The Twin's Daughter Read online

  “Lucy,” Mrs. Carson said, “you must endeavor to learn not to speak for your mother. It is quite impertinent that you should do so. I do not remember you being thus before.”

  “I shall try, Mrs. Carson,” I said.

  Mrs. Carson turned her attention to Mr. Brockburn. “And who is this—,” she demanded, leaving an audible silent slot in which she would normally have slipped the word “gentleman.” Mr. Brockburn dressed respectably enough, for a schoolmaster, but he was not in attire that any in the neighborhood would term “one of us” in the way that, say, my father was, or even Mr. Carson.

  “This is Mr. Brockburn,” I said proudly, running the risk of a second admonishment for impertinently speaking out of turn. “He is my schoolmaster.”

  Mr. Brockburn tipped his hat, executing a surprisingly elegant bow in Mrs. Carson’s direction.

  She all but took a step back, away from him.

  It was easy to read what Mrs. Carson was thinking: The schoolmaster? The Sextons are now taking strolls with their schoolmaster?

  As she took hasty leave of our company, I prayed that something more momentous than us should fall into Mrs. Carson’s path as she continued her journey, so that when she made her gossipy rounds through the neighborhood she might have something else to wax on about.

  I had had enough heart-stopping adventure for one day.

  “It is time to go back,” I announced.

  No one argued with me.

  Our walk back to the house was far more sober than had been the one when we set out.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Brockburn addressed Aunt Helen, prior to taking his leave at our doorstep, “for a lovely afternoon.”

  . . . . .

  My father had not been seen since breakfast time, but as he joined us for dinner, he looked at his recently acquired sister-in-law.

  “There is something different about you tonight, Helen,” he said, his brow moving into an exaggerated arch of puzzlement, as though it were a question mark lying down.

  “I—,” she said.

  “She—,” I said at the same time.

  “No.” My father waved his hand. “Do not tell me. I wish to guess.” He puzzled some more. Then his eyes lit with knowledge. “You have learned where New York is!”

  That’s when I knew he was teasing us.

  I couldn’t help it: I giggled.

  Aunt Helen giggled too.

  “No,” she said, mirth in her eyes. “That was last week.”

  “Hmm,” my father said. He drummed his fingers against his chin. “What else could it be?” The light of knowledge again. “I know!” He snapped his fingers. “You have acquired a new kitten!”

  “No.” She giggled.

  “But she would like one,” I added, giggling some more.

  “This is terrible,” my father said. “And here I have always thought myself to be an intelligent man.” He frowned. “Well, apparently, I am not nearly as intelligent as I thought.” But a moment later he collapsed against his chair back, as though relieved of something. “I have finally worked it out,” he said, smiling. “You have a new dress.”

  “Yes, I do,” Aunt Helen said, more soberly now, “thanks to you and my sister.” She nodded at Mother.

  “And it is very becoming on you,” my father said warmly, ignoring the words of gratitude. He turned to Mother. “Isn’t it, Aliese?”

  “Indeed. But I do think, Helen,” Mother said, “that you might take the hat off when at table. It is not customary to wear one’s hat while at home.”

  . . . . .

  I had caught a chill in the park that day, although my parents did not know how or where I caught it. But the next morning, when I had not improved, Mother ordered me to spend the day in bed. Mother was always concerned that any cold I acquired might lead to my death.

  “If you ever died,” she would say, “I would cry forever.”

  My father, hearing her say this, would tell her that she must not speak to me so, that I would feel responsible that her happiness was too bound up in me and that this would turn me into the sort of namby-pamby person he despised.

  But I never minded when she spoke those words. It was somehow nice to think that at least one person in this life loved me so much, if I should die the world would stop for them. And I understood how she felt. For, as much as Aunt Helen being there had disturbed things in our household, as much as the constantly changing swirl of it all had served to alter the balance between Mother and myself, Mother was still the one person who, were she taken from this world, her absence would cause me to cry forever.

  And so I bore my bed sentence with as much stoic grace as I could. And so I was not there in the schoolroom when Mr. Brockburn came to give the day’s lesson and Aunt Helen took that lesson for the first time alone together. I should like to have known what they talked about with no one there to hear their words. Did he ask her about her past? Did he inquire as to how she had come to be the way she was when he first saw her and how she came to be here now?

  It is impossible to know.

  • Eleven •

  One month passed, then two.

  My father once told me that he had dreamed briefly, when he was younger, of a life in the navy, but that being the only male child, he had been compelled when grown to manage the family fortune.

  Perhaps from time to time the idea of a life missed preyed on my father’s mind, bleeding out into his reading choices for me. At those times I would be forced to read a seafaring novel such as the one he’d recently given me, Frederick Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy. Apparently, my father was longing for his unrealized life at sea again.

  Which was why I was in the back parlor, alone, plugging away at the book. I cannot say I was overly impressed with Mr. Marryat’s writing. But at least I could be comfortable while reading the wretched book. I could recline on one of the sofas in the back parlor, book in one hand, crunchy apple in the other, even resting my booted feet on the soft fabric because there was no one there to see me.

  But then the book really became too much, making me want to hurl the thing across the room.

  Book unfinished, I put my finger between the pages where I had stopped reading, tossed the apple core on a plate, and went off in search of my father. I suspected this was not a book he had in fact read himself, that he had only selected it for me based on the title and, if I had to suffer at the hands of Mr. Marryat’s philosophizing, well, my father would too.

  But as I approached the door of his study, my purposeful stride slowed as a timidity crept into my resolve. My father did not normally like to be disturbed when he was working. His study was his sanctuary. He often said as much, causing me to wonder if Mother and I were so distracting that a man should need a refuge from us.

  I raised my fist to boldly knock, drew my fist back to my side. What if my father became angry at being interrupted? What if he was at a critical juncture in his novel writing and I, tearing his attention away at just the wrong moment, became the cause of his never creating a sentence that would have been sheer brilliance?

  It was as I was about to turn away from the door that I heard the sound of laughter coming through it.

  This was odd.

  I was not in the habit of walking past my father’s study often while he was working, but the few times I had, I had never heard laughter.

  The happy sound of that laughter gave me courage now, and this time, when I raised my fist, I followed through with a bold knock.

  “Yes?” I heard my father’s voice call out, as though it was a slight effort to turn his attention away from whatever amused him.

  Timid once more, I turned the knob, pushed open the door.

  My father’s study, in an octagon shape at the back corner of our home, had books soaring all around from the baseboards to the heights of the ceiling. The walls, what you could see of them, were painted dark cobalt with a blinding white trim. In one corner of the room roared a fire; in another was a trapdoor, which he said led to the cellar,
although I had never been. The room contained a sofa and chairs surrounding a centrally located table for when he wanted to read or think, instead of write. As for the writing; that was done at a large walnut desk, its back to the long French doors that let in abundant light and from which my father could enter his own private garden.

  It was that desk at which he was seated now, the light behind him causing me to blink as I adjusted my eyes to it.

  It was only after I made that adjustment that I realized he was not alone. To the right of him was Mother, her skirts not far from the strong hand he used to hold his pen. Her back was to me, the dress she wore white shot with gold. Whenever she wore it, which was not often, for it showed dust and dirt so easily, it always made me think that it was what it would be like if you could take the palace at Versailles and spin it into a dress.

  Mother twisted her waist to look back over her shoulder, an anxious expression on her face that disappeared the instant she saw me. What was she doing sitting on my father’s desk? It was not like her. I had never seen her do such a thing before. But before she could speak, my father spoke again.

  “Yes, Lucy?” my father said. “You wanted me for something?”

  I raised the book in my hand halfheartedly, no longer caring about the issues I had wanted to raise. “This”—I waved Mr. Midshipman Easy—“it isn’t very good.”

  “No? It’s a good thing you told me, then. Now I won’t have to bother reading it.” He cleared his throat. “Your aunt Helen was just helping me with my book,” he said.

  I nearly dropped Mr. Midshipman Easy on the ground at this.

  “Yes,” the woman who I had thought just a moment ago to be Mother spoke. And in that one syllable, although the differences between them had closed so much, I could still hear that this was Aunt Helen. The voice was almost Mother’s, but not quite. Or, perhaps I only knew it was Aunt Helen because my father had just said so. Even now, it is still so hard to say.

  “What are you doing in Mother’s dress?” I blurted, without stopping to temper what Mrs. Carson would no doubt call my impertinence or the outrage in my tone at this offense.

  “I have grown bored with my few dresses,” Aunt Helen said, “but there has not been time for the new ones I ordered to arrive. That Mrs. Wiggins can be so slow. Aliese said she wouldn’t mind if I borrowed any of hers in the meantime, anytime I liked. She has so many and, after all, we are now nearly the same size.”

  “I am sure she does not mind,” my father said. “In fact, I hardly ever remember seeing her wear that dress.” My father gazed at me sternly. “Not that it is your place to question your aunt as to what she does or does not do.”

  I suppose I should have bowed my head in submission, but I was not used to bowing my head to anyone, not even my father.

  “You said that Aunt Helen has been helping you with your writing,” I said, still puzzled by the very notion.

  “She has a wonderful ear,” my father said. “When I came to the part that was giving me so much trouble, she administered the perfect prescription for helping me over the hurdle. We were laughing at that when you knocked.”

  “We were,” she confirmed.

  I did not know what to say to any of this: the idea that my father would share his work with anyone but his editor before publication; the idea that Aunt Helen should turn out to be the sort of woman who was capable of giving profound editorial advice concerning a plot hurdle.

  “I suppose I should leave you to your work, then,” I said.

  Back out in the hallway, having closed the door gently behind me, I shook my head as though trying to wake myself from a confusing dream.

  Then I thought about how I had believed the woman sitting on my father’s desk to be Mother, how disconcerting it was to learn I had been wrong. And it was disconcerting—daily, more so—the idea that the face I loved more than that of any other could be so easily confused with that of another. It was as though they were the same person, but different.

  I shook my head again, hefted my copy of Mr. Midshipman Easy, and moved on, away from the closed door.

  . . . . .

  Another month passed, and another.

  Aunt Helen and I were once again in the schoolroom with Mr. Brockburn.

  The weather had changed much since our first schoolroom lesson, much more since that one day we three had gone to the park together. While the windows looked out upon other houses across the street, I felt as though I could see through those buildings to the flowering buds on the trees in the park beyond, see the grass sprouting up green and strong, see younger children playing games I no longer played. I yearned to be there, seeing all that in person, feeling the sun on my face. Later on, I would regret longing for this, regret having wished time away.

  Aunt Helen spent a large portion of our hours in the schoolroom that day also looking out the window. No longer the “sponge” that made her teacher’s pride, she was restless now, as I was, looking out the window as though anxious to be gone, like a prize pony who has had a whiff of the air beyond the stable yard. Or perhaps … I don’t know. There was a gleam in her eye, as though she was waiting for something only she expected to happen, waiting for something only she could see speeding toward us.

  As for Mr. Brockburn, there was a certain desperate sadness about him. He kept trying to pull our divided attentions back to himself, that center upon which we had been content to devote so much energy before. But whatever he attempted—discussing books that would normally pique my interest, complimenting Aunt Helen on her lightning progress through everything he could teach her—it was all to no avail. We remained with our minds and souls outside of that room, me at the park while Aunt Helen was wherever she had gone to.

  At last, a quarter hour before our lessons normally ended, Mr. Brockburn informed us that he had an announcement to make. Reluctantly, we turned our twin gazes upon the schoolmaster.

  “Mr. Sexton paid me a visit early this morning just before I left to set out here,” he began.

  My ears pricked up at that. It seemed unusual enough to me, that my father should take the time to pay Mr. Brockburn an early-morning visit, when early mornings were rarely my father’s finest hours, rather than waiting to talk to the schoolmaster when he came here.

  “Mr. Sexton wanted to tell me,” Mr. Brockburn went on, “that my services here would no longer be required. I was—” His breath caught. If he were a child, I would have imagined him choking on a tear. “I am surprised at this. I had thought that our lessons together would continue until some time in the distant future. But, apparently, I was wrong.”

  Aunt Helen’s look betrayed nothing, nor did she speak.

  So it fell to me to ask, “But why? Why end it? Why now?”

  Mr. Brockburn shrugged here, as though defeated. “Mr. Sexton says my work here is done. He says my …job was to give Miss Smythe intellectual confidence and that now that task is complete. Her education is complete.”

  I stole a glance at Aunt Helen.

  She looked pleased. I cannot say that I blamed her. Apparently, there had been some sort of test going on and, even though no one had informed her of that fact, she had still managed to pass. No, I could not blame her for being proud of all she had accomplished.

  But then the thought occurred to me: Of course Aunt Helen’s education was complete, or whatever education my parents had wished her to have, but what of me? What of my education?

  As though reading my mind, Mr. Brockburn looked at me with a sad smile. “Your father tells me that he will be once again employing your former tutor, Miss Walker, to see to your education.”

  So there it was.

  Aunt Helen, according to my father, no longer needed Mr. Brockburn; so for me, it was back to studying with the innocuous Miss Walker.

  Then Mr. Brockburn did a surprising thing, given who he was, who I was. He came to my side, bent down, and laid a gentle kiss upon my cheek. “You are an intelligent girl, Lucy,” he reassured me. “You will do fine.”
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br />   Then, slowly, Mr. Brockburn gathered up his things for the last time. I watched Aunt Helen watching him, and I noted a coolness in her look. But as he paused beside her seat, I saw that look warm.

  Mr. Brockburn bowed stiffly. “It has been my pleasure, Miss Smythe. I hope that this is not the last time we shall meet.”

  “I don’t see why it should be,” Aunt Helen said. “Indeed, I am sure that it is not.”

  Perhaps emboldened by her words, a look of hope now in his eyes, he turned to me.

  “Lucy,” Mr. Brockburn said, “could you please tell your father that I wish to speak with him before I go?”

  . . . . .

  “What did Mr. Brockburn wish to discuss with you?” Aunt Helen asked my father at dinner.

  “There will be time enough to discuss all that later,” my father replied. “In the meantime, we have something more pressing to discuss. Aliese and I have decided that it is time for you to be presented to the people of our world.”

  • Twelve •

  Winter, as has been noted, had turned into spring. Now spring had turned into summer and it had been decided that Aunt Helen’s first formal presentation into society was to happen upon the occasion of the celebration of Mother’s birthday, their birthday, July 6.

  The invitations had gone out. The Carsons. The Williams family. Andrew and Penelope Sexton—my father’s parents. Aunt Martha. The Tyler family.

  The Tylers were a family who had recently purchased the house next door. I had not met them yet, nor even seen them, but my parents said they supposed if they were inviting everyone else in the neighborhood, they would feel as though they were not being properly hospitable, were they not to include these new people.

  Invitations went out to about forty other people as well, some business associates of my father’s, mostly friends of the family.