The Copeland Bride

Then they were all around her, even the children, circling and shrieking, 'Hang her! Hang her! Hang her!'

Letty's knock awakened Noelle. What a horrible nightmare! She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, shutting out the daylight.

'Come in.'

'Morning, Miss Pope,' Letty murmured. 'Do you want your tray on the table, or would you rather eat in bed?'

Noelle struggled into a sitting position. 'On the table,' she muttered. She felt awful; the smell of the warm rolls, instead of whetting her seemingly unappeasable appetite, was making her stomach churn. 'Take it away, Letty,' she croaked. 'I've changed my mind.' As an afterthought, she added, 'Leave the tea.'

'Yes, miss.' Letty darted a curious glance at Noelle and then removed the tray from the room.

Noelle fell back on the pillow and took several deep gulps of air. That awful nightmare-it had actually made her ill. Lifting her head slightly, she peered at the small clock on her nightstand. It was after eight-thirty; she had to hurry to be in the library by nine o'clock. Perhaps the tea would help settle her stomach.

She drank it hot and strong and did seem to feel better for it. After stepping out of her nightgown, she washed and brushed her hair, tucking the frizzled strands behind her ears. The navy blue dress was being laundered that day so she resigned herself to an itching neck and stepped into the brown merino. Barely glancing at her image in the mirror, Noelle sped from the room, almost colliding with Constance in the hallway.

Constance's green eyes regarded her reproachfully. 'I'm happy to see you are prompt, Noelle. However, a bit less haste would be more seemly.'

'Yes, Mrs. Peale,' Noelle said, smiling sweetly and then smothering a giggle at the sight of Constance's suspiciously lifted eyebrows.

Constance proved to be an excellent, if demanding, instructor. Since Noelle already recognized the letters of the alphabet, Constance began teaching her the sound each letter made. Noelle's quick mind absorbed all the information Constance gave her, and by the end of the morning she could slowly read down the columns of words Constance had printed out for her.

'Hat, cat, fat, pat, rat, sat, tat, bat… had, bad, lad, mad, pad, sad.' Slowly she sounded out each word.

Finally Constance pushed herself back from the library table, where they were seated, and consulted a gold watch pinned to the bodice of her gray cashmere dress. 'I think that's enough for today. Tomorrow we will begin work on the sounds that are produced when letters are combined.'

Noelle looked up, her mind full of its new discoveries. How tantalizing it was… the way letters became sounds and sounds fit together to form words. 'How long do you think it will be before I can read something by myself?'

'That's difficult to say, Noelle. You're my first pupil, so I really have no experience to draw upon. I do know we still have much to do. However, you learn very quickly and are certainly most conscientious about applying yourself.' Constance paused thoughtfully for a moment. 'I believe I know just the thing.'

She walked to the library shelves, where she climbed up on a small stool and pulled a book from a shelf above her head. 'This is Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe,' she said, handing a worn volume to Noelle. 'As you can see, it's a bit the worse for wear; it was one of Benjamin's favorites.'

As Noelle studied the first page Constance remembered another one who had loved it. She could see him now, perched on a branch of the tall elm that stood near the back of the house, an unruly lock of black hair tumbling over his brow, this same book open in his lap. Her inability to have a child of her own had been like a knife in her heart that summer as she had watched him running and climbing, building a raft. Life was so ironic! Here she was sitting with his wife, and she didn't dare share the memory.

Noelle sighed. 'I can't imagine ever being able to read this.'

'Of course you will,' Constance responded briskly. 'Put the book next to your bed. Every night before you go to sleep, open it and try to read from it. One night you will surprise yourself.'

The clock in the hallway chimed. 'I have some matters I must attend to before lunch,' Constance said. 'This afternoon I would like you to practice what you have learned this morning, but only after you have a nap and then a long walk. Exercise is as invigorating to the mind as it is to the body.' Constance swept from the library, leaving the fragrance of violets in her wake.

The next few weeks quickly settled into an established routine. Noelle ate a sizeable breakfast, and then the two women worked together in the library most of the morning. Constance was an exacting taskmaster, even modifying Noelle's pronunciation if it rang too harshly to her sensitive ear. Declaring it was not enough for Noelle to be able to read, she soon decreed that her pupil must also write.

'But I won't be here nearly long enough to learn that,' Noelle argued. In fact, she was not as certain of that as she seemed. There was still no sign of her monthly time and a heavy band of fear was settling itself around her.

'Nevertheless, you will begin,' Constance insisted stubbornly. 'You must first learn to print the alphabet in upper and lower case. After you have mastered that, you will begin practicing the letters in script.'

Noelle complied with Constance's dictate; however, the task proved maddening for her. The recalcitrant letters stubbornly refused to stay in an orderly row. They clumped together or developed spidery blots at their ends. Her final product was so different from Constance's flawless model that she invariably crumpled it into an angry ball and flung it into the basket.

At meals, the two women remained polite but distant with each other, their conversation strained and desultory. The silver epergne had permanently disappeared from the center of the table, but Noelle found herself sometimes wishing it were back, for she soon determined it was not as easy to eat properly as she had at first thought, especially when she was always so hungry.

There were so many rules. She was also unaccustomed to using a fork. A spoon was the utensil she had grown up with and she had felt lucky to have that, since the others she knew relied on their fingers. It did secretly amuse her to discover that she had somewhat better luck wielding her knife. It, at least, felt familiar in her hand.

Each day after her nap, Noelle began taking long walks, venturing farther into the countryside surrounding the estate. She feasted on all that met her eyes, a world clean and pure, unmarred by muddy potholes formed from sunken cobblestones or filthy, open sewers. She found a nest of violets cradled by the roots of a sycamore; moss, tender and new, near a brook. One day she walked far out into the hills, reveling in the joy of being totally alone.

She met Boggin, the old, wrinkled gardener. He liked to identify the plants in his herb garden for her or talk of flowers that were just beginning to bloom. He named the trees that surrounded the house, often repeating himself, sometimes lapsing into silence in the middle of the conversation. But Noelle didn't mind; she felt comfortable with him.

When Noelle returned from her walks, she would enter the house through the kitchen as a precaution against encountering any of an increasing number of neighbors who were making their way to the Peale doorstep. As Constance had predicted, the story of her unusual guest had spread rapidly throughout the countryside, and rivalry was growing by the day to be the first to catch a glimpse of the young Englishwoman who had been raised in India. Despite the announcement that her guest was convalescing and would not be strong enough to have visitors for some time, Constance's callers continued to arrive on one pretext or another.

So, during the late afternoon when they were most likely to appear, Noelle made it a habit to secrete herself in the library, where a maid would bring her milk and a generous stack of tiny watercress sandwiches. Sometimes she would practice printing her letters, but more frequently she would continue browsing through the books that fascinated her.

In the evenings Noelle would excuse herself from the dinner table and retire to her bedroom and Robinson Crusoe. She now recognized many of the shorter words; however, the longer ones continued to befuddle her. She would sound them out laboriously, but by the time she was done with a sentence, she would realize she had concentrated so hard on reading the individual words that she had lost all sense of the meaning. So she would start again. 'I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York…'

One evening as she lay propped up in her bed, Robinson Crusoe open in her lap, there was a soft rap at her door. It was Letty.

'I'm here to brush your hair, miss,' she murmured, staring at the toes of her shoes.

Noelle was startled. 'Why would you want to brush my hair, Letty?'

'Mrs. Peale told me I'm to brush it every night,' she answered stolidly.