Charity Child

by Sara Seale

  “And you for me,” she said, but did not sound too sure she liked it. He spoke, she thought, in riddles, as he so often did.

  “You, my child, have no experience at all, thank heavens!” he retorted calmly. “Look! There are some of your lambs—none the worse, as you can see, for the blizzard. Do you know that old street cry:

  ‘Young lambs to sell, white lambs to sell;

  If I’d as much money as I could tell

  I wouldn’t be crying Young Lambs to sell!’ ”

  They turned back along the Beacon for home, and Charity felt release from her earlier doubts. They were the good companions of untroubled days, just as she and her father had been, striding over the springy turf in the wind, quoting snatches of poetry to one another and old nursery rhymes.

  When they came to the house, she was instantly reminded of her first arrival at Cleat, for the door swung open and there was Astrea in the porch, her arms outstretched to receive them.

  “Such news, my dears!” she cried. “Such tremendous tidings! Roma is coming home and she wants to come here.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THERE was no music that evening, but Charity found the perpetual arguments exhausting. They discussed it endlessly, it seemed, at least Astrea did, returning again and again to opposing points of view, while Marc listened patiently.

  Roma Nixon had cabled from America, apparently; she was sailing shortly and would arrive in time for Easter. Might she come home to her dear Astrea?

  “So typical, so imaginative—the prodigal returning at Eastertide!” Astrea had said, the tears running down her cheeks, but almost in the next breath she had exclaimed: “I will not have her here! With all that money, she can well afford hotels. She ran away to marry that old man, leaving me alone—and you too, Marc—why should I welcome her now?’

  And so it went on through the rest of the day and most of Sunday. One moment Roma was the spiritual daughter without whom Astrea could not exist, the next Charity had taken her place and a reunion with old ties was not to be thought of. At last, when at luncheon on Sunday Astrea turned to her nephew for the hundredth time to demand his advice, he replied with the taut irritability of a man whose patience was exhausted: “Why ask me, for heaven’s sake? You know perfectly well that you’re enjoying every minute of this quite unnecessary disturbance, Astrea, and in the end you’ll do exactly as you please. None of this can be very pleasant for Charity, who might well be excused for thinking herself in danger of the push in favor of Roma. We’ve both played up to you long enough. Now, for goodness’ sake, drop it.”

  Astrea’s eyes filled and she sent Charity a conciliatory look and a vague wave of the hand.

  “But of course my little Ganymede wouldn’t be sent away, should Roma come here,” she said with plaintive reproach. “She is simpatica, which Roma often was not—this lamb is very tough, I believe it’s mutton, Minnie must speak to the butcher—no, Charity, my dear, dear child, do not be anxious. After all, Roma would only be here on a visit, would she not?”

  “So I imagine,” Marc said shortly. “So what all the fuss is about, I can’t think.”

  “You have forgotten, perhaps, how she treated me?”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten. When you made certain conditions in your will which I could not agree to, the girl took a short cut to wealth and security, and I, for one, couldn’t blame her.”

  Astrea, who had long ago abandoned her diet of nuts, absently poured custard on to her meat in mistake for mint sauce and gazed at him with mournful eyes.

  “I had forgotten your own feelings were involved, dear boy,” she said in muted tones. “You would not, of course, wish to come here for Easter if it meant meeting poor Roma again. How very thoughtless of your old aunt.”

  Charity had become accustomed to Astrea’s disregard for the privacy of personal matters in front of other people, but she had been surprised that even Astrea had been able to ignore her nephew’s reactions until this moment. When the news had first been broken to him his face had set into that cold mask of reserve which he had learnt so well to affect, and Charity thought there had been a brief but instantly suppressed hint of pain in his eyes, but now he merely regarded his aunt with a quizzical expression and retorted:

  “My feelings are not involved at all, my dear aunt so leave them out of your calculations.”

  “Then you would still come for Easter?”

  “Naturally. I’ve no wish to upset my arrangements now.”

  “I wonder—” Astrea began reflectively, and Charity knew, as if the sentence had been completed, that another little scheme had just been born. Marc evidently knew it, too, for his smile was bitter and without amusement as he said:

  “Make what arrangements you like, Astrea, but be warned by past experience. Seven years is a long time, and people change.”

  “I do not change ever, for I am Astrea, the Star-maiden—what a peculiar flavor,” his aunt said absently, taking a mouthful of meat and custard. “Yes, dear boy, you are right. I must make the decision.”

  “Well, do it quickly, and then you can send off this wretched cable and we may be allowed to forget the whole thing for the rest of the day.”

  Astrea looked surprised.

  “But I’ve already sent it. I sent it yesterday, before you got home. The stars were most propitious.”

  Marc who had been about to drink his accustomed Sunday beer, put down the heavy glass mug with a bang that nearly shattered it.

  “Do you mean to tell me that you—even you—have been putting us through this ridiculous circus for the fun of it, when your mind was already made up?” he demanded furiously.

  “Don’t shout, dear boy—it will disturb Minnie in the kitchen. I wanted your views, naturally. I, of course, acted at once on impulse. I could not refuse the refuge of my heart and my home which are open to all, could I?” Astrea beamed tranquilly on them both, and Marc got to his feet with a barely stifled imprecation.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, aunt—I haven’t the stomach for any more lunch, with or without custard. I’ll pack my things and go back to London this afternoon, if you don’t mind. I’ve had about as much as I can take of your histrionics, coupled with those confounded stars,” he said, and walked out of the room.

  “Custard?” murmured Astrea, looking quite bewildered.

  “You’re eating custard with your lamb instead of mint sauce,” Charity said. She felt exhausted and also a little hysterical; there had been something faintly comic in Astrea’s outrageous behavior and her nephew’s subsequent loss of temper.

  “Marc is seldom rude to me,” Astrea complained, sounding a little ill-used. “Would you think he still cares for Roma after all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Charity replied, the desire for laughter leaving her, “but if he does, you’ve scarcely helped to make things any easier, have you?”

  “Now, don’t you start, dear child,” said Astrea fretfully. “Marc can stand a little hectoring—he hands it out himself when it suits him.”

  “I don’t like unkindness,” Charity said. “Marc’s been very patient with you.”

  “O-ho!” exclaimed Astrea, delighted to have got a rise. “You have a little fondness for him, after all? This should be interesting when Roma comes home—not that you can hold a candle to her, my poor child.”

  Charity fought back her desire to follow Marc’s example and lose her temper. Astrea was impossible in her present mood, but Charity knew there was nothing she would like better than to draw blood and complete the rout.

  “I don’t expect to compete with Mrs. Nixon in looks, or in any other way,” she said quietly. “Shall I ring for Minnie to clear?”

  “If you please,” said Astrea graciously, resorting, as usual, to dignity when she knew she had gone too far. “You know, dear child, my stars for today forecast strife and opposition, and misunderstanding. I should have been warned, should I not?”

  “Yes, you should.”

  Astrea knew when sh
e was beaten. When the child looked at her like that with grave, accusing eyes, and a polite refusal to be blandished, it was better to leave well alone. In any case she had had her amusement for the day, and perhaps it had not been very entertaining, after all.

  “I will go and make my peace with Marc,” she announced virtuously. “I shall persuade him, of course, to stay until tomorrow.”

  Whether or not she had made her peace with her nephew, Charity was not to know, but she did not succeed in persuading him to stay. Charity, from the window, watched him drive away half an hour later. He had not stopped to say goodbye.

  In the days that followed, Astrea seemed petulant and uncertain. Having made her gesture, she was inclined to regret it. She must, she said, offer hospitality, since it was demanded of her, but there it would end. When Charity suggested that she should move out of the room that had once been Roma’s, she was told not to be foolish.

  “Roma is merely a visitor,” Astrea said sweepingly. “You, my dear child, are my spiritual daughter. Do not forget it.”

  But for all this, Charity sensed her excited anticipation. She might resist the implication that the return of the prodigal could in any way affect her, after all this time, but she argued endlessly with Minnie on Roma’s favorite dishes, Roma’s preference in wines, and her objection, when she was last at Cleat, to Astrea’s refusal to have a radio in the house.

  “Perhaps we should get a set,” Astrea said grudgingly. “My magnificent recordings should satisfy anyone, but the young like this jazz, or jive, or whatever it’s called.”

  A set was installed, not in the music-room, which would have been sacrilege, but in the little study which Roma apparently used to use as her sitting-room.

  “But if she’s only coming on a visit—” Charity protested, her economical soul a little shocked, but Astrea took up one of her grandiose attitudes.

  “No matter!” she said. “The thing will come in handy afterwards. Me, I have no concern with things that happen in the world today, but you and Minnie might care to hear the news.”

  “She’s really looking forward to Mrs. Nixon’s return, isn’t she?” Charity asked Minnie, as she helped to turn out the room that would be Roma’s during her visit.

  The old dresser’s mouth pursed in discouraging lines. “She likes the novelty of anything unexpected,” she replied. “Miss Roma always made a lot of work. She’ll make it again, I don’t doubt.”

  “Well, I’ll always give you a hand, Minnie,” Charity said shyly. She was still uncertain as to whether the old woman had accepted her or not.

  “H’m ... maybe it’ll come to that,” Minnie said, without enthusiasm. “You’ll find your nose out of joint, I shouldn’t wonder, young miss.”

  “Not at all,” Charity replied pleasantly. “I’m here as a paid companion, as you yourself have often pointed out There’s been no need for you to wait on me.”

  Minnie sniffed. “I take my orders from Madam,” she said. “If she fancied you as one of them spiritual how-d’you-do’s she’s always talking about, it weren’t nothing to do with me. Had these fads all her life, has m’lady.”

  “She’s lonely,” Charity said gently, and the old woman left her polishing and dusting for a moment to give Charity a shrewd look.

  “You’re the only one that’s understood her, I’ll say that for you,” she said gruffly. “Them others—took what they could get, and laughed behind her back, I shouldn’t wonder. She wasn’t always a figure of fun, wasn’t m’lady.”

  “You’re very devoted to her, aren’t you?” Charity said.

  Minnie shrugged.

  “We’ve been through good times and bad together. That makes a bond,” she said. “She romances a lot now, but she made a stir in her day, when all’s said and done, not but what she doesn’t get mixed in her dates. But it’s sad, young miss, when the world forgets you. There’s loneliness and heartbreak too, in clinging to the past. Miss Roma never understood that.”

  “She was too young, perhaps.”

  “No younger than what you are, but Madam spoilt her. All this talk of the money and then making conditions—but Mr. Marc was never one to fall in with her whims, and so they both found out.”

  “Mrs. Nixon could have married Mr. Marc on his own terms,” Charity said tentatively, and Minnie sniffed again.

  “When you’ve had a fortune dangled in front of your nose, you, maybe, don’t think so clear,” she answered. “You be warned, young miss. Her money is m’lady’s only weapon now. I wouldn’t like to see you come unstuck, like the others.”

  It was the first intimation Minnie had ever given that she considered Charity any different from her predecessors, and the girl’s heart warmed to her.

  “I’m not concerned with the money, Minnie,” she said shyly. “I know Mrs. Stubbs is given to—fancies.”

  “And don’t you let her hear you calling her that!” the old woman snapped, reverting to her usual manner, but her eyes rested for a moment with grudging tolerance upon Charity, before she resumed her task of cleaning.

  Marc was not coming down again until the courts rose just before Easter, and the day before Good Friday Roma Nixon arrived at Cleat, unheralded, having driven from the docks in a hired car with a pile of luggage.

  Charity was arranging flowers in the music-room when she heard the sudden commotion and saw Astrea sweep into the hall and clasp someone to her bosom in the all-too-familiar embrace. There were exclamations, cries of protest and delight, then they came into the music-room together.

  “Roma, my dear, dear child! Let me look at you!” Astrea cried, oblivious, as usual, of the presence of a third person, and Charity, forgotten, let her eyes dwell curiously on the newcomer and they widened as they gazed.

  Roma was tall and exquisite from her flaming head of hair to her expensively shod feet; her face had the lovely purity of a mediaeval painting, with its full lips and smooth contours, and there was something oddly familiar in the expression. It was not until later that Charity realized that Astrea had once been like this, that she might in truth have said to Roma, as she had to Charity: “You are my lost youth ...”

  “The same ... the same ...” Astrea was saying, devouring the girl’s face with moist eyes. “Oh, my darling, such a long time! So much water under the bridge ... so many wasted years ...”

  “You don’t change, either, Astrea,” Roma said with a smile. “And I remember that old tea-gown seven years ago.” She spoke in a slow, rather husky voice, and her years in the States had given her a slight accent which was rather attractive.

  “Seven years!” Astrea said, and bestowed upon her another violent embrace.

  Roma extricated herself languidly and her eyes rested for a moment on Charity.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “A little girl called Charity Child. She’s my companion,” Astrea said with careless indifference, and Roma’s finely pencilled eyebrows rose.

  “That makes you sound very elderly, Astrea,” she remarked with amusement. “What do you need a companion for?”

  “I was lonely,” Astrea said with unusual simplicity, and Charity, who had been half-way across the room to shake hands, went back to her flowers.

  “Did you miss me?” Roma asked idly, her eyes wandering round the familiar room, marking each remembered item, the professional photographs, the framed programs and yellowing manuscripts, the plaster plaques of musicians’ heads in relief on the walls.

  Charity watched her surreptitiously. The mink, the jewels, the inviting whiff of some provocative scent as she moved, put her in another world, the world of pampered women who had never been obliged to work for a living. Just for a moment Charity knew an unfamiliar pang of envy.

  “Not at all!” Astrea retorted, remembering that she had nursed a grievance for seven years. “You treated me abominably! You were my daughter in all but fact, and I would have made you my heiress.”

  “But you didn’t, Astrea. You offered me a bone, then snatched it away.”
>
  “Because Marc wouldn’t have you on those terms and you didn’t care enough to take him on his.”

  “Oh, yes, Marc ... is he married?” Roma asked softly, sinking into a chair by the fire, where she sat, smoking one cigarette after another. She appeared to have Astrea’s gift for discussing her private affairs before a stranger.

  “No, he is not, and he will be here for Easter.”

  Roma’s long lashes veiled her eyes for a moment. She had heavy lids, Charity noticed, smooth and full and very white.

  “Does he know I’ll be here?” she asked.

  “Naturally,” Astrea replied. “He has quite got over you, my dear, in fact he—” Her eyes slid to Charity, and Roma’s followed.

  “In fact he what?” she prompted, looking suddenly alert, but Astrea only smiled as if she had scored a point.

  “Never mind,” she said, and for some reason Roma seemed suddenly to annoy her.

  “This dear child,” she went on, gesturing towards Charity, “is my spiritual daughter, just as you once were. She is very simpatica. I’m thinking of adopting her.”

  For the first time Roma Nixon gave Charity her full attention. Her eyes travelled deliberately over the girl, appraising, discarding. She had in that moment, Charity thought uncomfortably, Marc’s own gift for applying silent judgment.