by Joan Aiken
Ellen had to laugh, the expressions had been caught so shrewdly, the maid frowning with lower lip thrust out, the young lawyer open-mouthed in conversation, his eyes bulging and Adam’s apple almost bursting from his tight collar. Vicky had a cartoonist’s knack of seizing on the salient characteristic.
“I have more—” Vicky said, beginning to delve under her mattress; but at this moment a step was heard on the stair, and she hurled herself back into bed.
“Mrs. Pike! She’ll be in a rage when she finds you—”
“Don’t worry,” began Ellen; but fortunately the step proved to be that of Gerard, who put his head round the door, remarking, “Is that you, Sue? You won’t half catch it if La Pike hears you in Vicky’s room.” Then he saw his sister and his jaw dropped. “Ellen? Nobody told me you had come home.”
He was undoubtedly the boy who had played the fiddle at the Railway Inn, but Ellen realized now that he had simply not recognized her in her Parisian finery. She gave him a sisterly kiss, which he took defensively, backing away with a nervous air.
“Then it was you, playing for the morrisers!”
“For the Lord’s sake—hush! Papa would just about—” He pantomimed a wild explosion, then rapidly disappeared into his own attic, from which sounds of hasty ablutions could be heard. Then he put a wet head back round the door to beg, “Whatever you do, don’t mention that!”
The dinner gong boomed downstairs.
“Good nighty Vicky.” Ellen hugged her small half sister. “There is more drawing paper in my box, which you shall have tomorrow; and some French crayons.”
She could not help smiling at Vicky’s awed expression as she retreated down the attic stair; though there was not much to smile at in this household, she could see.
Supper was a gloomy meal. Gerard did not mend matters by arriving late, which earned him a seven-minute reprimand from his father and continued subsequent rumblings throughout the meal. Ellen tried to enliven the conversation with descriptions of Paris and the boat trip, but Mr. Paget had a depressing habit of slapping down any idle remark, made to fill an awkward silence, with some withering rebuttal.
“French ladies all seem to have English terriers this year—”
“All? How can they all have? There would not be sufficient breeders in the Kingdom to satisfy such a demand.”
Mrs. Pike, who, it appeared, ate with the family, did not help by letting fall numerous disparaging remarks about Paris and the French; these Ellen parried as good-temperedly as she could, although their ignorance irritated her even more than their evidently spiteful intention. Gerard, who had always been a silent boy, applied himself speechlessly to his plate, with shoulders hunched and eyes cast down. Luke, too, ate mainly in silence, apart from various snubs to Ellen and some animadversions as to the folly, laziness, and inconsiderate habits of the younger generation. Ellen recalled that it had always been impossible to please him. He always expected that people would prove to be idle, bungling, and unhelpful. If, contrary to expectation, they were skillful, handy, and anxious to please, it irritated him; and if his pessimism was proved correct, he was equally annoyed. In consequence, his gloom and displeasure were continuous; all that he saw appeared to depress and exasperate him.
Mrs. Pike made it her business to agree with all he said, emphatically nodding her capped and ribboned head up and down at each of his strictures.
The food was plain, tasteless, and served in penuriously small portions; Ellen, who had been hungry after her journey from London, rose at the end of the meal feeling almost as hungry as when she sat down.
After the dessert Mr. Paget remained in the dining room drinking a small glass of port. Mrs. Pike went down to the basement kitchen to reprimand the cook for putting too much sugar in the blackberry pie.
“Psst! Come out here a moment,” murmured Gerard to Ellen with a sideways jerk of his head. She followed him into the garden, which was beginning to fade into dusk, and he dragged her away through a pair of wrought-iron gates and down a tree-lined way known as the Glebe Path, which led into the valley below the house.
“Can’t talk within doors, that woman has ears like a bat,” he explained. Then he came swiftly to his point. “I say, Ellen, did you bring any music with you from Paris? It is devilishly hard to buy sheet music here—I can’t order it from Arnold’s, or Pa would twig, and I can’t invent pretexts to go to Chichester above once every six weeks or so.”
Ellen had brought a little music, but at most of her catalogue of names he groaned.
“Liszt! Czerny! How could you? Mendelssohn is just tolerable. Oh, if only I had known you were coming. I could have asked you to bring me some Beethoven quartets.”
“But how could you play a quartet? Do you have companions? And since when have you been learning the fiddle?”
“Oh, for a few months—don’t tell Papa! Tom, at the Railway Inn, teaches me. Anyway, I like to read the scores. Beethoven is so tremendous, Ellie! I believe he is the greatest genius who ever lived.”
Gerard would have gone on at length about Beethoven—Ellen saw he was just the same moody, self-absorbed creature as ever—but she interrupted him.
“Gerard, do you not see a great change in Papa?”
“He is worse-tempered than ever,” agreed Gerard. “Forever harrying me about my Latin and law work—and I do work hard, he has no reason to complain, but he does. If he had his way I would never lift my nose from Blackstone’s Commentaries and Mowbray’s Jurisprudence. He’s surly as a bear—though La Pike butters him up all she knows how—but that’s nothing new?”
“He is so haggard and gaunt-looking! And his eyes, when he is not speaking, have a—a kind of inward glare. And his voice is so hollow—as if he spoke from a pit.”
“Oh, pho! I do not know what you are talking about. He is getting older, that is all. Will you ask him for the key of the garden room, Ellie?”
“Whatever for?”
“He has had the piano moved out there. You could say that you wish to play it—he will allow you. It is all right for girls. And he never goes there after dinner.”
“But, you absurd boy, I don’t wish to play. I am tired, after traveling, and intend to go to bed.”
“Will you give me the music, then?”
“Oh, very well!”
As they returned, she asked, “Is there a piano at the Railway Inn?”
He nodded with a half grin. “If I play tunes for the customers, Tom lets me practice on it. And he pays me a shilling an hour. I slip out in the evenings—that’s how I make money to buy music.”
“You are mad. If Papa found out! Someone might easily tell him.”
“No,” Gerard said. “No one likes him in the town.”
“Suppose Mrs. Pike heard?”
“Ah. She’s a troublemaker, to be sure. But she’s from Wiltshire—has no friends here.”
“Where in Wiltshire?”
“I haven’t a notion. She’d been looking after some old gentry who moved to Chichester—she came there with them, I fancy—Aunt Blanche hired her because they died and she came free at the time of Pa’s accident.”
Ellen resolved to try and find out more about Mrs. Pike’s antecedents.
The housekeeper sat in the drawing room, working at her embroidery by the light of a parsimoniously small lamp. She received the news that Ellen proposed to retire with a small, cold nod. She did indeed already appear to regard herself as mistress of the establishment.
Ellen, glancing about the room, was saddened to see that most of her mother’s plain graceful Hepplewhite and Gillow furniture had been replaced by heavily ornamented, plush-upholstered articles which took up a great deal of space and made the room seem small and overfull. No doubt these things had been acquired during Lady Adelaide’s period as chatelaine. One or two of the discarded pieces had found their way upstairs to Ellen’s chamber, which was
otherwise, mercifully, unaltered. Lying in her narrow bed, listening to the owls in the orchard, she remembered how often she had longed to be here.
But now all was changed. She felt a desolation of sadness.
And Father, she thought. There is something dreadfully wrong with him, I am certain; beyond the pain of his mended hip. Can he be grieving over Lady Adelaide? I had not thought he loved her much.
He looks—he looks as if he owed somebody a debt, and does not know how he can ever pay it.
* * *
Word rapidly spread through the town that Mr. Paget’s third daughter had come home, and people soon resumed their habit of bringing sick children for Ellen to touch. This custom was probably augmented by the recent death of Dr. Bendigo; his replacement, young Dr. Smollett, had not yet gained the confidence of his patients.
“Shocking, vulgar superstition!” sniffed Mrs. Pike. “Carrying their nasty dirt and diseases to the back door—I’d soon put a stop to it.”
But to her annoyance Mr. Paget would not take a stand on the matter. “My wife always permitted them” was all he said.
“Lady Adelaide?”
“No, no. Mrs. Paget, Ellen’s mother. And Bendigo condoned it.”
Dr. Bendigo had been one of the objects of Luke’s reluctant, half-hostile respect.
“Well,” said Mrs. Pike, “don’t blame me if you find half the apples or all the poultry stolen away. I never heard of such a thing.”
The rebuff did not ameliorate her relations with Ellen.
“Can you let me know how much longer you intend to stay, Miss Paget? With so much more to do, I fear I will need to be asking your papa for an increase in the housekeeping—which will not please him, I promise you!”
“He will probably feel better about it when he hears that I intend to undertake Vicky’s tuition,” calmly replied Ellen.
“What? And deprive poor old Mrs. Socket of her only paid occupation?”
“She wishes to give up teaching and go to live with her married brother.” Ellen did not add that old Mrs. Socket had said she only continued coming because she felt so sorry for the little girl, and was delighted that Vicky’s sister had come home to take her part.
The news that he need no longer pay Mrs. Socket for her daily visits did, in part, reconcile Luke to Ellen’s presence in the house; though he continued to ignore her and rebuff any attempts at conversation. He had a gift for making people feel that they were in his way; this, though apparently unconscious, was remarkably powerful. Moreover, when he looked at Ellen, which he did as little as possible, it seemed to be with the utmost dislike. Did he resent her youth and health? she wondered. Did they aggravate the indignity of his limp? Luke had always been an active man, but the accident had aged him rapidly, and it was plain that he was far from reconciled to his disability.
Mrs. Pike did her best to exacerbate the situation by continual allusions to Ellen’s appearance.
“It is such a pity, Miss Paget, that your clothes are so out of fashion,” she would remark with tolerant contempt. “In those queer flounces I fear you must seem a regular figure of fun to Petworth society. But I daresay that will not worry you—such a clever young lady as you are, more interested in books than style. If you were going to stay here for long, you might contrive to put two of those gowns together and make one decent crinoline. However, I daresay your visit will not last above a week or two longer—a young lady accustomed to Paris will soon tire of our little backwater—will she not, Mr. Paget?”
“On the contrary, I intend to stay until Vicky is able to read,” said Ellen cheerfully, “which may prove a long business.”
Vicky, insatiable at drawing, was no scholar.
Mrs. Pike shook her head sadly. “One sister teaching another never answers. There can be no proper discipline in such a case.”
* * *
Soon after her return, Ellen received a note, handed in by a small boy at the back door.
My very dear Ellen: I am Rejoic’d to hear of yr return to Petworth & write to beg the Pleasure of an Early Visit from you. No doubt you have a Thousand things to occupy you, but, as soon as Convenient, do pray step up for a Dish of Tay with Yr,
Always Affctnt
Great-Aunt Fanny Talgarth
Ellen smiled with pleasure as she read these lines. Great-Aunt Fanny Talgarth was, in fact, no blood relation. She had been married at sixteen to Luke’s great-uncle Thomas Paget, who had died when Fanny was barely twenty, and their only child had also died as an infant. Fanny then made what was at first considered a shocking misalliance—she had married Andrew Talgarth, a landscape gardener and improver; but the marriage, which lasted forty-five years, had been very happy, and her husband, whose services were in demand by such eminent persons as the Duke of Wellington, Lord Melbourne, and even the Queen herself at Osborne House, had died a successful and prosperous man. Aunt Fanny had now outlived him by some fifteen years and was well into her eighties; she missed her husband deeply, but, as she often said, kept so busy that the time until their reunion in the next world was passing wonderfully fast. Their marriage had not been blessed with offspring, but Fanny was held in affection by all the humble people round about, and her time and energy were invariably at their disposal. Eugenia and Kitty had always tended to look down on her, because of her very modest way of life—at her husband’s death she retired to a small gamekeeper’s cottage in the woods east of Petworth—but Ellen had always loved her dearly.
As soon as Vicky’s morning lessons were finished next day, she accordingly walked off down the Glebe Path, descended the steeply sloping pasture below, crossed the brook by a cattle bridge, and climbed the other side of the valley where the sheep nibbled dry September grass and blackberries dangled in the hedges. On the hilltop, a ten-mile stretch of woodland began, known to locals as the Dillywoods because of the wild daffodils that bloomed in spring, and threaded with bridle paths in all directions; Aunt Fanny’s little house stood by one of these, about a quarter of a mile into the wood. It had originally been erected as a folly, or viewpoint, to be visible from Petworth House on the opposite elevation; it was crowned with a row of battlements on one side and had a small absurd turret. The trees had crowded about it to such a degree that its original function was now obviated, for it could not be seen twenty yards away.
Ellen thought, as she approached, how unlike Fanny’s practical and self-effacing nature was this fanciful piece of architecture. The small garden was, however, crammed with useful herbs, vegetables, and sweet-smelling shrubs; a loaded vine scrambled all over a small summerhouse, and the boughs of apple and fig trees were heavy with fruit. Fanny herself was to be seen reading at a table in the summerhouse; she sprang up and came to greet Ellen with a brisk step that gave no hint of her advanced age. Always small in stature, she had become tiny; she looked like some little brown dryad with her sheaf of snowy hair skewered in a careless knob on top of her head.
“Dearest child!” She embraced Ellen warmly and admired her dress with unaffected pleasure. “What a treat to see you in all your à-la-modality! Such an elegant change after those grotesque crinolines—more like the Empire styles when I was a girl. Sit down in the arbor and tell me every single thing that has been happening to you. But first some grape juice. I have it hanging in the well and it is cold as ice.”
Ellen sat, observing that among the books on the littered table were Plato’s Protagoras, Dante’s Purgatorio, a Greek grammar, Lois the Witch, by Mrs. Gaskell, and a New Testament in Greek.
Fanny followed her eyes.
“I have decided to give Andrew a surprise.” She chuckled. “I have been learning Greek since I saw you last, so that I shall be able to read Plato aloud to him in Paradise. But it is quite difficult—oh, not the Greek but the Plato; so from time to time I have to fall back on the Bible. You laugh: you think me conceited to have such confidence in Paradise; but, for Andrew’s sake, th
ey will have to let me in. And he is certain to be there.”
“Pooh, Aunt Fanny—if anyone is to be received there, it will be you. But are you so certain that Plato will be there?”
“Oh yes, I think so.” Fanny tilted her head to one side in birdlike consideration. “After all, he meant well, poor man. But now, tell me all. You are very thin, child.”
So Ellen told. Fanny listened intently, her mouth curved into a childlike pucker of concentration; at the end she said, “More has happened to you, I daresay, in the space of three years than to many people in the course of a whole lifetime. Your task will be, not to grieve wastefully, not to brood, but to make use of this experience, my love; to plough it back in, and enrich your pastureland.”
“Yes,” Ellen said doubtfully. “I am sure you are right, Aunt Fanny, for you always are—but how, in what way, shall I do this?”
“Why, you need not worry your head about that; life is sure to give you plenty of opportunity soon enough. Now tell me about them at the Hermitage; is Gerard still bent on being a composer?”
“I am afraid so. It is going to cause a terrible breach with Papa, who is so ambitious for him; he expects Gerard to become Lord Chancellor at least.”
“The breach will have to come. Luke can’t turn the boy into a substitute for himself. Gerard has real musical talent. He used to find his way up here, sometimes, and play on my tuneless old clavichord. He has not been so often of late. And little Vicky? Was she much distressed by her mother’s death?”
“Not too greatly, I think; I do not think Lady Adelaide ever devoted much time to her. My father’s housekeeper is very hard on her.”
“Ah, the redoubtable Mrs. Pike. I have not met that lady. And your father—how does he go on?”
Luke Paget had always disliked Fanny. To him, she represented all that was flighty, wayward, and unpractical; her husband’s profession had affronted him, and her retreat into the woods, after Talgarth’s death, had seemed to him frivolous and inconsiderate.