Amanda/Miranda

by Richard Peck

“It’s called a folly,” John Thorne said. “That temple thing. A folly, I suppose, because it serves no purpose.”

  She turned from his side, the moment shattered, and set a brisk pace toward the house.

  He caught up, sensing something had gone wrong and wondering why it mattered to him. It could only be her resemblance to Amanda that drew him. She was a servant, and he’d had his full share of servant girls before he’d fallen into Amanda’s web. Still, he tried to think of something to appease her.

  “You’ll be all right now,” he said at last when they reached the outbuildings. “He’ll be caught, my dad—”

  Miranda turned and looked suddenly up at him. “Why did you come back? After the war. Why did you come back to this place?” There was a challenge in the bold question.

  “I—I suppose it was my fate. I had a hundred plans, but when I was free, I came straight back. I guess it was my fate.”

  And mine, Miranda thought, wondering if she herself was going slightly mad.

  * * *

  When Miranda had closed the kitchen door against John Thorne, she felt close to fainting with fatigue and with another emotion, harder to recognize. The kitchen was quiet, but descending the stairs from the dining room were Mrs. Buckle and Mr. Finley, deep in conversation.

  “I left Her Ladyship with the impression that the old woman had taken sick,” Mrs. Buckle was saying.

  “And you were quite right,” the butler said. “For the present, I wish to spare the family the knowledge that old Thorne is back and very likely still within the grounds. It’s unfair that they should have visited upon them this—creature—of a past for which they have no responsibility.”

  “Ah, Mr. Finley,” the housekeeper declared, “when the family acquired this property, they little reckoned on the legacy of . . . depravity they fell heir to.”

  Mr. Finley nearly leaped to see Miranda there within hearing of their privileged conversation. “Miranda, at last! You have not done badly in these past hours, and you have shown your mettle. But unfortunately, Betty appears to be slacking her duties. You must see to her, and if there is nothing seriously wrong, you are to rout her out at once.”

  Mrs. Buckle directed Miranda to Betty’s rooms, high in the house. As Miranda negotiated all the flights and turnings, it was as if John Thorne’s gray eyes still followed her. She knew he wasn’t trusted among the servants. Perhaps it was his coarseness. Or the madness that stalked his family. But it was more likely John Thorne’s arrogant independence that vexed them all.

  It was only a show, Miranda decided, for what freedom did he possess? Then she thought of the gentle regret in his voice when he’d told her of his mad father. Nothing fitted about this John Thorne. And perhaps that was the greatest cause of his unpopularity.

  Near Betty’s door, a sharp, sour smell cut the mustiness of the attics. Betty lay across a disorderly bed, where she’d been very sick. Miranda dipped a towel into a pitcher of water and set about tidying up the girl.

  “What is it, Betty? The doctor is with Granny Thorne now. Shall I ask Mr. Finley to send for him?”

  “Wot? A doctor? He can’t prescribe nuffin for wot I got.”

  “What have you got, Betty?” Miranda asked.

  “Wot I’ve got is a little stranger comin’,” Betty muttered.

  “A baby, Betty? You?”

  “That’s right.” Betty sighed. “A baby and me.”

  * * *

  The night’s storm had kept her wakeful and tossing, and Amanda Whitwell was up at first light. She flung out of her bed and pulled her billowing nightgown around herself, drawing it in tightly at her narrow waist. Unquestionably, she’d taken off a few pounds.

  Amanda kept watch over her weight, for the new fashions called for wasplike waists and a swanlike line from bosom to hip. The day of the well-nourished English beauty had passed. Out with great lumps of girls like her friend Sybil Ward-Benedict, that monument to a robust appetite. Poor Sybil, Amanda thought. How unfashionable her ample thigh and jutting prow have grown to be.

  Amanda crossed the room to fix a rattling window. The windows were set in a great three-sided bay of carved stone that reminded her somehow of the bridge of an ocean liner. No matter that her ship seemed to have gone aground in a garden. And no matter that the only water in view was the mere. But instead of latching the window against the morning breeze, she pushed it open. Mist rose from the mere against the stone temple on the other shore. It struck Amanda as an ideal day for a walk.

  She turned to select something tweedy, then remembered her resolve not to leave her room until she had secured Miranda as her own maid instead of the beastly Buckle. Her mother was being tiresome about the new girl, claiming she needed more training. Amanda’s patience was drawing to an end. I shall have Miranda before the week is out or else, she thought. And I shall have that walk in any case.

  Amanda decided on a full Sybil Ward-Benedict breakfast, from kippers to scones, and rang for Buckle. She’d turned away from the window just as John Thorne and Miranda stepped out together from the grove. Amanda would have forgotten her breakfast plans had she seen them, brushing against one another, lingering to look out across the mere. Amanda would have thrown the tantrum of all tantrums. But she saw nothing, for Mrs. Buckle entered with the usual morning tea tray.

  Not noticing that the woman was distracted, Amanda said, “Oh, Buckle, I’m famished! Have a bit of everything from the sideboard sent up.”

  Mrs. Buckle blinked at this change of tack.

  “And, Buckle, if we must go up to London in November, I shall need new clothes. But oughtn’t we to salvage some of my older things as well?”

  “Indeed, miss,” the housekeeper said with lowered eyes.

  “I might get another wearing out of this gray crepe, but just see where the lining has pulled away. A job for Granny Thorne. Here, take it to her.”

  “Oh, Miss Amanda, I don’t think—”

  “Do take it, and see that Granny gets it.”

  After a hearty breakfast Amanda pulled a tweed coat and skirt from her wardrobe, and a small three-cornered hat. Soon now she’d have a proper maid to lay out her clothes. With a wool scarf wound around her neck, she crept with exaggerated care past her mother’s door. She left the house through a long window in the morning room because that was how John Thorne entered when he came to her by night.

  Amanda ran down the terrace steps and across the lawn, making for the mere. Circling it in her squishing shoes, she sat on the great stone slab near the temple and recalled that here, last June in Coronation Week, John Thorne had first made love to her.

  Rising, she walked past the temple along a broad green sweep between top-heavy rhododendrons. At the end was a round garden, almost hidden, where she’d played as a child. The end of the world, it had seemed to her then. In the secluded garden stood a ring of stone monuments carved as griffins, leopards, tigers. Lingering in the center of the circle, she recalled a childhood lonelier than it had needed to be because of her difficult ways.

  Behind her a stone leopard seemed to move—so silently that Amanda sensed nothing. The leopard kept to its plinth, but from behind it Bart Thorne stepped.

  He’d crouched all night beneath the rock at the mere’s edge and had crept all morning among the rhododendrons. He’d known a moment of clarity toward dawn, realizing he was back on his own land again. But now he was confused. The patchwork of his farmed land had vanished, his fields overgrown, his fences unmended.

  Bart Thorne saw his land was under an evil spell. Even the woman who sat in his mother’s place by the cottage fire was a witch. This crone had used her unspeakable powers to rob him of everything.

  Bart Thorne began to move forward. He was standing behind Amanda before she felt his presence. To him she was some young hussy, giving herself airs on his hard-won acres. His knobby hands closed over the ends of her wool scarf.

  Amanda’s head jerked suddenly back. She screamed soundlessly as the scarf cut off her breath. She felt not
hing but surprise until the day turned black.

  * * *

  Amanda drifted between nightmare and nothingness. At times all the stone creatures came alive, lunging at one another in an epic battle. At other times she was drowsing in her bed. Whispered voices came and went. At still other times she cried out in panic. Then cool cloths were pressed to her forehead.

  It was evening when she awoke. On one side of the bed sat her mother, and on the other side Miranda, very proper in a white wisp of a cap and no apron. Very much like a lady’s maid. John Thorne stood at the foot of the bed, cap in hand. His unruly hair was burnished by lamplight. The scene shifted again and Sir Timothy was there beside her. Then someone was urging a curved straw between her lips. It was Buckle.

  * * *

  The London newspapers broke the story of the attack on Amanda Whitwell on an otherwise unremarkable Monday morning in September 1911:

  KNIGHT’S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

  ESCAPES DEATH AT LUNATIC’S HAND

  Amanda, daughter of Sir Timothy and Lady Eleanor Whitwell of Charles Street, London, and Whitwell Hall, Isle of Wight, was set upon last Saturday by an escaped inmate of St. Luke’s Asylum in Newport. Miss Whitwell, taking a solitary stroll in the grounds of Whitwell Hall, was surprised by the man, identified as Bart Thorne. He had all but strangled Miss Whitwell with her own woolen scarf when her rescuer interrupted the assault.

  The hero was John Thorne, the son of the attacker and a retainer of the Whitwell family, who was searching the grounds for his father at the time. The two men struggled over the unconscious Miss Whitwell, the lunatic turning his attack on his own son. At length the elder Thorne suffered an apparent heart attack, staggered into a shallow lake, and fell dead. A forthcoming inquest is expected to return no verdict against John Thorne, who was forced to defend his master’s daughter.

  It has been learned that Miss Whitwell is suffering severely from shock and has not fully regained consciousness.

  One afternoon when Amanda awoke, her mind was utterly clear, and she sat bolt upright. She very nearly threw her legs over the side of the bed before she saw Gregory Forrest sitting there.

  “My darling,” Gregory said, reaching for her.

  To forestall his embrace, Amanda took his hand. “Oh, Gregory,” she said in annoyance, “I must have overslept.”

  At that he grinned. “It’s my own Amanda, restored in spirit.”

  “Account for all this, Gregory! Whatever are you doing unchaperoned in my bedroom? I’m in an awful muddle, and I’ve had the most extraordinary dreams. Gregory, how long have I been drifting in this bed?”

  “A week. Ten days.”

  “Good Lord! Then I’ve been ill. I remember . . .”

  “Yes? What, darling?”

  “I remember . . . the sculpture garden. It was lovely there. Then something very strange happened. Something—” Amanda tightened her grasp on his hand.

  Then Gregory told Amanda the story of Bart Thorne—of whom she’d known nothing—as it had been pieced together by his son, by Finley, and by the authorities. She lay very still against the pillows, listening.

  “Then John killed his own father to save me,” she said.

  “The man was old and sick, Amanda. As a result of the fight, he had a seizure and died. You’re not to think you had any responsibility.”

  “John saved my life,” Amanda said, as if she were in the room alone. But then she turned to Gregory and smiled. “Gregory, it took this to bring me to my senses. I’ve been foolish and willful, and I’ve made you miserable.”

  “Amanda, don’t. It’s enough for me to see you well again.”

  “You sat with me when I was unconscious?”

  “Yes. There was always someone with you. You looked like Sleeping Beauty waiting for her kiss.”

  “You may give it to me now.” But Gregory Forrest was already out of his chair and enfolding her in his arms. She returned his kisses with abandon. Her eyes shut, she thought of John Thorne and tightened her grasp on Gregory’s shoulders. Even then she wondered how long the news of her recovery would take to reach Smuggler’s Cottage.

  “I owe a great debt to Thorne,” she said when Gregory released her. “I must thank him. Perhaps a note. Bring me my writing materials, will you?”

  While Gregory rummaged in the desk, Amanda ran a hand through her tangled hair. She must look a fright. If Gregory found her desirable at this moment, then love was blind indeed. In Gregory’s case, she decided, it might have to be a great deal more blind in the future, and deaf. For there was no doubt in Amanda’s mind that Thorne’s sacrifice of his own father had bound them together in some final way. Up till now, Gregory had been only an inconvenience. That was over. Now he’d be very convenient indeed. Her last doubts fell away. From now on she would use every device—and everybody—to have John Thorne.

  When she’d finished her note, she handed it to Gregory. “Be an angel and deliver this to Thorne yourself. Servants are so unreliable.”

  The note inside the sealed envelope was to the point:

  John,

  Come to me tonight.

  A.

  MIRANDA SPEAKS

  5

  My mother taught me to serve but not to survive. And so I was less prepared to be a servant than she foresaw. I came to Whitwell Hall expecting to remain there all my life. I needed to succeed, for I had no home to go back to if I failed. I remained seven months.

  Later, I had reason to remember my first day and my strange encounter with the Wisewoman. She spoke of husbands and marriages, death and rebirth, and if it hadn’t been for the coin she gave me—an American Indianhead penny—I might have forgotten her words. But I carried it with me as something of my own. Even after I put on the quiet gray frock of Miss Amanda Whitwell’s lady’s maid, the coin was forever somewhere on my person.

  As I think back, my life at Whitwell Hall truly began on that Saturday morning when I answered a thumping at the yard door. John Thorne stood there, cradling Miss Amanda in his arms. He thrust her at me, and I staggered, for she was as heavy as I. Then he was gone, but I saw the marks on Miss Amanda’s neck and knew the madman had struck again.

  Mrs. Buckle and I carried her to her room and called Lady Eleanor. John Thorne returned to the mere and brought his father’s body to shore. The drive filled with policemen, and the household was caught up in chaos. It was then that Her Ladyship told me I was to be Miss Amanda’s own maid, and my duties began while she still lay quiet in her bed.

  I had my work cut out for me just putting her wardrobe to rights. She had enough clothes for a whole village of young women, and I had many an excuse to bring Granny Thorne a basket of mending or a hem to turn. She always greeted me warmly and was as sane as her son was mad. She was resigned to his death, saying his mind had long since died. I found myself listening for any mention she might make of her grandson. But John Thorne never arose in her conversation.

  Visitors gathered at Miss Amanda’s bedside in those early days. Miss Ward-Benedict came at once, and stayed on, but the visitor who interested me most was Mr. Gregory Forrest. He was there within hours of reading the newspaper account, and it was hard work to persuade him to leave her, even for meals.

  I suppose I had been in love with Gregory Forrest from the day I encountered him in the front hall. But it was an idolizing love, distant and make-believe, because of the difference in our stations in life. He spoke to me with great kindness. I attributed this to my resemblance to Miss Amanda, which clearly interested him, though it unnerved me severely. For all his kindness, he remained in my mind a storybook figure. I couldn’t believe Miss Amanda didn’t love him.

  * * *

  To my surprise, Mr. Finley granted me a half day off at the end of my first week, as a reward for my services. Betty was to have a half day as well, to keep me company, and I dreaded an afternoon with her. In my innocence, I thought she’d be desperate about her future and the future of her child. Clearly, her days at Whitwell Hall were numbered.
<
br />   But when we met to go out, she was all smiles. She wore a decent coat and an extraordinary hat, its brim up in front and skewered with a peacock feather. We set off down the road to Ventnor. “We’ll skate round the shops and take our tea at the hotel,” she said. “Did you bring money?” I’d brought twenty of my thirty shillings, and suddenly my heart was singing with freedom.

  I’d have lingered before every shop window in Ventnor, but Betty only slowed our pace outside Sampson & Son, Drapers. We tarried at the window until a tall, very pale man well past his first youth stepped out. His dark suit hung on his gangling frame, and he appeared to be lathering his hands with imaginary soap.

  Clearly, Betty knew him. He addressed her with nervous excitement as “Miss Prowse,” and I saw then we’d been heading for Sampson & Son, Drapers all along.

  Betty introduced us. He was Hubert Sampson, the son of the long-deceased founder. Presently he escorted us through the shop and up a flight of stairs to a small cluttered parlor above. Before the fire sat an enormous woman who looked up in annoyance.

  “Mother!” Mr. Sampson boomed. “Just see who I noticed passing the shop!”

  She could hardly favor us with a look while Mr. Sampson tried gamely to cover her coldness with his own geniality. “Surely you’ll both stop for tea with us,” he said.

  At that Mrs. Sampson said, “It’s too early by far for tea, Hubert. I won’t have the maid hurried.” She gave Betty a look meant to remind her that she was a servant herself.

  Mr. Sampson seemed to wither, but there was defiance in his eye, for he was taken with Betty. I thought the old woman clinging to her bachelor son might be going about it all the wrong way.

  I had no experience of the sort of scheming Betty was up to. I never once thought Mr. Sampson was the father of her unborn child. He was nobody’s idea of a seducer, and I was sure he knew nothing about the child. Yet I hoped that he would marry Betty despite everything—and soon.

  When we rose to leave, some time after we should have, I had little desire for tea, but Betty dragged me along to the hotel. A waiter as icy as Mr. Finley himself bowed us to a table. And before the bread and butter and tea could be brought, Betty began again to bubble. “Of course, Miranda, he’s miles above me and the . . . circumstances is difficult. But I think he fancies me, don’t you? It’s orful I’m not better spoken. But I was brought up in the orphanage. And he’s ever such a gentleman. I don’t know wot he sees in me, but I do need him.” Betty struggled with herself, and her eyes glistened.