Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (5 page)

“Only say yes and I will get up,” he pleaded, following her on his knees across the hallway.

Mama, her arms full of deep green fabric, hurried into the hall. She stopped, her eyes enormous, and stared at Thomas Cornwell. Ellen looked at her in desperation.

Mama sighed. “Mr. Cornwell, this will never do! I cannot possibly contemplate another wedding right now! Do get off your knees and save this for the spring.”

His face red from his exertions, Cornwell scrambled to his feet. “Yes, Mrs. Grimsley,” he said as he accepted the hat and coat that the wooden-faced butler was holding out. “Ellen, I will write,” he declared, hand to his heart, as she opened the door and ushered him into the rain. He stuck his head back in the door, his face redder still. “Provided that is not too forward.”

Ellen shook her head. “I think it is, Mr. Cornwell,” she said, her voice low, even though Mama had already retreated from the front hall. “I will see you at Christmas.” She closed the door on his protestations of love.

Ellen endured another week of Mama's tears and good advice. “You will be sharing rooms with Fanny Bland, our own dear Edwin's sister. That is the only thing about this havey-cavey business that sets my mind at ease. Fanny is all that is proper and she will keep an eye on you.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And you will not go out of doors unaccompanied, or have anything to do with the students in the colleges.”

“No, Mama.”

“You will do nothing to call attention to yourself.”

“Never, Mama.”

She spoke so quickly that Mama looked at her and frowned, but made no further comment beyond a martyr's sigh and a sad shake of her head.

Ellen found herself walking to the road during that interminable week of impassable roads, testing the gravel, willing the sodden skies to brighten.

The postman met her one morning with a letter of welcome from Miss Dignam and a list of her classes.
I will take French and embroidery?
she asked herself, letter in hand, as she walked slowly back to the house. She turned the letter over, hopeful of further enlightenment. Surely there was some mistake. She wanted to take geography and geometry too, if it was offered.

She folded the letter.
Surely I can discuss this with the headmistress when I arrive
, she thought.

Mama could spare none of the maids to accompany her to Oxford. Papa was forced to prevail upon his sister to act as escort. Aunt Shreve accepted with alacrity, declaring it a pleasure and presenting the squire with two more forgotten bottles of Fortaleza, to his great amazement and grudging approval.

“There now,” she declared. “Charles, you have enough Fortaleza to toast Horatia, and her first child, and Ralph's entrance into Oxford—if you have the unexpected good sense to send him there instead of to a beastly counting house in the City. You can also celebrate Gordon's leaving of Oxford eventually, if that should ever happen before we are too gnarled to pop a cork.”

Brother and sister had declared a wary truce and were sitting knee to knee over the tea table in Aunt Shreve's house. Ellen cast anxious glances at her papa throughout the interview.

He surprised his daughter by managing a ponderous joke. “What, no bottle for Ellen?” he asked. “She may marry someday, if we can force her nose out of books, or if she is not off exploring the world in a birchbark canoe.”

Aunt Shrive smiled at her favorite niece. “I wasn't going to tell you this, Charles, but years ago Father gave me a bottle of Palais Royal brandy.”

The squire choked on his tea. “My word, sister,” he exclaimed when he could breathe again. “I doubt there is another bottle in England!”

“Quite likely,” his sister agreed as she poured more tea. “I am depending upon Ellen to make a fabulous alliance.” She set down the cup and fixed her brother with the stare that had probably made him writhe when they were growing up. “
When
she is good and ready, Charles. Then I will open the Palais Royal.”

Thinking back on that artless disclosure, Ellen laughed softly to herself.
Mama declares that since I scared off the vicar, the best I can hope for is Thomas Cornwell. Horatia claims that she can find me someone among her darling Edwin's circle of rattlebrained acquaintances.
She shook her head.
None of these paragons would be worth Palais Royal. I suppose I must make the exertion on my own.

Aunt Shreve joined her in the village and they continued east across rolling fields shorn of sheep that dotted the landscape in other seasons. The trees had all molted their leaves in great piles, leaving skeletal branches that bore no promise of spring in the near future.
“Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,”
she thought, her mind upon Ralph and his everlasting Shakespeare.

“Perhaps I should study Shakespeare, in honor of Ralph,” she said out loud. She dug in her reticule for the letter from Miss Dignam and held it out to her aunt. “See here, Aunt, they have me down for nothing more strenuous than French and embroidery; I believe that I will request geography and Shakespeare, at least. I am not afraid of scholarship.”

Aunt Shreve put on her spectacles and read the letter. She leaned back, the look on her face telling Ellen that she was choosing her words with care.

“My dear, I hope you will not be too disappointed if Miss Dignam's falls short of your expectations,” she began. “I have never been there, but I do not know that study for women is serious anywhere.”

Ellen waved her hand and reclaimed the letter. “Oh, that is all right, Aunt. If they only teach the tragedies of Shakespeare and not the more ribald comedies, I can be forgiving!”

The sun broke through the weight of autumn clouds by late afternoon and their entrance into Oxford. The post chaise had slowed to the movement of farm carts that trundled toward the ford of the Thames called, in true scholar's eccentricity, the Isis, while it wound around the university town.

“It is only when I travel this road behind loads of potatoes, onions, and pigs that I wonder why anyone saw fit to establish a university in this place,” Aunt Shreve grumbled. “If this is the center of the universe, then I am Marie Antoinette, head and all!”

Aunt Shreve was poised to say more in the same vein as they inched along, but the look on her niece's face stopped her complaints. She tapped on the glass and rolled it down as the post chaise stopped.

“Mind that you pause and pull off when you reach the top of this hill, Coachman,” she ordered.

They continued in silence broken only by the squawk of geese in the cart ahead. In a few minutes, the carriage pulled out of the line of traffic and stopped.

“Get out and stretch yourself,” Aunt Shreve suggested “And do go to the top of that rise.”

“You needn't let me slow you down,” Ellen protested. “Surely the view can wait.”

“No, it cannot,” Aunt Shreve insisted. She motioned to the carriage door, where the post boy stood to open it.

Ellen stepped out, grateful—even though she had objected—for the chance to walk about for a moment. She walked to the top of the gently sloping rise, looked toward the east, and loved her aunt all the more.

The sun was going down over Oxford, throwing streams of molten fire upon honey-colored walls and spires. Ellen held her breath at the sight and then let it out slowly, There was Great Tom, and the spires of Magdalen, grace notes to the elegant architectural humor of the Radcliffe Camera, and behind it, the Bodleian Library. The river flowed under bridges as inspired as the buildings that lined it on both sides.

From her elevation, Ellen gazed, hand to eyes, into college quadrangles where the grass was still green, protected by the warmth of centuries-old stone. She clapped her hands in delight. Oxford was a city the color of honey, and a veritable honeycomb itself of colleges, quadrangles, and churches.

The sky turned lavender as she watched and then a more somber purple.
We will have rain tonight
, she thought,
but it will be special rain because it falls upon Oxford
.

“Excuse me, miss, if I appear forward, but are you in some trouble with your post chaise?”

Ellen whirled around. Papers in hand, a man sat upon a rock near the crest of the hill where she stood. She had not noticed him in his black student's robe because he blended in so well with the shadows that were lengthening across the copse.

“Oh, no, sir. We are fine,” she said, putting her hands behind her back as though she had been caught pilfering a candy jar. “My aunt merely wanted me to have a look at the city before we drove in.”

The man got to his feet. He was taller even than the tallest Grimsley. His hair was ordinary brown and untidy, and the wind was picking it up and tousling it further. Ellen felt the need to put her hand to her bonnet.

The breeze caught the student's gown and it billowed about him, making him appear larger yet. The wind tugged at the papers in his hand. As she watched, he tore them up and held them in both palms to the wind like an offering. The scraps swirled up and out of sight.

“Good riddance,” he said and came closer.

He had an elegant face, at odds with the untidiness of his hair, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and eyes as dark as his gown, She noticed that his ears lay nicely flat against his head, and she smiled as she thought of Thomas Cornwell.

“I amuse you?” he asked, giving her a little nod that passed for a bow.

“No, it is someone else. You have excellent ears, sir,” she said and then put her hand to her mouth. “I mean, I was thinking of someone who is not so blessed. Oh, dear, that was a strange thing to say!”

He laughed and tossed away the remaining scraps of paper that still rested in his palm. He gave her a real bow, and he was more graceful than she would have thought, considering his height. Suddenly she felt out of place and much younger than eighteen.

“Do you come up here to commune with nature, sir?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I come here to walk off my letters from home.”

She thought of her own home and found this reasonable. “I expect I would like to do the same thing,” she said. “Do your parents smother you too and worry and prose on and on?”

He gave a shout of laughter, grabbed her hand, and kissed it, bowing again. “Are you a Sybil, or perhaps a Cassandra, to divine this? I would not have thought there were other parents in all of England like my mother, but perhaps I was wrong. James Gatewood at your service, miss.”

She smiled and withdrew her hand from his. “I am Ellen Grimsley, sir.”

“Ellen?” he asked. “Prosaic name, but lovely.”

“I do not mind that it is ordinary,” she replied, twinkling her eyes at him for no reason that she could discern. “It could have been much worse.” She hesitated, looking at the student. Something about his open countenance seemed to invite confidence. “It could have been Zephyr.”

“Zephyr?” he asked in amusement. “Oh, surely not!”

“Zephyr indeed. It happens that a horse named Zephyr won at Newmarket the day I was born. My papa is horse mad, sir.” She sighed, and then grinned as he laughed. “But Mama, who seldom prevails, prevailed from her bed of confinement, for which I am grateful.”

He nodded in perfect understanding. “As it is, I suppose now you have brothers who tease you and call you Nellie, but that must be preferable to Zeph.”

“Indeed, it must be,” she agreed. She looked around at the carriage and made a motion to leave.

He grabbed up his books by the rock, falling in step with her as she retraced her way to the carriage below. She glanced at his books, noting North's
Treatise on Government
, and a copy of Paine's
The Crisis
.

He followed her glance. “I should be studying, but it looked like a fine afternoon.”

“And you are ‘a summer soldier and a sunshine patriot,’ when the weather is mellow?” she teased.

He raised one eyebrow. “You are a spy, sent by my don,” he teased in turn, “come to find out why I am not buried in scholarship.”

She shook her head. “I am no spy, and that's all I know of Thomas Paine,” she confessed. “I found the pamphlet at a church rumble sale, but Mama snatched it away and told me it was wicked.”

“And well she did, Miss Grimsley,” he said with a smile. “You might have attempted a nursery room revolt. But wicked? No.”

“You're teasing me,” she observed. “Sir, I do not joke about books.”

“
Touché
. Nor do I, Miss Grimsley,” he replied. “Perhaps I can loan you my copy. Are you staying in town?”

She nodded. “I will be matriculating at Miss Digman's Select Female Academy.”

“I never heard the word
matriculation
used in the same breath as Miss Dignam's,” he said. “I had thought the most strenuous course there to be French knots.”

“I am sure it is not so,” she said quickly. “I have great plans.” She was silent a moment. “I have greater plans than my brother, and he is a student here … under duress.”

“That happens to some,” he replied. “And what is this scholar's name?”

“It is Gordon, and he is in his first year at University College,” she replied. “He does not know how lucky he is.”

“They seldom do,” Gatewood murmured. He was silent then as they continued down the hill together.

As they came closer to the carriage, Ellen stopped in confusion. “Excuse me, sir, for being so forward. I really shouldn't be talking with strangers.”

“Neither should I,” he said and twinkled his eyes at her. “But as I did not think you would do me any harm, I chanced it. Good day, Miss Ellen Grimsley. I trust you will find Oxford to your liking.”

She nodded and smiled up at him. “I am sure that I shall.” He continued toward the main road. Ellen looked at the post chaise and called to him.

He turned, a look of interest in his lively eyes.

“My Aunt Shreve was teasing me a moment ago, but tell me, sir, is Oxford really the center of the universe?”

He came back to stand beside her. She noted the shabbiness of his coat under the student gown and his collar frayed around the edges. He did not appear to have shaved that morning, and his eyes were tired. He was silent a moment, considering her question, and then the good cheer reappeared. He shifted his books to his other arm and touched her arm lightly.