Like a cork removed, I burst out with it: “Why did you come here now? It seems, from everything you have said, that you have known of your sister’s existence for a long time, nearly your whole life. And yet you waited until now, after all these years, to come here. Why now?”
It was rude of me to ask her that. I knew it even as the words were flying out of my mouth. And yet I could not stop myself. It was a niggling thing that had been gnawing at my brain. She must have been released from the orphanage long ago. Why wait? Why now?
Rather than looking affronted by my outburst, however, Aunt Helen answered very coolly.
“Remember when I referred to the place I was put in while still a baby as an ‘orphanage’?”
I nodded, feeling the beating of my heart, which had been speeding to keep pace with my own outburst, subside just a little. “Yes.”
“Well,” she said wryly, “the more proper word is ‘workhouse.’ It’s a wretched place where they work human beings like draft horses.”
Not having ever been inside such a place, hoping I should never come to know firsthand what she had seen, I shuddered.
“Yes, it was awful,” she said with a smile that was almost friendly.
There was a long moment, during which I suspect we both thought of where she had come from.
“You’re not a stupid girl, Lucy,” she said, surprising me with her choice of words. “Think, for a moment, what it must’ve been like, what I must’ve been like when I first came out of the workhouse. It took me that many years to refine myself into something fit to show myself on your doorstep. It took me years—improving my speech, my manners, earning enough to buy better clothes.”
This was a huge thing to digest: the idea that it had taken her years to rise merely to what I saw before me now, someone who would have been sent to the back door without question, had it not been for her relation to Mother.
Up until this point in my life, I do not think I had known what it was to feel real sympathy for a human being not myself. But I felt it now.
“I am sorry, Aunt Helen,” I said, embracing her.
“It’s not you who should be sorry,” she whispered into my ear.
It did not seem like another serious word could be spoken after that.
A moment later, Aunt Helen asked me if I could teach her how to play charades.
Our joint laughter heralded our motion as we raced through the house.
• Seven •
“Now that we know that Sister Helen’s body is to be properly attired,” my father announced the next morning over breakfast, “we must see to the development of her mind. I have engaged the services of a special schoolmaster who will come here, to the house. He can educate Lucy at the same time.”
There was a jocularity in my father’s voice. Not for the first time, it struck me that my father regarded the advent of Aunt Helen in our lives as some sort of great joke or, at the very least, a game.
“I had a devil of a time securing a suitable schoolmaster on such short notice,” my father went on, “but when I offered to pay him double his wages, he was made to see reason. I am told he is the very best.”
Previously, my education had been seen to by one Miss Walker, a private tutor, but apparently my father did not feel her talents sufficient to teach Aunt Helen as well.
The schoolroom was attached to my bedroom, and it was in this room that Aunt Helen and I waited for the new schoolmaster to arrive, Aunt Helen once again wearing her drab gray dress. Was Aunt Helen as nervous as I was? As excited?
Mr. Samuel Brockburn, when Mother led him in, appeared to be a serious man with a sense of humor, for he carried himself so erect it was as though he was attempting to prove, single-handedly, that we were not descended from apes. And yet, when he looked down at Mother from his great height, there was a twinkle of merriment in his eyes.
Mr. Brockburn was also an astonishingly handsome man.
He had the same dark hair and eyes that my father did, only in Mr. Brockburn’s case those eyes contained an even greater depth. I guessed him at being just a few years older than Mother, and his hair had a wildness to it. I quickly saw it was his habit to use his long fingers to rake through his locks as though he might yet rein in the untamable.
“Mr. Brockburn,” Mother announced, “I should like to present your two new pupils: Miss Smythe and Miss Lucy.”
Immediately, I rose and dropped a perfect curtsy, as I had been taught. Aunt Helen, trying to follow my lead, was a beat behind me and less successful in her execution. The curtsy she dropped in haste was not so deep as to mimic mine and it threw her off balance enough so that she bumped against the table. Moreover, her curtsy, I saw from her sardonic grin as she rose from her stumble, had somehow lacked sincerity.
I suppose we should have warned her, prior to the schoolmaster’s arrival, that while I as a child would be expected to curtsy properly, she as an adult in the household would not, certainly not to someone my father was paying to be there.
As Mr. Brockburn, who it appeared had fine manners, reached out a steadying hand to Aunt Helen, he took in her face for the first time, his attention having been riveted upon Mother when they had first entered.
I saw the shock register there, recording the echo in her to another close by. Then a startling thing happened. It was as though, unlike with the others, he wasn’t in the slightest bit disconcerted by seeing my mother’s highborn face attached in a very different way to another body. He smiled at Aunt Helen with great sympathy, turning what I can only describe as a harsh eye on Mother. He looked as though he was seeing something quite clearly right then, but what that something might be, only he could say.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sexton.” He addressed Mother in a peremptory and dismissive fashion. It was unlike any way I had ever heard her addressed before, unless the addresser was my father. “I believe I have everything I need right here.”
“Very well,” Mother said, clearly confused by the change in his manner, but departing the room and shutting the door behind her nonetheless.
Once she was gone, Aunt Helen and I returned to our seats, eyeing Mr. Brockburn warily as he stood before us. What could we expect from a schoolmaster who had turned away my gentle mother so? And what, pray tell, did he expect from us?
“Let us begin,” Mr. Brockburn announced. “First, we must ascertain where you are in your learning. What have you been reading?”
I went to the glass doors of the bookcase and removed a copy of the latest book my father had told me to read. It was John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
“How far along in it are you?” Mr. Brockburn asked.
“Not very, sir,” I replied, retaking my seat. “I am just at the part where Evangelist comes by to direct Christian for deliverance to the Wicket Gate.”
“Very good,” Mr. Brockburn said. “It is an edifying tale.” He turned his head slightly. “And you, Miss Smythe?”
For the first time ever, I saw what looked to be a blush color Aunt Helen’s pale cheeks. “Oh,” she said softly, “I’m not much of one for reading …sir.”
“I see,” Mr. Brockburn said. Again, it was as though he was seeing something beyond what was in the room. Indeed, there was a soft sadness in his look. “Very well. Perhaps we would do better to begin with some of the rudiments instead. Mathematics?” He shook his head at his own suggestion. “No, I do not think that would be the best place to start. It is of course a worthwhile thing to know a little something about, but perhaps another time. Geography? What do my new pupils know about geography?”
“Geography?” Aunt Helen echoed as though the term might be unfamiliar to her.
“Yes, geography,” Mr. Brockburn reiterated. “You know: the science that deals with the description, distribution, and interaction of the diverse physical, biological, and cultural features of the Earth’s surface.”
Aunt Helen puzzled over this overdefinition for a bit.
I had only been in Mr. Brockburn’s presence for a short ti
me and yet already I suspected he might be even more intelligent than my father.
As Aunt Helen continued to puzzle, perhaps to save her embarrassment, Mr. Brockburn turned away and began arranging on the table some sheets of paper, writing implements, and schoolbooks he had brought with him. I took this opportunity to lean close to Aunt Helen, mouthing the word “places.” When she remained perplexed I took the chance and whispered, “He’s talking about places.”
Aunt Helen coughed, clearing her throat.
“Do you mean places?” she asked Mr. Brockburn. Had she not believed me?
Mr. Brockburn looked up, nodded.
“Well, I know we’re in London,” Aunt Helen said. “I know that London is in England.” She paused, thinking. “And England is in the world.”
Mr. Brockburn let show a smile of delight that was, well, a delight to behold.
“Someone once said the very same thing but in a much more verbose fashion,” he addressed Aunt Helen directly. “But I do think I like your succinct version much better. It hits the main points while leaving out the boring bits.”
Aunt Helen looked startled to be receiving a compliment and then pleased at the fact even while I suspected she had no clue as to what Mr. Brockburn was referring. It made me sad to think she had lived a life that should be so lacking in compliments that even one she did not understand should serve to please her so.
“Perhaps, though,” Mr. Brockburn said as he handed sheets of paper to us, “now that we have reduced the universe to the one pinpoint on it that truly matters, we should turn our attention to the basics of writing.”
It occurred to me that even though Mr. Brockburn chose to use the word “our,” he was focusing far more of his attention on Aunt Helen than on me. I suppose it exposes me as somewhat small-minded to confess it, but such a thing would normally bother me—the relegation of myself to the periphery in a situation where I expected to be central. And yet, somehow it did not. It was as though I saw that Aunt Helen needed what Mr. Brockburn might have to offer far more than I did.
“I will dictate a series of words,” Mr. Brockburn announced, “and you will write them down as best you can.”
The words he began with were simple enough: “Mother.” “Father.” “Aunt.” “Niece.” I suppose that, knowing we were a household here, and further guessing my relationship to Aunt Helen, he assumed these would be easy words for us to spell.
I set them down on the paper with ease and then glanced over at Aunt Helen’s paper to see how she was progressing. The first three she had accomplished well enough, but the fourth was again misspelled as it had been in the note she left me on the morning she left: “Neece.” It occurred to me then that the things I took for granted—being able to read a book if I so chose, being able to spell correctly as though it were second nature—were freedoms that were not available to everybody.
Mr. Brockburn looked at what we had written. He took up the pen and, rather gently I thought, corrected Aunt Helen’s misspelling.
“It is an easy error to make,” he said. “You would be surprised at how common it is.”
I do not think Aunt Helen liked being put in a class with what was “common.”
I saw Aunt Helen look over at my paper, my paper on which Mr. Brockburn had had to correct nothing. What must it be like for her, I wondered, to realize that her thirteen-year-old niece—not neece—could read better than she could, could write better too? It must be awful, I thought, to sit in a schoolroom with a child when you were not one and be treated like one yourself.
And yet, there was something special in the way Mr. Brockburn treated her. Another man might have had trouble concealing his contempt for her in such a situation, as though he were her better despite that she lived in this grand house while he was merely employed there. Mr. Brockburn, on the contrary, showed no such contempt. Rather, he appeared to treat Aunt Helen as though some great mistake had been made by the universe and he was now here to help rectify that.
Aunt Helen studied the way Mr. Brockburn had written the offending word. “Huh,” she said at last. “An i instead of an e. Who would have guessed?” Then, with great care, she copied out the word correctly several times. “I’ll remember it now,” she said, satisfied.
“Do you have a good memory, then?” Mr. Brockburn asked.
“I’ve an excellent memory”—Aunt Helen gazed at him steadily—“when I’m shown things.”
“I have an idea.” Mr. Brockburn tapped the pen against his lips. “Since you say you have an excellent memory when you are shown things, rather than waste your time with dictation, I will just write out words for you to copy. The English language is a notoriously fickle thing and for the first time I am thinking this would be the best approach to learning.”
Aunt Helen’s eyes practically gleamed at that.
I recognized that my presence had been forgotten. “And what am I to do while you are both doing that?” I did not like to appear complaining, and yet the prospect of a whole hour during which I would be expected to write out words like “cat” and “ball” repeatedly did not appeal.
Mr. Brockburn handed me a volume, the book I had pulled out earlier. “You can continue,” he said, “with Pilgrim’s Progress.”
And so I sat in solitary silence, reading, as Mr. Brockburn and Aunt Helen sat in communal silence, writing.
An hour later, I heard Mr. Brockburn ask Aunt Helen, somewhat solicitously I thought, “Isn’t your hand getting cramped yet?” In the short time he had been with us, he had already been changed much by her presence.
“No.” She laughed. “I could do this all day. I want to learn.”
Mr. Brockburn appeared charmed by her response.
“Be that as it may,” he said, “this is a good place for us to stop for the time being. You have learned much already. If you try to do it all at once, it will become overwhelming, and you will start to hate it.”
“That could never happen,” she said with strength.
Again, Mr. Brockburn appeared charmed.
Then Aunt Helen looked down at the words she had copied so carefully, filling sheet after sheet. She looked from her pages to Mr. Brockburn’s and then to my lone page with the four short words I had written earlier. Her face fell.
“The way I make my letters … ,” she started.
“You mean your penmanship.” Mr. Brockburn supplied the correct word.
“Yes. That. My”—Aunt Helen paused, her face a picture of struggle as though determined to get it right this time—“penmanship. It’s not very good, is it?”
Kind as Mr. Brockburn might wish to be, even he couldn’t lie about what was obvious, so he settled for one word: “No.”
I glanced over. The letters were uneven, spiking and going off every which way. Then, too, it was obvious from the darkness of the letters that the hand holding the pen had been bearing down mightily.
Mr. Brockburn brightened. “But,” he said, raising an instructive forefinger, “just because you have always done a thing poorly does not mean you need go on doing so. Since you are excellent at learning when you are shown things, instead of merely writing the letters as you see me write them, why not copy my hand, or even Miss Lucy’s?”
“Please don’t be offended,” she said, “but copying your hand, however fine—it’s still a man’s hand. As for Lucy …”
She trailed off, but I knew what she was going to say. No matter that I could spell circles around her, it was not an adult hand forming the letters.
“I know!” I exclaimed, wanting to be a part of things. “Aunt Helen could borrow a piece of Mother’s writing and learn from that.”
“What a perfect idea,” Aunt Helen said with enthusiasm. “Perhaps then I could learn to copy how a real lady makes her letters.”
“You really are determined to be a good student and to learn,” Mr. Brockburn said, appreciation in his eyes.
“Oh, yes,” Aunt Helen said. “I aim to be the best.”
. . . . .
I turned to Aunt Helen.
“He is a handsome man,” I said, “is he not?”
“Is he? Is he really?” Aunt Helen looked surprised. “I hadn’t noticed.”
. . . . .
We laughed our way down to the lower floor of the house, where Mother was enjoying tea in the back parlor.
She looked up, startled at our loud entry.
“How did it go?” she asked.
It felt odd, to stand there before her as though aligned with Aunt Helen against her somehow. Previously, I had been on my own before my parents. And, in terms of the greater world, it had always felt as though I was alone, unless I had Mother beside me. But now it felt different—yet another change.
“It went very well, thank you,” Aunt Helen said formally. Then a grin began to fight with the corners of her mouth, ultimately winning the war. “The only problem is,” Aunt Helen sputtered, “Lucy … Lucy … Lucy thinks the schoolmaster is …handsome!”
I do not think Mother caught the joke. In truth, I do not think I caught it entirely myself. But Aunt Helen’s hilarity, such a rare thing, was so infectious, I could not help but join in. Before I knew it, I was doubled over with the overwhelming humor of it all.
We were laughing so hard I didn’t hear the door and only realized our home had a visitor when one of the servants came in, delivering a card to Mother on a silver tray.
Mother glanced at it. “Mrs. Carson is here,” she said.
Mrs. Carson was a neighbor of ours, living in the next street over, and a nosy one at that.
“Tell her I will meet her in the front parlor,” Mother informed the waiting servant.
I controlled my laughter and straightened my skirts, preparatory to following Mother out of the room. Mrs. Carson may have been nosy, but it was fun to listen in on the gossip she so often delivered.
As though I were a duck and she were my duckling, Aunt Helen made to follow me.
Then Mother turned, stopping our progress.
“Perhaps,” she said, “it would be best if I saw Mrs. Carson alone today.”
The Twin's Daughter Page 4