Episode 7: A Twist of the Thorn and a Garden Rendezvous

Chapter 12

Fatigue filled Agnes as she left Stella’s room. She knew she needed a nap, especially since tonight she would be reading aloud her history of Brookside after dinner, and a lackluster performance was out of the question. She had put too much work into it for that. She would go to her room, ring for Fettles to check on the state of things, and lie down until tea. But as though anticipating her thoughts, Fettles approached from the far end of the hall with a tray bearing a single card. He held it out to her without a word.

            Agnes picked up the rich ivory card. Mrs. Sherman Thorne. She looked at Fettles with mild alarm. “Now? Again?”

            “In the parlor, ma’m.”

            Agnes exhaled hotly. “Tell her I am not at home—no, tell her—oh, why does she insist on dropping by at the absolutely worst times?!”

            “I can send her away. I would be very happy to.”

            Agnes thought. “No, I feel I must keep an eye on her. Let us just get this over with. And no tea, Fettles, whatever you do. We don’t need to prolong the agony.”

            Agnes found Claudia displayed to advantage in a deep brown dress with a finely worked lace collar. Above it, her perfect chin tilted upward as she beamed a benevolent smile.

            “I spoke with the Duke on my way in,” remarked Claudia without rising. “He looks very well. He was a great friend of your father’s, wasn’t he?”

            “He was,” answered Agnes, perching on the edge of a facing chair, “although they knew each other a fairly short time before Father’s death. But our families’ friendship has continued.”

            “Still not remarried, I assume?”

            “That’s true.”

            “Well,” confessed Claudia, “I hope you’ll forgive my just popping in once more, especially in the middle of your lovely fete, but—“ dropping her voice, “I was wondering about the Duke’s son. Did he come?”

            “Yes, he did. He was kind enough to come along and stay with a crowd of people he has never met, which is very brave, really.”

            “I’d like to meet him.”

            Agnes shifted in her chair. Failing to offer any refreshment to her visitor was only a small affront given the busy circumstances, but to refuse to introduce her to Lord Phillip was not possible. She rang for Fettles and asked him to request a moment of Lord Phillip’s time. In moments he was leading the young gentleman into the parlor. Phillip looked slightly bewildered and registered no amazement at the spectacle of the legendary Mrs. Thorne. Agnes introduced them, watching Phillip closely. He took Claudia’s hand briefly with a small bow and began a subtle study of her person. Agnes could see him taking in her feathered hat, her face, the costly earrings. She could almost hear his pen scratching notes.

            “Agnes has scored a great victory having you to herself this week,” Claudia cooed. “Everyone is talking, we are all so anxious to make your acquaintance, Lord Phillip. I trust you will be generous enough to visit the rest of us as soon as time permits? We would so love to hear about India.”

            “Would you?” asked Phillip, holding his hands behind his back. “When?”

            Claudia stammered. “Well, any time you like, I’m sure.”

            “The Wednesday after next?”

            Claudia for once was caught off guard. “Yes. That would be delightful. I shall expect you, then?”

            “I shall be there.”

            Agnes felt her cheeks flush. That would be a week after the end of his time at Brookside. Why was he so anxious to leap into this woman’s web? Was he smitten? He didn’t look like it. Was this just more research? Either way, she recoiled at the idea of his sitting comfortably across from Claudia, enjoying a light lunch, sniffing his entrée and sharing his observations on the Orient.

            “I should go,” Claudia was saying, “and leave you to your guests.”

            Agnes smiled.

            “May I show you out?” offered Phillip, extending his arm. Claudia poured a satisfied look over Agnes, took his arm, and swished away. Agnes heard the bubbling laugh.

She did not get her nap, and Phillip did not come to tea. Agnes occupied herself by introducing Stella, who felt much improved after a short rest, to those she had not met and listening to accounts of the hunt. Several people offered slightly different versions of Mr. McMeed’s behavior and his wife’s interference with the fox’s destiny, but it was clear that everyone had enjoyed himself enormously and would tell the story many more times to other audiences.

            Agnes dawdled over her tea, drinking three cups rather than her usual one. She sat afterwards with Stella on the terrace for nearly half an hour before excusing herself to find Phillip in the topiary as they had agreed.

            Shadows lengthened over the lawns as Agnes walked slowly toward the gardens, breathing in the delicious early evening air. She pulled her skirts close as she passed through the old arches draped in white climbing roses and stopped to put her nose in one. They gave off their sweet scent so freely at this time of day. It hung in the air above the fine gravel path where the delicate blossoms clung to the stone pillars and twined around the heavy black chains between them. She passed white, pink, and red roses set on thick, twisting stems that had been widening their reach for the better part of a century. Beyond the climbers came her favorites, the English roses, with their densely layered heads and sweet aroma. Vicious thorns covered their stems completely, and she had learned painfully as a child that these could not be picked but needed the shears of the gardener to separate them from the bush. Admire us, they seemed to say, but do not try to take us as your own; do not stand us in crystal vases in stuffy rooms. Gather your hybrid teas just down the path—they were grown for sacrifice with their long stems and garish blooms.

            The path led her into the topiary with its old boxwoods and dense yews trimmed into hedges, balls, and obelisks. On the far side of this strict garden, behind a hedge six feet high, was a sheltered corner at the edge of the estate’s high ground. Nestled against the ancient greenery, protected from view, was a stone bench enjoyed exclusively by Agnes. Two marble statues flanked the bench: a modestly robed Venus and her blacksmith husband, Vulcan. The spouses gazed at each other, forever longing, forever separated by the stone slab where living lovers might sit whispering between them and look out over the distant hills to the west. Agnes loved this secluded spot and came to it often to collect her thoughts or simply to dream, especially at sunset when the sky lay spread before her, shot through with vivid pink and orange. Sometimes she stayed to watch a perfect ascendancy of blue creep from the horizon to heaven’s immeasurable vault and see the first stars prick the darkening sky.

            It was on this bench that she sat immobile for hours when M. left, when her chest felt like its center had been carved out and taken away. The coward, the deceiver. Where was he now? Had she been fully replaced, and how many times over? Was he romancing another innocent maiden? Oh, but he could make her laugh. And his eyes, they looked inside her and saw what no one else had been able to find. Scoundrel! I hope he’s been lost at sea, made a slave to pirates, blanketed by coursing lava, eaten by wolves—

            Hurried steps approached down the gravel path. Agnes sat very still, listening, and wondered why she had not told Phillip about this bench behind the hedge. She had to admit that somehow she intended to test him, to see how hard he would look for her. The steps stopped momentarily. Then a voice called over the perfect silence of the late afternoon.

            “Agnes? Agnes, are you here?”

            Oh, my goodness, she thought, he is calling for me like a child playing hide-and-seek. Fearful that a guest might hear him and join in the search, Agnes rose and hurried around the hedge, nearly colliding with him on the other side. He stood smiling and clearly amused. Carefully he held out a tea cookie.

            “Another step and you would have made me drop our cookies. I brought some along for us.”

            “How very thoughtful,” she stammered, taking the proffered cookie. “You must enjoy anise as much as I do.”

            “No, I don’t like it all. Are these anise?”

            “Yes, they are Dahlia’s specialty cookies. She is rather well known for them.”

            “She’s done a good job of covering up the anise, then.” Phillip brought one close to his nose then popped it into his mouth. “Where shall we sit?”

            Agnes paused. Should she guide him back to a bench in the heart of the garden, where they might be observed and overheard by others? Or should she admit him to her private place between the gods, where he might look for her again, making that magical spot no longer a secret, no longer an assurance of solitude?

            “The view is best from over here,” she said, taking his arm. “But you must promise,” she warned, looking him steadily in the eye, “to tell no one. This is my private retreat,” she explained as they continued around, “and you should consider yourself flattered in a spectacular way to be admitted.”

            “Your confidence is safe with me, madam,” Phillip assured her as they settled themselves onto the cool bench.

            Now you’ve done it, Agnes told herself. She felt the sharp pang of having given away something before it was earned. She scolded herself, but it was too late.

Chapter 13

Phillip gazed at the deep green hills and the patchwork fields between thin lines of trees, tiny in the distance. A lone bird winged its way home across the vast sky.  Phillip took in the stone lovers on either side of him, looking first at one, then the other, and back again. “Forever separated,” he observed. “Your retreat is a place of yearning, then. And great beauty.”

            “You see why it is so special to me.”

            Phillip leaned back into his corner of the seat and arranged his arms and legs comfortably.

            “So what do you want to know?”

            “Everything you are willing to tell.” She looked at him expectantly.

            Phillip took a long breath and began. Some ten years ago an appeal had been sounded for missionaries to central India. The church wanted single, healthy males who were looking for adventure, loved God, and had a natural boldness that would allow them to talk about Christianity in a wild place among people who already had more gods than they could count. Phillip knew this was his calling. His extraordinary curiosity, which had gotten him into endless trouble since he learned to walk, could now be indulged. He would observe a totally new culture, with no one shutting up his questions or forbidding him from poking about where he did not belong. His father approved the trip as a providential solution for what to do with an intelligent son who did not seem to fit into any occupation he had tried—or even into polite society.

            The voyage had been exhilarating. For weeks he traveled, first across a stormy Atlantic, then through the enchanting Mediterranean, and on through the Suez Canal. At the Suez you knew you were entering another world, he reminisced. Passengers were told to change into their tropical dress, and a new energy ran through his travel-weary shipmates. Whether they were bound for India to make their fortune, take up a government job, or serve with the British army, a sense of eagerness gripped them all as they pushed into the Indian Ocean and made for Bombay.

            The year was 1874. The Brits had sent the last Mogul emperor packing years earlier and now held direct control over two-thirds of the country. Entrenched princes and maharajas ruled the other third in scattered states, having pledged allegiance to the crown. It was to one such state that Phillip was headed, Hyderabad, to a small mission at its southern border. He already knew that the ruling nizam was among the world’s richest men. Reports abounded of the splendor of his court, the egg-sized emeralds that decorated his throne, buckets of pearls and golden plates and clothes sewn with gold thread.

            By contrast, the mission—and the town and countryside around it—existed in the simplest way imaginable. Arriving in late April, the hottest month of the year, Phillip was stunned by the scorching sun. The land was dry and water precious as the population waited for the relief of the monsoon rains.

            “I came to reinforce a Welsh missionary who had been at his humble post for five years, the last two alone since his assistant died of cholera,” Phillip explained. “When I asked him after a few days how he stood the bristling heat, he scowled and said ‘Do you want some rain, then? Be careful what you ask the good Lord for, my friend.’ I didn’t know what to make of that at the time.”

            “We had a small chapel adjoining our rustic residence. It contained a few benches and a rough cross nailed above an altar that we draped in a piece of white cotton. Every Sunday Gregory, my taciturn superior, said a simple service at nine in the morning, attended by a changing mix of curious children and one very dark old man who told Gregory each week that he was thinking about converting. Gregory told me he was a spy for the local Hindu priest.”

            “So you made no converts?” Agnes asked.

            “Not there in Hyderabad, not while I was there. The Hindus listened to us politely but went away chuckling at a religion that relied on a single god. And one who had come to earth as a mere man with only two arms and two legs like the rest of us. Our tales were not tall enough, our holidays not colorful enough. And the local Mohammedans had no more use for us than the Hindus did.”

            Agnes asked whether he ever found out what his superior had meant about being careful what he prayed for. Indeed he had. They baked like pots in a kiln until June. Phillip was sitting in the scant shade teaching a few urchins some English from the Gospel of John, when the clouds slid over the mission. The next morning they let loose their load of water. He thought they must all drown. The hardened dirt of the mission yard was transformed into a slippery bog, and waterfalls fell from the roofs of every building. In many places the water lay ankle-deep, in others it rose to their knees. The rain continued until September, by which time he could not imagine the land ever drying out even if it never rained again.

            As the land recovered itself, Phillip could not ignore his growing restlessness. He received Gregory’s permission to travel around a great part of India, taking copious notes on the people and their customs, sharing the Bible with any who would listen.

            “Did you see the Taj Mahal?” Agnes asked eagerly. Once at her aunt’s house she had seen pictures of it through a stereoscope.

            He had, and made several sketches. He asked if Agnes knew that the emperor Shah Jahan had it built of white marble in memory of his beloved wife, who died after giving birth to their fourteenth child.

            “Fourteenth!” Agnes gasped.

            “And he himself would have been buried in a temple of black marble just across the river. Unfortunately, his third son interrupted his plans by throwing the father into prison and beheading his older brothers in order to crown himself emperor.” India, Phillip said, leaning forward, was a land of extremes. Drought and flood, excess and want, generosity and cruelty, beauty and barbarism.

            “Not a place for the faint of heart,” observed Agnes.

            Phillip was silent a moment, his brow contracted as he surveyed the deepening colors of the sky. “Maybe not a place for those with any heart at all.”

            Agnes held her breath. Now he might be on the verge of telling her why he had left. The real story, not the varnished one his father gave out.

To be continued . . .