Children of the Archbishop (73 page)

“I needn't have worried,” Margaret told herself. “It's going to be all right. It'll all turn out just like I hoped.”

Against the far wall, Dame Eleanor was seated on the couch alongside Admiral Sturgess.

“And she's one in a thousand,” she was saying. “Whoever gets her is going to be lucky.”

The Admiral was non-committal.

“Damn pretty girl,” he replied. “Don't wonder he fell for her. Would have done so myself.”

He was, as a matter of fact, still disappointed—and more than disappointed: fairly bowled over—by the fact that his son should have picked on a girl with no background. It seemed a sort of slight somehow on himself and the boy's mother. But he didn't want to start a row with Dame Eleanor this evening. So he merely repeated himself.

“Damn pretty girl. Don't know that I ever saw a prettier.”

“Or happier,” Dame Eleanor reminded him. She had sensed a feeling of reserve somewhere, and she didn't like it. “Both of 'em, I mean. They're cut out for each other.”

And it was Canon Mallow's view, too, that Sweetie was the happiest girl, as well as the prettiest girl, that he had ever seen. He pottered round the room telling everybody. And he went farther with Sweetie: he insisted on kissing her.

“And it isn't the first time I've done it, either,” he said smilingly. “I kissed you when you were only so big”—he spread his hands out, indicating something the size of a lap-dog—“That was just after you'd been brought in. I remember, it was a terrible night. The rain was coming down …”

And then he recollected that the one thing that he mustn't do was to remember: it was only on condition that he did not refer to Sweetie's earlier life in the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital—and certainly not in front of any of the Sturgesses—that Dame Eleanor had invited him at all.

Canon Mallow heaved a deep sigh of sheer physical relief when he got back to Mr. Jeffcote's old room.

“Aaah!” he said to himself as he pushed his shoes off and slid into his bedroom slippers. “That's better. Now I can breathe again.”

He had never been much of a man for parties, and he had been thoroughly glad when it had come time to leave The Cedars. The noise of so many voices, the champagne, and meeting all those people had just been too much for him. And besides, he hadn't been able to smoke there. All round him at the party there had been people frantically snatching up cigarettes and lighting them and stamping them out again practically all in one motion, but a quiet, thorough-going pipe smoker like himself had been left completely out of it. That was why it was so pleasant now to get down his tobacco jar and fill his pipe and put his feet up.

Of course, he was delighted by the way things had turned out for her. It was wonderful; simply wonderful. Or, at least, he supposed it was wonderful. Everybody else certainly seemed to think it was. But now that he came to reflect on it he was not so sure. And the longer he sat there, blowing out blue, lazy clouds of smoke, and thinking things over, the more he found that he was convincing himself the other way.

“You can't help wondering,” he told himself. “Really, you can't.” This habit of addressing himself in the second person had grown on him since his retirement: sometimes he carried on whole conversations as though he were only in partial agreement with what the other part of him was thinking. “You never can tell,” he went on. “It might have been better if Margaret hadn't bothered so much about her. A girl's got to stand on her own feet sometime. And most of my girls have been very happy in domestic service—provided they get into the right sort of family, of course. They like the feeling of being on their own.” He paused and pressed down the tobacco in his pipe with the flat side of the match-box.
“You may say it's the chance of a lifetime if she marries that naval fellow. But he'll never understand her. I can't imagine what Dame Eleanor's thinking about to allow it. Now that other chap—what-d'you-call-him?—the one with the red hair: he'd have understood her. And she must have liked him at one time or they'd never have gone off together.” Here Canon Mallow shook his head sadly. “I still think it would have turned out better if he hadn't been the naval fellow. I do. Really, I do. If only I'd thought of it earlier I'd have done something. I'd have told Dame Eleanor. Or Margaret. Or Sweetie. I ought to have tried to stop it. Say what you will, that's what I ought to have done. Tried to stop it.”

But he realised that it was the unpopular view. Nobody would ever forgive him if he even mentioned it. And, in any case, it was too late now. Not that this surprised him: all his life he had been leaving things a bit too late.

Not so his predecessor. Dr Trump was now busy making Chinese history. Already he had been able to report an unprecedented boom in Bible sales, and over seven hundred conversions in the Chungking postal area alone.

The most remarkable conversion of all, however, was one to which Dr. Trump had not even referred. But Felicity spotted it. The last issue of the mission magazine, unfortunately printed throughout in Chinese characters which meant that she could not read what it said, contained a picture of her own mother.

Actually it was Sebastian who spotted it.

“Look at Grannie,” he said.

And Felicity looked. There was Mrs. Warple, wearing a plain cotton dress. She had discarded her pearls, and ear-rings, and was distributing what appeared to be hymn-sheets. Remembering the difficulty that Bishop Warple had experienced in getting his wife along even to choral evensong at home, Felicity felt that she had gravely underestimated her husband.

And, secretly, she was jealous. The moment, the very moment, Sebastian's chest was strong enough, she promised herself that she would go out to Chungking to be beside her husband. Cherish him, make him happy, win him back again.

You are not your own master in the Royal Navy. Until you are on half-pay and retired, things like private life and getting married have to take second place beside postings overseas.

And it was Lieutenant Sturgess's sudden posting to Malta that threatened to upset everything. Or rather, would have upset it if Dame Eleanor had not intervened. But she was adamant. Mediterranean Fleet or no Mediterranean Fleet, she was going to see something settled before young James went off anywhere. And when she found that Admiral Sturgess was inclined to the other view and to postpone things until he got back, she required no more persuasion.

Not that young James seemed reluctant. It was simply that Dame Eleanor would have taken a better view of him if he had
insisted
. She disliked seeing men in their late twenties completely under the thumb of their fathers; and she told him so. Frankly, she would have preferred him to be just a bit more impulsive.

“You and Sweetie seem to be very much interested in each other,” she said to him. “If you want to get engaged to her before you go off I shan't put any obstacles in your way.”

James Sturgess did not reply immediately.

“It's not me,” he said. “It's Sweetie. I have asked her, you know.”

“And she's refused you?”

“Sort of,” he admitted. “She says she wants time to think about it.”

Dame Eleanor drew in her lips.

“Leave this to me,” she said.

She sent for Sweetie the same evening. She wasn't feeling well and she had to brace herself for what she was going to say. But it was in Sweetie's interest that she was doing it; she was sure of that.

“Now, listen, dear,” she told her. “Nobody's trying to make
you do anything that you don't want to do. It's only your happiness that I'm thinking of.” She paused. “But James Sturgess is a very nice boy, remember. And he comes of a good family. He's absolutely devoted to you, too. And he isn't the sort that falls in love easily. You could do a lot worse than James, you know.”

“I know I could,” Sweetie answered. “He's always been very nice to me.”

There was something in Sweetie's reply that annoyed Dame Eleanor.

“And let me tell you something else, my girl,” she went on. “It isn't everybody that would want to marry you, either. It's all very well being pretty and that kind of thing. But it counts for something having a family behind you. I've done what I could to give you a background. But it isn't the same thing. Some people put a lot of store by family.”

“James doesn't. He told me so.”

“Have you discussed it with him?”

“I told him just what you've told me now,” Sweetie answered. “I was warning him.”

“And he still wants to marry you?”

Sweetie nodded.

“Then why don't you accept him?” Dame Eleanor leant over and patted Sweetie's hand. “Don't you understand, dear, it's what I've been hoping for? I want to see you married and with a family of your own. I want to see—grandchildren.” The word had slipped out unintentionally, but she did not correct it. Instead she went on quietly, “Think it over to-night, dear. And pray. It's always a great help praying when you're worried. And tell me the answer in the morning …”

Dame Eleanor was smiling when Margaret came in last thing.

“It's going to be all right,” she said. “I've spoken to her. She'll come round all right. She doesn't dislike him, that's the main thing.”

It was late now; really late. Dame Eleanor had been put down more than two hours since, and all the servants had gone to bed long ago. Margaret was not asleep, however. She had just lain awake staring up at the ceiling ever since she had gone to
bed. She had thought a lot; remembered too much; cried once or twice; and prayed a little.

“Oh, God forgive me for everything,” she had just said, “and let it be the right thing that I'm doing now. Make her love him more than she does, otherwise she won't never be happy. She's a good girl, really she is. Please, God, let her be happy. Don't let her do what I did. It's all worked out so wonderfully up to the present, thanks to you, God. Please don't let anything start going wrong now.”

She heard the clock in the hall strike midnight, and then she got up. She decided to go down and kiss Sweetie good-night. It was something that she had always done when Sweetie had first come there. Sweetie didn't know about it, but Margaret had often kissed her good-night without waking her.

Going over to the wardrobe she took out her dressing-gown. It was a thick dressing-gown, an old one of Dame Eleanor's, it made her look fat and shapeless. Her bedroom slippers were old, too. She had bought those for herself—cheaply: they were loose over the instep already, and the soles made a dragging sound as she walked. Because it was late and she would meet no one, she took no trouble with her hair. While she had been tossing in bed it had become unplaited at the ends and she thrust it into the collar of her dressing-gown. It was still rich, plentiful hair but it was becoming streaked with grey by now.

“I'll just kiss her good-night, and then I'll go back to bed,” she told herself.

When she reached Sweetie's room, however, she saw that there was a light on. And she waited outside the door, undecided. Sweetie was so independent these days that perhaps she wouldn't like Margaret coming down to see her at this time of night.

“But I must go in,” she told herself at last. “Perhaps she's worrying about what Dame Eleanor said to her.”

She turned the handle of the door gently. Sweetie was kneeling in front of the fireplace, with a writing-case open on the rug beside her.

Margaret did not go over to her at once.

“Sweetie,” she said, still standing over by the door. “Sweetie.”

Sweetie turned suddenly. And, as she turned, Margaret saw how pale she was. She suddenly looked as young again as on the day when Margaret had first brought her there.

“You frightened me coming in like that,” Sweetie said.

While she was speaking, she was shutting up the writing-case, trying to conceal what it contained.

“I couldn't go to sleep,” Margaret told her. “I was thinking about you. So I thought I'd come down.”

“I'm so glad you've come,” Sweetie said slowly. “I needed someone.”

Margaret came over to her.

“What's the matter, Sweetie?” she asked at last.

But Sweetie only shook her head.

“It's nothing. Nothing that I can describe.”

“You'd better tell me.”

“You wouldn't understand. Nobody would. Not even you.”

Margaret put her arm on her shoulder.

“Perhaps I understand more than you think.”

Sweetie looked up at her, puzzled.

“Not about this,” she said.

“Is it that you're not in love with James?” Margaret asked her.

Sweetie did not answer immediately, but Margaret could feel her body stiffen as she heard the question.

“I love him all right,” she said at last. “It's just … just that I love Ginger more. I wasn't going to tell you. But you might as well know. I love Ginger more than I can ever love anybody.”

Margaret drew her breath in quickly. It was Sweetie this time who could feel the sudden, involuntary movement of the other person.

“You … you haven't been seeing him, have you?”

Sweetie shook her head.

“That's what's made it so dreadful.”

“And do you know where he is?”

Margaret's voice had become hard and anxious now.

Sweetie shook her head again.

“I've been trying to find out,” she said. “I've been trying all I could.”

Margaret's hands were clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed white along the backs.

“Since you met James?” she asked.

“I tried again last week,” Sweetie answered. “But it was no use. And I was writing again when you came in. He must be somewhere, and I know I can find him somehow. I shall go on trying—always.”