A Carriage for the Midwife (16 page)

‘Sit down, Susan, for there is something I must say. Forgive me, but I could not help noticing a certain freedom in my cousin Edward’s manners towards you. He is a fine young man, a gentleman in fact, but he was wrong in this matter, and did you no favour. I commend you for your own modest behaviour, for this should not be encouraged.’

Susan instinctively protested against this censure of one who could do no wrong in her sight.

‘But Mr Edward ha’ been so good an’ kind to me, Miss Glover. I know he’s a gentleman and far above me, but I can’t help bein’ obliged to him.’

She flushed as she spoke, and Sophia feared that she might have offended her young friend.

‘Please, Susan, understand that I’m not blaming you – though I have to blame Edward a little for not considering your feelings more. It is as well that he will be going back to his Oxford college in the autumn.’

She brought her chair close to Susan’s and laid a hand upon the girl’s bowed shoulders.

‘Listen to me, Susan – I say this only for your happiness. Mr Edward is young, he is subject to his parents, and in no position to make any kind of commitment, even if you were on an equal social standing with him.’

‘I know it, Miss Glover, ye don’t ha’ to tell me,’ muttered Susan, looking away and biting her lip. ‘I ha’ no ideas o’ marryin’ any man – not Master Edward nor any other.’

Her obvious uneasiness confirmed Miss Glover’s suspicions as to the state of her affections, and on a sympathetic impulse Sophia decided to share a certain matter of her own.

‘Susan, let me tell you something,’ she said gently. ‘You are not alone in this. I understand how you feel, the dreams and the disappointment.’

This was so unexpected, coming from the lips of Miss Glover, that Susan raised her head and looked at her blankly.

‘Yes, Susan, I too have let myself foolishly dream of one who is not for me,’ went on Sophia earnestly, ‘and I have had to pray to accept the Lord’s will on the matter. As you must also do.’

‘But ye’re a
lady
, ye could marry where ye please,’ said Susan, though she had never thought of Miss Glover as anybody’s wife, and found it hard to imagine.

‘You are quite wrong there, Susan. I am not a
lady
, but a bastard with no legal standing in the world. I happen to have money, thanks to my grandfather’s bounty, but that is all. Without it I would be nobody – perhaps a maidservant like yourself, or a sempstress like my mother.’

Sophia Glover’s exertions on behalf of the poor, especially the women and children, had made her highly respected in Beversley; she was seen as old Lord de Bever’s granddaughter rather than an illegitimate offshoot. Susan had never considered her origins, nor the fact that she seemed to have no relations but cousins; this fact now struck her for the first time.

‘But, Miss Glover, ye’re the most – everybody looks up to ye an’ thinks the world o’ ye,’ she said, floundering in her search for the right words, and wishing she could express herself better. ‘This gentleman – why can’t ye marry him if he – if he’s the one ye like?’

‘For the very good reason that his affections are engaged to another, Susan,’ came the quiet reply. ‘And there are other reasons why he is not for me, just as Edward Calthorpe is not for you. So you see, we can share in this, even though we may not speak of it. And we must pray for each other, Susan, as well as for ourselves and – those we care for in secret.’

‘Oh, I will, Miss Glover, that I will!’

And for the first time the two women embraced, warmed by a new closeness in their greater knowledge of each other. It was another step towards equality.

WHEN THE INVITATION
arrived at the Bennetts’ farmhouse, Marianne seized on it eagerly.

‘There is to be a ball at Bever House!’ she cried. ‘And we’re all invited, even Bessie! You must take the lace off my Sunday gown, Susan, and sew it on to my green silk.’

‘I ha’ better things to do than sit around stitching at your gowns, Miss Marianne,’ said Susan, briskly piling newly washed linen into a basket. Marianne scarcely heard her.

‘’Twill be such happiness to go to a real ball! I wish I had one o’ those big waving ostrich feathers to sew to my cap!’

‘Why don’t ye wear a cock’s tail-feathers like the Miss Smarts ha’ sewn on to their bonnets?’ asked Susan tartly as she hurried off upstairs. Since Mrs Twydell had returned to Pulhurst with her baby, Mrs Bennett spent a great deal of time visiting her there, and Susan’s household responsibilities had increased.

Marianne’s excitement was short-lived.

‘Your father won’t go hobnobbing with the Calthorpes and their grand friends,’ said the farmer’s wife, ‘and neither will Tom. Bessie’s too young to stay up so late, and my dancing days are over. And you can’t go unchaperoned.’

‘Oh, Mother, make Tom go and take me with him – he
must
!’ wailed Marianne on the verge of tears. ‘I couldn’t go to the pleasure party at Wychell Lake because o’ Sally’s confinement, and now I’m to miss the ball. It’s not fair!’

‘Shame on you, when your sister came so near to death,’ her mother reproved her.

‘But, Mother—’

Mrs Bennett frowned and gestured for silence. She felt that becoming a grandmother had aged her ten years, and she was not inclined to give way to a scatterbrain like Marianne.

However, she received different advice from an unexpected quarter on her next visit to Pulhurst.

‘Let her go, Mother,’ said Mrs Twydell. ‘She’s had a dull time of it this summer, with all the upheaval I’ve caused.’

‘But she can’t go alone, Sally!’

‘Then you must defy Father and go with her. Let my sister have a little pleasure before she has to face the truth about women’s pains.’

She sighed as she spoke, and Mrs Bennett understood only too well; so she allowed herself to be persuaded, and an acceptance was sent on behalf of the mother and daughter, with polite excuses from the others. A message was returned from Bever House offering an overnight room for them and their maid; Marianne’s joy was unbounded.

‘You will be our maid, Susan, and help me to dress – and then you may go and have a merry time below stairs with your sister, and stay up as late as can be. Oh, my!’

This struck a chord with Susan, who had only managed a brief meeting with Polly after church one Sunday afternoon – a mere half-hour’s walk around the village green within earshot of another maidservant appointed by Mrs Martin to make sure that Polly met nobody but her sister. The idea of a whole night under the same roof seemed too good to be true. And Mr Edward would be in the house, too . . .

Acceptances poured in at Bever House. Old county families who in previous years might have declined the attorney’s invitation were now prepared to condescend to him and his lady. There was a craving for pleasure and diversion with the war in its fourth year with no sign of victory. In Beversley the net was cast wide to include the Bennetts, the Smarts, the Turnbulls and Mrs Coulter as well as the rector, whose sister had apologetically taken to her bed, causing him a great deal of inconvenience, though the apothecary’s face was grave when he visited her.

Lieutenant Henry Hansford was expected daily on home leave before setting forth across the Atlantic on a troopship at the end of September. He had not yet officially spoken to Selina or her father, and Mr Calthorpe suspected that he wanted to wait until the war was over; but Gertrude thought that an announcement should be made before he left for America, to make Selina’s situation clear to other would-be suitors. Mr Calthorpe intended to have a frank talk with the young officer as soon as he returned from Portsmouth.

Preparations were going ahead in the kitchen, where Mrs Martin was engaged in much baking and broiling, while her husband strutted in a green baize apron, overseeing the cleaning and polishing of silverware, glass and plate. Martin was in high good humour, and had plans for a below-stairs entertainment that would be as memorable as the one upstairs. As he went about his duties he hummed a little tune to himself, which grew into a patriotic ditty with a rousing refrain.

‘It wants but dancers now to turn it into a right fine gallop!’ he declared proudly, and a fiddler was brought in and paid out of Martin’s own pocket to play ‘The Red and the Blue’ in the servants’ hall on the night of the eighteenth.

Mrs Bennett took the reins of the three-seater with Marianne and Susan on either side of her. It was a fine, mild September evening, and Susan resigned herself to Marianne’s excited chatter.

‘There’ll be that many brother officers o’ Mr Calthorpe and Mr Hansford, that I dare say the young ladies’ll be asked to stand up for every dance!’ she said eagerly. ‘Now, what’ll I say if a gentleman offers his arm to take me into supper? Should I accept, or say that I’m with my mother?’

Half of Hampshire seemed to be converging on Bever House. Footmen stepped forward to open carriage doors for the more exalted guests, and the Bennett ladies were taken in charge by a pock-marked maidservant who led them up three flights of stairs and along a passage to a room with four low wooden beds.

‘There be two other ladies to share the room wi’ ye, an’ yer maid’ll sleep wi’ the Bever maids,’ said the girl, bobbing the briefest of curtsies.

‘Yes, very well, we shall be quite comfortable, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Bennett, taking off her cloak. ‘See to Marianne, Susan. I’ve learned by now how to do up my own buttons.’

Polly Lucket was carrying up another loaded tray to the dining room where the sideboard was already laden with pies and cold meats. She eyed the main drawing room where music was playing, and thought she heard Master Osmond’s laugh above the buzz of conversation; she had strict orders to return at once down the backstairs, but could not resist a quick peep in through the open door.

She gasped at the brilliance of the glowing candlelight, the gliding movement of the dancers, the beribboned gowns of the ladies and the red and blue coats of the officers as they performed a stately minuet. There was no sign of Osmond, but Mrs Calthorpe was approaching, and Polly beat a hasty retreat.

The musicians had been playing for nearly an hour, and one of them was attracting a certain curiosity among the guests. Three violins and two clarinets were augmented by a drum to give a martial flavour to the lively tunes, but who was the lady in grey silk seated at the pianoforte beside them? Playing alongside hired musicians? Surely not!

In fact Sophia was quite enjoying herself, and her position on the elevated dais gave her a good view of the assembled company. When Mr Calthorpe had asked her that day if she would agree to play in place of the pianist, who had injured his hand, she had consented willingly enough, having no great liking for an evening of polite conversation and an occasional dance with some admiring bachelor who had heard of her fortune, or a married bore doing his duty by Lord de Bever’s granddaughter. She enjoyed playing, especially the country dances that were still the favourites; she watched as couples crossed, pirouetted, formed circling quartets that reversed and interwove with each other, touched hands, brushed shoulders and still managed to exchange remarks and glances as they returned to their first positions.

She saw Mrs Bennett and her daughter enter this scene of glowing light and colour, to be received by Mr and Mrs Calthorpe. They then found seats by the wall where they could view the dazzling spectacle of gowns, jewels, and feathered turbans such as were seldom seen in Beversley. In an adjoining room card tables were set out, and Sophia saw Mrs Coulter hobbling towards Mrs Bennett to invite her to try her hand at Speculation. The farmer’s wife politely shook her head: her place was with her daughter, at least until the girl was asked to dance.

Marianne was smiling shyly in the direction of the Calthorpe sisters and Rosa Hansford, but they were taken up with the uniformed officers, and Osmond was surrounded by bright-eyed girls vying for his attention; Rosa’s simperings behind her fan had so far failed to attract his notice.

Her brother was in the middle of a knot of blue-coated naval officers at the far end of the room, but his tall figure could not be hidden and Selina Calthorpe quickly tracked him down.

As Henry led her on to the floor to join in the dancing, he suddenly caught Sophia’s eye. His look of astonishment gave way to a smile of recognition that lit up his face. Sophia responded with a slight raising of her eyebrows, and saw him speak to Selina, who also looked in her direction as she replied.

He’s asking why I’m playing instead of dancing, she thought, and forthwith applied her attention to the keyboard. He would never know that Sophia mentioned him daily in her prayers, that he might be kept safe from the perils of the sea and dangers of warfare. And also that he might be happy in his choice of a wife.

There he was again, looking across the room over Selina’s head, even as he talked with her.

‘’Tis gracious of your cousin to play for us, Selina, for surely a member of your own family should be dancing.’

‘Oh, ’tis a spinster’s lot, Henry, to make herself useful where she can!’ answered the young lady unconcernedly. ‘Sophy is much taken up with good works, though she has an ear for music, and I dare say would rather play than dance!’

She leaned herself against him lightly as he led her down the line; she was determined not to show disappointment at his replies to her father’s discreet questions. As Calthorpe had suspected, Henry had no wish to enter upon a betrothal while on active service. It would not be fair on any young lady, he said, to be asked to wait for a man who might never return. Mr Calthorpe had told Selina that Henry’s sentiments did him credit, and advised patience, though Gertrude still pinned her hopes to the ball, for surely Selina had beauty and wit enough to bring the squire’s son to a declaration!

Yet Henry’s attention seemed oddly distracted, and his eyes were directed towards the musicians rather than on his partner.

Creeping down the backstairs, Susan recognised the little figure ahead of her, returning from the dining room with an empty tray.