Nurse Trent's Children (21 page)

Cathy did not answer.

Fayette went on, “The whole thing is ridiculous. Rita is an ill
-
managed little brat, and it is my intention to take her into my own household and teach her a few essentials. It is time she was taken in hand, and with the board’s approval I’ll start the discipline tomorrow.”

No one answered.

Cathy in her frozen sadness for Rita did not notice the small figure at the window, listening, waiting
...

“I have had reports typed out about Rita’s behavior,” went on Fayette. “I did this because I did not want you to think I had a bias against the girl, which definitely I have not. To me she is simply a case, an instance. I feel nothing personal for Rita at all.”

She was taking slips out of her handbag and passing them around. Cathy received hers almost unfeelingly. She glanced down, knowing the substance before she read it.

The report was brief. It showed the dates of Rita’s nonappearance at school, her failure at tests, her complete lack of attempt to make any headway. It finished with a thumbnail account of Rita’s character. The trouble was, it was all correct, every word of it. Only it was so different, so very different
.

“
Is this right, Miss Trent?” snapped Fayette.

“Yes, but—”

“I did not ask for comments. Well, ladies and gentlemen
...”

Again Cathy glanced to the left, to Dr. Malcolm. Again she saw the contemplative stare. Again she looked at Miss Watts. The little woman was sitting even more forward now. Her eyes were slitted as Fayette’s had been.

“I think,” said Miss Mariott, “perhaps another chance
...
”

“She has had more than enough chances.”

“Perhaps Mr. Marsdon could interview her?” The colonel suggested this.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a good home waiting for Rita, with every modern convenience and every opportunity for her to find her correct niche in life. I shall provide her wardrobe, see to her health, look after her in every way she should be looked after. She is, as you are all well aware, on the threshold of starting her own life. She has reached the age when she is no longer entitled to the privilege of our care. How much better than placing her in an apartment it would be to place her with me.”

“You mean as a domestic servant, Mrs. Dubois?”

“If you prefer to put it that way, Miss Trent.”

“Paying, of course, the appropriate wage.”

Again the slitting eyes. “Of course, Miss Trent.”

There was an uncomfortable pause, then Fayette resumed, “If we don’t do this we send Rita out unprepared. She has not absorbed sufficient clerical knowledge to enable her to snare a job. It is the only course.”

“Need she be sent out at all? We have room
...”

“
Miss Trent, must I repeat that Redgates is not functioning entirely for charity?”

“Surely it is not functioning for profit.”

Fayette ignored her. “Well, board members?” she asked.

They hummed and they hahed. Some asked questions. Some scribbled notes. Eventually they all agreed that Rita should go with Mrs. Dubois tomorrow.

Somewhere, by the window, a curtain moved. Cathy, glancing up, thought she saw a figure, then decided she was wrong. It was only the wind.

“The next subject under debate,” said the chairman, “is the future of Denise Lane.”

Cathy started. How had Denise come into the debate?

“I’ve had a letter from Mrs. Latrobe,” said Mr. Bell. He took off his glasses and put them on the bench. “It’s really quite touching. She wants to adopt Denise.”

There was a babble around the table. Cathy heard: “not permitted” ... “against regulations” ... “rules set down and must be kept” ... “can’t make a precedent of one ward.”

Mrs. Dubois was touching up her lips deftly and artistically. She did not join the babble.

“I would like to propose that for once the board overrides its regulation regarding adoption. I sincerely believe that in Denise we have an extraordinary case,” said Cathy.

“In what way, Miss Trent?” asked the chairman sympathetically.

Cathy told him, sharply aware of Fayette Dubois’s unfriendly glance. Satisfied as to which path Cathy was pursuing, Fayette spoke.

“A regulation is a regulation. If we are going to waive rules as easily as Miss Trent would have us, there is no use drawing up rules at all.”

Suddenly Cathy was cunning. It was an inspiration, a point she felt sure Fayette could not resist. The miser touch, she remembered, Fayette’s streak of meanness.

“Denise’s adoption would be to Little Families’s benefit,” she stated. “It costs a fair amount to maintain a child.”

“As at present
you
are maintaining them, yes, Miss Trent, but with a tighter management I believe that Denise’s child endowment, along with the other moneys received, should be quite ample to meet expenses, and even show a little profit. It is just a matter, as I said, of closer financial supervision.”

Cathy said desperately, her cunning defeated, “She would be happier with Mrs. Latrobe.”

“Why? Is Mrs. Latrobe wealthy?”

“No, she is not, but money does not make for happiness in a child
.”

A pause, then Cathy went on. “I am proud of Redgates, and I have a great respect for the work it has always done and will, I know, continue to do. But I believe to most children, and particularly
some
children, no institution can take the place of parental love in a home. Nothing has ever, can ever, or will ever, be a substitute for a house with a father and mother—no matter how poor or humble. For some little ones it is a terrible emotional upset to be away from their parents.”

“You are becoming rather emotional yourself, Miss Trent. The Latrobes are not this child’s parents.” Fayette’s green eyes were pinpoints now.

“I know they are not. Denise was either a deserted child, a neglected child, the child of an unmarried mother, or an orphan. But for all that she is not delinquent, she has no blemish, there is no spot of wrongdoing or misbehaving against her, and yet,
b
ecause she is a ward of Little Families, that privilege that would be permitted a child in another institution is not permitted her—the privilege of adoptive parents.”

“Rules are rules,” snapped Fayette, more, Cathy knew, to spite her than to keep the girl. “They must be kept. We can’t make an exception for you, Miss Trent. There has never been an adoption yet.”

There was a stir at the left of the table. Cathy saw that Miss Watts was about to speak. She took her time. She made herself comfortable.

“There has been an instance,” she said clearly and firmly, “and what has been done can be done again.”

There was a stunned silence.

Then Miss Watts continued, “Colonel Manning will bear me out, won’t you, colonel?”

The old man dithered a moment. “Well, er, yes, madam.”

“And Miss Marriott.”

“Quite right, Miss Watts, I remember it well.”

“You mean,” said the chairman, “there
has
been an instance of this sort in the history of Little Families?”

“There has been an instance here at Redgates. Twenty-five years ago, to be exact. There was an adoption of a female minor. Name of Susan Malcolm.
I
took her back to England with me. Christabel Harris, at present a ward here, is her daughter.”

“And
...
Susan
...
?” It was Dr. Malcolm who said it. He interposed it eagerly, a little starkly. He seemed oblivious of everything else. He
o
nly awaited the answer.

Miss Watts said, “Susan is dead.”

She turned to the members sitting around the table and resumed. “What has been done once can be done a second time. I propose that you interview these prospective parents, find out the
c
hild’s reactions, then alter your garment to fit your cloth.”

Fayette had risen. “And who are you to make suggestions? You are not even a member of the board.”

“I hope soon to be.”

“In which case, madam, I certainly shall resign.”

“That is unfortunate then.”

“Very unfortunate, as any member here will tell you. The place is only functioning because of me.”

“I believe they may find a substitute.”

“A substitute for a steady three thousand per annum?” Fayette’s voice had risen to a little squeal.

“I propose to make it a steady five thousand,” said Miss Watts coolly. And then, almost as though at the realization of what she had said, she who had not earned even one thousand at St. Cloud, sank back and accepted the colonel’s glass of water, Miss Marriott’s smelling bottle; then, recovering, looked clearly, fearlessly—and triumphantly—into Fayette’s furious green eyes.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

An extraordinary meeting ha
d been arranged to be held for the next day; the Latrobes were to attend.

Since there was no more business, Elvira had wheeled in tea, and the board members, with the exception of one, had accepted cups and had begun circulating around the room, and in particular around Miss Watts,

Fayette Dubois’s big black car had driven furiously down the driveway, in it Fayette. Cathy remembered how the last time the woman had left in a green convertible, in Jeremy Malcolm’s car.

The housemother mingled with the different groups, answering questions politely, giving her opinion when asked. Miss Marriott cornered her with regard to whether she should approach Mr. Kennedy on the subject of camphor bags for the boys. Cathy suggested she ask David herself, and ignoring the little lady’s shy disclaimers, had the housefather over to give his decision while she escaped to the outside of the biggest circle to listen with eager attention.

The impossible was coming true. Either that or Miss Watts had gone quite crazy. She stood, cup in hand, talking blithely about new buildings, replenishing sports fields—even a Little Families holiday house for Christmas vacation. The chairman and members leaned deferentially toward her.

It seemed to Cathy they would never go. Dear people though they were, spending a lot of their own time and much of their own money on something that so badly needed their help, spending it because they were kind and humanitarian, just now she wanted them t
o
finish their tea and depart.

At length they did, excited, stimulated, any flagging interest they might have known whipped into keen anticipation by this new turn of events. They all promised to attend tomorrow. No one mentioned Fayette.

The door closed on the last visitor. The last car went down the driveway. The Reverend Mr. and Mrs. Flett, who walked, called cheerily through the window. Cathy turned to Miss Watts. Jeremy Malcolm
turned, too.

“Miss Watts, quickly, I can’t stand it any longer,” urged Cathy.

M
iss Watts laughed. “I intended to make you wait longer still, my girl, but that woman settled it. I couldn’t be quiet another moment.”

“Is it a fable? Just something you made up to help Denise?”

“It is every word of it true. There was an adoption.”

“That is not what I meant. I believed that at once. It was your ability to right matters that I doubted.”

“Speak clearly, nurse. Don’t hedge. You want to say ‘Is it right you have all that money,’ don’t you?”

“Y-yes.”

Miss Watts nodded triumphantly. “I knew it, and the answer is yes. My plan was to settle everything with my solicitor in Melbourne before I made public my intentions. That woman, as I said before, brought on the announcement before I was ready.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when you wrote? It would have helped such a lot.”

“I can see that, but I had to be satisfied in myself before I acted. You were a good nurse, but that didn’t make you a good housemother. Redgates was a good place when I left, but that didn’t make it a good place twenty-five years after. There are bad places, Trent, and you know it. There are places of which I am not proud in England. There are places, I am sure, the same here. Even if they are not bad, they are not happy, constructive. I did not want to put my money into something that was just a function and nothing else.”

“Miss Watts, that money—how, I mean, where
—
”

“Where did I get it? Out of the blue, Catherine, as I rather ruefully told all my friends.”

“Ruefully?” It was Dr. Malcolm’s voice now.

“Yes, doctor. You’re young. You won’t know what I’m talking about. When you leave sixty behind you will understand, too, that a sudden fortune can be a blow as well as a blessing.”

“Was it a fortune?”

“A large one. The last member of the family of the man I was engaged to marry—Cathy knows this story—” Cathy nodded her head “—has died and left the entire family estate to one Edith Watts of St. Cloud Hospital in England. I am Edith Watts and an heiress by all accounts.”

“But, Miss Watts, you can’t do what you just said—
I
mean, give all that money. Even amassing a fortune, the patronage you have just promised to Redgates would surely take every penny.”

“There would be little left over I agree, but
I
only want a little. I am an elderly woman, and if I retire and sit in a beautiful home in the country and eat beautiful food I’m going to die much sooner, and the only difference will be that I’ll die a
rich
old woman. But if I have an interest, a big, intense, vital interest like Little Families, I shall be traveling backward and forward to England, supervising, poking my nose into things as Cathy here can assure you only I can poke, striving, agitating, fighting right to the end; then I will live longer and more happily, and die not so rich, perhaps, but fulfilled. Fulfillment is the only thing in the world. It is the only thing I want. Nothing, save a collapse in my fortune, which my solicitor informs me is most securely invested, can prevent me from being fulfilled.”

She stopped dramatically.

“Any more questions?” she asked.

The doctor stepped forward. “Yes,” he said quietly, “Susan
.”

Miss Watts was squinting at him as she had done yesterday. She was trying to find a memory.

Presently she said gently. “Susan died at Christabel’s birth. Her husband had been posted missing in Korea the week before. It finished Susan.”

“Is he still missing?”

“No, at least, not that way. He, too, is dead.”

“Miss Watts, I believe you said
you
adopted Susan.”

“That is true. I finished my term in Australia and took the child back with me. It was unusual, I know. I was a single woman, and Little Families did not sanction adoption. However, I had known Susan’s parents in London. They were both lost on a ship that went down. The mother had been a nurse. I believed some of their brothers or sisters would be glad to have the girl, so I prevailed upon the authorities to let me take her back with me. I recall the task I had getting them to agree. I believe I used almost the same words that Catherine did today: ‘No institution can take the place of parental love in a home
...
Nothing has ever been a substitute for a house with a father and mother.’ I talked ardently and without the opposition of a Mrs. Dubois. I received permission. When we got back Susan’s relatives did not want her, so I brought her up myself, f suppose I should have contacted Little Families again, but it would have made me look like a fool. Besides, I loved the child.

“I put her in boarding school. She did well. She was intelligent. I would have done the same with Christabel, whom, of course, I naturally took over at birth, only that I was now advanced in years and had the knowledge that there would be no one to look after Susan’s baby once I was gone. ”

“So I sent Christabel out here to Australia,” finished Miss Watts. “I believed it wisest.”