by CE Murphy
“William died a long time before Rosa was born,” Mrs Penney said gently. “It must be difficult even for you to conjure his face after so long; for me, it is nearly impossible. I was only six when he died. But I recall the...the circumstances.”
“He fell from an apple tree,” Mr Dover said. “Which would not have been strange in any other boy, but he had a sensitivity to apples; they made him very ill, and he was always cautious around them. He was also deathly afraid of heights, so to think he had climbed an apple tree high enough to fall and kill himself....”
“You never believed he had,” Mrs Penney said, gently still. “I remember your anger and disbelief so clearly, John.”
“I have never told you the last of it.” Mr Dover sat heavily a long while in the anticipatory silence of his sister and daughter. Finally, he turned his head, gaze going to the window, though Elsabeth believed he saw not the gardens beyond but his younger brother, all those many years ago. “It was put out that his neck was broken, Felicity, but I found him. It was not. He had not a mark on him, only a faint look of surprise, as though he had seen something unexpected at the last. Mother and Father believed he had killed himself, Felicity. The apple tree, the unmarked body; they believed it to be suicide, and put it out that he had fallen from the tree so he might have a consecrated burial.”
“John!”
“I know.” Mr Dover passed a hand over his eyes, then reached blindly for his cup of tea. Steam rose from it as his fingers brushed the porcelain, and he cradled the hot drink against his chest without sipping from it. “I did not object, because although I did not believe he had fallen from the tree, nor did I believe he had killed himself, and thought an unconsecrated grave was a condemnation he did not deserve. Nor did he,” he added softly, “for it seems I was right on both counts. It seems unburnt magic slew him, and that my own daughters have avoided such a fate only through luck and my own careless encouragement of their talent. I cannot imagine how Ruth survived long enough to marry.”
“Perhaps she practiced her magic in secret from time to time.” Elsabeth returned Mr Dover’s skepticism with a faint smile. “Perhaps not. Perhaps she has less inherent magic than your brother did, then.”
“For which we must be grateful. Elsabeth, she is soon to bear a child. You must tell her what you know.”
“Should you not tell her, Papa?”
“I believe you are closer to her than I am,” Mr Dover replied, then looked again to the gardens, seeing them this time. “Although we have grown closer this past week or ten-day than I had ever imagined we might. Do you suppose she would want to hear it from me?”
“I think she would like it very much, Papa. Tell her you are proud of her, and tell her what you know, and I think she would like it very much.”
“I shall do so forthwith.” Mr Dover rose and left with sudden energy, leaving Elsabeth surprised and Mrs Penney with a sorrowful gaze.
“He has always taken William’s death very hard,” she said when he was gone. “I believe he felt responsible, and I think that this will not ease that sense of responsibility. I fear he may wonder if his own willingness to use sorcery quashed William’s, either for fear of competing with someone more skilled or for Society’s censure.”
“There is no way to know.” Elsabeth caught her lip in her teeth. “I had not known you wished for magic of your own, Aunt Felicity. I had always supposed...”
A brief, sad smile curved Mrs Penney’s mouth. “That Mr Penney and I had chosen not to have children, for fear of them being inflicted with sorcery? No. Very early in our marriage, I had a bad pregnancy, and I nearly died of it. Mr Penney hanged the risk and called a midwife reputed to be a witch, who could save me but not the child, or my ability to bear children. I knew early that it was not right; there was too much pain. I have often wondered, myself, if I had had magic of my own, could I have kept it from setting, and...changed everything.”
Anger and loss heated Elsabeth’s face and brought tears to her eyes. “Oh, Aunt Felicity, I am so sorry. I didn’t know. Oh, what use is magic!” she cried. “What use, when it is only wild and cannot be tamed for such things as knowing our own bodies! It is all well and good to hurry the crops along or warm myself with a touch of heat, but it is the talent of a dilettante! There is no scope, no improvement; I can do nothing more extraordinary now than I could as a child! What use is it, Aunt Felicity, if only the lowest of the low have the means to save or slaughter with their skill, and the rest of us cannot even do that much?”
“It is magic, Elsabeth. I am not certain it is meant to be of much use.”
“I cannot believe that. I cannot believe we are given talents only to be squandered on the ripening of fruit and the heating of tea. I cannot believe it.” Elsabeth fell back into her chair, her own gaze now despondent on the gardens. “I cannot believe it, and yet I must.”
(47)
To Mrs Penney’s practiced eye, the news Elsabeth had shared had an immediate and marked effect. Mr Dover walked in the gardens more often than ever before, and was often found standing bleakly beneath an apple tree, as if its weight had drawn him there and then could not release him. Mrs Dover, indulged and self-centred as she was, could not miss the change in him, and took herself from the comfort of her sitting room with greater frequency to draw Mr Dover out from beneath the apple trees and back into the world. She was not by nature a gentle woman, Mrs Penney thought; she was too inclined to busy-bodiness and prattle, but she did not ask Mr Dover what troubled him, only stood by his side in unexpectedly silent support, save when she judged a little gossip would bring him out of himself and into laughter. As spring days slipped into summer weeks, Mrs Dover grew a little slimmer and a little browner from her walks in the sun, until one day Mr Dover was heard to laugh and call her nut-brown, and Mrs Penney, walking in the gardens herself toward that happy sound, was obliged to find another direction to amble in order to provide them their privacy.
Ruth, always solemn, became increasingly considering in expression, as if judging the world, rather than its denizens, for worthiness. She could not be said to encourage them, but she was easier on Leopoldina and Matilda than she had ever been, until the former began to believe Mrs Cox was an entirely different person from Ruth Dover. To her utter astonishment, Dina was dismayed when, just after Dina’s sixteenth birthday, Mrs Cox was obliged to return to Mr Cox, and wept through several nights while Tildy stroked her hair and promised they would soon visit Ruth at home. “Papa will never allow it!” Dina cried, and Matilda, considering the firmness with which they had been kept in hand for much of the past year, could not argue, which only made Dina’s sobs more wretched.
Elsabeth could not forgive Society, or magic, its caprices; the news of her uncle’s long-ago death and Mrs Penney’s own troubles burdened her light heart, and not even visits from Sophia or letters from Rosamund could wholly lift it again. She was sedate in their visits to Bodton, and did not look admiringly at the officers, but avoided their gazes entirely and instead frowned at the new bridge, which to her represented the usefulness of lower-class magic and the uselessness of her own. Mrs Penney’s heart ached to see such despondence in her oldest unmarried niece, and, determined to return Elsabeth’s countenance to its usual joy, proposed a plot first to Mr Penney, then to Mr Dover, and finally to Mrs Dover, who had been entirely too taken with her husband’s sorrows to notice any in her second-eldest daughter, and who was perfectly content that someone else should tend to it.
It was thus that at breakfast one day near the end of June, Mrs Penney said, “Mr Penney and I will be taking a tour of the lakelands for the rest of the summer. We hope Elsabeth might join us, if it would not be too much trouble to you, Mrs Dover.”
“Elsabeth!” cried Leopoldina before Mrs Dover could draw breath. “Oh, why must it be Elsabeth, when she is content to mope at Oakden and write dreary letters to Rosamund while I am forced to remain at home, ensuring that I shall forever be a spinster!”
“You are just sixt
een,” Mr Dover said more sharply than was his custom, “and rude. Your age cannot yet permit you to consider the possibility of spinsterhood, but your ill-considered commentary and your preoccupation with your own happiness above that of everyone else’s may well. You have Matilda, Dina; Elsabeth has always been closest with Rosamund, and she is within her rights to feel some loss with Rosamund’s marriage. Objecting to an opportunity for her diversion is small-minded and unkind. I expect you will wish to tender an apology.”
Leopoldina, gazing sullenly from one face to another at the table and finding no support even from her darling Matilda, could not bring herself to apologise, but did, for the moment, subside with the air of one much maligned. Mrs Penney waited a polite moment, then addressed Mrs Dover again: “Do you suppose you could spare Elsabeth for some six weeks, Mrs Dover? We should be so glad of her company, and while the lakelands might not have the gaiety of Brighton—”
“Brighton!” Leopoldina burst. “Oh, that we should go to Brighton! We must, Papa, all of us! I am sure the sea air would do Mamma great good!”
“Brighton would be diverting,” Mrs Dover said rather too hopefully, and for a moment, Elsabeth, whose attention had been quite fixed on her plate, lifted her eyes to meet Mrs Penney’s in contained amusement.
“We are discussing Elsabeth’s tour of the lakelands with Mr and Mrs Penney, not our own holiday to Brighton, which I assure you I have not budgeted for and do not intend to take,” Mr Dover said in a tone frightful enough to dismiss all thoughts of Brighton from Mrs Dover’s mind. “Felicity, I fear it is my own heart that would be the most broken to see my dear Elsabeth away again for so long, but I think we can have no objections to your enjoying her company for the summer. I might recommend Windermere, which I recall from my own youthful travels as an especially attractive locale.”
“It is on our itinerary,” Mrs Penney replied, pleased, then turned her smile on Elsabeth. “Do say you’ll join us, Elsa. I think you have not previously toured the lakes? It is something every young lady should do, if the opportunity arises.”
“I believe you brought Rosamund on such a tour two years ago, or was it three?” Elsabeth replied. “She wrote so happily of the time she spent with you. I should be very pleased to join you, Aunt Felicity, Uncle Charles. Thank you for inviting me.”
If this was not spoken with the spark that Mrs Penney might have hoped, that only served to illustrate the need for Elsabeth to be distracted. “Splendid. We will leave in two days, if you can be packed suitably in such little time.”
Elsabeth deigned to laugh. “I could be ready by this afternoon if you wished, Aunt Penney, but I shall endeavour to take two days to pack so that you will not feel rushed.”
“Capital of you,” Mr Penney said drolly, and everyone’s humour, save Dina’s, was well restored.
Leopoldina, having had the thought of Brighton put in her head, would not let it go; Mr Dover, the very morning Elsabeth and the Penneys were meant to depart, was heard to mutter, “I shall have to send her to have any peace, and yet I cannot bear to imagine what havoc she might wreak,” upon which he retreated to his library and could not be drawn out again until the carriage was ready and Elsabeth was prepared to alight.
“Do not dare to send Dina to Brighton, Papa,” Elsabeth said firmly as she kissed his cheek. “If there is the slightest danger of you doing so, I will have to remain at home to shore up your determination.”
“That will not do,” Mr Dover replied, for he, unlike Mrs Dover, saw the change in Elsabeth and knew its source, and, like Mrs Penney, hoped that diversion would restore her to herself, as he had been restored.
Elsabeth herself was not insensible to her aunt’s intentions, and at first made more of her delight than she could be said to truly feel. They travelled in comfort, rarely staying a full day in a carriage; there were too many sights to see, and no rush to be in any particular place at any given time. As summer’s full hold turned the countryside lush with life, Elsabeth could no longer resist the pleasures of a holiday, and often awakened early to walk through hitherto-unknown fields before the Penneys were prepared to depart for the day.
Mr Penney had let a house in Hawkshead, and, for two lazy weeks, the amiable trio resided there, ambition thwarted by heavy air and hazy days. Elsabeth saw little society save her own aunt and uncle, and received only as much news from home as to find pleasant; several letters from Mr Dover, touching on the books he had read and the health of the garden, two rather more rambling discourses from Matilda, who spoke glowingly of the regiment officers seen in town, and none at all from either Mrs Dover or Leopoldina, the latter of whom had never in Elsabeth’s recollection sat to write a letter.
She should have been much less pleased had either Mr Dover or Tildy’s letters clarified certain aspects of the Dovers’ improving social lives, but Mr Dover would not think to write it, and Tildy imagined all was made clear by her own gossip-filled missives, although if pressed she might have admitted to a certain consciousness that she had chosen, out of respect for what she supposed Elsabeth’s feelings to be, not to mention how often Captain Hartnell came calling once again, now that Elsabeth was no longer in residence at Oakden.
Surely, it was nothing more than innocence to have encountered the handsome Captain in Bodton only a scant handful of days after Elsabeth’s departure; surely, the young Misses Dover, released from what Leopoldina could only regard as a positive state of arrest, were certain to see gentlemen and officers they knew in town. Leopoldina had, as was her wont, merrily waved the Captain down, and when he, standing at the side of their carriage, enquired after Miss Dover’s health, Dina first laughed and proclaimed her married, then laughed a second time and cried, “Mercy, but you do not mean Rosamund at all! I have forgotten: Elsabeth is Miss Dover now. She is well, I suppose; we have not seen her this five-day, as she has been invited to tour the lakes with our Aunt and Uncle Penney. She will be gone all summer, and we two sisters left at home are wholly bereft without her company. It is very lonely, when one is accustomed to four sisters, to find oneself with only one!”
“I am sorry to hear of your troubles, although certainly if one must be left with a single sister, then Miss Matilda is the closest confidante any young lady could wish for.” The Captain’s smile left Matilda quite undone, and Dina, fearing to lose an opportunity, spoke before Tildy could recover herself.
“I am surprised you did not know of Elsa’s departure; you had once seemed so very close. But then, perhaps Elsabeth did not even know the regiment had returned to Bodton, so quickly upon the heels of Rosa’s wedding did she depart.”
Well over a month had passed, and Elsabeth, living as she did with Leopoldina, could not possibly have gone such a length of time without being made aware of the regiment’s return. Captain Hartnell forbore to say so and instead assumed a look of passing regret. “Perhaps that is the case, although one cannot be expected to keep up with the activities of one’s acquaintances, no matter how dear.”
“Acquaintances,” Leopoldina echoed with interest. “I had thought you and Elsabeth quite fast friends.”
“Oh, certainly, but never so intimate as to need to share each detail of our itineraries,” Captain Hartnell replied carelessly. “But let us not think of those who are—lucky creatures!— enjoying holidays; let us instead think of yourselves, Miss Dina, Miss Tildy, and on whether or not it is possible to alleviate the loneliness of your—dare I call it? Yes! I shall!—your exile at Oakden!”
“It could not be called exile,” Matilda began in protest, but was silenced by the sharp pain of Dina’s heel meeting her instep.
“Exile is precisely what we have suffered in the regiment’s absence and our sisters’ departures. You must come to visit, Captain Hartnell, you and perhaps a few other officers, and as often as possible.”
“I will visit, but I confess to a reluctance to invite others along with me,” Hartnell promised with a wink. “I should hate to have to share your friendship with so many, Miss Dina.�
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“Oh, think of Tildy,” Dina said brashly, and Matilda, injured both in spirit and body, could do nothing but feel slighted without fully appreciating why.
From that day onward, Captain Hartnell was at Oakden as often as his duties would allow, visiting two and three times a week and showing no reluctance to stop a moment in the street should the Misses Dover come upon him in Bodton. Mrs Dover foresaw a third wedding by the autumn, and to think that only a year earlier, she had been convinced of five spinsters living under Oakden’s roof until age or the odious Mr Cox threw them out. Matilda could not confess, even in letters, that she wished it might be her wedding that Mrs Dover dreamt of, and so, the topic of Captain Hartnell went blissfully unknown by Elsabeth, whose sense of restoration would have been much marred by the intelligence. Away from Oakden’s bustle, she had rediscovered a sense of peaceful joy, and was not insensible to its likely sources.
“Perhaps,” she said to Aunt Felicity during the course of one long golden evening, “it is that I have been too much in company these past months; since January, and it is now well into July. Perhaps I like a little solitude as much as time spent with friends.”
“You are very like your father,” Mrs Penney agreed, and laughed to see Elsabeth’s surprise. “He does not remain within his library only to avoid the innumerable women who rule his life, Elsa. He finds solitude comforting. I wonder at times if it is something that comes with the sorcery, although then I think of Leopoldina and cannot reconcile it.”
“Surely, no one is precisely the same, not even magicians. Perhaps it is a tendency amongst them, but a tendency is not a rule, and even rules bend or break. Think on it: within the family, the tendency does lie that way. Papa has his library, I, my walks. Ruth had, for so long, her uptight ways that may not have required physical solitude but certainly offered a certain isolation of the spirit, and dear Rosamund has always been gen- tly withdrawn. Tildy follows Dina, but even she—Matilda, that is—has shown a recent inclination to join Papa in the gardens and remove herself from most other society from time to time. Dina is the only one to strictly throw herself against the observation! All we need now is a larger sample to study; how shall we convince Society to give up their secret mages to us, or how dare we go amongst the lower classes to learn what their behaviours might be?”
