by Joan Aiken
I am degraded, she thought miserably; fatally sullied, and he knows it. If I try to enter London society, will the same thing happen? Shall I encounter the same attitude? Oh, if only Cal were here!
She was troubled, too, about Cal; not as to the result of the inquiry, for Gough and the other officers had seemed fairly sanguine concerning that: Phillimore’s intemperance being as well known in the fleet that it had been considered only a matter of time before some fatal accident befell him. But Cal’s leg was not healing as it should; although he made light of it, she could see that it pained him greatly and was still much inflamed.
Suppose—suppose—
For the twentieth time she composed herself for sleep; but the wind moaning in the trees outside disturbed her, and she heard a strange, keening wail—could it be a wild beast? But surely there were no wild beasts in England? She was reminded of the whine of a leopard in the desert sand hills; heavens, how happy I was then, sleeping in some flea-ridden caravanserai with Miss Musson close at hand, Cal and Cameron nearby; why do we never recognize our good fortune when we have it within our grasp?
It was many hours before Scylla slept.
* * *
By the time Scylla made her appearance next morning, heavy-eyed and apologetic, all Fanny’s household duties had been done, and there was plenty of time to devote to the guest. Bet, grumbling, had departed to her harp lesson, and little Patty, grumbling even more, had been set to sew a row on her sampler. Jemima was given charge of little Chet, who, greatly interested at his first sight of another baby, tottered across the room (which he had recently learned to do on shipboard) and inquisitively touched the stranger’s hands and feet. But Thomas merely lay gaping at this unwonted encounter, without making any attempt to respond.
Fanny sighed despondently and said, “I fear Thomas is sadly backward. How old is your little prince?”
“Oh, he is upward of a year now; quite six months older than your baby; so do not put yourself in a taking, Cousin! Babies vary hugely, as I know, having seen so many in my guardian’s hospital.”
“I am only afraid that my husband may be vexed by the great contrast between them. But come, Cousin—if you are sure you have had sufficient breakfast? I am longing to show you all about while the weather is fine.”
Scylla was eager to be shown and, in Fanny’s company, everything charmed her. The late roses, the scarlet crab apples, the dull gold of the oak trees in the valley, the sky-colored glimpses of the brook down below—“It is all just the way I imagined England to be!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. Then, turning toward the house:
“Good God! What is that tree?”
She had not noticed it before, since they had come out by the back door.
“Oh, that is an ash tree, a weeping ash; Thomas had it tied like that because he was not allowed to cut it down, which he wished to do; he said it blocked out the light.” Fanny had a sudden vivid recollection of Andrew Talgarth, a look of resolution in his blue eyes, saying, “Miss Juliana were particular fond of this ash tree, sir, I wouldn’t hurt it for the world.”
“I hate to see it fettered and cramped in that fashion,” Fanny went on, “but Thomas insisted. Are you fatigued, Cousin? You look pale. Do you wish to return to the house? Or would you like to stroll in the town?”
Scylla declared that she was not in the least tired, walking exercise was what she had longed for above all things while on board the Tintagel; so they strolled up the lane, talking without intermission.
“I feel as if I had known you forever!” Fanny exclaimed once, laughing, breaking off in the middle of a sentence.
“Perhaps we have conversed in our dreams,” Scylla said, laughing too.
But under the laughter she still felt vibrations of the shock she had received when she first saw the weeping ash tree: bowed, bent, fettered, casting its golden slender leaves on the ground, it resembled some haggard petitioner standing close to the house, half pleading, half threatening, like a beggar, ignored by everybody because he is so humble, because he is always there. What in the world would Cal say when he saw it? What in the world did it portend?
She felt inclined to tell Fanny about Cal’s poem—about the prophecies—but not just yet. Besides, there was so much else to tell Fanny!
Walking into the park, they encountered Liz Wyndham and Lord Egremont, who were standing by the ha-ha, deep in conversation with Andrew Talgarth.
“Good morning!” called Liz. “How glad I am to see you here, my dear Fanny! You can instantly come to my support! I wish to throw an ornamental bridge over the lake, and both Talgarth and George are horridly opposed to the scheme.”
“What Capability Brown saw no need to do, when he landscaped the park for my father forty-five years ago, I see no occasion for now! But pray make us known to your friend, ma’am!”
Fanny therefore introduced Thomas’s cousin, and Scylla entered cheerfully into the controversy over the bridge.
“George is about to dispatch Talgarth on a tour of all Capability Brown’s greatest works,” Liz told Fanny. “He is to go to Longleat, to Stowe, Blenheim, Hampton Court, Croome, Milton Abbas—we shall miss him shockingly while he is gone, but I am in hopes that when he returns after seeing Milton Abbas he will agree to build me an ornamental village over there in the middle distance! There is a charming bridge at Blenheim,” she told Andrew. “Mind you study it—it is exactly the kind I should wish to see across the water.”
“Directly Lord Egremont agrees, I shall be happy to build you half a dozen bridges, ma’am,” Talgarth said, smiling.
“Oh, you wretch! That is as good as saying, never! But, Fanny, bring your cousin into the house for a nuncheon. We have the best peaches you ever tasted. (And you need not be afraid of meeting that hateful Henriques),” she added in an undertone, drawing Fanny behind Egremont and Scylla, who were walking toward the french windows, “for Chilgrove set his broken leg and he has taken himself back to London in a closed carriage. I collect that he was discovered in some discreditable escapade, and I am heartily glad to see the back of him.—Fanny, your cousin is enchanting. Are you not happy to have her with you? I can see that George is head over ears in love already!”
Indeed, Scylla and Lord Egremont were conversing like old friends; Fanny, listening with half an ear, was amazed at her cousin’s grasp of international affairs. How, traveling across Asia from a small state in northern India, had she acquired so much knowledge? They had, too, it seemed, an acquaintance in common, a Colonel Cameron who had encountered Lord Egremont in White’s Club in London. Now they were talking about poetry.
“William Blake? Oh, he is one of my brother’s greatest heroes! Is he truly a friend of yours, Lord Egremont? And visits you here? I am afraid you will have my brother haunting your house forever, in hopes of meeting him!”
“Your brother is a poet also? Madam here will be happy to hear that—she collects poets like peacocks,” Egremont said, as a peacock strolled mewling across the terrace, and Liz threw it out some cake crumbs. “Has your brother published his verses, Miss Paget? Under what name does he write?”
“He has not yet had any of his work printed—mainly through lack of opportunity to show it to a publisher. But he lately sent some poems to the firm of John Murray in London. I think he intended using a nom de plume—in case, you know, our English friends disliked having a verse-writing connection. But what it was I do not know.”
“John Murray? I frequently step into his offices when I am in town; I shall hope to see the work in manuscript. I am to go to London in a few days’ time; I shall make a point of inquiring about it. There is talk, you know, of Mr. Pitt’s instituting a tax on income—a most unprecedented step. If there is to be a debate in Parliament, I should wish to hear it.”
“A tax on income?” said Fanny, instantly thinking how outraged Thomas would be at such a notion. Imagine his being obliged to reveal the amount o
f his income to some revenue official, for tax purposes!
“So it is said. The war against France, ma’am, you know, is proving a severe expense. And now the Tsar is asking for three hundred thousand pounds to equip a Russian force and send it into Holland.”
“Well, it is very shocking,” said Liz. “Why should we be obliged to pay those Russians? But listen, George, here is Miss Paget desirous of traveling to London in order to deposit her princely Indian babe with his friends—why should she not ride with us on Monday and spend a few days at Egremont House?”
Thus easily was Scylla’s journey to London arranged; and though she was sorry not to make her first visit to the capital in Cal’s company, she could not but see that there were decided advantages to the scheme. Slight though her acquaintance was with Thomas, it became plain to her after only a day that the sight of little Chet was extremely repugnant to him, whether this was because due to the Indian baby’s manifest superiority over little Thomas in walking, moving, playing with objects, and attempting to talk; or whether he secretly believed the baby to be Scylla’s own, and felt Chet’s presence to be a scandal on his house (which Scylla half suspected was the case); at all events, every time Thomas’s eye rested on Chet, Scylla felt most profoundly uneasy. Understanding, also, from Fanny, that their generous cousin Juliana had made a financial provision for her and Cal, she wished to call on Throgmorton, the London lawyer in charge of the funds, and obtain access to them; she and Cal could not live on his prize money forever. And, finally, a note from Cal arriving on the second day of her sojourn in Petworth informed her that he would not be able to travel from Portsmouth for another week or ten days; the result of an inquiry had been satisfactory, but his leg was proving a little troublesome. This last news naturally threw Scylla into a fret, but it clinched her decision to accompany the Egremonts to London. If Cal’s leg were paining him, he would not be able to travel to town immediately; it would be best that she should do so and return before he arrived in Petworth.
Thomas, surprisingly, was not at all pleased by this plan, and grumbled to Fanny.
“Why must she go off so soon? Is our house not good enough for her? I daresay she will find London so much to her taste that she never returns here, and we shall be left with her precious brother on our hands!”
Contrary to his expectations, however, Scylla spent no more than a few days in the capital and traveled back with the Egremonts when they returned.
She came back from her visit to the metropolis bright-eyed and bubbling with news. November 29 had been appointed a day of national rejoicing for Admiral Lord Nelson’s victory over the French at Aboukir, the rebellion in Ireland was finally quelled; she had met William Lamb, alleged by some to be the natural son of Lord Egremont and Lady Melbourne: “The most delightful young man, Fanny, and indeed I see a likeness!”; she had deposited little Chet with his father’s cousin—“The most reverend-looking old man, Fanny, in a long white beard and a blue turban; he is a kind of ambassador and presides over a Sikh college in London; it was such a pleasure to speak Punjabi again. He greeted little Chet with tears of affection, and I am sure will use him with the most tender consideration!”; Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan had come to call at Egremont House and were so entertaining that Scylla only wished she could recall half the witty things they had said; she had learned, to her amazement, from Mr. Throgmorton that wealthy Cousin Juliana had endowed her and Cal each with an extremely handsome competence—“So we need not be the least encumbrance on you, dearest Fanny!”; and, most wonderful, most delightful of all, her brother Cal, unknown to himself, was already an amazing, an instant success! His poems, in a volume entitled The Weeping Ash, were eagerly being passed from hand to hand and demanded at the circulating libraries; seven thousand copies at half a guinea had been disposed of to the booksellers and a new edition was already in preparation; Mr. Murray assured her that Cal must by this time have earned at least two thousand pounds. “Think of it, Fanny, two thousand pounds!”—and was eagerly requesting more works.
In consideration of these joyful tidings, Scylla had taken time out, as well, to rig herself up in the first stare of the mode; she had also purchased tonnish garments for Fanny and Bet which Fanny, though she could not help admiring them, feared that Thomas would think outrageously décolleté and diaphanous, not at all suitable for well-bred females to wear. As well as clothes, she had also bought a parcel of improper reading matter—Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, by Miss Burney, and The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole.
“It is so enjoyable to be able to spend money, Fanny; you cannot imagine how poor we were as we traveled through Kafiristan.”
She had brought back with her, as well, two copies of Cal’s poems, handsomely bound in green leather, embossed with gold.
“The Weeping Ash!” exclaimed Fanny, gazing at the spine. “But, Scylla, how singular! When we have a weeping ash tree here—in our garden. It seems like a premonition! What in the world should impel him to write a poem on such a subject?” She turned to the title poem and read a verse of it wonderingly.
“‘Wise tree,’ he prayed, ‘bestow on me some part
Of your immortal self; breathe out that lore
Founded in ice and fire, show me the art
To make a world where no world was before.
O wind-rocked tree, whose topmost boughs explore
Outermost realms of sky, no lightning’s flash
Can ever blast your limbs, nor thunder’s roar
Scatter your foliage, nor tempest gash
Your bark, divine Yggdrasil, Odin’s sacred ash!’”
“Why, Scylla, it is beautiful! It is by far more beautiful than Crabbe or Cowper!”
She turned eagerly through the pages of the book and said, “May I borrow this? Oh, it is a shame to read it before he has seen it himself! But I shall feel that I know your brother even before he arrives.”
“Of course you may have it; indeed I brought it for you and Thomas, and have already inscribed your names in it.”
Thomas, predictably, was not in the least grateful for the gift, nor impressed by the poetry, which he apostrophized as “Sad stuff!” leafing contemptuously through the pages. “Poetry! I do not know why grown men will be writing such fustian rubbish! ‘Odin, transfixed above the whispering sea’—pah!” Nor was he at all struck by the coincidence of the ash tree. “Why must you be making a mountain out of a molehill, Frances? Ash trees are to be found in all regions of the world. I beg you will not be continually dinning my cousin’s name into my ears—I am sick of it before he has even come to the house. I daresay he is a puny, posturing, paltry fellow.”
Learning, through Fanny, of Cal’s epileptic disposition had engendered in Thomas an extra prejudice against his cousin; in Thomas’s experience epilepsy was a hysterical, puppyish affection, nearly always pretense, a mere simulation of illness, a subterfuge adopted by those poltroons who were too cowardly to serve in the navy.
“But Cousin Cal has served in the navy,” said Fanny unwisely.
“And I daresay this epilepsy will serve as an excuse to get out of it again, now Cousin Juliana has given him this fine fortune!” snarled Thomas, and went off about his press gang duties.
Scylla said to Fanny, later that morning:
“Dearest Fanny, will you indulge me? I have a great curiosity to walk in English woodland. May we enter those woods that I see on the far side of your valley? For when poor Cal comes with his lame leg, I fear that our excursions may be restricted. Also Goble tells me that we may shortly expect snow.” (Strangely enough, a great friendship had struck up between the recovered Goble and Scylla; she treated him with an unceremonious friendliness which had punctured the defenses of his surly and eccentric nature.) “He says that all the bright berries we see on your hedges portend an early and severe winter, and if there is snow we may not be able to walk in your woods. So will you give me the pleasure of your co
mpany now?”
She was astonished to discover that Fanny had never even walked down to the bridge over the brook, let alone up the other side of the valley and into the woods.
“I daresay it must seem very poor-spirited to you, accustomed as you are to rambling Himalayan mountains,” Fanny said, sighing. “But Thomas will not allow me to go out unescorted, and Bet is no walker.”
Indeed Bet, though jealous of the growing affection between Fanny and Scylla, said grumpily, when she was told of the projected excursion, that she had better things to do than tramp through muddy woods; she was about to alter the trimming of the dress that Cousin Scylla had brought her.
Fanny and Scylla therefore set out unimpeded, picking their way with laughter down the steep grassy slope, past the rector’s packed hay barn halfway down, crossing the bridge at the bottom where the brook was already bordered with pale scallops of ice.
“Oh, this is better!” exclaimed Scylla, drawing in deep lungfuls of tingling-cold, frosty air. “I do not know why it is, Fanny, I love you as if I had known you all my life, your house is charming, but there is something in its atmosphere that I find oppressive.—Do you have a ghost?” she added, laughing.
“I am not certain,” Fanny said more seriously. “I think it is possible. I have seen nothing myself, but I have felt—something. And the builders’ men—simple, superstitious fellows, of course—talked of seeing the ghost of a little child. But Thomas says it is all nonsense.”
Scylla shivered.
“The ghost of a child? You make me glad that I removed little Chet to London. Besides,” she added candidly, “I have a notion that Cousin Thomas thought that he was mine—though I assure you, Fanny, that he was not!”
Since Thomas had indeed voiced his speculations to Fanny on this theme, her protestations lacked force. “No matter!” Scylla said, laughing at her in friendly mockery. “I collect that Thomas thinks I have been ruined by my wild life—and in some ways, Fanny, I am afraid that he is right!”