"Maggie, we have to think of the expense."
"It's not great. Jenny has told Christobel about Kate, and she is just the age Christobel feels she can manage. She is looking for a home like this. It can do no harm to see her."
So Christobel came.
I liked her from the beginning. It was obvious that she was of good breeding. Everything about her pointed to that. Moreover, she was modest and clearly anxious to please.
She told us much of what Jenny had and how she was eager to have some employment.
I said we could only pay a small salary and she assured me that that was not the most important thing to her. She had a very small income, which meant she need not be deeply concerned about the money. What she needed was a place where she could be with friendly people. I gathered it was her feeling that to be in a house similar to the one she had just left and in which she would now be relegated to the position of a servant—even a higher one—would have been intolerable. She was being very frank with us and she hoped we understood.
As she talked I was becoming more and more pleased with the idea. I was often at the theater. Maggie adored Kate, and Kate was certainly very fond of her, but Maggie was old and I knew that nowadays she was often in pain. It would be good for Maggie as well as Kate to have a young person in the house.
Christobel was bright and intelligent; and something told me that she was very anxious to come to us.
I looked at Maggie. "If you think we really can afford ..."
"Of course we can," said Maggie.
"I do have my small income," said Christobel. "And it is very important to me to find a place where I can be happy. I was very excited when I heard that you were the famous actress."
"Well, perhaps a little known in theatrical circles."
"She is over-modest," said Maggie happily, for she knew I was won over.
"I should very much like you to come," I said. "Shall we ask Kate how she feels?"
"I was just about to suggest it," replied Maggie.
Kate and Christobel took a liking to each other at once.
The matter was settled and Christobel joined our household.
Christobel quickly became one of us. She was natural and had no airs and graces, as Maggie called them. I could see that she was happy with her new home. Martha liked her and she and Jane were clearly pleased to have such an interesting addition to the household.
Very soon Kate and she became inseparable and it was comforting for us to know that Kate had such a companion. Always at the back of my mind, and particularly since that encounter at the time of the Duke of York's wedding, I was afraid that Jack Adair might approach Kate at some time, and I had been afraid to allow Kate out alone. That was reasonable enough when she was very young; but it was not so easy to keep a constant watch on a girl of seven or eight—particularly as our house was run on rather informal lines. Christobel supplied what we needed perfectly.
We noticed the difference in Kate. Not only could she read fluently and write well but she was developing a certain poise and confidence.
In the evenings, when I returned from the theater and Kate was in bed, Christobel would join Maggie and me and we would talk. I would tell them of how the play had gone and who had been in the audience, to which they both listened avidly, and Christobel would talk of what she and Kate had done that day. She would tell me what they were learning. Kate was very interested in literature and they went through the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe and occasionally some of the more modern ones such as Dryden and Beaumont and Fletcher.
"Do you think she will follow her mother in her profession?" asked Maggie.
"It may be. But she seems more interested in the words than the players. She is a very practical girl. She says she does not believe that a girl would only have to put on boy's clothes to be mistaken for one, so she cannot believe in the play. But the words, she says, they are magic, they excite her and sometimes they make her weep. She is bright and she is a pleasure to teach."
I said to Maggie what a good day it was for us all when Christobel came.
Maggie said slyly: "You will remember how reluctant you were to take her."
"I do, and I remember how you saw the virtue of the project right from the start."
One day she said to me: "I often think how lucky it was for me that Kitty brought you here, and I wonder what my life would have been like without you and Kate. When Kitty went you were there. Now that I am getting old and unable to get about as I did once, I should have been a very lonely woman."
Life had settled into a pattern. The days were peaceful and time was slipping past with a speed which startled me. Another month had passed—then a year. Kate was growing up. She was now nine years old. Christobel had become one of us and Maggie and I often asked ourselves how we could have got along without her.
With the passing of time Maggie grew perceptibly more crippled and often I was working, but we had the satisfaction of knowing that Christobel was there, so I had no qualms about leaving Kate when I was working.
We lived in a little world of our own. The scandals of the theatrical circles passed lightly over me. I was now and then pursued by some amorous gallant, but I was aloof and did not wish to be embroiled in further adventures. I had had my fill. I had a reputation for being cold and virtuous, which I shared with a few—very few—other actresses. I was glad of it. It was what I wished. My life was centered on the little household of Kate and Maggie and now Christobel, not forgetting Martha and Jane. A world of women—a safe world, it seemed to me.
In any case, I was very tired after the performances and had no wish to go anywhere but home. Ever since I had had that illness before Kate was born, I had tired more easily and I had a greater tendency than before to catch a cold.
This made me doubly glad of Christobel's presence.
We used to enjoy—Maggie and I—seeing Kate come in with Christobel. Kate, rosy-cheeked, glowing with health, eager to tell us what they had done, and Christobel looking very happy and contented.
"We were exploring London," Kate told me. "It is a sort of lesson, isn't it, Christobel?'' she added.
"Well," replied Christobel, "it is knowledge and all knowledge is good."
"That sounds just like a governess, does it not. Mama?" said Kate.
"It is what I strive to be," replied Christobel. "I myself am learning too. I did not realize what a fascinating place London is until Kate reminded me."
"We have been to the Hay market," cried Kate. "Do you know how long it has been there? It has only been there twelve years, so it is not much older than I am. Everything else seems to be so old. It is all hay and straw and horses. There is more to be seen in St. James's Fields."
They would laugh over the people they had seen bargaining and everything seemed very funny when they told it, although on contemplation one might wonder why it had seemed so hilarious. I came to the conclusion that when one was happy things seemed amusing when they might not have otherwise done so.
So Maggie and I would sit and wait for them to return to tell us what they had seen along by the river at Chelsea or near Rosamond's Pond in St. James's Park, When they saw the King sauntering in the park they were most excited and once they saw him along Pall Mall.
Maggie's gratified look of triumph often reminded me that I had almost missed this great opportunity.
Then one winter's day I became ill and was unable to go to the theater.
The doctor was brought to me and he said it was a return of the illness I had had before. I expected it to pass and that I would gradually recover, but it was not quite like that. I did get better, but my cough remained and I was very tired, and even when the spring came, I was not really well.