by Joan Smith
Annie was quite simply delighted with the whole affair. She was like a child having her first birthday party. Every inch of leftover material of any shape or color was squirreled away in her capacious pockets for taking to her room. She held some supernatural communication with the deceased Ruth Kessler during which she was told to watch out for me. I believe this idea actually insinuated itself into her poor disordered head because Sir Ludwig had developed the habit of enquiring where I was every time I was out of the room for so much as a minute. I learned of this by remarking that every time I entered, one or the other of the family would say, “Ah, here she is now. Safe and sound, you see,” or something of the sort. It became rather a joke between us.
“I plan to step into the hallway and ask Chalmers if the extra hay has arrived,” I would explain with great gravity to the family. “if I am not back within five minutes, pray be in touch with Bow Street. You will notice that when last seen I was wearing navy bombazine.” Naturally I could not every day wear the bordeaux, and in fact it was feeling a shade tighter than when it was delivered. It must have been due to the lack of taking exercise, for I strenuously resisted any second helping of anything. I had induced both Abbie and Ludwig to do likewise, which I considered a great victory. Abbie in particular was making giant strides in her diet. She had a very definite waistline now, of which she was proud. By the ruse of trying new dishes for the party, I got a few ragoûts onto the table, which perhaps helped to account for the taking of no seconds. They were not just as a ragoût should be, somehow.
I suggested a wide ribbon round the waist of Abbie’s ballgown to show off her figure, which caused Sir Ludwig to look at me with a start. “What do you plan to wear?” he asked. “You don’t have a sleeveless gown, and will want to be in gooseflesh like the others.”
This detail had not slipped my mind by any means. I had been into the attics with Annie and got out a rather pretty bronze taffeta gown of some obese ancestor, which I had stripped of all flowers and flounces and recut to wear as an underdress. Its lumpy seams would be concealed by a gauzy covering I had under construction. I explained all this to Abbie, and was surprised to see that Sir Ludwig was incensed at the idea.
“It won’t cost you a penny,” I quizzed him. “As I am already into my salary to the tune of twenty-five pounds, I could not like to run up any higher a bill. Then too my close incarceration here at Granhurst makes a run into town quite impossible. Of course I realize I shall have two or three shillings tacked on to my account, but really, you know, used clothing generally goes for a song.”
“It will not be necessary for a guest under my roof to appear at a ball in a gown twenty years old,” he said. “Having already cost me close to a thousand with carpets and draperies, I am willing to advance another one or two for materials.”
“Now he tells me, when he is certain there isn’t time to have it made up,” I said in a loud aside to Abbie.
Imagine my astonishment when the next day I was handed about twenty pounds of ghastly moss green satin, and told I would be taken that same afternoon to Wickey to be fitted by the modiste there.
“Lord, what an ugly color!” Annie said, regarding it.
Sir Ludwig looked at me questioningly. I was in total agreement with Annie, and think some traces of my feelings must have been on my face. “I thought you liked green,” he said. “Your first choice was green, if you recall, and you have said a dozen times you dislike the wine gown.”
“It’s—it’s lovely,” I exclaimed, trying very hard not to laugh, for he thought he was doing me a great favor. “But there is not time to have it made up before the party. Only two days away now.”
“I have spoken to the modiste in the village. She will have it done on time,” he pointed out.
“Oh! But really the other one she made me did not fit at all well. I shouldn’t like to go to her again,” I prevaricated hastily.
“It fit perfectly!” he objected.
Abigail had taken possession of the green satin, and was holding it up to me, frowning. “Stick to your ancient taffeta,” she advised bluntly.
“I’m sure they will take it back in the village, for the bolts are uncut, both of them.” Good God, and five ells on each, enough to outfit the whole family in moss green satin.
“We’ll go back in the morning and you can choose some color that is more pleasing to you,” he informed me.
“The bronze taffeta pleases me very well,” I answered quickly. I had sufficient duties involving the party that a trip to Wickey at this time would be nothing but an inconvenience, nor was I particularly eager for the villagers to see me flaunting myself in too high a style at Sir Ludwig’s expense. “If you want to ensure my appearance doing you credit, however, you might see if you can exchange all this satin for about three yards of dark green velvet ribbon—quarter of an inch, and dark green,” I emphasized, to ensure not ending up with great whopping bright green bows weighing down my gauze overdress.
He was looking offended, and this must be talked away, for it was this evening I had selected for the time when I would get the paintings in the Saloon changed. Both the Stubbs horses and Gainsborough animals were grating on my nerves, surrounded as they now were by so much elegance. To this end I set aside the material and began a series of judicious compliments on the Saloon. “So charming, so elegant,” I said, prior to introducing the ineligibility of horses decorating the walls. “Very modish, don’t you think, Sir Ludwig?”
“I like it very much. And it is saved from being overly dainty by the paintings,” he added with a challenging eye towards me.
“Ah, the paintings! Yes, I remember we discussed replacing Stubbs’ work—how very well they would suit your games-room! That pair of Fragonards in your mama’s sitting room . . .”
“Ruth would miss them,” he replied, unblushing.
“From what one hears of Ruth, I am sure she would gladly give them over to the Saloon. Annie tells me she was a great one for rearranging, and I doubt she intended things to remain static when she died.”
“You can hardly say things are static when you have changed every stick and rag in the room!” he pointed out.
“Nothing is changed except the Kent commode and rug and curtains,” I parried, rather glossing over a few chairs and tables that had found a new home.
“Nothing is the same.”
“You said you liked it,” I reminded him, far from relinquishing my goal, but discovering it to be more difficult that I had hoped. And I wasn’t wearing my bordeaux gown, either.
“I do like it, and I like the horses, too.”
“Would you not enjoy to have them in your study, where you spend so much time toting up my bill?” I asked, hoping to cajole him into humor.
“Maybe one of them,” he thought, “and we could change it for the stag in the study.”
“Oh, worse than ever! You cannot be so obtuse as to think those animals do justice to your Saloon!” I cried, outraged to consider a good painting of a horse was to be replaced by a very inferior etching of a stag.
“Do be reasonable, Lud,” Abbie said, laughing.
“I have been reasonable, which is not to say I haven’t a mind and taste of my own. The horses stay,” he decreed, and marched off to his study.
I knew he would not stay away long, however, and sat devising schemes to get him to change his mind. I was afraid he’d have the stag etching in his hands when he returned, but they were empty when he peeped in to see I was present and accounted for. “Still here,” I told him with a wave and a smile. I suggested a game of cards, hoping to win at gambling what I had failed to achieve by smiles and persuasion.
“Not tonight,” he answered, with a significant glance to his blasted horses. “Why don’t you play something for us, Abbie?”
Abbie, as eager as myself to conciliate him, for time was running very short, went to the pianoforte and played a few selections. I sat trying to envision how vastly improved the room would be with the proper paintings. To
me, the paintings in any room were always the icing on the cake, and I dislike a cake with poor icing very much. It seemed a great pity all the work and expense was to be ruined by one man’s stubbornness. I suppose my eyes were frequently on the walls during the recital, for after a quarter of an hour, I was told bluntly by my host (right in the middle of a waltz) it was petty-minded of me to sulk, when I had had all my own way thus far. “After all, it is my home, and I think my taste ought to be represented at least.”
How odious it is to be put firmly in the wrong. I had taken upon myself to redo his Saloon to my taste with his money, and was pouting because he wished to have these few small tokens of his execrable taste to remind him he was master chez lui. “You’re right,” I admitted in a peevish mood, “and it is a pity your taste is so very bad.”
“Indeed!” he said stiffly, pokering up like an offended dowager.
“And furthermore, the straw rug in your morning parlor is hideous!” I said in a fit of pique, then left the room before he should beat me to it. It was not my plan to stay away. I went no farther than the library to recover my temper and my manners. It was badly done of me to have been so forward and unappreciative of his improvements. I intended to render an apology in some oblique manner before retiring, hoping this unusual circumstance might bring him to change his mind. Before I had quite recovered, however, he appeared at the door. My first gratifying thought was that he had followed me, and my hopes soared, but it was not the case. The Kesslers were none of them great readers except for the papers and magazines, but he had come for a book. It was ironic that in this Germanic household there should be such poor representation of the invention of Gutenberg. There was the library to be sure, with several shelves bearing dusty tomes, but nothing of a light, poetic or romantic nature. Nothing a body would actually be tempted to read, in either English or French. Even Voltaire and Rousseau were missing. Descartes, dating from the seventeenth century, was the most modern French writer, and the English stopped with a few tattered copies of the Tattler.
“Oh, this is where you ran off to stamp your feet and scream, is it?” he asked, with a lifted brow and an eye not yet empty of anger. “I thought you would be in the morning parlor, tearing up the straw rug.”
There was a strong urge to answer this piece of insolence in kind, but I stifled it. “Oh no, I am not that strongly opposed to it.”
“That’s good, because I have no plans to change it.”
“Or the pictures,” I added for him.
“Just so,” he said over his shoulder, for he had turned his back on me in mid-conversation to examine the books.
“Looking for something to read, are you?” I asked casually. Had that foolish question been put to me, I would have declared I had come to take a bath, but perhaps he wanted to smooth over the squabble.
“Yes, I like to read a little philosophy before sleeping. I find it soporific.”
“That is hardly a compliment to the philosophers!”
“It is not intended as one. Philosophy is arrant nonsense, most of it.”
“How can you consider a search for truth and wisdom nonsense? It is the most serious subject in the world.”
“Truth and wisdom are not to be found in books, Miss Smith.” The ‘Miss Smith’ informed me I was still in disgrace. “Every man must make the painful discovery for himself. I read it to see where these fellows have run amok.”
“To see where Plato and Aristotle and Kant and those other geniuses have gone astray, you mean?”
“That’s the idea,” he answered blandly. “They were only human, like me.”
Ignorance is bad enough; arrogance is worse, but an arrogant ignoramus is intolerable. When he pulled his monocle out of his pocket and rammed it into his eye, I could conciliate no more. “It is incredible that the Teutonic race, which gave us Leibniz, Kant and Schiller should have so far retrogressed as to throw up only a Ludwig Kessler to correct them.”
“I was born and bred in England, ma’am, and have never been in Germany in my life.” I was only rarely “ma’am” at the lowest ebb of our relations or the height of disagreements. I had touched a little nerve then, and was pleased.
“If you were born in a stable it wouldn’t make you a cow I suppose,” I suggested with a polite yawn.
“Oh, no, a bull, surely.”
The best way to deal with that sort of obtuseness is a dignified silence, and I wish I had kept a rein on my tongue. However, he took not the least exception to being called a Bierwurst. I doubt he knew it to be a beer sausage, or maybe he was gratified at having incited me to such a display of bad temper. I’m sure every jot of my considerable wrath was evident on my face. Nothing else would have rung that sardonic smile out of him. He lifted out the monocle. “I can be led, Rose, as you well know. I cannot be driven.”
“I had a mule like that once.”
“I once had a bitch with a particularly nasty disposition. I had to get rid of her.”
I don’t expect you have ever been called a bitch. It exerts an indescribable and in my case uncontrollable fury in the breast. I reached right out and slapped his face, hard. Caught off guard, he was not prepared to stop me. He just looked stunned, as I realized too late what I had done—the enormity of it, and the ill-timing.
“I’m sorry! Ludwig, I didn’t mean to . . .” I stopped in mingled horror and embarrassment, trying to read his expression. It was still stunned, but rapidly recovering to anger. My hands reached out involuntarily, and I grabbed his sleeve. He didn’t say a word of either vituperation or forgiveness. He regarded me like a man hypnotized for about forty seconds, then he smiled enigmatically and reached his arms out to encircle my waist. I felt such a great wave of relief he wasn’t angry that I was a little delayed in responding. Before anything more could come of this promising beginning, there was the sound of running in the hall. Abbie had come to haul us back to the Saloon.
I still wished to apologize, to explain my unpardonable behavior. I later secured about two seconds in which to do it, while Annie toured the room blowing out candles and Abbie poked down the fire, just before we all retired.
“Sir Ludwig,” I began, in a voice that sounded unnatural with propriety, even to myself.
“If you are rehearsing to apologize, Rose, don’t,” he said. “It was inconsiderate of me to goad you when you have so much on your mind.”
I had nothing on my mind but the apology. I do not often tender an apology, and for some reason I felt rather cheated. When we steel ourselves to do the right thing, we like to get on and do it. “Anyway, I’m sorry,” I said.
“Then I suppose you force me to say, with what sincerity I can find, there is nothing to be sorry for. But if you are standing there with that scowl on your face waiting for me to now apologize, you’ll have a long wait.”
“I only expected you to say I was forgiven.” This had an abject sound to it that disgusted me. “That you aren’t angry, I mean,” I adjusted rapidly.
“I am blazing angry—that Abbie interrupted us,” he said with a boyish smile. Then he walked off and took the poker from Abbie, for of course the final poking down of the fire is the peculiar prerogative of males. A mere female cannot be trusted with such an onerous chore unless she has the felicity of living apart from men.
* * * *
The next morning when I came downstairs, the paintings in the Saloon had been changed. I had found a new way to bearlead a gentleman—by slapping him on the face! Not a word was said about it, but when I went into the Saloon once more to lament this one bone in my throat, the Fragonards, dainty fête-champêtre scenes of lovely ladies in flower-bedecked swings being pushed by dashing cavaliers had replaced the horses. Gainsborough’s human animals remained. It was not complete capitulation. They were insignificant on a side wall and were not so bad as the horses, in any case. I stood in the center of the room, looking all around and smiling at the wonder I had created. It was a room anyone might be proud of, I thought.
Sir Ludwig entered a
t the door, looking rather sheepish at his giving in. “I suppose you will now start in on me about the cat and dog,” he said.
“No indeed I will not! You deserve one token of your own atrocious taste. There was a snake in Eden, after all,” I replied, but in a rallying good-natured way, to show him I appreciated his sense in following my advice. “You must own this is an improvement. Now you have a Saloon to be proud of.”
“Fool that I am, I was not ashamed of it before.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it was bad enough to be ashamed of, but now it is lovely.”
“I collect I ought to be thanking you for your help.”
“Just bear it in mind when you are adding up my bill. I daresay ten or twenty years from now, when your wife wishes to redo it again, Annie will be scolding her that Rose Trelawney especially wanted to have those Fragonards hung in the Saloon. Pray do not consider the room is to be set under glass, immutable forever.” I hoped the word ‘wife’ might joggle his memory as to his interrupted business in the library the night before, but it failed.
“Do you think then that in ten or twenty years Miss Trelawney will have left us?”
“It begins to look as though she has made herself a life tenant, does it not? I had thought we would have heard from Mr. Williker by now.”
“Scotland is a long trip, and the roads at this time of the year are not good. For him to get there and get a letter back to us would take two weeks, or close to it.”
It was to be business, but the servant in the hallway took an occasional peep in at us, which might account for his failing to grasp this opportunity.