Victoria and the Nightingale

by Susan Barrie

  From the moment he recovered his composure, however, he never again referred to the accident . or not for a very long time. But while he was still struggling to get the better of his misery he endeavored to get one or two minor matters straight.

  “Does this mean we won’t ever be going—home again?”

  “No, darling, not to Cedar Avenue.”

  “Will we be living—here?”

  “For a while, yes. But only for a while,” she was careful to stress.

  “And after that?”

  “Arrangements will be made. But don’t worry, sweetheart, they’ll be quite nice arrangements,” without any real conviction in her heart. “For you, at any rate,” she added hurriedly.

  Johnny looked at her in an alarmed fashion.

  “But what about you? We will be together, won’t we?” he insisted. He shook her arm in sudden frenzy. “Won’t we?”

  “ I... I hope so, honey.”

  His enormous eyes raked her face.

  “You’re not quite certain?”

  She realized that this was no time for letting him know the truth, and she had no idea what Sir Peter Wycherley had said to him, so she decided to be reckless and give him the reassurance that he so obviously craved. She hugged him in her arms and she said over and over again: “Yes, yes, darling, I’m sure we’ll be together!” She prayed wildly that it would work out that way. “If that’s what you want, we’ll be together!”

  Johnny looked up at her with eyes like solemn, moistly gleaming, red-rimmed lamps and assured her that he wanted nothing else.

  “Just you and me,” he said, “Just you and me!” For no particular reason she heard herself asking him:

  “But what about Sir Peter? Don’t you like him?”

  “Yes,” he answered immediately, “I like him, and he’s promised to buy me a lot more toys as well as those they’ve given me to play with now. And he talked to me about

  playing cricket and football one day, and said I could have a pony if I’d like one. And he’s promised to show me the horses—the proper horses!” He looked temporarily diverted. “But,” he added unexpectedly, “he’s a man—he’s not you!”

  “You’re a baby,” she said, and sat crooning over him until teatime, when he was diverted once again by the sight of the chocolate cake that had been baked for him by the cook, and which occupied a prominent position in the center of the nursery tea table. And there were so many other delicacies besides that Victoria experienced a pang of uneasiness for the future, when there would be no nursery teas of this high quality, and no butler and housekeeper to take a particular interest in him and buy him presents with their own money ... and no Sir Peter Wycherly to promise a pony, and gratify his other childish whims.

  She managed to obtain permission from the hospital to visit the little girl who had attached herself to her like a limpet on the night of the accident, and she was pleased to see that she was bearing up remarkably well, and already the shock of the accident seemed to have lessened its effect.

  Victoria was driven in to the hospital by Sir Peter’s chauffeur in a long, gray car that had its backseat crowded to capacity with gifts from the staff at Wycherley Park, and in addition to those gifts she stopped the car in the local market town and bought sweets and books for the small patient she was visiting. She had no need to buy anything for Johnny, for he was snowed under with what he had already received.

  The funeral of Johnny’s father was a pathetic affair, the memory of which lingered for a long time in her mind. Once again a Wycherley Park car was placed at her disposal, and she was driven to the church where the interment took place by Sir Peter’s chauffeur, whom she was beginning to know quite well by this time.

  Sir Peter himself did not accompany her, possibly because he would have felt like an intruder at a time when there was really no room for intruders, and Johnny, of course, remained behind in the nursery. So there was no one, actually, to give Victoria support, although when she left the churchyard she found Mrs. Grainge waiting for her. The housekeeper explained that Sir Peter had thought that she ought to have someone to return with her to the Park ... someone in addition to the chauffeur who waited for her, and who was separated from her by a glass screen when they were actually on the road.

  Victoria returned to Wycherley Park feeling far older than her twenty-two years, and certainly more experienced than a good many girls of her age.

  For the second time in less than three years she had known shock and violence, and for the second time she felt unutterably bereft. It wasn’t because she had been all that close to John Musgrove, who had failed so often to pay her any wages; but, as a man—and because of an unfortunate affair when she was only nineteen, she really did mistrust, and was inclined to dislike, all men—she had found him pleasant to work for, and extremely appreciative even if he didn’t show his appreciation in any very practical way. And more than anything else, he had been Johnny’s father, and Johnny, who adored him, was now the apple of her eye.

  Without Johnny she would indeed feel as if she had been cast adrift on a strange ocean, without any real hope of seeing land again. And without Johnny she would have no one for whom she need feel responsible, no one who cared about her enough to threaten floods of tears if he thought he was going to be permanently separated from her, and no one—and this was the most important thing—to plan for.

  If only she could go on planning for Johnny. If only it was the day-to-day planning of one who was engaged to look after him. A child of that age could not be planned for unless he really belonged to one, and Johnny, she knew, would never belong to her. If she had been married to his father he would belong to her. But there had never been one single, solitary moment when she had contemplated marrying Johnny’s father.

  Although, in all honesty, she had to admit to herself, Johnny’s father had perturbed her somewhat a few weeks before by hinting that he might one day marry again, and further hinting that there was only one person in the world whom Johnny would welcome as stepmother.

  It had been merely a hint—and a look—that had thrown her off balance for several days. And if it had been repeated she would have had to hand in her notice.

  But it had not been repeated, and she was with Johnny when his father was killed.

  When she returned from the funeral she went to her own room for a short while, and sat there thinking of what had taken place that afternoon, and how much it was going to mean to Johnny, before she went to join him in the nursery.

  On her way to it she saw that a door of one of the major guest rooms was standing open, and a pile of luggage had been deposited in the middle of the floor by one of the housemaids. When the girl emerged into the corridor Victoria asked her who it was who had come to stay, and was not entirely surprised when the girl replied that it was Miss Islesworth.

  Victoria didn’t stop to ask any more questions, such as where was Miss Islesworth at that particular moment, but went on down the corridor to the nursery. She opened the door, as she normally did, rather briskly, and almost recoiled into the corridor when she saw that Johnny, instead of sitting waiting for her alone, as she had pictured him, had a visitor.

  Georgina Islesworth was sitting in the lap of a deep chesterfield couch while Johnny sat on the floor and played with a train set. Miss Islesworth was wearing a fetching suit and hat, and she looked as if she had recently emerged from the hands of a beautician. She also looked extremely aristocratic and aloof, as befitted the granddaughter of an earl—albeit one whose family had recently been hit hard by death duties—and extremely thoughtful as she contemplated Johnny at the moment of Victoria’s entry.

  Instantly her expression, that had been coolly affable, froze. She rose and looked at Victoria as if she positively disliked her, although she knew little or nothing about her. And the fact that Victoria was wearing black shoes and gloves and an unpretentious gray suit that she had bought herself before the funeral did nothing to soften her expression.

  “So you�
�re back,” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming back. I thought—” gesturing toward the child on the floors—“that one of the maids was going to look after him, and you were leaving. Hasn’t it already struck you that it’s asking rather a lot of Sir Peter Wycherley to maintain both you and the boy? I mean to say, as his fiancee I do feel that your return here is carrying things rather far, and even Peter, good-natured though he is, can’t be imposed on forever! How soon do you leave?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Victoria felt like someone who had most unexpectedly had the ground cut from beneath her feet. She supposed, when she thought about it afterward, that she should have been prepared for this. She had heard Miss Islesworth express herself somewhat forcefully on the night of her and Johnny’s arrival, but since then she had displayed a good deal of generosity in providing her, Victoria, with quite an outfit of clothes to wear since she had little or nothing of her own, and on the one or two occasions when they met she had been polite, if distant.

  She had left Wycherley Park two days after the accident, but now, apparently, she had returned to stay for a long time, if the pile of luggage on the floor of her bedroom was anything to go by. And she was in a truculent mood, a mood to put this young woman who claimed sanctuary at Wycherley in her place. It should have occurred to Victoria that when a man becomes engaged to be married he should, by right, consult his

  fiancee about every important decision that he made once the engagement had been announced ... and Sir Peter had merely seemed to take it for granted that the dark and devastating Georgina would be only too happy to support him in his decision to keep Johnny at Wycherley, at any rate for a time.

  There was, of course, no question of Johnny remaining at the Park for good.

  But it was now abundantly clear that Miss Isles-worth had either not been consulted, or she was actively rebelling as a result of a certain amount of afterthought. In any case, she had a perfect right to object, as Victoria would have been the first to admit. And she swallowed something in her throat and apologized hastily for inflicting herself on Sir Peter.

  “Of course, I do realize that he has been tremendously kind.” She moistened her lips with her tongue, recalling vaguely that she had been dying for a cup of tea when she entered the nursery, and had been hoping in the same vague, curiously exhausted way that the nursery maid who looked after them would bring one to her as soon as she knew she was back. But now she couldn’t have swallowed a glass of water if it was offered to her. Her throat felt dry and stiff. “No one could have been kinder than Sir Peter ... to myself as well as Johnny!”

  “No one is disputing that Johnny, as a child in desperate need, should stay here and be looked after,” Miss Islesworth returned, with rather more reasonableness in her tone. She glanced at Johnny as if she, personally, was not attracted by him, but she was a humanist, and all children had to be cared for. “For a time, at least,” she amended her statement. “Until some other arrangement

  can be made for him.”

  Victoria moistened her lips again.

  “Of course not,” she said, “There was never any intention that Johnny should stay here for good.” Georgina looked surprised, and her eyes flashed.

  “I should hope not!” she declared. “Sir Peter is a bachelor, and when he’s married he will not wish to start his married life hampered by someone else’s child. Why, the very thought is outrageous!”

  Johnny plainly disliked her tone, for he left his train set and crept across the floor to Victoria. He caught at her arm, and thereafter stayed very close to her side.

  Victoria, still partially bemused and violently disturbed by the sadness of watching his father buried that afternoon, put her arm around him and felt an almost maternal protectiveness take possession of her as she looked down on the top of his small, sandy head. A little flame of anger leapt up in her.

  “I have said that Johnny’s remaining here is only a very temporary measure,” she said distinctly to Georgina.

  “And you yourself are about to pack your things and leave? I gather that you’ve just been to the funeral,” flickering her luxuriant eyelashes as her glance traveled over Victoria’s sober garb.

  “Yes. That is to say, I’ve just been to the funeral, but I didn’t realize I was expected to leave tonight. As a matter of fact, Sir Peter asked me to stay on and look after Johnny.”

  “What?”

  “He was concerned because Johnny has just been deprived of a father, and he thought that someone he knows should stay with him for a little while. But it is only for a very little while ... and in any case, I thought you knew.”

  “I did not. I was not consulted.”

  “Then I suppose it’s a bit of a shock ... but we shall not get in your way, I assure you. We shall take great care to keep out of your way, Miss Islesworth,” and she tightened her grip on Johnny.

  “But that’s not the point!” The brilliant dark eyes were sparkling with emotion, and resentment and indignation flamed from them as well. “The thing that I object to is that it looks to me as if Peter, my fiance, has been taken advantage of ... that is to say, his goodness of heart has been imposed upon. Naturally, he couldn’t cast the child adrift...” with an infinitely impatient glance at the child in question. “But it’s one thing to take you both in because you’ve been involved in an accident, and quite another to keep you both here because you’re temporarily homeless. And surely the boy must have some relatives?”

  “I’m afraid he hasn’t,” sensing Johnny’s bewilderment and biting her lower lip hard.

  “Not even an aunt, or an uncle—”

  “No one.”

  “There are institutions that cope with orphans.”

  Even Johnny knew what the word orphan meant, and Victoria felt him clutch at her as a drowning person might clutch at a lifeline.

  “Johnny may be an orphan, but he is not without friends,” she stated with the same distinctness as before. “And as soon as we leave here I shall do my best to see to it that he doesn’t have to be consigned to the care of

  an institution.”

  “You mean you’ll look after him yourself?” with contemptuous surprise.

  “If necessary.”

  “But you don’t appear to have anywhere to take him to, or a job now that his father’s dead, or very much money,” with an even more contemptuous glance at the unpretentious gray suit Victoria had bought off the rack. “How will you support him, unless you work? And if you work, who will look after him?”

  “I shall arrange something,” Victoria replied rather helplessly.

  Georgina’s lip curled.

  “I don’t suppose the authorities will allow you to do anything of the kind,” she said. “I understand they’re rather hot on child welfare nowadays, and Johnny will be better off in a home. Of course he’ll have to go into a home eventually.”

  “Please...” Victoria felt like a lioness defending her cub, “do you mind if we don’t discuss this any more in front of—in front of Johnny?”

  The other girl shrugged.

  “As you please. But I do want you to understand quite clearly that you can’t stay here. . . . Certainly not you yourself. The child, I suppose, will have to stay for a time, and then Sir Peter will make proper arrangements for him.” She emphasized the word proper. “In the meantime, since Sir Peter obviously expects you to work your passage while you’re here, hadn’t you better put him to bed?” She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s six o’clock. In my nursery days all children were in bed by then, and the people employed to look after them were not allowed to skip their duties. I suggest that you go ahead with yours.”

  “I will if you don’t mind leaving us alone.” Georgina looked mildly surprised. There was a certain air of dismissal about the girl in the off-the-rack suit, as well as an infinite weariness and unhappiness in her eyes. And with her soft gold hair and her pearly pallor she might have been some delicate wraith the child was clinging to.

  Ge
orgina shrugged.

  “Go ahead and put him to bed. And in the morning you and I will have a talk. I think, perhaps, I might be able to find you a job.” She paused. “What do you do when you’re not looking after children?”

  “I can type and do shorthand.”

  “You don’t look to me as if you’d make a very good secretary. Are you good at domestic duties?”

  “Wh-what sort of duties?”

  “My mother wants a personal maid. Do you think you could do that sort of thing? Look after her clothes and manage her hair for her? You might even take a short course.” Once again that flickering look. “You strike me as being somewhat fastidious. It’s very possible you’d turn out to be a first-class personal maid.” Victoria said nothing.

  Georgina started to walk toward the door, and then she turned back.

  “You could visit the boy during your off-duty. I expect he’d love you to take him sweets and toys and things, when we’ve got him safely stowed away somewhere. You can take it from me that I shall do my utmost to persuade Sir Peter to put him in a good children’s home.” Once more she paused. Her look at Victoria was bright and challenging. “But whatever you do, please get it into your head that you cannot continue to take advantage of Sir Peter’s kindness ... and he is very, very kind to most people! As a matter of fact, he doesn’t know how to say ‘No’ when it’s a question of someone pleading poverty and tribulation.”

  Victoria lost what little color she had.

  “I do assure you, I haven’t pleaded poverty,” she said with noticeable huskiness.

  Georgina shrugged once more.

  “Well, perhaps you simply looked at him appealingly.” Her face and tone hardened. “Sir Peter Wycherley, I understand perfectly, is the sort of man to turn the head of a girl like you. He is attractive and kind and courteous and chivalrous, and in addition he’s extremely wealthy—as you must have gathered from this beautiful house of his. I’m not saying you’d allow him to turn your head, but I’d rather have you out of the way ... you and the child! Tomorrow I’ll send for you some time during the morning and we’ll discuss all the aspects of this somewhat—unusual—situation.”