The Young Clementina

by D. E. Stevenson

  “I’m sorry to worry you any further today,” he said gravely. “But I want to set things in motion, and I can do very little until the will is read. Mr. Wisdon was a man who detested euphemisms, and he laid very strict injunctions upon me to make the document short and simple. I try to please my clients in these matters when possible, so the will is couched in simple language.”

  He started to read it.

  To me the will seemed neither short nor simple. It took me all my time to follow it, and I wondered vaguely what a complicated will could be like if this were a simple one. I managed to discover, among the rigmarole, that Garth had left the bulk of his property in trust for Clementina, the trust to expire when she reached the age of thirty or married a man approved by her guardians, who consisted of Mr. Ponsonby and myself. If Clementina married a man of whom we did not approve the money was to continue in trust until her death, and then be divided among her children. Hinkleton Manor was Clementina’s, of course. The estate was to be managed by a suitable man appointed by Clementina’s guardians. I was to remain at the Manor in full charge of everything “until such time as my daughter, Clementina Mary Wisdon, marries, or becomes independent or until such time as the aforesaid Charlotte Mary Dean shall marry. An annuity of eight hundred pounds per annum shall be paid out of the estate quarterly to the said Charlotte Mary Dean to continue to her death, irrespective of whether she shall marry or not. This annuity is in recognition of her kindness in resigning her appointment in London at my request and taking up her residence in Hinkleton Manor to look after my daughter in my absence. Also to the aforesaid Charlotte Mary Dean I bequeath my diaries to be dealt with according to her discretion, the monies accruing from the publication of any book or books based on the said diaries to be the entire property of Charlotte Mary Dean to compensate her for the work of editing which will be necessary. Also to the said Charlotte Mary Dean I bequeath the mare known as Brown Betty—by Autumn Leaf out of Queen Bess—and the gold half-hunter watch which was presented to me by the Reverend Mr. Charles Dean—father of the aforesaid Charlotte Mary Dean—when I went to Eton.”

  We listened to it all in silence. I don’t know how much of it Clementina understood; she sat very still looking out of the window at the rain which fell in slanting needles against the window. I realized with amazement and gratitude that Garth had made me independent financially. Eight hundred pounds a year was riches to me. I need never worry about money again—it was a strange thought. I was to stay on at Hinkleton with Clementina; there would be no need for me to go back to London to work. Even if—in the dim future—Clementina were to marry I should still have enough money to live in the country. To live quietly by myself in a tiny house with a garden of my very own.

  The will ended with directions for a generous pension to be paid to Nanny, and with legacies to the tenants and the servants. Garth had forgotten nobody.

  Mr. Ponsonby stayed the night at the Manor. There was a great deal to arrange. Legal documents to be signed and witnessed and various other matters to be decided. Mr. Ponsonby thought that the estate required a bailiff to manage it; there were four large farms on the property quite apart from the home farm which supplied the Manor. He asked me if I would agree to the appointment of a bailiff—I agreed. It was strange to feel that I had the power to appoint a man to manage Garth’s property.

  “That is settled then,” Mr. Ponsonby said. “You will leave the appointment to me I suppose. I wish to speak to you about another matter, Miss Dean. About the wages and housekeeping money which has been paid into the bank monthly for you to draw upon. I find a large surplus—may I ask if there are any outstanding bills?”

  “I pay them all weekly,” I replied—it seemed funny that he should be worrying about a surplus.

  “How do you account for the surplus?” he inquired.

  I could not help laughing. “I can account for it quite easily. I dismissed the cook who was wasteful and extravagant and engaged an economical woman at less wages. I am running the house with two housemaids instead of three, and I dismissed Clementina’s governess and have been teaching her myself.”

  He smiled in quite a friendly manner. “Admirable, Miss Dean,” he said. “The laugh is on me. I have been worrying for months because I thought you must be running up bills.”

  After this point had been cleared up he became more human and helpful. He listened carefully to several suggestions which I made, and explained various things which I had not understood.

  “I’m afraid I’m very ignorant,” I told him.

  “You do not possess the knowledge, Miss Dean,” he replied with the meticulous precision of his kind, “but that is what I am here to supply. If you will excuse my saying so I am surprised at your perspicacity. I did not anticipate such an easy task. I thought—”

  “You thought I was a fool,” I said rather sadly. “Well, I’m not surprised at that.”

  “You are too quick to put words into my mouth,” he objected. “I was not going to say such a thing.”

  “But you thought it, and I don’t blame you, Mr. Ponsonby. You heard me give evidence in the divorce case—I was made to look pretty foolish, wasn’t I?”

  “Oh that!”

  “Yes. I was a dupe, Mr. Ponsonby,” I told him. I felt it was necessary that he should know the true facts of the matter. If I was to work with this man he should know that I was honest—a fool rather than a knave.

  “They misled you?” he inquired.

  “My sister and her solicitor kept me completely in the dark.”

  “I remember. Yes. I wondered at the time. To be quite honest with you, Miss Dean—as you are being quite honest with me—I thought that you had been coached by Mr. Corrieston. But Mr. Wisdon would not have it. Mr. Wisdon was sure that you were telling the truth as you knew it. The case was a curious one; it worried me very much at the time. I felt that my client was not being entirely frank with me, and Mr. Corrieston is a clever lawyer.”

  “He bamboozled me on purpose. It was easy because my brain was not working properly at the time. The whole thing had come as a great shock to me, and I was overworked. I see now, looking back, that I was very near a breakdown of some sort.”

  “I thought you looked dazed.”

  “I was dazed. I had a dreadful pain in my head and the whole thing was like a nightmare.”

  “It was good of you to tell me,” he said. “I am glad you have done so. It makes it easier to work with you. I confess I was aghast when Mr. Wisdon nominated you as co-trustee. I protested, but he was not to be moved from his purpose. Mr. Wisdon had a very high opinion of you, Miss Dean. I see now that he was justified.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I Shall Never Be Like Other Girls”

  There was a great deal in the papers about “The Fraser Expedition” during the next few weeks. Their adventures caught the imagination of the public. There were photographs of the desert, photographs of the camp, photographs of the sites of the proposed airplane depots, and photographs of the explorers themselves. People were talking about the expedition and discussing the practicability of the scheme (so Mr. Howard informed us) and wherever the subject was discussed the name of Garth Wisdon was mentioned with respect. He was the hero of the hour. There were a dozen theories as to how he met his death—we shall never know the truth—but everybody seemed to agree he had met it nobly, like the brave Englishman that

  he was.

  Clementina and I devoured all the accounts in the papers with interest and pride. Her admiration for her father was profound. It was the first thing that brought her real comfort in her sorrow. I, too, was comforted by my pride in Garth. I realized that this was the kind of death Garth would have chosen. He would have chosen to die alone, far from civilization; he would have chosen to die on his feet with his gun in his hand. I remembered that he had said to me, “It does not amuse me to kill animals that have never harmed me.” It did not app
eal to him to hunt a defenseless animal, but this lion that he had gone out to kill was neither harmless nor defenseless. It had carried off one of the porters already and might do so again now that its taste for human blood had been whetted. This lion was an enemy worthy of his steel, and he had gone out to meet it gaily with a laugh and a joke on his lips.

  Garth’s end was in the Wisdon tradition, the great Wisdons of the past had died for their country, fighting for her honor or exploring for her welfare. They had died face to face with their enemies just as Garth—the last of the line—had done. There were pictures of Wisdons hanging on the walls in the library and the dining room and in the hall. Men with stern faces and determined mouths, men with smiling mouths and straight-gazing keen eyes, they all looked down from the walls upon Clementina and me as we sat at dinner or moved about the house. For some reason I was more conscious of them after Garth’s death, and Clementina must have felt the same.

  “It’s a pity I wasn’t a boy,” she said one day, looking up at the ancestor who had died at the taking of Quebec.

  “You are a Wisdon,” I told her, answering her thought. “Whether you are a boy or a girl you have their blood in your veins just the same. It is a fine heritage and you can well be proud of it. Perhaps someday you will have a son.”

  “If I ever have a son I shall call him Wisdon,” she said. “But it’s a pity, all the same.”

  I realized that if I were going to write Garth’s book I should not have time to give Clementina her lessons—it would be impossible to do both these things adequately. And this brought me face to face with a problem—should I engage a governess for Clementina, or should I send her to school? I thought it over carefully, and the more I thought about it the more sure I became that Clementina ought to go to school. She required the companionship of other girls, and the discipline of school life. I had brought her out of her shell (she was much more like a normal child than she had been) but I saw quite clearly that she had idiosyncrasies which I could never eradicate, and which never would be eradicated unless she had girls of her own age to tease her and chaff her and chivvy her about. I did not come to the decision to send Clementina to school without a struggle. She would hate it at first, and I would hate it all the time—we were friends now. I would miss her, the house would be too dreary for words without Clementina—but the child’s welfare was the important thing. I wanted her to be a whole woman, not a crank.

  Mr. Ponsonby agreed with me, and we found a girls’ school about twenty miles from Hinkleton which was run by a woman with a positively alarming array of letters after her name. I went over and saw Miss Scales and found her a sensible, cultured woman—I liked her at once and I liked the school. It was comfortable but by no means luxurious, and I thought it would suit our purpose admirably. We arranged for Clementina to go there after the Christmas holidays.

  Clementina was anything but pleased at my arrangements for her welfare. She retired into her shell, not sulking, but simply withdrawing the essential part of her soul from contact with the world. I left her alone, it was the only way I could deal with these moods of hers; but I reflected that school would deal with them less gently and that this would be all to the good. After a few days of silent contemplation Clementina came to me and broached the subject herself.

  “Aunt Charlotte, why must I go to school?”

  “It’s good for people.”

  “But I shall miss the hunting.”

  “Your father missed the hunting when he went to school.”

  “He was a boy.”

  “You said it was a pity you were not a boy.”

  “That’s not the point,” she said, and of course it wasn’t. “Boys have got to go to school, but girls needn’t. If you won’t have time to teach me why can’t I have a governess?”

  “You could, of course,” I said. It was no use to be anything but frank with Clementina, and, after all, a reasonable being deserves the truth. “You could stay at home and have a governess, but I do want you to go to school. I was never at school myself and it is a drawback. I did not think so at the time for I loved my lessons with my father, but I found it a drawback afterward. I found I knew less of the world than other women. Lessons are not everything. You learn about other girls at school, and you learn to get on with people and to rub shoulders with people you don’t like without minding, or at least without showing that you mind. I don’t want you to be like other girls under your skin, but I want you to be more like other girls on the surface. It will be so much easier for you afterward—life will be easier.”

  “I shall never be like other girls.”

  “Perhaps not, but you will learn to appear like them.”

  “I shall hate it.”

  “So shall I. But we shall both know we are doing the right thing,” I replied firmly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Rock Garden

  Clementina and I spent Christmas together quietly but happily. She was resigned to her fate. We both felt the approaching separation and the feeling that we had so little time to be together brought us closer. We had some good hunting, for the weather remained open and the skies were soft and gray. Violet Felstead and her mother had gone abroad to escape the damp and cold of the English winter; they had left Mr. Felstead behind and he was very lonely all by himself in the big, empty house. He came over to Hinkleton quite often, either to lunch or tea. We saw a good deal of Mr. Howard too; he and Clementina had become tremendous friends.

  Mr. Ponsonby came down once or twice on business connected with the estate. I had found some rough plans of a rock garden in one of the drawers of Garth’s writing table and I was anxious to put the project in hand. I thought it would be nice to carry out Garth’s ideas; it would be a sort of memorial—far more individual and personal to Garth than the brass tablet in the church which bore his name. Mr. Ponsonby agreed to the expenditure, and agreed also to dismiss the head gardener—an argumentative man, who resented my interference—so that I could have a free hand. The site of the rock garden was the hill behind the house where the path leading to the station and the Parsonage climbed up through a wood of conifers. It was a sheltered spot, an ideal position for a garden which would be at its best in spring.

  From the veranda, a broad green lawn sloped gently to the bottom of the hill, so that when the rock garden was made, it would be in full view when we sat in the veranda having our tea. The broad green lawn, the rock garden, and, above that, the dark trees. I could visualize it very clearly in my mind’s eye and I was sure it would add greatly to the beauty of the Manor. Garth’s plans showed a path of uneven steps made of huge slabs of the local gray stone winding up the hill and disappearing into the woods. On either side of the path were natural rocks and boulders, and smaller stones which would give the necessary background for alpine plants and heaths. The whole thing was on an ambitious scale and would take months to complete.

  The gardener engaged in place of Fulton was a Scotsman called Walker; he was a man after my own heart, with all the virtues of his race and few of the vices. He rapidly became one of my chief amusements, and a firm ally. We did not always see eye to eye, but we respected each other’s vision, and he was always willing to defer to me and to carry out my ideas even when they were at variance with his own.

  “Och well,” Walker would say when he had tried to persuade me and failed, “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” and so turn away with admirable philosophy to put my “daft-like ideas” into practice.

  The rock garden appealed to the engineer in Walker which lies dormant in every Scot. We studied books together and combined half a dozen ideas with our own and Garth’s and the amenities of our site. But before we started on the rock garden itself I turned my attention to its approach. The broad green lawn, which sloped so admirably toward my rock garden, was disfigured by round beds in which bedding out plants—calceolarias, geraniums, and antirrhinums—succeeded one another in formal
array. I had some trouble with Walker before he agreed to eliminate these atrocities and turf the beds, but when it was done even Walker admitted that it was a vast improvement. The lawn looked twice as big, and the untroubled sweep of green carried the eyes up to the entrance of the rock garden—in our vivid imaginations already a blaze of color—and the dark trees which rose behind.

  In the rock garden itself the rough stones form an uneven path winding up to the hill into the woods. Among the natural rocks flanking the path, we planted heaths which were specified to flower at different seasons of the year—and dianthus in the crevices to reach out over the stones, and large clumps of anemones and primroses and small alpine plants. Higher up, at the entrance of the wood, we planted rhododendrons, and, in the wood itself, bluebells and foxgloves.

  But this is anticipating. There was a tremendous lot of work to be done before the thing took shape, and I spent many long hours in the rock garden having the stones arranged as I wanted them and discussing the mixture of colors with Walker and his satellites. At Christmas it was merely a fairy vision in our minds. I had ordered the stones for the path and they had come: big, uneven, rough-hewn stones, gray and jagged. They lay in a confused heap waiting to be sorted out and placed in position. At present they were an eyesore, and my heart sank when I looked at them—would they ever be as I wanted them to be?

  One mild windy morning soon after the new year I was busy among my heap of stones. They were so heavy that it took four men to lift them and we had had to engage extra labor for the job. One of the largest stones had just been placed and the men were resting after their Herculean task when I heard a shout, and looked up to see Mr. Howard approaching. I left the scene of action and walked slowly across the lawn to meet him. I felt dirty and untidy. The warm gusty wind had loosened my hair; it blew in little tendrils across my mouth. Far above us, the clouds were blowing in white streaks across the blue sky.