The Poor Governess

  Author’s Note

  The Governess’s lot in the Victorian and Edwardian era was often miserable and frightening as I have described in this novel. My mother always said she was so sorry for them as if they talked they were considered ‘forward’ and if they were silent ‘dull’.

  A pretty Governess was also too often considered fair game and I remember hearing a well-known ‘dasher’ of my mother’s generation saying,

  “There was a jolly pretty Governess in one house I visited. I was considering seducing her, but thought it unfair. Then, damn me, I learnt that my best friend had got there first!”

  Between upstairs and downstairs and often ignored by both, a Governess was lonely and isolated.

  But there was no other career open to respectable young women at that time except to be a companion to an old and usually disagreeable Dowager.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1887

  The door opened and a voice said sharply,

  “Come along, Miss Lara, it’s a nice day and you should be out getting’ the air instead of bein’ cooped up here scribblin’ your head off!”

  The Honourable Lara Hurley raised her face to say laughingly,

  “1 am scribbling my head off to some purpose, Nanny, and when I am famous you will be proud of me.”

  Nanny, who had been with the family for over twenty years, merely snorted disparagingly and, coming into the room, picked up a scarf that was on one chair, a sun-bonnet on another and several books that had been thrown onto the floor.

  Lara sat back in her chair and exclaimed,

  “Oh, Nanny, now you have broken the thread of what I was going to say and I am having such trouble with this chapter anyway.”

  “Why you should want to write a book when the house be full of them already is beyond my comprehension,” Nanny replied stoutly.

  “You say that now, but when it is published you will be the first person who will want me to sign a copy for you.”

  Nanny sniffed as if that was very unlikely and Lara went on,

  “It’s all very well, Nanny, but what else can I do to make money? And, as you well know, we need it!”

  “It’s not the sort of occupation that’ll bring in much money,” Nanny commented. “From all I’ve heard, famous authors have always starved in garrets before they had their books published.”

  “You are quite right,” Lara said, “and, although I am not starving, thanks to you, I am desperately in need of a new gown and, if I have to go to Church in the same bonnet for another five years, I am sure it will fall to pieces while I am singing the psalms and you will really be ashamed of me!”

  Nanny did not reply and Lara went on,

  “Not that there is anybody in the Church who would notice what I am wearing! And seeing how dull and uneventful this village is, is it surprising that I have to use my imagination to find excitement?”

  “I’m not goin’ to say you shouldn’t use your imagination, Miss Lara,” Nanny said tartly, “but you look pale and it’s fresh air you need to put them roses back in your cheeks and I can’t think why you don’t take up gardenin’ or sketchin’, as other young ladies do.”

  “Which young ladies?” Lara enquired. “There is none of my age around here, as you are well aware.”

  Because she thought that she was at the worst of the argument, Nanny walked to the door.

  “I can’t stay here gossipin’ all day, Miss Lara,” she said. “I’ve got your father’s dinner to prepare and the so-called chicken old Jacobs has killed be so tough it’ll have to be boiled for hours before you can get your teeth into it!”

  Nanny did not wait for a reply, but went from the study, shutting the door behind her and therefore did not hear Lara laugh.

  The toughness of the chickens was an everlasting bone of contention between Nanny and the odd job man who stoked the boiler, planted the vegetables in the garden and cleaned out the stables.

  Lara often wondered what they would do without him, for she was quite certain that they would find no one else who would do what Jacobs did for so small a wage.

  ‘Money! Money!’ she thought to herself now. ‘It’s not the ‘root of all evil’, it’s the cause of all discomfort and worry!’

  It seemed ridiculous, she often thought, that her father had come into the family title, but with not a penny to go with it.

  As the younger son of the third Lord Hurlington, he had gone into the Church while his older brother Edward, as was traditional, had served in the Grenadier Guards, which was the family Regiment.

  When Edward died in Egypt, not of wounds but of sand-fly fever, the Reverend Arthur Hurlington had become the heir to the Barony.

  But when Lara’s grandfather had died, he had left a mass of debts, which were only partially cleared by the sale of a family house and its contents.

  Because he was conscientious and also honourable, the new Lord Hurlington worked valiantly trying to pay off the debts that remained out of his very small stipend.

  This meant that his wife and daughter had to pinch and save every penny and such necessities as a new gown or even a new bonnet were all expected to wait until in some far distant future they were clear of the millstone round their necks.

  “How could Grandpapa have been so extravagant?” Lara had asked her mother a dozen times.

  Lady Hurlington not only had no answer, but a year ago had seemed to relinquish her hold on life as if she just faded away.

  Lara bitterly blamed the fact that there was not sufficient food to sustain her, nor could they afford the expensive medicines she obviously needed.

  Since she had become eighteen and no longer considered herself a schoolgirl, she had been obsessed by the idea of earning money.

  At the same time she knew it would be impossible for her to leave her father alone, even if she was offered lucrative employment elsewhere.

  Actually there was no chance of that.

  The only careers open to young women who were ladies were either to be a companion to some cantankerous old Dowager or else to become a Governess.

  “You’re certainly too young to be that,” Nanny said when Lara talked to her about it.

  “I have also no wish to teach children anyway,” Lara stipulated, “and Mama always said a Governess lived a miserable life somewhere between Heaven and Hell!”

  Nanny looked at her for an explanation and she said with a smile,

  “They are neither upstairs nor downstairs, so to speak, but in a ‘no-man’s land’ somewhere in between, which I imagine is a very uncomfortable position.”

  Then because the idea of Governesses rather caught her fancy, she decided that she would write a novel about them.

  The heroine would be very poor and very pretty, she told herself. She would obtain a post in a Ducal household, and of course, as the Duke was a widower, she would eventually marry him and live happily ever afterwards.

  It seemed to Lara the type of novel that she would like to read herself and she was certain when it was completed that she would find a publisher for it and make her fortune.

  ‘Perhaps like Lord Byron I shall become famous overnight!’

  There were also the Brontes, who she thought resembled herself, being Parson’s daughters living in the wilds of Yorkshire. While one could hardly call Little Fladbury wild, it was certainly dull and nothing happened from one year’s end to the next.

  In novels, she thought, there was always a grand house where the Squire lived.

  He would either be young and handsome with his eye on a pretty village maiden, or else, if he was old and cantankerous, he had a son who was dashing enough to wish to run away with the girl he loved.

  Because Lara was an only child and had lived so much on her own, her head was
full of stories. Only her mother had understood that the people who lived in her imagination were just as real, if not more so, than those encountered every day.

  Now as she rose from the table she thought with satisfaction that she had written two chapters of her book in her neat handwriting, but she was now undoubtedly stuck in the third.

  It was where the heroine, having been recommended for a position in the Ducal household by a kind old lady who lived in the neighbourhood, was setting out for the ancestral castle.

  ‘How can I describe such a place without having seen one?’ she asked herself.

  She wondered whether it would be possible to ride over and look at the outside of one of the country houses that were not too far from Little Fladbury. But in the part of Essex where she lived there were no stately mansions.

  Ten or fifteen miles away there were, Lara knew, several houses of aristocrats and she felt if she could see them it would be helpful.

  But the only horse she and her father had to ride was growing old and she doubted if Rollo would carry her ten miles, and certainly not twenty.

  She knew that one of the farmers would lend her a carthorse in an emergency, either to ride or attach to the gig, but again it was a question of distance.

  She reckoned it would take far too long to travel at least ten miles each way and get back the same evening and she could hardly spend the night under a hedge.

  ‘I suppose all writers have the same difficulties that I am having,’ she thought.

  But that was poor consolation and she looked at her manuscript a little ruefully before she thought that she had better do as Nanny insisted and go outside and into the garden.

  Nanny was always interrupting and trying to prevent Lara from concentrating on her novel.

  She knew in a way that it was a kind of jealousy, for Nanny had for many years disliked the thought of her growing up and being able to think for herself.

  And yet it was difficult to know what they would have done without Nanny to cook, clean the house and look after her father as she had looked after Lady Hurlington until she died.

  ‘I will walk down to the orchard,’ Lara decided, ‘and perhaps, besides pleasing Nanny, it will give me an idea of what I can say next.’

  She went from the study into the hall where she saw that Nanny had placed the old sun-bonnet she wore in the garden on a chair, but her scarf, which she wore over her shoulders when it was cold, had obviously been taken upstairs.

  Lara picked up her bonnet and was just going to leave the Vicarage by the garden door when there was a rat-tat from the front of the house.

  She wondered who it could possibly be.

  It was too late for the postman, who had already been, and all the local people knew that her father was away conducting a funeral in the next village to stand in for their incumbent who was on holiday.

  Realising, when she did not come from the kitchen, that Nanny could not have heard the knock on the front door, Lara went to open it.

  For a moment she stared at the visitor standing outside and then gave a cry of delight.

  “Jane!” she exclaimed. “Jane! How exciting to see you!”

  “It’s lovely to see you, Lara,” the woman replied.

  “Come in!” Lara invited. “I am longing to hear all your news.”

  Jane Cooper, who was a young woman of twenty-four, stepped into the hall and looked at Lara a little nervously as if she could hardly believe that she was really pleased to see her.

  Mr. Cooper, Jane’s father, had been a retired schoolmaster who had taught Lara for years until he died.

  Jane had been born when her father was quite old. Her birth had killed her mother and had been a great grief to Mr. Cooper, but he was compensated by the fact that he adored his only child.

  He spent his time teaching her as he taught so many boys at the public school where he had been for the main years of his teaching life.

  When Lara’s mother had realised how fortunate they were to have such an intelligent man living in Little Fladbury, she had asked him to take her daughter as a pupil and, although Jane was much older than she was, she and Lara had become good friends.

  But the two girls were very different characters.

  Jane, perhaps because she had never a mother’s love, was shy, self-effacing and very unsure of herself.

  She grew, however, to be pretty in a rather nondescript manner with fair hair and a clear pink and white complexion.

  In her small face her main beauty was two sky blue eyes that looked at the world either with surprise or with a shrinking reluctance to be involved in anything that was not straightforward and simple.

  In fact, despite her superior education, Lara often felt that Jane was younger than she was and even more unsophisticated.

  It was disastrous when Mr. Cooper died, because his small pension died with him and this meant that Jane had to earn her own living.

  The only possible position she was qualified for was that of a Governess and it was Lady Hurlington who found Jane employment with one of her husband’s relatives, who lived in a very different world from the one they occupied.

  Jane had been extremely grateful and had gone to Lady Ludlow’s house in London where she had three small children to teach and had been, Lara always understood, a success.

  As she opened the door of the study and Jane followed her in, she thought that it was providential that she should have arrived at this particular moment when she was badly in need of information for the background to the book she was writing about the life of a Governess.

  “Sit down, Jane,” she suggested. “I suppose you have had luncheon and it is too early for tea, but I will tell Nanny you are here and would like a cup of coffee.”

  “No, I want nothing, Lara, except your help,” Jane replied.

  “My help?” Lara repeated and smiled. “That is what I want from you!”

  She thought that Jane looked puzzled and she said quickly,

  “Never mind that for the moment. Tell me what it is you want first and I will talk afterwards.”

  Jane was taking off her white cotton gloves and, when she had put them down, she clasped her hands together and said,

  “Oh, Lara – I am in such – trouble!”

  The way she spoke told Lara that it was serious and she asked,

  “In trouble, Jane? How? What has happened?”

  “I really don’t know – how to – begin,” Jane replied, “but the reason I came here today was to ask – your father if he would be kind – enough to give me another – reference.”

  “What happened to the one you had before?” Lara enquired.

  “Your relation Lady Ludlow gave it to the Marquis of Keyston, where I am now employed.”

  “You have left Lady Ludlow?” Lara exclaimed. “I had no idea of that.”

  “It was not for anything I had done wrong,” Jane said quickly, “but the two boys went to a preparatory school and it was decided that the little girl should have lessons with some other children of her own age.”

  “Oh, poor Jane! So they did not want you any longer.”

  “I was very sorry to leave them,” Jane went on. “I had been happy there and Lady Ludlow was very kind.”

  “So she found you a new position?”

  Jane nodded.

  “And what is wrong with that?”

  She thought for a moment that Jane was not going to answer and there was an expression in her blue eyes that Lara did not understand.

  Then she said,

  “Oh, Lara – it is so – frightening! I don’t – know what to do.”

  “Tell me everything from the very beginning,” Lara proposed.

  It flashed through her mind that Jane’s revelations of what was happening in her position as a Governess were exactly what she needed for her novel.

  Then she told herself that was a very selfish thought and she must concentrate on helping Jane, who she was quite certain would never be able to help herself.

&nbs
p; “When Lady Ludlow told me that I was to go to the Marquis of Keyston, I was rather frightened,” Jane began, “because he is so – important.”

  “Who is he?” Lara asked. “I have never heard of him.”

  “He is a friend of the Prince of Wales and owns a great number of racehorses. Lady Ludlow spoke of him in a way that told me she admired him very much.”

  “He sounds fascinating!” Lara said. “Go on, Jane. What is the Marquis’s wife like?”

  “He is not married,” Jane answered. “I teach his niece, the only child of his elder brother who died without having a son.”

  “Oh, I see that is why the present Marquis inherited.”

  “Yes, that is right,” Jane agreed, “and Georgina is a nice little girl.”

  “How old is she?” Lara interposed.

  “She is ten, but rather stupid and I am not able to teach her very much.”

  “And where does the Marquis live?”

  “In an enormous house called ‘Keyston Priory’,” Jane answered. “It has beautiful grounds and I would be happy there, except – ”

  She stopped and bit on her lower lip as if it was trembling.

  Lara’s eyes were alight with interest.

  “What has happened, Jane?” she asked. “Is it the Marquis who is making life difficult for you?”

  She did not know quite how to phrase it, but she was sure in her imagination that a wicked villain, as in a play, was menacing the gentle and pure maiden who was Jane and only the hero could save her.

  “No, it is – not the Marquis who is the – difficulty,” Jane faltered, “but – his friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “He is called Lord Magor – and he is quite – old.”

  Lara waited and Jane added, the words seeming to burst from her lips,

  “Oh, Lara, I am frightened of him – and I don’t know what to do. I have to – leave and there is – nowhere I can go.”

  Lara drew her chair a little nearer to Jane’s.

  “What is he doing to frighten you?” she asked.

  “He keeps coming into the schoolroom in the – evenings when I am – alone and the night before last he tried to kiss me – Oh, Lara – I know it is wrong and wicked – but he will not listen when I – tell him to go away.”