The Widow of Larkspur Inn

by Lawana Blackwell

Jensen shook his head. “There are legions of used clothing shops on Petticoat Lane if madam wishes to sell some garments, and she would no doubt fetch a better price than what Mrs. Pankhurst would offer. But it shouldn’t be necessary.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “May I speak plainly, Mrs. Hollis?”

  “Of course,” Julia answered, still not quite sure what to make of this new side of Jensen she was seeing. Motioning toward the nearest adjacent chair, she said, “Please … have a seat.”

  The butler stared at her as if she’d asked him to perform a ballet upon the tea table. “That would not be proper, madam.”

  “And was it proper for you to dismiss Mrs. Pankhurst?” Julia couldn’t resist asking with an innocent lift of her brows.

  Jensen’s face flushed, but nevertheless he lowered himself gingerly onto the edge of the chair cushion, as if it were a bed of nails. Clearing his throat, he said, “I am quite fond of reading periodicals, Mrs. Hollis. And I have noticed an interesting trend of late.”

  He stretched out to hand her a folded piece of paper from his right coat pocket. “From the February issue of The New Monthly Magazine,” he explained as she opened up the paper.

  Julia’s eyes quickly scanned the printed page—it looked to be a continuation of an article having to do with bird-watching on the Isle of Saint Agnes.

  “The top right corner,” Jensen said before Julia could raise a question.

  She looked—it was an advertisement listing all of the amenities of a particular lodging house at Weymouth Beach. “That’s very nice,” Julia told him, lowering the page. “But why are you showing it to me?”

  “I often see advertisements such as this. But they’re almost exclusively for the tourist cities, such as Weymouth and Brighton, and then, primarily seasonal rentals. Why doesn’t madam consider turning her coaching inn into a lodging house?”

  “A lodging house?” Julia shook her head. “But from what I’ve been told, Gresham is a dairying village—not a tourist city by any stretch of the imagination.”

  “Exactly. I’ve been to Weymouth, Mrs. Hollis, on holiday with my brother’s family. And while it was a pleasant diversion, I would not care to take up permanent residence in such a transient atmosphere.”

  The idea of staid, somber Jensen splashing in the waves flitted across Julia’s imagination, and she found herself struggling to keep back a smile. Jensen seemed to read her mind, for he lifted his chin a fraction.

  “I do not care for sand in my shoes and clothing, Mrs. Hollis. I allowed the younger ones to take on the beach.”

  Suitably chastened, Julia nodded.

  “One would have to compose the advertisements with permanent lodgers in mind,” the butler continued, as if no break in the flow of conversation had occurred.

  “But who would want to take up permanent residence at a lodging house? Oh, I know there are hundreds in London, but in a dairy village?”

  “People of advanced age, Mrs. Hollis, for the most part. Those weary of living in congested, noisy cities, but who do not care to take on the responsibilities of a house and servants in the country. Those who are loathe to be dependent upon their families but are too well off for the almshouses. As one ages, one is willing to pay a premium for peace. And Gresham is a pleasant place, Mrs. Hollis. Green and quaint.”

  “You mean … you’ve been there?”

  “I have.” His expression became grim. “I served as Dr. Hollis’s valet when he visited there two years ago. Madam was in Brighton with the children.”

  “But he said he had surgeries to perform. Why did he go to Gresham?”

  Taking a deep breath, the butler explained that his master had wanted to inspect the Larkspur Inn before offering it as payment for some of his debts. “He was concerned that the bankers would take advantage of his desperation and decline to offer the full value of the inn. As it turned out, the bank declined any interest whatsoever.”

  And so he sent us off on holiday beforehand so I wouldn’t find out about his debts, Julia thought. What a wretched secret life her husband had led! But she reminded herself abruptly that, with her family’s future at stake, this was not the time to brood over Philip’s painful betrayal.

  “This coaching inn,” she asked Jensen, “what kind of shape is it in?”

  “It is structurally sound, in spite of its two-hundred years. Ethan Banning added water closets and lavatories to each floor only a year before his passing away. There are cupboards of linens and cookery too … almost everything needed to set up housekeeping.”

  Julia mulled over Jensen’s suggestion. To be able to stay at home with the children would be the most wonderful blessing imaginable. But what did she know about managing a lodging house … or any other business? She had never even managed her own household.

  “It sounds so … risky,” she finally said, “and with the children’s livelihood at stake, I don’t know if I dare.”

  “And what would madam be risking?” Jensen pressed. “The price of some advertisements? You already own the building and furnishings. Put them to good use.”

  “But I’ve never tried to manage a business before.”

  “No one was ever born having managed a business, Mrs. Hollis. Madam could learn.”

  I could learn, she echoed silently, but then remembered the dismal reality of their poverty. She shook her head and told him in a flat voice, “I shall have to find a position as soon as possible, Jensen, or we’ll starve. Fiona will be with us, but she cannot possibly transform the inn into a lodging house by herself. Not with it having sat idle for eight years.”

  Without a word, Jensen shifted to his right so that he could take something from his left pocket. He stood briefly to give her another paper, then resumed his chair. “Another advertisement?” Julia asked as she unfolded the paper, but then stared at a bank cheque written for one hundred pounds. She looked at the neatly scripted signature at the bottom—Lawford Jensen—and thought, absurdly, considering the circumstances, I never even considered that he had any other name but “Jensen.”

  “I cannot accept this,” she said, holding the cheque out toward him. “But you’ll never know how much it means to me that you would offer it.”

  As he sat there before her, the butler’s features settled into their usual calm. “Then consider it a loan, Mrs. Hollis. It was a legacy bequeathed to me by Mr. George Hollis, Dr. Hollis’s uncle—I was his butler for some years before Dr. Hollis moved into this house. I would suggest madam use it to bring the six guest chambers up to a standard that lodgers of means will expect. Wallpapering and such. And when madam’s establishment has been operating profitably for some time, I will look forward to being repaid.”

  She didn’t know what to think. As casual as Jensen was about the money, it was likely his security for the years when he could no longer perform his duties. What if she failed? But then the children’s faces came to her mind. You can’t even think about failure, she told herself. To Jensen, she said, “You’re that certain I can do this?”

  “I am, Mrs. Hollis.”

  “And people will want to live there?”

  “I would not be investing a hundred pounds if I did not think so.”

  For the first time in at least a decade, Julia found herself smiling at the butler. And for the first time ever, he smiled back. “Why are you doing this for me?” she asked.

  Jensen’s brown eyes took on a suspicious liquid sheen. He focused them at something just over her shoulder for a second, then back at her. “I was aware that Dr. Hollis was throwing away money at the card tables, Mrs. Hollis. But never did I imagine that things would come to this. He commanded such imposing wages from the hospital.”

  “What happened wasn’t your fault, Jensen.”

  “But perhaps if I had warned you …”

  Now the smile that Julia gave him was a bleak one. “I would have approached my husband about it, yes, and he would have assured me that you were overreacting.” She could picture them together
now, Philip’s taking her chin gently between his fingers and joking about what a worrier his butler was. In the end, they both would have laughed, and then Philip would have changed the subject to some humorous observation he’d made about one of the administrators at Saint Thomas’s.

  “And I would have believed him,” she added.

  The butler let out a long sigh. “Thank you for being so generous with your assurances, Mrs. Hollis—however ill-deserved on my part.” His face then took on a cautious expression. “If I may be so bold to add, madam, I do not believe Dr. Hollis intended to inflict such hardship on his family. He was as beguiled by the cards as the drunkard is by his gin. That was his great weakness.”

  “I know that now,” Julia sighed. “And mine was blindly trusting that all was as it should be.” She looked down at the cheque in her hand again. “Jensen … if this is because you feel you have to atone for anything—”

  The butler held up a hand. “I have a tendency to be judgmental where people are concerned, Mrs. Hollis. You were correct in pointing out that I’ve wronged you from the beginning. Perhaps it is atonement I am seeking, but it feels … well, rewarding, to do this for you and the children.”

  “Truly … I don’t know what to say.”

  “It is not required of you to say anything, Mrs. Hollis. Just put it to good use. And if I may make another suggestion … post the advertisements as soon as possible. Newspapers in the cities would provide the most immediate publication. I can procure a list from the reading library if madam so desires.”

  With a nod toward the clock, Jensen made an abrupt change of subject. “Is it not time for the children’s lunch recess?”

  “Yes,” Julia said, rising from her chair. The butler immediately got to his feet as well. But instead of leaving the room, Julia took two steps over to Jensen and put her arms around him. He stood there, rigid as a gatepost during the embrace, but when she took a step backward, he looked pleased.

  “You have given me and my children new hope for the future, Jensen,” Julia told him. “From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”

  “Not at all, madam.”

  “And if you would ever care to move to Gresham, you’ve a place to live. Always.”

  “Very kind of you.” The butler’s eyes took on a sheen again just before he turned toward the door. “I should make certain the collier delivered the correct order.”

  Julia smiled at his retreating back. “Yes, you should do that.”

  Chapter 5

  Julia turned her head to take another look out of the hired coach’s window on her right side. The passing north Shropshire farmland was blanketed by a morning haze, broken occasionally by a dense hedgerow or black-and-white half-timbered farm building. A pleasant odor of damp earth permeated the air. Over the hum of wheels and dull thuds of horses’ hooves against the macadamized road surface, she thought she could hear a faint lowing of cattle, no doubt heading from a barn into the fields.

  She settled back into her seat and looked around at her fellow passengers. They could have made the journey from London in one day, but Jensen had advised against it.

  “It would be best to arrive in Gresham in the morning,” he’d said. “You will need several hours to ready the house for sleeping. Besides, the children will require rest after seven hours on the train.”

  Since leaving the inn at Shrewsbury this morning, the children and Fiona had lapsed into a contemplative silence, no doubt wondering about the life that lay ahead. Julia breathed another prayer of thanks for the way her children seemed to accept moving to a new home. Only Aleda had shed some tears as the day drew closer, but even she began to show some interest as she helped Frances pack her things.

  Now Julia’s petition to God was that He would make her capable of running the Larkspur Inn. The ambitious plan Jensen had given her would take a great deal of confidence, something of which she found herself woefully lacking. But you know how to make people feel at home, an inner voice comforted. Surely that’s more important than any business experience.

  “Why, I do believe I see a hill in the distance,” Fiona said, staring out of the window on the left side. “Could even be a mountain.”

  “We must be nearing Gresham.” An anxious chill ran through Julia at the thought. “That has to be the Anwyl you’re seeing.”

  “The Anwyl, ma’am?”

  Julia leaned over Grace, who was seated between them, and peered through the window herself. In the northwest rose a stout brownish green hill of some five hundred feet. “From an old Celtic word for ‘beloved’ … according to Jensen. The cheese factory uses its picture as a trademark.”

  “Of course! Anwyl Mountain Savory Cheeses. Why, Mrs. Capshaw wouldn’t tolerate any other brand in her kitchen.”

  “Do you think we’ll be allowed to hike it?” Philip, seated across from Fiona, asked his mother after taking a look himself. The boy wore a splint and bandage on his left finger, souvenirs from his latest cricket match. “I’ve never hiked before.”

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” Julia answered, relieved to hear some excitement in his voice. “Wouldn’t it make a lovely picnic?”

  Grace nodded absently from beside her, though it was obvious she hadn’t paid attention. In her lap she held a tin bucket with Cooper’s Snowy-white Lard stenciled on the side. The girl had snatched a sparrow from the jaws of the neighbor’s cat—but not soon enough to prevent damage to its wing, which Jensen had splinted for her. Settled on a nest of soft grass, the bird would let out a tentative peep every so often, causing its rescuer to lean down and coo reassuring words.

  “He’s just worried,” Grace said to the others, her small face wearing its usual somber expression. “He’s never been away from his home before.”

  Next to Philip on the rear-facing seat, Aleda stopped brushing the hair of her porcelain doll long enough to inform Grace that birds didn’t care where they lived, as long as there was food nearby. “He likely doesn’t even know the difference between one town and another.”

  Grace ignored her sister and lowered her face back to the top of the pail. “You’ll be at your new home soon,” she cooed down at the bird. “And just you wait and see how nice it is.”

  Turning back to peer from her own window, Julia caught sight of a red sandstone church tower off to the northeast. It rose above a group of dwellings as if they were its brood, and the sight of it brought her a measure of comfort.

  Living in the country will be good for us, she reminded herself. It’s just going to take some getting used to. The trick was to not allow the things she had loved about London—Hyde Park, omnibuses, Grosvenor Square, coffeehouses, the National Gallery, operas, Charing Cross—to occupy any space in her mind. One couldn’t plan for the future while clinging to the past. And hadn’t Jensen impressed upon her that a country village would be better than London for raising children?

  True, Gresham would not offer the same cultural and educational opportunities of the city, but she could plainly see that neither was its air tainted with black fog from thousands of coal chimneys. Nor, by Jensen’s account, was the water from the River Bryce, which ran east to west through the north part of the village, evil-smelling and choleric from raw sewage like the Thames. And the children will have the security of knowing that their surroundings will stay the same. Not like London, where streets were constantly being dug up for continued expansion of the underground railway system.

  The wheels left the macadamized road surface and took on the cobbled stones of a lane, causing the coach to give a slight lurch and Grace to cradle the tin more tightly in her arms. Dainty shops and pleasant little cottages lined each side of the shady lane, flecked with broken sunlight filtered through the trees that stretched out their branches overhead. From Julia’s window a huge half-timbered house came into view. She held her breath hopefully, but let it out again when a signboard displaying the words Bow and Fiddle caught her eye.

  She knew from Jensen that this was the village’s other un
fortunate coaching inn that at least had managed to keep its kitchen fires going because dairymen, farmers, and factory workers still needed a place to trade stories over clay pipes.

  They passed more cottages and shops, and then the horses slowed almost to a stop at an intersecting lane. On the far left sat a two-story building, facing the east. Julia leaned closer to the opposite window.

  She did not need to even glance at the old wooden signboard that hung askew on a post outside the gate, for the desolation of the place told her that it was the Larkspur Inn. Moss and ivy swarmed over weathered red sandstone walls and shuttered windows, and the garden behind the low stone wall was choked with weeds. Early blooming flowers that had obviously reseeded themselves added splashes of color as they valiantly struggled to survive in the melee, but it would take more than a few flowers to dispel the gloom that hovered over the house and gardens.

  Well, I was warned, she thought dully but couldn’t tell if her sudden nausea was brought on by the long coach ride or by the thought that her family’s future security lay inside those neglected walls.

  The coach turned west and rolled another thirty yards before turning right into a gravel carriage drive. In the crook of the L-shaped inn was a large flagstone courtyard, fringed by stables, a coach house, gardening cottage and potting shed, and overgrown areas that had likely been a bowling green and kitchen garden. Once the five passengers were helped to the ground, the coachman began withdrawing luggage from the boot. Meanwhile, the three children stared at the back of the inn with expressions of stunned disbelief.

  “I warned you it would need some sprucing up,” Julia said, biting her lip.

  “Well, it’s certainly got the fireplaces, hasn’t it?” With typical optimism, Fiona pointed up at the six chimneys rising above the slate roof. “We’ll always be warm and cozy.”

  “But it’s such an ugly house, Mother,” Grace said. She held a hand over the top of her lard tin, as if to shield the sparrow from such a sight.

  It is at that, Julia thought. But it’s a far cry from the tenements of Saint Giles. She reached down to scoop her youngest daughter, tin and all, into her arms. Pressing the soft cheek to her own, she turned her face toward the house again. “But it’s all ours, my sweet Grace. And we’ll make it pretty.”