The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark

by Lawana Blackwell

  “Well, Mrs. Phelps, you managed to show yourself after all!” Mrs. Bartley, a commanding gray-haired presence, rose from a chair, her voice carrying over the hum of conversation. Three years ago Julia would have wilted at the woman’s tone, but now she knew well the warm heart inside that forbidding exterior. She simply walked over to plant a kiss upon her former lodger’s wrinkled cheek.

  “And I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Bartley. Have I missed anything important?”

  “Nothing earth shattering, I suppose,” she replied in a voice considerably warmer. She sent a worried glance past Julia’s shoulder. “I trust Mrs. Raleigh is well? Several ladies noticed your trap at her cottage.”

  But of course they would, Julia thought, for there were few secrets in Gresham. With truthful evasiveness she replied, “Elizabeth was feeling a little out of sorts, so I urged her to stay home and rest.”

  “I pray it’s nothing serious. And you gave her very astute advice. It’s always best to stay in when there is the possibility one may be carrying something contagious.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Mrs. Bartley took her arm. “And so now why don’t you go ahead and have some tea and cake so our meeting can begin?”

  Having had two cups at the vicarage as well as a hearty breakfast, Julia declined politely, opting to call the meeting to order as soon as the others had served themselves. She crossed the room, exchanging greetings along the way, and took a place near the marble fireplace in which a low fire snapped in the grate to break the morning chill. When everyone’s attention was directed her way, she expressed appreciation to Mrs. Bartley for hostessing the meeting and led the group in prayer.

  The Women’s Charity Society’s main concern was raising money to help provide food and other necessities for Gresham’s poor. But Saint Jude’s centuries-old pulpit had needed replacing for years, and just because it hadn’t actually crumbled apart when given a good pounding during a heated sermon, the diocese was dragging its collective feet in replacing it. Mrs. Derby, the cobbler’s wife, was first to raise her hand when Julia asked for suggestions.

  “We could sew quilts and sell them.” That idea was swiftly and tactfully put to rest because of the time such a project would require—not to mention that several of the members, Julia included, had never sewn a stitch beyond needlepoint.

  The most impractical suggestion came from Mrs. Bartley, yet it drew spirited applause—muffled by gloves. “We drag the pulpit out to the green and make a bonfire.”

  “Mrs. Bartley,” Julia was compelled to respond while constraining a smile, “how would that help the matter?”

  A coy smile curved under the elderly woman’s hawkish nose. “The diocese would have no choice but to give us a new one, now would they? They couldn’t very well expect Vicar Phelps to prop his prayer book and Bible on the floor.”

  Again there was applause, with Mrs. Bartley soaking it up like the sponge cakes soaked up chocolate sauce. “Aye, but they jolly well might if we burnt our own pulpit,” Mrs. Sykes argued, as if she believed Mrs. Bartley actually intended to carry out her plan.

  It was timid Mrs. Durwin who started everyone down the path toward a solution. “Why not sell sandwiches and lemonade on May Day?”

  “That’s a fine idea!” Mrs. Sway, wife of the greengrocer, enthused. “We could ask the vicar to announce it in church. But would that raise enough money?”

  “Why not have a pantomime too?” Mrs. Johnson suggested. “We could charge admission.”

  “But May Day is less than a month away. Would we have time to arrange it?”

  Mrs. Bartley got to her feet again. “Instead of a pantomime…”

  She looked across at Fiona, who stared back at her with growing caution upon her oval-shaped face. “Why not real theatre! After all, one of our parishioners is a famous actor. And his one-man show two years ago was the talk of Gresham.”

  The muffled claps were louder this time, intermingled with excited chatter. Intercepting Fiona’s panicked look, Julia raised a hand for attention.

  “Ladies…” she said when silence finally arrived. “I must remind you that Mr. Clay is here for a much needed rest.”

  Mrs. Bartley was the first to retract. She had once been Ambrose’s walking partner and felt great affection for the man. “That’s true,” she declared. Resuming her chair, she sent Fiona a look filled with regret. “I quite forgot myself.”

  “It was a good idea, Mrs. Bartley,” Fiona replied calmly, smiling to show that she understood.

  A moment or two of collective thoughtful silence had lapsed, when Mrs. Latrell had a suggestion. “We auctioned box lunches on May Days back in Faversham. You know, for the unmarried couples? Couldn’t we do that here as well?”

  This plan was seized upon eagerly. Mrs. Bartley was nominated, seconded, and then voted unanimously to head the project. When the business part of the meeting was concluded, Julia slowly made her way over to Fiona. Every woman she passed complimented her on her husband’s sermon yesterday or asked about Elizabeth, and it would have been rude not to linger and chat for a minute.

  “How is Ambrose?” Julia asked her friend when they finally had the opportunity for private conversation. She wasn’t quite sure when friendship between the Phelps and Clays had evolved into a first-name basis, but it seemed perfectly natural to her now.

  Taking her hand, Fiona replied, “The same. Thank you for coming to his rescue. He insisted that I attend today.”

  “I assumed as much. Your happiness is so important to him.”

  “I would have been just as happy to stay with him.” She flashed a guilty glance to the nearest circle of chatting women. “Not that I’m not having a lovely time.”

  “I understand,” Julia assured her.

  “Anyway, he mentioned challenging Mr. Durwin at the draughts board. And Mr. Bancroft from London has asked him to read a couple of plays to keep in mind for the future. So at least he has things to do with his time besides stare out the window.”

  “And besides pamper his wife?” Julia asked with an affectionate squeeze of her friend’s hand.

  A spark warmed Fiona’s violet eyes. “We wouldn’t want to get too carried away, would we now?”

  “And so who can give us an example of iambic pentameter?” Lydia Clark asked the seven girls and five boys at their desks, students of the Octavia Bartley School for Advanced Learning. As usual, Helen Johnson’s arm shot up immediately, while other students rustled through the pages of their anthologies. Lydia simply sent the girl a smile that said, Let’s give someone else a turn this time, shall we?

  “Ben?” she said after an appropriate amount of time had passed.

  The wheelwright’s son looked up from his text. “Uh…The Eve of Saint Agnes?”

  “A very good example. John Keats used iambic pentameter more than any other form. Read us a line, please.”

  Ben, whose dream was to be an architect in a big city, cleared his throat. “The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.”

  “Can you hear the five soft and strong rhythms?”

  Twelve heads nodded, and Lydia stepped over to the blackboard. “For this next exercise, I would like you to pretend you’re writing the body of a letter to a friend, using iambic pentameter. It should be at least eight lines.”

  The faces of all five boys filled with panic, as if she had asked them to prepare a dissertation in Latin. “It isn’t that difficult once you get in the habit of thinking in rhythm,” she reassured them. “You may even enjoy it.”

  If any believed that, it didn’t show by their expressions. Billy Casper’s arm shot up, prompting Lydia to add, “An imaginary friend will be fine.” The arm lowered.

  “Write your letter in iambic pentameter, telling your friend anything you wish.” When three more hands were thrust into the air, she added, “And no, it doesn’t have to rhyme.”

  It wasn’t that she was clairvoyant, but after teaching school for over sixteen years, Lydia had developed an instinct for antici
pating the questions that would accompany any new assignment. She pointed to the blackboard. “I’ve written some sample sentences. Let’s read them together.”

  “My Fa-ther took us to the shop for treats” was delivered by twelve young voices in unison. Three minutes later, the only sounds in the room were scratchings of pencils upon paper and the occasional creak of wood as a student shifted in his chair. Lydia went to her own desk and started marking arithmetic papers. She looked up presently and frowned. In the front row, Phoebe Meeks was rubbing her eyes. Lydia rose from her chair and went over to her.

  “Let’s go to the cloakroom, Phoebe,” she said softly. Eleven sets of eyes sent curious looks her way, but at a warning lift of Lydia’s brows, they all darted back down to the task at hand. Painfully shy during her own school years, Lydia had too much empathy to scold or even counsel a student in front of his classmates. In the cloakroom she smiled at the thin, brown-haired girl to reassure her that she wasn’t about to be reprimanded.

  “You’ve been rubbing your eyes quite often today. Have you another headache?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the girl murmured. Phoebe was not pretty like the children who graced the labels of bottles of castor oil and tins of cocoa, but she possessed a fine bone structure that would change into beauty when her face reached maturity.

  “Did you tell your mother about them?” Lydia asked.

  Phoebe’s green eyes evaded hers. “I thought it wouldn’t happen any more since you moved my desk.”

  “Will you tell her today? She needs to know.”

  “But I can see much better….”

  “If your eyes aren’t causing the problem, an oculist will rule that out. But we need to find out, Phoebe.” She put a hand lightly on the narrow shoulder. “And if you won’t tell your mother, I shall be forced to pay her a call.”

  Receiving a reluctant assurance from the girl that she would talk to her mother this evening, Lydia allowed her to return to the classroom. She couldn’t fault Phoebe for not wanting to wear spectacles. Those who wore them were not considered attractive by most people, no matter how clear the complexion or finely carved the bone structure. A terrible thing for a girl, for in every generation there seemed to be a certain number of healthy-sighted individuals who took it upon themselves to remind those less fortunate ones of just how unattractive spectacles were.

  Lydia scanned the three rows of desks to monitor her students’ progress, then fed the two goldfish in a bowl on top of the bookcase. The breeze had teased loose one of the curtains at a front window, and she went over to tie it back more securely. She had been spared the humiliation of eyeglasses. It was as if God had decided that natural plainness was enough of a burden. Taller than most boys during her school days, she walked with slumped shoulders until it dawned upon her that it was just as ridiculous to look like a question mark as to be overly tall. And one day she decided that the curls she labored over with a curling iron to camouflage her prominent ears consumed a fair amount of time that could be more enjoyably spent in the pages of a book. After thirty-four years of spinsterhood, romance was surely out of the question.

  She had learned not to mind it so much. At least she had had children—more than two hundred over the past sixteen years. Fourteen of those years were spent at a boarding school for girls in Glasgow. No matter the gender or location, the students brought her joy and frustration, laughter and sometimes sorrow, but they gave her a worthy reason to get out of bed every morning.

  Sounds in the lane interrupted her reverie. She peered out of the window to the left. Three women in Sunday dresses and bonnets were being driven in a landau toward Church Lane. Behind followed a parade of other horses, carriages, and wagons. Her mother had mentioned a meeting at the manor house this morning, so she would be passing by as well. Lydia turned to look at her students—most were twisted in their chairs in an effort to observe the scene behind them.

  “There was a meeting of the Women’s Charity Society at the manor house,” she explained, for it was unfair that she enjoyed the privilege of investigating from the window when they did not. “And may I assume that you’ve finished your assignment?”

  Only Helen Johnson nodded proudly while pencils started moving furiously against papers again. Lydia walked behind the last row, glancing over shoulders to see how her students were progressing. At Ben Mayhew’s desk she stopped, her eye having caught a familiar name. She kept reading:

  When I sit at my desk to start the day

  I pray that Laurel Phelps won’t look my way

  It’s not because I think that she is plain

  But her brown eyes are harmful to my brain

  I suddenly cannot add three plus three

  Who went to war with Prussia? Don’t ask me!

  I think if I’m to ever finish school

  I should wear blinders like my father’s…

  She waited until the boy had put the period behind the final word, mule, then tapped him on the shoulder. He started and gaped up at her in horror.

  “The cloakroom,” Lydia whispered.

  With a worried expression he turned his paper facedown, left his desk, and accompanied her as if on the way to his own funeral. When they were alone, she asked, “Are you aware that we’ll be reading the compositions aloud?”

  Color seeped from the roots of his carrot-red hair down to his chin, blending his mass of freckles into one rosy glow. “We will?”

  “Wouldn’t another topic be more appropriate?”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Clark. I just got carried away.”

  “Well, you’d best get started on something else now. You haven’t much time.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  She had to linger in the cloakroom for a second longer, for the struggle to keep from smiling had been intense. Fifteen minutes later, all pencils in the class had stopped moving. “And now, who would care to read first?” Lydia asked, leaving her desk again for the back of the classroom.

  Of course Helen Johnson’s hand stabbed the air first, but since none of the five male hands were raised, there wasn’t as much competition. This time Lydia granted her permission to proceed. Hurrying to the front of the classroom to stand next to Lydia’s empty desk, the girl arranged both dark brown braids to fall over her shoulders, cleared her throat delicately, and read in a dramatic voice:

  On Saturday I penned a page of prose

  So beautiful the angels quit their horns

  to listen. Then arose a wondrous sound;

  The flutterrings of a thousand mighty wings!

  As they paid tribute to my humble words

  I smote my quill upon my chest and cried,

  It was not I who stirred your heartstrings so!

  For talent is a gift from God, you see.

  “Thank you, Helen,” Lydia said as the baker’s daughter lowered the page. And because she always attempted to find something to compliment whenever a student put some effort into an assignment, she added, “You maintained the iambic pentameter perfectly through every line.”

  “Thank you, Miss Clark,” Helen said, beaming all the way back to her desk.

  Lydia could only pray that one day the girl would recognize the pride behind such a declaration of humility. It was one thing to give God credit for assigning talent, and quite another to suggest He had authored the poem himself. That was a lesson each of her students would have to learn for themselves—as it would have to come from a heart closely attuned to the Father and eyes that sought out wisdom from the Word. And as her students were still very young, there was always hope that that would happen.

  One by one, she called upon others to read. The topics ranged from Christmas memories to learning to ride a horse to gathering wildflowers on the Anwyl. Ben Mayhew stood and delivered a poem about fishing that was adequately structured but not nearly as amusing as the one Lydia had read over his shoulder. She called upon Philip Hollis last. Reluctantly he walked to the front of the classroom, his auburn hair almost dull compared to his friend Ben
’s cap of flame.

  And like Ben, Philip maintained he had no use for poetry. “What good will it do a doctor to know the difference between trochees and dactyls?” he had once asked her in frustration when he was having a particularly tough time completing an assignment. He held his paper at chest level with both hands and began:

  At River Bryce a tortoise bit my toe

  I danced and roared but it would not let go

  And so I hobbled home, at least a mile

  Attached to that cantankerous reptile

  The cook saw my predicament and cried,

  “I have the kettle boiling—come inside!”

  That night I said to family as we dined

  “If there’s a toenail in your soup, it’s mine.

  Youthful laughter filled the classroom as Philip lowered his paper, his face fairly glowing with surprise and pleasure. Lydia smiled too. To know that she had had a hand in helping him discover this latent talent filled her with a wondrous awe. A familiar scripture came to her mind regarding children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.

  She asked Philip to read his poem again and thought, Happy also is the woman whose days are full of them.

  Chapter 4

  After taking a shortcut across the green, Andrew was just unlatching the vicarage gate when he heard the trap being pulled up the lane. Just the thought of spending a little time with his wife was enough to lighten the doldrums that had afflicted him all morning. It seemed that at every call he made after leaving the Worthy sisters, people had looked at him curiously. Even the occasional passersby with whom he traded greetings in the lanes. Was he that transparent, his guilt so easily readable across his face? I’ll never do anything like that again, Father, he vowed.

  Again he set the basket down, this time over his own garden wall, and turned to wait for Julia. Only it was Mrs. Hayes, one of his parishioners, sitting at the reins of a runabout being drawn by a chestnut-colored bay. Of all mornings!