Rash Reckless Love, page 35
But past its beauty, all resemblance between Mirabelle and heaven ended, as Eliza Smith discovered to her sorrow. Its only advantage to her was that due to the crowding of the servants in the great house, she was allowed to live in a tiny hut by the sea. For although Mirabelle’s great house was set well back from the sea and its storms, the property included a long sweep of coastline and along that coast was a broken-down fisherman’s hut, half ruined, with a leaky palmetto thatch for a roof. Such were the living quarters, a long distance from the main house, that were assigned to Eliza, whose eyes gleamed when she saw it, for she had grown up by the sea and had always loved it.
Mirabelle was then owned by a dour family named Martinson, and gaunt Eliza Smith, no longer young and with no prospects of marriage, was not long in learning that she had made a bad choice. Forced to work long hours in the big house and in the nearby stone buttery where food was stored, Eliza had little time for the baby. The child grew up wild and free, her fair skin kissed golden by the sun, her long burnished gold hair tangled by the wind, her running bare feet learning the warm sands of all the nearby beaches. There was no future for little Mistress Anna Smith—then.
In some ways Eliza Smith was a harsh taskmistress. She insisted the child learn dainty table manners, taught her to curtsy, corrected her speech as best she could. But she never hugged her or caressed her, never showed her affection in little ways—not even when she was combing that thick thatch of gleaming golden hair.
It almost seemed as if Eliza shrank from physical contact with the little girl. She did not even face the truth herself—that she had given her heart to another child, Anna’s mother, and had it broken to bits. She would never dare to love another child—it had been too painful the first time.
But Eliza could feel fear for little Anna, for her future. Sometimes she looked at the beautiful child, running carefree along the beach gathering seashells, or dancing in the surf, and felt an old pain strike through her heart.
Anna had handsome ways, like her father—quick to anger, to repent. And her mother’s challenging spirit.
From them both she had inherited physical beauty, strength and health and joy of living. She had inherited some of their traits too—her father’s temper, her mother’s impulsive recklessness. And Eliza knew in her quaking heart that Anna would grow up to be a wondrous woman, as lovely as her mother—and as lost.
It made her want to cry.
“We must be brave, Anna,” Eliza told the little girl gravely when food was short and they shivered against the gales. “Somehow our deliverance will come.”
The pretty child had smiled at her, not understanding.
Their “deliverance” had come in fact when Martinson, supervising the felling of a great cedar tree for use as ship’s timbers, tripped unwarily over a root and had his leg severed by an ax. He bled to death before they could transport him to a doctor, and his widow, tired of Bermuda and longing for her native Yorkshire, sold Mirabelle complete with furniture, slaves and bondservants, to Tobias Jamison, a ship owner in St. George who had long had his eye on the plantation.
Jamison had bought the plantation as a “surprise” for his wife, Samantha, who had taken their only daughter Beatrice to London three years previously to be treated by the physicians there for a stomach condition, a lingering malady no local doctor could seem to diagnose. Samantha had written to him that the child was much improved, had gained weight, and they would be home soon. That was in the spring of 1665 and Tobias Jamison had labored mightily to make Mirabelle all that a loving wife and child could want.
Samantha Jamison reached Bermuda that fall—but it was a tearful Samantha garbed in black who disembarked. She brought with her the bitter news that a Great Plague was raging in London and little Beatrice, recovered from her lesser malady, had been one of its victims. St. George was shocked by her tales of pesthouses and carts and a city filled with brimstone. But the shock of her little daughter’s death (Beatrice was then seven) had almost killed Samantha Jamison and darkened their lives permanently, for they were both well along in years and had little hope of producing another child.
Samantha spent hours brooding over the scalloped Jacobean crib that had been her daughter’s in infancy, and idly rocking it with her foot. She sat slumped in her Cromwellian rocker, with its finely turned spool back, and seemed to pine away.
It was a miracle to Samantha Jamison, sitting listlessly on the broad shaded veranda, being fanned by a little black slave boy whose attention kept wandering to a chameleon about to drop from the blue morning glory vine that shaded the veranda from the morning sun, to look out and see a goldenhaired child approaching.
Samantha had leaned forward, puffing out her fat cheeks in surprise and clutching her hands to breasts like sofa pillows. The same burnished gold hair, the same—no, of course not. Not the same at all. Beatrice was dead. Dead and entombed in far distant London with the other plague victims.
Still this was a golden-haired little girl of winsome beauty and she had not seen her before. Not a neighbor child surely, for her simple shift was too short and of cheap material and patched. But her bones had a delicacy, her skin a sheen, her turquoise eyes a frank intelligent clarity.
Who was this child? On impulse, Samantha leaned forward and waved a fat arm, setting all her ribands in motion. “What is your name, child?” she called. “And where do you come from?”
“My name is Anna,” said the child gravely. “I am Eliza’s niece.”
'Oh, yes, of course—Eliza, the upstairs maid.” Samantha Jamison sank back, quivering like a bowl of jelly, her heavy body enervated by even this small endeavor. “Come closer, child.” She held out a soft white hand—doubly soft, for she wore gloves made of chicken skin at night to keep them so—and her jeweled rings flashed. “Come here and talk to me.”
So seven-year-old barefoot Anna, with her tangled mop of burnished gold hair, climbed up on a big reed chair and joined in polite conversation with the fashionably dressed billowy lady on the veranda. She enjoyed the slight breeze made by the langurously waving palmetto fan that wafted the lady's scents and pomades toward her, and talked gaily with the fresh enthusiasm of youth of all that she would see and do when she was a woman grown and the whole world opened to her.
So entertained was Samantha Jamison, so taken by the barefoot child’s easy talk and graceful manners, that they were still conversing when Eliza, her upstairs chores finished, spied them through the dining room window. Eliza’s heart leaped at the sight of the two of them together... It was what she had dreamed of, that these new people who had bought the place would take an interest in little Anna.
Stifling a cough—for her lungs, never strong, were failing her now and she had to pause for breath and sometimes spit blood just from climbing the broad flaring front steps outside—Eliza hurried away unnoticed. Let them talk: she did not want to interrupt this welcome new development.
“What were you looking at, Eliza?” demanded a suspicious voice from the door and Eliza saw with alarm that Editha Jamison had come into the room. Editha was Tobias’s older sister, who, as was the custom with impoverished relatives, lived with her brother and sister-in-law in the big house at Mirabelle. Eliza did not like Editha, who ordered her around in a snappish manner—and the feeling was mutual. Editha had never liked or trusted this tall, gaunt, noncommittal woman with the forgotten past who did her work overwell and confided in nobody. To Editha’s way of thinking, Eliza Smith considered herself better than a servant and held herself above the others—she should be brought down a peg or two. Editha had often told her sister-in-law that but foolish Samantha refused to listen. She had even insisted she liked the tall gray-haired woman with the firm set to her mouth.
“I wasn’t looking at anything,” said Eliza impassively, hoping Editha would believe her. “I was just straightening the curtain.”
“Don’t look so innocent,” snapped Editha. “I saw you staring out the window. What’s out there? Some young lad you’ve got your eye on, I don’t doubt—and you old enough to be his mother!”
At this unwarranted—and indeed imaginative—accusation, Eliza’s mouth tightened to a straight line and she withdrew from the room, hoping Editha Jamison would follow to berate her and so leave the child a clear field with Samantha.
But Editha did no such thing. Her suspicions were fully aroused, for she had sensed an unaccustomed tension in Eliza Smith’s back as she peered out, and now she hurried her large limbs across the floor, moving her massive bulk in a heavy-footed way that would have shaken the house had the floor been of timber instead of stone.
What she saw was her billowy sister-in-law, Samantha, conversing with a child whose tumbled gold hair hung down like spun silk around an angelic oval face.
“Who is that child?” she demanded indignantly, noting the child’s mended cotton shift and bare feet. But Eliza Smith had already gone.
Editha stormed out on to the porch and repeated her question to her sister-in-law.
Samantha Jamison turned to her with the most animation she had shown in weeks. “She is Eliza’s niece, and isn’t she a lovely little girl?”
“Well, Eliza must come and get her!” cried Editha, indignation sharpening her voice. “I can see she’s tiring you.”
“No, let her stay,” said Samantha. “Up to now all I’ve had to interest me is what’s for dinner. Don’t run away, child—sit back down and talk to me.”
Anna, who had been about to flee, sank back gingerly onto the reed chair. “Why do you wear black?” she asked innocently. And that heavy black veil, isn’t it hot wearing it?”
Editha sniffed but Samantha’s large eyes filled with tears. I wear black for a little girl who’d have been about your age—my little girl,” she choked. “She’s gone and I miss her.”
“Oh,” said Anna in a small voice. “I’m very sorry she’s gone—and I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“We’re all sorry,” snapped Editha. “Now get you gone. Don’t you see you’ve upset the mistress of the house?”
The child jumped up and edged away but as she left, Samantha, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief, called to her, “Come back and see me tomorrow, Anna. I’ll expect you.”
It was the first of many long talks between the pretty child and the lonely woman. Before the week was out Samantha was taking an interest in something besides food and grief; she could be seen in the afternoons walking with the child through the gardens of Mirabelle, pausing to admire the flowers, explaining the different plants. Over Editha’s protests that she was “raising that child above her station,” Samantha had a dress made for Anna—a simple dress of white cambric trimmed in azure velvet ribands that set off her delicate beauty.
Clad in that dress, little Anna came to dinner in the long dining room at Mirabelle. Her lustrous hair was washed and combed and brushed to a high sheen by Eliza. With faultless manners and unstudied grace, she presented herself shyly at the door and was ushered in to sit speechless at a frosty white board covered with a sparkling array of gleaming silver.
Tobias was equally charmed with Anna and delighted that with her winning ways, the child was bringing Samantha back to life. Already it seemed to him Samantha had lost weight—some of the many pounds she had listlessly packed onto her medium-sized frame after Beatrice’s death.
“I think you should leave off mourning,” Tobias told his wife decisively. “Our little Beatrice—if she can see you now—wouldn’t want you to grieve. She’d want you to wear the pretty clothes and bright colors you always loved.”
Samantha looked down at her pale hands, with their jet mourning rings, for a long time without speaking. She never answered Tobias but the next morning she came down to breakfast in Tobias’s favorite gown, which he had not seen since she left for London with Beatrice—a delicate mauve taffeta, very thin, with an overdress of violet tissue.
“Little Anna has had a good effect on you, Samantha,” he beamed, and leaned down to brush his mustached lips affectionately against his wife’s plump cheek.
And so Eliza’s hopes were realized. She and Anna were moved from the seaside hut to the great house, where they occupied—once again over Editha’s protests—one of the small guest bedrooms. Samantha began to redecorate her daughter’s old room, using a great quantity of white lawn and commissioning a blue and white coverlet to be embroidered for the big square four-poster. Editha had a sinking feeling every time she looked in on the needlewomen stitching up the new flounced white curtains, for she had little doubt who would occupy this pretty bedroom—Anna Smith.
But for Eliza, triumph was short. As her health failed, so that at last Samantha decreed that she should have no more household duties and she kept to her room, coughing out her life’s blood into a linen kerchief, so Anna’s fortunes prospered.
Anna had been moved into the big, lovely, newly decorated bedroom on the shallow excuse that Eliza was sick and needed quiet. But everyone but little Anna knew that Eliza was sinking and would not last very long.
The day Samantha Jamison spoke to Eliza about Anna’s education and how she and Tobias had plans for the child, if Eliza approved, found Eliza very weak and with her cheeks two red spots of color in her white face.
“I feel—I really feel you are too ill to be with the child so much,” Samantha said hesitantly. “But if you will let us have Anna to raise as our own, we will be glad to transport you back to England, where there are better doctors.’’
The trace of a smile played over Eliza’s wasted face.
There be no need to transport me anywhere,” she said with a sigh, “for I’ll not be here that long. And glad I am to give Anna to you, for I know you’ll keep her and care for her—which I cannot. But there’s something that must be writ down before I go, and I cannot write.”
Samantha could see for herself that the woman was dying. “My writing hand is so poor nobody can read it,” she told Eliza apologetically. “And Tobias is gone for a fortnight to St. David Island. But I’m sure that Editha—”
From the bed Eliza held up her hand as if she were warding off something. “Not Mistress Editha.”
“Oh—well.” Samantha could understand how, with Editha’s patent dislike of her, Eliza might very well not wish to dictate so Editha her dying words. “I know,” she cried. “I’ll send for Mr. Hunt, the minister. He’s no doubt busy packing, for he leaves next week on the same ship that will bring our new minister, Mr. Cartmell, but I’m sure he can find time for such a small thing and he does write a nice neat hand.”
“Would you see that we are not disturbed?” came that weak voice from the bed. “Would ye grant me that?”
“Why—why, of course.” Samantha felt flustered.
“I mean,” elaborated Eliza, “will ye keep Mistress Editha and the servants away from the door. I don’t want them to be hearing what I’ll be saying to him.”
Samantha would have protested, but she reminded herself that Eliza was dying and the dying deserve some privileges. “I’ll keep Mistress Editha with me the whole time Mr. Hunt is here and I’ll see that the servants are all sent on errands that will keep them away,” she promised.
“Thank you,” said Eliza faintly. “You were always a good woman. I’ve got no regrets about leaving Anna with you, thank God, for I know ye’ll treat her like a daughter.”
“Yes,” said Samantha Jamison in a smothered voice, “we will.”
She hurried away, certain that Eliza’s demand for secrecy was only a symptom of her dying condition; she must be out of her head. All that the woman could possibly want to do was to make some note of how her meager possessions should be left. Samantha told Mr. Hunt as much, after he was brought to her. So it was a surprise to the minister, on being left alone with Eliza Smith, to see her fix him with a stern gaze and say, “First off, ye must swear on the Bible that naught that I say tonight will be told to anyone—your solemn oath on it, sir.”
Feeling foolish, Hunt placed his hand upon the Bible and swore.
Eliza sank back in bed. She had only this one chore left to make her peace with God and then it would be all over for her. But this one last effort she owed to a woman dead these seven years and more, a woman who—like her—had come from sunny isles across the sea and who had been like a daughter to her.
“You understand,” Eliza told the minister solemnly, “the child’s to know nothing of this. I’ve told her naught, for she’s so young, no need to mark her life at this tender age.”
“Then am I to understand this is not a will you wish me to draw up?”
Eliza shook her head. It cost her an effort—any motion did. “ ’Tis, in a way, the story of my life, and of Anna’s mother—all things she will want to know when she is grown. And there’s much else I need to say—about the necklace of pink Scottish pearls with its great silver links—how I got it and how I came to part with it.”
For two hours Eliza dictated to the astonished minister, who wrote it all down laboriously in his labored hand by a candle’s light as Eliza’s own light ebbed away. At last he let her make her mark upon the last sheet of parchment, inscribed her name beside the mark—and then his own in testimony to her signature. In silence he sealed the parchment with dripping red sealing wax and took it away with him, promising “to keep it safe and not open it nor deliver it to anyone but Anna Smith on the day of her marriage.”
“And here—” Eliza called him back in a faint voice as he started to leave. “Look in that chest yonder. There’s a small book—a journal—that must go along with it. Ye must keep them both safe; fasten them both up and seal them both with sealing wax.”
With a hand aching from writer’s cramp, the minister did as he was told, making a bulky packet, which he stuffed into his saddlebag and took back with him to the town of St. George. He was very thoughtful on the journey and twice nearly turned back to speak to Samantha Jamison. He wondered if Eliza’s claims could be true or if they were a fabrication. She was far gone, he could see that but—she had seemed sane enough.
