FOUR
Massachusetts was checkered green and white with rolling fields and blossoming orchards. Kate knew better by now than to tease her silent companion with exclamations over glimpses of white wild cherry by the roadside or an orchard foaming uphill to its group of white-painted farmhouse and huge red barns. Willows by the Connecticut River gleamed golden in the morning light with their first shimmer of leaf, and from time to time as the heavy coach rolled on, more smoothly now, over well-made roads, Kate leaned forward to get a better view of a patch of flowers, brilliant purple or white against one of the gray walls that bounded these neat New England fields.
Jonathan, apparently, noticed nothing of this new splendor of flower and leaf. This last day of their journey found him silent, withdrawn, with new shadows etched under his deep-set eyes, so that Kate wondered whether he, too, had spent an anxious and wakeful night. His impatience to be home manifested itself in an occasional suggestion to their taciturn driver that his horses might make better time now they were out of the mountains.
The driver’s only reaction was to go, if possible, a little slower and to dally interminably when they stopped for their midday meal at the thriving little town of Worcester.
“At this rate, we won’t be home before dark!” Jonathan turned impatiently to Kate as they stood watching the driver deliberately harnessing up his horses.
“It’s maddening for you.” She forgot her own anxiety in a wave of sympathy for his.
“Oh well,” he shrugged. “Better late than never, I suppose.”
It was hot today; flies buzzed around the patient horses and tormented Kate. The afternoon dragged out endlessly. She was beyond caring for views of snug village greens arranged round white-spired churches, and when Jonathan roused himself from his brooding to tell her that the first of these New England churches was said to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, she could only nod wordlessly.
Jonathan had been right. It was almost dark, with lights showing here and there in cottage windows, when he leaned forward to give an order to the driver. “We turn off the Boston road here,” he explained. “Not much further now. I hope you’re not quite worn out.”
“Of course not.” She sat up a little straighter. “But I confess I’ll be glad to get there.” Would she? Suddenly, she was fighting panic. Suppose Arabella refused to have her ... Suppose little Sarah took an instant dislike to her ... With a hand that would shake, she tucked rebellious strands of hair closer under the brim of her bonnet.
“Don’t worry.” He was too good at reading her thoughts. “Just remember how badly we need you.”
“Oh, thank you.” It would be absurd to disclaim anxiety. “I’ll feel better when I’ve met Sarah.”
“I hope so.” It was not altogether encouraging.
It had rained a little just after sunset, and the leather sides of the coach were still up, but she could feel that they were beginning to climb. She leaned forward to peer out into the gathering darkness. “I wish I could see.”
“It’s the beginning of the Gray Hills. So far, the road’s kept close to the Charles River, but now we’ve turned off to go over the ridge. Penrose lies on the far side, on the Penrose River. You English would no doubt consider it a romantic situation, since the house is just above the falls. I look on it as a good one, as they provide the power for my mill.”
“Is it so bad to be romantic?”
“It’s an expensive luxury, that’s all, and one we Penroses have not been able to afford since my grandfather took the romantic line and stood out for God and King George—poor old lunatic.”
“You mean your grandfather?” Irritated suddenly, she mistook him on purpose.
“No: King George.” He refused to be drawn. “Though, mind you, Grandfather was crazy enough. Anyone with half an eye could have seen what the upshot of that war was bound to be.”
“And can you foretell the result of this one as easily?”
She was too tired to conceal her irritation.
“A draw, of course.” Her tone of challenge at once roused and amused him. “We will agree to differ, or differ to agree, if you prefer it like that.”
“I think you are talking a great deal of nonsense.” It came out sharper than she had meant, and she turned it off with a question. “Where does your land begin?”
“On the top of the ridge. We used to own the whole section. One of these days I’ll buy it back—I hope. There, we’re over the ridge now; we’re almost home.” He was leaning forward eagerly. “There—there it is. Those are the lights of Penrose. I’m sorry you should see it first m the dark.” He spoke with automatic courtesy, his thoughts already at the house.
Penrose was a blur of lights, hazy through a new fall of rain that blew into the crevices of the leather curtains, when the carnage wheels found smooth surface. “Ah,” said Jonathan, “that’s better. I had the drive graveled last year. Can you tell the difference?”
“Yes, indeed.” The lights were very near now. The driver pulled up his horses. Penrose.
She was aware, as Jonathan helped her down, of the looming bulk of a big three-story house, its shape defined against the sky by a scattering of illuminated windows. Now the front door swung open and light from inside showed a handsome pillared portico with three shallow steps. An elderly colored man advanced to meet them: “Welcome home, Mr. Jonathan.”
“How are you, Job? How’s everything?”
“She’s fine, Mr. Jonathan. She’s missed you, I think.”
“Not speaking?” Now, belatedly, Kate realized that they were talking of Sarah.
“No, nor smiling neither. Not since you left, sah.” He spoke, Kate thought, the most beautiful English she had heard since she crossed the border. Could he be a slave? Surely there were none in Boston?
“This is Mrs. Croston, who has agreed to take charge of Sarah.” Jonathan guided her across the threshold into a wide, well-lighted hall. “Mrs. Penrose?”
“In the drawing room, sah.”
“Good.” He moved toward one of the closed doors that opened off the big hall. “We’re famished, Job, and tired. Food—and warming-pans.”
“Yes, sah. I’ll see to it at once, Mr. Jonathan.”
“Thank you.” Jonathan threw open the door and ushered Kate into a room whose elegance amazed her. So far, her experience of American living had been limited to the Masons’ house in the wilderness, Pride’s Hotel, and the makeshift discomfort of the other inns they had stayed at. But here was a room that might have graced the most luxurious English country house she knew. She had seen furniture like this in many a lady’s drawing room when paying calls with her father, and thought he had told her it was made by a Mr. Chippendale in the previous century. Each detail of the elaborately carved chairs, cabinets, and sofas shone with polish, as did the floor, where it showed around the expanse of crimson carpet. Crimson damask covers on the chairs and sofas echoed the carpet’s sumptuous color and formed a striking contrast with white curtains and the white dress of the tall woman who had risen to greet them. The whole room served as a foil for her blond, full-blown beauty, and might have been designed to do so.
Following Jonathan across the desert of carpet, Kate felt horribly at a disadvantage in this glowing room, conscious of her drab bonnet and sober pelisse and of the long day’s heat and dust And still the beauty stood silent watching them from amber-colored eyes under heavy brows, while Kate wished passionately that she could have avoided being the unwanted third at this meeting.
“How are you, Bella?” Jonathan’s question seemed oddly inadequate.
Now, at last, Arabella took a step forward to greet them. “About as you’d expect” Her voice was deep, beautifully pitched, and angry. “I was beginning to despair of you, Jonathan.” And then, to Kate: “Were you so hard to persuade, Miss McGowan?”
The dislike in her voice was worse than anything Kate had imagined: “I’m not ...” Impossible to go on in face of that coldly hostile gaze. She stammered to a h
alt and listened wretchedly while Jonathan explained about Liz McGowan.
“Not Miss McGowan?” Arabella summed it up, eyebrows arched over those extraordinary amber eyes. “How do you do, Mrs. Croston? I hope, as an Englishwoman, you will not find us quite barbarous here. As to your work: you have experience, I take it, in dealing with children?”
“A little—”
Once again Jonathan cut short Kate’s stumbling approach to explaining herself. “She has what I hope will prove more valuable—sympathy.” They were discussing, Kate thought a great deal more than the mere words suggested. “Job says Sarah is just the same,” he went on.
“Job would.” Weary impatience in the beauty’s voice. “He’s like the rest of you; won’t see what’s before his eyes. She’s worse, of course: it’s been intolerable: screaming fits night after night. I thought I’d go mad. If I’d known you’d be gone so long, I’d never have agreed.” And then, turning to Kate, “I wonder if my husband has warned you just what you are in for,” she said. “Has he convinced you that a little ‘sympathy’ is all that the child needs? I don’t suppose he told you that the doctors find her case hopeless.”
“Yes, he did.” Kate was surprised to hear herself speak so firmly. “But he said he didn’t believe it.”
Dark eyebrows rose over scornful .eyes. “So you can speak up for yourself? Well, that’s something. Yes, Job?”
“Tea is ready, Miz’ Penrose.”
“Tea? Oh—you’ve not eaten, Jonathan?” Wearily graceful, she led the way across the hall to a crimson and mahogany dining room, and sat watching them eat with a sultry indifference that took away any appetite Kate’s exhaustion had left her. She had grown so used to the American habit of asking questions that she was actually disconcerted by Arabella’s silence, but Jonathan seemed to notice nothing. He had questions of his own for his wife, about the manufactury, the news in Boston ... Her answers were oddly negative, Kate thought, harping always on how she had been tied to the house by Sarah’s bad behavior.
It was an awkward enough meal, and Kate was deeply grateful when Jonathan, saying, “Mrs. Croston’s exhausted. I’m afraid I have brought her across country at a monstrous speed,” gave her an excuse to escape.
Arabella rang a silver handbell. “You won’t mind, Mrs. Croston, if Job shows you to your room? I have the migraine, a little. And—we keep early hours here in Penrose, you will find. Prue—the girl’s in bed long since, and I would not ask Mrs. Peters.”
Jonathan was on his feet. “I will take Mrs. Croston up,” he said. “We might look in on Sarah as we go.”
“I wonder you’ve waited so long.” Something very strange in her tone, but Kate was beyond analysis.
Sarah’s room was on the second floor, next door to her father’s. “Arabella’s over there.” Jonathan pointed to a door at the far end of the red-carpeted hallway. “You are to be upstairs, I believe, in the chintz rooms ... I had meant—” he stopped, gestured for silence, and eased open the door of Sarah’s room.
It was dark inside, cool and quiet, with only a faint glimmer by the bed where a night light burned under a glass shade. “I said she must always have light,” he whispered. And then, “Sarah, love, are you awake?”
A listening silence in the room, and the faintest possible stirring under the bedclothes was all his answer.
“It’s Father, love. I’m back.” This time the only response was a definite movement down among the bedclothes. He sighed, moved forward to tuck in a loose sheet, bent to kiss the quiff of dark hair that showed against the pillow, and came back to Kate, who had stayed quietly by the door. “She’s always worse when I’ve been away,” he said, closing it behind them. “Sometimes I let myself think that’s a good sign.”
“Yes.” Thoughtfully. “I see what you mean. She does notice—”
“Exactly.” He had turned to lead the way to a steep flight of stairs that went up from the center of the hallway. “Mrs. Penrose has had you put on the upper floor,” he said, with a trace of apology, “we will have to see—”
The servants’ floor? But he answered the unspoken question by pointing to a door at the head of the stairs. “The servants’ quarters are through there, if you should need anything. They have their own stairway. These are your apartments. I’m sorry Arabella is not well enough—”
“But it’s charming!” The opened door revealed a snug low-ceilinged sitting room lit by candles above the hearth where a newly lit fire burned brightly. The chintz curtains and chair covers had evidently given the room its name.
“The bedroom’s through there.” The door stood ajar and she glanced in to see a bed, hospitably ready, and her carpetbag standing in a corner. It was all of a sudden an oddly awkward moment. “I hope you have everything—” he had stayed with his hand on the door handle.
“Absolutely. It looks like heaven. And I could sleep for days.” A yawn fought with the words. “Good night, Mr. Penrose.”
Downstairs, Arabella had poured herself a glass of madeira and was sitting, elbows on table, lazily sipping it. “Did she greet you with open arms?”
“No.” He would not let her see how the mockery hurt. “She was asleep.” He moved over to stand with his back to the handsome carved chimney piece. “You might have been more welcoming to Mrs. Croston.”
“Might I?” Indifferently. “A poor little brown thing. How you imagine she will contrive to cope with Sarah ... But that’s your affair, Jonathan. I shall go into Boston tomorrow.”
“No, you will not.” The snap in his voice brought her eyes up from her wine glass to meet his. “You will stay here, Arabella, and play the hostess a little more successfully than you did tonight.”
“The hostess? To my nursemaid? Don’t think, Jonathan, because I tolerated her in here tonight that I shall do so in future. As long as she holds a servant’s position in my house, she shall be treated as a servant. We did not sit down at table with menials in Richmond.”
“What you did, or did not do, in Richmond has no bearing on the case. And—perhaps you have forgotten, Arabella? This is my house.”
“Pray, what do you intend me to understand by that?”
“Just this. I have great hopes of Mrs. Croston. She may be a little brown thing, as you so elegantly put it, but she has courage, spirit, warmth ... I’ve watched her on the journey, fighting exhaustion, gallantly refusing to admit how tired she was, because she knew I wanted to get home. I wonder what you would look like, Bella, after traveling non-stop for three weeks, staying at the kind of inns we have. You’d have something more than an imaginary migraine to look weary about then.”
“Imaginary! That’s what you think! If you knew what I’ve been through with that child! Dirt, spilled food, screaming fits, the sullens ... It’s past bearing, and the sooner you admit it and have her placed in a home where she can be properly looked after, the happier we shall all be. I tell you, I’m ashamed to have her about.”
“Ashamed!” He stopped himself with a furious effort. “I tell you, Arabella, if Sarah leaves this house, I go too. How ashamed would that make you?”
“That would depend...” she tried to make it sound light, but he had shaken her.
“Depend? On what, I wonder. What would the Quincys say then, or the Lowells, or the Otises, or any other of your fine old families? Don’t try me too far, Arabella, or you may regret it. As for Mrs. Croston, she is a lady and will be treated as one in my house. After the way you received her, I doubt very much whether she will wish to sit in your drawing room, but she will eat with us, whether she likes it or not. Perhaps, after all, it is better that she should have quarters of her own, away from the rest of us. Because, let us have this clear from the start, I intend her to stay. Is that understood?”
“Do you?” She yawned gracefully behind a white hand. “What’s that to do with me? I had no share in hiring her: she’s no affair of mine.” And then, with a sudden change to the warm, winning voice that had captivated him, once: “Jonathan! Try and see it my w
ay. Try and understand what it’s like for me, out here by myself all day ... every day ... what it was like last year, while you were in England. Buried here, week after week, at the back of beyond. It’s the loneliness, Jon. With no one to talk to but the servants, nothing to do—”
“Nothing, Bella?” But his tone was milder. “There’s the housekeeping, surely?”
“You know perfectly well that Mrs. Peters does it much better than I could—and wouldn’t much relish my interfering, either. And we weren’t brought up, in Richmond, to spend all our lives on jams and jellies. Oh, Jon, do you remember how gay life was there? The balls, the parties, the laughter ... Do you wonder if I need to escape, sometimes, from this dull old house? To get to Boston and remind myself that life still goes on? If only you’d try to understand what it’s like to be a woman, tied to one place ... It’s all very well for you: you go to England, to Canada, wherever you please. And I? I stay at home, with chores for company.”
“And your child, Bella. Aren’t you forgetting her?”
She shivered, as if a ghost’s hand had touched her, and gulped madeira. “Must you keep reminding me? You know I make her worse. And what do you think that’s like for me, for her own mother? Jon, don’t you see, that’s why I want to get away, not to watch this girl making herself at home with my child. Taking my place! A stranger, a nobody, from God knows where ... Perhaps worse than a nobody. How do we know?”
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