Prelude with Anne and Ellery

Prelude with Anne and Ellery  

“I am not going to invite the Landrys,” said Anne, firmly.

“No, quite right!  And nobody would expect you to do so, either, after the way John Landry behaved,” her husband agreed.  “Enough came out, from what Beatrice said about her sister, to convince me that Aurelia Landry is quite selfish, though she is to be pitied for being married to Landry.”

“She chose him for his wealth,” said Anne.  “And she has been extremely lucky that he has been enough in awe of her gentle birth to leave her untouched, and takes his lusts elsewhere.  And she is also lucky that her maid is prepared to have the child the wretched man sired on her reared as if it were Aurelia’s child.  I have hardly known where to look  when Mrs. Mayhew asked me if I knew how far on Mrs. Landry was, and if she had said anything to me at the Sanderville’s Christmas house party about whether she was already enceinte then.  It’s exceedingly difficult to lie to a vicar’s wife, Ellery, you are laughing at me.”

“Just a little, my love. I fancy you find it hard to lie to anyone, and I know you are doing it to protect the maid, what’s her name, Porridge or something.”

“Gorringe, and it’s a good Yorkshire name, Wroth!”

“Oh, I am in trouble when you are using my title not my name.”

“Entirely,” said Anne.  “And you are right, I wouldn’t protect Aurelia Landry as I despise her.  I know I married a wealthy man, but it was at least by accident, as I perceived you to be full of most excellent qualities when I thought you to be poor, and Luke’s pensioner.”

Ellery, Earl Wroth, pulled his wife onto his lap.

“Come and tell me more about my excellent qualities as a husband, whilst I detail your most excellent qualities as a wife,”  he said.

Anne giggled, and very little more was sad about the projected house party for some considerable while.

“We are going to be heavy on men,” said Anne, looking up from the list she was compiling.  Ellery looked over her shoulder.

“Lord Bradley won’t mind being a spare, if he even wishes to come; he might just like to have the house to himself whilst his son and daughter attend.”

“I hope the Honourable Thomas lives up to his title and is a bit less silly these days,” said Anne.”

“A couple of months without any allowance and a father’s pointed perspective on his undesirable friends has, I believe, worked wonders,” said Ellery.  “We don’t have to have Tobias Smith; he won’t be offended to be left out, being a yeoman farmer’s son.”

“I know, but he’s a nice lad,” said Anne.  “I’d have said at Christmas that I would have asked Daisy from Swanley Court, but since then she’s discovered that her parents left her a Croesus, and she’s planning on having a Season or some such.  And why not!”

“Oh, well, why don’t I find out if there are any ladies’ academies in Harrogate with girls expecting to be governesses, and offer a treat to a couple of them, a week’s house party they can remember all their lives?” suggested Ellery.

His wife gave a most unladylike squeal of delight.

“Oh, what a good idea!  I remember, my father’s agent said there was such a school, but he chose Swanley Court because it sounded better, and because he thought Cousin Hortensia might take delight in visiting to gloat.  I don’t think he realised how wanting the poor girl is.”

“Indeed, and I am glad I have homed her in the hostel for the women my repellent Cousin Larry passed on his diseases to,” said Ellery. “I think she would have been miserable being sent south to Swanley Court, however kindly your mistresses.”

“Yes, she told me she likes me visiting.  She has had the baby, and waxed long –winded on how much it hurt.  She is most confused that intimacy should lead to babies, and it is as well that she should be in a pleasant, but secure place where no men are allowed at all, for I fear she will not remember that it was sleeping with her groom which caused her to have a baby in the first place.  I’d suggest finding her a nice, kind husband who understands how to, er, bring down the courses, after she gives him an heir, but she’s not fit to be in charge of a household, or to bring up children. I dislike the custom of farming children out, but I cannot rear her child, it would be a reminder of what happened.”

“I don’t think I would much like a reminder of being beaten on the head to get me to marry the pesky female, either,” said Ellery. “I think it better if she is kept away from all men, and looked after kindly but firmly for the rest of her life.”

“It’s very sad, but I can’t think of anything better, not at the moment, anyway,” said Anne.  “And I will not have her in my household attempting to get into bed with you.  She has been placed in the habit by her father of considering herself entitled, and considering me worthless, and I have to say that fortnightly visits to her are all I can bear.”

“I think the other girls appreciate it too,” said Ellery.

“Yes, but I don’t have a problem with them,” said Anne.  “Larry the lecher used them to try to cure himself, in the belief that lying with a virgin would be the charm, and you would have thought he might have got the idea when it did not work.”

“My cousin is better off dead,” said Ellery. “I will go and make enquiries into this ladies’ academy.”

Ellery rode into Harrogate and returned the next day after having spent the night in an inn.

“I found the academy, Miss Chorley’s establishment,” he said.  “Most of the girls are the daughters of well-off tradesmen, but there are a couple of girls who are essentially orphans, who have been paid for to complete their education, and with the expectation of becoming governesses.”

“You look very grim; is it a harsh place, like the school in Oxford Daisy wrote to me about, which the Macfarlanes, in Daisy’s idiom, stole a little bit?”

“No, not as bad as the details you were reading out,” said Ellery.  “It’s a fairly cheerless place, though, for those who are not parlour boarders, and precious little fun and games or the small pleasures you have told me about at Swanley.  I fancy you would have pined away and died, for not being permitted music lessons, as they cost extra.”

Anne shuddered.

“Unless these girls are objectionable, is there any way we can keep them?” she said.

“I hoped my generous love would suggest that,” said Ellery. “They are already expected to teach the younger ones as part of their keep; and even if you had not suggested it first, one of them is my responsibility, and we may well send her to Swanley Court for a year if she wishes it”

“Y... your responsibility?” asked Anne. Her heart thumped.  No, Ellery was too young to have a daughter old enough to be expected to help with the teaching; perhaps she was his half sister!.  “Tell me about her,” she said, firmly.

“She’s Larry’s get,” said Ellery.   “I did not know he had been so precocious!”

“Good grief, was he not much the same age as you?  And has a daughter of marriageable age?”  Anne was shocked.  The late Lord Wroth had been depraved, but this was most unexpected.

“He’s a few years older than I am, but yes, he was still at school, must have been almost thirteen.  Apparently Uncle Charles paid for the girl to be cared for and educated, and her mother given a stipend to disappear.  Personally,” he added, disapprovingly, “I’d have brought the child at least home to be cared for by my wife, since she’s between Miranda and Lucenda in age. And depending on what the mother was like, have allowed her to visit.”

“I doubt she, poor girl, wanted the ties of being an unwed mother, if the child was going to have a good life,” said Anne.  “As for your uncle, perhaps he was too afraid of Aunt Claudia to introduce another child into the nursery of the Gerundives.” 

 Larry Hyde’s predecessor as earl had been Ellery’s uncle, Charles, had been a scholar.  His daughters were Amanda, she who must be loved, Miranda, she who must be admired, and Lucenda, never to be known as Lucinda, she who must be illuminated.

“It wouldn’t surprise me; and I’d stand up for my own flesh and blood.   And I stopped off to tell Aunt Claudia about this lass, Drusilla, her name is, so she may acquaint the gerundives with their cousin’s existence so they can come to terms with it.  And Aunt Claudia was most put out that Uncle Charles had not consulted her on the matter, so I fancy she would have taken the poor child more readily than you might think.”

Anne giggled.

“What would her name have been, Receptanda? She who must be welcomed?”

“Good grief, even Uncle Charles would not have .... Lucenda is strained enough .... I don’t even want to think about it,” said Ellery. “I think the next best ones are Vivenda, she who must live, and Laudanda, she who must be praised.  But the girl is Drusilla, and must live with it. Drusilla Haversedge.  I haven’t met her yet, I  hoped you’d go with me into Harrogate to meet and collect them both.”

“Yes, they must have me as a chaperone, though I’m hardly any older than they are.  And the other?”

“The other is the daughter of a dancer who left enough for her daughter’s education.  I felt sorry for her; I got the impression that the Chorley woman and her staff tend to punish the girl for the sins of her mother. She has no pretensions to gentle birth at all, my dear.”

“And if it is a school for young ladies, I am sure that  her lack of gentle birth will not be apparent, for it will have imbued the sense of what it is to be a lady, even if it is rather grim,” said Anne.

“And they certainly wanted the child of someone as exotic as a dancer to conform,” said Ellery.  “I was told that she has letters from her mother, who knew she was dying, and one has to credit Mrs. Chorley with not taking them and burning them, as she might have done. She has read them, though, and a bit of human emotion escaped her for a moment, when she said that they throw into relief how hard a dancer’s life must be. The child’s mother had to contend with the crippled feet and knees, and wrote of having to keep dancing and smiling as well if she wanted to eat.  Opera dancers are paid, apparently, by the show, not on contract, so if they miss an opera through illness, they are not paid that night.   No wonder the woman urged her daughter not to dance.  Mrs. Chorley says she is a good, dutiful girl with some odd kicks in her gallop, and the last made me rejoice that she might not be totally cowed.  I may have intimated that now I was married I planned to adopt my cousin’s base born daughter and would consider this Selena Johnson as her companion.”

“Well, to be honest, that was more or less what you had in mind, wasn’t it?” said Anne. “And at least you are married, so she isn’t envisioning you throwing wild parties to debauch any of her charges who are without protectors.”

“I think she worried about it at first,” said Ellery.  “And I pulled Lord Wroth out of my face, so to speak, and asked her who she felt better fitted to care for my cousin, Drusilla, than I.  Then  I  demanded to know why she had not informed me that I had a cousin under her care, but had left her discovery to the chance of my wife wanting more females about her. She apologised, but said she supposed that I would be aware of it.  I disabused her of that notion.  I’d have had the girl in Aunt Claudia’s household as soon as I knew, if I had known, as I pointed out.  It appears that Uncle Charles was concerned in case Larry was diseased even at that age, or that the girl’s mother was the source of it, and that she might not live long, which I’ve only just remembered, sorry, it wasn’t just concern over what Aunt Claudia might say.  However, there have been no suggestions that she was born syphilitic.”

“Well, that’s a relief.  Poor girl, I wager they peered at her, waiting for signs,” said Anne.

“Yes, and doubtless without telling her why. Well, it evens up the numbers, those two with the gerundives, Miss Clement, who I am sure you do not resent for being the Landry woman’s sister, Miss Mayhew, if you can persuade her, and Amelia Bradley, eight.  And for the men, you are risking inviting Fulkard?”

“He has been perfectly civil when visiting now you are teaching him music,” said Anne.  “And it means Lord Robert can come if he wishes, and Tobias Smith, as well as Mr. Morville, Mr. Thorngate, Mr. Mayhew, his brother, Michael, and Thomas Bradley, and of course, Sir Henry and Lady Sophia Bradley, to loan a note of sobriety.  I wish we might have Ophelia and Mr. Sanderville, but I’m not sure I can manage to run a house party and cope with four lively small people.”

“It wouldn’t be so bad if Philemon was not so unexpected,” said Ellery.  “Seb has sobered up no end, doing a man’s work, and Eglamour and Lucy are mostly harmless.”

Anne laughed.

“And at that, whatever they get themselves involved in, it is harmless mischief.  What would you rather a boy of twelve like Philemon should do, get in a fight with tinker brats over the way they treat their dogs, or sire a child, like Larry?”

“Good G-d, it had not actually impinged on me that Phil is much of an age Larry must have been when Drusilla was conceived.  You’re right, my love, having a courtesy-nephew turn up on my doorstep, bloodied but unbowed, with a cur of indescribable background in his arms demanding help is the sort of relative I want to have.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Anne.