by Joan Aiken
When I returned to the room, she was reading the note that Cousin Elinor had given me to deliver to her.
‘Humph, you certainly seem to be a well-educated young gel.—Are you looking forward to school?’ she pounced.
‘No, ma’am, not very greatly. But I know that it is needful. I have to earn my living.’
‘Humph,’ she said again. ‘Let’s see your hands.’
I showed them. There need be no false shame or pride with Mrs Jebb; she was wholly straightforward.
‘Yes . . . Unfortunate. You’ll never get a husband. However my niece informs me that you are a capable performer on the pianoforte and have a tolerable singing voice. At Mrs Haslam’s they will give you lessons on the harp, and other instruments too, I daresay. No doubt there will be an opening for you later as a music teacher.’
I assented politely, without troubling to inform her that I would sooner jump off a cliff.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Yes, child?’
‘What did your maid mean? When she said that I had a blue ring?’
Mrs Jebb nodded again. ‘I could see you thinking that Pullett must be a zany, touched in her wits. But she is not. A trifle slow, she may be, but about people she has unerring instinct. She comes of mixed stock: gypsy blood two or three generations back, I don’t doubt. She sees people in colour – as you have just been given proof. Blue – your colour – is a good one. Fortunately for you.’
‘If I had a bad one, what would it be?’
‘Black – or purple – or some reds. No one but a gaby would invite such a person into their house.’
‘Are you serious, ma’am?’
‘Indeed I am, gal.’
‘If I had had a red ring, what would you have done?’
‘Turned you out directly into the streets of Bath.’
I suppose I gaped at her, and she looked back at me, half smiling, half scowling. I wondered whether there might be any sailors in the streets of Bath, and how they were provided for soap. I wondered if Mrs Jebb, as well as Pullett, could be slightly mad, have a gap in her thatch, as they put it in Byblow Bottom. But I had received no such intimation from Mr Ferrars or his wife. And Mrs Jebb did not behave like a mad person. She was perfectly brisk and businesslike.
‘However,’ she went on equably, ‘as Pullett vouches for you, I expect we shall deal together well enough. I cannot be bothered with young people around me for a great deal of the time. You will keep to your own quarters, except when I invite you in here, or at meal times. You will run such errands for me as you have time for, along with your school duties. You must find your own way about Bath – my servants have enough to do without attending you through the streets.—You have been used to take care of yourself, I conclude?’
‘Indeed I have, ma’am.’
‘Humph, yes, here it says – Lady Hariot and that dolt Vexford,’ she muttered, reperusing the letter. ‘At some other time you shall tell me all about them. Not now. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, no classes at your school; you will of course accompany me to Divine Service in the morning. And in the afternoon you may as well plan your daily route to the establishment in Queen Square. It is no great distance. And I shall expect you to be well-behaved, polite and entirely truthful at all times.’
‘Of course, ma’am.’
‘Pullett always knows when someone is telling a lie,’ Mrs Jebb remarked, giving me an exceedingly sharp glance. For the first time I remembered about her arrest by the constables, and the affair of the packet of lace. Which party in that episode had spoken the truth?
It behoves me to get on to good terms with Pullett, I thought. For I was as used to lying as to breathing, and saw no benefit to be gained from discontinuing the practice.
‘Shall you accompany me to the school on Monday, ma’am, or shall I go there by myself ?’
‘Which would you prefer?’ she surprised me by saying.
I thought. ‘By myself, ma’am – if you do not think that would be improper?’
‘No, why? Mrs Haslam is expecting you; she has a letter from Elinor Ferrars. Of course you will have to find your own level in the place. I do not think you will receive much assistance from your cousin Nell; (if she is your cousin, that is). But I daresay your cousin Margaret may be friendly enough.’
Mrs Jebb gave a sniff.
‘That will be Miss Margaret Dashwood? Mrs Ferrars’ sister? She teaches at the school?’
Another sniff. ‘History and literature. Of course the poor thing hoped – when she came to Bath ten years ago – that she would soon secure a husband. But what man in the world ever married a history teacher? Let alone one as silly as Mag Dashwood. She has been at her last prayers for years.—Run to your room, now, child. You have tired me. I must rest before meeting my friends.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ I turned at the door to say, ‘I am very obliged to you for having me to live in your house, Mrs Jebb,’ and met her disconcerting regard.
‘Have you any idea who your father was, gal?’ she suddenly rapped out.
‘No, ma’am. Not the least in the world.’
‘Oh. Very well. That is all. You may go.’
Up in my room I found that Pullett had unpacked my modest belongings and arranged them neatly in cupboards and chests. Quite unused to such a service, I thanked her heartily and received in return a beaming smile, which completely transformed her thin hare’s face.
‘I daresay you’ll find it sad here, at the start, Miss, being used to the country as Missis tells you are,’ she said kindly (for the first thing I had done was to run to the window, open the casement and hang out. There was a view across city roofs to a handsome wooded hill – Beechen Cliff, I later learned – and far away, where the sun was setting in the distance, I could fancy I saw the hills of Somerset).
Pullett’s sympathy almost undid me. To me, Bath was a huge black ugly place. I had never conceived that a city could be so large. Byblow Bottom, Growly Head, Kinn Hall, Hoby, Triz and Lady Hariot all seemed unbearably distant, lost already in the past.
‘I come from a small place myself, Emborough. It took me a mortal time to get accustomed to all the houses and the paved streets, and all the folk everywhere,’ Pullett went on. ‘But you’ve a lucky colour, Miss Liza. I won’t say you’re certain of a smooth passage, for that beant so, but there’s allus likely to be one as loves you. So try not to fret, and if you’m low-hearted, and in need of a friendly word, why, come down to me and Thomas and Rachel in the kitchen, and we’ll try to cheer ye.’
‘But what will Mrs Jebb say?’
‘She’ll never know,’ said Pullett simply.
***
On Sunday morning, wearing a black stuff dress (too long, too loose) which had been discarded by Nell Ferrars, I accompanied Mrs Jebb to the Abbey and sat through what – after Dr Moultrie’s skimped offices at Othery – seemed like an interminable desert of prayers, chanting, music, more prayers and long periods of declamation. Once, Mrs Jebb had to prod me sharply because I had fallen asleep, exhausted after a long, sad and wakeful night listening to the hum and clatter of the town outside and the regular cry of the watch.
On the Abbey Green, after the service, I was made known to various of Mrs Jebb’s acquaintance, who were all elderly ladies in widows’ weeds, or aged gentlemen walking very lame with sticks, or pushed by attendants in Bath chairs.
To my surprise, Mrs Jebb introduced me as ‘Miss FitzWilliam’ to these people.
On the way home, as she was carried in her chair along Monmouth Street and I walked beside, I said,
‘Ma’am, I thought my name –’
‘Hush, be quiet,’ she said sharply.
And when we were back in the New King Street parlour, she told me, ‘Mr Ferrars and I have agreed to expand your name to FitzWilliam. Firstly, it sounds better.’
‘But why, ma’am? And what is se
condly?’
‘Never mind about that now. Just hold your peace and accept what your elders decide is best for you.—Now you had better take Pug for a walk. The way to Queen Square, where you will find Mrs Haslam’s school, is up Chapel Row. It will be as well for you to know how long the walk takes you, since you must be at school by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’
And so Mrs Jebb turned me loose in Bath, with Pug and my new name. I rambled around, at first dolefully enough, for it was a damp, misty and gloomy afternoon, but by degrees I became fascinated by the city, which was most majestically situated, up and down a steep hillside with many handsome houses. The streets, some of them in the form of circles or crescent shapes, were pleasing to the eye, and peopled with elegantly dressed strangers, sedan chairs and glossy carriages. There were arcades and stores, and a great market building (closed for the Sabbath) wholly unlike anything I had ever seen before. I discovered a few pleasant gardens, luminous at this season with fallen leaves. There was a wonderful bridge, which had shops and houses along it on both sides, and a rushing torrent below. And on the far side of this bridge a noble street led away into open country.
I wondered what Mr Bill and Mr Sam would make of this place. With their abiding passion for sounding cataracts and wild country, I concluded, they would not think highly of it. But they would enjoy the bridge and the river.
‘Bunch of hips ‘n’ haws, Missie?’ whined a beggar-girl at a street corner, proffering a dismal posy of a few berries made up with some dead beech leaves. I told her in Byblow Bottom language where she could put her posy, and received a look of startled respect. She had believed me to be a nob.
Pug began to whine – evidently he was not accustomed to such long promenades – and I retraced my steps to New King Street.
***
Next morning, tidily and correctly dressed, equipped with my umbrella, I presented myself at Mrs Haslam’s Seminary for Young Ladies in Queen Square.
What can I relate about the period of time I spent at this school? It was of some value. But by far the greater part of the information I acquired there was nowhere written down on the school syllabus. Lady Hariot had already acquainted me with the manners of good society. What I learned at the school was society’s hypocrisies, concealments, rancours and enmities. I learned how neat, sweet-voiced, trimly dressed young ladies are able to conceal in their bosoms the hearts of hoydens and the dispositions of street-girls. I learned how battle can be joined over the needles and thread-bobbins, how darts of malice and snobbery can pierce through the armour of muslin, lace and jaconet.
From the very beginning I understood how fortunate I was, in that I could escape from the compressed and hectic atmosphere of the school each evening and repair to the calm precincts of Mrs Jebb’s house. Of course the boarders and parlour boarders at the school heartily despised the day girls who went home at night (and who paid lower fees); taunts and gibes were exchanged between the two parties; the boarders were known as Queensers and the day girls (for some reason) as Pillihens. But, as well as this division, there were many, many exquisitely fine distinctions between the better-off and the worse-off pupils: at the top of the school scale were those whose parents paid the full fees, who attended the school for five or six years in order, it was assumed, that they should acquire enough ladylike accomplishments to equip them for matrimony – and also to keep them out of the way of their friends and families until it became time for them to be presented at Court, attend assemblies at Almack’s, endure the ordeal of a London Season, and hope to emerge from this with the necessary nuptial prize. Below them were those whose friends, for various reasons, paid reduced fees, either because they were acquaintances of Mrs Haslam, or taught at the school; below them came the ones who, like myself, were not considered eligible candidates for matrimony, and so must learn enough to prepare them for teaching others; and at the very bottom of this melancholy ladder were to be found a group who were paid for by public subscription or some charitable organization in Bath. They were despised by everybody, and, indeed, to some degree, served as handmaids to the elevated young ladies in the top levels.
Mrs Haslam, the founder of the school, had long since ceased to play any active part in its functioning. She appeared at daily prayers, a vague old creature, nodding and bemused, pink and powdered, much swathed in shawls. After that she was seen no more. The real administration of the establishment lay in the hands of her deputy, Miss Orrincourt, who interviewed me upon my first arrival there. She was a thin, dry, bracket-faced woman, who walked lame with a stick, and wore an enormous garnet brooch, holding together a great many folds of lace.
She scrutinized me with half-closed eyes, and said, ‘All the young ladies in this seminary, Miss FitzWilliam, are very genteel young ladies. I could never accept or keep here any that were not. The tone of my establishment is particularly high, and it is my intention to preserve this. Your hand – let me see it; ah; most unfortunate . . .’
Annoyance spurred me to retort: ‘I was born so, ma’am.’
‘I did not invite you to speak, Miss FitzWilliam.’ Each time she pronounced my name she laid a heavy accent on the Fitz, as if to remind me of its inauthenticity. ‘Ah – you appear to have been well educated in – ah – bookish concerns. We have now to see if you can adjust yourself to the ways of polite society – ah – gentlefolk.’
I said that I would try to do my best.
‘Scholastically – ah – you appear to be on a level with the top class. But they – ah – being, all of them, considerably older than you, that – ah – would not be satisfactory. You may therefore, for the moment, take your place with the young ladies of the middle group, under the authority of Miss Bush. Yes. Hmn. Miss Bush will tell you how to go on. The room at the end of the hallway. I wish you good-day, Miss FitzWilliam.’
As I was curtseying, about to leave, she called me back. ‘Your – ah – aunt, Mrs Montford Jebb – she is well?’
I said yes.
‘And your – ah – guardian, Colonel Brandon?’
I said that he was at present on his way back from India; I was not informed concerning his state of health.
‘Ah – yes. In this establishment, Miss FitzWilliam, it is not considered at all polite to – ah – discuss – or allude to – the connections of other students. To gossip is wholly unladylike.’
Later, I was to ponder this piece of direction. For in fact the case was exactly the converse. At any moment of liberty, when the girls were in the garden, or walking two by two to concerts, or between classes, or on the stairs, or in the hallways, the prime, the only topic of conversation was people’s family connections. Whose uncle the Duke was arriving to stay at the White Hart; whose aunt the Countess had rented a house in Paragon; whose parents were coming to take their daughter driving to Wells; whose dashing brother was betrothed to a West Indian heiress. So I supposed that what Miss Orrincourt really meant was that I should not talk about my connections.
Not that I had any intention of doing so.
My first encounter with Nell Ferrars was not propitious.
Mrs Jebb had told me that for its day pupils Mrs Haslam’s establishment did not supply luncheon and I must therefore take care to provide myself with my own noontide refreshment each day (from which I understood she did not wish to see me back in New King Street for this meal). On my first day Mrs Rachel the cook had furnished me with a pear and a piece of bread-and-butter, and I had betaken myself to the school garden, a largish pleasant area with a few flower-beds and some trampled gravel paths at the rear of the house. Here I had perched myself on a low wall bordering a rose-bed, while I munched my pear and sighed for the peace of Growly Head, when I was approached by a pair of young ladies. One of them, large, long-faced, fair and plain, I instantly guessed to be the daughter of Edward Ferrars; she was remarkably like him, but the features that made his countenance open and authoritative were too large and pronounced in hers
, and gave her a heavy, overbearing aspect. She was tall, like her mother, but had none of Cousin Elinor’s fine, worn distinction, evident always despite her shabby attire. Nell was far better dressed than her mother; I could guess at what cost to the latter.
‘You must be the new Pillihen – are you not? Eliza FitzWilliam,’ she announced, and then both she and her companion (a slender, elegantly dressed girl with very narrow hands and feet) exchanged a number of tittering, low-voiced witticisms concerned with my choice of site for a picnic. I answered yes, composedly, to her question, finished my pear and wiped my fingers on the square of butter-muslin in which Mrs Rachel had wrapped my luncheon. Then, standing up, I walked away to rinse my fingers in a small fountain beyond the rose-bed. This (I heard later) greatly disconcerted Miss Ferrars, who had expected me to ask some questions in return, which would have given her the satisfaction of snubbing me, by informing me that new pupils must not speak unless invited to do so.
Thereafter Nell took pains (when it lay within her power) to hold me up to ridicule among her cronies; my ignorance of dancing, of fine needlework, of most card games, of London gossip, of fashion, of nearly all the common topics of talk among my fellow-pupils, each in turn was sneered at and made fun of; and I passed several irksome and tedious months before acquiring sufficient proficiency in these areas for the mockery to die down.
Needless to say, this contemptuous usage spurred me on to exert myself, so as to pick up the necessary knowledge as speedily as I could. Furthermore, it soon became plain to me that Miss Ferrars was herself obliged to work hard – exceedingly hard – to curry favour with the set of well-to-do young ladies to whose company she aspired; being less well furnished than they in departments such as clothes, school materials, work-box, dancing shoes and the like, she must continually run errands for them, contrive to be in attendance at all times, and supply a regular feast of tattle, jokes and gossip.
I never grew to like Nell; she was too earnest a self-seeker to be likeable; but in the end I grew to feel sorry for her, since her great wish for popularity seemed to receive so scant a reward, and all these matters appeared so desperately important to her. I myself had few friends at Mrs Haslam’s, but this never dismayed me, because I so mightily preferred my own company to most that was offered.