The Domino Effect, Chapter Nine

That evening, Phyl strolled through the gardens, attempting to mentally compose a letter to her mother but unsure as to which was more distracting, the bursts of laughter coming from the lively card game between Mrs. Hartshorne and Mary Catherine on the terrace, or the piano duets played by Mary Alice and Mary Ellen. The true source of her distraction she failed to regard as a distraction, for a distraction, to Phyl, carried unpleasant connotations, and the true cause of her distraction could hardly signify as unpleasant. Does he love me? she repeatedly asked herself, remembering Wallis on the way to the village.

She felt light, like swan’s down lifted by a gentle breeze, letting the invisible current take her where it willed. She no longer had cares or worries, yet she was the same person she had been the day before. She ate, taught, and communed with the Hartshorne family, and she had serious matters to consider. Her mother had reported that her brothers had been traveling back and forth to Oxford, petitioning their mentors for help in finding suitable professions.

“I think you should ask your employer to find something for them to do,” Mama implored in her customary illegible hand, on cheap paper liberally smeared and dotted with ink. Phyl replied, in a far neater hand and on more elegant paper, that the Earl of Blystone and his brother would never consent to work so near to the old home, nor would she encourage them to do so. “The temptation to take back the estate would be too great,” she wrote, again forbidding herself to reveal that she herself worked there. “I know my brothers. They would think of nothing else, and do nothing else except plot against the current owner in a conspiracy that must resolve badly.” She nearly wrote “tragically,” but decided that the hint of death and destruction would tip dear Mama into hysterics. Poor Mama, always expecting the worst, Phyl reflected. Whatever would she say about Mrs. Hartshorne’s affections towards me?

Phyl had wandered to that part of the garden that her father had determined should mimic a meadow in the wild. Tall grass and lavender reached for her knees. Sere brown leaves, forgotten remnants of summers past, crunched beneath her feet. The path ended, smothered by a brightly colored tangle of shrubs and wildflowers that extended towards one of the park’s many copses. This was once her favorite spot in the estate. How often had she come out here, marveling at delicate spring blossoms or drinking in the lovely weight of autumn, when the air was still and everything was bathed in vague, pink-orange twilight.

Certain that nobody could see her she sat, arms around her legs, her chin on her knees, as she had been wont to do. It was astonishing, really, that the garden could look the same but not feel the same. There was no longer any comfort here. The knowledge that her home had been wrested from her unsettled her with the constancy of an ache from a splinter too fine to be removed. She reflected that she should have known her life would be unhappy, for not every moment of her childhood on the estate had been a source of delight. Surely, she hadn’t dreamt the scene of her mother confiding how she would have left her father (for whatever reason, Phyl had long forgotten), and the memory of her father declaring (for another reason that Phyl had long forgotten) how her mother “could be so vicious.” As big and sumptuous as Blystone was, despite the number of out buildings and pleasant pockets among the grounds and gardens, the only sanctuary from the parental tempests that Phyl and her brothers could find was at the home of Mama’s ever-so-clever modiste. “Ma’am,” as everyone called her, would ply them with tea and let them play her pianoforte. Though her son, Philip, treated Ronald and Russell with an awe that prevented him from being at ease in their company, despite their friendly nature and desire to please, her daughter, Penelope, at once took to Phyl. The girls had no doubt they would be friends for life and often plotted how “Pen” could snare Ronald as a husband.

The notion of Ronald as somebody's husband made Phyl wonder what sort of husband Wallis Hartshorne would be. She imagined Wallis as she so frequently saw him in his current, seemingly unattached state: the icon of the perfect son, brother, uncle, friend, playing with the children, joking (albeit it in writing) with siblings and gallantly strolling the grounds with his mother on his arm. She never saw him with a woman not related to him, and she never heard his family speak or speculate about his affairs of the heart. That Wallis was unattached, Phyl was certain. She considered that he never had been married, for women wanted to hear their husbands’ declarations of love, just as men wanted their wives to have money. No, he cannot have serious intentions about me, she concluded. He knows no woman really wants him, as I know no man really wants me.

Twilight drooped lower, snuffing the shards of pink and golden light that moments before had danced low between the trees. Phyl no longer felt like swan’s down dancing on the breeze, unburdened by memories, suspicions, uncertainties. She thought of the horribly round-shouldered woman who sold carrots in the market. Her spirits felt the way the woman looked.

“Psst!”

Was that a hiss or was it really a “Psst!”?

“Miss Phylidda?” the whisper belonged to Elspeth, the freckled girl from the kitchen.

Phyl looked up at her from where she sat.

Bending low, Elspeth whispered further, about someone she and Martin, the valet, had met in town. “Would you remember the other day, when Cook said a man had stopped her in the market, inquiring about the people who live here?”

Phyl often was amused by how the locals called the village town, while town, to her and her family, was London. She spoke without thinking, annoyed at the intrusion to her solitude. “I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of that. What happened?”

“Just as I said, Miss Phylidda. A man chatted up Cook about Mr. Hartshorne and the family. He said he wrote for a newspaper in London and wanted to know if it was true that an American lived at Blystone.”

Ah yes, Phyl thought; she knew the type: Anything for news that would make the paper stand out among the rest. “I doubt there was anything behind it, Elspeth. The gentleman was probably looking for a good story, that’s all. The ton is fascinated by foreigners who live in England.”

“But today it was me and Martin who was stopped. It sounds like the same man.”

“If it was indeed the same man, most likely he’s searching for somebody to give him an introduction. He knows he can’t very well come charging down here like a runaway steeplechaser. The form would be so bad as to be unforgivable.”

“I don’t know, Miss. The things he was asking! It didn’t sound like he wanted an introduction, or that he wanted to write a society story, you know?”

“Why? What was he asking you?”

“Impertinent things, like what kind of an income we thought Mr. Hartshorne had and how he made his money. We sid it weren’t any of his business, but he said we were fools to work for a foreigner and not know anything about him. He said it wasn’t right for so many people to live all together like that and not have a title or a profession to let them live so high.”

”Did he, now! What did he look like?”

“It was nobody I’ve ever seen, Miss. Mind you, I’m not from here. Mr. Hartshorne hired me in London.”

“In town?”

“No, ma’am, in London. I worked for the hotel where he stayed. I heard he needed staff for here, and I didn’t want to live in the city any more.” The girl’s brow crinkled. She leaned forward and asked Phyl, in a tone of dread, “The staff and me, we heard that Mr. H didn’t come by this house rightly. You don’t think he’s been doing something untoward, do you?”

“Untoward?”

Elspeth shrugged. “Thievery. Forgery. Opium. Light skirts. Speculation. Who can tell?”

Phyl laughed, confident in her knowledge and in the knowledge that her knowledge would calm the ingenuous girl! “I do not for an instant believe it’s any of those things. I myself happened to hear that he won Blystone in a bet with the old earl.”

“A bet…” The girl’s voice brightened with enlightenment then slid back into suspicion.“But how can he afford to live here, Miss?”

“The rents, Elspeth! Blystone has tenants. Surely, you could see that.” Phyl gestured broadly, as if to embrace the manor and its park.

Elspeth's eyes followed the gesture. "Of course, Miss Phylidda. How stupid of me!"

Phyl interrupted. “That stranger who accosted you. What did he look like? You never told me.”

“Oh! He—“ Elspeth stopped, mouth agape. Phyl followed the girl’s terrified stare. A young man on horseback, taking advantage of the twilight, had had the gall to ride up to the house and now awaited recognition not by Elspeth or by any other member of the household, but by Phylidda, who recognized the form despite the hat, which she had never before seen him wear. Indeed, Phyl had had no reason to see him in a hat, for she had never seen him outside his home or the print shop.

“Not to worry,” she assured the girl, who succumbed to her fright and folded upon on the turf in an inelegant heap.

“How very convenient,” said Philip, who dismounted and pushed a letter into Phyl’s hand.

“It’s imperative that we speak, my lady. The particulars are on the page. Until tomorrow,” he murmured, and walked the horse back toward the road, vanishing into the darkness.

Phyl hastened to the house, where she recruited a footman to help Elspeth, who was playfully chided for letting herself be overcome by the shadow of a tree in the night.