My Dear Jenny (2 page)

The chaise had advanced some twenty miles when Miss Prydd,
overtaken with a great thirst and the desire to exercise her legs, asked the
coachman to stop at the next posting house. Her companion, a timid sort of girl
with nothing to say for herself up to that time, was emboldened to say that she
couldn’t enter the inn to fetch refreshments, for fear that everyone would look
at her. Genia refrained from advising the girl that no one would bother to look
at such a mousy, rotund person as she presented, and informed Elsie that
she
at least intended to partake of a
light refreshment.

Some five or six miles later the chaise came to a stop at a
largish hostelry, the Green Falconer, where Miss Prydd was assured she would
find genteel refreshment. With a sigh of relief, she renewed the offer of food
to the maid, who stubbornly refused to budge from the carriage. Thus Iphegenia
advanced toward the inn herself, and was met at the door by a large, round
woman of years, with a genial face and an air of distraction.

“Certainly, miss,” she answered, in reply to Genia’s inquiry
after refreshments. “I can turn up a luncheon for you very proper, and in jig
time, too, but I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to take your food in the
coffee room with the other travelers. The doctor’s here, and using the private
room to look at my lad, who’s took a little ill.” She added that she knew it
was an inconvenience for a lady traveling abroad, to sit with the common raff
of the roadside, but that it wasn’t to be helped.... After a few more carping
phrases upon the same topic, the landlady, Mrs. Hatcher, was assured by
lphegenia that she did not regard it in the least, and persuaded to leave over
her apologies in favor of setting her customer at a table. The landlady then
withdrew toward the kitchen, murmuring again to her self. Genia, watching her
retreat with some amusement, wondered what sort of illness her son had
contracted to throw the woman into her present dismay. She removed her gloves
and tried to rid herself of the uncomfortable feeling that sitting alone in the
coffeehouse of a strange inn, without so much as an abigail to lend her
countenance—even despite her great age—was not quite the thing.
Inwardly she cursed the recalcitrant Elsie, still shivering in the chaise.

Within a few minutes Mrs. Hatcher had returned with tea and
promises of something more substantial to come. Genia, raising her cup to her
lips, began to examine her fellow diners. In one corner of the room, near the
fire, a young man was in animated discussion with an older fellow. The boy
looked about twenty, fair and slender, with a distracted enthusiasm, which
Genia immediately identified as student-on-holiday. His companion might have
been ten or twenty years older. Looking at him, it was hard to say, but he was
dark-haired and swarthy, with the unasserted authority of a soldier. If they
were related in any way, Genia could not see it, and so assumed that they were
tutor and charge, or perhaps just chance acquaintances. At another table sat a
cleric, almost a perfect cleric at that, with just such long and gently saintly
features as should grace a man of God and impress his female parishioners.
Genia, herself somewhat skeptical of saintly people, was thankful that the
parson did not appear to be the loquacious sort. Finally, there were two people
who sat rather farther away from the fire than she did. A young woman, probably
not over eighteen, was rather nervously sipping tea, glancing from time to time
at her companion. She was elegantly and expensively dressed, and her manner
with Mrs. Hatcher, while frank and pleasing, did indicate that she was used to
command some dignity, but her manner toward her companion was decidedly
nervous. He was unaware or unconcerned by her sidewise looks, and was engaged
in emptying a tankard of ale. Genia thought she heard a murmured “Oh, Adrian, I
do wish you would not...” but this was quelled with an eyebrow’s lift and the
girl subsided again to her tea.

Before Genia could learn any more about her interesting
companions, Mrs. Hatcher returned bearing cold chicken and a fruit compote—”That
being all we have at present, miss.” Then the landlady cast an anxious look
toward the doorway and was rewarded by the sight of a beckoning figure. With a
garbled excuse and something that might have been a curtsy in her direction,
the landlady made her way to the door and disappeared. Genia was again forced
to quell her interest in a stranger’s affairs, and returned to her chicken.
Some few minutes later, as she was wresting the last of the meat from the bone,
she began to hear scraps of loud and distressed conversation in the hallway.
Something in the tone of the landlady’s voice overrode every other instinct,
and Genia got to her feet and made her way to the hall.

“I beg pardon, ma’am, but is there anything that I can do to
help you?” She peered into the hallway, confronted by the startled faces of
Mrs. Hatcher and a bluff gentleman who was, presumably, the doctor.

“Oh, miss,” —the landlady turned a teary face toward
her— “it’s my Micah, come down with measles, and will be sick for at
least a week, and it could be longer. Think shame on him, a great boy coming
down with such a thing, and my poor customers—” Her mother’s heart was as
overwhelmed by the threat to her son’s health as was her businesswoman’s sense
offended at the setback this would mean for her establishment. Mrs. Hatcher
threw herself on Genia’s bosom, startling the young woman.

“Not only that, Mrs. Hatcher, but, as I said, this house
must go under quarantine until we are sure that no one else will carry the
disease elsewhere,” the doctor added, wrestling with his greatcoat as he spoke.
“I suggest that you permit me to make the announcement for you.”

Iphegenia looked over Mrs. Hatcher’s still-trembling head in
shock.

“Do you mean that I cannot leave here?”

“I mean exactly that.” The doctor nodded. “Until such time
as we are sure that no one else in the place is likely to fall sick. Mrs.
Hatcher will take excellent care of you, you know,” he assured her with a
jovial smile.

“But I’m expected in London tonight. Oh, Lord, what ever
will Mary say?”

“I cannot imagine that she will say anything to the point,
ma’am,” the doctor assured her, and he turned to enter the coffee room and make
his announcement there.

“But Doctor,” —Genia stopped him one more time—
“can’t I even write a note to send to my friends? They will be so concerned.”

“Yes, I suppose so, but how will you get it there? Waiting
for the stage won’t do you no good, for it will divert to the Queen’s Inn
instead, and no one in this house may leave it.”

“But if my coachman and maid haven’t entered the house?”
Genia spared a blessing for the uncooperative Elsie.

“Well, I suppose they may as well be permitted to go along
and take your note with them. Very well, ma’am. You write your note, quickly,
and I’ll take it out to your coach and tell your people what’s to be done.”

Genia thanked the doctor, or would have, but he had turned
so abruptly on his heel to enter the coffee room that she was left making her
protestations into the air. After a moment or two, Mrs. Hatcher revived
sufficiently to tell Miss Prydd where to find pen and paper, before lapsing
again into tears. Established at a writing table, Genia composed a note for her
friend and for her aunt, sending both to Lady Bevan in the hope that she would
forward it. To her friend she explained all, with her promise to advise them
when the chaise might be again sent for her, apologizing for the rather
inordinate amount of trouble she felt herself to be. The packet sealed, she
slipped into the coffee room, where the doctor was engaged in quelling the
disquiet he had caused with his decree.

The most obviously overset was the man accompanying the
nervous young lady. He was furious, and sought to cover that anger with only
the thinnest veneer of civility.

“We shall go on, I tell you,” he was insisting. “We must go
on. Absolutely imperative. My—my sister here—we must get her to my—our—our—yes,
our aunt, in the north. Old lady’s dying, and wants to see Emmy one last time—”

The doctor appeared unmoved. “Nothing would carry the old
lady off quicker than measles, sir. No, you and your sister had best stay here
until the danger’s gone. We’ll keep you far enough removed from the sickroom so
that you should not be in too great danger of contracting the disease yourself.”
The doctor’s tone suggested that the young man’s prime worry was catching ill
himself; this did not recommend the doctor or his decree to the young man at
all. When his companion turned to him with a feeble smile and murmured, “Oh,
dear, Adrian,” he turned to her with a snarl which only barely made itself into
a philosophic smile. “Well, Emmy, looks as if we’ll have to stay, don’t it?”

“Oh, Adrian, what are we to do?” She looked as if she would
have said more, but the man cut her off abruptly.

“Nothing to be done, dear, since we certainly don’t want to
make poor Great Aunt Anne any sicker than she is, do we?” The young man’s voice
held a cautionary note. Genia wondered at the strange emphasis the fellow used,
and at his companion’s widened eyes and pale complexion.

The parson, for his part, looked slightly annoyed, but
shortly recovered his sense of serenity when assured that he need have no
contact with the invalid. The two gentlemen in the fire corner showed no signs
of anything but ordinary impatience at their journey’s interruption, and both
were heard to actually offer their condolences to Mrs. Hatcher when she
appeared.

Genia again captured the doctor’s attention long enough to
remind him of his promise to carry her note to the coachman and explain to him
why Miss Prydd would be unable to continue her journey. To the doctor’s obvious
irritation, this brought similar requests from the student and his companion,
and from the parson. The girl, Emmy, looked as though she too would have liked
to send a note, but her brother quelled that suggestion with the remark that
they ought not alarm their Aunt Anne with these trials. Genia privately thought
this a strange attitude, if the old woman was awaiting their arrival, but Emmy
immediately sank into silence again. Genia imposed upon the doctor to beg him
request her bags and boxes be put down and brought into the house. The doctor,
resigned by now to the role of majordomo, agreed with almost a smile.

When the landlady had left the room with the doctor and Miss
Emmy had retired again to her table with her brother, lphegenia settled herself
at her own place and considered both the fruit compote and the position in
which she found herself. To be a young lady entirely alone, and so many miles
from home and friends that all advice was denied her, was certainly bad enough.
But that she had no abigail, even, nor chaperone, except in the person of the
much-harried Mrs. Hatcher, made things considerably worse. Given time to
reflect, Genia might herself have fallen into despair, but that prerogative was
denied her when Miss Emmy, engaged in conversation with her brother, gave a
tremendous sob, which drew the attention of all the occupants of the coffee
room, and, attempting to stand, fainted instead.

“Oh, good God, if that ain’t the last straw!” her companion
exploded.

Iphegenia, more worried about the girl, pushed past him and
knelt beside the inert form, and from the other end of the room came the young
student, bearing a cup of wine. Iphegenia received this with thanks and, when
the girl began to come round, forced a few drops between her lips.

“Now lie still, and I will have the landlady come and tell
me which room you are to be settled in, since we are to be trapped here,” she
said levelly. “You, sir,” she addressed the girl’s companion. “Have the
goodness to find the lady. And see that you overcome your own impatience for a
few minutes, if you have any feeling for your sister’s nerves.”

The gentleman looked as if he might have balked, but by now
the other gentlemen had collected at that end of the room, and it would have
presented too unfeeling a picture had he resisted. With sulky grace he excused
himself.

“Admirably done,” the swarthy gentleman commented.

“Is she all right?” asked the youngster.

From the floor, the girl’s voice came weakly. “Oh, yes, I shall
do very well in a moment. Only my—my aunt—oh, dear. I’m terribly
sorry to be so tiresome, Miss—oh dear, did you tell me your name? I’m not
very clear—”

“No more could you be expected to be, poor thing,” Genia
said warmly. From over her shoulder came the dark man’s suggestion that, since
they were to be housemates for an uncertain term, at least they had ought to be
introduced to each other.

“Certainly, sir. I am Miss Prydd.” Genia smiled down at the
girl. “I think, unless you very much object, that we must be each other’s
friends while we are here. My name is lphegenia, but you may call me Genia, as
my cousins do.”

“How very kind you are,” the girl whispered. “I’m Emily
Pellering.”

“Excellently done, Miss Prydd. Miss Pellering.” The dark man
made a slight bow in their direction. “Peter Teverley. And this whelp is
Domenic Teverley, my cousin. Go ahead, coz, make your bow to the ladies, since
you’ve been staring at Miss Pellering like a moon calf for the past half hour.”

The boy would have liked, lphegenia strongly suspected, to
disavow that statement. He blushed painfully from his chin to the roots of his
fair hair, but his cousin seemed not to notice. Meanwhile, the cleric, somewhat
at the back of the crowd, harrumphed interestedly. As this gained him no attention,
he edged himself toward the center of the crowd, announcing, it seemed for Miss
Prydd’s benefit alone, that he was the Reverend Mr. Dunham, en route to London
for a council of clergy and to make use of the resources that city offered to
one of a scholarly disposition. While no one inquired, he seemed to feel
himself bound to explain exactly what his scholarly interests were, and at
great length. Mr. Teverley, with a hard look and a smooth word, silenced him
after a moment by making known his intention to assist Miss Pellering to her
room.