It startled her into looking up, with all her former uncertainty, into his face. ‘For you?’ she weakly cried.
‘Madge Noakes heard you on the Regent Bird. With Mrs Harbin. You was for us then. You said you was. Madge Noakes heard you.’
She looked at him blankly, hardly taking in what he said, but thinking of her lost power, for which she could have wept; while he, with a face twisted in bitterness, said snarlingly, ‘Ah, but words is cheap. It takes more than words to be for a person, don’t it?’
Her power had felt so assured; how could she have known it was so fragile. ‘I hope, Martin,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I hope—’
Madge Noakes came in. Passing between them, her eyes moved in their sluggish way from one to the other.
‘The lamp, miss.’
‘Thank you, Madge.’
She was restored by the composure of her own voice, and by the woman’s presence. ‘Well, Martin,’ she said, friendly yet remote, ‘I hope I am for everyone.’
‘Has he spoke out of turn, miss?’
‘No, Madge. It was nothing at all.’
She held the sealing wax to the flame. ‘Let the ladder stop here,’ she heard Madge Noakes say. ‘I will use it to set the nets on the posts.’
‘Ah, you will! And what will I use for the winders?’
‘The bed steps is sittin’ there.’
‘Not high enough.’
‘It ain’t them that is not high enough, Martin. It is you. You can stop here yourself, and pass me up the nets.’
Frances, her head tilted, dropped the seal on her letter to Hermione and Lydia. In her side vision she was aware of Madge climbing the ladder, and then of Martin, leaning backwards to toss up the soft white mass of netting. But as soon as Madge busied herself with it, he turned with deliberation and fixed his stare on Frances’s profile. She was now heating the wax to seal Edmund’s letter, and even when he took a step forward, and brought into her range of vision the detail of his face, his scowling brows and silently twisting mouth, she forced herself to remain immobile but for her hand, which continuously turned the wax in the flame. She guessed that either Madge Noakes’s remark about his size, or her own retreat into self-possession, had enraged him, but she told herself that her only care must be that her hand should not tremble, and she was proud when it did not do so. When she dropped the seal on Edmund’s letter she was pleased by its exact placing and even contours. Madge Noakes’s sudden movement with the nets was a flash of soft white, like a great blurred wing. Frances snuffed the lamp and set down the wax. Smiling, she set a thumb gently on the warm seal.
‘A hand here, Martin!’ cried Madge in a stifled voice. Frances looked up, somehow avoiding the face that still sought to obtrude on her view, and saw that when Madge had thrown the net it had caught on one of the back bedposts instead of on both, and was trailing from there and had enveloped both Madge and the upper part of the ladder. But already, while still calling for help, she was hauling it up with both hands; and Frances, seeing first her boots appear, then the hem of her skirt, could not help laughing. ‘Steady the ladder, Martin,’ she said cheerfully. She got to her feet and picked up her two sealed letters. But Martin had not moved, and Madge, half-blinded by the nets, must be in danger, after all, of over-balancing. ‘Martin,’ said Frances sharply, ‘steady that ladder.’
Instead he sprang at her. She had already turned to leave the room, so that it was a collision, breast to breast, his furious mouth jabbering hatred into hers and his thin arms clamping both hers to her sides. In her first shock she thought of the knife he used on the sash cords, and fearing it in her back, sucked inwards a breath of fear, a soft scream; and when, in the next moment, the fury in his face became a sort of blind besottedness, and his imprecations a burble of love, she only screamed louder, for the change was so swift that it outdistanced her understanding, and it still seemed to her that she was screaming in fear of his killing her. But when he let her go, and stood back in pale awe, she dropped her crumpled letters to the floor, and put both hands over her eyes, and continued to scream, and did not know why.
More than a decade later, in the physical happiness of a late but loving marriage, she would understand the kind of hysteria that had impelled her that day, and would begin to forgive herself at last; but at the time, the first emotions that emerged from her mindless screaming were anger, offendedness, and fear. And the fear was no longer of murder, but of that lifetime of feebleness and usage she had envisioned so clearly when, after having set the bed-steps under the window, she had lain weeping on the floor. By that time Letty had come into the room. She was also carrying a letter. Showing no surprise, she went calmly and quickly to Frances’s side. ‘Be silent,’ she whispered.
Frances stopped screaming. She drew in great sobbing breaths and looked about her as if just awakened from sleep. Elizabeth Robertson was in the doorway, and Robert and Lucy, at her skirts, were looking from face to face with open curiosity and secret excitement. Martin was standing two yards away from Frances, his feet exactly together, immobile and agog. Madge Noakes had drawn up all the netting and was holding it back from her forehead. With its white coif around her swarthy fissured face she looked like a disreputable abbess.
‘Well . . .’ said Letty mildly, looking from Frances to Madge to Martin. ‘Gwacious,’ she said, seeing the children, ‘you two must go.’
Elizabeth shooed them away. ‘Back to the nursery!’
‘Take them back, Elizabeth.’
Elizabeth went. ‘Now, what is this?’ asked Letty.
‘He touched me,’ gasped Frances.
Letty did not look at her. ‘Oh, gwacious . . .’ she sounded milder than ever. ‘Well, you had better go back to the garden in the meantime, Martin. The nets can wait, Madge.’
‘But,’ said Frances, ‘he put both arms around me. Madge, you saw him.’
Madge did not move. Letty picked up the two crumpled letters from the floor and put them into Frances’s hands. ‘Be silent,’ she said again, curt and very low. She turned to the two servants. ‘Pway go along, both of you.’
Martin had turned towards the door, and Madge had dropped the netting on the bed, when Patrick Logan appeared in the doorway, holding a bloody wad of towelling to his mouth.
‘What is this?’
The words were indistinct, but they were asked at the same time by his eyes. They looked from one to the other, and rested at last, with hostility, on Frances.
‘A gweat wumpus,’ said Letty, before Frances could speak. She fanned herself with her letter. ‘Go along, Madge. Go on, Martin.’
After a quick glance at her, the commandant stood aside and left the door free for them to pass. While Madge was coming crabwise down the ladder, Martin, his mouth hanging slackly open and his eyes dulled, crossed the room, reached the door, and suddenly, with a cry, fell on one knee before the commandant.
‘Sir . . . captain . . . I never . . . oh, sir, don’t!’
His chin dropped to his breast and he broke like a child into loud sobs. Logan looked for about ten seconds at his bowed head, then spoke to Madge Noakes.
‘Madge, fetch Collison. Stand up, Martin.’
He took the towel from his mouth, looked at the blood, then went quickly to the window and spat into the garden. Martin got slowly to his feet and stood, as stiffly as before, facing the door. Frances looked at the two crumpled letters in her hand, then timidly held them to Letty’s view, pointing to the addresses. But Letty would look neither at them nor at her.
‘They will have to be written again,’ whispered Frances.
Letty turned her head away, but Logan, returning from the window, glanced at the letters.
‘Well, I shall at least write Edmund’s again.’
Letty disdainfully touched the ribbons at her neck. Collison came in.
‘Collison,’ sa
id Logan, ‘take Martin to the lock-up.’
Martin seemed unable to move. Collison, not much older than he, slender, flat-faced, with narrow grey eyes and a glitter of gold bristles on a tanned skin, touched him on the arm. ‘Come along, lad.’
Like a voice of fate, it set Martin in motion. Nobody spoke as he left the room. The commandant’s mouth was bleeding again. He dabbed it with the towel. ‘What did he do?’
‘First, let me bwing a clean towel.’
He gave a brief impatient headshake. ‘What did he do?’
‘Embwaced Fwances.’
‘What!’
His astonishment, his outrage, forced upon Frances what she had been (though hopelessly) evading—the consequences of the incident for Martin. She was about to plead that she was, after all, unharmed, when she saw that Logan’s gaze was moving over her not only with anger, but with a fierce and prudish disgust for her person, her flesh. She shrank before it. ‘But I could not help it!’ she cried.
‘It is my opinion that you could, miss.’
‘What, help it? How? Why?’
‘How? Why?’ The flash of disgust had vanished, consumed by his anger. ‘By your Yankee talk, for a start. Oh, you are overheard, miss. You are overheard. And by your sickly commiseration, which you see fit to display, and which gives them ideas.’
‘Ideas to embrace me? That is unjust. That is unkind.’
Letty stepped forward. ‘Patwick, it is unkind.’
‘And unjust, Letty. He is unjust.’
‘Well, Fwances, it is twue that you lack tact. To speak of the incident before them both! And you would not be silent. And to appeal to Madge to support your word—that above all. As if your word is not enough. I was as angwy as could be. Though not as angwy as Patwick is now. My love, upon my word, I believe you are about to burst.’
But he might not have heard her. The glare he had fixed on Frances had not abated while she was speaking, and now he simply put Letty aside, with surprising roughness, with a push of one forearm. ‘All very well! But where has your sister’s precious pity led one of the objects of it?’
Frances put both hands to her cheeks. ‘Oh . . . Martin . . .’
It was only a murmur, addressed to herself rather than to him, but he replied with passion, looking over Letty’s head into her face. ‘Yes! Martin! Who has never been in trouble until this day.’
‘What will happen to him?’
‘He will come before me in the morning.’
‘Fwances, a fair exchange.’ Letty crossed the room with her fast gliding step. ‘Here is Cass’s letter. Give me the one from Hermione and Lydia.’
But as Frances made the exchange she hardly looked away from Logan’s face. ‘And what will happen to him after that?’
‘So you expect me to prejudge him?’
‘Why—no—’
‘Why—yes. You do. Well, I shan’t. And nor does the matter concern you.’
‘Sir—’
But he had turned his back. She waited while he went to the window again to spit into the garden. In the strength and disturbance of her feelings she had lost her fear of him, but in this enforced interval she had time to regain it, and when he came back from the window her struggle against it was evident in her strained and timid voice.
‘Sir, a moment ago you said it did.’
But he had seen the sash cord; he picked it up. ‘Who requisitioned this?’
‘Oh, Patwick! Nobody.’
‘Nobody!’
‘There was no need. It was left over from last time.’
‘What last time?’
‘Sir,’ said Frances, in the same strained voice, ‘a minute ago you said it did concern me.’
‘I don’t remember requisitioning any sash cord. What? What? What concerns you?’
‘What happens to Martin.’
‘Oh, Fwances . . .’
‘Ah, yes, miss, the doing of it concerns you. It does, to be sure. But the punishment does not. That is in my unworthy hands.’
‘He has brought me to no harm,’ said Frances in a low voice.
‘What did you say?’
‘He has brought me to no harm.’
‘And so should not be punished?’
She was silent.
‘Come—is that what you mean?’
‘I don’t suggest he should not be warned.’
‘You are mad. You are mad. I am to let the thing pass with a warning?’
‘Oh, but let the warning be severe.’
‘Severe. I see. Miss Commandant!’ He bowed. ‘Only let me have your instructions!’
Letty stepped between them, her arms flung wide. ‘Stop! Patwick, your blood is making me sick. Did not Henwy tell you to wash out your mouth?’
‘He did. I was about to do so when I was diverted by the screams of your sister. Your sister is as idiotic as Cowper. Now there is her match! Let her marry Cowper. A precious couple!’
‘I think, sir,’ said Frances, with sudden composure, ‘that I may shortly marry Mr Edmund Joyce.’
He looked her over from head to foot. ‘Then I wish him joy of his bargain.’
But Letty put her fingertips together and cocked her head in enquiry. ‘Then he has . . .?’
Frances turned on a heel and grasped the last of Edmund’s three letters from the desk. But Logan was now leaving the room. ‘With you at his side,’ he remarked as he went, ‘he may say goodbye to all expectations from his uncle.’
Frances was shocked by her surge of hatred for him, and by her impulse to pursue him and thrust the letter beneath his eyes. She stared after him as she gave it instead into her sister’s extended hand.
‘It could hardly be plainer,’ said Letty, when she had read it.
‘And here is my reply.’
The seal had been broken during her scuffle with Martin. ‘Yes,’ murmured Letty. ‘Yes, it is well put. It will do.’
‘I thought you would be better pleased.’
‘I am thinking of what Patwick just said.’
‘I will change when I am Mrs Edmund Joyce.’
‘Change now, Fwances, or you will never be Mrs Edmund Joyce. Who would take a scweaming mad woman, a woman with a weputation for making scenes? Why did you do it?’
Frances shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘They say the climate . . . but Lord, it is not even summer yet.’
‘Letty, how can I make amends?’
‘By a wesolve never, never to act in that way again. But in the meantime, my dear, don’t let us distwess ourselves too much. Patwick will go on his journey. By the time he comes back his anger will have abated. You will see—all will be forgiven. And soon after that, we will leave this place for ever—’
‘But Letty—’
‘—and will leave your little scene behind us in the wiver mud.’
‘But I meant, how can I make amends to Martin?’
‘You can’t. It has passed beyond that.’
‘What will happen to him?’
‘You heard Patwick say it is not your concern. I don’t make such matters mine.’
‘He has never been in trouble before. I am sure he will be shown mercy.’
‘Can you doubt it? Do you think so ill of Patwick?’
‘No . . . no . . .’
‘On the other hand, can such an attack be passed over?’
‘No. But will you speak for him?’
‘Speak?’
‘Intercede.’
‘I have sometimes neglected to weport him for speaking to the childwen. It may have been a mistake.’
‘Then I will intercede.’
‘You will make the matter worse.’
Frances sat in the chair at her desk
and covered her cheeks with both hands. ‘I know!’
‘I will intercede on one condition.’
Frances raised her head. ‘Letty, will you? What?’
‘That you dwop the subject.’
‘Very well. But you will intercede?’
‘I have told you.’
‘You will beg—’
‘I have told you. Oblige me by dwopping the subject.’
‘But you will—’
‘Fwances, no more! I cannot bear it. These last six months have been hard and anxious—’
‘Letty, that sounds unlike you.’
‘All the same, I am saying it. Listen. They have been hard and anxious. And if now, so near the end, when there are only a few weeks to go, there should be more twouble, more fusses, I could not bear, it. No, forgive me, Fwances, but I could not. Help me in this. Help me and my family. Pway to God to smooth our way out of this place. And as for this—’ she folded the reply to Edmund and gave it back to Frances—‘you must do it again, of course, on fwesh paper.’
CHAPTER TEN
Letty could not see the garden from where she sat alone in the dark drawing room, but as the voices passed by the open window she could easily identify them. The first four came together: Louisa and Amelia, Victor and Lancelot. All talked and laughed as they threaded their way down from the road through the commandant’s garden, but the men, who had been drinking, were louder and more free than the women. No torchlight flared on the ceiling of the verandah as they passed. The moon gave so much light that Letty had tired of its brightness and had turned her back to the window.
The four were still talking when they reached Whyte’s office, but their sudden silence then informed Letty that the clerk (with a look and a jerk of his head?) had warned them that the commandant was working on his reports in the office next door. Into that silence sprang an image of her husband sitting at his desk, his right foot advanced and his left drawn back against a leg of his chair. The scrape of his nib would scarcely be audible, for he found writing a nervous business and refrained from forcibly pressing the paper. The candle at his left hand would reveal his swollen mouth and the frequent twitching of that taut little muscle high in his jaw. He would not look up when he heard the group enter Whyte’s office. His pen would continue to move irritably, lightly, across the page, or perhaps, without raising his head, he would stop to stare at the paper, as if its whiteness had suddenly struck him blind. That muscle would twitch, and as he wrote or stared, he would whisper a few of the words, while in the outer office the four would put their mail on the counter and silently depart.
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