Nothing for it but to plunge right in: “I’m extremely sorry, Mr. Penrose, about today. It won’t happen again.” No excuses. He must know how exhausting their journey had been. She was not going to refer to it. But the silence dragged out, as if each of them was waiting for the other to speak. At last Kate went on. “I brought down my marriage lines, Mrs. Penrose.” And then, when Jonathan merely shook his head impatiently, and Arabella turned away to study her own profile in the glass as if the whole subject was profoundly indifferent to her: “Sarah went to bed like an angel. I truly think her day in the open has done her good. She’s got a little color—”
“And so you think she’s cured!” The two Arabellas shrugged marble shoulders. “You come into our house, turn everything topsy-turvy, break all our rules for the child, give way to her in everything, and then talk about a cure! And to crown it all, you fall asleep out in the woods leaving her exposed to God knows what danger. It’s no good, I tell you, Jonathan. I won’t have a quiet moment.”
“You’re so anxious about the child?” Jonathan’s tone surprised Kate.
“Of course I’m anxious about her! Do you think I don’t suffer when I see her as she is? Don’t mind when she runs away from me? D’you think I’ve no feeling, Jonathan? Besides, it’s not safe for her here, running wild the way she does.”
“It’s just about as safe here as anywhere,” he said reasonably. “I’ve taken care she can’t get off the place. And with Mrs. Croston to watch out for her. If you think you’re up to it?” No mistaking the doubt in his voice as he spoke to Kate directly for the first time. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let you persuade me you could do it ... Well, that’s my fault. You see now, it’s not just a job, it’s a whole life. No reason why we should expect you to take it on.” And then, as she made to protest. “No—wait a minute. I brought you here, and I’m responsible for you. No way of getting you back to England right now, I’m afraid, but this war won’t last forever—not beyond this fall, or I miss my guess. It should be easy enough to find you work in Boston till then.”
“But I don’t want to work in Boston! I don’t want to go back to England, come to that. Please, Mr. Penrose, give me another chance. I want to try. I want the kind of life I could have with Sarah, She’s what I need ... I told you ... someone to love...” She stopped, embarrassed at her own vehemence.
“Love!” Arabella broke in. “Because her mother doesn’t? If you only knew the nights I’ve lain awake, listening to her scream, knowing it would do more harm than good to go to her—”
“But, Bella,” put in Jonathan, “be reasonable. Someone’s got to look after Sarah.” And then, wearily, “Lord knows, we’ve been through this often enough before. You’ve got to face facts, Bella. You can’t; Mrs. Croston thinks she can. Well then, I say, let’s give her a trial. If you’re really sure you’re up to it, Mrs. Croston?” Again that note of doubt.
“Of course I am. Mr. Penrose, I don’t know how to thank you. All I can say is, I promise I’ll do my best.”
“Promises!” said Arabella. “From a complete stranger, picked up God knows where in the train of the British Army. No, Jonathan, I won’t hush! What do you know about women? No mother; no sisters: it’s no wonder if you are a fool for a tale of woe and a pitiful face. I won’t say a pretty one. And it’s my child you propose to turn over to this—”
“Young lady,” he intervened grimly as she paused for a word. “And—our child, Arabella.”
“Yes. Our only—” For a moment it seemed that she would say more, then she moved away to pull the scarlet bell rope, merely throwing back over her shoulder: “Well, Jonathan, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And then, when Job appeared: “I’ll need the carriage first thing in the morning, Job. I’m going back to Boston.” Her defiant tone was belied by a quick sideways glance for Jonathan. Goodness, thought Kate, is this what she has been aiming at all the time?
Jonathan took it coolly enough. “Maybe you’re right, my dear. It will give Mrs. Croston time to find her feet. And that reminds me. There is one other thing, Mrs. Croston. This question of giving in to the child. I don’t like that. She must learn, poor lamb, that she cannot always have her own way.”
“Of course she must—when she’s well enough. At the moment she’s thin as a rail and nervous as a scared colt. I want some weight on her, and some color in her cheeks before I so much as think about discipline. I tell you, Mr. Penrose, if I’m to do anything for Sarah, I must have a free hand. If not—” She stopped, appalled at what she seemed to be saying.
He was looking at her with the amazement of a lion ferociously attacked by a mouse. “Well, I’ll be—” It was the first rumbling of an explosion and she nerved herself to face it. Then, surprisingly, he laughed. “You might be right at that, Mrs. Croston. I wouldn’t call in an expert at the works, and then tell him how to go about his business. Why should I do it to you? Very well. You’re the expert. Yours shall be the decision and, mind you, yours the responsibility.”
“Thank you.” She was breathing like an exhausted runner.
But it was Arabella who had the last word. “Responsibility?” she said. “After what happened today? My poor Jonathan.”
Her taunts echoed, that night, through Kate’s recurring nightmare. They had opened up the old wound. Once again, in the mounting terror of her dream, her father fell dead across the table, once again Charges Manningham—she woke there, sweating, and lay for a long time, eyes open to stare blankly into the darkness, trying to convince herself that it was all over, all past, to be forgotten. What had happened, had happened. The present, and Sarah, were what mattered now. Because she was almost sure that there was something she could do for Sarah. This was more important, surely, than the old disaster? And, thinking of Sarah, she smiled and slept quietly at last.
SIX
Agreeing to give Kate a trial, Jonathan had not specified how long it should be. At first, inevitably, he was full of doubts, which Arabella’s harping on the mystery of Kate’s past had exacerbated. It was true that he knew nothing about women. His own disastrous marriage was proof enough of that. Memories thronged to mock him: of how he had adored Arabella, of sleepless nights, pacing the deck of the ship he had named after her, dreaming of her, aching for her. Well, he thought bitterly, at least he would never make such a fool of himself again.
And yet—he had taken Kate on trust. He ought, he knew, to have looked at her papers that first night when she had offered them. He ought still to ask her about her background, but always when it came to the point, when he saw her flinch away from the first hint of a question, he could not bring himself to do it. And, besides, there had been something oddly convincing about the way she had turned on him, that first evening: “If I’m to do anything for Sarah, I must have a free hand.” It had shaken him—he was not used to being crossed—but it had also given him hope—a hope that time was to strengthen. Kate’s instinctive understanding of the child was worth any amount of doctors theory. The two of them were inseparable, spending most of their time out of doors as the brilliant New England summer days ripened toward fall, and already both of them looked the better for it.
Sometimes he asked himself, as he watched them chasing each other across the lawn and in and out among the locust trees by the river, what it was they had in common. Something there was, he felt sure. Kate was good for Sarah because of some deep need of her own that complemented Sarah’s. Or was he being absurd? Very likely. But his rash act was justified a thousand times by results. Sarah had actually put on a little weight; the bones were less obvious in her face, and her bouts of senseless, horrible screaming were rarer.
Kate remarked on it timidly, over dinner one still night of early September. “Don’t you think she’s better?”
There was something rather touching about the appeal for praise. “I really think she is. A little.” He reproached himself, afterward, for his caution. Why not give her the encouragement she deserved? After all, she had been with them three months now
. It was time to stop thinking in terms of a trial and make a permanent arrangement. If only he could bring himself to ask her about her past, to clear up the nagging little doubt that recurred every time he found her poring over the newspaper accounts of the war.
Of course it was natural enough that she should do so. But always, when he tried to tell himself this, he was stopped by memory of her frantic tone, back in York, when she had begged him to take her away. “There’s someone ... someone in the 98th. If I have to meet him again, I think I’ll die.” Surely no innocent relationship could have left such a legacy of terror?
And yet—did he really want to know about it? Was it this, in fact, that dried the questions on his lips? Whatever shadow lay over Kate Croston’s past, there was no question that in the present she was what Sarah needed.
But it irked him. It was against all his practical businessman’s instincts. Problems should be faced, doubts resolved, issues brought out into the open. He was brooding about this as he walked the short way home from the factory next day. Usually, Sarah would come flying out when she saw him, with Kate smiling behind her. Today there was no sign of them and he knew one of those instant pangs of almost unbearable fear to which he had become accustomed since Sarah’s illness. He took the porch steps at a bound and was instantly aware of bustle in the house, of a distinctive, heavy perfume in the air. Arabella.
“Well, Jonathan.” She was standing, golden, impassive, more beautiful than ever, in the wide doorway of the drawing room.
“Well, Arabella?”
She looked him up and down with that mocking half-smile of hers. “Don’t you think, my love, that a speech of delighted surprise would be in order?”
He looked down the hall. No servant in sight, but still no need to conduct this conversation so publicly. He ushered her into the drawing room. “Surprise, certainly. But if you expect delight...” He closed the door. “I thought we agreed, when you insisted on going, that you would stay in Boston until I advised your return.”
“Yes.” Her voice was mocking. “So we did. To give Mrs. Croston a chance to get acquainted with Sarah. I think I must be very stupid, Jonathan. It had not occurred to me that I was giving her a chance to get acquainted with you.”
“Oh?” He looked at it for a moment from all angles. Then, “Someone has been gossiping? Mrs. Peters, I suppose.”
“Gossip!” She made it a challenge, then seemed to think better of it. “Based on nothing, of course. You only have to look at the poor little mouse.” A sideways glance enjoyed her own reflection in the big looking glass over the fire. “No; Mrs. Peters has said nothing; to me, at any rate. Frankly, I should think better of her if she had. But there’s talk in Boston just the same. A good deal of talk. I value our good name too highly to let it go for nothing, a poor little drab of a nursemaid. So I’ve come to ask you to face the facts, at last, about Sarah. It’s hopeless, and we must admit it. God knows we’ve tried everything. They think your mad journey to Canada quite romantic in Boston. Miss Quincy was saying so just the other day. But it’s no good, Jonathan, Dr. Smedley says so: ‘Tell him to stop breaking his heart over the impossible,’ he said. And he knows a thoroughly genteel place in Salem, Jonathan, run by a widow lady of his acquaintance. Only a few patients, you understand, and the very best of care, Jonathan!” She was pleading with him now, the big eyes seeming almost ready for tears. “You know—we must face it, you and I: it’s she—poor crazy child—who’s come between us. Only send her away and you will find everything as it used to be. We will be happy again, Jonathan. How can we be, with things as they are now? With her screams always in our ears?” She put out a white hand to touch his shoulder appealingly. “Remember what it used to be like?”
“Yes, I remember.” He brushed the hand away like a spider. “I was mad for you, if that is what you mean—and I suppose it is. Until you turned me out of your bed after Sarah was born because you’d ‘never go through that again.’ I suffered then. I don’t think you’re capable of understanding what I suffered. And now—am I to understand that you are offering to bribe me with your ‘favors’ ”—he made the word sound obscene—“if I will agree to send Sarah away to some genteel madhouse kept by friends of that ass, Smedley?”
“But Jonathan,” the huge eyes held real tears now, “you know you always wanted an heir—a Penrose to carry on the name.”
“Yes, so I did. It’s hard to imagine. As for your offer, it’s too late. That’s all over: dead as yesterday. You can’t bring back the past, Bella. We have to think of the future now, and Sarah.”
“Sarah!” She spat it out. “Never anything but Sarah. I warn you, Jonathan—”
“Yes? Warn me? Do you, perhaps, wish to change the terms of our bargain?”
“Bargain? What do you mean?” She was shaken now, wary.
“Oh—a tacit one, of course, but a bargain nevertheless. Granted, I did not understand at the time that you were marrying me for my money, but that was my fault. You’ve said yourself that I don’t understand women. Well, you should know! I was a young fool when I met you, believing a thousand impossibilities a minute. I’m older now, wiser perhaps, but the bargain holds so long as you keep your side of it.”
“Which means?” She had given up the attempt to charm him, and moved away to gaze moodily out the window at evening mist rising from the river.
“That you continue to behave like my wife. And—so far as you are able—like Sarah’s mother. And that, by the way, involves courtesy to Mrs. Croston, whom we will be meeting for dinner. Otherwise—” He left it to hang ominously in the air.
Kate and Sarah had spent the afternoon picking huckleberries in the big meadow that lay on the far side of the carriage road, and Kate had been congratulating herself, as they walked contentedly homeward through lengthening shadows, that the child really did show an improvement. Oh, nothing spectacular. She did not speak, and would not meet your eyes, but she seemed to understand more of what was said to her, and better still, she seemed more able to concentrate her energies, to go on contentedly doing the same thing. A month ago, it would have been quite impossible to spend a whole afternoon like this one, peacefully filling their baskets with the crisp, shining berries. Not that Sarah had picked steadily, when there was so much wild life to distract her—a chipmunk chattering at them from his vantage point on a wall, a snake’s cast-off skin glimmering by the path, and, as always, her favorite butterflies to chase. But these had been the activities of any ordinary child. It was only as the shadows lengthened that she began to play that strange and, to Kate, ill-omened game of laying out sticks and stones and anything else she could find in an endless line.
Seeing this, Kate had picked up her basket at once. “Time for home, Sarah.”
They had walked back cheerfully enough, Sarah dragging behind a little; needing to be sung to, one of the marching songs she loved. “Some talk of Alexander...” Oddly inappropriate, Kate thought wryly, here in the New England countryside in the second year of her war with old England. But in this sun-drenched late summer landscape it was easy to forget the war and think only of today, and the improvement in Sarah. Something heartwarming, something to tell Jonathan Penrose over dinner.
Disconcerting, then, to go in by the kitchen door with their berries and recognize instantly crisis in the air.
“Huckleberries?” Mrs. Peters, who had urged the project that morning, promising pie, now sounded as if she had never heard of such a thing. “Oh ... yes, thank you.” She put the big and the small basket down side by side and went back to her pastry. “Mrs. Penrose is home.”
It came out oddly flat. “You’d best hurry, Miss Kate, if you’re to get Sarey to bed and be changed for dinner.”
“Yes, I will have to, won’t I?” Kate was very fond of Mrs. Peters by now, and found her habit of calling her “Miss Kate” as if she had been an unmarried daughter of the house particularly endearing.
It was one thing to intend to hurry; quite another to succeed. That was one time wh
en Kate could almost have believed in diabolical possession. Where was the cheerful child who had hummed the refrain of The British Grenadier on the way home? Mrs. Peters, apparently anticipating trouble, had produced Sarah’s favorite supper of bread and milk, and Kate, aware of thunder in the air, had begun the meal with a favorite counting rhyme:
“Here’s a bite for the Frolic
And one for the Wasp...”
It was no use. The bite for the Frolic was merely spat out, but the next one was snatched and thrown across the room. And then, while Kate was retrieving the spoon, Sarah picked up the whole bowlful and poured it on the floor at her feet.
Kate was tired too. In an instant of pure rage, she seized the child, ready—to do what? Controlling herself, she merely tucked her, with firm gentleness, under her arm. “No supper, then, Sarah? Right, then it’s bedtime.” Thank goodness she had insisted that Sarah have her meals in the little, unused morning room where she could clear up the mess at her leisure.
That moment of near-violence seemed to have had a chastening effect on Sarah. Getting her to bed was often a battle, but tonight she was almost alarmingly docile, and Kate got upstairs to her own room in plenty of time to wish she had something more elegant than a well-worn India muslin to put on for dinner.
She wished it even more when she finally got up the courage to join Arabella Penrose in the drawing room. She found her alone, a striking, sullen figure in a blaze of deep, green satin, and was not sure whether she was glad or sorry that Jonathan was not there to mitigate the meeting.
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