Mistress of My Fate

by Hallie Rubenhold

  Long before Georgie’s appearance, St. John had ordered the conversion of several rooms in the attic for the purpose of creating a nursery. He took great pleasure in this and in commissioning the furniture: acquiring the cot and tallboys and a nursing chair. During my period of lying-in, the house on Park Street was a scene of familial bliss. My keeper hovered frequently beside the infant’s cot, begging like a young girl for permission to lift the boy. His face beamed with wonder as he admired the child’s wide blue eyes and dark patch of hair. At first, I must confess that Georgie’s appearance caused me some concern, for there was a good deal of Allenham imprinted upon him, but doting adults see only what they wish to in a child’s features; and where I recognized my beloved, St. John recognized only himself.

  During that month, visitors bearing well wishes came and went regularly. To be sure, I drank so much caudle that by mid-September I could scarcely tolerate the sickly, spiced taste of it. It was offered along with seed cake to all of my lady callers, each of whom wished to admire and coo over the head of my angelic Georgie.

  At first I found it curious that Lady Lade, who had the least feminine charms of any woman of my acquaintance, seemed most possessed by the little infant. She, more than any of my companions, fussed and bustled about him, rocking him in her arms while mimicking his yawns and burbles. This attention from the swaggering woman, who seemed more devoted to horses and swearing, surprised me immensely.

  “Ho,” she exclaimed as she attempted to silence his wails with some gentle bouncing, “he has a pair of lusty lungs, just like my Jemima.”

  I turned to her with a puzzled expression.

  “Why, in all these months I have never once heard your ladyship mention a daughter.”

  “I had two. And a son. He is in the army, I know not where.”

  The room, in which sat Mrs. Mahon, Miss Greenhill and Miss Caroline Ponsonby, fell suddenly quiet.

  “And they are Sir John’s children?” I enquired with some hesitation. The others watched me closely, knowing that I had ventured on to precarious ground.

  “Of course not,” she snapped, and then laughed. “Too much damned pox in my veins to bear him a child. I bore the others when I was young. The boy, Billy, was named after his father. Raised by his relations in Ireland. The girls, twins, were by that devil John Rann, who had my maidenhead when I was fourteen. One is married to a goldsmith, and Jemima is in St. Marylebone’s churchyard.”

  “Oh,” said I, meekly, ashamed to have raised the matter, “how unfortunate.”

  “No,” came her quick reply. “Children come and go, that is the way of things. You think I desired those three? Why, I could not get them out of me! I took rue and ergot and pennyroyal. I had my cold baths. Still they stayed fixed. The others were got rid of with more ease.”

  I attempted to disguise my shock at her revelation, though I am not certain I was so successful.

  “Hooper’s Female Pills. They are the best for clearing the womb, if you swallow the entire box at once,” announced Miss Ponsonby with an air of authority.

  “Oh no, dear,” began Gertrude Mahon, “if you take too many of those your teeth will turn black and fall out. Blatchford’s elixir is unrivalled in its effectiveness.”

  “I have used it and it did not work,” pouted Miss Greenhill.

  “But you miscarried,” added Mrs. Mahon.

  “Yes… but I believe that was on account of a poisoned oyster, not Dr. Blatchford’s mixture.”

  “Pah! Oysters!” cried Lady Lade, rumpling her nose in disgust. “The best use for one of them is to push it up your cunny!” Her quip caused the company to fall about laughing.

  “I once moulded some wax into a flat plug and put it in me,” added Miss Ponsonby in her high, nasal voice.

  “Did it work?” asked the Greenfinch.

  “For one or two attempts, I believe it did, but the sponge and vinegar is best, for the wax came loose and does not take up the seed as does a sponge.”

  “I have become very clever at preventing Lord Sefton spending his seed in me, for I pull him out just at his moment of bliss.”

  “And he tolerates it?” asked Mrs. Mahon.

  “Not always, but I use a douche of lime water if he does, to great effect,” she simpered.

  “Well,” said Miss Ponsonby, “he should be grateful you manage yourself so prudently, for it is far more difficult to be rid of the ones that are born…”

  Just then, Georgie began to scream loudly. I rose and went to him directly, taking him from Lady Lade’s hands.

  “I do believe he heard you…” said I with an uneasy laugh.

  It was not as if I had never been privy to such conversation before, for female matters are forever a topic of discussion among the fallen sisterhood, but the coldness of the exchange struck me especially hard. Prior to my life in London, I would never have imagined that the birth of a child would not be a welcomed event, and had foolishly taken for granted that St. John would treat Georgie with such benevolence. Why, Mrs. Mahon and Lady Lade had entertained me throughout my pregnancy with terrifying tales of infants who, on the orders of their fathers, disappeared into laundry baskets and rivers, never to be seen again.

  But I had nothing to fear. St. John was the most doting of fathers. He never tired of fondling his son—scarcely a day went by when he did not bring the boy out to be dandled over his card table and toasted by his raucous companions. Indeed, I believed that my keeper desired nothing more than to pass his entire life, like me, staring down at Georgie as he slumbered and flexed his wee fingers. What happy days were these, thought I, in a type of blind delirium. There seemed no more perfect paradise than the tranquil nursery where I cradled my boy and admired the yellowing leaves from the high attic windows. To be sure, I had not felt such contentment since Allenham closed the door of Orchard Cottage behind him. But dear Gertrude Mahon was correct in her assessment of me: I was desperately foolish. I was a ninny, a giddy-brained little girl. I thought I had seen enough of the world to know my own mind, when I had hardly done more than glimpse it.

  Had I listened to her, had I been reasonable, I might have spared myself a great deal of disappointment and pain when St. John announced his intentions to me. As it was, it came quite unexpectedly one morning as we enjoyed breakfast.

  “It is time Georgie should be sent out to nurse,” he stated, as he sucked at his cup of tea.

  “Sent out?” I echoed.

  “Yes, it is time. For the child’s own good. A house such as mine, full of dissolutes and whores, is no place for him. And the air is better elsewhere.”

  “But, surely the nurse we have…”

  “No, Hetty, you shall not contradict me. Gertrude Mahon said you would object and I must not permit you to sway me on this. You do not know as well as she about these matters.”

  “Gertrude Mahon!” I blurted, feeling utterly betrayed that my friend should have advised on such a cruel course of action.

  “Do not be so quick to accuse, chaton. She merely convinced me of my own sentiments,” said he, straightening himself in his chair. “I am far too sensitive a father and I shall weaken my child through my own sentimentality. Georgie is to go to a nurse in Primrose Hill tomorrow. Mrs. Mahon has been good enough to fix it for you. She knows what is best, Hetty, where you do not.” Then he sent me a disapproving look. “And she warned me to prepare for your protests.”

  At that pronouncement, I exploded into a shower of tears and ran from the table. How my friend had betrayed me! She understood that Georgie’s removal would break my heart, and yet she conspired to have it done. Never could there have been a more unforgivable deed than this!

  “Henrietta… Henrietta!” I heard St. John calling, but it was no use. He would never have convinced me of the correctness of this plan, nor of the good intentions of the friend who had pushed a dagger into my maternal breast. Naturally, it was only after the deed had been done that I came to see the merit in it, and to comprehend the wisdom of her experience.
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  I wept the entire distance from Mayfair to Primrose Hill, which lay across tawny autumnal pastureland a few miles to the north of London. I clutched Georgie to me, my sobbing causing him to accompany me in my sorrowful song of parting and sadness. By the time we arrived, I had soaked his blankets and linen with my tears.

  It was not such a terrible place, the clean, whitewashed cottage to which he was sent. Mrs. Brown was a full-bodied woman of no more than twenty-six, with two children and an infant of her own. Her face was ruddy with health, as were the cheeks of her girl and boy. “The older ones have taken the inoculation,” she assured me, rubbing their tow heads, “so there will be no smallpox here. No, we are a healthful household,” she boasted, before adding that no one ever went hungry, for in addition to her own two breasts, they owned “two fine cows as well.”

  I suppose this went some way towards easing my distress, but it failed to cure it altogether.

  “Mrs. Brown has nursed two sons of the Duke of Portland,” St. John said upon our return, attempting to comfort me, but I said nothing. Tears were all I could produce.

  I wished myself dead in the days following our visit to Mrs. Brown. I lay in bed, entertaining all manner of thoughts. I imagined that my boy should be overlaid, that one of the nurse’s stupid children would drop Georgie or one of the cows might kick him just when he was learning to toddle about on two feet. Oh, I could not count how many possible fates awaited him! And when I had finished enumerating those, I wept over Allenham, that the only remembrance I had of my true love had now been stripped from me. When I had embraced Georgie in my arms it was as if I had held his father as well. “Dear God, where is he?” I sobbed. “When in heaven will he return to me? Surely, he must know,” I told myself. “He must know I have had his son.”

  To be sure, I truly indulged in my melancholia upon this occasion. I wallowed in my depressed spirits, behaving much as I had observed Lady Stavourley in her times of unhappiness. I refused to dress and believed myself ill. Foolishly, I even dared to turn St. John from my bed, prompting him to think me hysterical.

  “Hysterical women require a visit from the surgeon to cure them of their distemper,” he threatened me with a wagging finger. So, the following day, the surgeon arrived to cup me. As this had no effect, in a rash final attempt to revive me, he sent word to the Bird of Paradise.

  As I had lain in bed, Mary entered and announced that Mrs. Mahon was below, wishing to call upon me. The mention of her name drew such hot indignation from my heart that I sat up straight.

  “I shall not see her!” I declared. “Tell her that I am not at home to a Judas, nor shall I ever be again!” With that, I fell back upon my pillow in a torrent of tears.

  And this, dear reader, was how I repaid that woman’s kindness to me.

  After that disheartening episode, I can only say that I am grateful to Fortune for interceding on my behalf. With hindsight, I came to appreciate how the loss of Georgie spared me from complacency. It was not my destiny to remain at Park Street; indeed I had almost forgotten what were my intentions when I had arrived at this place. I was only reminded of them again when Lucy Johnson appeared in my dressing room.

  I have heard it said that when a great thing departs one’s life, the space is soon occupied by the arrival of something of equal importance. While I cannot say that Lucy Johnson filled the emptiness left by my son, her presence did significantly alter the course of events. And to think I very nearly sent her away.

  Nearly a fortnight had passed since I had parted with my Georgie and St. John wished that I should leave it a few days more before I paid him the first of what would become my thrice-weekly visits. Need I say that this news did not have an uplifting effect upon my spirits? Although I now no longer lolled about in my bed, I did little more than stare at the rain-splashed windows and imagine my son’s hungry cries. My misery had begun to offer me the sort of comfort that a drunkard finds in his bottle of brandy; I wished to be alone with it, to savour its stupefying effects, so when Mary rapped upon the door with a message I had no wish to hear it.

  “Madam,” she whispered, poking her head round the door, “there is a girl come to speak with you.”

  “I know no girls who would wish to speak with me.”

  “She insists you will know her.”

  “What is her name?” I asked, attempting to muster the thinnest of interest.

  “Lucy Johnson, madam.”

  “I know no one by that name.”

  “She says she is of number five Arlington Street.”

  At first I did not think I heard Mary correctly, or perhaps that I had imagined she spoke the address.

  “Arlington Street? Number five?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  Suddenly, I found my heart in my throat.

  “Well, well, do show her in, Mary,” said I in a trembling voice, arranging myself upon the sofa and nervously smoothing my skirts.

  After a minute or so, Mary reappeared alongside a young woman in a brown woollen cape, a starched white apron peeking from beneath it. She hardly dared look at me as she folded herself into a polite curtsey.

  I instantly recognized her as the maid I had spied listening to me plead with Allenham’s butler. Her auburn hair and freckled features made her unmistakable. I dismissed Mary and waited until the door shut fast behind her.

  “Lucy Johnson, of number five Arlington Street?”

  She curtseyed again. “Yes, madam.”

  I swallowed anxiously. “Do you come with a message?”

  Lucy Johnson corrected her posture. “No, madam, I come begging a place in your household.”

  I sighed inwardly at this announcement, but remained intrigued by her presence.

  “But you have a place in Lord Allenham’s household.”

  “Not beyond this week, madam. The house is to be closed up. His lordship’s cousins, Sir Folbert and Lady Jervas, who had rented it earlier in the year, have now gone abroad. I have been told I must find another place, but I have only a reference from the butler, not his lordship or his cousins, and that does not go far for securing another place, not as far as a letter from a person of breeding, madam.”

  “The house is to be closed up?” That was the only information I had correctly taken in. “By whose orders? Where is his lordship? Have you received word that he will not return?” I heard the pitch of my voice begin to rise, and immediately and rather ashamedly attempted to compose myself.

  Of course, Lucy knew too well that this information should pique me.

  “I was told his lordship is to be gone for some time.”

  My face fell, like a banner stripped of the breeze. I looked down at my lap, unable to think what to ask next. This news had pricked the small bubble of hope that I had managed to carry within me over the past months. Lucy stood patiently, observing my distress.

  “I… I saw you, madam, come to the house, begging to see his lordship,” she began, her tone now more tentative and confessional. “I said to myself, this lady has some business with Lord Allenham. I read the message you sent round by one of your servants. I know I ought not to have… but I remembered your address… I remembered it, thinking there might be a time when I am in need and she is in need and I can give her something she would want…”

  At that I looked up and locked my eyes upon her.

  “Do you wish to find his lordship, madam?”

  I continued to stare at her, my mouth parted in disbelief.

  “I can tell you where you might find him, but first, madam, I ask for a place in your household.” She dropped another deep, obeisant curtsey, knowing all too well the boldness of her proposition.

  I rose unsteadily to my feet, my face and neck flushed with heat.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, yes, please. You shall have a place,” said I, between frantic breaths. “Please… please sit, Miss Johnson,” I stammered, my eyes roving the room while I decided upon my course of action. By God, I would not permit this girl to leave St. John’s ho
use without disgorging her information. “I must first make an enquiry,” said I, reaching for the door. I had to find St. John immediately.

  I rushed down the stairs in search of my keeper, and found him in his study, hard at work on a play he was devising, Icarus Aflame.

  “Sir,” I said, startling him from his pen. He took in my flustered expression with a puzzled look.

  “I have in my dressing room a girl who comes to me for a position… as a lady’s maid. You know I am in need of one, sir, for while Mary is diligent, she knows nothing of dressing me properly and I am always scolding her. I should like very much to hire her. Oh Jack, it would make me so happy to have the company… with Georgie now gone…”

  “Say no more, chaton.” He dismissed me, waving his hand. “Do as you will.”

  “Bless you, dear Jack. Bless you,” I thanked him with a smile more of relief than gratitude. I turned on my heel—no, rather I spun on my heel to leave, when his voice halted me.

  “Who sends her?”

  I looked back at him.

  “Which house does she come from? I should not like a thief under my roof.”

  “Lord Kerry,” I lied, hardly drawing a breath to do so. “Who you know to be a relation of Mrs. Mahon’s. The girl was employed by a cousin of his… who has lately gone abroad.”

  There was a pause.

  “Very well.”

  I flew up the stairs to my dressing room, fearing for a moment she might have abandoned me, fretting that she would disappear along with her most precious secret, but she remained where I had left her, with no evidence that she had slipped one of my patch boxes or silver-topped bottles into her pocket either. She gazed at me with a hopeful smile.

  “I should like to take you into my service as my maid—from today.”

  “Oh thank you, madam.” Lucy beamed as she bobbed. “I am ever so grateful. I shall serve you well.”