Jennie About to Be (9 page)

Charlotte sighed. “Whoever I get, I hope he has yellow hair like Nigel. And if he can't be an officer in the Blues, I'd like him to be a naval officer.'

“Like Bobby Shafto,” said Sophie, and they sang the song together, breaking up in cascades of laughter.

Everything had to be packed early to go to Scotland with them; they would be leaving after the wedding breakfast for the long drive to the Tilbury docks, there to embark upon
Minerva
for the voyage to Banff. This was Uncle Higham's gift; he was a partner in the new vessel, built to bring coal down from Scotland. On her maiden voyage the Nigel Gilchrists would be occupying one of the owners' staterooms.

The portrait would be sent later, when the artist thought it was dry enough to be crated and shipped to what he considered a soggy and freezing wasteland.

There were two new trunks for Jennie's possessions; she had never had so many clothes in her life. She herself packed the small old trunk that had come with her from Pippin Grange, starting out with her keepsake box, her books, the old robe and the slippers from Ebony, and, with less enthusiasm, her workbox. Her aunt then banished her, telling her to go back to writing thank-yous.

“You'll never put things as they should be, distracted as you are,” she said, “and your warm things must be where you can find them quickly. It will be chilly on the water, and spring in the Highlands can't be told from winter, I hear.”

When she'd heard about Scotland, she had quickly ordered underwear of Spanish lamb's wool, flannel petticoats, warm spencers, and cotton stockings. These were to go on top of everything else, as soon as the wedding gown was laid away.

Sophie and Charlotte helped wrap and pack the smaller wedding gifts, constantly marveling aloud to each other. There were so many things, most of them from people Jennie didn't know, that she was embarrassed. Aunt Higham took a tight-lipped satisfaction in the loot, but the girls gloated over the monogrammed silver tea and coffeepots, the silver sauceboats and candlesticks, the Spode china, the variety of tea sets; an ivory tea caddy inlaid with ebony; vases, Chinese figurines, paintings. The younger children were allowed to watch but not to touch, and Derwent was nearly overcome by the chessmen carved from Indian ivory, the horses' heads were so perfect. His clenched fists trembled with desire, and Jennie saw, and told him to touch all he wanted to.

Aunt Higham's gifts were many and practical: linens, blankets, pillows, and two eiderdowns. Lady Geoffrey had described the factor's dwelling as a grim, high, stone house, and she gave rich-colored hangings and cushions and a gold-garnished mirror with candle branches hung with crystal drops to brighten a dark corner. The house had the bare necessities of furniture but was soon to be ornamented with such frills as painted fire screens and lamps, a carved and gilded clock by Daniel Quare, a mahogany wine table fitted with its own crystal goblets, and tall japanned screens to keep off the drafts.

The sudden acquisition of so many
things
was overwhelming to Jennie. So was the whole business of preparing for a wedding; Nigel was seen only in snatches that were more exasperating than joyous. The whole household spun in a cyclone of energy that made the younger children very naughty, and Jennie secretly hated the abrupt drop from courtship into controlled chaos. How could love possibly survive it?

Everyone else seemed happy enough with it. There were new clothes all around; even Uncle Higham had a new suit made in which to give her away, and was seen to smile complacently when some especially handsome gift arrived. Nigel was pounced upon by Sophie and Charlotte the instant he appeared and was taken to see the latest. He always said obligingly, “My word!” no matter what it was. Occasionally he threw in something like “Very
distingué
,” or “
Très recherché
, what?”

Once when Jennie was alone with him for a moment, she hugged his arm with both her hands and said, “Oh, Nigel, we're two babes in the woods being showered with gifts instead of leaves by a crowd of very peculiar robins. I supposed I may be house-proud one day and wear a lace cap indoors and cherish these things, but right now I can't see what they have to do with you and me.”

“I know, my sweet chuck.” He kissed her. “Pity that we're expected to behave like settled householders, ain't it? But that's only while they're watching us. Wait till we get to Scotland. How do you fancy being chased through the heather like one of those nymphs, wearing only a bit of gauze, which will come off in the escape?”

She pressed her face into his now-civilian lapel to stifle laughter while Aunt Higham greeted callers in the foyer. It was going to be all right; better than all right.

On the day before the wedding, with most of the packing done, all the fittings over, the wedding cake in the pantry veiled like another bride in protective gauze, there was a sudden lull. Aunt Higham retired to her room to rest, and the children were all taken by Mademoiselle to the birthday celebration of a young Higham cousin. Jennie asked Nigel to go with her to Tamsin's grave.

They walked, at her request; she had not had a long walk for days. London, the day before her wedding, was dank and gray, the sun a phantom through layers of dirty, stinking smoke. They bought lilies of the valley from a street vendor and went looking for Tamsin's grave in the crowded burial ground of a little church on the edge of a slum. The older stones, blackened and illegible, toppled toward each other in such confusion one would think the bodies they marked had been buried in like confusion. A gravedigger found Tamsin's grave for them; he had dug it. There had been no room to put her beside her mother, he said.

It wouldn't have mattered to Tamsin, who'd had no time to mourn; from the moment her dear mother had been carried away from the sordid room, the child had been engaged in a battle to survive.

Carolus Hawthorne had taught his daughters that the body was nothing once the soul had gone, that it was pagan to make an altar of a grave; he'd like to have been buried in a corner of the orchard with no marker, and he had forbidden them to wear mourning.

Tamsin was surely free of her terrified little body, but Jennie was almost overcome at the sight of the name Thomasina on the stone. She gripped the lilies of the valley tightly, and her face went cold and still, as pale as the flowers in her hands.

Nigel's arm came around her waist. “Tell me about this,” he urged gently.

“When I was miserable, she was so much more miserable, and she had reason to be. The very sight of her made me ashamed of my own weakness.”

“She was only thirteen,” he said, reading the stone. “What could a child of that age be so miserable about?”

“Nigel, don't you
know
”—she flared at him—“even if you're too fastidious to
think
about it, that all children aren't
nicely
raised? Don't you know about the little ones being sold to chimney sweeps, and sent to the factories and mines? And the children sold on the street for criminal
abuse
?”

Nigel looked as alarmed as if he'd embraced a wildcat, taking it for a tame kitten. He'd never seen her in a rage before.

“You know Dickon,” she hurried on. “He takes your eye because he's bright and cocky; no one has beaten the spirit out of him. Dickon lives like a prince compared to most of them. When a child weeps with terror for fear she'll have to leave off being a general slavey because it's the first time she can remember of being
safe
—”

She whipped away from his arm so she could face him. “Nigel, would you rape a child?”

He recoiled at the impact ofthe word coming from her. “Good God!” he protested. “I wouldn't rape anyone!”

“Well, that's what this child had to fear. From her father.”

“Good God,” Nigel said again. He took out his handkerchief and patted his forehead. “So that's what it is. And you had to hear it.”

“I could endure to listen to it; she was the one who had to live through it. Somebody had to hear it. I don't know if the woman who placed her with the Highams knew about it, or the minister who buried her. She was so ashamed she only told me one day because she was so desperate. One of the maids had spoken sharply to her, and she was terrified of being sent away. When she was sick, Aunt Higham told me how she'd come there. A good woman who used to be the parlormaid before she married asked for a place in the scullery for a motherless child, because the father was a drunkard and never in work. I didn't tell my aunt what I knew about the father.”

“Poor little devil,” Nigel growled. “I'd like to horsewhip the brute.”

“One thing I'm grateful for,” Jennie said. “Tamsin didn't know she was dying, but she did know that the maids were being kind, and Cook made special broth and puddings for her. She had her heaven then. I hope her father lives forever in hell.” She put the fragrant little nosegay at the foot of the stone. “His hell has to be of his own making, of course. I hope he makes a good job of it.”

“I say, are you an atheist?” he asked interestedly.

“No, but I wish I were. I'd like to think that evil flourishes by chance and not because of divine indifference. But God doesn't dispense rewards and punishments. On the seventh day He said, ‘Well, there's your earth, make the best of it,' and He rested. And kept on resting.”

“Was that before or after He extracted Adam's rib?”

“Oh, Nigel.” She laughed weakly and leaned against him. “Keep your arm around me, please. People will think we're married already and you're being the uxorious husband.”

“A
what
? It sounds improper.”

“It means a foolishly fond husband.”

“I'm a foolishly fond fiancé.” He ducked his head and kissed her under the rim of her bonnet. If the gravedigger, excavating another small pit, noticed, he paid no more attention than he did to the birds that sang through the dirty smoke.

T
HEY EXCHANGED
their gifts to each other the night before the wedding. She had a gold watchguard for Nigel, and he gave her a small diamond pendant on a delicate silver chain and tiny diamond eardrops like spangles of dew in the sunlight. Then he and the baronet (who had given them the chessmen) went off to a bachelor dinner held by Nigel's friends in the Blues, and his mother and Lady Clarke came to dinner at Brunswick Square. Jennie took Lady Geoffrey for a stroll in the garden while her aunt and Lady Clarke played backgammon; Uncle Higham and his whist cronies were playing their evening rubber in the Ibirary.

“You must give Nigel an heir as soon as you decently can,” Lady Geoffrey said. “So as to insure the possession of Linnmore. Otherwise one of those dissolute zanies in the Earl's family just might outlive the lot of you. Alcohol seems to preserve some creatures indefinitely.”

At least she didn't say I should foal at once
, Jennie thought. “Does it matter,” she asked politely, “if it's a son or a daughter?”

“Not at all; a daughter can inherit, and of course her husband would change his name to Gilchrist.” She patted Jennie's arm. “You're a good girl, my dear, and I'm happy for Nigel. Don't let Christabel bully you. Stand up for yourself as you did with me.”

“Shall you come and visit?”

“I'm afraid not, with this wretched hip. The journey's too long.”

“I'm sorry,” Jennie said. Nigel's mother looked at her in the light from the French windows.

“I believe you mean it.” She sounded surprised.

“I do,” Jennie answered.

Lady Geoffrey gave her hand a little squeeze. “Ah, but you'll be coming to London!” she said. “Travel means nothing but fun to you healthy young things.”

Jennie had never owned anything as subtly elegant as her wedding gown. It was sewn from gossamer-weight white silk tissue, embroidered with silver thread in diagonal stripes, simply cut with a gently rounded neck, and fell straight from the high waistline. Her slip, stockings, and long white gloves were silk; her slippers, white satin. She wore Nigel's diamonds.

Aunt Higham's maid had arranged her hair in Grecian ringlets, and Ianthe's veil was pinned into place and crowned with a wreath of white silk rosebuds and green leaves. She endured the whole grooming progress as if it were happening to someone else; she felt feverish, she saw her flushed cheeks in Aunt Higham's cheval glass, her aunt and the maid smiling proudly behind her, and she wondered with resignation and near hope if she were going to fall ill on the way to the church and thus postpone the wedding indefinitely.

She did not fall ill on the way to Hanover Square. Attended by Sophie and Charlotte in pale pink muslin, she was given away by an almost genial uncle in a Spanish blue coat (which clashed with his rufous coloring) to a handsome stranger in a forest green one, and they were married by a bishop who was a cousin of the bridegroom's stepfather. It was all rather like something one might have imagined in one's bath. In no time at all it was over, the register signed, and they were back in Brunswick Square, drinking champagne (probably smuggled) given by one of her uncle's friends. She thought she couldn't eat a mouthful of food, but she did not want to set off drunk on her honeymoon, so she did her best.

George Vinton was there, in clerical black for once. It looked like mourning, especially when he got a little tipsy and teary. The Earl had insisted on attending the breakfast and became drunk quite early on and was taken away by his entourage of two, protesting that he hadn't kissed the bride.

The baronet, the nineteen-year-old country squire, was very popular with the bridesmaids. The small children saw the cake cut, were given theirs, and were swept away by Mrs. Coombes; they came to Jennie's room to say good-bye when she was ready to leave. The little girls hugged her, tearfully promising to remember everything she'd taught them and all the songs and stories. Derwent scowled the whole time, furious with the world, but when she kissed his cheek, he flung his arms around her neck, squeezed hard, and then bolted, red-faced, from the room.