Rachel was quite pleased to listen. She could laugh at Cosmo, but she was very fond of him, and she was very glad to have an alternative to the Wadlows and their young, or Ella on slums.
The evil hour was, however, only postponed. As soon as lunch was over Mabel demanded an interview, and a very long, tearful and trying interview it proved to be, under such headings as a Mother’s Love, a Mother’s Anxieties, a Sister’s Heart, and, by implication, a Sister’s Purse.
Rachel did her best to endure the Mother’s Love, to soothe the Mother’s Anxieties, and to display the Sister’s Heart, whilst keeping a reasonably firm hand upon the Sister’s Purse. It was all very difficult and very, very exhausting.
When Mabel had at last been induced to lie down, there was Ernest, with a Father’s Anxieties and a Father’s Responsibilities.
Retiring to her room after this encounter, Rachel found herself pursued by her cousin Ella, tall, raw-boned, and purposeful, with a small attaché-case full of pamphlets and photographs.
“Most disappointing that you should have missed Mrs. Barber. I am a very poor substitute, but I promised her faithfully that I would do my very best to interest you.”
She was still there when Louisa Barnet came in to draw the curtains. She rose regretfully and began to pack the attaché-case.
“The time has simply flown-hasn’t it? I must go and wash my hands for tea, but I’ll leave you those pamphlets. Dear me, Rachel, you look quite tired. I hope you didn’t do too much this morning. Most inconsiderate of Mr. Brandon, I call it.” The door closed behind her.
Louisa rattled the curtain rings.
“Fair wore out is what you look, Miss Rachel, And it’s not what you did this morning that’s to blame neither.”
She got rather a wan smile as she turned.
“Well, I don’t think it is, Louie. You know what Miss Ella is. She’d got those papers on her mind, and she was bound to show them to me.”
Louisa looked angrily at the pamphlets.
“What’s it now? She doesn’t stick to nothing, does she? Last time it was lepers, and the time before that it was naked heathen cannibals. And what I say is, if they was made that way, then it was for some good purpose, and it’s not for us nor yet for Miss Ella to go flying in the face of Providence. Interferingness-that’s what it is, and you can’t get from it!”
Rachel bit her lip.
“But, Louie, Providence didn’t make lepers or cannibals, and He certainly didn’t make slums.”
Louisa gloomed.
“That’s what you say, Miss Rachel. I’ve got my own ideas, and I’m not the only one. And it’s no good talking about lepers and cannibals to me when I see you looking as white as a sheet, and saucers under your eyes for all the world as if they were full of ink. You’ll never be going over to see Mrs. Capper tonight?”
“Oh, yes-she counts on it. And I like going, you know. She’ll be a pleasant change, because she always tells me what a nice little girl I used to be, and when we’ve finished with me we go over all the other children she nursed. I sometimes think how odd it would be if we could all meet.”
Louisa took no interest in Mrs. Capper’s charges. It annoyed her to think that there had been a time when Mrs. Capper had brushed Miss Rachel’s hair and turned down her bed. Rachel’s visits to her old nurse were a source of irritation, and she never let slip an opportunity of suggesting that it was too wet or too cold, or that Rachel was too busy or too tired.
“That Miss Silver is coming at half past five, Miss Rachel. You’ll want to be in.”
Rachel couldn’t help laughing.
“Her train gets in at half past five-she won’t be here before six. I shall be back quite soon after that. Put my torch in the hall and hang out the lantern. Barlow can drop me before he goes to the station, and I’ll come back by the cliff.”
Chapter Fourteen
Cosmo seemed to think it was his turn for a tête-à-tête with Rachel after tea. He had a portfolio full of sketches to show her, was quite as annoyed as Louisa had been when Rachel reminded him that it was her day for Mrs. Capper. He said “Stuff and nonsense!” several times in a loud voice, and walked up and down jingling the keys in his trouser pocket and lecturing her about running herself off her legs, and when he had finished lecturing her he started in to scold the family for allowing her to wear herself out.
“It’s all very well, my dear, but good people are scarce, and if no one else will stand up to you and tell you you’re doing too much, well I will. You’re looking fagged out. What you want is a holiday. Why don’t you go right away from telephones, and begging letters, and neighbors who want you to do their shopping for them, and the whole boiling of us? Unless-” He stopped and bent affectionately over her chair. “Unless… Come, Rachel, here’s an idea. What about letting me show you Morocco? We’ll take Caroline to chaperone us, and you shall pay all the bills.” He laughed heartily and dropped a kiss on her hair. “Think it over my dear, think it over.”
Rachel laughed too and got up.
“I think I should make a better chaperone than Caroline. And now I’m going to see Nanny, so you must look after yourselves.”
It was an astonishing relief to get away. At Whincliff Edge everyone was so busy grinding axes that the noise quite deafened her. They pressed about her, exhausting the very air she breathed, always asking, always demanding, always wanting more. And under all this surface clamor and pressure something dark and stealthy moved, and waited to pull her down. In Nanny Capper’s neat kitchen she was in another world-a simpler, kinder world where Nanny herself played Providence and nobody else was more than seven years old.
“Up in the night he got in his bare feet and nothing on over his night things, and that’s how I caught him, standing a-tiptoe in your father’s dressing-room and tugging at the little top drawer to get it open. Two in the morning it was, and the noise of the drawer that waked me. And ‘Master Sonny.’ I said, ‘for goodness gracious sake, what-ever are you doing?’ And you should have heard how he spoke up. ‘I want a handkerchief,’ he says, and ‘Oh, Master Sonny,’ I said, ‘there’s aplenty in your own drawer, and one under your pillow, for I put it there myself.’ And what do you think he said? Never flinched, but looked me straight in the eye. ‘They’re too little,’ he said. ‘They’re not men’s handkerchiefs. I want a real man’s handkerchief to blow my nose with. And please will you open the drawer, because I can’t reach it, Nanny.’ ”
“And what did you do?” asked Rachel, who knew the answer.
Nanny Capper was a very fat old woman in a white Cashmere shawl over a black Cashmere dress, and large shapeless slippers on her large shapeless feet. She never got out of her chair except to go to bed, but she enjoyed life hugely. A stout niece looked after her, and she saw her beloved Miss Rachel once a week. She asked no more. She had four chins, and they all shook when she laughed as she did now.
“Oh, I gave him one-opened the drawer, and gave him the largest handkerchief I could find. I knew Mr. Treherne wouldn’t mind, seeing he was a visitor and Mr. Brent’s son that was his partner. A very nice gentleman Mr. Brent was, but they had some sort of a quarrel, him and your father, very soon after that, so Master Sonny never came back again. A couple of months we had him that time, and him and Miss Mabel sparred something dreadful. But you was only four months old, and he was mortal taken with you. You’d think he’d never seen a baby before, and I don’t suppose he had, not close to. There-I often wonder what’s come to him. He promised to be a fine man. But first there was the quarrel, and then Mr. Brent went away, and it was after that your father made all the money and we come back to England. Did you never find out anything about them?”