Friends and Lovers (3 page)

“One does not
make
Lord Menrod do anything he dislikes. He will dislike very much to have the care of two small children. Of course we shall take them.”

“I don’t know that I fancy...though Oakdene is a great, rambling place. Eighty rooms in all. No, I tell a lie. There are seventy-eight. Still, they would not be underfoot...” he said, in a musing way that showed clearly he had not given up his pursuit of me.

“I do not plan to billet them on
you,
Mr. Everett. They will stay with my mother and myself,” I answered sharply, and whirled away. Then I suddenly whirled back. “Please restore that staircase to as close a likeness of its former condition as possible, as soon as possible.”

“I’ll do better than that. You’ll be proud of the job, Miss Harris,” he answered with a low bow.

I was too distraught to read the ominous overtones in his speech. To a man who considered Oakdene beautiful, what grotesquerie would constitute a job to be proud of?

I donned my pelisse and bonnet and went straight up to the Dower House to converse with Lady Menrod, in an effort to discover Menrod’s whereabouts. Old Lord Menrod had married a youngish widow in his dotage, and died within a few years. The heir never liked his stepmother. He had her shipped into the Dower House within six months of his father’s death, where she had remained ever since. The rest of the parish took no exception to the lady. She was now in her fifties, an elegant and rather shy dame, who made no demands whatsoever on her stepson.

She was entertaining a guest when I arrived in her saloon. Lady Althea Costigan is some kin to the dowager countess, though not a close relative. She lives in London but spends enough time in our neighborhood that she is considered half an inhabitant. She is a little older than myself—thirtyish, to judge by the fine lines etching their way in at the corners of her eyes. She has pretty auburn hair and striking green eyes. It is mainly her figure for which she is remembered. It is of that fullness just a shade short of stout, most often described as voluptuous.

I explained my business to them and waited eagerly to hear what they could tell me. “I have no idea where he may be,” the Dowager said, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

“When I spoke to him last week in London, he said he was off to the selling races at Brighton, to look out for a filly,” Lady Althea told me.

“Had he heard from Mr. Enberg yet?” I asked, for if he had, he would of course return to London to meet the ship.

“He did not mention it if he had,” she answered.

“Then he had not heard. He would have mentioned such an important matter,” I thought aloud.

Lady Althea and her hostess looked unconvinced. “He might,” the former agreed, “but if I were you, Miss Harris, I would just run along to London to be sure someone is there to receive the children.”

It sounded so miraculously simple—
^"
just run along to London.” Running off to London I could not do alone, and to move Mama in that direction would take one of Mr. Congreve’s rockets at least. Then too, there was Mr. Everett, ripping the house apart during our absence. I had no accurate idea of when the ship was to arrive.

Suppose I got there a week early, and had to put up at an expensive hotel during the interim. The alternative was to send Mr. Pudge. I could think of no other. It was not the problem of my hostess, however, so I accepted a cup of tea and made a brief social visit of it.

“Don’t vex yourself, Miss Harris,” Lady Menrod advised. “My stepson will handle it. If he did not receive the letter himself, his man of business will have done so, and made all the arrangements. Menrod does not leave anything to chance. He is quite a perfectionist.”

“He will be at the Manor for the children’s arrival, to see them,” Lady Althea added, while a calculating light shone in her eyes.

“You may depend upon it. Menrod always does the right thing. Maybe that will convince you to prolong your visit, Althea,” Lady Menrod suggested, with a twinkle in her dark eyes,

I had not realized before that moment that Lady Althea came to visit her relative with any other end than friendship in view. The last speech awakened me to the realization she was throwing her cap at Menrod. A perfectly suitable match it would be, too. I wondered she had not pulled it off long ago. She must have timed her visits poorly, to have failed in her goal.

I was so preoccupied with worrying about meeting the children, that my attention wandered from their conversation. As soon as politely possible, I took my leave, to return home and discuss with Mama what ought to be done. She was all for letting Menrod handle it, but the awful suspicion would intrude that Menrod was not infallible. Suppose he did
not
handle it, then what? Were we to leave two children stranded on the docks of London?

Mr. Everett, running back and forth from stairs to dining room table, caught the gist of our conversation. Being as encroaching as a mushroom, he did not hesitate a moment to offer his services.

“I’ll just nip down to London and deliver the youngsters for you,” he told us.

“That would give us time to prepare the nursery rooms for them, to air the beds, and make sure everything is ready,” Mama said at once.

“I would not like to have them met by a stranger,” I objected.

“No, really! Stranger indeed! You are too hard on me,” Everett declared.

“You are a stranger to them yourself, Wendy. We all are,” Mama pointed out, quite correctly.

Mr. Everett was hardly of a nature to frighten them out of their wits. He was friendly, fatherly, in a way.

The trip represented such a high hurdle to me that in the end I allowed myself to be talked into accepting yet another favor from Mr. Everett.

“Very likely Menrod will take care of them,” I reminded him, for to have him fighting with his lordship or his emissary in front of the children was a fearful conjecture. “If he is there, or if he has sent his man, you need do no more than say good day to them. It is a hard trip to take, with a possibility of its being entirely unnecessary.”

“It happens I had to go anyway. It is nothing but a pleasure to me, to be able to serve you.”

I feared he was telling another lie, but he did not correct himself on this occasion. Later I went to check out his progress on the box stairs. Nothing had been done, though a large sheet of wood lay on the dining table, the outline of the steps drawn on it with a black grease pencil, ready for sawing.

“Remember, the panel is not to be cut, Mr. Everett. We want it right back up to the ceiling,” I reminded him. “Can the carpenters go ahead with it during your absence?”

“Certainly they can, and will. It will be done before you can say one, two, three.”

All his help earned him an invitation to take potluck that evening for dinner. It was the first time he had sat down to a formal meal with us. Mrs. Pudge was in the boughs with us for asking him. Ever since Hettie married Lord Peter, she has had ideas above our station. She thinks we are royalty, or nobility, at least.

“What will his lordship think of you entertaining commoners?” she asked, a fire burning in her blue eyes, her chin wagging.

About twenty years ago, my father gave her a Psalter for Christmas. It, her Bible, and the Pilgrim’s Progress are her library, sitting in state on her bed table, when they are not in her hands. She has them nearly by heart, and is liberal with her condemnations against the ungodly, and the unnoble.

“How should he know, Mrs. Pudge?” I asked.

“The scandal mongers won’t be slow to trot to him with the news. Bad enough the heathen sits down for tea three times a week, without having a place at our table.”

She does not have that degree of respect for Lord Menrod that the above would indicate. He too is frequently amongst the godless, but she has learned the trick of dividing her enemies against each other, in an effort to bring us all to justice.

“They will have a long trot, for no one knows where he is.”

“Aye, a long trek, whetting their tongues like a sword all the way. Will he be carving the roast, your Mr. Everett, or will I have Pudge to do it for you, as usual?”

“Let Pudge do it. It might put ideas in Mr. Everett’s head, to sit carving the roast at the head of the table.”

“You’ll never let him sit in the master’s place!” she gasped,

“No, no—it was only a manner of speaking. Put him at Mama’s right.”

“It’s a sad and sorrowful day,” she grieved. “You’ll be a proverb in the countryside, taking your mutton with the creature. As to them steps he is destroying in the front hallway, I hope you can keep the sight from Lord Menrod, or he’ll cast you into the desert, without a bone to gnaw on.”

“Have you anymore abominations to threaten us with, or will you go now and get the dining table cleared away, Mrs. Pudge?”

She glared once, then strode off, her chin waggling about heathens coming into their inheritance.

Mr. Everett left the next morning for London. My mother and myself spent the day on thorns, running to the front window every half hour to see if they were coming up the road yet. We began our intermittent vigil about noon, not many minutes after Mr. Everett would have reached the city.

We knew it was impossible they could be back home yet, but our eagerness would not be satisfied till we had looked out the window just once more. We were still looking long after the sun had set, in hopes of spotting carriage lights. Had it not been for the extra work around the house preparing rooms for the children, we would have been totally distracted. We roasted up a joint in their honor, then returned nine-tenths of it to the kitchen after we finished our evening meal.

Next day, the procedure was repeated, the running to the door or window every half hour. When the postman arrived, I realized what a monster of inconsideration I was. There was a dutiful letter from Mr. Everett explaining there was no Indiaman in the harbor. He would remain in London till the end of the week, awaiting the children’s arrival.

A long and expensive stay in London on the
possibility
that he might be required to meet the relatives of a woman who half despised him, if the whole truth were stated, I answered by return post that he must under no circumstance put himself to so much inconvenience. He was to deliver a note in person to Menrod’s London residence, and be assured it was read, understood, and that some of Menrod’s household would meet the children.

His letter posted the day before did not preclude the possibility of his arriving in person later that day. The vigil was maintained till nearly midnight. Early the next morning, it was resumed.
Surely
they would come today!

By noon, I never wanted to see the front window, the mulberry tree in the front yard, or the stone road down to the main road again. I took my watering can to the little conservatory that is attached to the west wing of the cottage, to tend my plants. They had been miserably neglected. Even in the moist atmosphere of the conservatory, the earth around many of them had turned crumbly from thirst. My philodendron had brown tips on its leaves, and my favorite dracaena wilted with fatigue. I put on my smock and busied myself tending my friends, filling the water racks over the fire boxes, whose function was to lend moisture to the air. I pruned and pinched and watered, losing myself to worldly cares for an hour.

There is some magical enchantment in gardening. Had Lady Anne’s cottage not had this little conservatory attached, I would never have discovered it, for I never took any interest in plants before moving here. While I worked over my pots and boxes, a feeling of deep peace descended upon me. Daydreams unfolded in my head, of a halcyon future in which I played mother to my niece and nephew. I had an idea how the children looked, from pencil sketches Hettie had sent home shortly before her death. I knew Gwen would be six now, Ralph four.

Gwen favored the Harris family in her physical makeup. She had Hettie’s and my own fair skin and gray eyes. Like us, her hair was an indeterminate shade of light brown that came close to blond in summer, darkening to a less attractive shade in winter. God’s graciousness had been passed along from mother to daughter, endowing the latter with the dimples and curls that avoided me.

Ralph more closely resembled his father, having darker-brown hair and brown eyes. His waywardness was occasionally mentioned, and blamed on his being of the male sex, but between friends and family, we admitted he might have inherited a little something of unstable temperament from his da as well. No matter, he was young, and I would train him up to be a proper gentleman.

I arranged a fairly idyllic life for us all. Menrod would give Ralph a pony on his sixth birthday. He would also want to send him away to a public school later on, but my idyll did not extend so far into the future. I thought of the nearer term, when we would be into a more comfortable house than the dilapidated cottage.

Gwen would come to view me as very much of a substitute mother. When you reach twenty-five and have no family of your own, it is a rare gift indeed to be given a child who bears not only your family’s blood, but even your own name. I knew as surely as my dracaena was wilting to death that I would love the children, and formed the firm resolution they would be made to love me in return. I would have children, even if a husband was denied me.

“He’s here,” Mrs. Pudge hollered from the conservatory door. She held her cooking apron in her hands, indicating she had ripped it off and run up from the kitchen to get the door, which told me Pudge was busy in the yard, fighting with the roses. They share the duties of butler in this fashion.

“Are the children with Mr. Everett?” I asked, removing my gloves and struggling out of my smock.

“It’s not Everett. It’s
him.
Lord Menrod.”

“Menrod? What is he doing here? Has he brought the children?”

“No, he’s alone, and he says he’s in a hurry, so you had better come as you are.”

I brushed my hair back, tucking in a loose strand, and wishing I might take time to nip upstairs to tidy myself before greeting him. We do not often have the honor of greeting a lord at our cottage door. I also wished I had thought to put a chair or table before the destroyed staircase. The carpenters had left, awaiting Everett’s return from London. I begged them to finish up the job in
some
manner, but they were worriesomely coy, which inclined me to fear Everett was buying some hideous materials or ornament for the job.