She looked towards the door through which Bella had passed a few moments ago. Miss Cartwright had said that the master had not expressed a wish to see her, but she must see him. For one last time she must see him.
Five
It was half past seven. She was putting the child to bed for the last time. She held him closely and kissed him and he put his arms around her neck and hugged her tightly, then pressing his head back from her he looked into her face and for the very first time he remarked on her eye as if he had never noticed its flickering before. On a note of high surprise he cried, ‘Nurse! Look nurse! Your eye is jumping like, like my jumping jack.’ As he put his finger to her cheekbone she pressed his head swiftly into her neck, and when she released him and put him into his bed he looked up at her and asked quietly, ‘Are you crying, nurse?’ and to this she answered, ‘No, no, I’m not crying.’ And she wasn’t crying. She hadn’t shed a tear for some time now, not even when she thought the master was dead had she cried. She didn’t think she would ever cry again; she had got beyond crying. She tucked him up and he turned on his side and sighed. It was a happy sigh, full of contentment.
Slowly, methodically, she went about the business of tidying the day nursery, doing everything for the last time, and when eight o’clock came and still the master hadn’t come to the nursery, she went into the bedroom and, taking a chair, she stood on it and reached up onto the top of the tallboy and took down a small bundle wrapped in a white table napkin. Lifting her long stiff white apron aside, she forced the ungainly package into the pocket of her print dress; then opening the bedroom door, she went into the corridor, across it, and stood before the door on the opposite side. After a moment she lifted her hand and tapped twice. There was no response. When again she tapped, a little louder this time, the door was opened by Mr Harris, and she said to him, ‘May I speak to the master for a moment, please?’
Mr Harris’s head turned slightly on his shoulder as if about to look back into the room; then he said in an undertone, ‘The master is resting, you’d better…’
‘Let the nurse come in, Harris.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Mr Harris stood aside, and Kirsten entered the studio and looked towards the fire where the master sat in the big leather chair.
‘Come and sit down.’ He pointed to a chair at the other side of the fire. His tone was kind, ordinary. Then he looked at the valet and said, ‘I will ring when I want you.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The valet left the room and they were alone, looking at each other.
Kirsten saw that the master was changed, he had lost weight. He looked tired, drawn; but more than that, something was missing from him, something had gone out of him. She asked quietly, ‘How are you, master?’ and he replied ‘Much better. Rather sore still’—he tapped his ribs—‘but better.’
They continued to stare at each other; then he said quietly, ‘I like your friends.’ And he watched the colour flow over her face like a red tide as he went on, ‘I understand why you prefer their home to mine.’
As she shook her head against his words and lowered it he put in quickly, ‘I don’t speak with ridicule. They are poor, granted, but their abode, as they call it, emanates something. Hard to put a name to…peace, happiness. Look at me, Kirsten.’
She raised her head slowly, and he said, ‘Believe me when I say I am very sorry that I ever called you back from their home. Do you believe me?’
‘Yes, master.’
He now moved in the chair. Pulling himself up straighter and leaning slightly forward, he went on, ‘You have suffered much in this house, how much I hadn’t realised until these past days, and there’s no way in which I can make up to you now for what you have gone through. I understand you are leaving tomorrow to take up a new position?’
‘Yes, master.’
‘Is it a good position?’
Her head did not droop now but she turned her gaze to the side as she said, ‘It will suffice until I get better.’
‘I would that I could have set you up in a business of your own. This would have pleased me, and acted as compensation for all I owe you.’
‘You…you owe me nothing, master.’ The words spilled out of her, the forerunner of more, but he checked them with his hand and the tight closing of his eyes as he said, ‘Be quiet. Be quiet. I know what I know.’
‘Master.’
It was he now who brought his eyes to hers. ‘Yes?’
‘I want to tell you something, but…but I’ve got to go back right to the beginning, to the day I was brought into the barn. Will you listen?’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll listen.’ He nodded his head slowly, then lay back in the chair. And hesitantly she began.
‘Hop Fuller, the tinker, used to make long stays in different villages, and…and he would go out walking for hours. He said he was rabbitin’. Sometimes he would come back with a rabbit, sometimes he didn’t. We…we never camped near any big houses. Sometimes we would go three or four miles past a big house before he would make camp. Often he would not come back from his walks until late in the night, and then he would hang over me to see if I was asleep, and I would make on I was. And then one day I…I found out the reason why he was so stealthy. I surprised him when he was doing something with the cart shaft, but I pretended that I hadn’t noticed. Well’—her body gave a little quiver—‘he would have killed me if I had found out then what was in the shafts.’
‘Found out what was in the shafts?’
‘Yes, master. He…he kept his money in one of the shafts. He had cut, or had made, a secret space inside. The spring was at the centre of the flower in the fancy painting.’ She paused, her eyes fixed on his, and he said, ‘Well, go on.’ And her voice low now, she went on, ‘We had settled in an old barn out of the rain when the flood came. It swept the barn away, and we clung on to the cart. I saw him drown, and then I remember little more till I woke up in…in your barn.’ She lowered her eyes now. This was the part she’d have to skip over quickly but carefully. ‘The morning I was about to leave Mrs Poulter offered me’—she gulped quickly—‘the post of wet nurse. Later, when I had some leave, I went down to the river, and there were the cart shafts wedged in amongst the debris against the fallen elm in the meadow. When I saw them I decided to try and find out what…what was in them. After some time I found the spring and…and discovered inside one shaft three black velvet bundles, and when I saw what was in them I…I was terrified. An’ so I buried them near the wall, this side of, of the Flynns’ wall, and I’ve left them there ever since. I rarely thought about them because I knew they were no use to me, and if I was to bring them up to the house I…I might be accused of helping Hop Fuller to steal them. You see, master, as soon as I saw them I recognised they had been stolen, and shortly afterwards you found your…your safe had been robbed…’
He did not bring himself up from the back of the chair as she lifted her apron and pulled out the white bundle from her pocket, but pressed his head deeper into the leather upholstery. He watched her untying the knot in the napkin and there, green with earth stain, were three black velvet bundles, and she held them towards him. Slowly he took them from her and put them on his knees and when he unfolded them there was the tiara in one, the two stars in the second one and the necklace in the third. He stared down at them for a full minute before he raised his eyes to hers, then all he said, and in a faint whisper, was ‘Girl! Girl!’ Lifting one piece up after the other, he examined them, and he was about to speak when he heard a sound of a soft footfall in the corridor outside. Quickly he covered up the jewellery and thrust it down the side of his chair. When the footsteps continued past the door he said to her, ‘Have you told anyone else of this?’
‘No, master.’
His body now seemed to slump deeper into the chair and he rested his hands along the arms as he said, ‘Perhaps you don’t know but I have been paid for these pieces through an assurance company, they’re mine no longer.’
‘Oh no, master.’ She shook her head and it appeare
d as a painful motion. ‘I…I thought they would help you because…because I understood…’
‘I know what you understood, and you understood right. I’m poor, in fact when I leave this country and my debts are cleared I will be almost on the same footing as your friends. Doubtless they may be better off than I, and so these pieces’—he tapped the side of his leg where lay the bundle—‘these could be in the nature of a godsend if…if I could keep them…and why not?’ He leant forward again. ‘You are sure you have never mentioned this to anyone?’
‘I can swear, master.’ Her voice was as low as his.
‘Not to the young man, Colum?’
‘Oh no, no, master, I gave him the sover…’
‘You gave him what?’
‘Some sovereigns, master.’
‘There were sovereigns with these?’ He again touched the bundle.
‘No, master, not in that shaft. You see young Barney, he…he had seen the shafts from across the river, he…he wanted them to make a sledge, he came over and carried one across. It was broken, but…but Colum’—her head jerked just the slightest—‘he would have none of it and he took it from him and threw it in the river and—’ she paused for a moment, then ended softly, ‘it stuck between the rocks.’ Now her voice was just a murmur. ‘It was when he was in a bad way over the land, he thought he was going to lose the land to you and could not fight you through a solicitor man, that…that I told him what might be in the shaft, and he went in and got it.’
There was a long pause before he stated, ‘You found the sovereigns in the shaft and you let him have them so he could fight me with…the solicitor man?’
‘Yes, master.’ Her voice was a mumble.
‘Huh! Huh!’ His laughter was soft, ironic, self-deriding.
She looked at him fearfully. He was holding his ribs tightly as he said, ‘Was there ever a woman torn with such loyalties! Oh, Kirsten! Kirsten! poor child!’
‘You’re not angry with me, master?’
‘Angry?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I am not angry. I could never be angry with you.’ He now picked up the bundle from the side of the chair and, weighing it in his hands, said slowly, ‘You know, I’m going to look upon these as a gift from God, a compensation, not for myself but for someone, someone close to us both. Come.’ Slowly he pulled himself from the chair and, thrusting the bundles into the pocket of his robe, he took her arm and led her to the door, across the landing and into the nursery, and he was still holding her arm when he stood by the side of the child’s cot and gazed down at him.
‘He is a beautiful child, don’t you think, Kirsten?’ He did not turn his gaze, nor she hers as she answered tremulously, ‘Yes, master.’
‘It’s a great pity about his legs, yet they have improved considerably these past few months. What do you say?’
Again the tremor in her voice. ‘Yes, master.’
‘They say rickets are the result of malnutrition, the lack of good food you know.’
Their eyes were still on the child. She remained silent. She imagined she saw an avalanche rolling towards her. In the next few minutes it would envelop her, and in enveloping her it would leave him standing alone as if on a bare mountain in winter.
‘I have often wondered whom he reminded me of. I couldn’t place him in any of the portraits, until the other day I came across a miniature of my great-grandmother, my Swedish great-grandmother, and there I saw a resemblance in the high cheekbones and the deep eye sockets.’ He turned to her now and, lifting his hand, he traced the outline of her brows with his finger, then moved it over one cheekbone, across the bridge of her nose, and along the other cheekbone, and he said, ‘You have similar bone formation.’
The next moment she was lying against his breast. The movements towards each other had been simultaneous.
Silently they stood, their arms about each other, and the essence of their embrace went beyond love. For her the avalanche had rushed over her head and left her unharmed. She realised that he knew that the child was hers yet he was claiming him as his son, and she also knew the feeling she was experiencing in this moment would never come to her again, not for any living creature.
For him, it was the moment of great temptation. A word and she would come with him, a word and she would be his. She was the natural mother of his son, he could make her his wife. But as he had already told himself, he wanted no more wives, he was too weary and disillusioned, and he could no longer play at being young.
The last temptation came to him when he told himself that this mood would pass. Away from the worry and responsibility and with time to erase the dying look in Florence’s eyes from his memory, he would regain a new youth.
Bella? The name brought her alive before him as if in the flesh. If he took the girl he would leave Bella behind, and to what? Death, even while she still lived, for he could gauge Bella’s innermost feelings and her suffering wrought by her tormented love for him. He knew Bella, much more than he knew this girl, or was ever likely to know her, for there was a reticence about the girl, bred, perhaps, by the gulf of class between them. Anyway, whatever had bred it, it was there, and he was aware of it; but there was no such barrier between him and Bella. And Bella’s love was the kind of love he needed at the present moment; there was no demand of youth in it, he could rest in it. It was rest he wanted, not only of the body but of the mind, rest in which to find himself.
Gently he pressed her from him and, putting his hands on her shoulders, looked into her face, it was white, and her eye was flickering and her expression was one of resignation. There was no vestige of happiness, or pleasure, but no sign of tears either. The embrace had not spelled anything to her but farewell, as he had meant it to.
His voice was thick, hesitant and low when he said, ‘I will give him these’—he patted his pocket—‘when he reaches manhood. Or perhaps before. I will know when his need is greatest. And then I will tell him the tale surrounding them.’
He smiled gently now as he added in a note he tried to make light, ‘Although that would prevent him from selling them. However, he will be able to raise money on them if he should ever need it.’
He turned slowly now and walked from the room, and she walked by his side as far as the nursery door; and there they looked at each other again. Bending forward, he took her face in his hands and for the first time he laid his lips on hers. Softly, as he would have kissed the child, he kissed her. The contact with her mouth took only a second, but almost a second too long. Sharply he withdrew himself, pulled open the door, went swiftly across the landing and into the studio, and there he stood leaning with his back to the door, his deep breathing aiming to expand his bound ribs.
His head now lowered, his chin almost on his chest, he went to a table holding pieces of rough stone, and he stood with his hand on one for a moment thinking. Then he moved towards the small writing desk in the corner of the room. But before he began to write he rang the bell.
When Harris appeared he said to him, ‘Give word that I wish one of the stable lads to be ready to make a journey. I wish him to deliver a letter. He may saddle a horse.’
The valet did not say, ‘Deliver a letter at this time of the night, sir?’ but merely answered, ‘Yes, master.’ When he had left the room Konrad, dipping the quill into the ink, looked in front of him for a moment trying to find words to convey a message he was, at bottom, reluctant to write.
Six
The morning was bright when Kirsten left by the side door. She had avoided the kitchen and the cook; Rose was the only one to bid her goodbye, that was with the exception of Mrs Poulter, whom she had left in the nursery. Rose was tearful. Bloody shame! she said. They could have sent her by luggage coach as far as the crossroads; they did that for the others when they were moving. And it was another bloody shame that she hadn’t been kept on with the rest of them, although nobody was looking forward to working under Lord Milton, or his son. Penny-pinching they were. She knew Alice Belling who worked in their kitchen, and you eit
her got tea or beer, she said, never both, even at times like harvest or Christmas. And the wages were less. By! They were all going to feel the pinch, if she knew anything. So perhaps in a way it was just as well that Kirsten was getting out. And would she write a letter to her when she was settled? Slater would read it out to her.
Yes, said Kirsten, she would write.
‘You promise?’ said Rose.
‘Yes, I promise,’ said Kirsten.
‘Look!’ Rose grabbed at the valise. ‘I don’t care what old Ma Ledge says. Anyway we’re all supposed to be gettin’ ready to go to the service for the mistress—not that that’ll do her much good now, but I can get cleaned up in a jiffy so I’ll help you carry that down as far as the lodge.’
‘No. No.’ Kirsten pulled Rose’s hand from the valise. ‘’Tisn’t heavy; really it isn’t. Now I must go else…else I’ll miss the cart. Bye-bye Rose.’
‘Bye-bye, Kirsten.’
‘I’d like to thank you, Rose, for…for being kind to me all the time.’
‘Aw, that!’ Rose tossed her head from side to side now. ‘If you ask me, I don’t know how people could not be kind to you. I’ve said it afore and I’ll say it again. You can’t help the way you were born, can you?’
Kirsten’s lashes shaded her eyes for a moment; then again she said, ‘Bye-bye, Rose.’
‘Bye-bye, lass. And…and the best of luck to you.’
Kirsten now took the staff path that skirted the back of the house and which came out halfway down the main drive. She did not look back although she knew Rose was watching her, and when she was out of sight in the shrubbery she did not pause to weep as one might have expected. There was a strange lack of emotion in her. Last night in the nursery feeling had broken through the numbness, but it was a feeling that had terrified her with its intensity, and it had stayed with her for long into the night. When she woke in the early dawn the numbness was still on her, deeper, if that were possible.
The Slow Awakening Page 31