“Now I have met the whole family,” he declared, “except for your grandfather, Miss Godric. I should like to thank him for the loan of his nightshirt.”
“Grandpa Stevens cannot climb the stairs,” explained Susan. “His back hurts. He says it is from too many years behind the counter of his shops.”
Mr. Fairfax glanced at Hester. She was slightly flushed, but made no move to hush her sister.
“My grandfather is anxious to meet you, sir,” she said. “However, you will have to wait at least a month, according to Dr. Price, before it will be safe to take you below stairs. I hope you will not find the confinement unbearably tedious.”
“Judging by today,” he replied, “I shall have visitors enough to pass the time most pleasantly. I begin to think I have passed a great deal of my life in unrecognised tedium.”
“I daresay you will soon wish for peace and quiet. I find myself doing so not infrequently, dearly as I love the children. Well, I must be on my way if we are to dine this evening. If you have finished your cake, Susan, you may carry the things down for me.”
“I still have a bite left, Hester. I pushed all the cream down to the end, and I’ve been saving it for last.” She looked guilty. “Oh dear, I’m not supposed to do that, am I? I’ll bring everything down in a minute.”
Hester shook her head in mock despair and went out. Susan gloatingly licked the last blob of cream from her fingers and heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
“What an excellent cook your sister is,” commented Mr. Fairfax. “I daresay she is teaching you the art? It must be delightful to be able to make pastries for yourself.”
“No, she only teaches me things like geography and history, and Alices teaches me sewing: It would be of all things great to know how to bake cakes. Only imagine, I could lick all the bowls myself, instead of sharing with Robbie! I’ll ask Hester to show me. Do you not think it would be more fun than ironing shirts?”
“I daresay, but I hope you will not neglect your brothers’ shirts. I have always been impressed by the way a skillful wielder of the smoothing iron can transform a wrinkled rag into a garment fit to wear to the Regent’s dinner parties,” lied Mr. Fairfax shamelessly.
“Have you been to his parties? They must be very magnificent.” Susan’s attention was momentarily caught, but she returned at once to the main point. “I pressed a new shirt for Grandpa Stevens this morning and he said he had never seen one so neat. And Hester said I was a great help and she did not know how she should go on without me. I’d like to help her cook, too. I’ll go right now and ask her to teach me.”
Mr. Fairfax lay back with a self-satisfied smirk. He hoped that by next day the volatile child would not have decided she wanted to be a stagecoach driver.
Chapter 4
The next morning a blustery west wind brought rain in driving sheets, hiding the far side of the valley and turning the busy Oxford road, which had begun to dry out, into a sticky morass again.
Mr. Fairfax had been more fatigued by the pain of his injuries than he had realised, but after a peaceful night he awoke refreshed. He was joined before breakfast by Robbie, who had somehow already both muddied and bloodied his bare knees. He responded to an interested enquiry with the news that he had gone down to the river when the rain stopped for a moment.
“That’s the best time to catch frogs,” he explained. “They come out of the river when it rains, ‘specially early in the morning. I caught a middling green one, only I had to kneel down to get it and there was a sharp stone in the way, so I scraped my knee and got a bit dirty. I wiped my feet and washed my hands,” he added anxiously, displaying the latter.
“Should you not wash the dirt from that scratch?”
“I’ll do it after breakfast. I’m ravenous. D’you want to see my frog?” The unfortunate amphibian was hauled from his pocket and placed on the edge of the bed, where it sat in astounded indignation, blinking, with its throat palpitating. “Jimmy Barnes nabbed a bigger one,” Robbie went on, “but it wouldn’t fit in his pocket, so he had to let it go. You should have seen it heading for the river. It jumped about a mile in one jump.”
The frog on the bed took the hint. With a flying leap, it landed on the bookcase, and thence dove under the bed, where it set up a belligerent croaking.
When Hester brought in his breakfast tray a few minutes later, the invalid was lying back helpless with laughter while from beneath his bed a pair of grubby legs waved at her.
“Robbie!” she exclaimed, setting down the tray, “whatever are you doing?”
A muffled voice emerged.
“I’m just getting my frog. It’s dusty in here.” A huge sneeze followed.
“Come out at once,” she ordered, raising her eyes to heaven. “Mr. Fairfax, I do assure you that we do not customarily have frogs running loose in the bedchambers, and if you do not stop laughing you will shake up your leg.”
“I already did,” he gasped. “Very painful but well worth it. It reminds me of the time I put a mouse in my sister’s chest-of-drawers.”
“Hush, do not encourage him. Robbie, go fetch a broom and we will see if we cannot chase it out. You’ll never find it under there.”
Robbie, filthy now from top to toe, ran off, and Hester sat down with a despairing sigh. The frog, dejected and dust-covered, promptly crawled out by her foot. Instead of screaming and jumping up, as Mr. Fairfax expected, Hester bent down and picked it up. It sat in her hand, looking at her with bright, reproachful eyes.
“Poor thing,” she murmured. “Children are so thoughtless. But I don’t believe you are hurt. Robbie shall put you in the garden and you may be useful eating the insects that plague Geoff so.”
On his return, Rob was sent to liberate his captive, change his clothes, and wash.
“And tell Ivy about this mess,” added Hester, “with your apologies.”
Shortly after breakfast, Mr. Fairfax was privileged to meet Mistress Ivy Hewitt. There was a knock, and a dour middle-aged face crowned with an inappropriately frilly cap appeared round the door.
“I’m to clean,” it announced gloomily. “If yer doesn’t mind, sir.”
“Come in. Master Robbie left some traces of his presence, I’m afraid.”
Ivy entered, bearing pails, mops, and dusters.
“Young imp o’ Satan. But there, boys will be boys.” She sniffed. “So, yer broke yer leg is what I hear.”
“That’s right.’’
“Well, I’m sure I hopes yer recovers. Me husband’s brother’s nephew by marriage, young Ned that be, he bust his leg nigh three year agone and’s limping yet. Then old Molly, she’d be me da’s sister’s husband’s auntie, she niver stood agin. Bin in her grave fifteen year come October, her has. Hurt yer head then, too, did yer, sir?”
“Yes, I did.” Mr. Fairfax waited in horrified fascination for the next revelation.
“Ah, well. Mr. Trimbull’s cousin’s boy as lives over to Sonning Common, Willy’s his name, fell offn a cow when he were six, hit his head on a fence post and ain’t bin right since. His mind wanders,” Ivy explained with grim satisfaction.
“Fell off a
cow?”
queried Mr. Fairfax, aghast.
“Wot’s it matter wot he fell off of? Not but wot he din’t ought ter’ve bin a-riding of it. Proper licking his da gave him. Still and all, I dessay yer head ain’t that bad,” she offered like a sudden ray of sunshine, though in a thoroughly depressed tone. “Miss Hester says ye c’n have the bandage off terday. Every cloud has a silver lining. Well, I better give yer room the once-over. Master Jamie don’t like me ter come in here. Don’t mind me.”
With this advice she set to work, and in a remarkably short time the chamber was spotless. Mr. Fairfax had never before been constrained to watch a housemaid at work, but considering the vast staff his butler found necessary even for his relatively modest house in London, he doubted that many were such paragons of efficiency. When she finished, he impulsively held out his hand.
“Thank you, Mistress Ivy,” he said. “I am happy to have made your acquaintance, and I hope we shall have another chat soon.”
She examined his outstretched hand with suspicion, then shook it gingerly.
“If yer lives,” she answered with unabated pessimism. “Don’t count yer chickens afore they be hatched.”
A few minutes after Ivy left, Hester reappeared to see if he needed anything. He regaled her with the sad histories of young Ned, old Molly, and Mr. Trimbull’s cousin’s boy Willy.
“Oh dear,” she laughed. “I really should have warned you. Ivy is not the most cheerful of souls at the best of times, and when it rains she becomes positively Friday-faced. She has been with the family for ever, and one grows accustomed to her ways. I fear you have had an exhausting morning. You shall not be disturbed again before luncheon, I promise.”
“I shall seize the time to continue to brushing up my Greek. It would be too humiliating if James were to find me as rusty as the vicar.”
“You are not to be feeling obliged to coach him,” Hester told him anxiously. “Perhaps I was wrong to allow him to ask you so soon after your accident. I should never forgive myself were you to overtax your strength.”
Mindful not to reveal that Robbie, rather than James, had made the approach, Mr. Fairfax reassured her. However, she was still uneasy when she left him.
* * * *
Two weeks later, Hester was once again haunted by a feeling of disquiet, though it was no longer prompted by concern over Jamie’s tutoring. For the most part, all was going well.
Mr. Fairfax was proving an ideal guest and a perfect patient. He was never crotchety or complaining, though his injured leg often pained him. Unfailingly courteous, he always had a compliment for her cooking, and he frequently expressed a slightly surprised pleasure in the company of her brothers and sisters.
Jamie’ s Greek lessons had quickly become a regular routine. Mr. Fairfax was by no means a classical scholar, but he knew where to look for answers, and Jamie found the dullest of syntax problems becoming voyages of exploration as the two of them pored over volume after volume in search of explanations and examples.
Robbie found in Mr. Fairfax a source of a different kind of exploration. It did not take him many days to discover that in his far-distant youth (before Robbie was born!), Mr. Fairfax had sailed not only to the West Indies and the Americas, but also to India, and even to the Slave Coast of Africa. The indulgent gentleman submitted to hours of interrogation, and if the tales of adventure retold nightly at the dinner table seemed somewhat fantastical, Hester was not one to cavil.
Geoffrey enjoyed exercising Fancy and Checkmate, and in exchange for his help with rescuing hay and harvest from the foul weather, one of the local farmers was providing fodder. Susan’s efforts in the kitchen were bearing fruit to the extent that she had to be dragged away from a gooseberry fool to dress for church one Sunday. The first thing she learned to make was gingerbread, and she made sure that there was a constant supply, in spite of Mr. Fairfax’s protests that he would grow fat.
It was where Alice was concerned that Hester was disturbed. She noticed that Mr. Fairfax watched her sister constantly whenever she entered his room, and that he had difficulty in tearing his eyes away when addressed by someone else. Soon she was certain that he was in love with her and, suppressing pangs of unacknowledged jealousy, she pitied him. Alice showed no sign of returning his regard, seemed unaffected by the charm which Hester felt so strongly, and appeared totally unconscious of the emotions she aroused.
Since the age of fifteen, Alice had fallen in love with monotonous regularity, but at the moment she displayed no preference for any of her admirers. Her suitors had for the past two years been a constant source of worry to Hester, and of alternate amusement and annoyance to her brothers. Presently they ranged from Mr. Green, the draper’s assistant, to the Honourable Edwin Barstow, Esquire, heir to a baronetcy; in age they varied from the said Mr. Green, a stripling of seventeen summers, to the staid height of five and thirty, owned to by Nathaniel Pettigrew, the curate. The numbers changed, but there were rarely fewer than five beaux on hand, and as Hester could not always spare the time to chaperone Alice when they visited, she often delegated that duty to James or Geoffrey, to their mutual disgust.
Alice was a tender-hearted young lady. In vain did Hester suggest that she might attempt to discourage the undeniably unsuitable Mr. Green. Not that Hester considered any of them suitable—not even Mr. Fairfax, of whom, after all, she knew practically nothing. Only Edwin Barstow qualified in terms of his situation in life, and he was a singularly foolish young man whose thoughts ran as often on the cut of a waistcoat or the set of a cravat as on the object of his affections. Moreover, his parents disapproved of the Godrics, according Hester no more than the merest nod when they met in St. Mary’s church on a Sunday.
Hester was ready to acknowledge that Alice’s upbringing had not been ideal. She had done her best, but she was not conversant with the quirks of behaviour of the highest society, and she knew her sister had little hope of obtaining an entrée into county circles. In London, she hoped, it might be different. No one there would know of Alice’s background, so her exceptional looks and sweet nature would certainly attract attention, if only her aunt could be persuaded to sponsor her. And once some wealthy, titled, and attractive gentleman had fallen in love with her, as was inevitable, surely he would not be put off by her lack of fortune or her plebeian sister. Her own birth could cause no objections. And Hester herself intended to be as inconspicuous as possible so as not to spoil her sister’s chances.
Naturally, the news that a fine London gentleman was staying at the Godrics’ soon made the rounds of the town and eventually reached the ears of Alice’s followers. Mr. Barstow was much too far set up in his own conceit to be worried. Mr. Green made a few sulky, half-mumbled comments about “well-breeched toffee-nose swells” as he sold Alice a yard and a half of cheesecloth. It was left to Mr. Pettigrew to take the offensive.
Mindful of his weak chest, the curate waited till the first fine day to press his attack. His questioning of Alice elicited the fact that she felt uncomfortable in Mr. Fairfax’s presence. Not waiting to be told that this was because of her inability to understand what he was talking about, Mr. Pettigrew stormed up the stairs, his usually pallid face an interesting shade of purple. He left Alice in tears and Jamie, who had been playing chaperone, horrified. It promised to be just the sort of embarrassing situation he dreaded. He buried his head in his book.