“You don’t need that house, Steamer. You need her so much more.”
His calm was beginning to frighten her.
“I don’t need it,” he said. “But Stevenson’s does. The firm and the family. There’s nine of us. There could be—sixty, seventy, eighty of our children. The firm can’t absorb them all. Even our father’s patronage and influence wouldn’t place them all and marry them all. So we must not just penetrate the very, very, very top of Society. We must become it. We shall have to be on Christian-name terms with royalty. Not in order to do any better, you understand, not any better for our children. Just to make sure they enjoy the prospects we nine share now. That big house is only the first of the things we’re going to need. But without it we can’t even think of getting the others.”
“It sounds very cold, very calculating, very…”
“Very far seeing?” he said.
“Yes. Mama said you have that ability.”
“It won’t be so bad. It will have its compensations. But Laney Delaney has no place in such a world. I could not destroy her by trying to force her into it.”
Winifred felt sick. “Steamer,” she asked quietly, “when did you think all this out?”
He considered that question a long time. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said finally. “As soon as you and the mater turned up, I knew I was going to be cajoled into coming back. I suppose it didn’t take more than five minutes to realize I couldn’t bring Laney, too. But then I intended to turn down the offer—as I did, in fact. I didn’t decide to come back.” His voice took on a bitter edge. “I let this”—his heels stamped at the deck of the ship—“and that”—he waved at the ocean—“make it irrevocable for me. I’ll marry Linny Sherringham. She goes with the job, you could say.”
By now, Winifred was so appalled she could barely rise above a whisper. “But then you think just like our father. He wouldn’t disagree with a word you’ve said.”
“Hah!” The bitterness was absolute. “The wormwood and gall of this last year has been the slow realization that the guvnor has been absolutely right. Every step of the way. Except that he should have sired me before Boy.”
“Oh, Caspar!” she shouted as she ran away. “You are such a clever fool!”
***
They called briefly at Cork, which allowed Caspar to kit himself out in new clothes and return his borrowed ones to the First Officer.
When they docked at Liverpool, John was on the pierside. He had come with only one question on his mind—and his binoculars had answered it while the Great Eastern was still out in the tideway.
The delight on his face was huge as he ran up the gangway, the moment it was in position. He had eyes only for Caspar.
But in those final yards a doubt—almost a shyness—seemed to possess John.
“Guvnor!” Caspar called out. He advanced with outstretched hand, a huge smile where no such smile had been for nine year-long days.
Reassured, John strode toward him again, so that they almost collided. Too close for a handshake, they embraced, and then again. Then John, radiant in his joy, caught his son by the shoulders and held him off for an arm’s length inspection. He glanced swiftly and slyly over Caspar’s shoulders at the unsmiling face of Winifred.
“I decided I couldn’t fight all the Stevensons and win. They’re too tough.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Guv’nor,” Caspar answered. “I’ve just joined your side.”
John laughed uproarious delight. “Think we can keep them in their place?” he asked. “You and I, together?”
“Better than that,” Caspar replied, and he, too, looked over his shoulder to smile at Winifred. “First we’ll find them a place. Then we’ll keep them in it!”
Laughing together, they went down the gangplank, not even noticing that the ladies were left behind.
“Sometimes,” Nora said, looking at the two black-coated backs and the tall, shiny hats of her husband and son, “sometimes it would be rather nice to be a god.”
About the Author
Malcolm Macdonald is the author of thirty novels, including the bestselling Stevenson Family Saga, Rose of Nancemellin, and Hell Hath No Fury. He was born in England in 1932, and currently lives in Ireland.
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