by Joan Smith
Slack expressed some interest in changing her skirts for trousers, which led me to comment that it was my desire to be rid of my curls and have convenient short tresses like a man. Clavering had more trouble than we in hiding his horror at these notions, but would not for the world say so. We drank a good deal of wine, those two devoured many dried cherries, and before he left, the Duke also had a piece of Slack’s birthday cake. He urged us to go to his library ad lib, promised he would send down the clavichord as soon as he had it tuned, and finally left.
“He’s an interesting talker, I’ll say that for him,” Slack said when he was gone.
“He’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg,” I added. “He thinks to become our friend and get Willow Hall from us. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but he won’t catch us."
“I wonder,” Slack said, and laughed archly.
* * *
Chapter 10
The next morning Slack went in the carriage to borrow books on Roman antiquities, and I remained home to deal alone with Lady Inglewood, who came to inform me I was wasting my time decking myself out in harlot’s gear—no, I do not exaggerate. That was her word—to win the Duke of Clavering. I told her we shared the common view, my paramour and I, that marriage was for fools, which so enraged her that she left before I could tell her about the clavichord; but I did throw in as she left that Slack was even then at his house, arranging the evening’s trysting place. The visit had the unfortunate effect of increasing George’s calls on us to win me back from Clavering’s malign views on marriage, and to spy and see just how much time he actually spent with us and whether I was chaperoned, I imagine. I put him to good use in my lessons and was beginning to feel quite an expert horsewoman. Other than putting on an occasional spurt of uncontrollable speed that terrified me, Juliette was coming under my control. The reins no longer felt like harness straps between my fingers, though I was still not convinced the popular arrangement was the optimum one.
Slack’s conversation, what there was of it, became almost totally incomprehensible to me as she progressed into the esoterica of antiquity. She lost all interest in any period later than A.D. 200 and reverted to the terminology of the era of her new interest. Londinium and Aquae Sulis were now familiar to me, but Anderida was a mystery for some time, till I eventually learned by induction it was none other than our own Pevensey. Rutapiae and Camulodumun were substituted for Richborough and Colchester, while her only concern with the countryside was to determine whether a little hump in the earth housed a barrow—a burial mound—and whether a stone wall or stretch of road were old enough to be praised. She took to roaming the park with her head bent looking for “artifacts,” and imagining she had found them in bent nails, rusty saucepan handles, and hairpins. When at home her nose was in one of Clavering’s books. I spoke in vain of a new Persian carpet for the saloon, and of putting in a hedge to protect us from the dust of the road, and as to mending the sheets—well! An antiquarian had better things to do with her time.
Clavering gave her every encouragement in this new hobby. He came often at night to peruse the books with her. They were now just plain Burne and Slack to each other, all formality abandoned. I became “Prissie” to them both, a name I abhor; I occasionally called Clavering “Wed” to annoy him, but when he once remarked, “I begin to get the idea,” I ceased. There, my pen is broken, and I shall discontinue this and take a stroll along the beach.
This next section, you will notice, is written in a different hand than Miss Denver’s scrawl. It is being written by me, Miss Slack. I have a first name, incidentally, a detail that has thus far been omitted. It is Maude, and Burne calls me Maude, not Slack. He pointed out to me that I was not slack at all, meaning inactive, negligent, and a host of other dilatory things. He is very quick to make a joke of such things. Miss Denver pointed out that she is not prissy either—prim, prudish—but we call her it in fun, since she never ceases to rise to the bait. I have had the opportunity to peruse her story thus far (I do occasionally glance at some other writing than Burne’s books) and feel impelled to point out that it is riddled with inaccuracies, to say nothing of questionable grammar. It presents a very biased view of the events and particularly of my own part in them. Going back some little way in her tale, I might say that I am not in the least afraid of men, and particularly masculine men, as she redundantly describes them. I do dislike rude, boorish men, which Burne is not, and if it appeared to her I was fond of George, it was only to conceal her own Turkish treatment of him.
I have been accused of stuffing Burne with cherries and wine, but I see it was not mentioned that after the first time he had them at our house, she purchased the very next day a large tin herself, and she loathes them. Nor did she give them to me but set them on the table in the saloon. I leave it to your imagination to work out why. There is also a little tampering with the truth regarding my actions when Clavering was present. She would have you believe I was fawning on him, which I was never with anyone in my life. When the titular hostess sits as mute as a chair and glares at a guest, I feel it incumbent on myself to make some conversation. Her behaviour in his presence was from the beginning peculiar in the extreme. She wishes to give the impression she had no feeling other than loathing for the man, but the fact is, she was smitten. From the first day he brought her home after her tumble she was in love, and I say with no other motive than kindness that her subsequent farouche behaviour in his presence was due to this. He is not handsome, to be sure—a little darker than the ideal, but with very nice eyes and a particularly winning smile. Her chagrin and her behaviour were due to the fact that the feeling was not reciprocated. He came certainly at first to try to get her to sell him Seaview, which she herself calls Seaview on any occasion when Burne is not present or under discussion. I think his present rash of visits has nothing to do with Seaview, and certainly very little to do with myself and my new hobby. I am not foolish enough to think a duke of thirty years has any romantic interest in me. In fact, my remark, questioned by Miss Denver, that I disapprove of marriage is true, insofar as it applies to myself. A fifty-one-year-old spinster must be a ninny to think of it as still a possible alternative, and, in any case, I am very happy with Priscilla.
The only impediment to the arrangement is that I do absolutely nothing to earn my salary. I am a companion paid handsomely for living in a fine home with a young lady who feels it appropriate to give me a diamond ring for my birthday. However, if I left, she would have to hire someone else, and as we have gone on comfortably together for so many years, I have no intention of leaving yet. An event might occur in the foreseeable future that would make my companionship unnecessary. I’ll say no more.
It has been hinted that my interest in Roman ruins is spurious. It is far from being the case. I do not simulate this interest to make up to Burne, but have fortunately at this late stage in my life found a hobby of consuming interest, and spend much time reading up on it. The hobby has found me, Burne says, as it found him. If I occasionally say Anderida instead of Pevensey, it is because I have so often read it, and one begins to speak automatically in the terms frequently encountered. Priscilla would have you believe she herself takes no interest in all this, but I have more than once found a book I was reading missing, and discovered it later turned to a different page. I cannot think Wilkins, the butler, shares my hobby, and the servant girl cannot read. It was my intention to teach her, and still is, but I find I have little spare time to do so. Actually, I have begun writing up an extract on the ruins around Pevensey, and though it has not been mentioned, I am frequently addressed nowadays as Doctor Slack by my employer.
The firescreen sits abandoned, nor has one been brought down from the attics. I must find a moment to go up and look it over and see if it will do. That was an ill-judged start, the day she ran from the attic to the meadow without telling me, and might have got maimed very easily. Odd about those two men she saw, who disappeared. But the grate no longer rattles, a
nd our little mystery is nearly forgotten. But I was saying I have abandoned the firescreen. It sits in the corner with exactly five square inches worked, and it will stand there unless Priscilla decides to finish it. This is unlikely in the extreme; she is awkward with her needle, poor soul. Never had the knack of it, in spite of my best efforts to teach her. It took her an eternity to finish her riding habit without my help, and truth to tell, it gapes at the neck, though I do not tell her so. She is very sensitive about her appearance these days. The green silk, to spite me cut lower and tighter than is modest, has been put on twice since the birthday party, and though it is nowhere mentioned, there have been two more trips to Anderida where a modiste is this minute making up a gown in rose satin and another in white with a thin red stripe, very pretty. She has also gone to have her hair styled and bought new patent slippers. The reason given is that we are now moving in higher circles than formerly. This is true, and it is quite shocking the short shrift all our other friends have got in this chronicle. Mr. McMaster for instance, was pretty well acknowledged as a beau before the advent of Burne, but now he is played down as hardly even an acquaintance. There are others, too, too numerous to mention in my one chapter, but really we have a good circle of friends, and I no longer think with regret of Wilton. However, it is only one of the new circle of friends who impels her to these unwonted extravagances.
With regard to the horse she bought from her aunt, I am amazed to read the lessons go well. She grits her teeth each morning and puts on the riding habit with the gaping neck—really I think I must alter it, it bothers me so—and goes out for an hour, but when I peer out the window, I see her sitting as taut as a wire on the animal’s back and am convinced those sudden starts the animal takes with her ears pulled back have not Priscilla’s approval. She should be a good rider, for she was always athletic, but she wants a tamer mount to begin. She would have got one before now if Burne did not continue to tease her about it, and ask her if she has been thrown yet every time he comes. She would ride it now if it were a tiger, to show him she can do it. I have occasionally hinted that mulishness is an unlikely way to nab a husband, but she tells me I had better change, then, or Clavering will escape my clutches.
The recital of the grate episode is substantially correct. I do feel, however, that the voices I heard from the chimney were given short shrift. I described to her in some detail that they were voices—human or ghostly voices—not creaking timbers or any mechanical thing. They came from a throat I am convinced, but that it was a living throat I could not swear. There was an eerie, supernatural sound to them, possibly caused by the echoing effect of the chimney. I do not strongly believe in ghosts, but a phenomenon that recurs throughout history and in all parts of the world cannot be rejected out of hand only because it is not understood. In fact, my own mother, whom I mentioned having vivid recollections of the earthquake of 1750, claimed to have seen an apparition on the grounds of Longleat in 1775, when the lord and lady of the manor had graciously opened the park for a church garden fete. Other than the grate, I have had no personal contact with the supernatural. While we are on the subject of my mother, I shall clear up a little point that might have mystified you. It has been said I am a “connection” of the late Mr. Denver and left at that. There is no mystery in my origins; I am not illegitimate or anything so raffish. My sister Wilma married Mr. Denver’s first cousin, Ivan Sinclair. That is the connection.
No doubt other things will occur to me after I have left off writing. I know I showed hackle every time my name cropped up in the story, as it finally did at the end of chapter one. Ah, yes, the shawl, the mustard shawl (to say nothing of the ominous-coloured mauve). There was a gratuitous insult. It is three-and-a-half years old, not five, and was plenty good enough until the Duke came into our lives. But you see who it is that is out to impress him. To finish off and bring it up to the present, I read that Clavering “often” came at night to read books with me. He came every single night that week, and also stopped in two afternoons on his way home from Anderida, and there was precious little book reading done, I can tell you. He frequently invited Priscilla out with him as well, but she stubbornly refused to go, for what reason I cannot fathom. He had the clavichord tuned and sent down immediately, the very next day, and often asked us to play for him in the evenings. He also brought her a box of dates (which he had sent down all the way from Londinium, I think, since there were none available in town), after I mentioned her liking them. He said they were the only thing he had heard of her liking, outside of wild nags that she couldn’t handle, and she already had that.
I write with embarrassment (for her behaviour reflects somewhat on my association with her) that she neither ate one nor even opened the package till he had gone. He was trying to court her, you see, but would have had better luck making up to a cabbage. I occasionally left them alone for brief periods, and always noticed when I returned that Burne had availed himself of a seat closer to her than when I had left, and on one occasion she was blushing, but I did not enquire what had passed, and naturally she did not tell me. I noticed that from that evening on she reverted to her yellow gown, so concluded he had complimented her on the green silk.
It remains only to straighten out the birthday gift from Clavering. I did not feign interest in it, nor was it a worthless, broken bit of rubbish, as you might be forgiven for concluding. It was purchased by a great uncle of his on a trip to Italy some years previously. It was primitive, which is to say not one of the large, classical copies of Greek work, but a bit of genuine Roman artwork, about fifteen inches high, very naturalistic, and there is no doubt as to the sex of the person in my mind. It is a small boy, holding a bunch of cherries, of which only one remains, but the statue itself is in perfect repair other than that. Its appropriateness rests in the cherry, of course, and I must say I think Priscilla is particularly petty with regard to our mutual taste for the fruit. It has come to the point I hesitate to offer the man one, which is ludicrous with the quantity of them now in the house, for she bought another tin when she got the rose satin material. There, the dinner bell is sounding now, and I shall finish up.
~ ~ ~
Evening
I see Miss Slack has availed herself of my story without bothering to ask my approval. I have read over her account and can say only “Balderdash!” However, in case I have inadvertently biased my account, I shall leave it in. She is quite correct to be angry at my neglecting to mention her name is Maude. Clavering did not come tonight, and we are both retiring early, since he has developed the rude habit of staying long past our first yawns, till midnight, in fact, and as we continue arising early, we are both fagged with his interminable visits.
* * *
Chapter 11
I spent the next day in my sickbed where I was resting not because of a sudden onslaught of illness but because of a long overdue spill from Juliette. On Monday the day was fine—the whole autumn had been beautiful with more sun than we ever got at Wiltshire, and in the afternoon I decided to ride alone. I had had a lesson with George in the morning and had planned to go to Pevensey with Slack later, but she had to dash to Belview to borrow yet another book—his library shelves must be nearly empty—and so my rose gown remained at Miss Savage’s shop, and it was to be finished that day. There was no immediate need of it after the spill, so it hardly mattered.
I became bored with the garden and decided to canter through Clavering’s spinney. It is closer than my aunt’s fields. She had dropped the hint she disliked a great deal of traffic in the park, since she was trying to grow some decent lawns there. I had permission to use the trap-free spinney, and intended doing no more than running through it once or twice on the footpath; but it happened that a stupid hare, of which there are many on Clavering’s property due to his having killed his foxes, dashed across our path, and what should Juliette do but take a fright and break into one of her wild gallops. I was first only frightened, thinking I could control her, since she has occasionally
pulled this trick on me before. On this occasion I did not succeed. When she got to the end of the spinney, she went mad with the vast expanse of meadow that suddenly opened up before her, and went galloping off into that trap-infested area at a hair-raising speed. It was the fear of traps that made me panic. I envisioned one opening its maw and snapping onto her legs, myself being thrown wildly and breaking my head or a leg, or falling into another trap. I thought of them as being littered every few yards, but this was not true. We didn’t see one during our whole gallop.
There soon arose before us a few remains of gray walls, the ruined chapel of Belview. I knew this to be the area particularly heavily trapped, and felt that if we were to be caught, this was where it would happen. I recount this now in a rational manner, but at the time I was irrational with fear, and hardly knew what I was seeing. I did catch, out of the corner of my eye, the sight of two men talking, and saw they had mounts standing by. Remembering the men who were to clear out the excavation for rebuilding, I assumed it was these workmen and shouted to them for help. The larger jumped on to a black stallion and came after me. The other also ran to his mount, but it was farther away and it was the first whom I had some hopes would rescue me. I soon heard him clattering behind me, gaining on me in spite of Juliette’s heart-pounding speed. He was soon at my side and reaching out one strong arm. I understood, quite naturally, I think, that I was meant to throw myself on to his arm, not that he could actually catch me, but it would break my fall.