by Carla Kelly
Fanny made no sound. Ellen said good night to Miss Dignam, undressed in the dark, and crept into bed. The sheets were cold and stiff, as if Miss Dignam had added starch to the rinse water. Ellen huddled into a ball and ducked her head under the covers as the tears began to fall.
When she finished crying, she blew her nose quietly and tucked her hand under her cheek. “Things always look better in the morning,” she said, her voice soft.
As she drifted toward sleep, she thought again of the student on the hill. She had already forgotten his name, but she could not forget the independent way he strode down the hill. You look so free, she said to herself as she watched the shadows cross the window and the moon change. I want to be free too.
Ellen was almost asleep when she heard the sound of pebbles hitting against the window. She did not move, imagining that the sound came from some other part of the hall. She closed her eyes.
The sound continued, little scourings of sound against the window. After debating with herself another moment, she rose silently from her bed and tiptoed to the window. She opened it and leaned out.
Gordon stood below, his hands cupped around his mouth. “I thought you were deaf, my dear.”
Ellen leaned her elbows on the windowsill. “What on earth do you want, Gordon? Don't you have a curfew?”
He laughed softly. “I can climb the wall, silly! We're leaving for London in the morning. Loan me three pounds. I know Mama must have sent you some money. Be a sweet thing, Ellen.”
She leaned farther out. “I dare not!” she called down to him.
“I'll win it back at faro,” he assured, his voice sharpening with that impatient edge that reminded her of Papa. “Don't be so missish, El.”
“Oh, very well,” she grumbled as she groped about on the dressing table. She counted out some coins and tossed them down to her brother one story below. He caught the money expertly and pocketed it. He bowed elaborately and walked backward down the deserted street, facing her.
“I'll win it back, and with interest, El. Don't you worry about a thing.”
Ellen stayed at the window until he was gone. She turned to her bed. The girl in the other bed was sitting up, watching her.
“Why, hello, Fanny,” Ellen said, smiling. “I'm sorry I woke you.”
Fanny rested herself on one elbow. She squinted into the gloom and then smiled, showing all her teeth. “I'm telling Miss Dignam in the morning.”
HANKS TO GORDON'S LATE-NIGHT ENTREATY and Fanny Bland's spite, Ellen spent her first morning at Miss Dignam's Select Female Academy sitting on a hard chair writing, “I will practice decorum as a virtue whilst I reside in Oxford,” one hundred times.
No matter that she had pleaded with Miss Dignam that Gordon was her brother and in need of assistance. Miss Dignam only pursed her lips in a thin line. “We have a front door,” she said and held up her hand when Ellen opened her mouth. “And he can plan ahead next time before curfew!”
When Ellen tried to speak again, Miss Dignam forgot herself so far as to put her hands on her hips and exclaim, “Miss Grimsley, are you always so difficult?”
Ellen closed her mouth and glanced at Fanny Bland, who had pounced on her as soon as Aunt Shreve had said her farewells with hugs and kisses. Fanny was smiling.
Ellen raised her chin higher. “I have been told I am rather more trouble,” she said in her clear voice. “You can ask anyone in the district. I am certain Fanny would be happy to furnish you with names and directions. She takes such an interest in me.”
The smile left Fanny's face.
Miss Dignam chose not to pursue the conversation. “Fanny, please conduct Miss Grimsley to an empty classroom, where she can pursue her morning's labors,” she said.
Ellen waited until Miss Dignam had closed her office door behind them. “Fanny Bland, you are a fine friend!” she declared. “And to think I was looking forward to being your rooming companion.”
Fanny sniffed. “I don't know why you ever entertained that notion. You might have fooled me, except that Edwin wrote to warn me that you were a coming little snip who thought nothing of correcting people like our good vicar.”
With a sinking feeling, Ellen remembered that Vicar Snead was a distant cousin to the Blands. “Lead on, Fanny,” she said, eyes ahead. “I will take my punishment.”
Fanny blinked in surprise at Ellen's unexpected capitulation but led her into the empty classroom. She supplied her with pen and ink and moved to the door. Ellen stopped her.
“Tell me, Fanny, what is the capital of the United States?” Fanny fiddled with the doorknob, a look of intense concentration troubling her face for a small moment. “I do believe it is Philadelphia,” she replied. “Yes, I am certain of it.”
Ellen only sighed and turned to the blank page before her. “I am sure you are right,” she murmured.
She finished writing her sentences before noon and was composing a letter home, begging someone to come and get her, when Miss Dignam swept into the room. She held out her hand for the sheaf of papers and checked them, her eyes growing wider and wider as she scanned the closely written sheets. She jabbed the offending papers with her fingers and thrust them under Ellen's nose.
“My dear Miss Grimsley, I do not know why I ever allowed your dear aunt to enroll you here!”
Mystified, Ellen took the sheets and stared at them, her cheeks growing rosy. From number fifty on, when her mind began to grow numb, she had written, “I will practice boredom as a virtue whilst I reside in Oxford.”
Without a word, she accepted another sheet of paper and bent her head over her labors once more. Miss Dignam watched in silence for a moment. “And while you are at it, compose an essay on the folly of disobedience,” she said before she made her majestic progress from the room.
The dinner hour came and went. As her stomach rumbled, Ellen breathed in the fragrance of beef roast and gravy, boiled mutton and the sharper odor of mint sauce. Never mind that she had always regarded boiled mutton as penance; she could have eaten a plateful and held out her dish for more.
But no one else came to rescue her from her sentences. “Ellen Grimsley has been sentenced to starvation,” she said out loud and giggled, despite her misery.
There was a tap at the door, scarcely audible, and Ellen stifled her laughter, fearful that too much enjoyment during punishment would lead to more sentences, and perhaps a thesis on the folly of mirth.
“Yes?” she asked.
A maid stuck her head in the doorway. She looked around, and seeing no one else in the room, whisked herself inside and closed the door behind her quickly. She held out a small package, done up in white paper and tied with a silver bow.
“For you, miss, at least, if you are Miss Grimsley,” said the maid, when Ellen made no move to take the gift.
“I am Miss Grimsley, but tell me, who is this from?” The maid looked about her again and came closer. “He was a tall gentleman, a student I am sure, but older than some. He came to call, but Miss Dignam had left word with the footman that you were in the middle of an ‘improving punishment.’ ” The maid leaned closer, cupping her mouth with her hand, in the event that the walls had ears. “At least, that is what she always calls it. I don't know that it ever improved anyone.”
“Did he leave his name?” Ellen asked, thinking of Gordon. “Was he tall and blond, and rather fine to look at?”
The maid shook her head. “No, miss, not a bit of it.” She perched herself on a desk. “But that's only the half of it. I shoved him out, and then who do I see poking about the kitchen door a half hour later but the same gentleman!”
“And?” Ellen prompted.
“And he handed me this package and told me to sneak it to you, and mind that I was not to let the dragon see it.”
Ellen slid the ribbon off the package and opened it. Inside was a box of chocolates. “Wagoner's Chocolates,” she read and looked at the maid. “Tell me, is that a local emporium?”
The maid nodded. “It's the best candy shop
in Oxford.” Ellen opened the box, inhaling the comforting odor. With inkstained fingers, she picked up the small card.
“‘Courage. Jim,’ ” she read out loud. She turned the card over. Nothing more.
“How singular,” she said, as she popped a chocolate into her mouth. She held out the box to the maid, who protested at first and then took a piece. They sat in companionable silence in the room that had somehow become less depressing.
Ellen sighed. “I am sure it is a mistake, but oh, how pleasant,” she said as she selected another piece. “I love nougat centers.” She wiped her fingers on the wrapping paper. “I suppose we should not eat any more. I am sure these are intended for one of the other students. If we do not stop soon, that will mean another hundred sentences.” She laughed out loud. “I will remember that gluttony is a deadly sin whilst I reside at Oxford.”
The maid giggled and shook her head when Ellen offered her another candy. “It's no mistake, miss,” she said, accepting a second piece when Ellen continued to hold out the box to her. “He said it was for Ellen Grimsley.”
Ellen shrugged. “How many Ellen Grimsleys can there be in Oxford?”
Then she remembered the tall gentleman on the hill yesterday afternoon. “Tall, and with brown hair and … and …” she said, trying to think of how to describe that look of interest in his eyes.
“Wondrous broad shoulders,” the maid continued and then blushed. “At least, that's what I noticed.”
“You and my aunt! James … James Gatewood,” Ellen said, her mind full again of the student with the easy air about him. “I don't suppose you ever wrote sentences, James Gatewood,” she said under her breath.
“Beg pardon, miss?” the maid asked, her hand poised over the open box again.
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Although I do not think he should waste the ready on such expensive chocolates. Do have another. I intend to. What is your name?”
“Becky, miss. Becky Speed.”
“Well, Becky Speed, thank you for rescuing me from starvation. Let us each take one more, and then hide this box behind that row of books. I would hate for Miss Dignam or the odious Fanny Bland to suspect we had enjoyed a pleasant moment.”
When Miss Dignam entered the room ten minutes later, Becky Speed was gone, the chocolate was hidden, and Ellen was finishing the last sentence of her essay with a flourish.
Miss Dignam sniffed the air. “I smell chocolate,” she accused.
Ellen looked up from her work. “I cannot imagine,” she exclaimed with an air of wide-eyed innocence that would never have fooled Gordon but seemed to suffice for Miss Dignam.
The headmistress accepted the essay and additional sentences and then arranged her lips in some semblance of a smile. “Very well, Miss Grimsley. Virtue is as virtue does. Come along with me now. It is time for embroidery.”
An hour later, Ellen looked up from a tangle of embroidery threads, filled with the desire to return to the sentences and the hidden box of chocolates. Miss Dignam had introduced her to a roomful of Fanny Blands, students who, from the whispers behind their hands and the looks they gave each other, had already been introduced to Ellen by Miss Bland herself.
Ellen dug her toes into the carpet during Miss Dignam's introduction, accepted the basket of tangled threads with the admonition to make order out of chaos, and scurried to the remotest corner of the room.
The whispers reached her then and her ears burned, even as her heart ached. “She thought to study Shakespeare and geometry. Imagine that!” “A petty squire's daughter with no more breeding than to lean out her bedroom window and toss money down to someone she claims is her brother.” “Dreadfully fast.” “Frightfully wild.”
The tangle of threads blurred as she worked on them. In another moment, they disappeared altogether. She folded her hands in her lap, bowed over the threads, and cried.
The others in the room were silent then. When they began to speak again, it was to each other, as though they had effectively shouldered her aside and cut her off from all further notice. She might not have been in the room.
The afternoon dragged on. Doggedly, Ellen kept her head bent over her work, unraveling twisted strands and wishing herself elsewhere, anywhere. She longed for a seat by the window, where at least she could look out occasionally. As it was, she saw nothing except the backs of the other girls and heard nothing except the impartial tolling of Oxford's bells. The clamor thrilled her to the bone, even as it mocked her and reminded her that she had no part of it.
After a cheerless dinner of boiled mutton and potatoes, she longed for Gordon to return. She sat in the parlor with the others, her head down, her eyes politely neutral.
Gordon had never been her favorite brother, although they were so close in age. He had teased her, bullied her, and tormented her throughout their shared childhood. But sitting there in misery in Miss Dignam's parlor, she would have given the earth for a glimpse of him.
When the clock struck seven times and still he had not made his appearance, Ellen remembered that he had taken himself off to London. Where you will likely get into huge trouble, she thought, and cause Papa such misery that you will get no closer to the fighting in Spain than the pier at Brighton.
Gordon, why are you not more prudent, she thought as she shifted in her chair, careful not to draw attention to herself, but weary beyond words with sitting.
Visitors arrived and were admitted to the sitting room. Some of them were parents, and others were young men from the different colleges. Parents chatted amiably enough with their offspring, but the young men writhed and squirmed under the cold eye of Miss Dignam, who sat in one corner and played solitaire.
Ellen observed the couples with some compassion, despite her own misery. While she did not exactly wish herself back in the company of Thomas Cornwell and his big ears and stupefying conversation, she wished that someone would come for her.
After another hour of quiet observation, she was grateful that no one had chosen to visit her. With increasing amusement, she watched how Miss Dignam slapped her cards down and cleared her throat whenever any young man went so far as even to gaze overlong into the eyes of one of her select females.
It would take a man of supreme courage to carry on a courtship under such daunting circumstances, Ellen decided as the evening drew to its weary conclusion. I wonder that anyone attempts it, she thought. The desire to perpetuate the human species is stronger than I imagined.
For one tiny moment, she wished that James Gatewood would announce himself to the butler and drop in long enough for her to thank him for the chocolates. When he did not, she realized that his kindness had been an impulsive whim, now forgotten. And I had better forget it, she thought.
At last the final guest left. Miss Dignam nodded to Becky Speed, who bolted the front door and took the Bible from the bookcase. Miss Dignam accepted the Bible and then peered slowly around the room until her eyes lighted on Ellen, sitting in the corner and trying to make herself small. The headmistress thumbed through the pages, stopped at Ecclesiastes, and cleared her throat.
While the other girls knotted fringes, crocheted, or embroidered, Miss Dignam read chapter one, slowing down on the last two verses: “‘And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived also that this is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increases folly.’ ”
Miss Dignam closed the book. Ellen looked up at the sudden sound in the quiet room to see Miss Dignam's eyes boring into her.
“And that, my dear Miss Grimsley, is how the preacher disposes of wisdom. It brings only sorrow and grief. I am certain that we can all echo the sentiments of Ecclesiastes.”
She looked around the room as the girls nodded. Her eyes fell again on Ellen. “And you, my dear?” she asked.
Ellen considered the question. She thought about the dreadful day she had endured, relieved only by the kindness of a servant and a box of chocolates. She thought of Gordon, likely making a cake of
himself in London and ignoring the riches that were here at Oxford. She took a deep breath and threw herself into the breech once more.
“I am equally certain, in this instance, that Ecclesiastes could not be farther from the truth, Miss Dignam,” she replied quietly, her hands tight together in her lap.
Miss Dignam gasped and gathered the Bible closer to her, as though Ellen would spring from her chair, snatch it from her, and trample the Holy Writ underfoot.
“And now you will criticize the Bible?” she said as the other students looked at each other with varying expressions of amusement and horror.
Ellen, her face pale, stood up. “No, I do not argue with the Bible!” she declared, her voice low and intense. “I merely put forward the suggestion that in the many years and years of its translation that possibly, just possibly, there might be an error in the text? Surely God does not wish us to glory in ignorance.”
She looked around her and slowly sat down, numbed by the blank expressions of the select females of Miss Dignam's academy. Don't you ever have a thought that is original? she wanted to ask but did not.
Instead, Ellen rose again and went to the door, her back straight. She paused in front of Miss Dignam, who still clutched her Bible. “I suppose this will mean more sentences,” Ellen said, her eyes straight ahead.
“Two hundred more,” snapped Miss Dignam, “plus an essay on ‘Why I Have Decided to Follow the Teaching in Ecclesiastes.’ ”
As she went slowly and quietly up the stairs, candle in hand, Ellen smiled as she reflected that with her sentences and essay, she was possibly getting a better education than the girls who untangled yarn and fretted over watercolors.
She looked back down the stairs where the other girls stood, whispering to each other. “I shall think upon this assignment and create a truly masterful essay,” she said quietly.
Fanny Bland treated her to prickly silence as they both prepared for bed. Ellen sighed, said her prayers in mutinous fashion, and leaped between chilly sheets, pulling the blankets up tight around her chin.
