by Joan Smith
“Would you mind very much to have your carpenters hammer on those panels they were preparing, as soon as possible?” I asked.
"The lads will be here this evening to take care of it. It is all arranged. I want you to promise you will not peek. In fact, you and your mother must take a late dinner with me this evening, so you will not be subjected to the hammering.”
“I shan’t mind the hammering,” I assured him.
“Don’t refuse me this favor. My cooks have been stuffing pheasants and baking pies and making ready since dawn. I wrote my instructions from London. You cannot refuse.”
Indeed I could not. One makes a dreadful error to put herself in debt to anyone. I was now obliged to take dinner with Mr. Everett. The splendors of Oakdene were known to me only by word of mouth, except for the exterior. It was left to conjecture what interior could match the oriental minarets, the baroque domes, gothic windows, and classical columns holding up the Georgian pediments of the outside. Of more immediate concern was the surprise he was preparing during our absence.
“It must look exactly as it did before. Menrod has been here complaining that we replaced an old poker with a new. He will not want his stairs changed.”
“If he is a man of good taste, he will like what I have planned.”
“It is not—not the dragons and lotus flowers, Mr. Everett? So charming as they would look at Oakdene, you must see they would not suit this old cottage.”
“I know you disliked them, though Skanner says the Prince Regent himself has something similar at Brighton.”
“Plain panels, stained very dark brown. That is what I want.”
“You shall have exactly what you want,” he promised, allowing me to breathe easier.
Mrs. Pudge had exerted herself to put on a tea to please two small children. When Everett sneaked in for a look at the table, it pleased him too. It consisted mostly of sweets, with some cold ham and cheese for the adults. Her famous Chinese cake was twelve inches high, elaborately iced with whipped cream. She had made up trays of dainties, tiny tarts, gingerbreads, sweet biscuits, to be taken with lemonade and tea. It more closely resembled a child’s birthday party than anything else.
To further bribe Gwendolyn, I brought down her mother’s favorite doll from her childhood. It was a rag doll, made by Grandmama, and dressed in a more modern mode by myself, with a pretty pink gown and bonnet. I had added a coiffure of new yellow wool. As I had no brothers, Ralph had no gift, but I hoped a four-year-old child would not realize he was being slighted.
I prepared my own toilette as carefully as the doll's. My second best green sarsenet gown was embellished with my best lace collar and my only cameo brooch—a twin of one Hettie had. I wanted to look attractive, to make them like me. The children’s preference would not carry much weight in court, but if I could show Menrod the children loved me, his insensitive heart might be softened.
My resolve to have them was not swayed by the material advantages the Manor offered. Their bodily needs would be more lavishly met, to be sure, but I was far from being convinced catering to their every whim and withholding affection was the best method of rearing children. Only look at the results it had created in their uncle.
When all was ready, we sat awaiting the arrival of the guests of honor. Mr. Everett regaled Mama and myself with details of his trip to London, and the various architectural wonders seen there. Pudge soon came stomping to the sitting room.
“They’re here,” he said. You may try for a millennium to train a country couple to civil manners, but you will never succeed.
I flew up from my chair to welcome them in the hallway. The first sight that struck my eyes was the supercilious face of Menrod. Why on earth had he come? He said very distinctly he would “send” them down.
Soon my eyes sank lower, to see the children. They looked as described earlier, except for a pallor, no doubt the result of their loss and their fatiguing journey from India. They were shy. The girl held onto Menrod’s fingers for dear life, while Ralph hid behind his legs, with only his dark head peeping out.
“Come now, children, remember your manners,” Menrod said gruffly, while physically pushing them forward. “There is nothing to be afraid of. This is your Aunt Harris, your mama’s sister. She won’t eat you.”
The girl was the first to take a voluntary step toward me. She executed a wobbly curtsy, then ran back to Menrod. I felt the strongest instinct to grab them both into my arms, but suppressed it. My aim was to keep the mood low-keyed, friendly, but not overly emotional. While we stood smiling at each, Mama and Mr. Everett came into the hall. There was a general confusion of introductions, along with some loud, ill-bred jollity from Mr. Everett.
“So these are the little Indian orphans,” he said, sizing them up like a slab of lumber. “I daresay it is the long haul that has made them so pale and frail. We will fatten them up in no time, eh, Miss Harris?”
Menrod lifted his slender brows in silent but quite obvious disapproval. “I don’t believe I am acquainted with your guest,” he said.
“This is Mr. Everett, who went to London to meet the ship in case you did not,” I replied, then ushered everyone into the sitting room, past the disassembled stairway, which I was busy to block with my own body. Menrod’s eyes roved all over the hall, for he was remarkably fond of this dismal little cottage, but soon they had settled on the new fire irons in the sitting room. While I made friends with the children, he took my mother to task about the ancient hardware. It was like drawing teeth to get a word from Ralph, but Gwen was more forthcoming.
“Uncle Menrod took us to see the white horses at Astley’s Circus,” she told me, her great gray eyes as wide as saucers. “He bought me a dolly, and he got Ralph a wooden rocking horse that he can sit on, only he falls off. My doll has glass eyes and real hair. She comes from France, so I call her Marie. Are you really my mother’s sister?”
“Yes, I am. I expect she told you a great deal about me.”
“She told me you were young. I thought you would be a girl, not a lady,” she replied, disappointed. “You don’t look like Mama. She was very pretty.”
“There’s a facer for you, Miss Harris,” Everett announced, chuckling loudly, and slapping his knee. “Around these parts, Miss Harris is considered a rare beauty,” he added, seeing my displeasure at the interlude.
Menrod sat like a rock, finding no amusement in the conversation and adding nothing to it. Ralph was painfully shy. Hettie had called him boisterous, which made me realize how hard her death had hit him. He tried to clamber up on Menrod’s knee, but was summarily put down, at which point he stood leaning against his uncle for security.
“I have something for you,” I told Gwen. “Would you like to come upstairs and see your Mama’s room, where she slept when she was a little girl, like you?”
“Yes, please,” she answered happily.
I wanted to get her alone, away from the others, to make a solid friend of her. I pointed out Hettie’s bed, her clothespress, dresser, the window at which she used to sit, looking out on the rose garden. The rag doll was on the bed; it seemed a poor sort of a gift after Menrod’s glass-eyed beauty, but I gave it to her anyway.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “What is her name?”
I had no recollection what Hettie had called the doll, but invented the name Goldie, to match the golden wool recently added. The girl, though friendly, was not immensely taken with me. Her interest in her mother’s room was polite rather than genuine.
“Shall we go and have our tea now?” she asked soon.
“By all means. Are you hungry?”
“No, we had a good luncheon, but I hoped there might be some sweets.”
The tea at least would be to her liking. Alas, it was not to Menrod’s. He looked about the table for more substantial fare than Chinese cake and small tarts, finally settling for a single slice of ham and a pickle, which he picked at delicately.
Ralph took one bite of a biscuit and two sips of lemona
de. I don’t recall that I ate anything at all, but Gwen and Mr. Everett appreciated the party. Everett ate heartily, and was the major talker at the table as well.
He was one of those insensitive souls who believe the more loudly you shout at shy children, the more they are put at their ease, when anyone could see Ralph was petrified of his clamor and laughter. When he turned to me to whisper in a loud aside that the boy was as backward as a maiden, I gave him such a dark scowl he fell silent for full two minutes, before turning to tease Gwen about taking the last tart on the plate. “That’s right, eat it up. We don’t want Miss Harris to have it, or she will be an old maid. That is what the ladies say, is it not, Miss Harris?”
Between Everett’s bothersome racket, Menrod’s looking down his nose at the food and the company, Mama’s sitting as silent as a flower, and Mrs. Pudge’s slamming plates and cutlery around as though she were a mess sergeant, the meal was not at all pleasant. The real disappointment for me was that the children did not warm up to me. I felt sure that if I could get them alone, I could make long strides in securing their friendship.
To this end, I arranged to get Menrod aside for a moment after tea. Mama took the children into the garden. By intensive staring and head jerking behind Menrod’s back, I transmitted to Everett that he was to accompany them. The only embarrassment in it was that he whispered in one of his carrying whispers, “Do you want me to go along, Miss Harris? Is that why you are scowling at me?” I nodded vigorously.
He nodded back, winked, and said, “I will be glad to oblige you. I feared I had offended you, you were looking so oddly at me. What a dandy party it was. I ate so much cream cake I won’t be able to do my own dinner justice. Don’t forget you are to come to me this evening.”
Menrod had enough breeding to overlook the exchange. “Alone at last,” he said ironically, after the others were out the door. “I am highly curious to learn what you can have to say to me that may not be heard by the world.”
“I could not care less for the world’s hearing me. It is only the children’s ears I wish to avoid. It is about them, you see.”
“So I gathered. Are you quite easy in your mind now? Is there something you find amiss in them?”
“Not in them, but in your arrangements for their keeping. We have not settled where they are to be raised.”
“It is absolutely settled in my mind,” he replied, with a sharp glare from those frosty orbs.
“They are my relatives too. I want to have them.”
“You are knocking your head against a brick wall, Miss Harris. I have been at pains to engage their affection, so that they might feel easy with me. I can give them everything they require. You can offer nothing but such company as we have been submitted to here this day. Let us consider the matter closed. You will find me obliging in allowing you to have free access to them, for visiting.”
“Allowing me to visit them! Kind of you indeed! If I do exactly as you demand, no doubt you will allow me to call myself their aunt as well, and my sister their mother. You are in no position to be allowing anything. I have as much right to them as you. More.”
“More?” he asked, with a questioning look.
“Yes, more. They would be everything to me, my sole concern. To you, they are no more than a diversion. You will dash off and forget them as soon as the novelty of playing father has worn off.”
“I am not playing father. I am their guardian, and uncle. As to their being everything to you, I find that an extremely unhealthy statement. I don’t want them smothered with love, growing up a pair of spoiled brats. Another woman’s children should not be everything to you. If you feel the need of someone to mother, I suggest you follow the more normal course and get married, preferably not to the person who has been battering our ears the past hour with his raucous noise. It is incomprehensible to me that you chose to have him present at this first meeting with your relatives.”
He arose on this bold speech, sniffed, and began a disdainful bow.
“We are not finished yet. I don’t mean to let the matter rest here.”
Mr. Everett decided to return. He had been peeping in at the window, and saw my consternation. “Is there anything I can do to help you, Miss Harris?” he asked, with a quick, questioning look at Menrod.
“Nothing, thank you, Mr. Everett. I can handle this myself.”
“If you are sure, then I had best be getting back to Oakdene. I want to oversee preparations for our party. I shall come back and pick you and your mother up around seven-thirty, if that suits you.”
“That is fine. We’ll be ready. Good day.”
Menrod and Everett nodded, neither saying a word about being pleased to have met, nor expressing any desire to continue the acquaintance. No sooner had we got rid of him than Mama returned with the children, making it impossible to continue the battle. Ralph attached himself to his uncle like a limpet, while Gwen began yawning and asking when they were to go home.
“Right away,” he told her. “Shall I return tomorrow, Miss Harris? I know you will agree this is not the optimum moment to continue our discussion. Shall we say, ten in the morning? I have an appointment in Reading at eleven, so will be passing by.”
“Excellent. I would not want you to go out of your way.”
“Thank your grandmother for the party, children,” he ordered.
Gwen thanked us on both their behalfs, then remembered to thank me for the doll.
“She didn’t give me nothing,” Ralph was heard to say as they left, the first unsolicited statement to leave his mouth.
“Anything, Ralph,” his uncle told him, correcting his grammar but not his manners.
“That was very pleasant,” Mama said, with a sigh of relief. “I am happy to see Menrod means to share them with us. It will be nice to see Hettie’s children once a week or so. Gwen is very like Hettie at the same age. You would not remember, Wendy, but Hettie had that same engaging manner. A pity little Ralph makes so strange, but we will win him over.”
Mrs. Pudge came to the doorway, folded her hands on top of her white apron, and scowled. “They liked the Chinese cake very well,” she congratulated herself. “It is nearly gone.”
It was our cue for more strenuous praise of her cooking, followed by her reciting the many difficulties that had littered her path in its execution—the cream refusing to whip, the almonds not taking to blanching with any ease, the stove smoking and burning the first batch of tarts. I hardly listened; I was too distraught, thinking of reasons to proffer why the children should come to Lady Anne’s cottage.
“Why is Menrod returning tomorrow?” Mama asked.
“To talk about the children staying with us,” I answered.
“They are so happy with him, I believe you ought to give up on that scheme,” she answered reasonably.
“You know he is never home two days in a row. They will be terribly neglected. Would you not like to have Gwen with us, the very picture of her mama?” I tempted.
“I am fond of Gwen, but I am not at all sure Ralph would be... He is very like Peter, is he not?”
“Peter was not so shy.”
“No, but he was hard to please, like Ralph,” she said, making her remark clearer.
“Will you be wanting any dinner at all, or was the tea enough to suit you?” Mrs. Pudge asked.
“We are dining out,” Mama told her. “Did Wendy not tell you? I confess I forgot all about it myself, such a busy day as we have had.”
“Where are you going?” Mrs. Pudge demanded.
“Mr. Everett has invited us to dine at Oakdene,” Mama replied.
The hands that were crossed over Mrs. Pudge’s apron fell straight down and clamped on to her beefy thighs. “You never mean it!” she exclaimed, her eyes large with distress. “You’re not going to sit down at that man’s table.”
“We do not plan to dine standing up,” I answered sharply, from sheer ill humor.
“You fill all our faces with shame for you,” Mrs. Pudge said angrily. “T
hat man is laying snares to entrap you into marriage, my fine lady.”
“Mr. Everett is very comfortable to be with,” Mama said, smiling bemusedly. “An excellent parti too, so very obliging of him to have gone all the way to London for us, and now he is to fix the stairs.”
“He is to make them back exactly as they were, and he had better do it,” I said, still vexed.
Mrs. Pudge shook her head at my straying. “So you won’t be wanting any dinner, then?”
“Not tonight,” Mama confirmed.
Our housekeeper trudged at a weary gait from the door, soon to be heard in the hall telling her husband we had both run mad and were going to visit the heathen, who had thrown up a Babylonian tent at Oakdene.
* * *
Chapter 5
Where does one begin to relate the wonders of an Oakdene? We were admitted to a house full of blinding light. From every table and wall, lamps blazed, illuminating such a host of finery as was never before assembled in one spot, unless it should be the garish residence of our Prince Regent. My first impression of Everett’s saloon was the yards of red velvet draperies, held back by fringed gold satin cords. The ceilings were festooned with not only plaster moldings and large plaster medallions, but, painted on the flat spaces between, with Grecian deities and cavorting animals.
The walls were covered with Chinese paper, the furnishings were mahogany trimmed with brass, while the upholstered pieces were covered in red and green. The yards and yards of floor were covered with carpets, all gaily patterned in red, blue and gold.
“My, how elegant! How colorful!” Mama exclaimed.
“I see no reason a house ought to be a dismal place,” he answered, pleased with the reaction.
“No one could call this dismal,” I said, my voice small, overwhelmed.
“I knew you would like it,” he answered, squeezing my elbow and directing my startled gaze to the three fireplaces that marched down the far wall. Two of them were of red marble, the central one green. All were flanked by caryatids, painted in life tones. Those ladies guarding the red fireplaces were outfitted in green, the ones guarding the green, in red.