The Girl from Paris

by Joan Aiken

  Mr. Paget was greatly discomposed by this news; he had become dependent on the daily reading sessions. “I hardly know that I can spare you” was his peevish response. Ellen waited in silence. “Well—well—if you made a promise to old Miss Fothergill, I suppose you must honor it,” he added ungraciously, after a long pause. “But I see no occasion for purchasing yet more lesson books; cannot the child manage with those she already has? Books are costly items!”

  “If you consider the expense unreasonable, Papa, I will pay for them out of my savings,” Ellen said quietly. “Vicky has really outgrown the books she has been using.”

  “I did not say that it was unreasonable; do not take me up so quickly, in that way of yours. You are always far too hasty to misjudge me, Matilda,” grumbled her father.

  “You mean Ellen, Papa.”

  “Ellen, Ellen! It was a slip of the tongue,” said Mr. Paget testily. “If I were left in peace occasionally, instead of being continually harassed with demands, and belabored with troublesome information, I would perhaps be able to reach a decision more easily on such matters.”

  He did look unusually perturbed and displeased; a nerve twitched at the side of his temple, and his large, well-kept but clumsy hands fumbled among the papers on his desk, creating hopeless confusion in the orderly arrangement that Ellen had just made for him.

  “I am sorry, Papa; who has been bringing you troublesome information?”

  It was not hard to guess; Mrs. Pike had, as usual, superintended the nuncheon which was taken to Mr. Paget each morning in his study, and she had remained with him while he ate it; this was her most favored hour for talebearing and imparting disagreeable reports about the other members of the household.

  “Your brother Gerard—” Luke brought out the words with difficulty. “I find it hard to credit; but Mrs. Pike informs me that word has come to her—and from an unimpeachable source—”

  Ellen waited nervously, wondering what spiteful gossip had reached the housekeeper, and from whom?

  “—that your brother Gerard has once more been indulging his taste for low company; playing music for money, she was assured by her informant, with those idle wastrels who call themselves the Moorish men, or morris dancers. Can this be true, do you think?”

  “They are not idle wastrels, Papa,” corrected Ellen, feeling that a flanking movement might be the best tactic. “They are all honest laborers who practice the dancing in their free time. I am familiar with several of them—Ted Thatcher, whose hand I once cured, and old Mr. Randall—”

  “Is it true that Gerard is consorting with these men?”

  “I believe he has played music for them in the past. Whether he still does, I am unable to say. Gerard is seventeen, Papa; so long as he studies faithfully—which I am persuaded he does—do you not think he should be allowed to choose his own diversion?”

  “No, I do not!” growled Gerard’s father, thumping so violently with his fist that a whole pile of books became dislodged and toppled to the floor. “Young persons must obey the precepts of their elders. They have not sufficient sense or judgment to select their own companions. And this fact is abundantly illustrated by Gerard’s behavior. I am exceedingly displeased with him. It is lucky for him that he is with Eugenia at present, or I should remonstrate with him most severely. But how can I tell what kind of low associations he may be forming in Chichester? I think you had best tell him that I wish him to return home directly.”

  “But he has not finished his course of tutorials with Sir Magnus.”

  “He could manage without those. Still,” said Mr. Paget, recollecting, “since Newman is still in York, he would have insufficient employment at home—no, perhaps matters are best as they are. You may tell him that I am greatly vexed with him.”

  “Very well, Papa,” Ellen said, and escaped, sending down silent maledictions on the head of Mrs. Pike the talebearer.

  That lady, when informed of Ellen’s forthcoming excursion, let fall various animadversions as to the good fortune of young ladies who could afford to go jauntering about the country whenever they wished. In fact, Ellen thought, she was not ill-pleased at the news. As before, she had a number of household commissions for Ellen, and added, as an afterthought, “If you should chance to visit old Miss Fothergill, Miss Paget, remember me kindly to her. But don’t forget she’s half flown in her wits; you can’t trust a word she says.”

  * * *

  Waiting outside the Half Moon Inn, from which the coach departed, Ellen heard herself addressed in a soft but urgent voice.

  “Miss Paget! Miss Ellen—ain’t it? Dear, I am that pleased I ran into you! I didn’t like for to come up to the house!”

  It took a moment for Ellen to recognize the girl who addressed her. But the lustrous black eyes in the warm-complexioned, sun-browned face were deeply familiar; as was the red smiling mouth and the tangle of black curls. Then the memory came back: “Selina Lee! Oh, but I am glad to see you!” She gripped the girl’s hand. “How you have grown—how big and beautiful you have become!”

  “Well, you are none so peaked and swarly yourself!” retorted Selina, smiling. “I on’y just recognized you—so city-smart as you are now! ’Tis a long cry from the skinny little elver that Doc Bendigo and I did teach to swim on Climping Strand all those years agone.”

  “Are your family—are the gypsies camped near here now? Are they at Eartham?”

  “No, we are adown past Rogate. I caught a lift over on a carrier’s cart.” Selina’s handsome face clouded. “I come over on behalf of Aunt Priscilla, for she’s in bed with a poisoned foot an’ can’t touch ground—come to see about the poor thing that died, Wednesday was a fortnit, in the Petworth Union. Word just come to us about her.”

  “Was—did you know her?”

  “Ah. ’Twas Aunt Priscilla’s youngest, my cousin Sheba Smith, her that run off, three years back, with a gorgio. I saw the picture up to the Town Hall here. She’m buried now, but that were Sheba, sure enough. And they showed me a brass bangle she had; they wouldn’t let me carry it away but I knew ’twas Sheba’s, she’d had it from a child. Poor Aunt Priscilla will take it mortal hard; Sheba was her dowlin’, her baby, and she grieved sore when the gorgio took her.”

  “What was his name?” asked Ellen with quickening interest.

  “I forget. But he was a no-good. We heard tell the bozzers got ’un, later, and put ’un in the lockup, and Sheba was tramping the roads on her own, for she were feared to go back to Uncle Reuben—she knew he’d beat her nigh to death for taking up with a foreigner.”

  The coach rumbled up. “Quick, tell me—shall you be at Rogate for much longer?” said Ellen. “And what about the baby—Sheba’s baby?”

  “A lady took it—they wouldn’t say who. Wouldn’t tell a Rom!”

  “I’ll try to find out for you,” said Ellen. “I daresay they will tell me. Where can I be in touch with you?”

  “We’ll be traveling south to Meon, then back to Eartham and Slindon. Look for us in Slindon come September. And I thank you kindly, sister,” said Selina, adding a blessing in Romany as Ellen climbed into the coach.

  As she settled herself she noticed, through the window, Mr. Wheelbird standing on the other side of the street, looking after Selina Lee with a face of strong disapprobation. Had he overheard their conversation? Well, what did it matter if he had? Mr. Wheelbird was not Ellen’s governor.

  * * *

  The visit to Miss Fothergill repeated the pattern of previous ones. The old lady was touchingly delighted to see Ellen, but found it hard to accept that she was not Matilda; since Luke, too, was tending to make this mistake more and more frequently, Ellen began to have a perplexed feeling that perhaps she was the only person not allowed into the secret of her own identity.

  “Of course you are your mother, child,” said Miss Fothergill, patting Ellen gently on the cheek. “Anybody can see that.”<
br />
  “But I am myself, dear Miss Fothergill. I don’t wish to be anybody else—not even Mama!”

  “We can’t choose, child.”

  As before, the old lady’s doll’s-house apartment was specklessly clean.

  “Are they treating you kindly here?” Ellen inquired.

  “Oh, my dear, beautifully. Much better than that odious woman. I forget her name.”

  “Mrs. Pike?”

  Miss Fothergill shivered. “Mrs. Pike discovered a dreadful thing about Uncle Henry’s past—he had once robbed the Bank of England.”

  “Dear Miss Fothergill! I am sure the Canon never did any such thing!”

  “Oh, but he did. When he was young. And Mrs. Pike found out. That was why he left her all his money.”

  It was just possible, Ellen thought, that Mrs. Pike had discovered some discreditable little secret, and held it over the poor old man.

  “What about Mrs. Pike’s son?”

  A guarded, withdrawn look came over the old lady’s face. “Well, dear, I never saw that man in person; and glad I am I did not, for from what she let drop about him, I believe he was the Evil One himself. But, pray, let us not discuss such distressing subjects; they make me shudder! Pass me the black canister, Mattie; it contains the ginger drops; let us have one apiece to warm us, and tell me, instead, what new embroidery stitches you have been learning.”

  Leaving St. Mary’s Hospital after this visit, Ellen had the good fortune to encounter her brother-in-law, who had been attending a churchwardens’ meeting, and he drove her out to Valdoe Court.

  “I am a little concerned about Gerard,” he confided on the way.

  “Has he not been attending his tutorials?” Ellen asked with a sinking heart.

  “No, not that. Indeed, old Orde says that he works well and has a keen brain. But, firstly, I find that he has persuaded Mr. Fielding, the Cathedral organist, to give him music lessons, and spends hours there practicing; and then in the evenings he goes out for long solitary excursions over the Downs, and comes back in such a queer, excited, wrought-up condition that Eugenia says she does not know what to make of him; she has been half inclined to write to your father, but did not like to give him additional worry when he was only convalescent.”

  “Oh no, no, let her not do that!” exclaimed Ellen, reflecting that, on top of Mrs. Pike’s disclosure about the morris dancers, this would throw Mr. Paget into an agitation that might have disastrous consequences. “Where do you suppose Gerard goes on these excursions?” Though she imagined she knew very well.

  “I am afraid,” said Eustace rather uncomfortably, “that he goes to visit my shepherd Matthew Bilbo.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “I feel to blame in the matter. And yet, I do not see why I should! It was no more than human decency to give the man employment. And it is not strictly my concern if your brother persists in the association. Bilbo has not an ounce of harm in him—”

  “And you are not my brother’s keeper,” finished Ellen. “Besides, Gerard is of an age when he should be allowed to choose his own companions—and so I have said to Papa. But you can imagine with how little effect!”

  “Eugenia is not at all happy about it,” said Eustace miserably.

  “Well, I will see if I can reason with Gerard. By the bye, did your friend in Winchester ever discover anything about Mrs. Pike? You said you were going to ask him.”

  “Oh, ay. He did tell me, last month, that he thought he was on the trail of something unsavory. Mrs. Pike had had a son by a former marriage, who turned out not all he should be. But Polwheal had not discovered his name, or what he had done. He hopes to find out more.”

  At dinner, Ellen was amazed by the change in her brother. A month’s residence in Valdoe Court had completely transformed the surly, silent youth of the Hermitage: he laughed, he talked entertainingly about his legal studies—the law, he said, was a series of contradictions, linked together with lowest common denominators—and he was fervent and inspired on the subject of music, about which, it was plain, he had now acquired a great deal of knowledge. After dinner he played good-naturedly with his small nieces and nephews (such as had recovered from measles), giving them piggybacks and rides in the swing. Then he announced his intention of taking a walk.

  “May I come too?” asked Ellen.

  Instantly his face clouded.

  “No. I would walk too fast for you—and I compose as I walk; I am working on a four-part setting for the Te Deum. Another time, Ellie—I do wish to talk to you—I have many things to tell you—but not now—” and he was gone before she could argue, vaulting over the garden paling and making his way through the copse, giving her no time to protest that she would not distract him with conversation. Besides, that would not have been true.

  Then a bold thought struck her. Gerard had said he was going to compose as he walked, so perhaps he did not intend to visit his friend this evening. Why should not Ellen herself do so? She had a curiosity to meet this man who had so bewitched her brother; and perhaps it would be possible to warn him that the friendship was a dangerous one for Gerard.

  “I am going for a ramble in the woods, Eugenia. Will you accompany me?”

  “Good gracious, no, child; I have all the girls’ dresses and the table linen to darn, I have not taken a walk in months! And if you had a grain of consideration you would help me, instead of roaming off.”

  “Well, I will help you when I return. But the evenings are still so long and light, it seems a shame not to make the most of them.”

  Ellen knew roughly where the shepherd’s hut on Lavant Down was situated, about a mile away, along a grassy bottom, past some earthworks supposed by the locals to be fairy mounds, but which Dr. Bendigo had said were ancient British burial places.

  It was a clear, still evening to be out in; the sheep, up on the hill above, were calling far and near; a breath of the sea came over the marshes from Chichester Harbor, and a large pale moon kept Ellen solemn company as she walked quietly on the dewy, sheep-nibbled turf.

  The shepherd’s hut stood in a disused quarry where spindleberry and young ash trees had already grown head-high, half screening it. Perhaps Bilbo won’t be at home, reflected Ellen; very likely he will be upon the hillside with the sheep.

  But as she approached the small wooden building she heard voices.

  The door stood open, and somebody was moving inside the dusk-filled hut; beyond it, on the velvet moss of the quarry floor, she could see two people stretched at ease by a small fire. One was her brother, one a gray-haired man in a shepherd’s smock.

  “And what did you do then?” she heard Gerard’s question.

  “Ah well,” said a slow, thoughtful voice. “’Twas owl time by then, ye see, dark enough so ye’d have to blow on your hand to find it afore your face—”

  Ellen passed in front of the open door and, standing at the corner of the hut, said gently, “Gerard?”

  The two talkers turned in surprise and looked at her. She received an instantaneous impression of Gerard’s annoyance at the interruption, and the other man’s accepting interest; she met the gaze of two intensely blue eyes. At that moment she heard a man’s angry, frightened voice from inside the hut—“Who the devil be that?”

  Some article was knocked over or dropped inside, there came a crash and a curse; she heard a rapid limping step behind her—then came a stunningly violent blow on the back of her head.

  Falling, she thought: This is the end of me. But why?

  As she lost consciousness, the last thing of which she was distantly aware was Gerard’s voice, appalled, crying, “My God, my God, man, what have you done? That’s my sister!”

  * * *

  Ellen did not recover full awareness for what seemed an infinitely long stretch of time. Now and then she realized vaguely that things were being done to her, most of them unpleasant. Light sometim
es shone in her eyes, and the pain in her head became so terrible that her only recourse was to slide into blackness; she was turned and handled—“like a roll of pastry,” she murmured once, achieving a brief command of speech; sometimes liquids were trickled down her throat; hot pads were applied to her feet and cold ones to her head; she was raised, she was lowered, pillows were packed behind her, coverings were laid over her and then taken off again; often, for long periods, she seemed to be hovering above her own body, physically removed from it, only detained in its vicinity by a mild interest in what was being done to it. At one point she seemed to see the whole top of her head removed, hair and all, while intricate maneuvers were performed with beautiful ivory-handled implements, like the crochet hook and buttonhole maker in her mother’s sewing basket. Two men in black coats hung over her, busy and attentive.

  “But they’ll never embroider as beautifully as you did, Mama,” she remarked to Mattie, who was beside her. “And suppose they put my head back upside down? Then what would I do?”

  “You’d sing mi re do while everybody else sang do re mi,” answered Matilda. “But don’t worry, that surgeon is a clever fellow. He knows what he is about. You can leave him to his task with an easy mind.”

  So Ellen floated away with her mother to a region of yellow lupins and blue tropic seas, breaking on black, shining beaches.

  “Mama, what did Papa do to you that was so bad? Why does he feel such terrible remorse?”

  “He forgot to treat me as a human being. But I was sadder on his account, because for him the sun never shone. It was like living on a north-facing hill. And now it is too late. Or so he believes.”

  “Can he not go back and begin again?”

  “Go back and begin again? Let time run in reverse? Unknit all that was knitted up? But how can a man turn back to a child again? How can a grown tree become a seedling?”