The Youngest Miss Ward

by Joan Aiken

  ‘He has been much plagued by the gout this past year,’ suggested du Vallon tactfully. ‘I have seen him at his club when both feet were so swelled that he was obliged to wear slippers – and, you know, in such case he could not possibly get his feet into hunting boots – let alone stirrups.’

  To Hatty, next day, privately, the Abbé said: ‘And I understand Lord Elstow had other reasons for remaining in London. It is rumoured that his Majesty has gone mad again, so mad that he called Mr Pitt a rascal and Mr Fox his friend. For a man interested in office, this is not a time to leave the capital.’

  ‘But do you think that Lord Elstow will ever really achieve any high office?’ said Hatty, who had, somehow, at long range, acquired a rather low opinion of Lord Elstow’s capacities.

  ‘Well, he has good friends – Lord Foley and Charles Grey. But, in fact,’ said du Vallon, ‘I believe what keeps his Lordship in town is another new friendship, with young Mr Matthew Artingstall.’

  ‘Who is Mr Artingstall?’

  ‘Oh, he is a poet,’ said the Abbé, as if poets rated fairly low in his catalogue of respectability. Later, Hatty was to remember this. ‘One of these new Romantic poets. But the thing is, he is very beautiful, with flowing black locks and rolling black eyes.’ He gave a philosophical shrug and raised his brows to indicate that such a friendship would be enough to keep anybody from their home, family and boring country duties. Hatty, not wholly comprehending, felt that he knew what he was talking about.

  ‘You and I, Miss Ward, must resign ourselves to wait for our wages.’

  ‘We are lucky that there is nothing to purchase around here.’

  As a matter of fact, Hatty was feeling quite rich, for she had sold two more poems to the European Review. ‘Dear Mr Bailiff,’ said the editor’s letter, ‘We think so highly of your work that we wonder if you may be contemplating the compilation of a volume? Our rate, as you know, is Half a Guinea per hundred lines, and thirty guineas for a full volume. A Commentary in verse on the present troubled situation in France would be of interest.’

  Thirty guineas! A year’s wages!

  Glastonbury came in with a distressed countenance. ‘If you please, Miss Hatty – something dreadful—’

  By insensible degrees, the servants had formed the habit of turning to Hatty in the event of household problems and crises. Lady Elstow took so little interest, and was so slow to respond that it often required half a day or longer to extract any reply or decision from her.

  ‘Oh, what is it, Glastonbury? Lady Drusilla has not suffered another convulsion?’

  ‘No, miss, there’s been a body found in the Sparsholt Brook and – and – and I’m loath to tell ye this – but it’s the other lady—’

  ‘The other lady?’

  ‘The one ye replaced, Miss Hatty. ’Tis Miss Stornoway.’

  ‘Miss Stornoway?’ repeated Hatty through numb lips. ‘You mean – a body – you mean – she is dead?’

  ‘Ay, miss. I’m afeared that’s so. They’re a-fetching her up now. Harris, he thought he heard somebody a-crying out, when he rode past that way yesterday with Lady Barbara – but they never stopped then, Lady Barbara was wishful to get home and said she heard nothing. And Harris, he was not certain sure he’d heard a voice – but troubled enough in his mind to go back this morning to take a look – ye see—’

  ‘But – but how terrible – you mean – she drowned – in that small brook? She was there all night?’

  ‘There will have to be a Crowner’s Quest – won’t there, miss? The men are out there now, fetching her in. The Crowner, he’ll have to say – won’t he? – if the poor lady drowned. But ‘tis a nasty unchancy place, on the corner of Tanner’s Piece and Yaffle Bank.’

  Hatty knew the place Glastonbury meant. A narrow, tree-bordered bridle-track ran across a wooded hillside some twenty feet above the brook, narrow and deep here, and sunk between high banks. The woods and paths were slippery at present with fallen leaves and heavy recent rains. If somebody, walking along the narrow path, had chanced to slide or trip, and had rolled down the steep bank into the stream . . . for a young, active person it would be no great task to climb out of the brook, but for an elderly frail lady, handicapped by her clothes – of an arthritic tendency . . .

  But what in the world was Miss Stornoway doing there, some five miles from the Thatched Grotto?

  ‘They are quite sure who it is? That it is Miss Stornoway?’

  ‘Oh yes, Miss Hatty. No question.’

  A gloomy muttering and shuffling presently announced the arrival of the group of men bringing home Miss Stornoway’s body on a hurdle. They were directed to a disused still-room in a semi-derelict wing, far from the family’s living-quarters. The Coroner was sent for. Hatty, mastering terrible reluctance, went along to view the body, which had been laid out on a work-bench.

  It took a moment or two to recognize Miss Stornoway, for the poor bent figure was so soaked, splashed and coated with mire that only the bony nose and the wispy grey hair, now draggled with wet but still bound close to her head by a drenched black velvet ribbon, gave proof that this was indeed the ex-governess. She looked more as Hatty remembered her from their first meeting, much less like the transformed figure of the Thatched Grotto.

  ‘There’s mud plastered all over her face and in her nose,’ said Harris. ‘I’m afeared the poor lady smothered in the mud. Don’t ye think so, miss? ’Tis deep mud there in the bed of the stream. The water itself is none so deep – a matter of two foot – but she’ll have rolled in and couldn’t muster up the strength to get herself out again. There’s naught to hold on to. Oh, if only I’d gone when I heard that voice a-calling – but Lady Barbara she said no, and I was just not certain in my mind – it could have been a kingfisher’s cry, or a heron . . . Reckon that’ll haunt me now.’

  When the Coroner – who turned out to be Mr Jones, the apothecary from Bythorn – arrived, he was of the same opinion. The marks below the sloping, slippery track, when inspected, told the same tale. The unfortunate lady had slid off the edge of the path – probably in trying to avoid a very miry stretch of the path itself which had been deeply cut by horse-tracks – she had then rolled or slipped uncontrollably down the steep hillside. Broken saplings and crushed leaves of wild garlic bore witness to this. She had tumbled headfirst into the stream and there lain helplessly, unable to raise herself out of the water, calling out faintly for aid, until she had succumbed to weakness and exhaustion. She had drowned in a mixture of mud and water.

  ‘There is no indication of foul play?’ asked Hatty nervously.

  ‘Oh, none, my dear miss; none at all. The ideal’ said Mr Jones, scandalized. ‘No, the poor lady was merely subject to a shockingly unfortunate mishap. She should never have been permitted to roam the woods alone, at her age, and in her state of disability. What could her friends have been thinking of?’

  ‘They will be dreadfully sad about it,’ said Hatty. ‘A message has been sent off to them – they must have been wondering – they will be so worried—’

  Hatty then, to her own subsequent shame and mortification, succumbed to a combination of strain and the sorrow that had been assailing her since hearing of the death of Aunt Polly; she fainted away, and only recovered, an hour or so later, to find that she had been carried to her own chamber, where the maidservant Bone and Winship, the young ladies’ nurse, were ministering to her with burnt feathers and aromatic vinegar.

  ‘Oh, good gracious,’ she said weakly. ‘Where am I? What happened?’

  ‘You fainted, miss; and small wonder, for a shocking thing to see, it was, and not at all the sort of spectacle a poor young lady should be expected to look at – ‘tis the mercy of Providence Lord Camber’s people came and fetched the corpus away as quick as they have done. What such a sight would have done to Lady Drusilla I do not dare to think—’

  ‘Poor Miss Stornoway. Her body has been
taken away already?’

  ‘Yes, miss. Her Ladyship said she didn’t care to have a corpus remaining in the house – and Mr Godwit and two others came with a tumbrel and took the poor lady’s remains off to Garrett, he’s the undertaker at Wanmaulden village. The funeral’s to be Monday, miss. Mr Godwit he left a message for ye, miss, that he was sorry you’d been taken bad and that he had no chance to see you. But he sent his best respects.’

  ‘I hope I may have the opportunity to see him at the funeral.’

  Indeed, Hatty much regretted not having seen Godwit who was, next to Lord Camber, the kindest, most reliable man she knew; and no fool, either, she thought, remembering with a small spark of amusement the look that sometimes came into his eyes while he listened to Lord Camber’s more high-flown asseverations. And yet Godwit is truly, truly fond of Lord Camber, thought Hatty, rising cautiously from her couch, and I wish I had had the chance of seeing him.

  ‘Take care, miss. You’re full weak yet.’

  ‘Where are the young ladies?’

  ‘In the drawing-room, miss, with the French gentleman and her Ladyship.’

  Drusilla was playing mournful, mysterious tunes of her own invention on the harp, while Lady Elstow slumbered and the Abbé du Vallon told Barbara about the siege of Tyre. But Barbara was paying him very little heed. In fact, studying her, Hatty’s heart sank; she was only too familiar with the sullen, resentful expression which had settled on the girl’s face. It meant that Barbara knew she was in fault, would rather go to the stake than admit it, and so was prepared to defy the whole world, be as hostile as she could to whomever she chose, rather than yield a single inch. Her lowering look at Hatty, entering the room, dared the latter to allude in any way to the circumstances of Miss Stornoway’s death, to the fact that it might have been prevented if Harris had been allowed to investigate the source of the cry he thought he heard.

  ‘Are you feeling better, Mademoiselle Ward?’ asked du Vallon solicitously. ‘Viewing the poor cadaver must have been a sad shock.’

  Barbara puffed out her lips contemptuously but said nothing.

  ‘Yes, thank you, I am quite better,’ Hatty answered.

  Lady Elstow roused from her slumber sufficiently to say: ‘What can the ridiculous woman have been thinking of, to walk about the woods all alone, like that, at this time of year, with the ground so dirty and treacherous underfoot? Such an undignified way to end one’s life – too stupid, upon my word! So inconsiderate, too! Making such a stir! She might have thought of that, before she started out.’

  ‘I wonder why she did start out?’ mused the Abbé. ‘It seems she must have been coming here. Perhaps she wished to pay a visit to her old pupils. But how would she ever have returned home before dark fell?’

  He gave his nearest approach to a smile, a roll of his large, extraordinary eyes, to Barbara, who jumped to her feet with a clumsy, abrupt movement, exclaiming, ‘Oh, who cares what the stupid creature planned to do? I have the headache. I am going to bed.’ And she flounced out of the room.

  For ten days after that Barbara kept to her chamber, asserting that she was ill. To Mr Jones the apothecary, summoned to her bedside, she complained that her head ached, she had pains in her back, her neck, her legs; she refused to eat, saying that food sickened her. She demanded that Hatty sit and read aloud to her, hour after hour, day after day. So far as Hatty could discover, she never listened to a word that was read, whether it were poetry, Shakespeare, French or Latin. Hatty felt that this insistence on being read to was a hostile act, an assertion of power; in this unspoken battle Hatty’s only recourse was to comply calmly, and wait until the aggressive impulse had worn itself out. It meant that Hatty was unable to go to Miss Stornoway’s funeral, which may have been the intention. This might not in any case have been possible for Lady Elstow did not attend the service and so the carriage would not have been available. It must, Hatty thought, have been a matter for some gossip in the countryside, that none of the family from the Priors attended the last rites of their old governess; still, doubtless the behaviour of the Fowldes family was nothing new to the neighbourhood.

  ‘Were many people there?’ she asked Glastonbury.

  ‘Nay, miss; nobbut the ladies from the Grotto. And Mr Godwit and the lad. Or so I’m told.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that I am ill, do you?’ Barbara said to Hatty one day. ‘You think I am just malingering.’

  ‘Why should I think that? Nobody submits to a boring regimen day after day just for fun; what could possibly be the object?’

  ‘Then,’ said Barbara challengingly, ‘what do you think is the matter with me?’

  Hatty was silent for a moment or two.

  ‘I think something has poisoned you.’

  After a startled silence, Barbara said: ‘What?’

  ‘How can I tell? The poison may have passed out of your system by now; you may be just suffering from the after-effects.’

  Barbara stared at her through narrowed eyes.

  ‘What can you possibly know about it?’ she said sharply. ‘You don’t know any more than I do.’

  ‘I have nursed quite a number of sick people, though,’ Hatty replied calmly. ‘And I know how they behave. Sickness is not only spots or vomiting or belly-ache – not only what you can see or feel. It can be in the mind, too.’

  ‘Oh, so you think I am mad – like Aunt Flimborough?’

  ‘No I do not. I think you are unhappy.’

  ‘Oh, go away! Leave me alone.’

  Next day Barbara got up, declared that she was better, and resumed her usual occupations. But she maintained a hostile manner to Hatty, never spoke to her unless it was essential, hardly ever looked at her, and avoided being left alone with her. She hates me, thought Hatty, sighing. But what can I do about it?

  There seemed little to be done.

  XIX

  Lord Elstow came down to Underwood Priors for a brief visit in January. He was a tall, pale man with a freckled complexion and an underhung jaw. He had a vague, hesitant, sleepy manner; Hatty thought that he and his wife seemed very well matched. He addressed Lady Elstow in a high, weary voice which was apparently gauged to penetrate her deafness and must have been achieved by years of practice. She, for her part, seemed mildly interested in what he had to tell her of their London acquaintance.

  ‘Parliament and the King have refused to pay the Prince of Wales’s debts.’

  ‘Well, why should they indeed?’

  ‘The Duke of Richmond insists on his right to control Sarah Napier’s annuity.’

  ‘Well, I daresay he has his reasons.’

  Barbara was annoyed that her father had arrived during a prolonged period of black frosts when no hunting would have been possible even if he could have accompanied her. But in any case his gouty affliction would have prevented his going out with the hounds. He did, however, put in hand the purchase of a new mare for Barbara’s use.

  Drusilla was ecstatic to see her father – she was very fond of him, it seemed, much fonder than Barbara; but unfortunately her excitement at his arrival brought on a series of severe convulsions which so weakened her that she was obliged to remain in bed for days on end. The winter was always a bad time for Drusilla; her narrow little weak chest was prone to bronchial disorders. Regrettably, her father was terribly embarrassed and disconcerted by her seizures and avoided seeing her as much as he could, which gave Hatty a very poor opinion of him.

  She was interested to observe the Abbé’s behaviour to the Earl. He treated Lord Elstow with a kind of scoffing affection, the derision shown by a younger brother to an elder who, though kind, is low in mental powers; rather, in fact, as Ned had behaved to his brother Tom. Lord Elstow, in his turn, submitted with unassuming mildness to this usage and seemed to defer to the Abbé’s opinion in most matters.

  It therefore came as a considerable surprise to Hatty when she heard
the following exchange take place between the two men (Hatty was an unwilling auditor; she had been choosing a volume, concealed from view in one of the bays of the library when the two men walked into the room, unaware of her presence, and their conversation was in process before she could declare herself):

  ‘Would you not think it an excellent thing, sir, if I were to marry your daughter Barbara?’

  Lord Elstow in his reply sounded exceedingly startled. ‘You? Marry Barbara? My dear fellow, no. No, indeed. What can have put such an idea into your head?’

  ‘It would be advisable for me to marry. To have a wife. Advantageous. And it would be an excellent thing for the young lady. Can you not see how unhappy she is here? She chafes. Married to me she would have more outlets. I know all her difficulties, I would be kind; I understand her very well. And her marriage to me would rid you of a problem.’

  ‘She is no problem,’ said Lord Elstow calmly. ‘She may very well remain here for the rest of her life. As to her marrying you – my dear fellow, that is out of the question. You are quite ineligible – hopelessly ineligible. Your family have disowned you and your political reputation is doubtful. What sort of future would the girl have with you? No, no, that would not do at all. Not at all! Marry the governess if you feel it is necessary for you to have a wife – she is a decent sort of girl, not bad-looking and respectable as to family – her mother was a Wisbech—’

  ‘The governess! I thank you, no! Besides, was there not some scandal with Camber?’

  ‘Oh, nothing that is not readily forgotten—’

  Hatty, trembling with rage and astonishment, here made her presence known by dropping a heavy volume loudly on the floor. There was an aghast silence and then the two men hastily left the library without waiting to see who their auditor had been. Hatty herself slipped away by the service door at the far end of the room, in order to avoid the possible awkwardness of meeting either of the men outside.