The Youngest Miss Ward

by Joan Aiken

  ‘Cyrus the great,’ Barbara amazed Hatty by replying.

  ‘Formidable! In the year 550 bc. But the Greeks, under Alexander, had excellent cavalry, trained by Xenophon. Bien, we have us the battle between Alexander and Darius on the plain of Gaugamela, between Nineveh and Arbela. Alexander led the cavalry himself. Now, we make this plain with sand. Drummond, the second gardener, has promised me a sack of sand.’

  ‘Why not plaster?’

  ‘Too much trouble to scrape off, once it has become hard. Sand we can re-form for each new battle.’

  The girls saw the sense in this, but complained that the sand slid about and made their hands dirty. It also stained the fronts of their dresses, until Hatty decreed that for the game they must wear enveloping aprons. The battle of Agincourt required a wet terrain so that the French army might sink in the bog; this rendered both girls so extremely filthy that Hatty demanded they both take baths and change every stitch of clothing before appearing at the dinner table.

  She noticed, with interest, that the presence of the Abbé in the house had effected a considerable change for the better in the manners and appearance of both girls. Besides being extremely elegant himself in his choice of attire – which, though plain and sober during the hours of day was always of the very best quality, his linen freshly laundered, and his shoes brilliantly polished – he was critically observant of any niceties in the wardrobe, style and trim of those about him.

  ‘I observe a young lady with very, very clean, shining hair,’ he congratulated Hatty one evening, when she had washed hers; and she was amused to notice that both girls the very next day followed her example and had their hair washed by Winship, the elderly nurse who looked after them. They voluntarily put on clean dresses without being urged to do so, and submitted to lying on back-boards and having their nails trimmed with a better grace than they had hitherto manifested.

  The Abbé also volunteered to ride into Bythorn in his curricle and purchase muslins to make the girls new summer dresses.

  ‘For it is plain to me that you wear outgrown and very faded toilettes.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ sighed Barbara. ‘They are dresses left behind by our elder sisters when they married and went away.’

  ‘Pauvres petites! Well, I am a very excellent judge of materials and shall bring you back some superb bargains, trust me.’

  ‘Oh, Monsieur! But how in the world will you be able to persuade Mama to part with the cash?’

  ‘Oh, I shall promise to buy her some of those bon-bons that she likes.’

  ‘I wish we could go with you!’

  ‘No, that I believe she would never permit.’

  Du Vallon offered to perform the same service for Hatty. With considerable tact he suggested that it was a pity a young lady with her charming appearance, and, he could judge, very superior personal taste, should be afflicted with a wardrobe of such gaudy and unflattering garments. ‘I am perfectly sure they were not chosen by yourself, Mademoiselle.’

  Hatty sighed and laughed. ‘No, you are entirely correct, Monsieur du Vallon. They were chosen by my aunt, and, dearly though I love her, I cannot agree with her taste in colour.’

  ‘Then – Mademoiselle – it would be the simplest matter—’

  ‘Alas, Monsieur, you are exceedingly kind, and I am vastly obliged to you, but it cannot be. I have no money to expend on my wardrobe.’

  She still had received no payment from Lady Elstow and, though she had a few guineas from poems she had sold to The Analytical Review, felt it prudent to retain what she had, in case of some sudden emergency. She did not trust Lady Elstow’s erratic temper and felt it not improbable that she might be dismissed with the same staggering unexpectedness and irrationality that had despatched her predecessor.

  ‘But this need be no concern,’ suggested the Abbé. ‘Madame la Comtesse gives me money for her daughters – the sum can most readily be distributed among the three of you.’ The Abbé seldom smiled outright, but a kind of wintry twinkle now passed over his strange countenance.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Monsieur, but that would not be honest,’ Hatty said very firmly indeed.

  ‘Dommage! You would so repay clever dressing, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘But what does one’s appearance matter, tucked away here in the wood?’

  ‘The eye of God sees you,’ said he sententiously.

  This was the first time he had referred to religion; Hatty could not feel that he took his calling very seriously. On Sundays when the girls, Hatty and Lady Elstow repaired to the down-at-heel little church which was all that remained of Underwood village, the Abbé remained at home and performed his own, presumably Catholic, devotions.

  Now he went on: ‘Besides, I see you, Mademoiselle, and I have the eye of an artist, let me tell you. It grieves me to contemplate you in a dress like an orange fondant.’

  ‘Well, I am truly sorry for your plight, Monsieur, but I am afraid that you must continue to suffer,’ Hatty said laughing.

  He bowed, hand on heart, and acquiesced; when, later, he returned from Bythorn with a considerable bundle of charming and intelligently chosen fabrics bought, all, he assured them, at bargain prices, over which the girls exclaimed in ecstasy, his eye caught that of Hatty and he shrugged and raised his brows in exaggerated grief at her obduracy. But Hatty had a curious and powerful conviction that she had passed some kind of test with the strange little visitor, and that it was lucky for her that she had not acceded to his suggestion.

  He gave the girls excellent advice as to how the materials that he had bought them should be made up, and personally superintended the process.

  ‘How does it come, Monsieur, that you are such an expert on fashion?’

  ‘Why, Mademoiselle, it is because I was brought up, so to speak, on the knees of the royal family at Versailles. My mother, you see, was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen and had to attend all Court functions. So we lived at Versailles (in a small apartment in great discomfort) and I, as a child, was dandled by all the royal personages. I was a very pretty child, with a mass of golden hair – yes, yes, I know I am very different now – my mother dressed me as a girl until I was five years of age, and in my little cambric frock I perched on many a royal knee. I was a child prodigy, learned to read at two, at the age of three could recite Racine’s tragedies by heart, and sat in the royal box when the royal family attended the theatre and amused them all with my comments.’

  ‘Good heavens, Monsieur.’

  ‘Your surprise is natural, Mademoiselle.’ He gave her a melancholy nod. ‘But I am glad to have had such experiences; good taste, thus acquired, can never be lost. (Take care, Miss Winship, you are cutting too close to the border.) Elegance of appearance and manner is, without question, the first step to a civilized life.’

  ‘I wonder if Lord Camber would agree with that?’ Hatty remarked, half to herself.

  ‘Hein? Camber? You are acquainted with him?’

  ‘When I was living in my uncle’s house in Portsmouth I saw him frequently,’ Hatty explained. ‘You know him also?’

  ‘I knew him at Cambridge.’ A curious shade passed over the Abbé’s face; as with so many of his expressions, Hatty did not know what it meant. Distaste? Wry amusement? Regret?

  ‘A man of much charm,’ he pronounced. ‘But I fear that his ideas do not – how do you say it? – they do not hold water. They have no validity. But it is some years since I saw him, he may have changed his opinions already.’

  ‘Oh no! He is a man of very strong convictions. He has lately gone as a servant to Pennsylvania.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Hatty suspected that this was no news to the Abbé. ‘Well, I pity his master, unless he is fond of argument! Chère Madame, pardon me, you make the tuck here, like this – so. Now, you will see, the gown will fit very well.’

  Drusilla was not so interested in the new clothes as Barbara, since colours and patte
rns meant nothing to her.

  ‘Monsieur, Monsieur, will you not come out and play croquet with us? See, the sun shines!’

  ‘If Mademoiselle Ward permits?’

  ‘Oh yes – provided you promise to talk to us in French all the time we are playing!’

  ‘You are a stern taskmistress, Miss Ward!’ But he went with the girls amiably enough. He was ready to fall in with everybody’s requirements, Hatty thought. In the evenings he played backgammon or cards interminably with Lady Elstow and entertained her with an inexhaustible (it seemed) supply of political and society gossip.

  ‘And is it true that the King is out of his mind?’

  ‘No, no, Milady, that fear has passed; his Majesty is quite himself again.’

  ‘And is it true that the Prince of Wales has a different pair of shoe buckles for every day of the year?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed, Madame, and more besides.’

  Hatty, along with the girls, benefited from the daily newspaper that the Abbé had caused to be despatched to him by post; and he also received a French journal, Le Moniteur Chrétien, which came weekly, and which he perused with great attention. ‘So that,’ he explained, ‘if my affairs mend, and I can ever return to France, I shall not feel too much of an ignorant foreigner.’

  The Abbé never, at any time, gave any account of what unfortunate or discreditable occurrence had obliged him to leave his native land and take refuge across the Channel; he occasionally had letters from Paris. ‘From a friend,’ he explained, but he did not divulge or allude to their contents.

  Hatty wondered what had obliged him to come abroad; he seemed so very discreet and sedate in his behaviour that it was hard to imagine him involved in any wrongdoing; something political, perhaps? The affairs of France appeared to be in a sorry state, judging by the contents of Le Moniteur Chrétien. It might be easy, in France, to make some dire political mistake.

  Hatty had persuaded Lady Elstow to have the harp repaired, and lessons on it now formed part of the girls’ daily timetable. Barbara had very little talent, but liked the idea of herself giving an elegant performance well enough to make her take some pains in practising; Drusilla, as with the pianoforte, seemed unable to apply herself to a systematic routine of learning and practising, but, by instinct, it appeared, had the ability to improvise and produce melodies for as long as she chose. Music had the power to penetrate Lady Elstow’s deafness better than voices, and she seemed quite well pleased, now and then, of an evening, to have the harp carried down to the drawing-room and sit nodding her head while her daughters played and sang.

  Du Vallon had a strange, creaky voice like a cricket chirping, Hatty thought, remembering her first impression of him, but he was cheerful and obliging about taking part in their after-dinner music-making, hummed along with them when they sang, and himself sometimes burst into odd little French nursery rhymes and songs:

  ‘Qu’on m’apporte ma flute

  La tzimm, la tzimm

  La tzimm

  La la!’

  During the mornings he applied himself diligently to the task of making a library catalogue.

  ‘You know, there are some treasures here,’ he confided one day to Hatty. ‘I am very sure that Lord Elstow, who is no reader, has no conception at all of what valuable items his library contains.’

  ‘For instance, Monsieur?’

  ‘For instance, a folio Chaucer printed in 1687 – “The Works of our Ancient Learned and Excellent English poet Jeffrey Chaucer” – see, here it is – look at that beautiful page, together with “The Siege of Thebes” by John Lydgate.’

  ‘Would that be one for the girls to do in their battle game?’

  ‘Now you tease me, Mademoiselle Ward, but indeed the book is a treasure. Look at the engraved portrait of the poet Chaucer with his “lyttel sonne”.’

  ‘It is charming,’ agreed Hatty. ‘Would it be worth a great deal of money?’

  ‘Oh, a hundred guineas at least, I should imagine; and, see here, “Seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain and Wales, illustrated by engravings, bound in morocco and gilded” and “Works of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 1733 edition with vignettes and floral gilt decorations”.’

  ‘Perhaps I could borrow that one for the girls’ Latin lesson.’

  ‘No, Mademoiselle Ward; I hope you are jesting. And look here, Malory, Sir Thomas, “Le Morte d’Arthur Wynken de Worde 1498”.’

  ‘That I must certainly borrow. I have always loved King Arthur.’

  ‘I beg you will do no such thing. The volume should be locked up in a chest lined with velvet cloth in a warm dry room.’

  ‘Where is one to be found in this house?’

  ‘I know. It is terrible what the damp has done already. But, seriously, dear Miss Ward – here are treasures enough to supply a dot for one, at least, of the young ladies – or—’

  ‘You think they will marry, then?’

  He shrugged. ‘The little one? Jamais à la vie. The elder? Perhaps. Mind, it is unfortunate about la kleptomanie . . .’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Her penchant for helping herself to other people’s valuables.’

  ‘Oh, goodness!’ said Hatty in horror. ‘Has she—?’

  ‘No, no. Soyez tranquille! She has taken nothing of mine. I am fully on my guard. I lock my door. But I have a memory from former visits. Do not disquiet yourself, dear Miss Ward! And indeed you are doing wonders with her. It is not too impossible, I begin to believe, that, in the end, she should find a parti. But you interrupted me, Mademoiselle. I was thinking how simple, how very simple it would be to forget that these books had ever been here in the library, for who knows of their existence except you and I? Not Lord Elstow, for sure!’

  ‘I do not think I understand you,’ said Hatty, who had turned quite white.

  ‘Do you not? But you have not yet been paid a single sou for your labours with these young ladies, I believe? Nor have I, for that matter. Just one of these volumes would amply cover our wages as preceptress and librarian, for one year, or even for two.’

  ‘You are joking, of course,’ said Hatty, after she had taken a careful, silent breath.

  ‘Oh, of course!’ He studied her calmly and said, ‘Now we will forget this conversation.’

  ‘If you please.’

  ‘Why forget the conversation? What was it about?’ asked Barbara, who had just walked into the room. She looked black, suspicious, and lowering, as always when she interrupted a conversation between two other people who seemed to be getting on well with each other and without her.

  ‘We discussed whether Quintus Horatius Flaccus should be added to your syllabus of education. You should be glad, Mademoiselle, that we decided against it. And you are wearing one of your new gowns and look charmingly in it! What a pity that Miss Ward has to go on wearing her old orange-coloured jaconet.’

  Barbara was only partly mollified.

  ‘Can we fight the Battle of Hastings?’ she demanded.

  ‘From where had Harold brought his troops, the night before?’

  ‘Stamford Bridge.’

  ‘And whom had he fought there?’

  ‘The Norsemen.’

  ‘And why did not the English return the Norman archery fire?’

  ‘They had no archers.’

  ‘Very good girl. They had learned better by the time of Agincourt. We shall play. Set up the ridge of Hastings on the table. But where is your sister?’

  ‘Asleep on the schoolroom floor.’

  ‘Eh bien, you had better wake her up.’

  Barbara went to do so, after giving the Abbé another suspicious glance. But Hatty had already left the library and was running upstairs to her own chamber. As she did so she clasped her reticule which contained a folded paper.

  It was a letter from the European Review, announcing their acc
eptance of two of her poems and offering payment of half a guinea apiece.

  Another step on the road to freedom, she thought.

  XVI

  As well as knowing all about London society, the Abbé du Vallon was a mine of information regarding the Wisbech and Fowldes families and their idiosyncracies and ramifications. The Duke of Dungeness, for instance, he said, had a rooted dislike of a half-filled cup or glass, and would never drink but from a full one. His butler had to be constantly at his elbow to keep the beaker topped up . . .

  ‘All that family are somewhat strange,’ the Abbé told Hatty. ‘The Duke’s aunt, Lady Flimborough, tore off all her clothes, once, at a Queen’s Drawing Room.’

  ‘Dear me! Did not that make quite a sensation?’

  ‘Well, it was during the first period of the poor King’s madness, so the people at Court were quite accustomed to odd behaviour. And then there was her husband, Lord Flimborough, who left a clause in his Will stating that he bequeathed his whole fortune to his beloved daughter Jane upon condition that, within the twelve calendar months after his death, she should marry a man not below the rank of a baron. If she should not do so, the money would go to his wife, not otherwise mentioned in the Will.’

  ‘Gracious me! What happened? Did the daughter marry a baron?’

  ‘No, she did not. (Though, as you may well imagine, there was no lack of applicants, for his fortune was an immense one.) She announced that it would be an insult to her father’s memory to marry within a year of his decease, and, after the expiry of that period, she entered a religious order, for she was of a serious cast of mind.’

  ‘So the wife inherited after all.’

  ‘No, the poor lady died of a flux five days before the conclusion of the year.’

  ‘So who got the money?’ This story would interest my cousin Sydney, thought Hatty.

  ‘Alas! The fortune was all dissipated in lawyers’ fees as different members of the family tried to claim it.’