Jennie About to Be (3 page)

Jennie was sickened and appalled by the child's terror. She learned then what put girls on the streets or in the river. At home, when one heard of any sort of abuse, there was something to do at once; she could have gone to her father or to Sylvia's parson or to one of the eccentric old ladies who were part of the country's flora and fauna.
Someone
would have said, and enforced it, “That child shall never go back to that man again.”

Even if there were no way of punishing the man, the girl would have grown up safe belowstairs in some country house, the father or uncle or brother forbidden the premises.

Jennie's homesickness was now compounded by bitter frustration. She didn't know Aunt and Uncle Higham well enough; they could very well put the girl out after hearing her story, as if she were a plague carrier. As for the London variety of eccentric old ladies, any of the bejeweled and beplumed specimens Jennie had met didn't look as if kindness toward the lower orders extended past being sure that the horses weren't chilled. The rector of the church which the Highams attended was so grand in the pulpit on Sundays and such a
bon vivant
on weekdays that one couldn't imagine approaching him. George Vinton was so green, for all his dandified airs, that he'd have strangled with horrified embarrassment if he hadn't burned to death with his blushes.

When she wasn't being homesick that winter in London, she was suffering for Tamsin and murderous toward the father. Tamsin never overflowed to her again; she was afraid of being caught at it. The fear of losing her place was contagious; it was a constant pain gnawing at Jennie's stomach. She lived a double life, as a grateful niece trying to live up to her obligations and as a prisoner of her passions. She could not even write it all out to Sylvia, who could have done nothing to help.

Tamsin died as quietly and humbly as she had lived, of a fever which was survived by the stronger, better-nourished girls. She died in a clean bed in her garret room at Brunswick Square, tended by the girls and women of whom she had been so unnecessarily afraid. She died unravished by her father, and she would never have to go on the streets, where she would have died a far different death after long miseries.

Uncle Higham had seen that she was decently buried. There was no more need to be anxious for her now, so one reason for the pain in Jennie's stomach was gone. But for the rest of her life she would remember Tamsin with the depressing ache of an old injury.

William and Sylvia were snug in the rectory, thinking God had made a gift of each to the other. They were good people; they acted swiftly when they saw distress. But she condescended wearily to their innocence. When she reached the north again, she would tell them what London was really like.

With thirty gold sovereigns
, she thought on this morning of the duet by the blackbird and the baker's boy,
I could even go to America, if I knew how to get started
. She put down her book and lay watching the light brightening on the ceiling, and let herself go in a fantasy about taking a ship for America. With the addition of an inexpensive wedding ring, she could call herself a widow, because a widow could move about more freely than an unmarried girl. She'd say she was going to relatives there, traveling alone because at the last moment her maid had become ill, or had refused to go across three thousand miles of ocean, or had eloped with the coachman.

Jennie passed lightly over the possibilities of storms or shipwreck. She smiled with gracious sadness on the officers and other passengers. There were some who would have courted her if they had not respected her grief. The delightful fantasy ended when the ship docked because she could imagine neither what she would see nor what she could do there.

No
. Home to the north first, and then, if nothing presented itself by summer, on to Switzerland. It was a pity she couldn't simply say to her aunt, “I would like to go home. Not to Pippin Grange, of course, but William and Sylvia will have me until I situate myself.”

If only her aunt and uncle would give in gracefully. (This was the purest fantasy.) She could depart with their blessings, and George Vinton would still come calling, she thought dreamily. He might be saved for Charlotte after all, though Jennie was sure her young cousin's romantic ideal was something rather different.

“
George Vinton
!” Jennie said it aloud, and shot up like a jack-in-the-box. “He's the way!”

She needed only to know where to go to take a northbound coach, and how to get there, and if she couldn't find this out from George Vinton without arousing his suspicions, she was a fool and deserved to be caught out.

There was a tap at the door, and Tamsin's successor, a brawny, good-natured girl, brought in her hot water.

“Y
OU MUST HAVE
more porridge, Jennie,” said Aunt Higham. “You're very thin. Be lavish with the cream. A pleasing slenderness is one thing, but there's nothing worse than being scrawny.”

“I'm eating an extra roll, Aunt,” Jennie said with an affectionate smile. She was even fonder than usual of Aunt Higham this morning, because she was leaving her.

“Then use more butter. There's no need to scrimp here. Lottie, pass her the honey.”

“
Monstrous
!” Uncle Higham barked. Jennie knew it was neither the honey nor herself that was monstrous, but the state of the nation.

So the day that was to turn her life around—if she could manage it—began as all other days had begun here. As usual, while she sat at breakfast with her aunt and uncle and cousin, she thought her own thoughts while Uncle Higham delivered his morning pronunciamentos on the idiotic behavior of Parliament, the lunacy of the King, the de-pravity of the Prince of Wales, the infamy of the Orders in Council which had caused the Americans to lay down their embargo; the colonies, as he persisted in calling the United States, were not to be forgiven their retaliation. The embargo was just as evil as Napoleon's blockade. They were strangling British trade to the death; if all the Highams ended up in the workhouse, it would be on the heads of the Americans and the French, and, of course, the criminal imbeciles responsible for the Orders in Council, he added, trying to be fair and turning purple in the attempt.

Since Sir John Moore had fallen at Corunna in January, Uncle Higham had been extremely gloomy, and he was not cheered now by reading in his morning paper that Arthur Wellesley had asked for, and been given, leave to lead an expeditionary force to defend Portugal.

“Of
course
Bonaparte can't be allowed to go on gulping down one country after another like a plate of oysters. Of
course
he must be crushed!” He crushed him with a huge meaty fist beside his coffee cup, which leaped off the saucer and fell back again. “But I don't trust this Wellesley. Something peculiar about that family! Flashy, unpredictable. Look at this woman! Disgraceful! Man should resign from the Army!”

“The woman's not a Wellesley, Roger,” his wife said briskly. “She's his sister-in-law. The Wellesleys are well rid of her, but God help the Pagets.” Lady Caroline Wellesley had just left her husband and young children to elope with Lord Paget. “Went off in a hackney coach!” Something about that made Aunt Higham want to laugh, but the impulse was bound and gagged.

Charlotte's larkspur eyes were vacant; these days she was reading
The Mysteries of Udolpho
on the sly in Jennie's room, and her thoughts moved in gloomy Gothic circles, searching for a demon lover.

“It's Paget who should resign,” said Aunt Higham, “not Arthur Wellesley.”

Her husband glared at her. “He's the best cavalry officer in the Army. Nation needs him. War, war,” Uncle Higham growled at his plate. “I'm sick of it. Country's sick of it. The whole world's dying of a plague of stupidity.”

He was a large man, red of face and hair, with reddish brown eyes, and with a thick prow of a nose projecting between fleshy cheeks, and jowls folding over his cravat. The broad curve of his middle made a fine display of his figured waistcoat, chain, and seals. He still had good muscular calves for silk stockings, which may have been one reason he held forth about the immorality of the pantaloons that were replacing honest, manly knee breeches.

He had never gone out of his way to make Jennie welcome, and at first she had felt humiliated and angry in his presence. But in time she realized that he had never gone out of his way to make her feel
un
welcome. He treated her as a member of the family—that is, he favored her with a comment or barked out a question when he felt like it, and otherwise ignored her.

After her father's charm and humor, Uncle Higham's manner was a shock, but it was the salutary shock of cold water dashed into the face to stop a faint or to startle a child into letting go its breath. It was instant notice that home was gone forever and the family broken up. Her aunt was not demonstrative, so Jennie was flung in to sink or swim. She had floundered, choked, thought she was going down for good, and had shot to the surface again, gasping but surviving.

She had survived to the point where Carolus Hawthorne's daughter was thinking very vigorously for herself while her amber eyes, seemingly as innocent and transparent as a young hound's, were fixed earnestly on first her uncle's face and then her aunt's. George Vinton would be here this afternoon or evening, if not this morning; the bird was unable to stay away from the cobra. If she suggested a walk in the garden, Aunt Higham would be pleased to keep the children away.

If he came this morning, there was even a chance that she might be away before nightfall. The thought of the ecstasy of heading north from London made her almost dizzy; she wanted to shut her eyes and swing with the sensation.

There was a stir in the room like the change in the tide. Breakfast was over, and Uncle Higham was about to be seen off to business. Charlotte returned reluctantly from Gothic grottoes. The two girls walked behind the senior Highams out into the marble-floored foyer. From the head of the stairs there were rustlings and whisperings as the younger children gathered. Mavis, the tall parlonmaid, appeared suddenly and soundlessly, like an apparition; Jennie suspected her of lying in wait in the library. Uncle Higham scowled at his greatcoat, and it was whisked away. His hat and gloves were presented, and he turned to select his stick from the collection in the tall Chinese urn; he always walked when the weather was fine.

Charlotte, while looking respectful, was dreaming again. Aunt Higham waited, her hands folded across her middle, also respectful but hardly browbeaten. There was a sense of held breath at the head of the stairs while Uncle Higham's hand hovered over the collection of sticks. Suddenly it pounced. When he lifted out the chosen one, he looked up at the bronze hanging lamp as if he were listening.

“Good-bye, Papa!” The chorus came. Derwent's voice was the loudest because this wasn't one of his jail days; he could never be sure, until he saw the stick come out, if Papa was about to announce that it was time that Derwent spent some time on the business premises of Higham Brothers, Ltd.

Now Papa waved his hat at them, admonished them to be good, and was swept out the door on a wave of fervent promises. Mavis closed the door behind him with reverent ceremony, and instantly the house came to the boil. Mavis disappeared as magically as she had appeared. Aunt Higham went to the kitchen to give the day's orders; she was not one of those women who feared to step into Cook's territory. The children rushed down the stairs, and Charlotte floated into the drawing room to practice her music on the new Broadwood pianoforte.

Jennie was surrounded by the children's giggling, stamping, hooting version of a Red Indian dance. Ann and Marjorie were six and nine; Derwent was ten, and his dream was to run away to North America and be adopted into a tribe of Red Indians. He wanted to go before he could be sent to public school, which gave the shape and substance to his chronic nightmares. Some Higham cousins had gladly given him the dreadful details. Only Jennie and Charlotte knew this; Jennie would have liked to go directly to the parents but, as with Tamsin, she didn't dare. Charlotte hoped his tendency to heavy colds would keep him home.

Jennie, trailed by noise like a comet by fire, went into the drawing room. She silenced the children with a finger to her lips and opened music for Charlotte to sight-read. The children ranged about the long room, staring at its riches. They spent so little time in this splendid place it was a treasure cave to them. There was the fascination of the circular convex mirror in its gilt frame over the mantel, in which they could see the whole room; the matching sofas with entire tapestry pictures set in their backs; the marquetry cabinets; the gold-framed paintings against the hand-painted wallpaper; the carpet that was a flower garden in itself; the fire screens painted with fantastic, fairy scenes; the crystal girandoles hanging from the wall sconces, flashing every color as the sun struck them. There were the Egyptian chairs with great paws for feet, and the Holy of Holies, the glass cabinet holding curios from wherever in the world their father's family had done business. They whispered covetously before it, breathing mist onto the glass, their fingers itching to hold miniature ship or elephant or man.

Charlotte's music tinkled through the tenuous morning light. She was silvery blond, and like Jennie she was very slender while the little girls were still round with baby fat. There was something so innocent and helpless about the nape of her neck as she bent her pale head toward the music that Jennie, thinking this could be the last morning she would stand behind the child like this, was suddenly stabbed with something worse than melancholy.

Charlotte in her own way touched her as much as Tamsin had. To be young was to be a victim in one way or another. Look at Derwent. At ten he should be completely carefree, bursting with happy expectations about life, but he was already terrified of it.