The Invitation

  * * *

  THE OPPOPRTUNITY TO put her hopes and fears to the test arrived but a few days later. Abbie had kept herself quite busy training Aunt Newhaven’s young staff to do the work they had been engaged to do. Progress was being made, and Abbie was feeling quite pleased with herself. Pleased and very, very tired.

  It had been her plan, on this night, to retire early. Supper was finished and Mariana had settled down with Aunt Newhaven and a book and was just preparing to engage upon an hour or two of reading. Abbie had excused herself to go to her room. She had made it half way up the first flight of stairs when there was a knock at the door. She stopped and waited for someone to answer it. The servants were below stairs having their own supper. There was no one else about.

  The knocking came again, louder this time, more desperate. And so Abbie, seeing no other alternative, opened it—to find Mr. Meredith supporting, half carrying, a young woman, pale and in evident distress. Abbie understood that look, she had seen it a hundred times at Holdaway, and was instantly ready to come to the young woman’s aid.

  “You shouldn’t have opened the door,” Mr. Meredith said stopping her.

  “You knocked, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but you shouldn’t have opened it. There’s a housekeeper for a reason, after all. Perhaps you could find her?”

  “Mrs. Giles is at sup—” she began but was interrupted by the woman herself.

  “I’m here,” she said, rushing into the hallway and meeting him at the foot of the stairs. “This way, Mr. Meredith. Have you got her? That’s good. If I can just get by you, Miss Gray. Thank you. Now if you’ll just follow me.”

  “I’m coming too,” Abbie said and moved to follow. “I can be of assistance.”

  “Please, Miss Gray,” Mr. Meredith objected as he continued his way up the stairs, and doing his best to follow the housekeeper, “this is no business for a young lady.”

  She did not like his patronizing tone, and so chose not to listen. She followed him up the stairs to the third floor, where a room had been prepared in advance, and where the woman was placed to lie on the bed.

  Mr. Meredith nearly ran into Abbie as he turned again from the room. “What are you doing here?” he said and stopped to examine her. He did not seem to like what he saw. “You should go to bed.”

  “It’s only just past eight,” she answered, and did not add that it had already been her intention. It was no longer. “I want to be useful.”

  “You can be useful by fetching Mrs. Newhaven, and then by staying out of the way.”

  His tone was grating. Who did he think he was?

  “I will go find my aunt, but I mean to assist. It may surprise you to know that I have experience in this sort of thing.”

  “Miss Gray,” he said, stepping near so no one else could hear him. “I am not in doubt of your good intentions, or even of your abilities. You are, however, very pale, and I fear you are not up to the task. Rest. Be strong and well, for the assistance this poor woman is in need of will not end this night. You are of far more use well rested. Now please, I must go fetch the doctor.” He slipped past her and was gone before she could offer any further argument.

  Defeated, Abbie followed him downstairs, and stopped to stand in the hall as the door closed behind him.

  “Is someone here?” Mariana said, emerging from the parlor. “I thought I heard voices.”

  “Someone has come, Mariana. Another of our aunt’s young women. Her time is very near.”

  “Her time? You mean…?” And she turned her attention toward the upper floor.

  “Mrs. Giles is with her, and Mr. Meredith has gone for the doctor.”

  “I- I should go find our Aunt, I think,” Mariana said, half dazed.

  She returned a moment later, following behind Aunt Newhaven, who, upon stopping before the staircase, hooked her walking stick over the banister and proceeded to climb the stairs with no aid whatsoever. She stopped just at the first landing.

  “Mary. You might be able to assist me. You are very patient and quiet. You might calm the poor girl.”

  “Me?” Mariana asked, and her manner turned from one of alarm to actual terror. She had rarely helped their mother in her nursing. She had never helped Abbie with a delivery. Not once.

  “Please, Aunt,” Abbie asked in her sister’s behalf as well as for herself. “Might I help? Truly, I do have some experience in these matters.”

  “Experience? In birthing and bastardry? I doubt that very much! I would suggest an early night. You look quite done in. Mary, if you will?”

  Mariana offered her sister a look that was both regret and apprehension. But she followed, nevertheless. Abbie yet remained where she stood, helpless to help and lost to do anything else.

  The door opened once more. Mr. Meredith and the doctor entered.

  “Back? So soon?” Truly she could not have been standing there above five minutes.

  “It was no great distance, Miss Gray. His is the house adjacent.”

  Ah. The doctor was also the neighbor. “And you live, Mr. Meredith?”

  “Some would say I live here.”

  She remembered, upon first observing the house, how very alike it was to the doctor’s practice on the one side, and the lawyer’s on the other. “Yours is next door as well, isn’t it?”

  “Just so. Now do go to bed, there’s a good girl.” And he and the doctor went upstairs.

  Obstinately, but loosing strength for the fight, Abbie followed them upstairs. Upon reaching the room, and being the last to do so, she found the door closed upon her and the door locked from the inside. She was beaten and she knew it. There was nothing for her to do now, but to do as she had intended all along, and go to bed. It was impossible to sleep, however. The bustle of activity in the corridor, the feeling of urgency that prevailed, prevented it. But when a desperate cry pierced the air, Abbie arose again and dressed very quickly.

  All was quiet as she approached the room. The door was open now, if only just a crack. The young woman was lying quite still. Mariana, sitting beside her, rested her head on the bed. Had she fallen asleep? She looked up as Abbie pushed the door open a little wider. Tears were streaming down her pale face.

  Abbie entered then. Her aunt, with her back to the door, stood on the other side of the room, whispering earnestly with the doctor. The sound of Abbie’s feet on the creaking floorboards drew the doctor’s attention.

  “What has happened?” Abbie asked, but knew already.

  “The child did not survive,” the doctor answered.

  “Tell me. I want to know.”

  He sighed and seemed to consider the request an inconvenience. “It was a breech birth,” he said. “The chord was prolapsed. He suffocated.”

  “Why did you not send for me? You should have let me help you. I have managed worse.”

  “Have you?” The aunt demanded. “Have you truly?” And she turned to reveal the dead child, limp and blue in her arms.

  “There was nothing anyone could do,” the doctor answered.

  “And the woman?” Abbie asked.

  “She has lost a great deal of blood. She is fevered as well.”

  Abbie looked, and immediately wished she had not. Like a rag doll the woman lay, limp and wasted in her futile labor. Abbie felt weak. The room was unbearably warm and close. The smell of blood and sweat assailed her. As the walls began to spin, she turned from the room, and walked, as quickly as she could, down the corridor to her own room. She had hardly stepped into it before she realized she could not remain. The vertically striped papers reminded her of a jail cell, and the guttering jets made her head pound in the pulsing light.

  From this room too she turned, and as quickly as her legs would allow her, she walked down the stairs and straight out the front door. To stand in the garden. She needed air. She needed freedom. But even the fence, with its wrought iron bars, seemed as a cage.

  In the distance she heard the cry of a peacock. The sound of a breaking heart, her mother
used to say. The sun had fully risen, but was hidden by a heavy fog that loomed and rolled about the empty street. Abbie shuddered in the chill air. She heard the cry, once more, of a captive bird. Was there a park so near? The fog cleared to reveal the opposite side of the street, where stood a large gated entrance, and upon which hung a sign. Of course she could not read it from this distance, but before she had quite given up the endeavor, a cab obstructed her view. It stopped before the house adjacent. Mr. Meredith’s house. One of his clients, perhaps.

  In her dazed state, unable to move from her spot, she studied the cab and the gentleman who emerged from it.

  As he came to stand upon the street she observed that he was a gentleman indeed, perhaps even one of breeding, for he bore that poise of self-possession that the well-bred adopted without thought and exercised out of habit. He was handsome, tall, clean shaven and his hair, light brown, curled at the ends as it poked out beneath his beaver skin hat.

  He stopped to stand just before Mr. Meredith’s gate and examined the placard very carefully. Finding it not to be the one he wanted, he turned from the lawyer’s and approached Aunt Newhaven’s house. As he came closer, she saw that the look on his face betrayed how little he enjoyed his errand. He stopped just before the gate, while she remained half hidden by the overgrown boxwoods.

  Aunt Newhaven’s door bore no number, and so he stared for a moment, as if willing it to give up its secret. Of course it would not. He heaved a frustrated sigh and stood back to examine the façade.

  It was then he saw her. His look of irritation, of disapproval even, changed to one of surprise, and then into something else entirely. He appeared to be suddenly, and sincerely, concerned.

  “Are you quite all right?” he asked her.

  It was only then she realized she had been crying. Confused in her near delirium, distracted by the unexpected appearance of a stranger, she had not thought to wipe her tears away. She was crying no longer, but the traces remained.

  “Is there some way I can help you?”

  Could he take her away from here? Could he take her from London and return her to her home? She shook her head in answer, both to his question, and to her own. “You are looking for someone?” she asked him instead.

  “I— Yes. Possibly.”

  “You’re unsure?” she said and laughed.

  He smiled with grey-blue eyes. He was very handsome when he smiled. And he looked, if possible, vaguely familiar, though there was certainly no reason he should. “I think I must have the wrong address. Perhaps you can help me.”

  “I doubt it. I–” But how explain her circumstances? She lived here but was a stranger to the neighborhood. She resided with her aunt, and with her sister. And with half a dozen other young woman who— Oh why had she come outside!

  “Miss Gray?” It was Mr. Meredith’s voice. He was just emerging from his house, and was now approaching. “What are you doing standing here in– Good day, sir. Can I help you? Are you acquainted with this woman?”

  Mr. Meredith’s speech seemed to have a curious effect on the stranger, the look of concern faded. The look of irritation, of disapproval, returned.

  “Not at all,” he said, rather too emphatically, and gracing her with an actually disapproving glance, as if that, after all, had been his purpose all along, he turned to walk away.

  “You will at least tell me your name, sir,” Mr. Meredith called after him.

  He received no reply and so followed, but the stranger was in his cab and pulling from the curb before the lawyer could catch up to him.

  “Arabella!” Her aunt now. “What on earth do you think you are doing? Come inside this instant!”

  And while her aunt scolded, and Mariana attempted to steady Abbie’s shaking hands in her own, and as Mr. Meredith returned with more questions (“Do you know that man?” “What did he want?” “Did you get his name?” “Are you sure you’ve never seen him before?”) Abbie felt her strength drain from her. Her vision began to blur and dim. The walls tilted and began to crush down upon her. The floor rose up to meet her.

  She met it half way.