Caroline England

by Noel Streatfeild

  Two days later Selina sent for Letitia. She explained about the driving, she told Letitia to pass the message on to Nurse, who would see to the right clothes being in order.

  “I don’t think a few less lessons will hurt her. She is quite forward isn’t she?”

  “Oh yes indeed.” Letitia spoke nervously. She wished she had the courage to ask Selina to give Nurse her message herself. There was sure to be unpleasantness, not only over the drives for the child, but over the order being given to her. She knew she would be accused of pushing herself forward.

  Selina fingered the piece of embroidery on her knee. Then she looked up. Miss Long had a kind face. She must have had a lot of experience of nurseries.

  “My mother thinks the children rather quiet. Have you noticed it, Miss Long? You have known so many children. They seem to you happy, don’t they?”

  Twenty-five years before, twenty years, even perhaps ten, Letitia would have seized her opportunity. But now she was almost fifty. Her salary had never allowed for saving. Her health was not what it had been. Those nasty headaches made her feel good for nothing. Of course she had told herself it was no good looking forward. So foolish to frighten yourself unnecessarily. You never can tell, there might be a little legacy, governesses sometimes got them. But she had only been deceiving herself. She had known there would be no legacy, whereas there very well could be starvation. Was she to risk this situation, this gift from God? No. Even if she spoke the truth, what good would it do? It was very unlikely to mean the departure of Nurse, whereas it would certainly mean the departure of herself if even a hint that she had criticised reached Nurse’s ears.

  “Oh, indeed, they are happy,” she said firmly. “Nurse is firm of course, but—” Letitia’s voice wobbled, “very kind.”

  Clip clop went the horse. Sometimes there was a plate to balance awkwardly on your knee and slices of seed cake which would make crumbs which fell on the carpet. Some months of the year the victoria was shut and there was a fur rug. At other times it was open and there was one of brown holland. Sometimes there was a basket at their feet. A jar of soup. Bottles of port wine. Sometimes blankets and flannel petticoats. In the cottages there was no seed cake to trouble you with crumbs. Women with work-worn hands accepted what was brought them with gratitude. Chairs were dusted, it was made plain that the cottagers knew their place and appreciated the honour the visit was conferring. The roads and lanes became familiar by being driven over. There is the place where we ought to see the first primroses. Do you remember how early we saw them one spring? Look, there’s that blackthorn in flower. Do let us go round by the dog-rose hedge. That odd smell of meadow-sweet and summer dust. I wonder if that honeysuckle is over yet. What a lot of red berries, more than usual I think. They say it means a hard winter, but it did not that time there were so many berries on the holly. Look at the old-man’s-beard. They say it only grows where people live. That cannot be true. Do you remember what a lot we saw once on the upper road? No one lives near there. We must not stay long, it is too cold to keep the poor horse standing.

  Spring again. The summer. There were no drives then. Selina lay on the sofa. Caroline sat beside her with her needlework. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes there were long silences. They were such friends now, Caroline and her mother, that there was no need to make an effort with each other. Besides, Caroline had heard it all. Selina’s creed. A woman’s place in the home. Agnes’s phrase, ‘a shrine.’ It was the things her mother did not speak of which made most impression on the child. Courage. A graciousness that knew nothing of condescension. A dignity that came not from any conceit of herself or of the Manor. It was part of her. It was inconceivable that it could fail her as long as she had breath.

  In October the boy was born. He was a puny little creature. Selina just succeeded in living until he came into the world. The life of effort she had insisted on had strained her heart. Thomas knew she was beat this time. He sent the nurse running for James. Selina caught hold of his hand.

  “Is it a boy?”

  Thomas found his eyes full of tears. He had the same pride in her that he would have had in a favourite mare who at the fourth attempt had won a race.

  “Yes my dear, a boy.”

  Selina could just hear his voice.

  “A boy.” No whisper had ever held more pride. On the word ‘boy,’ she died.

  Chapter IX

  SELINA died leaving just the impression she would have wished. The Manor seemed purposeless without her. It was as if it had actually been a shrine to contain her. There was sorrow at her death for miles around, tempered by thankfulness for the thoughtfulness of God. It was the nicest example of divine tact that since James had to be deprived of Selina with one hand, as it were, he should be presented with an heir with the other.

  James found the boy small comfort in the first days of his suffering. Selina and he had not only been husband and wife, they had been lovers. Even temporary lovers are apt to leave scars on their departure. Permanent lovers leave a cut that never quite heals over. As the days passed the pain grew less, but it was there in the background, ready to throb at a touch.

  He called the boy Ellison. A compliment that must surely reach across the Styx. He did it in spite of terrific Torrys’ protest. Apart from his mother, there were George, Robert and Frederick to point out that it was not a family custom to use surnames as Christian names. Certainly Richard in 1673 had used his wife’s family name of Osborne for his first son. They carried the story no further, James would have no need to turn up the family tree to remember that the little Osborne had died at the age of two.

  Rose was without her usual fire; or she might have dissuaded James. Elizabeth had died that summer through the miscarriage of her first child. It had shaken Rose. Apart from her grief, she felt ashamed. It seemed to her that in some way she had failed if a daughter of hers could be so inefficient over her simple duty.

  Louisa, at six and a half, and Elizabeth two years younger, felt nothing at their mother’s death except pride in their black frocks. Elizabeth, who was a pretty little thing, brought tears to everyone’s eyes by asking them in an awed whisper if they knew that Mama had gone to be with God. Louisa cried on the day of the funeral, but when a puzzled Elizabeth asked what she was crying about, she explained, “Can’t you see Nurse expects us to cry?”

  Nurse had to feign a grief she did not feel. Naturally, people expected the children’s nurse to be upset, and she gave a very good imitation of an upset nurse, but actually she did not care in the least. She had always thought Selina a soft thing, and although now she was dead she forced herself to think of her as ‘the poor, dear mistress,’ inside she felt the same about her as she had always done.

  Letitia shared in the sorrow of every servant on the place, indoors and out, and with every cottager. She felt with them, the world was poorer for the passing of someone who was always gentle and the personification of all they meant by the word ‘Lady.’

  Caroline, at eleven and a half, was inarticulate. She had no idea how much had gone out of her life. Only time would show her that. Those drives, it was impossible to grasp that there would be no more of them. She had been called to her mother’s room. Letitia had fetched her. ‘Quick. Your dear Mama is very ill.’ Selina was dead before they got to her. ‘Kneel down,’ Letitia had whispered, ‘she is with God.’ Caroline had turned a scared face to her. ‘Not dead, Longy?’ ‘Ssh! dear. Kneel and pray.’ Caroline seemed to shrink for a moment then she turned, and ran out of the room, up to her bedroom. There she threw herself face down on her bed.

  For those affected by a death the immediate edge of suffering is blurred for many hours of the day by the attendant fuss. There is the dressmaker. To Caroline their dressmaker seemed to fill a whole room with yards of black materials. There were mourning frocks of black alpaca bound in crêpe. For the funeral, frocks of black chalise almost covered in crepe. There were pelisses of black broa
d-cloth. Before all the clothes were finished, the Manor filled to bursting-point with relations. All her life Caroline was unable to see jet ornaments or smell lavender water without thinking of funerals.

  Caroline was considered old enough to help look after the relations. By a scowl she succeeded in disguising how nearly she was crying. Self-control is the duty of a gentlewoman, Letitia said. Looking like a sulky, sallow ghost, Caroline was self-controlled. For almost the only time in her life she preferred the Torrys’ relations to the Ellisons’. The Torrys’ attitude, that grief should never be mentioned in public, was so much easier to deal with than tears and pats, and being called “Poor motherless darling.”

  The day of the funeral was a complete blurr, with occasional highlights, like a ray of a street lamp breaking through a fog. There was the moment when they were all taken to kiss Selina good-bye, and Elizabeth screamed. Caroline was taken to the funeral. There was what seemed in retrospect an hour-long wait in the drawing-room, all dressed in their hats and coats. Then suddenly a movement as if a wind had blown through a field of black corn. Then the steps. Slow, very heavy, pausing on each stair. There was the service, of which one frightening phrase remained to haunt for years: “And though after my skin worms destroy this body.”

  After the funeral everybody left, except Rose Torrys and Mrs. Ellison. At no time were they a good combination. On this occasion there was no chance of their agreeing. Rose was remaining in order to arrange with James that Agnes came to live at the Manor. Mrs. Ellison remained to resist just that suggestion. Rose knew that Agnes was born to fill the niche the Manor now offered. There had been moments when she had wondered why Agnes had been born, and it was a relief to find there was a purpose. Mrs. Ellison was full of vague ideas. She had nothing really against Agnes except what she had against the Torrys family generally. She had to admit that James had seemed to make dear Selina happy. Yet there was something cold and hard about the Manor. Little children should be brought up in an atmosphere of sweetness and love. Neither sweetness nor love were words that naturally connected up with the name Torrys.

  When it came to looking upon James as a fort and Rose and Mrs. Ellison as rival armies attempting its capture, Rose commanded as it were, a battalion to Mrs. Ellison’s company. Was she not James’s mother? Had she not brought up her children on the theory: “Mother always knows best”? Even if James had forgotten his childhood’s training, her determination would have won against any soft Ellison persuasion. Besides, what had the Ellisons to offer? They had no unattached sister of Selina’s to produce. ‘And very fortunate too,’ thought Rose. There was a scarcity of niches for unattached females. Poor Mrs. Ellison bleated feebly that “Perhaps someone who is not a relative would be best. A kind widow who loves little children.” A snort or two from Rose and Mrs. Ellison’s ‘widow’ vanished.

  Two days later both the grandmothers left. Mrs. Ellison looked back wistfully at the Manor. The dear grandchildren. She hoped they would be happy. Rose was triumphant. She had forced Agnes on to James.

  Rose had been bored to death with Agnes. Agnes, that depressing object the unmarried daughter. Moreover, an unmarried daughter of thirty, who was, therefore, permanently unmarried. Rose had a theory that all mothers loved their children. If she had examined her heart and considered Agnes, this theory would have received a shock. She loathed failures. Just as her tongue had to lash the sonless Selina, so it had to lash the husbandless Agnes. Failures both. Naturally now, her tongue had ceased to lash at Selina even mentally. One does not lash at the dead, more especially at the dead who died admirably producing sons. Agnes, however, was still about to aggravate and lash. How fortunate then that James should need Agnes. There was the Manor, there the children, Caroline, Louisa, Elizabeth and the boy (not even in her thoughts would Rose yet call the child by that ludicrous name). There, in fact, if all went well and James had no temptation to marry again, was where Agnes could remain permanently. Mistress of the Manor. James, dazed with unhappiness, let the Agnes argument be dinned into his ears. He never realised that there was a struggle. The two days following Selina’s funeral were bright and warm. All discussion took place in saunters round the garden.

  “James, dear boy, some air will do you good. You must show me the chrysanthemums. My poor, dear little daughter was so fond of flowers,” or “Now, James my son, it’s no good sitting indoors moping. I hear the shepherd is saying his cottage needs re-thatching. Don’t believe a word of it. Your dear father always said that no matter what you did for them, shepherds were never satisfied.” Then, on the walks: “Dear Caroline is eleven. Such an important age. I should like to feel my little daughter’s children were brought up under my eye, or at least by a staff I had chosen.” While from Rose, “So fortunate, James my son, that Dear Agnes can come to you. Had Elizabeth lived—” She broke off there, on an inflection which proved just how disastrous Agnes being engaged elsewhere would have been.

  James did not really want Agnes in his house, but he was too low-spirited to put up a fight. He had no idea what his mother-in-law’s burblings were leading up to. Surely the old lady did not want to come and live with them, and she had no female relative to suggest. If he had to have someone to run his house, he would have preferred of his sisters, Rose, Sylvia or Dymphna. However, of course, the elder two had husbands and Dymphna was engaged. He had no good reason to put forward why Agnes should not come. Widowers always did have unmarried sisters to take charge of their children.

  “Oh, very well,” he agreed.

  “And she shall be here before Christmas,” said Rose firmly. “It will make things much brighter for you all.”

  For Agnes, Selina’s death meant happiness, a state she had given up hoping for. What she had endured these last years, she often thought, no other woman could have suffered and retained the sweetness of their natures. The indignities. No one who had not done it could know how an elder sister suffers while stitching at the trousseaux of a Rose, Elizabeth and Sylvia. No one, who had not had to hear it, knew just how much it hurt when people said: “Fancy, bridesmaid to James, George, Robert, Fred and Rose. Three times you know—” No one who had not endured it, knew just how your own mother could humiliate you. How the mere sight of her eyes on you could make you start and flush, wondering what sort of pin she held and when it was to be dug into you next. No one who had not reached the age of twenty-nine and remained unmarried knew how it felt to be sent out of the room on some excuse, because something was to be talked about not suitable for the husbandless. No one knew of the nervous storms she indulged in when alone, at the thought of the last awful ignominy coming upon her. Dymphna was getting married. Dymphna, whom she had bathed as a baby. Now, all the humiliations were to be forgotten. Who would know she had ever endured them when she was mistress of the Manor? A sister who gave up her life to mother her brother’s children was a respected figure. People would cease to wonder why she had never married. A sad smile, and a little something said about motherless nieces and a nephew, and jokes about spinsters would cease to be.

  When Agnes came to live at the Manor, James was away. Since Selina’s death Thomas had made a point of stepping over in the evening for a drink and a smoke with him. He had seen James flinch at the thought of Agnes in Selina’s place, so he had reminded him that his brother George lived on the edge of three good hunts, and there would be worse ways of passing Christmas than with him. So it was Letitia, Caroline and Louisa who were waiting in the hall when Agnes arrived.

  No one had thought how Caroline might be taking her aunt’s coming. No one had put two and two together in the last weeks. They had seen that Caroline spent every minute she was allowed with her father. They had seen her willingness to play childish games to amuse Elizabeth. They had watched her reading out loud to Louisa. But no one saw in these things a childish attempt to guard the walls of her home. To fill her mother’s place so that there was no room for an Aunt Agnes. She had hoped against hope to hear her father
say that no aunt was coming, he had decided that there was no need, that she was old enough to take her mother’s place. The hope had died over a week ago when Nurse had asked:

  “Where are you going, Miss Caroline?” She had answered:

  “To walk with Papa.”

  “Indeed you’re not then,” Nurse had retorted. “You’ll go for a walk with Miss Long. Your papa is away staying with your Uncle George.”

  “Papa away! When’s he coming back?”

  “Some time next month, I believe.”

  “Won’t he be home for Christmas?”

  “That’s enough questions,” Nurse interrupted.

  “Then is Aunt Agnes coming?”

  Nurse lost patience.

  “She is, and well you know it. Now don’t stand there looking all big-eyed at me. You go out with Miss Long.” Caroline had cried herself to sleep that night. Those days she often cried herself to sleep. Papa was silent and sad. Mama was dead. More and more she was being pushed into Nurse’s world. And now Aunt Agnes was really coming.

  From the beginning Agnes and Caroline were against each other. Agnes arrived glowing at her inward picture of herself. She knew she looked charming in her new black. She pictured a lonely James longing for companionship. She pictured an upset household just waiting for her to put it straight. She pictured her nieces just longing to fling themselves into her arms and be mothered. Although she had to be the centre of the picture, she was sincere in longing to comfort and help. She was slightly discouraged when the coachman told her James was away. She was a bit surprised when the door was opened by a parlour-maid looking as parlour-maids should. A womanless household should be all at sixes and sevens. Her nieces were in the hall just as she had pictured them. But there was no welcoming rush to greet her. Louisa was shy, and clung to the governess, and had to be pushed forward. “Give your aunt a nice kiss, dear.” Caroline came forward of her own accord and dutifully raised her cheek to be kissed. But the face that Agnes looked into had not the expression of one longing to be mothered. It looked bitter and sulky. Agnes ignored the expression and kissed her niece, but she made a mental note that she must break that spirit. Nothing was more unattractive than a sulky child. She would have a talk to Nurse about her.