by Joan Aiken
But Lady Ursula, with hardly a glance at her young cousin, gave brusque orders: ‘Run along, child, do; you are not wanted here. Your mother and I have private matters to discuss – run away, make haste, go along with you. And shut the door behind you as you go.’
Mrs Ward opened her mouth to protest against this, but then closed it again. She said gently, ‘Sit down, my dear Ursie. Find yourself a comfortable chair. It is so good to see you, after all this time. You must tell me all about your sisters’ weddings. And your Mama. And your Papa – Uncle Owen – how is he?’
‘Very ill‚’ replied Lady Ursula shortly. ‘He is drunk more often than sober, when at home. And when in London – which is where he spends the greater part of his time – my mother prefers not to inquire too closely into his doings. And she – she is hardly in this world at all. We will not waste time talking about them‚ if you please.’
With an air of disgust she pushed away the slipper-chair from the bedside and, looking around, chose an upright one more suited to her habitual posture. Seating herself upon it, she glanced frowningly at her hostess and said, ‘You should not allow that child to tire you so. One of her sisters could surely oversee her studies.’
‘Oh, but my dear Ursie, we enjoy such happy hours together. She is now my only – one of my chief pleasures. Pray do not scold me, Ursie! I hope you have not come here to do that! I have hoped to see you for so long! Why did you stay away?’
Mrs Ward stretched out a caressing hand and took that of her visitor.
‘Come! Let us pretend that we are back in the schoolroom at Underwood. How are Barbara and Drusilla? How is my cousin Fred Wisbech? And my uncle the Duke, is he well? And – and my cousin Harry?’
‘I have not the least idea‚’ replied Lady Ursula in a cold, remote tone. ‘Our paths do not cross. Nor is it at all desirable that they should.’
‘Oh, Ursie!’ Mrs Ward’s tone was hardly above a sigh, but it held all the sorrow and sympathy in the world. Now she held the visitor’s hand in both of hers and softly, condolingly, stroked it. ‘Oh, my dear, dear Ursie! Why, why have you never come to see me before this?’
‘What occasion was there to do so?’
Lady Ursula’s tone was cold, and her expression forbidding, but she let her hand remain where it lay. She sat immobile, like a large armoured vessel, held at the dockside only by the very slightest of mooring cables.
Darkness fell early on that hot, oppressive day. The provision of a more elaborate dinner than usual, in honour of the arrival of Lady Ursula and Mrs Winchilsea, had overtaxed the resources of the inefficient household, and, at the fall of dark, Hatty and one of the servant-maids were still running to and fro upstairs with bundles of gowns, cloaks, petticoats and toilet utensils which were being transferred from one bedroom to another. The most direct route for them lay across the head of the main stairway which led down to the entrance hall.
As sometimes occurs at the commencement of a storm, a sudden terrific gust of wind swept across the garden to break the sultry calm of the evening. The front door, which still stood open, blew shut with a reverberating crash, and all the hall candles were extinguished in the draught. Hatty, who at that moment had been crossing the upstairs landing with a heavy trayload of pieces from her eldest sister’s bureau, was so startled that she missed her footing in the unexpected dark and tumbled headlong down the stair, accompanied by a clatter of breaking chinaware and a strong waft of spilled lavender-water.
‘Oh, mercy on us, Miss Hatty!’ cried out Jenny the maid, who had been but a few paces behind her. ‘Oh, my laws, are ye killed? Whatever’s come to ye?’
Mr Ward heard the crash of the front door slamming, Hatty’s downfall, and Jenny’s subsequent outcry.
‘What in the world is going on here?’ he demanded irascibly, issuing from his study, candle in hand. ‘Not so much noise, if you please! Remember your poor mistress, lying ill in her chamber.’
Indeed, faint requests for information could be heard emanating from Mrs Ward’s chamber, while Agnes, Maria and Frances all made their way, bearing candles, to the scene of the accident, Agnes at a hasty pace, the others more leisurely.
‘Careless, abominable girl!’ exclaimed Agnes in a tone of strong reprobation. ‘Look what she has done to my things!’
Fragments of broken pottery, glass, ivory and lacquer lay widely strewn over the flagged hall floor.
‘But Miss Hatty, Miss Hatty!’ wailed Jenny. ‘She’s surely dead – she’s killed!’
‘Do not create such a foolish commotion, girl‚’ pronounced Mr Ward, in a voice of severe displeasure. ‘You will unnecessarily alarm Mrs Ward. Of course the girl is not dead, she has merely knocked herself senseless.’
‘But may she not have broken some bones‚ sir?’ suggested the housekeeper, Mrs Ayling, a calm, sensible woman who now arrived upon the scene. ‘Should not Mr Jones have a look at her?’
Mr Jones, Mrs Ward’s physician, lived not far away and paid frequent visits to the house. Hastily summoned, he pronounced that Miss Hatty had no bones broke, but was suffering from a severe concussion and must remain in her bed for several days.
Due to these circumstances, Hatty was obliged to miss the wedding ceremony and attendance on her sister at the church, besides the various festivities. She also missed meeting most of the guests. Her state of mind for the first few days after the accident remained somewhat confused, so she felt no particular regret at her exclusion from the service.
Afterwards her chief memory of the occasion was to be a visit to her bedside paid by Lady Ursula. The immensely tall, thin figure glided into her chamber and stood looking down at the invalid, it seemed, from a terrifying height. Lady Ursula’s face seemed to poor Hatty like that of some bird of prey, the nose aquiline, the mouth drooping in a disdainful curve, the eyes deeply hooded. The visitor’s hair, pulled straight back beneath a black lace cap, already showed strands of grey. Her hands were long, bony and emphatic, as she shook an admonishing finger at Hatty.
‘Tiresome child! You have caused great trouble, inconvenience and loss to your poor sister Agnes. What a ridiculous, unnecessary mishap! It was a thoroughly childish thing to do, and most unladylike, besides!’
‘Indeed, Cousin Ursula, I could not help it. I missed my footing in the sudden dark‚’ pleaded Hatty faintly, staring up at the long, severe face. To her still feverish fancy it was like some piece of marble statuary that had come stalking in from the garden.
‘Tush. Fiddle, child! A lady should always have complete control of her limbs. If you had learned such essential control, you would have stood still when the light blew out – not tumbled down in that clumsy maladroit hoydenish manner. Your poor sister Agnes has lost some of her most cherished possessions.’
‘I know, I know it‚’’ whispered Hatty forlornly. ‘How can I possibly replace them? Her ivory mirror – her silver brooch—’
The catalogue of losses sustained by Agnes had been the first information fed into Hatty’s unhappy mind as soon as she began to recover consciousness. Agnes, eldest of the Ward sisters, had been particularly proud of the treasures accumulated on her toilet table, the chief of these being an ivory brush, comb and hand-mirror bequeathed to her by old Mrs Wisbech, her maternal grandmother, when that lady died. They had the initial W engraved on the back which, of course, served for Ward as well as for Wisbech. And now the glass in the mirror was shattered, the comb broken in two, the hairbrush badly bent. Besides this, a cherished little lacquer box was irretrievably smashed, a Venetian vial cracked, so that it would no longer hold aromatic vinegar, and several other articles dented or bent beyond repair. Since her life had hitherto been barren of friends or lovers, Agnes set immense store by such possessions as she had contrived to acquire, and the loss of them was a bitter grievance, which she made no attempt to make light of or pass over. Hatty was obliged to hear the detailed tally of her bereavement several times a da
y.
Indeed this episode permanently impaired the relations between Hatty and her eldest sister, which had never, at best, been particularly warm or cordial; and it soon led on to the formation of a scheme that was to affect the whole of Hatty’s subsequent career. Up to this juncture Mrs Ward, though bed-ridden, had given Hatty all her lessons, since Mr Ward latterly begrudged the salary of Miss Tomkyns, the governess who had instructed Agnes, Maria and Fanny. Mother and daughter had both taken pleasure in the quiet reading of history, French, Latin, Greek and Italian, besides plays, essays and poetry; music continued to be taught by a master who came once a week and instructed the younger girls, since Mr Ward considered music a necessary female accomplishment if they were to catch husbands.
But it was becoming evident that, as Mrs Ward daily grew feebler, this regime could not long be continued; and Lady Ursula, with whom Mr Ward discussed the matter, was strongly of the opinion that Hatty should now be sent away from home to live with another family. This plan was also eagerly promoted by Agnes, who had never liked her youngest sister, and could think of a thousand good reasons why her departure was desirable.
‘She makes too much noise about the house for my poor mother; she is not receiving the requisite education – for her fortune and expectations in life, coming as she does at the end of the family, cannot be high, she must look to be obliged to support herself, most probably as a governess; I have not the time to see after her, so occupied as I am with the housekeeping and care of Mama; as we have just seen, she is becoming most regrettably careless and uncontrollable; by residing with another family she will learn better deportment and greater respect for her elders.’
The other family in question was that of Mr Philip Ward, their uncle the attorney in Portsmouth.
Mr Ward favoured the plan for two additional reasons, neither of which did he divulge to his family; the first being that some fifteen years previously, when his own fortunes were in better trim and his brother was still a struggling attorney in the early stages of his profession, Mr Ward had lent Mr Philip Ward five hundred pounds. Their situations were now reversed and Mr Ward had reason to believe that his brother might without any great difficulty have returned the sum, but for one reason or another, it was never forthcoming. ‘Obliged to wait until some rents were come in . . . clients were very tardy in paying their fees . . . shocking outgoings about the house – and Mrs Pauline Ward had many medical expenses connected with the birth of the twins.’ At least, reflected Mr Ward to himself, if Hatty were sent to live with the Portsmouth family, taking into account the subtraction of her board and pin money from his own budget, in the course of five years or so an equal sum might be saved. Moreover, set down among her cousins, was it not at least possible that the girl – though at present she had no particular attractions that her unloving father could discern – might, after the lapse of time and through sheer proximity, capture the affections of one of the boys and so be the means of retrieving the lost estate? At the present time this seemed wholly unlikely, but such improbable things did occur; certainly no harm could ensue from sending her to live with her uncle’s family.
Accordingly, letters were exchanged about the matter, an agreement was reached, and, half a year later, Mr Ward walked into his wife’s boudoir one morning, where she and Hatty were peaceably reading Twelfth Night together, to announce: ‘So, it is all arranged. Harriet leaves this house on Thursday next to make her home with my brother Philip and his family in Portsmouth. By great good fortune Mr and Mrs Laxton, the vicar’s cousins, are to make the journey to Portsmouth by stage that day, and will be pleased to escort our daughter.’
Two paper-white faces, two open mouths, received this news. Mrs Ward, indeed, fainted dead away, but since she had suffered from a number of fainting-fits during recent weeks, this was considered nothing out of the common.
‘When – when shall I come back from visiting my uncle Philip?’ whispered Hatty, through trembling lips, after her mother had been revived with aromatic vinegar and smelling salts.
‘Why, not until you are grown up, child. If then. But it can make no difference to you. You are sure of a comfortable home in either place. And you will have your cousins for company.’
Mr Philip Ward’s family, at this time, consisted of three sons – Sydney, Thomas and Edward – and a pair of twin girls, Eliza and Sophy, who were considerably younger.
Hatty absolutely dared not ask her mother if she approved of the plan; she could see that even discussing it would be too taxing for Mrs Ward’s enfeebled state. And, in any case, discussion would be useless: Mr Ward, Lady Ursula and Agnes had firm hold of the matter. Opposition would be vain.
By means of a mental and moral struggle far beyond what might have been expected of her years, Hatty managed to accept the dictum without argument or protest.
‘If – if Mama were to grow w-worse – if she should express a wish to see me – you would send for me, you would allow me to come home then‚ Papa?’ she ventured, with imploring, tear-filled eyes.
Agnes broke out indignantly, ‘Why, what use in the world would you be, if my mother should take a turn for the worse? All these years she has taken such pains with you – it will be a great relief to her, and a great rest, let me tell you, when she no longer has the burden of your instruction. Most likely she will improve in health when you are gone from here. And you must not be thinking that Papa can afford to pay your fare on the stage in order that you may come home for any trifling pretext – no, indeed! Is it not so, sir?’
‘No, of course not‚’ he said impatiently. ‘Do not ask foolish questions, child.’
‘Can I take Simcox – can I take my cat with me?’ Hatty asked forlornly.
But that evidently went under the heading of foolish questions; her father left the room without making any reply. And Agnes said sharply, ‘Certainly not! Your cousins will for sure not want another animal in the house. Besides, cats cannot be transferred from one house to another – they always make their way back to where they have come from. Now you had better go and begin packing up your things. You can take a pot of my damson preserve to our Aunt Polly; it kept so well that we have several pots left from last year which are hardly mouldy at all. I daresay she has nothing near so good. And you may as well write farewell notes to Fanny and Maria, since you will not be seeing them until who knows when; Mr Challis is going to Bath soon and has promised to take messages from us to Sir Thomas and your sisters.’
Hatty crept away to her chamber – Agnes had moved back into her own room as soon as Lady Ursula returned to Underwood Priors – but she made no immediate attempt to begin packing. She sat motionless on the floor, with her head resting against the bed.
Grieving words filled her mind, but she brushed them away.
Not now. Another time.
II
Bythorn Lodge, Mr Henry Ward’s home, was not a large house, but could be held to merit the status of a comfortable gentleman’s residence, standing apart, as it did, from the village of Bythorn, in its own tolerably extensive pleasure-grounds, with lawn, shrubbery, carriage-sweep, and a vista of woods and meadows on every side.
His brother Mr Philip Ward’s abode, in Lombard Street, Portsmouth, might also be considered handsome enough, for a town residence; it had two bow windows, on either side of the porch, was protected by substantial white posts and chains, and approached by three wide stone steps leading up to a handsome front door. It boasted also a substantial plot of garden-land at the rear, abutting on to a disused graveyard, besides stables, outbuildings, and a large and somewhat ramshackle conservatory.
Mr Ward had removed to Portsmouth from London several years earlier. Ostensibly the family migration had been for the sake of his wife’s health, she having been somewhat thrown down by the birth of the twins. At the time, Mr Ward’s business associates considered this move to be a grave sacrifice of professional connections, but in fact one of his chief clients,
the Duke of Dungeness, and the Duke’s eldest son, Lord Camber, both owned large tracts of land in Hampshire. The transfer had brought Mr Ward a great deal more of their affairs to manage, besides that of their acquaintance and connections in the country round about, and, as a result of the move, he had gained far more business than he had lost. Mrs Ward’s health benefited from the Portsmouth sea-breezes, and the boys lost no time in finding their way on to the ramparts and into the Dockyard. They thought the change of dwelling a vast improvement on High Holborn.
But to Hatty, fresh from the silent green woods and meadows of Huntingdonshire, a transfer to Portsmouth must be a very different matter. Lombard Street, where Mr Ward’s house stood, was a busy thoroughfare. Instead of green peace and country silence, she had to hear and endure the constant rattle and clatter of carts, horses, drays and carriages racketing over the cobbles, the shouts of market men and nightwatchmen, the chime of clocks, near and far, and, in the distance, the shrieks of seagulls and the staccato whirr and echo of musket practice. Although the house was a large one, as town houses go, Hatty found it almost unbearably cramped, close and noisy, compared with the rural silence to which she had been used hitherto. At night the din of traffic and the shouts of the watch disturbed her sleep; by day, outside of school hours, her boy cousins were continually racing up and down the four flights of stairs, slamming doors, and shouting to one another from top to bottom of the house (Mr Ward, who would soon have put a stop to this, being absent for a large part of the day at his attorney’s office). While the youngest members of the family, the twins, Eliza and Sophy, were so sickly, pale, whiney and cantankerous that their peevish voices were to be heard, day and night, raised in perpetual complaint. Hatty could not conceive how so lugubrious a pair could ever have been born to a fat, merry high-coloured woman like her aunt Polly.
