Dorothy Eden
Authors: American Heiress
Dorothy Eden
Contents1
T
HE MORNING MRS JERVIS
, her daughter Clemency, and Harriet Brown (known as Hetty to her friends) were to leave, New York was beautiful. It was the kind of day when the city was at its most magical. It had other moods, and well enough Hetty knew them. She hadn’t always lived in a tall important house overlooking Central Park, with its view of the early unsullied green of the trees and shrubs, and the sweep of brilliant blue sky.
In the shadowed streets of her childhood there had been few glimpses of the sun, and none of passing carriages, or of well-dressed children bowling hoops or tossing gaily-painted balls. The children Hetty had known had had no time to play. Thin and wizened, with eyes and noses running from the cold, they had either stumbled behind their mothers to sit all day, silent and sleepy from malnutrition, in sweat shops turning out endless garments for the Seventh Avenue warehouses, or had grown old enough to sweep the floor and fetch and carry for the drab tired workers in those badly-aired, badly-smelling rooms.
The background music to Hetty’s young life had been the rattle and clatter of sewing machines. She had never forgotten it and, ten years later, awoke every morning to a sense of escape, a sense of the miraculous. The sweat shop was an evil dream of the past, her mother’s worn pale face a sadder dream, and this rich house reality, although she still had as little life of her own as she had had as a child worker.
The sewing machines had rattled busily, making Clemency’s trousseau and Mrs Jervis’s extensive wardrobe of ruched silks and satins, but Hetty’s wardrobe remained sparse and simple, and very unobtrusive, as befitted a lady’s maid. Long before the trunks were packed Hetty’s arms had ached. There was so much tissue paper, so many garments, morning dresses, afternoon dresses, tea gowns, dinner gowns, ball gowns, furs and feather boas and, most important of all, there was the wedding gown.
This was a truly beautiful creation made of heavy satin like thick cream, and embroidered with slightly yellowed old Chantilly lace. The veil was also made of Chantilly lace, an heirloom worn by both Clemency’s mother and grandmother.
Hetty was not allowed to pack these two items. They were entrusted to the experienced hands of the couturière, Madame Natalia from the big Fifth Avenue store, Lord and Taylor. They occupied a trunk of their own, together with the long white kid gloves, the white and gold brocade shoes, the silk stockings and the hand-embroidered undergarments.
Of course, in London, Hetty would have to be trusted to unpack the precious garments and dress the bride. And wasn’t she just too lucky for words, to have the chance to be there? Miss Clemency, the Fifth Avenue household said, would make the best-dressed bride in England.
And the prettiest, Mrs Jervis added complacently. Mrs Jervis was one of those mothers who fed on their daughters’ lives. She was dictatorial, organising, possessive and overpowering. Only Clemency ever dared to oppose her, but that was over relatively trifling matters. Fortunately they both saw major issues in the same way, and had similar ambitions.
It was inconceivable, however, to imagine slim young Clemency ever growing to look like her big-bosomed mother, even though the arrogant confidence was already apparent. Clemency’s green eyes, not yet protuberant and faded as were her mother’s, could on occasion hold the same hard stare, the same will to be obeyed.
Hetty knew that well enough. But she also knew Clemency’s youthful butterfly gaiety, her wilfulness which had a certain charm, her supreme selfishness contradicted every now and then by some spontaneous act of generosity, her continuing love of schoolgirl pranks, accompanied by paroxysms of giggles, and her quite unscrupulous flirtatiousness.
Clemency Jervis, twenty-one years old and a spoiled only child, had enough character and determination to succeed in her new life. She would not be meek and scared and incompetent in her role as mistress of an English great house. The title would not come amiss with her either. She had a cool practical streak, unusual in one so young. She was ambitious, above all. Of course she would like to be loved, and to be in love, but position was more important. The love could follow, in one way or another. She was longing to wear the long white gown with a train and her sparkling little tiara, and curtsey to the Queen of England.
Which all slightly shocked Hetty for she realised that Clemency was not yet in love with her English fiancé, Lord Hazzard of Loburn in the Cotswolds. Of course she had seen him only briefly on his visit to New York last summer, a visit he had had to curtail when the European war broke out, and he had to hasten home to rejoin his regiment. His proposal had been made perhaps earlier than he had intended, for he, too, Hetty had suspected, had not been entirely guided by love. Indeed, the thought of Clemency’s dowry had probably been paramount in his mind. He was willing to give a pretty American girl a title, which naturally she would adore, a wedding in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and the chance to show off a wantonly expensive trousseau to London society, in return for a plump injection into his bank account.
Hetty knew that if she were in Clemency’s place she would not be thinking only of clothes and jewellery and being presented to the Queen, and becoming mistress of a famous old house. She would be thinking of the man whom she was to stand beside in church, and lie in bed with afterwards. And although she had been given little chance to observe Lord Hazzard, she had known that she found his blond good looks and his dazzling blue gaze very exciting. He had not, of course, noticed her. In her neat white cap and apron she was part of the background furniture. She was Harriet Brown, a lady’s maid. And Clemency, who was not always too possessive of her suitors, was very jealous of this aristocratic one.
Clemency’s grandfather had made some millions in various ways which could have been honest or dishonest, but which must have required skill and cool nerves. Perhaps Clemency, in the matrimonial stakes, had inherited his instinct for a profitable deal. She and Lord Hazzard no doubt would suit each other very well.
The outbreak of war had been both a disaster and a blessing. Even Mrs Jervis doubted if Lord Hazzard would have made such a speedy proposal if events had not precipitated him into a decision. There had been sundry hurried meetings with her brother, Jonas Middleton in Wall Street, consultations with lawyers, and a long private interview with Mrs Jervis. Then the intended marriage of Miss Clemency Millicent Jervis, only child of Mrs Millicent Jervis and the late Howard B. Jervis, Wall Street financier, to Major Lord Hazzard of the Coldstream Guards, and of Loburn near Cirencester, England, was announced.
Lord Hazzard had pressed for an early date. He was going home to go to war.
“He wants an heir,” Hetty said.
“Of course,” Clemency agreed.
“I think that’s more important to him than having a bride.”
“It always is with the English aristocracy. I’m not dumb, Brown.”
“You don’t love him, Miss Clemency.”
“Oh, yes I do.” Clemency sighed and stretched her arms voluptuously. “I love all good-looking men. Don’t look so shocked, Brown. I think I could be happy with any of them. But Hugo is making me a lady. That’s extra. I like it. So does Mother. Lord and Lady Hazzard are going to have fun.”
Hetty was genuinely shocked.
“There’ll hardly be balls and garden parties while the war’s on.”
“Oh, it will be over before we know it. Hugo says so. So does Uncle Jonas. He says three great cultured peoples like the English and the French and the Germans can’t truly be trying to annihilate each other. They’ve all got too much sense.”
“England isn’t used to giving in, Miss Clemency. History shows that. Neither is Germany. And France is wanting revenge for the Franco-Prussian War. She’s a proud nation. Besides, we don’t really know what it’s about, do we?”
“I certainly don’t,” Clemency said cheerfully. “I expect Hugo will explain. I hope he’s being careful. I don’t want a wounded hero. And you, by the way, are coming to England as a lady’s maid, not as a history student.”
“I always liked history.”
Clemency gave her critical stare.
“Mother should never have let you have lessons with me. You’d be a better maid if you didn’t try to be literary.”
“I’m not literary, Miss Clemency. I wish I were.”
“Well, you always did have your head in a book, at every opportunity. You won’t have any time for that in future. And don’t sulk. You’re getting a trip to England. You never imagined that would happen, did you? That day when your mother brought you here as a starved little creature, with nits in your hair.”
“I never did have nits!”
Clemency who could be a cruel tease, relented. She was too excited to indulge in the perennial amusement of tormenting Hetty, her poor, her extremely poor, relation, who was not expected to answer back.
“All right, no nits, but you had plenty of other things wrong. Your clothes had to be burnt.”
And I never saw my mother again, Hetty thought silently, with a grief that had never healed.
She had been told, that day, to wait in the hall, a vast marble-floored place like a palace, while her mother was closeted with an alarmingly haughty lady, who was apparently the mistress of this grand house. She had sat motionless on a hard chair with a carved back that had pressed into her thin bones, and waited.
It was only after some time that the voices behind the tall closed doors became audible. That was because Mother had begun to sob, and the lady of the house had begun screaming at her. One hadn’t known that ladies lost their tempers.
“It isn’t true. It’s a wicked lie. A fabrication. I will destroy these letters instantly, and you can leave my house and take your ba——your child with you.”
Then Mother had stopped sobbing and, with unaccustomed spirit had said, “Destroying them will do no good. They’re only copies. I have the real ones at home. I know where to take them if you don’t do as I ask. To a newspaperman on the
New York World.”
“You’re blackmailing me!”
“I know. I apologise, ma’am. But I’m sick and my little girl—” Mother’s voice wavered and faded, and the part of the conversation that Hetty desperately wanted to hear became inaudible.
She had begun trembling with apprehension. Something terrible was happening. She was going to be deserted, and by her own mother. If she could have found her way back to the Bowery she would have run off, there and then. But she was even more afraid of the alien streets than of this cold echoing hall. So she waited.
At last the double doors opened and the lady, her head high held and angrily, came out. She looked at Hetty with critical distaste.
“Eleven, you said? She’s very undergrown.”
“Undernourished, ma’am. She was a pretty baby.”
“That’s hardly the point. If she’s to live here she must be thoroughly scrubbed and decently dressed. Can she read and write?”
“I’ve taught her as much as I could, and she’s had a bit of schooling. She’s very bright.”
“Doesn’t look it to me. I can’t have an ignorant girl in my house, in any capacity. She can have lessons with my daughter’s governess for a year or two. Then when she’s fourteen she can learn to be a maid to my daughter. If Clemency likes her, of course. She will be known as Brown. Well, speak up, child. Would you like that?”
“Of course she would,” Mother said, looking so unhappy that Hetty was completely without words.
“Child?” said the imperious voice.
“Yes, thank you, ma’am,” she managed to whisper. “If Mother says I have to.”