Like a Flower in Bloom (14 page)

I determined to lie abed the next morning as Miss Templeton habitually did, until the hour of ten, but to my great frustration, I could only manage to stay prone until seven. When I could stand it no longer, I dressed and descended the stair for breakfast, hoping to sneak into the kitchen before Mrs. Harvey bestirred herself. From the sound of activity in the kitchen, however, it seemed I was too late. Now I would have to content myself with whatever it was she threw at me.

The idea that I would have to survive until the evening hours on a diet of stale bread and cold tea filled me with despair. Perhaps I could walk over to Dodsley Manor and cast myself upon Miss Templeton’s mercy. As I stood in the front hall contemplating doing just that, I heard Mr. Trimble conversing with someone in the parlor.

“And what is it you would say that you’re doing now?” he was asking.

“Now?” a female voice answered him. “Well . . . I’ve melted the wax to make a sheet, haven’t I? So now I have to add the color and then I’ll have to pour it into the mold, won’t I?”

“I wonder how I ought to write that up. . . .”

As I stood there listening, a young woman came out from the kitchen carrying a tea tray filled with delectably browned buns, a bowl of glossy hard-boiled eggs, and a steaming teapot. She could not have been any older than I. Her ginger-colored hair was caught up in the back with pins. Freckles mottled her high, flat cheeks and thin nose.

She dropped a curtsey.

Could it be
hot
tea she was carrying? She proceeded into the parlor and must have deposited it there, for when she returned, she was not carrying it. I followed her down the hall to the kitchen and looked inside. Mrs. Harvey was nowhere to be seen.

Returning to the front hall, I peeked round the corner and tried to catch Mr. Trimble’s eye.

At length, he spied me and promptly came to his feet. “Miss Withersby?”

I gestured him over.

He excused himself from his guest and stepped out into the hall to join me. “How may I be of assistance?”

I stepped closer to him so I could whisper.

He took a hasty step backward.

“Who is that woman?”

He turned and cast a glance toward the visitor. “Her name is Mrs. Gribble.”

“And what is she doing here?”

“She’s telling me how to make a wax flower.”

“Why?”

“So that I can write the book you promised to your publisher. Really, Miss Withersby, is that the reason you asked me to come out here? Because I’ve rather a lot of work to be accomplished and it’s already—”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s not.”

“It’s not what?”

“It’s not the only reason. What I really wanted to know was who is that girl? The one with the tea tray? And where is Mrs. Harvey?”

“That is Miss Hansford. I took the liberty of firing your Mrs. Harvey.”

“You . . . you
fired
her? Are you allowed to do that? She came with the house.”

“She wasn’t a box hedge or a window shutter. And her cooking was abominable! No one should have to suffer such food. It’s a wonder you and your father survived as long as you did.” He was glaring at me as if she were my fault. “And I would not say that’s to your credit. Most people eat genuine food at their meals.”

“But the leasing agent—”

“The leasing agent was quite accommodating when I told him that it was either Mrs. Harvey or you.”

He must have read incomprehension in my eyes. “I told him that if she did not go, then we would.”

I heard myself gasp. “But that . . . that was a lie! We never would have—”

“
I
would have. As much as I feel fortunate to be working with your father, I would not much longer have stood for that dreadful food.”

He didn’t have to be so adamant about it. “The new girl seems pleasant.”

“She ought to be. She’s being paid quite well.”

“But there’s no money to—”

“There was plenty of money after I realized the butcher was billing you for meat you never saw. Didn’t you wonder why you were always being served salt pork when you were billed every week for sausages and roasts and chops?”

“Well . . . no.” I hadn’t. “Are you saying that we paid for real meat? But . . . where did it all go?” And why had I never noticed?

“I expect they went to some friend of Mrs. Harvey’s.”

I felt my mouth drop open.

The bell sounded at the front door, and the girl in question came out from the kitchen, hurrying past us.

“She answers the door too?”

“She’d better if she wishes to keep her position. I’ve tired of doing it myself.”

She came back to us and dropped another curtsey. “A package for Miss Withersby.”

I took it from her, nodded to them both, and went to the study to find my father. “Did you know Mr. Trimble has fired Mrs. Harvey?”

“I was going to tell you last night, but you retired before I had the chance.” He was actually smiling. “I told you he was a fine young fellow.”

“You approve?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“You mean . . . I could have fired her months ago?”

“Of course you could have.”

“But . . . why didn’t
you
fire her?”

“I hadn’t noticed just how bad things had gotten.”

“But wouldn’t you have been upset if I had done it?”

“If
you
had done it, that would have been fine.
I
wouldn’t have wanted to though. That woman frightened me.”

She’d frightened me too. The question was, why hadn’t she frightened Mr. Trimble?

I took the package upstairs to my room and found it to be an eglantine-colored silk dress and other bits from the dressmaker. I took up a piece of lacey . . . something that had fallen to the floor. It looked as if it ought to be a cape, but it was too short to serve that purpose, and the sides ended in points. If it was too small to be a cape and too large to be a handkerchief, whatever could it be for? There must be some purpose for those pointed ends. They were meant to be tied around something. Perhaps on my head in place of my flowered fall? I made several attempts to secure it there, but it didn’t want to stay.

Holding it up, I tried to envision where else it might go. Around my waist?

I tried it, but it seemed rather awkward, and I hadn’t noticed any other women wearing lace tied about their waists.

The only place left was my neck, so I tied it on. The ends weren’t long enough to make into a bow, so I left it knotted and then looked at the effect in the mirror. It wasn’t what I would have thought of as stylish, but my taste in fashion appeared to be eccentric in the extreme.

Untying the lace, I left it on my dresser top and the dress spread upon my bed and went downstairs. I was able to get a cup of tea and two whole slices of bread from the kitchen and I didn’t even have to beg for them!

By the time the Admiral came that evening, I was ready and waiting for him. In order to avoid another vexing conversation with Mr. Trimble, I descended only when I heard my uncle’s carriage arrive. But I did feel the need to venture into the parlor to bid farewell to my father and urge him to retire earlier rather than later.

Mr. Trimble spared me a long glance. And then another. “That’s a rather novel . . . What
is
that there about your neck?”

“I’ve no idea. But it was meant to be tied around something. It has two long points to it.”

“Points? Can you . . . ? May I see it for a moment?”

He didn’t wait for an answer but simply stepped forward to dismantle my knot himself, and then he pulled the lace from my neck. As he held it up, I saw his jaw twitch. “It’s a pelerine, Miss Withersby, but you were not far off. It’s meant to be placed about your shoulders.” He leaned round me, brushing my nose with his cravat, and drew the fabric about my shoulders, leaving the pointed ends to dangle down the front of my gown.

I picked one of them up and waved it under his nose. “And what about these?”

“I’m afraid they’re meant for no purpose.”

“None?”

“Unlike in nature, you will soon discover that there seems to be no purpose to fashion.”

“But . . . why are they there, then?”

He took up the other and tickled my nose with it. “To be dipped in your soup, perhaps. Or to catch the wind and fly away.”

I reached for it, my fingers tussling with his as I did so. “I asked for a mantle, not some useless bit of lace.”

He let the ends drop, and they fluttered back to my gown. His teasing manner had disappeared and he had stepped away from me with an abrupt bow. “There. You are the picture of perfection. So keep your mouth closed as long as you possibly can, and perhaps you will manage to avoid persuading your companions otherwise.”

His tone was so reasonable that I was out the door and settled in the carriage beside the Admiral before I realized I had been insulted.

I
returned from the dinner with a headache and woke up with it as well. A piping hot cup of tea didn’t really help matters, but it tasted heavenly. After eating a bun and a soft-boiled egg, I strayed into the parlor. Mr. Trimble was bent over a table, my pen in his hand. So rapt was his attention that he gave no sign of hearing me, and I was able to observe his work unnoticed. He seemed to be drawing a spider orchid, though if so, he must have been drawing it from memory. It didn’t correlate with the established type. “What are you doing?”

He blinked as he lifted his gaze from the paper before him. Then he stood. “Forgive me. I’m trying to do up a spider orchid for your father’s book.”

“You can’t.” I was the one who illustrated my father’s books.

“I’m inclined to agree with you. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen the actual flower, and I think it would be much easier if I actually had one to draw from. But I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find the specimen.”

“There isn’t one.”

“Then how were you meant to draw it?” He gave me a keener glance. “And where have
you
seen a spider orchid?”

“I haven’t.”

“Ever?”

“Never. But I know that the variety you’re working on is nearly black in color, and its sepals are lateral. There should be a botanical plate illustrating the ideal of its type in the sitting room. That’s what I would have drawn it from.”

“I found that plate and was astounded by how little it looks like the actual flower.”

“It’s not supposed to.”

“Then perhaps we’re speaking of two different plants. On the specimens I observed in New Zealand, the flower blooms below the leaves, not above them, and the petals actually droop. It looks nothing like the one in the illustration.”

“It’s not supposed to look like anything you’d find in the field. It’s the
type
—the
ideal
specimen.”

“I assure you that one could look forever along the streams of the colony and never find a single plant that looks like
the type
.”

“You’re being too literal, Mr. Trimble. And the plate is not meant to offend you. It’s . . . it’s a simple compilation, if you will.”

“In that Wardian case I brought you, there
is
a spider orchid. A real one. When it blooms, I promise, you will find it looks nothing like that type of yours.”

“Be that as it may, the important thing is the type, not the individual specimen.”

His neck had gone flush, and he was drumming his fingers on the table. “You’re asking me to submit some idealized lie of an illustration instead of the truth?” He spoke the words quite carefully.

“If we illustrate an actual specimen, it’s possible that we may have chosen an aberration, and then people might walk through a field expecting to find one, and—”

“Beside a stream would be a more likely place to find—”

“They might walk beside a stream, then, expecting to see something that can never be duplicated.”

“That’s better than expecting to see something that never was.” He took up his pen and started drawing once more. “Is your father going to put a notation in his book? Warning to the reader: The flowers illustrated within have no basis in reality and exist only in the artist’s imagination?”

“I’m simply requesting that you do the work the way my father expects you to. Otherwise, I would be happy to do it myself.”

There was no reply save a tightening of his jaw.

I took my indignation over to Miss Templeton’s, feeling certain that she would understand. I was led into a sitting room where I found her drawing by aid of a camera lucida.

“Miss Withersby! You are heaven-sent. Please come and tell me what I’m doing wrong.” She was looking through a prism at her paper and attempting to draw a crested buckler fern that sat on a table in front of her. Its image was reflected down upon her paper. “I’m afraid it doesn’t look like a fern at all, but I can’t say why, for all I should have to do is sketch the form on the paper. That’s why I begged Papa to get me one.” She adjusted the prism. “I’m beginning to think it’s defective!”

Looking down at her penciled lines, I had to disagree. “You’ve done admirably well in copying the outline.”

“Then why does it look so flat? As if it hasn’t got any life in it?”

“Because it hasn’t. I daresay it looks the way it does because you’re only drawing what you see.”

“But that’s the genius of this contraption! It shows me, more clearly, what it is that I’m seeing.”

“But if you don’t know what parts make up the plant, then how can you correctly interpret it? This for instance.” I pointed to the base of the plant, where the few fronds seemed to rise from a single source. “Each of these fronds comes from a different branch of the rhizome.” I took her pencil and emphasized the distance between them. “And here you must be very precise.” I pointed to the places where her leaves joined the stems. “They alternate.”

“They what?”

“The leaves alternate. They aren’t directly opposite each other. And see here: this bare portion of the stem isn’t smooth. It’s covered with scales.”

“Well, of course it is, but I only wanted to draw the outline.”

“The fern is nothing without its parts.”

She pushed the paper aside with a sigh. “And I so wanted to have something to show the watercolor society on Friday!”

“You can. If you have a sharp knife, I can show you what’s inside and—”

She took the plant and set it in a Wardian case by the window. “No good can come from poking about at things that weren’t meant to be seen. I’ll just go empty-handed, the way I always do. One good thing about me: I can admire the handiwork of everyone else. I never stint on praise where praise is due.” She took her pencil from me and deposited it in a drawer along with her drawing paper. “Oh! Why don’t
you
join the society? We’d have ever so much fun. And I’m sure that any painting of yours could beat out Mrs. Archer’s. It wouldn’t even have to be a very big one. That way someone else could win artist of the month and I could take all the credit for recruiting you.”

“But I’m not an artist. I’m a botanist. I don’t paint. I illustrate.”

“Don’t worry. No one will care. They really won’t. And in
any case, illustrations and paintings are very nearly the same thing. Do come! We’re having a genuine drawing tutor come to give us lessons. And he’s going to be the judge of our contest.”

“I think it highly probable that I’ll be back to assisting my father in just a few days.”

“If you are, then think nothing of it, but if you aren’t, you must promise me you’ll come. And that you’ll bring the biggest painting you’ve done.”

By Friday, Mr. Trimble was still ensconced in my position, so I leafed through my most recent illustrations, selected a particularly finely detailed drawing of a potato orchid and put it into a portfolio. I added several sheets of additional paper for drawing, and then took up my box of brushes and paints—which, upon further investigation, I found that Mr. Trimble had ruined. For an exceptionally tidy person, he was remarkably careless with other people’s paints. “I’m going out to a watercolor society meeting.”

I might have simply spoken to myself for all the attention I received. It would serve them right if I did win artist of the month. Then maybe the society would insist upon keeping the illustration and Mr. Trimble would go mad trying to determine what had become of it.

I felt myself smile.

Perhaps I would enjoy this meeting after all.

The group met at the society president’s house. Just inside the door, I saw Miss Templeton. She waved. “There you are! I had worried you’d gotten your position back and I’d be left on my own.”

“Not yet.”

“Good!” She took my portfolio from me and wielded it like a
shield as she cut a path through the gathering men and women, heading down the hall toward an open door.

I hurried to follow before the path closed up again.

“Now . . .” She surveyed the various chairs and sofas placed in a semicircle about the room. It was a sort of glass-sided conservatory that appeared an ideal location for growing specimens, though there were only a half-dozen potted ferns placed about the room. “We’ll just put ourselves here.” She moved a pile of papers and brushes that was already sitting atop a chair.

“Isn’t someone already sitting here?”

“If they were sitting here, then really, they ought to be sitting here.” She leaned closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Besides, it’s Mrs. Shandlin, and she’s so tall that whenever she sits in the front, I can never see through her. If she were at all courteous, she’d sit in the back.” She deposited the aforementioned Mrs. Shandlin’s things two rows back. “There.” She turned to me. “Where is your painting?”

“My
illustration
is just there.” I nodded toward the portfolio.

Miss Templeton tore into the portfolio and pulled the illustration out like a prize. The beginnings of a smile had limned her face, but as she looked at the plant, her brow fell. “I had hoped for something a bit more . . . flowery . . . Although I suppose it’s very well drawn. It looks quite detailed.”

“It’s a potato orchid from New Zealand. A specimen Mr. Trimble sent us last year. I’m quite proud of it, actually, because it’s a challenging plant to draw and paint. They’re naturally brown, so it’s difficult to portray them without the flowers looking withered and dead.”

“Yes. I can see that it is. And this . . . ?” She was gesturing toward the bottom of the paper, where I had illustrated the root system. “Is that an actual potato?”

“It’s the root structure. Have you ever seen anything so unusual?”

“In a painting? I have not. Are you certain you want to display this? If it’s the only potato drawing you have, don’t you think you’d rather keep it for yourself?”

“I’m quite happy to have it displayed.”

We left our chairs and went back into the front hall, where some paintings had been propped against the hallstand.

Miss Templeton moved several smaller ones out of the way, set mine against the hallstand, and then put the others back in place in front of it.

“But you can’t really see it that way.”

“I would hate to seem too forward about it. You
are
quite nearly a professional.”

Among the amateur paintings of flowers and insipid landscapes, mine stood out for its detail and clarity. Miss Templeton was right. Why call extra attention to it when my skill was plain for all to see?

The meeting started with a reading of the previous meeting’s minutes and reports from the president, the four vice presidents, the treasurer, the secretary, the correspondence secretary, the chair of membership, and each of the six council members present, as well as written reports from the two council members absent. That accounted for about half of the people in the room. The president then stood once again, in her capacity as hostess, and welcomed us to her home and then went back to being president to welcome guests to the society, and finally, the drawing tutor was introduced.

He talked at great length about the holding of a drawing pencil and the proper ratio of water to paint and a great many other things that had nothing to do with actual drawing or painting at all. But as I looked around the room, I saw the men and
women sitting around me were listening with rapt attention. At last, he set a pot of anemone with vibrant purple flowers atop a table with instructions to paint not its form but its essence.

I set to work sketching with ink, and then—

“Better to do it in pencil.”

I looked up to find the tutor frowning at my drawing. “I prefer not to have to retrace my pencil lines in pen. It’s more efficient that way.”

“Be that as it may . . .” He lifted the sheet from me, revealing a clean one. “It’s much better to start in pencil, trace over it in ink, and then color your final drawing.”

Miss Templeton was glancing at me with a worried pull to her brow.

“Once you accomplish the correct method, believe me, you will never wish to draw any other way.” He tapped the paper with his knuckle. “Back to work, then.”

I tried to brush away the mark his knuckles had made, but I only succeeded in turning it into a greasy smear. Clenching my jaw, I discarded the paper for a second fresh page and hurriedly redrew what I had just done. There. I felt my shoulders relax as I started filling in the details.