“The cats haven’t been so happy in an age. The McCurdles will be in despair to have missed your shopping spree. I fancy Miss Gretch is on her way there now to report. She was in the shop I noticed.”
“Odious people will always talk and make a to-do over nothing. It is always like that.” My companion discerned no importance in the speech, but I suddenly knew this was not the first time I had been gossiped about. I was used to it, in fact. I had been held up as a bad example before. I was becoming immensely interested in myself, quite as a separate entity from Miss Smith.
“Let’s get home. I’m starved,” Sir Ludwig said prosaically.
“After that
huge
breakfast?” I asked, with more than polite surprise in my voice. It was time to begin the family’s diet.
“I don’t call that a huge breakfast—only gammon and three eggs.”
“And
four
muffins! But then you are a large man,” I added, hoping to imply he was larger than was pleasing. He was not fat to be sure, but there was a certain bulkiness that could be trimmed to advantage. I always preferred lithe, elegant gentlemen.
“Thank you,” he answered, mistaking it for a compliment! It was a little early in our acquaintance to disillusion him, and a poor time too, with his arms holding my shopping. “You ought to eat a little more,” he suggested, with a speculative glance over the parcels at my cape, which was all concealing. If he had a memory at all, he knew what was beneath it. He had looked hard enough the night before at the rectory. “You are a little thin.”
“I was considering going on a diet,” I answered, astonished.
“The proper diet will build you up. You don’t require more than ten pounds to be the right size.”
I was too nonplussed to reply, but with a memory of his preferred painting, the bulging Rubens lady, I think he had a poor notion of what ten pounds would do to my figure. Fifty was more like it!
Chapter Five
When we sat down to luncheon, it was clear Cousin Annie was also starved, and bent on satisfying her hunger with nothing but bread and sweets. It was quite simply frightening to watch her make a meal of bread and honey, while meat and cheese sat on the table, untasted. As she was on the downward path to senility, I did not feel she required all the tact and respect accorded to the normally aged. I judiciously slipped the honey beyond her reach; when she asked for it, I passed along the cheese instead, as though by error.
She smiled at me indulgently. “That is
cheese,
Rose,” she told me. “I want honey.”
“So much of it is not good for you,” I told her, and continued pressing forward the cheese.
She first shot an angry glance at me from those bright blue eyes, but I smiled blandly, and then a crafty look came over her face. “If you say so, Rose,” she said, and took a slice of cheese. She informed Abigail in a loud aside, “We must humor her, poor thing, till she gets her mind back.”
With this idea in my pocket, I quite insisted she try a slice of the mutton. In this, too, she humored me, as I humored her by calling it bacon, which sent her off into trills of delighted laughter. “Have some
bacon,
Lud,” she said, passing the mutton along to him with a broad wink.
“Sir Ludwig has already had bacon,” I told her, with a look to his plate, where a thick slice still sat. Encouraging him to eat more was a mile from my mind. But he had not tumbled to my hint, and took another slice, which I could not well prevent.
I concentrated on Annie during that meal, with good success. Under my eye, Abbie too was eating heavily, but till I got to know her a little, I would wait. Kessler regarded me closely, first with surprise at my gall, but as he realized it was working so well, the surprise turned to tolerant amusement. At the meal’s conclusion he said to me, “If you call the French lesson German you will induce my sister to partake of it as painlessly as Annie the mutton.”
As it turned out, it was less painful than that. Of course it wasn’t much of a lesson. At no time was it
la plume de ma soeur sur le bureau de mon frère.
Nor did we get right down to nasty irregular verbs and subjunctives, but conversed in French, with myself correcting her pronunciation and vocabulary, also her ideas, upon occasion, though to be sure this had nothing to do with French. Had she ever been exposed to French haute couture, however, she would not have expressed such a lively appreciation for a ghastly cerise gown with black ribbons. We had our lesson over my purchases and her fashion magazines. And why not? A lady is as likely to be discussing fashions as any more serious matter in either French or English.
The precise matter under discussion was a pattern to go with my green shot silk. Abbie’s selection of a gown with a plunging neckline and no sleeves was a trifle risqué for a sometime governess. I chose, instead, a modest model that I fully intended garnishing with all manner of lace and ribbons. It was an afternoon gown, fitted, with long sleeves. I had no pattern of any kind, but allowed myself, in my eagerness to get on with it, to be convinced none was necessary. Abbie measured me, thus providing an excellent chance to review our numbers in French, along with various parts of the anatomy. I also expressed, in English to be sure she didn’t miss the point, horror at the largeness of my dimensions, which were a good several inches smaller than her own. I expostulated on the impossibility of appearing elegant with a full figure.
“Lud likes a well-rounded figure,” she told me. “He thinks I am just right, and he used to call me scarecrow when I was thinner.”
A bit tricky convincing her her brother was old-fashioned, but a conscientious pointing out of the slender models in the magazines who looked so well in the gowns made her bite her lip in indecision. “I mean to shed five pounds in any case,” I concluded.
“Maybe I should, too,” she decided. It was a start.
I wondered during the afternoon how Annie was amusing herself. Abigail, with whom I nearly instantly achieved a first-name basis, told me it was her custom to either sleep or talk to Adeline. Talking to Adeline indicated she was prowling in my room, but with my precious purchases still in bags before me on the table, there was little enough mischief she could do there. I didn’t give a thought to Sir Ludwig. A man would have his own business to attend to, but when he entered the parlor where we worked some hours later, it turned out he had devoted himself to my problem. He was carrying the armful of papers purchased in Wickey.
“I don’t see anything about you in here,” he said, dumping them on top of my green silk. “Maybe you’d like to have a look later.”
With a little grimace of annoyance I removed them from my new material, looking for ink stains on it. Abigail, more at ease with him, castigated him as ‘the rudest brother in captivity,’ which had not the least effect, though he said ‘Sorry,’ in a perfunctory way.
“Gwynne had no news about the Italian madonna, either. I sent over a note and had my boy wait for an answer. He was in touch with no one but this fellow over Shaftesbury way about it. It looks as though we’ve reached a dead end. Nothing to do now but wait for the other papers to arrive.”
“You will be regretting your haste in having me here, as it seems the visit is to be a prolonged one.”
“Not at all. We enjoy the novelty of having a looney amongst us,” he answered in a perfectly civil tone.
“Ludwig!” Abbie gasped, looking to me for signs of offense.
“You have no idea how very much at home you manage to make me feel. But our collective wits are gone begging—only to be expected of course, mad as we all are. It is Bedlam we ought to have been in touch with! No doubt I escaped from there.”
“Or Bridewell,” he suggested, still politely.
“The women’s prison is a distinct possibility, except that I came from the wrong direction. I was not escaping from London.”
“We don’t know that you were escaping from anywhere. We do suspect, however, that you came from the direction of Shaftesbury—where that Uxbridge fellow interested in the madonna comes from. Gwynne is in touch with him. I’ll ask him to mention you, if you have no objection?”
“None in the world.”
Sir Ludwig was casting an eye on the pattern book by this time, mentally selecting the model he would prefer I suppose. “This is a nice one,” he said, pointing out the same vulgar cerise gown chosen by his sister.
I could only stare. Such poor taste was not unusual in a young girl of unformed ideas, but a fully grown man ought to have known better. “I doubt it is the style worn by your last governess,” I mentioned.
“Very true,” he said nodding, and, still looking at the book, with an occasional flicker of the eyes towards myself. “But our last governess was not such a prodigiously handsome creature. I am indebted to Annie for the delightful description. I am not poetical myself.”
“I am indebted to you for the advice on the gown, but shall seek my own counsel
quand même.”
“I begin to see that is your usual way of going on. Your speaking a word of French reminds me I interrupt the French lesson,” he said, with a pointed look at the fashion books and material. Then he strolled from the room.
“He likes you,” Abbie said with an impish smile. It was difficult to imagine from whence she pulled this notion. “You know how to handle him,” she expanded. “My last governess used to go into a quake and think she was about to be fired when he tried to roast her.”
“He may fire me if he wishes, but he will lose out on the ten guineas I owe him if he does.”
Sir Ludwig showed not the least intention of dispensing with my somewhat erratic services over the next few days. I was shockingly tiresome, and expensive too. Quite ruined the green shot silk by cutting it out without a pattern, thus making the waist too small, for we didn’t leave enough width for the seams. Annie snapped the ruined material up. Being not an inch over four feet eleven, she felt there was enough good cloth left in the skirt to make her an outfit. It was never done, but she liked the color, and often wrapped it around her shoulders on a chilly afternoon or evening. Abigail and I made another trip into Wickey to buy new material and hire a dressmaker. We also stopped to visit Miss Wickey and return her borrowed garments. When she enquired how my green silk gown turned out, and why I wasn’t wearing it, I knew my shopping trip with Sir Ludwig was public knowledge.
For the second new gown I selected a perfectly hideous bordeaux color. I don’t know what made me do it, except that Abbie insisted it was lovely. The other expense was Sir Ludwig’s own fault. He often suggested I put a brush in my hand, as I had happened to mention missing it. Of course there is no point putting a brush into one’s hand unless she has paint to stick it into, and canvas to daub it onto, and it is much more comfortable if one has a palette so that she needn’t ruin a dinner plate by using it for one. For myself, I cannot work without an easel as well, which unfortunately had to be sent from Winchester. Then there is the necessity for oils for mixing and cleaning up, and of course a smock so as not to destroy the old blue bombazine,
still
my body’s only covering. The bordeaux wasn’t ready yet. I believe the seamstress likes a nip in the afternoon, and will be lucky if the gown fits any better than the green shot silk did.
All told, I am now indebted to Sir Ludwig for the large sum of twenty guineas. He told me, very severely, that I am in hawk to him for close to five months’ labor, which necessitated my pointing out to him he is the world’s greatest nip-cheese if he paid his last governess the paltry sum of fifty guineas per annum.
“Plus room and board,” he reminded me. “She didn’t occupy the blue suite, however, nor have a spare chamber turned into a studio, or the salary would have been lower.”
“It is news to me if a single chamber is called a suite—there is no dressing room attached, and as to the studio, I understood the portrait I am painting would more than cover its hire.”
I was undertaking a likeness of Abigail, using a spare bedroom with a southern exposure—bad light, but not so draughty as some of the others. Its conversion to a studio consisted of no more than taking down the curtains, rolling up the carpet, and pushing the furniture against the wall. I had no real desire for him to knock out a wall or give me a larger window, but every disapproving eye turned on the renovations was met with the hint, to keep him in line. There was a fire given to us in the spartan chamber—for Abbie’s benefit as she wished to be done in the guise of a nymph, wearing only the scantiest covering, a chiffon curtain it was. Actually after the first ten minutes she put on a woolen undershirt and petticoat beneath it, pretending she was cold, but she was only overly modest. Perhaps my mentioning she was a little too bulky about the midriff for a nymph had something to do with it. She had set fifteen pounds as her target for removal.
The afternoons in the studio were the most pleasant part of the day. Annie never bothered us, as she disliked the smell of my materials. Sir Ludwig also expressed the greatest aversion to them, but was frequently present all the same, complaining he could smell the paint downstairs in his study.
“You have come up here to get away from the odor, I take it?” I asked.
“No, no. I am come for my daily drubbing. You neglected to mention over lunch—being so preoccupied to see I didn’t have a piece of cake—how poorly equipped you find your studio. I wanted to give you a chance to remind me.”
“Consider yourself reminded. I
do
wish I had a smaller brush as well, for this bit around the mouth. You won’t mind if your mouth reaches your ear on the left side, Abbie? I could not like to buy a brush for the detailed work when I was already in such deep debt to your brother.”
“Do I have to keep smiling?” she asked, through a pained smile.
“No, my dear, it is not in the least necessary. I know it is a trial to all you Kesslers to tackle a smile. I should have painted you as Cassandra and had done with it.”
“I suppose she is some fat goddess, is she?” Abbie asked suspiciously.
“She is the prophetess of doom.”
Ludwig came around to stand at my shoulder, thus making it utterly impossible to put on a single atom of paint without making a mess. “That’s very nice,” he said judiciously.