by Joan Smith
She tapped at the study door and left. “Come in,” Mr. Palin called from the other side of the door.
With the inevitable nervousness of the new employee, I entered hesitantly. “Ah, it is you, Miss Bingham. Come in. Come in,” he said, not arising from his chair for a mere servant. He had changed his day suit for black evening wear, a conceit not generally practiced by Aunt Harriet’s acquaintances. He was an impressive sight—elegant, handsome, aloof.
I glanced quickly around at his study, wondering what it would tell me about the man. It also was paneled, in a very light oak this time. There were cabinets and chairs, a desk, and little else, except for a fine painting hanging behind him of a man leading a horse. I had seen similar ones in the galleries, done by the famous painter of horses, Stubbs. On the wall opposite the desk hung a watercolor of the local river, not nearly so fine as the Stubbs. One would have thought he would choose to hang the better painting where he would constantly look at it. The room was simple, one might almost say austere, there was so little of creature comforts or ornamentation in it. His working room, I mentally noted.
“Have a chair. I want to talk with you before you begin your duties here. I had Bobby put to bed early. Have you settled in comfortably?”
“Very comfortably, sir. Everyone has been helpful,” I replied, taking up the seat closest to his desk and crossing my hands in my lap. The glasses began to slip down my nose, requiring me to push them back up.
“Good. Mrs. Steyne will see to any needs that might arise. Don’t be shy to ask her. We want you to be comfortable, Miss Bingham. Perhaps that is as good an introduction to what I have to say as anything,” he went on, with a frown gathering between his eyes. “I hope you will dig in and stay with us. My son has been subjected to too many changes of guardian recently. It is upsetting for him. The last two girls disliked the rather isolated location, and stayed under a year each. I took the unfortunate notion of hiring a young man to replace the last one. It was not at all successful. His idea of looking after the boy was to cuff him into obedience. I don’t want Bobby chastised physically.”
“I wouldn’t, Mr. Palin!” I said at once, shocked at the very idea.
“I didn’t think you would. Gentleness was the quality I was looking for in his new keeper. Gentleness, yet firmness too. I have already warned you he is somewhat unmanageable. He prospered best under the last girl we had, a Miss Thompson.”
I came to sharp attention as Rosalie’s name was at last mentioned voluntarily by someone. The long look he cast on me made me shiver lest he had discerned some resemblance, but it was not the case, as he soon spoke on calmly. “I must give you some idea of your duties. You might suspect that at an age a few months past four Bobby is ready to begin some simple lessons. I am afraid it is not the case. Your job will be to look out for his physical well-being, and if you can, give him some emotional stability. He will never be normal, as I indicated in London. I would like to think he is at least not unhappy.” It was very clear the admission made the father very unhappy indeed.
“I shall do my best for him, Mr. Palin.”
“Don’t let him impose on your good nature. He will have you be his pony if you let him. He likes horses. I cannot let him mount one, but he enjoys to go to the stables, where the hands are all aware of his condition. Send him in the afternoon, when you are ready for a respite. He is tiring, I know. It will be suitable to take him for walks in the park and so on. I expect the servants have already warned you off the moors. They can be treacherous for a newcomer. There is one other item I wish to stress most strenuously. At the back of the main wing, there is a gallery giving on the courtyard below. I don’t want him out there. A fall could kill him, and he is a climber. The railing is loose; it will be replaced one of these days.”
“I’ll see he is kept away from it.”
“Mrs. Steyne keeps the door locked, but I want you too to be aware of the danger. As for the rest of it, you have some experience with children. See that he eats well and sensibly, gets the proper amount of rest and all that sort of thing. Speak to Mrs. Steyne or myself if you discover anything he requires, in the way of either clothing or toys, medical attention, and so on. Most of all, be kind to him, Miss Bingham,” he said. It was a plea, those dark eyes so sad.
“I shall take good care of him.”
“I believe you will. I go often to see him, of course. He is my only child.” A note of grimness crept into the last speech. This was clearly the great tragedy of his life, that his only child should be mentally retarded, for this was obviously the problem. But he was young, with a young wife. There might be more children. I wanted to say so, to cheer him, but it was hardly a servant’s privilege. And in any case, a man’s eldest son must always occupy a special place for him. Mr. Palin appeared to have forgotten all about me. He looked across the room at the watercolor hanging on the wall, but I don’t think he really saw it. He was brooding over his son.
“Is there anything else, sir?” I asked.
“No, that’s all. I’m sure you’ll do very well, Miss Bingham. I shall be talking to you frequently to see how you both go on. Good evening.” He nodded his dismissal.
“Good evening, sir.”
I arose and escaped into the hallway, just as Mrs. Palin descended the staircase. She wore a frosty blue crepe gown, with a set of blue stones around her neck. Sapphire, I suppose. Her proud copper head looked in my direction. “Miss Bingham!” she said, smiling. “I see my husband has been giving you the lecture. Don’t let him frighten you. Bobby is a darling child. Have the servants seen to your needs?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, gazing at her beautiful gown, her jewels, her elegant, glowing copper curls. A scent of musky perfume wafted toward me from the lace handkerchief she held in her fingers. She looked like a fairy queen out of a child’s story. My admiration must have been written on my face. She smiled in pleasure and amusement.
“What a nice girl you are. So neat and capable-looking. I believe Robert has hit the jackpot this time. I hope you will be very happy here, my dear. I must drag that husband of mine from his study, or he will be adding up figures all night long, and I want some company. Good evening, Miss Bingham.”
She walked past me, toward his study door. I thought she was gracious, and extremely attractive. I understood Rosalie’s initial enthusiasm for the woman. What had happened to cause it to diminish? I wondered. The servants too disliked her, which could be due to lingering loyalty for their former mistress. In any case, she would be a welcome distraction to Mr. Palin, brooding alone in his study.
The doorway next to my room was ajar. I knew this to be Bobby’s room, and with a natural curiosity to see him, I tiptoed in. The light from the hallway slanted in on a cherubic little face, with dark curls nestling on the forehead. His hands were thrown up on the pillow, a disreputable brown plush dog clutched in one for company, or comfort. He looked so very sweet and innocent, lying asleep. It was a cruel prank that Nature had not given him a good brain, to match his fine exterior. Poor Mr. Palin. It was a hard cross to bear. And poor Bobby! But I must not forget poor Rosalie in all my pity.
I closed his door and went to my own room, lighting a taper. The gaslight did not extend to this wing of the house. The pattern of my rug sprang into life, and the crisp curtains at the windows fluttered from the draft. I removed the spectacles, which still bothered me at the end of the day, and laid them on the bedside table. I unpinned my hair and brushed it out, standing at the mirror over the dresser. That mirror had shown Rosalie’s reflection two months ago. I could imagine she was hiding in there still, peering out at me, trying to tell me what had happened.
What could have happened? Tomorrow I would begin a discreet questioning of everyone who had known her. It was odd she was so seldom mentioned, but then a minor servant who had been gone for two months would be little remembered in a grand house like this.
Glancing around the room, I noticed a tail of blue was sticking out the door of the clothespress�
�the skirt of my best gown. I took a step to tuck it in, with a memory of having already done it when I hung it up. Surely I had not opened the door since? Had someone else, then . . .
It was a disquieting thought, that someone had entered this small sanctuary that was my own, had thumbed through my gowns. Molly or Bess, curious to see what I owned? Bess, probably. As I opened the drawer of my dresser to select a nightgown, I thought the drawers looked as if they had been subjected to a hasty rifle. I am a neat person, compulsively so. I hang up my jackets and coats, fold things when I put them away. My bonnets are not left uncovered to gather dust, but are carefully stored in their boxes after a wearing.
Yes, certainly someone had been here during my absence. It might mean no more than that the servants were curious to size me up by means of my possessions, or it might mean someone in the house already suspected me. I checked my reticule to see no money had been removed. Nothing was taken. Whoever had come had only looked. It could even have been Bobby, not yet asleep when I left. No, a child, especially a mentally deficient one, would have created more chaos than this. This had been a stealthy, adult examination.
No matter, there were no incriminating clues left behind to connect me with Rosalie. Oh, and she had left dishearteningly few to lead me to her. Only a tortoiseshell hairpin. I went to pick it up, and noticed it was gone from its spot on the dresser top. My one fragile, inanimate link—gone.
Chapter Four
It was a strange experience, waking up in a different place from the flat I had been accustomed to. It had taken me weeks to grow used to the empty bed beside me in London after Rosalie left. How long would it take to grow used to this? It was cold, for the autumn was fast advancing toward winter. The trees seen in the distance from my window were nearly denuded. The oaks had been blown and frozen into grotesque, twisted shapes by the winds that howled across the bleak and barren moors beyond. Some few brown leaves clung to the beeches, while the broader outlines of scattered evergreens lent a variety to the countryside.
I made a quick splash in my washbasin, shivered into my dark-blue gown, brushed out my hair, thinking inevitably of that missing tortoiseshell pin as I plunged the metal ones preferred by myself into my knob. I was at the door before I remembered the spectacles, and ran back for them.
Thus disguised, I went to Bobby’s door, to find his bed empty and well mussed. Up so soon? My hunter’s watch showed the hour to be not yet quite eight. I darted down the dark servants’ stairs to the kitchen, to see a jolly, red-cheeked boy sitting at the table with Molly, happily spooning porridge into his mouth. He looked so utterly normal I could not credit the stories I had heard of him.
“Good morning. You must be Bobby,” I said, walking toward him. He cast one disinterested brown eye on me, and continued eating.
“The tyke don’t talk much,” Cook told me, in a matter-of-fact way.
He began some sort of jargon that resembled human speech, but fell short of it. His meaning was perfectly clear. He extended his empty bowl to Cook for refilling, which she was happy to do. “He has a good hearty appetite,” she said. “You’ll have no problem feeding him, though his manners want improving.”
This was not hard to confirm. The spoon was gripped close to the bowl, held firmly wrapped around with four fingers and the thumb. “Will you have toast and tea, Miss Bingham?” Cook asked.
“Yes, please.”
“Tea!” Bobby demanded, slapping his mug on the table. As it was the first intelligible word he had spoken, I looked in surprise. Cook poured half a cup of tea, half a cup of milk, and added a judicious spoon of sugar. She stirred it for him, did everything but lift the cup to his lips.
I said nothing, but observed the boy carefully throughout the meal. His jabbering often included the word “Mogo,” leading me to inquire of Cook if this had some significance.
“To be sure, it is the new mount Mr. Palin bought last summer. Mogol is the actual name, dear. It’s what they call an Arabian horse, you see.”
“Oh yes, Bobby’s father said he likes horses.”
The child looked at me with interest at the word “horses,” but he said nothing. When he had finished eating, I arose and took his hand. He deigned to look at me then, with unhappy eyes and a rebellious set to his jaw. “Mogo!” he said in an imperious way.
“Later. We shall go upstairs now.”
“No stairs,” he said, stamping his little foot.
His clothing was thrown on helter-skelter, his stockings hanging in an unkempt way, his hair untidy.
“Upstairs,” I repeated firmly, and dragged him up the dark, turning passage of the servants’ staircase. His fingers gripped mine more tightly as we mounted and the darkness deepened. He was frightened of the dark, I thought.
There was a brush on his dresser. I brushed his hair, parted it neatly, noticing how rich and fine it was, with a pretty golden tint where the sun shone in at the window. I tidied his clothing and took him to the mirror to see himself. “Now you look neat,” I praised.
He smoothed his fingers over the hair. “Tummy now?” he asked. I thought he was asking for more food.
“No food,” I said, leading him to the nursery schoolroom.
He accepted this meekly enough. He ran straight to the corner and picked up a hobbyhorse, a red stick with a horse’s head carved on one end, with a bridle hanging from it. He straddled this contraption and began bolting around the room, uttering strange, loud noises, some of them identifiable as horseman’s talk. Yoicks and gee-up were part of it, as was Mogo. My duties were uncertain, but physical exercise had been suggested, so I let him run, as I walked about the room looking to see what amusement it offered to him and me. As his shouts rose in pitch, I called him a couple of times. He ignored me. When I raised my voice loud enough to compete with his, he looked around, but to the far corner of the room from where I stood. He really was a difficult child to comprehend.
Seeing that I was not in that corner, he looked around till he located me, then galloped up to me. My ears could take no more of his racket. I lifted a book, carefully chosen to include pictures of horses, and showed it to him, hoping to entice him into some less noisy pastime.
“Tummy read now?” he asked, smiling, with a hopeful look.
“We shall read now,” I agreed, noticing his repetition of the word “tummy,” realizing it had not to do with eating after all. There was one comfortable padded chair in the room. Bobby darted to it, but when he got there he stopped.
“Tummy sit,” he commanded, looking at me in a remarkably imperious way.
I was Tummy then. Where had he got this outlandish name for me? It occurred to me no one bothered to introduce us. I made myself known to him then. “I am Miss Bingham,” I told him, tapping my chest with my finger. “Miss Bingham.”
“Bingie?” he repeated, making it a question.
“Close enough.” I sat down. Before I had straightened my skirts, he had clambered onto my knee, doing some considerable damage to my toes in the process.
“Tummy read now,” he said, with a sigh of great contentment and satisfaction.
“Bingie read now,” I corrected. At that instant I discovered what he meant by Tummy. It was his way of naming Rosalie. Miss Thompson had been curtailed to Tummy. Rosalie had read to him, as I was about to do. Mama’s spectacles interfered with my reading, causing the letters to fuzz into a blur. I removed them and set them carefully aside.
His eager fingers were flipping the pages, stopping unerringly at his preferred story, one heavily illustrated with ponies. An excited babble of Mogo and horse and Bobo (the way he referred to himself) burst from him. He was certainly keen to get on with it.
I began reading, but was subjected to such an intense squirming and twisting about of the child on my lap I could not continue. His head, most of all, kept twitching, nearly hitting my chin each time. “Wait now,” he ordered, jumping down. In a flash, he had resumed his perch, with his legs pointed in the opposite direction. This position pleased hi
m much better. He sat entranced, stopping only to jabber a little at each new picture that came along as we turned pages.
The morning passed fairly peacefully after that. Bobby liked drawing. He had colored pencils and pads of paper. Sorting through them, I saw many distorted pictures of animals, boys, trees and so on. My heart wrenched in my breast when I spotted a few sketches done by Rosalie. I recognized her style. I could picture her, sitting at a table with him, drawing or doodling to pass the time. She had attempted a few of the child, Bobby, some of the scene from the nursery window, a still life of one section of the room, cluttered with childish toys. Rosalie was a little interested in art, had had lessons in London. My own artistic outlet was music. I could not draw a straight line without aid of a ruler.
“Tummy,” Bobby shouted suddenly, stopping me at one page, which had been illustrated by himself. It was his depiction of Rosalie, which I would not have recognized had he not named her, but when he had told me, I realized the corkscrews hastily smeared with yellow pencil were her curls, the oval with a wide-set pair of eyes was her face. The human form was not his forte, but there was a certain energy about his sketches that was interesting.
“Tummy all gone now,” he said, his voice wistful.
I squelched the strong urge to snatch the book up and keep it. I must not indicate by a single clue that I had any undue interest in Rosalie. Soon my attention reverted to Bobby. He was very young, of course, but for a mere child, he had a good talent for sketching those things he was particularly interested in. His horses and carriages had very much the feel of a horse and carriage. Lines dashed off behind showed the vehicle in motion, while the horses’ manes stood out behind, stiff as starch. Clouds of dust puffed up behind the wheels. He was amazingly observant. Almost too much so, surely, for a child who was supposed to be mentally deficient.
When Molly brought up our lunch, my hopes plunged again. The little fingers clamped around the spoon, the thumb right in its bowl, while the food was shoveled in with no regard for manners. A piece of meat was left on the plate. He picked it up with his fingers.