With Love from Bliss Page 4

  Below stairs, in his dark-paneled, comfortable “study,” Sebastian Maxwell turned reluctantly from his desk and the spread of blueprints and papers, removed the much-chewed cheroot stub from his mouth, pulled his vest down over his generous paunch, and prepared to go upstairs to meet his wife. Apt to cushion himself away from the toils of everyday life in the great house, he presumed that, by now, Charlotte would be settling herself for a night’s rest, all reference to mundane matters of the house wisely put aside lest it be upsetting to the head of the home who, above all, relished his quiet and privacy. And just now he had the burden of obtaining property for a summer place, as so many of his contemporaries were doing.

  The cost of land for the erection of summer residences had rocketed. Lake Simcoe and Muskoka Lakes were choice areas, and Sebastian felt a glow of satisfaction in having obtained one of the last available sites. Land that had gone for fifty cents an acre could now command over eleven dollars. Cottage life was quickly becoming anything but rustic as the competition to excel spread from society home to society home. Magnificent gingerbreaded palaces were built, some of them with room for as many as fifty guests. To be invited to such a “cottage” was a high honor; to be able to issue such an invitation even more honorable.

  Thank goodness, Sebastian thought fleetingly as he laid aside the plans for his new summer residence. Lotte, as he fondly called his wife, with her naturally supercilious nose and stern-featured face, created an aura of respectability and position that was not always meant nor deserved, but that served Sebastian’s purpose: Never, never give the slightest hint of being in any way socially inferior to the Kirkpatricks.

  Lady Kirkpatrick, wife of Ontario’s lieutenant governor, was the haughtiest of the haughty in Toronto society. She had chosen Wednesday as her day for an “at home,” leaving the remaining times available for the anxious ladies of the city as they strove to avoid the social insult of being called “provincial”—one who didn’t know the rules of proper etiquette. Pity the man who laughed too loudly, used slang, or failed to stand slightly to one side or behind his chair, never in front, or in other ways showed ignorance of good and acceptable manners—he was labeled a boor. Good manners mattered intensely. Naturally the best-selling book of the day was Emily Holt’s Encyclopaedia of Etiquette: What to Write, What to Wear, What to Do, What to Say, A Book of Manners for Everyday Use.

  Beatrice Fairfax and Dorothy Dix had columns in the daily newspapers doling out advice to the uninformed: When a woman rises to leave, every man in the room gets to his feet. When calling, a woman does not remove her gloves or wraps; she shakes hands with her hostess, accepts a cup of tea (one only, never more), and does it all without removing her gloves. To do otherwise was to prove oneself gauche, lacking in good breeding, ill-mannered and unfit for genteel circles.

  Many a “comer”—that is, one working diligently at being accepted—burned with shame as she pored over the columns and realized that she had been wearing gloves of the improper length to tea or that she had overstayed by five minutes the acceptable half hour allowed for the formal call! Such humiliation.

  Sebastian Maxwell, “to the manner (and manor) born” in Scotland, schooled and taught and trained until the proper thing to do was part and parcel of his very being, was correctly suave and polished in all ways. His wife, coming from an excellent though impoverished Scottish family, was a model of propriety. Though no beauty even when young, there had been a glow of health and vigor about her that was attractive. And she had the good breeding necessary for a Maxwell.

  Entering his wife’s room, finding her sitting at her dressing table brushing her hair and preparing to braid it for the night, Sebastian moved ponderously across the room and stood behind her. Putting his sausage-fingered hands on her shoulders, he bent and kissed her cheek.

  “Home safe and sound, I see. Get the child?” Sebastian spoke in small bursts, whether from preference or because physical effort shortened his breath and reddened his apple-like cheeks. To say more when less would do, to Sebastian, seemed totally unnecessary.

  Though his wife knew his aversion to scenes or undue emotion of any sort, her eyes raised, met his in the mirror and, with rare passion she burst forth with, “Child? However Avery raised his daughter, it hasn’t prepared her for a life other than that of a preacher of the gospel! The child is a fountain of admonitions, dire warnings, and predictions. It will take a firm hand and an iron will to make a silk purse out of this . . . sow’s ear!”

  Knowing her as he did, studying her in the mirror, noting her face with its heightened color, the sparkle in her rather colorless eyes, and the small touch of energy and even renewed youth about her, Sebastian said, “You do love a challenge, my dear. Are you sure this one isn’t more than you want to tackle?” Unspoken, but delicately hinted at, was her age (and his), and the threat to the peace and quiet of the home; Sebastian felt a small frisson of disquiet in his spirit. But Charlotte, usually sensitive to his moods, flung her braid over her shoulder, squared her shoulders, leaned forward, looked herself in the eye, and said, “I believe I’m up to it!”

  Morning came, as mornings always do, and with it and her awakening, Kerry’s peace and contentment of the previous night were replaced by anxiety. Surely this present happiness would vanish away, and she would find herself back with the nuns, uncertain and afraid. Or back in Mrs. Peabody’s rooming house with Papa snoring across the room, sleeping off a night’s carousing—long hours during which she, Kerry, had nothing to do but peruse the Bible or the outdated catalog once again. A familiar pattern; not one she longed to return to. It was the familiarity she clung to, the stability of something known, something of her own. Though it might be marked with a certain misery, it was misery accustomed to and thus her own. And miserable she had been, and lonely, with an unchallenged mind that craved learning and knowledge and an empty heart that cried for affection and attention.

  Once, alone and desperate for something to do, she had cut paper dolls from the catalog—a father and mother and baby. Garments for them were cut from the clothing pages, with little tabs to hang them upon the shoulders of the figures. When that was done, she cut furniture for the dolls’ home, furnishing it room by room with selections from the big book. Thereafter, she played “house.” This game kept her entertained through many a lonely day and long evening. When not playing with the cutouts, the pieces were carefully gathered up and saved between the catalog’s pages, to be lifted out and brought to life again and again. One cold day, to start a fire, her father had carelessly wrenched a handful of paper from the catalog, held a match to it, and tossed it into the fireplace. Kerry, suddenly sick and stricken dumb, had watched the little play family curl and catch fire and burn away to ashes. Her own father’s funeral, not long afterwards, was not cause for any more anguish than the moment her paper friends were taken from her.

  That day and many others, alone, and with the fire dying down and the room too cold for comfort, Kerry pulled a quilt around her, sat on the window ledge in the only light there was, and entertained herself as best she could—by reading. And reading the Bible, one of the only two items available, the other being the desecrated catalog.

  The Psalms were favorites, and she turned to them. Rather than finding comfort from the beautiful, singing words such as “Keep me as the apple of the eye; hide me under the shadow of thy wings” and other passages equally promising, she brooded over, “My bones are vexed, my soul is also sore vexed,” and, “I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.” And she did; far too often, she did.

  Coming awake in a downy, comfortable bed in a graciously appointed room in Maxwell Manor, an ordinary child would have looked around and exclaimed, “Oh, how pretty, how nice!” One would hope that Kerry, with her Scripture-saturated mind, would find her heart overflowing with something like, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.” But Kerry’s reaction—perhaps a natural one in
view of the disappointments she had experienced all her life—was cautious: “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust,” came to mind. This was followed after a long moment by a hesitant “Alleluia.”

  It was this alleluia Gladdy, the maid, heard when she entered the room, a congregation of one for Kerry’s faint praise. It’s hard to say who was the most startled—the praiser or the congregation. Seeing the maid for the first time, Kerry clutched the blankets around her, raising her head from the pillow and staring at the apparition that was Gladys McBean.

  Gladdy was a broomstick of a girl with unmanageable hair of a strawberry color, impressive in its wildness. This mop of hair stood out from her head like an explosion of last year’s straw stack, making her head appear to be as wide as her narrow shoulders. She was properly uniformed, however, and this allayed somewhat Kerry’s sudden spurt of anxiety.

  “Was yer prayin’?” Gladdy questioned, stepping to the side of the bed. “Or singin’, maybe?”

  Kerry’s imagination was immediately captured; young as she was, she recognized in Gladdy one of a kind; her kind.

  With her eyebrows almost disappearing into her hair, her hands red and rough, her face untroubled by the worries of the world, Gladdy (her nickname suited her disposition) was unlike anyone Kerry had ever met. Granted, her circle of acquaintances was limited; but anyone with a lick of discernment would see the little maid as a person in her own right. Though Gladdy was learning the rules and would usually adhere to them, one never knew just when she would burst asunder the bands of decorum and be herself.

  Just now she was apparently uncertain how to handle this particular situation; never before had she welcomed a stranger to the household by standing at the bedside. In all things, she strove to do what Mrs. Finch, her mentor, would do. In Gladdy’s opinion Mrs. Finch was a fount of knowledge, the final authority, and to be emulated closely. But this was one situation that hadn’t been covered in Mrs. Finch’s training sessions; she had simply directed Gladdy to “the new missy’s room” to awaken her, prepare her for a bath and breakfast, and hurry about it. Gladdy was, quite literally, aquiver with the magnitude of her obligation. But first off, she had faced this surprising comment and was caught untrained for it and unprepared.

  “I was just saying alleluia.” Kerry answered Gladdy’s spontaneous question defensively, as if ejaculations of praise were common occurrences and beyond notice.

  “Hallelujah,” Gladdy repeated, savoring the word. “I never heard anybody say it before. That’s why—”

  It was all Kerry needed. Sitting up abruptly, drawing up her knees and clasping them in her arms, she said earnestly, “Not hal-le-lu-jah—alleluia. King James says alleluia. But,” she added kindly, noting the confusion on the face of the little maid, “I think it means the same thing.”

  “King James?” Gladdy repeated, that being the part of Kerry’s explanation she understood best. “We haven’t got a King James,” she said scornfully, for once superior to somebody in her knowledge. “We’ve got a queen—Queen Victoria. God bless the queen!” she finished, as Mrs. Finch herself might have.

  “God bless the queen,” Kerry responded properly and automatically, adding, “Well, I know, silly. But she didn’t write the Bible, did she?”

  Gladdy was nonplussed, and her quick defense of the good queen stuck in her throat. “She could of,” she said feebly, “if she wanted to. She can do anyfing she wants to. You can, when you’re queen, you know. Anyway, why was you sayin’ alleluia, all alone, and early in the morning like this, not even in church?”

  It didn’t make sense to Gladdy. And Gladdy, unlike the “new missy,” was not given to flights of fancy; nothing in her neglected life had encouraged it.

  “It’s a shout of praise,” Kerry explained.

  “Well, yours was more of a whisper. So, did somefing good happen? Or was you just practicing—in hopes of somefing good happening?” Hope, Gladdy could understand, being of an unquenchably optimistic nature. It didn’t take much for Gladdy to skip and rejoice, in her own way. She was, after all, not much older than the new missy and was no stranger to deprivation, disappointment, even abuse. Gladdy McBean was a survivor.

  Not knowing whether this strange girl resembled the despised Cordelia and would hear her confidences and make fun of them, Kerry grew stubborn about revealing the feelings that had prompted her experiment with praise. As usual, when backed into a corner or when uncomfortable or when words simply failed her, Kerry resorted to Scripture, though, if she were questioned about it, oftentimes she didn’t half understand what she was quoting.

  Quoting Scripture, Kerry had found, usually resulted in setting the opponent at a disadvantage, perhaps giving Kerry an opportunity to gather her wits about her. Sometimes, she had noted, it tended to infuriate the other party. Once, taking Miss Perley’s combs back to her, which she had somehow left in the Ferne room, Kerry had looked around at the clothes scattered everywhere, the bed unmade, the soiled dishes on the table, and said, innocently enough, “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean.” Miss Perley’s ordinary treatment of Kerry—at least in the presence of her father—was fawning and petting, but in this instance she had flushed an ugly red, snatched up her combs, and said, “You’re too lippy by far, Miss Smarty!”

  Now again, Scripture came readily to Kerry’s defense: “A prudent man concealeth knowledge,” she quoted primly, thus confusing Gladdy more than ever.

  “Man? What man?” the little maid asked, momentarily forgetting the bath preparations Mrs. Finch had instructed her to make.

  Kerry sighed, sorry she’d brought it up. “It says man, but it means women, too, see?”

  Gladdy moved across the room to the windows, gave the drapes a yank, and said saucily, suddenly quite sure she had nothing to fear from this newcomer, “No, I don’t see. And now maybe you can see a little better. It’s a sunny day out there, see?”

  Kerry slid her legs from under the covers, stretched to reach the floor, and stood up. Her attention was drawn first to the dainty nightgown that fell around her ankles in soft luxury, unlike anything she had seen, and certainly like nothing she had worn.

  “Who put me to bed?” she asked, half-memories coming to mind.

  “Mrs. Finch, I guess,” Gladdy answered. “Now if you’ll just take it orf, we’ll give you the baff you shoulda had last night. I’m Gladys, but I’m called Gladdy, and I’m Mrs. Finch’s helper.” Associating herself with the all-powerful Mrs. Finch seemed more important, somehow, than maid. “Now then, here comes the baffwater—”

  Mrs. Finch’s helper turned importantly to the door and ushered in an elderly man. His hair was thinning on top of his head, he was long and thin of body and had a sharp, red nose that twitched from time to time—he was Finch, butler, valet, runner of the household, and now bearer of a container of hot water. He was followed by a nondescript man of indeterminate age, of lackluster color and appearance—Biddle, gardener, handyman, and just now bearer of a zinc tub.

  At their appearance Kerry had quickly pulled the corner of the bedding around her nightgown-sheathed form, but the two men seemed not to see her. The tub was set in front of the fireplace, the water poured into it, and Biddle and Finch departed with never a word spoken. But the twitch of Finch’s nose seemed to indicate the guest’s inferiority.

  “All right, orf wiff it,” Gladdy commanded, and, when Kerry hesitated, “Take it orf so’s you can baff.”

  Gladdy was lately come from the slums of London, gathered up in a sweep that culled the streets for likely candidates for positions in the new world. Some would become wives for bachelors advertising for them; others, like Gladdy, too odd to catch even the most lonely settler’s eye, to go into service. It had seemed an excellent opportunity to the street urchin and to the parents who were overburdened and overwhelmed with a large family of children usually left to their own devices, roaming at will, picking up a few cents when possible, and keeping from underfoot at the same time.

  Though reluctant, Kerry obe
yed, having been “baffed” from time to time by Mrs. Peabody or Miss Perley. But never before had her surroundings been so pleasant, never had the soap been so fragrant nor the room so cozily warm. The towel had always been thin and harsh; the clothes held out to her had always been her own faded, outgrown garments, sometimes the very ones she had removed.

  “I’ll have you know,” Gladdy was saying proudly, “that this house has a baffroom just for baffing. Missus Maxwell thought you’d ravver have one in your own room this time. Snuglike, in front of the fire.” Just when the fire in the fireplace had been lit and fed, the sleeping Kerry had not known. But it was warm, and it was inviting, and Kerry submitted happily enough.

  Ablutions over, she was bundled into a luxurious towel while Gladdy struggled to brush her dark curls, curls that had never known proper cutting and that now, encouraged by the soft water, good sudsing, and sufficient rinsing, curled riotously around her face, over her shoulders, and down her back.

  “Coo,” Gladdy said admiringly, “it’s pretty. But,” she added quickly, “it needs cuttin’ orfly bad. Didn’t no one never give yer a hair cut?”

  What made Gladdy an expert on hair care was questionable, seeing as how her own wild and frizzy mop totally defied control.

  The clothes Gladdy offered were secondhand, being outgrown by “Miss Frances” according to the maid, whose voice softened as she spoke of the other young person under the Maxwell roof.

  “Well, where is she? Tell me about her!” Kerry demanded, eager yet hesitant to meet the girl mentioned first by her aunt, now by the maid, and always with a certain tenderness. Her experience with friendships had not been encouraging, but in spite of that, she was finding herself excited at the prospect. To date her new acquaintances had been limited to her aunt, a fat, barely remembered someone undressing her, and this wild-haired creature who was giving her a “baff” and remarking on her uncut tresses.