She seemed to notice his uncertainty, because all of a sudden her lips formed a cruel little grin, as if she had a major delight in unsettling him with her insinuations and obtrusive glances. Henry guessed she had just wanted to confuse him, although he was not sure how serious she had really been in her advances.
“From your letter of application, I take it that you taught in London. Is that correct?” she then asked matter-of-factly, and Henry was glad that the conversation was taking a different course.
“Indeed,” Henry answered eagerly. “At primary school.”
Lady Partridge nodded quietly but the doubtful look she gave him revealed that despite his obvious experience she suddenly didn`t trust his abilities anymore to fulfil the assigned future tasks. Again, Henry was confused and wondered how someone like him who had taught thirty little children should not be capable of dealing with a single young girl.
“Can I see her? Miss Sarah, I mean?” Henry asked and immediately bit his lip, knowing he should not have been so straightforward. But he could hardly contain himself anymore. He finally wanted to know what he was in for.
“You will see her soon enough,” Lady Partridge answered with a sigh. “You will probably hear her first before you see her. She tends to scream a lot, and she throws things around… So you better be careful... Well, as for now, I suggest that Roderick will show you to your room. My husband will talk to you later once he returns from town.”
“So, does... does this mean I am employed?” Henry asked excitedly.
“Of course, you are.” Lady Partridge looked at him in surprise and laughed. “I told you there wasn’t anyone else.”
Although Lady Partridge’s last comment slightly dulled his enthusiasm and hurt his vanity, Henry could hardly conceal his excitement about the fact that they had chosen him exclusively.
“Thank you, Lady Partridge. Much obliged,” he said and took another bow.
“Well, if I were you, I would not be all too exhilarated about it.” Lady Partridge smiled at him wearily. “Days may come where you wish you were back in primary school again...”
“I am certain I can handle it,” Henry responded determinedly.
“I hope so.” Lady Partridge smirked. Then, with the same cool gracefulness she had shown the moment she had come down to see him, she now turned and purposefully marched back up the stairs without deigning to look at him again.
Relieved that he had got over this first encounter and happy that he was now officially the Partridges’ new private tutor, Henry looked after her until she disappeared on the upper floor.
“May I, Sir?” Roderick’s voice tore him out of his daze.
Henry looked at him puzzled. The butler pointed at the suitcase, which was standing next to Henry on the floor.
“Oh, certainly, thank you,” Henry answered quickly. He was not used to someone else carrying his things for him.
Then, with a quiet nod, Roderick took the suitcase and motioned Henry to follow him.
* * *
Henryʼs room lay on the first floor. It was small and only equipped with the most basic things: a wardrobe, a bed, a stained mirror at the wall, and a small washtub in the corner.
Henry didnʼt mind. He was accustomed to humble accommodation. Having grown up as the son of a coal miner in the working class district of London, he had spent the best part of his life living hand to mouth. Despite having managed to climb the ladder and become a teacher, and despite having earned and saved quite a bit of money, Henry was still a modest man who could easily put up with simplicity. Apart from that, this room still showed more luxuries than the place where he had spent his childhood and where he had had to share the bedroom with his parents and his brother. Back then they had all slept in a single bed.
He felt in desperate need to refresh himself and get some sleep after the long journey by train from London to Oxford, and then from Oxford station to the mansion by coach. The estate was so far away from town that he would be depending on the coach driver, who had brought him here, if he ever wanted to get away; or else, it would take him hours to walk.
But somehow he started to take a liking to the countryside. He had been pleased by what he had seen while the train had been passing vast cornfields and seemingly endless rows of sunflowers on the way to his destination. It was so peaceful and quiet here without the hustle and bustle which he was used to after having spent all of his young life in the city. Apart from that, he was glad that he was finally able to actually see the sky, as back in London the dirty emissions of the ever-growing industries tended to cover the city like a thick black veil.
He strode over to the window and opened it. Warm rays of the late afternoon sun gently fell through the curtains. From here one had a magnificent view out onto the garden, its cherry trees, and the flower beds. The air was filled with the sweet and heavy smell of roses. Henry closed his eyes and took a deep breath as if to inhale this moment deeply into his mind and soul.
Suddenly a horrible scream tore him out of his reflections, a scream that sounded as if an animal was about to be brutally slaughtered. Just that the scream was human.
“Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
The next moment, Henry saw a small portly woman in her forties running across the lawn. She was wearing an apron and a bonnet. Henry wasnʼt sure if he could trust his eyes but soon realized that he wasnʼt erring: Yes, it was definitely dung which covered both head and shoulders of the poor woman, who was now crying at the top of her lungs, “She did it again! She did it again!”
Henry noticed that she spoke with an Irish accent.
A man dressed in a tweed jacket and sporting a massive mustache suddenly appeared on the scene. His stature was small and a little bit sturdy. Judging by the size of his belly, Henry guessed that the man obviously enjoyed a good piece of meat and several pints of beer every now and then.
“What is it, Thelma?”
Purposefully, the man marched over to the woman with the apron, whom he had called Thelma, and flinched at the sight of the excrements on her head.
“Lord Partridge, this is the third time now!” Thelma lamented. “If this doesnʼt stop, I will go and work for someone else!”
“I promise you that it will not happen again.” Henry noticed that the man, who had turned out to be Lord Partridge, appeared strangely calm. It was obvious that the lord wasnʼt a friend of showing too many emotions and that he tried hard to disguise them. But his face which was red as a lobster gave him away and revealed that deep inside he burst with anger.
“Sarah!” he called and looked around in search of the girl.
“She must be sitting somewhere in the trees...” Thelma said and quickly followed Lord Partridge, who was now walking over to a big oak tree. Together they peered up to the treetop.
“Maybe she has already made a run for it,” Thelma reasoned.
“We have employed a new teacher for her. So all of this is soon going to change,” Lord Partridge explained, determinedly.
“Yet another tutor?” Thelma threw a doubtful glance at Lord Partridge, but the latter didnʼt answer and instead turned around and marched back to the house. Thelma angrily muttered something to herself, then she too left the ʻscene of the crimeʼ where she had been so shamelessly attacked with dung and disappeared out of Henryʼs sight.
This is soon going to change… Henry thought glumly and suddenly felt rather overwhelmed by the obvious big hopes that Lord and Lady Partridge placed in his abilities. Judging the amount of dung with which Thelma had been covered, Henry worried that the task that lay ahead of him would prove to be not as simple as he had initially thought.
Trying not to let this incident discourage him, he decided to make himself at home in his room. He was just about to close the window when his glance fell out onto the garden one last time.
And then there she was—Sarah.
To his utter surprise, Henry noticed that she was a truly beautiful girl. Her brown, long curls flowed over her shoulders and cascaded down to
her waist like a waterfall. Her fragile body was tucked into a pink dress with white ribbons, which made her appear deceptively innocent.
Lazily, she was strolling past the flower beds, not appearing all too bothered by the commotion which she had just caused. When she noticed that her dress and her hands were dirty, she knelt down on the ground and began to wipe the remains of dung, which her hands were soiled with, off in the grass. When she rose to her feet again, she suddenly looked up to Henryʼs window, just as if she had sensed that he was secretly watching her.
Boldly, she looked him straight in the eyes as if she wanted to stare him down.
Win or lose… Henry thought as he was facing his first challenge. He wasnʼt used to such kind of behavior at all. All well-behaved children he had ever taught had been told to avoid their teacherʼs gaze. But from what he had heard and seen so far, this child wasnʼt well-behaved. And apart from that, Sarah wasnʼt a child at all but a fully developed, beautiful, young woman. As Henry remembered from his previous correspondence with the Partridges, she was eighteen.
He bravely held her gaze in an effort to convey that from now on he would be the one in charge. From his work at school, he was well aware that the very first impression that the student got of the teacher counted more than anything else. He had always been in favor of less authoritative methods of education, but even he knew that if a teacher didnʼt express some kind of authority right away, one was eternally lost and the students would never show a shred of respect.
Sarahʼs mouth turned up to form a smirk which made Henry feel uneasy, because it conveyed a message, too. And this message was, “I am going to show you who really is in charge…”
Henry hoped that he just misinterpreted the looks that the girl threw him, and that Sarah merely meant to be friendly. He wondered if he was only being paranoid because of all the bad things that he had heard about her; for example, that the Partridges had almost called for the priest one day in order to perform some kind of exorcism on her, as she once had had a particularly terrible fit of rage and wouldnʼt calm down. But Henry guessed that there were enough people out there who envied the Partridges for their wealth and their status and who therefore simply wanted to damage the familyʼs reputation by spreading all sorts of dubious gossip. Henry truly couldnʼt believe that this little girl in her pink dress really was in need of an exorcist to bring her back to her senses.
Or was she?
He supposed that he would have to discover the truth for himself.
Suddenly, Sarah turned and walked away. Shortly afterwards, he heard her little fists bang against the main door, heard her stomp into the house and run up the stairs, heard Lady Partridge scold the girl for her inappropriate behavior.
“Your hair is hanging loose again! After all the effort Emily made to pin it up this morning! A lady is not to wear her hair like that! This is completey intolerable!”
Henry decided that it was safer to stay in his room for the time being in order to get some sleep and wait out the storm. He would be introduced to Sarah sooner or later.
He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out if he was really ready for this challenge, or if he was in fact about to bite off more than he could chew.
Then he fell into a lovely slumber.
* * *
Playing such an important role in the house—teaching the offspring—Henry was allowed to have dinner together with the Partridges in the dining room and didnʼt have to go downstairs where the servants lived and had their meals.
Upon entering the dining room, he saw a chambermaid—a young girl wearing an apron, her blonde hair neatly pinned up and hidden under a bonnet. She was busy laying the table and carefully positioned the plates and cutlery so that everything would be straight. When she noticed Henry, she stopped in the middle of her work and took a slight bow.
“Dinner will be served shortly, Sir.” Her voice was hushed and hardly audible.
Henry nodded quietly and turned to take in the setting. Even without anybody present as yet, he found that the atmosphere in the room was rather intimidating. He dreaded that he would create utter chaos if a single word came out of his mouth and that he would destroy the silence, maybe even cause one of the very expensive-looking porcelain vases to come crashing down to the floor.
He guessed that it would make a bad impression if he sat down at the table before anyone else had arrived, so he simply waited and continued watching the chambermaid, who was now carefully aligning the backs of the chairs. Again and again she circled the table, checking if everything was in order. Henry couldnʼt have cared less if his chair was properly aligned or not as long as he got something to eat soon. After all, he had not eaten anything since he had left London and was by now famished.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps behind him. Lord Partridge entered the dining room and, a rather pinched expression on his face, strode over to where Henry stood, his left hand holding a cigar.
“Did you have a nice journey?” he asked. His voice sounded aloof and somewhat absent-minded as it was typical for an overworked businessman who felt that his time was far too precious to deal with trivialities such as the arrival of a new tutor, but who at least lowered himself to utter a few welcoming words in order not to appear as arrogant and impolite.
“It was excellent,” Henry answered. Despite his nervousness, he smiled confidently at Lord Partridge, but the latter had already turned away from him and walked over to the table where he sat down at the head.
Hesitantly, Henry approached the table, wondering where he was supposed to sit and how many people would attend the dinner. He counted eight chairs.
“Would you not like to take a seat, Mr. Abbott?” Lord Partridge finally asked when the situation was becoming rather awkward with Henry helplessly lingering in the room. Ultimately, Henry grabbed the chair next to Lord Partridge and equally sat down.
He hardly dared to touch anything. Everything seemed to be made of the finest material; from the fabric of the chair upholstery to the silver of the cutlery and the porcelain of the plates.
Suddenly, three men entered the room, chatting animatedly with each other. As soon as they saw Lord Partridge sitting at the table, though, their chatting subsided and they made an effort to appear more serious.
The three men had arrived late in the afternoon by coach. And as Henry was soon to find out, two of them were the Partridgesʼ sons, Harold and Adrian, who studied at the university. The third man was Oscar Scott, Lady Partridgeʼs brother, who lived in town. He was a doctor in his mid-thirties and a self-proclaimed bachelor who explained that he was a regular guest at the mansion, not only because he belonged to the family but also because he was desperately trying to cure his sister of her regular fits of headache.
Henry smiled uncertainly when Lord Partridge introduced him to everyone as ʻthe daredevil whose intention it is to tame the little beast,ʼ which caused general laughter amongst the others. To his relief, Henry sensed that they all seemed to like him; especially Dr. Scott who immediately took a particular interest in Henry and asked him so many questions about London that Henry felt slightly interrogated. But it turned out that Dr. Scott had once lived in London himself. The fact that he had found a position as a doctor in Oxford, however, had made him leave the city and start up a new life in the countryside, which he equally loved and loathed. He openly admitted that deep inside he had always preferred the city, therefore he couldnʼt get enough of Henry telling him the latest news and gossip from London.
The little congregation at the table was distracted when they heard muffled voices coming from the corridor. One of them belonged to Lady Partridge.
“Will you go now, for heavenʼs sake? Stop making such a fuss,” Henry heard her mutter angrily.
Then the door opened and Lady Partridge entered.
She was not alone. Next to her was Sarah, not looking happy at all.
Her mother shoved her into the room and hissed something into her ear. Henry believed to u
nderstand that Lady Partridge wanted Sarah to walk over to him and introduce herself. But the girl neither moved nor said anything at all. Instead she just stood motionless and let the arms hang slackly at the sides of her body. Contrary to the afternoon when Henry had first caught sight of her in the garden, she wore a very clean, bright blue silken gown and her chestnut curls were neatly pinned up around her head. She also wore a pretty pearl necklace.
As she still showed no inclination to either walk over to him or say anything, and as the situation threatened to become rather awkward and embarrassing, Henry decided to get up and walk over to her, an encouraging smile on his lips, which she didnʼt return.
“Say something, Sarah,” Lady Partridge hissed through clenched teeth, gently elbowing the girl in her ribs. Reluctantly, Sarah took a slight bow, but no word came out of her mouth.
This is not going to work out… Henrys thought nervously.
Henry & Sarah Page 2
