Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (19 page)

“Mind you hurry then, Miss Grimsley,” Mrs. Speed said as she opened the door. The snow blew in and nearly extinguished the exhausted fire. “I wouldn't want your cold or sore throat laid at my door!”

Ellen smiled and touched the woman's arm. “I am never sick,” she declared. “It is a sore trial to my mother, who thinks I would be more interesting if I could languish a bit, like my sister.”

They said good-bye and set out, arm in arm, through the alleys. It was too cold to talk. Ellen clutched Ralph's present to her, grateful that the footman had taken the others on ahead.

After walking in silence through the winter twilight, James stopped, pulling Ellen up short. “I, for one, am grateful you are never sick,” he said, speaking distinctly to be heard above the wind. He started walking again.

She looked up at him in amusement “Well, thank you, sir!” she declared.

“Seriously, El,” he replied, “think how handy that will be when you are slogging through the malarial rain forests of Brazil, or the frozen steppes—Heaven help us—of Siberia. The world was never explored by weak people.”

Ellen stopped this time. “You don't think I am foolish, like all my relatives do, and Miss Dignam, and Fanny Bland, and Vicar Snead?”

He tugged her into motion again. “I don't think you are foolish,” he said quietly. “Not at all, Ellen Grimsley. You may be a little ahead of your time, but so was Galileo.”

“You put me in august company,” she shouted over the wind.

“It's where you belong.” He stopped at the top of the steps to the female academy and rang the bell. “The only difficulty I foresee is finding a husband obliging enough to let you traipse off around the world.”

“It is a problem,” she agreed, rubbing her hands together and taking a firmer grip on her package. “He will have to be quite wealthy and excruciatingly patient.” She laughed and extended her hand. “Should you ever meet anyone like that, please send him calling to Miss Dignam's! Thank you for your escort, sir.”

He only leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “If it were any colder, we would be stuck together right now, and then Miss Dignam would have you writing thousands of sentences,” he murmured, his voice close to her ear.

She smiled and touched his face. The door opened, and the footman stood there, grinning at them.

“One moment.”

Gatewood took her arm and led her down the steps again.

“We have not even had time to discuss your much-applauded essay.”

“Did you like it?” she asked, wishing the footman would close the door again. He just stood there, leaning against the frame, whistling softly to himself.

“Like's not the word, Ellen. It was a masterpiece,” he replied. He took her hand again. “Meet me tomorrow afternoon at the bridge at the end of the High. We'll go punting. Wear your scholar's gown, of course.”

She stared at him. “But it's snowing! And cold!”

He looked up at the sky. “See the stars peeking through over there? It will be clear tomorrow. And this is a perfect time to punt. No one will bother us while we discuss your next paper.”

“But …”

Gatewood was already backing away down the street. He waved to her and ran across the street to the All Souls entrance.

Ellen stood there a moment until she heard the footman clearing his throat. She turned back to Miss Dignam's, shaking her head.
James Gatewood is an odd one indeed
, she thought.
He must be almost as eccentric as Lord Chesney. It's no wonder those two are friends.

Ellen woke in the morning to sunlight streaming through the curtains. With a sigh of contentment, she snuggled deeper into the pillow and regarded that portion of sky she could see from her bed. It was a beautiful, crackling blue, untroubled by a single cloud.

For a moment, she wished herself home, where the upstairs maid would bring her cinnamon toast and hot chocolate, and she and Horatia would share her bed and plan their lives. Her smile faded. Horatia's life was already planned, and soon she would be married to Edwin Bland, the silly son of a sillier baronet.

And then Horry will be a wife, and likely a mother, and I will be an aunt
, she thought.
We will forget we were ever sisters who giggled over life in bed on Sunday mornings.

Ellen turned over on her stomach and lay there, her face pressed into the pillow. There was an ache somewhere in her body as she thought of Gatewood's words of last night. Would she ever really slog through malarial swamps or conquer frozen steppes? It seemed unlikely.

She rested her chin in her hands.
I wonder if Thomas Cornwell has ever been up to London
, she thought.
He has seen no more of the world than I have, but the difference is, he doesn't care if his horizons extend no farther than the farthest Cotswold hill. His only interest in the horizon would be to own it and sow it. Tom's idea of an excursion would be a trip here to Oxford, and even then, he would only come here because it was a market center, and not because it was the seat of all learning and wisdom.

Ellen sat up cross-legged in bed, her pillow propped behind her, wondering at the feeling of homesickness that washed over her suddenly. At home they would be rushing around, getting ready for the ride into the village and church, steeling themselves for the prospect of another of Vicar Snead's stupefying sermons.

In the afternoon, Mama would knot lace in the sitting room and carry on about the neighbors, while Papa, his mind and heart on horses as always, would pace the floor from sofa to window and back again, chafing because it was Sunday and Mama would allow little else. As soon as he settled himself in a chair, Martha would climb into his lap and they would both fall asleep.

They were silly, idle people, but she missed them, and loved them in her own way.
And they love me
, Ellen thought suddenly.
Mama thinks that Thomas Cornwell is the best choice for me.

The pang of homesickness did not go away as she thought of Horatia, sitting close to the fire, deep in loving silence with her ridiculous fiancé. Ralph would find an excuse to steal from the room to the company of his beloved Shakepeare.

Shakespeare. Ellen rolled her eyes and plopped her hands in her lap. “Dear Willie of Avon,” she said, “you are rapidly becoming my greatest trial in life.”

She looked around, feeling foolish that she had spoken out loud, and in such decisive tones, and then remembered that Fanny Bland was away until tomorrow. She tightened her lips, seeing in her mind's eye Fanny and the other symmetrical bridesmaids, giggling with each other as they received their final fitting of that divine deep green lawn.

Mama and Horry had gone round and round over the tiny puffed sleeves and low-cut neckline. “But my dear, it will be winter!” Mama had protested. “They will have to carry warming pans instead of nosegays!”

“I hope you all come down with galloping consumption and putrid sore throats and chilblains,” Ellen declared, looking at Fanny's bed, all tidily made up with not a single wrinkle. “And frostbite,” she added for good measure.

But none of those things would likely happen. The tall, elegant bridesmaids would march down the aisle, Horry would be shot off, and Ellen would be left to keep the younger children in line and see that Martha did not eat too many sweets. And when it was all over, Mama would look her over once or twice and ask her how she felt about Thomas Cornwell. “Such a nice young man, and from such a good family,” Mama would say.

What a pity that James Gatewood is so ineligible
, Ellen thought, and then smiled at the idea of the casual Mr. Gatewood, in his shabby collars and wrinkled clothes, bowing over Mama's hand. It would never do. Even if he combed his hair and pressed his clothes, he would still be just a horse trader's son.

A pity
, Ellen thought.
We could probably have dealt so well together.
The notion made her blush. What was she thinking? Mama would never understand what she saw in him. Ellen was not sure herself, except that she felt better when he was around.

Ellen wrapped herself tight in her blankets again.
It can not be love, at any rate
, she thought. Horatia had informed her that love was a feeling of total delight. Horry had never mentioned the restlessness that Ellen felt when she was away from James Gatewood, or the feeling of wanting to tidy him, and organize his life, and bully him into eating better than toasted cheese and rather bad tea.

It must be infatuation
, she decided as she threw back the covers and pulled on her robe. She headed for the dressing room but got no farther than the window. She sat at her desk and looked out at the lovely spires of Oxford.
I suppose I am also a little bit in love with Oxford too.
She smiled to herself. Like her infatuation with James Gatewood, it would have to pass, and quickly too for her own peace of mind.

Church was a quiet business. Many of the older parishioners from Oxford's center had stayed indoors, kept there by the bracing cold that brought a bloom to Ellen's cheeks. She sniffed the air appreciatively as they walked from church in decorous ranks of two. The fragrance of wood smoke, captured and held in the bowl-shaped valley by the cold, competed with musty smells off the River Isis and cooking odors from every hearth. Ellen knew it was her imagination, but she thought she could smell the delicious aroma of leather bindings on old books.

Ellen thought twice, and then three times, about sneaking out of Miss Dignam's after the noon meal.
I can have no business out of this building with James Gatewood
, she told herself as she picked up her embroidery basket and gazed at it in dismay.
How was it that those threads seemed to knot and tangle of their own accord? I declare it is perverse
, she thought,
a conspiracy to remind me of my failings.

She tried not to think about the scholar's gown hanging in the back of the dressing room, hidden from prying eyes. Ellen looked out the window then, and her resolve weakened. The sky was so blue, a dramatic backdrop for the honey-colored stones, mellow with age, that made up many of Oxford's colleges. Resolutely, Ellen turned away from the window and took her embroidery basket onto her lap.

After a futile half hour spent trying to follow each errant thread to its source, she dropped the basket at her feet and kicked it under the desk. She looked in the direction of the dressing room and got slowly to her feet.

No one was about as she crept down the backstairs, the scholar's gown draped over her arm, shirt and breeches underneath her dress.

Becky was the only servant in sight, the rest having taken themselves off for the afternoon, away from Miss Dignam's crotchets. The maid scrubbed the pans in the scullery, looking up with a smile when Ellen stepped out of her dress and fluffed her wilted shirt points.

Becky dried her hands and hurried to shake out Ellen's dress and hide it in the broom closet. “Where are you going today?” she asked as Ellen pulled on the scholar's gown.

“James Gatewood has some harebrained scheme about punting on the River Isis,” Ellen said. “I think he is crazy.”

“No, Miss Grimsley, he is wonderful,” Becky said, her eyes shining.

Ellen stared at her. “Whatever do you mean?”

Becky dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “This morning, the beadle from the parish came tapping on our door. Behind him was a coal wagon. He backed that wagon up to the cellar window and shoveled in a mound of coal that still has the neighbors wondering.”

“My word,” said Ellen, her voice soft. “And you think it was James Gatewood?”

“Who else?” Becky asked. “When I woke up, Mama was crying and piling coal on the grate until I thought she had taken leave of her senses.”

Ellen sat down at the table. “I simply do not understand where he finds the money for his philanthropies. Horse trading must pay beyond my wildest imaginings.”

“There's more, Miss Grimsley,” Becky said as she plunged her hands back into the dishwater. “The beadle told us that as soon as the coal gets low, we are to notify him. Miss Grimsley, we will be warm all winter!”

Ellen felt tears prickling her eyes. “I will definitely confront him with this evidence of his kindness,” she said.

“If you think it won't embarrass him,” Becky said.

“It won't hurt to embarrass James Gatewood,” Ellen replied as she opened the door and peered out. “Sometimes I have the distinct impression that he is not giving me straight answers.”

The afternoon was clear and cold, the street deserted. Ellen huddled in her scholar's gown and hurried down the High to the bridge. The street was icy so she took her time, asking herself again what she was doing outdoors tempting fate like this. Only the knowledge that Miss Dignam insisted on quiet Sunday afternoons, spent in meditation of some sin or another, kept her going. No one would miss her.

“Watch your step, Hermia.”

She looked down from the bridge. James Gatewood stood halfway up the little steps that led to a small landing on the river's edge. He held out his hand to her and she gripped it.

“This is insane,” was her only comment as he helped her down the ice-covered steps.