Delsie (2 page)

In her gratification at seeing Mr. Grayshott, brother-in-law to deVigne, at her door, Miss Frisk lost her head and had Delsie called down to her own parlor to meet him. Mr. Grayshott had a young daughter—he was clearly come to offer Miss Sommers the job of tending her. What a blessing for the girl! Her mama just dead, and money certainly in very short supply. Delsie spoke of looking for a position. Though she never learned the truth of that meeting, she could not have been more surprised than Miss Sommers herself at what transpired.

Upon first entering the parlor, Delsie had recognized Mr. Grayshott. His general contours, his outfit, were familiar, as one knows by sight a familiar landmark, yet on closer examination she found the face to be not as she expected. Older, for one thing, more lined, the eyes fatigued and the mouth having a despondent downward curl to the lips. Ah, but Miss Frisk had mentioned his losing his wife—that would account for it.

Before long, she also discerned something unmentioned by Miss Frisk. Mr. Grayshott had been drinking. The aroma, and a certain unsteadiness in both speech and legs, told this as clearly as if he held a bottle in his hands. “Forgive my coming here, unknown to you,” he said, bowing formally. “I am Grayshott. I live up on the hill.” He waved a hand vaguely towards the north.

“How do you do, Mr. Grayshott. I take it you are aware who I am, as you have asked to see me.” Her conclusion as to his asking to see her coincided exactly with Miss Frisk’s. She had been elated at first. What an excellent thing to have a good job land in her lap, one as well that would take her up the hill. When she realized he had been drinking, she wondered if it were a regular thing with him, in which case she was loath to go to work for him.

“Does not all the world know Miss Sommers?” he asked, his voice becoming wild.

“I shouldn’t think so,” she replied, in confusion.

“Modest! Oh, too modest. You must know I have been admiring you from afar.”

“Indeed, Mr. Grayshott!” She looked at him in alarm, eyeing the door in case of requiring a hasty exit.

“Forgive me! My emotions overpower me, seeing you like this for the first time. So lovely, lovelier even than I had supposed. Since the death of your poor mother, I have begun to hope—only hope, Miss Sommers—I do not by any means take it for granted...” He stopped, weaving on his feet, and a foolish smile settled on his hagged features as he sank into observing her.

She arose and edged towards the door. “What is it you want of me?” she asked, deciding on the spot she would refuse the position he had come to offer.

“I want you to be my wife.”

“Oh!” She stared in blank astonishment. “You cannot be serious!”

“I am totally serious. Marry me, Miss Sommers, and I will do all in my power to make you happy. I have loved you ever since your return to Questnow. I could not believe, when I heard in the village, that you were the little girl who left some years ago to go to school. Do not fear this is only a passing fancy.”

“It is quite impossible!” she replied, becoming angry at his impertinence.

“Make it possible! Say yes,” he implored, his voice becoming maudlin.

“I’m sorry. No, I could not possibly.” She reached the door and fled upstairs to her room, without even saying good-bye. She was trembling from head to foot when she sat on the edge of her bed, as if she had just escaped a horrible fate. She marveled at the strange interview for days, but it was just at this time that she received the offer from the Johnsons, and her life was busy arranging the move, so that she did not dwell on it as she might otherwise have done. It became, in time, a bizarre experience she could consider with amusement—the day poor Mr. Grayshott had come to her, drunk, and offered marriage.

When she returned to Questnow again after leaving the Johnsons, to take up her post at St. Mary’s School, she rather wondered if Mr. Grayshott would repeat his solicitation. Meeting him on the street one day a week after her return, she observed that he had gone rapidly downhill. His drunkenness was apparent now at a glance. His clothing had become disheveled, his hair not well groomed, and his face not lately shaved. He presented an altogether displeasing appearance. She crossed the street to avoid meeting him head on. But her tactic was in vain. Again he came to her at Miss Frisk’s, to which apartment she had returned, and again he made his preposterous offer, in more exaggerated phrases than formerly. And again he received very short shrift.

“Please go away and don’t bother me again,” she said coldly. She was older now, more sure of herself, and he was no longer a character of any importance. She gave it very little thought this time.

He had not bothered her again. He cast soulful eyes at her when they passed occasionally on the streets of the village, but he did not approach her, and after a few months she ceased to see him. Then her life settled into a dull routine, teaching at the school, reading in the evening, or playing piquet with Miss Frisk, who was making a bosom bow of her, going occasionally to a villager’s home for an evening of entertainment, as she would not have been allowed to do had Mama been alive. But a young girl needed some company after all, and so she went.

On that dreary morning in early November, she plodded along the road to the school, with no thought that before she had returned to her room a whole new horizon would have opened before her. There would be a crack in the magic door that would lead eventually to the hill.

Chapter Two

Baron deVigne sat in the morning parlor at the Hall in a deep concentration, staring with unseeing eyes through the French doors to the autumnal remains of a rose garden, with an occasional glance beyond to see if Lady Jane was approaching yet. He had a fair idea why she wanted to see him. After a little while he saw her tall, gaunt figure, wrapped up in a huge cape of gentian violet, trundling along the footpath from the Dower House, her head bent. Poor old girl, she’s getting on, he thought. It was with solicitude that he welcomed her, took her shawl, and ordered her a glass of sherry.

Her sagging cheeks waggled in pleasure as she took the glass. She had gray hair, a beaklike nose that always turned red in the cold, and a pair of mischievous blue eyes that lent an air of youth to her lined face. “Just what I need,” she told him in her deep voice, and knocked the sherry off at a gulp, holding out her glass for a refill. “Good stuff. Now, down to business. Tell me, Max, what is to be done about it?”

This cryptic question was apparently clear to deVigne. “Something must be done at once. He was foxed again last night. That Miss Milne you hired to look after Roberta came dashing over here at nine o’clock close to hysterics, and the silly chit hadn’t even the sense to bring Robbie with her. She left the child there, in the house with a drunken father. I went over and got her, of course. They are here now in the schoolroom, the pair of them. I don’t mean to let Roberta go back to that house. With Grayshott drunk three-quarters of the time, it is no place for his daughter. God only knows what he might do—set the place ablaze one night and have them all burned to a crisp. Miss Milne, too, has begun dropping hints she means to leave, and who shall blame her?”

“Dear me, what a fix. It begins to look as though we must have him put away at last, He has become a confirmed alcoholic. The courts surely will support our claim.”

“They will agree to remove her from
his
charge, but it is his uncle, you know, who will be her guardian. I cannot like to see my sister’s daughter remove to Clancy Grayshott’s establishment, where she will be exposed to horse dealers, smugglers, and worse. That is no place for a deVigne to be raised, when there are our two houses eager to have her.”

“It would be no worse than staying with her father, at least.”

“It would be better, but not good enough. A dirty set of dishes we have got connected with through Louise’s marriage. When I helped Samson put Grayshott to bed last night, I was appalled at his condition. A room full of medication. I spoke to Samson about him, and he feels, from what the doctor says, that Grayshott hasn’t long to live. In his will, you know, he puts Roberta in Clancy’s charge. Spite. All spite because of the way Louise’s marriage portion was tied up in the child. He wants to get his hands on it and squander it as he did his own money. Ran through a handsome fortune in the space of three years. And because I refuse to comply, he has made Clancy the guardian in spite. Clancy has hated us forever. We’ll never be allowed to even see Roberta. I am at my wits’ end trying to sort this muddle out.”

“Poor Louise. If only she had lived, things would have been fine. Grayshott only became a loony after her death. He was crazy about her. He has those uncontrollable emotions. The right woman could have done anything with him. It’s a great pity that young schoolteacher could not have seen her way clear to accepting him.”

“Do you think he actually offered for her? I remember he used to run on about her soulful eyes.”

“According to local gossip, he offered more than once and was roundly snubbed both times. I was sorry to hear at the time that he was interested in her, but I have often regretted since that time that she refused. One cannot but wonder why she did. Scratching for a living. You’d think even Grayshott would be better than teaching at the parish school. And she is the soul of propriety—would have kept him in line, or I miss my bet.”

“Yes, it is a pity, but what is to be done?”

“Do you think it is too late for her to have him yet? She’s had a year of pitting herself against those rowdy students. I wonder if she wouldn’t take him now, where she turned him off before.”

“He’s gone straight downhill the last year. If she refused him when he was relatively sober, I cannot think she’ll marry a drunkard.”

“If he hasn’t long to live, as the doctor thinks... And really, you know, he is as well as bedridden. It would be a marriage in name only. She would be more nurse than wife. She might be happy to exchange six months’ work as a nurse, followed by a life as a respectable widow in fairly easy circumstances, for the future she now has, eking out a living as a teacher. She’d be a good mother for Roberta. If Grayshott married her, he would make her the child’s guardian, one must suppose. Roberta would live with
her
and not Clancy. It might be worth putting it to her in that light, Max. It would save a long and costly court battle for Roberta. There is no saying we’d ever win the case either. Clancy is a ramshackle old fellow, but he wouldn’t
beat
the child, or anything of that sort. It is only that she would grow up unmannered, in an extremely second-rate household, and marry some scoundrel...”

“Would she be better off with the schoolteacher in that respect? That woman might be anyone, for all we know. She is hand in glove with Miss Frisk and
that
set. A
third-rate
household, if ever there was one.”

“Good gracious, I didn’t mean Bobbie would go to live with her at Miss Frisk’s place. They’d both stay at Andrew’s cottage, right under our noses, and
we
would see to the hiring of help for the teacher and so on. In any case, from what I hear, the Sommers girl is from a good family. A connection of Strothingham on the mother’s side.”

“She cannot be connected to Strothingham or she would not be living as she does, in rented rooms, and teaching school. She’s invented the story to try to nab herself a genteel husband.”

“I don’t know about that. She was in no hurry to nab Andrew, was she? The connection cannot be close, I suppose, but she is at least a gentlewoman. Miss Frisk tells me she attended a seminary, and can speak French and play the pianoforte—has all the accomplishments of a lady.”

“Miss Frisk, of course, would be an excellent judge of such matters!” deVigne said with a sardonic curl of his lips.

“She knows the girl is above herself, at least. You cannot deny the influence would be
morally
good. One never sees Miss Sommers anywhere except at church and the lending library.”

Driven to despair, deVigne allowed, with great reluctance, “It might be worth a try. But are we able to get Andrew sobered up and made presentable to go calling on her? For that matter, is he out of his bed at all these days? I haven’t seen him outside the cottage for weeks.”

“Lord, I hadn’t thought of Andrew going in
person
to court her. His looks would be enough to disgust her, to see him run completely to seed.”

“She’s bound to see him if she agrees to marry him.”

“You
go and put it to her. Explain the situation. He is ill, dying in fact. Fill my glass, will you, Max? I come to rival Andrew in my drinking, but at my age it can hardly matter. Delicious sherry.” She sipped carefully, then settled back to continue the discussion. “Miss Sommers will tend to his deathbed, then be Roberta’s stepmother, living at the Cottage. Much better than wearing herself to a thread at the school. We would have to make some settlement on her as an added bribe—a few thousand pounds would be enough.”

“I’ve never even
met
the girl. How could I put such a proposition to her? She looks a perfect little nun, mincing up the aisle on Sunday in those black gowns and plain round bonnets.
You
would be the more proper person to approach her, Jane. The nature of the arrangements would come more easily from a woman—the fact that it would be a marriage in name only, and so on.”

“Use your head, Max! Your position as lord of the village must exert some influence. People are accustomed to doing as
you
wish.”

“Miss Sommers is not. I’ve never had a thing to do with her.”

“Still, your reputation—the very fact of your calling in person—would speak for the plan. You could use a little charm too, you know. It wouldn’t kill you to
smile
at her, for instance.”

“What, lead her to believe I have an eye on her myself? Nothing would be more likely to horrify a prude.”

“Why do you say so? You ain’t quite such an antidote as that.”

“If she feels there is a position as my mistress as well as Andrew’s wife in the bargain, she will view the scheme askance, I think.”