Delsie (7 page)

“Is there French blood in the family, ma’am? The ‘deVigne’ would lead one to believe so, and you mentioned Pierre.”

“Some Norman ancestors a couple of hundred years back, I believe. We never speak of it. My cousin Pierre, I was telling you, was an utter tyrant. He made Max look like a puppet. Take some crackerbrained notion and stick to it buckle and thong. But you are not in a mood for family anecdotes today. We’ll get to that another time. We must learn all about each other. What I began to say, but I always get diverted, is that Max can be steered, if it is done cleverly and openly. Be open with him, it is the best way.”

“It is my own way of dealing, Lady Jane.”

“Good. Now, have you any questions? A million of them, I daresay, all rolled up in a ball. They’ll fall loose one by one, and you must just ask me as they occur to you.”

“I am too confused to be methodical. One thing that
does
interest me very much is Mr. Grayshott’s daughter. I understand she is here with you. I should like to meet her. What sort of a girl is she?”

“Ah, Bobbie, our little baby!” she exclaimed, with a softened expression and a glowing eye that told her listener that whatever else the girl was, she was the apple of this lady’s eye. “She’s six years old and has been motherless for more than three of those years. Louise died in childbirth, an unhappy event that has had very bad effects on the whole family. You may expect Bobbie to be different,” she finished, inadequately. “She has had a succession of nursemaids and lately a governess, a Miss Milne, whom I procured for Andrew. A good sort of a girl. Bobbie is bright—not a great beauty, worse luck. She has a strong look of her father about the eyes, and his unfortunate coloring. Brownish hair, but Louise’s pleasant smile and disposition. Her manners are not what they should be, but I am sure you will take care of that. You’ll meet her later today. Max sent her home from church today with Mrs. Beecham, a friend of mine. He knew there would be confusion, with the wedding and all. He’ll pick her up and break the news to her. It won’t be so appalling for her as you might think. She was not close to her father. Well, you know the way he’s been lately. It will be better for you both to stay here a few days till she gets used to you. Rather hard on her to be set up with a total stranger at this time.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Too wrapped up in my own problems. It will be difficult for her. I hope we will get on together.”

“You will. It will be good for her to be able to get used to someone—someone who will be with her for more than a few months. The girls minding her lately never stopped long, what with Andrew’s behavior. She is at loose ends. I tried to mother her as much as I could, but when I wanted to have her here, Andrew invariably took the idea that I was Max’s accomplice, trying to get her moved to the Hall, from whence she would nevermore return to him, so I only saw her there, at the Cottage, and it was not as good as one could wish. However, I hope you will let me have her for a day now and then, and yourself too. How cozy we shall be—three women—’girls’ of all ages—to sit and gossip and giggle together. I am a great gossip; I love it, and I daresay you can tell me all the doings of the village. Is it true the butcher beats his wife?”

They enjoyed a long and entertaining gossip before Lady Jane suggested it was time to change for dinner. Max was coming
, and she must haul Harold away from his tomes and see that he put on a clean shirt.

Sir Harold, Lord deVigne, Lady Jane, and Delsie were soon seated round an oval table in a large dining room, where the death and subsequent arrangements made up the dinner conversation, which was not so lugubrious as might be imagined. It led Sir Harold to an exposition on Milton’s “Lycidas,” an ode mourning the death of a friend, interspersed with more down-to-earth matters by his spouse and deVigne. It was hammered out by the three not interested in Milton that deVigne would be in charge of the funeral arrangements, and the callers would be greeted at the Hall.

“No formal announcement of the wedding will be made at all, with your approval, ma’am,” deVigne said to Delsie. “It is so singularly inappropriate to do so at this time. We shall say in the death announcement that he is survived by his wife, Mrs. Grayshott
(nee
Delsie Sommers) and his daughter, Roberta. That will be announcement enough. There is no question of its being overlooked. You will be presented as Mrs. Grayshott to the callers, and, as Jane so cleverly pointed out, a funeral call is no time to be overly curious as to the details.”

“Delsie is staying here with Bobbie for a few days, Max,” Jane told him. “Let the child become accustomed to her new mama while there is at least one familiar face around, in case she makes strange at first.”

“An excellent idea,” he agreed. “It will be a difficult period for Bobbie. It will give us time to send a few servants to the Cottage to clean it up a little as well.”

“A lot,” Jane countered. “It will require a small army.”

“Is there anyone of your family you wish to notify of your marriage?” Max asked next.

“No, there is no one,” she answered quietly.

“Strothingham ought to be informed,” Sir Harold mentioned.

As Sir Harold was so seldom aware even of important facts, his wife was astonished to learn he had come into contact with a rumor. Her eyes flew first to Sir Harold, then to deVigne, lastly to Delsie, who wondered that the lady should look embarrassed.

“I am not personally acquainted with my cousin, Strothingham,” Delsie answered. “Indeed, I have never so much as seen him.”

“Still, head of your family. Ought to be informed,” Sir Harold told her. “I’ll do it myself, Mrs. Grayshott. Not a close friend of Strothingham, but I was a crony of his uncle’s. Once told him I’d look you up, in fact. Did I ever do it?” he asked with a puzzled frown.

“No, I don’t believe you did,” she answered, staring at him, as folks were inclined to do when first becoming a little aware of his peculiarities.

“Bless my soul! What a memory I have. Shocking,” he said calmly, and went on eating, while Lady Jane and deVigne threw up their eyes in despair.

“Then the only remaining piece of business is to introduce you to Roberta,” deVigne said. “I brought her back with me. She is abovestairs with Miss Milne now. We shall speak of the running of the Cottage another time, Mrs. Grayshott.”

Her jaws clenched at the use of that name, Mrs. Grayshott, but her mind harked back to Sir Harold’s curious speech. He had known Strothingham, had known all this time she was related to him, had even promised to look her up. How different things might have been, had he done it.

After dinner, Lady Jane said she would bring Roberta down, but Delsie asked if she might go up to her instead. She wished the first meeting with the girl to be informal, in private, that she would not feel constrained to be stiff because of the onlookers. Her experience of children told her this was the better way to start off the friendship.

“A good idea,” Max agreed. “As I have already spoken to her of you, I shall make the introduction, if you have no objection?” He was overly careful, she thought, of consulting her on these matters since she had given him the hint.

“None in the world,” she replied, and they went together to the room Roberta was using as hers during the stay at the Dower House. She was a very ordinary-looking child. Mousy brown hair in pigtails, eyes distressingly like her father’s, but she had a winning smile, the absence of front teeth emphasizing the childish, vulnerable air.

“This is the lady I told you about, Bobbie,” he said. “Your new mother, Mrs. Grayshott.”

Delsie watched with amusement and a pang of sympathy as the child clung to deVigne’s fingers, jiggling back and forth shyly, while casting little peeps at herself.

“We’re going to be good friends,” Delsie said encouragingly, and put out her hand.

A little set of pink fingers reached out to take it. “Are you a wicked stepmother?” the girl asked, not in a condemning way at all, but in a spirit of curiosity.

“I hope not indeed!”

“I believe I may have inadvertently used the term stepmother,” deVigne explained.

“The ‘wicked,’ I trust, was her own invention?”

“All
stepmothers are wicked,” Bobbie told her conclusively. “They step on you. I hope you’re not a
hard
stepper.”

“I shall try not to be as wicked as most,” Delsie assured her, then led her to the edge of the bed to sit down, to remove the obstacle of height. “I never beat little girls, or starve them, or hardly ever lock them in a dungeon, if they behave well.”

“Max has a dungeon,” she was told. “He’ll never lock me in it.”

“You must show it to me one day. I’ve never seen a dungeon,” Delsie answered.

“I will. It’s got big thick doors and no windows. It’s black as coal.”

“It sounds lovely.”

“It is. I wouldn’t care if you locked me up in it forever. And you can’t turn my papa against me, because he’s dead,” Bobbie added, knowing the role of stepmothers very well.

“I think I may safely leave you two adversaries to discover each other’s evil propensities,” Max said with a smile, and left. He returned below to announce that the two were in a fair way to becoming acquainted.

“She will know how to handle the child,” Jane informed him with satisfaction.

* * * *

As Roberta did not dwell on the subject of her father’s death, Delsie was happy to avoid it, and spoke bracingly of future projects they would undertake together. She was promised a view of not only a dungeon, but a walking doll and a dog who had fleas. While the last-named did not sound very exciting, she was eager to see the dungeon and the walking doll.

When the governess came to prepare Bobbie for bed, Delsie told her that for this one occasion she would like to perform this chore, to prolong the meeting. She saw that the child was in sore need of mothering, for her garments, outside of her dress, were small for her, and in poor repair. The two got on well together, the older sensing in her new charge that same unsettled quality she had experienced herself, and an eagerness to attach herself to someone.

It was close to an hour before she returned below-stairs to find deVigne just leaving. “I shall spend the night at the Cottage,” he told her.

“The Cottage? What in the world for?” Lady Jane inquired. “The Bristcombes are there.”

“They are old-fashioned,” Max replied. “Mrs. Bristcombe, I noticed, was putting a dish of salt on the coffin to keep the corpse from rising, and as she follows the old customs, she will likely light a candle to propitiate Satan as well. We do not want Mrs. Grayshott’s house to be burned to the ground before ever she moves in.”

These old folkways were well known to Delsie, but for herself, she would not much have cared if the house did burn down. She did not in the least look forward to removing to it.

After deVigne had left, Sir Harold asked her for a game of chess. This sounded preferable to further lessons on Milton, and she was happy to oblige him, for it always fagged her brain to the point where sleep came easily.

Chapter Six

The next few days passed
with a mixture of joy, em
barrassment, and serene contentment. They were never
boring. The meetings with the funeral callers were a
strain. There was no denying that fact; even with the family at her back she felt foolish to be presented as
the bride of a dead man nearly old enough to be her father, one, besides, whom she scarcely knew. But as
wise old Lady Jane had predicted, prying questions were kept to a minimum.

Delsie smiled to herself to
see deVigne poker up, pinch in his nostrils and say
“Indeed?” when a neighbor from the far side of the hill
began a discussion on her shock at reading of the affair
in the papers. She knew Jane was also busy visualizing dead rats, for she would hear all about it after the company had left.

Few questions were directed to herself, and those that were, she fielded easily enough, for
she wore a downcast, bewildered face, and the quizzing
was not severe.

The periods with Bobbie were joyful. Such a blessed relief to have the throng of children to which she was accustomed, mostly rowdy boys too, reduced to one
fairly well behaved girl, who already looked to her as a surrogate mother, and was beginning to run to her
with her secrets and problems. Time was found for a
few walks in the afternoon with her stepdaughter, to further the acquaintance.

When the callers
were done with, the family would gather back at the Dower House to sit and gossip and even—it seemed incredible—to laugh occasionally. This, in her private thoughts, Delsie considered the happy hour. With the day’s duties done, she could relax. She had quickly come to the stage where she was perfectly at ease with Lady Jane, and no longer on tenterhooks with deVigne, though they still addressed each other formally, with always that
“Mrs. Grayshott” irking her. Then there was dinner,
a formal meal, whose elegancies she was able to appreciate now as she had not on that first, dreadful day
of her wedding.

She had been married on Sunday. The funeral was
Thursday. On Friday the idyll was over. DeVigne came
over after breakfast to take her to the Cottage, her new
home. “I’ll tell Miss Milne to prepare Bobbie’s things,”
she said, and excused herself.

“I’m sorry to see them go,” Lady Jane said to her
nephew. “It was good to have a spot of company. Harold
is as dumb as a dog, unless I let him talk my ear off about Rome or Greece. It was a wise move, Max, to
push this marriage.”

“It seems to be working out very well for
us.
I can’t
imagine Mrs. Grayshott will be as happy at the Cottage
as she has been here with you.”

“How happy can she have been in Questnow? What
a strange, lonely life the girl has led. Little things she says betray her, you know, like how pleasant it is to have company for her meals. She must have eaten all alone, I suppose, since her mama’s passing. Imagine
that ninny of a Harold having known Strothingham all
along and not telling us. We might have made her acquaintance years ago.”