Delsie

Chapter Three

DeVigne had no alternative but to press on with his half of the bargain. At three o’clock he had his crested carriage harnessed up, two liveried footmen standing behind to lend him consequence, his new blue superfine jacket on his shoulders, and a wary expression on his face. His timing was perfect. Out of the door of the schoolhouse erupted a stream of screaming students just as he drew up. Every one of them had to come and admire his carriage and horses before dashing off home to tell the parents deVigne was at the school.

It was Mr. Umpton who first saw him and ran out to make him welcome, but within three minutes he was in Miss Sommers’s room, sitting atop a student’s desk with his curled beaver in his hands and feeling more foolish than he had ever felt in his life, to put his preposterous scheme to this dignified gray-eyed woman who was looking at him in astonishment, and not friendly astonishment either. She appeared hostile, and he scarcely knew where to begin.

“How do you like teaching here?” he asked, to play for time.

“Fine. I like it very much,” she answered calmly, wondering why he had come, and fearing Umpton had at last arranged to be rid of her. She had had words with Umpton only recently about her seeing some of his students after school. Lord deVigne was going to fire her!

“That’s nice,” he said, though it was not what he had hoped to hear. If she liked it, she would not be eager to leave. “Still, it must be a difficult life for a young lady.” He didn’t hesitate, even mentally, over the word lady. He had been pleasantly surprised to see that Miss Sommers was just that. Well-spoken, dignified, even pretty, with an elegance unrelated to her toilette but inherent in her bearing.

“The hours are long and work demanding, but I enjoy it. Why is it you have come to see me?” she asked immediately, when he had planned to broach the matter by degrees. Her eyes took in every detail of his splendor. A coat that seemed poured on his back, so well did it fit. An immaculate and intricate tie, above which his well-shaped head sat at a proud angle. Dark eyes, an aquiline nose, a lean face, with a touch of arrogance that was caused more by the arrangement of features than by his expression. Through the window she saw the impressive carriage, the footmen, and wondered at all this display, only to fire her.

“It is a family matter,” he told her, after clearing his throat. “My brother-in-law, Mr. Grayshott…” He noticed her face took on a wary look at the name. “You are acquainted with him, I believe?” His dark brows rose in a question.

She realized this was not mere chitchat. The visit had to do with Mr. Grayshott. “I know him very slightly,” she allowed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have met him twice, very briefly.”

“But I understood-I thought you were better acquainted than that!”

“No, I was only speaking to him twice in my life.”

“I see.” He came to a standstill. The eyebrows settled down, and he blinked twice in surprise. She hardly knew Andrew, and here he thought there had been some romance between them. His proposition was clearly ineligible. A fool’s errand, “I understood there was more to your relationship than that. I thought he had offered for you.”

“He did. Twice.”

DeVigne stared hard at her, out of penetrating, dark eyes. “He met you twice, and twice offered marriage to you? To a virtual stranger, in fact?”

“Yes, it was very strange,” she agreed. “The first time ever I met him, he asked me to marry him. He was-he had been drinking, I believe, which would account for it.”

“Very likely,” he murmured, rapidly considering what to say next.

“What about Mr. Grayshott? Has your coming something to do with him?” she pressed on.

He was favorably impressed with her and, though he was pretty sure she would not accept the plan, he decided to put it forward, having come this far. Indeed, he could think of no other way of extricating himself from the classroom. “He is not well, you know,” he said.

“I haven’t seen him about the village for some months now.”

“No, he is ill. Very ill.”

“I am sorry to hear it.”

“Dying, in fact,”

“Ah, that is too bad. It will leave his daughter an orphan.” That’s why he is come, she thought, her spirits lifting. I am at last to be offered the post of her governess, and I shall accept this time, if Grayshott is indeed dying.

“Yes, the reason I am come has to do with his daughter, Roberta.” She smiled a little in anticipation. “She will be left under the guardianship of her uncle, Clancy Grayshott, when her father dies. It is not what we wish for her.”

“Would you not be a more proper guardian, milord, being also an uncle?”

“I think I would, but there is some-disagreement between Grayshott and myself. We have not got along for years, since his wife’s death. A family matter. So Roberta will leave the area and go to Clancy Grayshott, which the family is anxious to prevent.”

“In what way can I be of help? I don’t see what all this has to do with me.”

As she was always rushing him on to the facts, he decided to blurt it out, and have it over with. “You could marry Andrew Grayshott. He still wants to marry you. If you did so, you, as her stepmother, would be appointed guardian. You would not be left alone in charge of her. I-the family-would give you every help. We would be most eager to help you in every way. You would live at the Cottage-you know, I expect, where Grayshott lives?”

“Yes. Oh, yes, a charming place. But I must tell you before you say any more, milord, that I am not at all in favor of this plan. Twice I have refused Mr. Grayshott in person, and I am not at all interested in marrying him.”

“He is very ill, dying.”

“Yes, but he’s not dead yet, and who is to say he won’t recuperate?” she asked frankly.

The possibility of this could not be totally ignored. He was rapidly drinking himself to his grave, but if he did actually engage in the life of sobriety he had mentioned to Jane, he might pull through. “I cannot guarantee his death,” deVigne admitted.

“I didn’t mean that! Indeed, I hope he does not die at all, but I cannot marry him.”

“He likes you very much. Loves you, he says.” This was a mistake. She drew back involuntarily, and he diluted the claim of passion as much as he could. “He is impressionable. When he cares for someone, he is eager to please her. He made my sister Louise a good husband; his drinking did not set in till after her death. If you married him, he might very well settle down and make you a good husband.”

“No, he would not be a good husband for me. I dislike him intensely.”

“Only think of the advantages. You would be freed from this life you lead. You say you enjoy the work, but you must confess it is hard on you, working every day from dawn till dark, with very little pay, and living in straitened circumstances. As Grayshott’s wife you would live a life of ease, in a fine home that you could soon set to rights. You would be a respected member of society, with a carriage of your own, good company to visit, a completely different life from what you have now.”

She brushed all this aside immediately and firmly. “The perquisites of the position are clear to me, clearer than they could possibly be to you who are not really aware of the alternative, but I do not wish to marry Mr. Grayshott. My present life is not that distasteful to me. If it were a job you were offering, your niece’s governess I had thought, then I would happily accept. I cannot enter into marriage with a man I actively dislike, do not respect at all. My past dealings with him were of a sort to make me very decided in this matter.”

“The marriage would be only a formality, in his condition. The doctor feels he-”

“Yes, we have been through that, but still, he might live for years, and I do not wish to marry him.”

“We had planned to make a settlement on you.”

Her back stiffened at this. “Thank you very much, milord, but I am not for sale,” she said, and arose from her seat to accompany Lord deVigne to the door. Perforce, he too arose and walked reluctantly behind her. It irked him to be the receiver of the last word instead of the giver. He was not accustomed to being balked, but in this affair he had not much hoped for success. He could have accepted failure if it had been more kindly worded, or more meekly.

“If you change your mind…” he said at the doorway, but she immediately overrode this suggestion.

“My decision is final,” she said, with a certain set to her square chin that informed him to retire, before further angering her.

“Good day, ma’am. I am happy to have made your acquaintance,” he said, and bowed and left to enter his carriage and return home, while the teacher stood at the door, smiling ironically at all his entourage, the footmen hauled out on this foolish errand. She must think him a coxcomb of the first water.

Delsie had been tired when he arrived, after her day; his short visit exhausted her utterly. She hardly had the strength to crawl home. If she had accepted, she supposed he would have offered to drive her. She climbed the stairs to Miss Frisk’s attic apartment and threw herself on the bed. This is a new twist, she thought, sending his relatives to propose for him. What next, a minister with a ring, a choir hired, and a white veil? She shook her head and smiled, but in annoyance at their presumption, to think they could buy a person.

It was the first time she had spoken to Lord deVigne. He was not as she had expected. But, really, she had never satisfied him to look before. She made a habit of looking another way when he rode past, to show her disinterest. She found she had missed a good many interesting details.

His hair, for instance; she had not noticed that it was worn brushed forward. The Brutus do, it was called. And the outfit-with a little gold watch fob shaped like a wishbone. Who would have thought deVigne was superstitious? His eyes, too, were darker than she had thought, almost navy blue. He had a commanding aspect which suggested to her he was not Grayshott’s tool in the affair. Had the idea possibly originated this time from the baron himself? Was he that aware, then, of her existence, as to have known it was herself Grayshott would accept as a wife in this peculiar circumstance?

And he never so much as glanced at her, or pretended to know she was alive, when they met in the street. To think that she, Delsie Sommers, was a subject of conversation at the Hall! It amused her to think of it. She accepted, after half an hour’s musing, that there had been no trickery in it. DeVigne had come in good faith for the reason stated. It was plausible, if peculiar. And she had it in her power to thwart the wishes of Baron deVigne. She must be the only person in the village who had ever said no to him. This too amused, delighted her, to have the upper hand over those who rode past in their fine carriages with two footmen, ignoring her.

She hugged to herself the conquest. Those on the hill whom she had so long secretly envied now wanted her, and she would not go to them. It was impossible not to consider how life would have changed if she had agreed to marry Grayshott. No more teaching recalcitrant, ill-behaved youngsters, who wore one to a bone with their disinterest in learning. No more toadying to Mr. Umpton, no more rising at seven. But better than that, to live on the fabulous hill, to walk up the aisle to church on Sunday with that august party. To drive into Questnow with them, and be bowed to in the shops, to be on the inside of all that life, it was hard to say no. She almost regretted her decision, till the image of Mr. Grayshott darted into her head-drunken, dissolute, old, and with eyes that devoured her. She was quite sure he was mad. No, she had made the right decision, but it was the hardest one she had ever made.

* * * *

DeVigne had his carriage and men sent on to the Hall and stopped at the Dower House to see Jane. The dame was waiting for him, peering through the lancet windows of her drawing room. “Well, what did she say?” she asked, before he had off his hat.

“No. She would not hear of it. Wouldn’t consider it at all. She was paralyzed with shock, and so was I. Do you realize she only met Andrew two times in her life?” he asked.

“I knew he had not been courting her in the regular way. You didn’t smile, or butter her up, I suppose?”

“She is not the butterable sort. Too stiff for that stunt. She has developed a schoolteacher’s eye that made me feel ten years old and very gauche. She certainly knows her own mind, and doesn’t hesitate to speak it, either.”

“One cannot but wonder what set Andrew off on this passion for her.”

“She’s mighty attractive at close range,” he went on, as they entered the drawing room and took up a seat. “The eyes, you recall, did the trick. Very fine eyes too, but hardly soulful. They were sparkling with anger throughout my visit. Andrew always had good taste in ladies. Louise was considered a bit of a beauty in her youth as well.”

“What’s to do, then? We must have Andrew committed and see a solicitor about getting Roberta without delay.”

“Pity. She would have made such a good guardian for Bobbie. Very ladylike, and a firm hand on her.”

“Too firm a hand is not what the child is used to. I wouldn’t like that.”

“I don’t think she’d be too firm. There was some softer quality in her when she smiled.”

Jane regarded him closely. “She had the wits to throw her cap at you, I see.”

“Not in the least. It wasn’t that sort of a smile. She thought we wanted a governess, and would have leapt at it. She’d be happy enough to get out of that school, I think. We’ll wait a little, Jane, and see what develops, shall we?”

“What will develop is that Andrew will very soon die.”

* * * *

Over the next three weeks, Miss Sommers debated on and off with herself whether she had done right. Every morning at seven when she arose, with the day hardly bright, and put on her kettle to boil, she regretted that she was not between the linens at the mansion on the hill, having her breakfast in bed, but not for several hours yet. Cocoa she would have, not tea.

As she walked briskly along the road, she would think, If I had accepted the offer, I would be in a carriage, not walking. And when she received her twenty-five pounds on quarter day, she thought: He mentioned a settlement. I wonder how much it would have been. But these were only vagrant thoughts. On the whole, she knew she had made the wise choice.

Mr. Umpton took a keen interest in deVigne’s visit to the school. The true reason for his coming could not be told, so Delsie invented a different story to appease him, one having to do with becoming governess to Roberta at some future date. He didn’t believe a word of it, and developed such a strong suspicion of her that life at school was nearly intolerable.

Maybe he thought she was angling for his job. If a single student laughed or spoke loudly, he was at the door complaining of the noise. He complained too that the students coming to him from her class were ill-trained, couldn’t read a word, and could hardly add two and two. He even spoke badly of her to his students, an unpardonable offense, so that they looked at her in a jeering way. The few who used to come after class for work no longer showed up. He spoke more than once of the mistake of hiring a woman for a man’s job. “Next time we’ll know better,” he’d say meaningfully, implying that the next time was not far off.

The autumn wore on, the weather becoming colder, the days shortening, the winds growing more bitter, and the memory of the visit faded. She thought regretfully, once or twice a day, how fine it would have been if it had been a governess they were looking for, instead of a wife.