Keeping the Castle

17



MR. FREDERICKS RETURNED EARLY the next morning to enquire after the health of the child, and we were able to give a fairly good account of his night. Leon, for that was his name, lay exhausted and white on the bed, but his huge black eyes were open and aware and the coughing that had racked his small frame was stilled. His cheek was cool (tho’ I knew from experience that his fever might rise again, later in the day). He addressed Miss Vincy as “Mama,” settling the nature of their relationship beyond a doubt.

His name was a matter of interest to Mr. Fredericks as well. As he accompanied me on a stroll around the farmyard so that I might stretch my cramped limbs, he explained that my stepsister Prudence wished to know what Mrs. Bowden’s grandson was called, so that in the event of the boy’s death she could create a mourning picture with an affecting verse in his honor.

“She thinks of depicting a tomb and a weeping willow,” he said, his face expressionless, “with perhaps a bird flying above to symbolize young Leon’s soul escaping into eternity. She hopes you will be able to secure a lock of his hair to incorporate into the composition.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank goodness they believe us to be seven miles distant, or she would be here this moment with her sketch paper and crayons, ready to begin memorializing the boy into the grave. I really believe Miss Vincy—” I hesitated and then continued, “I call her that, you know, because she has not told me to call her by any other name—would do her grave bodily injury if she even mentioned the possibility that he might die.”

Mr. Fredericks smiled. “I imagine you are right. From all I know of her, I am certain that she is a devoted mother.”

I was silent for a moment, thinking. Mr. Fredericks had known enough to bring Miss Vincy to the farmhouse, known that she had a special interest in the child housed therein. Yet he had had to ask the child’s name, and had to speculate on her behavior as a parent. Frustrated almost to the fever pitch by convention and good manners, which forbade me to put a few direct questions to him, or to her, I walked a little faster. As I paced I plucked a stalk of flowering weed that brushed against my skirt and began stripping it of its little flowerets, one by one.

I could see nothing of Mr. Fredericks in the little boy’s face or form, I realized, and was aware of an intense relief at that knowledge. I could not have borne it if he had been that child’s father. However, he had known her for a number of years, no doubt stretching back well before the birth of this child. Had he guessed? Or had he known before? He’d spoken admiringly of her likely devotion to a child. Did that mean he admired her in a warmer sense? What was the nature of their relationship? I turned to look at him.

He had been watching me, with an amused glint in his eye. He paused and picked another flower head and presented it to me with a bow.

“I see you have done with disassembling that unfortunate blossom, Miss Crawley. Allow me to supply you with another.”

I looked down at my hands. Indeed the tiny flowers were all gone and the stalk torn into green strips and discarded. My hands were sticky with sap.

“Oh, ugh! No, I thank you. My hands—”

He gave a positive shout of laughter. “If you could see your face, Miss Crawley! How it maddens you not to know! And yet you cannot ask. Here,” he added, “use my handkerchief.” He handed me a slip of linen, which I inspected suspiciously. True enough, it was covered in ink and other, less identifiable stains. I wiped my fingers on it nonetheless. When I had done he reached for it, but I folded it and put it into my reticule.

“I shall have it laundered and then return it,” I said. “I’ve no doubt it will be a novel experience for the handkerchief.”

“Oh, a paltry blow, I fear. Come, come, Miss Crawley, you can do better than that! You wish to know all that I know about our mutual friend and the child residing in this place. Very well, I shall tell you all I can.” He stopped.

“Yes?”

“I know nothing. I cannot tell you even one thing more than you already know.”

“Oh!” I turned my back on him and began to walk away. My feelings towards him may have changed, but one thing that had not changed was his ability to stir my ire.

“Temper, Miss Crawley, temper! This display of pique ill suits your station in life, and I have that on the best of authorities. Why, last night,” he said, lengthening his stride to catch up to me, “when I informed Mrs. Vincy that her daughter found it necessary to remain at the bedside of some cottager’s child, she so forgot herself as to make several inelegant remarks. My dear aunt and mother had all they could do to restrain her. They informed her that a lady never loses her temper. And they would know,” he added, looking thoughtful. “I believe my uncle, the former baron, and my uncle Westing often gave them cause for annoyance.”

I slowed my steps. “Really?” I said, diverted by this unexpected insight into the emotional life of a baronial family. I had no difficulty in believing that the late baron had been a trial to his relatives, tho’ I’d never met Mr. Westing. But I had always wondered—what had life been like for the Fredericks family, living, as I had been given to understand they did, in a room above a shop? “Then . . . did your father never vex Mrs. Fredericks?”

“Frequently. But it was a love match, you know, and went on being one until the day he died. That was the first time I saw my mother really annoyed with him. ‘I gave up everything for his sake,’ said she, ‘and now he goes off and leaves me!’”

I blushed at my temerity in asking, while repressing a guilty urge to laugh at the image of Mrs. Fredericks scolding her husband for his thoughtlessness in dying. “I am sorry. I ought not to have asked such a . . . such an intrusive question. It must have been a dreadful time for your mother, and for you, being left alone and . . . and perhaps not very well off, at your father’s death.”

This appeared to fix Mr. Fredericks’s attention. He stopped, and looked at me rather queerly, perhaps overcome by memories.

“Well,” he said cautiously, “we were not precisely begging in the streets.”

Now I did blush. “Of course not!” I said, mortified. “I did not mean you were bound for the poor farm, or anything of that sort!”

“No . . . of course, I don’t think they’ve got poor farms in London,” he mused, still with that look in his eye. “Soil’s not good enough for it, you know, and there are buildings and roads everywhere. Difficult to turn a profit, with crowds of people and horses and carriages trampling your crops all the time.”

My eyes narrowed. Perhaps I ought not to have broached the subject, but I could not help but feel he was making use of my honest sympathy for some sort of private jest.

“Then it was lucky, was it not?” I enquired coldly, “that your cousin and aunt were so hospitable as to receive you here in Yorkshire.”

He gave another great shout of laughter. “Oh indeed! Now there was a famous stroke of good luck for my mama and me!”

“I agree,” I said, more coldly still. “I think it was very good of the Baron.”

The joke, whatever it was, lost its savor. His countenance darkened.

“Yes,” he said, “you would think that.”

We continued on in silence for a few moments. Our conversation seemed to have traveled a long way from the subject of Miss Vincy and her child. Evidently he came to the same conclusion, for at length he said, “I confess I did not tell you all I knew about Miss Vincy, as I promised. You perhaps wonder why I brought her here yesterday morning if I was indeed as ignorant as I claim?”

I nodded, but did not speak.

“I’ve been on intimate terms with the Vincy family for perhaps as much as five years,” he said. “Some two and a half or more years ago I became aware of a crisis going on, about which they did not want me to know. Miss Vincy went away, to visit relatives, I was told, and did not return for over a year. Given the old lady’s temperament, I found it unsurprising that the daughter should get away when she could, so I said nothing.

“Eventually she turned up again, looking a good bit different. She’d changed, and not for the better. She’d lost something—her nerve, I’d say. She got quieter, and it was a long while before she took up her drawing or painting tools again.

“However, it wasn’t until recently, on this visit to Yorkshire, that I had the opportunity to observe her closely, living in the same household as we are. What I guessed was that she had a secret, a secret that she stole off to visit from time to time. And that it lived in this cottage.” He jerked his chin at the house behind us.

“I was curious, I’ll admit.” He kicked at a stone in his path, frowning. “I’ve always thought highly of Miss Vincy.”

I stared at the stone, feeling my spirits sink.

“When she seemed so agitated lately, I decided to investigate. I stopped by here yesterday morning, early. I asked that woman if I could take any messages to Miss Vincy at Gudgeon Park. She jumped at it. Seems the boy had taken a turn for the worse in the night and she was anxious Miss Vincy know about it. I had a look at the child, so I could convey his condition to her, you know. And then I did the arithmetic. Crisis in the Vincy household two and three-quarters years ago; two-year-old boy kept in a cottage close enough for Miss Vincy to visit regularly.

“I am very good at sums, Miss Crawley,” he said. “And this was not a difficult equation.”




I returned to the house from my walk somewhat refreshed in body but much perturbed in mind. Was this why Mr. Fredericks had not proposed when Mr. Godalming was making a nuisance of himself? A man may be excused for proceeding warily under these circumstances, especially when he does not know all the relevant facts.

Of course, a man may have half a dozen by-blows begat upon half a dozen women without anyone even commenting on the fact, let alone giving his prospective bride cause to reconsider the relationship. But a woman most emphatically may not.

My poor Miss Vincy! Did she love Mr. Fredericks, and had she spent yesterday not only in terror for her son but in mourning for the loss of her suitor? Or had she in fact been partial to Lord Boring, as I’d once believed? It occurred to me that, given the speed of recent events, she might not even know of his engagement to Charity. I looked at her as she bent over her son’s bed, and I sighed.

She turned white and beckoned me out of the room.

“What? What is it, Miss Crawley? Do you see something I do not? He seems so much better today.”

“No, no, no,” I assured her. “I quite agree. He is going on very well.”

“Then why did you look so sad, and sigh?”

I should have been quite happy to have passed it off with an excuse, but she was remorseless. She was determined to know the truth, and, with a worried mother’s single-mindedness, she assumed it had to do with her sick child. At last I said, “It was for quite a different cause, I assure you. I was thinking of Lord Boring and Charity.”

She stared at me blankly. At least I could be certain that Lord Boring had been little in her thoughts of late. “Lord Boring . . . and Miss Charity Winthrop? But why should they make you sad?”

“Oh, not sad, exactly. In fact,” I said, “it is quite happy news. They are to be married.”

Her eyes, so like Leon’s, grew enormous. “Miss Crawley! Althea, dear. I am so, so sorry! How selfish of me. Here you have been, wearing yourself out on our account, when you must be wretched. I feared it would happen, but I hoped you would not mind too much.”

I smiled and assured her that I did not mind at all. She frowned and looked doubtful, whereupon I said, “I did mind, at first. But I do not believe he is to be regretted. He is not the man I thought he was. But I was afraid that you might be upset by it.”

“I? But why should I be upset?” And she looked so startled by the idea that I saw that there had never been a partiality on her side, only on her mother’s. “Althea—that is, Miss Crawley . . .”

“No, I beg you will please call me by my first name.”

“And you must call me Hephzibah. Surely you must realize that Lord Boring never had the slightest intention of marrying me, however rich my papa is?”

“But, but . . . ah . . . Hephzibah, I feared that you might wish it, nevertheless.”

Miss Vincy burst out into a peal of laughter. “How funny it sounds! No one ever calls me Hephzibah, no one! Even Mr. Annuncio did not.”

“Mr. Annuncio—? Oh! You mean . . .”

Miss Vincy, or rather Hephzibah, ceased laughing. “Yes,” she said. “Mr. Annuncio. My husband.”