This appeared to fix Mr. Fredericks’s attention. He stopped, and looked at me rather queerly, perhaps overcome by memories.
“Well,” he said cautiously, “we were not precisely begging in the streets.”
Now I did blush. “Of course not!” I said, mortified. “I did not mean you were bound for the poor farm, or anything of that sort!”
“No . . . of course, I don’t think they’ve got poor farms in London,” he mused, still with that look in his eye. “Soil’s not good enough for it, you know, and there are buildings and roads everywhere. Difficult to turn a profit, with crowds of people and horses and carriages trampling your crops all the time.”
My eyes narrowed. Perhaps I ought not to have broached the subject, but I could not help but feel he was making use of my honest sympathy for some sort of private jest.
“Then it was lucky, was it not?” I enquired coldly, “that your cousin and aunt were so hospitable as to receive you here in Yorkshire.”
He gave another great shout of laughter. “Oh indeed! Now there was a famous stroke of good luck for my mama and me!”
“I agree,” I said, more coldly still. “I think it was very good of the Baron.”
The joke, whatever it was, lost its savor. His countenance darkened.
“Yes,” he said, “you would think that.”
We continued on in silence for a few moments. Our conversation seemed to have traveled a long way from the subject of Miss Vincy and her child. Evidently he came to the same conclusion, for at length he said, “I confess I did not tell you all I knew about Miss Vincy, as I promised. You perhaps wonder why I brought her here yesterday morning if I was indeed as ignorant as I claim?”
I nodded, but did not speak.
“I’ve been on intimate terms with the Vincy family for perhaps as much as five years,” he said. “Some two and a half or more years ago I became aware of a crisis going on, about which they did not want me to know. Miss Vincy went away, to visit relatives, I was told, and did not return for over a year. Given the old lady’s temperament, I found it unsurprising that the daughter should get away when she could, so I said nothing.
“Eventually she turned up again, looking a good bit different. She’d changed, and not for the better. She’d lost something—her nerve, I’d say. She got quieter, and it was a long while before she took up her drawing or painting tools again.
“However, it wasn’t until recently, on this visit to Yorkshire, that I had the opportunity to observe her closely, living in the same household as we are. What I guessed was that she had a secret, a secret that she stole off to visit from time to time. And that it lived in this cottage.” He jerked his chin at the house behind us.
“I was curious, I’ll admit.” He kicked at a stone in his path, frowning. “I’ve always thought highly of Miss Vincy.”
I stared at the stone, feeling my spirits sink.
“When she seemed so agitated lately, I decided to investigate. I stopped by here yesterday morning, early. I asked that woman if I could take any messages to Miss Vincy at Gudgeon Park. She jumped at it. Seems the boy had taken a turn for the worse in the night and she was anxious Miss Vincy know about it. I had a look at the child, so I could convey his condition to her, you know. And then I did the arithmetic. Crisis in the Vincy household two and three-quarters years ago; two-year-old boy kept in a cottage close enough for Miss Vincy to visit regularly.
“I am very good at sums, Miss Crawley,” he said. “And this was not a difficult equation.”
I returned to the house from my walk somewhat refreshed in body but much perturbed in mind. Was this why Mr. Fredericks had not proposed when Mr. Godalming was making a nuisance of himself? A man may be excused for proceeding warily under these circumstances, especially when he does not know all the relevant facts.
Of course, a man may have half a dozen by-blows begat upon half a dozen women without anyone even commenting on the fact, let alone giving his prospective bride cause to reconsider the relationship. But a woman most emphatically may not.
My poor Miss Vincy! Did she love Mr. Fredericks, and had she spent yesterday not only in terror for her son but in mourning for the loss of her suitor? Or had she in fact been partial to Lord Boring, as I’d once believed? It occurred to me that, given the speed of recent events, she might not even know of his engagement to Charity. I looked at her as she bent over her son’s bed, and I sighed.
She turned white and beckoned me out of the room.
“What? What is it, Miss Crawley? Do you see something I do not? He seems so much better today.”
“No, no, no,” I assured her. “I quite agree. He is going on very well.”
“Then why did you look so sad, and sigh?”
I should have been quite happy to have passed it off with an excuse, but she was remorseless. She was determined to know the truth, and, with a worried mother’s single-mindedness, she assumed it had to do with her sick child. At last I said, “It was for quite a different cause, I assure you. I was thinking of Lord Boring and Charity.”
She stared at me blankly. At least I could be certain that Lord Boring had been little in her thoughts of late. “Lord Boring . . . and Miss Charity Winthrop? But why should they make you sad?”
“Oh, not sad, exactly. In fact,” I said, “it is quite happy news. They are to be married.”
Her eyes, so like Leon’s, grew enormous. “Miss Crawley! Althea, dear. I am so, so sorry! How selfish of me. Here you have been, wearing yourself out on our account, when you must be wretched. I feared it would happen, but I hoped you would not mind too much.”
I smiled and assured her that I did not mind at all. She frowned and looked doubtful, whereupon I said, “I did mind, at first. But I do not believe he is to be regretted. He is not the man I thought he was. But I was afraid that you might be upset by it.”
“I? But why should I be upset?” And she looked so startled by the idea that I saw that there had never been a partiality on her side, only on her mother’s. “Althea—that is, Miss Crawley . . .”
“No, I beg you will please call me by my first name.”
“And you must call me Hephzibah. Surely you must realize that Lord Boring never had the slightest intention of marrying me, however rich my papa is?”
“But, but . . . ah . . . Hephzibah, I feared that you might wish it, nevertheless.”
Miss Vincy burst out into a peal of laughter. “How funny it sounds! No one ever calls me Hephzibah, no one! Even Mr. Annuncio did not.”
“Mr. Annuncio—? Oh! You mean . . .”
Miss Vincy, or rather Hephzibah, ceased laughing. “Yes,” she said. “Mr. Annuncio. My husband.”
18
“MR. ANNUNCIO WAS THE drawing master,” explained the lady I now knew to be Mrs. Annuncio, also known as Miss Vincy and Hephzibah.
“Ah,” I said.
“We were legally married, tho’ it was ‘over the anvil’ in Scotland, not by a minister in a church, and my son is legitimate, tho’ unrecognized as such by his grandparents. His grandfather would like to see him, I know, but my mother will not allow it.”
“They know of Leon’s existence, then.”
“Oh, yes. Keeping Leon a secret from everyone else was made a condition of my being taken back into their household. My mother covered my flight so well that not a word about the marriage escaped. She convinced her aunt, who is dependent upon her, and who lives quite out of society, to say that I was on an extended visit to her home. Of course, my parents do not know that I had Leon conveyed here to Yorkshire and installed nearby where I could visit him from time to time. I could not bear to be parted from him, and so I gave my old nurse, who was caring for him, some jewelry to sell to finance his journey and housing, and arranged to have him follow me north. That is,” she went on, “I suppose that since Mr. Fredericks told them I was tending a child nearby, they do know, or at least they must guess that it is so.”
“I see. And your husband is now . . . ?”
&nbs
p; “In his grave,” she replied calmly. “When you enquired some weeks ago about the present whereabouts of my former tutor I told the truth in saying that I did not know. I am not certain of the exact location of his remains, only that he is no more. It did not last long as a marriage. He was a bad husband and a worse father. On the other hand,” she said, with a reminiscent gleam in her eye, “as a draughtsman he was superb. He could draw anything, either from life or from memory. And as a colorist—”
As touching as this tribute to her late husband’s professional skills was, I interrupted.
“You were not with him when he died, then?”
“No. He was disappointed when my mother refused to have anything to do with me after the marriage. He had hoped that my being with child would reconcile her to the match, but when he realized it would not, he abandoned me, and his unborn son.”
“Oh, my dear Miss Vi—that is, er, Hephzibah . . .”
She laughed. “Never mind, Althea. You may go back to calling me Miss Vincy if you prefer. We are both used to it, and I do not go by my married name, for obvious reasons.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said. “I cannot think of you as a Hephzibah, somehow. But what did you do, Miss Vincy? Did your parents take you back once they knew your husband had left you?” This seemed unlikely, as Mr. Fredericks claimed she had been gone from her family home for over a year.
She cocked her head at a soft sound in the boy’s bedroom, and went to stand over his bed. She was clearly intending to take her place at his side once more, but I objected.
“Really, Miss Vincy, we ought to let him get some sleep. Our talking will disturb him, and he will do very well without your constant presence. We shall only be a room away, you know.”
“Ah, but I have been so close to losing him in the past few days, and in general I can spend so little time with him that I must make the most of it. Well, he does appear to be resting, so perhaps we should both take some tea and continue our talk in the next room.”
We were shortly provided with tea, in rough earthenware mugs, true, but hot and comforting, and some bread with butter and honey. When Nurse Braddock had retired, I ventured to continue my catechism.
“Perhaps you did go to stay with your great-aunt when your husband left you, thereby making your mother’s story true?” I suggested.
“Oh, no. My mother was far too angry with me, and Great-Aunt Anne would never have done anything to annoy her. When Mr. Annuncio and I returned from Scotland after our wedding, such as it was, he brought me back to London. He had married me, of course, for my money, and my money—that is, my family—was in London.
“As an artist, he had a circle of friends and acquaintances including a number of working portrait painters. When he deserted me, several of them were kind enough to help me by sending me some commissions, so that I might scrape a living painting miniatures on ivory. I managed to support first myself alone and then myself and Leon, by means of this work.
“It was one of his friends, a kind, good man named Drury, who discovered that Mr. Annuncio was dead, and went to the Whitechapel slum where he had been knifed in a fight. Mr. Drury saw him buried, and paid for it too.”
She put her mug of tea down and was silent a moment.
“I—I am sorry,” I said.
“Oh, I am not,” she replied. “Tho’ it is true that the world lost a fine painter. Had he lived he would have bled me white. He would appear from time to time, you know, demanding money. No, that sailor who killed him did me a great favor, and my son too. And when he was dead I was able to write to my parents. I could never have been reconciled to them while he lived, and I am quite fond of them. Of both of them,” she added.
I did not reply to this at once, for I was thinking. “Was it . . . was it so very dreadful, being a woman alone, earning your living in London?”
“No . . . in some ways I enjoyed it, tho’ it was a fearsome struggle much of the time. And of course I had my son with me every moment, as I do not have him now. But Leon has never been strong. I could not neglect any chance to improve the conditions of his daily life. The neighborhood in which we resided was not ideal for a delicate child.”
I sat musing for a moment. If I had a talent like Miss Vincy’s, and no young brother or mother for whom I must save an estate, would I have the courage to live alone and independent? Then, if I ever did choose to marry, I could marry someone I liked and respected, without reference to his fortune. Someone who could make me laugh, for instance. Someone like . . .
However, I did not have a talent like Miss Vincy’s and I did have a mother and young brother who dearly needed me to marry well, so it was not worth thinking of. Perhaps one day women might be able to choose their husbands with no thought of money and position, but not in this day and age in Lesser Hoo, Yorkshire, England.
“My life is quite tolerable, by and large,” Miss Vincy was saying, “except that I see my son less than I would wish. I did have to promise my mother that I would marry any man of whom she approved, if she could maneuver him into asking, but I felt that I would be able to discourage most men from asking. Unfortunately, somehow or other Mr. Godalming got the idea that I was open to his advances. I do not know how it was that you got rid of him, Althea, but I am most grateful.”
The mortification which smote me may be imagined. “Oh, really, I had nothing to do with it,” I muttered, feebly repulsing her attempt to show her thankfulness by kissing me. “It was entirely Mr. Fredericks’s doing.”
I next had to listen to an effusion about what a staunch friend and all-in-all splendid fellow Mr. Fredericks was. In the faint hope of disillusioning her, I explained how he had discouraged Mr. Godalming, but she laughed merrily and shook her head at his cunning.
“I shall have to remember that!” she said. “Tho’ perhaps poor Papa would prefer I not use it too often.”
Dr. Haxhamptonshire called that afternoon and pronounced Leon to be well on the road to recovery. His temperature remained low for the rest of the afternoon, and it was determined that Miss Vincy and I would return on the morrow to our respective abodes.
The good doctor was warned not to call Miss Vincy by her married name again (“I only told him, because I did not wish him to look down on my son as illegitimate, and perhaps not exert himself to do everything he could,” she explained), and I thought he would obey, if only because a man as rich as Mr. Vincy and a woman as determined as Mrs. Vincy could cause him serious harm, even here in our quiet little corner of the world.
We ate a humble but hearty meal, and spent the evening with the invalid, who was awake and beginning to be interested in some warm gruel. Nurse Braddock sat with us and revealed herself to be a good, decent soul, fond of Miss Vincy and of young Leon. We whiled away the evening listening to her tales of Miss Vincy’s infancy and early years—I had little difficulty believing that she was a perfect paragon of goodness, and clever with her crayons—and went early to bed.
As neither of us had had the forethought to bring a change of clothes along on our visit, and as we did not wish our families to know where we were, Mr. Fredericks had been authorized to bring us the necessities so that we might present a dignified and decent appearance. To give greater color to the story that we had been staying at some distance, he then undertook to drive me by coach to the castle before returning Miss Vincy to the Park, even tho’ it was but a twenty-minute walk for me and fifteen for Miss Vincy.
We washed and dressed ourselves with as much care as possible and awaited his arrival. Master Leon was up this morning and toddling about, pestering his mother and his nurse to be allowed to go out of doors. Beyond the fact that he was new-risen from a sickbed, the day was rainy and blustery; he was instructed not to think of such a thing, but to play with his toys quietly in front of the fire.
But the morning wore away and Mr. Fredericks did not come. By noon Leon had exhausted his newfound vigor and become tired and peevish. He wept and coughed and clung to his mother, whom he rightly suspected was pr
eparing to leave him. Nurse Braddock fed him some porridge with cream and his mama rocked him to sleep.
Miss Vincy laid her son down upon his bed and we waited, in a mood which alternated (at least for me) between annoyance and foreboding. Outside, the wind and rain lashed against the walls of the cottage, and through the windows we could see branches heaving back and forth.
“Perhaps Mr. Fredericks thinks the weather too bad to venture out,” suggested Miss Vincy.
I did not trouble to reply to this. Mr. Fredericks was not afraid of a little bad weather, and Miss Vincy knew it quite well. She was trying to persuade herself out of any unkind thoughts about him. Now would be the best possible time for her to leave, while her little boy slept. I knew she was torn, wishing to stay with him, to satisfy herself that all was as well with him as she believed, but she was also anxious to return to her parents and soothe their ruffled feelings and calm their fears. She bit her lip and watched the window and the small yard in front of the cottage.
I was occupied in preparing a scolding for Mr. Fredericks when he should finally arrive, until it suddenly occurred to me that there might be a reason beyond simple perversity for this delay. Perhaps he was ill. I remembered that he had been ill on his return from India. I wondered, as I never had before, about the nature of that illness, and how serious it had been. What if he was at this moment tossing with fever?
Or perhaps there had been an accident? He was a superb horseman, but accidents may happen even to the skilled. Pictures flashed across my mind, of Mr. Fredericks lying in a gully with a broken neck, of Lord Boring’s horses and carriage careening off a cliff.
“Althea, is something wrong? You have torn that handkerchief quite in half,” said Miss Vincy. “And your face is whiter than the handkerchief.”
I looked down. It was true. I had spoilt a perfectly good handkerchief. I began to reassure Miss Vincy, but was interrupted by the sound of hoofs and the jingle of harness in the road outside. We started up from our chairs and hurried to the door in time to hear Mr. Fredericks’s voice halting the horses and to see him, wearing a greatcoat of such smartness and with such a multiplicity of capes that it was almost certainly the property of Lord Boring, jumping down from the box.
Keeping the Castle Page 15
