The Captain's Daughter (6 page)

Amy awoke
the next morning—late the next morning—to a
light tapping. Effie the maid was timidly trying to wake her.

“Miss. Miss. Your mother sent me to
awake you.”

Effie was a locally recruited maid
who had never been schooled in all the niceties of being a maid, so she called
everyone either Miss or Sir. Her failure to use their proper titles did not
matter to Amy. And it did not matter to her mother, who despite holding a few
strongly held opinions, they did not extend to the proper formalities of the
gentry whom for reasons hard to fathom she felt were inferior her and her
family.

The Sibbridge household, while not
anywhere close to being impoverished, was not especially affluent either. While
a great household would have many servants, they had only a few. In fact, it is
likely they would have been a source of pity to many of the gentry they
associated with in London or Bath. But they had sufficient funds to keep up
appearances during the curtailed season they spent in those splendid places.

At least in the countryside you
never starve even if you are poor because there is always food available. It
would have shocked many a fine lady in London or Bath, but Amy ate breakfast
that morning at the kitchen table while she conversed with Mrs. Pemberton, the
cook, and Effie the house’s only maid and cook’s assistant.

Sleeping late had melted away her
anger of the night before. It was only after she took her leave of Mrs.
Pemberton and Effie and was once again alone that thoughts of the night came
back to her. Even then, evidently emotionally drained by her outrage and
indignation, it took her a considerable effort to resurrect her fury. Since she
believed it was the proper thing to do, and by working hard at it, she was
finally able to rekindle some of the fire that inflamed her during the night.

She found that pacing up and down
in the front hall helped quite a bit. Her mother passed through at one point
and for some reason asked about her health, but didn’t stop to hear the answer,
which was probably just as well. Amy proffered that her health was fine but
someone else’s might not be shortly. By that last part her mother was
thankfully out of earshot.

Deciding that she had worked up
enough motivation she headed upstairs to Emma’s study room. Emma was looking
disgusted and working on some arithmetic. Mrs. Parkhurst was sitting in her
usual chair and appeared to be dozing.

“I need you to come with me,”
whispered Amy while grabbing Emma by the arm and dragging her out of her room.

As they left, Mrs. Parkhurst
sounded like she was waking up. Amy couldn’t be sure but decided it was best
not to find out. True, it would be nice to let her know why Emma was missing,
but then again it was not unusual for her to discover that Emma was no longer
at her desk.

Dragging a mystified Emma
downstairs, she led her out of the house and in the direction of the stable.

“Are my studies no longer of
importance to you?” asked Emma. “Do you not want to see me educated? Is it of
no concern to you that I might grow up illiterate?

Ignoring her sister’s sarcasm, Amy
led her over to old Hubert who was weeding the same flower bed that he’d been
working on for what seemed a month.

“I need to use the trap, Hubert,”
she told him and then continued to the stables.

Knowing that it would probably be
more time than she was willing to wait for old Hubert to arise from the
marigolds, which were evidently so afflicted by weeds, and reach the stable,
she tracked down Daniel, who was not the smartest of the family’s servants but
had finally learned to ready the trap.

They were leaving by the time old
Hubert rounded the corner to the stable, looked at them with disgust, mumbled
something, and turned back to presumably go to the rescue of the
weed-threatened marigolds.

“Let me guess,” said Emma touching
a finger to her temple, “we are headed to Ben’s place.”

At Ben’s place, his butler startled
by her loud pounding on the front door, holding his nose as high as he could in
the air, informed her that Ben—Sir Benjamin—was in back at the stables.

Having brooded long enough to
rebuild her outrage of the night, she was fully ready when she encountered Ben.
He was startled to see her and even more startled at her withering verbal
attack. Her coherence was somewhat chopped up by the sword of her rage, but he
gathered, in bits and pieces, that she was accusing him of making fun of
her...continuing to derive amusement at her expense...and...and why was he
digging a grave?

That took a minute to sink in.

“What?” he blurted out. “Digging a
grave? What are you talking about?”

Without acknowledging his puzzled
question, she continued because she was on a roll like a runaway wagon heading
downhill: “I saw you digging a grave yesterday. If you were burying someone why
didn’t you bury them at the church?”

Ben was recovering from his
amazement, and his face was darkening.

“Maybe they aren’t Christian,” she
hurled the accusation at him. “Is that it? If they are not Christian they
wouldn’t want to be buried in a Christian churchyard...”

She hesitated because she was beginning
to run out of steam.

“If you are finished, young lady,”
Ben intoned through clenched teeth, “I am busy. You have to go home.”

As he turned and walked into the
stable, she yelled after him: “That is what I intend to do. Good day!”

On the way back to the trap she
wondered if she had maybe been a little too emphatic in what she had said.
While it had given her satisfaction to get it off her mind she now felt a
little deflated and even somewhat apprehensive.

Emma was not in the trap when she
got back to it. When she noticed that the gate to the walled garden was open
she decided to go in search of Emma.

She found her in the garden talking
to the man dressed in the clothes of a clerk whom Amy had seen the previous day
overseeing the digging of the grave. Emma was smiling and looked up as Amy
approached.

“Look at these, Amy.”

She was drawing Amy’s attention to
three small bushes.

“Aren’t the flowers on the bushes
so delicate and beautiful? Mr. Worthington tells me that Sir Benjamin’s father
sent them from India. They’re called Rhododendrons and they come all the way
from the slopes of the Himalayas.”

“Come, Emma,” she said with a
forced smile after greeting Mr. Worthington and being greeted in return.

A grim faced Amy led her sister
back to the trap.

“The place where the Rhododendrons
are planted,” said Emma with a clearly fake innocence, “isn’t that where Ben
was digging the grave?”

When the Saturday of the picnic
came around, the family gathered atop Old Camp Hill. The unprepossessing hill
got its name from a local legend that it had been a Roman camp back in Roman
times. Except for a few large boulders that might form a circle if one looks at
them the right way there was not much evidence that the sight had any past.

One advantage of the putative Roman
camp was it always proved to be a good place for a picnic. Another advantage
was it gave a splendid view of the surrounding countryside. To the south,
Hillfield House could be seen, and to the west, the River Arne peeked out here
and there through the trees. While Sibbridge House remained hidden in the
trees, the smoke from its chimneys was highly visible, and to the north the
spire of the Stockley-on-Arne village church stood out in the distance.

With the use of both the trap and
the wagon, the family gathered for the picnic which the servants were setting
up. To the disappointment of Amy’s mother for one reason or another only the
family was present. The invitees had given various apologetic excuses and no
one else was there.

“Oh dear,” said Lady Sibbridge, “if
only Lord and Lady Brewminster could have come. And the others we invited.”

“But mother, everyone was anxious
to go and see Prince Frederic during his visit to Cambridge now that he has
been promoted to be to be a full general and is leaving for Flanders to fight
the French.”

“If only I had known about his
visit. We could have arranged the picnic next Saturday.”

“Mother, it was in the London
papers. Remember Emma mentioned it.”

“I don’t remember hearing her say
anything. Oh dear, do you think they will be angry at us for not going to see
the prince.”

Amy was not sure who was supposed
to be angry but reassured her mother that there would be so many people in
Cambridge to see the prince, who seldom appeared in public and usually resided
in Germany, that no one would notice their absence.

When they were near the end of the
picnic it began to cloud up, so Lady Sibbridge began to fear they might get
caught in a downpour and set her mind on getting back home as quickly as
possible. Amy doubted any sudden violent rainstorm and rather suspected that
her mother was disappointed that the picnic hadn’t been more of a success.

Amy herself was a little
disappointed. Despite her confrontation with Ben a few days previously, she had
held on to the hope he might appear at the picnic out of respect for her family
even if he was upset with her. And she had now begun to feel he had a right to
be upset since she felt she had behaved abominably. All during the picnic, she
had continually glanced at Hillfield House hoping to see him riding their way,
but to no avail.

As the servants were loading the
picnic hampers back into the wagon, Emma suddenly called out “Look!”

Turning in from the road and making
its way carefully up the hill was a coach.

“That’s Frank and Estella’s coach,”
said her mother, and when it arrived it did indeed prove to be Sir Frank and
Lady Ramsey.

“Estella and I are sorry we could
not come earlier,” Lord Ramsey said to everyone present but with a special nod
to Amy’s father, the silent figure at every meal, “but I had some urgent
business to attend to up north. We are in a hurry to get back to London, but we
wanted to stop by on our way because we have something for Emma.”

“Emma,” said Lady Sibbridge in a
voice that combined surprise with curiosity.

“Yes, Emma,” said Sir Frank as he
extracted a bundle that was about five feet long and wrapped in heavy cloth.

Emma took the bundle from him and
setting it on one of the Roman boulders unwrapped it. Inside the bundle was a
telescope. Emma was ecstatic. Amy glanced at her mother who, while she did not
share Emma’s joy, did not say anything.

Sir Frank then went over to Amy’s
father to speak quietly to him while Lady Ramsey exchanged a few pieces of
gossip with her mother. Amy joined Emma to admire her new possession.

The telescope came with a portable
polished wooden stand. After Emma expressed profound appreciation to her
benefactor, Sir Frank and Lady Ramsey left to hurriedly return to London
because of Lady Ramsey’s fear of brigands on the London Road.

Emma was about to set up the
telescope when her mother once again, casting fearful looks at the accumulating
clouds overhead, announced they must return home hastily.

After they descended the slope
carefully from the Roman Camp to the road, they were approached by a rider from
Hillfield House. It was one of Ben’s servants and he handed a note to Lady
Sibbridge.

Her mother examined it and then
read it out loud. It was simple and to the point.

Dear Lord and Lady Sibbridge, I
must sincerely offer my apologies but I am unable to attend your picnic today
because I have been called away. With deep respect, Benjamin Anstruther.

Emma looked sympathetically at Amy
whom she knew was saddened that Ben had not come to the picnic, and wounded
that the note did not even mention her name.

When they arrived home, her mother
hurried in the house to get warm, since it was now completely overcast and had
turned chilly.

“Come with me,” Emma invited Amy.

“What is it, Emma?”

Emma retrieved the telescope from
the wagon. Assuming she wanted help to take it into the house, Amy lifted the
stand declining Daniel’s offer to assist. But instead of taking the telescope
into the house Emma put it in the trap.

“What are you doing, Emma?”
inquired Amy.

“I, or rather
we
, are going
to take the trap back to Camp Hill and try out my telescope.”

“We can’t, Emma, Mother will never
allow it. She thinks we’re headed for a storm and would get struck down by
lightning or drown in a torrential downpour.”

“We won’t tell mother,” Emma
declared. “You’ve dragged me around repeatedly in the last two weeks, now it is
my turn. You have to come with me.”

Amy glanced uncomfortably at the
house. But she knew that right now her mother would be sitting in front of a
nice roaring fire thawing out from the picnic. Emma had a point. She did owe
her after what she had put her through of late.

They only went part way up the
slope at Camp Hill but it was high enough for Emma to get a good view with the
telescope mounted on the trap. While Emma examined the landscape, Amy was deep
in thought. How would she get back on Ben’s good side after what she said? She
recalled a recent sermon the minister had delivered on the very subject of
speaking with care and discernment.

She didn’t remember where the
scripture was except that it was near the end of the Bible, but she remembered
clearly what it said mainly because she didn’t quite understand it at first.
Even
so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great
a matter a little fire kindleth!
The minister said it was saying how great
a woodland a little flame can set ablaze, and the tongue is just like that. She
had to agree her tongue was indeed like that. She had really started a forest
fire, in fact...