Northwest Passages Page 24
“You have come, then,” she says in a low voice. “I thought you had forgotten.”
“I could not forget you, Constance Kent,” he replies, his own voice friendly, almost laughing, as if it is not past midnight, and they are not alone in her room, the house sleeping around them. “You are an extraordinary girl.”
Constance had met him a fortnight earlier, on the road to Beckington. Only one day home from school, and already she was seeking reasons to escape from the house, from the watchful eye of her stepmother, the prattling talk and silly games of her younger half-brother and -sisters. The road had been reduced to a muddy morass by the rain which looked set to continue all summer, and the hem of her dress had been caked with dirt, but she did not care. At least the weather had discouraged other travellers, and she was spared having to make conversation with any wayfarers. She thought longingly for a moment of the school in Beckington at which she had boarded for the last six months, so close to her home and family and yet as distant from that life as Sleeping Beauty in her briar-choked palace. Some of the other girls, she knew, thought it odd that she boarded when she lived so close, but her manner forbade enquiry, and she did not vouchsafe any information.
She rounded a bend, and was surprised and not a little displeased to see the figure of a man standing near a gate set into the hedge which bordered the road. He was not, as strangers often were, admiring the countryside around, lush and green, but was gazing in her direction as if in expectation of her arrival. Indeed, upon seeing her he called out “Miss Kent! The very girl I was hoping to see.”
Constance halted, conscious of the mud and damp of her skirts, the dishevelment of her dress. She felt momentarily discomfited, unnerved; an unusual feeling for her, and it lent her voice an even more challenging tone than usual when she replied, “And how, might I ask, do you know my name?”
“Ah, I know many of the folk hereabouts, and very well, too.”
“Have we met, sir? I do not call your face or name to mind.”
“No, we have not met, Miss Kent; but I certainly know of you. Your father and mother, too. A very fine couple, well suited to each other, if I may say so.”
Constance eyed him, her gaze direct. “My mother, sir, is dead. The—lady—to whom you refer is my stepmother.”
The man made a slight bow. “My apologies, Miss Kent. I was not as precise in my language as I should have been. Your stepmother, to be sure. Formerly your governess, was she not? A very enterprising young woman.”
“You seem to know a good deal about my family, sir. And you have the advantage of me: you know my name, but I do not know yours.”
Again the slight bow. Was it her imagination, or was there an air of faint mockery behind it? “My apologies again, Miss Kent. Your sudden appearance has made me entirely forget any good manners which I possess. You may call me Mr. Hobbes.”
Constance inclined her head slightly. “Mr. Hobbes. And now, if you will excuse me, I have business in the village.”
“An errand, Miss Kent? Surely, on a day such as this, these things might be better left to a servant. And so soon after the start of your holiday, an event which I am sure you were anticipating with great excitement. Indeed, I happened to overhear one of your school friends discussing the matter with you only last week, saying how pleasant it would be to go home for the holidays.”
“That was a private conversation, sir. How did you happen to overhear it? I do not recall seeing you.”
Mr. Hobbes smiled. “As I said, I know a great many people. I overhear a good deal.”
“Then you cannot have failed to overhear my reply to Emma, which was that it might be pleasant at her home, but that mine was different.”
“Ah yes. I had forgotten that.” Mr. Hobbes indicated the gate. “May I suggest this way instead? A shortcut, if you will. I, too, have business in that direction, and will accompany you, if you do not object. The countryside, for all its pleasant face, may harbour treachery and danger, and I would not care to see anything untoward happen to you.”
Constance hesitated for a moment. She did not know him, but he appeared to know her and her family, and seemed to be a gentleman: his dress and manners and mode of speech indicated as much. She glanced down the muddy ribbon of road, and then at the path, glinting green and wet on the other side of the gate. Her stepmother had told her to stay to the road and avoid getting her dress too dirty. Constance turned her level gaze back to Mr. Hobbes.
“Thank you,” she said. “I will take the path, if you will be so kind as to open the gate for me.”
They walked in silence for a time, Mr. Hobbes in front where the path was narrow, alerting her to pitfalls in her way. When the path widened enough to allow them to walk abreast, he slowed his pace until she drew level.
“Yes, I have known of your family for some time,” he said easily, returning to his earlier comments. “Quite a remarkable one, if I may say so. There are surely many households where the governess aspires to the position of mistress of the house, but few where she is able to achieve that station. Your father was fortunate indeed to find such an able and willing helpmeet within the bosom of his own family, as it were. Yet it must have been difficult for you, to see your governess replace your own mother, and become a parent to you. A transition smoothed, no doubt, by the fond feelings between you. Surely you recall those days when your mother was still alive, and yet you would sit for hours on end with your governess, listening as she described your mother as a ‘Certain Person’ or ‘That Woman’; those occasions when you were rude to your mother’s face and then repeated the words to your approving governess. What a pretty pair you must have made!”
Constance, after a first flush of anger, grew pale. She stopped on the pathway, and Mr. Hobbes turned to face her.
“It is true that at one time I took against my poor mother; behaviour for which I am now truly sorry. And as for her”—Constance fairly spat the word—“any fond feelings which I might once have felt for her have long since evaporated. She showed herself to be a false friend, winning my father with a smiling face and soothing words, while behind his back she sought out every opportunity to treat my sisters and brothers and me with cruelty and meanness.”
“Strong words, Miss Kent! I am certain that she had only your best interests at heart.”
“Our best interests? Insisting, when our brother Edward sent us two tropical birds, that they be kept away from us in a cold back room, where they died? Locking me in the attic, or in the beer cellar, because I could not master the printing of the letter H? Banishing me to my room for two days, with only dry bread and milk and water to eat and drink, because I failed to spell a word correctly? Indeed, she kept all of us like prisoners. William and I were forbidden from playing with the neighbouring children, even though we begged to be allowed to do so.”
“I am sure that she did not want you corrupted by outside influences.”
“These were children of our own class, not urchins from the slums of London, or common labourers’ children! What harm could have come from associating with them?”
Mr. Hobbes shrugged, and brushed a blade of grass from the cuff of his trousers. “I am sure that she had good reasons. You did defy her once, though, did you not?”
“Yes, William and I crept through the hedge when we heard the children playing one day. And do you know what she did when she found out? She tore up the little gardens that we had planted and cultivated ourselves! Was that not a harsh punishment for what was surely a minor transgression?”
“Perhaps. I have never been a parent myself, so cannot say what is and is not a fitting penalty. However, you certainly had any number of siblings to play with; could you not have been content within your family circle?”
Constance shook her head. “She was always trying to create discord between us,” she said, bitterness making her voice rough. “She drove my brother Edward away, and tried to cause me to turn against my older sisters. She told me once, when I came home from school for the sum
mer, that it was only through her agency that I had not been forced to stay there, because my older sisters did not want me at home: she said that they had called me a tiresome girl. When I taxed Elizabeth and Mary Ann with this they both denied making any such comment. And she is always praising her own children, and setting them above us. She and father make such a pet and a fuss over Saville, and William gets scarcely a word or glance. Often, at night, we visit each other’s rooms, and he tells me how upset he is at the treatment he receives.”
“Yes, you are both fortunate that you have rooms of your own, and do not need to share. On the top floor, so far removed from the business of the house. It must be very quiet.”
“And that is another thing!” cried Constance, the dull red flush back in her face. “We—the children of father’s first marriage—must sleep with the servants, while father and my stepmother and their children sleep on the first floor. Indeed, I believe my stepmother thinks me a servant. It is always ‘Constance, fetch this’ or ‘Constance, do that’; and if anything in the household goes wrong I am immediately blamed.”
“But my dear Miss Kent, you must admit that you can be somewhat provoking.”
“If I act in a provoking manner, sir, it is because I have been sorely provoked.”
“Is that why you and William ran away to Bath three years ago? That took considerable courage: you, a girl of thirteen, and your brother, a mere lad of eleven!”
Constance tossed her head back and looked straight at Mr. Hobbes. “I have never lacked resolve, sir.”
“That is quite obvious. There are not many thirteen-year-old girls who would disguise themselves as a boy—even going so far as to cut off their hair—in order to make the endeavour more likely to succeed. You hid the clothing, and disposed of your hair, in the disused closet in the shrubbery, did you not? A useful place for secreting something.”
The girl eyed him with some suspicion. Until this moment she had been carried away by the passion of her feelings, the sense of injustice, but only now did it occur to her to wonder precisely how Mr. Hobbes knew so much about her and her family. As if in answer to her unspoken question, her companion said in a cheerful tone, “I have had my eye on you for some time, Miss Kent; ever since the Bath incident, as a matter of fact. It brought you to my notice, and since then I have taken an interest in your affairs; from a distance, you might say. It seemed to me, however, that the time was ripe for me to make your acquaintance personally.” Mr. Hobbes glanced up at the sky. “Dear me, Miss Kent, it looks as if the rain will recommence at any moment. What a dreary Spring it has been, to be sure. Summer, however, looks a good deal more promising. I would suggest that you hurry along to the village, before you are soaked through.”
“Are you not continuing on to Beckington?” asked Constance, somewhat confused. “I had thought you had business there.”
“No, not in Beckington itself. My work takes me to many places. But I would like to speak with you again, if I may. I have enjoyed our conversation. It has been most illuminating.”
Constance gazed at the stranger. She could not imagine that her father or stepmother would approve of her meeting with a strange man, alone in the countryside; but she did not like to suggest that he come to their house. The thought of the questions she would be asked, the disapproving words and looks, the punishment which was sure to result, made her shake her head. Again, Mr. Hobbes seemed to read her thoughts, for he said in a light voice, “I do not propose that I pay a social call, Miss Kent. I would much prefer to speak with you tête à tête, as the French would say, without the formality of tea and cakes, or the interruptions of family and servants. I suggest that when you have occasion to walk to Beckington, you take this path instead of the road, and I am sure our ways will cross again. Good day to you.” And with a polite tip of his hat he turned and walked back the way they had come, leaving Constance on the wet and muddy path, her face a white mask of confusion and apprehension oddly mixed with pleasure.
She said nothing at home of her encounter with Mr. Hobbes, even to William, her one confidant in the family. She was scolded for the state into which she had got her dress, after which her stepmother sighed and added, “But I have come to expect this from you, Constance. If I ask you particularly not to do a thing, you deliberately go out of your way to do it. Perhaps, in future, I should ask you to take care to get your clothes as dirty as possible, and you will return with your dress spotless, to spite me.”
“What does it matter to you?” asked the girl, with a toss of her head. “It is Mrs. Holley who does the laundry, not you.”
“Impertinent girl! I should think I do not do laundry. The mistress of the house does not look after such matters like a common washerwoman. And in my condition”—again her hand went to her belly, in the gesture which Constance found so intimate, so repugnant—“it is not advisable that I do anything of a strenuous nature. You should have more respect for my state.”
“Yes, I should,” replied Constance, and her stepmother looked at her in some surprise. “After all,” the girl continued, “you have spent the better part of your marriage to my father in this state, as you call it, so we should all of us be used to it, at the very least.” And she turned and left the room before her indignant stepmother could formulate a reply.
Constance recounted this incident to Mr. Hobbes four days later, when she once again made the walk to Beckington. Mindful of his words, she had taken the path rather than the road, and had been surprised, but secretly pleased, to see him ahead of her. She hurried to catch him up, and as they walked she told him of what her stepmother had said. Mr. Hobbes shook his head as if in sympathy with her.
“Your stepmother does indeed seem abundantly blessed in this regard, Miss Kent. And your father, too: such a passion for life, one might say. Four children survived from the first marriage, and soon to be four from the second. Something of which a man might well be proud. As I said upon our first meeting, it was fortuitous indeed that he found such an admirable partner, and under his own roof, too.” Constance said nothing, and Mr. Hobbes glanced sideways at her. “Yet not, perhaps, so very fortuitous,” he added in his light, pleasant voice, for all the world as if he were discussing the weather, or the crops. “For, of course, your father had ample time and opportunity to assess your stepmother’s suitability for the role of the second Mrs. Kent, long before she was called on to assume it.”
Constance stopped. She had previously been looking at the ground beneath her feet, but now her gaze was fixed on her companion, her dark, deep-set eyes standing out even more than was normal in a face grown more pale than usual. Mr. Hobbes stopped too, and turned to face her.
“Of course, I am not telling you anything which you did not already know, or at least guess, an intelligent, observant girl like yourself.”
“Yes.” The word was spoken in such a low voice that it was almost inaudible. “Yes, you are correct. I knew . . . ”
“Certainly you knew, Miss Kent. How could you not? The evidence was there before your eyes.”
She swayed for a moment, but Mr. Hobbes was confident that she would not faint. He knew her far too well to suppose her capable of such behaviour, and had a good idea of what she was thinking. She would be going back, in her mind, over the events of the past; events which she had seen but the full import of which had not made themselves felt until this moment. She recalled her then governess taking fright during a thunderstorm and rushing to her father, who pulled her down onto his lap and made to kiss her before the governess half-whispered “Not in front of the child.” She thought of her bedroom in their last house, whose only entrance lay through the governess’s room, and of the door between the two chambers which was kept locked at night. She remembered her father being away from the house for several nights, and the governess begging Constance to share her bed, “Because I am lonely.” At the thought of whose place she had taken, while her mother lay a few feet away, she cried aloud, a strangled sound of disgust mingled with anguish.
“You see, Miss Kent? You knew the truth all along; you simply did not realise its full import until now. I must make allowance for the fact that you are still a child in many ways.”
“I am not a child, I am not!” she cried out, hands clenched in anger, eyes blazing, her face suffused with a dull, ugly red. “Do not call me that!”
“You sound like a child when you speak thus,” Mr. Hobbes said, his voice sharp. “If you wish to be thought of as an adult, you must speak and act as one.”
“I want to be an adult,” she said in a low voice. “I have wanted it since I can remember.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I used to pray to be good, and could not be, and decided that I would be good when I was a grown-up, because grown-ups never do bad things.”
“Ah, but they do, Miss Kent. Grown-ups do bad things as a matter of course, because they can. Who is there to send a grown-up to her room when she is bad, or deprive her of food, or tear up her garden? Grown-ups do bad things because they have little fear, if they are at all clever, of being punished for them.”
“Like father and my stepmother?” She continued without stopping, the words tumbling over themselves. “They were bad, weren’t they, when my poor mother was alive, convincing those around us that she was a madwoman, slighting her, laughing at her, and all the time they were . . . they were”—she hardly knew how to phrase it—“acting the part of husband and wife, and then as soon as my mother was dead they married, and they have not been punished at all; at all! Instead we are being punished, William and Mary Ann and Elizabeth and I, treated as little better than servants, kept like prisoners in the house—Mary Ann and Elizabeth are not even allowed suitors!—while she goes on having children who take our places, who are loved as we are not, set above us, his first family. Saville is not yet four, but father tells William that this toddling child will be a better man than he ever will, and makes William push him in his pram, while I am expected to read him stories and dandle him on my knee and coo and fuss over him, until I want to . . . ”