Karen Harbaugh (10 page)

“But they are
your
estates, after all!” I said. “Surely that counts for something.”

“Of course it does.” Lucas shrugged. “But I must go through my trustees first, and it’s dashed difficult reasoning with them.”

“They are terribly old-fashioned,” chimed in Samantha. “They act as if younger heads cannot have more than two thoughts in them to rub together!”

“Hidebound!” said Lucas. “Can’t think beyond two years in the future. Take my millhands, for instance. I want to pay them a touch more than they’re earning now, enough to reduce their hours a bit. I
have
managed to take the children out of there, thank God, but my trustees are balking at my setting up schools and nurseries for them.”

Samantha beamed at him. “Why, Lucas, I did not know you were going to set up schools for the children!”

“How truly kind you are!” I exclaimed, and gazed at him in admiration.

“Not kind at all!” protested Lucas. He looked embarrassed, and his ears took on a pink color. “I mean to say, it’s only practical!” He nodded his head toward the horses he was driving. “Think! No good horseman drives his horses at a spanking pace for sixteen hours at a time—it’d ruin ‘em. Stands to reason a man’s not as strong as a horse. You ruin a man, and then you have to start all over training another—waste of time, because you know a new man won’t work as well as one who has done it before. Shorten the hours, keep ‘em in good health, pay ‘em a bit more to make up for it, and you’ve got good workers that last a long time. Not only that, but the good workers will stay with you because Lord only knows they wouldn’t get better work elsewhere.”

“But what of the schools? How is that going to make for better millhands?” asked Samantha.

Lucas looked more embarrassed and shifted uncomfortably on his seat. “Haven’t thought up a good argument for that yet. Heard of the idea from a mill owner, Robert Owens, up in Lancashire. Sounded like a good one.”

I smiled to myself. So much for being “only practical”! I felt a warmth grow in me: how kind and modest he was! Few mill owners would think twice about the welfare of their workers. / knew firsthand of Lucas’s kindness—had he not been so to me? It did not surprise me that it extended to his dependents as well.

* * * *

It is remarkable how things all fall together when one has a Plan. Samantha and I discussed my abilities at length and had now found another occupation for me besides that of schoolmistress. We had decided my talent for painting could be developed to the point of salability. It would be difficult, said Samantha, for she had heard of only one woman, Angelica Kauffmann, making a living at it, but this challenge gave me greater fuel for practice.

I reserved a few hours of each day for practicing my drawing, sketching, and painting, and Mama once ventured into the schoolroom, curious. She stood behind me for a while, watching as I charcoal-sketched a bowl of fruit on a table. I was not aware of her presence for a while, for I was absorbed in the shapes and shadows cast by the apples and grapes in the earthenware bowl, and my eyes turned from the arrangement only to follow the lines I made with the charcoal stick on paper or my fingers when I smoothed a black line into grey roundedness.

“That is well done,” came Mama’s voice behind me.

Startled, I turned, then smiled at her. “Thank you, Mama. I felt it was time I practiced what I learned at Miss Angstead’s. Miss Tarnaby, the drawing mistress, once told me I had a talent for it. I think it a pity should I lose the ability through lack of practice, do not you?”

“Indeed! Quite a waste! Tell me, what subject do you plan to try next?”

I thought about this for a minute, then brightened. “Lord Ashcombe and Samantha have invited me to an al fresco luncheon in the country if the weather complies. I suppose I could try a landscape then.”

Mama glowed. “Why, how wonderful! How amiable of his lordship and his sister to invite you! I know you will have a very enjoyable time with him—them.”

I sighed wistfully and my smile faded as I said:

“Yes, Luc—ah, Lord Ashcombe is so very kind and—and handsome, is he not?” I turned back to my drawing. “I think I will have to get some oil paints for this drawing.”

“Oil paints?” asked Mama, taken aback. “Do you not mean water colours? We could frame it and put it in the drawing room.”

“Oh, no, Mama, definitely oils!” I said firmly. “Oils
sell
, you know. Water colours are only for one’s own home or perhaps printed in books. If I am to sell miniatures or painted fans like Angelica Kauffmann, I will definitely have to practice more in oils.”

“Sell?” Mama said faintly.

“Yes, I believe in having as many options as possible for a career,” I said cheerfully. “If I cannot find a position as a governess or schoolmistress to support us in the future, perhaps I can fall back on my talent in painting. Indeed, I believe painting to be the superior choice. I can stay home with you and care for you then, instead of going away to earn money and leaving you all alone.”

I turned and smiled at her as if expecting approval. She had closed her eyes as if in pain and was fumbling for the door. “Excuse me,” she said weakly. “I think I forgot to tell Grimley about, about something....”

She hurriedly quit the schoolroom, and I returned to my drawing with a smile and wider sweeps of the charcoal stick.

* * * *

Samantha’s party was looming fast, and I was both excited and anxious about it. Needless to say, I had had no experience with parties except Mama’s at home, and I had been considered too young to attend those. I had watched them from the stairs while munching on tartlets and lemonade that Cook would furtively give me on these occasions, and I had observed some of the formalities of these gatherings. I felt I knew little and had more to learn. I was excited that at last I would be able to attend a party as a young lady already “out” would.

Mama brought a seamstress in to make me a dress for the event. We went through a number of Ackermann’s fashion plates before we selected a round gown of pale blue muslin. My eyes had widened considerably when I surveyed the dresses displayed in these plates, which ranged from plain morning day dresses to sumptuous court gowns. Some, like the day dresses, were modestly cut with high necklines and ruffs; others such as ball gowns were so low cut as to make me think there had been an error in the printing of the drawings. I laughingly pointed out one of these to Mama, wondering aloud how these misprints could have got past the editors, but then she shook her head, saying they were not misprints at all.

I eyed Mama’s fully developed bosom and my own not-quite-as-buxom one and said, “But, but Mama, unless they looked more like myself, I don’t know how—how any lady could stay
in!”

Mama broke out in her rich, trilling laugh. “It is something only women have figured out and are not telling the male members of the species. That mystery, I am sure, has gained the riveted attention of men since the décolletage was first discovered, and they seem not to have found the answer yet! Precisely why ladies continue to wear such dresses, my dear!”

The thought was daunting. I never had much cause to think of fashion in the past, for I was used to the schoolgirl’s plain fare of neutrally colored, comfortably baggy round gowns that hid everything from neck to toe. When I came home, we bought more clothes for me, but these also were plain and modest, since I had outgrown my old gowns and had to have new ones in a hurry. But now I saw that these dresses a la mode exposed much more than I was used to, and I was not at all sure that I had anything worthy to expose—or wanted to. To be sure, I had seen Mama wear very fashionable clothes indeed. But she wore them naturally, unselfconsciously, and I knew I could never do so, for she had her beauty to support her and I did not. Even if I did have some measure of beauty, I knew I would feel, well, vulnerable somehow. Naked. I could feel my face growing warm at the thought. No, really, I could not wear such a dress.

I said: “So if a lady wishes to have a gentleman pay attention to her, she might wear one of these dresses?”

“That is one strategy, yes—especially if she has one such good feature and not any other attributes or talents which may attract.”

“Well, I shall not need any such stratagems, thank goodness,” I said firmly.

Mama smiled, saying: “No, indeed! You are quite pretty and lively enough so that you would not need to do so.”

I blushed at this but said calmly, “Not at all, Mama! Indeed, I shall insist on having the neckline of my dress raised, as I have no wish to attract gentlemen at all! It will not do at all if I am to remain single and care for you, you see.”

Mama froze slightly but seemed to recover; there even seemed to be a little gleam in her eye as she gazed at me for a short space of time. “Indeed!” she replied, her face serene.

I made sure, when the pattern came to be fitted about me, that Miss Barton knew to make the neckline high. She nodded and wrote this down in her little brown book and adjusted the pattern this way and that about me. Mama made no comment but merely smiled.

I grew a little worried. A fortnight after I had announced my intentions to be a prop to her, Mama no longer seemed to make such a fuss about it. I kept a watchful eye on her as I ran my little errands for her, but her reactions to my intentions for our future seemed to become less and less overt. Perhaps, I thought, she believed this turn of mine to be an errant whim that would pass with time. Well, we shall see who can wait the longest, I said to myself.

Meanwhile, Samantha called upon me, and we would discuss everything from the plots of stories she would write to my painting efforts to her party. We talked most about her party, as it was so near, and what we would wear. Samantha had chosen a white muslin dress with a rose-pink bodice and matching ribbons threaded through the tiny puffed sleeves. She showed me a picture of it from Ackermann’s, only the plate showed the dress to have a yellow bodice.

“I simply cannot abide yellow—or orange, for that matter—so I nearly passed this design for another. But Mama pointed out that the bodice could just as well be made in another color, and so I agreed to it. I do wish, though, that I could see what it would look like in rose pink,” she finished wistfully.

I nodded, then said suddenly: “I have an idea! I have some pastel chalks!”

Samantha looked bewildered at this apparent change of subject but waited.

“I will get some and paper, and I will draw what you would look like in that rose-pink dress!”

She clasped her hands together, starry-eyed. “Oh, could you? It would be wonderful if you did!”

“Of course!” I ran up to the schoolroom, fetched some paper, lead, and pastels, and brought them down again. I had Samantha stand near the light and put the fashion plate beside me. I sketched her basic features first, then, looking at the plate, imagined the dress on her and sketched it in. I brought the initial sketch to her for approval.

“Why, Georgia, it looks just like me! And as if I were really wearing the dress!” She wrinkled her brow for a moment as she looked at the plate. “The only difference, though, is that the neckline of the dress is lower cut in the plate than you have drawn it on me. Mama said it would look exactly like this for me except for the color.” My eyes widened a bit, for the plate showed quite a décolletage. Samantha caught my surprised look and lifted an eyebrow. “Are you thinking that it is too low cut? I had thought so, too, but Mama says it is all the crack, I assure you!”

I nodded, reflecting that my dress with its neckline at the collarbone was probably going to look positively Quakerish. I mentally shrugged, however. It meant little to me if I was not precisely in mode, for I was not looking for a husband, after all.

I returned to my sketch, made the dress match the plate, and began to use the pastels. I used charcoal for Samantha’s raven-black hair, and instead of drawing her hair in the schoolgirlish manner it was in, I had it pulled up in a knot with long ringlets falling forward toward her face. Tiny pink dots representing flowers crowned the confection.

I put down the chalks with a sigh. “Come see. It’s done.” I said.

She quickly ran forward and looked at my finished drawing. “Oh, Georgia! You have made me look beautiful!” she breathed.

“That’s because you are, silly!” I laughed.

She blushed and shook her head but said, “I can see now that Mama was right in selecting this dress for me! How foolish I was to protest I did not like it just because of its color! And you have put my hair up. I shall ask Mama if I can put it up in precisely the same way.”

“I am glad you like my portrait of you,” I said. “You may keep it if you wish.”

“Oh, may I? Dear Georgia, you are too kind!” She cast her arms around me in a fervent hug.

“Watch yourself!” I exclaimed, and laughed at her enthusiasm. “You have chalk dust on your dress!” She backed away, brushing at a white streak with her hand. “Of course you may have it! How else are you going to remember how you will put up your hair?”

“I will show it to Mama as soon as I get home!” promised Samantha. We did not talk long after this, for I was flattered to see she was eager to take my portrait home to show Lady Ashcombe.

* * * *

The last fitting was the day before the party. I stood on a stool while Miss Barton pinned my dress here and there and Mama looked on. It took too long, I thought, and I itched frequently and was pricked by pins more times than I could count. Miss Barton finally stood back to view her handiwork. “How does it fit?” asked Mama.

“It is a little tight in the bodice front,” I said.

“Can you raise your arms properly?” asked Miss Barton.

I raised them gingerly and found the tightness did not restrict their movement at all. “Yes, quite well.”

“We needn’t worry about it, then,” replied Mama. “The neckline is high enough to make it of no matter.” Miss Barton nodded in agreement. Much to my relief, I was soon unpinned and released to put on my usual day dress.

I was almost in alt as the next afternoon crept to a close. As Grimley brushed and styled my hair, I could see in the mirror that my cheeks had a glowing blush that swept up almost to my temples. For the first time, I was to have my hair put up just as Mama had hers—no schoolgirlish crown of braids, but as sophisticated as anything that might be found in a fashion plate. I wondered if Lucas and Samantha would recognize me with it styled in the simple knot atop my head and the little curls Grimley had managed to coax out to frame my face. I was ready to put on my new dress.