Sophie was a pale shadow of Elvira. Her hair was well-brushed and dressed, though kept short, but lacked the vibrancy of Elvira’s polished auburn locks. Sophie’s face lacked curves and looked gaunt, the deep pain-line between her eyebrows pronounced. Her eyes, however, shone with as much life and enthusiasm as her sister.
“Oh, Miss Worthington! Elvira has told me so much about you, I feel that I know you!” said Sophie, holding out her hands. Kitty ran to take them, not heeding the dry, unhealthy feel of them.
“Why, you must call me ‘Kitty’ as Elvira does; I am sure we shall be friends,” said Kitty.
“I am looking forward to having a friend, if only you will not find me tedious for being immobile,” said Sophie.
“I do not regard it in the least; and moreover, perhaps I may be able to push you in a Bath chair to go to the park, and visit shops, maybe even the theatre.”
“Oh! But I will be afraid to be away from home, in case…” she flushed. “I can lose control of my bladder,” she whispered.
“Well, if you are well packed up with towels, same as during your flux, it will be a little unpleasant, but at least easy to clean up for your maid, and I will help, and I wager that if you are not thinking about it and worrying about it, you will be less likely to have problems,” said Kitty. “I imagine it would be embarrassing, but is not the chance of seeing new places well worth it?”
“I… I don’t know… I will have to think about it,” said Sophie.
Hugo came into the room at this point.
“Mr. Bottringham,” said Kitty, “I cannot like it that you have persuaded your sister to act like an invalid, instead of treating her like a person who has some limitations.”
He stiffened, and the look of icy hauteur came into his eyes.
“What do you mean? She is an invalid, and her well-being is my business, not yours.”
“No, sir!” said Kitty, ignoring the quelling look. “It is your concern, but it is also her concern; and that makes it the concern of any other young girl who can enter into her feelings. You should encourage her to do as much as she can, and to enjoy as much as she might, and if her… control… is shaky, then she might still go out with such measures as one may use with an infant who has not learned full control, as a safeguard. And in such case, she would not be as afraid of problems, and therefore would be less likely to be prey to them. Being shut up in a few rooms which have very little cheer to them cannot be good for her! Why, there are not even any flowers in her sitting room here, and I wager her bedroom has medicine bottles in evidence and looks like a sick room, not a young girl’s room. She needs pretty things about her; what is wrong with buying her a Norfolk shawl, not a plain, serviceable, doubtless comfortable but plain brown shawl. She needs sun on her hair and on her face, and… and ice-cream from time to time, because good nourishing fare is all very well, but it is depressing! You, sir, are turning your sister into an old woman!”
Hugo started.
“Sophie! Is this true? Have you been afraid to ask me for more?”
“Oh, Hugo, no, but I did not realise until Kitty spoke to you so passionately that I… I should like more from life than being ‘the invalid Miss Bottringham.’ I… I would like pretty things. And, Oh, Hugo! I know it is frivolous, but I should like fresh wallpaper on my room, I am tired of the same thing on the wall when I open my eyes. I want… I want a toile de Jouay wallpaper with interesting scenes that I can imagine stories about the people.”
“Well, then! That is easy enough to accomplish, though I fear the hammering as the paper is hung might give you a headache.”
“I can move to a room on the other side of the house whilst it is done, Hugo, if you will carry me there. And… and I want to go into the garden, and to the park, and it may be a little demeaning to have to be packed with diaper cloth like a baby, but less so than any accident happening, and I am thus packed overnight, anyway. I… Kitty has opened my eyes.”
“Then I rejoice that Elvira invited her, and I am sorry I did not see beyond your immediate physical needs,” said Hugo.
“Oh, Hugo, you have looked after me so well, and I would not have thought of wanting more….”
“It may be my fault, but I know I would feel my spirits to be quite depressed being made to feel an invalid,” said Kitty. “And perhaps, dear Sophie, if you were to visit Bath, you might enjoy some freedom with the weight taken from your feet in the baths, as well as being beneficial to your health. I am sure I would happily attend you, if your sister was not able to do so.”
“One thing at a time,” said Hugo. “Maybe it is to be considered in the little season. I came in to see if you girls were ready to have tea sent up.”
“Oh, yes, please, Hugo,” said Sophie. “Why, I believe I might have a little appetite just thinking about fresh air!”
Kitty called on Sophie three times a week from then on, she and Elvira taking Sophie out in a wheeled chair on fine days, and Sophie’s hair lost some of its dullness, and her face took on some colour. After she had been cleaned up, if need be, by her maid, they had tea, and then played card games, board games, or just talked about society, using Kitty’s commonplace book. And sometimes Kitty went on to a soirée with Elvira, with promises to tell Sophie all about those people who caught her imagination.
“Oh, it is good to get fresh air,” said Sophie, as Kitty pushed her out in the park, taking turns with Elvira.
“I’m so sorry, Sophie, that I never thought of it; you and Kitty must think me very selfish,” said Elvira.
“Not at all; it took an outsider to see it,” said Sophie. “Not that Kitty is an outsider any more, but she looked at us with new eyes.”
“Indeed, for I am sure that at first it was a question of handling your grief over your parents, fear as to whether Sophie would survive, and then settling into a routine, doubtless necessary at first, before Sophie was well enough to want more,” said Kitty. “What a lot of daisies there are! I am going to make a daisy-chain crown for you, Sophie.”
“Pick me some, too, please, so I may make daisy-chains too,” said Sophie.
Three young girls made daisy chains, slitting the stem of each with their thumbnails to pass the stem of the next through so it was held by the head, in a way familiar to every girl since she learns it at her mother’s or nursemaid’s knee, as soon as she is old enough to sit steadily. Nobody minds the picking of daisies in a park, as they are but weeds. Sophie was adorned with a crown, a necklace and the bracelet she managed for herself; and when they got home, she demanded a small vase, so that the daisy jewellery could be dismembered and the flowers placed in a vase as a memory.
“I shall press one or two, some in the chain and a couple loose,” said Sophie. “I have started my own commonplace book, and I will start to take watercolours with me to paint flowers and scenes, so those days when I am in pain and cannot go anywhere or do anything, I can look back and remember.”
“What a good idea!” said Kitty. “Are you also going to stick scraps of the new wallpaper in, and write remarks about such stories as it suggests to you?”
“Why, yes, I believe I shall,” said Sophie. “And scraps from Elvira’s dresses, to record her season, with sketches of them.”
“You are such a generous heart,” said Elvira. “And I will not marry anyone who is not prepared to have you to stay with us for extended periods.”
“It will sort the sheep from the goats, Elvira, and show you who has proper feelings for family and compassion,” said Kitty. “My brother has offered to take Sophie for a quiet drive; Mr. Bottringham will attest to his ability.”
“I am not sure I am prepared to drive out ever again,” said Sophie, paling. “But please thank him for me.”
“Oh, perhaps he can push you out, then, for a longer walk than Elvira and I can manage, to give you someone different to talk to,” said Kitty. “In addition to me visiting, of course!”
“I… maybe,” said Sophie. “Don’t press me, Kitty, I don’t know that I want to have a man visiting me.”
“Oh, as you wish,” said Kitty. “He said he hoped his friends would rally round if it was me in a chair.”
“Oh, I see!” said Sophie. “It is kind of him.”
“He’s not a bad sort of brother,” said Kitty.
“He’s got some amusing stories too, from university,” said Elvira.
“I liked the one where he was trying to impress the Dean’s daughter by taking her punting, and pushed down too hard and was stranded on the punt pole embedded in river mud while she calmly took up oars and rowed away, leaving him to it,” said Kitty. “He tells a story against himself very well.”
“It does show his sense of humour,” agreed Elvira. “I liked the impromptu game of cricket in the quad using balled up stockings inside themselves as a ball, and a long-handled hand-trowel borrowed from the gardener as a bat. I didn’t quite understand why they didn’t get into trouble.”
“Oh! Well, good play is considered admirable, and Stephen, even with a garden implement, managed to knock their impromptu ball so hard it went onto the roof, and the Dean, hurrying out to remonstrate was moved to cry ‘Oh, well played, sir, well played, knocked for six, by Jove!’ because if you hit a ball over the boundary in one go without bouncing, it counts as six runs. And Stephen had to go up onto the roof to retrieve his stockings, because although we are well enough of, his allowance doesn’t stretch to the permanent loss of a good pair of stockings,” said Kitty. “He then nearly got sent down after being caught having wagered a sailor that he couldn’t perform a hornpipe entirely on the mortar board of another member of the faculty.”
Sophie was laughing at the stories.
“Does he actually do any work?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” said Kitty. “Probably; it’s only people with titles who are given degrees automatically for being enrolled for two years, and Papa would have words. Stephen doesn’t need to work, but Papa wanted him to know enough law to administer our lands, and to become local magistrate if he wishes. Though a lot of university is about making good contacts.”
“Hugo said there are a lot of people who waste their time, and though not all of it is useful, one can pick and choose, and sit in on the lectures of others if they are interesting,” said Elvira. “It’s not fair; there are a lot of women who would jump at the chance to learn and earn a degree, and they waste it.”
“Indeed,” agreed Kitty. “Not that I am educated to a level to take a university education, as Emmy doesn’t know enough to prepare me, but it’s unfair not to have the opportunity.”
Sophie sniggered.
“Your beaux, most of them, would have forty fits, Elvira!”
“Well, yes, but that’s why most of them are tedious,” said Elvira. “At least Kitty is learning which ones to avoid when she has her season.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you are correct,” said Kitty. “Look at Mr. Trencham; he seems knowledgeable at first, but the longer you speak to him, the more you realise he is very opinionated, even on things he knows nothing about.”
“He’s a prosy bore,” said Elvira. “Have you a picture of him, for Sophie?”
“Here,” said Kitty, turning to a page with a long-nosed man wearing a disdainful look, plainly talking, and the air arising lifting several hot air balloons crewed by bored looking women. Sophie giggled.
“I can almost hear him,” she said.
“I never listened to him enough to find out he holds forth on things he knows nothing about right after he told me that I did not need to bother my pretty little head about politics, and bored on until I dozed off,” said Elvira.
“He thinks he knows horses,” said Kitty, scornfully. “He was praising Lord Whitham’s showy greys.”
“Oh, dear,” said Elvira.
“What’s wrong with them?” asked Sophie.
“High steppers, not exactly a fault in itself for town work, but out at the knee, shows too much daylight, and nervy,” said Kitty. “A real pair of flat-catchers.”
“Oh, dear!” said Sophie, who did not have to have any explanation of the immobility of the knee joint nor too long-legged explained to her. “Neither Lord Whitham nor Mr. Trencham seem to have much discernment of horse flesh.”
“Exactly!” said Kitty. “I did not bother to interrupt Mr. Trencham, however; your brother did it admirably.”
Elvira sniggered.
“I wager,” she said.
“It went something like this,” said Kitty. “He said, ‘My dear Trencham, has Whitham replaced those terrible greys of his with new horses that you praise them? I have not seen any greys but the useless pair he has been trying to cripple further by making them trot around the park.’ Mr. Trencham gobbled like a turkey, and his eyes bulged, and he tried to argue. Mr. Bottringham merely laughed, and said, ‘Oh, my dear fellow, I had no idea you were using hyperbole for comic effect, I fear it does not quite hit the mark for high comedy.’ And then Mr. Trencham actually flounced and took himself off.”
Her friends laughed.
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