Her Mother's Hope (10 page)

“They won’t have to invent a thing. It doesn’t even occur to you how I feel, does it? How can I show my face outside the front door when my mother is the scandal of the neighborhood?”

Fuming, Marta returned to the kitchen. “Miss Millicent wants spicy chicken sandwiches tomorrow.”

“If I make spicy chicken, she’ll want something else. There’s no pleasing her.”

“I’m surprised Miss Millicent receives so many invitations.”

“She can be quite charming when she has reason to be. And I understand she can be quite pleasing to young men.” Enid shrugged. “I’ll be needing more carrots and another onion. Why don’t you go on out to the garden? You look like you could use a breath of fresh air. But don’t be long. Her Highness will be wanting the tea things removed from the parlor. She’s invited guests for dinner.”

Miss Millicent stayed home for two months, then left again.

“She must love to travel.”

Enid gave a snort. “She’s gone hunting. And I don’t mean foxes.”

“What, then?”

“Miss Millicent is off on another one of her husband-hunting expeditions. It’s Brighton this time because she heard a friend has a brother who’s eligible. She’ll be home in a few weeks, disappointed. She’ll be moody and disagreeable, and she’ll stuff herself with scones and marmalade, cakes and spicy chicken sandwiches. Then, she’ll start writing letters again, and she’ll keep writing until someone invites her to come for a visit on the Continent or in Stratford-upon-Avon or in Cornwall. She meets people everywhere she goes, and she keeps their names and addresses.”

Enid’s prophecy proved true. Miss Millicent came home after two weeks, and she stayed in her room for another, demanding that all her meals be brought to her. Marta would find her propped up in bed, reading Jane Austen romances. After exhausting the staff with constant demands, she went off to Dover to visit a sick friend.

“I heard her tell Lady Daisy the lady must be on her deathbed,” Marta told Enid. “The vicar comes to visit several times a week.”

“A vicar, you say? Well, maybe Miss Millicent is beginning to see the light and lowering her standards. But if the man has a lick of sense, he’ll heed the apostle Paul’s advice and remain unmarried!”

Miss Millicent returned in a foul temper.

Lady Daisy ordered beef Wellington. Enid clucked her tongue as she iced a chocolate cake. “Things must not have gone well in Dover. No big surprise there. Miss Millicent will be off again soon enough, to Brighton or Cambridge.”

Millicent didn’t spend a week in her room this time. She lounged in the conservatory, regaling her mother with complaints. “It’s a perfectly horrid place, Mother. I don’t know why anyone would want to live in that cold, dreary place.”

“Did you attend church with Susanna?”

“Of course, but I didn’t like the vicar at all. For all his kind attention to Susanna, he was quite dull.”

Back in the kitchen, Enid sighed. “More likely she tossed out her line and didn’t even get a bite.”

Another letter came from Rosie. She had married Arik, and she expected to be blissfully happy for the rest of her life. She wished the same to Marta, who felt a sense of loss and envy. Ashamed she could resent such happiness, Marta prayed God would bless them and spent a month’s salary on white lawn, Irish lace, satin ribbons, silk embroidery thread, needles, and a hoop. While others slept, Marta sat in an alcove with a candle burning and made a dressing gown fit for a princess. It took two months to finish it.

I have never worn anything so beautiful in my life! Even my wedding dress could not compare. I have wonderful news. Arik and I expect a baby to arrive just before our first anniversary.

I can’t express to you how happy I am. I pray God will bless you with happiness, too, Marta. I pray you will meet someone you can love as much as I love Arik.

Marta folded the letter away and added it to the growing bundle. Love could be a two-edged sword. What guarantee was there that it would be returned? Solange and Rosie had been blessed by the men they loved. Mama had not been so fortunate. Marta began work on a christening gown and bonnet.

10

A strained ambivalence took hold of Marta. She continued to save money, but she stopped making grandiose plans about having her own boardinghouse. She tried to follow Mama’s advice and count her blessings. She had grown deeply fond of Lady Daisy and enjoyed being her companion. She respected and had great affection for Enid. She liked Welton, and she had befriended Gabriella, the new girl from Italy. Marta set herself the task of learning Italian while teaching her English. Life was good enough in Lady Stockhard’s household. Why change things?

Marta had collected the best of Enid’s recipes and tucked away the book Rosie had given her. She didn’t write letters to Rosie as often as she had during her first three years away from Steffisburg. Rosie’s letters still arrived with regularity, filled with glowing words about Arik and going on and on about every little change in baby Henrik. And now she expected another. Rosie had always been a wonderful friend, but there was an unconscious insensitivity in the way she shared her joy. Each time Marta read one of her letters, she felt as though salt were being poured over her wounds.

She could almost empathize with Miss Millicent’s increasing frustration over not finding a suitable husband.

Every Sunday when Marta went to church, she imagined Mama sitting beside her. She prayed God would have mercy on Elise’s soul. Although the dreams had stopped after a year, she sometimes longed for them to return, afraid she was already forgetting Mama’s and Elise’s faces. The ache remained like a heavy stone inside her. Occasionally, unexpectedly, the grief would swell up and catch hold of her throat until she felt she was choking on it. She never cried in front of anyone. She waited, searching desperately for something to do to keep her mind occupied. At night, she had no defenses. In the dark, she felt free to release the pent-up pain inside her.

When she couldn’t sleep, she borrowed another book from Lady Daisy’s library.

Time passed most pleasantly when Miss Millicent was off on one of her hunting expeditions, far less amiably when the miss languished at home. Marta liked having Lady Daisy all to herself. She thought Miss Millicent the most foolish girl she had ever met to take her mother so for granted. Lady Daisy had entered her declining years. Someday she would be gone. Who would love Miss Millicent then?

A year passed and then another. Marta took comfort in her routine. She got up early every morning and helped Enid prepare breakfast, then did housekeeping chores with Gabriella. Every afternoon, rain or shine, she took Lady Daisy on an outing to Kew Gardens. If Miss Millicent was home, Gabriella did the running to and fro. Marta wrote once a month to Rosie, though she had less and less to tell her friend.

Often after everyone had gone to bed, Marta would sit in the library and read. One night Lady Daisy found her standing by the shelves. “What have you been reading?” She held out her hand, and Marta handed over the book she had intended to return. “
The Battle for Gaul
by Julius Caesar.” She chuckled. “Rather grim reading, don’t you think? Certainly not something I would ever choose.” She smiled at Marta. “It was one of Clive’s favorites.” She handed the book back to Marta, and Marta slid it back into its place. Lady Daisy pulled a slim volume from a shelf. “I prefer Lord Tennyson’s poems.” She held it out to Marta. “Why don’t you take this with you tomorrow when we go to the gardens?”

After Tennyson, Lady Daisy told Marta to select something. After one afternoon of listening to Charles Darwin’s
The Origin of Species
, Lady Daisy brought
A Tale of Two Cities
with her. Sometimes Marta would read to her in the evening. Lady Daisy selected Sir Walter Scott’s
Ivanhoe
next and followed that with Maria Edgeworth’s
Castle Rackrent
. Sometimes Miss Millicent became so bored or distraught, she came along to listen.

Marta continued reading whenever she had a moment to herself, often keeping a book tucked in her apron pocket.

Rosie wrote with surprising news.

Your father married a woman from Thun the summer after your mother died. I didn’t know how to tell you. She manages your father’s shop, and if I dare say it, she manages your father as well. Apparently, his wife has connections. She saw that he had two men assigned to help him.

After the initial shock, Marta felt numbed by the news that she had a stepmother. How would Mama feel if she knew she had been so easily replaced? Did Papa ever grieve over her or Elise? She considered writing to him and congratulating him on his marriage, then decided against it. Though she felt no ill will toward the woman, she didn’t want to extend good wishes to her father. Instead, she hoped his new wife would be as great a trial to him as he had been to Mama.

Marta continued to take Lady Daisy to Kew Gardens every day. Lady Daisy knew the name of every plant, when they bloomed, and which had medicinal value. She would lose herself in thought at times, and she’d be silent. They went often to the Palm House with its Pagoda and Syon Vistas and the steam rising from underground boilers into the ornate campanile. The steamy heat soothed Lady Daisy’s aching joints and reminded her of India. Marta preferred the Woodland Glade with its deciduous canopy, flowering shrubs and hellebores, primroses and red poppies.

Every season had its delight; winter with its witch hazel and ordered beds of viburnums along the Palm House pond, and snow covering the lawn with white. February brought thousands of purple crocuses peeking up through the grass between the Temple of Bellona and Victoria Gate, and bright yellow daffodils along Broad Walk. In March the cherry trees bloomed and left a carpet of pink and white on the path. April filled the dell with red and purple rhododendrons and magnolias with their plate-size white, waxy blossoms, followed in May by azaleas covering themselves in shawls of peachy-pink and white. The scent of lilacs filled the air. Roses climbed the Pergola and giant water lilies spread out across the pond while laburnum dripped sunlight-yellow streamers in celebration of spring. The tulip and mock orange trees hinted scents of heaven, before autumn came in a burst of color, fading by late November with the advance of winter.

“It’s a pity I can’t be buried here,” Lady Daisy said one day. Death seemed to be on everyone’s mind these days, ever since the “unsinkable”
Titanic
had hit an iceberg and sunk on its maiden voyage. Over fourteen hundred lives had been lost in the frigid Atlantic waters. “Of course, I’d rather be buried in India beside Clive. India was like another world with its strange architecture and jungles. It had a scent of spices. Most ladies I met longed to return to England, but I would’ve been happy to stay forever. I suppose that had everything to do with Clive. I would’ve been happy in a bedouin tent in the middle of the Sahara.”

Lady Daisy hardly said a word the next afternoon as Marta pushed her along in the Broad Walk in Kew Gardens.

“Are you feeling all right, Lady Daisy?”

“Sick at heart. Let’s rest by the lily pond.” She pulled a thin volume from beneath her blanket and held it out to Marta. “Lord Byron used to be Millicent’s favorite poet. She doesn’t read him anymore. Read ‘The First Kiss of Love.’” When Marta finished, Lady Daisy sighed wearily. “Again, and with a little more feeling this time.”

Marta read the poem again.

“Have you ever been in love, Marta?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Why not?”

It seemed an odd question. “It’s not something that can be ordered, ma’am.”

“You have to be willing.”

Marta felt her face heat up. She hoped silence would end such personal inquiries.

“A woman should not go through life without love.” Lady Daisy’s eyes grew moist. “It’s why Millicent is so desperate and bitter now. She thinks all her opportunities are gone. She could still marry, if she had the courage.” Lady Daisy sighed heavily. “She has a good education. She’s still lovely and can be charming. She has friends. But she has always set such high expectations. Perhaps if she had had Clive’s mother to help, but you see, she would have nothing to do with me. I was a pub owner’s daughter, nothing more. Millicent thought the lady’s heart might soften for her only grandchild. I warned her, but she went anyway. Of course, she was not received.”

Lady Daisy fell silent for a long time. Marta didn’t know what to say to give her comfort. Her mistress smoothed the blanket over her legs. “It’s a pity really. Millicent is like her grandmother in some ways.” She gave Marta a bleak smile. “She doesn’t approve of me either.” She lifted her shoulders. “And, in all truth, no one knows that better than I. But Clive saw something in me and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“I am sorry about Miss Millicent, ma’am.” Marta couldn’t deny what she had seen with her own eyes. “You are a remarkable mother.”

“Less than what I should’ve been. It’s my fault things turned out this way, but if I lived my life all over again, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I wanted him. That’s how selfish I am. Besides, if I had done things differently, Millicent wouldn’t even exist. I comfort myself by remembering how much Clive loved me. I tell myself he wouldn’t have been happy behind a desk overseeing his father’s landholdings or sitting in Parliament.”

She shook her head sadly. “Millicent met a fine young man when she was sixteen. He was absolutely mad about her. I advised Millicent to marry him. She said he didn’t have the proper connections and therefore would never amount to anything. He’s in Parliament now, and married, of course. She saw him with his wife and children in Brighton last summer. That’s why she came home so soon. One poor decision can change the entire course of your life.”

Marta thought of Mama and Elise. “I know, Lady Daisy. I made a decision once that I will regret for the rest of my life, though I don’t know what I could have done to change anything.”

Lady Daisy looked pale and upset. “Clive was always the one to call me Milady Daisy, and Welton called me Lady Daisy when he came. I’m not a lady at all, Marta. I’m just plain Daisy. I never knew my father. I grew up in Liverpool and worked in a theater. I was Clive’s mistress for a year before he took me off to Gretna Green to make an honest woman of me. Millicent knows enough about my past to think I have nothing good to teach her. I may be lower than a guttersnipe under my nice clothes, but at least I knew quality when I saw it, and I wasn’t afraid to grab hold. I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was Clive Reginald Stockhard!” She gave a broken sob.

“You are a lady. You are as much a lady as my mother was, ma’am.”

Lady Daisy leaned forward and grasped Marta’s wrist tightly. “What are you waiting for, Marta Schneider?”

Marta started at the question. “I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.”

“Of course you do.” Her hand tightened and her blue eyes glistened with angry tears. “You didn’t come to England to be a servant for the rest of your life, did you? You could’ve done that in Switzerland. A dream brought you here. I knew that the minute I saw your application. I saw in you a girl driven by something. I thought you would only stay for a year or two before you set off to get what you wanted.”

Marta’s heart pounded heavily. “I am content, ma’am.”

“
Content.
Oh, my dear.” Lady Daisy’s voice softened and became pleading. “I have watched you grieve and punish yourself for nearly six years.”

Marta felt the punch of those words. “I should’ve gone home.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Because Solange needed her. Because the winter snows had piled up outside the door. Because she had been afraid that if she did, she would never be able to escape.

“Don’t come home again,”
Mama’s words whispered in Marta’s mind. She pulled her wrist free and covered her face.

Lady Daisy sat beside her on the park bench. “You have served me faithfully for five years. Soon it will be six. Even with the little you have told me of your mother, I doubt she wanted you to spend the rest of your life as a servant.” She put her hand on Marta’s knee. “I am very fond of you, my dear, and I’m going to give you some advice because I don’t want you to end up like Millicent. She puts a shawl of pride around herself, and life will pass her by.”

“I’m not looking for a husband, ma’am.”

“Well, how could you when you spend six days a week working in the kitchen or taking me on outings and then most of the night reading? You never go anywhere other than church, and you never linger there long enough to meet any young man who might be interested.”

“No one has ever been interested. Men want pretty wives.”

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty never lasts. A man with sense knows that. You have strong character. You are kind. You are honest. You work hard and learn quickly. You left home to better yourself. You may not have formal schooling, but you’ve read the best books in my library. These are qualities a wise man will value.”

“If my father could find nothing about me to love, Lady Daisy, I doubt any other man will.”

“I beg your pardon, Marta, but your father is a fool. Maybe you aren’t beautiful, but you are attractive. A woman’s hair is her glory, my girl, and besides that asset, you have a very fine figure. I’ve seen men look at you. You blush, but it’s true.”

Marta didn’t know what to say.

Lady Daisy laughed. “Millicent would be appalled to hear me speak so bluntly, but if I don’t, you may go on for another five years before you come to your senses.” Lady Daisy folded her hands. “If you want to marry and have children, go to an English colony where there are more men than women. In a place like Canada, a man will see the value of a good woman and not care whether the blood in her veins is blue or red. These are things I have said to my daughter, but she won’t listen. She still dreams of meeting Mr. Darcy.” She shook her head. “Be wise, Marta. Don’t wait. Go down to Liverpool and buy passage on the first ship heading for Canada.”

“And what if my ship hits an iceberg?”

“We’ll pray that doesn’t happen. But if it does, you climb into a life raft and start rowing.”

Marta laughed. She felt exhilarated and afraid at the same time. Canada! She had never even thought of going there. She’d always thought she would return to Switzerland. “I’ll leave at the end of the month.”