by Joan Aiken
“Thankyou, sir.”
“And we’d be pleased if ye’d coom to an evening-party my good lady is giving next week, Miss Clement; Saturday evening; an evening-party with wine and refreshments. The cream o’ the town will be there, so ye may dress as fine as ye please,” he added, looking with some disparagement at the grey dress which Alvey thought appropriate for her rambles with Miss Edith and Miss Jemima.
“Why, thank you,” she said doubtfully, “I should be very happy, but—”
“Now, now; we won’t take any ‘buts’, will we, Mrs Grainger? We’ll look to see you then. And—ahem—”
Having written a novel that received public acclaim, Alvey now discovered, entitled her to a substantial increase in the emolument she was receiving for her French teaching; in fact her fees were to be more than doubled; perhaps Mr Grainger feared that if Alvey were to become well acquainted with the cream of the town, she might inadvertently reveal to some of those persons the rather small payment which had previously been thought sufficient for her services.
It was with no little dread that Alvey looked forward to the Graingers’ evening party; but she was not destined to attend it. On the previous day, when she returned from reading Fénélon to old Mrs Morley, she was told that a gentleman had come to visit her.
“A real fine, well-spoken gentleman,” said Mrs Robson, big-eyed. “He were a mite lame, like, so I wouldn’t wish to make him climb all the way up. Ye’ll find him in my front parlour, hinny; Winship, the name was.”
James! Alvey’s heart bounded so violently that she was obliged to stop and rest halfway up the stairs; it was with a shaking hand that she lifted the latch of Mrs Robson’s front parlour door.
And the person waiting inside was not James, but his father.
Without a word he walked across the room and folded her in a strong embrace. Then he held her at arms’ length and scolded her.
“Wretched, wicked girl! How could you dare to play such a trick on us? Hussy! Minx! I do not know how you have the gall to look me in the face! Of all the outrageous—abominable—barefaced—intolerable—”
“Stop, stop! Oh, I deserve it, I know I do; I deserve all that you say—”
Alvey found herself crying with positively enjoyable abandonment; tears cascaded down her cheeks. “I do deserve your displeasure,” she gulped, “but, after all, it was your daughter Louisa who planned and initiated the scheme; without her insistence it would never have come about—”
“I am not talking about that, you silly besom, I’m talking about running off and abandoning us in that extravagant, nonsensical way. How could you do it? Just because Louisa had come back? As if I cared the snap of a straw whether Louisa were there or not—”
“But she is there, is she not, Sir Aydon?”
“Oh, ay, she’s there, with that rhubarb-stick of a husband of hers; she’s there right enow. But she won’t be for long, now I’ve found you, not if I have any say in the matter. Why in the world, you silly girl, did you let her talk you into leaving?”
Why indeed? How to convey that it had seemed, at the time, entirely inevitable?
“Now,” he said, “you must pack up your traps and make ready to ride back with me; start packing directly.”
“But, sir, consider! Now that everybody knows I am an impostor—that I have no shadow of right to be at Birkland—how can I—?”
“How can you?” he thundered. “How can you? Because I bid you, that’s why! I am the master of the house, damn it! For that matter, everybody except myself and Charlotte seems to have been well aware for months before you left that you were an impostor, and precious little difference did it make to them. No, you must come,” he went on in a different voice, “for my mother’s taken another of her queer turns—I’ll tell you the cause presently, another bad thing that happened—she’s uncommonly low—can’t seem to get her breath and she keeps asking for you. So, if you’re a Christian lass, as I don’t doubt you are, you must come back. Setting aside the fact that the children were fair broken-hearted—”
“Oh!” she cried. “Parting from them was the hardest thing I ever did!”
“Well then, don’t make any more pother about it, but just pack your traps, like a good girl. I’m dining at the Castle Hotel—to give the horses a bit of rest—ordered dinner for six. We should leave directly after, and be home by sunrise. So come along to dinner as soon as you are packed.”
As soon as she sat down to dinner, Alvey said anxiously, “Sir, you spoke of something else bad that had happened at home—at Birkland. Please do not keep me in suspense any longer.” She studied his face, which did look exceedingly tired and drawn. “Is it—does it relate to Lady Winship?”
“Hey? Oh, no. No, Charlotte’s much as she was. Not any better, but no worse, I’m glad to say. No, the matter relates to Tot.”
“To Tot?” Alvey’s heart jolted horribly. “Why—what has happened to him?”
“Well—” Sir Aydon frowned, crumbling a roll. “I blame myself about it—very much. Should have acted sooner in the matter of Louisa’s jointure. To tell you the truth—a kind of lethargy came over me after you left us—found myself very down in the dumps—”
“Oh sir—I am so very sorry—”
“And so you should be, my girl! There we were, left high and dry—with no one but Louisa for cheer and comfort—and she’s about as much comfort as the prophet Jeremiah; in fact, of the two, I’d sooner have him—and that devilish bore of a husband of hers. Tallow-faced, stuttering puppy! To see him drinking my port, night after night, was almost more than flesh and blood could bear.—So why didn’t I pack off the pair of them, you may ask? Well—in a way—I hardly know myself—”
Alvey felt that she could easily guess. The combination of Louisa and her husband—their complete self-satisfaction coupled with determination to pursue their own ends—made a tremendously strong negative force. She could imagine the stunning impact of their presence on the household at Birkland. And how Sir Aydon might have turned stubborn in protest.
“To tell truth,” he confessed, “I did let myself fall into a despondency. I know I should have given the wretched girl her portion and sent her off directly with a flea in her ear—which was all she deserved after that precious scheme she hatched. Oh, she spun a fine tale about how it was entirely your idea—but I could tell that was a Banbury story as soon as she opened her mouth. Knowing the two of you as well as I do. And so I told her. No, it just went against the grain with me to give her her dowry so easily. I kept putting it off. She’d got us into this sorry state, I told myself; let her kick her heels for a while at Birkland. Why should she think she could just walk home, turn us all topsy-turvy, and then clear out again, as soon as she had got what she came for?”
“I daresay I should have felt the same,” said Alvey.
“Understand my position, do you? Good girl. Thought you might. But it led to harm. For there was this wretched husband of hers, at a loose end, with time on his hands, all set to make mischief.”
“Oh, good God! What can he have done?” asked Alvey with foreboding.
“For a start, made those poor children’s lives a burden. So Nish told me afterwards. Always hounding them about, under pretext of giving them lessons, in navigation and so forth; chivvied them and teased them, obliged them to do exercises, and kept on, particularly at the boy, telling him that he was a milksop and a mollycoddle, nothing but a baby.”
“Odious, hateful man!” Alvey clenched her hands. “I knew I was right to dislike him, the moment I laid eyes on him. Oh, poor Tot! So, what happened?”
“That mad, wild old fellow, Amos Herdman—you know whom I mean?”
“Annie’s father, yes. The children are rather afraid of him. The one who did the damage to Lady Winship’s garden.”
“Well—it’s thought so—yes. And he has uttered other threats since. But nothing of a definite nature.”
“It seems he came past the paddock one day, when Dunnifage was making the children run races—or some such thing—and shouted a whole string of abuse at them over the wall—and young Tot was upset by it and turned very white. So Dunnifage had to taunt him about that, and tell him he was a puling little coward, to be so frightened of an old man. Said something about you—your teaching being only fit for girls—”
“Oh! Oh, what a monster! So what happened?”
“Tot went off and was not seen all day. That was yesterday. In the evening Nish came to me, half drowned with crying, and told me he’d meant to show Dunnifage that he was not a coward, so he had gone up to the old man’s hut, where he lives all summer, to—to beard him in his den.
“Nish had an idea that Tot was going to do this. He wouldn’t let her go, but she followed, at a distance.
“He went to the door, she told me, and called something; the old man wasn’t inside, Nish said, but somewhere close by. She saw him steal up behind Tot and hit him with a club. And then dragged him into the hut. Nish ran to the door, and shouted, and banged on it, but it was fastened, the old man paid no heed. So then she ran all the way home.”
“How dreadful Poor child! What happened?”
“I sent up all the men from the house, Stridge and Blackett and Carey—they shouted and threatened to break the door, but Amos said if they did he’d cut the boy’s throat.”
“Oh no—then what?”
“That was when my mother had her attack. Duddy—idiot woman—had to go and let it out—old lady turned blue directly—at first we thought she was done for. Surtees went off hell-for-leather for the sawbones—Cunningham—knew he was in the neighbourhood, visiting old Lady Burnacres—came directly—bled her, and she recovered consciousness. Asked for you. So,” Sir Aydon said simply, “I came for you. Mrs Slaley gave me your direction. Seems she knew it all along.”
“But Tot? What of him?”
“Still in the old man’s cabin—so far as I know—with the men outside. Unless by this time they have succeeded in effecting an entry. Of course,” said Sir Aydon, “I hope that is the case.”
Alvey stared at him in consternation.
“You mean to say—you left home—not knowing, with Tot still at the mercy of that madman? Oh, why are we sitting here? Let us go at once—how could you bear to come away?”
“Well—” he mumbled, “it was life or death for m’ mother too—and whom could I send? Do you see? Sufficient men up at Amos’s hut—Lumley in charge—nothing I could do better—”
Yet it was plain to her how it had wrung him to come away.
“Let us go—please let us go—indeed I could not touch another crumb—”
She pushed away her half-full plate.
“Well, we had to bait the horses and give you time to pack,” said Sir Aydon. “But I’ll be glad to set out, and that’s a fact.”
“Glad to see ye, Miss Emmy, hinny,” said Archie the coachman, stowing Alvey’s box in the boot.
“I wonder how in the world I can ever persuade anyone in the house to use my real name?” Alvey murmured, as they were bowling westwards out of Newcastle. “Perhaps I had best continue as Emmy.”
The point was a trifling one, but any topic, anything had value that might possibly distract Sir Aydon, who fell, at the shortest pause, into a grim, anxious silence, tapping his fingers restlessly on the strap.
“What is your real name?” he asked, and when she told him, “Alvey, Alvey? Hmn, it seems to me there were cousins of that name on my father’s side, half a century back or more—that would account for the singular resemblance, I dare say.”
“That comforts me a little—makes me feel less of an outsider.”
“Of course you must be connected with the family; any fool can see that. Tell me about your parents.”
So she told him, with much greater ease and fluency than when she had told Guy, and he listened and exclaimed, and said it was the damnedest thing he had ever heard in his whole life. “And they are still there? Living in that devilish settlement, what’s its name—Simony, Sanctimony?”
“Unison. Yes; so far as I know. If they are still alive. Supposing they had left, I am sure my mother would have been in touch with me.”
“But how would she be able to find ye?”
“I left my direction with a bank in New Bedford.”
“Well, well, all that was deuced bad luck for you, my dear, but it was a piece of good fortune for us, I can tell you. Now you must never run away from us again.”
“Well, sir—we shall see. If—if—” She abandoned that beginning, and said, “I would be very happy to stay until—until the children are a little older, at least. But then, later—supposing, for instance, that James should marry, should bring home a wife—”
“I had thought how handily it would fall out if you were to marry James?”
His tone was wistful; but, over the pang it gave her, Alvey replied firmly, “No, sir, I’m afraid that idea won’t wash. James prefers—a different type of female. I am sure that, by and by, he will choose a charming wife, and you will love her very much, as much as your own daughters.”
“Wouldn’t be difficult. Curious thing how I never cottoned to any of my daughters,” he muttered. “Isa’s well enough, I suppose, but Parthie and Louisa are both antidotes. And Meg selfish as they come—”
“Nish is a darling—”
“Well, she’s improving, I grant. The one I had a real soft spot for—died before you came, you never knew her. Maria, that was—had a look of m’sister who also died—Curious, when you first arrived at Birkland—thought for a moment you were she—remember it well—”
Alvey, too, remembered that curious moment.
“What a long time ago that seems.”
They talked about Lady Winship.
“Does she improve at all, sir, since I left? Has having the real Louisa at home helped her?”
“Not in the least. Why should it? Never cared a rap for Louisa—stubborn, priggish girl. Louisa ain’t at home now, by the bye. Went over to visit her sisters at Tinnis, before all this trouble came on us.—No, Charlotte’s still under a cloud, poor thing; kinder to me, since she heard the news about Sim Whittingham; but she still vows that, if it’s believed about the countryside that she did away with wee Geordie, up in that place she will stay till her dying day.”
With great trepidation Alvey asked, “Do you believe she did that dreadful thing, sir?”
After a moment or two he replied, “No.—No, I don’t. I did have the notion in my mind at one time I must confess—when I was so low myself—but no; I can’t believe Charlotte would be capable of such an act. She is not a particularly kind woman, mark you; thoughts too far away, engaged with that garden of hers; but she’d not be wicked, she’d never be spiteful. No; I think she must have visited the pool, perhaps, early in the morning—found the child drowned already—tried to move him, perhaps, then grew frightened and desisted, when she found it was too late—”
“How can she ever be persuaded to return to normal living?”
“I had hoped the summer would bring it about,” he said gruffly. “But that didn’t come to pass. Perhaps your intervention, my dear?”
“It had no effect before . . .”
They talked of Tot, tacitly agreeing to ignore the present crisis, to assume that it would, it must end well.
“I see such an improvement in the boy,” Sir Aydon said. “He is so much more open, fearless in his dealings with me—it is a shocking pity about his disability—”
“He may grow out of it in time, Major Fenway thinks. And, even if he does not, it has no bearing, you know, upon his intelligence, which is considerable. After all,” said Alvey gently, “some of the world’s greatest men have been of an epileptic habit.”
Sir Aydon flinc
hed at the word, but said, “What do you think, then? School would be too much for him, hmn?”
“Why not a tutor? Some sensible, active young man? And then, later, university, where he can mix with minds of his own calibre?”
“Odd that both my sons should turn out so bookish!”
“But Tot spends all his days in the open air.”
“Oh, well, you know what I mean.”
More and more, as the carriage hurried towards home, Alvey and Sir Aydon talked about the estate. Anything, she thought, to keep his mind away from what might await him at home. And in estate matters he was always ready to be engaged.
“If, as Lumley suggests, you put down some of those wheat fields to pasture—wheat prices, he tells me, have fallen from 120s three years ago to 53s6d—wheat can no longer be said to be a profitable crop—”
“Are you a Whig, girl?”
“No, sir, I am an American. I have no English politics. But I can see a practical course, when it is laid under my nose.”
For the first time, he actually laughed. “American! Gad, I suppose you are. Well, no doubt, in the end, I’ll have to let you and Lumley persuade me.”
“Lumley says that in a hundred years Northumberland will be covered with sheep.”
“Perhaps if I bought more sheep that might do something to appease old Herdman,” he murmured.
“But—good heavens—will you not arrest him? Put him under restraint? After what he has done now?”
“We must wait and see,” he said heavily, “Wait and see what he has done. Look: now you can see Cheviot; we are nearly home. Morning is coming.”
It was a different homecoming from any of her previous returns. Established now as necessary and wanted, even if not belonging by birth, Alvey felt more certain of her welcome than she had done before.—The joy as they rolled down the last hill was very profound—even accompanied, as it was, by such acute anxiety and suspense. She looked about her alertly at the signs of summer’s end—the fading heather, the vermilion berries on the rowan trees, rosehips and heart’s-ease and purple knapweed.
Nish and Tot had taught her all their names.
