The Miser's Sister

by Carola Dunn

  “It would have been nothing new to me, I assure you. Goodbye, Mr Vane.”

  Deaf to his pleading, she walked out.

  Feeling as if she had been relieved of a great load, Ruth almost skipped on the way back to Penderric Castle. It took several hours in that gloomy abode to reduce her to her usual state of silent endurance.

  She did not tell either Letty or Godfrey that she was no longer planning to marry the curate. Neither ever expressed the slightest interest in her affairs, and she was content now to have it that way.

  November passed with rain and icy winds. Letty came down with a chill and had to be nursed. She was at best a crotchety patient, but Ruth was glad of an excuse to stay out of Godfrey’s way. Whenever he saw her he cast malevolent looks in her direction, and several times shook his fist.

  It was growing more and more difficult to run the household. Previously Godfrey had given Ruth a weekly sum, which though meagre had allowed her with careful management to pay their bills. By the end of the first week in December, she had had nothing for a fortnight and more. The local tradesmen were beginning to grumble, and one or two had refused to deliver any more goods.

  One foggy evening, Ruth summoned up her reserves of courage and went to the library to tackle her brother. To her surprise, for he rarely left it, he was not there, nor could she find him elsewhere in the house. At last she consulted Tremaine, who rather thought his lordship and Will had gone off in the gig, he could not say whither.

  Ruth sat up late, but finally gave in and retired to bed before she heard them return.

  Godfrey did not emerge from his chamber until after noon, and then went straight to the library without a word to his sisters. Ruth soon followed him, determined to get the unpleasant business over as soon as she could. She found him seated at his desk as usual, languidly sharpening a quill with his penknife and looking like death.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Godfrey,” Ruth apologised. “You do not look at all well. Should you not be in bed?”

  He glared at her with glittering eyes. “Giving orders again, sister?” he snarled through clenched teeth.

  “Of course not,” she placated. “You know your own health best. Godfrey, I must have some money or we shall all starve. The butcher—”

  “It’s all your fault, bitch!” shrieked her brother and lunged at her with his knife.

  Ruth threw up her arms to protect herself The dull blade gashed the palm of her hand and spun from Godfrey’s loosened grip to clatter to the floor. Petrified, she watched him scrabble after it, then coming to her senses she turned and ran.

  There was no sign of pursuit. Outside the parlour she paused to catch her breath, then entered.

  “Letty,” she said quite calmly, “I have hurt my hand. Pray help me bind it up.”

  “Oh, Ruth, how clumsy of you. However did you do it? See, it is not very deep, I daresay it will heal soon.”

  Between them they contrived a bandage. The wound was indeed not serious, though painful.

  Ruth’s mind was clear as a bell. She had come to a decision and was determined to let nothing stand in her way, but she did not wish to frighten her sister.

  “Letty,” she began, “how should you like to go to London to live with Uncle Hadrick?”

  “Ooh!” squealed Lady Laetitia, “Can we really? But Godfrey will never give us the money to go. He has been saying so forever, and he grows more and more bad tempered, I vow. You are always vexing him, Ruth. Oh, do not say that he will let us go?”

  “My dearest, I do not mean to ask him. I am sorry to tell you that today our brother has forfeited every claim to my obedience or consideration, and he will have to learn to go on without us.”

  “You are on your high ropes again, Ruth, I can see. But I do not mind if we can go to Town. Only, who is to pay for the journey?”

  “You remember Mr Pardoe, who brought me home after... after I was in Plymouth? He is a friend of Sir John, and he told me when he left that he would be happy to escort us to our uncle’s house at any time. I shall write to him and to Sir John at once.”

  “Pray do. I will fetch ink and paper. Do you think Aunt Hadrick goes to many balls?”

  “I cannot say, my dear. I hope so for your sake, for I feel I should be sadly out of place at a grand assembly.”

  Provided with writing materials, Ruth began her letters. The one to her uncle was soon done, but she struggled for some time over Mr Pardoe’s. Eventually she was sufficiently satisfied to fold and seal the epistle. She had doggedly resisted the temptation to tell him of her dismissal of Walter Vane.

  The cold feeling at the pit of her stomach, caused by her brother’s attack, was being displaced by a sense of anticipation, of having taken control of her own fate. This was somewhat dampened when she realised that she could not possibly entrust her letters to any of the servants. She must walk to St Teath to see them safely dispatched.

  And St Teath was nearly halfway to Port Isaac, where Oliver’s good friends had been advised to expect her. To continue thither would not be much farther than to return home, and she would be able to feel herself quite safe there from Godfrey’s strange fury.

  That possibility was dismissed out of hand by Lady Laetitia who did not see any urgency in the matter.

  “What can you be thinking of, Ruth? Why should we walk eight or nine miles in the mud to stay in a poky cottage with people we don’t even know? You are quite run mad, I am sure!”

  Unwilling to disclose her brother’s terrifying actions, Ruth sighed and agreed. She thought Letty quite safe, as Godfrey had never displayed any animosity toward her. For herself, she would strive to keep out of his way and would certainly not speak to him of money, though they all should starve. She prayed Oliver might come quickly.

  To that end, she donned her shabby pelisse and worn jean boots and walked down to St Teath with the letters.

  For two days, Godfrey behaved in his normal, unsociable manner, and Ruth began to think she had acted prematurely.

  On the morning of the third day, wintry sunshine drew the sisters out to exercise in the overgrown shrubbery. They were returning to the house by way of the terrace at the rear when there was a crash behind them. Swinging round, they saw that one of the massive stone windowsills had fallen from the ruined wing of the castle.

  It had missed them so narrowly that Ruth, instantly suspicious, glanced up. She was almost certain she saw a pale face at a third floor window directly above them.

  Hurrying Letty into the house, she declared positively that she would not stay another moment to watch her home falling apart about her head.

  “Better a straw pallet in a cottage than a broken head,” she pointed out. “I am going to Port Isaac immediately, Letty, and you must come with me.”

  Letty was too frightened by their narrow escape to argue. Within half an hour they had packed their scanty belongings in a pair of band boxes and set out.

  Chapter 7

  Long before the sisters reached St Teath, Ruth was carrying both bandboxes, and Letty was complaining of weariness.

  “We should have asked Godfrey for the gig,” she said crossly. “I am surprised you did not think of it.”

  “Do you wish to return and ask him?” queried Ruth.

  Faced with retracing her steps and confronting a bad-tempered brother who might well refuse her request, Letty subsided. Ruth realised with dismay that she had been overly optimistic in expecting her sister to walk all the way. She must hope they might meet a farm cart that would give them a ride for a few miles.

  They passed through St Teath without seeing a soul, let alone a helpful carter. However, before they had walked far down the narrow, high-hedged lane to Port Isaac, they heard the rumble of wheels behind them.

  “Ho, my pretties!” shouted a jovial voice. “Hop up along and ride with me. ‘Tis a powerful steep hill for a pair o’ dainty wenches.”

  From the smell of his vehicle, the grinning carter had taken a load of fish to market. Letty wrinkled
her nose, but accepted a helping hand to climb up. Ruth would far rather have walked, only she could not leave her sister alone. She scrambled in and settled herself between a pair of brand new lobster pots.

  “Thank you,” she said. “We are going to visit a Mr Polgarth. Do you know him?”

  “Oh aye. Him and his hot air balloons and Crazy Auntie.”

  Ruth, who had heard all about Auntie from Oliver, was undismayed.

  “Ye’ll be relatives?”

  “No, we are just going to stay for a few days until a friend comes to fetch us.”

  “Come from Camelford, have ye? Well, ye must’ve, for that’s the only...” Taking his eyes from his huge horse, the carter scrutinised them. “T’ain’t, either,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Zo ye’ve finally up and left, little lady. Nay, don’t be afeard, I’ll not tell.”

  He turned back to guiding his horse, who seemed to know the way well enough. From time to time he could be heard to mutter such things as “zin and a shame”, “mad miser”, and “Trelawney’s curse.” Ruth took the latter to be a reference to the first earl’s part in hanging the Cornish hero after the Monmouth Rebellion.

  Letty soon recovered from her unwonted exertions and began to grumble, sotto voce, about the smell, which seemed indeed to grow overpowering. She suggested that they resume their walk, but Ruth was anxious not to offend the carter who had recognised them.

  “You have made your bed, now you must lie in it,” she whispered sharply.

  “It’s none of my making,” retorted Letty. Fortunately, at that moment they rounded a bend and below them spread the grey slate roofs of Port Isaac and the stormy green sea. Absorbed in the sight, Letty dropped her quarrel.

  Soon they pulled into the courtyard of the Scrimshaw Inn. The carter, it appeared, was the son of mine host, a spry old fellow with crabapple cheeks.

  “Gave these young women a ride from Camelford, Pa,” he announced, with a heavy wink at Ruth. “Boy! Show the way to Auntie’s, and mind you’m polite!”

  “Thank you very much,” said Ruth gratefully. He winked again with a conspiratorial grin, and she managed a creditable wink in return, which sent him into guffaws.

  As she turned to follow Letty and the boy, Ruth heard him say to Pa, “She’m a proper lady, the little brown un.”

  “How can you be so familiar with an odious yokel!” hissed Letty as they hurried after the urchin.

  Ruth did not trouble to answer, and Letty was soon too busy wondering at the maze of Port Isaac to say more. They were breathless when they drew up before a neat, whitewashed cottage. Their guide banged heartily on the door, and then dashed off the way they had just come. Before Ruth had time to do more than wish she had been able to give him a penny, the door opened.

  A buxom maid in a white cap and apron scrutinised them. She was evidently about to ask their business, when over her shoulder appeared an elderly face, spectacled and crowned with thick grey braids.

  “You’re come at last!” cried Auntie, delighted. “Well, Martha, move aside and let them in, girl. My dear children, welcome.”

  She hugged and kissed the bewildered and overwhelmed sisters.

  “You know who we are then, ma’am?” asked Ruth shyly.

  “Of course, my dear, of course. A certain gentleman, who shall be nameless, told me all about you. And that same gentleman intimated that you might wish to remain incognito, so I have been at some pains to think of suitable aliases. You, my dear, shall be Miss Priscilla Cholmondsley-Smythe, and your sister, Miss Arabella. Is not that clever?”

  “It is indeed, ma’am...”

  “Auntie, Auntie, pray call me Auntie!”

  “Those are excellent names, Auntie.” Ruth’s shyness had by now been overcome by amusement. Letty, meanwhile, had seated herself by the window and was looking out sulkily into Dolphin Street. “Only do you not think,” suggested Ruth, “that we should perhaps have less aristocratic aliases? I should happily call myself Mary Smith.”

  “That would never do,” said Auntie decidedly. “There is nothing, simply nothing, so liable to arouse suspicion as a person named plain Smith. I take your point though, my dear. Here, I have a list of possibilities. Pray peruse it and make your choice.”

  Auntie had apparently discarded a score of names before settling on Priscilla Cholmondsley-Smythe. Ignoring her sister’s crotchets, Ruth called her over to help choose. Soon they were giggling over such gems as Persephone Arbuthnot and Ekaterina Dachikoff.

  “In case you should wish to be thought foreign,” explained Auntie, not in the least offended.

  Letty rather fancied herself as Lavinia Streathamstead, but in the end Ruth prevailed and they were newly christened ‘Jane and Louisa Bailey’.

  “Very good,” Auntie approved. “A step above Mary Smith yet not likely to draw attention. We will tell people you are my nieces. I am always happy to discover new nieces, you know.”

  Martha was heard to snort in the kitchen.

  By the time Bob Polgarth returned from the barn he rented to house his balloon, ‘Jane’ and ‘Louisa’ had long been settled in his chamber. Letty was reconciled to her strange hostess, whose humble abode she was honouring with her presence. Ruth felt some qualms about having displaced their host, and wondered if he would be very angry. She apologised as soon as the introductions had been made.

  “Pleasure to help a friend of Oliver’s,” he muttered, his face scarlet, and dashed into the kitchen to wash for dinner.

  The meal was a simple one, consisting of a pea soup, grilled mackerel, lamb chops with mint sauce, and apples, with plenty of fresh baked bread. To Ruth and Letty, it seemed a veritable feast, used as they were to the skimpiest of fare, and badly cooked at that. The company was an equally great improvement, as even Letty later acknowledged.

  Auntie, always cheerful, continually confused their new names, but Ruth suspected that she would have done the same with the originals. Far from asking inquisitive questions, she ignored the unexplained reasons for their arrival, and entertained them with a caustic commentary on the ways of Cornish fisherfolk.

  “However,” she admitted with a sigh, “I am very fond of all of them.”

  Bob was silent until Ruth tactfully introduced the subject dearest to his heart. Both young ladies found the idea of flying through the air fascinating. Letty lost interest when their host entered upon technical matters, but Ruth, remembering Oliver’s penchant for engineering, eagerly absorbed the details and requested elucidation. In fact, she found she had a genuine interest in the subject, which Mr Polgarth was unable to satisfy. He could describe the apparatus by which inflammable gas was to be produced to fill his balloon, but was ignorant of the theories behind it.

  “Daresay Oliver knows,” he told her, and she resolved to find an opportunity to ask that gentleman.

  The spring flight in which the Pardoes were investing was to be an attempt to fly from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Bob explained that he actually intended to ascend from the summit of Brown Willy, which was both closer to home and higher.

  “Also,” he added, “there is less chance of being swept out to sea, as happened to Zambeccari in Bologna in ‘03. If there is any mishap we shall come to earth on the moor, an ideal place to land, as it has no trees to entangle the balloon.”

  “It sounds monstrous dangerous,” said Letty with a shudder.

  “Who will make the journey with you?” asked Ruth.

  “Oliver insisted on coming as the price of his investment. He does not believe in the future of balloons as transportation, but he viewed Mr Sadler’s ascent in London last year and is anxious to try it for himself.”

  Ruth was silent. It sounded like a very hazardous undertaking.

  * * * *

  By the evening of their third day in Port Isaac, Letty was feeling decidedly offended that Godfrey had apparently not set up a search for them. Ruth was beginning to worry that Oliver had not yet arrived.

  All sorts of possibilities flitted through her head
. The letter might not have reached him. Perhaps he was not at home when it arrived. Had her uncle refused to give them a home? Could it be, horrid thought, that Oliver no longer wished to come to her aid? Worst of all, perhaps he had set out and had met with some dreadful accident.

  She did not confide her fears to Letty, trying as usual to protect her sister from distress. However, she mentioned some of her thoughts to Auntie, in the course of apologising for their prolonged stay. She had already grown very fond of the old lady, but besides being tiny, the household was not oversupplied with money, and she could not help but feel that they were imposing on their kind hosts.

  Auntie brushed aside her apologies and her worries.

  “The mail is always delivered on time,” she declared, firmly if over-optimistically. “Remember, child, that it is a good two hundred miles from London to Launceston, and thirty more to Port Isaac. I daresay your sweetheart will spend tonight in Launceston and be here on the morrow.”

  Ruth blushed and disclaimed.

  However, at least part of this speech was proven correct, for the next day at noon there was a hammering at the door, which generally betokened the arrival of the boy from the Scrimshaw Inn, and in stepped Oliver.

  Even as he bowed over Auntie’s hand and kissed the cheek she proffered, his eyes sought Ruth’s face. She was standing with her back to the window, and he was unable to make out her expression.

  “My lady... I hope... I am sorry...” he began, with an unwonted lack of assurance.

  “No ladies here,” scolded Auntie, interrupting. “Permit me to present you to my nieces, Miss Louisa Bailey and Miss Jane Bailey. Oh dear, now should it be the other way about?”

  “I am Louisa,” corrected Letty as the others laughed. Jane was far too common a name for her. She pushed forward past Ruth. “How do you do, Mr Pardoe. How delightful to see you again. When shall we go to London?”