A Woman's Estate (5 page)

Thus, Abigail insisted she preferred to deal with Empson
personally, and before any further argument could be raised, she rang the bell
herself. In the few minutes it took for the butler to come from the servants’
quarters, she introduced her children, who had been listening in wide-eyed
astonishment tinged, Abigail was afraid, with alarm. They had no experience at
all of being unwelcome and were uncertain of how to react to a grandmother who
did not greet them with open arms and cries of joy.

When Empson answered the bell, Abigail simply nodded to
Hilda, smiled generally at Eustace and Griselda, and said she would like to be
shown to Lord Lydden’s suite. She braced herself for another round of
complaints and protests, fearing that Hilda had retained possession of the
master suite and would fight to keep it, but this time Abigail had guessed
wrong. She did not mind being wrong in the least. It was a relief to know that
Hilda had probably realized that Francis would not stand for it and had not
dared go that far. In fact, from the placidity with which Hilda listened to the
order, Abigail reassessed the situation and decided that Hilda probably
approved of the heir taking his rightful place.

As Empson led them up the right-hand wing of the lovely
curving staircase that rose from the hall, Abigail gave the instructions about
dinner, including the fact that at least for this evening Victor and Daphne
would be eating with them. She also asked that a maid be sent up immediately so
that she and the children could do as much as possible to tidy themselves.

When she examined the rooms of the master wing, Abigail was
even more delighted with the first spark of common sense she had seen in Hilda.
On opposite sides of the corridor, there were two bedchambers, handsomely
furnished for male and female, and two dressing rooms, with a servant’s room
off each. According to custom, poor Victor should have been isolated in the
male bedchamber with his valet, Daphne should have been lodged on another floor
in the nursery wing with her governess, and Abigail should have chosen a
bedchamber on the ground floor for herself.

Actually, there was considerable sense in such an
arrangement for those accustomed to it, but not for two children who had been
uprooted from their home and transported to a new country and into a house
where they had been made to feel like interlopers. Eventually Abigail would
move, well before the time when Victor could be expected to bring home a bride
to occupy the mistress’s bedchamber, but until her children had found their
balance and were secure in their new lives, she herself would occupy the lady’s
bedchamber and have a bed set up for Daphne in her dressing room.

While they had looked at the rooms, the maid had come up
with water for washing. Since the coach carrying their baggage had not yet
arrived, there could be no question of changing for dinner. Abigail simply sent
the children off with the maid, telling them to wash their hands and faces in
Victor’s dressing room and uttering her usual dire warnings of what she would
do if all the dirt was found on the towels instead of in the basins. When they
were finished, the maid was to come back with more water for her. Then she
removed her hat and sat down in one of the luxurious chairs to catch her breath
and think over the scene in the drawing room below.

At least Abigail now felt she understood why Francis might
have tried to forget the existence of his stepmother. And, of course, if he
would not speak of Hilda, he could not mention Eustace and Griselda. There did
not seem to be anything sinister in the omission. Abigail could easily imagine
how much Francis, the most graceful and charming of men, had been offended by
Hilda’s manner.

From Alexander Baring’s exposition on Hilda’s financial
position as a widow, Abigail guessed that Francis’ father had married her for
her money. About half of Hilda’s property, which of course became her husband’s
to use as he pleased when they married, had been swallowed up by the Lydden
estates. Nonetheless, Hilda had what Abigail considered a more than adequate
income from her jointure, which was to be divided between Eustace and Griselda
on her death.

Understanding was not much help, though. It was going to be
hell to live with Hilda, and there was nothing Abigail could do about it.
Abigail could only be grateful that she was much less nice than Francis had been.
Serving in a shop accustoms one to dealing with all kinds of people. Some
customers had been abrasive, a few actively unpleasant. Abigail feared she
would need all the self-control she had learned, for she could not withdraw her
invitation for Hilda and her children to continue living at Rutupiae, despite
the fact that she now knew there had been no need for any charitable gesture.
Nonetheless, to push Hilda out immediately, which Abigail would have loved to
do, would be seen by everyone in the neighborhood as crude and inconsiderate,
even cruel.

Abigail could just hear Hilda saying, “Hardly a foot in the
door and she was telling us to get out, driving us out of the only home my poor
children have ever known.” Worse yet, Hilda would be saying it to families in
the neighborhood, just those people Abigail hoped to win as friends. Nor was
there any way to keep Hilda away from them, since she knew from Mr. Deedes that
the dower house, where Hilda was legally entitled to live, was situated right
in the park surrounding the main house—not to mention the complication that it
was occupied and the tenant would have to be evicted.

Abigail sighed. She suspected she had been deliberately
trapped, but she was not certain. Probably Mr. Deedes should have insisted that
Hilda leave Rutupiae Hall forty days after Lord Lydden’s death; that was the
law. A widow had no right to remain longer than forty days in her husband’s
house unless it was specifically willed to her. There was some excuse for Mr.
Deedes’ failure; it would take longer than forty days to obtain information
from America as to whether Francis wished his stepmother to remain in residence
and whether he intended to leave America and come to England. If Francis had
survived and decided to remain in America, it would have been better to have
Rutupiae Hall occupied than left empty.

Actually, Abigail felt that the excuse was very weak. Mr.
Deedes must have known Francis hated his stepmother—Deedes had hinted as much
by saying that there was a lack of harmony in the household—and that Francis
would never have agreed to sharing Rutupiae Hall with her or even to her living
in the place in his absence. But there was another way of looking at it. If Mr.
Deedes had requested that Hilda leave and she had refused, it would have
created a dreadful scandal to evict her legally. It was unlikely that the
solicitor would have taken so drastic a step without specific orders. But once
it was clear to the servants who was truly the mistress of Rutupiae Hall, it
would be easy enough to make Hilda want to leave.

When the maid returned, Abigail did not waste any time over
her own preparations for dinner, and shepherded Victor and Daphne down well
within the half hour she had stipulated. The children had been roaming around
Victor’s suite, peering into closets and giggling over the possibility that
Victor would get lost trying to find his bed and have to shout for rescue.
Abigail joined their nonsense gladly when they came to tell her of their
discoveries, suggesting that Victor tie a line to his waist so that he could
follow it back to a known point. This caused such a burst of hilarity that
Abigail was confident the children had regained their spirits.

In fact, they had regained them too well. They made so much
noise coming down the stairs and rushing into the hall that she had to warn
them that company manners would be necessary, or they would be sent to eat in
the kitchen. This threat, however, was the wrong one. An informal meal in the
kitchen was far more appealing to Victor and Daphne than sitting still and
being proper for two or three hours with adults they did not know well and were
not sure they liked. Both children immediately began to jump up and down and
demand to be punished immediately.

Exasperated, Abigail said, “Don’t you dare shame me in front
of Hilda. Don’t you realize she thinks we are common barbarians? Do you want to
prove her right? Victor, you are now Lord Lydden. Are you going to sit at the
head of the table and act like a man or not? And you, Daphne, will you give her
reason to say you have not been trained to be a lady?”

She was sorry a moment later for using Hilda as a bugbear,
which would not improve whatever slim chance there was to establish a friendly
relationship, but there was no time to mend what she had said. And Hilda did
not help. First she complained about the noise Victor and Daphne had been
making on the stairs and in the hall, and when she saw the extra places at the
table, she sniffed audibly and, looking off over the children’s heads, said
that dinner conversation among adults was not suitable to children and that she
hoped that in the future Abigail would keep them where they belonged—out of
sight.

“No,” Abigail said simply. “I am accustomed to having them
about and am quite fond of them, you know.”

Chapter Four

The first dinner at Rutupiae Hall was a disaster. Before
Abigail could soften her statement by explaining that Victor and Daphne would
have their meals served separately as soon as proper supervision could be
arranged, another contretemps arose. Eustace, who had been looking with some
surprise at Abigail—for it was most unusual to have children dine with
adults—had moved automatically but rather slowly to the master’s chair at the
head of the table only to find Victor already seated in it. He had opened his
mouth and then closed it very firmly and turned away almost as if he were going
to leave the room.

Abigail could feel her heart thumping in her throat, but she
forced steadiness into her voice and a smile to her lips as she moved toward
the chair at the foot of the table, inviting Eustace to sit to her left and
Hilda on her right. She had expected an outraged outcry, but Hilda took her
seat without a glance at the chair she must have occupied for years, and
although she continued to complain about having to dine with the children, she
said not a word about Victor sitting at the head of the table. This forbearance
moved Abigail to apologize for not warning Eustace that she had told Victor to
take the master’s place. Eustace mumbled a formal acceptance of the apology,
but Hilda looked surprised and said that it was his place and if he had to be
at the table at all, that was where he belonged.

Abigail was thankful that there had been no time for the
cook to try to show off for the new mistress. In her opinion the meal was
elaborate enough and lasted far too long. She struggled to make conversation,
but Eustace was abstracted, and Hilda’s responses were more the type that kills
conversation dead rather than encourages it. The one and only good thing was
that Victor and Daphne were remarkably well behaved. Not that they were silent;
Abigail could hear their voices nearly all the time, but they were speaking
softly. Practiced in letting sleeping dogs lie, Abigail did not glance in their
direction for fear her attention would disturb the peace.

As the second course was served, Abigail made one last
attempt at opening an unexceptional subject. She offered compliments on the
beauty of the gardens. This having been promptly done to death by a spate of
strictures on the idiocy of her daughter—for it was apparently Griselda who
planned and oversaw the gardening—and the stupidity and stubbornness of the
gardeners, Abigail gave up and resigned herself to enduring the remainder of
the meal in silence.

That did not suit Hilda either. Abigail discovered that it
was not necessary for her to introduce new topics of conversation. Hilda was
quite capable of finding her own. From the gardeners she wandered to the odd
shape of Rutupiae lands, which were no more than a half mile wide, although
they stretched several miles from the bank of the River Stour to the house, and
the fact that Rutupiae Hall was so close to Stonar Magna, precluding a proper
“wilderness” to stroll in on hot, sunny days.

“But I noticed a very pretty wood at the back of the house,”
Abigail remarked pacifyingly before she could stop herself.

“Those belong to Sir Arthur St. Eyre,” Hilda snapped, “all
except about twenty yards, and I am not presently disposed to gratify Sir
Arthur by trespassing on his property.”

“Trespassing?” Abigail repeated. “I was given to understand
that the families were very friendly and that Sir Arthur was too busy with
politics to pay much attention to anything else.”

“I cannot think where you could have come by such a foolish
notion,” Hilda exclaimed, her peevish whine giving Abigail a strong desire to
put her hands over her ears. “Although Sir Arthur is
certainly
political,
we never found him
friendly
. Lady St. Eyre never invited
us
to
her political dinners. I suppose she did not like the idea that I would be
given precedence. Oh, naturally
you
won’t understand, coming from
America as you do, but Lord Lydden was a
baron
, and Sir Arthur was only
a baronet. And as for not paying attention to anything except politics, I can
say that Sir Arthur is
never
too busy to stick his long nose into what
does not concern him.”

Involuntarily Abigail looked at Eustace, who had several
times softened his mother’s statements. He had at last raised his eyes from his
plate, and they met hers briefly, but there was no expression in them that
Abigail could read. Then he shrugged.

“The families may have been close at one time, when my
father and the late Sir Arthur were alive, but he died some twenty years ago,
and the present Sir Arthur seems to have taken his responsibilities very
seriously. He and Francis were childhood friends, but after a time he had no
taste for Francis’ type of playfulness, so they drifted apart. Perhaps it is
that same sense of responsibility that makes him monitor and forbid all expenditures.”

“Necessary repairs,” Hilda cried before Abigail could ask
what Eustace meant. “We shall have the
roof
down on us before Sir Arthur
will admit that some attention must be given to this house.”

“Is the roof leaking?” Abigail asked, aghast. Rutupiae Hall
was an old house, originally Elizabethan, which had been added to and rebuilt
in part over the centuries. The roof of such a structure, with its many joins
and odd angles, might easily develop leaks that could cause serious damage from
wetting and running along the supporting beams.

“Oh!” Hilda flapped a hand dismissively. “How should I know
whether the roof leaks? That was merely an
example
. However, there is a
terrible
draught from the drawing-room windows because the curtains are not thick enough.
I was misled over those curtains. I will never again trust that
sly
creature who made them.”

Abigail nodded without speaking, hiding behind a silence
that could be construed as agreement. Actually she was thinking with relief
that there was no need for any catastrophic confrontation with a tight-fisted
executor over curtains for the drawing room. She was also rather concerned. If
Sir Arthur were going to contest every sum spent, no matter how small, until
Victor reached his majority—and curtains for the drawing room could not amount
to a very large sum—she would likely come into serious conflict with him.

She therefore felt more amusement than she might under other
circumstances when Hilda explained that, of course, changing the curtains would
necessitate replacing the wallpaper, furniture and rugs, also. Since so radical
a refurnishing might run to several thousand dollars—Abigail could not yet
think quickly in terms of English pounds—it became clear to her that Sir Arthur
might be less unreasonable than Hilda had implied. A mild question as to what
was wrong with the present furniture soon produced the information that Hilda
was tired of the dowdiness of Queen Anne comfort and craved a version of Prince
George’s Chinese rococo. Further, Hilda made it clear that she felt the stiff
old Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits of Lydden ancestors should be replaced
with more modern paintings by contemporary masters. She first suggested stylish
portraits of herself and her children, and then, as a second thought, added
Abigail and her children, and perhaps one or two landscapes by Constable.

A flicker of sympathy for Sir Arthur passed through Abigail
as she wondered whether it was the cost alone that had induced him to veto
Hilda’s proposition. Abigail had a vision of a bucolic landscape by Constable
against a glaring background of gold, red and black Chinese dragons and
pagodas. Even as she repressed the temptation to giggle, Abigail knew it was
possible that she was being unfair. There were Chinese wallpapers of great
beauty and delicacy that would grace any room and any furnishings. As she had
no reason at all to place any reliance on Hilda’s taste, however, she did not
feel guilty.

Still, Abigail did not contradict or express any
reservations, even when Hilda’s comments on Sir Arthur’s niggardliness centered
on expenditures where Abigail agreed even more heartily with the executor, as
in his refusal to pay Hilda’s dressmaker’s bills and the cost of an expensive
horse for Eustace. Hilda, Abigail knew, could well afford to pay her own bills,
particularly as she was living at Victor’s expense instead of supporting her
own household.

Although it was true enough that Abigail was glad she could
avoid any confrontation on this subject, she was not silent out of cowardice. Her
mind was busy trying to sort out the contradiction between Alexander Baring’s
favorable comments about Sir Arthur and Hilda’s diatribe against him. It did
seem as if Sir Arthur was
not
too busy with politics to pay rather close
attention to his executor’s duties. On the one hand, this was helpful because
he was protecting Victor’s interests efficiently and bearing the brunt of
Hilda’s animosity, which otherwise, Abigail guessed, would have been directed
against herself and possibly against Victor. On the other hand, this close
examination of minor matters like dressmaker’s bills again raised the specter
of his interference in
her
affairs.

There was little to be gained by her speculating, Abigail
soon decided. She would have to arrange a meeting with Sir Arthur and discover
for herself whether his close attention was owing to a distrust of Hilda, a
most reasonable attitude as far as Abigail was concerned, or to a general
desire to control others, which was sometimes an unfortunate result of the
strong sense of responsibility Eustace had mentioned. Once or twice Abigail
glanced at Eustace, but he had returned to his abstraction, and there was
little pleasure in listening further to Hilda’s painful voice. Thus, it was
with considerable relief that she saw the remains of the second course of the
dinner removed and replaced by the sweets and savories.

Just before release finally came, a shout of laughter from
Victor, hushed with uncharacteristic rapidity, reminded Abigail that her
children had been models of behavior. It was close to the end of the meal, so
she took the chance of glancing at them and noticed that both were looking at
Griselda. Then their eyes caught Abigail’s, and Daphne began to giggle and
Victor joined her. The halcyon period was obviously at an end. Abigail hastily
suggested that the children take a few cakes and excused them from the table.
Even so, she made a mental note to reward them for not adding to her
difficulties.

Over the next few days, however, Abigail had no time to
pursue her plan for meeting Sir Arthur. The weather turned wet, and the
children’s curiosity and the newness of the house led them into constant
mischief. The servants were more amused than disturbed, but Hilda, having
several times discovered a maid repairing the traces of Victor and Daphne’s
passage rather than performing her accustomed duties, fumed over the disruption
of their work.

Eustace was no better pleased with the hitches in the
previously smooth functioning of the household. Although he did not complain
directly to her, Abigail heard him angrily castigating Empson for permitting
the footmen to lead the children around the house, which made them slow to
answer his bell. Abigail was annoyed; she wished he had spoken to her directly
rather than blaming Empson for what was not his fault. Too much of that might
change the warm welcome Victor and Daphne had received from the servants.

Worst of all, by accident—at least, Abigail hoped it was an
accident, rather than a deliberate attempt to get back at Hilda—the children invaded
Hilda’s room. That precipitated a major crisis. Both Victor and Daphne
apologized, Abigail apologized, all three explained that it had only been a
result of their mistaking the corridor, owing to having come up the wrong set
of stairs. Still, it took a whole day to soothe Hilda’s sense of “having been
violated”.

Then Abigail felt she had to face the problem of
transferring the management of the house from Griselda’s hands to hers. But
Griselda’s silent shrinking from opposition to
any
proposal Abigail
made, despite her clear terror that her mother would discover she was not
performing her usual tasks, woke in Abigail a mingled pity and exasperation.
Half of her wanted to shriek “Stand up for yourself, you ninny. I won’t bite
you!” at the girl, and the other half wondered if there was any “self” left
inside poor Griselda after years of being scorned and scolded by her selfish
mother.

Pity won over exasperation, however, partly because Victor
and Daphne kept insisting that Griselda was “the best of good sports”, although
they would not say why, and partly because Abigail was annoyed with Hilda, who
was periodically still lamenting the dreadful shock caused by the intrusion of
the children into her private domain. Inspired by this mixture of emotions, Abigail
came down to breakfast with an idea that would protect Griselda and still leave
the real power in her own hands.

This morning it seemed that everything was going to fall
into place. Abigail had finally arranged what she felt was adequate temporary
supervision for her children, although not for education. Mrs. Howing, the
housekeeper, had suggested Francis’ old nurse, who lived on the estate in a
cottage not far from the Roman ruins that gave Rutupiae Hall its name. Mrs.
Franklin had married a farmer, and when he had died, she had sold the farm
because her daughter’s husband, Price, the head gamekeeper on Sir Arthur’s
estate, knew nothing about farming and cared less.

Mrs. Franklin was not young, but she had not lost her touch
with children. Over the years, she had taken into her home, first on the farm
and then in her cottage, any of the children of the Lyddens or St. Eyres who,
for one reason or another, needed special, private care for a few weeks or
months. She had nursed Griselda over a long convalescence after she had been
desperately ill, first with measles and then with pneumonia. Lady Hilda, Howing
said expressionlessly, claimed she could not bear to see her pale, listless
daughter creeping about the house.