Dear Laura (3 page)

‘The usual question, I suppose?’

Theodore spoke without rancour but his face was inflexible: a dark face which seemed never to have been young.

‘Have you no chink in that armour of yours?’ Titus asked
reflectively
. ‘I am not such a good accountant as yourself. Money slips by me. I do not know where it goes.’

‘My commitments are nevertheless greater,’ Theodore replied. ‘There are the boys at Rugby. Blanche must have a portion when she marries. I keep Laura in dress, which is no small item. She is another spendthrift. I have an establishment to maintain,’ and he looked about him with pride at the solid mahogany. ‘You are a bachelor, Titus, and can make no such claims.’

‘I am a bachelor and have other claims,’ said Titus easily. ‘Surely, brother, you did not save all your money until three-
and-thirty
, when you married, without the ladies picking your purse now and again?’

A shadow over Theodore’s face gave him pause.

‘You are now a reformed bachelor, brother,’ said Titus,
smiling
, ‘and should help me to reform also.’

‘Laura has given musical evenings for you in plenty,’ Theodore replied with indulgence. ‘No lady seems to come up to your
expectation
. We have often talked this over, Laura and I.’

‘And what is Laura’s considered opinion?’

‘That you prefer your freedom to domestic delights.’

‘Well, we cannot all be patriarchs. You have responsibility enough for both of us.’

‘I began early. I played the father to you for many years when our own father died.’

‘For which I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You fetched me out of some sad scrapes.’

He laid his hand for a moment on Theodore’s shoulder in genuine affection.

‘Well, well,’ said Theodore, suspicious of showing emotion, ‘you were young and foolish, and I have sown a few oats of my own. A man must be a man, after all.’

They both smiled, secure in a world where men were
paramount
.

‘But no more money?’ Titus persisted, returning to the nub of the discussion.

‘No more money. You must find less expensive pursuits and cut your coat according to the cloth.’

‘A dancer can be a devilish expensive pursuit.’

His brother did not answer, brooding over the ash of his cigar.

‘Then shall we join the lady?’ Titus asked, good-natured as ever, though a frown of disappointment lingered.

‘Would you care to amuse Laura for half an hour or so? I have papers to look into.’

Titus rose with alacrity.

*

‘I am ordered to amuse you while Theo works,’ said Titus. ‘An order which I find most charming.’

Laura motioned him to sit down, and lifted the coffee-pot with a perceptible tremor. Switching his coat-tails aside, Titus sat at his ease and watched her fill two cups.

‘Now how shall I amuse such beauty?’ he inquired idly, ruminating.

‘You have many accomplishments,’ said Laura demurely, ‘and amusing the ladies is one of them. I leave the choice of
amusement
to you.’

‘Shall I tell you the tale of your inebriated coachman and make you laugh? I like to hear you laugh.’

‘Poor Henry,’ said Laura. ‘I fear that he prefers strong drink to anything else in life.’

‘There are more heady pleasures.’

She was silent, fingering her rings as he sipped.

‘Did I tell you of the time that he worked for Lady Wareham? I am sure that I did, and I would not have you bored by
repetition
.’

‘I should like to hear it again.’

‘Well then, the gallant Henry Hann was entrusted with Lady Wareham’s exceptionally plain daughter Augusta – whom no man would have married without a handsome dowry, poor girl! Good God, how very ugly she is! And Henry, overcome by the
honour – and possibly the young lady’s countenance – dosed
himself
with a quantity of raw spirit, and set out in red-nosed style on the driving seat of a fine equipage.’

She was watching him covertly and he affected not to notice, revelling in her absorption.

‘At first all was well. The horses minced along Hyde Park nicely. The lady shaded her charms with a parasol. Then, as the drink rose to his head, Henry licked his steeds into a fair trot. “Not so fast, Hann!” cried the Honourable Augusta. He took no notice. Smartly, she whisked the parasol down, furled it, and poked him in the back. “I ordered you to slow down, Hann!” she cried. That voice would drive any man to drink, let alone Henry.’

‘You should not speak so of any lady, Titus.’

He grinned at her.

‘But we are old friends, are we not, and may speak the truth?’

She drank her coffee and did not answer.

‘Faster and faster went the horses,’ Titus continued, enjoying Laura’s discomfiture and his story. ‘And the faster they went the harder Henry laid on with his whip, in the grip of a very demon of drink and speed. They tore through the Park like Jehu, and as they flashed by all the other carriage-people began to shout and cry “Stop! Stop!” and “Help! Police!” You always smile at that point, Laura. Up rose the Honourable Augusta, parasol in hand, and began to lay it about Henry’s back, crying, “Mama! Papa! Police! Help!” and the more she struck him, the more he
belaboured
the horses, and the harder they galloped!’

Laura threw back her head and laughed, and he laughed with her.

‘On and on. Faster and faster. Henry’s top hat had fallen off a long way back. The Honourable Augusta lost her bonnet and then her parasol, burst into tears, and fell back in the carriage, thrown from one side to the other. And then the demon
disappeared
and Henry Hann returned, penitent. He reined and checked the terrified beasts to a halt. It took him many hundred yards to do that, I can tell you. They were in a fearful lather and so was the lady. And he turned the equipage about, and drove her home as meek as a lamb. The Honourable Augusta was
carried 
in to Mama on a tide of smelling salts, and Henry received his immediate notice. Have I amused you, Laura?’

‘Indeed,’ she cried, handkerchief to mouth, ‘indeed you have.’

‘Then may I beg another cup of coffee, in payment?’

He judged her to be indulgent and he to be in favour.

‘Laura, I have a request to make of you.’ She looked up, startled, and he gave a little deprecatory movement of the hand. ‘No, that is another matter to be spoken of at another time. I am devilish short of money, Laura, and must get it from somewhere. Will you not speak for me to Theo?’

‘How do you run through it so fast?’ she asked, very low.

‘I hardly know myself. But I owe Marchmont at cards, and some tradesmen, and they are pressing me for payment.’

‘You promised me you would not gamble.’

‘I promised I should try – and so I did!’

‘Have you not approached Theodore yourself?’

‘To no purpose. I thought you would know how to persuade him otherwise. It will not be the first time you have petitioned him for me, on one count or another.’

She stared at her rings.

‘I have no influence over him.’

‘That I find impossible to believe. You have considerable influence over
me
.’

She lifted her head and looked directly at him.

‘Not at cards, Titus,’ she said drily.

For a full minute each held the other’s gaze: he admiring, she confronting. Then she looked away again.

‘I shall see what I can do,’ she said without hope.

After a pause, Titus said, ‘The influenza begins to rage here as well as in Europe and in the United States of America. Lord Salisbury, I hear, is confined to Hatfield. I wonder if I shall catch it?’

She rose and paced slowly to the window, lifted a curtain and contemplated the Common at night. He knew, without seeing, how she held her head crowned by that ashen coronet, and how well the emerald watered silk set off her pallor. And she,
struggling
against tears, sensed the arrogance of his ease and his
sureness
of her.

‘If I were ill again,’ said Titus, surveying the fire with
half-closed
eyes, ‘would you come again to nurse me like a kind sister-in-law?’

She was silent, very still at the window, and he twisted to see her.

‘Would you, Laura?’

‘I beg of you,’ she said to the empty dark, ‘to forget what should be forgotten.’

His face changed.

‘That is very hard,’ he replied. ‘Do you not find it so?’

‘I find it both hard,’ said Laura, ‘and bitter.’

Her sadness had wiped out his humour.

‘I suppose,’ she continued, in sorrowful acceptance, ‘that your money has been spent on ladies as well as cards? It is, perhaps, unmannerly of me to mention such a possibility, but there can hardly be any pretences between us.’

He took counsel of the fire again.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘both women and cards. But I appear to have developed a taste for someone who cannot be bought. So what matter?’

‘I would rid myself of you with that knowledge.’

As torn as herself, but adamant, Titus replied, ‘Try, Laura.’

The entrance of Theodore acted as a restorative to them.

‘You will catch cold at the window in that thin dress,’ said the master of the house. ‘Come to the fire, Laura. Titus, you should not allow her to stand in a draught.’

‘Ah, but I have no influence over her,’ said Titus carelessly. ‘Have I, Laura?’

She let the curtain fall and turned towards them, her smile lifted like a banner.

‘None whatsoever,’ she replied, just as carelessly, and sat back in her chair to be admired, with the brooch glittering at her heart.

I
N
the vast hot kitchen the servants settled to a supper of cold meats and pickles after the day’s labours.

‘There’ll be nothink more from that quarter tonight,’ said Mrs Hill, nodding at the bell-board above the kitchen door. ‘Let me help you to a bite o’ beef, Mr Hann. I can recommend it.’ And she nodded to herself, and narrowed her eyes at the blade of the carving knife.

A woman of fifty, stout of body and high of colour, she was a tribute to good cooking and heavy feeding, queening her tableful of deferential faces in contentment.

On her right sat Nanny Alice Nagle, who had been in the Crozier’s service only one year less than herself; brought in to nurse Master Edmund, the first-born child. She and Mrs Hill were strong-minded women with a powerful sense of their own dignity, and they understood each other. The kitchen was the cook’s province and the nursery belonged to the nanny. On their separate grounds they deferred to one another, but to the rest of the staff they presented an irresistible front. Should
anyone
offend either they could expect a united attack, larded with exclamations of horror and protestations of outraged disbelief.

On the cook’s left sat Kate Kipping the parlourmaid: small-boned, smooth-haired, with a ladylike aspect. Privately the others considered she gave herself airs, but she commanded sufficient respect to keep their opinions unvoiced. By her side was Harriet Stutchbury the housemaid, one of Cook’s protegées:
kind-hearted
, gullible and awkward. Henry Hann, the coachman, took the foot of the table. Between himself and Nanny wriggled the latest of Cook’s recruits Annie Cox: an undersized child of
thirteen, who played general factotum for the sum of ten pounds per annum and board.

‘Another Christmas over and gone, Lord love us,’ Nanny Nagle observed, watching Cook’s knife sheer expertly through the baron of beef and deposit three red slices on her dinner-plate.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Mrs Hill, shaking her head sadly, though her mind and eyes were on the carving, ‘and none of us getting any younger. Harriet, make yourself useful and cut the bread. Not too thick, neither. We aren’t cannibals I hope.’

Harriet set a pair of rough hands to the task, without avail.

‘Six year,’ said Mrs Hill, with sombre satisfaction, ‘has that girl been under my instructions, and can’t keep the loaf straight. Six year. Cut another for Miss Nagle, Harriet, and give that slice to Annie.
She
don’t mind.’

‘Glad to get it, Missus,’ said Annie sincerely, anxious to oblige. ‘Fresh or stale, as my mam allus says.’

Mrs Hill put down her carving tools with some deliberation, and a tight silence descended. Annie, stricken sparrow, stopped with the uneven slice of bread at her mouth and stared
round-eyed
at the mountain of wrath.

‘Have I been trained and training in my profession for uppards of thirty-seven year this Michaelmas,’ said the cook terribly, ‘to be called
Missus
at my own table?’

‘Shame on you,’ cried Nanny Nagle, ‘and put that bread back on your plate, Annie Cox, instead of gormandizing in front of your betters.’

‘She don’t know nothink,’ said Harriet Stutchbury kindly,
remembering
a hard apprenticeship under the same authority. ‘She don’t do it a-purpose.’

The child squirmed, scarlet-cheeked and grateful, and looked anxiously at her slice.

‘I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, Harriet Stutchbury,’ cried the cook. ‘Mrs Hill is my name, Annie, and Mrs Hill I
will
be called,’ though it was purely a courtesy title due to her status, since she had never married. ‘Two week you’ve been in this gentleman’s house, Annie Cox, and a-gazing at the food as if you never saw meat in your born days. What you do at home is no concern of mine,’ she added loftily, ‘but in my kitchen
you learn your manners. Last served is last to start, and nobody starts afore grace. You say grace at home, I hope?’

‘No, Missus – Hill.’

The quietness was dreadful. In awed delight and suspense the others waited.

‘Take that plate to the scullery, Miss,’ said the cook, ‘and light a candle to eat it by. I don’t sit down to my meal with a Heathen of a Christmas-day. Get along with you, do!’

The child, relieved that she was not to be deprived of her food as well as their company, scrambled down from her chair.

‘You’ve forgot somethink, Miss,’ cried the cook grandly,
pointing
to her knife and fork.

Annie scurried back and collected the cutlery she was unused to wielding. But in the privacy of the cold scullery, with her two inches of candle, she delved her fingers here and there in the
titbits
, glad to enjoy it in peace.

Alone among them, Kate Kipping ate sparingly and elegantly as her mistress did, and wiped her lips with her napkin after every mouthful.

‘Lantern slides this evening, Mr Hann?’ said Mrs Hill.

‘Yes, ma’am, with Mr Titus a-clowning.’

‘Ah, he’s a merry gentleman,’ said Mrs Hill drily. ‘Very free. I hope he behaves hisself with you when you open the door, Kate.’

The girl lifted an exceedingly self-possessed face.

‘I know my place, I hope, Mrs Hill.’

‘Ah yes, but does he? That’s what I’m saying!’ And the cook sucked a fragment of meat from her tooth reflectively.

Harriet, staunch to the chains that bound her, said, ‘He took a liberty with me, once, Mrs Hill. That day Kate was poorly.’

‘How do you mean, girl, a liberty?’

‘Pinched my cheek, ma’am, and gave me a bit of a squeeze.’

‘He’s done a deal more than that in his time, I can tell you,’ said Mrs Hill heavily.

The housemaid giggled nervously, misjudging her mentor.

‘I’ll have no light behaviour here, Harriet Stutchbury,’ said the cook, very sharp. ‘Do you hear me?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Begging your pardon, ma’am.’

‘Well he never took liberties with me, and never shall,’ said Kate Kipping firmly. She glanced at the subdued housemaid. ‘A gentleman knows when he may and when he may not, and Mr Titus is a gentleman.’

‘Excepting where a certain lady is concerned,’ said Nanny Nagle, raising her eyebrows significantly.

‘Name no names, Miss Nagle,’ the cook replied. ‘Say what must be said, but name no names.’

‘Oh, we all know very well round this table,’ said the nanny. ‘Henry Hann could tell a tale or two, couldn’t you, Mr Hann?’

He paused in the midst of his eating, swallowed and cleared his throat.

‘What I say now I could say in a Court of Law,’ he began, and they all pulled their chairs nearer, except for Kate Kipping who mentally withdrew from a conversation she could not check. ‘And I lay it all at Mr Titus’s door. The mistress is a lady, and without Mr Theodore I’d be in the workhouse.’

‘No, no,’ they cried, as his lower lip trembled. ‘Never in this world, Mr Hann.’

‘Yes I should,’ he protested, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Owing to an unfortunate weakness of mine as is no secret. Though I promised Mr Theodore as I’d be sober whenever I drove his lady. And so I was, stone cold sober, when Mr Titus was took ill in the summer.’ He buttered his bread liberally. ‘She was with him nigh on two hours, and she’d clean forgot about me when she come out.’

‘Lor’!’ cried Nanny Nagle, throwing up her hands. ‘Whatever do you mean, Mr Hann?’

Although they had heard the tale, with variations, many times already.

‘Mrs Crozier comes out, a-pinning her hat and a-drawing on of her gloves, and begins to walk along the street. So I calls out, “Here I am, ma’am.” And she stops, as if she recollects
somethink
, and walks back and says, “I did not see you, Henry.”’

‘Whatever did
you
say?’ the cook asked, agog.

Some delicacy was evident in his reply.

‘I said, “Begging your pardon, ma’am. I must’ve drawed up too far back.”’

Kate Kipping lifted her head and looked at him, then looked down again at her locked fingers.

‘Was she flushed up?’ asked Nanny Nagle, on the flushed side herself with scandal.

‘She had a good colour, but it could have been the heat. It was a warm day,’ said Henry slowly, regretting the deathless
popularity
of his story.

‘Fiddlesticks!’ cried Nanny Nagle. ‘I’d call it Shame if I didn’t know her better.’

‘Whatever it was, and we don’t know as it was what we think,’ said Henry with rough courtesy, ‘it was Mr Titus’s doing.’

‘A man is as he is,’ said Nanny Nagle, ‘and a woman should know that and keep herself Pure.’

‘She is pure,’ cried Kate, firing up. ‘Purer than you, Miss Nagle, for thinking shame of her.’

‘Hoity-toity, Kate Kipping,’ said the cook. ‘We all know you set yourself up to be like her. Walking the Common of a Sunday in her hand-me-downs, acting the lady. I shouldn’t be surprised, Miss, if you didn’t know more than you say. Thick as thieves together!’

‘I know nothing, Mrs Hill, and there’s nothing to know. Mr Titus is Mrs Crozier’s brother-in-law and a bachelor gentleman. It’s only right that she should see to things for him when he’s poorly.’

‘She’s a secretive cat,’ said Nanny Nagle, pondering. ‘She dodges papers under her blotter when I come in too sudden. And she sits for hours in that bedroom of hers, writing in her diary. She keeps it locked up, too. And once, when Mr Titus called on her in the afternoon, I found her with her eyes red and she turned away so as I couldn’t see she’d been crying.’

‘I don’t hardly like to think of the lady crying,’ said Henry guiltily, but Nanny Nagle was relishing the idea too much to be parted from it.

‘The virtuous woman is far above rubies, the Good Book says. Life may be a Vale of Sorrow, but there’s One Above as sees
all. Poor folks can be good Christians, and rich folks no better than Heathens. Take her worldly goods away from her and I could tell you what’s left – though I wouldn’t soil my lips on the word!’

Their stomachs were distended with fruit tart, but a
cheese-board
was not refused. Appetites whetted by defamation they set to willingly, except for Kate.

‘She’s thought about it, even if she hasn’t done it,’ said the nanny, wiping cream from her mouth and helping herself to a hunk of Cheddar and three pickled onions. ‘Sinned in her heart.
I
know her.’

‘Still,’ said the cook, disturbed by the vehemence of her ally’s arguments, ‘there’s no signs of anythink being wrong. It’s eight year since Miss Blanche was born.’

‘There’s ways and means,’ said the nanny. ‘He’d know even if she didn’t.’

‘I don’t like to think of Mrs Crozier being upset,’ said Henry helplessly.

‘Don’t you?’ cried Kate Kipping. ‘Then why do you say ill of her? I’ll tell you who’s no better than he should be, and that’s Mr Theodore. Why should there be talk of her and not him. He’s out at nights often enough, and it isn’t work that keeps him, I’ll swear to it. Because Mr Titus called once or twice, expecting to see him, and Mrs Crozier was by herself. Don’t smile like that, Miss Nagle, I won’t bear it!’

‘Prove it, Miss!’

‘I can prove it, for I was clearing away the coffee, and Mr Titus said, “Where’s Theo?” And the mistress said, “I thought he was with you, in the city, on a matter of business.”’

‘Ah, they fooled you, Miss,’ said the nanny knowingly. ‘They’re up to many a trick of that sort.’

‘No more they did, for he went ten minutes after, and she sat by herself until well on eleven o’clock. She hardly spoke a word while I was helping her to bed. Just after three in the morning – I heard the clock strike – the master let himself in.’

‘And where was you, to hear all this from the top of the house?’

‘I’d left the attic door open, because the mistress looked ill and I wanted to hear her if she called for me. I told you, if you
remember
, Harriet?’ The housemaid nodded, for they shared the same room. ‘Well, I crept on to the landing and saw him down below, mounting the stairs. You call her secretive, Miss Nagle,
but you should have seen
him.
Smiling to himself. Then he went in as solemn as a vicar, and she was awake, and for once she let fly. I could hear them quarrelling and then her crying. And I say it’s the master you should be gossiping about!’

‘Gossiping?’ cried Mrs Hill, enraged. ‘You’ll hear no gossip in this kitchen, Kate Kipping.’

‘What do you call this, then?’

Cook and parlourmaid faced each other. The one with social, the other with moral, authority. After a brief pause, Mrs Hill gave way and rescued her dignity in one sentence.

‘Here,’ she cried, in loud good-nature, ‘if we aren’t a-talking away and forgetting that silly Annie Cox in the scullery!’ She turned from Kate and shouted, ‘Annie! Annie! Come back here, you silly girl. You’ll be froze to an icicle!’

The kitchenmaid, chilled in bone and pink of nose, emerged.

‘And what do you mean by this sort of behaviour, Miss?’ the cook said briskly. Then, as the child wondered what new outrage she had committed, Mrs Hill gave her a little push towards the polished range. ‘Get yourself warmed on that stool. And, Harriet, cut her a piece o’ pie. I daresay you like apple pie, don’t you, Annie?’

‘I ain’t never had it, Missus – Hill – as I recollect.’

‘Then eat up. Pour her a spoon o’ cream on it, Harriet. I can see it’ll take me a month o’ Sundays to make any think of
you,
Annie!’

The kitchenmaid, perplexed and comforted, applied herself to the pie.

‘Come now, girls, let’s clear these things off,’ said the cook, ‘and I’ll read the Cards.’

‘On a Christmas-day, Mrs Hill?’ Harriet asked uncertainly.

‘It ain’t a Sunday, and it’s nearly over anyway.’

‘Well, I thank you for one, Mrs Hill,’ said the nanny. ‘It’ll be an education and a pleasure to us all. Be quick now, you girls, for Mrs Hill!’

Among the farthing novelettes in the kitchen drawer,
underneath
a book on the Understanding of Dreams, the cook found a sleazy pack of cards. Harriet washed up, Annie dried, and Kate whisked crumbs neatly and folded the cloth. Then Mrs
Hill, in her best black dress, shuffled and dealt the pack. Between the reading of tea cups and the reading of cards lay a chasm of difference. Little fortunes to be found among the leaves
shrivelled
in comparison to the magnificence of the Public
Armageddon
predicted through pasteboard.