My Dear Jenny

by Robins, Madeleine

  Lady Teeve had taken Emily’s measure, and decided that her best course was to give only such attentions to Miss Pellering as would keep the girl under the impression that she was a welcome guest, and to ignore her—worse, to leave her to the tender mercies of Mary Quare and Miss Joanna Brickerham. Lady Teeve was no novice in the interesting game of playing one person against others, and had made it clear to Miss Brickerham—who fancied herself as Mrs. Peter Teverley—that both Miss Prydd and Miss Pellering had set their caps at Mr. Teverley, thereby insuring that lady’s wholehearted cooperation in depressing Miss Pellering’s pretensions. Miss Quare she incited by requiring that she act practically as a maid to Miss Prydd, which offended the companion’s sense of dignity almost beyond bearing.

  So Emily, downstairs, was snubbed by Miss Brickerham, and alternately ignored and courted by Lady Teeve, who made a point of speaking to the girl of her plans for dearest Domenic and Miss Gorbuttleigh, and managed, at the same time, to intimate to Emily that Jenny was receiving a great deal of attention from Mr. Teverley. Which information only served to widen the gap between Jenny, upstairs, and Emily below. Lord Teeve spent most evenings in conversation with Peter Teverley and his son, or playing backgammon with Miss Sarah Brickerham. Domenic and Peter Teverley did not take pains to make conversation with her, and Emily felt very much alone. Had it not been for Miss Quare’s gorgon presence and Lady Teeve’s clever hints about Jenny and Teverley (but that couldn’t be, surely! Emily thought), Emily would have sought her friend out half a dozen times before Jenny was allowed to return to the drawing room.

  At last Jenny was permitted to appear briefly in the drawing room for evening tea. She was made much of by Domenic and Emily, and Sir John and Lord Teeve welcomed her back to the company genially. Lady Teeve and Miss Joanna Brickerham were elegantly insincere in their congratulations, and Miss Sarah Brickerham only smiled, apologetically, over her sister’s shoulder. Perhaps it was the knock on the head, and perhaps it was the strain of the party; Jenny retired very early, accompanied unwillingly by the even less willing Miss Quare, who had been instructed by Lady Teeve to escort Miss Prydd to her room.

  “You really need not,” Jenny said again. This time Miss Quare did not even answer; she only shot Miss Prydd a speaking glance. When they arrived at Jenny’s door the companion turned to leave with a sullen “Good night,” but Jenny detained her.

  “Please, I do want to thank you for your assistance to me in these last few days. I know it is not what you are used to.”

  “I know it is not at all what you are used to.” Mary Quare turned suddenly. “I’ll tell you again, I do only what Lady Teeve bids me do. Nothing more.”

  Jenny stared at the hard, defiant expression on the other woman’s face. “I am sorry to bother you with it,” she began shakily. “But can you tell me how I have offended you?”

  Miss Quare sniffed disdainfully. “You aren’t worthy of the notice,” she said coldly. Then her eyes sparked as if, having said so much, she must say more. “No, you aren’t worth the notice at all. In any case, Lady Teeve don’t like you, and that must be my reason.”

  “But surely you cannot hate me for someone else’s cause? When Lady Teeve has only conceived a dislike for me based on a misunderstanding—that’s no reason to form a true dislike secondhand.”

  “It is reason enough. My lady insists that her staff share her opinions. There are plenty of poor girls of good family who would be delighted to have my position.”

  “And that is the point, do you see?” Jenny pressed on eagerly. “We are two of a kind, you and I; I am of no better fortune, I warrant you, and it is only by my aunt’s kindness, and chance, that I am here today. I would have thought that we would feel a great similarity—”

  “Similarity!” Miss Quare broke loose of Jenny’s hand. “I said before: You aren’t worth the notice. You—you’re older than I, and little and plain, with no pretensions of any sort, and you get taken into that silly chit’s family and courted round to balls and plays, invited, not attending upon, quite as if you were young, or pretty, or wealthy. And I—” She broke off, staring at her hands. “I follow Lady Teeve’s instructions.” Her voice dropped and her shoulders ceased their shaking. “If you need anything further, please ring, Miss Prydd.”

  “But—” Jenny tried, but Miss Quare had inexorably turned her back and was gone in a moment.

  Unable to think too clearly, Jenny did not undress immediately, but sat on her bed to contemplate the acquisition of an enemy.

  o0o

  Emily was faring little better in the drawing room. Domenic and the other men were disposed to act more kindly to her once Jenny had made her appearance in the drawing room and they were assured that all was well on that front. But Peter, Sir John, and Lord Teeve had formed the habit of discussing men’s affairs after dinner, a topic in which Emily could by no means take part, and even when they disbanded, Lord Teeve played backgammon with Sir John or Sarah Brickerham, and Miss Joanna Brickerham attached Peter Teverley immediately. Which left Emily with Lady Teeve and Domenic for conversation, and Emily was not in charity with Domenic, whom she regarded as the author of Jenny’s accident and her own disgrace. So Emily, who had spent every moment since coming-out at the heart of some group or another, found herself reduced to floating on the edges of each group of talkers, unable to bring the conversation round to something she understood on the one hand, and being efficiently snubbed on the other. To be sure, Lady Teeve would occasionally call her over to chat, but these little conversations were so heavily laced with references to a match between Peter Teverley and Miss Brickerham, Lady Teeve’s hopes for a match between her son and Miss Gorbuttleigh, and sly hints, couched as advice, about Jenny’s behavior with Teverley. “I would suggest that you speak with your—your friend, my dear child; it really is a sad thing for a woman of her age to be throwing herself—I assure you! throwing herself—at the head of some man. Poor Peter hardly knows what to make of it, I may assure you....

  And no matter what Emily said, somehow Lady Teeve agreed absolutely, and still contrived to leave Emily with a horrible feeling that she was wrong, that Jenny was throwing herself at Teverley—whom she had not seen since his visit to her sickroom—and that no one in the party was as civil to her as Lady Teeve.

  And then the lady would dismiss her and take up her netting, or begin to talk to Sir John or one of the Brickerham girls.

  Left sitting alone, with Jenny retired to her sickroom and all the others in conversation, Emily began to gravitate toward the gentlemen’s group, where they were discussing earnestly a problem at one of Peter Teverley’s Indian plantations. Sir John had just finished making a long, involved suggestion, and was countered by Lord Teeve, who proposed an exactly opposite remedy for the problem.

  “Precisely what Miss Prydd said, sir,” Teverley agreed. “And I find that the more I think upon it, the more I think that she—and you, of course—are right. Let the men have their families there, and they will work the better for it.”

  “Do you discuss your business with Miss Prydd?” Sir John asked.

  “Well, on one occasion the subject came up, and she made a few very observant remarks.”

  “A fine little lady, that,” Lord Teeve pronounced from his chair.

  “Remarkable,” Teverley agreed quietly.

  This was too much for Emily, on top of Lady Teeve’s pronouncements about Jenny, Mr. Teverley, and Joanna Brickerham. She giggled. “Jenny, remarkable?”

  “What, child?” Lord Teeve looked up vaguely, surprised by her interruption.

  “Why, sir, only that Jenny is the dearest creature on earth, but remarkable?”

  “My dear child,” Teverley drawled. “What is remarkable to a man of five and thirty may easily pass the notice of a babe of seventeen.”

  “I am not a babe,” Emily cried, stung.

  “Of course not,” Teverley agreed, unconvinced. “Hi, Domenic!” He called for his cousin, who had been sitting and chatting idly with Sarah Br
ickerham, as she worked her tambour frame. The youth joined his cousin in a moment. “I suggest that you take this charming young lady and propose a game of draughts to her.” Teverley turned back to Sir John and Lord Teeve with the calm incivility of a father dismissing an impertinent child. Dom stood, feeling a little awkward, but happy now for the opportunity to spend some time with Emily.

  But, “I am not feeling quite the thing, Dom. If you’ll excuse me, I shall retire,” she said wanly, and left him, to take her leave of Lady Teeve. Domenic’s mother smiled at her guest, wished her a good night’s rest, and, once the girl was gone from the room, permitted herself a satisfied smile.

  o0o

  Emily, hating Teverley, hating Domenic, hating Joanna Brickerham and Sir John and Miss Sarah, and Mary Quare, and mostly hating herself, went up the stairs, hesitating in front of Jenny’s room. She needed to be comforted, she needed to be soothed and permitted to cry; perhaps Lady Teeve was wrong about Jenny. Perhaps she was not trying to attach Teverley (though, of course, how could she?). And Jenny was always ready to hold her hand, pat her hair, and with common sense chide her out of the sullens. Emily paused a moment, then opened Jenny’s door.

  Jenny was asleep, the light still burning.

  Emily left the room, convincing herself that no one cared for her, and of all those no-ones, Jenny was the worst. Jenny had fallen from her horse and thus put Emily in disgrace; Jenny had presumed to give Teverley advice, which he was going to follow; Teverley had almost compared Jenny’s antidotical common sense with Emily’s beautiful birdwittedness and found in Jenny’s favor! And now, Jenny was asleep when Emily needed her!

  It was the outside of enough. Before Emily slept that night, which she did very badly, she had convinced herself that Jenny was her enemy, and had so far forgotten her place as companion—a post which Miss Prydd had not accepted, and for which she certainly received no salary—as to be asleep when her mistress needed her. Emily slept at last, wondering why she found herself so miserable.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was the opinion of the doctor, visiting the next morning, as it was of several members of the household, that Miss Prydd had overtaxed herself, and, although admittedly a game sort of lady, was not yet truly strong enough to go among company. The doctor went so far as to say that Miss Prydd might take her choice: the free run of the house now, or attendance at the ball in four nights’ time, if she behaved herself as becomes an invalid and did not sit in company for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Jenny was fully aware that her “company” for those four days was likely to consist of Emily, the sullen Mary Quare, and Miss Sarah Brickerham, who had an innocent’s blithe ignorance of the currents which boiled around her. Despite even this knowledge, her inclination was to settle in her room and play the invalid, enjoying four days of moderate boredom and excellent meals (Lady Teeve’s cook was not one to be thwarted by the mention of a sickroom, and, if anything, outdid himself in preparing dishes to tempt Miss Prydd’s appetite). Mary Quare would stop to see her now and again, Emily would dart in and out, and for the rest of the time Jenny saw no problem in contenting herself with books, which Miss Sarah Brickerham undertook to deliver to her.

  “Mr. Teverley picks them out—I should say, both the Messrs. Teverley, for dear Mr. Domenic stood about giving suggestions to his cousin,” Miss Brickerham fluttered. “I was most grateful for the assistance, for, you know, I ain’t bookish in the least. Are they all novels?”

  Miss Prydd assured her visitor that indeed, most of the books supplied her were novels. Miss Brickerham drew back, pleasantly scandalized. “Although I daresay other books may be even a worse trial to read. Imagine a travel book, or some horrid history. Why, the library downstairs is full of the most dreadfully serious books, and I cannot understand who reads them, for Teeve and Lady Teeve don’t seem bookish or blue at all, do they? Jo says—” And here Miss Brickerham was stumped, trying to recall what her sister had said of the matter.

  “I suspect that they are the work of several generations,” Jenny suggested mildly. “And some of them may only be decorations, at least now, unless Lord Teeve cherishes a scholarly bent.”

  “That’s just what Jo said!” Miss Brickerham agreed happily. “At least I think that was what she said. Jo’s far the cleverer of the two of us, Miss Prydd, and she says—”

  For the next few days, grateful as she was for Sarah Brickerham’s good-natured company, Jenny wished she could hear rather less of what Joanna Brickerham had said on all occasions. Emily, after the first day of dancing in and out of Jenny’s room, came in only twice on the second day and once on the third day of Jenny’s renewed incarceration in the sickroom. When she did appear, it was with the air of a child making a duty visit to an elderly and disagreeable aunt. While she was there she chattered on, at only a slightly faster pace than ordinarily, but her eyes were guarded, and it was no trick at all for Jenny to tell that something was not right with her friend. And to Jenny’s urgent inquiries as to how Emily was getting on, the girl gave her a look of mingled slyness and resentment, insisted that everything was delightful—and began to rattle about Lady Teeve in much the same way that Miss Sarah Brickerham spoke of her sister. Jenny, wishing that she could believe that this was due to the fortuitous kindness of an older woman to a young and charming one, wished that she were up and about.

  Still, she reflected, she could no more afford to treat Emily as a child than could the girl’s parents. She sighed. “I wish—I do wish that I had told her of the meetings Lady Teeve and I suffered before she gave this invitation, I know it will not purpose to tell her now. I only wish that I knew that Emily knew something of the lady’s real character, and what some of the circumstances surrounding this visit are.”

  Had she made it her business to indulge in this sort of thought, Jenny would quickly have given up her resolve to save her strength for the party, but she had a suspicion that she might be needed at Emily’s side during the party, and in the meantime, truth to be told, she rather enjoyed the chance to lie abed with no more responsibility than her own amusement. Sarah Brickerham might appear, or Mary Quare bearing the tea tray, and Jenny would exert herself to be social, to listen to Miss Sarah’s latest unwitting drollery, or to try—albeit unsuccessfully—to break down the unchanging wall of resentment between Miss Quare and herself.

  From Sarah Brickerham, who, in her eagerness to amuse and cheer Miss Prydd, did not guard her tongue very well, Jenny learned that Emily was not the only one—even excluding, as she must always do, herself—who had fallen to Peter Teverley’s charming smile. Frequently what “Jo said” would center about the other members of the party, and when she commented upon Teverley, at least in Sarah’s company, Joanna Brickerham was full of praise for Mr. Teverley’s appearance in riding dress, for his neat leg, for his romantic look (here Jenny sniffed amusedly) and for his money. Very often full of praise for his money. “Jo says Mr. Teverley is fairly rolling in money, Miss Prydd, although you don’t think of a man like that as the sort—he dresses too plainly for a wealthy man, doesn’t he? Although Teeve don’t dress much more elaborately than his nevvy, and I know he’s full of blunt.”

  Disturbed and intrigued by these confidences, Jenny tried to draw Miss Sarah into confession of her own opinions, but it seemed that she had none; she was obviously too used to receiving them secondhand from her sister. Faced with this obvious dependence between the sisters, Jenny ventured to ask what would become of one when the other married. “Mr. Harrington will take care of me,” Sarah replied, undismayed, and went on to explain that Mr. Harrington was her betrothed, whom she would henceforth trust to make all her decisions, and to whom, Jenny inferred, she would in future go for her opinions. “It ain’t announced yet, for Mr. Harrington is in mourning for his step-mamma, and don’t wish to show no disrespect. Jo says...” and Miss Sarah continued in her recitation until Miss Quare came to scold her and turn her from the room. And even then, Jenny saw, she bore no ill will, but smiled at her hostess’s co
mpanion, made her curtsy to Jenny, and danced down the hallway, humming softly to herself. Jenny, faced with Mary Quare’s grim service, rather wished she might have followed in Miss Sarah’s path and vanished herself. And she received meekly her broth and toast and her pork jelly, thinking wistfully of sunshine.

  o0o

  Emily Pellering was experiencing a novel feeling of freedom and a somewhat unnerving sensation of being alone. She had, of course, been alone before, but never before had she felt quite so unattended, so much responsible for her own actions. It was not an altogether pleasant feeling, for it took much more thought than she was accustomed to give in dealing with her fellow creatures. And when she felt some sting of compunction, or some twinge of dismay at her own behavior among the company, she reminded herself that Jenny was only up the stairs, after all, and was looking after her in a fashion. Taking this further, she could persuade herself that it was all Jenny’s responsibility after all, and if she was so disobliging as to be ill, it was not her, Emily’s, fault. Emily avoided thinking of the accident that had led to Jenny’s convalescence, since that made her remember uncomfortably some of Peter Teverley’s remarks to her. This only hardened her heart against Jenny further, for being the cause of those scolds. And after a day or so she had convinced herself that Jenny deserved no better treatment than a grudging visit once or twice a day, and in deciding this, insured her own inclusion among Lady Teeve’s familiars. Her hostess had nothing to object to, it seemed, in the company of the young woman, and often drew Emily over for what she termed a comfortable coze.

  “I dearly love to talk with young people, you know,” she assured Emily.