The Victory (4 page)

‘How poor-spirited of you,' James murmured.

‘
The lessons I teach the choristers are not suitable for a
girl, in any case,' the chaplain went on. 'I've said before,
many times, that Fanny ought to have a governess; but even
that will do no good unless you, her father, discipline her. As
long as she knows she can appeal to you to countermand
anyone else's orders, there will be no doing anything with
her.'

‘
Just what I've always said,' Edward exclaimed trium
phantly. ‘If you go on like this, Jamie —'

‘
Yes, yes, spare me the reiteration,' James cried, ruffled.
‘Lord, what a pair of Methodists you are! Let the poor child
have a little fun! She's only seven years old. There'll be time
enough for simpering and sitting when she's older. She likes to romp and play, and what harm can there be in that? Lucy
was just the same at her age, and she grew up to marry an
earl.'

‘
Lucy was never as wild as Fanny, and she was very good at
her lessons,' Ned said. 'She was a romp, true enough, but
Mother saw to it that she kept within bounds. Even so, I
doubt whether any earl but Chetwyn, who was practically a
brother to her, would have taken her, after she ran away to
sea.'

‘
Well, Fanny won't run away to sea, anyway,' James said,
tired of the argument.

‘
She's run away this morning,' Edward pointed out, 'and
not for the first time. Someone ought to be sent after her.
How you can just sit there, while —’

Aislaby interposed himself between the brothers soothingly.
'I expect she'll be back by breakfast time. Hunger is a stern
imperative at that age. And now I must get ready for the early celebration,' he added, and withdrew.

*

Mary Ann, only daughter of Joseph Hobsbawn of Hobsbawn
Mills, wife of James Morland and mother of Fanny and
Henry, led a well-regulated life divided, though unequally,
between duty and pleasure. Duty, that morning as every
morning, was represented by her private and public devotions
before breakfast, her presiding over the coffee-pot at break
fast, and a long interview with the housekeeper and the cook
immediately afterwards. Pleasure then had its turn, as she
mounted the stairs to the nursery to visit her son.

‘
How is he this morning?' she asked Sarah, the under-
nursery maid, who tweaked Henry's lace petticoats into posi
tion and propelled him gently towards his mother. 'Has he
coughed much?’

Not so much, today,' Sarah replied nervously. She
evidently had something on her mind, and began, 'I beg your
pardon, madam —’

Mary Ann was not listening. She lifted Henry in her arms
and set him against her shoulder. 'My little dear,' she
murmured. 'My pigeon!’

Henry's solemn face regarded her for a moment consider
ingly, and then broke into a smile, and Mary Ann felt the
rush of love like hot blood through her heart. 'That's my little
man,' she said. 'Has the nasty cough gone away, then?'
Henry, though healthy enough upon the whole, had never
been quite as robust as Fanny, who had never ailed a thing
since the moment she was born. It was Mary Ann's deep and unspoken fear that something would happen to her son, who
was the one joy of her life. She turned to Sarah again. 'I think
we had better continue with the syrup, at least for a day or
two.'

‘Madam,' Sarah tried again, 'if you please —'

‘Has he had his pap?'

‘No, madam. But —'

‘
Then I shall give it to him. Run and fetch it, Sarah.
Quickly, girl, don't stand and gawp like that. God loves those
who do their duty with a light tread and a glad heart.'

‘
Yes, madam,' Sarah said resignedly, and trotted away.
Mary Ann took her child to the window-seat and sat with
him. The window looked out over the orchard towards the
track which branched one way to York and the other to the moors and the open country. In the nine years, almost, that she had lived here, she had never managed to grow used to
the views from the windows. Born and brought up, as she
was, on the edge of a town, with streets and gardens and
noises all about her, the country around Morland Place still
often seemed very desolate and lonely to her.

‘
Though perhaps,' she said aloud to the baby, with a short sigh, 'it may be in me, and not in the place.' Henry had noth
ing to dissent to the proposition. He had hold of her hand,
and was engaged in the pleasant game of folding and unfold
ing her fingers. A movement took her attention, and she
turned her head to watch a groom with a pair of horses,
riding one and leading one along the track at the slow trot thought proper for a gentleman's carriage-horses. She had
given no orders for the carriage that day, so of course the
horses must be led out for exercise.

‘
Routine,' she said aloud, 'is a beautiful thing.' A saving
thing, that kept man from the chaos all around him. And
woman, of course.

Henry examined her forefinger carefully and then carried
it experimentally to his mouth, in the way of very young
creatures.

But there were good routines and bad routines. Her
husband, for instance, had developed a routine of visiting his
club and staying all night. From her window she had seen his
return early that morning; and that was all she was likely to
see of him until dinner. It wasn't even, she thought with
another sigh, that he avoided her. 'He doesn't know we exist,
you and I,' she said, gathering Henry into her arms again. Henry smiled and put a fat hand up to tug her ear, and she
pressed him to her in a sudden and painful access of love
which startled him enough to make him cry.

‘There now, madam, let me take him!' It was Jenny the senior
nurserymaid, entering as if on cue, with Sarah behind her carry
ing the tray with Henry's bowl of pap. 'Hush now, my dear.'

‘
No,' said Mary Ann to the reaching hands. 'I wish to feed
him myself.'

‘
Of course, madam,' Jenny said, too good a servant to
argue, though her eye was rebellious. 'Sarah, the bowl and
spoon.' She waited until her mistress was settled and Henry's
wails had ceased in favour of a more contented sound, and
then said, 'One of the gardeners was in the kitchen just a
while back, madam. He'd been talking to a chap from the
village, seemingly.'

‘
Yes,' Mary Ann said with a lack of encouragement which
would have quelled a lesser mortal.

‘
It's about Miss Fanny, madam,' Jenny went on. 'This chap
was out in the north field this morning, and saw Miss Fanny
go by with young Forster and the carpenter's lad from
Hessay, heading for the Lord knows where.’

Mary Ann raised her eyes from Henry's face and regarded
Jenny blankly. 'What of it?'

‘
Well, madam, it isn't right. Really it isn't. It's not so much
that she might come to harm, for God knows everyone here
abouts would lie down and die sooner than let anything hurt a
hair of Miss Fanny's head, but —'

‘Enough, Jenny.'

‘
But it's the scandal, madam,' Jenny continued stubbornly,
'and the talk. It reflects on us to have her wander about so
unseemly, and without so much as a kitchen-maid to attend her. And then, she's a girl, when all's said and done, for all
that she's only a child; and when girls are suffered to grow
wild, the trouble they get into is always worse than anything
anyone expects, and that's the truth, madam, if I was to die
for it.’

Mary Ann's eye was flinty. 'I really cannot listen to any
more nonsense about Miss Fanny,' she said coolly.

‘It isn't nonsense, madam,' Jenny protested.

‘
Miss Fanny's behaviour is none of my concern,' Mary Ann
went on. 'I won't be troubled with it, do you understand?'

‘
Someone's got to be troubled with it,' Jenny muttered
angrily.

‘
If you have any complaints about her, you must speak to the chaplain or her father,' said Mary Ann, looking away to signify the end of the matter. 'She is nothing to do with me,
and if you haven't learnt that by now, then you have been
wasting your time here. Now leave me. I wish to be alone with
my son.’

Jenny stared red-faced a moment longer, and then turned
away abruptly, ushering Sarah out before her. The door was
not closed quickly enough to keep her underling's comment
from Mary Ann's ears. 'The truth of it is she's jealous of Miss
Fanny, because Mr James loves her more.’

Mary Ann's lips moved in a little spasm of wry humour as
she loaded the spoon once more and conveyed it to Henry's
mouth. 'Love!' she said aloud. Henry looked up at her. It was
a very long time since she had expected or even wanted love from her husband. 'But servants are always so vulgarly senti
mental.'

‘Spoon!' said Henry, waving both hands in approval.

*

The hour for morning visitors found Mary Ann seated
correctly in the drawing-room with her work basket and her
embroidery frame to hand. It was also the hour for the chapel
boys to practise their singing, and with the chapel door and the drawing-room both left open, she could just hear them.
She loved music, and it soothed her.

Ottershaw the butler soon announced Lady Fussell, who as Lizzie Anstey had once been in love with James and hoped to
marry him. She had been married now for six years to Sir
Arthur Fussell, an experience which had produced in her a
deep sympathy for all women who were married to uncon
genial men. She visited Mary Ann more often than any of the other York ladies of their circle, and defended her vigorously
when they abused her for being repulsively cold or stupidly
silent.

‘
Who would not be reserved, in her situation?' Lady Fussell
would say, and they would stare at her in amazement. Most
of her contemporaries had been violently in love with the
elusive James Morland at some time in their youth, and he
still held for them all the charm of the eternally unattainable.
Many a private tear had been shed when he brought back a
bride from Manchester, and many had been the private
smiles when he had abandoned her in that scandalous way and run off to live openly with another woman. Mr James
Morland's former admirers, with their respectable but dull
husbands, could safely assert to themselves in their most
secret thoughts that he would not have run away if he had
been married to
them.

‘
What lovely music,' Lady Fussell remarked when the
initial commonplaces had been exchanged. 'What is it?'