by Joan Smith
With a little grimace of annoyance I removed them from my new material, looking for ink stains on it. Abigail, more at ease with him, castigated him as ‘the rudest brother in captivity,’ which had not the least effect, though he said ‘Sorry,’ in a perfunctory way.
“Gwynne had no news about the Italian madonna, either. I sent over a note and had my boy wait for an answer. He was in touch with no one but this fellow over Shaftesbury way about it. It looks as though we’ve reached a dead end. Nothing to do now but wait for the other papers to arrive.”
“You will be regretting your haste in having me here, as it seems the visit is to be a prolonged one.”
“Not at all. We enjoy the novelty of having a looney amongst us,” he answered in a perfectly civil tone.
“Ludwig!” Abbie gasped, looking to me for signs of offense.
“You have no idea how very much at home you manage to make me feel. But our collective wits are gone begging—only to be expected of course, mad as we all are. It is Bedlam we ought to have been in touch with! No doubt I escaped from there.”
“Or Bridewell,” he suggested, still politely.
“The women’s prison is a distinct possibility, except that I came from the wrong direction. I was not escaping from London.”
“We don’t know that you were escaping from anywhere. We do suspect, however, that you came from the direction of Shaftesbury—where that Uxbridge fellow interested in the madonna comes from. Gwynne is in touch with him. I’ll ask him to mention you, if you have no objection?”
“None in the world.”
Sir Ludwig was casting an eye on the pattern book by this time, mentally selecting the model he would prefer I suppose. “This is a nice one,” he said, pointing out the same vulgar cerise gown chosen by his sister.
I could only stare. Such poor taste was not unusual in a young girl of unformed ideas, but a fully grown man ought to have known better. “I doubt it is the style worn by your last governess,” I mentioned.
“Very true,” he said nodding, and, still looking at the book, with an occasional flicker of the eyes towards myself. “But our last governess was not such a prodigiously handsome creature. I am indebted to Annie for the delightful description. I am not poetical myself.”
“I am indebted to you for the advice on the gown, but shall seek my own counsel quand même.”
“I begin to see that is your usual way of going on. Your speaking a word of French reminds me I interrupt the French lesson,” he said, with a pointed look at the fashion books and material. Then he strolled from the room.
“He likes you,” Abbie said with an impish smile. It was difficult to imagine from whence she pulled this notion. “You know how to handle him,” she expanded. “My last governess used to go into a quake and think she was about to be fired when he tried to roast her.”
“He may fire me if he wishes, but he will lose out on the ten guineas I owe him if he does.”
Sir Ludwig showed not the least intention of dispensing with my somewhat erratic services over the next few days. I was shockingly tiresome, and expensive too. Quite ruined the green shot silk by cutting it out without a pattern, thus making the waist too small, for we didn’t leave enough width for the seams. Annie snapped the ruined material up. Being not an inch over four feet eleven, she felt there was enough good cloth left in the skirt to make her an outfit. It was never done, but she liked the color, and often wrapped it around her shoulders on a chilly afternoon or evening. Abigail and I made another trip into Wickey to buy new material and hire a dressmaker. We also stopped to visit Miss Wickey and return her borrowed garments. When she enquired how my green silk gown turned out, and why I wasn’t wearing it, I knew my shopping trip with Sir Ludwig was public knowledge.
For the second new gown I selected a perfectly hideous bordeaux color. I don’t know what made me do it, except that Abbie insisted it was lovely. The other expense was Sir Ludwig’s own fault. He often suggested I put a brush in my hand, as I had happened to mention missing it. Of course there is no point putting a brush into one’s hand unless she has paint to stick it into, and canvas to daub it onto, and it is much more comfortable if one has a palette so that she needn’t ruin a dinner plate by using it for one. For myself, I cannot work without an easel as well, which unfortunately had to be sent from Winchester. Then there is the necessity for oils for mixing and cleaning up, and of course a smock so as not to destroy the old blue bombazine, still my body’s only covering. The bordeaux wasn’t ready yet. I believe the seamstress likes a nip in the afternoon, and will be lucky if the gown fits any better than the green shot silk did.
All told, I am now indebted to Sir Ludwig for the large sum of twenty guineas. He told me, very severely, that I am in hawk to him for close to five months’ labor, which necessitated my pointing out to him he is the world’s greatest nip-cheese if he paid his last governess the paltry sum of fifty guineas per annum.
“Plus room and board,” he reminded me. “She didn’t occupy the blue suite, however, nor have a spare chamber turned into a studio, or the salary would have been lower.”
“It is news to me if a single chamber is called a suite—there is no dressing room attached, and as to the studio, I understood the portrait I am painting would more than cover its hire.”
I was undertaking a likeness of Abigail, using a spare bedroom with a southern exposure—bad light, but not so draughty as some of the others. Its conversion to a studio consisted of no more than taking down the curtains, rolling up the carpet, and pushing the furniture against the wall. I had no real desire for him to knock out a wall or give me a larger window, but every disapproving eye turned on the renovations was met with the hint, to keep him in line. There was a fire given to us in the spartan chamber—for Abbie’s benefit as she wished to be done in the guise of a nymph, wearing only the scantiest covering, a chiffon curtain it was. Actually after the first ten minutes she put on a woolen undershirt and petticoat beneath it, pretending she was cold, but she was only overly modest. Perhaps my mentioning she was a little too bulky about the midriff for a nymph had something to do with it. She had set fifteen pounds as her target for removal.
The afternoons in the studio were the most pleasant part of the day. Annie never bothered us, as she disliked the smell of my materials. Sir Ludwig also expressed the greatest aversion to them, but was frequently present all the same, complaining he could smell the paint downstairs in his study.
“You have come up here to get away from the odor, I take it?” I asked.
“No, no. I am come for my daily drubbing. You neglected to mention over lunch—being so preoccupied to see I didn’t have a piece of cake—how poorly equipped you find your studio. I wanted to give you a chance to remind me.”
“Consider yourself reminded. I do wish I had a smaller brush as well, for this bit around the mouth. You won’t mind if your mouth reaches your ear on the left side, Abbie? I could not like to buy a brush for the detailed work when I was already in such deep debt to your brother.”
“Do I have to keep smiling?” she asked, through a pained smile.
“No, my dear, it is not in the least necessary. I know it is a trial to all you Kesslers to tackle a smile. I should have painted you as Cassandra and had done with it.”
“I suppose she is some fat goddess, is she?” Abbie asked suspiciously.
“She is the prophetess of doom.”
Ludwig came around to stand at my shoulder, thus making it utterly impossible to put on a single atom of paint without making a mess. “That’s very nice,” he said judiciously.
“Nice is an uninformative word. Could you be more specific?”
“Surely it indicates approbation of some sort.”
“Yes, but of what? Do you like the pose, the expression, the style?”
“Yes, yes, and yes—satisfied with all three.”
“Good, then if you have no constructive criticism, perhaps you will be kind enough to get off my shoulder and let me proceed
with it.”
“One would take me for the governess,” he said with ill humor, but he left us alone.
We—Abigail and I, worked on French in the mornings, did some readings of a broadening nature in English (we interpreted the term broadly, to include any novel in which we were interested), and occasionally took a turn at the pianoforte. She was the teacher here. She had exceeded my slender accomplishments and laughed quite openly when I sat down to hammer out my three tunes. Her brother’s suggestion that I ought to knock a little something off my fifty guineas per annum due to this lack in my skills was met with the rejoinder that I doubted very much I would ever see a penny.
“So do I doubt it. You’re into me for twenty guineas already, and you’ve only been with us five days. At this rate you’ll have run through something in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred pounds by the end of a twelvemonth. Pass the ham, Abbie.” We were having this discussion over dinner one evening.
“Your brother is a keen accountant,” I complimented Abigail. “Do you suppose he might give me lessons? I never can remember whether two and two are four, or four and four are two. I’m quite sure he is cheating me, and want to check out my interest when he has calculated it.”
Abbie handed me the ham for passing along without any comment on my jibe. She delighted to have me tackle her brother, but gave me little support. I set the meat down without offering it to Kessler, in a subtle effort to curb his appetite.
“Ludwig wants the ham, Rose,” Annie reminded me.
“Oh, excuse me! I thought Sir Ludwig had already had some ham.” I had to either give it to him then or make an issue of it. As he was regarding me with a challenging eye, I passed it.
“We’ll strike a bargain,” he said with a sardonic smile. “I won’t eat another slice if you will. That way we will both be improving our figures.”
I felt completely foolish, but also completely full. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“Rose is not too thin. Why do you say so, Lud?” Annie asked. She had allowed me to be just right in size as soon as I fell back into the habit of taking a little sugar in my tea again. “And neither are you too fat. What the devil is this nonsense? Both of you have some,” she ordered. In fact, neither of us had. My hints were beginning to sink in. The night before, Sir Ludwig had refused dessert.
With such good success in all their eating, I felt the time had come to begin varying the fare offered at the table. In five days we had eaten only roast meat, always with the same pan gravy, if there was a sauce served at all. Some clever Frenchman said the English have a hundred religions and only one sauce. He was right, but the Germans have been known to do better. I had had initially some hope of tasting a meal done in the nach Jägerart style, served with mushrooms sautéed in a wine sauce along with other vegetables. The cook’s name was Feilotter, but her way with a piece of meat was dreadfully English. Nor did she ever give us a ragoût. However, we were spared both wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut, to do her justice.
“I’m a little tired of ham myself,” Abbie remarked, giving me an excellent cue.
“One does tire of the same old things. Does Mrs. Feilotter never make you up a ragoût?” I asked.
They all three stared at me as though I had suggested we eat roast rat. “We had a rabbit stew last month,” Ludwig thought.
“Last month! You have the memory of an elephant,” I told him.
“Elephants have need of a long memory.”
“Why?” Abbie asked him.
“Well, for one thing, the gestation period is something over twenty months.”
This right at table, and with three ladies for company! I scowled up the board, to see him regarding me with a lazy smile, trying to get a rise out of me. “I hadn’t realized you were interested in such things, as you are still a bachelor.”
“Gentlemen are always interested in the matter of begetting offspring.”
“Ludwig!” Abbie howled. “Upon my word, what will Rose think of you! And you are usually so nice in these matters too.”
“If I have offended your sense of modesty, Sister, I apologize.”
“You had better apologize to Rose.”
“I don’t believe I have offended hers.”
I tried hard to look offended. “Shocked would be more like it!” Abbie said. With my honor thus gallantly defended, I said nothing.
That interlude was fairly typical of the sort of conversations we had over dinner. There seemed little hope of bringing this crew to a sense of propriety, or of elegance, either. The meals were not changed.
The newspapers arrived at the office of the stage, and were eagerly perused by Sir Ludwig and myself when he brought them home. He became quite excited when he read a black-edge notice proclaiming that a Miss Grafton was missing from her home in Gillingham. I must say the name sent a little shiver of something through me. I snatched the paper from him and read the item through carefully. Miss Lorraine Grafton, it said, had been missing from her home since December 1, having disappeared without a trace while out for a trip to do some shopping. She was the daughter and sole offspring of Sir Rodney Grafton, heiress apparently to an estate worth close to fifty thousand pounds. Her uncle, Mr. Morley, lived with her and was her guardian, as she was an orphan. The next item nearly threw me into an apoplexy. Her late father was well known in the world of art as a collector, famed particularly for his knowledge of Italian works. “It’s me! It’s got to be me!” I shouted, pointing this bit out to Sir Ludwig.
He grabbed the paper back, and with our heads together we read on. Mr. Grafton had traveled extensively on the Continent amassing his storehouse of paintings. “No doubt about it!” Kessler agreed.
There was very little doubt in my own mind that I read of myself. My eyes traveled back to the first part, with the mention of fifty thousand pounds. What a happy discovery to make! I was rich! Ludwig jumped up in his excitement and ran for maps to locate Gillingham. “That place is very close to here,” he told me. “Here we have been neighbors all these years and never met.”
“Do you know the family at all?”
“Never heard of them. Here we are,” he said, fingering a dot on the map. “Why, it’s within a stone’s throw of Shaftesbury! That is where the driver of the stage said you might have got on.”
“The date too is just right! December 1. It was December the second when I straggled into Wickey. Imagine! I have been within forty or fifty miles of home all this time and no one has come for me!”
“The storm held up traffic for days. I knew it was nonsense you were in any trouble. A simple case of loss of memory. You had some accident, and in this state boarded a stage to Shaftesbury, then on towards Wickey.”
“I wonder why I got off in the middle of the road, though?”
“Oh—in that state of confusion you didn’t know what you were about. Miss Wickey told me you were completely distracted when you arrived at the rectory door.”
“I had an awful feeling, though, that I didn’t want to be found. With fifty thousand pounds to lure me back, wouldn’t you think . . .”
“Fell says it is not at all uncommon to have these unexplained fears in such cases as yours. Sometimes too the victim doesn’t want to remember. We’ll find out exactly how the situation stands in Gillingham with this Morley before we let you go back. If he is trying to hustle you into doing something you dislike . . .”
I had to smile a little at this. I had no recollection of Mr. Morley, but no feeling either that I was the sort to bolt only because an uncle was trying to bearlead me—into some undesired marriage, I suppose was what he meant. “I am not a child, you know. I doubt my uncle is the reason I left.”
“A young lady might well be pressured by an older relative. Fell says . . .”
“When did you discuss me with Fell and Miss Wickey?”
“What has that to say to anything?” he asked impatiently.
It indicated to me a greater concern in the affairs of a stranger than seemed likely. “Let�
��s see what else the article has to say.”
It was fairly long. We read it to the end in silence, my own silence due to a sinking sensation that it was not me written about at all. I didn’t feel I was Miss Grafton. Surely one’s own name would be instantly recognized. There was a little familiarity with the name, but it was not a strong enough association somehow. Miss Grafton had been educated at a ladies’ seminary in Bath. It mentioned nothing of any travels. The last line pretty well clinched my decision. She was seventeen years old. Looking to my companion, I noticed he was regarding me in a speculative way.
“I would have taken you for a few years older,” he admitted, for he knew by my face I had decided against Miss Grafton.
“I would have taken myself for several years older.”
“Travel is broadening. Your air of sophistication makes you seem a little older than you are.”
“No mention is made of any traveling. Miss Grafton has been cooped up in a seminary in Bath, which I am convinced would be the most narrowing existence possible.”
“There were the summers. You might have been taken abroad with your father.”
I looked back to the article for more details. “And it mentions here she is five feet four inches, too,” I pointed out. I was taller.
“Approximately,” he countered. “The coloring is right. Brown hair and brown eyes.”
“I’m more than seventeen.”
“Dammit, you’re not old! It’s impossible two young ladies disappeared on the same day, both mixed up in art, both from around Gillingham or Shaftesbury.”
“She was an heiress. How should I be wearing this old dress if I were she?”
“It doesn’t mention she was a stylish dresser.”
“Oh really! As though anyone with a better gown would wear this thing!” I replied irritably. My anger was not really with Sir Ludwig, but due to disappointment that I was not this genteel, wealthy orphan.
“You are obviously a lady of some consequence, whoever you are, and you were wearing it when you strolled into Wickey.”
“Who says I am a lady of some consequence? As no one has advertised for me, I am probably a governess, turned off for insolence or something of the sort.”