‘Women walking, women talking, women weeping!’ said Duncan. ‘Doing all they can do. I will thank you to let me pass, as I am to catch a train this morning. Otherwise I would ask less. Your chatter may wait, as it is what the day holds for you.’
Alison and Nance and Cassie were talking on the staircase.
‘Do you want us to come to breakfast, Father? It is not quite time.’
‘Want you to come? What would it do for me? It would do something for you, as I see it. I want my own breakfast, as I am pressed. And why say it is not time, when I tell you my time has come for it? Can you not hear me speak?’
‘Even from the stairs,’ said his daughter. ‘Let us take advantage of his mood. Nothing should count this morning.’
‘Come in, if you are coming; and go out, if you are going, and let me hear nothing. So, Sibyl, you appear in your right mind. What were you doing, weeping and helping some other woman to weep? I heard your noises from my room.’
‘I was talking to Richard’s nurse, Father. She is going to leave, and is very upset. I have only just heard.’
‘There is no secret about it, I suppose?’
185 ‘Sibyl, why were you alone with one of the maids?’ said Cassie, in a sudden, sharp tone.
‘For the reason she has told us,’ said Duncan. ‘A woman may speak to another woman in my house. I did not look to hear foolishness from you, Miss Jekyll.’
There was a pause.
‘Why is the nurse going?’ said Duncan. ‘Is there anything wrong about her? If there is, see she leaves our house for another, that other people may put up with her, and not ourselves. And fill her place, and make no ado. And do not tell me what is amiss, as I have no wish to hear.’
‘She is not what we want,’ said his wife. ‘I am going to satisfy my maternal instincts, and look after Richard myself.’
‘Look after him yourself? Be tied to him, morning, noon, and night? Your instinct is good for that, when it has lain fallow for your life. It is a scheme you would make. It will take you a week to tire of it.’
‘Cassie will have an eye on me, and keep me to my duty.’
‘Why should she do so? What is our brat to her? As it is no duty of yours, it is less of hers. See you engage a nurse, as that chances to be your duty.’
‘I have a right to look after my own child, if I choose.’
‘I dispute your words. You are not the fit person. Look on yourself as he would look on you. And it is not your employment. That, as I see it, is to do nothing. And I don’t understand why the woman is going. I thought the brat hankered after her.’
There was a pause.
‘This is no folly of yours, Grant,’ said Duncan. ‘So there is this over again, when you are by rights past it. I should be glad 186 to get out of the sight of you, if I did not leave the women of my house.’
‘You are doing that with your eyes open. You expose rather many to the risk, if you make much of it.’
‘Be silent. I have no use for your words. It will be for you to be the better for mine, when I have time to give them. Be easy about them: I can keep a rod in pickle.’
‘We can look after Richard between us,’ said Alison. ‘It cannot take more than four women to attend to a child.’
‘A lot of baffled old maids,’ observed her husband.
‘If it does take more, command me,’ said Grant. ‘I am to be left in the feminine circle.’
‘Keep out of the house, where your business is,’ said Duncan. ‘Who has taken out the boy this morning, while the nurse sheds her tears?’
‘The housemaid, who is fond of him,’ said his wife.
‘Marshall was too upset to go out,’ said Sibyl.
‘So it does take more than four women to attend to a child. I direct you shall engage a fifth, and a sixth, if need be, as soon as is feasible. It is our custom to have a suitable person in the nursery.’
‘It appears it hardly is, Father,’ said Nance.
‘Alison has made up her mind,’ said Sibyl. ‘Let her have her way, Father, and make some occupation for herself.’
‘And what occupation have you for yourself? It is time you had children of your own, and the right to speak.’
‘We must all make shift with Richard,’ said Nance. ‘It would be a pity to have a nurse, and frustrate the four.’
‘Miss Jekyll, I did not know you hankered after brats.’
‘I have been fond of all of yours, Mr Edgeworth.’ 187
‘But you have not run about after them. I did not know it was your fancy. Their mother used to say it was not.’ Duncan now spoke freely of his first wife before the second.
‘When Richard reaches a further stage, Cassie will undertake him single-handed,’ said Nance. ‘One woman is enough when education is in question.’
‘We would have less, if we could, for what he will want,’ said Duncan. ‘Miss Jekyll will do for him what she fancies, and no more. What use is a boy to a woman? And as I have no concern in your talk, I beg you to continue it without me.’
‘Cassie, the nurse is not going because of me?’ said Grant. ‘What bee have you got in your bonnet? You are not often so wide of the mark.’
‘We can’t know how it will go on,’ said Cassie, not meeting his eyes.
‘There is Richard coming back in the rain!’ said Nance. ‘He ought to have an umbrella.’
‘I direct you shall obtain an umbrella, and a second, if need be, as soon as is feasible,’ said Grant. ‘It is our custom to have a suitable umbrella in the nursery.’
‘I will go and meet him,’ said Nance: ‘I am feeling rather baffled this morning.’
Cassie followed her; Grant went upstairs; and Alison and Sibyl were alone.
‘Are you going upstairs with Richard, Alison?’
‘No. He has a sufficient escort.’
‘That is not your reason. It is because you are expecting Almeric.’
‘Well, in that case it is polite to stay and receive him. We can’t press everyone into Richard’s service.’ 188
‘I know you want me to go away.’
‘You should suppress the knowledge, if you are not going to act upon it.’
‘I am not going to act upon it; I will not be driven about in my father’s house. I was here nearly twenty years before you were.’
‘I am familiar with that twenty years. I do not regret that I had no part in them. I can leave you to hold this position, if you wish. I am not tenacious of positions in your father’s house. That is as well, as mine belongs to somebody else, who seems remarkably tenacious of it.’
‘Father is in the drawing-room. You will hardly wait for Almeric with him there.’
‘I would not do anything with him there, this morning.’
‘Alison, you liked us, when you first came, didn’t you?’
‘I thought you accepted the stepmother with fortitude. I recall it, when now I observe it failing.’
‘Would you like to lose Nance and Cassie’s friendship?’
‘No friendship that is lost has ever been worth having.’
‘I thought you so much prettier than you thought me,’ said Sibyl, bursting into tears. ‘I thought you were beautiful, and I think so now. I know how Father must have felt; and I know how Almeric feels, when you let him. But it will pass, as it has for you and Father.’ Sibyl raised her eyes to Alison’s face. ‘Grant was the second person you were fond of, wasn’t he?’
‘You make me out an affectionate creature.’
There were sounds of Duncan’s leaving the house, with the milder stir of the present days.
‘I hear the departure of my first love. Why do you assume he was my first, when your view of me is what it is? And I am deserted by my second, and will leave the third to you.’ 189
Almeric entered the hall, and looked up the staircase.
‘I am here, Almeric,’ said Sibyl, coming forward with a drooping head. ‘Alison has gone up to Richard.’
‘She had barely gone when I came. She will be coming down.’
‘She was not going to. She told me to see you for her; but you do not want to talk to a person you have known from a child.’
Almeric was silent, and Sibyl started forward and rushed out of the room.
‘Can I come in, Alison? The nursery door seems to be locked. Almeric is waiting for you.’ She spoke in a tone of simple meekness.
‘The door locked? How did that happen?’ Alison strolled into the passage, glancing back to say a word to Cassie, who was attending to the child. ‘There is no need to seal the separation with lock and key.’
‘He is waiting for you,’ said Sibyl, in the same manner.
‘That is returning good for evil. I can’t let such forbearance go unrewarded.’
Cassie glanced sharply at the door as Sibyl stood within it.
‘Go back to what you were doing, Sibyl. You are not upstairs at this hour. You would be better out of doors.’
‘I came up with a message for Alison. And you need not speak to me as if I were a child. I am not in a child’s position. And if Alison will not keep a nurse, she should look after Richard herself; Father was explicit about it. Though Marshall might do her own work, while she is in the house.’
Sibyl drifted to the passage, and catching voices from another room, entered to find Grant and the nurse. Emma Marshall was a short, square woman of thirty-five, with smooth, dark hair, short, blunt features, opaque, dark, drooping eyes, and a moody, 190 aloof expression. She was lifeless within the arm of Grant who was inducing her to dance.
‘Grant, you must not be here! Cassie will find you!’
‘I have suffered the consequences of that, and will enjoy the preliminaries.’
Marshall stood still, as he released her, and did not speak.
‘Go downstairs, Grant. Alison is in the drawing-room, and I daresay Nance is with her. If Cassie comes to the landing she is bound to hear.’
‘She ought not to be surprised. I am doing what is expected of me. Well, Cassie, you have nothing to say that is not said.’
Cassie signed to him to go, and turned to the nurse.
‘You must leave us to-day, Marshall; I can see no other course. I will give you wages for another month, and you have a home. I do not say it must be your fault, as that is not true; but you must go for your own sake.’
‘It is no good me saying anything, ma’am.’
‘Tell Marshall there is nothing against her, Sibyl,’ said Cassie, going to the door. ‘I know a good place, where the wages are higher than we give. She can say she is leaving to do better for herself, and feel it is true.’
‘What good is higher wages, when you leave where you are used to, and a child you are fond of? I don’t ask more money than is enough. And what there is between me and Mr Grant, has nothing in it, like it has had with him and some of the maids. There is reasons behind, as we know, Miss Sibyl, and too many mistresses, as you may find.’
‘I have to take the house as it is; I can’t go to another as you can.’
Sibyl went back to the nursery, where Cassie was still with the child. 191
‘I don’t see why Marshall is going, Cassie.’
‘Then you cannot have been attentive at breakfast, or in the other room just now.’
‘Grant does not seem very guilty about it.’
‘It would not be his line to make the most of it. And I am afraid he has adapted himself to such positions. Your father seems almost to have done so too.’
‘I do not think Marshall seems guilty either.’
‘She may not be so. But you should not gossip with her, Sibyl.’
‘Will you make an end of treating me as if I were Richard? Father is right, that you will all become lost in the child. You will become children yourselves. And why should I not speak a word to a fellow-creature? He was right there too. There are not too many people in the house for me to talk to.’
‘Let us have a chat, whenever you like,’ said Cassie, neither her voice nor her words seeming her own.
‘Have you nothing against Marshall, but Grant’s foolishness?’
‘You must see that we cannot arrange for her to be kept in his way.’
‘It would be fairer to get rid of Grant.’
‘It would; but we cannot find another home for him, as we can for her.’
‘I think she is very upset about it.’
‘We did not make the arrangement for anyone to be soothed. If you have an alternative, let us have it. We are obliged to reject your first suggestion.’
‘We will not quarrel about it.’
‘We will, on the contrary, if you give any more reason. We cannot do better than take the only course.’
‘I don’t know why you are so disturbed.’ 192
‘For the reasons that you are. You have given them.’
‘Well, Richard,’ said Sibyl, ‘you grow a big boy, don’t you? Nearly as big as sister Sibyl. He is not like any of us, is he?’
‘He has a look of your father.’
‘He reminds me of one of the portraits,’ said Sibyl in an idle tone: ‘I can’t say which.’