by Joan Aiken
“But nothing was said—nothing took place—” began Ellen.
Madame brushed aside these remarks as if they had not been made.
“You will be going to a position of great responsibility, in a great hôtel, where you will see infinitely more of life than in this quiet little backwater. Lady Morningquest came here expressly to invite you to become companion and gouvernante to her husband’s niece, the Comtesse de la Ferté. So observe how admirably matters have fallen out! You will depart from here with an unblemished character, my dear; indeed I fully know how good, how replete with integrity is your nature. I have already praised you to Madame in the highest terms. And, as for this little contretemps—the burnt child bewares the fire! You will be wiser in future. So do not lament that your existence here has come to its conclusion, but look forward, instead, to the enticing new sphere.”
And Madame patted Ellen amiably on the shoulder.
“You appear a little pale, my child, and no wonder! The day has been full of fatigues. Run along, therefore, to your couch; all here will arrange itself very well without you. And there will be much for you to do tomorrow. Go, then!”
With a gentle push, she propelled Ellen from the room. The latter could not help glancing back wonderingly; she noticed that Madame, apparently no whit perturbed by the scene that had taken place, was carefully scrutinizing a worn spot on the piano cover, before turning to march at a brisk pace back toward the main area of the school.
It was like observing the burned area after a heath fire followed by a tempest—black, scorched, sodden, silent; one could hardly imagine the raging blaze that had traversed the same spot such a short time before.
The teachers in Madame’s Pensionnat were not allotted private rooms of their own. For the purpose of surveillance, they slept among the boarders in the long conventual dormitories at the top of the house. Ellen, therefore, having toiled up the four flights of stairs, could not indulge her feelings in seclusion; she must undress in the dark and slip quietly into bed, hushing a few giggles and murmurs from pupils who were still overexcited by the day’s festivities; then she must lie containing herself in silence, under the row of uncurtained attic windows beyond which lights from the city still glimmered.
Ellen did not weep. Long ago, when she first arrived in the school, the shock of leaving her intensely loved home and acclimatizing herself to this new, noisy, and hostile environment, soon to be followed by crushing, consuming grief at her mother’s death, had been so complete that she had lost the power to comfort herself by tears; and now the source seemed to have dried up. Instead she hugged her arms tightly across her slight body, as if the ache within her must somehow be kept in bounds; as if her corporeal self were all she had; as if she felt that even this, her identity, might be taken from her too.
Madame Bosschère did not really need me at all, she thought. It is of no consequence to her whether I go from here or stay; she can replace me as easily as she might a withered nosegay or a torn fichu, and at equally short notice. And I—I thought I was so valuable to her!
It did not occur to Ellen that Madame might be glad to be given a pretext for disposing of a lieutenant whose power and prestige bade fair soon to equal that of the headmistress herself; might, in time, exceed it.
But he—Monsieur Patrice! she pondered wretchedly. He said he needed me! He seemed as if he meant it! And then—just to go—like that—to walk from the room without a word, without a look even. Oh, how can it be borne?
Her heart felt as if it were being slowly and painfully dragged from her body. The center of her whole being had been extracted. She could not contain the pain of it. And yet she must, and might give no hint of the anguish that was devouring her.
It was many hours before she slept.
* * *
Next day, shortly after noon, Benedict Masham drove round to the Pensionnat in a fiacre. He asked for an interview with his stepsister, and was greatly startled to hear that she had left the establishment for a new position in Paris.
“It was a chance too good to be missed,” Madame Bosschère told him blandly. “Indeed, la petite herself did not know about it until last night. Our good friend Lady Morningquest would take no denial, I assure you—none but Ellen would do! It was her insistence that finally persuaded me to part with your belle-soeur—though I shall miss her like my right hand, indeed! But I greatly regret, mon ami, that you did not have an opportunity to bid her farewell. The whole affair was arranged with such rapidity!”
“Oh, that’s of no consequence,” replied Benedict. He seemed rather pale, thought Madame, acutely observing him. Up all night, no doubt, drinking and gambling. Madame knew a great deal about fashionable young men. “I shall be able to see Ellen in Paris just as well, for I am going there directly. But I have a somewhat shocking piece of news from home, just received, which I was about to break to her—”
“Ah, tiens—” Madame ejaculated. “Here, also, after she had departed, a télégramme was received for Miss Paget. I had intended to redirect it to her Paris address. Doubtless the same bad tidings?”
“Doubtless. My mother, Ellen’s stepmother, has been killed in a carriage accident; and Ellen’s father, Mr. Paget, severely injured in the same affair; my mother’s sister, my aunt Blanche, who lives in Sussex, telegraphed to give me the information.”
“Ah, quel douleur!” exclaimed Madame sympathetically. “In that case I am doubly grieved that Elène has quitted Brussels and must receive the sad news in a strange place. But, hélas, my poor friend—your mother! What a calamity! I deeply commiserate with you.”
She noted, however, the ironic gleam in Benedict’s eye. Cold as fishes, all the English, thought Madame; no proper family feeling.
“But in that case,” she went on, “miséricorde, what a disaster that la petite has just departed to take up a new position. For naturally she will wish to return home for the funeral, and remain to care for her poor papa?”
“The funeral has already taken place, I understand. My aunt Blanche, who is the wife of the Bishop of Chichester, arranged it all. And Aunt Blanche informs me that she has already engaged a capable nurse to care for Mr. Paget, and a housekeeper for his home. No, I merely came to break the news to Ellen—and to inform her that, now her stepmother is no more, there would be nothing to stand in her way should she wish to return home. You must have been aware, madame—since Ellen has resided with you for six years—that my mother felt a—a considerable dislike for her youngest stepdaughter.”
Madame shrugged.
“Such things occur in families. However, her papa, doubtless, would be happy to have her company—even if there is also a nurse? Since both elder sisters are now married?”
“I believe not,” Benedict said coolly. “He is a strange man, Mr. Paget. He bore little affection toward his daughters. But naturally I thought it my duty to bring Ellen the news.”
“Naturally. Poor child, she will be greatly shocked. It will seem like a recurrence. Soon after she first came here, her own mother died. In fact I believe she was sent away from home in order to make room for a nursing attendant.”
“Perhaps you would be good enough to give me her Paris address, madame,” said Benedict, reflecting that Madame kept herself very well informed of the affairs of her subordinates.
“Mais naturellement; here it is. You go to Paris now? Then you will be so good as to deliver this télégramme to the poor child. I shall indite her a letter with solemn condolences. But meanwhile I beg you will take her my affectionate greetings, and repeat to her, what she already knows, that she will always have a sincere, maternal friend in me.”
What a pity the news did not come a day earlier, Madame reflected; then Miss Paget need not have been bundled off to Paris, but could simply have been sent home to England.
However, matters must stand as they were.
Three
Sometimes—more frequ
ently, in fact, than he would allow himself to remember—Luke Paget was troubled by a haunting dream. It concerned a house—not his everyday dwelling, the Hermitage—but a house that he owned and inhabited solely in the territory of dream, that he had been visiting for the past thirty years and more. Part of this building was familiar and friendly enough, but one area—and this was where the dream became ominous, threatening, or just unspeakably sad—one area was empty, shut off, removed from the core of the house: a closed wing, a derelict suite of rooms, a disused pavilion—ruined, abandoned, wasted, desolate.
Sometimes, in his dream, he would be making plans for the occupation of this part, and its repair; sometimes he was outraged at finding unlawful settlers in possession—secret, evil beings who scurried away, mocked him, and hid in dark, dusty corners; sometimes his mood was simply one of despair, at the waste of so much useful space; sometimes he spent the whole dream in a hopeless, frustrated search for the door, passage, or many-angled stairway by which the vacant wing might be approached. But he always woke melancholy, perplexed, hollow-hearted, and possessed by the fear which had haunted him through the course of the dream, that his chances were slipping away, that soon there would be no time left in which to re-enter or restore his lost place.
* * *
Lady Blanche, parasol on shoulder, sailing majestically toward her brother-in-law over the smooth lawns of the Bishop’s garden, saw that he lay sleeping in his basket chair under the mulberry tree, but that his sleep was not a peaceful one; he moaned, twitched, and whimpered; his eyelids flickered; then, suddenly, he was awake, his large pale-gray eyes were regarding her coldly. She was relieved that he had woken up; to see the chill reserve and self-control of this dour man break down in sleep had been an unsettling experience.
Blanche Pomfret, a big, self-confident woman, who shared the Bishop’s straightforward piety, had never greatly cared for her sister’s second husband. “Handsome—clever, I daresay—but a cold fish,” she said of Luke to her husband at the time of the marriage. “It was a most unfortunate mischance that Adelaide should encounter him again so soon after Radnor died; if she had met him before, and come to know him rather more thoroughly, it is odds that she would never have married him. She would have settled down into widowhood, I daresay.” “No use questioning God’s ways, my love,” said the Bishop. “No; I know; but He might have spared a thought for poor little Vicky. Imagine being left an orphan at five, with Luke for your father—and old enough to be her grandfather, at that!”
“Poor little Vicky is lucky that she has you for an aunt, then,” said the Bishop blandly.
“Humph! You know how little time I have, Bishop, for family affairs. It is fortunate that I found that excellent woman to take charge at the Hermitage.”
“Very fortunate, my dear!”
Now, furling her parasol, Blanche touched Luke on the shoulder.
“Wake up, my dear Luke; you were having a bad dream.”
“Was I? I can remember nothing of it.” Vexed at having been caught unprepared, he ran a hand through his thick white hair, and shifted, with a grimace of pain, the leg that was still heavily bandaged and protected by wooden splints. “Is it late, Blanche? Do you come to summon me to dinner?”
“No, no, my friend; don’t bestir yourself, it is early still; I am come to prepare your mind for visitors; or rather,” she added, seeing a cloud pass over his brow, “to ask if you wish to receive your children, who are come, with very proper filial devotion, to inquire after you.”
“Children?” he repeated with a look of blank incomprehension.
“Gerard, and little Vicky,” his sister-in-law explained patiently.
“What? They have driven here—all the way from Petworth—fifteen miles? Why in the world’s name did they do so? There was not the slightest occasion for it,” said their father, manifesting no pleasure whatever at this dutiful behavior. “Did Gerard drive my horses? Over Duncton Hill? Has he no consideration?”
“No, no, they came with John coachman and Mrs. Pike.”
“Who—pray—is Mrs. Pike?”
“She is your new housekeeper, Luke. Do you not recall? You did meet her, but I fear you were still in great pain at the time.”
“Oh—ay. Now it comes back. Mrs. Pike.” Luke Paget heaved an angry sigh, as if these names, Vicky, Gerard, Mrs. Pike, were so many feathered darts lodged in his shoulders to irritate and distract him.
“You did say,” his sister-in-law calmly reminded him, “that you would prefer hiring a housekeeper than to have your daughter Ellen summoned back from Brussels. And indeed there was need to install some responsible, comfortable body without delay; and Mrs. Pike seemed eminently suitable.”
“Oh, good God, yes, I am not querying your actions, Blanche; much obliged to you indeed. What use in the world would Ellen be—a fidgety chit of a girl, hardly out of the schoolroom? No, no, I daresay Mrs. Pike will do well enough.”
“Do you not wish to see them, Luke? Since they are here?”
Quite plainly it was the last thing he wished, but, after a moment or two, with reluctance, he grunted, “I had best do so, I suppose; as they have seen fit to come all this way. And the Pike woman as well. If only to make her understand that there is no call to be taking my horses across the Downs twice a week!”
“Set your mind at rest. I have already impressed on her the need to run your household with proper economy,” smoothly replied his sister-in-law, with only the slightest touch of irony. “But I understand that she had various other domestic errands in Chichester which could be accomplished at the same time. I will send them to you then—in separate detachments, so as not to overtax your strength.”
She departed at a stately pace; in her massive crinoline, with parasol, gauze-and-ribbon-trimmed cap, shawl, lace gloves, and chatelaine, all in severe mourning hue, she resembled some baroque, smoke-blackened cathedral which had been set in motion and was gliding over the grass.
Luke Paget heaved another irritable sigh.
The Bishop’s garden in Chichester was a charming spot. Of considerable extent, bounded by walls of rosy, ancient brick, it contained various different enclosures, contrasting formality with exuberance: here, exotic shrubs, noble trees, luxuriant foliage; there, velvet turf and carefully tended formal beds; the air was warm with the scent of wisteria, over a faint, salt tang of the sea. A mild May sun beamed down, and birds sang joyfully. None of this had any beneficent effect upon the man in the basket chair. Luke Paget had never cared for gardens. By his reckoning, they were just places to be kept trim and productive; he had never understood his first wife’s passion for planting, pruning, and tending green things. (Though, since it was a relatively inexpensive pursuit, he had not gone out of his way to hinder her activity.) Now he wished, with irritation, that he might have suffered his children’s visit indoors; there was something informal and al fresco about receiving them here that did not consort with his attitude toward them.
However, as he was still unable to move more than a few paces without help, he had to remain where he was, chafing inwardly.
Often, these days, he found himself thinking of his first wife. Why? She had been dead for six years; there was no utility in such a habit; and Luke Paget was, above all things, a practical man. Yet, unbidden, exasperating, these recollections would flash out: Matilda helpless with laughter over some diverting occurrence—she had found humor in the most trivial, unbecoming sources, and loved to laugh; or thoughtful, silent, meditating some ploy in the household, which she had ordered with serene, untroubled ease. Sometimes she had laughed over her children: Kitty’s follies, Eugenia’s snobbery; for she had been a realist, wholly unsentimental. And yet she had loved them devotedly, and loved him, Luke, with an equal, open, uncritical attachment which, perfectly aware of his shortcomings, yet embraced him in a large, tender, humorous warmth. Why, he now wondered angrily, why had he not appreciated this happy state more wh
ile it was his? For some reason he often remembered a breakfast scene—one in particular? or was it the prototype of many?—with Mattie smiling over the coffee cups, and the girls, small then, pretty and well-behaved in their places. Gerard had been a baby in his bassinet upstairs. Why did I not realize that I was happy then? Luke demanded of himself. What would I not give for that day back again! Furiously he now regretted, not that during the whole of their married life Mattie had received from him far less than her due, but that he himself had failed to make the most of that well-being while he had it. He was absorbed, at that time, in his ambitions—the hope of getting into Parliament, of making a name for himself at the Bar. Vain hopes! And, while he was pursuing them, the reality had slipped away from him. Now, his life offered no possibility of fulfillment, apart from some deep-seated aspirations for his son. The only immediate gratifications left were the common, accepted ones of physical taste—comfort—warmth—health; and now, since the accident in which his second wife had been rudely taken from him, even health and the pleasures of the bed were lost.
Without joy, he watched his two youngest children approach.
They, for their part, came toward him at a rather dawdling pace, as if unsure of their welcome, crossing the wide lawn at some distance apart, without addressing each other; it was plain that the occasion, not any compatibility, had thrown them together.
Vicky minced along with disdainful precision, staring frankly about her, taking in her surroundings: the battlemented brick walls, the green and flowery garden, the croquet hoops on the grass, the slender spire of Chichester Cathedral tapering above the Palace roof. Vicky was a small, round-faced, watchful child, dressed for this visit in bright tartan silk and white starched pantalettes, her wiry dark hair elaborately twisted into ringlets. She had the wary look of someone whose life produced so little entertainment that she was adept at making the very most of what came her way. Occasionally she cast a critical glance at her half brother. Gerard, the fifteen-year-old, bore a marked resemblance to his father, with the same bony build, which was gaunt in the man, coltish in the boy; and the same long lantern-jawed face, hollow eye sockets, pallor, and large reflective gray eyes; but Gerard’s eyes were a darker shade of gray than his father’s, and his mouth was wider, and somewhat irresolute, whereas Luke’s was set in lines of rigid severity. The son’s hair sprang upward thickly like the father’s, but was soft and dark.