The Youngest Miss Ward

by Joan Aiken

  Hatty blushed a hot vivid scarlet and sat speechless for a moment, while the boys gazed at her with interest. Then she said, ‘I am sure, sir, whatever is in the note is not – is not at all – there has not been – this is the first—’

  ‘I believe you must allow me to open it and see for myself,’ said Mr Ward.

  ‘Of course, sir. Pray feel free to do so.’

  With another frowning glance at Hatty, her uncle prised up the seal, and read the contents of the communication inside – only a few lines.

  ‘My dear Miss Hatty: here is the address I promised you. I regret that press of business will keep me in Huntingdonshire from now on, and that I shall not have the pleasure of visiting your uncle’s house again and bidding you goodbye in person. I hope that your Muse continues active. Your sincere friend H. Camber.’

  ‘Muse?’ demanded Mr Ward. ‘What is this about a muse?’

  ‘Oh, it is nothing – only a kind of joke. I had shown Lord Camber some of my verses – which he was so good as to – as to admire – and he promised to give me the address of an acquaintance of his who edits a journal which – which sometimes publishes such pieces—’

  ‘You? Write verses? This is something quite new‚’ pronounced Mr Ward, in a tone suggesting that the production of verse came rather lower in his estimation than cleaning the gutters.

  ‘No, sir; it is not new; I have done it all my life. Ned knows about it‚’ said Hatty faintly, wishing that her uncle would hand her Lord Camber’s note; she would have liked to see it, to handle it for herself. But he put it down by his plate and turned his censorious gaze on to Ned.

  Ned, however, was in no state to take up the cudgels on behalf of his cousin. From deathly white, his complexion had changed to a uniform brick-coloured flush, and as his father addressed him – ‘Ned?’ – he gasped, ‘I am s-s-s-sorry, sir – I feel uncommonly s-sick—’ and incontinently bolted from the dining-room.

  Two hours later Ned had thrown out a rash which covered his entire body with small red papules set so close together that a pin-head could hardly pass between them. His eyes and nose ran continually, he was slightly delirious.

  ‘Nancy?’ he mumbled. ‘Nancy, I am so sorry – I could not come to the glass-house. Chess with the twins. Pawn to king’s four – pawn to king’s five—’

  ‘I am afraid, sir, that Ned has the measles,’ said Hatty, at the bedside, to his father, hoping that Mr Ward had not made any sense of Ned’s disjointed mutterings.

  ‘Oh, good heavens. Good heavens! As if we had not troubles enough in this house!’

  Mr Ward looked down without a great deal of sympathy at his restless, feverish son, who rolled miserably among the bedclothes, crying out at one time that he was so thirsty! then that his ears pained him so much that he could not bear it another minute.

  ‘How are we ever going to manage?’ demanded Mr Ward. ‘Have you had measles, Hatty?’

  ‘Yes, sir – fortunately. Frances and I had it at the same time, when I was eight.’

  Hatty’s voice quivered as she remembered, with a pang, how their mother, though not well herself, had tended them, how they had shared jokes, and grapes, and games, during their convalescence. Another life, gone for ever.

  ‘Let us hope that, as it has come out on Ned so fast, it will be quickly over for him. But I am afraid there is a quarantine period of two weeks for those who have not had it.’

  Mr Filingay confirmed this, when summoned to the house. He prescribed Fellow’s Syrup of Hypophosphites and ordered the curtains of the room, which Ned shared with Tom, to be kept drawn at all times.

  Hatty was in dread that some mention of the Price household should provide the clue as to where Ned had picked up the contagion, but that danger seemed by-passed; Mr Filingay said there were numerous cases of measles in the town. Fortunately both Tom and Sydney had had the disease already. And, even more mercifully, Aunt Polly (who had also contracted measles in childhood) at this time took a slight turn for the better and was able to lie on a sopha in her bedroom and receive visits from her family, two at a time.

  Hatty had managed to take possession of the note from Lord Camber, at a moment when her uncle and cousins were cast into confusion by Ned’s collapse. (Let her not be blamed unduly if, during this hectic period in the history of the Ward household, the piece of paper containing Lord Camber’s few kind lines was never parted from her during the twenty-four hours, tucked under her pillow at night, hidden in her reticule during the hours of daylight.)

  Perhaps he has already embarked now, she thought sorrowfully, as she went about her household duties or lay wakeful and worried in the dark. My uncle said he would probably embark from Bristol – that is where most of the emigrant vessels take on their human cargo. Bristol! I suppose Fanny is there. How strange if she were to encounter Lord Camber. He said he might write to me from Pennsylvania. It takes at least two months to sail across the ocean. And another two months for a letter to come back. Sometimes the people on board may have been taken by force, he told me; if the captains have not enough passengers to make their trip profitable they snatch a few more. Suppose some disease breaks out? Sometimes the vessels arrive with smallpox aboard and are turned away from the ports. Oh, how can I bear his being so far away? I may very likely never hear from him again.

  Sometimes, at night, she would re-light her candle, sit up, and write a few lines.

  Perhaps, perhaps,

  This strange word slips through gaps

  escapes from traps

  is never found

  on signs or maps.

  Perhaps we shall get a letter

  perhaps we shan’t.

  Perhaps we can meet again

  perhaps we can’t.

  Perhaps is just

  a word we cannot trust

  She could not solace herself in this way too often, however, for Burnaby, whose attic bedroom was opposite hers, would remark, with her dour sidelong glance: ‘Wakeful in the night again, were you, Miss Hatty? I saw your candle-glim shine under the door. No wonder the bills for tallow and wax is so high!’

  Burnaby, for some mysterious reason, perhaps because of her sour disposition, had Mr Ward’s confidence, and if there were disputes among the servants, it was Burnaby’s version of the controversy that he would be inclined to favour. Hatty was sure that her policy of keeping the twins in monotonous, unstimulated subjection stemmed directly from Mr Ward; he saw no future for them, so was prepared to lay out as little as possible, in time and human effort, on their welfare or instruction.

  Sydney, for some obscure reason, was Burnaby’s favourite among the boys; they had been allies from a time when he was much younger. Perhaps it was, Hatty thought, because they both preferred to conduct their lives in a devious, diversionary, undercover manner. Sydney, Ned once told Hatty, had several times procured the dismissal of servants he did not like, or who had attempted to discipline him, or been severe with him, by spying on them until he found out something discreditable, or which could be made to sound discreditable, and then informing Burnaby, who would carry the story to Mr Ward.

  ‘It is too bad that Burnaby and you ain’t better friends, Cousin Hatty,’ observed Sydney one day. ‘She’s a close, quiet one, but she’s as shrewd as she can hold together; with her on your side, I can tell you, you’d have an easier time of it, running the house.’

  ‘Thank you, cousin, but I fear I will have to manage as best I can without Burnaby’s goodwill. She has always chosen to resent my attempts to instruct or develop the twins in any way. So long as she is in charge of them I fear they will make but little progress.’

  ‘Oh, hang the twins! Who cares a straw what becomes of them?’ said Sydney impatiently. ‘I am sure my father has written them off long ago. It is too bad that creatures of that sort cannot be drowned at birth, like unwanted kittens. What a useless drain on my father’s resources
!’

  And Sydney commenced a long discourse, to which Hatty, hemming sheets, paid little heed, about Economy, and Management, Thrift, Good Housekeeping, and How to Make Every Penny Work. One’s life should be planned with extreme care from the very beginning, he informed Hatty, that was the only way to get on; as an example of the horrendous foolishness and misjudgement, one had only to look at the example of Hatty’s sister Fanny!

  ‘How can Frances have been so cow-witted, when your elder sister Maria did so well for herself – far better, indeed, than Maria had any right to expect? And I hear that your eldest sister Agnes has left off her foolish repinings and agrees to marry the new incumbent at Mansfield, Mr Reginald Norris. So she does not do so badly and will at least never want for a comfortable establishment, as Norris is an old friend of Sir Thomas.’

  ‘From whom did you hear that, cousin?’ asked Hatty, surprised, breaking off a thread.

  ‘Lady Ursula, when she is staying at the Fowldes town house, sometimes visits the Chancery Lane office on behalf of her father the Earl, who is sadly gouty; and she has been so affable and condescending as to stop sometimes and chat a little when she passes by my desk. She was so good as to recall the time when I was privileged to escort her back to Lombard Street after the Sunday service.’

  How unexpected, thought Hatty, re-threading her needle, that Lady Ursula, proud and stand-offish with almost everybody, should bestow her favour on Sydney, of all people! How very odd.

  Sydney, smirking, took a turn about the room. He was bored and restless in Portsmouth, Hatty thought, for all his suggestions as to inviting friends in for Christmas festivities had been instantly negatived by Mr Ward, and he was probably as eager to get back to his London ways and acquaintances as Hatty was to see the end of his visit. He made a great deal of extra work for the servants, for he was decidedly fussy about his food, demanded clean linen every day, and required his boots to be polished at inconveniently frequent intervals.

  He was like a tiresome bluebottle about the house.

  ‘Lady Ursula won’t stop in London long now, though,’ he divulged. ‘For Lord Elstow has commenced another of his friendships.’ Sydney sniggered. ‘He won’t want his daughter in Grosvenor Place when anything of that sort is afoot – no, by Jason, he won’t! She will be despatched back to Underwood, with her bride-linen, you may be sure. And she probably will not be sorry to leave London now that her particular friend, Miss Kittridge, has set sail for America with her brother.’

  ‘Kittridge?’ Hatty’s attention was caught by the name. ‘Is her brother Jonathan Kittridge? The poet? Lord Camber’s friend?’

  ‘Ay, Camber and Kittridge and Wandesleigh are all cronies together. Founders of that fanciful, holier-than-thou Society of Sophocrats. That precious scheme will soon founder, you may be sure; it is very certain to collapse.’

  To avoid fruitless argument, Hatty left the room. She wondered whether Lady Ursula minded the departure of her friend Miss Kittridge on a venture that she herself had spoken of with such scorn. Was her friend’s departure the event that had decided her in favour of marriage with Mr Henry Ward? Had Miss Kittridge paid her own fare, or did she travel as a servant? Was she also a friend of Lord Camber?

  There are so many things I do not know, Hatty thought.

  By Christmas Eve the weather was worsening. Rain and gales swept the country. Hatty shivered, thinking of Lord Camber, perhaps by now a passenger on some ill-found ship, laden with poverty-stricken people, desperate to start a new life in unknown surroundings, mortgaging their future in order to get away from their past. What kind of travelling companions would they make? Hatty wondered about the conditions on the ships. Did they have separate bunks? Or hammocks? Or cabins? What kind of food was available and who served it? Who cooked it? Hatty glanced at her watch. In a moment she must go upstairs and superintend the swallowing of a posset by her Aunt Polly, who was still permitted only the lightest of nourishment; then she must visit the bedside of poor Ned, who, fractious and miserable, a bad patient suffering an exceptionally severe case of measles, could not be soothed, cried out continually that he was going mad with pain and irritation, took very little food, and was the despair of his attendants. He might not even read, usually a solace for Ned, since his eyes were so inflamed.

  Hatty, much occupied with hemming sheets to augment the household’s depleted supply, had suggested that Sydney read aloud to his brother, a proposal which met with a very curt rejoinder: ‘What? Waste my time droning out Orphans of the Forest or some such rubbish? I thank you, no! I did not come back to Portsmouth to wet-nurse that pitiful fool!’

  Hatty could scarcely conjecture why he had come back; it could hardly be filial devotion to his mother, for his visits to her bedside were brief and perfunctory. Tom he seldom, if ever, addressed, and he never went near the twins.

  He did, it was true, spend time with Mr Ward discussing legal matters, and showed considerable interest in the family’s business affairs and relationships.

  ‘Even though my uncle Henry has done his possible to chisel me out of the entail by marrying Lady Ursula this week,’ he remarked, ‘I reckon ‘tis all Lombard Street to a china orange that he don’t succeed. After all, he is getting on in years. And she’s no spring chicken either. My guess is that nothing will follow. There won’t be any issue. I’ll come into Bythorn Lodge in the end, no matter for all his plots and his ploys. And then shan’t I laugh! And a devilish good base Bythorn Lodge will afford me – handy for town, and close in among all the nobs.’

  Hatty sighed, thinking of her home. She had no wish to go back there and see it under the governance of Lady Ursula, but she still pined for the green fields and woodland walks of childhood.

  She stood up, shaking out heavy crumpled folds of bed-linen.

  ‘I say, Cousin Hatty!’ said Sydney, with a sudden change from easy self-occupied satisfaction to what he evidently hoped was a languishing, flirtatious manner. Unexpectedly he crossed the room, stepping over Hatty’s mound of piled-up draperies, and sat himself down plump on the window-seat, where Hatty had been sitting. He looked up at her, as she struggled to fold the sheet, and went on: ‘I can tell you, Cousin Hatty, I didn’t come back to Portsmouth with matrimony in my intentions – no, curse me, I didn’t! But marrying, you know, is no bad thing for a young fellow at the start of his career. It settles him. It keeps him out of mischief. And then – and then – well, the truth of the matter is, I had never thought of you in that regard, Cousin Hatty, such a little quiz, such an ugly scrawny little thing as you were when you first came here; ‘tis quite wonderful how your looks have improved in the past year. Quite a woman you’ve grown! And now I spend most of my time in London, you know, I am well qualified to judge! But that ain’t the whole of it, Cousin Hatty: I never expected, truth to tell, that you’d turn into such a deuced clever housekeeper! Why, the place seems to go on just as well, with you in charge, as when my mother held the reins.’ He gave her an encouraging smirk. “Tis a monstrous fine thing to set up house with a clever manager! That’s what I think. And I daresay you’d not object to be back in your old home – hey? – and be queen of the nest in Bythorn again? Hey?’

  Hatty, now, for the first time, began to pay attention and see whither this overture was tending.

  She clapped her needlebook together decisively, and said, ‘Cousin, I think you had better say no more. The subject is not at all pleasing to me, nor suitable for our present circumstances, and I—’

  ‘Hey, hey!’ he cried. ‘Not so hasty, miss! Not pleasing? You have not heard yet what I have to say!’

  ‘I must go to my aunt. It grows late. And Ned is waiting for his soup.’

  ‘Let them wait!’ decreed Sydney. ‘Cousin Hatty – my little charmer – I haven’t even told you about my feelings yet! Haven’t said what a devilish regard for you I have! Let me inform you – there’s not a girl from Whitehall to Ludgate Circus that’s fit to hold
a candle to you – and I’ve looked at them all – with your dark eyes and glossy hair and your clever ways and neat ankles – and a trim waist, too, I’ll be bound, under that apron—’

  Unexpectedly he slid his arm round her waist. Hatty, springing back, dealt him a box on the ear. And he, lurching forward in pursuit of her, tripped over the entangling sheet and fell headlong.

  Hatty, whisking herself out of the way, snatched up the folds of sheet, flung them untidily on to the window-seat, and started across the room. Tears of wrath and mortification were pouring down her cheeks.

  Oh, if my uncle comes to hear of this, she thought, how angry he will be!

  Behind her she could hear Sydney picking himself up, muttering maledictions. As Hatty sprang to the doorway a figure appeared there, blocking the way. It was Burnaby, with a doom-laden countenance.

  ‘I beg pardon for interrupting, Miss Hatty – ‘ Burnaby’s sneering tone made Hatty wonder precisely how long she had been standing just outside the door and how much she had heard. ‘I beg your pardon but I thought it my duty to come at once and tell you that both twins have thrown out a rash. They’ll have caught the measles from Master Ned, I don’t doubt. Didn’t I say that no good would come of all those chess games?’

  VII

  Aunt Polly had become very thin during the weeks of her illness. Her round pink face, with lively twinkling eyes, once so responsive, had grown hollow-cheeked and pale; her former animated interest in all the doings of the family had wholly abated; she lay, most of the time, in a quiet lethargy as if husbanding her strength for some possible forthcoming emergency. Mr Filingay had been most emphatic that she be spared any worry, problems, or bad tidings, lest such news bring on another seizure, which might easily be enough to terminate her existence. She lived, therefore, in a kind of bubble, thought Hatty, sitting at her aunt’s bedside and administering the posset, sip by careful sip. She knew nothing of all the agitation and trouble in the house. And, at all costs, she must remain in this condition of peaceful unawareness.