Sarah looked shyly from one to the other. "There is no one in the world now to whom I am 'Sarah.' Do you think…would it be too…"
"Of course, my dear!" Nora said. "Sarah!"
Sarah beamed at them.
"It would be such a help to us," Nora said, "to have a friend around on whom we may rely. And the children need—oh, you would be so right. And you could help me improve my French. What do you say now?"
Sarah, remembering what John had just told her downstairs, smiled complicitly at him; he returned a what-did-I-say smile. Nora almost said "What are you both grinning at?" but, for some reason, thought better of it. And then Sarah happily repeated her acceptance, and the moment for such a question had passed.
Chapter 17
The Protestant burial ground at Coutances was a windswept plot of sand above the town. The afternoon was oppressive. Clouds had steadily thickened all morning as the wind got up off the sea. By midafternoon, when John and Gaston trundled the coffin on its sandcart out to that barren plot, the sky was one grey from east to west. Occasionally a large drop of warm rain fell through the half-gale. The two men and Sarah were the only mourners, the pastor and sexton the only other witnesses.
When they arrived at the graveside, John was shocked to find it merely four feet deep—no deeper than the sand.
"I'm not having that," he said and told the sexton to dig deeper.
The sexton refused; all the graves in the place were like that. The pastor made placatory gestures, more afraid of losing his gravedigger than eager to get a proper job done.
John grabbed a shovel from the sandpile—a long-handled one like the ones in Cornwall and Ireland—and, throwing off his coat and rolling up his sleeves, jumped down into the shallow pit, which came no higher than his waist. Within ten minutes he was in deeper than his own six feet two inches, levelling the floor and trimming the sides to geometrical perfection. It took Gaston on the other end of a rope to get him out.
"Thank you, John," Sarah said.
Later, as they walked slowly back to the inn, he said, "It was hard enough to see Tom go so thinly attended; him who was always the heart and soul of any company. But to see such an excuse of a grave!"
She began to weep then, for the first time in the whole proceedings. He knew he had made her cry, yet he could honestly feel no remorse. "Take my arm if it will help," he told her and was glad when she did so. The wind and the slight rain, too, made her huddle to him.
"I'm glad you are coming to us," he said.
She hugged his arm but did not speak.
"It will be so good for Nora. You will see why. She is—a rare woman. She has rare gifts. They set her apart and make it hard for her to cultivate female society at large."
"I did not like her," Sarah said. "Until we met in Boulogne, I never liked her."
John stopped abruptly. "You astound me. I had no idea."
"Oh, it's all right now," Sarah told him. "I was wrong—very wrong. She is, as you say, rare."
They began to walk again.
"But why your dislike?" he asked.
"I'm not sure I should tell you. Though it was a long time ago. The first time you came to stay at the Tabard."
"Oh! I think I can guess. She borrowed your room to open up some letters she'd intercepted. Or stolen, really. They were stolen, did you know?"
"I guessed it, from her behaviour. I hated her for making me a partner to it."
"Hate?" John said. "That's very strong."
"But true." She laughed grimly. "I was a prig then. And a prude. Hate came easily."
"That was natural."
"You understand," she said, as if it relieved a fear. Her grip tightened on his arm. "There's so much I would permit now that I would have frowned on then."
"It was obvious you had not always been a maidservant. And—or so I guess—you had recently suffered a great drop in fortune. Temptations to…easy money…must have been all around you. I would not call it priggishness nor prudery that armed you to resist."
"Yet it made me think Nora was hard and shameless. I never had the charity to ask what forced her to it. And that made me misjudge her very badly."
"She has no notion of this, you know."
"To be sure," Sarah said grimly. "Who notes the moods of a servant—until the soup is cold or the mud left on the boots!"
"There's something in that," he said, disagreeing. "But Nora wouldn't notice anyway. She's not sensitive like that. Also, she owes you a big debt."
Now it was Sarah's turn for surprise. "I can't believe that."
"We slept in the Pilgrims' Room, remember? And you told her all about The Canterbury Tales. She'd had little acquaintance with books until then. Also she saw all the books in your room. I fancy she envied you. All that summer her nose was never out of a book. You started that. It changed her life."
"I had no idea." She slowed down; they were almost at the gate of the inn. "It's frightening if you really think of it—the unknown influences we may have on others."
"Aye." He looked up at the inn. "What'll you do about this place?"
That was a question Nora had gone some way toward answering while they had been at the burial.
"Isn't he lovely?" Sarah whispered, admiring the sleeping Clement. "Such tiny, perfect hands they have."
"Don't whisper," Nora said. "The world's not got to put itself out for him. Come and sit here, Sarah dear." She patted the bed at her side. "I have a suggestion to make."
Sarah sat on the bed and John turned a chair around, straddling it and leaning on its back.
"Monsieur Colbert called while you were out," Nora said.
Sarah groaned and buried her face in a hand; Colbert was the vendor of the inn, so impatient for his money.
"Don't fret," Nora told her. "I have made him an offer, which he is now thinking over. And I want you think it over too. I will buy this inn from him and I will also pay you back your deposit. Count up to one and a half and say yes."
Sarah was delighted. "Oh Nora—you are so good! I'll say yes now, with no regret. But you must not lose by it."
Nora said nothing. Sarah almost ran to look for the contract, as if she were afraid Nora might change her mind.
"It's done, then," John said when they were alone. "We are over the first hurdle."
"I got it for a good deal less than Tom Cornelius was willing to pay. Mr. Colbert's in a fix and would be glad to settle at any price. We'll rename it: l'Auberge Clément. I like the name Clement."
He watched her come alive as she described how she had done it: "Colbert came in here like Chanticleer on a…"
"You saw him in here?"
"I put screens around the bed," she said, as if that had been too obvious to state. "We talked through the screens. He never saw me."
John, picturing the scene, burst into laughter. "Poor devil!"
"I saw him though. In that mirror. I had a gap in the screens there and could see him. But it was too dark behind the screens for him to do the same. You never saw a man less comfortable!"
His laughter brimmed his eyes with tears. "Oh, Nora, Nora! I'm that fond o' thee!"
"Shush!" she said, grinning herself. "It's still a house of mourning."
Baby Clement stirred, almost cried, and settled down again. And Nora went on to describe how she had used the certain knowledge she had gained from Gaston to bring Colbert down in price.
"We'll shut the place this winter," she went on, "and Gaston can come over and take a position at the Adelaide. You can order that with the manager, whatsizname, Hurst. He can show Gaston how a proper hotel is managed. And better his English."
John laughed but she pressed on. "When we get the Great Hall contract at Euston, you see, I imagine you'll take a suite there. So you can keep an eye on him too." She settled happily and smoothed her hands over the sheets. "How well it all works out!"
What with visits from Sarah and Sam, and Nora's need for rest, it was evening before he could speak alone with her again.
; She wanted to talk of the suggestion she had made to Rodet in the rose garden the previous week. She was uncertain now how it might fit into their future. But at least she no longer feared John's anger; it would be a long time before John had the temerity to be angry with her again over any business matter.
"John," she said, "could Rodet become an important supplier to us?"
"It's possible."
"What if we could find out his manufacturing costs?"
John froze. "If it came about through ordinary commerce."
"Yes."
"Not through being a guest of his? Not by underhand means?"
"Through ordinary business."
"Then I wouldn't walk away from the idea."
So she told him of Rodet's proposal to make "Stevenson" rails in France for them to sell out of Southampton. John was not very taken with the notion. "At the very most our profit will be in the low hundreds," he said. "Not very interesting. What did you reply?"
She drew a deep breath. "I said you'd probably go for a fixed-price contract."
"Good God! I would say that's the very last…"
"John. I'm not remotely interested in his proposal. As long as we don't make an actual loss. But if we start with a fixed price, and then if we introduce some variations, I will be able to work out very quickly what his real manufacturing costs are."
"What variations?"
"For instance, we'll say we have a glut of pig iron at Stockton and we'll transfer it to him at a nominal cost—since we're going to buy the product back anyway. That and a few other changes—it doesn't matter. They're all legal. The point is, we could soon know his costs. So that when you sit down with him, next year say, to negotiate a really important contract…"
"Yes, I see." His eyes held hers in an unblinking gaze. "How many days went by between his proposal and your telling him I'd prefer a fixed price?"
"Oh, I told him that at once."
His look was sheer disbelief.
"I mean within a minute or so. Of course I needed that much time to think it out."
"A minute or so!" He laughed flatly. "I'll say it again: Thank God you're on my side."
"Of course," she said, "we must use the knowledge very carefully. Our 'little frog' must always believe the Stevenson kiss has turned him into a prince, not just a little golden goose."
He gripped her arm, unable to find words to express his relief.
She realized then that a euphoric John was as dangerous to their present state as a John sunk in self-blaming despair. "We must go on absolutely as normal, love," she warned. "No one, not Rodet, not our own people—and certainly not Chambers—must suspect that we are anywhere near insolvent. We may have until November before the bubble bursts. Until then we're well in funds. We must use those funds to go on absolutely as normal. We must even stay on warm terms with Beador! Can you do that?"
"I can!" He grinned.
"I'm not so sure. There's a nasty streak of honesty in you at times."
Chapter 18
Ten days later Nora, Sarah, and the baby were in the Rodets' coach on its delayed return to La Gracieuse; Sam had gone back to the Nelsons a week earlier; John left with him, stopping in Rouen to negotiate a fixed-price contract with Rodet, Maître de Forges. L'Auberge Clement was Nora's, and she left a delighted Gaston in charge. A dignified headstone had been ordered for Cornelius, and it was to be Gaston's most important duty to tend the grave each week.
Now that the bustle incidental to Tom's death had abated, Sarah was beginning to plumb the depth of her bereavement. She did not sigh nor wring her hands, much less weep; but Nora noticed that she would stand for long minutes looking at a view or a picture or a stone wall, seeing nothing. And the pages of any book she settled to read would lie long unturned. Lacking John's courage, Nora kept her silence, feeling helpless.
When they arrived at La Gracieuse, Rodie showed, yet again, her extraordinary emotional range, combining intense and sincere compassion with a tactless egotism that left Nora breathless and Sarah bemused. They were hardly through the ill-matched gates when her voice filled the courtyard with oohoo, ohoo! and allo, allo! And then in one sustained, nonverbal sentence of cries and ohs and tongue-clickings and sighs she conveyed her sorrow for Sarah, her muted pleasure at their meeting, her delight at Clement, and her ecstasy at seeing her beloved Stevie once again. Throughout, she held in her gloved left hand— totally unaware of the fact—an apple bitten down to its core.
She swept Sarah indoors and up the stairs, talking volubly and much too fast for Nora to make out. But it was clearly no conducted tour of the pictures and ornaments. Nora took Clement from Honorine and followed them more slowly.
Rodet inclined his head toward her and smiled conspiratorially.
"Ça va bien, m'sieu?" she asked.
"Merci, madame. Ça va très bien."
Sarah was in what had been John's dressing room, next to Nora's room. As Nora passed by the door, Rodie came petulantly out seeking somewhere to put the apple core, which she had at last discovered. When she saw Clement she forgot the core once again. "Oh, but the bébé can go with Honorine to the night nursery. Honorine!"
Nora looked doubtful. "I must not dry up," she said. "Not until we get to Yorkshire."
"Oh!" The apple core waved inches from her face. "You can feed him at the day. You must sleep undistraught. I have a nourish. You will see."
"Nourish?"
"Wet-nurse," Sarah intervened, coming to the door. "Nourrice, oui?"
"Oui," Rodie said. "Wet-nurse? Oh, it's good." Like a choral conductor, she willed the baby into Honorine's arms. "So, so, oh, the angel! [kiss kiss kiss!] Now a little dinner. Just some little crudities. But you will be so fond of them."
Waving the apple core about her like a pennant, she talked them all the way downstairs. Nora felt guilty at abandoning Clement to an unknown night nursery but thought that Rodie might feel slighted if she made an immediate inspection. She went up quickly after dinner and found it, like everything else in the house, elegant, ill thought out, and reassuring. The wet nurse had just finished suckling Clement and was holding him on her shoulder, rocking and singing.
Nora slept "undistraught" that night, but only because she left undisturbed the pile of railway newspapers that had grown during her absence. The following morning, while Rodie took Sarah on the tour of inspection, she went through them, beginning the task with a sinking heart and ending it in the deepest gloom. In the 28 days since she had last checked, 63 new companies had joined the motley, making
377 newly projected lines; and the total capital they now sought was a lunatic £343,010,788. The mad pack was still in full gallop on a drag scent laid by men far less scrupulous even than Hudson. The subscription lists had the names of infants down for thousands, and, beside them, clerks and parsons, servants, sporting men and cooks, dainty ladies and—for all one could tell—their pet dogs. Sir George Beador must indeed be only a small lieutenant in a great legion of numskulls.
Before, she had watched, as it were, from the sidelines, fearing only the backwash when that idiot legion sank below the waters. Now, willynilly, she and John were yoked to one of its leaders.
At least she was not now alone in her forebodings. The Times was clearing its throat and voicing an ambiguous worry. The railway papers no longer trumpeted the newly announced schemes as if each were the wonder of an age. And even George Hudson was beginning to hint publicly that enough was enough. There was some satisfaction in his belated and cool support for the views she had been laughed at and humoured for expressing; but such comfort in no way matched the deep unease she now felt. If George Hudson, who had once led the pack, was now telling all and sundry that he was winded, things had indeed come to a grim pass.
Perhaps the bubble would now burst within weeks, not months. Certainly she could no longer stay here, so far from the centre of events. She must return at once to London; Sarah could stay or come as she pleased. At least she seemed to have accepted for the moment that John wa
s to be a sort of unofficial trustee of Cornelius's money—her money now. As long as that persisted, all they need actually give her was mere pocket money.
Before Nora left, however, there was one more arrangement to make. If she and John ever had to make a run for it, and if they had to start again, they would do it here in Normandy. And they would do it in a line of business she understood—land and property. It would cost them money they could now ill afford, but she would not let that stop her. Never again, she vowed, would she permit John to have an absolute say over their joint affairs.
The Rich Are with You Always Page 21
