Clarissa and the Poor Relations (6 page)

Lady Staines was determined, after the insouciance of this announcement by Mr Booth, to meet Miss Thorne who must, she felt, be at the bottom of his desire to stay in Hertfordshire.

She arrived at the door to be given the same message as her son at the hands of the stately Sullivan. However, his mother was made of sterner stuff.

‘Of course, it is too early to intrude. Give her my regards and say I will call again.’  She turned away with a faint smile, then turned back just as Sullivan had begun to shut the door. ‘I feel a little faint in the heat of this spring day. So silly of me. Might I have a glass of water?’ She put her delicate hand to her brow affectingly.

Sullivan bowed low and ushered her into the hall. He appreciated that he had met a match in the frail lady. ‘Please take a seat in the library and I shall have someone attend you madam.’

Soon Lady Staines was joined in the library by a fluttering lady of middle age wearing a dove coloured silk dress and a lace cap decorated with a bewildering number of dove satin ribbons and carrying in a glass of water.

‘My dear ma’am, so sorry to find you unwell, pray drinks this,’ said the lady and set about in a rather distracted way to plump some cushions and set the table nearer to Lady Staines elbow.

‘Miss
Thorne
?’ she uttered

The lady laughed, ‘Oh, dear me no. I’m Miss Appleby, one of Miss Thorne’s companions.’ Then she looked distracted.

‘
One
of her companions? She has more than one?’ said Lady Staines, quite forgetting to sip her water.

‘Three.’ uttered Miss Appleby in fatalistic accents. ‘That is to say two, I suppose, for Oriana is a friend bearing her company whilst Miss Micklethwaite and I are…Goodness, what am I saying? You are ill; you do not want to be hearing my ravings…’

Lady Staines remembered her illness with a jolt, though she did indeed want to listen to Miss Appleby. Her instinct for gossip was infallible.

Meanwhile Miss Micklethwaite was intercepted on her way to the sitting room by Sullivan, who informed her that Lady Staines of Staines Manor was in the library.

‘With Miss Appleby, Miss.’ he added, significantly.

Miss Micklethwaite took it in at once. ‘Good Lord. What might not she say.’ She hurried towards the library.

‘Lady Staines, I am sorry to hear you are indisposed.’ She said, ‘I trust Louisa is taking good care of you.’

‘Augusta, dear. Let me introduce you to Lady Staines. Your ladyship - Miss Augusta Micklethwaite.’  Miss Appleby was relieved for she vaguely felt that she had not quite explained herself properly.

Lady Staines held out her hand to Miss Micklethwaite, ‘
Another
of Miss Thorne’s companions, I presume?’

Miss Micklethwaite took up her seat with stolid serenity.

‘Yes, indeed, Lady Staines. You find us a house full of women here. Miss Petersham bears Miss Thorne company. These young girls all have their particular friends, do they not? Miss Appleby here was the dearest friend of Mrs Thorne before she passed away and now stands somewhat in the nature of a mother to the young lady. I myself have been companion and teacher since she was a child and she could not bear to part with me, though she is too old for a governess now.’

Miss Appleby was amazed at Augusta’s masterful summation: surrogate mother, governess and best friend, what could be more natural? It was moreover, nearly the truth.

‘Miss Thorne is very fortunate in her friends, I’m sure.’ said her Ladyship graciously, ‘I’m so sorry to intrude, but I fear at my time of life, these attacks overcome one.’

The ladies disclaimed and offered her tea, which she accepted. Although they all enjoyed a chat, there were no more unguarded words. Miss Micklethwaite was a bit of a mystery. Just a touch less genteel than any governess she had encountered, she was nevertheless a woman of sense. Her manner to Lady Staines was respectful but untouched by any servility. Her more genteel companion showed more irritating attentions to her comfort but was clearly a lady. Though she lingered over tea, she had almost given up on her quarry, when suddenly Clarissa entered the room crying, ‘We have a tenant for the Dower House.’

She broke off at the sight of Lady Staines and said all that was civil upon her introduction. She was wearing her new velvet riding dress (delivered that very day from the French emigrée dressmaker in Ashcroft village, who had cut it from her mother’s opera cloak) with mannish epaulets and a rakish hat adorned with black gauze. She looked every bit a lady and she had a becoming flush upon her face and sparkle in her eye.

As Clarissa minded her manners, Lady Staines shook her hand apologized again for intruding and left the house satisfied.

‘If you want that land, Frederick, you would do well to marry the owner.’ she recommended her son later that evening. ‘It will cost you a great deal less and she is a very pretty girl.’

Whilst deprecating his mother’s lack of delicacy in her remark, it gave Lord Staines food for thought. He was a very wealthy young man, owing to some fortunate investments of his father’s, and did not seek to marry for any but social advancement. He already had an impoverished Earl’s daughter in his eye, if he could just get over her rather unfortunate complexion. Miss Thorne’s father may be no-one, but she
was
the granddaughter of a Viscount and if she were passable…It was with more patience that he awaited the allotted time to visit his new neighbour.

Mrs Cornelia Thorne, meanwhile, was shrieking at her husband about his decision to set off for Ashcroft.

‘Oh, John, you cannot. It would delay my visit to Bath and I have so longed for the diversion.’

John was holding Staines letter aloft, ‘But, my dear, think. Clarissa is meaning to stay at Ashcroft. I can no longer place any dependence on her coming here. One would have thought that she would have given up this foolish start but she is setting the neighbourhood in a turmoil. I must go and order her home to us.’

‘You may just as well tell her to come by letter. But it is not convenient for her to come for at least another month. I get so few chances to go to assemblies these days. Why, I have not had occasion to wear my new lilac silk since I bought it three months ago. It would be very well for Clarissa to stay at home and look after the children next year, but this year she would be sure to want to go Bath with us.’ She saw that John was looking doubtful and she made haste to pet him, ‘You are such a good brother, John. In a month, when we are returned to Bath, Clarissa will be more willing to see sense and follow your wise guidance.’

John returned his wife’s caress and reluctantly agreed. ‘But my dear one ... Assemblies! I thought we meant to keep to private parties since the death of my stepmother. The mourning period is not quite over. It is not seemly.’

Cornelia pouted, ‘Nonsense, John. It is not as though she were your mamma. I shall wear black gloves, of course, but we cannot still be in mourning for one who is not even blood relation. It is six months.’

Mr Thorne salved his conscience with her argument and with the reflection that his stepmother was not well known in Bath and they might thus be spared the opprobrium of the sticklers of etiquette who resided there.  He sat down to write a measured letter to his sister, adjuring to come home to her brother and her fond sister-in-law and to give up her ridiculous attempt to set up her household with little money on a derelict estate. Her behaviour had already made her ridiculous to the district at large, as he had only today been informed by post. (That it had also rendered him ridiculous, he did not dwell upon.) He would be absent from home for a month and after that time he would come to bring her to her new home. He would be accompanied by his lawyer with some papers to sign that would obviate the need for her to worry her head any longer with the millstone of her inheritance.

This letter had the effect of freezing Clarissa when it was delivered at breakfast that morning. She had been looking at her best again, with her hair dressed by the talented Becky and wearing a black muslin gown cut low at the bosom and kept decent by a gauze kerchief tucked into the bodice. Miss Micklethwaite’s face rarely lost its grim expression but she was well satisfied with the bloom that a busy and useful life had put onto Clarissa’s face and was now shocked to see her face turn pale as she clutched her letter.

Miss Appleby noticed too and flustered, ‘My dear girl, whatever is the matter?’

Clarissa looked distracted and upon Miss Micklethwaite’s blunt interjection, ‘That brother of yours.’ she merely held out the letter for her to read. This Miss Micklethwaite did with deliberation, a darker than ever look upon her face. She grasped Clarissa’s hand firmly; ‘A month is a long time, my dear. Look what we have already achieved.’

Clarissa searched her face for reassurance, but her heart was heavy. These last days when all the ladies worked and laughed together, the plans they had still to realize had become as dear to her as anything she had ever known. It had salved the grief of her parents’ death and she was moreover sure that they would be proud of her. Her mother, influenced by the words of Mary Wollstonecraft, had seen women’s independence as a right and had despised the selling of women into the career of marriage even where there was no equality of intelligence or values.

Somewhere, though, Clarissa had been expecting this. Women’s freedom was not always won even by money. It could all be taken away, even now.

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Appleby, despairingly, as she read the letter, ‘We are undone. If only you had a husband to protect you, my dear girl.’

‘Louisa.’ rebuked Miss Micklethwaite. But it was too late; Clarissa had run from the room.

Augusta Micklethwaite was a strong woman but she did not underestimate how weak that was when faced by the power of the male establishment. She had previously had employment in a school run by a deserted wife, in order to support her family which had nevertheless had to close when the husband had insisted that it was an insult to him as a gentleman. That his destitute family was not a worse insult was something that Augusta could not understand or forgive. She still sent her late mistress what money she could spare.

Now, she thought that little as she liked to ask for his help, she needed her brother’s advice for Clarissa. He was a fair man and what help he could render he would. Had it not been for his foolish marriage to the merchant’s petted daughter, Augusta might have accepted his offer of a home before now. As it was, Augusta’s tongue and Clara’s false airs did not mix. She wrote to her brother, but she was not hopeful. As her male next of kin, John might claim guardianship of his sister and then he could do as he chose. Clarissa’s age was against her.

All of this she confided to Oriana as she awaited Clarissa in the green room after breakfast. Oriana was wearing her navy velvet riding habit whose severe lines she had chosen for their plainness. Her hair was simply looped as usual and her mannish hat was adorned only with a muslin veil, which could be drawn across her face to shield her from insects. Her attempts to disguise her charms were wasted. The high-necked velvet robe was a beautiful frame for her face and figure. Augusta was quite as concerned for her as for Clarissa. She was a creature made for passionate love, but one who might yet be sold in marriage to an inferior man or live a life of drudgery to avoid the unwanted attention she must forever excite. Yet where could there be an equal to this fabulous creature?  Only a man with intelligence and passion to match her own. Miss Micklethwaite thought poorly of the male sex and could not think of a specimen of it that would be equal to the task.

Oriana was saying, ‘Poor Clarissa. I was hoping that her sister-in-law’s jealous humours might be enough to stop Mr Thorne pursuing her. We’ve all been living in a fool’s paradise. Just when we have the new income from the Dower House tenant. Three times the rent we were expecting, Mr Elfoy told me. Do you know who took it? Clarissa did not tell me.’

‘No, indeed, my dear. I fear Lady Staines’ visit discommoded her. Perhaps my brother can help. If we can at least delay, perhaps some worthy gentlemen might come along who supports her object here,’ said Miss Micklethwaite.

Oriana laughed ironically, ‘Waity, not you adjuring a good marriage as well as Appleby and the rest of the world.’

‘I work with the world as it is, my dear. I do not believe marriage to be the only rational pursuit for a woman, yet I do not despise the love and family life that a
good
marriage gives a woman. Elfoy is a fine young man with an obvious attraction for Clarissa, if he but had the connections to protect her - but it is not to be thought of.’

‘No indeed it would be just such a connection that her brother must fear and may even use his power to break…’

Sullivan announcing Mr Elfoy, coming as usual to ride with the ladies and look at the progress of their plans interrupted her.

He bowed over Miss Micklethwaite’s hand and then turned to Oriana, ‘Work has begun on draining the top field and I thought we might begin there today. It was a very good notion of yours, Miss Petersham. My attention was taken too much by the tenant’s troubles to notice the possibility. Muggins has organized the other farmers into a work party. He is a splendid fellow. I do not know where he gets his energy from.’