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ONE YEAR LATER
“Use your favorite poem or song to help you keep a rhythm,” Marianne told her new students. The girls looked at her like owls, eyes wide and blinking, half worried and half hopeful. “Get your hands into the dough—yes, just like that, Jemma. You can’t hurt it, Elsie—it’s all right even to slap it against the table.”
From her table at the front of the large converted room, she showed the half-dozen students how to knead and pummel and otherwise abuse their bread dough. “If there’s a fellow you’re angry with, you can imagine his face,” she said, working her fists into the soft mass.
As she hoped they would, the girls laughed, and they began to settle into a rhythm of their own at their long worktables. Some chanted in a quiet voice; some merely moved their lips. Some caught on quickly; some called for help from Mrs. Grahame—that was her!—and needed Marianne to stand near, coaching each step.
Marianne’s dowry, invested in the funds, yielded a steady dividend, and she used it to pay the students a wage to attend her school of cookery. These girls needn’t become maids at the age of twelve. They could learn to work with food, to gain themselves better posts. To help themselves and their families and those who loved them, lifelong.
With Marianne, they learned for a few hours each day, five days a week. Boys came for lessons at other times, other days. Some learned joinery, some studied languages and penmanship to prepare for clerkships. They too received a wage and were taught by those with knowledge.
Marianne still kneaded her dough to Shakespeare, but no longer to the words of Macbeth. Sometimes now it was The Merchant of Venice:
The qual-i-ty of mer-cy is not strained.
It drop-peth as the gen-tle rain from heav’n.
And sometimes she paced herself with sonnets. She particularly liked the one about the marriage of two minds, and love not altering when it alteration found.
Mercy and love, and the changes that time brought to a loved one. With these sweet balms, she had healed her heart. And whole, it was hers to give again.
She’d been like these girls once, uncertain of her place, though she’d had advantages they didn’t all have. She’d had a home to leave and to return to and the knowledge of love, though she’d thought it dust and shaken it from her feet.
And she’d been hired by Mrs. Brodie, been taught by Mrs. Patchett, aided by Katie and Sally and the four Js and several other marvelous maids and assistants. They’d all seen to her future. Now she did her piece to see to the future of other girls, one roll and sauce and tart at a time. One perfectly cleaved apricot.
One strawberry in season, and one honeycomb still sticky sweet.
Outside, one of the last cool days of spring chilled the ground and the air; within the just-christened Helena Wilcox Grahame Academy, all was warm and bright. Marianne would finish today’s lessons, then speak to Edith James about beginning to teach one day per week. The newest Grahame, Marianne and Jack’s first child, would be born near Midsummer. While Marianne recovered from her confinement, she’d need someone to teach for her all the time.
Edith had been Marianne’s first student, a quick and eager learner. She could take over the instruction, and well. And someday, so could several of the others. Love was generous, not selfish, and these girls watched out for each other.
They were exceptional young ladies, and sooner than they expected, they would be equal to anything.