The Ladies of Grace Adieu

by Susanna Clarke

  "She has got a little more colour," said Fanny's anxious voice. "Do not you think so, Mr Hawkins?"

  Venetia found that she was in Fanny's parlour and Mr Hawkins was kneeling on the flagstones before her chair. There was a basin of steaming water on the floor with a pair of ancient green silk dancing slippers beside it. Mr Hawkins was washing her feet and ancles with a cloath. This was odd too – she had never known him do such a thing before. When he had finished he began to bathe her face with an air of great concentration.

  "Be careful, Mr Hawkins!" cried his wife. 'You will get the soap in her eyes! Oh, my dear! I was never so frightened in my life as when they brought you home! I thought I should faint from the shock and Mr Hawkins says the same."

  That Fanny had been seriously alarmed was apparent from her face; she was commonly hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked -fifteen years' worrying about money had done that – but now fright had deepened all the hollows, made her eyes grow round and haunted-looking, and sharpened up her nose until it resembled the tip of a scissar blade.

  Venetia gazed at Fanny a while and wondered what could have so distressed her. Then she looked down at her own hands and was surprized to find that they were all scratched to pieces. She put her hand up to her face and discovered tender places there.

  She jumped up. There was a little scrap of a looking-glass hung upon the opposite wall and there she saw herself, face all bruises and hair pulled this way and that. The shock was so great that she cried out loud.

  As she remembered nothing of what had happened to her it was left to Fanny to tell her – with many digressions and exclamations – that she had been found earlier in the day wandering in a lane two or three miles from Piper by a young man, a farmer called Purvis. She had been in a state of the utmost confusion and had answered Mr Purvis's concerned inquiries with queer rambling monologues about silver harness bells and green banners shutting out the sky. For some time Mr Purvis had been unable to discover even so much as her name. Her clothes were torn and dirty and she was barefoot. Mr Purvis had put her on his horse and taken her to his house where his mother had given her tea to drink and the queer old-fashioned gown and the dancing slippers to wear.

  "Oh! but, my dear," said Fanny, "do not you remember any thing at all of what happened?"

  "No, nothing," said Venetia. "I took the soup to the Peasons – just as you told me – and then what did I do? I believe I went somewhere. But where? Oh! Why can I not remember!"

  Mr Hawkins, still on his knees before her, put his finger to his lips as a sign that she should not be agitated and began gently to stroke her forehead.

  "You tumbled into a ditch, my dear," said Fanny, "that is all. Which is a nasty, disagreeable thing to happen and so naturally you don't wish to dwell upon it." She started to cry. "You always were a forgetful girl, Venetia."

  Mr Hawkins put his finger to his lips as a sign that Fanny should not be agitated and somehow contrived to continue stroking Venetia 's forehead while patting Fanny's hand.

  "Fanny," said Venetia, "was there a procession today?"

  "A procession?" said Fanny. She pushed Mr Hawkins' hand away and blew her nose loudly. "Whatever do you mean?"

  "That is what I did today. I remember now. I watched the soldiers ride by."

  "There was no procession today," said Fanny. "The soldiers are all in their lodgings I suppose."

  "Oh! Then what was it that I saw today? Hundreds of riders with the sunlight winking on their harness and the sound of silver bells as they rode by…"

  "Oh! Venetia," cried Fanny in great irritation of spirits, "do not talk so wildly or Mr Hawkins and I will be obliged to send for the physician – and then there will be his guinea fee and all sorts of medicines to buy no doubt…" Fanny launched upon a long monologue upon the expensiveness of doctors and little by little talked herself up into such paroxysms of worry that she seemed in grave danger of making herself more ill than Venetia had ever been. Venetia hastened to assure her that a physician was quite unnecessary and promised not to talk of processions again. Then she went up to her room and made a more detailed examination of her own person. She found no injuries other than scrapes and bruises. "I suppose," she thought, "I must have fainted but it is very odd for I never did so before." And when the household sat down to supper, which was rather late that evening, Venetia's strange adventure was not mentioned again, other than a few complaints from Fanny to the effect that the Purvises had still got Venetia 's gown.

  The next morning Venetia was stiff and aching from head to toe. "I feel," she thought, "as if I had tumbled two or three times off a horse." It was a familiar sensation. Captain Fox had taught her to ride in the previous November. They had gone up to a high field that overlooked Kissingland and Captain Fox had lifted her up onto Belle-dame's back. Beneath them the village had been all a-glow with the ember colours of autumn trees and the candlelight in people's windows. Wisps of vivid blue smoke had drifted up from bonfires in Mr Grout's gardens.

  "Oh! how happy we were! Except that Pen Harrington would always contrive to discover where we were going and insist on coming with us and she would always want the Captain to pay attention to her, which he – being all nobility – was obliged to do. She is a very tiresome girl. Oh! but now I am no better off than she is – or any of those other girls who liked the Captain and were scorned by him for the sake of Mrs Mabb. It would be far more natural in me to hate the Captain and to feel sisterly affection towards poor Pen…"

  She sat a while trying to arrange her feelings upon this model, but at the end of five minutes found she liked Pen no better and loved the Captain no less. "I suppose the truth is that one cannot feel much pity for a girl who wears a buttercup-yellow gown with lavender trimmings – buttercup-yellow and lavender look so extremely horrid together. But as for what happened yesterday the most likely explanation is that I fainted in the lane and Mr Purvis found me, picked me up and put me on his horse, but subsequently dropped me – which would account for the bruises and the holes in my clothes. And I suppose that he now is too embarrassed to tell any one – which I can well understand. The Captain," she thought with a sigh, "would not have dropped me.

  That morning as the sisters worked together in the kitchen (Venetia shelling peas, Fanny making pastry) they heard the unexpected sounds of a horse and carriage.

  Fanny looked out of the window. "It is the Purvises," she said.

  Mrs Purvis proved to be a fat, cheerful woman who, the moment she set eyes upon Venetia, gave a delighted cry and embraced her very heartily. She smelt of sweet milk, new bread and freshly turned earth, as if she had spent the morning in the dairy, the kitchen and the vegetable-garden – as indeed she had.

  "I dare say, ma'am," said Mrs Purvis to Fanny, "you are surprized at my warmth but if you had seen Miss Moore when John first brought her in, all white and shaking, then I think you would excuse me. And I know that Miss Moore will excuse me for she and I got to be great friends when she was in my kitchen."

  "Did we, though?" thought Venetia.

  "And you see, my dear," continued Mrs Purvis, delving in a great canvas bag, "I have brought you my little china shepherdess that you liked so much. Oh! do not thank me. I have half a dozen other such that I scarcely look at. And here, ma'am…" She addressed Fanny respectfully, "… are asparagus and strawberries and six beautiful goose eggs. I dare say you will agree with me that it is scarcely any wonder that our young ladies faint dead away when they let themselves get so thin."

  Fanny always liked visitors and Mrs Purvis was precisely the sort to please her – full of harmless gossip, and deferring to Fanny as a farmer's widow should defer to a curate's wife. Indeed so pleased was Fanny that she was moved to give each of the Purvises a small biscuit. "I did have a bottle of very good madeira-wine," she told them, "but I fear it is all drunk." Which was true – Mr Hawkins had finished it at Christmas eight years before.

  Of the queer, old-fashioned gown Mrs Purvis had this to say: "It was my sister's, Miss Moore. She d
ied when she was about your age and she was almost as pretty as you are. You are welcome to keep it, but I expect you like to have everything of the new fashion like other young ladies."

  The visit ended with Mrs Purvis nodding and making signs to her son that he should say something. He stammered out his great pleasure in seeing Miss Moore looking so much better and hoped that she and Mrs Hawkins would not object to his calling upon them again in a day or two. Poor man, his blushing countenance seemed to shew that Venetia had not been alone in sustaining some hurt from the previous day's adventures; her rescuer also appeared to have received a blow – in his case to the heart.

  When they were gone Fanny said, "She seems a very worthy sort of woman. It is however extremely provoking that she has not brought back your clothes. I was several times upon the point of asking her about it, but each time I opened my mouth she began to talk of something else. I cannot understand what she means by keeping them so long. Perhaps she thinks of selling them. We have only her word for it that the clothes are spoiled."

  Fanny had a great deal of useless speculation of this sort of get through but she had scarcely begun when she discovered that she had left her huswife in her bedroom and sent Venetia upstairs to fetch it.

  In the lane beneath Fanny's bedroom window Mrs Purvis and her son were making ready to drive away. As Venetia watched, John Purvis took a big wooden pail out of the back of the ancient gig and placed it upside-down on the ground as an extra step for his mother to mount up to the driver's seat.

  Venetia heard Mrs Purvis say, "Well, my mind is much eased to see her looking so much better. It is a great blessing that she remembers nothing about it."

  Here Purvis said something, but his face was still turned away and Venetia could not hear what it was.

  "It was soldiers, John, I am sure of it. Those great slashes in her gown were made by swords and sabres. It would have frightened them both into fits – as much as it frightened me, I am sure – to see how cut about her clothes were when you found her. It is my belief that this Captain Fox – the same I told you of, John – must have set on some of his men to frighten her off. For all that he has treated her so cruel she may still love him. With such a sweet nature as she has got it is the likeliest thing in the world…"

  "Good God!" whispered Venetia in great astonishment.

  At first the horror which she ought to have felt was quite overtaken by her indignation on the Captain's behalf; "I dare say she was very kind to take me in, but she is a very stupid woman to invent such lies about Captain Fox who is every thing that is honourable and would never do harm to any one – always excepting, of course, in pursuit of his military duties." But then, as images of her poor, ill-treated gown rose up before her fancy, the disagreeable impression which Mrs Purvis's words had created grew until Venetia was thoroughly frightened. "What in the world can have happened to me?" she wondered.

  But she had no satisfactory answer.

  On the following day after dinner, Venetia felt in need of fresh air and told Fanny that she thought she would walk out for a while. She went down Church-lane and turned the corner at Blewitt's yard; looking up she saw something behind the walls of Mr Grout's kitchen garden – Oh! the most terrible thing in all the world! – and the fright of it was so great that her legs gave way beneath her and she fell to the ground.

  "Young lady! Young lady! What is the matter?" cried a voice. Mr Grout appeared with his housekeeper, Mrs Baines. They were very shocked to find Venetia crawling on the ground and she was scarcely less shocked to be found. "Young lady!" cried Mr Grout. "What in the world has happened to you?".

  "I thought I saw a strange procession coming towards me," said Venetia, "but now I see that what I took for pale green banners a-fluttering in the breeze are only the tops of some birch trees.

  Mr Grout looked as if he did not very well understand this.

  Mrs Baines said, "Well, my dear, whatever it was a glass of marsala-wine is sure to put it right." – and, though Venetia assured them that she was quite well and was certain to stop shaking in a moment, they helped her into the house where they made her sit down by the fire and gave her marsala-wine to drink.

  Mr Grout was an attorney who had been settled many years in Kissingland where he had lived quietly and inexpensively. He had always appeared friendly and was generally well thought of, until he had suddenly got very rich and bought two farms in Knightswood parish. This was all quite recent, yet long enough for Mr Grout to have acquired a reputation as a most unreasonable landlord who bullied the farmers who worked his land and who increased their rents just as it suited him.

  "You will eat something, perhaps?" said Mr Grout to Venetia. "My excellent Mrs Baines has been baking this morning if I am not mistaken. I smell apple tarts!"

  "I want nothing, sir. Thank you," said Venetia and then, because she could not think of any thing else to say, she added, "I do not think I was in your house, sir, since I was a little girl."

  "Indeed?" said Mr Grout. "Then you will see a great many improvements! It is a curious thing, young lady, but wealth don't suit everybody. The mere notion of great quantities of money is enough to make some people uneasy. Happily I can bear the thought of any amount with equanimity. Money, my dear, does more than provide mere material comforts; it lifts the burden of cares from one's shoulders, it imparts vigour and decisiveness to all one's actions and a delicate clearness to the complexion. It puts one in good humour with oneself and all the world. When I was poor I was not fit to be seen."

  Money did indeed seem to have worked some curious changes in Mr Grout: his lawyer's stoop had vanished overnight taking with it all his wrinkles; his silver hair shone so much that, in certain lights, he appeared to be sanctified, and his eyes and skin had a queer sparkle to them, not entirely pleasant to behold. He was known to be more than a little vain of all these new graces and he smiled at Venetia as though inviting her to fall in love with him on the spot.

  "Well, sir," she said, "I am sure that no one could deserve good fortune more. You made some cunning investments no doubt?"

  "No, indeed. All my good fortune has sprung from the same noble source, a great lady who has employed me as her man of business – for which I may say I have been very handsomely rewarded. Mrs Mabb is the lady's name."

  "Oh!" said Venetia. "She is someone I have a great curiosity to see.

  "I do not doubt it, young lady," said Mr Grout laughing pleasantly, "for she has got your sweetheart, the bold Captain Fox, has she not? Oh! there is no need to pretend that it is not so, for, as you see, I know all about it. There is no shame in being seen from the field by such a rival as Mrs Mabb. Mrs Mabb is a pearl beyond price and praise. The soul delights in the smallest motion of her hand. Her smile is like the sunshine -No! it is better than sunshine! One would gladly live in darkness all the days of one's life for the sake of Mrs Mabb's smile. Oh, young lady! The curve of Mrs Mabb's neck! Her eye-brow! Her smallest fingernail! Perfection every one!"

  Venetia sighed. "Well," she said and then, not knowing very well how to continue, she sighed again.

  "In her youth, I believe," continued Mr Grout, "she was most industrious in managing her estates and ordering the affairs of her relations and dependants – who are very numerous and who all live with her – but at length the follies of the world began to disgust her and for many years she has lived a very retired life. She stays at home where she is very busy with her needle. I myself have been privileged to examine yard upon yard of the most exquisite embroidery, all of Mrs Mabb's production. And all her spinster cousins and maiden aunts and other such inferior females as she condescends to keep about her embroider a great deal too, for Mrs Mabb will not tolerate idleness."

  "She lives near Piper, does she not?" said Venetia.

  "Piper!" cried Mr Grout. "Oh no! Whatever gave you that idea? Mrs Mabb's house is not half so far and in quite another direction. It is reached by the little path that crosses the churchyard and goes out by the ivy-covered arch. The path, which is
somewhat overgrown with cow parsley and foxgloves, passes a little pool full of reeds and then climbs a smooth green hill. At the top of the hill the visitor must climb through a gap in a ruined wall of ancient stones – whereupon he finds himself in Mrs Mabb's garden."

  "Oh!" said Venetia. "How strange! For I am sure that someone told me that she lived near Piper. But, sir, I promised my sister that I would not be gone long and she is sure to grow anxious if I do not return soon."

  "Oh!" said Mr Grout. "But we are just beginning to get acquainted! My dear, I hope you are not one of those prim young misses who are afraid to be alone with an old friend. An old friend, after all, is what I am, for all I look so young."

  In Church-lane Venetia climbed up and looked over the churchyard-wall. "So that is the path that leads to Mrs Mabb's house and there is the ivy-covered arch!"

  She could not remember ever having observed either of them before. "Well! I do not think it can do any harm to go up very quietly and privately to look at her house."

  And so, quite forgetting that she had told Mr Grout that Fanny would worry if she did not return home soon, she slipped into the churchyard and beneath the ivy-covered arch, and passed the pool and climbed the hill and came at last to the broken wall.

  "I wonder that such a great lady should have no better entrance to her house than this inconvenient gap in an ancient wall!"

  She passed through.

  Majestic trees of great age and height stood about a great expanse of velvety green lawn. The trees had all been clipped into smooth rounded shapes, each one taller than Kissingland church tower, each one a separate mystery, and each one provided by the evening sun with a long shadow as mysterious as itself. Far, far above, a tiny moon hung in the blue sky like its own insubstantial ghost.

  "Oh! How quiet and empty it is! Now I am quite certain that I ought not to have come for I was never in so private a place in my life. Any moment now I shall hear silver bells and hooves upon the turf, I know I shall! And as for the house I do not see one.