Rebecca Stubbs: The Vicar's Daughter (19 page)

Then we settled down with excited chatter to decide on how we could impress our important guests, especially the lady who would soon be our new mistress. The news excited great interest in us all, and we seemed united and girlish in our curiosity to know the facts of the relationship, how he proposed, when they would marry, and most importantly to us—what sort of mistress she would be and if she would make many changes?

I suppose I should have curtailed this sort of gossipy talk, but the housemaids’ questions were also mine. After Clara and Molly had gone home, Agnes and I went to the parlour to begin organising the menus and food orders for the next week. We had no idea how long our guests were staying or even what time on Thursday they would arrive so had to cover all eventualities. It was late into the night before we had settled on a satisfactory plan. This rush of activity was good for me, and I went to bed with my head full of thoughts of pounds of bacon and butter rather than that Edward was marrying and would never be mine. The Lord has many ways of being kind to us; some are strange, but all are effective.

The next day I awoke with a vague awareness that something was amiss. Then, all of the events of the previous day came flooding back. I lay in bed with a heavy heart and a sense of despondency, even my limbs feeling heavy and unwilling to move. I would have dearly loved to be a fine lady at that moment, able to give in to my feelings and lie morosely in bed all day, wallowing in my ill-fated love life, but I could not. I had work to do and staff to organise, so I heaved myself up to do my morning Bible reading and prayer. I prayed for strength and wisdom to get through the day, as usual, but also I prayed for special grace and submission in the unfolding events.

I wish I could report that I immediately felt special strength and help from above, but alas, this was not the case. Nevertheless, in a strange, unaccountable sort of way, the news of Edward’s engagement was a relief after weeks of speculation. My loyalty to Edward had almost been a self-inflicted chain, binding me to Biggenden, putting him first in my every decision, but now I felt released, though somewhat afraid and daunted by my new freedom.

The whole house was spick and span, but the bedrooms needed airing and warming, so after letting in great gusts of cold November air, we shut the windows and lit the fires and then kept them roaring. The kitchen was a hive of activity as various delivery boys brought in their orders and Agnes set about making the ingredients into beautiful delicacies. Rightly or wrongly, we had gotten the impression from her last visit that Mrs. Harrington viewed us as inept country bumpkins. We were determined to prove her wrong and, to avoid any unseemly disorganisation, we practised lining up outside the front door to welcome the guests. The gardeners acted, with great exaggeration, as dignified guests, and we curtsied to them and made appropriately welcoming noises before collapsing with laughter. Mrs. Kemp coerced the head gardener into giving Mr. Kemp a thorough wet shave, which made him at least look presentable, but we determined to keep his involvement with the visitors to the bare minimum. Rex came to see what was going on and looked at me beseechingly for a walk, but with great reluctance I had to delegate the task to the garden boy, wondering how long it would be before I would have the pleasure of a walk again.

Throughout Thursday we worked in a jittery, expectant way, ready at any time to throw off our aprons, smooth our extra crisp dresses, hide any loose ends of hair under our lace caps, and line up to greet our auspicious guests. Any movement on the gravel drive would send one of us scampering to a window, ready to sound the alarm. As the afternoon advanced, we took it in turns to stand guard near the hall window.

Just as we were sitting down to a cup of tea and Molly was drinking hers at the window, she cried, “Their coach is coming!” We rushed to take our well drilled places at the door. (I found Molly’s cup of cold tea two days later behind the hall curtain.)

Mr. Thorpe (from now on I vowed to address him thus) sprang from the coach in his normal boyish manner, followed by a more cautious exit by Mr. Harrington, who went on to flex his back to relieve the aches from the country roads. Mr. Thorpe and the coachman together assisted Mrs. Harrington out of the coach; she looked exasperated by their attendance but could not have descended without their help. Then Miss Sophia appeared, and with the lightest touch of Mr. Thorpe’s hand, she elegantly stepped down and smoothed out her beautiful dress whilst saying something that made her fiancé laugh.

After barely a glance in our direction, the party swept into the house and we became busy attending to their wishes and needs. A second coach soon appeared with the luggage and, to our surprise, a lady’s maid to attend the female guests. Whilst preparing afternoon tea, we had a quick discussion in the kitchen about where to accommodate the maid. Agnes volunteered to sleep at home, so her attic room was available, but it soon transpired that the maid intended to sleep in Miss Sophia’s dressing room.

I hoped my face did not give away my blankness because, to my knowledge, none of the bedrooms could boast of a dressing room. Then, within seconds, I remembered that the room allocated to Miss Sophia did have a small room adjacent to it, which we called “the box room.” After a bit of hasty furniture removing, we rearranged the room into an apology of a dressing room. We wanted to get a brass bed frame into the room, but the maid said it would be “out of keeping with the function of the room.” Instead, she was willing to sleep on the bedroom’s chaise lounge, so we struggled and succeeded in getting it through the door way, all the while thinking that she was sacrificing comfort for elegance.

If we had ever entertained the idea that having a lady’s maid to attend to the Harrington ladies would lessen our workload, we were quickly proved wrong. Bertha (for that was her name) made free use of the call bells with the excuse that she could not possibly leave her ladies to run and fetch what was deemed necessary. So poor Molly and Clara were forever running up and down the stairs to fetch (and I give but a few examples) lavender water, raw egg for smoothing the hair, and someone to handle shoe cleaning. Bertha was deeply shocked when she found out there was no servants’ hall and that we ate and sat in the kitchen of an evening. Such was her indignation that I thought it diplomatic to invite her into my parlour, and from then on she saw it as a kind of “pug’s parlour” for the upper servants and used it regularly. My lack of privacy was irritating, but more so was the way she preferred to sit at dying embers in my grate rather than dirtying her pretty hand to throw on a log or pump the bellows.

At first I found Bertha’s stories of working at the Harrington’s interesting, but soon I began to suspect that most were stretching the truth considerably. She had never asked about my previous employment and did not know I had worked in a larger household before and could recognise a farfetched tale when I heard one! As she told her stories, Bertha was usually busy doing some fine work on one of her ladies’ dresses or hats. She had been horrified to learn that we sent our laundry to several faithful village women to clean in their own cottages. I explained that their work was faultless, but she shuddered to think of
her
ladies’ undergarments flapping around in a villager’s garden for all and sundry to behold. This, of course, led to my parlour looking like a laundry room, with various items of clothing hanging to dry on a clothes-horse we had managed to find for the job. My desk was regularly covered with a blanket and used as an ironing board, despite the fact that I had more accounting to do and orders to write than usual. I was gradually learning that the wonderfully natural and spontaneous look that Miss Sophia prided herself in actually took hours of careful preparation and planning.

As Bertha was gradually taking over below stairs, the visitors were settling in above. During her previous stay, Mrs. Harrington had been a polite guest and expressed some wry amusement at the bachelor and provincial ways in which the house was run, but now she had a very different attitude. She was on a mission to sort the household out single-handedly before her poor daughter found herself the mistress of such an ill-run establishment. She seemed to think that Mr. Thorpe was a dear boy but slightly incompetent in knowing how to organise a house, and I soon got the impression she thought I was the main cause of the poor management.

Before she had been in the house forty-eight hours, I was summoned to Mr. Thorpe’s study, where I was surprised to find a gathering of Mr. Thorpe (looking a trifle uncomfortable), Mrs. Harrington, and Miss Sophia. Mrs. Harrington was the self-appointed spokeswoman and instructed me to get my accounts book so it could be examined. Mr. Thorpe had never looked in the household accounts book, despite my asking. He always laughed off the matter, saying he trusted me entirely and, anyway, disliked wading through columns of figures. As I hastened to get the book, which I found under a pile of Bertha’s ironing, I was thankful that I had kept up the accounts so meticulously. I also kept all receipts and invoices for two months, so I took those along too.

The ladies sat at the table, and Mr. Thorpe was pacing around behind them. If Mrs. Harrington had had her own way, I believe she would have made me stand throughout the interview, but thankfully Miss Sophia kindly invited me to sit down. Mrs. Harrington appeared to find my accounts disappointingly thorough, but she asked a few questions nevertheless, mainly to do with the amount of food required whilst Mr. Thorpe had been away. When I explained the number of staff we had, she immediately questioned as to who the Kemps were, and I explained their history.

“Oh really, Edward!” she exclaimed. “You are not running a charity. Surely it is time to move them on.”

I looked at Edward, silently willing him to speak up on their behalf, but he merely smiled at his mother-in-law-to-be and said it was under consideration.

After making a few strong suggestions to Edward that the staff have less expensive cuts of meat and butter
or
jam but not both, Mrs. Harrington ploughed on in her investigations and began exploring our roles. She cross-questioned me about my daily tasks and all went well until she asked me what I normally did during the afternoons.

“I go for a walk with Rex, ma’am,” I replied.

“Rex? Who is Rex? Is he a follower?” she asked, glaring at me suspiciously as if I had sinned.

“No, ma’am, in fact, I normally follow him. Rex is Mr. Thorpe’s dog,” I answered, noting a smile beginning to creep onto Mr. Thorpe’s face, a smile that he hastily wiped away with his hand.

“What an unusual state of affairs—and do not be impertinent!” exclaimed Mrs. Harrington, leaning forward. “Why do you not delegate this task?”

“Why, ma’am, because I enjoy it, and the fresh air is beneficial.”

“Enjoy?” she spluttered. “Enjoyment is hardly a reason. You should be guided by duty, not enjoyment. Do you think you are paid a wage to roam the countryside? Are you aware of these unorthodox arrangements, Mr. Thorpe?”

Mr. Thorpe shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Yes, I am, and I am grateful for Reb— err—Miss Stubbs’ care of Rex in my absence.”

Miss Sophia intervened by saying, “Mother, is this intrusive investigation quite necessary?” only to be severely rounded on by her mother.

“My dear girl, one cannot be intrusive as far as servants are concerned. It is one’s
right
to know their doings.” Then, mixing her metaphors, “Details are the building blocks for the smooth running of any household.” She fixed her steely gaze on me. “Stubbs, I hope you realise what a generous employer you are fortunate enough to have in Mr. Thorpe and that you do not presume upon his good nature.”

I nodded demurely and said, “I am indeed grateful for his kindness, ma’am.”

Mr. Thorpe, meanwhile, continued to pace to and fro behind the table, and somehow it was rather irritating. Miss Sophia must have felt the same, for she patted a seat next to her and said, “Darling Edward, please take a seat.” When he did as he was bidden, she laid her hand on his knee and looked happier.

The interrogation then moved on to the roles of the other staff. Another snort of disgust came when I revealed that Molly and Clara had interchangeable roles.

“How utterly absurd!” Mrs. Harrington exclaimed. “How do they know their order of rank and where to sit at meal times?”

“Ma’am, we sit anywhere at meal times, and as for who does what, having both of them trained for all jobs gives us greater flexibility when we need it. For example, when entertaining guests, we can all clean, tend the fire, serve at the table, or wash up.”

“My word, Stubbs, you are rather opinionated, are you not?” she answered scathingly.

I was pleased when Miss Sophia intervened.

“She has a good point, Mother.”

Miss Sophia was quickly silenced by her mother’s lengthy lecture on staff needing to know their place, watching their superiors, so working diligently to move up the ranks and be rewarded with more responsibility. “Rather than,” she said, giving me a withering look, “being unguidedly given responsibility after very little experience and becoming conceited with their own perceived wisdom.”

Then the Kemps and their role came up, and I knew we were skating on very thin ice. Mrs. Kemp’s involvement by cooking for staff meals was satisfactory, but how could I explain that Mr. Kemp did little more than polish the silver, sharpen knives, and rub Rex dry? I stretched the truth as much as possible without lying, as I explained the Kemps’ important contribution to the smooth running of the house, but the wool could not be pulled over the formidable matriarch’s eyes, and once again she encouraged Mr. Thorpe to hasten their departure.

To conclude the interview, Mrs. Harrington reiterated to me the benevolence of Mr. Thorpe in being so understanding, if not
indulgent,
to his staff, and that this was not to be abused. She indicated that there would be changes in the future to increase the efficiency of workforce and to ensure no one “got above themselves.” Then, with a dismissive wave of her hand, she said, “and that will do, Stubbs.”