Rutherford Park (9 page)

“For a walk,” he said.

She caught his arm. “Hold on,” she commanded. “What’s happened to you?” She touched his lip.

“I’ve been out on the horse, and the blighter caught me as I was putting on his bridle.”

“
You
were putting on his bridle?” she asked, astonished.

He tried to get past her. “I’ve got to change.”

“And you’ve been out all day?”

“What does it matter?”

“There’s been something happening.”

He turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”

“I saw the doctor come.”

He felt himself reel a little. “For whom?”

She put her head to one side, regarding him. “I don’t know,” she told him. “Someone downstairs. There’s been a lot of rushing about, and Mother said I was not to go and see Father. Now, why do you suppose that? He was only in the library.”

“How should I know?”

“I thought you might,” she murmured, and touched his hand. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look awfully done in.”

At that same moment, they both heard a heavy step on the landing above them. They looked up to see William looking severely down at them.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

A beat of silence followed. Louisa, glancing from one to the other, answered, “He’s been riding, Father.”

William’s face betrayed nothing. “Come to my room, Harry,” he said. “At once.”

* * *

B
elowstairs, despite the preparations for the evening meal, the clatter of plates, and the ceaseless movement up and down to the dining room, a kind of eerie gloom hung in the air. Nothing had gone right; what ought to have been the best day of the year was spoiled. Bradfield stood near the kitchen with a face like thunder; occasionally he would stare at the girls and Cook as if they might be harboring more secrets, something else of vital importance that they had not told him. Everyone avoided his eye, and said nothing.

It had been midmorning before the butler even knew that Emily Maitland was in Mrs. Jocelyn’s room. Word had spread among the lower staff, and in the end it was Harrison who let it slip that he had been out in the snow and that Emily Maitland had been the cause. From there, the truth tumbled out. Bradfield went to Mrs. Jocelyn’s room, demanded to see Emily, and had retreated only forty seconds later.

Lunch came and went; silence took hold. During the servants’ meal, the bell rang on the electrical board that had replaced the old system of bells in the corridor. Mary had gone to Mrs. Jocelyn’s room. “Stay with her,” the housekeeper had ordered, “while I fetch Mrs. March.”

The housekeeper’s sitting room had been warmed by a fierce fire in the grate. Hesitantly, Mary took two or three steps across the carpet. Emily was propped on a daybed, her face white, and both hands clutching the blanket over her.

“Now, then, our Em,” Mary murmured.

To Mary’s horror, Emily began to make a noise. It was like
nothing she had ever heard before, and she had heard enough where she came from, brought up in a back-to-back terrace where one family’s noise became another’s, meshed together by paper-thin walls. She had heard women giving birth—heard the yelling—but she had never heard a woman keeping it in like this until what came out of her mouth was a thin single note that made her want to cram her hands over her ears.

She knelt at the other girl’s side. “Don’t take on,” she said. “Mrs. March is coming.”

Sweat was streaming down Emily’s face. She looked at Mary like an animal cooped up in a slaughtering pen. There was a smell on her too: some visceral heat that had nothing to do with the fire.

“What can I do?” Mary whispered. She took Emily’s hand and was sorry at once; the other girl’s grip nearly broke her fingers. “Is it bad?” she said, although she knew the answer.

The clock ticked loudly over the mantelpiece; Mary glanced at it. It was a solid black slate thing with columns at either end, funereal, morbid, Victorian. In a glass dome alongside it were two stuffed songbirds. The whole lot stood on a piece of yellow velvet hung with tassels.

The long keening sound stopped.

“Why’d you never tell us, Em?” Emily had closed her eyes. “Who was it?” Mary asked. “Where is he? Shall we ask him to come?”

Emily shook her head. She was panting now.

“Shall I damp down the fire?” Mary asked. “Are you too hot? What shall I do?”

The minutes passed. Mary’s feet cramped from crouching alongside. She stroked Emily’s hand. The clock struck half past one. All at once there was a sound in the corridor and Mrs. March was ushered in. There was a blessed moment of cooler air before the two
older women crowded over Emily. Mary stood back; her eyes ranged over the songbirds, the clock, the little shelf of books. The Bible and
Pilgrim’s Progress
; a hymnal, a book of psalms. Mary looked up at the wall, at an engraving and the title underneath it:
Elisha Raising the Shunammite’s Son
. She didn’t know who Elisha was, and she didn’t care. She just wanted Mrs. March to go away and leave Emily alone.

At last, the older woman stood up. “Lady Cavendish will have to know,” she said. “The doctor must come.”

“God have mercy,” Mrs. Jocelyn said. “She’ll have my guts for garters.”

Mary stood transfixed while the two women exchanged a grimace, as if their bad fortune at having to confess Emily’s state to Lady Cavendish were worse than Emily’s suffering. In that moment, Mary hated the housekeeper as she had never hated her before; it was all she could do to look silently at the floor as they passed, Mrs. March telling her to pour Emily a glass of water and to make sure that she drank it.

Mary went over to the bed with the glass trembling in her hand. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “The doctor will come. He’ll be here soon.”

Emily looked at her. She said something. Mary moved closer. “I can’t hear you, Em.”

“The box,” Emily muttered. “There’s a blue box.”

“What box?” Mary asked.

“In the glasshouse.”

Mary frowned, perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“Look for it.”

“But I can’t go to the glasshouse, Em.” She looked hard into Emily’s face, wondering whether this was the kind of delirium she’d seen in her little brother when he had scarlet fever. He’d talked of
all sorts of things he had never seen and never would see, ships and castles. Emily gripped her hand. “Look in the glasshouse,” she hissed. “Find it.”

“All right,” Mary promised.

Emily seemed to relax. “He gave it to me,” she whispered. “You get it. You have it.”

“A box?” Mary asked. She wondered what she wanted with a box; what Emily wanted with it, come to that. Nevertheless, she agreed. “Don’t you worry; I’ll get it,” she said.

Emily put her head back on the pillow. “What time is it?”

“It’s two o’clock.”

“I ought to get up.”

“Nay, you can’t do that.”

But Emily was upright again, grimacing, her gaze oblique, unfocused, her mouth set; she began to try to swing her legs off the bed, shuffling forward.

“Don’t,” Mary begged. “Oh, don’t do that.”

“I’ve got to walk,” Emily told her. There was a sudden panic in her tone. “I must get up.” She got one foot to the floor; she gripped Mary’s arm. “Help me.”

“Em, I can’t. You must stay.”

For a second, Emily stared at her; then her eyes slipped away to that distant point at which she seemed to have been looking just a few seconds before. It was as if she were listening to something that Mary could not hear. Then, “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God.” Her eyes rolled back in her head; she fell sideways, half on and half off the daybed. The hand clutching Mary’s arm relaxed, and two high spots of color, jagged circles, flushed Emily’s cheeks. Her deadweight fell back, her head brushing the wall and the upper half of her body pressing down until, despite Mary’s efforts, she slithered
to the floor. As she fell, she took the blanket with her, and on the bed Mary suddenly saw a trail of blood.

She jumped to her feet, aghast.

“Mrs. Jocelyn!” she cried out. “Mrs. Jocelyn!”

* * *

W
hile he stood in William’s bedroom, for the first time Harry felt truly cold. Snow that had adhered to the hem of his coat was dripping now onto the Indian carpet; he looked down and saw the wet, dark patches among the flourishes of knotted flowers, the blue medallions of silk and wool. William paced backwards and forwards, and then stood with his back to the fire. Above him, the Landseer with its pathetic dog on some Scottish hillside cast a sickly sentiment over the room.

“For God’s sake, take off your coat,” William ordered. “Don’t stand there like a fool.”

Harry did as he was told; he looked around for somewhere to hang it, and finally took it to a chair by the door. He felt his father’s eyes boring into his back, and was infinitely colder, though he recognized that the room must be warm. He longed to shove his hands into his pockets; they felt too large for him. He turned to face William.

“Suppose you tell me how you came by that swollen lip.”

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but was not quick enough.

“And no lies about a horse. I am not Louisa.”

Harry stared at him, trying to determine what his father knew. He felt a crawling sensation of pressure, the need to blurt out everything. He wanted to say that he would marry Emily, absurd as it was, and despite all his thoughts that day. For a second this seemed paramount; he thought of people like Featherstonehaugh, the baronet, marrying his dairymaid eighty years ago—those Regency
scandals that boys had talked about at school, the butt of jokes. But jokes that had always had a thread of envy in them; to buck the system would be a delight, wouldn’t it? He heard his own thirteen-year-old voice in his head. “One in the eye!” To marry a dairymaid, a housemaid, what did it matter? A sort of crazed idea rattled in his brain, pressed down on his tongue as if it were going to leap out of his mouth. He realized that he was shaking not from cold now, but from the sensation of standing on the edge of a precipice where everything hinged on his next reply.

“You were down at the river last night,” William said. “Armitage has been here. You might as well know that.”

Harry tried to get a hold on the carousel, slow down the circularity in his head. “Jack Armitage struck me,” he heard himself say.

William looked wordlessly at his son for a while. “Perhaps you’ll share the reason with me.”

“I don’t know, Father.”

“I see.”

“Really, I don’t know,” Harry continued. “I was looking out; I saw lights outside. I went down there and they were trying to get a girl from the water, one of the maids….” William said nothing. Harry took a step towards him, trying to smile. “I mean, what was she doing?” he asked. “I only wanted to know what she was doing. I asked Armitage.”

“You asked him?”

“Or…or rather, he said…”

“You asked Armitage who this girl was?”

“I could see that it was one of the maids.” He tried to blot out Emily’s face, the shape of her under the dress. “And suddenly Jack Armitage struck me. I don’t know why. He never said a word.”

William’s face did not betray a single emotion. “Then perhaps, if there was no reason, I should get rid of them.”

“Get rid of whom?”

“The Armitages.”

Blood beat in Harry’s throat. “No, I…”

“I can’t let it go, Harry.”

“I wish you would, sir,” Harry replied. “I mean, it was a rotten thing, you know. The girl and all. I don’t know if Jack even knew that it was me standing there. He had been in the water; it was snowing; I don’t know that he saw that it was me at all.”

William still had not moved an inch from his position before the fire. “Armitage said as much,” he replied. “He said that Jack had been angry, but did not say at whom, or why. He claimed not to know.”

Harry did not dare say a word.

“Harry,” said William. “You must tell me now if there is something between you and Jack, something to make him do such a thing.”

“Nothing,” Harry said.

“He simply lashed out at you?”

“He was coming out of the river. I don’t know that he even knew…”

William waved his hand. “All right, all right.” At last, William shifted his position; he walked up to his son and looked him hard in the face, assessing him. “Have you something to tell me?”

“No, sir.”

“The truth, Harry.”

“No, sir.”

“You didn’t know this Maitland?”

“No, sir.”

“You’ve seen her about the house, though?”

He found himself shrugging. “One sees them all, I suppose, at some time or other.”

William nodded, and then moved so close that Harry could feel his father’s breath on his face. “Did you know this girl?” he asked in a low voice. “I’m asking you, Harry. Do you hear me?”

“No,” Harry said.

“You swear this to me on your honor?”

“I did not, sir.”

“You understand what I mean?”

“Yes, Father.”

“You are not responsible for this unholy drama?”

“I am not, sir.”

William assessed him a moment longer. Feeling sick, as if he had been cut off from the world—his word of honor, on his
honor
—Harry managed to take in a long breath.

“The girl had a child this afternoon,” William said. “A daughter, not expected to live.”

The world dropped under Harry’s feet, and he dropped down with it like a lead weight. For a second he closed his eyes and, opening them, was surprised to find himself still standing. William was gazing at him acutely. “Dreadful thing, under this roof. Your mother is most upset.”

“Mother?”

“She went down to see the girl.” William sighed with complete exasperation. “Down to Mrs. Jocelyn’s room, if you please, with the doctor.”

“The doctor came?”

To his intense relief, William turned away and walked back to the fire, where he stood with his hands behind his back, staring down at the flames. “It’s no concern of yours.” He flexed one fist. “Damned stupidity,” he muttered, “utter wasteful stupidity.” Though whether he was talking about Octavia, or the girl, or Mrs. Jocelyn, or anyone else was hard to tell. When he looked back at Harry, his
eyes ranged over his son; there was a fleeting look of unease that did not quite amount to distrust. Then it was gone. “Get along to dress,” he instructed. “And make yourself pleasant at dinner, for God’s sake. It’s Christmas Day, after all. The guests are not to hear of this bloody disgraceful business. Do you understand?”