“Scarlet fever!”
“You needn’t worry about her. She’s strong, and already she’s beginning to show signs of improvement. I’ve hired a nurse, and I make a habit of checking on her in the morning and at night, although even I can’t get past the door.”
“She’s all right? You’re quite sure?”
“I was told a few minutes ago that she’s sleeping as peacefully as a baby. Right now, it’s you we have to think about.”
“I — I have no money. I hate having to ask, but if you could lend me enough for a hotel—” It was all Serena could think of. There was no other place in the whole town that might shelter someone like her.
Nathan shook his head. “They wouldn’t let you in, at least none where you would be safe and comfortable; especially if I drove you to their doors, which is something I most certainly would have to do. No, I have a better idea.”
Without another word, he turned and urged her toward the phaeton, helping her up on the high seat. Serena could have wished for a closed carriage, but she was so exhausted, so grateful to be able to sit down, that it didn’t matter. She accepted the fur lap robe Nathan wrapped about her, the steadying arm he kept about her shoulders, with a fervent gratitude that she seemed unable to express. Closing her eyes, she leaned against him as he slapped the reins on the rumps of his horses and sent the light carriage bowling along the dark deserted street.
It was several minutes before Serena could summon the will to notice where he was taking her. What roused her then was the silence. They were in open country; there were no lights anywhere around them. The snow whirled toward them, collecting in their laps, growing thick upon the buffalo lap robe, forming a yellow fog around the side lights of the carriage.
“Nathan,” she said, her voice uneasy.
“We’re almost there. See, there’s the gate.”
It was the arched entranceway of gray granite that marked the drive to his house, the gateway she had noticed on that long-ago drive with Ward to Mt. Pisgah. “But — but this is the way to your home.”
“Yes. Do you mind?”
“I can’t impose on you.” She tried to lift her head from his shoulders, to sit up straight, but he would not allow it.
“I insist,” he said, his voice low. “I’ve waited for a long time to see you in my house. I want to take care of you, Serena, to offer you every protection and comfort. You won’t deny me that?”
What choice did she have? A fleeting memory intruded of the occasion when Nathan had offered Ward money to release her, but she dismissed it. Not only did she lack any alternative, she had no strength to protest.
“Only for tonight, then,” she conceded. “Tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow is another day. We’ll take it as it comes.”
There was something insidious in the idea of allowing someone else to take charge, to shoulder her cares. It had not been easy since Ward had failed to put in an appearance when he was expected. The future had loomed as dark and without hope. Now that the worst had happened, she felt only a great urge to drift, uncaring of where she came to rest. Tomorrow would be different, tomorrow she would have energy and courage and faith again. But for now, she could do no more than sigh and close her eyes, letting herself be carried on toward the house where Nathan Benedict lived.
There was a lantern burning under the portico of the great white house. It illuminated the wide brick steps with their outward-curving banisters, gleamed on the knocker on the heavy paneled door, and shone with the colors of jewels in the leaded stained-glass window above it. There were flowers worked in the glass, flowers that winked and glowed in the wavering lamplight from inside with the look of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts.
Nathan half-led, half-carried Serena up the steps. The door was opened to them by a woman in black bombazine wearing a starched white apron and a white cap with streamers. She had iron-gray hair and a lined face that creased into an expression of concern.
“Here now, Mr. Benedict! Let me help you,” the woman exclaimed, moving to Serena’s side, ready to support her into the great hall that opened before them.
“I can manage, Mrs. Anson. You can run a hot bath for Miss Walsh, and see that a bedroom is made ready.”
“You know there’s always a fire lit in the green room in case of visitors.”
“I think I prefer the gold room for Miss Walsh.”
“But sir, that’s—”
“I know that it is,” Nathan interrupted.
The woman, staring across Serena, was silent an instant. “Yes, sir,” she said and whisked away, her back stiff as she climbed the broad oak staircase that rose against one wall.
It was blissfully warm inside the house, a warmth that came partially from the bronze gaslight chandelier with pink morning-glory shades overhead, and partially from the blazing heart of a great fire burning under the marble mantel in the room that opened out of the hall. The mellow light was reflected in the waxed polish of the golden-oak paneling on the walls and staircase, and the sheen of the parquet floor. There was a gothic hall tree to one side, a huge affair with a carved satyr head wreathed in ivy on the pediment, a rose marble seat, and brass hooks in the shape of ram’s horns. An oriental rug broke the expanse of parquet, and centered upon it was a round table holding a china bowl of Japanese design filled with coins. There hung in the air the smell of beeswax, camphor, and gutta percha from the oilskins and boots that crowded the hall tree.
To the right was a parlor, judging from the stiff formality of the horsehair settees and chairs, the crowding of tables covered with bric-a-brac, and the tightly closed curtains. Beyond it, an open door revealed a smaller room where a fire also burned, a room with a rounded alcove that indicated it had one of the twin towers of the house grafted to its sides.
The height of the arabesque-patterned steel ceilings, the size and grandeur of the rooms, affected Serena with a sense of panic. She was out of place. She had no business being here, none at all.
“Can you make it up the stairs?” Nathan asked, bending over her.
Serena turned her attention to the wide flight with its oriental runner and another window of stained glass at the first landing. “I think so,” she whispered.
In the end, Nathan half-carried her, his arm firm around her as he supported her weight. Serena saw the upstairs hallway with its flocked paper in green and gold and its shimmering brass gaslights through a haze of fatigue. The housekeeper met them at the open door of the bedroom. Scanning Serena’s pale, blue-veined face, she took charge, recommending that Nathan order a glass of warm milk and some crackers, telling him that his own dinner was waiting if he cared to ring for it, that someone she called Dorcas would serve him. With that she shut the door upon him, and with a strong arm about Serena, led her toward the bathroom where steam rose from a zinc tub encased in walnut paneling.
The hot water brought the feeling back to Serena’s icy feet, but it also took the last of her strength and will. She hardly knew when the housekeeper helped her from the tub, dried her with thick, warm Turkish towels, fluffed sweet-smelling Pozzoni talcum powder over her body, and slid a soft flannel nightgown over her head.
The bed had been turned down, the embroidered, lace-edged pillow covers whisked away, leaving the linen cases. The sheets of smooth, ironed linen had been warmed, and a hot-water pig, a fat ironstone bottle with a snoutlike handle on one end filled with hot water, had been pushed into the depths of the covers. Finding it with her feet as she stretched out, Serena sighed and closed her eyes.
“Your warm milk, miss.”
With an effort, Serena drank from the glass the woman held to her lips, then lay back down.
“If there is anything you need in the night, miss, there is a buzzer on the table beside the bed. You have only to ring.”
“Thank you,” Serena murmured, “for everything.”
“Goodnight, then, miss.”
Serena thought she replied, but she could not be sure. She did not hear the clos
ing of the door as the woman went away, leaving her alone.
What followed was a confusion of lowered voices whispering above her, of soft lights and shadowy figures coming and going. It was Nathan leaning to speak to her, his face earnest, pleading, Nathan standing beside her, holding her hand while a quiet voice intoned, questioned, and she answered as bid. It was hot drinks and steam rising in the room as from the stones of hell to give her a sense of fevered heat. It was agonizing chill, racking coughing and gasping for breath while a great weight rested on her chest. And then the inflamed anguish in her upper body spread, stabbing into her vitals, pulsing in hard, knotted pain as the housekeeper hovered over her with frightened eyes, a man in a black coat came and went, and Nathan shouted outside in the hall. A long period of darkness came, varied with brief moments of dim twilight pervaded with a hovering feeling of being beyond and above herself, tethered on a loose rein, and yet a well-knotted one.
Serena came awake by slow degrees. The room was bright with the rays of the afternoon sun slanting in at the window, filtering through curtains of fine Belgium lace. Its yellow light seemed to glow in the room, intensifying the gold drapes at the windows with their graceful swags of fringe and tiebacks of bronze molded in the shape of flowers. The carpet was an Aubusson of pink, green, cream, and gold. On the walls were insets of flocked paper in gold and green, outlined with moldings painted green, gold, pink, and chocolate brown. The thick and heavy moldings ran around the steel ceiling that had been molded in a repeated daisy pattern and painted a lifelike white and yellow on a pale-green background. Hanging from the center was a chandelier of pink Bohemian glass hung with crystal lusters. In one corner was a dressing screen with a gilt framework in the French style. A cheery fire burned beneath a mantel of pink-veined marble set between the two windows on the outside wall. The walnut dresser bureau on the opposite side of the room was in the Renaissance style, with an incredibly tall mirror backed with diamond dust, a carved and scrolled pediment, and tiers of bracket shelves holding what appeared to be a varied collection of Staffordshire china dogs. The paneled bed that towered above her both at the headboard and foot was of the same design.
Serena lay in the exact center of the bed with her arms outside the covers. Centered over her chest on the turned-back sheet was a monogram of entwined initials so intricate it was impossible to decipher them. There were several layers of cover on the bed for warmth, the top one of which was a crazy quilt in silk and velvet outlined in gold silk in a herringbone stitch. The most fascinating and terrifying thing about it, however, was that the quilt lay straight and smooth across her body, perfectly flat over her waist and the bones of her hips.
Without warning, tears rose in her eyes and ran trickling into her hair. She lifted her hand to wipe them away, and found she could do so only with a great effort, that her fingers were white and thin, almost skeletal. She was staring at them, at their near-transparency, when the door swung silently inward on its hinges.
A woman stepped with brisk efficiency into the room, a woman with a vaguely familiar look, though Serena could not place the name.
“Why, you’re awake, my dear. How nice,” she said as she neared the bed, taking Serena’s hand in a firm, warm grasp.
“Yes,” Serena answered, though there was a shadow of puzzlement in her blue-gray eyes as she stared up at the other woman.
“You’re looking much better. I believe there is even some color in your cheeks.”
Serena ran her tongue over her dry, cracked lips. “I’m sorry,” she began.
“You don’t know who I am, do you? I’m Mrs. Anson, housekeeper to Mr. Nathan Benedict. You have been very ill, my dear, since the night he brought you. You have been here with us at Bristlecone for over two weeks.”
“Two weeks,” Serena repeated, her voice a whisper. It didn’t seem possible.
“You had been out in the weather, were nearly frozen. You came down with pneumonia, and I can tell you there for a while it was a near thing. You were so weak, you see, and altogether in no condition to withstand—”
“But — but my baby—” Serena said, her eyes dark with the fear of unbearable pain.
“Oh, my dear, how stupid of me not to tell you at once, especially knowing you have not been yourself in the last few days. Your child was born a week ago. It’s a boy, a fine, healthy boy.”
Once more tears collected in Serena’s eyes, tears of gladness. “May — may I see him?”
“What a question! Of course you may. We have set up a nursery only two doors down. I’ll fetch him for you.”
Despite the woman’s words, it was not the housekeeper who stepped into the room with a bundle in her arms a short time later. It was a young woman, little more than a girl, with red-gold hair, freckles like flecks of gold, and a shy smile that revealed the engagingly crooked teeth of a child. Like Mrs. Anson, she too wore black bombazine with a starched apron and cap.
The housekeeper came into the room behind her. “There, Mary, take the babe right up to the bed so his mother can see it. Miss Serena — I hope you don’t mind me making free with your name, but Mr. Benedict said that was how I was to address you for the present — this is Mary. She has been retained as nursemaid and wet-nurse for your son, you being too sick and weak to stand the strain.”
Serena smiled at the girl, acknowledging the greeting even as she pushed aside the covers so her son could be placed on the bed beside her. Oblivious to everything except the warm, blanket-covered weight next to her, she unwrapped the baby with slow care. She examined his waving pink hands, his perfectly shaped head and tiny, shell-like ears, the fine, incredibly long lashes that rested on his round cheeks, and the thatch of dark hair that curled over his skull.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered.
At the sound, the baby opened his eyes. Mysterious, gray-blue, they stared up at her with what seemed wondering curiosity, a reflection of her own blue-gray gaze. Abruptly he made a cooing sound, kicking at the confinement of his wrappings. Curling his long fingers with their tiny almond nails into a fist, he tried to maneuver them into his mouth.
“Isn’t he precious,” Mrs. Anson said, a smile on her long face and a fatuous sound in her voice. “We have all fallen in love with him; Mary, my daughter Dorcas, and myself. And if Mr. Benedict isn’t half wild over him! Sits and holds him for hours, and never so much as frowns when the sweet little dear soaks through its diapers onto the trousers of his best suit!”
Serena smiled. “Can he stay with me for a time?”
“Yes, indeed. He’s yours, isn’t he, for all that the rest of us would like to claim him. He’s such a good baby, he shouldn’t give any trouble, but if he begins to fuss, you can ring for Mary, two short buzzes, and she will come and fetch him. Oh, and about Mary. I do hope you will keep her on, even though you had no say in her hiring. She’s a good girl, and she needs the job. Her husband and her little boy were killed not three weeks ago in a wagon accident, dragged underneath it when it overturned. Mary was thrown clear, but she lost the child she was carrying, and your baby has been a great help to her in getting over the loss, to say nothing of relieving the ache of her milk.”
Serena glanced at the other girl, but she was hanging over the baby, letting him wrap his strong little fingers about one of hers, smiling as if she did not hear.
“Oh, you needn’t fear that I’m blabbing out something that will hurt Mary’s feelings. She doesn’t hear, hasn’t since she was two years old. She can tell when the baby is crying, though, from the vibrations in the air or some such. And she never takes her eyes off him, so you need not worry that he will be neglected. It’s far more likely that he will be completely spoiled.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Serena answered, her face sober. “It will be hard enough for him later on. But about Mary, I’m not sure how long she can stay. I — I can’t afford to pay her, and I don’t like the idea of Nathan’s being responsible. I wonder if I—” She stopped suddenly as a cough caught in her throat.
“The doctor said you were not to try to take on the task yourself, my dear. You are still weak, more so than you imagine. You must rest and recoup your strength. In the meantime, don’t worry about money matters. Don’t worry about anything. It will straighten itself out by and by.”
Don’t worry. That was easy enough to say, but how could she help it? Serena, when the others had gone, lay staring down at her baby. Poor sweet mite. What would become of him? She could not stay here forever; already she had trespassed too long on Nathan’s hospitality. But where would she go when she left, what would she do with a baby boy to care for, to feed and clothe and raise somehow to be a man?
Did he look like Ward, this child of hers? With an ache in the region of her heart she had to concede that he did, a little, about the nose and chin. Though the blue-gray of his eyes would change, taking on his permanent color in a month or so, for the moment he looked more like her than anyone else, or perhaps more like her own father.
“I’ll call you Sean,” she said, her voice low. “Sean Walsh. You will be my child and no one else’s. My Sean.” She bent to kiss the silken top of his head, and drew him close, staring out through the lace curtains that veiled the window at the clouds floating against the turquoise blue of the sky.
She was wrong, however. The child would never be called Sean Walsh, never be hers alone. Nor would she ever be Serena Walsh again.
15
It was nearing suppertime. The sun had set behind the cone of Mt. Pisgah. Mary had come for Sean, to take him away, feed him and make him ready for bed. The fire on the marble hearth had died down to a bed of glowing coals. Serena, between waking and dozing, knew she should ring to have it kindled and made up again, but she could not summon the energy. The westering sun had lent its warmth to the room, just as it had melted the last of the snow left from the storm the night she had come here, here to Bristlecone. It was still cold, of course; she could tell that from the drafts that eddied from the windows, but it was no longer raw and freezing. There was so much comfort here in this fussy, pleasant room with its warm colors, she was so much thinner and lighter, that it seemed impossible she was the same person who had been turned out into the snowstorm.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 115