Chapter Ten
There is Nothing makes a Man Suspect much, more then to Know little.
The order of multiple copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream required Fletcher’s to send to London; therefore it was not until several days onward that Mrs. Dere could send Harker to Oxford to fetch them. In celebration the entire Greenwood Hall party was invited to Perryfield for dinner and cards.
To Frances’ dismay, a note from Mrs. Dere arrived at Iffley Cottage the morning of the occasion, requesting she come earlier in the day.
Frances could guess what that was about because, on the previous afternoon, Mrs. Dere called at the Hall and discovered her sitting with Mr. Hearne, hearing his speeches and prompting him from the book when he lost his way.
Not only that, but Jane whispered to her later that she heard Mrs. Eveleigh tell Mrs. Dere, “It falls out that Mr. Tilson always sits beside your Frances at dinner—a matter of precedence, you understand—and I believe they begin very much to like each other.” With two possible suitors in the offing, of course Mrs. Dere wanted to speak with her.
While the messenger waited, Frances composed a hasty reply.
“I thank you for your invitation, madam,” she wrote neatly (Mrs. Dere detested illegible scrawls), “and will walk over an hour before the other guests arrive. Jane and Miss Jarvis will be spending the morning with us because we have collected all the cloth, drapery scraps, and trimmings in order to make the fairy costumes.”
It was a partial truth. Miss Eveleigh and Miss Jarvis were indeed walking to Iffley Cottage, but over the course of the morning Jane and Frances hoped to find an opportunity to speak confidentially.
Meeting at Iffley Cottage removed them from Mrs. Eveleigh’s supervision and the comings and goings of the young men, but Frances’ home was hardly empty.
Mrs. Barstow and Reed the maid were occupied with making currant wine in the kitchen, and Gordon had run off to join Peter, but there remained Sarah and her little son Bash, as well as Maria.
“I thought we might fashion little wings from wire for the fairies and cover the frames with gauze,” Sarah suggested. “Lamé would be even better, but of course we haven’t any. Still, there might be enough tinsel to embroider the outline of each wing.”
“Mama says if we are already ordering baize from Meldrum’s for the curtain and the mechanicals, we may purchase additional ribbons and such,” Jane said. “Suppose we were to ornament the gauze with a few spangles?”
“Yes, that would be enchanting!” cried Maria. “How generous of Mrs. Eveleigh.”
“Will Mustardseed and Peaseblossom have tinsel and spangles as well?” laughed Frances. “I cannot see Gordon and Peter being as delighted with the idea as Maria.”
Sarah considered. “The fairies should all have the tinseled wings so that they are clearly one group, but we might spare Gordy and Peter the spangles.”
Altogether it was another hour before Maria and Sarah went away to see to other tasks, leaving only Miss Jarvis to be dismissed on some pretense.
Miss Eveleigh must not have thought this necessary, however, because she at once leaned forward and said, “At last! Not that I do not like Mrs. Langworthy and Miss Maria very well, but I have been dying to speak apart with you, Frances. And, no, we needn’t mind Annabel hearing because I have already said it all to her.
Though, if you have anything confidential to tell me, Frances, only say so and I will banish her. ”
“Nothing of the kind,” Frances replied quickly, for what else could she say? “Nothing at all. I only wanted to ask you how you were liking Mr. Midgecomb now, now that you have known him for all of a week.”
“I think I still might come to like him,” Jane said, lifting her shoulders in a helpless shrug.
“I don’t dislike him, at any rate, which is something far more easily discerned in so short a time.
” Holding up the gauze she was embroidering, she twirled it, letting the silver catch the light.
“The curious thing is, I feel I hardly know him any better than before. Mama seats him between us every day at dinner, as you know, but he talks mostly to her!”
“You had better beware, then, of him transferring his affections to Mrs. Eveleigh,” Frances rallied her.
“He might already have done so,” Jane chuckled, “for when he tries to talk to me, it all comes out a jumble. All stammers and stares!” She shook her head.
“He does stare at you almost continuously,” put in Miss Jarvis.
“Don’t I know it! As if he had seen me once before, long ago, and was trying to remember precisely where!
It has gone past the point where I find anything endearing in it, I can assure you.
Now I begin to fear the man will never be able to converse with me like an ordinary person.
” Smoothing the gauze in her lap again she added, “To be frank, I hoped I wouldn’t like him at all, simply because I resented Mama’s scheming, but he seems a good friend to Mr. Hearne and Mr. Tilson—he is very patient with Mr. Hearne’s absence of mind—and he reads well enough.
Those are marks in his favor, I suppose. ”
“I tell her she will know better when she reads with him,” Miss Jarvis insisted, “when we have the new copies of the play. With only the one, everyone has felt Mr. Hearne ought to keep it because he will take so long to learn his part.” With a sly, sidewise peep at Frances she added, “It is good of you to help him, Miss Barstow.”
Frances colored. She expected Jane to reprimand her cousin for the impertinent hint, but Jane only peeped at her as well.
Ah. So that was how it was.
Show Mr. Hearne a little kindness, and not only Mrs. Dere began to be suspicious!
“I believe we would all agree, privately, that the more time Mr. Hearne has to study his speeches, the better,” Frances answered, a trifle stiffly. “And if I—and the fairies—feel it even more strongly, you must remember that—we—will have two scenes with him.”
When Jane and her companion exchanged knowing looks, Frances knew straightaway they had been talking about her, and the wire she was shaping in her hands acquired an unlooked-for zigzag in its arc.
“You speak as if I might have tender feelings growing for Mr. Hearne,” she said boldly.
“Which I assure you I do not. He seems a pleasant enough young man, and there is no denying his personal attractions, but I am greedy enough to wish for more. To wish for—a likeness of-of temperaments and minds.”
“Mr. Tilson then?” insinuated Miss Jarvis with a demure smile. Her weak eye prevented her from fine needlework, but she assisted the efforts by fitting and cutting the pieces of gauze to the wire frames. “At our end of the dinner table, you and he speak quite fluently.”
“Mm. Yes. He is an agreeable dinner companion.”
“And no more…?” Jane prompted. She threw out a placating hand, however. “You must forgive us, Frances. Our conduct is insupportable. But you cannot conceive how stirring it is to consider such things, you, who have two older sisters and a sister-in-law recently married.”
That may have been, but Frances disliked the two of them amusing themselves at her expense all the same. She smiled (tightly) and changed the subject, and when they took their leave shortly after, she was only half sorry to see them go.
“Mrs. Markham Dere is in the kitchen instructing Mrs. Robson and Cook on how she would like the jelly garnished,” the footman Wood informed Frances when he deposited her in the drawing room.
“If you’ll wait here, miss, and try not to mind us working around you.
” Wood and the other footmen were setting out the square card tables with their marquetry surfaces, chairs, candlesticks, counters, and unopened packs of cards.
Frances set down the half-completed fairy wing she had brought with her and skipped over to one of the pier tables where ten copies of the play were stacked. With eleven total copies, they need not even share! She might mark up her own speeches and carry it about, studying it.
Within minutes she had forgotten the Deres, the footmen, and the vexations of the day and was removed to one of the window stools, book open, mouthing Hippolyta’s first speech: “‘Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;/ Four nights will quickly dream away the time…’”
“I see you have found them.” Mrs. Dere’s voice broke the silence. Her gaze swept the assembled card tables, and she straightened one of the packs of cards.
“Oh, Mrs. Dere! I am beside myself with joy. What riches. What generosity! Thank you for ordering these.”
“You must thank the baron that you have your very own. I said surely two copies would suffice for Iffley Cottage, Mrs. Langworthy’s and Gordon’s parts being so small, but he insisted.”
Frances believed it, but it was a sign of Mrs. Dere’s good humor that she let the baron have his way.
“Look,” she said, laying down Dream and crossing the room to pick up the fairy wing.
“How do you like our prototype? Or, one of them. Maria is prancing around in another set. We thought at first to attach it to our clothing with buttons but then chose instead to add ribbons as straps.” She demonstrated, threading an arm through.
“And in her own fit of generosity, Mrs. Eveleigh tells us to make a list of items to order from the linen-draper and haberdasher.”
“Very nice. Come, Frances. Sit beside me. I would speak with you.”
Frances complied, a hand pressed below her bosom for courage, and the ladies waited for the footmen to finish their arrangements and go.
It was not a direct repeat of the morning with Miss Eveleigh and Miss Jarvis, thank heaven. And at least with Mrs. Markham Dere one was spared the glances and giggles and coyness.
“I wanted to praise you, Frances, for heeding my earlier counsel.”
“Ma’am?”