“Good sir, are you unwell this afternoon?” I asked.
“Heavens, no, Miss Darby. I’ve never felt more robust! I…I should not beat about the bush, for I’m bound to make a mess of it…. Mrs. Darby, I am quite taken with your daughter. Miss Darby’s manners, her mien, her fine mind—not to mention her fair person—have quite struck my fancy. What…what…what I should like to say is that I would very much like to make her my wife.”
My mother, taken quite by surprise, spluttered into her tea saucer and nearly dropped the thing into her lap. “Mary? Marry Mary?” It was some moments before she recovered her composure. It was all I could do not to laugh, and so I turned my head away and pretended to cough politely into my handkerchief.
“Captain Fredericks, how old do you think my daughter is?”
The poor man gave my mother a quizzical look. “Well, my mum always told me it was impolite to hazard a lady’s age, but since you put my feet to the fire, I should guess from her height, and her looks, and from several afternoons conversing with her and observing her manners, that Miss Darby was sixteen years old.”
“Sixteen! Oh, dear!” Mother clapped a hand to her heart. “Mary is not quite thirteen!”
Captain Fredericks looked dumbstruck.
“Not till November,” I said.
He looked as if he doubted our veracity, but to have challenged it would have been the height of rudeness. “Well, then…,” the officer said, coloring slightly and clearing his throat once more to cover his expression of dismay—or perhaps it was chagrin—“well, then, I take my leave of you.” He rose and bowed to each of us. “I will be setting sail soon on a two-years’ expedition to the Indies. In fact, that was why I purposed to break my disclosure to you this afternoon. May I be so selfish as to express the wish that upon my return, Miss Darby will still be disengaged.”
Mother made no promises, and scrupled to say as much, for there was not a dishonest bone in her body. That afternoon was the last that she and I ever saw of the amiable and gallant Captain Fredericks.
Not too many months later, due to pecuniary derangements, Mrs. Lorrington gathered her students in the parlor of the academy. Her face was drawn and she appeared to be in a significant amount of pain.
“Circumstances compel me to close the academy,” she told us. “I should be sorry indeed to see you go. But I will always carry an image of each of you within my heart.”
It was a tearful dismissal. And no pupil felt the impending separation as keenly as I, the governess’s favorite, her little confidante.
“I don’t think I should ever be able to write another line of poetry,” I snuffled. “No one else has encouraged me as you have done—and I daresay no one ever will!”
“Tush, child.” Mrs. Lorrington stroked my head. “I am quite certain that the time will come when you feel you cannot abide it if you do not take up the quill again, and your future tutors will recognize merit when they see it.”
“But what if there are no future tutors? My father has been forced to economize, and when one is in his position, the daughter’s tuition is the first casualty.”
Mrs. Lorrington blinked back a tear. “I should hate to see that day come, Mary. But I have faith in you, my girl. You’ll not give up an education without a fight.” Pressing me to her bosom, she declared, “You’ll turn out just splendidly, my little friend.”
“But what about you, Mrs. Lorrington?” I feared for this poor woman’s future more than for my own.
“Me?” She tried to smile. “I shall be…” Her voice broke and she glanced away, focusing her gaze on the dado rail. “Don’t worry about me, my dear. I have my consolations.”
After Mrs. Lorrington shut her doors, Mother removed me to a more traditional boarding school across the Thames in Battersea, run by the lively, sensible, and accomplished Mrs. Leigh. Mrs. Leigh’s daughter Cynthia, a good-natured and lovely girl, was not much older than myself, so the transition from one academy to another was eased by the existence of an instant companion. Here I should have been quite happy, but then a few months elapsed during which my father repeatedly failed to send his remittance for my education. In a letter to Mother, Mrs. Leigh gently explained that she could not afford to extend her charity by keeping me on indefinitely with no guarantee of payment. Mother was beside herself. Deeply mortified, she was induced to remove me from Mrs. Leigh’s, though my brother George remained under the tutelage of the Reverend Gore in Chelsea. My worst fears had come to fruition. I retreated to the solace of my room, angry and betrayed by the man I had so adored, feeling punished for being born a girl.
My father’s impracticable arctic schemes had impoverished his fortune and deprived his children of the affluence that in their infancy they had been taught to hope for. I was now fourteen years old and my mother began to foresee the vicissitudes to which my youth might be exposed—unprotected, only tenderly educated, and without the advantages of fortune.
Mother now deemed her children fatherless, his payments having ceased entirely, just as his affections had done so many months previous. I bore her desolation in my own heart. Yet her indomitability in the face of adversity would not permit her to wallow in self-pitying despair. She retained a cheerful temper even as she struggled to find an honorable means to support her children, to that end hiring a convenient house at Little Chelsea and opening a ladies’ boarding school of her own.
Assistants of every kind were engaged, and Mother surprised and honored me no end by deeming me worthy to superintend the English Language department! I resolved to be up to the task in every way, pleased to be able to be of
