by Joan Aiken
The second notable event was the sudden disappearance of Martha, who, in the classic manner, was found to have vanished one Sunday morning when it came time for church, leaving no trace but a note pinned to her sister’s pillow which cryptically said, “Dear Bet, gone with C, you may guess where. Wish me happy!”
Given time to think and recollect herself, Bet would certainly have concealed this note from her father, since its purport indicated some considerable degree of knowledge and complicity in herself. But her own indignation and astonishment at her sister’s departure almost equaled that of Thomas, who, indeed, after one tremendous explosion of rage, began to consider that he was now quit of the troublesome keep and care of a daughter whom he had never particularly regarded and would not miss—and, furthermore, without the expense of having to find her a dowry.
“She shall never set foot in my house again!” he declared. “That is for certain! She may come begging and praying, in tatters, sick, or starving, she will find no pity here.”
Blubbering and contradicting herself, Bet swore that she knew nothing, nothing at all of what had been going on; well, only just that sometimes Martha had loitered on the way home from harp lessons to talk to a young fellow who was sometimes to be seen down in the Shimmings Valley overseeing the work of dredging out the brook; he was a very well-set-up handsome superior young man who, from his bearing, might be rather a militiaman or excise officer than a mere civilian—
“Then what the devil was he doing ordering the dredging of the brook?” thundered Thomas. “And what the devil were you about to let her walk down that way and talk to him? Depend upon it, he was merely some steward or foreman of Egremont, who, I daresay, will give the pair of them a cottage on his estate to live in—as if my name were not disgraced enough in this town already!”
Whoever the young man was, he did not reappear, nor did Martha; Thomas was far too touchy and jealous of his reputation to make any inquiries after them. He did, however, place a crippling interdiction on Bet, who was forbidden to leave the grounds, bawled at, and deprived of all treats, until, as she tearfully complained to Fanny, life was not worth living, and she had as lief hang herself from the weeping ash tree.
Fanny could not help secretly feeling it quite a blessing that Martha’s elopement had taken place during the second week after the baby was born, while her own life was still in danger and she therefore could be expected to play little part in the family disputes and recriminations that followed. She imagined that Martha’s selection of this time was no accident; while attention was concentrated on the mistress’s sickroom and the household at sixes and sevens would be a very favorable opportunity to escape from it.
The third change Fanny was not to discover until, after six weeks, by Dr. Chilgrove’s permission, she was finally able to leave her chamber for an hour or two and venture down into the parlor window seat, which in the morning, at this time of year, was flooded with warm sun. By now May was running out. It was close, unusually warm weather for the time of year. The daffodils around the knobbed roots of the weeping ash were fast withering, and foxgloves were growing up to take their place. The baby, little Thomas, lay out of doors at Dr. Chilgrove’s recommendation, swaddled in flannel bands in the bassinet, under the shade of the ash tree. Fanny looked out at him wistfully—but he was in the care of his nurse Jemima King, who sat by him; she, his mother, had been allowed to handle him for little more than a moment or two, once a day; she hardly felt that he belonged to her. But when I am better… she thought. In the meantime, since she was not yet permitted out of doors, she asked Tess if the old lady, Mrs. Paget, would not like to come and sit in the parlor for a little while and talk to her.
“For I have not laid eyes on her since before the baby was born.”
“I’ll see, ma’am. She haven’t hardly stirred from her chamber since you was laid up,” Tess told her.
While waiting for the old lady, Fanny looked out at her son again. The fettered, crippled branches of the ash tree, bound with leather straps so that they pointed downward to the earth instead of upward to the sky, had, as if in frantic reaction against this abnormal confinement, sprouted thickly with green featherlike leaves, so that the tree now formed a natural umbrella of dense foliage; it was only just possible to see the baby’s basket crib and the white cap of the nurse-girl sitting beyond him on a stool with her head nodding low; tired, poor soul, thought Fanny, who had heard the baby cry many times in the night. Although large and strong in spite of his premature birth, he was of a colicky disposition; but this, Dr. Chilgrove said, was not at all uncommon, and he pooh-poohed Thomas’s anxieties about it. “The child cries in the nighttime, but he sleeps soundly by day; he is doing very well, sir, you need be under no apprehensions.” Now, however, Fanny suddenly heard the baby give a loud, indignant scream, and then she heard Jemima King’s sharp exclamation: “Do not be doing so, Miss Patty! Fie for shame! Bad, bad girl! I shall tell your mama what you did!” There was also the sound of a slap, and little Patty emerged from among the dangling feathery branches, red-faced and resentful.
With an effort, Fanny raised the window sash a little higher and leaned out.
“What has happened, Jemima?” she called.
“Oh, ma’am! I didn’t see you there.” Rather confused, red-cheeked like Patty, Jemima came across the grass to the window and curtsied. “That wicked little hussy crept up to the baby while I—while I was not looking—and poked him with a twig. You have to watch her all the time, she is as naughty and sly as a barrel of weasels! Why, she might have put his eye out!”
“Come here, Patty,” Fanny quietly said.
Patty came, scowling and dragging her feet.
“Tell me, why did you do so? Did you not know that it was wrong? The baby is only little, and feels pain very easily.”
“She is forever trying to come at him and tease him,” Jemima put in.
“I wanted him to open his eyes,” Patty said in a grumbling tone.
“Her nose is out of joint, ma’am, that’s the truth of it,” Jemima said. “She can’t abear not to come first. But girls must take second place to boys, she knows that.”
This was such an evident truth that there was no gainsaying it.
Though it was hard to be fond of her youngest stepdaughter—who stole sugar and cakes then put the blame on Tess, told untruths at every turn, constantly broke or mislaid household articles which she used for her own purposes, left disorder behind her everywhere, and was rude and disagreeable to her stepmother—still, Fanny could not help being a little sorry for the child. No one in the household could tolerate her, except, occasionally, Mrs. Strudwick, and of late she must have felt lonely and neglected, for since the baby’s birth Fanny had been too weak to resume the morning lessons. She resolved, now, to begin again at once; at least in those, Patty had been showing a little improvement.
“I am sure that Bet and Martha did not use you so when you were a baby,” Fanny suggested hopefully.
“Yes, they did! They never left off plaguing me!”
“Well, if I find you tormenting Master Tom again, straight to your pa you go,” Jemima threatened.
“Now run along, Patty, down to Mrs. Strudwick, and tell her I said you were to learn how to make a posset,” Fanny said swiftly, and when Patty had departed, thrusting out her lower lip, Fanny told Jemima, “Never mind informing Captain Paget this time, Jemima; he takes the child so to task that I fear it only makes her dislike the baby more.”
“Very well, missus; but, to my mind, she’ll never mend her ways without a good birching,” Jemima, a plain-faced country girl, said roundly. She had two children of her own at home and had just lost the third, so she felt she spoke with authority. Fanny sighed.
“Thank you, Jemima. That will do.”
Tess came into the parlor, supporting the old lady, who hobbled at a slow pace. Fanny was startled and dismayed at the change that had c
ome over Thomas’s mother in the past six weeks.
“Mercy on us, ma’am! Are you not well?”
“What is that, dearie?” mumbled the old lady, looking around her vaguely as Tess assisted her to sit down in a rocking chair and wrapped her knees in a shawl. She seemed to have aged five years; her face was puffy, her eyes dim, her thin hair unkempt and greasy-looking; her bodice was only half laced, a dirty dimity petticoat showed under her crumpled muslin gown, her gray stockings hung in wrinkles.
She looked as if no one had helped her to dress; or, indeed, washed her, brushed her hair, or assisted her with her toilet for many days.
“This was how I found her, ma’am,” Tess said apologetically. “Mrs. Baggot had gone out on an errand—and I’m a bit behind with my work—”
“Well, never mind, Tess; thank you. I will speak to Mrs. Baggot when she returns,” Fanny said, though with sinking spirits, for Mrs. Baggot these days treated her with hardly veiled insolence.
It was soon apparent to Fanny that the old lady, besides being physically neglected, seemed to be greatly deteriorated and confused in her wits; indeed Fanny began to suspect that she had perhaps been dulled by repeated doses of opiates. Her replies to questions were rambling and incoherent, she appeared interested in nothing, and, unless addressed, tended to fall into a doze with her chin dropped to her chest and a drool of spittle sliding from the corner of her mouth. When Fanny sent for Jem and the basket chair so that the old lady might have an airing in the garden, she was shocked to learn that Thomas, considering these promenades no longer necessary, had ordered the chair to be sold.
“Is Mrs. Baggot come back from her shopping yet?” demanded Fanny.
“No, ma’am, I believe not.”
Fanny found the old lady’s condition so dismaying that, in spite of Thomas’s total interdiction on visits to the garden house, she resolved to go and speak to him about it without delay.
She wrapped a shawl around her and walked out onto the flagged path. As she did so, Will the postboy came whistling down the lane and into the garden.
“Morning, Missus Paget! That’s good to see you about again! Here’s a letter as’ll cost ye a deal of money, for it’s all the way from furrin parts!”
Receiving the letter from him, Fanny saw with amazement that it was addressed to herself in a completely unfamiliar handwriting.
“Thank you, Will; go in to Mrs. Strudwick and she will give you the money,” she told him, having none about her, and she broke the seal with hasty fingers.
Demerara, January 1798.
Dear Cousin Fanny (for so I shall call you without ceremony):
I write to extend a Welcome to you and hope that you will be very happy in the Hermitage. I am delighted to hear that you and my Cousin Thomas (whom I have never met) have married, and I am sure you will prove a kind Mother for his orphaned daughters. It pleases me to know that a young and growing Family resides in my house while I am in the West Indies. I trust that you may soon have Children of your own, playmates, perhaps, when they all meet, for my twins, little Charley and Gussie. Speaking of twins, it has Occurred to me that, since I requested you and my Cousin Thomas to be kind enough to receive our other Cousins Priscilla and Carloman Paget into your Household, should they travel to England from the East Indies, you may hardly have house-room enough to Accommodate them besides your own brood. I therefore gladly authorize my Cousin Thomas to build an Extension on to the house (if he thinks fit) and have instructed my Bankers, Messrs Coutts in Leadenhall, to issue funds to cover the cost of the work. I am certain, dear Cousin Fanny, that you will treat our young kinsfolk kindly when they arrive; poor Children, I fear that, up to now in their lives, they have received little but neglect and hard usage, abandoned by their father (my great-uncle Henry) and thrown on the mercy of strangers after the death of their mother. Of their precise age I am not certain.
My husband joins me in extending warm greetings to You and Cousin Thomas:
Juliana von Welcker.
Fanny read this letter slowly, pacing along by the shrubbery, and her first reaction was, What a very great difference there must be between this unknown Juliana and her cousin Thomas. How I wish she were in England, Fanny thought, forgetting that, in such a case, Thomas and his family would be obliged to quit the Hermitage and resign themselves to greatly inferior quarters elsewhere.
During the last months Fanny had not given much consideration to the two unknown cousins presumably making their way from India; the possibility of their arrival had been overlaid by other events, indeed almost forgotten. And yet, for all anybody knew to the contrary, they might appear at any moment. Now, reflecting on the practical aspects of this prospect, she thought: Poor children, this is not a happy household for them to be received into, I wish they might find some kinder harborage, though for my part I shall be glad to welcome them. But I fear that Thomas will be surly, and Bet sullen, and little Patty spiteful… It is too bad indeed that their first experience of England should be among such a disagreeable family.
Having arrived at which depressing conclusion, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and tapped firmly upon the gardenhouse door.
After a considerable pause Thomas’s voice called out sharply:
“Who is that?”
“It is I, Fanny. I wish to speak to you.”
“Frances?” His voice sounded both astonished and wrathful. “What in the world are you doing out here? Chilgrove has not given permission for you to leave the house yet.”
Still the door remained closed.
“It is a very warm day,” Fanny said. “And I have an urgent matter to discuss with you.”
Another longish pause ensued, and then the door was flung open. Thomas stood in the doorway with a decidedly forbidding aspect. He said:
“I am very displeased, indeed, that you should have come out here, entirely counter to the doctor’s instructions! Pray return to the house directly! Whatever you have to say can surely wait until dinnertime.”
His eye then fell on the letter in her hand. “What is that letter?”
“It is from our cousin Juliana van Welcker. But that is not—”
Thomas’s brows flew together. He said, “How dare you open it without permission?” almost snatching it from her hand.
“But it was addressed to me!”
“To you?” He was astonished. “Why should she do so? What can Juliana be about, writing letters to you?”
“It is merely a very kind, civil letter of welcome,” Fanny explained. “Oh, and she authorizes you to add an extension onto the house if you see fit.”
“Hah!” His expression lightened a trifle. “Very well—I will reply to my cousin Juliana about this matter. There was no occasion at all, however, for you to be coming out here on such a trifling matter. Now, pray return indoors at once.”
“But that was not what I came about,” Fanny persisted. “I am very distressed about your mother, Thomas! She does not look at all as she should. I am afraid that Nurse Baggot has been neglecting her shockingly.”
To Fanny’s astonishment, Thomas’s face became suffused with rage. He glared at her as if she had bitten him.
“Is that all? How dare you lay such accusations? Nurse Baggot, I may inform you, is somewhat better qualified than you to pronounce on my mother’s state. Indeed, she is here now, with me, discussing it.”
He moved a little to one side revealing the figure of Nurse Baggot behind him in the shadows of the room, arms akimbo.
Though very taken aback, Fanny held her ground.
“Why does the old lady look so dirty and uncared for? Her hair has not been done, her clothes need mending—and I am persuaded, too, that she is suffering from the effects of opiates—she seems so drowsy and confused in her mind.”
“Of course she has opiates!” Nurse Baggot came and stood by Thomas. She smiled scornfully a
t Fanny. “Ma’am, you had best not be interfering in what you know nothing about and what does not concern you.”
“It does concern me.” Fanny’s voice trembled a little; the combined hostile regard of her husband and the nurse had begun to make her feel a little sick; how long had they been in there together, so quietly? What could they have been talking about all that time?
She went on as steadily as she could. “It concerns me to see her looking so neglected. It is not right.”
“My dear Frances,” Thomas said sharply, “as Nurse Baggot has said, it is no concern of yours, but since you are so inquisitive I may as well inform you that my mother is beginning to fail in her wits and requires frequent doses of laudanum, otherwise she becomes impossibly quarrelsome and abusive, even violent; for which reason, because she is so difficult and intractable, Mrs. Baggot finds it best to wash her and perform her toilet but once a day, instead of twice. Now, are you satisfied?”
“Does Dr. Chilgrove know about this?”
A white patch appeared around Thomas’s mouth.
“Certainly he does—do you dare to doubt my word?”
His look was so menacing that, almost unconsciously, Fanny took a step backward from the doorway and supported herself against the elbow-high stone wall that overlooked the valley.