Will You Love Me in September

So I went back and waited in my room. I was terribly frightened, for I sensed all was not well. It was like being back in the cellar again. What was happening could mean change. I was still that time clinging to my security.

Love ,7aitin8 seemed to go on and on, and when it was finally dread -joyous expectancy had gone from the house. It was Nobody Sad' The baby was stillborn and Damaris was very ill. grand Seemed to notice me- There were talks between the parents. This time I was not mentioned. It was all "poor Damaris" and what this would mean to her. And she was desperately ill. Jeremy was sunk in gloom; there was a bitter twist to his mouth. I was sure he believed Damaris was going to die as well as the baby.

Grandmother Priscilla was going to stay at Enderby for a while to look after her daughter. Benjie came over. He said he would take me back to Ayot Abbas, and to my chagrin no attempt was made to dissuade him from doing so.

So I went to Ayot Abbas, there to find that loving concentration of affection which I had known at Enderby.

Benjie loved me dearly. He would have liked me to stay there and be his daughter.

Oddly enough, when I was at Ayot Abbas, memories came flooding back to me. I remembered being there and how I used to play in the gardens with my nurse in attendance. And most of all I remembered the day when Hessenfield took me away to the excitement of the ship and the hotel, which culminated in the cold and menacing cellar, with Jeanne as my only protector.

I could not help being intrigued by Harriet. Since her husband Gregory was so gentle and kind I could be very happy at the Abbas if it had not meant leaving Damaris, with whom I had a very special relationship.

This must have happened about the year 1710, for I was eight years old. But I suppose what had happened to me had made me somewhat precocious. Harriet thought so anyway.

Harriet and I were alike in a way. We were both enormously interested in people, and that meant that we learned a good deal about them.

She was an amazing woman; she had an indestructible beauty. She must have been very old-she would never tell us how old-but the years seemed to have left her untouched.

She dismissed them, and try as they might, they could not encroach on her with any real effect. Her hair was dark still. "I will pass on the secret before I go, Clarissa,”

she said with a smile which was as mischievous as it must have been when she was my age. In addition to this dark rippling hair she had the bluest of eyes, and if they were embedded in wrinkles, they were alive with the spirit of eternal youth.

She took me in hand and spent a lot of time with me. She probed me, asking many questions, all about the past.

"You're old enough to know the truth about yourself," she said.

you have your eyes and ears wide open for what you can "I reckon y piCk Emitted it. One could admit to peccadilloes with Harriet * a one could be sure she would have committed them in the because jt-on f . . perhaps more daring ones. Although she was SuTnd must be respected, she was different from my family. °x~ia j was with her I felt that I was with someone who was as 2 as I was in spirit but with a vast experience of life which could be useful to me.

"Yes," she said, "it's better for you to know the whole truth. I reckon your dear grandmother would never whisper a word of it. I know my Priscilla, and Damaris-dear, good girl-would do as her mother told her. Even your great-grandmother would never tell you, I'm sure. Dear me! It is left to poor old Harriet.”

Then she told me that my mother had fallen in with some Jacobites at an inn, the leader of whom had been Lord Hessenfield. They fell in love, and I was the result.

But they were not married. There had not been time and Hessenfield had had to make a speedy escape to France. I was born, and Benjie had said he would be my father, so my mother was married to him. But later on Hessenfield came for my mother and me and took us to France, so poor Benjie, who had thought of himself as my father, was left lonely.

"You must be particularly kind to Benjie," said Harriet.

"I will," I assured her.

"Poor Benjie. He must marry again and forget your mother. But she was so beautiful, Clarissa.”

"I know.”

"Of course you know. But she brought little happiness to herself or to others.”

"She did to Hessenfield.”