Lord of the Far Island, Victoria Holt [world of reading TXT] 📗

you will have advantages like those of my own daughter. That would not be good for your character. When you are of age it may well be that you will have to earn a living. I therefore advise you to take advantage now of the immense blessings which have come your way. You will have a governess to teach you so that by the time you reach your eighteenth birthday you will be an educated young woman. You will also learn the manners and customs of well-bred households. It is for you, Ellen, to profit from this. Learn all you can and always remember that it is due to my bounty that you are able to take advantage of these opportunities. That is all."

I was meant to go away and brood on these things, to marvel at my good fortune and to cultivate humility, that most desirable virtue of all for those in my position, and in which alas I seemed sadly lacking. I had at one time even thought briefly that Cousin Agatha regarded me with affection, for she would glow with satisfaction when her eyes rested on me, but I quickly realized that the satisfaction was in her own good deed in taking me into her household and had nothing to do with my progress. In fact she seemed to revel in the unsatisfactory defects in which I seemed to abound, and I came to understand that this was because the more of a burden I was, the greater her virtue in keeping me.

It will be seen that I had little love for Cousin Agatha. In character we were diametrically opposed, and I came to the conclusion that I was the only member of the household who ever contradicted her. When I was younger the threat of the orphanage hung over me; but I quickly learned that I should never be sent there because Cousin Agatha could never allow her friends to know that she had disposed of me in such a way. In fact my unsatisfactory character was a source of pleasure to her. I think she talked of me more often to her friends than she did of Esmeralda. Her own daughter was a nonentity. I was scarcely that. I often caught the comment after I was leaving a room: "Of course her mother . . ." And "It is hard to believe that poor Frances was an Emdon." Poor Frances being my mother and Emdon the name of the noble family from which both she and Cousin Agatha had sprung.

Of course I grew shrewd, "artful as a wagonload of monkeys" as Nanny Grange put it. "If there's mischief about, Miss Ellen will be in it. As for Miss Esme, she's led there by her naughty cousin, that's what." I suppose in my way I was as much a force in that household as Cousin Agatha.

In the winter we lived in a tall house opposite Hyde Park. I loved the trees which would be growing bronzed and golden when we returned from summer in the country. Esme and I used to sit at one of the topmost windows and point out the famous buildings to each other. From the north we looked right across the Park, but from the east we could pick out the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the Brompton Oratory. We used to listen for the muffin man's bell and watch the white-capped maids come running out with their dishes to buy his wares. Nanny Grange always sent for some and then we would sit by her fire toasting them and reveling in their soft buttery succulence. We used to watch the crossing sweepers—barefooted boys who made us unhappy because they looked so poor; and we both shed tears when we saw a man running behind a luggage-laden cab on its way to Paddington Station, where he hoped to earn a few pence by carrying the luggage. I made up a story of heartrending squalor which had Esmeralda weeping bitterly. She was very kind-hearted and so easily touched that I had to amend my story and tell it the way Cousin Agatha would have done. He had come from a good family and had' squandered his patrimony in gin and beer shops. He beat his wife, and his children went in terror of him. Poor sweet and simple Esme! She was so easily swayed.

In the afternoons after lessons we would walk in Kensington Gardens with Nanny Grange. She would sit on a seat in the flower walk while we gamboled around. "And not out of sight, Miss Ellen, or I'll have something to say to you." She rarely had to worry on that score because I liked to hang about and hear what she said to the other nannies.

"Esme's mother. My word, what a tartar. I'd not stay if it wasn't for the fact that my aunt was her nanny, and it's right and proper to keep these things in families. Sickly little thing, Miss Esme. As for that Miss Ellen, a real little madam. My patience, you'd think she was the daughter of the house instead of the poor relation. Mark my words, it will be brought home to her one day."

The other nannies would talk of their employers and their charges and I would make Esmeralda be quiet while we listened. Our companions shrieked, threw their balls to one another, spun their tops or cuddled their dolls and there would I be seated nonchalantly on the grass behind the seat on which the nannies sat, shamelessly listening.

I was obsessed with curiosity about my mother.

"My aunt says she was really pretty. Our young miss is the living image, I reckon. And we'll have trouble with her, I shouldn't wonder. But that's to come. Come home she did, said my aunt. She was in a state. Something went wrong—she never knew what, but back she came to her mother, bringing the child with her. My goodness me, it must have been jumping