The Westerby Inheritance (4 page)

“Easy,” grinned Hetty. “They won’t miss it, and we’ll enjoy it.”

But Jane knew the parsimonious Bentleys would miss every item, and her face burned with shame.

“Look at Jane’s face,” screeched Sally, giving tongue for about the first time that evening.

“Don’t mind Jane,” said Hetty carelessly, easing off her slippers and padding about in her green silk stockings. “Help me get your papa to bed.”

Sally supported the Marquess on the one side, and Hetty the other. He briefly came somewhat to his senses and stared blankly around the parlor. Then his eyes fell on the low bodice of his wife’s dress, and he absentmindedly plunged his hand down the front. Hetty giggled and slapped his hand.

Jane walked to the window and stared unseeingly out at the falling snow. “I must escape,” she thought. “Hetty’s vulgarity will drive me mad.” She did not blame her father. Men were like that, she thought vaguely. But women?
Never
!

But by next morning ambition had died, hope had died, faced with the harsh reality of the snow. Cold fingers fumbled to keep the old house clean, frozen hands wielded the ax for kindling as Jane battled with the horrors of the prolonged winter. The roads and lanes were blocked with deep drifts, and a walk to the vicarage was impossible.

Only the farmer, Mr. Plumb, came to call, bearing gifts of hare and partridge, and was fulsomely welcomed by the Marchioness. Jane was fearful that the farmer might propose marriage and foiled all Hetty’s strenuous efforts to leave her alone with him. The Marquess of Westerby was barely sober, drifting around the house with a vague smile on his face, his mind cozily wreathed in drunken fantasies.

Sally, bored by enforced confinement, tormented young Betty ruthlessly and sulked anytime Jane tried to intervene. The only person not made miserable by the severity of the elements was the Marchioness, who wore an ancient frogged riding dress and a quantity of shawls. The house resounded to the clatter of her wooden pattens, which she wore indoors and out.

Hetty tried to help Jane with the housework, but after a few dabs at the furniture with a duster, she would lean her hip on the table and talk of her life with her late husband, the blacksmith. Her anecdotes were warm in the extreme and often brought the blush up into Jane’s pale cheeks. Hetty never washed, so was not concerned with the rigors of keeping clean in a cold climate, and watched with amused eyes as Jane struggled to heat cans of water.

Strangely enough, there always seemed to be ample food, and Jane often wondered at the abundance of game that appeared on the kitchen table. Wondered until one night when Betty’s nightmares prevented her from sleeping, and she crept down to see if the kitchen fire held any warmth and surprised the Marchioness entering the kitchen with a fowling piece over one shoulder and a brace of pheasant in her hand.

“Hetty!” screamed Jane. “You have been poaching!”

Hetty did not reply but hung the birds on a hook on the low beams of the ceiling.

“Hetty,” pleaded Jane. “You have been poaching on Mr. Bentley’s estate. What if you were caught? They would hang you, Marchioness or no.”

“Pish!” said Hetty, turning round and swinging her cloak from her shoulders to reveal that she was wearing a man’s leather jacket and frieze breeches. “How else can we eat? Your pa ain’t got no money.”

“It’s shocking,” said Jane in a low voice. “And you are dressed in man’s apparel and—”

“And you are a prig,” said Hetty with a grin. “Poor little Jane. I shock you, don’t I? But I can’t afford to go around in gowns of silk and lace, and that’s a fact. Wouldn’t know what to do in society nohow. But mark this well, my Lady Jane Lovelace. If I were a fine lady with fine manners, you would have an empty belly, and your father as well.”

But Jane was very young and very immature, and Jane felt miserably that it would be infinitely preferable to starve than to have a stepmama who was a poacher. She shuddered as she looked at the stolen game and compressed her lips. Not one morsel of it would she touch!

But the next day Hetty had a hare stew simmering in the pot, and the delicious smells wove their way into every cranny of the house. “Perhaps,” thought Jane weakly, “the hare is from Mr. Plumb and Hetty did not steal it, and besides, I have to eat.”

Hetty cast a tolerant look at her stepdaughter as Jane pretended to toy with the food on her plate, but did not make any remark. Hetty was coarse and blowsy and vulgar, but her spirit was generous to a fault.

But Marchioness Hetty could not help feeling like shaking Jane until her teeth rattled when Jane firmly turned down Mr. Plumb’s offer of marriage. Mr. Plumb had put his proposal before Hetty, begging her to act as his sponsor.

“You must learn to live in the real world,” said Hetty crossly. “What is wrong with Plumb? He is a trifle old, but a lusty man for all that. He will give you children and keep your bed warm.”

But how could this appeal to Jane, who neither dreamed of romantic love nor understood the baser lusts that flesh is heir to?

“Is my life to be plagued with vulgar persons?” wailed poor Jane, shrinking from the very idea of marriage to Mr. Plumb.

“There are different kinds of vulgarity,” said Hetty crossly, “as you will find out. Who else is going to offer for you, girl? Have sense. You h’an’t got no dowry. Oh, don’t cry. There now, Hetty will tell old Plumb how you doesn’t want him. Perhaps he’ll take Sally when she’s older.” Hetty could not remain angry in the face of Jane’s real distress, and her soft heart was touched.

But she could not help adding, “Think, Jane, all the same. Your pa ain’t going to last long. Not with what he’s drinking. I’ve pawned all the jewels. We h’an’t got nothing left to sell. Except ourselves. Yes, think on that!”

So Jane’s refusal was conveyed to Mr. Plumb, and Jane was relieved and at the same time felt guilty and did not know why.

Spring arrived quite suddenly, one fine morning three weeks after the visit to the Bentleys. Jane had gone to sleep, huddled up next to Betty and Sally for warmth, the night before. In the morning, she woke to the sound of the water dripping from the eaves and chuckling in the stream at the foot of the garden.

She leapt from the bed, despite sleepy protests from her stepsisters, and threw open the window, which creaked protestingly on its rusty hinges.

A pale blue sky smiled down on the fields all the way to the Surrey woods. A thrush sang its tumbling, repetitive rhapsody on the thorny branch of a rosebush under the window, and the sun was warm on Jane’s face. Dormant ambition, frozen in her bosom by the long winter’s cold, leapt to life again, and thoughts tumbled one after the other through her brain.

Philadelphia… godmother… letter… London! She rushed to the looking-glass and stared in dismay at her wan and dirty face. Dressing hurriedly in a patched gown, she ran lightly to the kitchen and then out to the pump at the back, where she began to fill pots with water to put on the kitchen fire.

When the water was warm, she filled up the old wooden washtub with it and undressed and scrubbed herself till her skin glowed.

Then she refilled the pots and ran upstairs to collect piles of soiled linen to boil over the fire.

Hetty was at first amused by all this burst of cleanliness and then goodnaturedly joined in and even consented to have her hair washed; it still bore traces of powder and pomatum from the night of the visit to the Bentleys.

Jane also had her way in cleaning her two stepsisters. Betty was docile, but Sally fought and screamed and protested until her mother cuffed her under the ear and held her head under the pump.

The Marquess emerged from his drunken stupor and did not drink at all that day, nor on the succeeding ones, as the sun shone and the snow melted from the countryside and tender young leaves began to sprout on the bare branches.

At last it was reported that the road to the village was clear, and with a beating heart Jane set out to consult Philadelphia.

Philadelphia was sitting in the morning room of the vicarage, surrounded by silks and lace. The sun sparkled through the long windows on her fair hair and on her dimpled hands, which stroked the silk with an almost catlike pleasure.

Jane waited impatiently until Mrs. Syms had left the room and then burst out with her news of the newly found godmother and James Bentley’s threats to remove Mr. Syms from the living of Westerby.

“Oh, I wish he
would
,” sighed Philadelphia. “It is so
dull
here. Perhaps we could move to some large town where they have assemblies and balls and fashionable people and
young men.
”

“How could anyone—even you, Philadelphia—want to leave Westerby?” wondered Jane, who loved every stick and stone in the place. “Only think how different it will be when Father is restored to his estates—”

“You are dreaming again,” interrupted Philadelphia. “You must face reality, Jane. The Bentleys are not going to leave Eppington Chase. Mr. Bentley has spent a fortune in decoration already. It has become his whole life. He rarely plays cards anymore. The Chase is now his obsession.”

“It is mine also,” said Jane, setting her jaw. “Tell me, Philadelphia. Would you say I could attract some rich gentleman—say, a rather elderly gentleman?”

Philadelphia put down the silk she had been working on and looked at her friend consideringly, at the intense little elfin face with its strange eyes, and at Jane’s small and neat figure.

“You are not pretty in the accepted mode,” said Philadelphia consideringly, “but you have animation and very pretty hair. With some good clothes and a little dowry, yes, I think you could well attract some gentleman.” Philadelphia glanced complacently across the room to view her own reflection in the glass. Privately, she thought Jane rather drab and unbecoming, set against her own blond beauty, but she was the vicar’s daughter, after all, and was expected to be kind.

“Then you must help me,” breathed Jane. “I wish you to advise me how to write to my godmother so that she will invite me to London. She is Lady Harriet Comfrey, and Papa says she is quite old and very rich.”

“Then you must send her a present,” said the worldly Philadelphia. “Rich people like to be given things. They are so used to people trying to take from
them
. I have a very handsome shawl I was going to give you, but we shall send it to her instead.”

“What will your mama say when she finds it gone?” asked Jane anxiously.

“She will not notice,” shrugged Philadelphia. “And when you are established with this godmother, then you must send for
me
. Papa has money, as you know, and, should Mr. Bentley remove him from the living, it will not affect our comfort. But he will not take me to London, you know. He thinks it a terribly sinful place. As if Westerby itself did not hold horrors enough!”

“What horrors?” asked Jane.

Philadelphia settled herself more comfortably. “
Well
,” she began, leaning forward and dropping her voice to a whisper, “Widow Gill came to call on Father, and they were closeted in his study. She seemed in sore distress. I heard her telling Papa—”

“You listened at the door!” accused Jane.

“Telling Papa,” went on Philadelphia as if Jane had not spoken, “that Emmy—her daughter, you know—was with child by Simpkins, the butcher. Well, now, what do you think of that?”

“Oh, poor Emmy!” cried Jane, thinking sadly of mousy little Emmy Gill, who started at her own shadow. “Perhaps it is not true.”

“Indeed it is! Papa went to talk to Simpkins, who denied the whole thing—supported by his wife, I may add. So the Gills are to leave for another parish, where Emmy will be called Mrs. and pretend to be a widow like her mother. And Papa gave Mrs. Gill
money
. I wonder we have anything left, he is so openhanded.”

“It was a fine thing to do,” said Jane hotly. “Don’t you feel a tiny bit sorry for Emmy, Philadelphia?”

Philadelphia carefully examined her porcelain heart. “No,” she said after due consideration. “I should never do anything so stupid. And for a butcher!”

“You pretend to be so hard, Philadelphia,” laughed Jane. “But I know you really do not mean it.”

“As you will,” said Philadelphia indifferently. “Now, to a more interesting topic. Your letter. Let us begin right away!”

An hour later, Jane left the vicarage and walked toward the village. The letter had been composed and the shawl parceled. Philadelphia had said she would send both, so as not to occasion comment in Jane’s household.

Philadelphia had also applauded Jane’s decision not to accept Mr. Plumb. “You are meant for better things!” she had exclaimed. This had comforted Jane immensely. Jane did not think much of herself, but her small figure was consumed with ambition to restore her father’s estates, and how else could a woman without money do that except by marriage?

The spring day was warm and full of country smells of grass and blossom mixed with the dark, weedy odors from the ditch beside the road. As Jane entered the village, a group of women clustered round the well on the village green looked at her slyly and began to snigger behind their hands.

Jane put her little chin in the air and walked past them, wondering at this unusual insolence. Despite her patched dresses and lack of maid, she was considered a lady by the villagers and treated with deference. What had brought this change?

Past Simpkins, the butcher, past Hardy, the baker, past Fulham, the haberdasher, marched little Jane, aware all the time of the changed atmosphere. Even a majestic swan sailing across the village pond seemed to fix her with an insolent eye. Outside the village public house, The Green Man, several of the regulars, including Mr. Plumb, were taking their ease on rustic benches propped against the wattled walls of the building. Mr. Plumb jumped to his feet and made Jane a magnificent leg, flourishing a dirty handkerchief in clumsy imitation of a virtuoso, while his friends cheered. Every time Jane tried to walk past him, he leapt in front of her and continued his grotesque bowing to bar her way.

“Good morrow to you, Lady Jane.” With relief, Jane heard the familiar, well-modulated voice of the vicar, Mr. Syms. “I am going in your direction,” he said, offering his arm, “and will walk with you a little way.”