Chapter 68
Phillip described how the Thoroughgoods had returned Henri
to Fellcrest without explanation just two weeks earlier. He also explained why
he hoped to keep the little fellow this time rather than turn him over to an
orphanage or seek another home. He did not trust anyone now with the child, he
said, after the callous nurse he had first hired and then the mysterious events
at the Thoroughgood home. But he needed a mother for the boy—he should have a
family.
“So,” Agnes
summed up, leading Henri to the Christmas tree and handing him a strand of
tinsel, “it’s the both of you or nothing, is that what you’re offering?”
“I thought
about letting you, if you insisted, take just Henri and leave me to my fate,
but then I came to my senses.”
“And how
did you find me?”
“I had
help. When they brought Henri back to my father, he not only brought him to me
directly but, unknown to me, he penned a letter to your Aunt Vera. He had been
furious with me for a year, you know, for hiding on the farm. But when Henri
reappeared, my father took it into his hands to make one last try for us. Your
aunt sent back a short note that, well . . . .”
Phillip looked for a word. “Encouraged me.”
“Vera did
that?”
“Thank God
for those older and wiser than we, eh?”
Phillip
reached a hand into his pocket, forgetting for a moment that he had already
given the box he brought to Agnes. “The little box —“
In her
jubilation at seeing Henri, Agnes had let the box roll from her lap. Phillip
scanned the dark carpet lit only by the fire, now burning low. Finally he spied
the black velvet box just inches from the grate and snatched it up. With an
uncertain smile, he opened it toward Agnes.
Phillip
felt a tug on his trouser leg and looked down to see Henri raising both arms imploringly.
Phillip handed the box to Agnes and picked up the child, who leaned against his
shoulder and rubbed his little fists into sleepy eyes.
“I know,
old fellow, it’s past time for bed.” And turning his eyes to the woman before
him, standing so close that they nearly touched, he asked, “So here we are, two
men wretchedly in need of you. What do you say, Agnes Eileen Somerset?”
“I wonder,”
Agnes nearly whispered, looking from the ring to Phillip, “if I should feel
manipulated.”
“Oh, I
would,” Phillip whispered back.
The tiny
flames that clung, wavering, to the spent logs cast only a dull glow upon their
faces. Henri began humming lazily into Phillip’s shoulder, signaling that sleep
was near.
Agnes took
Phillip’s free hand and pressed the velvet box back into it. She watched his
features freeze.
Then she
stretched out her left hand and lifted her finger.
That
Christmas, for the rest of their lives, stood as the greatest of all—at once
the darkest and most radiant, the thriftiest and most lavish, a time both
impossible and perfectly inevitable. And the miracle of that night in Vera’s
parlor seemed to the participants hardly less astounding than the one so many
centuries before that brought the whole world to its feet. One could say that
Phillip and Agnes themselves never stopped celebrating, and all who were
fortunate enough to know them in the many years to come were undeniably the
richer for it.
Epilogue
Agnes and Phillip married quietly less than two months into
the new year. They installed themselves, along with little Henri, at Phillip’s
farmhouse. In the spring they expanded the old homestead to accommodate a guest
or two as well as Fettles, Ned, and Marie, who had in the meantime been making
themselves useful at the Duke’s home.
Phillip enthusiastically tended the small farm with the help of Ned and
Richmond, and everyone became so absorbed in their new duties that they found
themselves thinking back less and less upon the lives they left behind. For
Empress and Napoleon the move to the country was perhaps one too many, and
whether out of confusion or pique, they showed little enthusiasm for the great
outdoors and spent most of their time patrolling the house or dozing on the
front porch.
Vera and
Frederick made regular visits to the farm. Two years into Agnes and Phillip’s
married life, these two arrived one sparkling autumn afternoon—as usual, a day
earlier than expected. As they approached the house arm in arm, they delighted
again in the country air and broad sunshine. At a wooden table beneath one of
the maples, the delighted company sat down to tea (hastily prepared by Fettles
with the enthusiastic help of Henri, who assumed his habitual duty of urging
more butter onto the bread). Vera caught herself almost forgetting to give Agnes
a letter sent to them by Mrs. Bairnaught, who lacked Agnes’s address, and had
asked the Schmidts to forward it. Rummaging in her purse, Vera at last produced
the letter, which Agnes opened and read aloud.
October
5, 188_
Dearest
Agnes,
I
felt I should write to tell you that Mr. Bairnaught left us last month, on the
3rd day of September. I have not found the strength to write to you
until now. I am sure that I do not need to describe my feelings at this time,
plunged into the void that his absence has created. The silence is almost
unbearable, but I read my scriptures, and somehow time passes.
You
may have heard by now the news of your old home. In case it has not yet
traveled to you, I will share it. Shortly before my dear husband’s passing,
Mrs. Thorne had fallen under suspicion of foul play. It was widely rumored that
she had conspired with several others in high places to maneuver her current
lover into the office of senator in Washington.
Two weeks ago she was placed under house arrest at her cousin’s, where she was
staying, on charges of tampering with the election (in which our dear friend
Mr. McMeed was defeated—or was he?). This new trouble, coupled with the
dwindling of her fortunes since acquiring Brookside,
has apparently forced her to offer the estate for sale.
It
would be a great delight to me if you would chose to return and resume your
place at your family home. With this wish in my heart, and with the
considerable means left me by my husband, and lacking any children to bestow
them upon, I would like nothing more than to purchase the estate and will it to
you. My assets will also become yours, by immediate transfer, if you are
inclined to accept my offer. The only condition is that you allow me, a very
old and confused woman, to live among your precious family in that great house
until the end of my days, which I sense may not be far off.
I
await only a word from you and Phillip to put my solicitor to work.
God
bless you all. I remain, in anxious
anticipation of your response,
Beatrice Bairnaught
No one knew
about Claudia. Vera and Frederick had only returned from London a week earlier and had not yet caught
up on news. And they had not spoken with Mrs. Bairnaught in months, having been
abroad at the time of her husband’s funeral.
Discussion
of Claudia’s fate and Mrs. Bairnaught’s proposal dominated the next two days.
Vera and Agnes chattered over the possibilities as they took Henri for long
walks, during which he stopped to examine every late butterfly and wandering
worm. Frederick
got a taste of farm work while turning over with Phillip the advantages of
re-inhabiting Agnes’s former home or staying their present course. It was hard
to comprehend that Brookside could be returned
to the family—the gardens, the secret bench, the grand terrace and library, all
theirs once more to enjoy. But Brookside had
been changed, who knew how much, by Mrs. Thorne and her legion of carpenters
and decorators. And to install themselves again on the estate, Agnes and
Phillip would have to turn their backs on what they had built together on the
farm. Phillip would have to lease the land and manage it from a distance. Gone
would be the early morning rooster call, the smell of fresh hay, and the joy of
watching the crop he planted break through the spring soil. Fettles would no
longer ride ten minutes each Sunday to the little chapel of Saints Peter and
Paul, and Agnes would leave all her friends at Covenant Presbyterian, where she
had just been elected head of the Ladies Relief Board.
So it was
that the evening after Vera and Frederick’s departure, over dinner, Agnes and
Phillip decided that Brookside in all its
beauty could not pull them from their rustic home at the end of the birch-lined
lane. Agnes felt that the long chapter of her life lived in the great mansion was
closed. Their decision made, Agnes wrote to Mrs. Bairnaught with an alternative
to that lady’s generous offer, which was promptly accepted by return post.
Their
benefactor came to occupy the guest room and begin her new life with them in
the first days of a particularly icy winter, happy in the bosom of the busy,
noisy household. Agnes was especially grateful for her when spring came, when
she herself lay confined to bed for days on end by doctor’s orders as they
awaited the birth of baby Emmet. When Mrs. Bairnaught was not sitting by
Agnes’s bed or sharing a sunny corner of the front porch with the two dogs, she
could be found in the nursery reading to Henri or warmly admiring his skill at
building wooden block towers.
With the
help of the widow’s copious funds, the couple built a guest cottage just behind
the farmhouse the following summer, where both children spent many hours
enjoying the attentions that only a grandparent—actual or adopted—wise and
patient with years, can shower upon the young. As for the bulk of the
Bairnaught money, it was jointly agreed to set it aside in ironclad accounts
for the children’s future.
The Duke
found his way to the farm two days out of seven, and on Sunday afternoons the
young family came to Fellcrest. These were always pleasant visits, largely
because Mrs. Morgan had been replaced as housekeeper by Agnes’s own Mrs.
Williams, who despite her efforts to remain unaffected, worshipped the children
in her own stern way and slipped them sweets when their parents were not
looking. (As for the discharged housekeeper, the much-relieved staff had
observed the Duke, while her black cab rolled away, raise his arms and contort
his face as though ensuring by some dark art that they should never set eyes on
her again.)
So the years
turned, with children growing and everyone getting older through the passing
seasons. On winter days as Agnes helped Marie hang laundry by the stove, she
would sometimes look out the kitchen window and see her husband heading for the
house, his hair blown back and his cheeks red from the raw November air. Above
him gray clouds would be scudding southward, and for a moment, in the narrow
spaces between them, the sun might shine through and light up his face. Then
the old green kitchen door would squeak open, admitting him in a whirl of air
rich with the smells of cold and animals and damp leaves.
Stella
remained in Chicago,
separated by many hundreds of miles from her beloved Aunt Agnes, a distance
reinforced by the arrival of several children in quick succession, which
delighted Stella and William, but kept the Molls close to home. Still, the aunt
and her niece wrote faithfully to each other every week no matter what domestic
calamities tried to keep them from their pens and paper. They became closer than
ever now as they exchanged common sympathies over a child’s illness or a
husband’s forgetfulness or the price of little boys’ shoes.
As for
Abram Rockwell, the whole affair of the lost fortune shook him so profoundly
that he retired from practice and spent most afternoons at the club, renewing
his friendship with the classics. He was, however, comforted in seeing how
happy Agnes’s life had become. He was further comforted by a somewhat puzzling
letter that arrived one day from the south of France. It read simply “Wilbur
is probably deceased, apparently at violent hands. Thought this might provide
some solace to you and the Somersets, although it does nothing to restore what
was lost. I myself am moving on somewhere as yet undecided. Farewell. –Eleanor”
The
indomitable Mrs. Rockwell, as the years went by, increased her stream of
letters to congressmen, senators, the First Lady, and even the President,
exhorting them to support the cause of women’s suffrage. Accompanied by her
daughter, she paid several personal visits to these same luminaries in Washington and may well
have been a force in moving to the forefront of possibility the radical idea of
women casting their own vote.
Just
outside Chesterton, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Thoroughgood burned one evening,
all its occupants barely escaping in their nightclothes. An investigation
quickly showed that Lavinia had started the inferno while trying to incinerate
an uncomfortable dress her mother had made her wear the day before. Afraid for
their own lives, the couple sadly turned the young woman over to the county
home for wayward girls, where she continued her reign of terror. Her parents
left Chesterton for a pastor’s post in Alabama, where they adopted three
orphans and lived as happily as parents can who have lost a child to
wickedness.
Far
across the Atlantic, a young woman known as La
Violette turned twenty. She had, after four years at La Coquette, lost the draw
she once enjoyed, although she had never been more beautiful and still cast a
spell on those who saw her for the first time. A month before her birthday,
twins from Tunisia
had taken her place as the main attraction, performing their provocative
Arabian dance to roars of approval. Watching them she had suddenly felt old and
prudish. She seemed to see her audience run past her, arms extended, wild-eyed
and insatiable.
Fortunately, an
agent from a club in Paris had visited and
expressed interest in her, and two days later she packed up her few things, kissed Monsieur Vaudin and all the girls, and left Marseilles for a finer
room and a larger window to lean against. As she stood there musing on
sleepless nights, she felt the company of the Virgin Mary, whose likeness stood
nearby atop a tarnished dome. Mary, white in the moonlight, constant and
imperturbable, held out her arms above the rooftops in that ancient town of
saints and scoundrels, of orphans and thieves. And together in this silent
communion, the two women watched over the slumbering city.
Finis
--Ann M. Doyle doyleann@comcast.net
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