After they had returned to Far Flamstead, my mother wrote frequently and they were all delighted at the prospect of the birth of my child.
Happy days they were. Uncle Toby was beside himself with delight.
“There is nothing pleases me so much as to see young people happily married. There is nothing like marriage. Married bliss—ah, it should be the dream of us all.” He became maudlin when he had drunk too much wine, talking of all he had missed. And now he was forced to go and watch pretty women on the stage and try to live vicariously the adventures they portrayed there. If he had married he might have had sons and daughters by now. Ah, it was sad. Life had passed him by.
He was constantly going to London. Carleton said there was not a play in London that he had not seen. He was either at the King’s House or the Duke of York’s. He was an honoured patron there and well known in the green rooms.
“Poor Uncle Toby,” said Carleton. “He’s trying to catch up with youth.”
Christmas came and went, and with the New Year I began to be more and more aware of my child. Sally Nullens was joyous. Nothing could delight her more than the prospect of having a baby in the house. “The boys are growing out of babyhood,” she said. “My word, they’re a handful. It will be pleasant to have a little one.”
Carleton was the devoted husband. He was beside himself with joy, and I realized how frustrated he must have felt during all the years when he was married to Barbary. I knew he was thinking of a son. I kept reminding him that our child might well be a girl.
He said it wouldn’t matter. We should have boys in time.
“Pray allow me to deliver this one first,” I retorted.
Indeed, they were happy days. We bantered our way through them, always taunting each other, and there were nights tender more than passionate now that my pregnancy was advancing.
I was no longer mourning for Edwin. I realized that I had kept that grief alive. Someone had said that the wise drown their sorrows, and it is only the foolish who teach them to swim. I thought that was apt. I had nourished my grief, I had brooded on it; I had built a shrine to Edwin in my heart—and I had worshipped a false God. Feet of clay indeed!
I was longing for my baby to be born.
She was born on the seventh of July, and I called her Priscilla. Carleton tried to pretend that he was not disappointed by the sex of the child, but he was; but to me she was perfect, and from the moment I saw her I would not have exchanged her for any other.
Priscilla. My Priscilla. I was taken right back to the days when I had first held Edwin in my arms. How dearly I had loved him; he had been more than my own child; he had been the consolation for the loss of his father. Priscilla I loved none the less. I loved her because she was a girl. She would be more completely mine. If Carleton was disappointed in her sex, I was not.
Great events might be happening away from Eversleigh. I could not think seriously about them; my life was centred round my child. When I heard that the Dutch fleet had sailed up the Medway as far as Chatham and had made themselves masters of Sheerness, I said how dreadful it was, but I was not thinking much about it. The Loyal London, the Great James and the Royal Oak were burned by the enemy and fortifications were blown up. I shuddered, but my thoughts were all for my child.
“We had never been so disgraced,” cried Lord Eversleigh, and I knew how deeply shocked my parents would be by the news.
But I could only think that Priscilla was gaining weight, that already she knew me and would stop whimpering if I took her. Already she would smile at me. I delighted in her.
The boys came to see her, and were amazed at her little hands and feet.
“She’ll never be able to run fast with little feet like that,” declared Leigh.
“Silly,” said Edwin. “She’ll grow big, won’t she, Mama? We were little like that once.”
“I was never as little,” boasted Leigh.
“Oh, yes, you were, I saw you,” I told him. I could never look at him without thinking of Edwin and Harriet together. I wondered when he had been conceived. It was before Edwin had been, because he was the elder.
I had to stop thinking of that because it was affecting my attitude to Leigh. It was not his fault that his parents had both deceived me so blatantly.
Uncle Toby was always making excuses to come to the nursery. He was enchanted by Priscilla.
“You lucky man,” he said to Carleton. “I’d give a lot to have a child like that.” Then he would talk sadly of his misspent youth and how different everything would have been if he had settled down and become a family man.
“It’s never too late,” said Carleton. “Shall we find a bride for him, Arabella?”
“We’ll have a house party,” I said. “We’ll invite as many eligible ladies as we can muster …”
And I thought: Someone for Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, she seemed to have grown even more unhappy of late. It was almost as though she had been affected by my marriage. I suppose it was seeing me with the children.
There was great jubilation when peace was declared with the French, the Danes and the Dutch, but Carleton told me that people were beginning to murmur against the King for concluding a peace which it was said was dishonourable.
“The country’s honeymoon with Charles is long over,” he said. “They are now murmuring … not so much against him as against his mistresses.”
“Which is somewhat unfair of them.”
“Alas, dear Arabella, the world often is unfair.”
I agreed it was, and we talked about Uncle Toby and the possibility of his finding a wife.
“We really must bestir ourselves,” I said.
As it happened there was no need for us to do that.
That September Uncle Toby went to London for a brief visit and it became a long one.
He wrote back to us that he was enjoying life in London. He was at the playhouse most days. He had seen Nell Gwyn as Alice Piers in The Black Prince, and better still in Dryden’s comedy An Evening’s Love as Donna Jacintha. He wrote lyrically of the charms of Nelly and how the rumours were that the King’s attentions were now fixed on her and poor Moll Davis was nowhere in the running.
“It appears he is enjoying the London scene,” said Carleton. “That will compensate him for all he has missed as a family man.”
Then quite suddenly came a letter which was addressed to Lord Eversleigh. We were all shown it and read it again and again. Carleton laughed immoderately.
“I never thought he would have gone as far as that,” he declared.
“What will happen now?” demanded Lord Eversleigh.
“What is natural!” said Carleton. “He will return here with the lady.”
The fact was that Uncle Toby had married a wife. According to him she was the most beautiful of women; she was attractive, amusing; everything he had wanted in a wife. He was the happiest man alive and he was going to share that happiness with his family.
The day after we received this letter he would be with us, for he was following close on the heels of his messenger.
The whole household waited eagerly.
True to his word Uncle Toby arrived with his bride. As they came through the gates we were all there waiting.
I stared. I thought I was dreaming. It could not possibly be so. But it was. Uncle Toby’s bride was Harriet Main.
The Shadow of Death
MATILDA’S IMMEDIATE REACTION HAD been alarm. For a few moments she could only stare at her unbelievingly when Toby presented her. I was sure she felt as I did that she was dreaming.
“Oh, I know you’ve already met Harriet,” Uncle Toby announced. “She has told me all about it, have you not, my love?”