The Rich Are with You Always (27 page)

The predawn birds had sung to silence and a band of dark green was eating up into the black of the eastern skyline when the baby gave its first cry. It was neither loud nor startled and it soon ceased.

  John, now standing at the window, grasped the curtain in his fist and held it to his mouth. His lips moved in prayer. There was only silence.

  Sarah stood shakily and went across the corridor. In moments she was back, smiling hugely. "All's well," she said. He did not turn until the words were out. "A boy," she added. "All present and correct."

  He took her hands in his and shook them and shook them again, unable to speak his joy and relief. "A boy!" he said. "That's three in a row."

  Sarah giggled. "He has a little crease in the palm of his hand, in the shape of an anchor. The midwife says you must call him Clément."

  "Clement," John said experimentally, giving it the English pronunciation. "Clement Stevenson. It will do."

  Ten minutes later he was allowed in to see Nora and the boy.

"You've done it again, love!" he said, his joy once more at a peak.

  She was exhausted but happy, very close to sleep. "I always feel so sorry for you," she told him, barely above a whisper. "Nothing to do but wait. You've done a lot of waiting lately."

  He grinned and patted her hand. "I've done aught more this while," he said. "I had a long jaw with Mrs. Cornelius, who I fancy now sees sense—your way. I fancy too she'll be stopping with us at Thorpe while she finds her feet."

  Nora, too tired to speak her pleasure at this news, gripped his hand, closed her eyes, and smiled. "Do you remember," she asked, "how I joked about 'a birth at a death'? How grim!"

  "He's a grand little fellow," John said, looking at the baby for the first time—a damp, shrivelled, unprepossessing bundle of self-will, he thought. Only his conscious mind, saying
yours—your flesh,
enabled him to handle the boy with the outward demeanour of a proud parent; but all his love was for Nora.

  "Was it bad?" he asked.

  "Never easier," she said. "He's littler than the other three were."

  "About three weeks early, I'd say," the doctor added. "But he's breathing all right. Bit of glue in his nose but that'll come away."

  A harder, more everyday glint came into her eyes. "Well?" she said, her tone suggesting that he might have raised the subject without her prompting. "How's the old firm of Nature, Fate, and Company?"

  "I've spent the night with Mrs. Cornelius."

  She raised her eyebrows, accepting it as a joke.

  "Yes, I think she'll be coming to stop with us—'indefinitely,' as someone once said."

  "It would solve many problems," she said delicately. "And how is the 'indefinitely' respectable lady?" She did not want to use the name in front of Honorine.

  "As I came in here, a very worried gentleman was being shown into their room." He smiled and leaned forward to kiss her. "I had better go and finish that business."

  Angry but muted voices were coming from the Corneilles' room as he passed the door; they interrupted one another in a way that reminded him of an opera. The vehemence seemed too charged to be real.

  Out in the courtyard his professional eye estimated the number of cobbles at around forty-five thousand. He walked the length and breadth of the yard slowly, heel and toe, idly checking the guess, biding his time.

  Before he had finished, a choleric little man, wrapped tightly in a cloak, came stalking out of the kitchen. He almost bowled John over, muttered a perfunctory
"Pardon, M'sieu,"
and vanished through the archway to the street.

  Less than a minute passed before Madame Corneille, in obvious agitation, walked out into the courtyard. She did not see him, standing in the far corner by the coachhouse door.

  "Congratulate me, Madame!" he called. "I am the father of a fine new son!"

  She came toward him at once, as he had intended. Her congratulations were brisk but warm. "And Mrs. Stevenson, the deary?" she asked.

  "She too is well. In fact, I think it is time for me to return to her." He took one step before she sailed in front of him. When he stopped and looked puzzled, he saw the relief on her face.

  "Did you see that man?" he asked.

  "He came here. He says he is the owner of the inn and he has not been paid."

  John looked calmly at her, saying nothing, waiting for her to reveal more of her state of mind.

  "When I told him I was Thomas's aunt, he wanted
me
to pay. Me and Corneille!"

  John sighed, hinting at reluctant knowledge.

  "What do we make of it? Please, Monsieur Stevenson, if you have any notion of these affairs, I implore you to help me."

  Her imploring was most professional.

  "Madame," he said, even more reluctant, "I barely know or knew Thomas or Sarah Cornelius. I barely know you." She nodded, losing hope. "But," he added quickly, "I am a man of business. I see…certain signs."

  "What? What signs?" She was so avid he could feel her tremble.

  He took her arm and lowered his voice. "If I tell you," he said, "you will please to take credit for the discovery yourself. Mrs. Stevenson, you see, although she does not really know Sarah either, has naturally formed a great sympathy…"

  "Naturally. Naturally. I understand, m'sieu. Please. Be quick."

  Still reluctant but now grimly committed, he began. "In April, when I last stayed at the Tabard in London, I find that Thomas Cornelius has suddenly sold out and vanished. No one knows where he is. Some say they think he is in the west of England. I think that is odd. Some weeks later, Mrs. Stevenson and I, stopping the night in Boulogne, happen by the merest chance to meet Thomas Cornelius and a former maidservant from the Tabard, whom he introduces as his wife Sarah. That too is odd—or unexpected. He is very happy and he tells us that he has bought this inn at Coutances, and it becomes clear that he himself has deliberately spread this false tale of going to the west of England. Later that same evening, he asked me for some help over money. It was little enough he wanted and I was happy to oblige. And now it turns out that even the inn is not paid for." Madame Corneille hung on every word. "Put these facts together, Madame, and I ask you—does it not explain—or I should say, does it not
perhaps
explain—Mrs. Cornelius's eagerness to be free of the inheritance?" A flinty, cunning smile parted Madame Corneille's lips. John rammed home the keystone. "Remember that she has made her way in the world entirely by her own…" He waved his fingers, unwilling to supply the word. "She is no fool."

  "Ha!" Madame Corneille sneered. "And nor am I! I said it was a trap. Did I not say so! I was sure of it. A thousand thanks, m'sieu. It was only an instinct with me but I was right. My instinct and your reason, they make the case certain. Ha!"

  "Of course," John added, now beginning to withdraw, "I may be wrong. I may be doing her a great injustice."

  "No!" Madame Corneille was scornful, as if she were now the clever one and John the simpleton. "Not her. Not that one! Believe me, m'sieu. I know them. Oh, yes! Well, we shall stop that little game, just you see!"

After breakfast Sarah came downstairs, tired and pale, bearing an opened note in her hand.

  "It's very strange," she said to John. "It's almost a legal document. From the Corneilles."

  "They have left," he told her. "I saw them go, quite early."

  "Yes. They say goodbye here. And they renounce entirely and unconditionally any claim they may have as heirs to Thomas. Why? Don't you find that odd? They didn't even wait for the funeral."

  "Not in the least. There was once a man who stood all morning in Lincoln's Inn fields offering to sell a five-pound banknote for a single golden sovereign—a four hundred per cent profit to the buyer."

  "I don't follow you."

  "No one bought. People mistrust altruism and generosity. You frightened those Corneilles."

  She was shocked. "I hope you are wrong."

  "I could wish I were. But you remember that. If ever you want to make it easy for someone to accept your help, always stress the benefits the arrangement will bring to yourself."

  They went upstairs to Nora, who was suckling baby Clement. "Three weeks early and greedy," she said. "He's a Stevenson."

  Sarah sat beside her and admired the baby. "You must be very happy," she said.

  "I would be happier, Mrs. Cornelius, if you would come back to England and stay with us," Nora began. Then, seeing hesitation in Sarah's face, asked her what was wrong.

  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.

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."