by Joan Smith
“That is up to Miss Smith,” he said, and with a weary sigh he reached out to pour his own tea, as his cousin made no move to do so, and I was seated well away from the tray.
“What has she got to say about it? We may call her what we wish. Besides, she won’t know the difference, poor thing.”
After he had poured three cups, without a single word of reply to his cousin’s speech, but only a harried glance at her, I arose and handed one cup to Miss Annie.
“She has some manners, you see. She is not a complete savage as the McCurdles are saying,” she informed him. “Cream and five spoons of sugar, Rose,” she commanded me sternly. I added these revolting supplies and gave the cup back to her, taking up a cup for myself, with cream only. “You want sugar in that,” she told me. “We ain’t poor. I daresay Mulliner didn’t put any sugar on the table, the skint. He is our cousin, you must know. Lud gave him the living at Wickey to get him off our backs. He only gets two hundred and fifty a year.”
“He is a connection merely,” Sir Ludwig corrected hastily. A very distant connection surely, or Mr. Mulliner would have been prating of it.
I settled back with my tea, still without sugar. I had fallen into this habit at Mulliner’s, not so much to save his sugar as to slim down my figure. I sat waiting to hear what outrage the old dame would say next.
“The dog peed on the carpet in your room,” she informed her cousin. “That demmed pregnant spaniel it was.”
“Too bad. I trust it was cleaned up,” he replied in a tone that held much of mortification in it.
“I gave her a good kick you may be sure. Had her tied up in the barn and took a stick to her.”
“I won’t have my dogs beaten!” he shouted angrily.
“No, only your family!”
I looked with a little upsurge of fear towards my host, but the line of defeat of his shoulders soon removed the fear, and even incited me to a shred of pity. “He beats his sister,” Miss Annie announced triumphantly. “He’ll beat you, too, if you don’t do as he says. All the child did was to take a run on his hunter, and he . . .”
“Annie, if you please!” he said in a loud, grim voice. “Miss Smith is not interested in our domestic squabbles.”
“Beat her and sent her to her room to starve!” She drew out the last word in a horrible manner, the eyes sparkling with pleasure. She was as mad as a Bedlamite.
“Gave her one swat across the bottom, and made her go without dinner. My hunters can be dangerous to an inexperienced rider,” Sir Ludwig explained to me in a strained voice.
“Ha, but I fooled him. Took her up a nice piece of plum cake.”
“You couldn’t have made it meat and potatoes!” he expostulated. “Stuffing the girl with sweets. She’ll turn into a dumpy, fat Fräulein.” He went on with a few more angry remarks. Remembering the origin of the word ‘German’, from the Celtic meaning ‘shout’, I smiled at the appropriateness of it. It was no quiet, civilized household I had chanced into. Between the three of them, it seemed things would be lively.
“Abbie is skin and bones, like Miss Rose Trelawney,” Annie said, with a disparaging look, not at me, but my sugarless cup. “Well now,” she ran on, “so Miss Trelawney is to be Abbie’s governess, is she? Do you know anything about the job?”
“I had a governess myself. I have some idea how to proceed,” I told her.
“How do you know you did?” she asked craftily. “I thought you couldn’t remember things.”
“I don’t know exactly . . . that is . . . I must have.” I fell into a little quandary at the question. No helpful image of one specific governess arose to aid me.
“Don’t pester Miss Smith, Annie,” Ludwig said.
“How is she going to remember things if we don’t ask her questions? Ha, I’ve got it!” she declared in a bright voice. “We’ll give her a tap on the head. That’s how she lost her mind, and that’s how we’ll bring it back. Don’t stare, Lud. It works, I tell you. Your cousin, that muffin-faced girl they was trying to get you to marry, she took a spill from her horse, a clumsy woman she was, so bow-legged her skirts stuck out with it, and didn’t know her name for three hours. Then a glass of water fell off the shelf onto her head, and it all came back.” She eyed the teapot as she spoke, finding boiling hot tea a suitable replacement for a glass of water, no doubt.
“May I be shown to my room?” I asked, suddenly overcome by so much nonsense.
“Where are you putting her?” Annie asked.
“The blue room, next Abbie.”
“It’s haunted,” she told me with a happy smile. Quite a treat! “Lud’s great-grandfather murdered his sweetheart in that room. She was his wife’s half sister, and she comes back to haunt people. Adeline is her name. I like her excessively. Come, I’ll introduce you.”
“I’ll show Miss Smith up,” Sir Ludwig said, arising with a resigned look.
I took up my brown paper bag and followed him from the room, after making a curtsey to his crazy cousin. “Goodnight, Rose Trelawney,” she called happily. When I left, she was merrily spooning a pound of sugar into an inch of tea, and humming to herself. I wondered who was my chaperone, a Bedlamite in her seventies, or a young lady of fifteen years.
“My cousin is not usually so—strange,” he said, in the spirit of an apology as we went up the stairs. “I hope you will not be troubled by either ghosts or fears of a beating. If she has taken a stick to my dogs I may have to have her restrained. But really, she is quite harmless, in the general way.”
I nodded in understanding of his predicament. He opened a door into a pretentious chamber, hung in deep, dusty shades of blue, with a canopied bed that reached nearly to the ceiling. “That contraption is for sleeping in, I presume? A bed it is called, is it not? It all comes back to me now.”
“Annie was correct about one thing. Smith is too bland a name for you.” He pointed to the walls. “Plenty of pictures there for you to disparage and find a fault with before you go to sleep. I believe you mentioned recalling the matter of sleep.” He turned to make an exit then turned back with a doubtful look on his face. Its cause was soon apparent. He was trying to figure out my position in his household. “Shall I send a girl to you?” he asked, uncertain.
“No thank you. I can take Kitty’s nightdress out of the bag myself. Goodnight, Sir Ludwig.”
“Sleep well, Miss Trelawney.” He bowed and the door was opened wider. Then he turned back as he went out to say, “Wickey is the lady’s name. Miss Wickey.”
“Oh yes, so it is.”
Kitty—how odd I should twice call Miss Wickey by that absurd name. She was more mouse than kitten.
Chapter Four
I dreamed that night of Scotland. One of the pictures on the wall which Sir Ludwig mistakenly put in the darkest corner was a rather fine etching of a medieval Scottish castle, its turrets resting on heavy moulding, stretching into a cloud-scudded sky. I looked to the etching to see how accurately I had dreamed, and was surprised to see the picture differed considerably from my dream. It was not Castle Fraser at all, as I had thought. Odd, but the picture had triggered the dream no doubt. I had been walking over highlands, smelling heather and seeing many sheep. One had the raddled face of Miss Annie, another no face at all, but only a smooth blank where a face should be. It was of the most interest to me. It seemed absolutely vital that I put a face on that unknown sheep. The dream was still with me, vividly, along with a sharp sense of urgency. Something to do with my past, obviously. Someone I wanted to remember? But why had I put that someone in the form of a sheep? And what was a smooth black kitten doing amidst the herd of sheep? It should have been a sheepdog. I felt almost on the edge of knowledge. As if, once I got the answer to these few questions, I should know everything. Then the feeling fell away quickly as I glanced around the strange room. The memory of where I was and what awaited me overcame all these vague tatters of thoughts, and I sat up quickly.
In a minute I had washed and outfitted myself in the omnipresent blu
e bombazine. How I wished for a new gown! And shoes to fit. These were an inconvenient half inch too long. Was someone, somewhere, wearing a pair half an inch too short? She must be even more uncomfortable than myself. It was still early when I went belowstairs, only eight-thirty, but the Kessler ménage was already assembled at table, tucking into a large repast. Sir Ludwig presented me to his sister, a sprightly young lady in her early teens, with brown hair and blue eyes. The ‘skin and bones’ Annie had referred to were accompanied by approximately one hundred and forty pounds of firm flesh. Another ten pounds and she would indeed be a fat Fräulein. The breakfast on her plate indicated she would add five of the ten before noon. But she was pretty, also full of curiosity. No doubt Miss Annie had given her a rundown on me. I assumed, when her greeting was proper to the point of blandness, that her brother as well had had a few words with her. She was ‘very pleased to make my acquaintance’ and ‘hoped I would be comfortable at Granhurst.’ Other than staring at me with all her might, she did nothing outrageous over breakfast. Miss Annie made minute enquiries for Adeline. I told her she was fine.
“Ah good! She has got over her cold, then,” Miss Annie said nonchalantly, and spooned gobs of marmalade on to her plate. How did she keep her wizened little figure? She ought to be rolling in balls of fat. The whole family ate ravenously. They needed a firm hand on their diets, and would soon have one. “Lud tells me he is taking you to see Gwynne this morning.”
“What about my lessons?” Miss Kessler asked. I doubted it was an eagerness to get at her French that instigated the question. She wanted to examine the looney more closely.
“Your sudden bout of eagerness will have to wait till after lunch,” her brother told her, undeceived.
The only real unpleasantness over the repast was Miss Annie’s asking, “Rose is going to eat with us, like a guest, is she?” I assumed the last governess had not done so. Perhaps I ought not to have come into the family parlor. I must say no other course so much as occurred to me. If I had been a governess in my last incarnation, I had been treated as family.
I looked up with a guilty start at the question, feeling suddenly very ill at ease. “Miss Smith is a guest, who has kindly offered to teach Abbie a little French,” Sir Ludwig said in a damping way.
“Said she was a governess,” Annie contradicted.
Abigail opened her mouth to second this speech, but she was silenced by a blighting stare from her brother, who rapidly spoke up to request more coffee, if it was not too much trouble.
“Are you paying her then?” was Annie’s next speech. It threw him for a total loss. I think the matter had not occurred to him. It had to me. I was very eager to get my hands on some cash, to augment my infinitesimally small wardrobe. “We haven’t discussed that,” he replied.
He left very soon afterwards, but his authority remained behind him, preventing the ladies from pestering me. Soon I too arose to don my cape and go out to the carriage. We used only a pair for the short trip to Gwynne’s, a good team, therefore Sir Ludwig’s own, I supposed.
Mr. Gwynne’s home was of red brick, large and square and modern, with very little adornment on the exterior. It was the reverse of Granhurst, all opulence within, painted ceilings, chandeliers, touches of gilt everywhere, in overly ornate poor taste. Nouveau riche run riot. Mr. Gwynne, however, appeared a sensible man. His first interest was not the local freak—he did no more than nod and smile when Sir Ludwig mentioned who I was—but the soi-disant Vermeer, which had been brought along for showing.
“Let’s have a look at her,” Gwynne said eagerly, rubbing his hands in anticipation, then snatching the package from Kessler’s fingers, unable to contain his eagerness. “Ah, too bad,” he said, shaking his head after no more than a glance at the thing. “The Guild of St. Luke, right enough, but not Vermeer,” he told the owner.
Dutch painting was not so well known to me that I could second this opinion regarding the guild, but I was happy to hear confirmed my view that the work was not an authentic Vermeer, and for the reasons I had mentioned. Sir Ludwig’s eyes were more often on myself than the picture during this discussion. At its termination, he told Mr. Gwynne our thoughts, that I had been on my way to see him when I had suffered my accident, and asked if he had been expecting a young lady.
“No, I wasn’t,” he said, astonished at the idea. “I have never seen Miss Smith before in my life. I was expecting no one.”
“The lady’s name is not actually Smith. We feel she has had some doings in the world of art, and hoped you might provide us a lead as to who she might be,” Sir Ludwig continued.
“I have correspondence with many people, including some ladies, both here in England and abroad, on the subject of acquiring paintings for my collection, but beyond that, I can tell you nothing,” he said.
Kessler pressed on to request the names of some of these ladies, but we both knew I was no Italian contessa, nor Austrian princess, certainly not Lady Melbourne. It was pointless. We had drawn a blank here. Mr. Gwynne was always eager to meet a fellow connoisseur, however, and wasn’t about to let us away that easily. We were led into a long picture gallery, whose walls were hung with a miscellany of paintings. There was everything from early Renaissance works, even one slant-eyed Madonna going back to the Byzantine period, to recent portraits by Lawrence and Reynolds. He was no specialist as to period—he bought what pleased him, he said. We admired the works together, we three, never really agreeing on anything. Sir Ludwig had a taste for voluptuous, writhing naked women by Rubens; Gwynne some leaning towards the French Directory period. The former was too emotional for me, the latter lacking in emotion. I confess I prefer a dainty, pretty picture. Fragonard, Watteau—elegant trifles. Gainsborough sans animals pleases me as well as any English painter. Gwynne was soon patronizing me, and before I became sharp with him, I began patronizing Kessler, in which pursuit Gwynne was not slow to second me. Sir Ludwig did not come right out and say he didn’t know much about art, but he knew what he liked, but he did admit he was less informed on the matter than his father, who had apparently been a bit of a dab, and an old friend of Gwynne’s. “But if art is supposed to represent beauty, then I’ll pick Rubens,” he finished up, with a last lecherous look at a plump blond lady, who was being hauled under a tree by a satyr.
I nearly missed the most interesting piece in the gallery. It was not hanging on the wall, being an oddly-shaped piece painted on wood, with hinges on its left side. It went up to a point on the right side and was straight along the other edges. Half a pointed doorway it was, one third of a triptych. The large central portion was missing, as was the right-hand hinged piece. Assembled in toto, the work would make up a central panel, with pieces half the size to close over in front showing one picture, to be opened to reveal the large panel beneath. He had his fraction mounted on a fancy tripod. It was a madonna, undoubtedly the work of the fifteenth century Italian sometime monk, Fra Filippo Lippi. Yes, no one but that rogue would paint such a saucy, pert madonna—some urchin from the streets he was making up to whom he had used for his model. One half expected her to look up and wink, despite her halo. “The Missing Madonna!” I exclaimed, lifting it up to carry it to a window for closer examination.
“Ah, you are familiar with the Medici triptych!” Mr. Gwynne said in approving accents. “It is not well known, Miss Smith. You have indeed a good eye to recognize it.”
“Oh, was it painted for a Medici? Cosimo, I daresay. I had thought it must be from a church.”
“The family chapel,” he corrected happily. “I picked it up for a song at a little street auction in London. I would love to get ahold of the other two pieces. Traced the owner, but he knew nothing of the thing’s history. He bought it in Italy a few years ago, just the one piece, as an oddity, but found it didn’t hang well. It would hang well if I could get the rest of it. I wish I could do it.”
“I wish I could!” I heard myself say.
“Aye, it would be something to reassemble it. We haven’t much from such
an early period of Italian art here in England. This predates Botticelli, daVinci and so on,” he continued to Kessler. “Mid-fifteenth century, the quattrocento. The central portion is thought to be the Christ child with angels, and the right door St. Joseph. A nativity scene it was, I believe. I came across a description of such a work in any case, and believe this is what I have a piece of. How did you come to know of it, Miss Smith?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never seen this before. I recognized Fra Lippi’s style from a convent in Florence.”
“Ah, you have been to Italy,” Mr. Gwynne said, looking at me with interest.
“Oh yes, I liked Italy best of all till . . .” Realizing Sir Ludwig was staring at me open-mouthed, I stopped to think what I was saying. I had been to Italy then, and other places. Unless I lied; unless I dreamed it in those strangely vivid dreams I had. And why had I stopped liking Italy best of all? I felt suddenly very warm, could almost smell the hot dust blowing through the olive trees.
Mr. Gwynne would have liked to discuss Italy, but realized from my sudden silence and Ludwig’s stare that I was distressed. “Let us have a cup of tea,” he said kindly. We left the gallery and went into the tasteless saloon for tea. Odd that with all his love of beauty and apparent wealth Mr. Gwynne could not have contrived a more pleasing saloon for himself. It was garishly red and blue, with plush and velvet everywhere.
“Strange your eye picking out my madonna,” Gwynne rattled on. “Not the most valuable piece in that room, not the prettiest, but the most curious I think. I mentioned I am trying to get the rest of it. Mr. Uxbridge over in Shaftesbury is said to have a line on something from the quattrocento. Painted on wood. I am in touch with him in writing. I was to go to him when that dreadful storm came up. Wouldn’t it be something if it were the large central panel! Then I would lack only the other door.”