“But not us,” Bradford said. Mudd came back to the table just then and Bradford picked up the camera and handed it to him. “Will you oblige us, my good man, by taking our photograph? We should commemorate this happy occasion.”
Mudd backed away, looking apprehensive. “Me, sir? Oh, no, sir. I couldn't at all. I don't know how.”
“It is very easy,” Sir Charles said. “Just aim, hold steady, and push the lever.”
Kate had to laugh at the sight of Mudd, holding the camera as if it were the Queen's crown. She laid aside her hat and she and Eleanor leaned close together, while Bradford and Sir Charles stood behind. Mudd operated the lever with a trembling thumb. There was a faintly audible click. With a look of relief mixed with pride at having successfully carried out the complicated task, he handed back the camera.
“And now,” Eleanor said, standing up, “no more photographs. Come, Sir Charles, you and I shall show this pair the spirit that has led the British Empire to govern the globe.”
“Ah, yes,” Sir Charles said dryly. “ âAnd upon this charge cry âGod for Harry! England and Saint George!' ” He looked at Kate.
“Henry V,
Act Three.”
Kate lifted her chin. “ âEngland shall repent his folly.'
Henry
V, Act Four.” She was immensely gratified to see the look of surprise that crossed Sir Charles's face. Did he think that only the English read and remembered Shakespeare?
As it turned out, the Anglo-American team split wins with the British, so that when two rounds of croquet were completed, both sides claimed victory. After the match, they toured the ruins on the other side of the lake. It was the first time Kate had seen them, although they were not much to remark onâjust the remnants of old stone enclosures, fallen to rubble and populated by rabbits and robins. After their walk, the guests departed, Eleanor insisting that Kate and her aunts must come to tea as soon as possible.
Reluctantly, Kate went back inside. The afternoon had been unexpectedly pleasant. Eleanor had lighted the gathering with her usual vivacity. Bradford had finally come around to a gay but rather nervous and uncertain amiability. Even Sir Charles had unbent enough to laugh over the mock battles on the croquet field, between mock-serious lectures on the effect of grass height and moisture on the velocity of the croquet ball. He had even promised to give her copies of the photographs he had taken earlier that day. Kate now knew that an ironic playfulness lurked under his serious facade, and she found herself liking him a great deal.
At teatime Kate went to the kitchen. Mrs. Pratt was steaming something savory in preparation for dinner. Kate lifted the lid and sniffed it appreciatively, then busied herself making a tea tray for Aunt Sabrina. She left it with a knock outside the door and had a solitary tea for herself, with the latest copy of
Longman's Magazine
in front of her, open to the third installment of “The Matchmaker,” which she was studying for plot development.
The aunts appeared downstairs only after dinner was called, and when they met at the dining table they averted their eyes and did not speak to one another. Aunt Sabrina engaged Kate in bursts of animated conversation punctuated by gloomy silences, while Aunt Jaggers sat opposite, glowering and snappish. Aunt Sabrina, as if to make a show of naturalness, allowed Mudd to serve her a large portion of the savory mushroom pudding that Cook had prepared, talking gaily to Kate all the while. Served next, Aunt Jaggers seized on the remainder, taking it spitefully so that none was left for Kate. Tired as she was and depressed by the disharmony, Kate ate only a little soup and the fricassee remaining from luncheon. Mudd, for his part, was no more silent than usual, but there was an unveiled grimness in his face that reminded Kate that he and Mrs. Pratt held little good feeling toward Aunt Sabrina and none at all to Aunt Jaggers. She felt a real relief when the awful dinner was over and she could escape to her room.
It was a meal that Kate was to mull over for a long time to come.
41
“In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too.”
âMATTHEW ARNOLD “Requiescat”
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T
he next morning, Kate woke and dressed as usual. Alone in the breakfast room, she openly ignored Aunt Jaggers's interdiction and read from the newspaper. Having finished both breakfast and the newspaper, she glanced at the clock. Nine o'clock. Aunt Sabrina would certainly summon her if she was wanted, and after yesterday's upsets, it was probably better not to disturb her. What to do?
Feeling at loose ends, Kate put on sturdy boots and a coat and went to climb over the ruined stone walls of the old keep. Tiring, she sat in a quiet corner with her back against a wall of dark flint cobbles, watching the mist rise from the quiet lake and thinking back over the events of the past few days.
The relationship between Aunt Sabrina and Aunt Jaggers had frozen into an icy glacier, and the scarcely disguised animosity of the servants added to the chilly foreboding that seemed to Kate to seep throughout the house like the tendrils of mist over the lake. If she were no longer to work for Aunt Sabrina, should she stay on? Would it not be better if she gave her notice? It was not what she wanted to do, but she did not want to stay in a place where the atmosphere was so poisonous that it infected even her own usually buoyant spirits.
At ten, she went indoors and climbed the stairs to her room. If Kate had no work to do, Beryl Bardwell had an abundance. She settled herself at her desk, took out the manuscript of “The Conspiracy of the Golden Scarab,” and dipped her pen into the inkwell. She was about to begin drafting the scene in which Mrs. Bartlett plotted the murder of the Egyptian gentleman, when she heard cries in the hall and the noise of hurrying feet.
Kate went to the door and threw it open. “What is it, Amelia?” she asked. The maid had a foul-smelling, lidded chamber pot in her hands.
“Oh, miss!” Amelia cried in a panic. “Mrs. Jaggers is took terr'ble sick!” Averting her face from the stinking pot, she hurried down the hallway to the stairs.
Kate went to her aunt's bedroom. The heavy velvet drapes were tightly drawn against the daylight. In the dimness, she saw Aunt Jaggers in her white cotton nightgown, doubled over in bed, clutching her heavy abdomen. Her face was contorted with a wrenching pain and her skin had a jaundiced cast that frightened Kate. The bedsheets were twisted and rank with sweat and liquid excrement. Mrs. Pratt straightened up, holding the washbasin into which Aunt Jaggers had vomited a greenish gray slime. Vomit slicked the cabbage rose carpet beside the bed. The fat terrier, ears and tail quivering nervously, cowered in the corner.
“Has the doctor been sent for?” Kate put her hand on Aunt Jaggers's forehead. It was wet with perspiration and the skin felt clammy.
“Pocket's gone, miss.” Mrs. Pratt turned away to dump the contents of the basin into a half-full bucket. There was, Kate thought, a tone of grim satisfaction in the cook's voice, and her glance at the desperately ill woman huddled on the bed seemed coldly pitiless. Kate thought of Jenny. It would be no wonder if Cook derived a dour compensation from the woman's suffering.
Aunt Jaggers arched her back with a loud cry, and a convulsive shudder shook her whole body. Her eyes rolled in her head, showing yellowy whites, and she shrieked in pain. Then she flung herself over the edge of the bed and began to retch into the basin that Mrs. Pratt once more thrust forward.
Kate ran for her own room and brought back basin, water, and clean cloth, and when Aunt Jaggers was once again lying on the pillow, exhausted, she began to apply the wet cloth to her forehead. Her aunt's eyes were wide open and staring fixedly, the pupils sharply dilated. Her pulse, when Kate at last managed to find it, was slow and irregular, although she was breathing fast, in shallow gasps.
The next hour was a melee of confusion, Mrs. Pratt with the basin, Amelia with the chamber pot, and Kate intent on keeping Aunt Jaggers from flinging herself off the bed in her convulsive thrashings. Dr. Randall arrived at last, a stout, genial-looking gentleman whose heavy jowls were frosted with old-fashioned white muttonchop whiskers.
“Indigestion, is it?” he asked in a booming voice. He opened his bag and took out his stethoscope. “Let's see, let's see.”
But when he looked up from a quick examination of Aunt Jaggers, his glance was worried.
“What is it?” Kate asked. “What's wrong with her?”
Aunt Jaggers roused herself with an effort. “Poison.” Her voice was a threadlike whisper. “I've been poisoned.”
“Don't be foolish,” Dr. Randall replied with loud heartiness, as if he were speaking to a deaf person. “Been eating oysters? There's been some trouble with taint hereabouts. Several taken ill.”
“No, no oysters,” Kate said.
Aunt Jaggers began to flail frenziedly, and a stream of wild words poured out of her.
“Hysterical,” Dr. Randall said. He took a bottle out of his bag. “This should set matters right straightaway, I warrant.” He measured out a thick liquid into a teaspoon.
But the medicine, whatever it was, brought no quick improvement, and within five minutes Aunt Jaggers had vomited it violently into the basin. The doctor looked on, perplexed, stroking his nose with his thumb. Kate stood with Amelia at the foot of the bed, watching apprehensively. At last Aunt Jaggers quieted, her limbs relaxed, and she seemed to pass into a deep sleep, her mouth slack, her breath hoarse and raspy, a slug's trail of saliva on her flabby chin.
“Ah,” the old doctor remarked with some relief, “we're past the crisis, I'd say.” He put the bottle of medicine on the bedside table. “Spoonful of this every three hours, and keep her warm and quiet. I expect to find her greatly recovered when I return this afternoon.
Greatly
recovered,” he added loudly, with an admonishing look at the sleeping Aunt Jaggers, as if instructing his patient in the course of her improvement.
“What do you think has made her ill?” Kate asked.
“Hard to say,” Doctor Randall replied. “You are certain about the oysters?” As Kate nodded, he snapped his bag shut. “What did she eat for breakfast?”
Kate shook her head. “I don't know.”
“No one ate, 'cept fer th' young miss, sir,” Mrs. Pratt offered. “According t' Mudd, that is.”
“Dinner was about eight last night,” Kate said.
“Not likely food poisoning, then,” the doctor remarked with an air of authority. “Symptoms would have been felt within four or five hours.” He looked at Kate. “You seem healthy enough. Any symptoms?”
Kate was about to answer when Nettie rushed into the room, her eyes big, her thin face pale. “It's Miss Ardleigh,” she gasped. “I went t' do her bed an' found her on th' floor. She's bad sick!”
Leaving Amelia to watch over the sleeping Aunt Jaggers, Kate and the doctor ran to Aunt Sabrina's room, Mrs. Pratt, and Nettie at their heels. The scene there was much like Aunt Jaggers's room: bed clothing rank and disarranged, the basin overflowing with vomit, the chamber pot brimming. Aunt Sabrina was sprawled on the floor by the door, her nightgown drenched with cold sweat, the bellrope clutched in one hand.
“Pore lady,” Nettie whispered. “She musta pulled an' pulled an' pulled it straight off th' wall.”
“Weren't nobody t' hear belowstairs,” Mrs. Pratt said sadly. Her voice hardened. “We all bin tendin' t'other one.”
Kate summoned Mudd, who was hovering in the hallway. He and the doctor managed to lift Aunt Sabrina onto the bed. Her breathing was so shallow that Kate thought at first she was dead, but once in the bed her eyelids flickered.
“Mother,” she moaned. Her breath was foul with the smell of vomit, and her nightdress reeked with her waste. “Don't be angry, Mother. I did not mean to soil myself.”
“Out o' her head,” Mrs. Pratt said judiciously.
Dr. Randall dispatched Nettie for the medicine he had left with Aunt Jaggers and began his examination. Kate stepped to the other side of the bed and took Aunt Sabrina's cold, clammy hand.
“It will be all right, Aunt,” she said quietly.
Aunt Sabrina's eyes flew open, the whites yellowed and sickly looking. An expression of confusion came over her face. “Whoâ?”
“It's Kathryn.” Kate smoothed her aunt's matted hair away from her face. “Your niece.”
Aunt Sabrina stared at her wonderingly for a moment, and then the confusion seemed to clear.
“Kathryn,” she whispered. Saliva trickled out of one corner of her mouth and she spoke with what seemed like intense effort. “I ... must see ... the vicar.”
Dr. Randall straightened up. “Things haven't arrived at that state yet, my dear Miss Ardleigh. You'll be up and around in no time, I promise it.” His face belied the assurance of his words.
Aunt Sabrina leaned over the bed to retch into the basin Mrs. Pratt held. When she finished, Kate gently pulled her back and began to wipe her forehead. She reached up to clutch Kate's hand.
“I ... must see the vicar,” she whispered thickly. “Must tell him ...” Her eyes closed and her voice trailed off in an incoherent string of muttered syllables.
Kate leaned closer. “Tell him what, Aunt?”
“Tell him ... to tell Jocelyn ...”
“Jocelyn?”
Aunt Sabrina's eyes opened wide and a spasm of pain twisted her face. “My ... child,” she grated between clenched teeth.
Dr. Randall straightened up, shaking his head. “Delirious.”
“She does not have aâ?”
“Absolutely not. Known her all her life. Splendid woman, but never had a husband, never had children. Can vouch for that.” He frowned, looking around. “Where the devil is that girl with the medicine?”