The Serpentine Garden Path

by Edeana Malcolm

  However, the birth of their third child, and its attendant expenses had finally convinced them that they could no longer afford to affect a position in society which they did not hold, and so they removed to the cheap, but still respectable address of Fetter Lane. John had to walk an hour or longer to his work at the Vauxhall Gardens, and a somewhat shorter distance to his church on Sunday, but he did not complain. He felt acutely the embarrassment of seeing Susan descend even further in the world’s assessment, but it would have been wrong to complain. Of greater value than wealth, God had blessed them with health, which gift John daily improved with his increased perambulation.

  ***~~~***

  Susan was standing at the looking glass tying a ribbon around her neck when she saw his reflection in the glass. He looked tired. The three toddlers at her feet squealed with delight and jumped up. “Papa,” James cried, putting his arms out to greet his father. John did not pick him up as he usually did, so James wrapped his arms around his father’s leg.

  Then Ellie let go of her mother’s skirt and clutched his other leg.

  “Do you know what day it is today?” Susan asked him.

  John pulled some flowers from behind his back, and she smiled at the cascading sweet peas.

  “You remembered my birthday.”

  As he was unable to walk with a child attached to each leg, she went to him and took the flowers. Johnny, the youngest, toddled beside her, and pushed his sister so that he could take her place at his father’s leg. Ellie screeched, and John bent down to pick her up, planting a kiss on her fat cheek.

  “They are beautiful,” Susan said, burying her nose in the blooms.

  John was going through his evening ritual of kissing the children, and Susan waited her turn patiently. When he had put down the last child, he kissed her lightly on the cheek as well.

  “I hope you will do better than that later,” she smiled at him coquettishly.

  “I promise I will.” He returned her smile. “Let me put the flowers in water.” He took the nosegay from her and left the room with the children toddling after.

  Susan returned to her image in the looking glass, frowning at the reflection. It had been five years since she had met him, and her face seemed to show every one of those years. She looked as weary as he did. She tried a smile and different creases formed.

  John returned, this time alone. She looked at him, replacing the smile on her face with a pretty pout. “Where is my proper birthday kiss?”

  “You seem a little peevish today,” he responded. “Is anything the matter?”

  It was not the response she had hoped for, so she tried a different tack. “Do you know how old I am?”

  He did not answer immediately and seemed to be counting mentally the years from the time he had met her. “I am twenty-one,” she said, impatient with him. “I am twenty-one,” she repeated, hoping he would realize the significance of the number, but he said nothing. “You do not remember.” She was disappointed.

  Five years before they had gone together to her parents and professed their love for each other. Her father had immediately dismissed him from his employment as the head gardener on the Kirke estate. Then, he had asked her to wait for him until she was twenty-one, that being the age of consent in England. She had thought this to be an eternity, especially when her parents had arranged her marriage with a man she disliked. Then she had run away to John, arriving at his doorstep in the middle of the night. He had had no choice but to elope with her to Scotland in order to save her reputation. She had gotten what she wanted, but she could not have imagined the result. Her parents had not only disowned her, but even worse, had placed John on a black list so that he was unable to find employment as a gardener on any estate of consequence in England. He was considered to be a common thief who had stolen a rich man’s property.

  “Aye,” he said. “I remember.”

  “You do not look happy about the memory.”

  “On the contrary, I am glad we didna wait. I cannot imagine a life without James and Eleanor and little Johnny. I cannot imagine coming home from work every day and not meeting you at the door with your sweet smile.”

  “You do not lie very well, John.”

  “That is because I do not lie, Susan. I do not regret a moment of the last five years. Do you?”

  “I love you, John, and I love our children, but you were right when you said that I was silly and impetuous. We had three children in the first three years! I am exhausted, and we are impoverished! How can I not regret it? How can you not regret it! You are lying to me, I know you are.”

  He shook his head. “I am not. Our children are a bountiful harvest from our maker and they are all the riches I will ever need. I dinna blame you; indeed, I love you as you are, even your silliness.” He added, smiling.

  She was not impervious to this smile, but she pressed on. “Perhaps you do not blame me, but you must surely blame my parents. Even though we named our first two children after them, they have neither forgiven us nor even acknowledged our existence.”

  “That is their loss. I pray that they may change their mind one day, but I dinna require their approval for my happiness. Do you?”

  Susan said nothing. She wished for it of course. As long as her father blacklisted her husband, he would not be able to make enough money to support his family. How could she not blame her parents for their intransigence? It was their grandchildren who suffered for it.

  John tried to show her that he did not blame her by giving her the kiss she had asked for, and Susan finally succumbed to his charms.

  London, Autumn, 1783

  The streets south of the Thames still held traces of the countryside, though the old mansions were here and there were being torn down and the former fields were rapidly becoming building sites for housing developments. John admired the small two-story clapboard houses that were being erected and wished that he had the means to purchase one for his growing family. As he walked towards London Bridge, he came to the older and more densely populated area of Southwark. There he crossed the Bridge and entered the business section of the City. Here the narrow, cobble-stoned streets were quiet now, the bankers and other businessmen having long since made their way home. At his lodgings, he usually opened the door to a happy chaos, but today was different.

  The children were sitting on the floor crying at the frightening sounds emanating from the bedroom. He realized immediately that Susan must be in labour.

  Mary greeted him. “You have arrived in time for the birth this time,” she said smiling. “The midwife is in with the mistress, and all seems to be going as it should.”

  “God be praised!” He removed his cap and jacket and hung them on the rack. “Would you let Mrs. Dean know that I have arrived and that I shall mind the children.” Mary nodded and went in to the bedroom to impart the comforting news.

  “Come, my bairns,” John cried, feeling somewhat like Jesus suffering the children to come unto him. “Dinna fash. Your Mama is in the capable hands of God. Let us pray together that He will care for and protect her.”

  He sat down with them, making a little circle, and showed them how to put their hands together and close their eyes to pray. Though he did this every evening, this was the first time that they all obeyed without fidgetting. The cries of their mother must have put the fear of God into them, he thought and wondered what would affect the same change in her. They had been together for six years and, by his standards, she was a heathen yet, but he loved her and would love her till the day he died. So he prayed for her, earnestly, lovingly, remembering how she had given up everything for him, and how she had given everything to him: these three beautiful bairns seated beside him, and another one whose cries he could hear just now coming from the other room.

  “Let us thank God for the gift of new life, children.”

  ***~~~***

  Susan was sitting up in bed, and Mary stood beside it with a bowl of soup.

  “You have to eat so the baby wil
l have milk, madam.”

  She could sense that Mary had no more patience with her. Susan could not explain her lack of will. A kind of lassitude had invaded her spirit and it felt too much effort to raise her limbs, never mind to get up and move about.

  “There will be more food for the rest of you if I do not eat,” she said, aware of, but unable to curb, the petulance in her voice.

  “What about the baby? Do you want Sweet William to die?”

  Sweet William. That was Susan’s name for him. It was the name of a flower and a line from a song that she had sung a long time ago, or so it seemed to her, when she had once been in love. “Sweet William died of love for me, and I will die of sorrow.” Such melodrama, she thought, but she could not keep herself from wallowing in it.

  “Eat your soup, madam.”

  Susan could hear the anger in Mary’s voice now. Perhaps she had gone too far.

  “Fetch me my bairn,” she said.

  In spite of her anger, Mary smiled then. “Your bonny wee bairn?” She affected a Scottish accent like John’s.

  “Aye. Fetch him.” Then Mary left Susan with her soup and her misery. Sweet William would have his supper soon. She started to sing that sad and sugary song because it suited her mood so well and perhaps it would purge her.

  ***~~~***

  Something had to be done. There was another mouth to feed from a fund that did not provide for the opened mouths already sucking from it. It was impossible to let Mary go: Susan was already unable to cope with the burdens that mothering and housekeeping demanded of her, and the children were still too young to help. Besides, it would not be possible to find someone else willing to do so much for so little. John could think of no other economies he could make that he had not already put into practice.

  So he went through a list in his mind of the people he might turn to for assistance in this time of need. He would not ask for money. He wanted only a more remunerative employment. It was no use applying to Susan’s parents: they had returned all of his previous letters unopened. His own family in Scotland had no connections. There was only one person he could think to appeal to, and that person was Herbert Fitzwilliam, a distant cousin of Susan’s on her mother’s side. He was the man that Susan had been engaged to marry at the time of their elopement.

  One might be surprised that John should consider this jilted suitor as someone who would aid them now, unless one already knew the gentleman, for it was he who had given John the funds required to undertake the elopement with Susan, a fact that John had never divulged to her. He had also never told her that through all these years he had been setting aside a tiny sum from his wages every month in order to repay Fitzwilliam for his uncommon generosity.

  As great as his need had been, John would not visit Fitzwilliam to ask for his assistance until he was able to repay him. After six years of effort, he had at last amassed the sum required, and, before the temptation to spend it on his family became overwhelming, he went directly to the gentleman’s London house and enquired after him. Fortunately, he was in town.

  Fitzwilliam greeted John with an enthusiastic and uncomfortable hug.

  “Dean! It is so good to see you again at last! Have a seat. Stay a while. Where have you been hiding? I have been so hurt that you have not come to visit me before this. How long has it been? Five years at least, I’d say.”

  “Six years, sir.”

  Fitzwilliam seemed not to have heard and continued. “And how is your good wife, the former Miss Kirke?”

  “Mrs. Dean is well.”

  “I am so glad to hear it. Have you any children that I might enquire after their health as well?”

  “Aye, sir. We have three sons and a daughter.”

  “Three sons! Upon my word! Three sons and a daughter! That is amazing, Dean. But you were always such a prodigious gardener that I ought not to be surprised by your procreative abilities.”

  “I thankee, sir,” John said, though he was not sure that the remark was meant as a compliment. He began to wonder if he should ever be asked to state the purpose of his visit.

  Fitzwilliam finished chuckling and ordered his footman to fetch them some sherry. “We must drink a toast to your productivity, my good friend. It has been a long time since I have laughed so heartily, sir. Five… or did you say? six years, at least. I am so pleased that you have come to enliven my day. I was about to leave for Parliament. Can you imagine anything more dull? No, I suppose you cannot. Not in your life with your beautiful wife and all of your babies about you. When I think what a fate you have saved me from, I must thank heaven. I have to ask, how do you tolerate it, Dean?”

  “I must protest, sir...” John was about to say when the footman arrived with a decanter of sherry and two beakers on a tray, and Fitzwilliam interrupted him.

  “No, no, Dean. I know that you are some kind of dissenter, and probably an abstainer at that, but I must insist you drink a toast with me. It is most probably a lack of alcohol that has made you such a prodigious sire. Perhaps you ought to drink more as an antidote, my good man. Have you considered that?”

  Fitzwilliam poured the sherry into the cups and passed one to John. Then he took his glass and raised it. “To the health and well being of the family of John Dean, gardener.”

  John could never have refused to drink to such a toast. “I shall drink with you, sir,” he said.

  “Good man.”

  John raised his glass and swallowed the sherry quickly. It burned his throat, sending pleasant fumes through his nostrils and leaving a sweet and cloying taste on his tongue. He replaced the glass on the tray and began to speak before Fitzwilliam could resume. “The health and well being of my family is the very subject I have come to discuss with you.”

  “Then, what can I do to assist you, Dean? Name it and it shall be done.”

  “You are most kind. I dinna ken if you are aware, but since my marriage I am blacklisted by Susan’s father and hae found myself unable to obtain work suitable to my abilities and with sufficient wages to support my family. I am hopeful that you might be in need of a gardener perhaps?” Dean felt himself demeaned by the necessity of his plea.

  “I should not wish my father dead, of course, but until that unhappy occasion, I am not in possession of an estate worthy of your talent. I cannot offer you employment on my father’s behalf as he remains on good terms with Mr. Kirke in spite of our failed engagement, for which he blames me.”

  “Surely he does not know of your involvement in our elopement?”

  “No, but it springs naturally to his mind to consider me as the guilty party as I have already so many failed engagements to my credit”

  “Perhaps you might know of someone among your acquaintances who is in need of a gardener.”

  “Now, there I may be able to aid you. I have some friends among the peers and gentry at Parliament. I shall make enquiries and mayhap find some gentleman who will act like one and rescue your family from penury. I am only sorry that you did not consider me enough of a friend to come for assistance before this.”

  “I confess the reason that I did not visit you earlier was my shame that I could not repay the money you had lent me. Now that I have managed to amass the sum required, I feel that I can come before you as an honest man.” Then John took a small bag heavy with coins from his pocket and handed it to the gentleman.

  Fitzwilliam would not take it, waving his hands so that John could not place the bag in them. “No, no, sir. I know from your own admission that you cannot afford such an expense. Besides, I am afraid that you mistook my meaning at the time I gave you the money. I intended it as a wedding gift for you and Mrs. Dean. I will not take it back.”

  “There was no mistake, I assure you. If you had given it under any other pretext than as a loan, I would not have accepted it. I maun insist that you receive it. If it is any consolation to your generous spirit, I hae not paid you any interest.”

  Fitzwilliam laughed heartily. “You do amuse me, Dean.” He said, taking the
bag at last.

  John continued to sit, looking as though there was still something on his mind.

  “Is there anything else I may do for you?”

  “There is, sir,” he finally said. “I would be much obliged to you if you could give me any news of my wife’s family. She seldom speaks of her parents, but I ken they are often in her thoughts.”

  “I am afraid that my family has had few dealings with the Kirkes since the engagement was broken off, as you can well imagine. All the information that I have is at second and third hand, so you must not value it as very reliable.”

  “I shall keep that in mind, but I would still appreciate any information that you might have.”

  “Because of my particular interest in the Kirke family, I have heard much gossip on their account. It is said that Mr. Kirke drinks a good deal, even more than he did before. It is further said that Mr. Kirke’s inebriated state blinds him to the fact that his butler has moved in to his wife’s apartment. But I cannot vouch for the truth of this slander to the lady’s reputation. The world takes pleasure in a cuckold, and it could indeed be pure invention. How can anyone know for sure, especially since the Kirkes do not often come to London? Of course, the Kirke Hall Gardens were on the tour of the bon ton for a few years, but they have recently fallen into disrepair without your expert hand, and without Mr. Kirke’s will to keep them up. I believe the man is heart-broken, and not on account of his inconstant wife either, though I rather suspect it is she and the butler who keep him from visiting his daughter.”

  John was so disheartened by this news that he decided not to repeat it to his wife. He knew it would only upset her, but an idea began to form in his mind that he might ask Fitzwilliam to be an intermediary once again, as he had been in the days of his engagement to Susan. “You have been so kind that I hesitate to impose on you further.”