Last Miss Phillips

by Briggs, Laura

  The Evertons were exactly the sort of people Hetta Harwick imagined them. Not thoroughly vulgar, but without the reserve of the genteel birthright, eager for connections, yet eager to please their own tastes to the point of an enthusiasm which rebuffed many of the shabbier nobility who might have been inclined to accept them on limited terms.

  Mrs. Everton was a plump, well-dressed figure who preferred heavy quantities of lace and the very latest in bonnets, her voice, after much practice, betraying only the slightest trace of an accent from the North. Mr. Everton, hearty and booming in voice and manner, was carefully removed from his former trade in fabrics and looms, a red-faced, bewhiskered figure who kept his moustache impeccable and his kidskin gloves in pristine condition.

  They were young, lively, and somewhat international in experience and tastes; given to music and sport in great quantities, and to parties in general. It was no slip in propriety, perhaps, that Mrs. Everton called so quickly upon Miss Harwick upon hearing that a London heiress was lately returned to the land of her father. It was a slight slip, although permissible, that she was so open in her admiration for the lady’s charms after a single morning’s acquaintance.

  “I shall invite her to our party, I am certain of it,” she declared to her husband. It was the morning afterwards, the two lingering over their breakfast of smoked kippers and marmalade toast. “You shall be as fond of her as I am afterwards, for she is such an accomplished little thing! I could scarce contain myself when she told me that she lived but a stone’s throw from the very place in Munich where our walking tour was conducted–you remember–”

  “I do, of course, my dear,” answered Mr. Everton, whose joviality was somewhat dampened in the first trials of morning wakefulness. “By all means, invite her. It will be pleasant to talk of Germany again with someone who appreciates it with more than the proper gentleman traveler’s sneer.”

  “Herbert! How can you say such a thing?” giggled his wife. “You know how many of our friends are well-traveled–why, the Spencers spent a month altogether in Marseilles and Mr. Spencer was as enthusiastic as anything–” Her husband's equally good-natured laugh put an end to his wife’s protests as proof that he–beyond any real truth which might be in such a statement–was merely teasing her.

  “Speaking of which, we must see about a better instrument for the music room,“ he said. “Your pianoforte will not do at all for a true musician’s performance. I would have spoken to Seamus already about the matter, but you must oversee the furniture being rearranged, of course.”

  “The harp must have a good corner...and the effect of a stage before the windows would be grander than anything else we might contrive.”

  The Evertons’ party on the eighteenth was a musical affair, an elegant soiree which anticipated much entertainment and was hopeful of more than a few esteemed guests, including whispers of a Countess Nicy, recently fallen into genteel poverty. Among the actual performances-to-be the Evertons could boast of a capital harpist, a pianist from the Music Conservatory at Cologne, and a true composer whose works had lately taken hold in England and created whispers of an opera in the works.

  This last guest mentioned was Magner Leopold Scheimann, an acquaintance of the Evertons from their brief foray across Europe. Having dined with them more than once at the same breakfast table in Versailles and exchanged correspondence with him upon two occasions, they considered him sufficiently acquainted to attend their dinner party. Since the gentleman had the good fortune–in their estimation–of being in London for a musical engagement, Mrs. Everton promptly extended an invitation to his host and all guests housed beneath his roof upon word of the eminent composer’s arrival.

  “We must have a cello, if possible. Perhaps a flute–although I suppose a horn might seem too common in such a setting,” reflected Mrs. Everton.

  “If you send a card to Lady Lufton, you must remember to include her mother, who is their guest this Season,” said Mr. Everton. “She is quite deaf, I have heard; but her husband was a duke and it does not do to forget these things.”

  “Oh, I should invite her at any rate,” answered his wife, in a careless tone. “The Luftons have asked us to dine, so it is only polite. And to think of having a duchess in our drawing room does me more good than anything. Anything except an acceptance from the countess. ”

  The cards were sent out by the twelfth; the responses were fewer than hoped for, but pleasing nonetheless for Mrs. Everton, who took special notice of those accepted by premiere entertainment–the soprano and composer both accepted–and those accepted by nobler houses. Regrettably, the countess declined, but Mrs. Everton secured her duchess when the reply was received from the Lufton household.

  As Mrs. John Hobbins feared, an invitation was delivered to her townhouse upon that same day, presented to her by her footman in the drawing room.

  “Well, it has come at last,” she sighed, after surveying it for a moment. The audience addressed by this remark, her sister Kitty, was forced to pause in the midst of hearing her nieces recite their Latin verbs. “I suppose there shall be nothing to do but accept it. I am quite against it, but I am positive that John will hear of nothing but our attending.”

  “Perhaps he shall change his mind,” ventured Kitty. “If you dislike them so, is it not kinder to refuse? Perhaps they ask you only out of obligation and would not wish to force it, let us say.”

  “They think nothing of the kind,” said Louisa. “This is all a matter of men’s work and politics, I daresay; it prevents us from avoiding these tiresome engagements where one is among people one cannot respect nor admire. But I shall make the best of it, I suppose. I shall wear my wine-colored satin for the occasion.”

  Kitty had resumed her concentration on the Latin grammar book as her sister’s child lisped her way through the progression of caveat, supposing Louisa’s remarks at an end. She felt a twinge of pity for the Evertons, assuming no one invited to their party wished to attend but did so out of an obligation to their rising fortunes.

  “I see they have had the foresight to include you in the invitation, Kitty,” said Louisa. “See, here–it says, ‘and their guest’. They mean you, of course; so they have extended the invitation to you as well.”

  “To me?” repeated Kitty. “Oh, but I cannot go, Louisa. Really, I must beg off. For I have nothing suitable and would make a dull companion for anyone that evening.”

  “You shall not escape it if I must endure it,” said Louisa, indignantly. “I shall not be made to sit alone in the Evertons’s drawing room as John moves about with the only people of rank and distinction who are all sure to be men, as you know. No, if I am to go, you must come as well, for it shall give me someone to converse with while that tiresome Mrs. Everton mills about with her feathers.”

  Kitty did not object to the Evertons, who were nothing more than harmless people longing for a place in society; but she did object to appearing before them in her evening dress from last season, since she had ceased to include herself in the number for balls and parties during most of their London visit. Her dresses did well enough when at Enderly, of course, where the highest citizen of rank besides her brother-in-law was an unmarried squire and the highest woman the rather plain and wan vicar’s wife. No one there expected anything of her, for she was merely Mrs. John Hobbins’s unmarried sister.

  “Your spotted silk is not too bad. I shall lower the neckline and put tucks in the sleeves–that will improve it,” said Louisa. “We shall trim it with some of those pearl beads I had been saving for embroidering a handbag.”

  “But surely it would be better if I stayed with the children. Little George still has his cold, you know, and the nurse’s hands are quite full with the nursery so unruly and the smoky fire in the grate–”

  “I’ll not hear another word of protest, Kitty,” said Louisa. “You are invited and you will go. I shall not have it said that my sister has not the grace to accept an invitation from even those beneath her without a sufficient excuse. John
would not hear of it either, so there is an end to the matter.” She took up her sewing again with a calm hand, although the firmness of her stitches proved she was working within her mind to form arguments against further protest, rather than have Kitty escape the supposed trials of the Evertons’s party.

  Kitty did not protest again, however; although she had little heart for the remaining verbs in the Latin lesson, and still less so for the game of jacks which her nephew entreated her to play with him. In silent unhappiness, she submitted to the alterations of her blue spotted silk, the pearl beads liberally bestowed upon the bodice and the tucks in the waist attempting to hide her unfashionable skirt length.

  Louisa, pleased with the arrangements, made a generous present of a headdress trimmed with silver feathers and blue silk flowers, which she had not worn more than two occasions in her life, she declared.

  *****

  Kitty’s unhappiness over the invitation and the altered blue silk was not lessened by her appearance at the party. The Evertons’s large drawing room was not quite enough space for comfort for the number of guests invited, even with its doors open to the adjoining music room, where Mrs. Everton had contrived a sort of low platform or stage for supporting a small but expensive piano and a splendid harp.

  But the music was a pleasure in itself; and that was the point of Kitty’s forgetting about her self-consciousness and her lack of conversation. From her seat, she listened entranced to the high, clear voice of a soprano accompanied by the young pianist. Leonore’s aria from Fidelio, familiar to Kitty’s ears from her own songbook. The sound of a sob in the woman’s voice, disturbing the calm of her faithful declaration–was it not wonderful how she could create such feeling with a mere tremble of a chord, a vibration tempering the strength of her notes? A different interpretation than the saint-like Leonore upon the stage, who suffered no human doubt as she waited for Divine mercy.

  The applause from Kitty’s hands would have been the loudest if not for her gloves, for several of the prominently positioned guests would have preferred something less tiresome than Beethoven’s rather threadbare opera. Kitty had not the luxury of concerts of London’s gayest, which gave her reason to love the selection without comparison to the newest and brightest.

  She fell quiet with the sound of the pianist’s next selection, a livelier piece from Rossini which her mind momentarily associated with another, more obscure piece of music in her own possession. Such a piece she had played how many times? Over and over in the mornings, her hands flew over the keys, thundering the wrong chord or note here and there. Her fingers cold from the damp fire in the grate, the sound of her mother’s voice, shrill and cross, as she called below from the sick chamber.

  But such reflections did not do for this moment. She pressed her fingers together, ending the sensation of ivory keys beneath. The forgotten tune had grown older and unpopular, stored away with the faded music sheets in the townhouse drawing room.

  She had not brought her music to Enderly, the exception being a few new pieces purchased for her by a relative a month or so before her removal from the house. The rest–the ones she had purchased in her youth, the ones which her mother had given over to her in the previous years–remained in the chest in the drawing room. They were hers; and despite Louisa’s complaints over such a pretty penny’s worth going to waste, they remained there.

  The Rossini air had ceased to resemble the past in the second half of the composition, allowing Kitty to enjoy it more freely. The earnest young figure, so pale and gangly behind the instrument’s polished wood surface, did not look like a creature capable of producing such sounds with ease, his expression of fearful concentration suggesting he was aware that more than one pair of eyes was upon him. She felt for him in that moment with the sympathy of one who had once known the dread of public performance, although without an equal standard of artistry to magnify her discomfort.

  His performance was subject also to the momentary notice of his host and hostess, who were standing near the drawing room doorway with one of the guests of honor, the German composer of recent arrival.

  “Blakely is lively enough at the keys, eh, Magner?” said Mr. Everton. “Your own students are better, I wager–but for one come late to the table, he’s remarkably good.”

  For the past few days, the Evertons had improved their acquaintance with said composer, reaching intimate terms of address after various reminiscences on their travel experience and their mutual love of music. Perhaps it was the strangeness of being in a new city, or the relief of a familiar face even if it be a relative stranger, that persuaded him to acquiesce to such an informal title in so little time.

  The composer eyed the young man in question with an inscrutable gaze. “He is not bad,” he answered. “Merely untrained. His instructors will cure him of his eagerness and teach him patience.” His accent still bore traces of his native Germany, along with several more countries of long sojourn, his tone deep and almost brusque to the point of seeming rude at times.

  “Oh, Mr. Scheimann, you would crush his passion if you would do such a thing!” protested Mrs. Everton in a playful scolding. “Is it not his enthusiasm which makes his music seem alive?”

  “It is what makes him play so hastily, Madam,” answered Magner, with only a hint of a smile, “and makes him treat one note the same as another.” As he spoke, his gaze wandered from the young pianist to the glass of port in his fingers, marked by a musician’s calluses as they extended forth from thick, muscular hands.

  He was a seasoned man, Magner Scheimann, with a strong jaw, long and heavy features, and a dominant nose and brow seeming rough-chiseled from stone and hammer’s blow. An aspect of fierce concentration breaking occasionally beneath a surface emotionless and inscrutable in its survey of others. His dark hair was a heavy shock untamed despite the evident care given to his evening clothes.

  Women claimed they found him frightening, no doubt believing that the temperament of all foreign composers was one of passion and anger; while men merely believed him to be somewhat cold, proud, and without the proper manners and sophistication of a gentleman.

  “I shall introduce you to Blakely, nonetheless, if you like,” said Mr. Everton. “He would be pleased to meet a composer of your repute and as eager as anything, I daresay, to know more about your opera.”

  The opera was a work in progress; for Scheimann had been displeased with its rather simple Paris performance, despite its popularity with its European audience. For its London debut–should the Theatre Royal keep the desired engagement–he pictured alterations which would bring it to an altogether different height in music.

  “The opera is yet imperfect,” repeated Scheimann. “It is but an idea in my head and little upon paper. Unless I find a quiet place to finish it–and the theater is willing to engage it.”

  “That would be no trouble at all,” said Mrs. Everton. “There is always the Theatre Royal, that is where everyone goes who wishes to see a good opera.”

  “There is more to the business than merely a theater in which to perform, my dear,” said Mr. Everton, who was wiser on the subject than his wife. “As to a quiet place,” he said, turning to their guest, “I should engage a set of rooms near Drury or Haymarket if I were you. There is a place I know of which is respectable enough–or if you prefer something more hospitable, I have–”

  “There is our place in the country,” said Mrs. Everton, eagerly anticipating her husband’s next thought. “There is a cottage there which is the quietest place I have ever laid eyes upon–it would do perfectly for sitting with pen and paper and no one would trouble you at all. We could have Betsy and Tom from the house to wait upon you and have the pianoforte from the parlor brought down–”

  “Thank you, Madam,” interrupted the composer, “but I could not think of imposing upon you in such a manner. There are rooms enough in London; your husband’s kind suggestion shall be enough for me.” He concluded this statement with a polite bow which flattered his hostess deeply,
although the rare glimpse of a true smile appearing upon his face, ever so fleeting, was a still-greater compliment than Mrs. Everton realized.

  “Young Blakely is upon the closing of his Rossini, I believe,” said his host, with an ear inclined in the direction of the performance. “Come, I shall introduce you.” He led the way, albeit slowly, through the dense crowd of guests congregating behind the drawing room sofas and chairs.

  Their movement was a ripple in the tide of observers, less noticeable when the final notes thundered forth from young Blakely’s keys to the response of admiring applause. The pianist rose from his seat–several guests resumed circulating at this momentary end to the musical performance–and from her seat, Kitty Phillips observed a woman across the way whose presence had been obscured until now by her fellow guests. A golden-haired figure in a gown of russet-colored satin, creamy skin accented by a gold bracelet and pearl droplet earrings. Her graceful aspect and sculpted features were familiar at once to Kitty’s eye as a companion of former years.

  Miss Hetta Harwick seemed untouched by time in comparison to herself; a thought which surprised her briefly. There were marks of maturity in Hetta’s figure and face, but it was merely the effect of replacing the uncertainty of girlhood with an assuredness of sophisticated gentlewoman.

  Mrs. Fitzwilliam would be disappointed, she could not help thinking, picturing the elderly woman’s astonishment if she could see how little changed the spoiled daughter of Charles Harwick appeared upon her reappearance in the society of a London drawing room.

  She turned away before the object of her reflection could notice her, for it was unlikely that Miss Harwick would recognize her in turn and renew their acquaintance. They had scarcely known each other before; and there was little recognizable evidence of her sixteen year-old self left in her features.

  She would have walked about for a moment, perhaps changed to a more favorable chair had not the hand of another guest upon her arm detained her as she moved to leave.