by Mira Stables
The heavy eyes opened. For a brief moment there was a rational gleam. “Auntie Bee,” murmured the hoarse, weary voice, as the lids drooped once more and their owner drifted off into the realms of feverish nightmare.
“Harriet Pendeniston!” exclaimed Mrs Bedford. “After all these years. No wonder I thought I knew the face. But with her lovely hair cut off and so thin and miserable looking. What in the world could have happened to her? Thanks be to heaven that she found her way to me! The master must know of this. Little Harry!” And murmuring thus in agitated fashion she rang for Alice to sit with the patient while she went in search of her master to tell him of her discovery.
Chapter Two
Simon had ridden out on estate business and did not come back until it was time to change his dress for dinner, so Mrs Bedford had to wait until the meal was done before she could acquaint him with her new knowledge. In the intervals of tending the sick girl she spent a good deal of time in recalling her former acquaintance with Harriet Pendeniston, searching her memory for every detail that she could recall of the girl’s unusual story. Her information stopped short some five years ago. Apart from that it was complete and detailed, so that when she sought an interview with her master as soon as he had finished his dinner, she was ready to pour out a full tale.
Simon was in a pleasantly relaxed mood, a satisfactory day’s work behind him, an excellent dinner within. He bade the good soul be seated and settled himself to listen, having first made polite enquiry as to the patient’s progress. Still very feverish, said Mrs Bedford, but that was only to be expected. She went on to describe the one lucid interval that had given her the clue to the girl’s identity.
“Old Pendeniston’s granddaughter?” exclaimed Simon. “What in the world is she doing in such a state? I suppose I’d better let him know she’s here. A damned nuisance. The less I have to do with that household, the better, but I suppose that even he has some natural feelings, and may be worried about the brat. It’s only decent to put him out of his misery.”
Mrs Bedford shook her head portentously and settled herself more comfortably in her chair. “As to that, Sir, you’ll be better able to judge when you’ve heard the whole,” she began.
Simon restrained a strong impulse to grin. Before she attained the dignity of being his housekeeper, Mrs Bedford had once been his nurse. He knew her narrative powers of old. It was fortunate that he had no work of particular importance to do tonight. Once launched she would be hard to stop, and although he was only mildly interested in her disclosures, he had not the heart to do it. A story concerning local characters would be better than meat and drink to her, and he owed her something for her willing acceptance of the waif that he had foisted on to her. He poured himself another glass of burgundy and prepared to show an intelligent interest.
“I’d take leave to doubt if the colonel knows anything of Miss Harriet’s circumstances,” continued Mrs Bedford, “let alone worrying about her. He never forgave his son for marrying her mother. Maybe if she’d been a boy he might have changed his attitude, ’specially seeing as how his present heir is no better than a madman and a wicked one at that. But that’s nothing to do with Miss Harriet. I’d best begin at the beginning, Sir, else I’ll likely muddle myself and you too.”
When she accepted a glass of port wine to help her settle her thoughts, Simon realised that it was likely to be a long tale. He resigned himself.
“Miss Harriet’s mother was Mary Johnson,” she began presently. “You’ll remember the Johnsons, Sir. Decent, self-respecting folk, and brought up their children proper, though it was little the son did to repay them for it. A nasty, mean-minded creature, Jonas Johnson, but Mary was a lovely girl. As bonny as a picture, and all the lads after her, for her ways were as handsome as her face. Only she’d have none of them. Should have been a boy, for all her winsome ways. All she wanted was adventure – travel. They say if you want anything badly enough you’ll get it, don’t they? Who’d have thought a girl born and bred on the Johnson’s farm would travel half across the world? But so it was. There came a lady called Preston to stay at the farm. Brought her two children to seek the benefits of country air and fresh farm food. Born in India they’d been, her husband being a soldier in those outlandish parts, and frail, puny little scraps they were, but they thrived. My! How they thrived! And Mary all over them. What with listening to Mrs Preston’s tales of the goings on in India, with tigers and elephants and rajahs and such, and what with the two little lads, which Mary always had a hand with young things, never one like her for rearing a cade lamb or a weakly foal, seemed as though she was under a magic spell. When Mrs Preston had to go back to India and begged Mary to go with her, there was no holding back. Maybe the Johnsons were reluctant, but Mary was all agog to go, and she was their darling.”
She fell silent a moment, pondering the odd workings of fate. Simon’s attempt to hasten the recital by offering to refill her glass met with a shocked refusal. “No, indeed, Sir. I never take more than one glass, and that only when I have been overset as I have today.”
“I beg your pardon, but you were telling me about Miss Johnson and her adventures in India,” reminded Simon gently.
“Yes. She seemed well suited with the life out there. Wrote regularly – I told you the Johnsons had brought her up nicely – had her taught to read and write, and weren’t they glad of it? Happy as could be, she was. Then she met Henry Pendeniston. The colonel’s son. I can see how it happened. Mary always had a tender heart for the weak, and that’s what he was. Weak in health – which is why he’d been sent on a long sea voyage – and weak in character. Though maybe with such a sire, that’s small wonder. It would take a strong man to stand up to the colonel. Whatever the reason, they met and married. Three years with the Prestons had taught Mary the ways of the polite world. She had always been a quiet-spoken girl and prettily behaved, but how her husband could ever have thought that she would be acceptable to his father is still a mystery to me. Maybe it was his fears on that head that wrought so powerfully upon his health that he did not live to reach England. Mary came home a widow, but with the promise of a child to console her. Which might have been expected to soften her father-in-law’s heart, but did not. To be fair to him he did not cast her off entirely. There was money of her husband’s, left to him by his mother. That she should have, but he would not receive her, nor take any interest in the child – Harriet. Mary was content enough. The money made her independent in a small way. She could bring up her daughter in comfort, if not in luxury, and send her to school when the time came. She need no longer drudge on the farm, and she had no further ambitions. The child fulfilled her needs. She doted on her, but she was not foolish. The little girl was brought up as she had been – taught the ways of household skills and management until she was of an age to be sent to school, and never allowed to think herself above her station.”
It had been at this stage in the child’s life that Mrs Bedford had become ‘Auntie Bee’, her friendship with the family entitling her to honorary relationship. Once Harriet had gone to school she rarely saw her, but she saw enough to realise that there was tension between Jonas and his sister, the man jealous of the inheritance that had brought comfort and independence to Mary, resentful of what he called her niminy-piminy ways, and venting his anger, when occasion offered, on his defenceless niece. The death of Farmer Johnson when Harriet was twelve did nothing to improve this situation, but life went on reasonably smoothly for three more years, when Mary Pendeniston died suddenly and left her daughter doubly orphaned.
Harriet left school and went home to the farm. Fifteen was full young to leave school, opined Mrs Bedford. Whether the money was no longer available, or whether the girl was actually needed to support her aged and grieving grandmother, she naturally could not say, but she did feel that Jonas Johnson had had a voice in the decision and she wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that he had managed to get his hands on Harriet’s money – for it should have come to her on her
mother’s death – and appropriated it to his own uses.
During Grandma Johnson’s last illness, Mrs Bedford had visited the farm regularly, but she had been more concerned with her old friend’s condition than with Harriet. Jonas was surly and unsympathetic as usual. She guessed that Harriet was hard-worked and probably got little thanks for all that she did. She was quiet, perhaps unnaturally subdued, but Mrs Bedford had set it down to anxiety for her grandma and in any case it was not her place to interfere. After Mrs Johnson’s death she had called at the farm once or twice, feeling that she owed it to her old friend to keep a motherly eye on the girl. She had been surprised to learn that Harriet was going to London. Uncle Jonas had found her a post as under-governess to some smart London family. She had seemed to Mrs Bedford to be very willing – even looking forward to the prospect. It was not so very different, she had pointed out, from what Mama had done when she went out to India with the Prestons. Mrs Bedford had been dubious. A girl who had left school at fifteen was hardly sufficiently well educated to be a governess. And how had an ignorant oaf like Jonas Johnson heard of a post with a smart London family? She hoped the child was not being pushed into some menial post where she would be overworked and underpaid. And if her present state was anything to go by, that was precisely what had happened. At the time she had merely assured Harriet of her continuing affection and interest and extracted a promise that the girl would turn to her if ever she should find herself in need of help.
“And I’m thinking that’s just what she’s done, Sir. I believe she was making her way here when the accident happened. If she’d wanted to go to her grandfather, she’d not be using the river path. So it seems to me there’s no need to be telling him that she’s here. Not, at least, until she’s back in her right senses and can say what she wants for herself.”
It was a nice point. Simon had no wish to involve himself with Colonel Pendeniston, who was heartily disliked by the entire neighbourhood, and if the man had shown no interest in his infant grandchild there seemed to be no valid reason why he should do so. Mrs Bedford, of course, was prejudiced, partly by old friendship, more by the fear of having her protégée wrested from her, but from what he had heard of Pendeniston Place there was likely to be small comfort there for a sick girl who needed careful nursing. On the whole he was inclined to favour the suggestion that they should wait until the invalid was sufficiently recovered to express her own views. The interview ended on a very amicable note, Simon expressing the view that Miss Pendeniston could not be in better hands, Mrs Bedford accepting this as her rightful due but gratified that the master had seen fit to fall in with her view of the case.
The following day saw little change in the invalid’s condition. She was, perhaps, a little less feverish, but still very restless and certainly not rational. However, she seemed to recognise Mrs Bedford, even through the daze of fever, for she swallowed her medicine and the various draughts and possets meekly enough at the good lady’s behest. Simon, paying a punctilious visit to his uninvited guest, thought she looked a little better. He studied her with rather more interest now that he knew something about her, and told Mrs Bedford that he could detect no resemblance to the Pendenistons.
“And a fortunate circumstance that is,” retorted the head nurse tartly. “No. She’s the very moral of her mother in features and colouring, only slighter and more delicate in build.”
Simon nodded. He did not make any comment, though he could not help remembering that Mrs Bedford had described the mother as very pretty. Little sign of beauty about this poor little rat! Still, it was hardly fair to judge her appearance when she was disfigured by the blotchy measles rash, and in any case no one should know better than he that appearances were not everything. He picked up one lax hand and felt for the pulse at the wrist.
The effect of this innocent gesture was startling. The girl flung herself away from him across the bed, wrenching her wrist from his hold and exclaiming in a hoarse whisper, “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me. I’ll scream and scream and raise the house.”
Simon sprang back rather as though his devoted Meg had bitten him when he stooped to fondle her. Even Mrs Bedford looked shocked and startled, though she was swift to beg the master to take no notice. The poor child was plainly out of her senses.
“Yes,” agreed Simon grimly, “but one cannot help wondering what shocking experience she has undergone to put that note of terror in her voice. A feverish nightmare it may be, for certainly she has no cause to dread my touch, but somehow it struck a chord of memory that distresses and frightens her. That can do no good. I shall not visit her again until she is rational, and shall rely on you to report to me as to her progress and to acquaint me with her needs.”
Mrs Bedford promised to do so faithfully, and Simon walked slowly down the long gallery to his own apartments. The hint of mental suffering had touched his sympathies more surely than the girl’s obvious physical distress. For the first time he thought of her as a person, not just as some kind of pitiful waif who must be warmed and fed and could then be forgotten. For the days that remained before he was again able to speak with her, Harriet Pendeniston was never far from his thoughts.
Chapter Three
After giving her nurses cause for serious concern through four interminable days, Harriet finally drifted back to consciousness – and to a feeling of well-being and security to which she had long been a stranger. At first it was enough to savour the comfort of the soft feather pillow on which her cheek rested. It was so very different from the Cushing’s attic which had been her pitiful refuge these past few years. The pillow there had smelled sour and felt as though it was stuffed with corks.
Memory of that pillow, of the straw mattress and the wretchedly thin blanket and coverlet that went with it, stirred other memories. Hideous, paralysing memories. She struggled up on to one elbow and stared frantically about her, seeking reassurance. She had fled. So much she remembered, but where was she now? And was she safe? The room was far different from any she had ever occupied or even seen. It was not smart, like the best bedroom at the Cushing’s, but it was much bigger than her bedroom at the farm. There were three windows through which she could see trees, and there was a bright fire burning in the hearth. The furniture was old-fashioned but it was well polished, and her sheets and pillows smelled of lavender.
At this point in her search for some means of identifying her whereabouts, the bedroom door opened gently and Mrs Bedford came in carrying a tray. The anxious, wary expression on the sick girl’s face vanished. She sat up in bed and held out both hands. “Auntie Bee!” she said joyfully.
Mrs Bedford set the tray down carefully on a small table drawn up to the hearth. “There now,” she returned contentedly. “So you’re in your right senses at last. And a fine dance you’ve led us all. Fancy taking the measles at your time of life! Old enough to have known better.”
This affectionate but practical attitude had a very heartening effect on the invalid. “Is that what I’ve had?” she enquired with interest. “I must have caught it from the Cushing children. And I wish I had known better, because it felt perfectly horrid. Am I recovered now? Can I get up? And where am I?”
“A deal better than you’ve been these four days past, but you’ll not set foot out of bed for another sennight at least, and then only if the doctor says so. As for where you are – why – you’re at Furzedown. Mr Warhurst’s place. I made sure you were coming here to me when he picked you out of the river.”
“I remember jumping into the river,” said Harriet, wrinkling her brow. “Mandy fell in. Where is Mandy? Is she all right?”
“All right? I wish you were as much all right as she is. The first day she was as good as gold. Scarcely stirred out of her box and never made a sound, but she’s a taking little thing for all her comical looks, and the maids started making a fuss of her and giving her titbits. You never saw such a change in an animal. Reckons she’s queen of my kitchen now, she does, and getting to be a right littl
e madam. Climbs up into my chair and yips at me when I order her out. It’s only impudence though. I must say she’s obedient enough in the ordinary way. So no need to fret yourself about her. Now. Let me put another pillow behind you and then you must drink this broth before it goes cold.”
Harriet drank obediently. For the first time the broth tasted good and she finished it all, to Mrs Bedford’s satisfaction. There were a great many more things that she wanted to know, but her nurse said that she had talked quite enough. She must go to sleep again now.
“You’ll soon begin to pick up your strength if you just do as you’re told. Then you can ask all the questions you want. For the moment it’s enough to know that you’re with friends, and that the pup you set such store by is thriving.”
There was something very soothing about being treated as though one was still a child. Harriet, who, for the moment, had had more than enough of independence, snuggled down into her soft pillows and was asleep within minutes.
But this submissive attitude was born of weakness. Before the end of Mrs Bedford’s threatened week she was clamouring to be allowed out of bed, even if only to sit in a chair by the fire, and was forever pleading for a sight of her beloved Mandy. Mrs Bedford said that she didn’t hold with dogs in bedrooms and thought that the convalescent might take cold sitting out of bed with no more than a borrowed shawl to wrap about her. The parish box nightgown had been exchanged for new ones of fine linen, but Mrs Bedford, having bought these, together with such essentials as a toothbrush and a brush and comb had called a halt. She had a strong notion that it would be easier to keep Harriet in bed if she had no clothes to wear. The boy’s clothes in which she had arrived had been carefully dried and pressed, and Mrs Bedford, having hidden them away in one of her own capacious presses, felt that she deserved commendation for not enquiring into their provenance. Doctor Fearing had been very definite. On hearing of the girl’s hysterical outburst he had strictly forbidden any enquiry into her immediate past until she was a good deal stronger. He was, however, more sympathetic than Mrs Bedford over his patient’s desire to get up. He said it was a good sign, showing returning vitality, and added that surely, in a house this size, there must be something laid away in the attics or some such place that a bit of a girl could wear over her nightdress. To Mrs Bedford’s objections that the said girl would never sit still in a chair but would be wandering about the room and looking out of the windows, he said only, “And a good thing too. What she needs now is something to distract her thoughts, and I don’t want her spending too much time reading because her eyes are still weak.”
