“I beg your pardon!” Miss Miller’s mouth hung open. “I did not know! The governess? The one who ran away? It was you?”
“Yes. However, the tale that Dowager Lady Ingram told does not bear repeating. It is both cruelly slanted and spiteful.”
“Again, please accept my apologies. My word, Miss Eyre, you are the wife of a squire? How fortunate for you!”
Nan Miller’s frank admiration embarrassed me. It would take some time for me to sort through all the mischief that Lady Ingram had caused. In the meantime, I would need to set the situation right with Maude Thurston. More importantly, I needed to see to Adèle.
“Even if Mrs. Thurston did not know about our marriage, Adèle did. Mrs. Augustus Brayton is a family friend. She checked on Adèle regularly up until six months ago.”
“Perhaps the girl did mention it. I can’t say. Adela babbles in French so quickly that I find it hard to follow.”
A fresh wave of guilt swept over me. That poor child! Until six months before I became her governess, she had lived on the Continent and had spoken naught but her native tongue. Edward brought her and her French-speaking nurse with him to England after her mother left. Although I had insisted we spend a portion of our days speaking in English, Adèle still preferred her native tongue, especially when she was tired or distressed.
“I never was very good with languages,” Miss Miller said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
While most girls’ schools offered Latin, Greek, and French—and occasionally German and Italian—as part of their usual curriculum, at Lowood, Miss Miller never rose above the position of under-teacher because her linguistic skills were so paltry.
“But surely the girl confided in someone,” I insisted. “Was there no adult who could converse freely with Adèle?”
“Yes, of course. Our old German teacher, Fräulein Hertzog, and Adela got along famously. Fräulein could speak a bit of French. Not much, but some. She was the proctor for the Senior girls. You know, Adela is the youngest in her form. Most of the Seniors are thirteen and up.”
“Why is she in the Senior form? She only turned ten this year.”
“When Mrs. Thurston came, she moved Adela in with older girls, in consideration of the fact that the girl had been exposed to certain unsavory influences early in life.” She paused and shook her head at me.
The fact that the child had been judged for the sins of her mother, who was an opera dancer and a courtesan, struck me as unnecessarily harsh. However, I did recall that shortly after meeting Adèle she had shown me a specimen of her accomplishments, which included a canzonet with a subject that was wildly inappropriate for such a young performer. Perhaps Mrs. Thurston was wise to separate Adèle from the younger children.
“There is one other question I have. Of late, Adèle’s letters are different. The phrasing seems foreign to her.”
Miss Miller laughed. “And much improved, no doubt? Yes, the truth is that the students are not the authors of their correspondence. Mrs. Thurston is. All the girls copy her letters from the blackboard.”
“What?” I could not believe my ears.
“Really, it is quite an ingenious arrangement. Lady Kingsley, our founder, was furious when one girl complained to her parents about something or another and they responded by withdrawing her. Maude Thurston vowed it would never happen again. But parents do expect to hear from their children regularly. So Mrs. Thurston decided she would script out the messages.”
My heart went out to Adèle, but I also experienced a feeling of relief—at least now I knew why her recent letters had been so strange!
“I feel horrible that Adèle has not seen us in so long,” I said. “Do the other parents who send their daughters to Alderton House visit them often?”
“Most, I am sorry to say, do not. Her situation is not unusual. Sometimes parents stay away because their visits are disruptive. Each family is different. All of our parents choose Alderton House because they want a good education for their children. Many travel and have decided that a stable atmosphere is best, but others seem to want to be done with the rigors of parenting. To tell you the truth, many exhibit more affection for their little dogs!” She sighed. “Students often stay with us over the holidays and summers. The majority of parents visit the school infrequently if at all.”
“Then how do they know that their girls are getting a good education?”
“A few ask for regular reports in the form of letters, which Mrs. Thurston provides sporadically. She feels it best not to bother the parents unless there is a problem. Involving parents only invites interference, as you can well imagine.”
“Interference.”
“Yes.” This, a soft hiss of admission.
I could not contain myself any longer. I stood up. “Enough. I’m afraid I shall have to ‘interfere’—you must take me to Adèle at once.”
“I am sorry, but that’s not possible. She is sleeping.”
“At this hour? She should be in class, should she not?” Adèle who never napped? Never showed any sign of diminished energy? My heart took an unwelcome tumble.
“After her friend’s death, Adela grew distraught. When she refused to be comforted, the doctor examined her and suggested a tisane. Perhaps if you can come back later—”
“Either you can escort me or I shall find my own way.”
Miss Miller put her hand on mine. “I might almost suppose you didn’t trust me.”
“It does not matter if I trust you,” I explained. “I must see the girl. I will see her. I have promised my husband, and I must fulfill my promise.” I would make it up to Adèle for being remiss, and I would start that process today, right here, right now.
“You are so…hard, Jane. So intractable! I remember you always asking too many questions. But I do not remember you being so insistent and challenging. What has changed you?”
Had I changed? Since my days at Lowood, certainly—and only for the better, I thought. “It is the responsibilities I now shoulder—some happily and some reluctantly. These are the burdens I intend to carry as my own from now until the day I draw my last breath. One of those includes seeing to the welfare of Adèle Varens.”
Miss Miller rose from her seat and started toward the hallway. “You have convinced me. But we must be quick. Mrs. Thurston thinks I take time with you because you are our new German teacher. I don’t believe we have the luxury of correcting her misunderstanding and introducing you properly at the moment. Not right now. She is understandably preoccupied by our tragedy. I believe she is making arrangements for us to go into mourning. Earlier she was writing a letter of condolence to the girl’s parents.”
Since I could do nothing for the dead child, I nodded my assent. I cared not a whit about Mrs. Thurston or what she thought of me. I cared only about seeing Adèle.
The parlor door opened into a spacious foyer. A fine silk rug covered a portion of the alternating black and white marble squares. A crystal chandelier dangled above us. Marble busts stared down from alcoves in the wall.
“To the right is Mrs. Thurston’s office, and behind it is her own snug apartment,” explained Miss Miller. Seeing the surprise on my face, she laughed quietly. “We could not imagine such a place as this, could we? I think back to our early days at Lowood, before it was rebuilt. How crowded the one schoolroom and dormitory were. The odor of burned porridge seeping through its every pore. There’s none of that here.”
She gestured toward an open room on our left, and I glimpsed two dining tables set with fine silver that sparkled in the light streaming through the windows. “A partition can divide this room in half,” said Nan Miller, pointing to a set of folding doors. This space was approximately the same size as the whitewashed cottage in the good village of Morton where I taught twenty scholars during that sad interim when I was estranged from Edward.
Following Miss Miller upward along a broad staircase of polished mahogany, I glimpsed a first floor neatly sectioned into quarters. These were the classrooms. Through the closed doors, I heard the high piping voices of little girls chanting their lessons.
“At the back is a music room, complete with a cabinet piano. Each classroom has globes and reference books,” she said with an abundance of pride in her voice.
We ascended another set of stairs. “Here we have our library. There is even a ten-volume set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. At night we gather here, so that the girls can practice their needle arts and read aloud. We have fifteen students—well, I suppose now fourteen students—in all. The dormitories for the five Infants, the five Juniors, and the five—four—Seniors are on this floor. The forms are divided into Infants, ages six to eight; Juniors, ages nine to twelve; and Seniors, ages thirteen and up.”
At the top of the landing, we stepped inside a long room. A bed and small dresser sat apart, near the door, in an area cordoned off by a dressing screen. “The teacher usually sleeps here. Each dormitory has an adult in attendance. But because our new German teacher has not arrived, this bed is currently empty.”
We stepped around the dressing screen and gazed upon five beds in two facing rows.
“Adèle!” I said. She lay on one side with her face turned away from us. Her copious hair with its abundant curls was easily recognizable as it spilled over the pillow. I hurried to her, expecting her to rise up and greet me sleepily.
How she had grown in the last two years! I could tell she was much taller. The clock of childhood sweeps along at a faster pace than that of adulthood. Although our parting seemed recent to me, for Adèle the separation had already lasted a large portion of her life.
I stepped around the bed and knelt beside her.
“Adèle?” I tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear so it did not dangle over her face. Poor child. Did she think we had forgotten her?
She made no response.
“Adèle!”
She didn’t move.