by Rose Jenster
Mrs. Rochester rushed to her side and patted her arm solicitously.
“What’s the matter, my dear?”
“It’s Daniel, my—my betrothed. He’s gone and married someone else and left me behind,” she said, a catch in her voice.
“I’m so sorry. Can I do anything for you?”
“No, no, it’s kind of you to be concerned. I’d best keep busy,” she said, trying to sound brave when really she wanted coddling.
“Oh, let me pop over home and make you a cup of tea,” Mrs. Rochester urged until Felicity nodded her acquiescence as if it were a favor she granted.
While Felicity had the shop to herself, she wondered what it would be like if it were her own store. She would certainly put the lavish white hat with its great curling plumes in the front window because it was more eye-catching than the practical straw bonnet with its nice, but simple, pink ribbons that Mrs. Rochester had on display. Perhaps she’d add in a few shelves of gloves and baubles to appeal to customers who wanted something pretty to update an ensemble but couldn’t part with the price of a hat. She made note of the idea to mention to her employer at a later date to be helpful.
By the time Mrs. Rochester returned with tea and shortbread biscuits, Felicity had quite refurbished the shop in her imagination. Gone would be the heavy red draperies and in with a silvery blue silk, soft as moonlight. She would bring in a pair of wing back chairs like the sort one saw in parlors and position them just so before the window, so ladies could sit and admire other customers’ hats and have a moment of quiet in a pretty, feminine shop. She wondered, as she sipped her tea, why they didn’t get a spirit lamp to brew tea and have little biscuits on offer for a more gracious experience, like the customers were really guests. She was surprised to find that Mrs. Rochester was talking to her.
“Now I don’t discuss it, but my cousin’s daughter that she met through the mail and was set to be his bride and he ordered her up from a catalog the way as you’d get seed or shoes.”
“And did he jilt her? Was he faithless?”
“No,” Mrs. Rochester looked rather deflated, “It worked out all right for them, despite his living out on the wild frontier. Truth is, I didn’t much like you going so far off to the wilds.”
“It was a town; it’s on the map down at the public library and everything. I spent a deal of time at the library reading up on the settlement of Wyoming and good garden crops, which livestock fare well there, what wild animals threaten the chickens, all that sort of thing. I’d even got out a book on old fashioned herb remedies, like poultices and teas you can make from plants to help with sickness. I was all prepared to be a proper pioneer wife,” she chuckled ruefully.
A lady came in to browse, and Mrs. Rochester stood to tend the customer so Felicity could finish her tea and biscuit. The young lady was one who had been at school with Felicity. Her name was Jessamine and she was married to a banker now. She rushed over to her old schoolmate with an expression of bright, avid concern.
“Oh, dear, I’ve only just heard what happened with you and Daniel. Poor you! I don’t know what would have become of me if my John had turned and jilted me at the altar like that!” she exclaimed.
“We weren’t quite at the altar yet, Mrs. Falk,” Felicity said coolly.
“I just want you to know that if you need a shoulder to cry on, why, you can always come to tea at my house. The baby naps between two and four and after that, my John gets home and we have our evenings quite full of engagements, but you’d be welcome to come to an early tea and tell me just all about it.”
“Thank you, but I’m working during that time,” Felicity said.
“Oh, of course. Well, I do hope you don’t take it too hard,” Jessamine said and left the shop.
“It’s the talk of the town now,” Felicity mused grimly.
“Sure enough, there’ll be another scandal tomorrow to wipe yours away, don’t fret,” Mrs. Rochester reassured her kindly.
“Yes, but I won’t marry now. I’m to be a spinster. Daniel was what there was for me, and since that is not to be, I’ll end an old maid.”
“I’m sure you’ll be a great comfort to your parents in their old age,” Mrs. Rochester said wisely.
“Yes, I’ll try to be,” she declared a little uncomfortably. While she knew she was amusing and nice to look at, Felicity wasn’t certain she’d ever been much of a comfort to anyone, least of all her mother.
At that moment she felt a real pang of regret, possibly the first in her life, that she hadn’t been more considerate, more helpful to her parents. She resolved right then and there to be better, kinder, more useful. Less wrapped up in herself and all her daydreams. She’d had her knuckles rapped at school dozens of times for daydreaming and not paying attention. It might be time, at age twenty-one, to pay a bit of attention to her family and try to improve herself.
Felicity forced a smile onto her face, thanked Mrs. Rochester for being so kind, and set about dusting the shelves and tidying the displays that had been set askew by her curious schoolmate. She sold two hats and put another back to reserve it for a lady who might come back for it on the following morning. She felt positively heroic, having overcome every swell of tears that threatened during the long day and persevering to do her job with good cheer and aplomb. When the last customer left, she wilted into a chair and wept. Mrs. Rochester patted her shoulder and then left her to it. When Felicity managed to master her emotions at last, she stood and checked her reflection. She was puffy and pale and had not her usual bloom of health. Well, why should she? She had had her heart broken and would have to spend the rest of her life a spinster, unwanted, and unloved.
She had done her job for the day and could go home to the warmth of her family. She winced a little, remembering Christopher’s remarks about her allowance. She knew that she had more pocket money, especially with her trousseau these last months, than her brothers did, and in fact, had as much or nearly as much as her friends with more fortunate fathers. It gave her a sharp pang to think of her parents doing without so she could fit in with her friends and have the things that they had. She went directly to the back room and took the cunning bonnet she’d put back to pay for when she got her wages. She set it firmly on a display stand right in the front window and stalked off.
“Mrs. Rochester, I’ve decided against the hat I had put back. I returned it to the display. I hope that’s all right. I really—I think my parents may need the money more than I need another new hat.”
“If that’s the way you feel, my dear. I’ll just go tidy up the display.” Mrs. Rochester said.
“Good night,” Felicity said and took her leave.
She walked along the street and made her way to her parents’ home. She looked at it with the eyes not of a young girl soon to marry and move away but as a woman who has had her disappointment and stands before the only home she will ever know.
“I suppose I won’t have anything of my own, then,” she said a bit wearily, and took in the peeling paint around the windows, the small flower bed that needed weeding. She would live here with her parents until they passed away. She would not have the money to keep the house and take care of it on her wages as a shop girl. So she would have to go live with one of her brothers, a cuckoo in his nest, in his wife’s way, and requiring civility and condescension, an old maid living in the attic. Tears shot to her eyes at the thought of such a hopeless existence. She had wanted a home of her own and a family, a husband who thought her pretty and amusing, children she could amaze with her cunning little tricks of folding napkins into swans or fashioning neat little boats out of newspaper.
Felicity rushed up to her room without stopping to greet her mother. She changed into an old school dress, two inches too short now and worn thin at the elbows. She hurried outside, knelt down and began pulling weeds from among the flowers rather haphazardly. This could be hers, she thought. This small corner of the lawn where she might make something neat and beautiful. She could conquer this piece of
earth first, and then figure out what to do with the long, dreadful expanse of the rest of her life.
When she was finished, she wiped her damp, dirty hands on her skirt. There was earth under her nails—nails which she kept short but which had never been truly dirty before. She looked at them with more amusement than dismay. She wondered what it would have been like to dirty her hands working alongside Daniel in Wyoming, side by side toil as they built a life out of the wild frontier. Well, she thought, it may not be Wyoming, but a flower garden was better than nothing.
Felicity felt good about the progress she’d made with the weeds as she scrubbed up. She went into the kitchen, and her mother dropped a spoon at the sight of her.
“Fliss, what’s happened? Are you hurt?”
“No, Mother. I’m perfectly fine. Why do you ask?”
“You’re—dirty. I thought, dear, you gave me a turn! I thought you might have been robbed and beaten in the street!”
“Goodness, no. I’ve been clearing weeds out of the flower bed. I wanted to ask you if I might—get some seeds and take care of it myself,” she said, her voice rather smaller than usual.
“Well, I never thought I’d see the day that my Fliss wanted anything to do with dirt and weeds,” her mother chuckled. Felicity couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother laugh like that. It felt good even if it was meant at her expense.
“I want to do—more. I had plans about going West and those—well, they aren’t to be. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for me. I can do this, plant some flowers, do some of the cooking, take some of the burden off you if I’m to stay,” she faltered.
“The cooking? I can’t say as I’ve much hope of that, Fliss.”
“I know I’ve not been much of a hand around the house, and I’m sorry. I’ll do more,” she said humbly.
“This isn’t like you one bit. I expect it’s the shock of being jilted, my girl. He wasn’t the man for you. Don’t be giving up hope just yet. You may be one and twenty but you’ve still a pretty face on you,” her mother said, meaning to console. “Now, go change yourself for dinner. I’ll not have you appearing like a scullion before your father.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Felicity said and went to tidy herself.
The next day, she nipped off to the lending library during her lunch break. Instead of taking out one of the travelogues about the West as she usually did, she went to the cookery books and took out two of those as well as one on kitchen remedies which she thought meant how to fix trouble in the kitchen. Soon enough, she found it was a recipe book of herbal teas and poultices using kitchen ingredients to treat sickness. She set aside the cookery and read on in the fascinating book about how herbs could heal. She reluctantly laid the book aside and dealt with customers, flipping back to her place in the book whenever a lull occurred at work. She made notes with a pencil on a piece of brown wrapping paper, absorbed in the different uses of fennel.
At the end of the day, her head full of stomach disorders and soothing teas, she took her wages from Mrs. Rochester, thanked her absently, and made her way home. Her mother met her at the door and said if she was serious about cooking she would teach her how to fry potato balls. Felicity smiled and handed her wages to her mother in full. Astonished, her mother stared at the money.
“To help with the housekeeping, of course,” Felicity said brightly as though it were a common thing.
“What am I to do with it?” her mother asked, dumbfounded.
“Buy things you need, a new tablecloth or something,” she said airily. “I’ve got a parcel waiting at the feed store where I’ve spoken for seeds. I want a few flowers as I said last night, but I’ve also found the most remarkable book. Did you know that people use herbs to heal sicknesses?”
“Yes, my mother was one for herbs. I remember taking lavender and honey for a throat ailment time and again,” she said fondly.
“Did she have any books or notes about it?”
“Why no. She had her knowledge handed down to her from her own mother.”
“Do you... could you teach me any of it that you remember?”
“The honey syrup and she made a poultice of fried onion for pneumonia. Mint leaves were used to make tea for a cough or a sick stomach.”
“Thank you. I wish I’d had the sense to talk to her about such things when she was alive. Now let me go change, and I’ll be in the kitchen to learn all about potato balls.”
“You sure have changed, Fliss,” her mother said with a shake of her head, but she was smiling for all that.