The characters Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes and Patrick, the farm manager, in this story belong to Laurie R. King. Judith Russell Holmes belongs to Vestige of Femininity.
The others are my creations. I'm not sure to whom Great-Aunt Sarah Tiano and her husband, Great-Uncle Ezra, belong, since they are my interpretations of LRK's "elves," so with many thanks and great affection I give them to her. The same is true of Leah Weinberger Klein.
April 1968
I found the photograph when I finally steeled myself to address the large carton of papers and personal effects I had emptied from Great-Aunt Sarah Tiano's highboy. The large piece was to be sold, along with the few other objects that had any value. By the time of her death at ninety-five, last year in 1967, Aunt Sarah was indifferent even to memories of a long and productive life and career. Great-Uncle Ezra had passed ten years before, and since then she had become disinterested in the world. She had no patience left for the fashion publications that she had loved; she didn't care to go to the showings of the designers' collections; had even lost interest in concerts and plays. But then, I told myself, she was in her nineties, and had continued to work as couturier and dressmaker to fashionable London women well into her late eighties.
I was the only relative they could find who was willing to rummage through the contents of her crowded little apartment. I'm related to the Tiano side, I knew of the Levis, the Cardozos and the Kleins, but not personally.
An old cigar-box held photographs, most of them worn around the edges and somewhat faded. The oval portrait of two young women enchanted me. On the back was written, in a flowing hand, "The Honey Mirror, 1912." Of course: it reflected two lovely women, either of whom could have been called "Honey" by loving parents or husbands.
My cousin Delia was the only one who had a clue: the girl on the left bore a striking resemblance to our distant cousin, Judith Russell Holmes.
Holmes! Who does not know of our family's connection to the Great Detective? Judith Russell Holmes was his daughter; her mother was Mary Russell, who was a maternal relation of Great-Aunt Sarah Tiano. If Mary is alive today, she must be at least sixty-five. Great-Aunt Sarah had lost track of her; she said she thought that Mary had gone to Australia after Sherlock Holmes died in England around 1960. That was eight years ago, and I was only ten. I don't remember meeting Mary, or her daughter, Judith, who lives in the United States. Mary's father was born there.
If one of the "Honeys" was Judith Russell Holmes, the period was wrong: Judith was born in 1925. Could the picture be of Mary Russell herself? In 1912, she would be only twelve years old. I made telephone calls and dug into old records. I badgered Delia until she took me to visit her father, who was delighted to see us but remembered nothing. However, he had some fascinating old photo albums. One, in particular, was of great value, and from it, I identified the young ladies in the Honey Mirror: Judith Klein Russell, who was Great-Aunt Sarah's cousin and Mary Russell's mother, and her half sister, Leah Weinberger Klein. The year was 1912, and the photograph was taken during one of Judith's rare visits to England. It took me three years to find the rest.
Judith was always considered the more beautiful, with her red-blonde hair, patrician features and large blue eyes. Leah – ah, Leah was the one to whom one's eyes returned again and again, Leah, with her exotic dark eyes, large features and high cheekbones. Leah was the witty one; she was the funny, articulate and dominant sister. Where Judith was gentle, self-effacing, creative; a poet, a painter and a musician, Leah had a mind like an abacus and no interest at all in the arts. How can two sisters be so different? Different mothers produce different daughters.
Leah was the older, by two years. Her mother, Charlotte Weinberger, was the daughter of a wealthy German Jewish family, into which the English Harold Klein married in 1882. He was the only son of an attorney and a schoolteacher. Charlotte died a year later giving birth to her daughter, Leah. Harold Klein married again, this time to Rebecca Levi, daughter of a Jewish family that had lived in London since their flight from Spain in 1492. Their one child, Judith, was born in 1885. Rebecca Levi Klein was the only mother the girls knew.
Leah had a great string of beaux from the time she was fifteen. She was a lively, graceful dancer, and was invited to many affairs, at which she appeared, flamboyantly gowned, on the arm of her latest handsome young man. Everyone expected her to marry young, but her interest was not in becoming a wife and mother. Leah wanted a business of her own. She badgered her father relentlessly until he borrowed money and set her up in a bookshop of her own. Although Leah cared not a fig for books or literature, she was a natural businesswoman. She knew what her clients wanted, and she got it for them. She terrorised publishers until they agreed to deliver new books to her shop before they were sent to her competitors. She never broke her word to a client: if she said they would have a certain book by Thursday, on Thursday it was in her shop, with her elegant Ex Libris label on the inside of the front cover, ready to be picked up.
She researched rare finds for teachers and students alike; she corresponded with publishers and libraries all over the Continent. And she charged more than any of her competitors, but her clients paid the extra money gladly: her service was without peer. Dons from Oxford and Cambridge discovered her shop, and she soon had a thriving textbook business. She would not sell anything that she considered offensive; she would sell something that was avant-garde, if it had merit. For this information she relied on friends who were curators at the British Museum, or associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company, or institutions of belles lettres.
The money accumulated, and Leah invested it, with her father's advice. She became wealthy in her own right; by the time she was twenty-two, she was capable of supporting herself, although she lived at home.
Then, her sister Judith, the bookworm who would rather read Shakespeare than attend a ball; who would rather paint her insipid landscapes than discuss finances, and who seemed not to be interested in society at all, announced her engagement.
Leah was content to see her sister married off, traipsing around the world with her new American husband and staying out of her way. When Papa Klein passed away, Leah, naturally, took care of her mother, and saw to it that her mother's life was, if anything, even more comfortable than it had been when Papa was alive. It was a good thing that Leah had money of her own. Her father died penniless: as he had given Leah good financial advice, he had not followed it himself. Leah drew a deep breath, sold off the large London town house and took her mother to live with her in a commodious flat in Earl's Court.
Leah was furious that her father's irresponsibility had left her no portion, no inheritance for her and for Judith, and plenty of debts to pay. Leah worked doggedly to pay off accounts and try to restore her father's credit. She had not realised the depths of her father's incompetence until she received a letter demanding that she turn over the ownership of her shop to a Mr Francis Leary. To her horror, she found that her father had mortgaged her shop twice over, and had not paid the notes.
Leah begged Mr Leary to allow her to keep the shop; he refused, but agreed to let her remain as a manager. The store was profitable through Leah's efforts, and Leary was no fool. However, he paid Leah a salary, considerably less than she had paid herself, and her savings began to shrink. Rebecca began to ail, requiring expensive medications and doctors' visits. Leah was hard-pressed to keep her mother in the same elegant style to which she had become accustomed, and she moved her household to a smaller apartment in a less fashionable district.
Judith and Leah corresponded frequently, and Judith trusted her sister implicitly. She wrote, "Dear Leah, do not hesitate to ask for assistance if you should need it for yourself and for Mama." "Dearest sister," Judith wrote after Mary's birth, "I can hardly wait for you to see your niece. She looks like me, but I promise you, she is you all over." Leah could not bear to tell her sister about the hard times into which she had fallen. When Judith, her husband, the ebullient twelve-year-old Mary and little Arthur, eight years old, visited in 1912 to attend a large family wedding, she kept her own counsel, and although her life became pinched and poor, she never complained. Then, Rebecca Klein passed away. Leah, standing at her grave, breathed a sigh of relief. "You would understand, Mama," she whispered. "You never wanted to be a burden to me."
Freed of the expenditures her mother's illness and upkeep had brought upon her, Leah looked forward to restoring her resources. But two years later, Fate once more levied a menacing finger at her: the shop burned to the ground one chilly night. The police did not think it was arson; no-one had any reason to harm her or Mr. Leahy. But Leah's livelihood was smouldering ash when she came to it, gone, her work, her income, and her security.
She had nothing. She had an apartment that she did not own; she had no more investments and only a tiny pittance left of her savings. Still, she was resourceful and determined not to alarm her sister, who still did not know of her reduced circumstances. Her friends advised her to marry as quickly as possible; Leah shrank from such a liaison, seeing it as a form of prostitution.
Then, she fell terribly ill with smallpox. She escaped with her life, with her beautiful smooth face and body pockmarked with craters, with hardly any of her thick dark hair left, and (so the doctor told her) unable to bear children if ever she should marry. She was still weak, tottering around her chilly apartment, when she received a telegram which gave the lie to all of her strength, all of her ingenuity, her wit, her beauty, her productivity and her independence: her sister had died, along with her husband and one of the children, in a motor car crash in California.
There was one survivor: the daughter, Mary, fourteen years old, clinging to life in hospital. Clinging to life herself, Leah wept in despair: what now? She had been screwing up her courage to finally tell Judith about her misfortune, finally ask for help, and now, there was no hope, no help.
"Dear Miss Klein," the letter began. "You have our sincerest sympathies on the unfortunate demise of your sister, her husband and your nephew, and we offer our condolences in your grief.
Your sister and brother-in-law died in testate, without a will. The State of California has reviewed the family's circumstances, and has established a trust for the sole inheritor, Mary Judith Russell, who is a minor. You have been appointed guardian to Mary Judith Russell, until such time as she shall attain her majority at 21 years of age, and inherit the corpus of the trust. The earnings of the trust shall provide a stipend for Miss Russell's care, and for your maintenance as guardian, until that time. Miss Russell is a British subject, and shall return to England as soon as she is able to travel. A farm owned by the Russell family in Sussex is to be inhabited by yourself and Miss Russell, and we expect that you will be comfortable and well provided for. Yours respectfully, Benjamin Cunkle, Attorney at Law, San Francisco, USA."
Leah was stunned. She knew that her sister's husband had money, an old family fortune earned during the Gold Rush days and increased by land investments. But no mention of an inheritance? Nothing for her? She read the letter carefully. It was so like Judith to think she would live forever, to not make a will, leaving her survivors at the mercy of the State of California. So, she was to be an indentured servant: a nursemaid and housekeeper for this child whom she barely knew. There was precious little time to prepare, and secretly, with shame, she prayed that the daughter would be too ill, too damaged to make the voyage to England; she would have to remain in the United States. Her telegram to Mr Cunkle, however, was answered with the unfortunate news that no living relatives of Mr Russell could be located.
Leah had prayed for a way to survive; well, here was the answer. Her living costs would be taken care of, she would have a house and a farm and even a child. She squared her shoulders and prepared to make the best of it. Leah moved herself to the small farm in Sussex, and there prepared to nurse the daughter of her sister back to health, if that was to be her lot.
On a freezing-cold January day, in 1915, Leah waited impatiently for the train, was looking for a sturdy, healthy-looking child with bright blonde hair, a cheerful round face and delightful smile, as she had been two years ago. At first, she looked past the skeletally thin woman, over a head taller than she was, with an ugly brown wool hat pulled down over her head, clad in what seemed to be a man's old suit, with enormous feet in men's boots. Then, the ice-blue eyes, Judith's eyes, bored into her, and she gasped with shock.
"Mary?" she whispered. The apparition lifted her head. Her face was devoid of all expression, or perhaps it was the livid scars that dominated her countenance. She limped over to Leah and held out a woolen-gloved hand. "Yes," she said, in a flat, toneless voice. They shook hands, and Leah was surprised by the strength in the child's hand. Child? Was this indeed a child?
The farm manager, Patrick, who was taciturn in the extreme but did as he was told, waited in the carriage. Patrick's nephew, Edwin, lifted Mary's small trunk and put it into the boot, then handed Leah up to her seat. Mary stood stolid, silent, and ignored Edwin's proffered hand. With excruciating slowness, she climbed into the carriage and sat down. She was as pale as a cheese, her brow beaded with perspiration. The effort had cost her much.
Leah was not one for small talk. She sat silent during the ride to the farm, only speaking when they arrived. "Mary," she said, "have you eaten?" The child looked at her with incomprehension. Her voice was so small that Leah had to strain to hear her: Mary said, "No, thank you." Leah's temper flared. "I have not offered you anything yet," she snapped. "I asked you a simple question, please answer it."
Mary looked at her with the fixity of a snake. "I had breakfast on the train, at six o'clock," she said. Leah answered, "It's teatime, you'll have tea, I presume." "Yes, thank you."
That short, ice-cold dialogue began their relationship, and changed little during the time that Mary and Leah lived together. Leah, never patient with others' problems, was filled with chagrin: this child had awful nightmares and screamed hideously during the night; she stared into space for long periods of time; she answered questions in monosyllables. She was obedient in that she did whatever Leah told her: made up her bed, hung up her clothes, and came to the table when called. Every week she went to see Dr Ginzburg, the psychiatrist.
The stipend that Leah received every month from her sister's estate was quite enough to keep them comfortably. The farm produced hay, a small crop of wheat, milk, eggs, and chickens and, in season, apples and pears. Patrick kept everything running smoothly, and made whatever repairs were necessary. Leah, of course, kept the accounts. She realised soon enough that the monthly sum was quite generous, and she saw an opportunity to restore her prior standing: if each month she siphoned off an amount that would not be noticed –– she could build up some savings, make some investments. Never extravagant, she watched every penny. They ate plain food; they wore plain clothes. Leah had a large wardrobe accumulated over the years and seldom needed anything. Mary, however, was a horse of a completely different color.
She was growing. Great Heavens, she was growing like a weed; her arms stuck out of her sleeves and her skirts were much too short. She was attached to her father's old suits and wore them as much as possible, although Leah made her dress sensibly when she was in public. Her feet, especially, were growing. It seemed that every month, she needed new shoes. At first, she said nothing. She never said anything. She walked oddly, and Leah noticed that the backs of her shoes were pressed flat, so that her heels were on top of them. Leah scolded Mary for ruining the shoes, and Mary mutely held them out to her, showing that they were too small. Leah fumed and growled, and bought Mary a cheap pair of men's shoes when next she went shopping.
Not that the child was demanding, or troublesome. Quite the contrary: she hardly said a word, obeyed without question and asked for nothing. She was quiet and studious, and attended the local school without complaint.
On a warm March day, Mary went down to the barn, bringing a new harness that had arrived for the plow-horse. Patrick took special pains to make her acquaintance, seeing the bereaved child in the too-tall, too-silent young woman. He introduced her to the cow, Phyllis; the plow-horse, Blue; all of the chickens (each of which had a fussy old-fashioned name, like Hephzibah or Persis): and to the cats and the old dog, Sandy. She met the two carriage-horses, Amos and Jephthah. The barn offered simple warmth, an undemanding sanctuary, and soon she spent much of her free time there.
One day, she timidly asked Patrick if she could ride Amos, who was saddle-trained. He tacked up the big bay, and gave Mary a leg up into the saddle. To his astonishment, she rode like a professional equestrian. The view from Amos' back was different, and taking him slowly out of the paddock along the road that led back to the cottage, Mary drew a big breath. The world was indeed brighter from horseback. Mary put her heels into Amos' sides and he obliged with a slightly offbeat trot. Mary straightened her back, leaned her knees into the saddle rolls and posted a bare eighth-inch off the saddle; that low post was her pride. Where others banged their posteriors into black and blue soreness, she could trot for hours; her strong legs gave her leverage. She smiled at two boys driving a goat along the road; they called out, "Hullo, Amos! Hullo, Miss Mary!" So she was known.
Amos' trot began to lengthen, and, noting his alertly pricked ears and the handsome arch of his neck, Mary gave him a right lead and off he sailed into a smooth canter. The road ahead was straight; there was no-one in sight, and Mary, feeling her life return with a rush, let the reins hang, leaned forward, clapped her hands and whooped like a red Indian. Amos stretched out his neck and galloped down the road.
Mary returned to the barn covered in dust and sweat, her hair disarrayed, her face shining. "Oh, Patrick!" she cried, throwing her arms around the startled man. "I haven't had a good ride in ages!" She led Amos into the barn; he was cool, for she had walked him for a half-mile on the way home. She took off his saddle and bridle and began to rub him with a damp cloth, chattering to Patrick all the while, until she felt two eyes boring into her back.
"Where have you been?" Leah demanded. "You're filthy, you're disgusting! You had chores to do at home, and you've been playing with the horse! Get home!" Mary stood stock-still. Leah regarded her with astonishment: she had expected Mary to hang her head and slouch off towards the cottage.
"Well? Get you going!" Mary drew herself up, looming over Leah.
"I shall ride when I please, Aunt Leah. I shall require jodhpurs and riding boots; kindly order me some immediately." She turned on her heel and began to walk away. Patrick turned away to hide his smile; the young miss was finally standing up to that witch!
Leah hurried after her. "You miserable girl, riding clothes are expensive. We have barely enough money to buy the enormous amount of food you have begun to eat, little say the endless pairs of shoes you ruin. You can sew yourself a riding habit." She snatched at Mary's arm, and was startled when Mary flung her hand away.
"Don't put your hand on me, Aunt Leah," she said coolly. "If you continue to treat me like a prisoner, I shall write to the attorney in San Francisco and inform him of your behaviour."
Oh, dear God, I am so sorry, I can't stand her, I can't bear this! Haven't I had enough in my life? Leah wept miserably into her pillow. She could not understand why she could not love this child, who was bereft of everything – but I too am bereft! Who will care for me? Who will love me? Mary was a stranger; Mary didn't have Judith's gentle, loving nature or her father Arthur's genial expansiveness. She was a cipher.Leah mourned her sister deeply. It was so awful, so unfair, that the life of the dear, gentle Judith should be cruelly snuffed out, leaving an orphaned child. It was unfair that she, who had had so much, should have had her productive, self-sufficient life snuffed out, leaving a penniless wreck, weak and scarred, without resources. And the greatest irony of all, which she deplored and despised, was that she was saved from starvation and the poorhouse by the death of her sister, and preserved from homelessness by the survival of a sullen, cold and spoiled child.
Mary had no charity to spare. Another child might have approached Leah with love, offering love, requiring love in return, but Mary was too deeply damaged. She soon realised that her aunt could not understand her devotion to study, or her passion for literature. Mary, knowing almost nothing of her aunt's former life, not knowing that Leah was a well-educated, sophisticated businesswoman, whose life had been fatally derailed by, first, her father's stupidity, then by fire and sickness, had no compassion for the scarred woman.The best that Leah could do was to arrange for Mary to have all the books she needed. Mary's taste ran to the classics, to Ovid, Virgil, the historians Philo and Josephus, and various scholarly texts on antiquity. Leah's old contacts were all too happy to hear from her again, and one even suggested that she return to London and open a shop of her own. When she explained about her new life, he wished her well. Leah wept herself to sleep, remembering her cozy, well-ordered shop with its comfortable reading chairs, crookneck lamp, customers coming in and out, the cash-box filling.
Mary retreated into that most seductive of worlds, the world of words. And so it was that one April day, after yet another argument over outgrown shoes, Mary seized a book of Virgil, put an apple into her pocket, and slammed the cottage door behind her. She went forth to walk upon the Downs, in the companionship of the poet, and so she sallied forth to find the rest of her life.
Leah suffered through the next two years, as Mary's friendship with Sherlock Holmes threatened to grow into a gossip-provoking scandal. Mary, in turn, confirmed the power that she held as the heiress to the estate, and set the attorneys upon her aunt with regularity. Mary went up to Oxford, and Leah breathed a great sigh of relief. Mary spent more and more time at Holmes' cottage in Sussex, and Leah closed her ears to the chitter-chatter and thanked God that the girl had found someone else to plague. When Mary attained her majority and inherited, Leah announced her intentions of leaving Sussex at once. She had bought herself a quite respectable terrace house in London.
Leah stood at the train station, with two suitcases at her feet. The rest of her furniture and goods had been sent ahead by lorry. Mary paid for Leah's ticket and came over to stand by her. "Aunt," she said, "We've had a dreadful time. I'm sorry you were burdened by having to care for me, and I'm sure you were at least as sorry as I."
"Don't put words in my mouth," Leah snapped. "Your mother and father brought you up to be a respectful, decent girl, and you have been horrid. Horrid! Your mother must be turning over in her grave at the things you have done and how you have treated me."
"I was fair to you," said Mary. "Fairer than you were to me. In any case, it's done now, and the only thing we have left that we had in common is that we loved my mother."
The train's whistle blew. Mary leaned down and took her aunt in her arms, hugging her tightly. Leah stiffened up, then put her arms around her niece. They looked at each other, many years of unsaid words in their eyes. Mary stepped back to stand next to Patrick. I'm shut of her, thank God. I'll never utter her name again.
Leah boarded the train. She did not look back to see Patrick with his arm around Mary's shoulder, handing her a handkerchief, patting her hand. She found her seat, unpinned her hat and took a small notebook out of her train case. She opened it to the list of friends and correspondents with whom she had never lost touch. At last, she thought to herself. Judith, I believe I'm going home. She took out the picture of herself and Judith, in 1912, at a family wedding, and smiled. A whisper, from somewhere, carried in the train's hooting whistle: Be happy, Leah dear. Leah smiled. Yes, Judith, I believe I will be.