara, is fit to break her heart every time he brings me a posy—he never even looks at her! He thinks only of gardens. It would be like being wed to a woodland god! When he hands me a bunch of clove pinks or gillyflowers, I expect them to last forever and never fade.”

  At this moment a footman came to announce that Mrs. Socket’s carriage had returned to take the young lady to the Rectory.

  “I hope it is the old cob between the shafts again,” said Liz, laughing, “though I feel thankful to that naughty Dapple for giving me the chance to become acquainted with you.” She kissed Fanny warmly. “Now, remember that you have a friend, my love, and one in George too—he thinks you are as pretty as a primrose, he said so! George is a great flirt but you may trust him never to go beyond the bounds of what is proper. The man I should perhaps warn you against is James Henriques.” Liz lowered her voice, and Fanny remembered the grizzle-haired man whose eyes had dwelt on her so uncomfortably. “He is a rake, a gambler, and a shallow-minded fellow—never trust him. However you are not likely to come across him again. Good-bye, my dear neighbor and friend—I hope that we may meet again before too long. I shall do my best to contrive it!”

  “Good-bye—and—and I thank you, most sincerely!” said Fanny, whose mind was in a whirl, as the rector’s two menservants carefully assisted her out to the carriage.

  Liz strode wrathfully back into the Grinling Gibbons paneled room, where Lord Egremont and his friend were talking about old days at Pampellone’s school, where they had both been as boys along with Charles James Fox; and reminiscing about the subsequent careers of various wild fellows and jumped-up counter-coxcombs, who had also been at the school with them.

  “Though why you should care for such snobberies, Egremont,” said Major Henriques quizzingly, “you who allow your farm hands to play cricket on your lawns and your gardeners to make use of your library—you are a true Radical!”

  “Ay, but there is a wide difference, James, between what one chooses to give and what one may not wish to have taken. This Buonaparte, now—it looks as if he is about to conquer Sardinia, without more than a bleat from the miserable Austrian—It is time someone took a hand to him.”

  “It is time somebody took a hand to that miserable wretch Paget!” Liz declared. “That poor little creature is kept mewed up, more—more like a slave in a harem than a British Christian lady. You ought to have her odious husband put in the pillory, George, for people to throw rotten eggs at him!”

  “I must admit I don’t like the fellow, m’dear,” Lord Egremont peaceably replied. “But this is a free country, you must remember, where a man may use his own wife as he thinks best.”

  “Which is why you never had one, eh, George?” suggested the major. “But does her husband use her so ill, ma’am? She looks to me like an engaging little charmer—when she ain’t quite so big in pod—I’d have thought any husband would want to ply her with comfits and kickshaws.”

  “Not that monstrous Paget,” said Liz. “I suspect he uses her quite villainously. I have told her that if she can endure it no longer, George, she must seek our protection.”

  Egremont raised his brows.

  “You might find yourself in devilish hot water, m’dear, if she should ever take you at your word. Suppose the incensed husband comes after our blood? Still, we’ll jump that rasper when we come to it. Well, James? Have you lazed indoors long enough? Shall we ride out and look at my Southdowns? Rapley tells me this is the best year for lambs since ’84; they have lost only three and they are growing fat as butter.”

  “You are a cunning rascal, Egremont,” Liz heard Henriques say as the two men walked out of the french doors. “If I had a dear little bird such as that, nesting just outside my coverts, damme if I wouldn’t encourage her to fly off from her keeper, by gad!”

  “Stretch your own snares where you choose, James,” replied Lord Egremont without heat. “Never trouble your head about my preserves.”

  * * *

  Fanny, solicitously cared for at the rector’s house, was put to bed by her hostess immediately after an early dinner. But it was many, many hours before she went to sleep.

  Six

  During the night the little maid, Bisesa, died. Scylla was with her at the end. Shortly after the depart
ure of Miss Musson for the palace an urgent message came from the hospital, asking for the sahiba, as the maid’s condition had deteriorated alarmingly. Scylla sent Ram up to the citadel with instructions to find the mem if possible and summon her to the hospital but was not surprised when Miss Musson failed to appear. In the grief-stricken chaos at the palace it might not have been possible to locate her, or she might have felt that her duty to Mahtab Kour took precedence. Scylla herself hurried with old Abdul to the hospital. There she could see at once that Bisesa’s fever had reached a critical point: her body was ragingly hot, the whites of her eyes had gone yellow, and every inch of her skin was now covered with the sores that had developed with such mysterious speed. These were now oozing bright yellow matter and were so painful that, even at the height of her delirium, Bisesa constantly attempted to rub or scratch them; her hands were being patiently held down by her sister and sister-in-law sitting on either side of the charpoy. There was practically nothing Scylla could do for the poor girl except dull her pain with opium, which she did. The fever reached its height shortly after midnight, and the girl’s slender frame was simply not strong enough to bear it. Just before she died she had a moment’s comparative calm, during which she opened her swollen gummy eyes and recognized Scylla, who was bathing her forehead with essence of rosemary.

  “Oh, Mem Periseela! Truly I am sorry that I tried on the queen’s gift—I knew I should not have done it—and now I am being punished—but indeed I did not think it so very wrong, not a great sin—”

  “Of course it was not a sin, my poor child—in any case I am going to give it to you for your wedding robe—so you must make haste and get better!”

  “I shall never be better, mem,” gasped Bisesa, and on that she died. The women around her bed instantly broke out into heartbroken wailing, but Scylla could only be glad that the unfortunate girl’s sufferings were over. While trying to tend Bisesa, she had been too preoccupied to think about the pain of her own hands, but now, while old Jameela and the girl’s relatives washed and laid out her body, Scylla went into the small closet where the medicines were kept and found some lotion of honey and gum arabic to rub on her blistered, stinging palms; she wondered, with a kind of exhausted resignation, whether by the next night she, too, would be in Bisesa’s condition.