Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (15 page)

Ellen had perched herself on a stool, her knees drawn up to her chin. She brightened to see Miss Dignam, and got down off her roost.

“Miss Dignam, tell me please, does the academy possess a copy of
Measure for Measure
?”

Miss Dignam had shut the door behind her. “Miss Grimsley, that is most decidedly not a play for select females,” she said, lowering her voice to a hiss. She gestured toward the bookcase. “I will tolerate
Romeo and Juliet
because, heaven knows, young girls need to see what happens when they disobey their parents …”

“I don't think that is precisely the message Shakespeare intended,” Ellen murmured.

Miss Dignam frowned down at her. “It is the message I intend, Miss Grimsley!” she declared. “
Hamlet
is tolerable, I suppose, because who among us will ever actually meet a Dane? And
Macbeth
, well,
Macbeth
is questionable, what with ladies walking about in their nightgowns. But there will be no
Measure for Measure
in this academy,” she concluded, shaking her head vigorously at the thought. “I honestly do not know where you get your ideas, Miss Grimsley.”

Ellen threw up her bands in exasperation. “Miss Dignam, have you ever read
Measure for Measure
?”

Miss Dignam sucked in her breath as though she had been shot. “Of course not! I have it on good authority that it is no play for a lady to read, and that is enough for me!”

Ellen was forced to listen to the improving tirade that followed. With her fingers crossed behind her back, she promised never to stray into those less-accepted works of the Bard and beat a hasty retreat when Miss Dignam paused for breath.

Miss Dignam followed her into the hall. “Miss Grimsley, I recommend a turn about the garden to work off your excess zeal for scholarship of a questionable sort.”

“Yes, Miss Dignam,” she replied and hurried upstairs before Miss Dignam dredged up another argument.

Fanny was seated at the dressing table, examining the spots on her face up close in the mirror. She leaped back when Ellen bounded into the room.

“Can't you knock?” she protested.

“It's my room too, Fanny,” Ellen said over her shoulder as she hurried into the dressing room she shared with her roommate.

She pulled aside her clothes to find the scholar's gown and the shirt and breeches. She peered closer, a frown on her face. Surely she had not left that shirt all bunched up like that. She thought she remembered shaking it out before putting it on the hook behind her other clothes, but there it was, thrown in a ball on the floor of the closet. She put it on the hook again and grabbed up her sewing basket.

To her relief, Fanny was gathering up her embroidery. “Some of us have been invited to Lady Willa Casterby's apartment to complete our assignment.” She smiled in triumph. “Too bad that you were not included.”

“Yes, a pity,” Ellen agreed, flopping down on her bed. “I do not know how I shall endure this slight.” She laughed and rested on one elbow. “Think how convenient this will make it for you to talk about me. Think how I would retard the conversation, were I there.”

Fanny uttered an unladylike oath she never learned at Miss Dignam's Select Female Academy and slammed the door behind her. Ellen was off the bed and back into the dressing room as soon as Fanny's footsteps receded down the ball. She took off her dress, pulled on the shirt and breeches, and put her dress on again.

Ellen looked in the mirror and laughed. “I am as fubsy as Fanny, with all these clothes on,” she said. She threw a shawl around her shoulders to hide the lumps and then folded the scholar's robe as small as she could and stuffed it in her embroidery basket. She snatched up the book she was to return.

Becky Speed was polishing silver in the servants’ quarters when Ellen tiptoed silently down the stairs. She looked up in surprise. “Miss Grimsley! I thought you said you were not going to try that again!”

Ellen made a face as she struggled to unbutton her dress. “I was not, but Gordon has found himself backed into a corner and needs my help. This one last time,” she finished, biting off each word.

Becky finished unbuttoning her. “You may say that, but I think you like writing those papers.”

Ellen nodded. “You have found me out, Becky. I suppose I do.”

In another moment, she was wrapped in the scholar's gown and across the High Street. She took a deep breath and turned the handle on the small door that opened onto All Souls quadrangle.

She crossed the quad quickly, head down, hardly allowing herself a look around at the peaceful grandeur that was All Souls in early December. She ran into the hall and stepped up to the porter's tall desk, standing on tiptoe and keeping her head down at the same time.

If the porter was surprised to see an undergraduate before him, and one so short, he did not let on. He scarcely glanced up from the paper he was reading and inclined his head in her direction.

“Yes, young master?” he inquired mildly.

“The way to James Gatewood's apartment, please,” she said, her voice gruff.

“Gatewood. Gatewood. Oh, yes, Gatewood!” the porter said, a smile wreathing his face. “Up the stairs and to the right. Look for the nameplate.”

Ellen nodded and ran up the shallow steps, holding her breath when a group of scholars passed her. They were speaking in Latin. She rolled her eyes.
I have died and gone to heaven
, she thought.
Surely there is no place in all of England like All Souls, maybe not in all the world.

One of the men said something in Latin and the rest laughed.

Ellen hugged herself. Only Ralph would understand how exciting it was to be in a place where scholars joked in Latin.

She took the hall at a half-trot, looking at the nameplates, exclaiming to herself over the viscounts and earls and other distinguished names she recognized from the scraps of London news that occasionally made their way into the Grimsley household.

James Gatewood. There it was, an ordinary piece of paper stuck in the holder. She peered closer. The ink looked hardly dry.
Trust James to forget about such details
, she thought as she timidly knocked.

The door opened and James stood there, dressed in a shabby shirt without a neckcloth and breeches that looked slept in. His waistcoat was unbuttoned and his shoes were off.

“Hermia,” he said, keeping his voice low. “To what do I owe this pleasure? Come in, come in.”

She hurried into the room. “I sent Gordon with a message,” she stammered, her face red.

He shrugged, a smile on his face. “I think we know Gordon well enough to suspect the outcome of that, my dear. I am glad I am here.”

Ellen looked about her in delight. Books filled the room, filling each bookcase to overflowing. They rested on the broad window ledges and jostled each other on every flat surface. The desk was covered with papers, the wastebasket crammed to capacity.

“You are fearsome untidy,” she said, clutching the book she was returning, as if afraid to turn it loose in this room.

“It is the despair of my mother,” he agreed. “But what is the point of putting away a book, when you know you will only be needing it again sometime next week, or the month after?”

She laughed. “I can't imagine, James.” She held out the book to him. “I wanted to return this book, as you requested. I have kept Chesney's
Commentary
, because you said I should.”

“So I did,” he said, taking the book from her and adding it to the pile on the chair by the desk. “By the way, I heard your brother's presentation this morning. That essay was something fine, indeed.” He shook his head. “You should have seen Gordon basking in all that acclaim.”

He noted the mulish look in her eyes. “Acclaim that should have been yours?”

She nodded and then laughed in embarrassment. “But that wasn't why I wrote the paper, Jim, and not why I have come now.”

James gestured to a chair by the fireplace, removing the books in it and sitting down across from her. “Why have you come, Hermia? I hoped you would, but I did not expect to see you, not really.”

She clasped her bands in front of her. “I know I should not be here, but the worst thing has happened, James.”

“There was an earthquake, and no one told me?”

She laughed, despite her agitation. “Are you never serious?” “I am usually too serious,” he said firmly, “except where you are concerned. And if I get too serious, I will send you into the Bodleian again to hunt for mice, so I can have another laugh.”

“It is Lord Chesney, James,” she said when he had fallen into his familiar pattern of just looking at her in silence, his eyes appreciative. “He was at the lecture too, and he has asked my looby brother for another paper!”

“Such a troublesome man is Lord Chesney,” Gatewood commented. “It is a wonder that any of us tolerate him.”

He went to a cabinet by the fireplace and removed some cheese. He sliced it and put it onto a cheese fork and handed it to her. “Turn that slowly while I toast the bread.”

She did as he asked, watching the cheese change color and begin to bubble. In another minute, she slid the cheese onto the toast he held out to her and accepted it gratefully. He poured her some tea and then toasted some cheese for himself.

“Now, is that better?” he asked when she finished and was sitting cross-legged by the fire.

“Oh, much, Jim, but it has not solved my problem. I am supposed to write a commentary on
Measure for Measure
, and I daren't chance another tutorial, or try the Bodleian. I don't even have a copy of the play, and there is not one at Miss Dignam's. In fact, she was aghast that I would think of reading it.” She looked at him as he sat beside her in front of the fireplace. “What is the matter with
Measure for Measure
?”

He went to a particularly abundant bookcase and stood there a long moment, his eyes skimming each row. He pulled several more books from the shelf.

“You may borrow these, Ellen, and this copy of the play. They might answer some of your questions.” He chuckled. “Knowing your mind, though, I expect they will only raise more questions, but that is the essence of scholarship, so we shall be satisfied.”

She opened the first book, which was stenciled with a heavy crest and the word Chesney scrawled across the top. She looked at him, her eyes puzzled.

He took it from her, swallowed, and returned it without batting an eye. “Dear me, it appears that I have acquired some of the mysterious Lord Chesney's books. We have been known to raid each other's libraries.”

She opened another book and another. All were stenciled with the same crest. She closed the books and raised laughing eyes at him. “You are a bit of a rascal, Jim! Don't you think you ought to return his books?”

He crossed his heart. “As soon as you have finished with them, I pledge that they will be returned to Lord Chesney. There, is that good enough, you little Puritan?”

She nodded. “I would hate for Lord Chesney to lose track of his books. Perhaps you should check his shelves for books of your own, James. Ralph and I are forever getting our books mixed up.”

“I will do it this very afternoon,” he said. “Of course, Chesney is such a raving eccentric that he probably won't even remember that he loaned them.”

She laughed and hugged the books to her. Her eyes grew troubled then, and he sat down beside her on the floor again.

“What's the matter, my dear?” he asked, his voice soft.

“I am so tired of getting all my information secondhand. What am I supposed to look for in
Measure for Measure
?” she asked. “What is there that Gordon is supposed to discover?”

Gatewood settled himself against the dressed stones of the fireplace, where he could see her better. “Merely whatever speaks to you about the play, fair Hermia,” he said. “It is called one of Shakespeare's ‘problem’ plays. It is the story of sexual blackmail, simply put. See if you can uncover a new way of looking at it, something no critic has ever even considered.” He shifted slightly, resting his arm on his knee. “I wonder that Lord Chesney would choose such a topic, but then, he is a different sort of fellow.”

“You know him well?” she asked, her face fiery red from Gatewood's plain words.

“About as well as one person can know another,” he replied, moving away from the warmth of the fireplace. “We have always been friends. He's a bit of a rascal, I think, but harmless enough.”

She was silent a moment, staring into the flames. “I will write this one paper, and then no other, as I am leaving,” she said. “One would almost think that Lord Chesney engineered this to keep me here, with the assignment of this paper to Gordon.”

“I did not know you were leaving,” he said quickly. “Didn't you tell me that … that Lord Chesney had smoothed things over at Miss Dignam's?”

She shrugged. “I am enjoying my geography class, thanks to his lordship, but I want more, Jim. The other girls laugh at me, and I begin to think I am as much a raving eccentric as Chesney himself.”

He smiled and took her hand. “What is it you really want, Ellen?”

She looked around from habit, to make sure that no one was listening, and he chuckled. “I want to map the world, Jim! I want to ride in an ascension balloon all across Europe and visit every country there is, learning languages and customs. And when I am done, I am going to write the most marvelous books about what I have seen. Books for young ladies who aren't as fortunate as I am.” She stopped, embarrassed. “Well, you did ask.”

“So I did,” he replied and gazed into the fireplace. He looked at her, his eyes piercing. “And what if you cannot do any of these things?”

Ellen rested her chin on her knees. “I will probably just return home and marry Thomas Cornwell, or someone else my Papa has in mind, someone with horses and property and a seat on the Grain Exchange. That's probably what will happen. I'm not a fool.”

Gatewood was silent then, his face unreadable. Ellen watched him for a moment and then got to her feet. She touched the books in her arms. “But right now, I will write about Shakespeare, and probably remember these days as the best of my life. Thank you, James Gatewood.”