The Youngest Miss Ward

by Joan Aiken

  ‘It was that excessively wet, dismal summer of seventy-eight‚’ Mrs Philip Ward explained cheerfully as they sat hemming shirts. ‘Or was it seventy-nine? Bless me! I remember it so clearly. There was not a decent strawberry to be had in the whole of London, though Mr Ward, your uncle Philip, sent as far afield as Blackheath and Barnet – since, my dear, when I am increasing I entertain such a craving for strawberries as you cannot imagine. La! I should not be talking to you in this way, but I can see that you are such a sage, sensible little creature – most unlike some of my pupils in the past, I can tell you! Lady Susan and Lady Louisa Wisbech – now there were a pair! Tease, tease and up to their tricks all day long – though, mind you, not a whisker of harm in either of them, dear girls, and both well settled now, I am happy to say. And as for their cousins the Fowldes – but we will not speak of them. Now you, my dear, I can see that you are old beyond your experience, and have been your Mama’s comfort, I know, these any number of years. There, there! Do not cry, child! Life for us females is a continuous succession of hard, hard trials, and the quicker we settle down and accept that fact, the better we are able to come to terms with it. Lord save us! The trouble I have had with those twins. It is a wonder to all my acquaintance that I have succeeded in rearing them up to this day, and if it were not for Burnaby and her lotions and potions, I do not for one moment believe that I could have done so, and if you, my dear Hatty, can devise any means of rendering them less excitable and sulky, I shall be for ever in your debt!’

  ‘I shall be happy to, ma’am – if Burnaby will permit it . . .’

  ‘Ay, ‘tis true, Burnaby’s temper is not the easiest in the world – and it will not do to set her back up, for I depend on her very completely in the management of those twins . . . you must set about it little by little, Hatty my love, inch your way in slowly so she won’t take a pet; I am sure you will know how to manage her. (For your sister Agnes is just such another, is she not? Fond of her own way and quick to take offence if she feels that her position is being assailed.)’

  ‘Yes, that is so, ma’am. Well, I will try to make friends with the twins, if – if Burnaby will at least let me into the nursery.’

  ‘Do‚ child. For, to tell truth, the thought of their future has me quite in a worry. I am half-ashamed to admit it, but I cannot find the way to reach their comprehension. My former pupils were so easy in comparison! Dear, sweet-tempered little things. But – in short – those twins put me out of all patience. I begin to suffer from such severe heartburn, such tremblings and hot flushes and palpitations if I am in their company for more than ten minutes, that your uncle has positively forbidden me to fatigue myself with them any more, but tells me to leave them quite entirely in Burnaby’s care. Is not that singular? The dear boys never taxed me so, no matter how naughty and high-spirited. Ay, ay, Hatty my dear, I think it a fine thing that you have come to live among us, for your uncle Mr Ward dislikes your father as heartily as one brother can hate another, thinks Henry so puffed-up in his pretensions that my husband would never willingly have paid off that five-hundred-pound debt, though nowadays, to be sure, it would be the easiest matter in the world for him to do so, prospering and thriving as he does, with half the nobility and peerage on his books; whereas your unfortunate Pa, by all that’s heard, has hardly a feather to fly with; but – one way and another – I dare swear you will be better away from your poor dear mother in her last months. Lord! My dear, I know you do not think so now, but, just the same, it is kindest you are spared some such painful memories as would doubtless torment you lifelong; and since, as I hear, the household is now under the rule of your sister Agnes and her crony, Lady Ursula Fowldes – a pair of gorgons if ever the name was deserved – and Lady Ursula, moreover, set to fix her talons on your Papa, the very instant you are all out of your blacks, if what I hear from Cousin Letty Pentecost is to be trusted—’

  A tide of ice seemed to run backward through Hatty’s veins.

  ‘What, ma’am? What can you mean? Mama is not going to die?’

  ‘Ah, my love, there’s no good blinking facts when they stare you in the face like bulldogs. The wonder is that the poor lady has endured as long as she has to this present. And as for that Lady Ursula, who used to be your Mama’s great, great friend, we all know that your Pa will do anything that lies within his power to keep the entail of Bythorn Lodge away from our poor boy Sydney (though Sydney is as sweet and smart a lad as ever tied a cravat – if he does not end up as Lord Chancellor I’ll be mighty surprised) – and, with Lady Ursula ready and eager to have your father, besides having been at her last prayers these five years, you may lay the knot will be tied between ‘em so soon as it is decent to do so. Philip – your uncle – is wild angry about it, but there’s no way he can see to throw an impediment in their path; wasn’t your Papa doing the pretty to Lady Ursula as hard as he could lay it on at your sister Maria’s wedding to Sir Thomas? Cousin Letty told me his civilities at that time were marked by many (your Pa not being, in the common way, over free with his gallantries and compliments to ladies). Though – mind what I say – whether such a union as that would take would be quite another kettle of eels. I’d not wager my Sunday bonnet on any issue from that pair excepting, perhaps, another girl-child; for that Fowldes stock seem all bred out – five skinny daughters, poor Lady Elstow bore (Lady Ursula’s mother, that is, the countess) just the same case as your poor dear Ma, and though I say it as shouldn’t, one of them, at least, only sixpence in the shilling – and who’s to wonder, bred up in a damp dungeon like Underwood Priors.’

  Aunt Polly had been for a number of years governess, mentor and much-loved guide to the daughters of the Duke of Dungeness, after the early death of their mother. She had, of course, while carrying out her duties in this family, been privy to many matters regarding their cousins, the family of Lord Elstow, and it was owing to her connection with the two groups that Mr Philip Ward had met, wooed and won her when visiting Bythorn Chase on ducal business.

  Now Hatty stared at her aunt in deep dismay, only half comprehending this torrent of information. It would take hours, days, weeks to assimilate it fully.

  ‘Ay, ay, my dearie, as I say, I think it an excellent thing for my dear boys that you have come among us. Your uncle would have it that one or other of the lads would fall in love with you, there would be sweethearting, if not rivalry and fisticuffs. But, lord, no! my love, said I, there’s not the least risk of that in the world, she will be just the same as a sister to the dear fellows, and she will be daily improving their manners by her example and leading them into milder, more gentlemanlike ways. And so I am sure it will be. Ah, now, here is your uncle, come home from business.’

  Mr Philip Ward was a thin, waspish man with a leaden complexion, from being generally within doors. The pressure of his business was now so great that he daily brought home large bundles of documents from his office in the town, and also made use of a room on the first floor of his house, which held a desk, and shelves of law books and many cupboards where he kept the more important of his titled clients’ papers and archives. He was sharp and curt in his demeanour, in that respect not so different from his red-faced, fox-hunting brother, and Hatty, never quite easy in his company, was hastily rising to withdraw, feeling that he did not welcome her presence, when he halted her by an inquiry.

  ‘Well, miss! Has any word come yet from your sister – from the new Lady Bertram? Humph! She did a great deal better for herself there than might have been expected – a very great deal! Ten thousand a year! I did not reckon her above two. It is a fortunate thing for her sisters – they may well have cause to be grateful to her. Well, child?’

  ‘No, sir‚’ said Hatty, faltering. ‘At least, my sister Maria has not written to me. But then she would not be very likely to do so. I – I suppose she may have written to Mama and Papa. I have not heard.’

  ‘Very well, very well. Run along, child.’

  Her aunt’s kin
der glance seconding this dismissal, Hatty hastily left the room. Avoiding the schoolroom, noisy haunt of her boy cousins when lessons were over, she repaired to her own little attic bedroom, but found it in process of cleansing by an irritable housemaid, who declared that the new arrival had set her all behind in her tasks. Deprived of this sanctuary, at a loss, Hatty made irresolutely for the haven known as the book room, her uncle’s study, knowing that he was still talking over the day’s affairs with his wife in the parlour. To Hatty’s dismay, she found her cousin Ned, the youngest of the three boys, walking up and down in front of the window-seat, mumbling to himself:

  ‘A‚ ab‚ absque‚ coram‚ de,

  Palam, clam‚ cum‚ ex, and e

  Tenus, sine . . .’

  ‘Pro, in, prae‚’ Hatty prompted him.

  He gave her a glance of pure astonishment.

  The ages of Hatty’s cousins at this time were respectively: Sydney, sixteen, Tom, fifteen, Ned, eleven, and the twin girls, Sophy and Eliza, four years. Hatty’s father had frequently sneered at his brother’s parsimony in not sending away the elder boys to Eton or Westminster, conveniently forgetting that, from first to last, he had expended remarkably little money on his own daughters’ education. But Mr Philip Ward had declared that the only thing the boys would pick up at public schools would be expensive habits and a taste for fashionable frippery associates; they could just as well get themselves a good plain education in Portsmouth and in due course, if need be, acquire a bit of polish at some university. Sydney was destined to follow his father into the attorney’s office; Tom and Ned, respectively, were intended for the army and navy.

  Tom and Ned had grumbled a great deal at being required to master Latin.

  ‘It is all very well for Syd, who will need lawyers’ Latin – but what is the need for a dead-and-gone language in the services?’ Tom, a fat, slow-witted boy, had great difficulty in learning anything, and Ned, though naturally brighter, tended to follow his next brother’s lead and echo his sentiments.

  Hatty had formed no very favourable impression of her boy cousins. The elder pair were rough, loud-voiced, unaccustomed to the company of girls, and wholly lacking in curiosity about any of the things that interested her; but Ned, the youngest, was at least unlike his elders in appearance. Ned was smallish, compact, with dark-brown hair, bright brown eyes and a nut-shaped head. Though younger than Hatty, he overtopped her in height, but not by a great deal. She had already guessed that, left to himself, his natural talents would soon cause him to overtake his brother Tom in schooling.

  ‘You know Latin‚ Cousin Hatty? How is that?’ he demanded wonderingly.

  ‘My mother has been teaching it to me. I have been learning it these great many years.’

  ‘But why? What need for a girl to learn Latin? And how did my Aunt Isabel come to learn Latin?’

  ‘Her father, my grandfather, was a bishop. He thought girls should be able to read the bible in Latin.’

  Ned stared at such a notion. ‘Glory! I am glad he was not my grandfather! What else did your Mama teach you?’

  ‘Oh – Greek delectus and the irregular verbs, and Euclid and Wood’s algebra. But I did not get on with the algebra at all.’

  ‘No more don’t I‚’ said Ned with feeling. ‘But a sailor has to have algebra, for calculating positions, you know, and that sort of stuff. But what I detest most of all is the history. All those kings and queens and popes. What use are they‚ I’d like to know?’

  ‘Oh, but history is so exciting!’ cried Hatty. ‘There are so many heroes! Richard Coeur de Lion, and Roland, and Charlemagne, and Hereward – and – and Bonnie Prince Charlie –’

  Ned’s mouth opened wider and wider. He stared at his cousin Hatty as if she were a conjuror making birds fly out of her ears.

  He said: ‘You know about all of those?’

  ‘Oh dear, yes! And the Greeks – the Spartans, you know, at Thermopylae, and Ulysses – and Marathon – and the battle of Lake Regillus and – and Robin Hood – I used to play at being Robin Hood—’

  She came to a sudden stop, blushing. And then added, lamely, ‘But I could never make myself a proper bow and arrow. You need yew wood, of course, for a bow, and there are no yew trees in the garden at Bythorn Lodge.’

  Ned said, his eyes sparkling, ‘I know where there are some yew trees, Cousin Hatty!’

  Hatty’s position in the house of her uncle Philip Ward would always, in some degree, resemble a trading-post in hostile, savage territory. She had a few friends – her aunt, her cousin Ned – and she had goods to exchange, valuable goods to those who valued them. But her status was at all times precarious, sometimes perilous.

  The boys’ tutor, Mr Haxworth, a dour man, and a severe disciplinarian, at first regarded Hatty with considerable distrust, which deepened to outrage when he learned that the instruction of this small, insignificant, uncomely female was to be added on to his duties with the Ward boys.

  However, in the course of a few weeks, Mr Haxworth was bound to acknowledge that the presence of their girl-cousin at lesson-times had no adverse effect on the Ward boys, quite the reverse; her questioning mind, her serious attention to instruction, her industry in preparing her lessons, exercised a decidedly beneficial effect on her cousins who, whether out of emulation, shame or simply increased interest, showed a general improvement in their studies that he found quite startling. Tom, the middle boy, it was true, was heard to grumble about the higher standards, the increased amount of work, the more diligent application that was now expected of him.

  ‘In the old days‚’ he complained, ‘I could sleep through half old Hacky’s lessons, or whittle a top; now it is talk, talk, and questions. You have to be alert and on the go all the time or he loads you down with tasks and impositions and a lot of deucid extra stuff you have to learn by rote.’

  Hatty, the boys considered, possessed a wholly unfair aptitude for learning by heart, doubtless from all the poems she had put to memory to recite to her mother.

  So, by degrees, as the weeks and then the months went by, Mr Haxworth was brought to accept Mr Ward’s niece with a qualified approval.

  Hatty found, however, an inveterate enemy and ill-wisher in Burnaby, the attendant and nurse to the twins Eliza and Sophy. The little girls, as their mother told Hatty, had from their earliest years been of a sickly and lethargic disposition. Their natures were querulous and selfish, and this temperament in them was aggravated by the constant care of a nurse – a close, quiet, hard-featured woman – who saw that, in her oppressive bond with her charges, lay a considerable degree of power for herself in the household. After the difficult birth of the twins, Mrs Ward had at first been obliged to relinquish the larger part of their care to this woman, and later became relieved to have done so, for, as she herself admitted, she greatly preferred her three high-spirited sons to the doleful and demanding infants.

  When Hatty first came to Portsmouth, Mrs Ward said to the nurse: ‘Now, Burnaby, I know how hard-pressed you are with the care of those sad, ailing children, but I intend that Miss Hatty shall share some of your burden in keeping them company and tending them. She has, you know, been much occupied about her mother, my poor invalid sister-in-law, so she is well accustomed to the fretful ways of sick persons and, if you instruct her, she can be of real use to you in sharing the task and giving you some hours of freedom.’

  Burnaby’s apparent agreement masked an internal resolve that she would never, while she drew breath, relinquish her two peevish dependants to the care of a little upstart newcomer of no more than thirteen years.

  ‘I thank ye, miss, but I’ve no need of ye at present‚’ was her invariable response whenever Hatty tapped at the nursery door and looked in at the two melancholy little creatures captive in their high chairs, either sucking on their coral comforters or wailing dismally for succour. By the age of four they had probably swallowed more physic than any grown pe
rson in the British Isles.

  Hatty had no wish to make trouble between her aunt Polly and the person who had been selected, presumably with careful thought, by her uncle Philip, to look after her afflicted cousins; but she did feel that Burnaby’s regime was not calculated to help or develop the unfortunate twins.

  Very likely, if no one takes notice of them soon, they will just die of discouragement, she thought in pity.

  Hatty wrote copious letters to her mother from Portsmouth. She received very few in return, but she understood sadly that this must be so, because of Mrs Ward’s weakness. One of the few she did receive, indited in a very shaky hand, and enclosed in a cover addressed in an unfamiliar hand – perhaps that of Lady Ursula – said:

  My Dearest H. It is a joy to hear from you. I believe you can help those children. Only by aiding others can we ourselves go forward. Try S.P.S! . . . I miss you with every breath I draw. Not many now perhaps. We shall meet after - Yr loving M.

  Hatty wept and puzzled over this letter for weeks. True, she could have written back to Mrs Ward and asked what S.P.S. meant – but her mother was so ill, so frail, that it seemed almost heartlessly slow-witted not to be able to grasp what the letters stood for, to trouble her over such a trifle.

  Instead, she consulted her cousin Ned.

  Ned, in gratitude for some covert, tactful assistance with his Latin grammar, had, once the boys had grown accustomed to her presence in the family, made his cousin privy to a secret which had never been revealed to his elder brothers. In the grounds of the house were a stable-yard, outbuildings, a flower garden, and, beyond that, a vegetable plot and walled orchard. To the elder boys, the flower garden was unsatisfactory for any games of bilbo-catch or bat-and-ball; in their free time they generally betook themselves to the shore, or the ramparts, or the Dockyard. But Ned was something of a gardener; he had his own small patch where he grew cresses and radishes and marigolds; and, now and then, when his brothers sallied forth to Dockyard or beach, he would announce that he preferred to stay at home in the garden.