Chapter 1 - 1814

No spot on the coast of England is perhaps better calculated for the two-fold purpose of sea-bathing and retirement than Bognor…The smoothness of the sand, reminds the valetudinarian of a velvet carpet, and invitingly draws him to the sea side…to enjoy his ride or walk, even at the reflux of the tide, without the least risk, surprise, or interruption from the waves.

—John Feltham, A Guide to All the Watering and Seabathing Places, etc. (1815)

On a crisp day in early October, Miss Beatrice Ellsworth stood on the sandy beach at Bognor. As the sunlight faintly penetrated her closed eyelids and the fine sea air whipped loose strands of her light-brown hair, she had no idea her being there was the result of her family's well-meaning machinations.

For Beatrice, the youngest of the Ellsworth Assortment of Winchester, had not the least notion a secret family conference had been held to discuss her, at which the decision was reached that, clearly, Something Must Be Done.

Something must be done, for, at the still-fresh young age of one and twenty, Beatrice showed premature signs of settling into contented spinster-aunthood.

"She has always been indifferent to balls and assemblies," her stepmother Mrs. Colin Wolfe sighed to her other stepdaughters and her daughter-in-law, "but now that her friend Emmy Wright has married, Bea says, hurrah, and how she ‘needn't bother about all that now.'"

"It cannot be that none of the gentlemen showed interest in her," murmured Mrs. Robert Fairchild, Beatrice's oldest sister. "With her prettiness and connections and generous portion."

"Certainly they showed interest, Flossie," returned Mrs. Wolfe, who had chaperoned both Beatrice and the former Miss Wright to the dances. "But Colin says a man can only do so much when given no encouragement whatsoever, and once he has been firmly refused, he can do nothing at all."

"Exactly," Mrs. Simon Kenner, née Lily Ellsworth, agreed. "And after two years of Bea's indifference and rejections, not only are the good gentlemen already taken, but she is unlikely to change her mind about the ones which remain. Therefore she must see a new crop altogether."

"But where would such a crop be found?" asked her older sister.

"Isn't it obvious, Flossie? If Aggie and Tyrone are going to Bognor for a month, clearly they must take Beatrice with them."

"That would be lovely!" Aggie clapped her hands. "My little Joan and Margaret would be so glad to have their aunt along. There would be room enough for her in the house we have rented, and Bognor has the usual assembly room and such." A nostalgic smile curved her lips. "Tyrone and I cannot wait to see the sea again because it was at the seaside where he and I…came to our understanding."

"But Bea herself has no sentimental attachment to draw her and will see no reason to go along with you, Aggie," the third sister Araminta observed with her usual practicality. "She'll just stay at Beaumond and continue to cling to Mama like a barnacle." (With a nod at Mrs. Wolfe.)

"True," conceded Lily, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Too true. Then, Aggie, you must insist that you require both her company and her assistance. Heaven knows Tyrone's head is always buried in a book, and little Joan and Margaret might toddle straight into the waves before he noticed. And—and Mama, cannot you and Mr. Wolfe go on a little trip as well, so that Beatrice cannot stay behind at Beaumond? You might go and see his estate and his relations in Kent."

"But if Mama goes to Kent, Bea will certainly prefer to go with her," Araminta argued impatiently. "And we don't want Bea marrying someone in Canterbury, or we will never see her again."

"I could say Mr. Wolfe and I were going on a belated honeymoon," suggested Mrs. Wolfe, blushing. "We never had one at the time because Willsie and Edmund were sick that Christmas. If it were a honeymoon, Bea would understand if we did not ask her to join us."

The others regarded her admiringly.

"Why, what a clever scheme, Mama," Lily pronounced. "It will certainly do the trick. If you are out of the picture, Beatrice would have to choose between accompanying Tyrone and Aggie, or paying a long visit to Minta or me. And we can say it would be too great a squeeze in our homes, couldn't we, Minta?"

"But then she will suggest coming to Robert and me at Hollowgate," Florence pointed out. "In fact, I am certain it will be her first solution because she knows she might have her old bedroom back, and she would be more than welcome."

"Then you must be ruthless, Floss!" Lily exhorted her. "You must say that you so long to make Hollowgate your own at last, now that the renovations are complete, and that you're ashamed to say it, but you're even glad Tyrone and Aggie won't be there to trouble you for a while, and that, when they do return, it's a mercy they will live in the refashioned wing, so they aren't underfoot, and you may be left to queen it to your heart's content."

"Well, that's just silly," interposed Araminta before Florence could muster a reply. "Beatrice wouldn't believe for a moment that Flossie would say or think such a thing. Whereas if you were inheriting Hollowgate, Lily, I daresay she would swallow the whole story without question."

Not in the least offended by this slight to her character, Lily frowned in thought. "Hm. You may be right. Very well. Flossie need not say so much, but I will say it. I will say Flossie secretly thinks it, and you must back me, Minta. It's a little lie but all for the good. When Bea is safely married, we will confess all, and she will be the first to laugh and thank us."

With fewer hitches than any of them would have hoped, the plan was executed. Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe departed for Kent the day before the Tyrone Ellsworths left for Bognor, and if Beatrice's feelings were at all hurt by the thought that the Fairchilds wanted all of Hollowgate to themselves for an entire month, she could not dwell on it overlong in the face of her sister-in-law Aggie's indefatigable excitement.

"I first saw the sea at Worthing when I was heartbroken over Tyrone," Aggie explained, "but even heartbroken I still loved it! And now that I am not heartbroken, I intend to enjoy myself thoroughly. My mother, who spent a couple months in Bognor, says the town itself is charming but without the great crowds of other resorts. Everything one would want for accommodation and amusements—a subscription room for assemblies and such, a library beneath it, charming shops in the High Street, a coffee house for Tyrone, and so forth. But it's the sea most of all, Beatrice, which you will learn is like nothing else in the world. I cannot do it justice."

And as Beatrice opened her eyes again that brisk autumn day, she had to agree. Nothing had prepared her for the vastness. The restless, shifting colors. The salt aroma and rhythmic crash and hiss of the waves. The beach itself extended several miles east to west, with a full mile of it dedicated to bathing. No, one did not have to be heartbroken, as Aggie had been at her first encounter, to fall in love with the sea.

Aggie appeared at her elbow now, a wriggling daughter Joan in her arms. "We will bathe first thing tomorrow morning," she declared. "But today we will purchase our own bathing dresses. That was one thing I would rather not repeat—wearing a hired bathing dress."

The Ellsworths' home for the next month lay in Spencer Terrace, along the main road into town and not far from the Dome House where both Lady Jersey and Princess Charlotte once stayed. Number Four blended with its neighbors, sharing the same red-brick frontage over a painted-brick plinth, its discrete state only revealed by a pair of thin Doric columns flanking a fanlight-crowned door. Within were three storeys and a semi-basement, with Beatrice being assigned a neat back bedchamber overlooking the garden. In addition to the shared services of a cook in a nearby home, the lease included an ancient man and maidservant, the man Pidgeley so creaking that Tyrone felt guilty asking him to do anything even mildly strenuous, and the maid Fussell, who moved as little as possible but whose tongue ran on wheels.

"Eight of you altogether," marveled Fussell from where she sat on a stool, unpacking Beatrice's trunk, humming and clicking her tongue and murmuring to herself as she worked. "The last tenant was but one elderly lady and her half-blind niece and their maid. We'll be lively now, to be sure, with the two little girls and all of you stuffed in one place or t'other. And you a young, unmarried lady! Which will mean assemblies and dancing and I dunno what all! Well, that's how it happens. Sometimes Pidgeley and I must work ourselves to the bone, fetching and carrying for a dozen people, and sometimes there will be just one sad little fellow and his valet."

Apart from apologizing for being so many, Beatrice could think of no reply to this, but fortunately Fussell did not require one. "It's my cousin who works next door in Five," she went on, "and that's all she and Barnstable have just now—one sad fellow and his valet—though Molly says at least it's not some crabbed old man with the gout who must be heaved up every time he sits down and who is as like to throw something at you as he is to speak to you. No, this one is always writing, writing, writing—he hasn't even had a bathe yet!—and how the letters fly back and forth!"

"Perhaps he's a spy for the French," suggested Beatrice playfully, turning from the window. "Or a smuggler."

Fussell's round eyes grew rounder. "Oh, miss, I didn't think of that! I'll tell Molly straight off and see what she says."

Gasping half in dismay and half in amusement, Beatrice said, "Dear me—please don't. I was just being naughty. We have only arrived, and I would not want our new neighbor hearing I started idle rumors about him."

"Bless me, miss!" cried Fussell. "How would he ever know, when he never comes out of there? I'm no chatterbox, and neither is Molly."

At this juncture Tyrone was heard calling up the staircase, and Beatrice was obliged to leave the matter. The newcomers spent the remainder of the afternoon investigating the High Street shops and admiring the view, and so charming did she find it all that she entirely forgot her careless remark.

It was only on the third afternoon following their arrival that she had cause to remember. Aggie and Beatrice were pulling the twins Joan and Margaret in a clever little cart, having taken the girls to see the sandy beach, and they were nearly home before they got into difficulties. For after they turned into the upper road from the High Street, they found their little passengers more eager to "help pull" than to be pulled. Margaret soon succeeded in tangling her sister's trailing blanket in the cart wheel, halting progress altogether and sending Joanie into wails of protest because it was her favorite blanket, and now it would be dirty.

"Come, dear, don't put your fingers in there," Aggie coaxed. "Let Auntie Bea unwind it."

"Self do!" insisted Margaret, tugging with all her toddler might on a corner of the wool coverlet and tightening it further. Vexed, she poked a plump finger in its creases, just as Joanie gave a bounce in the cart. The wheel turned a fraction of an inch, pinching Margaret in the process and setting off her own wails.

In all the fuss of the girls crying and their mother hushing them and their aunt muttering under her breath at the stubborn twisting of the fibers, no one heard the door of Number Five, Spencer Terrace, open and shut, nor the firm footfalls approach.

"Might I be of assistance?"

The startled Ellsworth ladies looked up to see a lithely built young man, sober of dress and features, with dark hair and eyes. So surprised were the twins that they left off crying and scrambled for their mother, peeping at the interloper from the shelter of her skirts.

"Thank you, sir," said Aggie simply, bending to pick up Joanie, who was clinging like a particularly dogged limpet. At this, Margaret hopped and held up her own arms, and Aggie was obliged to reach for her as well, biting her lip to stifle a groan at the added weight.

"The blanket is wound all through the spokes," Beatrice said, stepping back to let the young man see. "Miraculous in itself, for I daresay it happened in an instant. I fear we may have to c-u-t it free."

A gleam of something which might have been humor came and went in his eye. "Dear me. We can't have that," he murmured, before quickly removing his gloves and lowering himself to one knee to inspect the damage.

"Oh, sir! Your trousers," objected Aggie. When Beatrice raised eyebrows at her, she hastily added, "I mean, your inexpressibles."

"Better they than the young lady's skirts," he replied, his fingers working nimbly.

"If it can't be untangled, we will just carry the whole kit home, blanket and all," Beatrice said. "It isn't far to Number Four."

His movements stilled briefly, and he threw her a glance. "Number Four, you say? No, that isn't far." Setting to his task again, in another eyeblink he worked the blanket free. "Ah. No need for any cart-carrying or c-u-t-t-i-n-g after all." He rose to his feet again, holding the precious item out to the twins, and Joanie released her mother long enough to snatch it from him before burying her face in Aggie's shoulder.

"Thank the gentleman, Joan," prodded her mother.

"Mraff oo," mumbled Joanie without lifting her head. Margaret, sucking on her fingers, stared enough for both girls, however.

"Amazing," observed Beatrice. "However did you do that so quickly, sir?"

He fluttered his fingers at her as he replaced his gloves. "Plenty of experience fixing things. No—wait. It might have been all the smuggling and spying I've done. Hard to say. Now, if you will excuse me…" With a touch of his hat, he made them a half-bow and walked away down Bognor Street.

"Smuggling and spying?" echoed Aggie, when he was out of earshot. She loaded the girls back in the pull-cart, and this time they went without protest. "Whatever can he mean?"

But Beatrice had gone crimson. "Oh! That Fussell! What a loose tongue she has! That man must be our neighbor in Number Five." She recounted her discussion with the maid, spelling a few of the words she would rather the twins not repeat, while Aggie collapsed in laughter.

"Dear me!" Aggie gasped. "And you dared to give me a look for saying ‘trousers'! Well, let us be thankful he does keep so much to himself, if we are always going to show ourselves at such a disadvantage. Too bad, though, for he's a rather pleasant-looking fellow." With another chuckle she tugged the cart into motion. "Come along, girls. Let's see if we can lay hold of any sandwiches. How is it that sunshine and play can be so tiring?"

Later Beatrice would think of her time at Bognor as Before and After. Before the Accident, that is, and After it. But it was not the accident so much as the consequence of the accident which made the difference so stark. In truth, it would be more accurate to call it Before Mr. Clayton and After Mr. Clayton.

Some days after the Episode of the Blanket, the Ellsworths made an early start as they had all the previous days. Again Aggie shooed Tyrone away, flapping the end of her capacious shawl at him, for he had learned to swim at Oxford along the banks of the river Cherwell and had no need for bathing machines. Unlike at the larger, more popular resorts, no separation was made at Bognor between men's and women's bathing areas, but still he removed some distance, laughing, "I have no desire to have my foot crushed by a hoof or one of those six-foot wheels."

In retrospect, his words would prove not exactly prophetic, but certainly singular.

Shyly Beatrice stepped forward when it was her turn, glad her dipper this morning was not the commanding, red-faced, burly creature of the previous few days, but someone much slighter who didn't appear older than Bea herself. This one avoided her eyes and gestured mutely for her to enter.

After Beatrice climbed the two steps to the little dressing chamber, her dipper led the horse around to yoke it to the seagoing end. Then, without warning, just as Beatrice had removed her shawl and was hanging it on a peg, the machine lurched forward, sending her tumbling to the sodden and sandy floor.

"Ooh," she frowned, inspecting her scraped palms. The flannel of her bathing shift protected her knees from similar injury, but the same could not be said for the dress itself, which now had a tear along one side at knee height, from which the fabric hung down. With a sigh she shrugged. It would have to be mended later but made no difference at present, for no one would see her but her dipper. Waiting upon the bench, she tucked her knees up and blew on her palms to soothe them, listening as the horse was switched around again. "What a dull life for the creature," she observed aloud. "All morning spent going a few yards up the beach and a few yards down, over and over, back and forth. I hope the reward at the end is a warm blanket and a bucket of oats."

More thumps and jolts followed, which Beatrice recognized as the bathing-machine steps being moved from the front to the back, until at long last the rear doors of the machine opened to reveal the rail-thin dipper standing under the umbrella of canvas, hands held up to receive her customer.

"Do you like your work?" Beatrice asked, taking hold of her. "The fresh air, and always to be by the sea?" She thought it must be rather tedious herself, but one must say something, and she had been too intimidated by her previous dipper to utter more than quiet thanks when it was ended.

"'Tisn't my work," replied the girl unexpectedly. "'Tis my pa's. But he's in a barley-hood."

Beatrice hadn't the least idea what a barley-hood was but understood it to mean the girl's father was indisposed. She put it from her mind, in any case, too eager to plunge in and experience the shock of the cold water and the delight of being carried hither and yon in the waves.

Between the waiting for the use of the machine, the hitching and unhitching of the horse, the drawing of the carriage back and forth, and such rigmarole, the actual time spent bathing was always sadly brief, but that morning Beatrice had not been longer than a minute in the water before some unseen and barely overheard to-do took place around the front of the machine. In alarm, the horse whinnied and tried to kick out, shifting the chamber hitched to it so that the machine tilted toward one side, before landing with a jerk and sliding down, further into the sea. All this took place in an instant, and neither Beatrice nor her dipper was aware of the danger until the stairs caught Beatrice in the back of the knees. She crumpled into the water to her neck, only to be pulled all the way under the waves when the six-foot wheel of the machine rolled over the dragging hem of her torn bathing dress.

Beatrice's undersized dipper stared in horror. She was more usually a seamstress, and crises of the sewing room were confined to crooked seams and snapped thread. Oh, she would be in for it with her pa, if something bad happened! With a frightened moan, she made a scrambling effort to catch at some part of her customer and tug her free, not an easy task for one of her size, especially as she could not swim herself and was too afraid to poke her head underwater. But she could scream with the best of them, and this she did at last when her exertions failed, in a voice both powerful and piercing. Tearing back the canvas umbrella which enclosed them she cried, "Help! Help! Anyone! She's caught! My lady's caught! Something's got her and keeps her down! Help!"

The nearest at hand was the young man in the next machine, being dipped himself by the commanding, red-faced, burly conductor Beatrice had been grateful to be spared. Before his meaty dipper could respond to the seamstress's cries, John Clayton flung off her grip, ducking under his own canvas to begin fighting his way through the surf. Though he was head and shoulders above the water, when he reached the panic-stricken girl sounding the alarm there was no sign of her charge, and, after a hesitation, he took a deep breath and dived beneath the surge.

Beatrice, in full panic and having inhaled a lungful of sea water, was in no condition to understand what was happening. Blindly, she clawed at her shift, trying to rip it loose, only to find herself the next moment gathered in iron arms and wrenched upward, the torn section of her bathing dress shearing loose and her face once more breaking the surface to be touched by the blessed air.

"You there," Clayton ordered the recent seamstress, "draw this thing back up the beach." Without waiting for an answer (and indeed, she offered none), he climbed the two steps of the bathing machine and gently deposited his burden within.

No sooner had he laid her upon the bench than another burst up the stairs into the cramped chamber.

"Dear God!" cried the interloper, rushing to the victim's side. "Beatrice! Are you all right?"

In answer, the young lady rolled on her side and promptly disgorged that portion of the English Channel she had unwillingly imbibed. She could not speak, but she could cough and groan and cough some more, and the young man spoke enough for both of them, thanking God repeatedly, if not with any fluency. He even kissed her dripping head as she coughed and gagged. Only when he had convinced himself that she was not lying dead, full fathom five, and that she would in fact recover, did he have attention to spare her rescuer.

"Sir, we are ever more in your debt," he swore, his voice shaking as he rose to his feet. "I was perhaps fifty yards distant—thank God I had my head up and was treading water, so I heard the screaming—but it took me some time to realize it was Beatrice's dipper raising the alarm. Heaven knows what might have happened if you had not reached her when you did."

Clayton nodded, still breathless himself, his mind beginning to catch up with what he had done by instinct. Anyone with experience in building, mining, and channeling, as he had, was familiar with the ever-present threat of danger or injury to the workers. This poor trapped young lady was not the first person he had dragged free from machinery, though she had been the lightest and the daintiest, despite being wet to the skin.

His color rose with the last thought because just then he glimpsed the lower half of the young lady's leg, bare and glistening where her bathing dress had rent away. Though he removed his gaze the next moment, somehow he still saw her limb in his mind's eye, slender and shapely.

Her face half hidden, she clung to the other young man now. He had knelt again, and silent tears ran down her cheeks while he fumbled at her streaming hair. A twinge of something surprised Clayton, which took him several beats to recognize as envy. Why, he envied the young man. Envied him having so cherished a sweetheart, who cleaved to him in return. But that was as far as John got in his analysis before the front door of the bathing machine crashed open and an entirely unexpected second young lady flew in, shrieking, "Bea!"

A sister to the victim? There was something familiar about her, but John only just managed to shrink out of the way as she threw herself at the embracing pair, flinging her arms about them both and bursting into tears.