Fortune's Mistress (9 page)

He nodded, not unused to the woman
’s pledging his time without leave. He was here to serve, after all, not to indulge himself.

“
And if you would be so kind,” the woman went on crisply, “take Charlie and George away with you. All day they’ve been wicked enough to make the angels weep, and that’s a fact.”

He sighed and shook his head ruefully. Some of his projects took longer to show progress than others.
“What have the little criminals been up to now?” he asked.

“
The question is more,” she returned with a long-suffering sigh, “what have they
not
been up to?”

Alden allowed himself a heartfelt groan.
“Ought I to sit down,” he asked, “or do I dare face the tidings standing?”

“
I hope I’ve no need to remind you, doctor,” she returned tartly, “ ‘tis you brought the savages here. You must listen to the tales without support.” She took a deep breath and began counting on her fingers.

“
First, they terrified Lucy into a fit with a snake, so that she could not help me prepare your supper. Next, they set the dogs to chase a badger through the kitchen, upsetting a tray of tarts I was saving for your tea tomorrow. The dogs then worried themselves to fits over whether to eat the tarts or follow the badger, all the time those boys laughing as if they would break apart. Then the rascals got into the cream as was setting up, ate it all, and did not even have the Christian decency to be sick afterward! I do not suppose I could persuade you to put them to bed with a dose of laudanum?”

“
I suggest we hoard it for ourselves, Mrs. Maiden,” he laughed. “And the little newcomers? How do they fare?”

Mrs. Maiden bit her lower lip thoughtfully.
“Well enough. They are very quiet, though,” she said. “Too quiet for children, if you ask me. I do not think they said more than ten words between them today. But perhaps that can be laid at the door of those two rapscallions as have plagued me today. I could not blame the dear little girls for being shocked to silence at such naughtiness. Charlie and George, indeed! They ought better to have been called Imp and Scratch!”

“
Very likely, my dear Mrs. Maiden,” he agreed. “Indeed you are a paragon to have braved their mischief. Do not fear. I shall take the pair of them along with me to the Wallers’, and you will have some respite. I warn you, however, if those good souls have cause to regret my impetuosity, I must lay the blame at your door.”

“
For a few moments’ peace, I will take that risk. And what is more,” she added darkly, “if the two of them should be misplaced somewhere along the road, you would not hear me complain.”

“
I thank you for your forbearance, Mrs. Maiden,” he said as he lifted his bag once more. “Anyone else would have sold them to the gypsies.”

“
Do not imagine it is my virtue that I have not done so, doctor. There are simply no gypsies to be had!”

* * * *

“Thank you for coming, Dr. Venables.” Mrs. Waller arose as he entered the parlor, where the reverend was resting with his foot well elevated.

“
You may reclaim your thanks when you find I have not arrived unaccompanied,” he told her.

“
Not another— ?” she began.

“
Never fear,” he laughed. “Nothing so dire as another four-legged addition to your household, but Christian charity demands I be forthright. Mrs. Maiden has banished Charlie and George from her sight for the present, so I have sent them off to the barn to assist your Haggerty, until I am finished here.”

Although his wife looked somewhat alarmed, the reverend smiled wanly.
“An excellent notion,” he said. “Haggerty will at least have the presence of mind to clap the little demons in irons, should they play at setting the place afire. Tell me, doctor, do you never bring
angels
home from your travels?”

He shook his head.
“Not so often as I would like. You must know it is exceedingly rare for angels to be abandoned to the streets— with imps and injured animals it is otherwise, I fear. I have a pair of little girls, though, who
appear
angelic enough.”

“
So did Charlie and George,” Mrs. Waller reminded him, “before they became used to wholesome meals and your easy ways.”

“
That is too true,” he sighed. “Perhaps, however, we can with our combined efforts keep this villainous pair from the noose until they achieve the ripe age of ten.”

“
Perhaps,” the reverend allowed, rather tentatively, it seemed to Venables, “but let me tell you here and now, that I draw the line at preparing them for the ministry!”

“
Heaven forfend!” Mrs. Waller exclaimed.

“
Indeed!” the doctor smiled as he made his way to his patient’s side. “Although my heart forewarns me that the role of sexton might appeal to them enormously.”

“
Ringing bells and digging graves!” Mrs. Waller laughed, shaking her head. “I can see it all too clearly. Give us your word you will not inform them such occupations exist!”

“
You have my word as a gentleman,” the doctor promised. “Now tell me. Reverend. How did this sorry mishap come about? Confess—you have been swinging from trees, have you not?”

“
So you have discovered my secret vice, doctor!” He shook his head ruefully as he went on, “No, I must confess it was nothing so daring. It is merely that I did not watch my step, while on my afternoon ramble.”

“
It is difficult to always be aware of one’s surroundings,” his wife added with tart good humor, “when one has his nose in a book during that ramble. Doctor, you must warn my husband of the dangers of mixing intellectual and physical pursuits!”

Dr. Venables examined the swollen extremity before him.
“I should think,” he commented, “that ample warning had already been issued!”

“
And a penalty exacted,” the reverend added, paling as the doctor gently rotated the injured ankle. “How long until I am mended, do you think?”

“
That depends on you as much as nature,” Venables told him. “If you rest and allow healing, as little as two weeks. Otherwise, a good deal longer. No bones have been broken, but the muscles and tendons have suffered a good deal. You must stay off it at all accounts. Is there someone you can call upon to assist you in your duties here?”

“
I suppose,” the reverend said thoughtfully, “I might request Reverend Burne in Plymouth to send his curate to me. But then I should have to suffer his company— he talks when he should listen. I had rather bear the pain, if you must know.”

The doctor nodded.
“Have you a cane?”

“
There are several from Uncle Erasmus’s time,” Mrs. Waller said. Then she laughed. “How ironic, Enos, that it should come to this so soon!”

“
It is my punishment,” he said ruefully, “for my foolish mockery as a youth.”

Venables looked at him quizzically.

“Yes,” his wife explained, “however serious he now seems, Enos was once quite a scamp. Had you told me as a child I would end by marrying my cousin, I should have called you a base liar! He was ever imitating his elders, when the opportunity arose. Uncle Erasmus caught him at it once, hobbling about on a cane and quoting dire passages from Scripture.”

“
What’s more, I was using one of those selfsame canes which I must now use to good purpose! Perhaps,” he went on thoughtfully, “I might use this mischance as an illustration in my next sermon. What think you, doctor? No sin, however small, goes unpunished?”

Venables began to wrap the reverend
’s ankle slowly, and it was a moment before he answered. “That depends,” he said at last, “on how you wish your parishioners to view the Almighty— a merciful father or a heartless judge.”

“
Yes, that thorny problem again—will it be Old Testament or New?”

When Mrs. Waller escorted Venables to the door after he had finished with her husband, she asked,
“How did you find Mrs. Glencoe this afternoon?”

Although he was good friends with both the reverend and hi
s wife, something— perhaps a superstitious fear of losing the happiness he seemed to have discovered— made him reluctant to reveal his interest in the widow. “It is as she said yesterday,” he replied briefly. “She does well enough.”

Mrs. Waller nodded.
“I do not mean to pry, of course, but I have been a little worried about her.”

“
It is little wonder you should be—a lady alone, facing the birth of a child.”

“
It is not,” she went on slowly, “her . . . condition so much that prompts my concern. It is her spirit. Oh, I know you will say, well, she is after all a recent widow, but I fear that has little to do with the . . . well, for want of a better word, the
darkness
I have sensed about her.”

So he was not alone in his assessment. He said nothing, though, and merely nodded for Mrs. Waller to proceed.

“In some ways, I have been where she is,” she said softly. “I have not confided this in many, but once— before I married Enos
—
I was engaged to another man whom I loved very much. He died.”

The doctor put a hand on her shoulder. She shook her head.
“I did my best to recover, but it would not do. I was grateful when my cousin offered for me, and we have built a pleasant life together, but I have never expunged my grief— merely assimilated it into the rest of my life, like poor Annie with her crooked leg. I go about living, doing what I must, even laughing when I may, but I am still aware of his absence. With Mrs. Glencoe, though, it is different.”

Venables frowned
. “How do you mean?”

She took a moment before proceeding, choos
ing her words carefully. “It is as if
.
.
.
as if her heart has never sung. Only the mention of her baby brings joy to her eyes, and then it is guarded, as if this treasure, too, might be snatched away.”

They passed into the garden together, both lost in thought. The sage lady read people very well, it seemed. She had given words to his nebulous awareness that something aside from the obvious was amiss in Mrs.
Glencoe’s life. What, he wondered, did Mrs. Waller make of him and his oddities? Gathering broken children, even animals, during his travels and bringing them here. Could she divine the memories that drove
him?

“
I have been thinking,” Mrs. Waller continued, “that it would be a very good thing if her heart were to be lightened before her child arrived ... and that you and she might between you lighten your burdens.”

He looked at her sharply. What could she mean? Were his emotions that transparent then? And what might she know of his burdens?

“You have returned with new protégés, I understand,” she went on. “Might they be of a nature to be companions to Mrs. Glencoe? Is there aught she could teach them?”

“
You are a redoubtable woman, Mrs. Waller,” he said, a good deal relieved. “Perhaps you have hit on the very thing. The little girls I brought back with me are six and eight. They are very quiet— I do not know if they have even learned their letters. Quite likely not, considering the surroundings from which they came. They are orphans, and lived with an old woman who sent them daily into the streets to pick rags.”

“
Poor little souls,” she murmured.

“
Not forever,” he assured her. “They do smile quite readily now that they are in the country, so I have begun to hold out a great deal of hope for them.”

Just then they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of two urchins, their clothes badly torn and faces painted with a suspicious inno
cence. “Charlie and George!” the doctor said, shaking his head wearily. “As for these two I can make no such predictions. Come now,” he said, addressing the pair, “what have the two of you been up to?”

Both boys erupted into a flurry of self-righteous explanations, each attempting to out-do the other in volume and velocity.

“Enough,” Venables ordered, taking them each by the collar and physically separating them. “One at a time. Come now, George?”

“
‘Twas Charlie’s wicked idea, it was,” the child began defensively.

“
‘E’s flammin’ you!” the other interrupted with loud indignation. “ ‘Twas him thought of it, and it’s him ‘as got the rent in his britches to prove it!”

“
And whose fault might that be, I ask you?” George scoffed. “ ‘Twas you, not me, thought of the goat to begin with— “

“
Perhaps I am better off not knowing what went on,” the doctor muttered.

“
Then we’ll not plague you with explanations,” Charlie offered generously. “Just leave it alone then, right and tight.”

“
However, I dare not!” The doctor looked apologetically at Mrs. Waller who, despite the alarm in her eyes, seemed to be hiding a smile behind her handkerchief. “Ah, here is poor Mr. Haggerty, looking like a thunder cloud. Perhaps he can illuminate us.”