Rose Trelawney (2 page)

“You mustn’t let this get you down,” he said in a very peaceful tone. “A little lapse of memory is the commonest thing in the world after an accident. A day or two of rest and it will all come back to you. You’ve had a bump on the head, my dear. Have got a bit of a cold from your walk in the snow as well, but outside of that you’re a fine healthy young lady. Not a thing to worry about. Let your folks do the worrying. They’ll be wondering what’s happened to you. A pity, but you’re safe here. Miss Wickey will take good care of you. When this snow lets up they’ll be coming after you, very likely, your family. Meanwhile you just have a good rest.”

“I can’t remember
anything!”
I told him.

“You
remember coming here last night.”

“Yes, yes. I remember that—I walked for ages in the snow. That’s all I remember from my past.”

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it? A pity this storm came along to hold us up, but when it clears we’ll take a drive out to the spot where you came to, and it will all come back to you. If it hasn’t done so before that. We’ll find you descended from a stage, find where it came from, and soon we’ll know who you left behind. How do you feel?” he
asked.

“Scared,” I answered, without having to think about it.

He nodded, as though it were the answer he expected. Soon he left, but he had helped. His malodorous draught cleared my head, and his calming presence laid some of my fears to rest. It wasn’t an uncommon thing after all, to suffer a little loss of memory. It happened all the time. I had probably got off a coach, and been hit by something—a falling branch possibly in that storm, and been knocked unconscious. It seemed almost mundane, until nightfall.

Then as I lay alone in the darkness, it seemed less ordinary. Why should I have got down from a stage in the middle of nowhere? There had been no houses nearby. There had been no one to meet me, either. No one making enquiries as would surely have been done had my contact been late for the appointment. If neither the rector nor his housekeeper nor the doctor recognized me, obviously I was a stranger to the neighborhood. A young lady would not be walking alone in the dark, into a howling storm. She would have a trunk, a case or at least a reticule. She would not be wearing a plain navy bombazine gown and shoes that did not fit her, not with a fancy silken petticoat under her gown at least. She would not have this insurmountable feeling of dread hanging over her—this ominous certainty that someone was after her. She wouldn’t be angry as a hornet either, and my anger was as great as my fear.

Chapter Two

The storm continued intermittently for two days, heaping an unaccustomed ten inches of snow on the roads, making them impassable. Making a trip to that spot where my memory began impossible, too. Dr. Fell, who lived in the village, came once, sometimes twice a day to cheer me. He allowed me to read and to get out of bed, but he mercifully kept the curious villagers at bay. The Misses McCurdle in particular were eager to meet me. Miss Wickey pointed them out to me on one of their trips to the door—a pair of hawk-nosed dames both in black, with garishly-colored feathered chapeaux atop their heads.

 Fell explained away my lack of belongings by assuring me we would find them abandoned on the roadside where I had gained consciousness. He pointed out that I remembered many things. I told him, for instance, that I had already read the novels of Miss Edgeworth, that I liked Dr. Johnson’s works but disliked Walter Scott’s. He tried various tricks to make me regain my memory. He put a pencil and paper in my hands and told me to write, thinking I suppose that I might write my name. What I wrote instead was ‘Help me,’ in a shaky scrawl.

Miss Wickey, too, was a frequent visitor. She let me in on the stories going around the village, the little neighborhood gossip. The McCurdles had sent a pair of footboys ploughing down the road through snow to their knees to the spot where I said I had come to, but there was no trunk found, no bag, no reticule. They did not quite castigate me as an outright liar, but the word ‘alleged’ was being hurled about with regard to my story. This would be pique that I had not allowed them an audience, Wickey told me. It thrilled her that she had access to me; they had not. The spinsters fancied that as I arrived at one, I must have left the spot at around twelve, and had therefore almost certainly descended from the night stage to Winchester. That a decent, Christian woman should be traveling alone in such a manner did much to counteract the glory of the silken petticoats. The stages were not operating these days during the storm, however, and travel of any sort was extremely difficult, so that no enquiries in that regard were instituted. That I was apparently headed east told us I came from the west. We examined together maps, hoping a name would jump out and hit me in the eye. None did.

We discussed my strange outfit. The plain outer wrapping, fancy underpinnings. “Maybe my mistress gave me the petticoats,” I suggested.

“They were nearly new, both of them,” Miss Wickey countered “And—and you must not take it amiss, my dear, it is not a dig in the least, but a lady who was in service would make her own bed in the morning. Little things you say and do—well, your hands for one thing, white and unmarked and manicured like a lady’s hands. And the quantity of butter and sugar you use—not that I mean to say you should not, but servants would be more sparing.”

Here all along I had thought I was being sparing, due to the miniscule quantity of these goods placed on a table for three. I took my meals with Mulliner and Miss Wickey after the second day. Other things unmentioned by Miss Wickey but noticed by myself supported this idea. I found the meals at the rectory inferior almost to the point of inedibility. The wine, too, was scarce, and what there was of it execrable, the service intolerable. A dozen times I had been about to ring a bell to summon a servant, only to look around in
impatience and find no bell. But if I were such a grand lady as this would indicate, why did I wear bombazine? Why did I travel alone? Why was not my prestigious family out proclaiming my absence?

When I was alone, I looked into the little faded mirror over my washstand, to examine this strange body I wore. My hair was an utter mess. I had no one to dress it for me, and wore it pinned in an unbecoming knob at the back, like Miss Wickey. It was chestnut brown, thick and of medium length, with a natural wave. The eyes too were brown, the face pale—an oval face with an ordinary nose and full lips, teeth in good repair. I didn’t even know my age. Not a girl—over twenty, but not old. Between twenty and twenty-five I estimated. I was tall, not ill-formed, but with a little fuller figure than I considered ideal. In a better gown I thought I might possess elegance. I carried myself well, proudly. Even the word arrogant did not seem amiss.

Over the week, the storm passed, the roads were cleared, my cold healed and I found myself a stranger being billeted on a country rector and his long-suffering housekeeper. Enquiries of the stage driver, whose customary route was now open, revealed that he thought someone, possibly a woman, had been let down around the spot where I was first born into this new life. He didn’t know where I had got on—not later than Shaftesbury, the last stop, possibly before. Due to the lapse of time and the difficulties caused by the storm, he was extremely vague about it all. Newspapers were scanned in vain for a clue as to my identity, but we did no advertising of our own, thinking every day that it would all come rushing back to me. I made no push to institute any advertisements. I wanted to remain hidden away from whoever might be after me. I wanted to discover who I was, but I had a strong compulsion to do it on my own. ‘Fear of the unknown,’ Dr. Fell called it.

Mulliner must have abandoned the idea I was a woman of any importance. His manner began to change after about four days, after four visits with the McCurdles that would be. He was now merely tolerant, with even that wearing thin. He sat one night with Dr. Fell and myself in the small study of the rectory discussing what was to be done with me. “Thing to do, I think, call Sir Ludwig,” he suggested.

“He’s gone to London,” Dr. Fell told him.

“Is he so? Odd he didn’t tell me,” Mulliner answered, miffed. He often mentioned Sir Ludwig, but I had not yet laid eyes on the gentleman.

“Maybe I could work for someone,” I suggested.

Mulliner brightened up at this. He had half a dozen boys coming in for lessons in the mornings. If I was to batten myself on him, I could work for my bread, the look said. It was done. For three days the six boys sat under my unwatchful eye in this same study, reading poorly, writing worse, and trying vainly to put together the map of the world. I was amazed at their ignorance of geography. One of them was quite insistent France belonged in Asia, so I described it to him a little, its climate and vegetation.

“Have you been there, miss?” he asked.

“I have read about it, as any educated person has,” I answered, frowning. Yet I felt I had done more than read about it. I knew the look and smell of the Seine, knew it in springtime, with the trees in new leaf and the walks crowded with—Englishmen! No, it was a vivid dream, obviously.

“I still say it’s in Asia,” he insisted. “They moved it at the Congress of Vienna.”

I had been explaining a little earlier how the map of Europe had been altered a few years previously by the Congress. He apparently took my lessons to mean Russia and Prussia had literally ‘taken’ a piece of this or that country and dragged it off. But France at least had not been so dismembered that it went to England, and those Englishmen I saw jostling along the banks were out of place, a dream. Ah, but they weren’t! The
ton
of England had gone to France after Waterloo, gone in droves to see it anew after being rid of Bonaparte at last. ‘Now at last we can get to Paris!’ Someone was saying it to me—I could hear his voice. Oh speak louder, louder!

“So France goes here,” Billie McKay said, shattering the memory, and nearly shattering Mulliner’s cardboard map by trying to push France in where it did not belong.

“It’s eleven o’clock. Time for ‘rithmetic,” another said.

Arithmetic! What a loathsome word. Some absolute demon named Wardle had collected a mass of impossible riddles and put them all into a green book to pester us. He added only the meagerest of clues to solve these riddles, too. Three barleycorns make an inch, four inches a hand, twelve inches a foot, and such unhelpful facts. How was one to deduce from that the area of a field shaped like a star? Impossible! No one in all of Great Britain surely possessed such an oddly-shaped field. I doubt one exists in the whole world. We dispensed with Arithmetic that day and read Dr. Johnson instead. Indeed we dispensed with Arithmetic entirely, till Mulliner found out what I was up to.

Little as I knew about my past history, I knew I was not accustomed to receiving a dressing down from such an upstart as this man. My hot blood boiled. He preached to me of duty, when he was dumping his own duty in my lap, and so I told him. It was clear after I called him Jack Dandy that I must leave the rectory, but where to go? The Misses McCurdle, from nothing other than a vulgar sense of curiosity, offered me sanctuary. They thought I might be useful with a needle! I knew where I would jab any needle I held if I had to remain in the same house as that pair of harpies. They finally got in to see me. Mulliner sneaked them in one day I was at lessons with the boys. They took turns staring at me and asking questions: while one pried, the other scrutinized my gown, shoes, hair. It wouldn’t have greatly surprised me had they lifted my skirt to get a view of the famous petticoats. I would sooner have scrubbed cutlery or served ale at the local tavern than move in with that pair.

After dinner I went into the saloon to peruse the papers—first for any article relating to myself, then for positions open for women. While at this chore, I heard a caller being announced. Not an unusual occurrence, but when the name Sir Ludwig Kessler was relayed to Mr. Mulliner, my interest perked up. I had heard much of Sir Ludwig during the ten days of my stay here. He was the local god, of more importance to Mulliner than the One above, as he held the living at St. Martin’s. I waited for them to enter, that I might see for myself the proud owner of Granhurst, the giver of a living to that old fake Mulliner, and why not a sinecure to Miss Nobody, as he was so rich? Miss Nobody had been christened temporarily Miss Smith, though was much wider known locally as ‘that woman.’

Oh yes, I had become the resident freak. Mulliner ought not to have resented my presence. All three hundred and seventy-four of the locals and every farmer’s wife for miles around had come with a fitch of bacon or basket of bread to get a look at me. A pity none of them had brought sugar or butter. Mulliner had lately been hoarding them at his own end of the table, and failing to hear any request to pass them. Sir Ludwig was likely here to have a look at me as well, if the truth were known. I decided the price for a glimpse of Lady Lazarus, risen from her dead past, would be a position in his household. I would ask for it outright. I smoothed my hair and prepared an enticing smile, only to see the back of a shoulder being shown into Mulliner’s study. That wretch of a rector wasn’t going to let me meet Sir Ludwig. Not till he had turned him against me at least. The vanishing shoulder wore a drab greatcoat with many collars, denoting a gentleman of fashion. He was tall, dark-haired, and had, mercifully, a nice loud voice. If I sat in the chair next the door, kept my door open and strained my ears, I might be able to overhear their conversation, from which I was being pointedly excluded.

Sir Ludwig’s half of it at least was perfectly audible. “What’s this I hear about a strange woman having landed herself in your lap?” he asked. ‘Strange’? Here was a new description.

Mulliner mumbled some reply, lengthy, of which only a few words reached me. “. . .
trying
to teach . . . wretched muddle of it . . . bossy and overbearing . . .” How I longed to jump up and light into him.

“What does she look like?”

More mumbles. “ . . . not
old
exactly . . . strapping girl no reason she can’t work . . . eats like a horse . . .”