by Joan Smith
“We ran aground near Newhaven,” Gwen said. “It means we got stuck on the bottom of the ocean, on a sandbar.”
“Hush, now, you are only to tell the good things,” Menrod warned, in a playful way. “Your aunt might be interested to hear how you both conquered your mal de mer.”
I was more interested to hear the foreign phrases dropping from his lips, indicating some lack of ease.
“We went to church every Sunday,” Gwen offered. “The weekend Uncle went to London, Miss Enberg took us. She is staying in Brighton till her brother takes her back to India.”
“Miss Enberg is the lady who looked after the children in India last year,” Menrod mentioned.
“Uncle thinks she looked like you, Auntie, but I don’t think she does,” Gwen said, scrutinizing my face for a similarity. “She’s younger.”
“Only the good things, if you please,” I reminded her.
“We took Miss Enberg out on our ship,” Ralph said, in a proprietary way. “She wants to get her sea legs back, before she has to go to India.”
“Everett’s men did a good job on the roof, I trust?” Menrod asked. “Did they think to clean the chimney while they were about it? That was the reason for all the catastrophe.”
“They did, and a large bird’s nest was in it,” Mama told him. “It must have been made last summer when we were not using the grate. There were no birds or eggs in it. It was last fall the chimney took to smoking so dreadfully.”
“Would you care for a cup of tea?” I asked the company.
This was greeted with enthusiasm by everyone. “I’ll step outside and look at the new thatching while it is being made, if you will excuse me a moment, ladies,” Menrod said.
I thought he might invite me to go with him, to allow a few private words, but he did not. There was some constraint in the conversation, after the month’s interval.
“So you enjoyed your visit,” Mama said, smiling tenderly on the children. “Did you have lots of sweets, Gwen?”
“We had ices on the Steyne three times. Mrs. Livingstone showed us where the stall is. She lives there.”
“Mrs. Livingstone?” Mama asked, her ears perking at the familiar name. “You never mean she was there!”
“Yes, she lives in Promenade Grove.”
“Did you go to visit her?” Mama asked, scandalized.
“No, we met her sometimes on the Steyne.”
Mama and I exchanged a meaningful look. It was not necessary, or possible, to say anything. Our minds were alike enough that we were both revolted to hear Menrod had presented his mistress to his charges. I should have pressed on to win custody of the children. This was wretched behavior on his part. I did not know what I would say, when he returned.
As we still had the young audience to consider, what I said was, “I am surprised to see you today, Menrod. Is this not the day of the hearing in Chancery?”
“No, it has been delayed a week. Gwen mentioned that I was in London last weekend. When I got news of the delay, I went to try to push it forward on schedule, but a couple of the magistrates have the flu, and all cases are put back. Rather than wait so long at Brighton, we decided to come home and wait here.”
“I didn’t want to come home,” Ralph said clearly, and received a repressive stare from his uncle.
“The children are missing their ponies,” he added.
“I love Brighton,” Gwen insisted. “It was Uncle Menrod who wanted to come home.”
His color was high, his manner flustered. I was not surprised to hear him say, “Soyez sages’’ to the children. Remembering the brass knocker reinstalled on Mrs. Livingstone’s door, I wondered if she had been sent ahead before he heard of the delay of the case.
“No doubt there was a good reason your uncle wanted to return to the country, when the Season is in full swing in London. I would have thought you would prefer to wait out the week in the city.”
Mrs. Pudge came in with the tea tray, to save him from inventing some excuse. “I didn’t expect you today, my dears, or I would have had something special made up for you,” she told the children. “There’s half a dozen of my little tarts left from yesterday. Try some of them.”
The half dozen tarts disappeared rapidly. As soon as they were gone, the children decided they would go out to the swing. “Don’t forget the basket in the carriage, Uncle,” Gwen called as she left.
We looked to learn what the basket might contain. It sounded like a gift, some fruit or fowl from the Manor. We were not accustomed to such perquisites.
“I’ll get it now,” he said. “May I speak to you a moment in private first, Mrs. Harris?” he said to my mother.
My curiosity grew higher. What on earth could be in the basket, that required a private word with Mama? It was more usual for him to seek me out for any private matter, as he knew she was not at ease with him. He could surely see how she stared in consternation at his suggestion.
“I shall be in the conservatory when you are through,” I said.
The conservatory gave me a view of the walk to the stable, where the basket would have to he picked up. For five minutes I stood looking out the window, hidden by the screen of cascading ivies, but Menrod did not pass by. My mind was seething with conjecture.
In the end, I could think of nothing else but that he was going to marry Mrs. Livingstone. He was embarrassed to tell me to my face, and was telling my mother, explaining to her the details. That would be why the children had met her a few times, to see how they all went along together.
Before I saw Menrod, I spotted Gwen running up from the stable with the basket. She gave it to him, and he turned toward my conservatory, planning to enter by that door, where he knew he would find me alone. Was it a plant he had got for me?
At the next instant, Mama was at the other door, staring as though she had run mad. “Wendy, I cannot believe it. He wants to get married! What do you think of that?”
“I am not surprised. I half suspected as much,” I said, my voice loud and clear, my insides shaking.
“Mrs. Livingstone right there in Brighton, seeing him every day. And now he has brought the hussy back here. I am sure I did not say a word that made any sense. He is going to speak to you now. Say whatever you think is best, Wendy,” she told me, then fled as the door from the outside opened to permit Menrod to enter.
I was still in confusion as to what the basket had to do with it. It was a large straw affair, with a lid over it. He opened the lid, to reveal Lady and a litter of six kittens, four black, one white, and one spotted.
“Everett would approve of this one,” he said, laughing. “Six at a crack. He’d fill up his nursery in no time. So did my Tom approve of her, it seems. I doubt the termagant will. Pretty little things, aren’t they?” he asked, lifting the white kitten in his hand to admire it.
“All that caterwauling you were subjected to was worth it. How can making love be wrong, when such beauty results? A baby anything is always beautiful. A kind of miracle, really.”
“Where did you find them?” I asked, hardly listening. I was too overwhelmed at Mama’s news.
“In the hayloft at the Manor. They’re a week or so old, I think. Their eyes are all opened. The kittens are becoming frisky. Lady eloped on you, made a runaway match of it. I like to think they did it legally, over the anvil at the smitty’s shop in Reading. Why should Gretna Green get all our business?”
He was in a frivolous mood, as becomes a groom-to-be. I tried to quell down my rage, to be polite. “I’ll give the basket to Mrs. Pudge,” I offered. Her steps were heard, running toward us.
“Is it true what the kiddies told me? She’s come home?” she asked, running breathless through the door, her topknot completely tumbled to the side of her head.
“Like the human race, she has decided to increase and multiply and fill the earth,” Menrod said, handing her the basket and the one kitten he held in his hand.
She accepted the kitten, held it up till it was about a foot from her
nose. “If that isn’t a caution!” she exclaimed. “The image of Lady. Where is her mama?”
She rooted in the basket for the dame, who meowed proudly at her litter. “You’re a bad girl. Yes, you are,” Mrs. Pudge said, but there was no rancor in her. She was won over by the happy family. “What is to be done—six new mouths to feed, and us with not but a quart of milk in the pantry. Pudge!” She turned to flap from the room, then came back to thank Menrod very cordially.
“Here I was afraid she would break my teeth in my mouth, strike me in the hinder parts, purge me with hyssop, and perform those other cordialities proposed against us sinners in her favorite book.” He stopped talking, looked at me closely. “What’s the matter?” he asked suddenly.
“Nothing.”
“When I left, you were ready to blossom. I even fed you with tepid tea before leaving. You ought to be in bloom by now, instead of...”
“Do I look so hagged?”
“No, you look—vulnerable,” he answered, choosing his word with care. “Not so vivacious and capable as I have been remembering you. The setting is not to blame. I most often thought of you here, watering pot in hand, chastising the greenery.”
“Menrod, about Mrs. Livingstone,” I said, cutting into his speech. It was not the sort of introduction I expected to his announcement. His manner was too intimate. There was admiration in the eyes observing me. Oh, if he was going to marry a nobody, why couldn’t it be me?
“Did that curst Gwen tell you we met her at Brighton?”
“She mentioned it.”
“She is there for the Season, with her new patron. Lord Havergal has her under his protection. We met her twice on the Steyne. It was impossible to cut her. We were too good friends for that, in the past. We chatted for five minutes—that’s all. After the second meeting, I was careful to change our hour for walking there.”
“I thought—I thought she was back here,” I said, rapidly revising my intended utterance, as I realized what misunderstanding had occurred. “The shutters are off the brick house.”
“You cannot have thought I sent her back here, at such a time! It has been rented to a doctor from Brighton, a fellow I met, who was moving to the neighborhood. He tended Ralph when he had a bout of sniffles. Nothing serious. But about Mrs. Livingstone —naturally that part of my past must bother you.”
Why should it bother me unless... I had been correct all along. He had gone to Brighton to be cured of hating me, and the cure had not taken.
"There never was a string of ladies, stabled across the country, as you accused me of having. It is your friend Everett who indulges in such excesses. I never had but one at a time, and often none.”
“For how many hours?” I asked, laughing for joy.
"Weeks at a time. Even months. Well you know yourself how often I ever visited Mrs. Livingstone. She was more a Platonic friend than anything else. Practically.”
“You poor deprived creature! Here I have gone twenty-five years without a single lover.”
“It’s time we did something about that,” he said, sweeping me into his arms. I had a sensation—it could only have been a memory—of the sweet aroma of the gardenia, heady and exciting, almost intoxicating in its richness, surrounding me, there in the greenhouse. It was a fleeting impression, soon lost in stronger sensations as I felt the bruising pressure of his lips, the close clutch of his arms around me, the increased beat of my heart, and his against it. It was a violent, almost a frightening first brush with love, but his words, and his eyes, were gentle when he released me.
"That will teach you to make fun of me,” he said. “Twenty-five years, eh? We have got a lot of catching up to do.”
“There is no hurry,” I said. My senses wanted a respite.
“I’ve got the whole day free. We can take our time.” He kissed me again, with enough ardor to frighten me half to death, and enough gentleness to guide me through the hazardous undertaking.
All good things must come to an end. I reluctantly detached myself from his arms. “Did I tell you I got a gardenia?” I asked, to draw his attention to another direction.
“You are branching out from weeds, are you? I hope this doesn’t mean you have been making up to that botanist from Reading during my absence.”
“I still have not met him. The gardenia died, and it was very pretty, too.”
He looked at the brown petals, sitting in the pot. “A berry is forming. See? The flower must wither, to make way for the fruit. More flowers will come if you take care of it.”
“I will. I am planning a more adventurous garden in the future.”
“Leave plenty of time to tend your Menrod cactus. We bloom too, if properly nurtured.”
He behaved more like a clinging ivy than a prickly cactus. “Where do you want to be married, here or in London?” he asked, drawing my arm around his waist. “We’ll have to be in the city next week for the hearing. We could introduce you then, take in the remainder of the Season, if you like.”
“What about the children?”
“I know you will want them with you. I have been at pains to trim Gwen into line and urge Ralph a little out of it. It was a sticky month, without you there to give me a hand. We had many a bout of tears, and threats she would run home to Auntie Harris, but I laid down some hard ground-rules, and she is shaping up. The job is by no means done, mind you. We must set our course, and sail it together. She is quick to find out our weaknesses. I won’t give in to her against your wishes, and vice versa. It is the only way to handle her. That Miss Enberg—not a clever woman. Hardly a woman at all, in fact, but only a young girl, which is perhaps how Gwen got so far out of line.”
“Our being at odds put her in a good position. She was quick to wiggle through any little wedge between us.”
“United we stand, as the Americans say. I personally don’t intend to allow an inch between you and me, at any time. I am not speaking only about Gwen and her tricks, either. She is so forward she’ll be married within a fortnight. She very nearly got an offer from Prinny last month. Truly, though, we won’t be saddled with her forever.”
“We’ll be losing Ralph long before that, when he goes off to school. The house will seem strange and empty without them.”
“Devil a bit of it. We’ll have half a dozen of our own by then. Everett is not the only one who appreciates your breeding potential. Which brings us back to my first question—when and where shall we be married?”
“I would like to have it done in my father’s old church, with Reverend Miles officiating. He would like to do it, and Mama will not want to go all the way to London. She dislikes travel.”
“I hope you don’t. There are so many things I want to show you—mountains and rivers and temples. It would be the deuce of a bother to have them hauled to Reading. I’ll drop by now and see Miles. If we skip the banns and use a license, we could be married before we have to go to London. Any objections?”
“It doesn’t leave me much time to prepare my bridal clothes...”
“Althea did it up in a week. If I know anything, her bridal clothes will be ten times as fine and as numerous as yours. Couldn’t you just buy a new shawl, or something, and leave the rest of it to get in London? Not that I am anxious for your company, you understand! But if you refuse, I shall drag you into Reading and have the smitty perform the nuptials, as he did for Lady and Tom.”
I sensed the eagerness, amounting almost to anxiety, beneath the frivolous words. “A pity the cure in Brighton did not take, Menrod. I know you went to cure yourself of liking me, but you know absence makes the heart grow fonder as often as it puts out of mind what is out of sight. Had you remained here, you would be tired of me by now.”
“I hope you don’t think that is why I went!” he exclaimed.
“Wasn’t it?”
“Certainly not! You told me you would not share a roof with Gwen, after her performance at the ball. I went to bring her to heel so we could begin our marriage with some semblance of peace and ord
er. Bad enough to have to start off with Peter’s children, without having one of them driving us to distraction with her tantrums. I wanted to get her away from all her spoilers. I thought you understood that. I would have been more explicit, but you remember your mother chose that one morning I left to bear us company. Then Everett landed in just as we were about to have a moment alone at the door. Gwendolyn, is that really what you thought?” he asked, frowning.
“You did tell Mama the only reason Peter married my sister was because he found himself alone in the country, with no decent company.”
“What have Peter and Hettie to do with us? He was a green boy, had never been anywhere. I have been half way around the world, sampling, by sight! the ladies of all the countries. I know what I am doing, know what I want, and I want you. Is that why my flower has wilted?” he asked, drawing a finger along my cheek. He looked genuinely sorry.
“I would not have troubled you so for worlds. I thought you knew, as surely as I knew you had had the misfortune to fall in love with me, that I couldn’t live without you. If Peter had the temerity to say it to me, I guess I can use the overblown phrase too. I’ll make it up to you. What can I do?”
“I’ll have a lifetime to pay you back. It would be nice if Mama could be happy too. The box stairs...”
“I knew you wouldn’t make it easy for me! Even—to show the depths of my chagrin—I will allow the desecration of this gem of Elizabethan architecture. The box stairs will be renovated, temporarily, for the duration of your mother’s stay here. We’ll put the wall panels back on as soon as she is through with the cottage, however.”
“She kept the brass railings, and the panels with the gilded... Were the white panels and gilt roses not included?” I asked, as he looked unhappy. “I was very miserable while you were gone, knowing you were in Brighton with Mrs. Livingstone.”
“Here I have been blaming Hettie for Gwen’s tricks! She inherited them from you! Well, perhaps if you ask me very nicely.”
“She is a poor widow,” I pointed out, with an abject face. “If Papa were alive, he would let her have them.”
