“Has she had anything to eat?”
“To eat!” Arabella was on the verge of one of her rages. “What do you think! We’re to pay for the damage in the dining parlor, Charles.” But he had turned to leave the room and took no notice. “Well!” For a moment, Kate thought she would let rage conquer discretion, but, recollecting herself, “Best lose no time, Mrs. Croston,” she said, “if we are really to start at once.”
Grateful for her experience in just such little country inns when traveling with Jonathan, Kate began by finding her way to the big, hot kitchen at the back of the house. As she expected, the landlady and two of her daughters were hard at work there preparing the dinner Arabella had ordered. It was none of her business to warn them their labor was to be wasted. “How do you do,” she had learned from watching Jonathan, that the owners of an inn must be treated as rather better than equals. “Forgive my intruding when I can see how busy you are, but I’m Sarah’s nurse. I came to apologize for all the trouble she’s caused you. Poor child, traveling always upsets her.”
“Upsets!” The red-faced landlady handed her wooden spoon to the taller of her two girls. “I’m upset too, I can tell you, by the mess she’s made in my dining room. They’ll find it on their bill, and so I warned Mrs. Manningham.”
Mrs. Manningham? But—of course. “I am so sorry.” Kate really meant it. “There’s nothing worse than a panicky child, is there? It’s almost an illness with Sarah. I can see you’ve had no trouble of that kind.” Here a glance for the two stout, red-faced girls who so unfortunately favored their mother.
“No, ma’am; never a day’s trouble with mine.” The landlady was thawing. “ ‘Make them mind you,’ that’s what I say. First and last, that’s the secret of childrearing. But that Mrs. Manningham—why, you’d think she’d never had the care of the child before. In fact, we had begun to wonder, my good man and I, just what was going on?” Her curiosity was almost palpable in the room.
For a moment, Kate was horribly tempted. If she told this good-natured, inquisitive woman what was, in fact, going on, surely she would fetch help? But—what help, in a village this size? Charles Manningham would carry it, she was sure, with a high hand. The only result would be that she was left behind, and Sarah taken on, helpless, drugged with laudanum. And what effect that might have on the child’s already disordered nervous system...
It did not bear thinking of. “You might well wonder,” she said as cheerfully as she could. “The trouble is, Mrs. Manningham’s not had much to do with the child. She’s—well, you know what Boston society is like?”
“One of those is she? Just what I thought. I’ve read of their doings, the painted Jezebels: balls and parties, picnics on Sundays; and even going to the theater.” She made it sound like the uttermost depth of debauchery. “Yes, I reckoned that was what it was, miss, but glad to have you confirm it, and will set my husband’s fears at rest. We’re a respectable house, mind, and a God-fearing one, and no wish to get mixed up in anything underhand.”
“Of course not.” It was frightening to have succeeded so easily. “I can see you’re a good woman, ma’am, and not one to stand by and let a child suffer. And it makes me bolder to ask a favor of you.”
“A favor?” She was all bristling suspicion at once.
“Oh, nothing much. It’s just—could I possibly, do you think, have a glass of milk and a bit of cake for the child? I know it’s asking a lot, when it’s not your regular dinner hour, but by all accounts she’s had nothing to eat all day, naughty little thing; and you know, don’t you, ma’am, how badly growing children need their food? I’m sure your handsome daughters had plenty of midday snacks from you when they were growing.”
“That they did.” The woman moved across the room to pour a mugful of milk from a big stone crock. “No child shall starve in my house, that’s one thing certain. As for some folks that want their dinners to suit themselves, not me, that’s something else again.” She cut off a lavish slice of fruitcake as she spoke, and Kate was able to thank her and retreat with it before she had drawn breath for a new volley of questions.
The ladies’ bedroom was on the shady side of the house, and the air struck pleasantly cool when Kate entered it. At first sight, the room seemed empty, then she saw the small figure, curled in a tight knot on the farthest bed. Sarah was fast asleep, her arms clutching the pillow among a welter of disordered bedding. She was still wearing the nightgown in which she had been carried off, and Kate had a horrified vision of her mother trying—and failing—to get her dressed.
She had lost weight while confined with the measles, and her face, relaxed in sleep, looked alarmingly thin, pale and dark-shadowed. At the sight, Kate abandoned any thought of trying to rouse the landlady on their side. It must inevitably mean a scene—another scene for the poor child to endure. No, for the moment, she must co-operate with Manningham and Arabella, simply to protect Sarah from the kind of inquisition to which she would be subjected if the question of her parentage should be raised. Imagine some bungling country lawyer trying to find out from speechless Sarah whether Arabella was indeed her mother. Of course—she sat down quietly by the bed—this was the strength of Manningham’s position. What did it matter that Arabella was traveling under an assumed name, when her daughter could not speak to accuse her—and Kate would not?
The sound of horses being got ready in the yard below reminded her of her mission. Reluctantly, she put a hand to Sarah’s cheek in the gentle gesture she had found efficacious in waking her. The child reacted like a wild animal, awake in an instant, trembling all over, curled even more tightly in on herself, hands over her eyes, as if what she did not see, could not hurt her.
“It’s all right, Sarah pet.” It was an effort to keep the anger out of her voice. “It’s me: Kate.”
The hands came down at once. Two huge eyes stared at Kate as if they did not believe what they saw, and then, astonishingly, her lips moved: “Kate,” she whispered, and for the first time since Kate had known her, big tears began to fill her eyes.
“It’s all right, my poppet, it’s all right my honey.” Kate had her in her arms now, rocking her like a baby. “I’m here now: I won’t leave you for anything.” And Jonathan Penrose will just have to arrange his life around that, she told herself. But harness was jingling in the yard below. “Sarah, honey, we’re going on a long journey, you and I. You’ll like that, won’t you, now I’m here? We’ll ride in the coach all day and see all kinds of new things and people and I’ll be beside you all the time. But first we must get you dressed, mustn’t we? Just look at you sitting there in your nightgown in the middle of the day. I don’t know what your father would say. No.” The big eyes had asked a question. “He’s not coming too, but I hope we’ll see him when we get there. We’re going to Washington, Sarah, where the President lives in his palace. Won’t that be a treat! I’ll take you to see all the sights when we get there.” No use worrying now as to whether she would be able to keep the promise. At any rate, while she talked, she had been expertly helping Sarah out of her nightgown and into pantalettes, petticoat, and frilled muslin dress. “And now, before we go down and say hello to our horses, something to eat, don’t you think? I’m famished, aren’t you?” She broke off a piece of the cake and fed it to Sarah, whose mouth opened willingly, like a small bird’s.
By eating a few crumbs herself, she managed to keep up the fiction of a shared meal, which had always been the best way to get Sarah to eat. “And now, your hair, Sarah! You never saw such a bird’s nest. And we’ve no brush either, so be patient with me, love; we don’t want to shame our traveling companions do we?” She was busy with her pocket comb as she spoke, teasing out the tangles in Sarah’s hair. Usually, this would have been apt to provoke rebellion or even a screaming fit, but today Sarah just leaned confidingly against her, the big tears still pouring down her cheeks.
“It’s all right, honey.” Unbearably touched, she bent down to kiss her. “It’s all right now, I promise you.” How she
hoped it was true.
Downstairs, there was, inevitably, a row going on between the landlady and Manningham about the uneaten dinner. Kate shepherded Sarah quickly through the contending parties and got her out into the village street, where the coach Manningham had hired stood ready. The coachman, a gloomy-looking man with a squint, was standing by his horses, ostentatiously consulting a huge pocket watch.
Kate smiled at him. “They’ll be out directly—I hope.” And then, remembering the lessons in friendliness she had learned from Jonathan. “I’m Mrs. Croston— you’ve met Sarah, but not at her best, I’m afraid. May she say how-do-you-do to your horses?”
“Surely.” He spat out his quid of tobacco neatly at her feet. “I reckon she looks a sight better than she did this morning. Feeling better now, hey?” This to Sarah, who hung back, clinging to Kate’s hand.
“Much better, thank you,” Kate answered for her. “She does not speak, you know.” The memory of that whispered, “Kate,” was warm in her heart. “But she loves horses, don’t you, pet?” And she lifted Sarah up to make much of one sleek brown nose after another.
When Manningham and Arabella emerged, still angry, from the inn a few minutes later, the coachman was Sarah’s established friend, busy trying to make the rear seat of his clumsy vehicle comfortable for someone with such short legs. He was called about his business sharply by Manningham. “Must we wait for you all day, my man?”
“Just fancy.” He emerged, broadly grinning, from the back of the coach. “And there was I thinking I was waiting for you.”
Watching Manningham swallow the familiarity, Kate smiled to herself. She might be able to get Sarah through this journey after all. Arabella, brought up in the South, had never understood the democratic, anti-slave Northerners, and Manningham would not learn in time how to treat these independent upstanding Yankees who actually thought themselves as good as he was. It was almost a pity, in a way, that she had abandoned the idea of trying for help, but—no—the feeling of Sarah, already nodding off to sleep against her, enjoying security again, was an antidote to this. Time enough to think of escape when they got to Washington.
THIRTEEN
Sarah bore the journey much better than Kate had feared. The coachman, Silas, her firm friend, managed in all kinds of small ways to make it pleasant for her. If these attentions also succeeded in irritating Manningham and Arabella, why, so much the better. He had, fixed his price for the trip. Take it or leave it, was his attitude, and like it or not, they had to take it.
Inevitably, taking this western route which was to avoid all the major cities along the coast, they spent their days on bad roads and their nights at one small, village inn after another. Kate watched almost with awe as, night after night, Arabella and Manningham contrived to irritate their hosts, she by her complaints and he by his hauteur. When she could, she managed, by explaining Sarah’s condition, to achieve, at best, an early meal for the two of them, at worst a position at the big, communal table as far as possible from the other two. Thus, she was able to follow, with a kind of sympathetic horror, the worsening of their relations. For Arabella, everything was Manningham’s fault, while all the things that infuriated him about Americans in general, were, inevitably, part of Arabella. Watching their tiffs become quarrels, Kate began to wonder whether this ill-starred venture might not be’ abandoned before ever they reached Washington.
The best thing, so far as she was concerned, was that Sarah appeared miraculously immune to their behavior. The days when her mother’s mere presence might bring on one of her screaming fits seemed to be gone forever. So long as she had Kate always with her, nothing seemed to trouble her. They did everything together, and Kate, watching Sarah’s cheerful acceptance of one strange meal and bed after another, even found herself wondering if this fantastic journey might not be, in some incomprehensible way, just the thing she needed. Had she been, at Penrose, too engrained in the habits of a difficult case? If only it ended right, this ruthless uprooting might even prove good for her.
If only it ended right ... There was the crux of the matter. That was what she tried not to think about, because Sarah always grew restless when she did. So Kate thought determinedly about nothing but the farms, fields and orchards they passed, the excitement of crossing a horse ferry, or the pleasure of getting out to walk beside the coach as the horses labored up a long hill (Arabella never did so) and the reward, at the top, of a whole new prospect of smiling America.
“Lord, it’s a vast country.” Manningham, to do him justice, always got out and walked with them, when the horses were hard-pressed.
“Yes. Doesn’t it make you understand, traveling like this, day after day, how Napoleon must have felt when he took his great army into Russia and found nothing but fields, and forest, and burning villages?” How odd it was, she thought, turning to help Sarah over a rough bit of the hill road, to be talking thus to Manningham, of all people, Manningham, who had ... She checked herself: these thoughts were .best left deep in the well of the mind. There would be a time for them, later. Or—would there? Wounds heal, she thought. If you survive, that is ... Now she did not even hate Charles Manningham, she just despised him.
But Sarah was pulling impatiently at her hand. “Tired, honey?” She swung her up into her arms. “Not far now to the top of the hill. Or would you like to ride with Silas?”
The head that leaned against her shoulder shook itself vigorously, and she sighed. That one miraculous word she had spoken, that whispered, “Kate,” did not seem, after all her hopes, to have been the beginning of anything.
“Let me take her; she’s far too heavy for you.” Manningham had misinterpreted the sigh and tried to disentangle Sarah from her perch on Kate’s hip.
In an instant, she was a wild thing, clinging frantically to Kate, and at the same moment Arabella leaned out of the open side of the coach. “Charles! Must I be shouting for you forever? I’m suffocating in here!”
A rueful, almost conspiratorial smile for Kate, and he had moved forward to offer his sympathies and suggest that Arabella might enjoy a stroll in the cool of the evening.
“The horses might profit, too, I reckon,” put in Silas, who was walking at their heads, encouraging them up the steep slope.
Regrettably, Arabella swore at him with a freedom that cast an odd light on the education of a southern young lady. For a moment, Kate thought that he was going to refuse to go any further, but all he did was laugh. “I reckon you’ll owe me danger money when we get to Washington,” he told Manningham. “The things I have to put up with. If it weren’t for the young ladies...” He left it at that, but Manningham did not. Kate, a reluctant eavesdropper from the ladies’ bedroom above the porch of the inn that night, heard his voice and Arabella’s furiously raised and could only congratulate herself as she drifted off to sleep that except for the odd hysterical, phrase on Arabella’s part, she could hear only the angry tone, not the words.
Arabella was visibly subdued in the morning, and the journey went more easily after that, but they were all deeply travel-weary and proportionately relieved when Silas waved his whip in an easterly direction one heavy August evening and said, “Baltimore’s over there, I reckon. Two days now should see us home, I guess, if all goes well and we don’t run into your friends.”
This was directed at Manningham. “My friends?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“Why, that tarnation British squadron that’s been raising Cain down here on the Chesapeake for the last year. The word is, they’re to be reinforced, now the war’s over in Europe. Well, I reckon that stands to reason, don’t it? Anyways, don’t expect to find yourself just the most popular man in Washington, speaking the way you do. If you run into any kin of the womenfolk were attacked at Hampton last summer, I’d cut and run, if I were you. Those Virginians are mighty touchy where their honor is concerned, and I don’t guess you’re much of a dueling man.”
“Insolent!” But Manningham said it under his breath. Already the journey had take
n longer than he had expected. “We can’t afford to quarrel with the man—” he explained to Arabella that evening. “We must get there as fast as possible—and if he were to leave us in the lurch here ... Suppose we were to find your husband there before us!”
“Suppose what you like!” Arabella no longer even pretended to keep her temper with him. “I can think of nothing more likely. Jonathan won’t have wasted his time running over every side road and patronizing every filthy, bug-infested inn he can find. He’ll have gone the direct way, never fear, and be waiting for us.”
“Yes, maybe, but he won’t find us. You did say, did you not, that he knew nothing about your cousin’s house?”
“Of course I did. He’s never even heard of her. And as to the house, it’s not in Washington at all, but a couple of miles out on the brow of a gorge called Rock Creek. Once we get there, he’ll never find us, but just be so good as to explain to me how we are to get there. You know as well as I do that Kate Croston means to make trouble the moment we reach town, and that oaf of a driver will side with her; and Sarah will have one of her screaming fits and draw people in from miles around—and then what will become of us?”
He laughed. “Give me credit for having thought of these hazards too, my love. And admit that we could not have made the journey without Mrs. Croston.” Now that they were approaching Washington he was making a determined effort to improve the strained relations between them. He had not gone to all this trouble merely to lose the money he meant to have with her because of a little quarreling on the way. Sometimes, it was true, when she was at her most captious, he found himself wondering whether it was all worth it, but then, despite what he had told her, the chances of his ever having to marry her—or even being able to do so, were slight enough to be negligible. And money he must have before he returned to England to face his creditors.
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