Jane Fairfax

by Joan Aiken

  “Also I am afraid that you will find this house not near so comfortable when you return. You will soon see why! But I am ever and always your devoted Friend. I hope you will come back soon. I embrace you …”

  And indeed, not long after, the Campbells accepted a friendly offer from Mr Weston, who had driven his carriage down to Highbury with a load of furnishings for the new house, and was now about to return to London with plenty of empty space.

  “I can just as well take you as not,” he told Jane comfortably. “Colonel Campbell perfectly approves, and we can have a fine chat all the way up to town.”

  Which they did, Mr Weston being a cheerful, garrulous man, very ready to discuss the engagement of Isabella Woodhouse to John Knightley — “Mr Woodhouse has said they must wait at least four years before the wedding takes place. But Miss Taylor, a charming woman of great sagacity and discernment, thinks they may whittle it down to three; after all, poor John Knightley is nearly twenty-seven; he will be one-and-thirty before he is married. A man should marry young, in my opinion.” They talked about the new young lady pupil at Mrs Goddard’s school: “She is a very pretty little thing; nobody knows who her family may be; the Cox girls think it the most romantic business, and that she must be a princess incognita.” And, of course, they talked about his son Frank, a subject upon which Mr Weston was at all times happy to descant at boundless length: “Such a fine, handsome, cheerful boy, and not in the least spoiled, though the treatment he receives from that Churchill woman would, you would think, be enough to turn the head of any boy. Sometimes they are so amazingly liberal, allow him the least thing he asks for; and then, at other times, Mrs Churchill is downright tyrannical, and will not permit him even to see his friend Thomas Braithwaite or leave the house for so much as half an hour. Her temper is shockingly unreliable.”

  “So I have heard Mrs Campbell say,” agreed Jane. “It must be very difficult living with such an unreasonable person.”

  “Ay, but it is true that Mrs Churchill suffers from wretched health and is often in quite severe pain; some of her variations of temper must be put down to that.”

  And the same, Jane supposed, might be said of Colonel Campbell, who experienced frequent pain from his head-wound, and his lame leg, besides the exasperation of his deafness; she wondered how he was managing to put up with his mother-in-law.

  Mrs Fitzroy had been a Despenser, as she lost no time in informing any new acquaintance considered worthy of the honour; one of her ancestors had been the last Justiciary of England and another had been Earl of Winchester, executed in 1322 by Queen Isabella. “No doubt she had her reasons,” Colonel Campbell was in the habit of darkly muttering to himself when he chanced to overhear one of his mother-in-law’s not infrequent repetitions of this piece of history. Marriage to General Fitzroy had been a decided come-down in the social scale for Amelia Despenser, but sweetened by his five thousand a year, for the Despensers had by that time ceased to count wealth among their assets. Some fairly severe mismanagement of his funds while the General still lived had, however, reduced their income, and, after his death, which had occurred five years previously, his widow had, by her foolishly improvident and extravagant habits, so seriously diminished the remainder of her capital as to be obliged to throw herself on the good-nature of her son-in-law. Colonel Campbell, a man of rectitude and high principles, did not attempt to evade his duty by his wife’s mother; “but,” as he said to Cecelia, “I doubt if we shall have a single comfortable day in the house ever again. Our chance of a peaceful family life is quite cut up.” “Oh, I daresay we shall all rub along tolerably once Mamma has settled down,” Mrs Campbell replied calmly. “You will simply have to spend longer periods at your club.” Mrs Campbell herself, who made no hypocritical pretence of the least attachment to her mother, contrived to pass even more of her own time in charitable meetings with her various committees. Consequently the brunt of Mrs Fitzroy’s presence in the household as a fellow-inmate was felt by the children.

  Miss Winstable, of course, was an old ally of the lady, having been hired in the first place, long ago, as governess to Mrs Fitzroy’s own two daughters. She, naturally, was overjoyed at the arrival of her old employer in Manchester Square, and continually held her up to the girls as a pattern of all that was elegant and ladylike.

  “Such a manner! Such an air! Such dignity! Blood will tell! Why, the queen herself, girls, could not come near it.”

  Mrs Fitzroy was, in fact, remarkably elegant — “So she ought to be, considering the cost of her wardrobe,” sourly observed Colonel Campbell. Indeed, before Paris had been cut off by the Terror, Mrs Fitzroy had always paid regular annual trips to the capital of fashion, and never bought so much as a chemise anywhere else; after the regrettable events culminating in the death of the French king and queen she was obliged to intermit her visits, but still contrived to maintain a correspondence with persons in the front line of the mode, and so to receive drawings, patterns, snippets, and samples, long in advance of the general British public. She knew about shades such as terre d’Egypte, nègre, and gris-antique long before any of her acquaintance, and had participated in the shocking fashion of wearing a red velvet ribbon round the neck, symbolical of la Guillotine, to the outraged disgust of her daughter Cecelia who, fortunately, was out of England at the time, only informed of her mother’s conduct by the letters of scandalized friends.

  In appearance, Mrs Fitzroy resembled her daughter and granddaughter: she was thin to emaciation with a long nose, thin-lipped mouth, pale stone-coloured eyes set close together, and an exquisite pink-and-white complexion, most carefully tended with Gowland’s Lotion and a whole pharmacopoeia of other preparations. Her pale straw-coloured hair, tending to white, was much frizzed, and piled up in classic Grecian mode. Her clothes were the admiration of all the females in the household, excepting her own daughter.

  “It is singular that Mamma should be so v-very different in her t-tastes from Grandmamma,” observed Rachel to Jane. “If they were not so s-similar in feature, you would never b-believe they were related to one another.”

  Jane did not think it singular; she could quite comprehend how any daughter of Mrs Fitzroy might wish to be as different from her as possible — particularly a person of such intelligence and good sense as Mrs Campbell.

  Mrs Fitzroy, for her part, never let slip an opportunity for gentle denigration of poor Cecelia’s taste. “I am afraid — my daughter’s clothes — well! I believe she must have picked up her notion of fashion from some Corsican fisher-woman. Perhaps it is not too late to hope that I can instil some notion of propriety and good taste into my unfortunate granddaughter. But, how all circumstances combine against me … Her father — so uncouth, so abrupt! And this house — the furniture; indeed the building can hardly be said to be furnished at all. One might as well reside in a barn …”

  Mrs Fitzroy had, fortunately, brought a quantity of her own possessions with her, to improve the comfort of her apartments, making them, the Colonel said, more like some cursed Eastern bazaar than a habitation for humans. But unless obliged to do so, he hardly ever set foot within those doors.

  Mrs Fitzroy’s bedroom was a source of considerable grievance.

  She had, naturally, stipulated for a chamber with an adjoining room for her maid Fleury. The only practical solution to this request, in the view of Colonel Campbell, was to transfer the two children, who had adjacent rooms, to the rear of the house, and instal Mrs Fitzroy in the room previously occupied by Rachel; that of Jane, smaller, next door, was allocated to Fleury the maid.

  But Mrs Fitzroy found this accommodation shockingly inferior and did not hesitate to say so.

  “In front of the house, where I must hear all the noise of the street! No sun! Dark and cold! And why, pray, should I have a room smaller than the one assigned to that upstart Fairfax child? Why should not I be at the back?”

  “My dear madam, you yourself insisted on having your maid next door. You also have a sizeable powdering-closet.
Why should your maid sleep in one of the biggest and best chambers in the house?”

  The dispute was never resolved, and never would be. It sputtered on for weeks, months, finally years, exploding into open hostilities when relations were especially strained, conducted at other periods as a form of guerilla warfare, in sudden ambuscades, unexpected volleys of fire, or subterranean tunnellings. And it was the original cause, though there were, of course, many others, for Mrs Fitzroy’s fixed dislike of Jane.

  “So very odd to bring in a child from outside — such an atrocious mistake! — unknown origins, probably no better than they should be — Fairfax all very well, but Bates — what sort of a name was Bates? — child just what might be expected from such a mongrel background — encouraging Rachel to insubordination and all manner of foolish nonsense — music? of what importance, pray, was music? So long as a gal could accompany herself in a ballad or two — all that study far from desirable — Rachel’s arms deplorably thin, no benefit to be derived from displaying them in performance — the last thing she needed was to acquire a reputation as a bookish bluestocking — a totally different case from that other wretched girl who must of course earn her living —”

  Mrs Fitzroy saw no necessity for Jane’s continued residence with the Campbell family after her own arrival, and lost no opportunity for making this opinion audible. On the whole, this militated in Jane’s favour: Colonel Campbell so disliked his mother-in-law that her invincible, unceasing hostility towards Jane must necessarily restore and raise the latter in his favour. Former faults and imperfections, errors of encouraging Rachel’s insubordinate activities were overlooked or forgotten; the household drew together against the common foe. In fact, the Colonel was obliged to admit to his wife, “it was a lucky thing Rachel had her dear crony there so they could console one another when the old Termagant had been more than commonly devilish.”

  Here he maligned Mrs Fitzroy who could never, at any time, have been described as a termagant. Acid sweetness was her forte, trickled on to a victim drop by venomous drop.

  “My dear child! Turn around. Your petticoat! Your tucker! Whence had you that handkerchief? It is a disgrace. And your hair is out of curl. Do, I beg, stand up straighter — feet together when I am addressing you. Now let me hear you recite a hymn. Grace and manner are of the very first importance — pray make an attempt to look a trifle more like a young lady of breeding, and less like some dreadful little orphanage creature.”

  All these sentences delivered in a high, incisive carrying tone; unfortunately for Colonel Campbell, his deafness availed him not at all in this particular context, for Mrs Fitzroy’s voice was of the shrill, resonant kind that, as he complained “went through your head like a perditioned tuning-fork.” He could easily hear her, and her cursed fowl, three rooms away.

  The parrot, more properly a macaw, an evil-dispositioned bird, loved by none but its mistress, was kept, during the daytime, in the conservatory, an arrangement which soon led to more hostilities.

  To begin with, Mrs Fitzroy thought it very remiss, not to say odd, of her daughter, to use the conservatory merely as a music room.

  “The place is as bleak as a tennis-court! The one room in the house that might, with very little pains, have been made to support the aspect of a gentleman’s residence. Why, pray, have a conservatory if you do not propose to furnish it with blooms?”

  “It c-came with the house; it was th-there,” pointed out Rachel, her mother having, as usual, quitted the field with a vague and inattentive murmur relating to business elsewhere.

  Another and bitter grievance arose from the treatment of the macaw, who, suffering from surplus energy, since he was obliged to remain covered up in his mistress’s room all night, tended to shriek all day, most especially when the girls were practising on the piano. His volleys of clamorous squawks obliged them to drape a shawl over his cage to silence him while piano lessons or practice were in progress.

  Mrs Fitzroy was outraged when she discovered this.

  “My poor Mistic! Treated like a coal miner!”

  Nor did she see the necessity for locating the piano in the conservatory. It would be far better situated in one of the saloons.

  Mrs Fitzroy’s greatest, and most bitter grievance against Jane was one which must necessarily remain unvoiced. This was the superiority of Jane’s looks over those of her own granddaughter. Rachel, because of her long nose, patchy complexion, and close-set pale eyes, could never boast any pretension to beauty or even prettiness, despite the most careful attention to hair-dressing, countenance, and dress, although her eager, intelligent expression must always attract friendship and interest from those well-disposed or acute enough to remark it. — Whereas Jane was beginning to grow apace, doubtless because of the more healthful and spacious environment and more liberal regime and diet afforded her by the Campbells; her height seemed to increase weekly, her hair lost its lankness and became glossy, thick, and dark; her eyes were large, grey, and lustrous; her complexion, though it would always remain pale, was clear and fine; she was, above all, endowed with that quality of innate elegance which Mrs Fitzroy laboured so unremittingly to instil into her own grandchild. And, from observation of Mrs Fitzroy (who, with all her faults, must be acknowledged a model of good taste) Jane could not but help acquire greater grace, greater elegance.

  “Your grandmamma has such a way of wearing her clothes,” Jane observed to Rachel. “Disagreeable though she is, one cannot help admiring her. Even a simple twist of gauze is given a clever, fashionable air by the way she adjusts it.”

  “B-but all to what p-purpose?” objected Rachel, who was imbued already with many of her mother’s republican and utilitarian sentiments.

  “It is simply an art in itself — like your drawing.”

  Rachel drew as naturally as a bird sings; and, from long practice, had acquired a startling ability to catch a likeness.

  “Yes; but my art is for something; I should like to become a political cartoonist — like Gillray or Rowlandson.”

  “For mercy’s sake, never let your grandmother hear that! She would forbid you ever to take a pencil in your hand again.”

  Rachel sighed, leafing nostalgically through the pages of a portfolio filled with portraits.

  “Which is Sam, and which is Matt?”

  “That one is Matt — with the longer hair. Here is Sam, playing the flute; that is Matt again … I am so s-sorry you d-did not meet them. They were mighty curious to m-meet you, after all that I had t-told them about you. I wish they might ever come back! But how can they, now Granny Fitzroy is here? — There is Frank Churchill — the one holding the book.”

  Frank Churchill, also, had left London to return to his school in Yorkshire, and was not expected to reappear until midsummer, at which time the Churchills sometimes hired a house in Richmond or Twickenham.

  “B-but by then, I think,” said Rachel, “we s-shall not be here. P-Papa said s-something about going to the s-seaside.”

  “The seaside!” Jane had never been to the sea.

  Rachel chuckled. “I th-think he hopes to leave G-Grandmamma behind.”

  Before the family removal to the seaside, however, occurred what Jane would ever after think of as the bracelet affair.

  It began when Mrs Fitzroy, animadverting disparagingly on Rachel’s untended apparel and appearance, advised that her granddaughter should have a maid of her own to look after her.

  “Soon she will be ten, Cecelia! It is high time she took more care of her toilet.”

  “Do you really think so, Mamma? I should hardly have considered it necessary. However, if you insist …”

  Mrs Fitzroy did insist. Where money was to be spent by some other individual, her ideas were still on a lavish scale. And, to the amusement of Jane and Rachel, a tiny personal maid was forthwith engaged, by name Sukey, aged thirteen, whose duties consisted solely of ministering to the two young ladies, tending their hair, stockings, and nails, making certain that they did not walk abroad with p
etticoat frills unhemmed, cutting their curl-papers, mending their laces, cleaning their gloves, collecting lemon peel to soften their fingertips, and preparing clove-oranges to sweeten their linen-drawers. Sukey and her two young mistresses were soon on the very best of terms, she told them about her large impoverished family in Spitalfields, and they enlisted her as an ally in many of their activities.

  Unfortunately, however, not many months after Sukey’s installation in the household, many small articles began to disappear: fans, beads, feather ornaments, pins, scissors, girdles, silk stockings, and, last and most valuable, a pearl and opal bracelet belonging to Mrs Fitzroy.

  Mrs Fitzroy set great store by her jewellery. From her diamonds, lodged in the bank, down to the humblest pin, they were continually enumerated, thought about, cleaned, re-set and exulted over; when this loss was discovered, she raised a great outcry.

  “General Fitzroy had given it to her upon their betrothal; it had the very deepest sentimental value to her — besides its intrinsic one, which was not inconsiderable; she did not wish to cast suspicion — but what was one to think?”

  Fleury, Mrs Fitzroy’s maid, went about with a very lowering aspect. This was not hard for her, since she was at all times a lean, dour, sallow, black-avised creature with not a good word to say to any member of the household except her mistress and the macaw, which she tended solicitously. After the bracelet’s loss had been discovered and broadcast, Fleury spent whole days in a restless pacing of the house, peering in the most unlikely spots, under dish-covers, behind clocks, in coal-scuttles, with her lips pressed savagely together as if she accused the whole family of having conspired to steal her mistress’s treasure.