The Rich Are with You Always (55 page)

  "Poor Mama," Winifred said. He could see she knew how close death had come.

  Nora's eyes flickered open, saw nothing, and shut again.

  He let the children stand there a minute more and then said casually to Sarah, "Reverend Paine is coming soon." He could see it was a shock, like a physical blow, to her.

  "Come on, children," she said. "We'll go back with the vicar and go to church and pray." She stayed behind long enough to whisper, "Poor Winifred hasn't slept. I sat with her all night."

  He smiled and patted her arm. "Bless you!"

  They heard the vicar, Arabella's father, coughing a raw, winter's cough as he came up the stair. Professor Liston came out at once. "If you have a cough, sir," he said, "I think it most unwise to come in here."

  The Reverend Paine nodded patiently. "I can administer it from here," he said, settling upon the landing. John went out to him.

  In later years, John came to look upon this night, begun in Stockton at midnight, ended in the cold Hertfordshire dawn, as the time when he finally lost what little faith he had. The vicar rattled through the communion of the sick as if he were holding a private auction with God for Nora's soul. And when it was over he threw in an extra prayer—the commendation at the point of departure. At the words "whatsoever defilements her soul may have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world, through the lusts of the flesh, or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before Thee"…he wanted to stand and shout to the heavens: "No! Take her as she is—spots, lusts of the flesh, and all. If that's not good enough for You, then leave her here with me! With me!"

  All that day he sat at her side, except when they had to change her sheet and the dressing. Dr. Hales came twice; Professor Liston went back to London. Sarah sent word to Newcastle for Sam to come down. At dusk they brought the baby for John to see but he would not even look at her.

  "Go on, sir," the nurse said. "She's a fine, lusty girl. I never knew one so 'earty."

  But still he refused. The nurse went out in tears. The baby started to cry again, too.

  They tried to give Nora some soup that evening, though she was unconscious; but she would not take it. He sat by her all that night, waking from his shallow doze every time she moved or changed her rhythm of breathing. Next morning, the doctor ordered him to bed, "or you'll be of no use to her when she does come to."

Three hours was all he could manage. Then he tossed and curled and stretched and turned while the Christmas bells rang out over the snowbound countryside. He got up, took handfuls of snow from the window sill, and rubbed it over his face and neck. For half a minute it left him feeling fresh and rested; but the sight of his slack, bloated face and bulging eyes in the mirror soon confirmed the feeling that crept back out of his bones once the sting of the cold wore off. Only to sit by Nora brought its own kind of peace. It held no hope, but it suspended his despair. She took water, drop by drop, that day. Half a pint. But it did not wake her.

  Walter and Arabella came that afternoon. "We are praying for a happy Christmas," she said, offering a cheek for John to kiss. Five children and seven and a half years of marriage had taken far greater toll of her than they had of Nora. She seemed always to be anticipating a pain that never quite took hold of her. She knelt to pray at Nora's bedside as if she herself were only just out of convalescence. But her eye was still sharp and bright, and her skin clear and firm. It was the will that was ailing there, John thought, not the body.

  He went down to take tea with them in the library, which they were using for all purposes during this crisis. They could talk only of trivialities. Nobody mentioned the baby.

  Then the day nurse came running down the stairs. John was out of the room before she reached their foot. "Oh, sir!" she called excitedly. "Do come now. Mrs. Stevenson's awake!"

  He left her standing and was breathless at Nora's side before the woman was halfway back. Nora seemed no different from when he had last seen her. The same closed eyes in the same haggard face.

  "Nora?" he whispered.

  There was no response.

  He spoke her name. A terrible urge to punch her, or the pillow, came to him. He noticed he was trembling and he felt a sweat pass over his body.

  "She was. She was." The voice of the nurse. And then Nora's eyes fell open. "Nora!" he said.

  They sought him, first to the wrong side, then, guided by his repeated call, they turned full on him.

  And then that most wonderful moment as her face flooded with recognition!

  "John!" It was hardly a whisper.

  "Aye, love. I'm here."

  She smiled and closed her eyes. Her lips said something.

  "Water," the nurse said.

  They lifted her gingerly to a half-lying position and held a glass to her mouth. She took two gulps and moved her mouth away. The nurse looked triumphant. "We'll try some soup again in an hour or so," she said. They laid her down once more.

  Still she was trying to speak.

  He put his ear to her mouth. "What is it, love? Whisper it."

  "I knew you were there," he thought she said.

  "Aye." He squeezed her arm. "I was. And I will be." He turned to the nurse. "Go and tell Mrs. Cornelius, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton. They'll want to hear."

  She was gone only a minute. "Mrs. Thornton says she will come back tomorrow and sit by Mrs. Stevenson," she said. "Or help tidy the library."

  "Or
what
?"

  "That's what I thought she said, sir."

  That night, Nora took a small cup of beef tea and a spoon of honey. She did not ask for the baby, which was, by now, in the night nursery in the north wing, beyond earshot.

  "She'll sleep easy five, six hours, I shouldn't wonder," the night nurse said. "No point you sittin' aside 'er, sir. Why not rest now?"

  They made up a bed in the front part of the boudoir, where there were curtained windows on three sides. He slept right through till breakfast.

  During the night the doctor had come and gone. He and the nurse had changed the dressing, and the doctor took some of the sand out of the bag.

  "He said she's healin' wonderful, sir," the nurse told John. "He said even if she was still unconscious, it'd be a wonder, the healin' she've done to herself."

  Nora sat half upright for fifteen minutes that morning. They spoke little; she was still plainly exhausted and could not keep her eyes open for long. But if he squeezed her hand, she would smile and squeeze back, again with that surprising firmness of grip. Mostly he told her the news—how the opening of Stevenstown had gone, what a marvel Hudson had been, how Arabella and Walter were in the neighbourhood, when Sam would arrive, how glad the children were…He did not yet mention the baby, though he could not say why. To each of these snippets she would nod and smile and pat his hand. At the end, she said, "What of the business?"

He laughed. "Dearest…oh, dearest Nora! It is Boxing Day. There is no business."

"Ah," she said, content.

Soon she was asleep.

  He had lied about Sam. Word had come back from Newcastle that the Nelsons and Sam were at their shooting lodge and snowed in; the servants were trying to get word through.

  That afternoon with Arabella, it was the same thing. Arabella prattled thirteento-the-dozen about home in Bristol and the children and Walter and her father and mother…and did Nora know that she and Walter had been married from this house and indeed this boudoir was the very room in which she had changed into that wonderful dress…of course she knew, it was the one she had worn to Squire Redmayne's ball that first Christmas in Todmorden…no, it wasn't, but Nora had seen it, of that she was sure, and, dear oh dear, wasn't it all such a long time ago and now here they were with five children each….

  Nora smiled and listened and sighed when sighs were in order.

  And Arabella left looking more perky and energetic than she had in years. It was so wonderful, she thought, to be of such great use to someone—outside the strict call of family duty. And she went down to tidy the library with ten times the vigour she had felt when she had set herself the task yesterday.

  "Did she tire you?" John asked.

  "She does…chatter so. She said we've five children." She opened her eyes and looked at John. "Have we? I've been feared to ask."

  He smiled. "I've been feared it would overexcite you. Would you like to see? It's a grand little lass. Lungs like Stentor, solid brass."

  She nodded.

  The long walk from the north wing quieted the baby so that, although she was bawling blue in the face when John set out carrying her, she was down to snuffles and hiccoughs by the time they were at the boudoir. He took his first real look at the child on that walk, ashamed now of his previous hatred. She wasn't a bad-looking baby, as babies went; in fact, she looked better than any of the four previous. She had stupendous violet eyes.

  "She's the best-looking one you've ever produced," he said, holding the baby vertical in her field of view.

  She raised her hand and touched its tear-stained face. "Abigail?" she said. "What about Abigail Stevenson? Bringer of joy."

  Abigail began to cry.

  Nora closed her eyes and lay back again. "Good," she said.

  He wanted to know how it had felt to be so close to death. "What do you remember of the operation?" he asked.

  With her eyes still closed she shook her head. "Nothing. I just had a feeling all the time that you were there and all would be well."

At about the same moment, Sarah walked into the library to see Arabella standing on the book ladder, holding half a dozen books precariously against her left hip, and reaching for a seventh.

  "Mrs. Thornton!" she called. "Be careful; you will fall."

  "I'm glad they've only just been moved," she said. "So there is no nasty dust upon them." She came down. "There! I think that is all. I hope so." She added the seven books to the fifty or so that lay on the table.

  Sarah looked at them:
Home Influence, Sense and Sensibility, Conversations with
Lord Byron, The Diary of an Ennuyé, Domestic Manners of the Americans, Sacred History
of the World.

  A fearsome thought struck her. "Do you intend trying to read these to Nora?"

  Arabella laughed. "No, no! I merely thought it would be—nicer, if these had a shelf to themselves. Don't you agree, dear?"

  "I suppose so," Sarah said carefully, having no idea what was meant. She helped Arabella carry them to an empty shelf on the other side of the room.

  "We'll keep them in alphabetical order still," she said.

  "Of course," Sarah agreed.

  When they had finished, Arabella said, "There! Isn't that so much more…
suitable.
One's library should reflect one's delicacy."

  Exactly what lay behind all this activity did not become clear until John came down that evening to get a travel book by Harriet Martineau, which Nora had asked him to read to her from. He could not find it among the M's, nor anywhere between the K's and the O's, which filled that particular shelf. He went to see if Sarah had borrowed it.

  "No," she said. "Perhaps it's among those Arabella sorted out this afternoon. In fact, I'm sure I saw it." She came back with him to the library and took him to the shelf they had filled. "There it is," she said.

  But John had burst into laughter, which rapidly got wilder and more hysterical. All the tension of these last days erupted into that mirth.

  "John!" Sarah laughed, still mystified. "What is it?"

  "Well, look!" he said, pointing at the shelf. "Look at the names."

  She did as he told her: Grace Aguilar, Jane Austen, Lady Anne Barnard, Lady Blessington…Quickly, her eye ran ahead:…Mrs. Hemans, Mary Howitt, Anna Jameson, Harriet Martineau…right on to Charlotte Smith, Agnes Strickland, Frances Trollope, and Sharon Turner.

  
Sharon Turner!
she thought, now bursting into laughter herself. "John, I had no idea," she said. "I actually helped her to carry them over here. And not once did it occur to me."

  "What did she say?"

  "I didn't understand it. Then. She said something about one's library should reflect one's delicacy. Really!"

  They had to sit down then; their laughter weakened them so.

  "The joke is," Sarah said, "that Sharon Turner is a man. He's a lawyer, isn't he? He published that strange poem on Richard III last year. Shall I move him back?"