The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark (14 page)

“Oh, but you don’t have to fret yourself about that,” he assured her after a chuckle. “I don’t swear in front of women and girls. Used to around my sister, Mercy—only if I was galled about something, mind you—until she married that horse farmer, Seth Langford. He won’t allow us to say so much as a—”

“Mr. Sanders…” Lydia warned, tightening her hands around the reins.

Harold Sanders’ ruddy face assumed a wounded expression. “I weren’t gonter swear, Miss Clark.”

“That’s good to hear, Mr. Sanders.” Lydia relaxed, sat back, and hoped for silence for the rest of the ride. But within seconds Mr. Sanders leaned forward again.

“I s’pose you’re wondering why I’m going to Shrewsbury.”

“I wasn’t wondering that at all,” Lydia replied, this time in all honesty.

This did not discourage him. “Well, our wagon’s been patched to death and ain’t reliable for making milk deliveries to the factory, so my papa is sending me to see if he can get a new one made cheaper down there than he can from Mr. Mayhew. He’ll waste a whole day o’ my time just to save tuppence.” He gave another little chuckle. “If he knew how tickled I am to get out of milkin’ cows, he’d send one of the others.”

“Hmm,” was Lydia’s only response.

“That’s the trouble with working for your own papa,” he sighed. “Mine kicks us out of bed at the break o’ dawn. I’d give anything to have the money to get my own place.” They happened to be passing a large stone farmhouse with thatched outbuildings and vast hedged pastures. Harold gestured toward it. “Like that one. And I’d have enough workers so’s I could take it easy onest in a while.”

“Indeed?”

While the man’s attention was still drawn covetously toward the farm, Lydia sent Phoebe a wink, which caused the girl to bite her lips to keep from smiling. Harold went on, pointing out that life was unfair, that he worked just as hard as any worker on any dairy farm, and should be rewarded accordingly.

Some three-quarters of an hour after taking Mr. Sanders as passenger, they rode down Berwich Road into northern Shrewsbury. It was a jewel of a large country town, nestled on a peninsula of rising ground formed by a loop of the River Severn. The steep, winding cobbled lanes were flanked with angular black-and-white half-timbered Tudor shops and dwellings, symmetrical buildings of red Georgian brick, and modern Victorian gingerbread houses. Each dwelling had its own small garden plot, with spring flowers blooming among early vegetables. The shops also boasted flowers in window boxes and in any available inch of ground. Beside her, Phoebe took in as much as her weak eyes would allow.
I should bring her sister and brothers here one day
, Lydia thought.
Mrs. Meeks too
, she added mentally, for surely there had not been much time for leisure in the woman’s life.

“You can put me out here,” Mr. Sanders said after Castle turned into Saint Mary Street.

By now, Lydia knew more than she cared to know about how unfairly life had treated him, so it was with great relief that she reined the horse to a stop. He jumped down from the carriage.

“Thank you kindly, Miss Clark. When will you be passing back this way?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My business won’t take too long, I shouldn’t think.”

As much as Lydia revered courtesy, she had also absorbed from her parents that in matters that weren’t life-and-death, one had to put limits upon how far one must allow oneself to be imposed. And she had had quite enough of the man.

“Mr. Sanders, I’ve no idea how long
our
business will take. So I suggest you ride back on one of the cheese wagons.”

“But they won’t—”

“Not all the drivers are Baptists, Mr. Sanders. But it might behoove you to watch your language, in any case.”

She gave him a nod and snapped Wellington’s reins, leaving the man standing in the street. Moving back into the space he had vacated, Phoebe twisted around to squint in that direction. “I think he’s still watching us, Miss Clark.”

Lydia felt compelled to explain her harshness. “He’ll find a ride easily enough if he minds his manners. That’s how the cheese wagon drivers make a little extra money, you know.”

“But what will you do if he’s there when we leave?”

“Oh my.” Lydia hadn’t considered this. “I couldn’t very well pass him by. We’ll just have to loop around to Dogpole Street on our way out.”

Doctor Rhodes had recommended an oculist on High Street, a German by the name of Mr. Rosswald. “You’ll pay more than at some places, but his spectacles are custom made,” Doctor Rhodes had said. This sounded good to Lydia, who had only known of shops with racks of spectacles from which one could only choose the pair that worked best.

As it turned out, Mr. Rosswald had built up a reputation. A dozen somber-looking people were already seated in ladder-back chairs against the walls of his waiting parlor. Phoebe began to look a little pale after about fifteen minutes of waiting, and Lydia asked her if she felt ill.

“No, ma’am,” the girl answered, but shortly afterward she turned to her and whispered, “It won’t hurt, will it?”

“No, not at all,” Lydia whispered back. “And I’ll go with you.”

That seemed to reassure her somewhat, for the tenseness drained from her expression. An hour later Lydia accompanied her young charge into a long, narrow room. Attached to the far wall was what the oculist explained as the
Snellen Chart for Distance Testing
. Mr. Rosswald, a bespectacled, bearded man with only a faint trace of accent, had Phoebe read the letters to him as he covered alternating eyes with squares of dark pasteboard. It was no surprise to Lydia, who sat in a corner chair out of the way, when the girl could not read the bottom three rows. The oculist then used a retinscope and looked into each of Phoebe’s eyes to determine if she suffered from an astigmatism.

“She has the astigmatism,” Mr. Rosswald said when the examination was finished. “Her eyeglasses will correct that as well. You must bring her back here in two weeks to have them fitted.”

“I’ll be able to see?” the girl asked.

“You’ll be able to count the leaves on the trees, Fraulein,” he said, patting her shoulder.

They lunched on fidget pies at the
Lion Hotel
, which was crowded with patrons, giving them ample opportunity for peoplewatching without being rude. Lydia bought her father some paints and linseed oil afterward in a dusty little art supply shop. To her disgust, her conscience would not allow her to bypass Saint Mary Street on her way out of town again, but at least her conscience did not prick at her when she did not rein Wellington over to wait in case Mr. Sanders was to show. They rode in silence for a quarter of an hour, and then Lydia turned to Phoebe. “You’re not looking forward to the eyeglasses, are you?”

“But I am, Miss Clark,” Phoebe replied while aiming her eyes just under Lydia’s eyebrows. “I’ll be able to see everything. Thank you for buying them for me.”

“I’m asking you to be honest with me, Phoebe.”

When the girl did not speak right away, Lydia turned her attention back to the horse and road to give her some time.

Finally a small voice replied, “No, ma’am.” She sent a worried look sideways to Lydia. “But it’s still very kind of you, Miss Clark.”

Lydia had to smile at her. “Some favors we can do without, yes?”

Phoebe’s green eyes clouded. “I’ll be ugly.”

“That’s not so. Do you really think a bit of wire and glass could detract from such a lovely face?”

“I’m not lovely. And everyone will laugh.”

Please help me again with this, Father
, Lydia prayed while drawing in a quiet sigh. She wouldn’t lie to the girl, for even though she didn’t allow her students to ridicule one another, she couldn’t monitor them every hour of the day. And children nowadays were no different from when she was in school.

“It’s not fair,” the girl whispered.

Lydia nodded. “I know, Phoebe. And if it were in my power to change that, I would. But you can’t allow this to ruin your life.” She let go of the reins with one hand long enough to touch the girl’s shoulder. “Every person has his own burden to carry. Remember Captain Powell? He didn’t allow the loss of an arm to hinder him.”

“But he was an adult. I’m the only one in the school with a burden.”

“Some burdens you can’t see, Phoebe—and some will come later. That’s the way of life. But God helps us to bear them, if we ask Him. And we can still have happiness in spite of them.”

“Did you have a burden when you were a girl?” Phoebe asked after a thoughtful hesitation.

“Oh, I thought I did. My height and ears.”

The girl gave her a blank look. “Your ears?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“But I haven’t. Honestly, Miss Clark. You’re almost as beautiful as Miss Raleigh.”

Lydia remembered then that the girl was short-sighted and smiled. “Thank you, Phoebe.”

A silence lapsed between them for several minutes, and then Phoebe turned to her again. “People teased you?”

“Oh, unmercifully.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Somehow I realized that my height and ears weren’t all there was to me—if they had been given to someone else, that person would have suffered the same teasing. That helped me not to take it so personally. And by the way, when the teasing stopped mattering so much to me, it eventually faded away.”

“Have you a burden now?”

As unfair as it was that she should hear the girl’s innermost angst and then not confide her own, Lydia could not go burdening a child about the ache that sometimes stabbed her heart at the sight of a happily married couple, like the vicar and his wife. She replied lightly instead, “I have a dear student who would rather go through life running to second base and bumping into things than wear a pair of spectacles on her
lovely
face.”

Finally a smile touched the girl’s lips. “I’ve never bumped into anything, Miss Clark.”

Lydia smiled back. “Well, it was just a matter of time.”

Chapter 9

The following Sunday, Jacob Pitney mustered up enough courage to plant himself two rows behind Miss Rawlins during the morning worship service at Saint Jude’s. Vicar Phelps delivered a fine sermon centered around the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, but sitting so close to the object of his affection made it difficult for Jacob to keep his attention from straying to the back of Miss Rawlins’ head.

During the closing prayer Jacob added a petition of his own that she would walk back to the
Larkspur
unaccompanied. He pretended to fuss with the cuff-fastener of his tweed coat while she passed his pew on her way toward the front, counted fifteen silent seconds as planned, then stepped out into the aisle himself.

But he hadn’t planned on Mr. Trumble cornering him in the vestibule.

“I’ve been meanin’ to ask you about a collection of marbles I’ve got from the ruins uphill.” The shopkeeper held up both palms as if to head off any accusation. “I got them before you and Mr. Ellis started your escallation up there, mind you.”

Escallation?
A fraction of a second later it dawned upon Jacob that
excavation
was likely the intended word. He darted a helpless glance in the direction of the open front door, where the vicar was shaking hands with Miss Rawlins. “Why don’t you bring them over this afternoon and we’ll have a look?”

“You sure it’s no incompetence?”

“Incompetence?”

“You know…too much trouble?”

“I would be very interested in seeing them,” he assured the shopkeeper before bidding him good-day and exiting the church. He sent a silent
thank you
heavenward at the sight of the writer strolling along the willows alone.

“Miss Rawlins?”

Jacob was chagrined to hear his own voice break as he spoke—like a half-grown schoolboy’s, but she turned and smiled. His breath caught in his throat. She looked so elegant with her salmon-colored gown billowing about her slippers in the breeze.

“Mr. Pitney,” Miss Rawlins said as he caught up to her. “Where is Mr. Ellis?”

This deflated his confidence. Did she only see him as part of a team?
We work together, we’re not married
, he thought but of course did not say. “He’s visiting his family in Bristol and should return by late afternoon.” Jacob had carried on as usual atop the Anwyl yesterday, because they did not normally take Saturdays off unless visiting their families.

“Would you mind if I accompanied you?” he asked, holding his breath.

He let it out again when she replied, even pleasantly, “That would be nice.”

This encouraged him to press on in his quest to deepen their nonexistent relationship. “I’ve recently finished reading
Rachelle of Chamonix
.”

“Indeed?” Looking at him with new appreciation in her expression, she said, “Tell me, what did you think of it?”

“I liked it.”

“You
liked
it?”

Jacob wondered if he had imagined the little edge to her voice.
What did I say?
Perhaps
like
was too weak a word. Too late to take it back now, but he could amplify it. “
Very
much, I meant to say. I liked it very much.”