Chapter Two #3
Mr. Ellsworth had been unwell, of course, and there was every possibility that, in his right mind, he might kick as much as Frances when he slept.
Or he might tell her, “Please confine yourself to your side of the bed, madam, for I am no bolster.” And then there were the Marital Duties her mind skirted around.
A crease marred her brow. On the one hand, sometimes the chickens and sheep and cows ran away or protested when the male of the species bothered them, only to submit eventually with unreadable countenances.
(Was that, for example, chicken joy, chicken outrage, or merely chicken resignation?) On the other, Maria’s older sisters doted upon their husbands, and their husbands upon them, so Marital Duties could not be all bad.
And, even if it were something to be borne with resignation, one might have dear little babies!
If it were positively dreadful, someone would have told me. Frances would have, at least. But it can’t be, or would both men and women be so often accused of engaging in Marital Duties without troubling themselves about the “marital” part?
They would not.
And, preferring optimism to gloom, Maria pursued that line of inquiry no further.
Doubtless one’s chances of happiness in marriage, even forced marriage, improved if one could like the person one married, and there she considered herself fortunate.
Because even when Mr. Ellsworth had been no more than a Peculiar Person She Met in Oxford, Maria had liked him.
He had been kind to Gerry and Ranulph, even taking the time to talk and tease with them, when he must have been dreadfully uncomfortable.
He had been humorous as well, making the little joke about his own foolishness.
And he had been courteous to her, no resentment flashing even when she rallied him about how desperately he must have wanted that money.
Yes, she had liked him even before she realized he was handsome, and that was a point in her own character’s favor, she decided with some relief. I am not all bad.
By his own admission he had no money. Not if he would risk his life for five pounds.
He might not have known it was a risk, of course—the danger of the hardening plaster seemed to have taken both him and the sculptor by surprise.
But then there was his mention of visiting Gray’s the jeweler and something about the printer in Whitehall—what could those mean?
“Mama?” Maria turned from the window to address her. “What will happen if Mr. Ellsworth has no money upon which to marry?”
It was Mrs. Dere who answered, after sucking in a sharp breath. “If there are no other obstacles, I suppose the baron will supply the lack.” (“As he always does,” went unsaid but understood.) “You must not expect to live in clover, however.”
“Of course Maria would have no such expectation,” Mrs. Barstow replied indignantly. “Nor could the young man, considering he—entered her life—purely by chance.”
“So he claims,” was Mrs. Dere’s chilly pronouncement. “If the marriage goes forward, this Mr. Ellsworth must give up his New College fellowship and cheap lodgings be found somewhere. Perhaps near St. John’s Street.”
“If you mean near the workhouse, Mrs. Dere, I would sooner have Mr. Ellsworth and Maria to Iffley Cottage.”
“How can you suggest such a thing, Camilla? Think of the example they would set Gordon and your grandchildren! Imagine how people would talk! And I need not remind you that Iffley Cottage is not your own, but rather the baron’s.
Nonsense. They cannot reside in Iffley any more than they can be married there. Let us hear no more of that.”
And Maria knew things must be in a very bad way for her mother to swallow her ire, throat working, and say after a minute, “But—not near the workhouse—if you please, Mrs. Dere.”
To be exiled from Iffley!
Tears welled in Maria’s own eyes, and she balled her fists in her lap.
She might have given way altogether, but she fought it, wishing she could again throw the example of her second older sister Jane in Mrs. Dere’s face.
Jane had come to Iffley in disgrace after her ill-advised elopement, and she had been forgiven at last, even marrying a parson!
Maria had been much younger when all this took place, and the family rarely spoke of such things all these years later, but there was no denying Jane and her Philip visited Iffley as often as they liked now, without even Mrs. Lamb the postmistress finding anything shocking about them to publish to the village.
Kicking her slippered foot against the leg of her chair a few times to relieve her feelings, Maria made quite a passionate speech in the privacy of her own mind: “Bother you, Mrs. Dere! You cannot keep me from my family. Even if I must live by the workhouse in Oxford, that’s still not so very far from Della (and Gordy, now he’s at Magdalen College), and on a very fair day I might even walk all the way to Iffley Meadow, so there!
And Mama and Sarah and Jane will surely come to Oxford to see me.
I daresay Lord Dere would even sneak Mama her own donkey and donkey cart so they may come.
And then, if Mr. Ellsworth and I behave irreproachably, everyone will forgive and forget, and I will return to Iffley in triumph! ”
But she was not fool enough to speak such things aloud. They could only be stuffed down to burn like embers in her bosom.
If Mrs. Dere suspected her companions’ simmering resentments, she did not acknowledge them.
Instead she collected her letters, patting them into a tidy stack.
“Come, Camilla. Let us put these in, and then I have promised my uncle we will see what can be discovered in town of this Mr. Benjamin Ellsworth. It is time for some investigative work.”