Chapter 27

Lizzie had lobbied her department for more than two years to let her teach a seminar based on museum collections and had looked forward to it with enthusiasm. Now that she was actually teaching the course, however, she found it hard to concentrate. Her thoughts were often somewhere else, sometimes at Hengemont, staring out through the tall library windows across the terrace to the sea, sometimes on the coast of Alaska as described in Francis Hatton’s journal.

Soon after her return to campus she had lunch with Jackie and Kate at Rose Geminiani’s restaurant, but Lizzie found herself unable to articulate what had happened to her. She sketched in the straightforward details, including the fact that she was going to have to make a quick trip to Alaska to repatriate the corpse of a Tlingit man from the late eighteenth century, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell even these close friends about how she had really felt when she learned of John d’Hautain’s missing heart.

She tried to make a joke of it, but felt somehow that to belittle the experience was to betray all those generations of women. She also decided not to tell her friends about her relationship to the Hattons. It was still confusing.

“This seems to have been quite a powerful experience,” Kate said as Lizzie fumbled through her narrative.

“And I sense a change in you,” Jackie added. She turned to Rose, approaching their table to catch up after the holidays. “Bring the wet noodles, Rose, Lizzie may need that beating after all.”

Lizzie was reminded about what she had said to them before she left. Sitting at this very table she had pledged that she would not be altered by the experience. It had been, in fact, a very short time to have been altered so much.

“You liked it, didn’t you?” Jackie demanded.

“Liked what?”

“The aristocratic life.”

“Of course she did,” Rose laughed. “Who wouldn’t?” She pulled out a chair and sat down to join them.

“But that doesn’t mean she’d change that life for this one,” Kate said. “It was just a luxurious interlude..”

“It was more than that,” Lizzie admitted. She didn’t elaborate.

“Oh no,” Jackie gasped in mock seriousness, “I don’t believe it. You let those people influence you.”

“‘Those people’ were, in fact, terrific,” she said. “You’d like them.”

“Never!”

“Why not?”

“Because of what they represent.”

“They’re perfectly nice.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

Kate broke into the conversation. “I can’t believe that you, Jackie, a champion for the acceptance of all people, without regard to race, creed, color, or sexual orientation, want to condemn these people simply for the accident of their birth.”

Rose, ever the good hostess, filled all their glasses. “Yeah, weren’t you the one who got in trouble over at St. Pat’s last year for supporting same-sex marriages?”

“This is different,” Jackie explained. “We’re not talking about the victims of society now; these are the victimizers.”

“Is this an Irish thing?” Kate asked with pretended innocence.

“Of course not!” Jackie huffed. “It’s a British thing.” More than once in the past Jackie had taunted Kate about her last name, “Wentworth,” which to Jackie smacked of the English aristocracy. Everyone at the table had heard Jackie’s lecture on the British Empire so many times that Lizzie merely sighed, Kate rolled her eyes, and Rose had long since simply ceased listening whenever Jackie was on the subject.

Lizzie felt it was time to wrestle control of the conversation from Jackie. “Ordinarily, Jackie,” she started, “you know that I am in total agreement with you on this topic.”

“I know,” Jackie said, “that’s why I need reassurance that you haven’t gone over to the dark side.”

“I swear to God,” Lizzie responded, “the Hattons are actually nice people. I liked them.”

“Do they have servants?”

Lizzie nodded and Jackie gave a loud sigh as if to say, “Well there you have it.”

“I think they should sell their house to some Internet millionaire and move into a hovel,” Kate said sarcastically. “Then someone who really deserved it would be living in it.”

“Oh Kate,” Jackie said, shaking her head. “There is something serious here.”

Lizzie patted Jackie’s arm affectionately. “You’re right,” she said. “There is something serious here.” She looked around the table at her three friends. She regretted that she couldn’t tell them everything that had happened. She wasn’t even going to tell them about the impending collapse of the Hatton fortune.

“The truth is that I found life at Hengemont very comfortable,” she said. “Too comfortable, I guess. I have always felt, like Jackie, that there was something just wrong about the way society was divided into people who were born with wealth and position, and those who had to earn it.”

“And those who never have it under any circumstances,” Jackie interrupted.

Lizzie smiled at her friend’s passion.

“George Hatton,” Lizzie continued, “Sir George Hatton, was born into a way of life that he simply never questioned. And it wasn’t always a life of ease. I can say with confidence that the Hatton family always felt a weight of responsibility that went along with their privileges.”

She described the tremendous losses the Hattons had experienced in every English war. Jackie was about to make a comment, but Lizzie held up her hand.

“I know what you’re going to say, Jackie,” she said, “it’s noblesse oblige. I fully acknowledge that. And it was a very comfortable way of life, and it exploited the labor of less fortunate people.” She paused for a moment and looked at Jackie. “Did I forget anything?”

“That it was originally based on an act of aggression?” Jackie offered with a smile.

“Okay,” Lizzie said, “a thousand years ago there was a violent act that brought the Hattons into prominence.”

“In all seriousness, Jackie,” Kate interjected, “how do you suggest that a family like Lizzie’s Hattons make their amends to society?”

Jackie swirled her wine in her glass and took a sip. “Well, that’s a problem,” she said, “for which I don’t have an easy solution. But I guess it would start with giving away large sums of money.”

“I think they do that,” Lizzie said. “Certainly George’s son Edmund lives modestly.”

“You never mentioned a son,” Rose said. She had been sitting silently, drinking coffee, simultaneously watching her restaurant and listening with half an ear to the conversation. “Now we get to the good stuff. What’s the son like?”

Lizzie had not wanted to mention Edmund, but she knew that to avoid describing him now would cause even more curiosity among her friends.

“He’s a doctor,” she started, “and he has volunteered his services in a number of different countries that Jackie would approve of.”

“Is he handsome?” Rose asked.

“Very.”

“What does he look like?”

“Tall, well-built, blond hair with a touch of gray, one of those nice trim beards.”

“Ooh, I’m shivering,” Rose said dramatically. “Handsome, rich, titled, in line to inherit a grand estate. . . .”

Lizzie interrupted her, “Actually, he won’t inherit Hengemont. He has an older brother.”

“Okay,” Rose said, shifting the focus of her fantasy. “What’s he like?”

Lizzie thought for a moment about Richard. “He is exactly Jackie’s model of an aristocrat. Snobbish, grasping, stupid, and an exploiter of the little people.”

“Mama mia,” Rose said dramatically. “Let’s get back to the other brother.”

“Yes,” Kate said. “This younger son, is he married?”

“Get in line,” Rose said, pushing Kate lightly on the shoulder. “You already have a man.” Rose turned back to Lizzie. “So, is he married?”

“Divorced, with a nine-year-old daughter.”

Rose had been widowed at the age of twenty-nine after only four years of marriage; her two children were now in their teens. She often joked about men with her friends from St. Pat’s, but they all knew that her energy was devoted to keeping her restaurant afloat and raising her children. Of the four women, only Lizzie was married. Kate had a serious relationship with a man with whom she had lived for several years, and Jackie was divorced.

“It’s too bad I didn’t go to England for you,” Rose said. “I could use a man like that, and you’ve already snapped up the best guy I know.”

“That’s for sure,” Jackie added. “What does Martin think of all this?”

Lizzie joked that Martin had pledged to support her in the manner to which she had now become accustomed.

Kate tapped her fork on her glass to get the attention of the others. “We still haven’t answered our fundamental question though.” The faces around the table turned to her. “Is inherited wealth and position a romantic ideal to which we should all aspire?”

“I vote no,” Jackie said.

“I vote no, with tremendous regret,” Rose said with a wink.

“I vote no, with somewhat less regret,” Kate said, nudging Rose.

They all looked at Lizzie.

“I vote no, of course,” Lizzie said with authority. “I have to admit that a life of ease is attractive, but I did not as Jackie feared ‘go over to the dark side.’ Like you said weeks ago, I would rather earn it than inherit it.”

As they left the restaurant to return to campus she thought about Hengemont’s beautiful library, and of Helen Jeffries bringing her coffee and pastries as she sat at the table looking across the garden to the Bristol Channel. She loved Hengemont, but she felt in her heart that everything Jackie had said was right.

Despite its fascinating history, she could not regret the fact that when Richard’s turn came, Hengemont might be lost to the Hattons.