The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter (48 page)

If Philip had been unpopular at the Josiah Smith Academy before Saturday’s cricket match, he was now the equivalent of Guy Fawkes in the minds of most upperclassmen. Being held in such low esteem by fellows he considered to be Huns in Norfolk jackets did not trouble him nearly as much as the thought of what those same fellows were capable of doing to make his life even more miserable. After stepping into a shoe Monday morning that contained a raw egg, he had acquired the habit of overturning and shaking his shoes before slipping his feet into them, of hiding his toothbrush under a corner of his mattress, and taking other similar precautions.

He had Gabriel doing the same, for even though he hadn’t Philip’s reputation of being a “bad sport,” he was still an object of scorn because of his size and gentle nature. It also didn’t help Gabriel’s case that he was Philip’s friend, but when Philip had mentioned that perhaps for his own protection he should distance himself, Gabriel refused to hear of it. “I’d rather have the worst done to me and still have your friendship than have it lighter and be alone,” he insisted.

So they took to watching out for each other. They were especially cautious this particular Wednesday night, because the students in the fourth form had caught frogs along the River Severn that afternoon for dissection in class tomorrow. Philip had just come from washing up in the lavatory, when Gabriel approached him.

“There is a lump under your covers,” he whispered.

Philip groaned. While he didn’t share Aleda’s repulsion toward amphibians and reptiles, the idea of having a slimy creature between one’s sheets didn’t appeal to him.

“What’s the matter?” Smith, one of their dormitory mates, asked as Philip and Gabriel walked toward Philip’s bed.

“We think there’s a frog in Philip’s bed,” Gabriel replied.

“Oh, nasty!” The boy said, making a face. He fell into step with the two and was soon joined by three others. Sure enough, there was a lump in the center of the mattress, one that was too large and well-defined to be caused by a wrinkle in the sheets.

“What’s going on?” This voice came from Westbrook, standing four feet away and sending his usual scowl in their direction. “You’re supposed to be dressing for bed.”

“There’s a frog under the covers, sir,” Smith replied.

“I think it just moved,” Lowry declared.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Westbrook. “Nobody brought frogs in here. Hollis was too lazy to make up his bed proper.”

Then what do you call this!
Philip thought, grabbing hold of the edge of his blanket. It was almost worth having a frog soil his sheets, to prove Westbrook wrong. He threw back the blanket and top sheet and sure enough, the lump quivered slightly. But it was brown, not green, and revealed itself on closer inspection to be a pair of woolen stockings rolled up in a ball.

Laughter erupted around him, and Philip had no choice but to smile sheepishly, though he wished the incident had not drawn an audience.
But they’re not my stockings
, he protested silently when Westbrook railed him out about staging a stunt to get attention. It was better to swallow the accusation and run his laps tomorrow than to risk making the prefect despise him even more.

The next morning a small frog happened to show up after all—not in Philip’s sheets or shoes, but smashed flat between the pages of his Latin text. Seated in his Latin lecture, he quickly turned several pages and pretended that he hadn’t made the grisly discovery. There were a handful of older students who had failed the subject in previous terms, and he could feel their eyes upon him.

The deaths of small animals had never before affected Philip. Many a worm, cricket, and minnow he had impaled upon a hook and afterward gutted his catch without a second thought—other than how tasty his supper would be. But this disturbed him for reasons he could not quite fathom.

“Say, Hollis … you look a bit peaked,” Quain, the captain of Saturday’s opposing cricket team, commented as students filed out of the room on their way to their next classes.

“Maybe you should
hop
on over to the infirmary,” his companion grinned just before Philip lost his breakfast on his shoes.

After seeing her daughters off to school Thursday morning and having tea with Andrew, Julia walked over to the town hall with Mrs. Hyatt and Mrs. Dearing. Mr. and Mrs. Sykes met them there, and they spent an hour deciding how the room should be arranged for the Hyatt-Durwin wedding reception a week from Saturday. Four ancient serving tables were brought from the storage room and inspected for stability. Table linens were inspected for holes and then sent to Mrs. Moore’s to be laundered.

Soon members of both the Hyatt and Durwin families would be arriving in Gresham and lodging at the
Bow and Fiddle
, which accounted for the bounce in the innkeeper’s step as he dashed from greengrocer to butcher to baker, making plans for the flood of guests. Julia, Mrs. Beemish, and Mrs. Herrick were making plans for the
Larkspur’s
dining room as well. On the eve of the wedding there would be a supper for the family members and lodgers, and, of course, Andrew and his daughters, since he would be conducting the ceremony.
And Philip will be here that weekend
, Julia thought, holding up two corners of a long tablecloth while Mrs. Sykes held the other end for the other two women’s scrutiny.
I wonder if he’s as eager to come home as we are to have him.

Mrs. Sykes caught her eye and sent her a sentimental smile.

“I can read your thoughts, dear, by the look in your eyes.”

Julia returned the smile. “Can you, now?”

“You’re thinking it won’t be long before we’ll be doing this for your wedding.”

“And I think you’re a very wise woman,” Julia told her, causing the churchwarden’s wife to flush with pleasure. It would have served no purpose to reply that, while she spent a good amount of time thinking about her own wedding, her thoughts at that moment had centered around her son. .

When everything that could be done at the hall that day was finished, Julia did not accompany Mrs. Hyatt and Mrs. Dearing back to the
Larkspur.
During their brief morning tea together, Andrew had asked her if she would see about Elizabeth while he was out making calls. She seemed to be quietly wrapped in melancholia lately, and he feared asking her what was wrong. “If it turns out that her mood has anything to do with Jonathan Raleigh, I’m afraid I’ll lose my temper and make matters worse,” he had confessed.

At the vicarage, Dora led Julia upstairs to the sitting room. Elizabeth looked up from her desk and immediately pushed out her chair. “What a pleasant surprise!” she declared, crossing the carpet for an embrace. “I thought of visiting you this morning but was afraid to interfere with the wedding plans.”

“You should never worry about that,” Julia admonished lightly. “You’re practically my daughter.”

“I like the thought of that.” Elizabeth led her over to the desk and showed her how she went about her duties. It was easy to see why Mr. Ellis and Mr. Pitney now considered her an integral part of their team. On the left of the desk top sat a stack of papers torn from a notebook. Some of the pages were creased from having been folded; some were marked with dirty fingerprints, and Elizabeth even brought out one smeared with something resembling quince jam. The girl had meticulously transformed all of this into fines of neat, uniform words and spaces. “I was afraid it would become boring, but I’m enjoying the challenge of making order from chaos.”

“And from quince jam,” Julia reminded her.

Elizabeth giggled. “Yes … and from quince jam.”

When the giggles intensified into laughter, Julia grew alarmed. She had not thought her own remark
that
amusing. She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Elizabeth?”

Now the laughter turned into sobs, the girl’s breath coming in spasmodic heaves while tears spilled from the brown eyes. After a second of stunned immobility, Julia gathered Elizabeth into her arms and patted her back as she continued to sob upon her shoulder. “There, there, now,” she soothed while wondering if she should call out for Dora. She decided that such action might make Elizabeth more agitated. To wait this out until she could compose herself would be best.
This either has to do with Mr. Treves or Mr. Raleigh
, Julia thought.
Or more likely, both.

It took some five minutes for the sobbing to cease, during which time the shoulder of Julia’s burgundy gown became soaked. When Elizabeth raised her head and realized the mess she had made, she appeared on the verge of bursting into tears again.

“It’s poplin, dear,” Julia reassured her. “It’ll wash.”

“I’ve some handkerchiefs here,” the girl sniffed, her face mottled with red splotches. She leaned down to open the top drawer of her desk and pulled two squares of linen from an orderly stack. Handing one to Julia, she used the other to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. “I seem to be crying a lot lately, so I keep them close at hand.”

“You poor child.” After the words left her mouth, Julia realized they were the wrong thing to say, for misery washed across Elizabeth’s face again, and her bottom lip began to tremble. Taking the girl by the elbow, she started leading her to the settee. “Let’s sit, shall we?”

“Your gown …”

Julia dabbed at it with the handkerchief when they had seated themselves. “See? No harm done. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong, Elizabeth?”

Closing her eyes, Elizabeth sighed and then said in a voice strained from weeping, “I don’t love Paul, Mrs. Hollis. I don’t know if I ever did.”

“I see.” The question had to be asked. “May I ask you, Elizabeth, how much this has to do with Mr. Raleigh?”

The girl nodded, as if she expected the inquiry. “I’ve asked myself that a hundred times. It’s likely that Jonathan’s arrival in Gresham caused me to think more about my relationship with Paul, but to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never compared the two of them. Or if I have, it has been to Paul’s favor because of his stability.”

How hard it is to be young
, Julia thought, taking up her hand. So many life-altering decisions had to be made by young men and women without the life experience to understand them fully. She herself had been no more competent to choose a marriage partner at the age of seventeen than she was to teach architecture.

“I know Paul is a good man,” Elizabeth went on, as if she feared Julia would argue. “But remember when you asked me if he was a friend? I told myself that he was. But would a friend constantly make you feel that your thoughts and opinions are inferior to his? I’ve been hoping marriage would change all of that, but what if it doesn’t?”

“Perhaps if you spoke with him about this?” Julia suggested. “Put off any talk of marriage for a while and give him an opportunity to decide if he is willing to change?” It was not that she felt Elizabeth should marry or
not
marry Mr. Treves. But surely she should explore all avenues before making any sort of monumental decision.

Elizabeth thought about this for several seconds but then shook her head. “I don’t want someone I have to try to change, Mrs. Hollis. If he doesn’t see the need to do so on his own, then he would be doing it just to keep me from leaving. And what if he slipped back into his old ways after we were married?”

“That’s something to consider.”

“The early days of our courtship were exciting,” she said miserably. “But I can see now that it was having a new, handsome beau to pay attention to me that made them seem that way. Our personalities are too different. Now all I feel for him is pity.”

“Pity?” Julia asked.

Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “Pity for the hurt I’ll cause him if I break off our courtship.”

Julia sighed too. “You’re positive about this, Elizabeth?”

“Very positive …
most
of the time,” she confessed. “It’s so frightening, the thought that I may be wrong. What if I look back years later and realize I’ve thrown away my only chance for happiness?”

“Your
only
chance?” Squeezing the girl’s hand, she said, “Do you think when God created you, He designed that your only chance for happiness would be wrapped up in one particular person?”

Again several seconds of thoughtful silence passed. “No, of course not,” she said presently, then leaned her head upon Julia’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you came. My thoughts seem much clearer when I can talk them over with you.”