Cousin Prudence

by Waldock, Sarah

  “Paulson will see to that,” said Alverston.

  “No he won’t,” said Georgiana, “he’s eloped with Clara Bullivant. I have no idea why he needed to elope but perhaps when they return he might tell someone. Arthur

  went haring off to Hartfield to cry on George and Emma’s shoulders. Best place for him; out of the way somewhere with sensible keepers. He has less sense than Diana.”

  “Alas that your are correct,” said Gervase. “Very well; I shall be gone early. I don’t know when I shall be back. I shall pack a valise or two to stay; whether I shall or not I do not know. There has to be an inn of some sort there.”

  “Take care you pudding-head,” said his sister lovingly.

  Chapter 28

  Prudence glanced out of the window to see a well-known Phaeton bowling up the drive.

  With an exclamation she was running from the house without so much as bothering to pick up a shawl, nor change her slippers for anything heavier.

  Alverston leaped from the high seat in one bound as he saw her, tossing the reins to John, and in two short strides was pulling her into his arms, kissing her hard and thoroughly.

  Prudence melted into his embrace and, though a little shocked at the intensity of the feelings that it brought, kissed him back.

  It was not just the cold that made her shiver.

  Finally he lifted his face.

  “Little love!” he said.

  Prudence had never known anyone who might call her ‘little’ with quite so much accuracy before and she liked it very well; and leaned against him.

  “It was, then, a proposal in your letter?” she said demurely, her eyes laughing lovingly up at him.

  “Well if you do not intend to marry me, madam, I should ask what business you have in kissing me so hard,” he teased. Prudence blushed fierily.

  “Oh Gervase,” she said, blushing still further to use his first name for the first time in speech, “I had quite made up my mind that if you asked it of me I should have come to you as your m-mistress.”

  He kissed her again, hard.

  “If you think I’m going to let you go without tying you to me by every law in the land you are much mistaken!” he said, “mistress indeed! That's for incidental bits of amusement like Lady Elvira – or rather was. I intend to give up such recklessness and embrace only Prudence…… I fancy I shall find quite enough amusement in my lovely wife, and my dear you are cold; why are we still outside?”

  “Because you were kissing me,” said Prudence.

  “Well I can do that indoors,” said the Marquess, firmly manhandling her inside the door and showing her that he was quite equal to the activity within doors.

  Cowley cleared his throat delicately.

  “Beg pardon sir, but will you be sitting down to breakfast with the family?” he asked.

  “Of course he will, Cowley,” said Prudence, “no gruel will be needed for him however; he will be content with cold meats and bread and toast and conserve with everyone else.”

  “Very good Miss Prudence,” said Cowley.

  “Gruel?” said Alverston, revolted.

  “My Uncle Henry has a delicate digestion,” said Prudence gravely, “which he further damages with gruel. The rest of us however might be urged to do so for our health but we ignore such strictures and eat a more normal diet.”

  “Thank goodness for that! If I thought you were being made to eat gruel I should drive you forthwith to an inn and thence to my sister!” said Alverston. “My dear, let me make this formal; will you marry me?”

  “Well if you ask me that after such a kissing and lead me to think that you are – are loose in the haft you are daft!” said Prudence. “Of course I will marry you Gervase; with all my heart.”

  “Where the devil did you pick up an expression like ‘loose in the haft’?” demanded Gervase.

  “Aunt Mouser,” said Prudence.

  “Oh I suppose that was inevitable,” said Gervase.

  Prudence felt as though she was walking on air; he thought the lovely Elvira of no account; and he had come straight from town to find her. She led him into the dining room almost in a dream.

  “Poor Lord Alverston,” said Mr Woodhouse when introduced and apprised of the situation, “driving all that way at an unconscionable speed and on an empty stomach! Some gruel perhaps to settle you….”

  “Thank you, I believe I do not need to put the servants to so much trouble,” said Alverston gravely, “I am glad to see you feeling more the thing sir than I hoped to do from the letter my betrothed left for me.”

  “It has been a sad illness,” said Mr Woodhouse, “this is the first day I have risen for breakfast; and right glad I am too to be able to welcome you to my house…. Do you play Backgammon?”

  “I have been known to do so,” said Alverston, who generally only did such a thing for the amusement of elderly aunts. Whist was his favoured game, requiring skill rather than luck. He had heard something of Uncle Henry from Prudence and was prepared to be tolerant.

  “I understand that you have spoken with Mr Blenkinsop,” said George.

  “Indeed yes….dear me, there are two Mr Knightley; might I presume upon our incipient relationship to call you George?”

  “I do,” said Arthur, looking up from the ham he was addressing with the serious application of youth, “and after all, Uncle Gervase, you’re about to be leg shackled to his cousin.”

  “Thank you for making me free with George’s name, Arthur,” murmured Alverston with heavy irony. George caught his eye and they both grinned.

  “Well now that is settled Cousin Gervase, perhaps you will tell us how you found Mr Blenkinsop,” said George.

  “Very well,” said Gervase, “he has a scrupulous policy of cleanliness for his factory workers, to keep the cotton clean he says but if you ask me to help them keep free of disease. There is hot water from the steam engines that he makes available to them in a bath house; the mill is quite a model of its kind. Large, clean and well ventilated, there is much dust in the air of course but he requires those cleaning the machines to wear muslin cloths across their faces, and the spinners also where lint is floating about. I

  spoke with an eminent physician in York who says that dirt and close proximity causes the spread of Typhus as well as other diseases so Mr Blenkinsop is going to issue orders that the younger children of his workers are to be brought to the bath house once a week to bathe and to see that their clothes are washed in good hot water too so the disease may not hang around and fester in the clothes. Really, for a very little extra outlay, any employer might take such preventive measures! He already sees that all have a meal first thing in the morning at the mill so even if there is little to go round a large family the breadwinner at least has one square meal a day. I cannot think that your father’s mill will suffer any disease amongst its workers, Pru; for your father is an excellent man!”

  “He has then forgiven you for being an aristocrat?” asked Prudence. Gervase laughed.

  “Once I demonstrated that I had some understanding of such essentials as steam power and coal-gas lighting!” he said. “He is ready to lay aside his prejudices for me as apparently I pass his test as an honest and intelligent man with good common sense. I told him about diversifying my interests into horse breeding,” he added, “and he told me that he is buying out a woollen mill to add to his assets because people will always want cloth even if the fashion for what they may want changes. He showed me some of your designs printed into the bolts, my dear,” he added, “I was much impressed. Practicality and a personal interest is an important part of retaining property; those who merely expend the fruits of another’s labour are soon done up and drowning in the River Tick. And I have seen it in London; fortunes lost at gaming and squandered on women. Even that great one time arbiter of fashion, Beau Brummel has had to flee to France to avoid debtors’ prison for having been induced to spend above his fortune. Arthur, it is why I have been so strict with you. And may I commiserate by the way ov
er your disappointment with Miss Bullivant.”

  “I have decided,” said Arthur, waving a piece of toast airily, “to eschew all feminine entanglement. I cannot fathom the minds of women; they are outside my ken. I shall live a bachelor existence all my life.”

  Alverston hid a smile at the thought that popped into his head that this resolve would last exactly until the next fair beauty needed a chivalric rescuer; but he said nothing of that.

  “You should learn by observation perhaps rather than participation,” he said gravely.

  Arthur brightened.

  “By jove sir, what a capital idea! I shall cultivate a bored and world-weary air to stand aside and observe life!” said Arthur.

  It is to the credit of those who knew him that they managed not to laugh at the idea of the excitable and enthusiastic youth cultivating a world weary air.

  Gervase and Prudence withdrew after breakfast to the corner of the parlour with Emma and George discreetly in another corner as chaperones whereat Gervase might further explain to Prudence how much he loved her.

  “We have typhus in the village I fear,” said Prudence, “I have paid Mr Perry to alleviate it in the hopes that the disease might be stopped in its tracks by isolating it to one family. Do you think that I should pay Mrs Fellowes not to wash the clothes of others in order to prevent the spread of the disease?” she rapidly explained about the Fellowes family.

  “I believe that is an excellent idea,” said Gervase, “and I shall contribute to that venture…a fellow officer of mine was convinced that the disease lay upon the backs of body lice since when we were all being bitten to pieces on the Peninsular, many succumbed; I myself have had a bout of it and most of my fellow sufferers died. I caught it in a hospital, for I had been wounded; so between that and a ball in my leg I had a most unpleasant time.”

  “You are fortunate to have lived,” said Prudence, “and I am very glad! I expect there was too much of you for the disease to take over and it died exhausted from trying!”

  He laughed.

  “Fitness does help in fighting disease,” he said, “but I believe that now I have had it, after the fashion of Jenner’s inoculation experiments concerning the protection cowpox gives against smallpox, I shall be safe in helping personally in the poor of my own people and their neighbours; if you will permit that my dear.”

  “I do more than permit it; I urge you to see to those of our people who require your aid,” said Prudence, “I do not know that I am brave enough to risk it. Though…. If your fellow officer was correct, lice might be exterminated by carefully ironing the seams of clothing to destroy the eggs. I shall work with you; but only when we are married and when I shall not risk Emma in her delicate condition nor Uncle Henry.”

  “My brave love!” cried Gervase “That I would not ask of you!”

  “No; but I offer. And let us now step out to pass this idea of your friend’s to Mr Perry that he might tell his patients’ families to protect themselves by killing lice quickly. I cannot think that living with such can be pleasant in any case and do not understand how so many of the truly poor put up with it for the want of a little effort.”

  “Because, you green goose, many do not have enough time for the hours they work, nor the fuel to heat an iron,” said Gervase, “and with some it is sheer fecklessness; like this Fellowes. But his wife will scarcely have time in having to be the main bread winner to take care of herself and her own clothes properly.”

  George and Emma, who were not really listening, each reflected how nice it was that Gervase and Prudence had so comfortable a relationship that they might discuss the needs of Gervase’s tenants. They wished the couple as much happiness as they themselves had!

  Gervase had intended removing to the Crown Inn while he stayed in Highbury but George would not hear of it. All of Donwell Abbey lay empty; it should be at Alverston’s disposal. And, said George, he might use it whenever he and Prudence came to visit in the future.

  Gervase appreciated George’s generosity; and had sent for his valet and more luggage to make an extended stay in Highbury. And as it was to be his home for a while, he was happy to step out with Prudence to make an acquaintance with the village.

  Chapter 29

  Gervase and Prudence found themselves with the attendance of small Henry and John whom Prudence suggested would be the better for a bit of exercise and might therefore walk down to Mr Perry’s house and engage in games with the doctor’s children. The boys’ father forbore to point out that this would end with the rudely healthy Knightley boys taunting the Perry boys and ignoring the Perry girls, all of whom were both as interfering and chickenhearted – in his opinion – as their father; he felt it would do the Perry boys, who were pasty and overweight for the cosseting they received, no harm to be run about a little.

  The broad, but somewhat irregular, street lead from Hartfield into the cheerful village of Highbury; a busy and bustling little town even in the miserable weather that this morning could not make up its might whether it was a wet mist or light rain and compromised by penetrating every item of clothing with clinging tendrils of damp.

  The doctor’s house was a large one with a brass door plate, the dispensary beside it, a converted cottage, where two youths laboured under regular direction in the making up of both prescriptions and more regular nostrums for everyday ills. The younger of the two, newly apprenticed and scarce more than twelve years old made a horrible face at Henry through the window which was promptly returned with interest.

  Gervase caught Henry’s eye, winked, and pulled an even worse one, so quickly executed and so quickly gone that the gurning youth might wonder if indeed the big gentleman had thus demeaned himself or no; for Gervase’s face returned swiftly to bland well bred indifference as Prudence pulled on the bell pull by the brass plate to set up a distant and doleful clanging in the stygian recesses of the nether regions of the house.

  “You are a bad man my dear lord,” said Prudence equably.

  Mr Perry was a little overawed to have a real noble lord talking to him, and somewhat inclined to puff out his chest when he heard that an eminent physician in York agreed with his ideas on dirt and proximity spreading typhus. He was more cautious on the theory Alverston advanced from his Peninsular days however.

  “Carried on lice! Well indeed, an interesting theory, but only a layman’s theory of course… I am inclined myself to believe that the disease is spread by the foul miasmas that exude from an unwashed body; still I suppose there can be no harm in suggesting killing lice eggs in this fashion, they are disgusting things and it might too mean that I am less likely to succumb to being bitten when in the more insalubrious areas I visit…. Miss Fellowes is, I fear, Miss Blenkinsop, so delirious that I am not sanguine about her chances of survival at all; her sister however, who has also taken the illness, I believe may live.”

  “Take me to this Fellowes house, Perry,” said Alverton, “Prudence; go at once to George and ask him if I might nurse the girl in the spare stable at Donwell. I shall not take her into the house, but there is ample unused stabling as I understand; if he will permit this, you and Hester shall scrub the floor clean and bring bed linen, bed linen that can be spared for I shall burn it after she either recovers or dies.”

  “What about the boys?” asked Prudence. Henry and John had been born to the nursery by a servant.

  “George must collect them” said Alverston.

  Prudence watched as Gervase approached Donwell’s outbuildings with the unconscious figure of the girl in his arms. She had made up a bed, filling a tick with crackling straw and laying a good thick blanket over it below the sheets so none of the straw might penetrate; old darned linen that might not be missed made up the bed, Emma having emptied out what was kept for emergencies.

  George had suggested that, rather than a stable, the groom’s accommodation over the stable might be used; as he kept only a boy to see to his few horses, who used one of two rooms at opposite ends of the stable block. Prudence had
kindled a fire in the grate there and had put water to heat; she had an idea that Gervase planned to wash his charge thoroughly too. She had left a nightgown of her own for the girl; and asked George if Mrs Hodges would heat water for her so she might aid Gervase and then strip and wash before returning to Hartfield.

  “After all,” she had said to George, “Mr Perry visits other sick people and he is adamant that it is washing thoroughly between patients that is the key.”

  “Perry is an old fool who encourages flights of morbid fancy,” George had replied, “but he is a solid enough physician and he has never brought disease to the house. I will permit this. You will however, if you do not mind, not be close to either Emma or papa until it is certain that you are not likely to take the disease.”

  Prudence was willing to acquiesce; and Gervase frowned as she walked up to him.

  “You should be safe at home,” he said.

  “I have arranged with Mrs Hodges that I shall bathe and change and she will launder my clothes immediately,” said Prudence. “I cannot in conscience do anything else; for a girl should be stripped by a girl or woman. It is unseemly that you should minister to her in any intimate function.”

  “I do know that females have similar intimate functions you know,” said Alverston, “I have mares. I have also had mistresses.”

  “But consider her feelings when she regains consciousness; her embarrassment,” said Prudence.

  “You are as bad as my sisters,” growled Alverston. “Very well; strip her, wash her, burn her clothes, then go and strip and wash yourself – change to the skin. Do not risk being in contact with lice; whatever Perry says I believe my friend was right.”

  “And as you have carried her, do you likewise while I see to her,” said Prudence, “even if you are no longer susceptible.”