Lady Catherine's Necklace (5 page)

‘Miss de Bourgh! What brings you here?'

‘Oh, sir! Your cat is in trouble, sitting on a rock down where the brook runs so fast. That
is
your cat, is it not? That big yellow one? She is crying most miserably!'

‘Our Alice? Yes, indeed! Has the wretch got herself into difficulties again? I am very much obliged to you, Miss de Bourgh – I will come and rescue her directly.'

A voice from the interior now demanded to know what was going on, and Mynges, turning, said:

‘Do come in a moment, Miss Anne, while I leave my brush to soak and find a jacket. Tom, here is Miss de Bourgh, arrived to inform us that Alice has got herself marooned on a rock in the rapids.'

He swept a large bundle of blue velvet from a chair and said, ‘Pray be seated, Miss de Bourgh. I shall not be more than a couple of minutes.'

Anne moved almost unconsciously to the freed chair and sat down on it. All her attention was focused on the figure who reclined upon a chaise longue at the end of the studio. The figure was merely that of Mr Desmond Finglow, swathed in more of the heavy blue curtain velvet and holding a toasting-fork in his right hand, but he looked so amazingly kingly that she was quite electrified and could only gaze in silent wonder.

Finglow was a man in his seventies with a majestic countenance, a bush of white hair now somewhat retreating from his brow and a wealth of flowing white beard and moustaches. Two luminous blue eyes enhanced his Jove-like appearance.

Smiling, he said, ‘I would rise to greet you properly, Miss Anne, but if I did so without Tom's aid I should infallibly trip over all this tangle of canonicals; so I hope that you will excuse me and take the will for the deed. As you may guess, I am representing Neptune for a set of gods and goddesses which have been commissioned from Tom by the Grimsby Press. How very kind of you to come and tell us about our wayward Alice. From time to time she takes these fits of wandering and we are obliged to perform all kinds of heroic and uncongenial antics in order to rescue her. Ah, Tom, sweetheart, will you be so good as to help me out of these draperies before you run off with Miss Anne to rescue the truant?'

‘Of course, my dear – there.'

Divested of the blue velvet, wearing a plain white robe and toga, Finglow still made an impressive figure. He said, ‘I will exchange these lendings for a more conventional costume while you go with Miss de Bourgh to fetch our wandering puss. Then I think you should offer her a glass of cowslip wine.'

‘Alice?'

‘No, chucklehead, Miss Anne.'

‘Oh, no – I do not think I had better—' Anne began to protest. But Ambrose Mynges, now revealed in conventional breeches and shooting jacket, said, ‘Come, and show me where she has got to.'

And, of course, when they reached the marooned Alice, perched like Andromeda on her rock, and Ambrose called to her:

‘Come along now, you witless creature – I have seen you jump five times that distance!' the cat stretched herself, hunched her shoulders and easily bounded across to the bank, coming to rub herself vigorously against her master's ankles and then stand on her hind legs, sinking her claws into his thigh, until he picked her up, when she sat on his shoulder looking complacent.

‘Her ruff is splendid,' said Anne. ‘Almost as good as Queen Elizabeth's.'

‘And she has a splendid opinion of herself, quite equal to that of the Virgin Queen,' agreed Ambrose. ‘It is her constant ambition to catch an eel down there; she has seen them swimming in that race, but I do not think she ever will. Now please come back, Miss Anne, and take a glass of cowslip wine, or a cup of tea if you prefer, in the cottage, and then I will escort you home, for it grows dusky.'

‘Oh, I do not think I should—'

But of course Anne allowed herself to be persuaded. They walked back to the cottage, which, in contrast to the wildly untidy studio, was almost spinsterish in its neatness, and the visitor was regaled, most correctly, with tea and macaroons by the hearth. Talk, easy and simple, ran on coventional lines: the weather, birds and flowers to be seen at this time of year, mention of neighbours and happenings in the village. But the glimpse she had been given of the barn – the paints, the pictures in progress and paraphernalia scattered about; above all the free and friendly relations of the two men, even with their cat – gave Anne de Bourgh an intoxicating glimpse of an undreamed-of life, something that lay totally outside any of her previous experience.

From then on, whenever opportunity presented itself, which it did more and more often as Mrs Jenkinson's migraines increased in frequency, and Lady Catherine became more deeply occupied with the commission of peace for the county, and with parish affairs, Anne found chances to slip away for brief, revitalizing visits to Wormwood End cottage. There she learned a little of the history of painting, for the two men had brought a substantial library with them when they quitted London; she learned a little about public affairs, for the friends received a daily paper and discussed it vigorously, often disagreeing; she learned the pleasures of conversation, which was deficient at Rosings, where Lady Catherine expressed her views and the rest of the household remained silent. Best of all, Anne learned that she herself might have some value in the world, for the two Toms, nine times out of ten, seemed genuinely pleased to see her.

‘Why, it is Miss Anne! Come in, come in!' If they were tired, out of sorts, or too hard at work, they said so directly, and her feelings were not hurt. Though sometimes, in the latter case, she was allowed in and might sit and observe in silence if she chose. Just occasionally, if Old Tom were at work on a portrait and the sitter was there, Young Tom would warn her, by a gesture at the door, that the time was not propitious. In London, Desmond Finglow had been well known for his fashionable portraits; he had painted Lord D— and the Duchess of N— and even some members of the royal family, and though he said his eyesight was deteriorating, and he found portraits too much of a strain these days, he still occasionally accepted a commission if some neighbour asked for a likeness. Lady Catherine had never made such a request; she was not interested. In the upstairs gallery at Rosings there was a prim portrait of Sir Lewis de Bourgh as a young man by Arthur Davis, looking boyish and bewildered. ‘
Not
a good likeness,' Lady Catherine said of it dismissively. ‘The artist has entirely omitted his strength and manliness.' But she did not care for art of any kind, holding it to be a frivolous waste of time.

Anne once asked Old Tom if he had seen Davis's portrait of her father, and he told her he had, at the time when it was painted. ‘At that period your father and I were good friends, my dear.' But when she asked what he thought of the portrait, he gave voice to rather the same opinion as Lady Catherine. ‘Davis did not make much of him. It was a shallow piece of work. There was more to your father than what he saw.'

Eagerly, Anne asked about her father. ‘What was he like, Mr Finglow? I was so young when he died.'

‘Oh, do call me Tom, my duck; everybody does. What was your father like? He was one of the most lovable characters I have ever met.'

Old Tom sighed. Anne wondered if he thought it a pity that Sir Lewis had married Lady Catherine. But he said only: ‘It was a sad waste that he should die at so young an age. He would have settled down and become a fine man – gone into politics, perhaps.'

‘Settled down? Was he wild, then?'

‘No more than was to be expected of a man his age. But come, Miss Anne; young Tom here is waiting to walk you home.'

There was only one fly in all this delicious ointment.

When Young Tom was escorting Anne back to the ha-ha bridge after her fifth or sixth visit to Wormwood End, they encountered Sydney Smirke, the head gardener at Rosings, who was very slowly and diligently raking the gravel on the far side of the bridge. Smirke greeted Mynges civilly enough, and said, ‘I'll see Miss Anne on as far as the shrubbery, sir,' touching his hat. But when Ambrose had gone, Smirke told Anne:

‘Lady Catherine come back early and unexpected, Miss Anne, about half an hour past. She was asking where you was got to, and I told her I thought you was in the succession houses with young Joss … Least said soonest mended, I thinks.'

Anne was somewhat flustered. ‘Oh – oh, thank you, Smirke.'

She had never liked Smirke. He was a dark, slant-eyed man who always seemed in need of a shave, and had a sidelong way of looking and an obsequious way of agreeing with whatever was said to him, at least by his betters.

‘I knew her ladyship would
not
be wishful to hear that you was down so near the water!' Smirke now suggested. ‘I knew that.'

He had a smile like that of a crocodile lying in shallow water waiting for its prey.

Anne felt in her pocket. All she had there was half a guinea.

She gave it to Smirke.

‘Oh, thank you, Miss Anne! Thank you indeed! I'll tell the boy Joss, shall I, that he's to say you were in the succession houses. If he were to be asked, that is.'

‘No,' said Anne more firmly, ‘you need not do that. That will not be necessary.'

And she walked on towards the house, trying to make her footsteps sound brisk and decisive.

Since that day she had given Smirke many more half-guineas.

On that first occasion, chancing to encounter the new garden-boy, Joss, as she returned, nervous and preoccupied, through the kitchen-garden regions on her way to the stable yard and back door, Anne paused a moment and said:

‘Were you in the succession houses just now, Joss?'

‘Nay, my lady.'

Joss, a tall, open-faced lad with a mop of curly, pale brownish hair, looked startled to death at being asked this question. As well he might; Anne de Bourgh had never addressed him before.

‘Did ye want something from there, miss? I could fetch ye aught that ye wanted – a pine, maybe, or a peach?'

‘No – no thank you, Joss. How long have you worked here, now?'

‘'Tis three-quarters of a year, now, miss, come Lady Day.'

‘You live in the village?'

‘Yes, miss, I lodge with Mrs Hurst, that was kin to my ma.'

‘Where is your mother, Joss?'

Reared by Lady Catherine, Anne put the question without hesitation, with a straightforward wish to know the answer; it would not have occurred to her that such an inquiry might cause offence.

But Joss, with equal simplicity, replied: ‘She be dead, Miss Anne. She died up there in Lunnon town. Dunna-many years 'tis, now. But I wholly craved to come back to Kent, where I was a babby, for I allus remembered the cherries and the primmy-roses on the banks and the kingcupses in Hunsford brook. 'Sides that, I remembered my ma a-saying as how some good luck'd come my way in Kent. What 'twas, she'd not say. But she had Romany blood, my mam did, she was a Smith and come of travellers' kin. She learned me how to read a hand, did Mam; though I haven't the sight, not how she had it. Shall I read your hand for 'ee, Miss Anne?'

‘Gracious,' said Anne, rather disconcerted. ‘If you like! But I do not believe in such stuff.'

‘No more do I – not more 'n half,' said Joss with an ingenuous grin. ‘But let's see, then.'

He took Anne's thin white hand in his brown earthy paw and studied the palm. What he saw seemed to surprise him considerably.

‘My word, miss. You're a lepper, you are!'

‘A leper?' Anne was puzzled. ‘Sick? Infectious, you mean?'

‘Nay. There be a high hurdle ahead of ye that ye mun lepp over.'

‘What
can
you mean?'

But at that moment they were interrupted by Mrs Jenkinson, who came hastening from the back door, exclaiming, ‘Miss Anne, Miss Anne! I have been searching for you everywhere! Lady Catherine has been asking for you this half-hour and more!'

III

Letter from Miss Maria Lucas to Mrs Jennings, Berkeley Street, Portman Square, London

My dear madam,

I arrived safe in Kent, thanks to your kind solicitude in having me despatched to my sister's door in your own comfortable carriage. Thanks also to the careful but speedy driving of your excellent coachman, I was delivered at Hunsford parsonage in good time, first, to bid farewell to my brother-in-law Mr Collins (who is now gone into Hertfordshire to wind up the affairs of his deceased cousin, Mr Bennet), and second, to be of some use and company to my sister Charlotte during the period of her confinement. This, I am happy to say, was of comparatively brief duration, without complications, and the outcome being twin boys, bringing the total of her family to four. The new arrivals are strong and thriving, to judge at least by the power of their lungs. In appearance they resemble my brother-in-law, that is, they are plump, red-faced and active.

While still in Hertfordshire I had anticipated that my time during this visit to Hunsford would be entirely passed in quiet, sisterly conversation, embroidering robes for the new arrivals and hemming napkins. But this was not to be. Judge of my delight, dear,
dear
Mrs Jennings, when your most wonderful, most welcome, most undeserved, most unexampled piece of generosity, the Broadwood piano, was delivered to the parsonage door! How shall I ever repay you for this gift! I play on it all day long, for the diversion of my sister, who dearly loves piano music. How very thoughtful of you it was, too, to send such a quantity of sheet music. Our favourite is ‘The Battle of Prague' by Kottzwara, but we also love Dibdin's ‘Sailor's Adieu', most touching; and the Clementi, and the Niccolò Puccini Overture – indeed, dear madam, we cannot sufficiently thank you, and I shall be happy to play for you, as many hours as you chuse, next time you visit Lucas Lodge, or if I should again spend time beneath your hospitable roof in Berkeley Street on my return from Kent to Hertfordshire.

My sister Charlotte has now quitted her chamber, as she is naturally of an active disposition and never likes to be confined for longer than is absolutely necessary. Charlotte reclines on the sofa knitting, while I play for her diversion. Not for her alone: we do not lack company, since there are several visitors just now up at Rosings House. The first arrivals were a brother and sister, a Mr and Miss Delaval, whose carriage suffered an accident near here in a snowstorm. Miss Delaval sustained an injury to her ankle, and until it is quite mended Lady Catherine has offered them hospitality. My sister Charlotte was not a little astonished at Lady C.'s readiness to entertain these strangers, for she is not used to be so liberal and sociable, except to members of her own family; but the Delavals are such a very agreeable, entertaining pair and make such acceptable inmates at Rosings that, although Miss Priscilla's ankle is now mending, Lady C. hardly knows how to part with them. Mr D., it seems, is knowledgeable regarding horticulture, and spends hours a day, when it is fine, walking about the grounds of Rosings with Lady C., advising her as to an improved arrangement of her parterres and parkland. She listens to him most willingly!