by Edith Layton
However much her family had comforted her after she had returned home that night, exhausted and confused, it had not been enough. It could never be enough to shield her from the criticism of the outside world. If Lord Quincy and his family had been appalled at their factor’s daughter’s sly behavior when he had, full of pride, prematurely announced her wedding to their honored guest, there were no polite words to describe their reaction to her ignoble return. Neither could Julia discount neighbor women’s whispers, nor could she pretend to ignore their menfolk’s calculating stares for long.
It soon became apparent to her that she had not only destroyed her own future, but that she had jeopardized others’ as well. The local people shook their heads and opined that Mr. Hastings had got above himself, thinking to marry his daughter into his betters’ class. Lord Quincy and his family decidedly agreed. It wasn’t long before Lord Quincy himself began to drop ponderous hints about renovations the estate needed that a younger man might find easier to implement. “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he had jested, sending his factor home that night looking a score older than his actual years. Julia had four sisters, one already of an age for matrimony, and as the attitude of the local bachelors changed toward her, it subtly altered toward her sisters as well. They never said so, but when Dorothea went walking out with young Alan Baines, and came running home alone, her face flushed and stained with hastily wiped tears, her sister knew what had transpired as surely as if she had been there to see the familiarity which had been rebuffed.
No, it was time for her to be gone, Julia had vowed, despite all their pleas for her to remain. A shadow cannot fall if there is no one about to blot out the sun, she insisted. And so, armed with a letter from the vicar, whose job it was, after all, to forgive all transgressors, and a letter to the Misses Parkinson, whose job it was to find jobs for all idle young females regardless of their morality, she went.
The family saw her off again with tears in their eyes. But this time they did not shed tears of happiness, and this time she did not return.
Julia finished her packing and stared about the room, which now looked naked without her little picture frames upon the nightstand, and her sister’s samplers on the wall above the bed. A jumble of oddments still remained upon the nightstand, however. She had decided that in light of present circumstances, it would not be fitting for her to pack away those many tokens of esteem her employer had pressed upon her during her brief orgy of atonement.
As she lay down upon her bed, Julia thought of Toby, whom she had left an hour ago, rosy and talc-covered, still damp from his bath and the sleep which had overtaken him just as the princess lost her golden ball down the well. That memory she would take with her, she mused on a sleepy smile, and the visions of the mustard fields, this room, Old Joseph, the village people, even Mrs. Bryce in those days before the deranged baron had called upon them. She would stay on a few more days and then, even if the letter she awaited did not arrive, she would go. She had done it before, Julia thought as she herself fell down into a soft gray well of sleep, and however much it pained her now, she consoled herself by remembering that the present would soon become the past. And she had become an expert at living with the past.
The gentleman entered the room as he was bade, and walked to the older gentleman seated at the huge satinwood desk; At least, he thought it was the satinwood desk, but there were so many books laid out upon it that the exact nature of its surface was difficult to ascertain. He smiled as he watched the other man carefully place a bookmark, or what he had decided would do for a bookmark but was rather a jay’s feather that he extracted from his pocket, in the center of one particularly large tome.
“Nick, my boy,” the older gentleman then said, rising and coming forward from behind the desk with every evidence of delight large upon his thin, patrician features. “I had not looked to see you here. I thought you were off to the Continent, about the King’s business, or the family business.”
“And so I thought too, sir,” Baron Stafford replied, taking the preferred hand in his, “but I’ve had to change my plans.”
“I’m not a bit sorry,” the older gentleman said, gesturing to his visitor to take a chair by the window, as he himself now did." “I should think any friend of the enemy knows your face as well as Bonaparte’s by now, and Robin is quite old enough to be accountable for himself.”
“Actually, the home office quite agrees with you on the former, and I very much doubt your infinite wisdom on the latter, but in any case my hands are tied and I must wait a while before I leave, it seems,” the baron replied with barely concealed annoyance.
“Petulance does not sit well upon you, Nick,” the older gentleman chided.
“Bad as that?” The baron laughed, relaxing and stretching out his long legs. “Then I apologize, sir, for it wasn’t my intention to sulk. But I had hoped to have this business with Robin resolved and I’ve met up with an unexpected impediment.” He frowned as he left off speaking.
At the questioning look upon the other gentleman’s face, he said with some irritation, “The young woman in question refuses to cooperate.”
“She must be a very strong-minded female to resist your blandishments,” the older man said, smiling, but then his face grew serious and he reached out to tap the baron’s knee, as though to reinforce the importance of his next words. “Nick, my boy, let it be. Robin is his own master now. He’s of an age.”
“Marlowe’s sinking, sir,” the baron replied, just as seriously. “Even the King’s physician don’t give him more than a month. My aunt is weeping all over everyone in sight, including the gardeners if they come close enough, and it isn’t for Marlowe’s sake, as you might think, it’s all for Robin. ‘Ah where’s my boy,’ she cries, and looks accusingly at me as though I could produce him from a hat. And that isn’t so bizarre, sir, for I used to have some sway over him, far more than anyone in the family, you know, even more than you had, sir, and I can’t convince him to return. But his light lady might, if she would, but she won’t.”
“Then there’s no more to be done, my boy,” the older gentleman said gently, seeing how his visitor had fallen into a brown study.
“But there is, and I shall,” the baron swore, his face growing closed and hard.
“Robin is no green youth any longer,” the older gentleman mused, “and I’m not at all sure you shouldn’t just let him be. He may know best.”
“As he knew best when he ran off with that bit of muslin? Come, sir, it was good luck, not good sense, that saved him when she decided to sheer off. No, it’s clear that he stands in need of some counsel now.”
“He is your nephew, Nick, not your son,” the older gentleman said softly.
“But he hasn’t a father, or at least Marlowe might have sired him but he never did more,” the baron explained earnestly. “And who is there to guide him? At least I had you to set me straight when I was about to make a cake of myself in my youth, and you were not, strictly speaking, my father.”
Ah, that episode still rankles, the older gentleman thought, but he only said calmly, “I did marry your mother.”
“Devil take it, sir,” the baron muttered. “You know that’s not what I meant. I could not have had a better father than you had I ordered one up from the deity.”
Ignoring his stepson’s embarrassment, the elder gentleman went on, as though musing aloud, “I have not thought of that incident in years. That young woman you were involved with was a pretty little creature, I quite sympathized with you. In fact, it was not her lack of birth that disturbed me at all. You know I don’t place much emphasis on social lineage, and neither should you. Why just think of the odd branches on your own family tree: the Spanish lady that Elizabethan rogue brought back from his travels, the moneylender’s daughter your wastrel Royalist ancestor wed, your great-grandmother who came from a humble cottage. They only strengthened the stock, you know. Weak links tend to crop up in those socially-pure inbred families. Why look at the Bryants,
they go back to the Normans, without a misalliance, and they haven’t produced a chin for generations.”
“Then why did you pay off my little filly to be rid of her?” the baron asked coolly, though his white cheeks had grown flushed during his stepfather’s discourse.
“Ah, because, as you well know, she had more than no breeding, she had no heart, and no morals,” the older gentleman said. He paused and then asked quietly, “Does Robin’s light of love remind you of her? Then it’s no wonder you’ve become so exercised about it. Is she such a pretty little creature then?”
“No,” said the "baron abruptly, “she is not.” He paused and then added bitterly, “She is beautiful.”
4
The stagecoach driver was being extremely conscientious, or so at least one of his unhappy passengers thought. For the fellow seemed to be taking great care not to miss one rut or hollow in the road. Perhaps, Julia thought as she raised her hand again to secure her bonnet, he was doing some sort of audit for the government bureau in charge of public roads and it was his duty to painstakingly record every deficiency in them. Then, when the coach lurched over a particularly deep depression, she clenched her teeth tightly to ensure that they did not rattle out of her head and left off thinking about the driver’s hidden motives and only prayed that her traveling cases were more securely anchored than their owner presently was.
When the coach had righted itself again, the fair-haired young woman attempted to do the same herself. Julia whispered a polite “Excuse me” to the matron on her left, who had taken most of her weight when the movement of the coach caused the passengers to sway like trees in a tempest. Then she bent and felt about the floorboards with her hands as her fellow passengers were doing, in an attempt to help the fellow immediately opposite her in his search for his dislodged spectacles.
They had been riding without a stop for quite some time, and by now had exhausted all their expressions of ill-usage. Really, Julia thought wearily, as she accepted a curt “Thankee” from the fellow to whom she handed the wire-rimmed spectacles, there can be few more foolish situations than finding oneself packed into a coach in a random pair, sitting facing two other complete strangers, and then being shaken vigorously every few moments for endless hours. If one then added the effects of a sultry early summer’s day to the experience, Julia thought miserably, one could get the general impression of what one’s fate might be in the afterlife if one were very wicked in this one.
She had been traveling for two full days now, and it seemed that even when the coach stopped to change horses, the scenery still swam before her eyes. The only comfort she could take from the experience was a mean one, for it was only her gratitude that she had the funds to sit within the coach, and not ride atop it as those less fortunate or more foolish, were doing. But yet, every jolting, bone-shaking mile brought her closer to London. So she sat back and closed her eyes, and felt the warm wind from the partially opened window upon her face, and tried to leave the coach, if not in her person, then at least in her mind.
Julia thought that despite her present discomfort, she had a great deal to be thankful for. She had not, after all, had to leave Mrs. Bryce before she had heard from her employment counselors in London. Two days after she had packed her bags, a letter had come summoning her to them. The letter had hinted of several suitable positions that had arisen, so Julia could at least save face when she presented it for her employer’s inspection. It was a very little thing, to be sure, but on such small details, much pride may be spared. For instead of seeming to be fleeing, she was able to depart in a very dignified manner.
It had been a wrench to leave young Toby, but both Julia and her employer were able to comfort themselves secretly with the thought that children forget quickly. It may well be so, but still, though Julia was never to know it, Master Toby eventually grew to be a devil with the ladies, a source of great embarrassment to his family, and only settled down to respectability when he found a golden-haired, ice-eyed lady of his own to wed.
Julia’s departure was also made more bearable by the fact that by the day she left, the mustard fields had left off their riotous celebration of spring and had gotten down to the serious business of growing. So she felt no tug at her heart when the coach trundled off out of the village, past now mundane acres of mere vegetable fields.
Still, she had been unable to leave without one last attempt at setting her record straight. After she had shaken hands with her former mistress, and Toby’s distressed shrieks at her departure had faded enough as his nurse bore him back shrieking to his nursery so that normal conversation could be heard, she had said, firmly facing the issue, “Ma’am, no word that the baron spoke of me was true. He was sadly deranged, you know.”
But Mrs. Bryce had only stared at her as though she were the one who were unbalanced. She mustered up enough countenance to say stiffly, “Good-bye, Miss Hastings, I wish you well.” And then she left before Julia could utter another traitorous word. She made it clear she felt that even if such a thing as insanity among the upper classes were possible, it was only another prerogative of the nobility. So most people would think, Julia had mused sadly as she stared at Mrs. Bryce’s retreating back, and so she would be sure not to mention the incident to anyone else, lest by her own insistence on the matter she should convince her listeners that she were at fault.
Another jolt of the coach, this one accompanied by a rather piercing scream from one of the hapless topside passengers, interrupted Julia’s reveries. Since the coach continued on its way and nobody could be seen flying past the dusty windows, the general consensus of the inner passengers was that it had been caused by an understandable attack of nerves, and no great harm had been taken by anyone above. But now Julia could see that they had reached the outskirts of London itself, and now she firmly put aside her memories and concentrated on the future.
When the coach at last achieved the stage stop, Julia got down quickly and commandeered her luggage without a moment’s pause. She had traveled this way before, and by now she well knew that a young female obviously traveling alone, arriving from the countryside, and moreover, not being met upon her arrival, was often in danger of being considered fair prey by many sorts of urban predators. So she ignored the helping hand offered by a well-dressed gentleman, turned her back upon the sweet-faced woman who offered her a tentative smile, and kept on walking to a line of hackney carriages when another rather dashing young female attempted to stop her by miscalling her, with every evidence of recognition and delight, “Mary, my dear Mary!”
She was sorry to be so hard, but if they were only well-meaning folk, they would understand, and if they were not, then she had saved herself a great deal of difficulty. Julia told the coachman the direction of Mrs. White’s boarding house, and reflected that it was from her sojourns there that she had achieved such wisdom. Mrs. White ran a respectable facility, and there were always a few mature unemployed females in residence at her establishment. They had been the ones who had seen to Julia’s education in matters to do with unprotected young women. These older, wiser females did not think it at all out of the way that Miss Hastings, although still in her extreme youth, should know all about the mistresses of houses of ill-repute, sporting ladies, and dissolute gentleman of London and their many and various means of luring innocents to their moral downfall.
If Julia had been a young debutante, she would have known nothing about the likes of the infamous Mother Carey and her chicks in their expensive bawdy house, nor would she have known of the human birds of paradise gentlemen of leisure selected for their adornment and then discarded through their tedium in much the same careless manner as they selected and discarded snuffboxes. But though all of Julia’s tutors were respectable gentlewomen, and indeed many of them were the daughters of clergymen, not one of the elder women Julia had encountered at Mrs. White’s had spared her shocking and cautionary tales of physical and moral danger. Indeed, after one look at Julia’s face, hair, and form, many of them had consi
dered her immediate enlightenment about such matters in the light of missionary work.
Mrs. White’s house was a narrow gray townhouse which had once been in a fashionable section of town, but which now gathered its skirts nervously in from its iron railings as the surrounding neighborhood became decidedly more common. Julia accepted her traveling bags from her driver, stepped through a squealing throng of urchins at play, ignoring one cheeky lad’s cry of “Ooo, pretty lady, ’ave you got a moment?”, and knocked upon the door.
In a few moments, Mrs. White appeared. She took one look at her visitor’s tired face, and then she said, a bit sadly, “Ah yes, Miss Hastings. Do come in, I’ve your room ready, indeed I prepared it the moment I received your letter.”
But as she led Julia to her spare and tidy room on the third floor, she thought, Poor lass, she’s failed again. Yet Julia, seeing the flowered wallpaper, the neatly made bed, the pitcher and washstand all exactly as they had been before, felt not at all like a failure, but rather intensely grateful, for she had reached a refuge and she had a chance to start again.
Acting upon her guest’s instructions, Mrs. White sent her maid-of-all-work to waken Miss Hastings just as the clock chimed seven. Although Julia could have afforded several days of leisure, she could not wait to secure a new position. It was not her purse she was concerned about, it was her spirit. She had discovered that the more time she took between posts, the less pleased she was when she secured one. Idle times were the ones in which she was most susceptible to bouts of self-pity and thus were the ones she sought to avoid the most diligently. So she donned her best severely cut black walking dress, brushed her hair until it gleamed like trapped sunlight in its plaited chains, and went down to breakfast. As soon as she had had her last morsel, she resolved that she would walk to the Misses Parkinsons’ office, for she could see that it was a fine day.
