The Weeping Ash

  Voices coming from the public right of way below the boundary wall caught her attention, and, glancing down, she saw one of the liveried footmen from Petworth House carefully escorting a plump lady in a pale pink dress, whom he shaded from the sun with a parasol. Because of the parasol, Fanny could not at first see the lady’s face, but a sudden premonition was making her step back from the lookout wall when the lady, becoming aware of Fanny’s presence, looked up and laughingly waved to her, then gestured to the footman to proceed farther along the path.

  “So there you are, my love! I have discovered a means of reaching you in spite of your incarceration! Is not this famous! I declare, you are exactly like Fair Rosamund, shut up at Godstow by the wicked Queen Eleanor. Now I have found out your hiding place, I intend to take no more rambles in the park but walk this way every day, exercising Pug,” exclaimed Liz Wyndham, glancing down at the diminutive dog she had on a leash.

  Her round face broke into its irresistible dimpling smile. “I hardly dared hope that I might see you! I told Egremont that I was not satisfied the brook in the bottom of the valley was being kept properly dredged—our coal is all fetched up it by boat, you know—and some other commodities that I will not mention! Now I shall report to him that the brook requires a great deal of attention and that I must come to inspect it with the most meticulous regularity. Do you not approve? How are you keeping, my sweet friend? You look pale and hagged—did you receive the basket of peaches and nectarines that was sent to you from the Rectory? Come now—could you not contrive to lower a basket on a rope so that I could pass you up Horrid Mysteries, The Orphan of the Rhine, The Necromancer of the Black Forest, and The Castle of Wolfenbach? I am sure reading those delicious romances would do you more good than all Chilgrove’s potions and nostrums. He, however, assures me that you go on just as you ought—in spite of you know what—and that your baby will be born within a few weeks. Do you really feel tolerably stout, my sweet creature?”

  Fanny could not help laughing, though she glanced in terror toward Thomas’s garden house at the far end of the walk. Mrs. Wyndham’s conspiratorial looks and glances were very funny, but what if Thomas should appear? In a low voice, but with heartfelt sincerity, she assured her friend that she went on very well, that the nectarines had been most gratefully received, and that, since they were sure to be discovered and would lead to serious trouble, Mrs. Wyndham must not on any account think of lending her books.

  “Oh! Such stuff! You promised to call me Liz, remember? Why do you keep looking at the gazebo? Is the ogre within?” With a roguish look she shook her fist at the garden house but lowered her voice, “Then I will be more circumspect. Are you truly in good health? I rejoice to hear it. Now I will not embarrass you any further! Adios! But, I warn you, I shall somehow contrive to see you again. Come, Pug!”

  Blowing kisses to her friend, Liz Wyndham moved on along the path. Fanny thought that she seemed like an emanation of spring itself: a cluster of pink apple blossom, a cloud drifting in the sunlight. She had departed only just in time. The door of Thomas’s garden room opened, and he strode out, glancing suspiciously at Fanny.

  “To whom were you talking just now?”

  Fanny, naturally a truthful person, had resolved that, whatever the circumstances, she would never tell a lie to Thomas, for if she once began to do so, she could imagine that her life would become in no time a terrifying tissue of falsehoods and mendacity. The silent suppression of fact that she already practiced made her feel quite sufficiently guilty as it was. In the present situation she would have been hard put to it for a reply, but fortunately at this moment two children ran by along the path below, searching for a lost ball. Thomas concluded that she had spoken to them and withdrew again, saying sharply:

  “I do not choose that my wife shall hang over the wall like a servant girl, talking to all and sundry who pass by. You will oblige me by withdrawing to some other part of the garden.”

  “I was just waiting for your mother,” Fanny replied mildly.

  Indeed Goble now appeared at the end of the walk, pushing the old lady in her chair.

  Thomas scowled. “Do not be keeping Goble from his duties for more than twenty minutes.”

  He went back into the garden house and slammed the door.

  They had taken no more than half a dozen turns along the yew-tree walk when Bet and Martha returned from the harp lesson. Fanny could not help wondering, sometimes, about these harp lessons, in what lay their great attraction. The girls today were giggling, and red-cheeked, full of some mysterious excitement, hardly likely to be called forth by a series of scales and arpeggios. Both girls had lately blossomed out in new ribbons for their gowns and new strings for their bonnets; these, they asserted, had been bought with money given them by Thomas’s mother. The two girls passed by now, ignoring Fanny and the old lady; they were laughing and whispering together. Fanny caught a few words.

  “Even if he plagued me to death I would not tell him for the world—they are both amazingly saucy—I shall not pay them the compliment of seeming to give them any attention—they cannot put me out of countenance, I promise you!”

  They passed into the house. Fanny looked after them in some perplexity. If they were not getting into some scrape! But she felt the delicacy and difficulty of her situation. Being younger than they were, she did not like to seem to pry or dictate her own notions of propriety—particularly since, considering her own clandestine acquaintance with Liz Wyndham, she felt that she herself stood on very debatable ground.

  “Have you had enow of trundling to and fro, Mrs. Paget, ma’am?” Goble was inquiring of the old lady, who, hunched down in her chair, had let out a querulous murmur to the effect that the sun had gone behind a cloud, she believed the damp air was giving her a rheum, her feet were unconscionably cold, and no one cared if she died of the influenza.

  “Eh? What did you say?” she demanded, peering up at Goble irritably.

  “DO YOU WISH TO GO INDOORS, MISSUS PAGET?” impatiently repeated Goble in a voice that had, when he was a boatswain, summoned men from all over the ship.

  “You do not have to shout! I am not deaf!” peevishly replied the old lady. “Yes, I do wish to go indoors, and have done any time this last ten minutes. What’s the pleasure in going up and down, up and down a grass path, pray? Why can’t we go into the town? And my name is not Paget, I’ll have you know! It is Wilshire, and pray remember it.”

  Without a word, Goble turned and directed the course of her chair toward the garden door. Fanny followed, reflecting how swiftly an April day could pass from brilliant sunshine to cold, dark threat; the air had become icy, a great bank of black cloud had crept up, and there was promise of another heavy shower before dusk. She hoped that Liz Wyndham would contrive to return home safely without a drenching…

  As she stepped indoors, heavy drops of rain began to patter on the flagged path.

  About to slip off her pattens, Fanny paused and put her hand to her side with an involuntary startled gasp of indrawn breath. For a moment a sudden transfixing stab of pain held her motionless; she clenched her teeth and gripped her hands together. Then, as the pain slowly withdrew, she went carefully on into the house and pulled the bell cord for Tess.

  “Tess? Is Jem come back yet? No? Then will you please go to Dr. Chilgrove’s house and ask him to come here as soon as he conveniently can. First tell Mrs. Strudwick that I have sent you on this errand. Say to Dr. Chilgrove that I think my pains have begun.”

  And, turning on her heel, Fanny toiled wearily up the stairs to her own chamber, where she began walking to and fro at a slow but steady pace.

  * * *

  Fanny’s labor lasted for more than thirty-six hours. Afterward she was to look back on the time with a kind of wondering disbelief, as a species of nightmare that could not possibly have happened or, if it had, must have happened to some other person, not herself. It seemed impossible that s
he could have survived such an experience, and indeed, at many times, both during and after the birth, her life was despaired of. Her main recollections were twofold: firstly, of walking to and fro, to and fro, exhorted to do so by Dr. Chilgrove, until the pain in her back became so consuming that she felt as if it were likely to split her in two; then of lying on her bed, speechless, bewildered with agony, unable to do anything, even cry out, nothing but mutely demand of whoever came within her range of vision why this was happening to her and when this undeserved torture would be over. Dimly she was aware that little Tess, the maid, called in at some point to help rub Fanny’s back, had burst out blubbering.

  “Oh, jeemany, Doctor, I can’t a-bear the look in her eyen! Bain’t there some way ye can put her to rights? Poor lady—and she the deediest, kindliest mistress a body could have—niver taffety or grummut—oh, do summat for her, Doctor, do!”

  “I am doing all I can, my girl,” grunted Dr. Chilgrove. “Do you fetch Mrs. Strudwick and tell her to bring more hot water and a strong, hot cup of her chamomile tea. And send that nurse, Bagshaw, Baggot, whatever the woman calls herself—where the devil is she?”

  There were long, confused intervals when pain was the only reality: pain vaguely apprehended by Fanny on two levels, a deep, continuous basic gripping drilling torment that grew steadily more and more severe until she could see it would finally rise to a pitch when it became wholly intolerable; and a sharp, intermittent pang whose sudden assaults, when they came, were so ferocious that they depleted her ability to endure the more continuous agony.

  “I am sorry—Oh! I am sorry!” she gasped when one of these acute spasms shook her out of control and she felt the sweat pour down her cheeks.

  “Don’t you be sorry, ma’am, you got naught to be sorry for—” That was Mrs. Strudwick’s voice. She felt as if she were in a hammock of friendly hands and voices; but they could no nothing for her, she was merely conscious of their well-meaning impotence.

  Sometimes she was aware of dissident notes in the concerned chorus. A frightened twittering at the door—that must be her stepdaughters; she tried to call out, to tell them that there was nothing to be frightened of, but her voice would not carry so far, would hardly come out of her throat. And in any case, she thought confusedly, perhaps there is something to be frightened of—did not their own mother die in childbirth? I cannot recollect. Or was it mine? She—Thomas’s first wife—went through this so many times, they very likely know more about it than I do—what did Martha say that first evening, twelve babies in thirteen years? Oh, dear God, think of going through this twelve times…and an overmastering onrush of pain deprived her momentarily of sight or hearing as she battled in a thorny twilit region of anguish and delirium. Out of this she came at some point to hear Dr. Chilgrove’s voice, sharp with anger and disgust:

  “Get out of this room, woman, you stink of geneva! God knows by what authority you term yourself a nurse, but I do not scruple to say that you are wholly unfit for your office. I would as soon employ a milkwoman or a stone picker—” And then Mrs. Baggot’s tones, loud, hectoring, and abusive: “I daresay I have as much right in here as you, sir! I am employed by Captain Paget, not by you, I’d have you know—”

  “Oh, send her away, pray send her away,” Fanny murmured faintly to whoever was within earshot. “Her voice is so loud—if the truth be known, I do not like her above half—and if I am going to die I had as lief die among friends—” And she was off again, hardly heeding Dr. Chilgrove’s robust exhortations.

  “Psha, ma’am, let’s have no more of this talk of dying—why, we shall have you in plump currant in no time, I promise you—now, pray take a little of this cognac—”

  More angry voices: that of Thomas, this time. “What the deuce is all this pucker about? A young, healthy girl, not yet eighteen—Frances, Frances, let us have no more of such mawkish, sickly, swooning affectation! Pull yourself together, I beg! Good God, Chilgrove, my first wife went through this twelve times, I am not a man to be told my business when it comes to childbirth, I assure you! Get the infant out of her, that is all I ask.”

  “That is all I am trying to do, Captain Paget—” Dr. Chilgrove’s voice, ragged with fatigue and irritation. “Your first wife, sir, must have been a lady of remarkable stamina if she indeed experienced such a labor as this twelve times; though, as I apprehend that she finally succumbed, perhaps her strength was less than you gave her credit for. The present Mrs. Paget is young and small in frame—the infant I am attempting to deliver is a remarkably large, fine one, even though slightly premature—”

  “Boy or girl?” Thomas’s voice, quick, eager.

  “That, sir, the Almighty, in the fullness of time, will disclose. Now, if you please, Captain Paget, there are enough persons in this room as it is. Mrs. Strudwick, pray hand me that hot plaister; I wish to apply it to the poor lady’s extremities, which are becoming dangerously chilled—”

  Fanny wished that the plaister could have been applied to her back, where the pain was rapidly becoming so terrible that she feared it might rip her apart like a pea pod.

  “Pray, Dr. Chilgrove, if I die, see that my green morocco slippers go to my sister Maria, they are but hardly worn and her feet are the same size as mine—”

  “Come, come, Mrs. Paget, be of good heart, ma’am. Never mind the slippers now! Hark, the cocks are crowing. Let that brave sound raise up your spirits!”

  “Have you e’er tried snuff, Doctor?” she heard Mrs. Strudwick’s tired voice inquiring diffidently. “Time my daughter was took so dannel bad with her fourth, a haitch o’ snuff were what pulled it out of her, handsome as a herring—”

  “Well, well, Mrs. Strudwick, the old country remedies are sometimes worth trying—let us see what snuff can do.” In an undertone, not meant for Fanny to hear, she caught a few words: “Last resort, I fear—strength is ebbing rapidly—”

  Indeed, Fanny did begin to feel a strange, dreamlike slipping away of all her faculties; very agreeable, she thought vaguely, if this be death, I am not in the least afraid of it; besides I shall see dear Mama and Papa in heaven, he promised it, and Barnaby also perhaps—

  A gust of sharp, stinging, burning powder up her nose made her gasp, gasp again, and inflate her lungs in a series of shattering sneezes: they were followed and overborne by a pain compared with which all those that had gone before seemed mere twinges, irritations.

  “Mercy!” she screamed, and on the word her child was born.

  “Bravo, ma’am! Mrs. Strudwick—make haste, hand me those—”

  “Oh, ma’am! Thank God, thank God!”

  “Well done, missus, that’s the dandy—”

  Now I can lie back, Fanny thought, now I need never stand up again. Limp, flat as an ell of soaking-wet gauze, she sank back on her pillows. She felt boneless, drained, evanescent.

  “Quick, Tess—the smelling salts, girl—she be going—”

  “No, I am not,” said Fanny faintly. “The child—I wish to know—is it a boy or a girl?”

  “Oh, ma’am, the most beautiful boy! Blue eyes, and fair as an angel!”

  “A fine little fellow, Mrs. Paget, one to be proud of—eight pounds, if he’s an ounce, or I never pulled a fish out of Benbow Pond! Now sup this cordial and let you lie back and rest, you have done your part—”

  “He should be called Mercy,” whispered Fanny. “Let me see him, let me hold him if you please—”

  “One moment, my dear ma’am, while Mrs. Strudwick sets him to rights. Then you shall have him.”

  But by the time her son was ready for her Fanny had fainted dead away, and her next sight of him was not to be for some ten days, during which period she nearly died from loss of blood, and Dr. Chilgrove, a sporting man, predicted her chances of recovery as one in fifty. Thomas, privately, felt it would be no bad thing if she were to die. He had his son, which was really all that mattered. And another wife, one with l
ess of Fanny’s silent obstinacy, reserve, and something he could only define to himself as undeclared rebellion, would be a considerable improvement, and not at all hard to find.

  Meanwhile a wet nurse, Jemima King, was found for the baby, who was christened, not Mercy, a wholly unsuitable name for a boy, but Thomas, after his father.

  * * *

  It was six weeks after the birth of the second Thomas before Fanny was permitted by Dr. Chilgrove to leave her chamber. In the course of that period, several things of considerable importance occurred.

  The first took place during an interview between Thomas and Dr. Chilgrove in which the latter bluntly told Captain Paget that another pregnancy and birth such as that before at least two years had passed would in all probability kill Fanny.

  “A speedy recovery of tone to her system cannot be hoped; we must watch for hectic symptoms and hope that her whole constitution has not been dangerously undermined; in short, my dear sir, I shall hold you morally responsible for her death if, before at least fifteen months shall have elapsed, Mrs. Paget is again found to be with child. She has given you a fine boy, in whom you can take just pride; you must be satisfied with that for the present.”

  Thomas, of course, was not satisfied; far from it. He had already begun considering that two strings to the bow were better than one—for heaven knew, and he, personally, was only too well aware, to what ailments and accidents young children were constantly subject. He fell into a fury at this piece of unwarrantable interference in his domestic affairs. “Outrageous!” “Insupportable!” were some of the adjectives he applied to Dr. Chilgrove. But the latter calmly and firmly held his ground, only agreeing to reexamine Fanny and reconsider the matter at the end of six months; and Thomas, possibly recollecting that there were some questions regarding the death of the first Mrs. Paget that he would not wish to be reopened, finally contented himself with a great deal of angry bluster and with being exceedingly short, curt, and irascible during his visits to the chamber of Fanny, whom he roundly abused for not making more push to pluck up her energies, get back on her feet, and resume her household duties. Indeed Thomas was startled and annoyed to discover how much less comfortably the household ran when her quiet presence was lacking to give it order and direction.