piano, and the soprano advanced purposefully to the front of the floor again and faced us. She took an enormous breath, her beads jangled at her throat and all but broke, and with tremendous aplomb she began a spirited rendition: ‘Three Little Maids from school are we, filled to the brim with girlish glee’ …” She hesitated a moment, staring straight into Jack Radley’s dark blue eyes. “Unfortunately Miss Arbuthnot was crashing out the ponderous chords of ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ with a look of intense longing on her face.”
This time even the old lady’s mouth twitched. Tassie was helpless with giggles, and everyone else chortled with pleasure.
“They struggled on for a full three minutes,” Emily said finally, “getting louder and louder, trying to outdo each other, till the chandeliers rattled. Charlotte and I couldn’t bear it any longer. We stood up at precisely the same moment and fled through the chairs, falling over people’s feet, till we collided in the doorway and almost fell outside, clasping each other. We gave way and laughed till we cried. Even Mama, when she caught up with us, didn’t have the heart to be angry.”
“Oh, how that takes me back!” Vespasia said with a broad smile, dabbing at the tears on her cheeks. “I’ve been to so many ghastly soirees. Now I shall never be able to listen to an earnest soprano again without thinking of this! There are so many fearful singers I should like such a thing to happen to-it would be such a mercy for the rest of us.”
“So should I,” Tassie agreed. “Starting with Mr. Beamish and his songs of pure womanhood. I suppose with a little foresight it could be arranged?” she added hopefully.
“Anastasia!” Mrs. March said, with ice in her voice. “You will do nothing of the sort. It would be quite irresponsible, and in the worst possible taste. I forbid you even to entertain the idea.”
But Tassie’s smile remained radiant, her eyes faraway and shining.
“Who is Mr. Beamish?” Jack Radley asked curiously.
“The vicar,” Eustace said frostily. “You heard his sermon on Sunday.”
Great-aunt Vespasia smothered a deep gurgle in her throat and began to take the stones out of her grapes assiduously with a silver knife and fork, placing them with elegant fingers on the side of her plate.
Mrs. March waited impatiently. At last she stood up, rustling her skirts noisily and tweaking the tablecloth so the silver rattled, and George snatched at a swaying glass and caught it just as it overbalanced.
“It is time the ladies withdrew,” she announced loudly, fixing first Vespasia and then Sybilla with a stony stare. She knew Tassie and Emily would not dare disobey.
Vespasia rose to her feet with the grace she had never lost; the air of moving at precisely her own speed, and the rest of the world might follow or not, as it chose. Reluctantly, the others rose also: Tassie demure; Sybilla svelte, smiling over her shoulder at the men; Emily with a sinking feeling inside her, a taste of Pyrrhic victory fast losing its savor.
“I’m sure something could be contrived,” Aunt Vespasia said quietly to Tassie. “With a little imagination.”
Tassie looked confused. “About what, Grandmama?”
“Mr. Beamish, of course!” Vespasia snapped. “I have longed for years to take that fatuous smile off his face.”
They swept past Emily, side by side, whispering, and on into the withdrawing room. Spacious and cool in pale greens, it was one of the few rooms in the house Olivia March had been permitted to redecorate from the old lady’s taste, which was dictated at a time when the weight of one’s furniture indicated the worthiness and sobriety of one’s life. Later, fashion had changed, and status and novelty became the criteria. But Olivia’s taste flowered during the Oriental period, around the International Exhibition of 1862, and the withdrawing room was gentle, full of soft colors and with only sufficient furniture to afford comfort, quite unlike old Mrs. March’s boudoir. The other downstairs sitting room was all hot rose pinks, with drapes over mantel and piano, and jardinieres, photographs, and antimacassars.
Emily followed them and took her seat, after offering token assistance to old Mrs. March. She must keep up the act every moment until she was alone in her room. Women especially notice everything; they would observe the least flicker of expression or intonation of the voice, and they would interpret it with minute understanding.
“Thank you,” Mrs. March said tersely, rearranging her skirts to fall more elegantly and patting her hair. It was thick and mouse gray, elaborately coifed in a fashion common thirty years before, during the Crimean War. Emily wondered fleetingly how long it had taken the maid to dress it like that. There was not a wisp out of place, nor had there been at breakfast or luncheon. Perhaps it was a wig? She would love to have knocked it and found out.
“So kind of you,” Mrs. March went on. “Too many young people have lost the consideration one would wish.” She looked at no one in particular, but the tightening at the corners of her mouth betrayed an irritation that was not in the least impersonal. Emily knew Tassie was going to receive a curt lecture on the duties of a good daughter the moment they were alone, foremost among them being obedience and attention to one’s betters-and doing everything possible in aiding one’s family to obtain for one a suitable marriage. At the very minimum one positively did not get in the way of such efforts. And Sybilla also would come in for some grim correction.
Emily smiled warmly back at her, even if it was amusement disguised, not sympathy. “I daresay they are merely preoccupied,” she said sententiously.
“They are no more preoccupied than we were!” Mrs. March retorted with a waspish glare. “We also had to make our way, you know. Being with child is an excuse for fainting and weeping, but not for sheer inconsideration. I have had seven children myself-I know what I am talking about. Not that I am not pleased. Goodness knows, it is more than time! We were beginning to despair. Such a tragedy for a woman to be barren.” She glanced at Emily’s slender waist with implied criticism. “She has certainly caused great disappointment to poor Eustace; he so much wanted William to have an heir. The family, you know, the family is everything, when all is said and done.” She sniffed.
Emily was silent; there was nothing to say, and that curious pity came back, violently unwelcome. She did not want to remember that Sybilla also had been an outsider in this family, a failure in the one achievement that mattered to them.
Mrs. March settled a little deeper into her chair. “Better late than never, I say,” she repeated. “Now she will stay at home and do her duty, fulfill herself, instead of all this ridiculous chasing of fashion. So shallow and unworthy. Now she will make William happy and create the kind of home for him he should have.”
Emily was not listening. Of course, if Sybilla was pregnant it might account for at least some of her behavior. Emily could quite clearly remember her own mixture of excitement and fear when she was expecting Edward. It was a total change in her life, something that was happening to her and was irreversible. She was no longer alone; in a unique way she had become two people. But for all George’s pleasure it had set a distance between them. And sharp in the middle of all of that was her fear of becoming ungainly, vulnerable, and no longer attractive to him.
If Sybilla, in her middle thirties, were facing this confusion of emotions-and perhaps also a fear of childbirth; the pain, the helplessness, the utter indignity, and even the vague possibility of death-it might well account for her selfishness now, her compulsion to draw all the masculine attention while she still felt she could, before matronliness made her awkward and eventually confined her.
But it did not excuse George! Fury choked Emily like a hot lump in her chest. All sorts of actions careered through her mind. She could go upstairs and wait until he came, and then accuse him outright of behaving like a fool, of embarrassing and insulting her and offending not only William but Uncle Eustace, because it was his house, and even all the rest of them, because they were fellow guests. She could tell him to restrict his attentions to Sybilla to those courtesies which were usual, or Emily would leave for home immediately and have nothing more to do with him until he made full apologies-and amends!
Then the rage died. A feud would bring her no happiness. George would either be cowed and obey, which she would despise-and so would he-and her victory would be bitter and of no satisfaction; or else he would be driven even further in his pursuit of Sybilla, simply to show Emily that she could not dictate to him. And the latter was far the more likely. Damn men! She gritted her teeth and swallowed hard. Damn men for their stupidity, their pigheaded perverseness-and above all for their vanity!
She could feel the lump growing larger in her throat, impossible to swallow. There was so much in George she loved: he was gentle, tolerant, generous-and he could be so much fun! Why did he have to be such a fool?
She shut her eyes, opening them again only with effort. Aunt Vespasia was staring at her. “Well, Emily,” she said briskly. “I am still waiting to hear an account of your visit to Winchester. You have told me nothing.”
