“I couldn’t help what happened tonight.”
“Bevil, that’s what I want to be sure of.”
“Of course, you can be sure of it Good God, what are you suggesting?”
“She’s a very beautiful woman.”
“And you’re an extremely jealous one.”
“And there are going to be a lot of curious ones when this is discussed throughout the constituency.”
“I wish you wouldn’t try to be clever, Harriet.”
“I’m not trying.”
“Well, let’s accept the fact that you are, without effort. What a stupid thing for Lister to do.”
“We had to do something. I agreed with him that he must go to Lansella. It was my fault. We had no idea what could have become of you, Bevil.” My voice had become earnest, almost pleading. I was fully aware while I quarreled with him how very much I loved him, how I needed him; and I was afraid because I believed I needed him far more than he needed me. “You’ll have to be very careful about your relationship with Jessica.”
“My relationship? What do you mean? She’s Benedict’s governess.”
“Nursery governesses have figured so frequently as the heroines of romance that they are becoming so in ordinary life, and when they are, besides being nursery governess, very beautiful, and the master of the house cannot hide his interest … when he disappears for hours with one—however innocently—and a hue and cry is sent out, there you have an explosive situation. If the master of the house is a landowner, a king in his own kingdom, he can go his own willful way, but should he be a Member of Parliament, guardian of public morals, a figure of righteousness, he’s sitting on a powder keg.”
“Quite a speech!” he said and began to laugh. “You’re good at them, Harriet. But I sometimes fancy you let your love of words run away with your common sense. Shall we let that be a peroration?”
“If you wish it.”
“One thing more. What I have told you about tonight’s affair is true. Do you believe me?”
I looked into his eyes. “I do now, Bevil.” He drew me to him and kissed me, but without the passion for which I longed. It was like a kiss to seal a bargain rather than one for displaying affection.
I wanted to say: When I’m with you I believe you. Perhaps I’m .like your mother. I believe what I want to believe. But when jealousy should rise up again it will bring the doubts back.
I slept late next morning, and when I awoke Bevil had gone. Fanny brought in my breakfast on a tray. She set it down and stood at the end of the bed, looking at me. She would, of course, have heard all about last night’s adventure.
“You look worn out,” she said, as though she were angry with me, as she used to be when I caught a cold as a child. “I suppose you’ve been worried about the absentees last night.”
“It’s all over now, Fanny.”
She sniffed disbelievingly.
“Here!” She had brought a bedjacket and put it about my shoulders. I saw her sharp eyes examining me for bruises. Fanny would never forget anything she did not want to forget.
She poured out the coffee and said, ‘There!” as she used to when I was a child.
I drank the coffee but could not eat with any relish. I kept going over that moment when I had stood on the stairs and seen Bevil and Jessica together, and the words Bevil and I had flung at each other later in this room still rang in my ears.
Fanny clucked her tongue and said: “I don’t know, I’m sure. All I can say is, you can’t trust ‘em. We’re better off without ‘em.”
“Who, Fanny?”
“Men.”
“You don’t mean that,”
“Oh yes I do.”
“If Billy had lived …” It wasn’t often that I talked of Billy; I usually waited for her to broach the subject.
“Billy,” she said. “He was like the rest, I reckon. Billy wasn’t as much for me as I was for him.”
“But he loved you, Fanny. You always told me so.”
“He had a mistress, you know. He went from me to her. That’s how it is with men. They don’t love like we do.”
“Fanny!”
“I never told you that, did I? No I wasn’t the only true love for Billy. He had this other love … and you might say he deserted me for her.”
I was startled. I had never heard her talk like that before. Her eyes were wild, and she seemed to be peering beyond this room into the past.
. She was talking to herself, “There was the little one … and he gave me that … but I lost my baby … that baby … and then I found my other baby.”
I put out my hand and she took it. The touch seemed to bring her out of her trance.
“Don’t you fret,” she said. “I wouldn’t let nothing bad happen to you. I’m never going to leave you, Miss. So don’t think it.”
I smiled at her. “I didn’t think it, Fanny,” I said.
“All right then. Eat up that egg and don’t let’s have any nonsense.”
I obeyed, smiling to myself. I had thought I stood alone— but there was always Fanny.
I was very anxious to hide my fears, so I asked Jessica to ride with me the next day, and we went into Lansella together. People threw us some curious glances, but I was sure that to be seen together was the best way of allaying suspicions. Jessica behaved as though nothing had happened, but I was very unsure of her. There were moments when I thought she was secretly amused at my anxiety to make people believe we were the best of friends.
I promised I would go and have nursery tea with her and Benedict next day, and when I arrived I found Benedict alone in the nursery standing on a chair.
“I’m a monkey,” he told me. “Monkeys climb; did you know?”
I told him I did know.
- “Ill be an elephant, if you like. They have trunks and walk like this.” He climbed down, got on all fours and lumbered about “Would you like me to be a lion now?” he asked.
I said I would rather he were himself for a while, which amused him.
Jessica came out, and I was at once aware of his affection for her and ashamed of the surging jealousy within me, I should have been pleased that we had a good nursery governess for him; Jessica had certainly shown herself skillful in the nursery, and to have won his affection did her credit. I thought: But she is usurping my place … everywhere … throughout the house.
Then I felt ashamed and said quickly how well Benedict was looking and how grateful we all were to her for her care of him.
“It’s my job,” she replied. “But I never thought I’d be a governess to Gwennan’s child that day when they carried her into the house.”
“Poor Gwennan. Benedict is so like her. I see her in him every time I look at him.”
I had sat down, and Benedict came to put his hands on my knees and look up into my face.
“Who’s he like?” he asked.
“He was like an elephant just now, and now he’s like himself.”
That made him laugh.
Jessica brewed tea in the brown earthenware nursery teapot. “It always tastes so much better in these old brown pots,” she said lightly as she poured. “Is it because we always remember them from our childhood?”
She talked about nursery days hi her home, when her mother was alive. She was the only child and must have been beautiful from the day she was born; they had doted on her. How different her childhood had been from mine!
“I used to sit on a high stool in the dispensary,” she told me, “watching Father make up the medicines, and he used to say “This for The Influenza’ or The Ulcer came in to see me today.’ He thought of all his patients as the disease they had. Mother used to say it was bad for me to hear so much of illnesses, but Father said it was right for a doctor’s daughter.”
She was being affable. Perhaps, I thought, she was as anxious to reassure me as I was to reassure the community.