Chapter Seven #2
With no clear idea of where she wanted to go (apart from away from Pembroke and Christ Church), she was grateful to find the estimate of a three-minute walk to Keele’s exact, and in short order she stood before it in Cornmarket Street, debating whether to go in.
What would Della think, to find Maria wandering about alone on her wedding day?
If Della herself had even returned from the Egertons’!
Of all her sisters, Maria had been closest to Frances because Frances was nearest her in age.
But in the years since Frances’ marriage and removal to Abingdon, Maria had been thrown back on the company of her mother, her younger brother Gordon, and her sister-in-law Sarah.
Her oldest sister Adela, by dint of being fourteen years her senior, had been less like a sister to her than a second mother, but Maria was glad of that now, for she stood in need of counsel.
Moreover, questions and problems which might cause their mother Mrs. Barstow to lie awake nights, eaten with anxiety, Adela would receive more lightly, if only because she already had the care of a husband, three little sons, and two dozen more pupils of Keele’s.
“Good day to you, miss,” said a grinning young lout in the gold-tasseled velvet cap which proclaimed him a nobleman. He elbowed his companion, similarly appareled in a dark undress gown and gold tassel. “Fancy a pretty girl like that, all on her own, forlorn as a duck in thunder.”
So much for her matronly freedoms! Wishing she had remembered to don under her bonnet one of the batiste caps Jane had given her, appropriate for a married woman, Maria went straight up the step to Keele’s and knocked.
“Miss Barstow?” wondered the Keele’s maid Paulson when she opened the door.
Not bothering to correct her, Maria gave a quick smile and pushed her way in. “Is Mrs. Weatherill about?”
Della’s head appeared around the door of the parlor. “Maria? Goodness! Is something wrong? Whatever are you doing here? Where is Mr. Ellsworth?”
Maria thanked heaven later that, apart from Bumble Babykins in Della’s arms, she miraculously found her oldest sister alone.
Her tale was soon told (leaving out only the baron’s subsidies of Keele’s), and the tears held back in her husband’s presence released, though Maria, already wiser than before, unburdened herself as quietly as she could.
“Oh, no,” sighed Adela, still bouncing Bonkers on her knee. “Oh, dear me. What a dreadful beginning! And Lord Dere meant it all, all of it, in kindness.”
“I know it,” sniffled Maria. “But it doesn’t matter to Mr. Ellsworth!
He calls it charity and thinks it an affront to his pride.
He would rather we lived in two little rooms, as long as he paid for it himself.
No—no—that’s not all. He wishes he’d never been married to me in the first place.
Then he might have gone on with his fellowship and whatever diverse odd jobs came his way, earning and saving until—until he could have his stupid Miss Whatshername. ”
Her sister made sundry soothing murmurs, putting an arm about Maria and subjecting poor Bonkers to being crushed between them.
“Della, I don't want to be the only one in the family whose husband doesn't love her!” hiccupped Maria.
“I know it, darling, and you won't be,” Adela promised her. “He’ll come to love you, just wait and see. How can he help loving our dear, sweet Maria?”
“He can help it,” said Maria grimly, smearing the final tears from her cheeks.
“I wasn’t particularly dear or sweet just now.
And I did so intend to be! When he told me at the Egertons’ that he would like to be friends, I took hope and thought it might all turn up trumps.
But, Della, if you could have seen his face when he…
alluded to the things he had lost. To her, chief among them. ”
“If he is at all respectable,” replied Adela with the stern voice more often used in her schoolmistress role, “he must renounce this other person and think of her no more. If he doesn’t, why, we will set your brothers on him.”
“Right. Then he’ll love me—after my family thrashes him.”
“Who said anything about thrashing?” Della laughed, delighting her infant son, who echoed her and reached a chubby hand to pat her mouth. “I only meant, if he does not prove sensible, someone will have to talk sense to him.”
“Talk sense to me too, Della!” Maria begged. “Say something to give me hope.”
“Silly girl. One clear cause for hope is that I think you already begin to care for him. Think how much more hopeless and wretched it would be if you had come today and told me you hated him and could never like him, much less love him! That would have been reason for despair, to be tied to such a person for life.”
“No,” said Maria unwillingly, “I think I might…come to like him easily enough.” She had a brief memory of twining with Mr. Ellsworth like eels in a barrel and hastily pushed it away.
“Then, if he is not a complete dunderhead, he must realize there will be everything to be gained by forgetting Miss Whatshername and learning to like you instead,” Della pronounced, with all the confidence of a well-loved woman. “It may take time, but you can begin by becoming friends.”
“Does that mean I should not have—told him he must have the dressing room?” she whispered, anguished.
Her oldest sister frowned, considering. “Dearest Maria, it so happens that Mr. Ellsworth would be within his rights, legally speaking, to demand—er—how things must be. But he seems a sensitive person—judging by how touchy he was about Lord Dere—so I do not suppose he will…force anything upon you which he would think unwelcome. If you exile him because of Miss Whatshername, I suspect he will honor that because he will be too proud to insist. I cannot be certain, of course, but it strikes me as plausible. As likely.”
And though Maria knew her new husband hardly better than Della did, it sounded plausible to her as well. That pride of his.
Catching at Bonkers’ plump little hand, his aunt gave it a kiss. Then she leaned to kiss her sister, too. “Thank you, Della. I feel better than when I came. Much. Where is everyone? Would you like to go for a walk?”
“Even if I did, I would not go with you on your wedding day. You must go home, Maria. Storming out of the house is no way to begin a marriage.”
“I didn’t storm! I snuck.” But after she made Della laugh again with the story of avoiding Chop and Pork, she pleaded, “Please? Just a short walk? Up and down Cornmarket? You might tell me about the churches.”
“All right, then. Let me give Babykins to the nurse, and we will go. We might venture as far as St. Mary Magdalen, though you live within St. Aldate’s parish, I suppose, and Keele’s belongs to St. Martin’s.”