by John Harding
‘I will explain later,’ I told the puzzled housekeeper. ‘If you don’t mind, I would like some time now to chat with Mr Van Hoosier.’
Mrs Grouse doubtfulled a nod and said she would fetch us a pot of tea.
As soon as she was gone I motioned Theo to come closer. He bent his head over mine and ambushed me a kiss plumb on the lips. ‘Not now, Theo, there isn’t time!’ I said, my cheeks hotting up, for it shamed me to be kissed with the governess watching from her mirror. ‘As soon as Giles hears that you’re here he’ll be along like a shot. Now put your ear to my lips and listen, for I have no idea if the mirrors can hear.’
He puzzled me one at this. ‘The mirrors…can hear?’ He upped his eyebrows, but when I took hold of his lapels and pulled him close he raised no objection, figuring no doubt it would put him in the way of another kiss. I soon disillusioned him that, twisting his head so that it was his ear lined up with my mouth, not his lips. I whispered to him about the mirrors and how Miss Taylor had practically the whole house watched. At this Theo let out a mighty guffaw and broke away from me. He stood over me, staring down.
‘Florence, are you sure it’s only your ankle that took a knock? You didn’t by any chance get a bang on the head too?’
‘Theo, it’s true,’ I hissed. ‘I swear by anything you care to name.’
He condescended me a smile, put his hands in his pants pockets and took a casual turn about the room, stopping at the mirror and peering into it for a while, making adjustments to his necktie as he did. Satisfied he looked quite the beau, he came and sat on the end of the chaise.
‘Florence,’ he whispered, a smile playing about his lips, ‘I have to tell you, she ain’t there.’
‘She’s there, all right,’ I hissed back, bridling at his mockery, ‘but I’m the only one can see her.’
‘Oh, I see – or rather I don’t!’ He patronised me such a nod I would have hit him were I not desperate for his help.
‘Anyhow, never mind about the mirror now, humour me about it if you like, but just listen.’ I had decided to entrust him with one of my greatest secrets. After I had expounded to him my belief that Miss Taylor was planning to take Giles away and the confirmation of it I had received in finding the steamship tickets, I whispered him how to get to the tower room and where to find them. ‘But not yet, Theo, not yet. You won’t have time to do it before Giles gets here and she reappears. We must bide our time. I will tell you when.’
As if this were a cue the door opened and Miss Taylor, now in another dress, black like the other, glided in. She had put her hair up again and cleaned up the thorn cuts on her face and powdered over them so you would scarce have noticed anything different about her at all, if indeed there was. I thought that maybe it was not face paint that had restored her features; perhaps a ghost may renew itself whenever it fancies.
‘Ah, Mr Van Hoosier.’ She beamed a charmer at Theo. ‘You are still here.’ Theo awkwarded upright as if caught doing something he should not, as indeed he had been, listening to my seditious talk. ‘It was so kind of you to take care of Florence, but I think that now I must ask you to cease your ministrations, for the poor girl’ – here she sarcasticked me one – ‘needs rest.’
Theo stood his ground. ‘But ma’am, her ankle…’
‘I have sent John for the doctor. He will be here directly. Now I think if you’ll just step outside…’
Theo was left with no choice. He gave my hand a squeeze. ‘You take care, Florence. I’ll be back tomorrow.’ She ushered him out as if he were a docile cow and I was left alone, listening to the drone of their voices in the hall. The door to the drawing room opened and Giles stood there, holding the handle, not coming into the room but warying me from the threshold.
‘Giles,’ I said, ‘what’s the matter?’
‘Gee, Flo, what was that all about? You must have done something real bad to make her so mad.’
‘Come in, Giles, and close the door,’ I loud whispered him. ‘Come on, hurry!’
He hesitated a moment but then did as I asked. He slowed over to me but still stood a couple of feet off, just out of reach. ‘What’s going on, Flo? Why did she chase you like that? Was it because you went into her room? You left your cloak there, didn’t you? Why did you do that?’
‘Never mind that now, Giles, you must listen to me.’ I dropped my voice to a whisper because of the mirror. ‘I have proof that she means to take you away. I found the steamship tickets.’
His face brightened. ‘Steamship tickets? I’m going on a boat?’
‘Yes, if she isn’t stopped. To Europe.’
‘Europe?’ He thought a moment then said, ‘Why has Theo come back from Europe so soon? Didn’t he like it there?’
‘He never went. He had an asthma attack.’
‘Oh.’
‘Didn’t you speak to him?’
‘Only to say hello. Miss Taylor told me he was just leaving.’
Right on cue I heard the front door close and through the window I saw Theo, walking backwards away from the house, looking at it with an expression that mixed puzzlement with concern. I feebled a wave, which was difficult, laid out as I was on the couch, but it obvioused he could not see and he turned and walked away down the drive.
The door opened again and Miss Taylor came in. She was all smiles with Giles, although I saw that he waried her as he had me. He had, after all, seen her wilding at me earlier, which must have somewhat shaken his impression of her as all sweetness and light. I bethought me that this was something I might work on, that it might opportunity me to drive a wedge between them.
‘Giles,’ she said, ‘please go up to the schoolroom, there’s a good fellow, and fetch Florence’s book for her, will you? Oh, and her embroidery, of course.’ She meaningfulled me one. ‘After all, we mustn’t give away her secret, must we?’
As soon as he was gone she strode over to me. ‘Now listen to me, young lady, and listen well.’ She practically spat the words out. I, of course had no choice but to listen, for I was as a prisoner shackled here by my useless ankle. ‘I want what is mine. You will hand them over now or suffer the consequences.’
‘I cannot do that.’
She sat on the edge of the couch, stretched out her hand and applied it to my ankle, squeezing hard the swelling so that it was all I could do not to cry out. ‘Give them to me!’
‘I cannot, for I do not have them about me.’
She released her grip and suspicioned me a long look, her eyes travelling up and down my body as though she might be contemplating searching me, or else was considering where about my person the tickets might be hid.
‘Go ahead, look,’ I said. ‘You won’t find them.’
‘Very well. But you will tell me where they are.’
‘That’s what you think, you fiend.’
She stood. ‘I can make life very difficult for you, little girl, if you persist in crossing me.’
‘I will not stand by and let you take my brother away.’
‘Your half-brother, you mean. And you are right, you will not stand by, for you will not be standing at all for some days. You will be lying helpless as you are now.’
‘You will only take Giles over my dead body.’
‘Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.’ She was annoyed, I could see it, frustrated that I intransigenced so. ‘Come now,’ she said, in a more conciliatory tone, ‘you may as well give me what’s mine, for they can in no way serve you and the loss of them is but an inconvenience to me. I have only to write a letter to get them replaced. Why not make things easy for us both by telling me where they are?’
‘They are where you will never find them. And you are quite wrong, they are not useless to me. They are proof of your devilish plans.’
She long-silenced me one and then turned and glided from the room, leaving behind her a trail of anger and frustration.
24
That afternoon the doctor visited and pronounced my ankle sprained and prescribed complete rest an
d keeping all weight off it for a week. So I lay in the drawing room pretending to sew but really reading my book, which I covered whenever Mrs Grouse or any of the servants came in. And this was my pattern for the next few days. Every morning John would carry me down from my room and set me up for the day on the couch. At mealtimes a small table was brought to me and my food laid out on it. In the evening John carried me back to my room. I had no idea what Miss Taylor had told Mrs Grouse concerning our chase through the woods but, whatever it was, it obvioused she had convinced her that it had been but a game, for it was clear the good housekeeper suspected nothing. At times when I aloned with her I bethought me to tell her all, but held back, for I still doubted being believed. No, my best plan had to be for Theo to get the tickets and then somehow convey them to Hadleigh and thereby prove our new governess’s intentions.
The immediate problem I had with this was how Theo was to gain possession of the tickets, for Miss Taylor, taking the doctor at what I considered to be more than his word, had deemed ‘complete rest’ to mean no visitors. She even kept Giles’s trips to see me to the minimum. Giles himself seemed to have gotten over his brief fear of her, which I suppose was only to be expected now that he aloned with her for most of every day. On his visits to me he parried any attempt of mine to renew talk of his impending trip with his usual childish prattle.
‘Giles,’ I whispered, when we aloned for an instant one morning, ‘has she said anything to you about going away with her?’
‘Flo,’ he stonewalled, ‘now that you’ve tried being without the use of one of your legs for a while, which would you rather have, a leg chopped off or one of your eyes gouged out?’
How was I to answer that?
It difficulted me greatly that I could think of no way to get Theo into the house to put my plan into action; the whole thing hopelessed, for she had banned him quite. So I was surprised on the third morning of my indisposition to look out the drawing room window and up the drive and see a familiar figure heroning its way toward the house. A moment later Mrs Grouse showed him into me.
‘Theo,’ I gasped, the moment we were alone, ‘how did you get around her prohibition?’
‘By appealing to a greater authority,’ he whispered, for I put a finger to my lips to shh him and indicated the mirror with a nod of my head. He pumped out his chest like a cock pigeon when it is courting the hen. ‘I faked an asthma attack, so my people fetched the doctor and in passing I happened to mention it was a pity you weren’t allowed visitors. Naturally he said that was a load of nonsense and that nothing would do you more good. So here I am.’
‘How clever of you.’
‘Yes.’ He sheepished a little. ‘Mind you, he did say it wasn’t a good idea for me to go out at all, given the state, as he thought, of my asthma, but that’s another matter.’
At this moment Miss Taylor brusqued into the room, evidently having seen Theo through one of her mirrors, followed by Giles, who bounded up to him and regaled him with questions and entreaties to play this and that. Miss Taylor patiented until the first flush of Giles’s enthusiasm for our old friend had abated somewhat, then said, ‘I believe I mentioned to you, Mr Van Hoosier, that the doctor has ordered complete rest for Florence. We don’t want her getting over excited, now do we?’
Theo smiled. ‘I have to say, ma’am, I don’t rightly see how getting excited would have an effect upon a person’s ankle, but in any case I have it on good medical authority that it will do her good to have company,’ and he explained what the doctor had said, omitting the precaution about himself.
Miss Taylor stood chewing her lip and then said, ‘Very well, come along now, Giles, this is lesson time. You can see Mr Van Hoosier later.’
When Theo and I aloned we chatted some more, whispering as I explained what he must do with the tickets, should he secure them, and what he must tell Hadleigh, and then he stood up and said in kind of a stagey way, ‘Tell me, is there any book you require from the library?’ He had his back to the mirror and was making his eyebrows dance about to show he was not in earnest. I straightwayed what he was up to. Under cover of going to the library for me he could get to the tower and recover the tickets. I asked him for Macbeth.
So Theo set off. He went first to the library, found Macbeth where I had told him it would be and then made his way to the tower. He intentioned if he should encounter Miss Taylor en route there or on his way back to say he had taken a wrong turn when he left the library and gotten lost. With luck, Theo being so vague and stupid-seeming and all, he would be believed. As it fortuned, he met no one on his brief diversion, although Miss Taylor took it upon herself to look in on me while he was gone.
‘Where is Mr Van Hoosier?’ she demanded.
I could tell she suspicioned something. It obvioused she had seen him leave in her spyglass and had lost track of him when he left the library and turned right and went off her map.
‘He went to the library to fetch me a book.’ This much was true and accorded with what she would have seen.
Just then Theo returned. He handed me the book and, as he did so, with his back to her and her mirror, patted his breast pocket. ‘Well, Florence, I’m afraid I must be off,’ he said, adding with studied significance, ‘I have things to do.’
That is the worst about involving such as Theo and Giles in one’s plots: they have not my gift for it. Miss Taylor immediately ear-pricked. ‘Oh yes, Mr Van Hoosier, and what might those things be?’
Theo coloured and began to stammer, the which turned into a cough, and that in turn led to the necessity of a spray. When he had recovered himself he said, ‘Oh, this and that, Miss Taylor. Some mathematics and Greek. My tutor keeps me hard at it and I must be up to the mark with my studies for when I am well enough to return to school.’
This recovery was good by Theo’s standards but I inwarded a curse that he had all but ruined things by trying to be too smart. Now it obvioused that the governess knew he had the tickets. She would not know what he had them for, but it would have been better had she remained in the dark as to where they were.
25
The next few days were an agony to me, laid up helpless as I was, not only unable to do anything to halt the progress of Miss Taylor’s plans but also in the most terrible ignorance as to the furtherance of my own. I had no way of knowing what Theo was up to. It occurred to me that the answer might simply be nothing, nothing at all. Suppose he considered what he had seen, a half-crazed girl in a state of unseemly disarray pursued through the woods by her governess, together with what I had told him, that this same governess was a ghost, the spirit of a previous governess come back to haunt us and steal away my brother, although for what motive it was unclear; moreover, that this spirit could see like an owl in the dark, without recourse to candles, walk on water and watch people through all the mirrors in the house? What if he considered all that and decided I was plainly not in my right mind? It was a great deal to expect even someone so naïve as Theo to believe.
But then again, the boy besotted with me…
About the only entertainment I had during my recuperation was in dodging my book out of the sight of Mrs Grouse and Meg, who both so mother-henned me that I was not often left with a whole hour to myself. I would no sooner settle myself down to read than one or other of them would be in to make up the fire or bring me a drink or some little delicacy, a cake or cookie which Meg had prepared especially (and no doubt consumed half a dozen of herself), so that I constanted grabbing my embroidery and holding it over my book. Thus I found myself reading in stops and starts and it was almost like the old three-or-four-paging days in the tower when I had to look up to see if Theo was upping the drive. I wondered that Mrs Grouse didn’t in turn wonder how my embroidery made no progress, or if she secretly thought me another Penelope, unravelling by night what I stitched by day.
The other thing I anxioused about was what that witch our new governess might be up to with Giles. For apart from a few minutes here or there, such as after a meal,
she kept him from me, away up in the schoolroom, my absence opportunitying her perfectly to poison his mind against me and seduce him to her plans. Although I had little chance to alone with Giles, when I did manage to whisper a question to him he reticented, hanging his head and avoiding my eyes, and then quickly changed the subject. Giles will not give up a secret easily, but he is not good at concealing the fact that he has one. It obvioused that now he was part of her plan, his secrets were with her, not me.
There was no way in which I could alter this for now; all I could do was Lady of Shalott my way through the days, waiting for Hadleigh to shining-armour up the drive. But on the fourth day it was not Hadleigh who came, but Theo.
I could tell there was something wrong the moment he walked through the door. He so anxioused that he almost rushed into the room and blurted it right out, but I held up a finger and nodded toward the mirror to caution him to hold his fire. He came and nexted me on the couch.
‘Did you see Hadleigh?’ I whispered. ‘What did he say?’
Theo shook his head miserably. ‘It took me until yesterday to get into town. I had another asthma attack, a real one this time – it’s very bad at the moment – and was laid up, so my tutor wouldn’t countenance letting me go. Not that I was capable of it anyhow.’
I impatiented through all this, for Theo’s asthma did not hold the interest for me that it did for him. When does the illness of anyone other than one’s self? But I said nothing, for I did not want to impression him I did not care. Theo was now my only ally until Hadleigh should come.
