Friends and Lovers (24 page)

“I’m not afraid to swim,” Gwen had to boast. “Can we stay till it is warm enough to swim, Uncle?”

“Not that long, I’m afraid.”

Conversation was difficult, with the noise on the roof. “Are you quite sure you would not like to spend the next few days at the Manor?” Menrod asked, directing his words to my mother. She was upset at the idea.

“Oh, no, we are perfectly comfortable here,” she assured him, her face wincing at every blow that descended from above.

She held in her hands the newspaper with the two announcements. I noticed Menrod glance at it from time to time, and feared she would bring them to his attention. The visit was short, a formality only, or at least was turned into one, owing to the noise. I worked myself up to a smile for Gwendolyn, which took some doing. Dissatisfied with this meager token of affection, she threw herself into my arms for a bout of sobbing. “I
am
sorry, Auntie. Truly I am, but it was such a disappointment not to see you dancing. I looked forward to it so. You looked very pretty last night, just like Mama.”

She had the knack of disarming you by these flattering outbursts. I hugged her briefly. “Monkey,” I chided, laughing in spite of myself. It was Ralph’s turn for a farewell embrace. He felt so terribly small in my arms. I knew his fear of the water, and wanted to tell Menrod not to force him into the sailboat if he was too frightened. While the children made their adieux to their grandmother, I mentioned it to him.

“It is best to overcome his fear while he is young. He is pleasantly excited about the sailing. Later in the summer, when he sees Gwen swimming, he will try that too. If Peter and Hettie had known how to swim, they might be alive today. Several of the party made it safely to shore. They were less than a mile from it when the ship sank,”

“I thought you were staying only a short time!”

“I usually return to Brighton after the Season is over,” he answered. It filled me with desolation. I had pictured them all coming back after the visit was up. This was how life would be in the future. They would be darting all over the country, seldom settled in at the Manor, as they had been the past weeks.

“Of course. I had forgotten,” I said.

The children had finished hugging Grandma goodbye. They stood, waiting for the word to leave. “We’re off,” Menrod said, in a hearty spirit. “Say goodbye to the plants for me, Wendy. Take good care of them, and yourself.”

There was a knock on the cottage door. I was dismayed to see Mr. Everett enter before Menrod and the children had got away. I would now be subjected to some heavy-handed roasting by the two gentlemen. Menrod turned a satirical eye toward me. He read the unhappiness on my face.

“Good morning, Mr. Everett. We are just off to Brighton. Congratulations on your engagement,” was all he said, but it revealed he had read the paper before coming.

“Thankee kindly, Menrod. I see you have already read the news. I have five or six papers here to leave off with friends who have not seen it. It is a big day for me. The racket on the roof must be deafening you all,” he shouted, to make himself heard above it.

“Not at all. We are used to it,” I said.

“ ‘Tis a friendly sound after all, the blow of a hammer on wood,” he agreed.

“We’ll settle up the bill when I return,” Menrod told him.

“You’ll be wanting the ceiling in the bedchamber plastered as well? I have a lad...”

“If you would be so kind.”

“Happy to oblige you,” he said, then they passed each other in the hallway, Menrod and the children to leave, Everett to come in.

“You have taken us by surprise, Mr. Everett,” Mama said, not happy, nor pretending to be, at the nature of the surprise.

“I am the most surprised of the lot. It fair bowled me over,” he told her humbly. “I never thought, when she came trotting down to Oakdene every two days, what she had in her mind. A dozen times she told me how happy I must be, surrounded by so many lovely things, lacking only a wife to complete my joy. I thought it was a roasting about Wendy, but it was no such a thing. It was herself she pictured there all the time. She out and out said as much last night. Yessir, it fair knocked me down. I wasn’t tardy to offer her the ring. It looks very handsome on her dainty white fingers, if I do say so myself. You know the ring, Wendy—Miss Harris,” he said, slipping back to my more formal name.

“You will get right to work filling up your nursery,” I said. It was the oddest thing, but I felt a spasm of jealousy, to think of Lady Althea having all those objects, which I did not even want. A dog in the manger is what I felt like.

“We won’t waste a minute. The wedding is to take place next week, at her home. We’re going there shortly. Her folks will want to have a look at me. She’ll not be wanting a dozen wee ones, but quality is important, too, as we agreed between us last night. They’ll be good stock, half blue-blood,” he said, shaking his head and winking with delight.

It was difficult to get a word in edgewise. He was so overwhelmed with his catch he rattled on nonstop. “I never thought I’d see the day I would be squire to a titled lady, I never aimed so high. It’s a strange thing, surely, she wanted me, but so it is, and I’m not the one to argue. We see pretty well eye to eye on matters. She tells me I have an aristocratic disdain for public gossip and so on. I told 'er I don’t know where I got it, then, unless it rubbed off onto me from herself, for my pa was a woodcutter.”

Her compliment would have been employed to get the announcement in this morning’s paper. I think it was aristocratic cunning that accounted for it, myself. He chatted for half an hour before taking his leave. I went with him to the door.

“We’ll be seeing you at our ball, if not before. It will not be held till we return from her father’s place, the earl, you know,” he added with relish. “There will be a brace of lords and ladies back home with us after the wedding. It will be good to have some life at Oakdene.”

A honeymoon sounded a strange time to fill the house with guests, but it would not bother Everett. How happy he would be, having throngs of blue-bloods to take on a tour of his home. When my resentment of the match wore off, I knew I would think it an excellent one for him—for them both. She would tame him down, steer him through the shoals of high society, introduce him to the fashionable ways of spending his money.

“I’ll give the lads their final instructions before I go. Don’t think I mean to leave you with your roof half off. Nothing of the sort. Menrod is off to Brighton, did he say?” he asked, at the doorway.

“Yes, he is taking the children there for a holiday.”

“You might very well use that to gain control of them, Miss Harris,” he said, with a meaningful nod.

“What do you mean? There is nothing wrong in his taking them there.”

“Seems to me he ought to have left them home, when he is off to visit his light o’ love. It is Brighton he sent Mrs. Livingstone to, is it not? It is what Lady Althea told me, at any rate. If you want to know a secret, it is Mrs. Livingstone that kept her from accepting Menrod. He refused to part with the woman. ‘He cannot have cared for your happiness as much as I do, then,' I told her. Not a lie either. I would never treat my wife so shabby.”

He went out, smiling and hitting the half dozen newspapers against the side of his leg. I noticed, as he mounted into his waiting curricle, that his knees did bend; the right one, at least, he bent at forty-five degrees to mount into his buggy.

My mother had not overheard the remark about Mrs. Livingstone, and I did not wish to bring it to her attention, but I could not root it out of my own mind. It was a logical explanation for the unseasonable holiday by the sea. I placed no reliance on Lady Althea’s claim that Mrs. Livingstone had kept her and Menrod apart. It was an excuse for having failed to attach him, a puffing off of her charms to Everett.

It was difficult to think, with the barrage of blows from above and the barrage of wrath from Mama and Mrs. Pudge. I was a fool and worse, to have let Everett slip through my fingers. I thought I was too good for him, but Lady Althea Costigan, an earl’s daughter, did not hold herself so high. Oh, no, she knew what she was about, none better.

“She’s got the fine art of nabbing a husband down to a science,” Mrs. Pudge proclaimed. All day long the maledictions continued, taking on a pseudo-religious fervor after Mrs. Pudge spent half an hour with her Psalter.

“Our inequities are gone over our heads,” she told me, with a frown at the noisesome roof.

“They certainly are,” I agreed.

“I’m talking about Mr. Everett and that woman, the slyest creature ever set her toe into our neighborhood. If there’s any relief for you in it, all deadly enemies will be enclosed in their own fat.”

“I do not have any deadly enemies, thank you, fat or otherwise.”

“Money is what it means, miss. It is plain gold that ever made a boney fide lady like Lady Menrod’s cousin to marry that common cit. She’ll drown in gold.”

“It sounds a pleasant way to go.”

“And you will wither like a leaf on the bough.”

“Thank you for reminding me of my plants. I have not watered them today.”

I escaped to the haven of my conservatory, to ruminate in peace and quiet, for even the hammering on the roof was less bothersome here, on the far side from where the men worked. I had soon put all thought of Everett and Lady Althea from mind, for they were not at all important to me.

What I disliked very much was Menrod’s duplicity in whisking the children off to Brighton so that he might be with his mistress. Did I have a moral obligation to bring it to Mr. Doyle’s attention, to try in earnest to gain custody of them? Did I have any chance whatsoever of succeeding, and also importantly, did I want them, considering Gwendolyn’s nature? After much lengthy consideration, I came up with a negative reply to all questions.

Many, perhaps most, wealthy bachelors had dealings with women before they married. Such behavior would not be considered so grossly immoral as to override Menrod’s other qualifications. He would be discreet enough to keep the children away from Mrs. Livingstone, or even from rumors of her. He cared for them more than I had imagined he would. He went to the personal bother of teaching Ralph to ride, and now to cure him of his fear of the water. Gwen was a demanding girl, who would always be looking up the hill to the Manor, comparing her situation at the cottage with what it might be there. She would not settle in happily with us.

It sounds foolish to say, but in my heart I think I loved Ralph too much to be at all strict with him. He touched a chord in my heart, touched it so deeply I could not reprimand him, push him, as a growing boy ought to be pushed. Menrod was better at it. I would turn him into a sissy. The courts would not decide in my favor; I knew it as well as I knew anything, so what was the point worrying about it? I asked myself. Yet the worries stayed with me, my constant companions.

I assuaged my conscience in every way I could. I would not abandon the children; I would be as much with them as I could, whenever they were in residence at the Manor. They would spend days, perhaps whole weeks, with me and Mama, on occasions when Menrod was away. He was often away, as he was now, with Mrs. Livingstone—

Water splashed down the front of my gown. Coming to attention, I saw I had watered my poor dracaena till it was floating, the water coursing down the sides of the pot, onto the floor. I took myself severely to task. Forget about the children. They will deal fine with their uncle. He won’t spoil them, and he won’t be cruel. He was fair in his dealings. Oh, but was it fair for him to tell me he was beginning to hate me? Yes, that was what was at the bottom of my turmoil. That was why I could not put Mrs. Livingstone out of my mind. I felt betrayed at the knowledge he had gone to her.

I thought he had gone to Brighton to get away from me, because he was becoming too fond of me. He did not want to fall into Peter’s trap of marrying a country girl, only from being too much in her company. Such was my opinion of my country-bred charms that I did not think the cure would take. I thought he knew it too, when he invited me to join them in Brighton. I likened his case to a gout victim, who knows it is the rich food and wine that defeats him, yet he must have them in spite of himself. What a fool I would have made of myself had I gone.

So I sat quietly at home, receiving a couple of calls from Lady Menrod, who was bored, with her houseguest gone. The weekly card party at the cottage continued. We read the wedding report of Lady Althea and Mr. Everett in the newspapers. They would not be holding their ball for some time; they were off to several countries on their wedding trip. He never can be satisfied with only one of things.

There was the trip to Reading on Saturdays, church on Sundays, and a long, desolate week between, to be got in somehow. The roof was mended and rethatched. Mama’s ceiling was replastered. My dracaena died from over-mothering, and I bought an exotic gardenia to replace it, and to raise my spirits. I usually dug my plants up from the ground around the cottage.

The gardenia in bloom had a beautiful aroma. It sat in state on a stone table. I looked at it, until I knew every white waxen petal by heart, then the bloom turned brown and fell off. I was happy to be rid of it. It was out of place in my simple garden. As out of place as a romance with Lord Menrod in my simple life.

The last few days before Menrod’s arrival home with the children were the hardest to bear. He wrote once, a brief business letter to my mother, announcing he would be home after the custody hearing in London. My heart stopped beating when the letter arrived. I thought he was urging us to go to Brighton, but my name was not once mentioned in it. Mrs. Pudge said waspishly she would be glad when my eggs had hatched, for if ever she saw a broody hen, it was me, ready to cackle and snap at everyone. To atone for her impertinence, she brought me a disgusting concoction of whipped milk and eggs, flavored with sugar and vanilla.

“For you are too young to go off in your looks, miss,” she felt obliged to add. “Peaked—you are looking peaked. It comes of losing Mr. Everett, but you’ll nab a better man yet, if I know anything. They’ll all have to drink the wine of astonishment at your cath.”