Lament for a lost lover

I said: “You know I would never turn anyone away who needed shelter.” Her smile was dazzling. I felt I wanted to keep looking at her as listening to her. Of course I wanted her to stay. Of course I was delighted that she had suggested it, even though I was a little wicked that she had pretended so convincingly, but then she was an actress.

When I told the children that Mistress Main was to be their new governess, Dick set the young ones leaping high into the air - their special way of conveying approval. Lucas thought it would be good for the children and that our parents would be pleased. I was not so sure of the latter and made up my mind that I should not tell them that Harriet had been a player before she had decided to become a governess - not until they had seen her for themselves that was, and had, as I was sure they would, succumbed to her charm. Jeanne, Marianne and Jacques were pleased to have a new excitement brought into their lives. Madame Lambard could not but approve of one who had so rapidly shown the efficacy of her cures.

And so Harriet Main settled in our household.

It changed at once as I had known it would. Even her clothes were different. She had dresses of brocade and velvet which looked wonderful in candlelight. The children thought her beautiful, which in a strange, exotic way she certainly was. They could not take their eyes from her. Lucas was ready to be her slave, but I was the one she wanted most to impress.

Sometimes she wore her magnificent hair in curls tied back with ribbons, at others she dressed it high and set glittering ornaments in it. The children thought she must be a princess to possess such jewels and I hadn’t the heart to tell them that they were the cheapest paste. On her they looked real; she had the power to transform anything she put on.

We were all becoming quite knowledgeable about plays, and lessons often took the form of dramatic acting. She would assign for” h”?’ taking the best for herself - but how could I blame he or that?- and rehearse us, promising us that when we were ready e would perform for the servants and the Lambards.

We were all caught up in the excitement, particularly myself.

She said to me once: “You would have done quite well on the stage, Arabella.” She had completely won our hearts, and I was afraid that one day she would grow tired of us and decide to rejoin the company of players, but she showed little sign of doing that and seemed perfectly content with our way of life. She made a habit of coming to my room after the others were in bed and we would talk-or mostly she talked and I listened.

She would always sit near the mirror and now and then glance at her reflection. I had the impression that she was outside the scene, looking in on the play. Sometimes it seemed to amuse her.

One night she said: “You don’t know me, Arabella. You are as young as innocence and I am as old as sin.”

I was always a little impatient with these theatrical utterances, largely because I felt they impeded the truth and I was anxious to discover the truth about Harriet. “What nonsense,” I said. “I am seventeen years old. Is that so young?”

“It is not necessarily years which determine our age.”

“But it is exactly that.”

She shook her head, “You are gloriously young at seventeen ... whereas I at twenty ...” she hesitated and looked at me mischievously ... “two,” she added. “Twenty-two ... yes, not a day more, but since I am in a confessing mood tonight, I will whisper to you that I have been twenty-two for more than a year and sometimes I am merely twenty-one.”

“You mean you pretend to be younger than you are!”

“Or older. Whichever seems expedient. I am an adventuress, Arabella. Adventurers are made by fate. If I had had what I wanted from life I shouldn’t have had to go out and adventure for it, should I? Then I should have been a high-born lady living quite contentedly. Instead of which I am an adventuress.”

“High-born ladies have become exiles, don’t forget, so perhaps they have to adventure a little in these times.”

“It’s true. The Roundheads have made schemers of us all. How I always wanted to be an actress. My father was an actor.”

“That explains your talents’ I cried.

“A strolling player,” she mused. “They used to come through the villages and stay where business was good. It must have been very good in Middle Chartley, for they stayed long enough there for him to seduce my mother, and this seduction resulted in the birth of one destined to become the finest jewel in the world of the theatre. Your own Harriet Main.”

The tone of her voice changed. She was a wonderful actress. She could make me see the strolling player, the simple country maiden, who was enchanted by his performance on the stage and equally so it seemed by that other performance under hedges and in the fields of Middle Chartley.