The Captain's Daughter

by Minnie Simpson

  “Emma’s sometimes a little lax with her studies,” Amy interrupted in her sister’s defense, “but she has an intense love of knowledge. She is fascinated by science and is forever studying flora and fauna and would love studying the stars if she can talk Daddy into buying her a telescope.”

  “That sort of thing is for boys,” snorted her mother.

  “We were able to get these wonderful musicians from Nottingham,” interrupted Lady Penelope who hated to be present when even the slightest conflict arose in a family. “Mildred Southwark recommended them. Don’t they sound enchanting?”

  “They sound beautiful, Penny. Why don’t you girls run along and dance.” Lady Sibbridge addressed her daughters. “There are a number of fine young gentlemen just waiting to dance with you.”

  Mattie, who had been craning her neck to survey the available young men, immediately took the cue and swiftly joined several girls standing in a group against the north wall while they exchanged somewhat vapid comments.

  The truth was that as balls go it was no great affair. None of the occasional balls at the few noble houses around Stockely-on-Arne ever were. In the ballroom there were scarcely a dozen or so girls and about half that number of males. That is the reason they had long given up the use of dance cards. Against the north wall not far from the collection of undanced-with girls three old men sat together talking about the things old men talk about.

  “Why don’t you go and dance with one of the young men,” said Lady Sibbridge to Amy noticing her daughter was still there inhibiting her conversation with Lady Brewminster. “Run along now. Penny and I have things we want to talk about.”

  Sometimes Amy’s mother could be refreshingly frank. Amy indicated, to her mother’s disappointment, that she was going to inhibit their conversation for at least a little longer.

  “I don’t know about my girls,” said Amy’s mother shaking her head. “Emma seems to think she is a boy, and Amy seems to have little interest in young gentlemen. Only Mattie is normal. She’s just like I was when I was her age.”

  In truth, Amy was not averse to the charms of young gentlemen, she just didn’t see any young gentlemen possessed of charms in the ballroom tonight. One of the defects of country balls is there are so few families of nobility or breeding around to invite, that the pool of young people of the desired age seems very shallow and mostly understocked especially with the masculine gender. And the male fish that are in the pool have a preponderance towards minnows rather than those of sturdier stock. And tonight, the better fish were all taken.

  So Amy prefered to remain with the matrons and wait for the London season. They do not have a pond there, it is more like a lake, and it is often stocked with fish of a worthier kind. Until then, she would mostly keep company with the older folks, as there was at least occasional interest in what they had to say. She would actually prefer to hang around the gentlemen because they generally discussed things of greater interest to her, but they would be displeased and uncomfortable if a young lady intruded on their domain.

  The best she could do was to sit near them and eavesdrop, but that usually only lasted a few minutes at the most before some busybody took pity on ‘poor Amy having to sit all by herself’ and came to her rescue.

  Her mother and the hostess had been joined by Mrs. Winthrop, and Mrs. Throckmorton and her son Lazarus, who had just arrived. Seeing Amy, Lazarus, who was a tall gangly youth and much taller than any of the young gentlemen present kept, casting glances at her. Amy tried to avoid looking at him after the initial greeting since she could feel the forces at work inside him striving mightily as he worked up his courage to ask her to dance.

  “Miss...Miss eh Sibb...Sibbridge...”

  She could almost sympathize with his pain. Almost, but not quite since she was the quarry. She braced herself and prepared the kindest way she could to turn him down.

  “Miss Amy, would you like to dance?”

  “I am really complimented that you would wish to dance with me, but...”

  She broke off with a little squeal of pain. Her mother had just rammed a finger that felt more like a knife into her back.

  “Don’t hold off on account of us older folks, Amy, feel free to accept the young gentleman’s offer.” And then Amy’s mother added to no one particular: “Amy’s such a caring girl she doesn’t want us to feel abandoned.”

  It is likely that the mothers who were present could see why Amy didn’t want to dance with the gangly, stuttering, and somewhat incoherent Lazarus, except of course his own mother who deeply loved her son and saw beauty in him not immediately apparent to others who did not share her insight and his genetic material. Amy was about to politely decline once again when another sharp poke of her mother’s amazing finger convinced her that all things considered she would suffer less damage dancing with Lazarus than being anywhere in the proximity of her mother.

  As she left, Mrs. Winthrop was telling the other matrons she had heard old George Anstruther had passed away. She believed he was still in India at the time. Such was the pleasant gossip the older ladies exchanged with one another. Amy heard no more as she was promptly out of earshot.

  As they danced, or actually as she danced and he tried his best to do something that resembled dancing, she noticed that the same girls were still sitting next to the north wall but she could not see Mattie. Moments later Mattie danced by looking up admiringly at young James Breverton, whom Amy had to admit was the best of the bunch of young men at the ball. She also had to admit he wasn’t too bad looking, and was a nice friendly youth.

  After several dances, Amy was desperately trying to determine how to get out of further torture while she was still able to walk and in reasonably good health when a stranger arrived at the ball. Old Peter, Lord and Lady Brewminster’s longtime footman introduced him. Old Peter was quite tall, very shaky, and his voice had faded from too many years of riding atop coaches in the chilly wind while trying to converse with the coachman. At least, that was Amy’s diagnoses. At any rate when he introduced the stranger she could not make out the name.

  Her interest in the stranger caused her to be a little distracted from her reflections on her present miseries and thus to an extent mitigated her pain as she tried to catch sight of what he was doing as well as she could, while gangly Lazarus dragged her around the ballroom.

  The visitor obviously exchanged pleasantries with the matrons at the front of the ballroom. Then Lady Brewminster pointed towards the three old men by the north wall, one of whom was Lord Brewminster. They had either not seen the stranger enter or they were studiously ignoring him. He walked around the ballroom in their direction.

  “Look at them,” Amy rasped in a loud whisper.

  “Huh,” said Lazarus.

  “The girls.”

  “Huh,” said Lazarus looking around at the girls in the room and not seeing whatever it was she was seeing.

  “They are like little magnets, trying to attract him while not being too obvious about it.”

  “Who?” said the clearly puzzled gangly Lazarus.

  The stranger walked by the girls sitting next to the wall, nodding to them politely as he did so, and approached the old men. They watched stiffly as he passed and then their heads clumped together like a bunch of old hens.

  After a brief introductory conversation while he stood next to the old men, he sat down beside them and they all seemed to be engaged in a more intense discussion.

  “Look at them. Look at the girls,” Amy rasped again.

  Lazarus surveyed the room, still puzzled. “What?”

  The stranger had risen again and was slowly walking around the ballroom in the direction of the musicians.

  “Every one of them is plotting how she can get to dance with him.” Amy looked up at her tall gangly dance partner although she was really directing her comments to no one in particular. Was there drool coming from the left side of his mouth?

  The stranger stood and admired the musicians for a few moments and th
en continued his circuit of the ballroom.

  “They all want to dance with him. They’re just plain fawning over him.”

  “Dance?” This conversation between Amy and Lazarus clearly didn’t really include Lazarus.

  The stranger was slowly strolling back to the front of the ballroom and was now about even with Amy and her partner.

  “It is so un... undignified,” she spluttered. “They haven’t even been introduced to him. I would never dance with a man I hadn’t been introduced to in a thousand years.”

  She was facing the north wall and away from the object of her contempt, when Lazarus looked up with strange expression, and as they swung around, a polite, firm, and commanding voice asked: “Excuse me sir, but may I dance with the lady.”

  She turned and looked at the source of the request. Standing there firm and tall was the stranger.

  He looked at her with a very winning smile and asked: “Will you favor me with a dance?”

  She was annoyed at herself later, but she just stammered: “I will sir.”

  As they danced, she desperately tried to decide what to say, when he broke into her thoughts.

  “I am sorry for breaking in like that and separating you from your young man. I was most rude. Please forgive me. I trust you are not betrothed. I wouldn’t want to separate a young lady from her beloved.”

  “We’re not betrothed,” she said meekly, hiding the mixture of disgust she felt at the idea of being betrothed and eventually married to gangly Lazarus Throckmorton, and the guilt she felt at being disgusted by a well-intentioned if occasionally drooly youth. Amy often found life confusing.

  “I am glad to know that,” he said with his warm charming smile. Then he looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Have we met before?”

  “I...I don’t think so.”

  “Then let me introduce myself. I am Benjamin Anstruther.”

  “I am pleased to be acquainted with you, Mr. Anstruther. How long are you going to grace us with your presence?”

  “Actually, I’m not visiting. I just inherited some property near here from my late uncle in India. Hillside House. I came to take a look at it”

  “That’s right next to us,” she said in surprise.

  “We’re neighbors? I must pay your family a visit.”

  Amy was a little flustered at the suggestion, although she had no idea why that would be.

  Her rather jumbled thoughts were again interrupted when he said: “Here, your charming young man is approaching. I better turn you back over to him. Thank you for your gracious willingness to dance with me.”

  Despite her most valiant efforts, she danced with her charming young man for three more dances, before she had to beg off with excuses of illness which was not true, faintness, even though Amy never suffered from faintness, and that she was about to pass out, even although she miraculously never did lose consciousness.

  For the rest of the evening she sat near the matrons while they intermittently fussed over her with wet towels, sips of sherry, and smelling salts. She never spoke to Benjamin Anstruther again that particular night, although she would have many occasions to do so in the future.

  Her mother who had obviously absorbed every morsel of gossip available, finally decided to get Amy home because of her ill health. She protested she was willing to sit there despite her weakness so Mattie would not be prematurely whisked away from the dance, but once Mildred Sibbridge made up her mind, shaky as it was, it could not be changed.

  Once home, Amy made a miraculous recovery. She was feeling very good, which puzzled her a great deal given that she had spent most of the evening guiding a totally uncoordinated skinny, immature, and much too tall youth, around the dance floor. She even felt a little giddy, which was stranger still. After thinking it over she decided it was the wine and smelling salts that were to blame.

  “It’s not completely dark yet and there is a quarter moon,” said Emma sticking her head in the door of Amy’s room. “Would you like to take a walk in the garden and tell me all about you adventures at the ball this evening, and how you danced with a prince, and how you lost your slipper, and came home in a pumpkin pulled by three blind mice.”

  Amy laughingly consented.

  After standing talking by the sundial for a few minutes they began to slowly stroll down the drive in the direction of the road from Stokley. The Sibbridge Estate, beyond the gardens that were immediately in front of the manor, had a generous three hundred feet of lawn which their gardeners kept well-manicured. The drive ran down the middle of the lawn and into a small wood which reached all the way to the road.

  Although the sky was now completely dark except for the curved wedge of moon, the girls had wandered down to the road. With their house and the nearly unoccupied Hillside House beyond the only destinations on the road, there was normally no traffic except for an occasional visitor or a herder passing with a flock of sheep or cattle.

  For a few minutes, Amy and Emma stood talking in the hushed tones that such settings seem to naturally invoke. They were about to return to the house when they heard a noise coming from the direction of the town.

  Puzzled and a little nervous, and curious too, standing close to the bushes where they could not be seen, they watched as lights approached. Rumbling and rattling noisily a black coach furiously pulled by four black horses, thundered past them kicking up dust and gravel which crackled into the bushes next to the two huddled girls.

  “What was that,” Emma said shakily.

  “I don’t know,” whispered Amy as she strained to look at the disappearing coach lights, “but it’s going in the direction of Hillside House.”

  “We better hurry back to the house,” said Emma nervously. And they did.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, Amy was a little late for breakfast. Normally this would have brought a reprimand from her mother who was deeply opposed to the common practice of so many of the landed gentry of England who usually had their servants set out the items of food for breakfast in the appropriate serving dishes on the sideboard of the dining room, so their family and guests could wander in at all times of the morning and eat.

  This morning, however, Lady Sibbridge couldn’t get a word in because Mattie was enthusiastically telling everyone about the ball at the Brewminster’s. Everyone, was limited to her mother who was there at the ball, Emily who was not and whose interest in balls and the permutations of young lads and lasses was not especially great, and Sir Anthony whose participation in any conversation, or understanding of any account given, was always in some doubt. He would sit quietly, occasionally smile and nod, but no one knew how much he really understood. Sometimes his comments seemed quite lucid, but other times no one was quite sure what he meant.

  Amy quietly took her place at the table.

  “What is your opinion?”

  Amy realized that Mattie was speaking to her, but she had no idea what she was supposed to have an opinion about. She hadn’t admitted Mattie’s conversation to her still slightly fuzzy brain.

  “Opinion?”

  “You know, your opinion about that Mr. Anstruther.”

  “Well, I...”

  “As well as I can see, he is most aloof.” Matty continued unabated. “Is that not right, Amy? You danced with him a full half of the evening. I’m not blaming you for that since there was no one else to dance with you.”

  Matty was a sweet, kindly girl, but sometimes a trifle indiscreet.

  “I danced with the Throckmorton boy half the evening,” said Amy a little testily and with emphasis on the last three words.

  “Isn’t he so sweet,” said Mattie. “He is so kind. He danced all these dances with you because he felt sorry for you since no one would dance with you.”

  Amy was suppressing what she wanted to say when she noticed outside the dining room window that some riders in fox-hunting clothes had arrived.

  “Mother, we have visitors,” she said, thankful for the interruption because she didn’t
like the way the conversation was going.

  As she rose to go outside with her mother, she looked at Emma for the first time this morning. Emma just returned a sly grin.

  As they approached the rider in red, Emma said excitedly: “Look, Mama, it’s Sir Frank.”

  Emma and Sir Frank Ramsey always got along well. He was always friendly and fun, and he was an old friend of her father. Many years ago they had served together in the army and had that unique bond born of the dangers they had survived together.

  The second rider was Lady Ramsey in her black fox-hunting outfit.

  “Good morning, Lady Ramsey, Sir Frank, we’re really happy to see you,” said Amy impishly, “but we don’t want you to suspect us of hiding the fox, he really isn’t here.”

  “Well, I don’t quite know,” said Sir Frank, “sizing her up. You look just like the sort of varlet who would hide the fox and deprive a gentleman of the pleasure of catching and feeding it to the dogs.”

  Amy’s mother grimaced and chastised her with: “Now, now, we’ve had quite enough of that. You must apologize to Sir Frank for being impolite.”

  “Oh, Mildred, don’t take us so seriously,” said Sir Frank.

  “I understood,” said Amy’s mother who had swiftly floated to another subject, “that Penelope Brewminster was anticipating your presence last night at the ball. I hope you and Estella weren’t delayed by anything serious.”

  “We did have a little scare,” answered Sir Frank, “a wheel broke on our coach just outside of Etting Howe. Fortunately, we were able to locate a wheelwright and soon had it repaired. But it gave Estella quite a scare.”

  “I can understand that,” Lady Sibbridge said with deep concern. “Anthony and I had that happen years ago. It feels as if the coach is going to turn all the way over and kill you.”