by Joan Aiken
“Why not?” Ellen asked. “Here, we are outside all that—are we not? Here time stands still—does it not?”
“Time certainly does not stand still, my girl!” exclaimed a voice—intolerably loud and harsh, close to her ear. “As you will presently find out, if you will only condescend to favor us with your attention!”
A not ungentle thumb opened one of her eyes, and she became reluctantly aware of light and dark, of shapes, of pungent medical smells, and of an enormous face, much too close to her own, and two eyes surveying her.
“Do I know you?” asked Ellen doubtfully.
“We haven’t been formally introduced, me dear, but I know you; better than anybody else in the whole world, I daresay! Better than your own mother.”
“No, never better than her.” Ellen tried to shake her head, but found this was impossible; a kind of iron crown, with the spikes turned inwards, held her scalp rigidly in one spot on the pillow.
“A—a! No wriggling, if you please! You are my prisoner just at the moment, and must do as I say.”
“May I have a drink?”
A cup with a spout was held to her lips; water like nectar trickled down her throat.
“Now that is famous, Miss Paget! We’ll have you up, drinking tea and port wine, in no time. And none too soon, I may say! You have been playing truant for too long. Yes,” mused the voice—now that Ellen was becoming accustomed to its tones, it did not seem quite so atrociously loud. “I know just what makes you function; every neat little cogwheel and spring balance; very prettily they work together, too! It was fortunate for you that I was at hand to wind you up again—the best clock mender in the business—because I learned my trade at Scutari and Balaclava, where there were more broken heads in the hospital than crocuses on the mountainside.”
“Did I have a broken head?”
“You did, me dear; but I have mended it so neatly, with white of egg and plaster of Paris, that you will soon be as good as new.”
“To go back and begin again?”
“If that is your wish. Now you must sleep. Mrs. Pinfold will see to that.”
“Ah, I will so,” said a comfortable voice, warm and soft as the wind over those distant azure seas. “You be off with yourself, Sir Thomas, while I see to the poor pretty.”
Ellen felt herself gently rearranged into an easier position; the light faded, silence enshrouded her, and she slept again.
* * *
Gradually, after that conversation, she began to be aware, once more, of the passage of time. Days, nights succeeded one another; people and events slowly began to take on reality.
Mrs. Pinfold became the fat motherly nurse who fed, washed, and tended her; Sir Thomas Bastable, the brusque, white-haired surgeon who had first addressed her. After a week, members of her family were allowed at her bedside: Eugenia, wan, haggard, full of silent reproach; Eustace, nervous and friendly; Lady Blanche, solicitous but reproving; the Bishop, kindly and cheerful as always. She became conscious that she was in Eugenia’s house, and later realized with amazement, when she was allowed up for a brief spell, and wheeled to a window in a cane chair, that the leaves were blowing from the trees; autumn had come, summer had ended while she was still wandering in that distant, nebulous region where her mother had seemed to talk to her.
“But what happened to me?” she asked Sir Thomas—he had been knighted for his work at Scutari, she learned from the Bishop, and happened to be staying in the Palace at the time of her mishap.
“Why, you went for a ramble, as young ladies, with their romantical notions, are prone to do on summer evenings—and a great stone fell on your head in a place called Hayes’s Quarry. No doubt you were climbing up after some flower or bunch of berries.”
“I remember nothing about it.”
“Lucky for you your brother was not far off and ran to the rescue. He and a shepherd fetched you down to Valdoe on a hurdle. At first all thought you were dead. But then they saw faint signs of life and somebody had the good sense to send for me. And I put you together again.”
“My brother—Gerard—where is he?”
“In Petworth, my dear, keeping your father company. The poor man has many times petitioned to come and see you, but your sisters were firm. It would be too disturbing for you both, they said.”
“Sisters? Is Kitty here, then?”
“No, she is at Petworth with your papa.”
“Mrs. Pike won’t like that,” murmured Ellen, but Sir Thomas had gone, with an injunction to her to “be a good gal and mind what Nurse says.”
Very soon she demanded books to read, but for a long time this solace was forbidden. “Eyes and mind must not be taxed at first,” warned Sir Thomas.
However, one day when Ellen was in the cane chair, having her bed made, she chanced upon a most engrossing manual entitled Notes on Nursing, which Mrs. Pinfold had left on the washstand, and she read it from cover to cover before she could be stopped. “Apprehension, uncertainty…waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion…he is face-to-face with his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him, having long imaginary conversations with him.” Why, that is like Papa, thought Ellen; although in bodily health, Papa has the temperament of a sick man. The author of the manual, F. Nightingale, was very brisk about people who thought it required only a disappointment in love to turn a woman into a good nurse. This is a remarkable mind, thought Ellen. The small book stirred in her a feeling of emulation. What am I doing, lying here, being tended like a baby? She remembered that she had heard something about F. Nightingale five years ago, while still at school in Brussels.
From that moment she began to recover more quickly; she demanded to be let up for longer periods, and asked for more reading matter, for writing materials.
At last she was allowed downstairs. “It has been a shocking charge upon your household, having me here all this time,” she apologized to Eugenia.
“Well—yes; it has.” Eugenia was nothing if not frank “But Lady Blanche did not think it would be convenient to have you at the Palace. The Bishop has been very kind, though; he paid Mrs. Pinfold, and Sir Thomas’s fees.”
“I have given a deal of trouble.”
“It would certainly have been better,” said Eugenia, “if you had stayed indoors with me that evening and helped with the mending. What in the world were you doing in Hayes’s Quarry?”
Ellen had no idea. The whole of that evening was a blank in her memory.
When she asked how soon she could return to the Hermitage: “Now, Ellen, you must not be in too much of a hurry! You need not concern yourself about the household there. They go on well enough. When Mrs. Pike left—”
“What?” cried Ellen in utter astonishment. “You say that Mrs. Pike has gone?”
“Why yes. Oh, of course, I recollect, all that occurred during the long period of your unconsciousness.”
“What in the world happened?”
“Eustace had asked his friend Polwheal to see if he could not find out something about Mrs. Pike’s circumstances. And this man discovered that, by a first marriage, she had a son who had been sent to jail for robbery.”
“Oh yes…I believe…now a little is coming back. Eustace did say something about her having a son who was not all he should be. And Miss Fothergill said something—”
“And then, just as this information was received, something much more disturbing transpired; word came from Winchester that this son, who went by the name of Simon Enticknass, had escaped from the jail.”
“Escaped? Good heavens,” said Ellen faintly.
“As you may imagine, Eustace and I became very agitated. The idea that this violent criminal might come seeking his mother—in Petworth—at the Hermitage—was not to be borne! We made very strong representations to Papa—Kitty came down expressly from Maple Grove—and so Mrs. Pike was gi
ven her notice. She was exceedingly angry about it, as you may imagine.”
“I can indeed,” murmured Ellen, trying to picture the scene. Poor Mrs. Pike—after all her pretensions of gentility—to be confronted with such a shocking skeleton in the cupboard as a criminal son. Ellen surprised herself by saying, “In a way it seems unjust. What the son had done, after all, was not her fault.”
“Unjust? Are you out of your senses?” cried Eugenia. “She had reared the son, had she not? In any case, she was given her marching orders. And she went, threatening every kind of retaliation, action for defamation of character, I don’t know what else. ‘I shall have the last laugh on you yet!’ she was so impertinent as to say to Kitty.”
“Where did she go?”
“I am sure I don’t know. The main thing is that Papa is rid of her.”
“I hope Kitty makes him as comfortable as Mrs. Pike used. Or there will be trouble!”
“Kitty has carried him back to Maple Grove with her; I suggested that she do so, until you are capable of taking charge at the Hermitage.”
Do I have no choice? thought Ellen. But mental effort was still laborious. Her brain still felt clouded and clogged, her body weak and languid.
“I shall be able to see after it all in a week or so, I am sure. But there was a question I wished to ask—what was it?”
“Never trouble me now, child; I have so much on my hands that I hardly know which way to turn.” And Eugenia went off to organize her straitened and hard-pressed household.
Once she was permitted downstairs, to the observation post of a sofa in the drawing room, Ellen was given so many opportunities to witness the difficulties, embarrassments, and lack of adequate help in Eugenia’s life, while Eustace spent every available penny on restoring his impoverished acres, that it was hard to blame Eugenia for her constant complaint that “Papa was miserably niggardly not to help them with more money, which he could very well do if he chose.”
“He is worried about the possibility of civil war in America, because of his interests in the cotton industry,” Ellen suggested.
“Oh, my dear Ellen! Those are not his only interests! Papa is a rich man.”
Even Eustace agreed, sighing, that Mr. Paget was known to be very comfortably situated. The grass-cutting device that some Paget forebear had invented alone brought him in some ten thousand pounds a year.
“If we could have a tenth, a twentieth of that!” wailed Eugenia.
A week spent convalescing in this atmosphere was enough to imbue Ellen with a lively desire to return home; at length she prevailed on her physicians to permit this. “I am perfectly stout again,” she asserted, “and must not impose on my poor sister any longer.”
The Bishop doubtfully suggested that she should come to the Palace for a while; Lady Blanche found a number of reasons why this was not possible; and in the end Ellen was given her way, under a proviso that, after her return, she must spend at least a week in bed, submit in every way to the jurisdiction of Dr. Smollett, and not attempt to resume the teaching of Vicky, who had, in fact, been taken off by Mrs. Bracegirdle.
Indeed the Hermitage seemed strangely quiet when Ellen re-entered it. With Mrs. Pike gone, and her father and Vicky away, the servants had little to do, for Gerard was indifferent about meals or comfort; Ellen was welcomed with affectionate enthusiasm.
“But, oh, Miss Ellen! Your poor hair!” mourned Sue. “And you so thin and peaked—you seem like a token maid, that you do!”
Ellen had not been encouraged to look in minors while she remained at Valdoe; one had been removed from her bedroom. But since getting up she had become accustomed to her appearance. It had been necessary to shave her head for Sir Thomas’s operation. Her hair, dark, fine, and silky, had never been very long, and was now taking its time about growing back; at present it was hardly more than two inches long, curling over the top of her head in a soft, unmanageable mop.
“I look like a French poodle,” she said, laughing. “And all my dresses need taking in.”
“Ne’er mind, Miss Ellie; we’ll soon feed you up like a fighting cock.”
Her brother Gerard, Ellen noticed, also seemed unusually thin and pale. It might have been expected that he would seize the occasion of his father’s absence to indulge his musical propensities and neglect his studies, but the reverse seemed to be the case; he worked long hours every day with Mr. Newman, his tutor, appeared only briefly at mealtimes, and seemed unwontedly subdued, particularly in the presence of his sister, whom he treated with a kind of anxious, propitiating solicitude. Several times he asked her if she did not indeed remember anything about her accident, and on her assuring him that all events of that evening were lost to her, he appeared relieved, but also troubled. When she thanked him for bringing her back to Valdoe Court, and said she understood that she owed her life to his promptitude, he burst out, “Don’t thank me, Ellie! There is not the least occasion in the world! The fellow you should properly thank is Matt Bilbo, the shepherd, for he played the main part in the business, and it was his idea to lay you on a hurdle.”
“I don’t remember any of that. But I should like to thank him. Shall I write him a letter?”
“No! No, don’t do that,” said Gerard hastily. “How ever could the postman find his hut? I believe Matt is coming to Petworth in a couple of weeks for his sister’s wedding anniversary; I will tell him to come up here—shall I?”
“Yes, do; I am curious to meet the man who has had such an influence on you, Gerard!”
“Oh—that is all gone by,” said Gerard. “Or at least—Matt says that, for your sake—and Papa’s, not to distress him further—I must now apply myself to my books. And indeed, Ellie, I begin to think—to see—that perhaps Papa is right when he says that I ought to go into politics. Not that I want to! But there is so much wrong that needs putting right—responsible people are needed to administer the laws more justly than they are at present—”
Greatly astonished at this change of attitude, Ellen would have liked to hear more from Gerard on the subject. But she was really too weak, as yet, for long conversations, and in any case he did not seem to wish to pursue the matter.
* * *
Bilbo did come to the house a couple of weeks later, and Ellen could not help being impressed by him, though there was nothing striking about his appearance: a smallish, gray-haired man with a thin, lined face and a pair of guileless blue eyes. But he had a mild self-assurance and dignity, as he received her thanks, that made her instinctively like and respect him.
“Your brother do say as how you’ve forgot how your mishap all came about,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d tell ye more of the matter. But, simmingly, ’tis best not to talk about it, on’y stirring up troublous memories, or laying up more sorrow. Let be how ’twill.”
Ellen did not quite understand his meaning, but did not attempt to very hard; her head still ached easily if she overtaxed herself. Instead she said, “I am afraid that you have received much injustice at the hands of my father, Mr. Bilbo, for which I am truly sorry.”
“Ah, never trouble your head about it, maidy,” said Bilbo kindly. “’Tis all gone by now, an’ forgot, like your mishap. I’m right glad to work for your brother-in-law—who’m a notable good maister an’ a kindly man; as for the time in jail, ’twas your dad’s duty to sentence me, if he saw fit; and I reckon ’twas the Lord’s wish I should be there; I bear no grudge in the business.”
“How long were you there?” Ellen asked with a shiver.
“In Petworth jail, six months; then I tried to run off, an’ they shifted me to Winchester. Then, seems, I lost count; ’twere over twenty year, I reckon. Just about the length o’ your lifetime, maidy,” he said, smiling. “And now ’tis all gone like a dream, and I’m a free man, minding my sheep on Lavant Down.”
“Winchester jail,” Ellen said thoughtfully. What had she heard recently concerning Winchester
jail? “Why, I know what it was,” she added, half to herself, proud of catching the elusive memory. “Simon Enticknass—did you, by any chance, while you were there, come across a man by the name of Simon Enticknass?”
A curious look came over Bilbo’s face—a look not hostile or withdrawn, but wary, meditative, as if he observed a hazard ahead in his pathway, and did not know how best to approach it. “Ah, I knowed him, poor fellow,” he said after a moment. “Half flash, half fuddled, he were; take him the right way, not a doit of harm in him. But he were wrong led, an’ mazed wi’ the drink. And that ‘solitary,’ that done him mortial harm; turned his mind, like.”
Gerard, who had been anxiously invigilating the interview, broke in at this moment “I think my sister should rest now, Matt.”
“God bless ye, maidy, and see ye better soon,” said Bilbo earnestly. “My sister said to thank ye again for coming to touch her Cath, time the maid was poorly wi’ the ague; the liddle ’un healed up wonderful quick arter that, Sairy said.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bilbo.”
“An’ I hope your dad get his wish to find the owd Doom Stone he be so set on! If I hear aught of it, lying out in the woodses and hillses, I’ll let ’un know, surely.”
He knuckled his brow to Ellen, and allowed himself to be marshalled out by Gerard, who seemed intensely anxious to bring the interview to an end.
“I liked your Mr. Bilbo,” Ellen said later.
“I knew you would. He’s a wonderful man!” Gerard said fervently. “He—he is noble, Nell! He acts by instinct as others never learn to in their whole lives.”
“Yes, I can see that. What a curious coincidence that he knew Mrs. Pike’s son. What did Bilbo mean by ‘solitary’?”
“Oh—solitary confinement… But it is no great coincidence that they should meet,” Gerard said hastily. “After all, there must have been hundreds of men in Winchester jail.”
“Yes, that is just why—” But Ellen was not strong enough to pursue the matter.
