The Youngest Miss Ward

  Later that day she was in the schoolroom (use of which for lessons had been resumed during the Earl’s visit) when du Vallon came there, ostensibly to bring a map of the battle of Charlestown.

  Hatty was alone in the room, for Drusilla had fallen asleep, after suffering a seizure, and Barbara was out trying the paces of the new mare.

  Du Vallon came to the point at once. ‘Miss Hatty, was that you in the library when Lord Elstow and I were talking?’

  Hatty met his eye squarely. ‘Yes, sir, it was.’ She was interested to see that he looked extremely relieved at this information. ‘I could not make my presence known in time to prevent your conversation,’ she added.

  ‘No, I appreciate your difficulty. We should have been more circumspect.’

  ‘Yes, sir, you should,’ said Hatty coldly.

  ‘I am sorry if you were mortified. It was most unfortunate.’

  ‘It was indeed.’

  He surprised Hatty by saying, ‘But still, as you have no great opinion of either myself or his Lordship, no bones are broken. What do you care for our disparagement?’

  ‘Just the same, it is not very pleasant to hear oneself spoken of in such terms—’

  ‘Oh, pfui! You are a clever girl. Within your secret self you believe that you have a better brain than either of us.’

  ‘Not than you, Monsieur. I think you have a great deal of intelligence.’

  ‘And you wonder that I waste my time here making lists of books.’

  ‘That is not my affair.’

  A slight frown crumpled his high bare brow. He said: ‘I am not so sure about that. Now that I have given the matter some serious consideration, I believe that Lord Elstow may have been right. An alliance between the pair of us would be advantageous to both.’

  ‘Advantageous, Monsieur?’

  ‘You have bestowed your heart on Camber. Oh, do not stiffen your neck and raise up your chin at me – every time his name is mentioned, your eyes become as brilliant as carriage lamps – but Camber is no use to you. He will never make a parti. His head is always in the clouds. If he ever comes back from chasing wild geese in America – which is possible, for none of his designs have been successful hitherto and few of them last for more than a few months – if he should come back, do not deceive yourself that you will be able to pin him down to any connection, to any rapport. He will be off again on some new fool’s errand.’

  ‘You are entirely mistaken, Monsieur,’ Hatty said with icy dignity. ‘I had no such hope or intention as you seem to suggest. All I can claim – or would wish to – from Lord Camber, is friendship. I have no expectation of ever seeing him again. I have my own plans—’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘My private business, Monsieur.’

  He shook his head impatiently.

  ‘What can you possibly achieve by yourself? You are young – friendless – female – lacking in birth and fortune, already your reputation somewhat tarnished—’

  ‘Not unlike yourself,’ she could not help saying.

  ‘Yes! Except that I do not entirely lack for friends. Listen, Miss Ward. Do not immediately repudiate my offer. Take some days – weeks, months, if you will – to consider. I will ask you again. Rome was not built in a day. Entendu? I have a very considerable respect for you, Miss Ward.’

  ‘Despite the fact that I am no more than decent, and have some scandal attached?’

  The Abbé performed the flutter of his eyelids and twitch of the lips which passed with him for a laugh.

  ‘No person of sense – such as yourself – cares a pinch of snuff for such trifling opinions. Forget Lord Elstow. He is of no consequence. He will never succeed in his aspirations, though he dangle round the fringes of the Whig party until he is in his dotage. But you, Miss Ward – I look at you, and I think to myself, That young lady has a future ahead of her. If someone – like myself – should take her in hand.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I have. But I do not think my future contains you, Monsieur l’Abbé. Now I believe we had better end our conversation, for I see Barbara out there dismounting, and you know how angry she becomes if we confer too long together.’

  ‘Very true.’

  He left the room.

  Well! thought Hatty, not without some complacency, for a friendless, middle-class disgraced governess in a secluded, tumbledown mansion in the middle of a wood, I have not done badly. Two proposals of marriage in the space of a few months. What next! (At least, I suppose that du Vallon’s was a proposal of marriage?) Really, though, it is quite surprising. Why should Sydney, and now the Abbé, find me so captivating that they are impelled to propose? What makes them do so?

  XX

  The earl’s visit was not of long duration. He found it necessary to hurry back to London and test the political climate there. Unfortunately his hopes were due to be dashed: by March the King had recovered his wits, the Tories were triumphant and the Whigs disappointed yet again.

  In March, Hatty had a letter from her sister Fanny begging for help. ‘I supose you are paid a decent salary for your teaching labours – which is more than I do, for I toil all day and receive nothing but hard words for my pains,’ wrote poor Fanny. ‘We are now remov’d to Portsmouth, but the house is small, dark, and inconvenient. Oh, Hatty! When I think of our pleasant childhood and the woods and meadows of Bythorn and the kindness of our dear Mother, my heart is like to Break. Never marry, Sister, marriage is but a trap, you are better by far with none but your own Self to care for and none but an Employer to please.’

  That is as may be, thought Hatty; Lady Elstow had been somewhat bored and peevish since the departure of her husband and required to be played cribbage with for long hours each night, which duty fell mostly on Hatty as Barbara refused point blank, Drusilla was not capable of mastering the rules, and the Abbé now always pleaded writing work in the evenings. He must, thought Hatty, have very nearly completed his task of cataloguing; what would he do then? Would he devise some other pretext to keep him at Underwood? Or would he flit away as suddenly as he had arrived? She would miss his company, she thought, if he went, for he always had something lively to say, and the journals and newspapers he received were freely available to all the household and frequently referred to by Hatty in discussions with her pupils on contemporary history and current affairs. Drusilla made little of these but Barbara could at times be quite engaged, especially over such topics as the emancipation of women and the slave trade. During lessons she talked with reasonable civility to Hatty, but at other times the mantle of sullen antagonism drew down over her again and she could maintain a hostile silence for hours on end, particularly if Hatty and the Abbé fell into conversation, or seemed to be getting on well together. As April drew into May and May into June this antagonism became more pronounced, and Hatty sometimes wondered wearily how long she would be able to live and deal with such a continuous barrage of resentment and ill-will; trying to battle against it was like walking all the time through heavy, clogging sand. She thought it strange that two sisters out of a family of five should have such a capacity for enmity, and sometimes wondered what Mary and Anne, the two who had married, were like. And where was Lady Ursula all this time? After leaving Bythorn Lodge she had gone, Hatty knew, to the sister who had hired a house in town, and from there to Mansfield Park, but where had she gone after that?

  When Hatty wrote to Fanny sending money (Lord Elstow had paid her a year’s salary in arrear and six months in advance so she felt at last quite comfortable and beforehand with the world), she asked Fanny if she knew anything about the whereabouts of Lady Ursula, but had received no reply. This, for some reason, made Hatty anxious. Lady Ursula was such a powerful, unpredictable factor; she seemed like a loose cannon rolling about the deck of a ship (as described vividly by Ned in one of his letters); not to know where she had got to made life seem even more hazardous.


  In June Lady Elstow required to visit a dentist in Bythorn. Haymaking was in process on the home farm, and neither of the girls wished to leave the cheerful scene and take a tedious drive into the town with their mother, so Hatty accompanied the Countess and took the chance to purchase herself some muslins and trimmings for new summer gowns. When, with the help of Bone and the advice of the Abbé, she had the muslins made up into simple but pleasing garments, she felt Barbara’s hostility increase tenfold; the girl could hardly speak without letting fall some bitter, disparaging remark.

  Unfortunately du Vallon was greatly preoccupied at this time. In part, this may have been the cause of Barbara’s bad temper. Normally, he would have tried to mend matters and ameliorate her mood by his chat, inventing some lively absurdity, or relating some odd piece of information culled from his reading; but, at present, events across the Channel were absorbing most of his attention.

  A National Assembly had been summoned in France, the States General were convened at Versailles, in order to try to solve, probably by means of a tax, the critical economic state of the country. Regrettably, no agreement had been reached among the three bodies that made up the States General, and, after six weeks’ fruitless disputation, the King had called a halt to the proceedings and closed the hall in which the meetings had been held. Enraged by this high-handed action, the deputies had continued to meet in a tennis-court, where they took an oath not to break up their gathering until a constitution had been drawn up for France. The King, alarmed, ordered foreign troops into Paris under the command of Marshal Broglie.

  ‘It is folly – suicidal folly,’ said du Vallon one evening to Hatty. ‘The Parisians are a volatile, unruly mass; threatened by foreign mercenaries, they will explode. Louis is like a man knocking away the props of a dam.’

  He sounded disapproving, but his strange eyes were bright with excitement. Barbara, left out of this conversation, scowled and bit her fingernails – a habit which Hatty had managed to persuade her to leave off, after a long, hard-fought campaign, only two months ago. She then stood up and walked noisily out of the room, slamming the door.

  ‘Barbara needs attention,’ said Hatty sighing. ‘She misses her father. Attention from me is no use to her.’

  ‘Dommage!’ said du Vallon, shrugging. ‘She must learn to manage without – like the rest of us.’ He returned to his journal.

  Five minutes later Barbara opened the door again and put her head round it, keeping the rest of her body concealed.

  ‘Marcel,’ she said, in a charged, meaningful voice. ‘Come out to the Pavilion. I have something to show you.’

  Sighing in his turn, the Abbé folded the Moniteur, raised his brows ruefully at Hatty, and followed Barbara into the garden.

  Lady Elstow had retired early, complaining of toothache, which made an excuse for a dose of laudanum. Drusilla, who needed a great deal of sleep, had long ago gone to bed.

  Hatty, thankful for an interval of solitude, walked up to her own room. But she paused when she reached it, finding the door ajar. Puzzled by this – for the chambermaid never left it so – she went directly to the desk where she kept letters and papers. This had been ransacked. Letters lay strewn about, and a notebook was missing – the book in which she jotted down her current, unfinished work.

  Without a moment’s hesitation – her heart hot as a cannon-ball under her ribs – Hatty ran downstairs again and went out through the library french window, through the overgrown shrubbery, and across the unkempt lawn. Beyond it stood the building that was known as the Pavilion. This was an imitation Greek temple facing away from the house, embellished with four Corinthian columns. It had a floor of cracked tiles and a stone seat for those hardy enough to sit there and look at the encroaching woods.

  As she approached, Hatty could hear a voice reading aloud – Barbara’s loud, triumphant voice reading her own lines, recently written, the conclusion of a sonnet:

  ‘The road leads on no farther than your gate

  Having come so far, one can only knock and wait.’

  Hatty swung round the corner and into the Pavilion with the pace and mien of an avenging Fury. Barbara and du Vallon were sitting side by side on the seat, she reading from a thick notebook with brown marbled covers, he listening with an intent, critical expression on his face. Both looked up, startled, as Hatty confronted them; her approach in sandalled feet across the grass had been quite silent. Barbara’s face turned a dark, dusky red; the Abbé’s expression remained unchanged.

  ‘My book, I thank you, Lady Barbara,’ Hatty said quietly, and extended her hand. Barbara had now begun to grin: a broad, challenging smirk, as if to say, Well, all right, you have caught me, but who cares? Even so, I have made a greater fool of you. Still smirking, she handed the book to Hatty.

  ‘Very nice poem, Miss Ward,’ she said. ‘Is it by any chance addressed to Lord Camber?’

  Hatty had to battle with an almost ungovernable impulse to strike that red, grinning face – to slash at it with the heavy, thickly bound notebook. She did not do so. She clutched the book in her hand, took a long, steadying breath, repressing the shudder of rage that ran through her, and said, ‘I shall leave this place tomorrow morning. I cannot stay in a house where my personal possessions are not secure.’

  Barbara’s face turned from red to white. Her mouth assumed an ugly twist.

  The Abbé had sprung to his feet. ‘Miss Ward,’ he said urgently. ‘These are hasty words. Do – pray – take time to reflect.’

  ‘Reflect? Why should I reflect? Why should I remain where I am of no value, where my pupils are detestable? Let their own sister come back and look after them.’

  Hatty strode away and returned to her bedroom. Too angry to remain at rest, she packed up her belongings, then went out to the front of the house, to walk impatiently back and forth along the carriage-way and wait for the hours of darkness to pass.

  It was a sultry July night, scarcely dark yet, though so late; by now the sky was overcast and a few drops of rain fell. A rumble of thunder sounded far away, in the distance. Hatty was reminded of the night, so long ago now, when she had dropped her sister Agnes’s trayload of precious possessions down the stairs.

  And that accident, she thought, has led me, step by step, to this place. And where will this night’s events lead me?

  An hour or so later the Abbé came out and found her there.

  ‘Barbara is in bed,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Mrs Winship has given her some drops of Lady Elstow’s tincture in hot milk to quiet her. She was greatly over-excited. And I have come to apologize. Had I known – had I only known what she was about to read to me, I would have stopped her. But, once she began, I confess I was too interested to interrupt.’

  ‘Fine words,’ said Hatty.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know. Truly I have no excuse. But so it was: during my life I have read little verse, I have not the poetic ear, yet your lines, your images and ideas, impressed me greatly.’

  ‘Merci du cadeau, Monsieur.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I am planning to leave this place.’

  ‘I, too.’

  ‘Folly, my dear Miss Ward! You have nowhere to go and nothing to live on. For you to storm away from here now, in a rage, with no security, no plans made, would be highly – highly – injudicious. Suicidal, I might say! But come with me; and I will introduce you to a new life.’

  ‘What can you possibly mean?’ Despite her angry mood, her attention was caught.

  ‘Pay attention! I have been watching affairs in France. I am about to return there.’

  ‘But you were cast out? You are persona non grata.’

  ‘Aha! All that is due to change. There will be a rising. And my friends, my sympathizers will be those who hold the power, who take command. Here we are, entering July – the change will take place at any moment now. It will have been precipitated by the King’s stupidity, his dr
afting those foreign troops into Paris. The populace will not tolerate that. So: I am going to leave and return to Paris. Miss Ward, come with me! The new scenes, the new life and activity will change your whole way of thinking. No more drowsing in a damp grove with two stupid, ill-conditioned children! You are made for better things! You will meet politicians, men of letters, musicians, sculptors, painters. It is not unlikely that you will be a sensation. There are few English women in Paris at present. You may have a salon – you may command your own select circle.’

  ‘But I do not wish to do any of those things.’

  ‘Why? What do you wish?’ he demanded impatiently.

  ‘To write down my own thoughts, whatever they are.’ And I certainly do not wish to spend all my days discussing politics with a lot of chattering French, she thought, and asked, ‘How is it that you are so confident of all this, Monsieur? How can you be so well informed about what is going on in Paris?’

  ‘Oh, I have correspondents who keep me au fait with what happens. And I, in my turn, keep them apprised about events in political circles in London.’

  ‘I see. You have been a kind of spy.’

  ‘Say, rather, a political analyst.’

  ‘Well, it is obliging of you to invite me to accompany you, and I appreciate the offer – but that life would not suit me, not at all. I wish to read, to write, to reflect; to express myself; I certainly do not want to become involved in a whirlpool of political activity. That would not agree with me in the very least.’

  ‘But you would see Paris! Paris is a magnificent city!’

  ‘I prefer these woods. And I particularly would not wish to see Paris in the middle of a coup d’état.’

  ‘Oh, that will soon be over,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I prefer to wait for that time, until affairs there have settled down.’