by Joan Aiken
What kind of person could the girls’ father be?
After forty minutes spent wrestling with the schoolroom piano, Hatty pronounced it tolerably fit for service. Meanwhile she had taken unobtrusive note of the sisters’ occupations during this period of time: Barbara hunched herself in silence over a little notebook in which she occasionally jotted down a word or two; perhaps she kept a journal? Drusilla, to Hatty’s great surprise, squatted on the floor close to the piano stool, following and listening to Hatty’s scales and shifts and modulations with what seemed the keenest, most breathless attention. When Hatty finally said, ‘There! That is the best that can be done with it. One note is dumb entirely, but by good luck it is a high register and will not be required a great deal,’ Drusilla jumped to her feet and said, ‘Now let me play!’
‘Certainly, if you wish.’
To Hatty’s great astonishment Drusilla sat down on the piano stool and plunged into a medley of airs and harmonics: Hatty recognized melodies from Gluck, Arne, and Purcell, besides ballad themes, Christmas carols and hymn tunes. The child seemed to have an inexhaustible memory for musical themes and a natural gift for harmonizing them. Hatty heard passages from Haydn piano sonatas, all jumbled up with chants from religious services and popular songs from street and meadow.
‘Who taught you this?’ she asked when Drusilla came to a stop and looked up at her, for once with a smile of pure delight. ‘Did Miss Stornoway?’
‘Oh, no! Miss Stornoway could not play at all. My sisters Mary and Anne had a teacher, when they lived at home. I used to listen to them. They learned the harp too.’
‘Well, we must have that mended. Perhaps you should play the fiddle as well.’
Drusilla nodded, as if this was only her right.
‘Can you read music?’ Hatty pulled down a set of simple exercises from the tattered heap of manuscripts on top of the piano. But Drusilla looked at the staves, minims, and crotchets with blank incomprehension.
‘Music in my head,’ she said.
Then she flung herself down on the worn rug and went instantly to sleep.
‘Should we not lift her up and put her to bed?’ Hatty said, disconcerted.
Barbara shrugged.
‘She will be well enough there. Very often she goes off like that, quite suddenly, after she has tired herself out with music.’
‘Her music is remarkable.’
Another shrug from Barbara.
‘It is of no use, however. She will never be able to learn to read music, or remember a piece right through correctly. As she said – it is all in her head.’
‘Has no one ever really taken pains to teach her reading and writing?’
‘I tell you, it is a waste of effort. She cannot learn. She is incapable.’
We’ll see about that, Hatty thought militantly, but from Barbara’s look of derision she could see the girl guessed what was in her mind.
‘You will only be throwing away your time, Miss Ward. As you will in teaching me to speak Italian or read French plays.’ Impatiently Barbara pushed aside the Purgatorio and plays of Molière which Hatty had brought from the library. ‘We do not want to be done good to. We do not want to be improved. Who in the world will care one jot if we speak with superior French accents or can translate Italian arias? Where did any of her education take my sister Ursula? She had to marry your father! Now she will very likely have to come back here again.’
Barbara gave Hatty a shrewd, penetrating look out of her dark eyes, and said, ‘You have sisters, have you not, Miss Ward?’
‘Why yes – three,’ said Hatty, rather surprised. ‘Agnes, Maria and Fanny.’
‘And which of them do you love best?’
Caught off her guard, Hatty hesitated before replying. Barbara laughed – a sardonic chuckle.
‘I see how it is. You do not really love any of them.’
‘We were all so different. And they were a great deal older than I,’ Hatty defended herself. ‘The person I really loved was my mother. But she died.’
‘You were lucky,’ Barbara said flatly. ‘You were lucky to have that one person at least. Nobody could love Mama – as I daresay you have discovered. That is why my father interests himself elsewhere. While there might still be some faint hope of a male heir he made a pretence of devotion but once that was past, enough! And he will not take Mama to London any more – he says she is too deaf. And too disagreeable.’
‘Barbara, you really should not be telling me these things! They are not at all a proper subject of conversation for Lord Elstow’s daughter – or from a young lady to her governess.’
‘Oh, stuff! What difference can it make? And you are hardly a proper governess. Why, I do not suppose you are much older than I.’
‘No,’ said Hatty firmly, ‘but I am far better educated. And I have a greater knowledge of the world and society.’
‘Fine words! Just because you have lived in an attorney’s house in Portsmouth and attended dancing classes, you need not assume grand airs.’
‘Your cousin Lord Camber was not too proud to pay frequent visits to my uncle’s house in Portsmouth,’ Hatty could not help retorting. ‘And his conversation was always very delightful and instructive.’
Barbara eyed her even more narrowly.
‘Ah. I see how it is. You have fallen in love with Harry Camber. Many do. Even when he was betrothed to my sister Ursula there were a dozen young ladies in London all dying for love of him. And so it has been ever since. Very queer, when you consider how plain he is. My sister Mary was off her head in love with him before she married Finster; and Ursula, of course, never recovered from the blow of losing him. Look at her now!’
‘Barbara you really must not speak so.’
‘Why? Because Harry Camber is thought to be a saint? If you ask me,’ said Barbara forthrightly, ‘saints do far more harm in the world than ordinary wicked people. Their expectations are too high, nobody can come up to them, everybody feels guilty who has anything to do with them, and they waste themselves in preposterous schemes like this one of my cousin Camber – going off to found some idealistic society on the banks of some swampy river in America. What use is that, I ask you? It will last three years, a lot of money will have been spent, some people will probably die – and for what? It is all balderdash!’
Hatty said: ‘This scheme in itself may fail. But all such efforts add to the sum of human progress. In a hundred years’ time, perhaps, some future society may profit by learning from the experiences of your cousin’s design. His name may be remembered, along with that of Sir Thomas More and Francis Bacon.’
‘Who, pray, are they?’
‘Both wrote fables about imaginary societies. Thomas More about a place called Utopia, Bacon about an island called Bensalem. Both men were imprisoned in the Tower of London,’ Hatty added.
‘Oh. Why?’
‘Bacon, I think, for bribery. Thomas More because he would not approve Henry the Eighth’s divorce from Queen Catherine. He had his head cut off, though Bacon was let off with a caution. Your cousin may think himself lucky that he lives in quieter times. People’s heads are not cut off so often nowadays.’
‘Henry the Eighth? Was he the one with six wives?’
‘Yes, and the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sir Thomas More was present on that occasion.’
‘I never heard of it,’ said Barbara dismissively. ‘We did not get as far as Henry the Eighth – we stopped at Henry the Seventh.’ After a moment she added, as if in spite of herself, ‘Was it really a whole field covered with a cloth of gold?’
‘I’ll tell you about it some time,’ said Hatty. ‘What does that bell ring for?’
‘Oh, that is to let us know that our cold meat is served downstairs.’
‘Should we not wake Drusilla?’
‘No. She seldom eats anything but fruit. And not much of that. She
may as well go on sleeping.’
Hatty was decidedly relieved to discover that the light repast of cold meat, very welcome after her chilly drive and long, difficult morning, was not consumed in the company of the Countess. She, it seemed, kept to her own apartments for the greater part of the day.
‘Mama is very lame,’ Barbara explained, ‘and finds coming downstairs too fatiguing, when there is no company but us. I suppose she may do so again if Ursula returns home. But I hope not. They do nothing but fight. Mama has always detested Ursula, and, after the business of Harry Camber and Francis Fordingbridge – losing two husbands at a stroke – of course it grew much worse.’ She stuffed her mouth inelegantly full of cold mutton.
‘Tell me,’ said Hatty, in a determined effort to lead the talk away from Harry Camber, ‘is that a portrait of your parents over the mantel?’
‘Yes; but executed long before I was born.’
Like Lord Camber and Lady Ursula in the library, this couple were young and elegantly dressed, though in clothes long since out of fashion, the lady with hoop skirts and a high wig, the gentleman in a long-skirted embroidered coat and buckled shoes. She was recognizably Lady Elstow, he had a long face, protruding teeth, a prominent nose, and slightly receding chin. He was taller than his lady, so must be very tall indeed, thought Hatty, and, like her, stared off into the distance with a look of extreme boredom and distaste for his surroundings.
‘I always go riding on horseback at this time of day,’ announced Barbara, abruptly leaving the table and starting towards the door of the small dining-parlour where they had eaten. ‘You, I presume, will wish to renew your labours with my sister. I wish you joy of her.’
And she vanished round the door.
But Hatty asked the footman who waited at the meal to direct her to her sleeping chamber. She felt that she required some time to herself, and wished to discover if her boxes had been brought upstairs.
It is going to take me weeks to learn my way about this house, she thought, as she followed the servant up yet another stair and along a different series of narrow, ill-carpeted passages.
From the view of overgrown shrubbery glimpsed outside its small-paned window, she judged that her room must be located above the library. It was a large enough chamber, scantily furnished with somewhat antique pieces, but, she thought, might be made pleasant enough. It was, however, bitterly cold; no fire burned in the grate.
‘I shall need a fire,’ said Hatty.
‘No orders were given about that, miss.’
‘Well I am giving you one now. Please see that a fire is kindled directly,’ Hatty told the man with more authority in her tone than she privately felt. But he said, ‘Yes, miss,’ in a docile manner, and not long after a maid appeared who proceeded to kindle and light a fire.
‘Do you know if Miss Stornoway was driven to Lord Camber’s house?’ Hatty asked.
The girl gave a sudden quick smile. ‘Yes, miss, she was! Frott, the under-coachman, he drove her in the gig. And when they got there the old ladies took her in – Mrs Godwit and Mrs Daizley. Mrs Daizley’s my dad’s second cousin, miss. At first they was mighty surprised to see her; but Frott he gave them your note and told us he left her there all right and tight; he reckoned they’d be glad to have her.’
‘I am very glad to hear that,’ said Hatty, much relieved. ‘Thank you for telling me. What is your name?’
‘Bone, if you please, miss. Would you like me to help unpack your things?’
‘Thank you, no, I can manage,’ said Hatty, nodding at the small boxes.
‘Well, just you ring if you want anything stitched or pressed out, miss,’ Bone said, and departed, leaving Hatty with the feeling that the servants here were friendlier than their employers.
As she unpacked, and piled her belongings in the one small chest provided (resolving at the same time to investigate the rooms on either side of hers, which appeared to be unoccupied, and see if she could not equip herself with a writing-desk and a cupboard with shelves), Hatty pondered about her pupils. Drusilla certainly presented a formidable challenge, perhaps insuperable; her problem seemed a medical one, not to be overcome by tuition, however lively or affectionate. And precious little help would be forthcoming from their mother, it was plain. Lady Elstow was bored by her children, bored by her household, bored by her whole life. And, if the Earl came home so seldom, and took so little interest in his property, an appeal to him seemed likely to be equally unprofitable. Neglect and despair suffused the atmosphere of Underwood Priors. It is as if there were a curse on the place, thought Hatty; and put the thought on one side for a possible poem.
What about Barbara? She at least was imbued with active emotion, even if that emotion was anger, mistrust and dislike. Her need for a companion was very evident; something might be built on that, thought Hatty. She resents me, but at least she converses.
Wrapping a shawl round her shoulders, for the air in the passageways was glacial, Hatty carefully built up her fire, hoping that it would last, then left her bedroom and began the troublesome process of finding her way, by trial and error, back to the schoolroom. As she neared her goal she was guided by the sound of music; evidently Drusilla had woken from her nap of exhaustion and was once again utterly absorbed in her delirious game of tunes and variations.
A footman who had been mending the fire came out as Hatty entered the room; he cast up his eyes to heaven and murmured, ‘She’ll go on like that all day, miss!’
Drusilla was too engrossed in what she was doing to take notice of Hatty’s entry, until the latter tapped her on the shoulder. Then she turned, rather impatiently, as if a fly had bitten her. Her expression was rapt, lost, infinitely distant. But as the lustrous blue eyes slowly focussed on Hatty, their look became less ethereal, and she smiled again.
‘Come now,’ said Hatty. ‘We shall try and see if we can play a duet.’
PART TWO
XII
Letter from Midshipman Ned Ward to Miss Harriet Ward
Dear Cousin Hatty:
Here I am at sea & it is none so bad. The first three days I was sick as a Cat & Oblig’d to keep to my hammock in the Midshipmen’s Mess for the wind blew a gale & I felt like to die. But on the 4th day a Marine help’d me dress in my midshipman’s rig & I was fain to totter up on deck & much amus’d to see how all the men’s garments, wet from spray & rain, were hung up to dry; the whole of the rigging being loaded with shirts, trowsers & jackets. All the wet sails were spread on the booms or tric’d up in the rigging, the decks were white & clean & the sweepers hard at work with their brooms. At first I knew not where to go or what to do, but the other midshipmen are a decent set of fellows & soon sho’d me how to go on. We have been in several engagements with privateers & I was sore Frit at first but now am becoming tolerably accustom’d to the gunfire & shocks of battle. The lads I pity are the powder-monkeys. They must bring up the powder from the magazine in small tubs & then sit on these tubs in a row on deck so no sparks shall get into the powder from the men working the guns. I do not envy them this task!
The Captain is kind & after 4 months at sea tells me I am in line for promotion to 2nd Lt but shall have to go before a Board on the Admiral’s Flagship where they ask terrible questions about quadrants & sextants & what to do if you are in charge of a ship that is embayed on a lee shore with a hurricane blowing. If I manage to pass this & gain my promotion it will all be thanks to you, dear Hatty, who help’d me so many times with my multiplication and division!
At night in my hammock I often while myself to sleep with remembering those pleasant Hours we us’d to spend in the old Tree House & the Poems you us’d to tell me. I hope that you still make up poems, Cousin Hatty, for yours were some of the best I ever listen’d to and I am very sure they deserve to be publish’d in a book. Well no more now from your devoted cousin Ned. By the bye, do you know how the family go on at home? I have heard no news for months.
This may be because mail is slow to catch up with us. I send this to Bythorn hoping it may find you.
Midshipman Edward Ward.
Letter from Mrs Frances Price to Mrs Agnes Norris
My dear Aggie:
I have been meaning these months past to write & wish you Joy upon your Marriage. If you are half as happy as I with my dear Mr Sam Price, you will do uncommonly well. It is a great comfort to know that you are so Respectably settl’d in life & when you think of it, I wish you may be able to send me and my dear Sam a trifle . . . perhaps £10, for his present wage is hardly enough to keep a Bird alive & I am in a promising way. You might mention me also to our sister Bertram – she is grown so grand now that I am nervous of approaching her but do, pray, send her my dear love & Remembrances.
Yours etc.
Yr affct Sister Fanny
Letter from Mrs Norris to Mrs Price
My dear Frances:
I was somewhat surpris’d, I must confess, at your application to me for aid, since you must know that it is quite out of my power to find any such sum as that you mention out of the very modest allowance that Mr Norris provides me with for maintaining his Establishment. Not that he is a parsimonious man, no indeed, but he must keep a respectable Establishment, suitable to his Cloth, and is of course ever mindful of the Poor and observant of his duty to them. Therefore I regret that I cannot assist you but fear that your misfortunes have been brought on by yourself through your own foolish indiscretion & you must endure them accordingly. I did not inform our sister Bertram of your application, as I know she feels as I do that you brought Disgrace on our family by your most ill-judg’d Escapade & must therefore brook the consequences. When ever she speaks of you she refers to you as ‘Poor Sister Fanny’ with such a sigh as would break your heart to hear. We do, of course, very constantly remember you in our prayers.