Inherit the Skies (14 page)

‘It's all right, James,' he said hastily, for the boy's very proximity made him shudder inwardly. ‘You may sit down. And make up your mind what you want for breakfast today before Evans serves you. I don't want to see a plateful of good food going back to the kitchens again. There are plenty of children who would be only too glad of the chance to eat what you allow to go to waste.'

Evans began serving mounds of fluffy scrambled egg, lean rashers of bacon and small succulent kidneys, moving around the table with the inconspicuous grace which had been perfected through a lifetime of service at Chewton Leigh House. Evans came from a long line of highly skilled butlers, he had learned his business at his father's knee and when his turn had come to take on the exacting role he had been ready for it.

‘I hear the Thomas child is settling in well at Home Farm,' Blanche said, beginning on her minuscule portion of scrambled eggs. ‘It was extremely generous of the Pughs to take her in, I think. Her mother was an excellent seamstress of course. It could be Bertha Pugh thinks Sarah will develop the same talent.'

Gilbert, who had been glancing at the headlines of
The Times
, neatly folded as always beside his place, looked up. He had not intended to broach the subject of Sarah so early in the proceedings but now that Blanche had mentioned her he realised the moment had come.

‘I believe it falls to all of us to adopt a Christian attitude towards Sarah,' he said, nodding to Evans to indicate that he should proceed with serving him. ‘When a child is orphaned in such tragic circumstances it seems only right that we should do our best to rally round.' He saw Blanche's light eyebrows raise a fraction and continued: ‘I have been doing some thinking about Sarah myself. She is a clever child and very willing and I believe her education is suffering as a result of all her misfortunes. Not that the village school has a great deal to offer in any case for although all children get at least a rudimentary education free since Salisbury introduced his government grant, a great many of them have no wish to be there and their parents resent them having to attend. No, I believe Sarah is worth more than that. I have decided to invite her here, to the house, to share her lessons with our children.'

For a moment there was complete silence at the breakfast table. Even the inscrutable Evans appeared to falter, the silver service hovering briefly over the chafing dish before continuing smoothly as before and Gilbert saw Blanche's green eyes widen with shock. It was Lawrence, however, who broke the silence.

‘I say, Father, that's a bit extreme, isn't it?'

‘No, I don't think so.' Gilbert reached for the condiments, liberally salting his eggs and kidneys. ‘Richard Hartley is an excellent tutor – that is what I pay him for – but his talents are hardly used to capacity at present. And Leo will soon be going away to preparatory school and on to public school as you boys did. That means he will have only Alicia and James to occupy him. Sarah seems to me to be an exceptionally able girl who would benefit from a good education and I'd like to see she gets the opportunity.'

‘But why, Father?' Lawrence persisted. ‘I mean, what's the point? She's just a girl …'

‘I thought you were conversant with my views on the education of girls, Lawrence,' Gilbert said a trifle tartly. ‘I realise it is generally considered quite unnecessary but I fail to see why a girl should not receive at least a good enough education to fit her to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation with her husband and be mistress in her own house. There are women's colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge now, and have been for the last twenty years, to fit women to be teachers and governesses. It could be that Sarah could aspire to something like that given the opportunity. Besides I happen to think that we shall soon see some changes in attitudes to women generally. Women's suffrage is very much on the menu nowadays. It may be a long while yet before these free thinkers make any impression on the old order but I believe it will come. And when it does then all kinds of things will be open to women that people of my generation would never have believed possible. That is why I have ensured Alicia has received at least as good a grounding as you boys; why I might consider Cheltenham Ladies' College for her even.'

‘But this Sarah isn't just a girl – she's a
village
girl,' Hugh put in. ‘That's what you mean, isn't it, Lawrence? Her mother was a seamstress. You can't compare her with Alicia.'

Gilbert's mouth hardened.

‘Obviously you have never listened very carefully to my views either, Hugh, I don't believe an accident of birth should make anyone unworthy. That should depend entirely on their abilities. And ability, unless nurtured, can never be given a fair chance.'

‘An accident of birth!' Blanche repeated softly, unable to keep the scorn out of her voice. ‘Really, Gilbert – you and your revolutionary views! It's bad enough that you support Campbell Bannerman and the Liberals when in your position it would only make sense for you to be a Conservative. But from the way you are talking you will be joining Keir Hardy and his group of cloth-capped upstarts next!'

Gilbert smiled. When Keir Hardy, the Scottish miners' leader, had been elected to Parliament nine years earlier he had caused a great stir by arriving at the House wearing a cloth hat instead of the traditional ‘ topper' and now, with Ramsay Macdonald, he was set on forming a distinct group in Parliament to represent the interests of the unions and the working classes generally. Gilbert was himself a fair employer but he had long sympathised with the millions of men who worked in unspeakable conditions for a pittance below subsistence level and he thought the new rallying of the underdogs was no bad thing.

‘I doubt I shall go quite that far, Blanche,' he said, beginning on his eggs. ‘But I don't feel this is the moment for a discussion on my political views. This is no great matter of laws to change the course of history. All I am proposing is a small social experiment.'

‘One which may well have a detrimental effect on your own children. You cannot seriously expect Alicia to share her lessons with a child of Sarah's upbringing,' Blanche said. Tiny high spots of colour had appeared in her pale cheeks and her eggs lay untouched on the plate in front of her.

‘I see no reason why not,' Gilbert replied levelly. ‘Alicia has a good many privileges. I don't believe it is too much to ask her to be generous with some of them. Besides, as the only girl in the family she is very much one on her own. A little female company in the schoolroom could only be beneficial to her.'

‘I don't want female company,' Alicia said. It was the first time she had spoken since her father had made his outrageous suggestion and her voice, though quiet, had the ringing tones of conviction.

Gilbert flicked her a glance of annoyance.

‘When I want your opinion, Miss, I'll ask for it.'

‘But that's not fair!' Alicia protested. ‘ I'm the one who has to have lessons with this – this Sarah.' She had been on the point of saying ‘slut' but the expression on her father's face made her think better of it.

‘That is true, Alicia,' he said firmly. ‘And it will do you no harm at all.'

‘But I don't want …'

‘What you want, Miss, is not at issue. You have had things far too much your own way and it is beginning to show. Your brothers spoil you and I must confess that although I was determined it would not happen I have spoiled you too. It stems from your being the only girl, I expect.'

‘It isn't spoiling me to force me to have my lessons with a common village girl,' Alicia said defiantly.

‘That will do, Alicia,' Gilbert said coldly. ‘My mind is quite made up. And if this morning's performance is anything to go by I think you will learn as much from this experiment as Sarah will.'

She stared at him defiantly for a moment, her eyes holding his, her mouth puckered into a tight hard pout. Then she clattered her knife and fork onto her plate of scarcely touched egg, scraped back her chair and leaped to her feet.

‘Alicia …' Blanche began warningly but Alicia ignored her.

‘I won't!' she spat furiously. ‘I won't have my lessons with her. Why should I? And if you make me I … I won't learn a thing!'

She pushed the heavy Victorian chair aside and flounced across the room.

‘Come back here this minute!' Gilbert thundered.

She checked momentarily, twisting her head to look at him. He saw the quick flash of fear in her eyes then her jaw set and her mouth hardened again. ‘Make me!' that look seemed to say and with a flash of insight Gilbert knew that he was facing a will as indomitable as his own. How ironic, he was to think later. None of his sons had ever openly defied him and although, for all his liberal and forward-looking views his authority where his family was concerned was very important to him, yet strangely their acquiescence and continual eagerness to please had disappointed him in a way he could scarcely understand. Somewhere inside him a boy should have the spark to make him rebel, his own individuality should occasionally surface as insurrection; as in nature the young buck should sometimes test his strength and make his play for the position of leader of the herd. Yet the boys did not do this. Lawrence was too anxious to be thought of as responsible by his elders, Hugh, for all his military aspirations, was too lightweight to care – not for him the family responsibilities that would come hand in hand with superiority. And James – James had no spine and no spirit, Gilbert decided, and wondered idly if young John, his third son, had lived if he would have had that dominance which was so lacking in the others. But John had died of whooping cough when he was just fourteen months old and the secrets of his character had gone with him to the tiny grave beneath the outstretched wings of the stone angel in Chewton Leigh Cemetery. No, Gilbert had sometimes thought, none of his sons showed the spirit he would have hoped for in them. And now, unexpectedly, there it was in the eyes of his daughter.

The challenge was brief and shocking yet for all his anger it excited him, firing some deeply hidden ambition for the continuity of family traits founded in the dark ages and for a future which might be even greater than the past.

Lawrence had half risen from his chair.

‘Shall I fetch her back, Father?'

‘No!' Gilbert spoke sharply, then regained his control. ‘No, let her go, Lawrence. I shall speak to her later. This meal has already been interrupted quite enough.' He looked around at each of them in turn. ‘Has anyone else anything to say on the subject or can we consider it closed?'

‘It seems,' Blanche said evenly, ‘as though you have made up your mind.' Her expression said that there was more she would have liked to discuss but she was too wise to do so and he took her words at their spoken value.

‘Yes.' He lifted his fork and popped a piece of succulent kidney into his mouth. ‘ Yes, Blanche, I believe I have. Now I suggest we all forget Alicia's unpardonable behaviour and enjoy our breakfast.'

The schoolroom in Chewton Leigh House was situated on the first floor, a pleasantly sunny room which overlooked the open parkland to the side of the house. Alicia and James were the second generation of Morses who had sat there at the square, comfortably worn table to learn their lessons. Well away from the main living rooms, it provided the peaceful atmosphere necessary to do sums and grammar and learn the conjugation of Latin verbs. The walls were panelled in wood and hung with delicate watercolours depicting the various components of wild flowers and the curtains of dusky pink velvet had been altered to fit this room by Sarah's mother, Rachel, when new ones had been purchased for the drawing-room.

Sitting at the table one day in September, flanked by Alicia and Leo and under the eagle eye of Richard Hartley, the tutor, Sarah found herself looking at the curtains as the one friendly item in this alien place. She had come to the house with her mother when Rachel had been sewing them; she remembered the bright flush of colour they had made in the small bare sewing room and the way her mother's fingers had flown nimbly over the hems. She had been bored at the time, having quickly grown tired of the piece of needlework Rachel had given her to occupy herself, for Sarah had not inherited her mother's talent with a needle, but now looking back it conjured up for her a time when she had known nothing but warmth and happiness, carefree days forever lost in a barren desert of hostility.

It was bad enough at Home Farm, Sarah thought, for Bertha Pugh's temper had not improved with the passage of the weeks. If anything practice had put sharp barbs on her tongue and she demanded more, not less, from Sarah by way of assistance with the daily chores. But here at Chewton Leigh House it was infinitely worse.

From the moment Gilbert had brought her here Sarah had been aware of the resentment the family felt for her. Gilbert was kind enough, it was true, but even he was different here at the house, a total stranger displaying none of the warmth she had felt when he had first rescued her-at-the time of her mother's death. Lawrence and Hugh, who had been distant but not unfriendly, were now back at their boarding school. Only little James seemed not to object to her presence – and he was too young to count. A wraith of a child with none of Billy Stickland's rumbustious sense of fun and mischief, he spent most of his time with his Nanny, only entering the schoolroom for a few hours a day and Sarah was almost unaware of his existence.

‘Sarah! Perhaps you would like to read the next passage for us.' The tutor's voice ended Sarah's reverie and she looked up to see his eyes, oblique behind his thick spectacles, on her.

‘I – I'm sorry …' she faltered.
The Old Curiosity Shop
was open in front of her but what the next passage was she had no idea.

‘Pay attention, Sarah, please,' he reproved gently. It was not in Richard Hartley's nature to bully or scold; the gentle and scholarly son of a parson, he believed firmly that encouragement was far more efficacious than compulsion and the carrot worked a great deal better than the whip. But he was well aware that Sarah's village school education had left her far behind both Alicia and Leo and even allowing for the difference in their ages he would have to work hard to raise her to a standard which would satisfy Gilbert Morse. Still, she was an able child – if only he could bring her to keep her mind on her work! At the moment she seemed to spend most of her time in a world of her own.