Midsummer's Eve Page 33

  “I’m thankful for you, Uncle Peter. You do me so much good. Talking to you, listening to you, has always helped me.”

  “Odd, isn’t it, an old villain like myself?”

  I said: “You are a very lovable villain and you almost make me feel your villainies are virtues.”

  “That, my dear Annora, is the very essence of villainy.”

  I supposed I felt happier in London than I could anywhere else. It was an interesting suggestion that I should travel down to Mobury with Helen and Matthew. My reunion with Jonnie had been rapturous. At first he had not known me but after a while he seemed to, and it soothed me considerably to play with him.

  A great deal had been happening in the world. The Queen had married most happily.

  “It’s rather put Lord Melbourne’s nose out of joint,” said Uncle Peter. “But he doesn’t seem to mind and I think all of us are glad to see the Queen happily settled.”

  She had regained the popularity she had lost over the Flora Hastings and Bedchamber affairs.

  “There is nothing the people like better than a wedding,” said Uncle Peter. “A royal wedding makes the people forget the intrigues of the boudoir.”

  There had been a hint of my having a season. I would have vehemently declined if the hint had been pursued. I think it was feared that the scandal which Uncle Peter had skillfully managed to divert might be resuscitated and it was well known that the Queen’s husband was, as Uncle Peter said, most definitely prudish.

  I was sure Prince Albert would not have agreed with Uncle Peter’s views about directing dubiously acquired money into good causes.

  I heard of the alarming incident when an attempt had been made to assassinate the Queen. True, it was only a brainless potboy and he had been declared insane, but it was sobering. The Queen behaved magnificently, of course, as most of her ancestors had in similar circumstances. But it was an indication that life could never be smooth for anyone.

  In Mobury I got caught up in the excitement of electioneering, and it became to me a matter of the utmost importance that Matthew should win the seat.

  I sat on platforms listening to his speeches. He was turning out to be quite an effective orator. He burned with zeal when he spoke of the necessity of prison reform. He harrowed his audience with stories of what he had seen firsthand. He wanted the laws drastically changed; he wanted better conditions for the poor. He had visited the Mission run by his brother-in-law and his wife, and he knew what he was talking about. People listened to him and were moved.

  Helena would sit on the platform smiling and admiring. She reminded me of Aunt Amaryllis; and when I thought of how their marriage had come about I was truly amazed.

  She had grown into marriage—and if ever there had been a marriage of convenience that had been one. But now she was contented, reminding me so much of her mother.

  To see her thus set me longing for Rolf. What a fool I had been! I had allowed myself to turn away from happiness because of a dream … and something which had happened long ago. He had said he was not there and I had chosen not to believe him. Then I had convinced myself that he wanted to marry me to get Cador.

  Perhaps I should go back to Cornwall. I could go to Croft Cottage. I should see Rolf often. Perhaps we could talk about Midsummer’s Eve and perhaps I could explain how deeply it had affected me, how I had lost my illusions, for I had seen ordinary people turn into monsters of cruelty. It had had a great effect on me. It had changed me from a trusting girl into a doubting woman.

  If I could see Rolf … if I could break through this barrier between us … if we could be together … if I could forget Midsummer’s Eve … if I could believe him … if he again asked me to marry him now I no longer owned Cador … how happy I should be.

  I would go back. But not yet.

  Helena sat there, her hands on her lap, obviously pregnant. Uncle Peter had said: “That’s a good thing. It shows a nice family life.”

  I thought of Joe Cresswell and wondered what he was doing now. This was where he would like to be. He had been very ambitious to follow in his father’s footsteps and get into Parliament.

  Uncle Peter had prevented that. I wondered afresh why I was so fond of Uncle Peter. He was such a ruthless, amoral man. Yet he always had answers to explain his wickedness, and he never failed to show me another side which differed from the obvious one.

  Election day came. There was an air of excitement in the town. I drove round in a carriage with Helena waving banners. “Vote for Matthew Hume. Your Member who cares for the Unfortunate.”

  Uncle Peter came down in the afternoon. He expressed his pleasure with the manner in which the campaign had gone.

  It was late that night when the results were declared. Matthew Hume was the elected Member of Parliament for Mobury.

  What a celebration there was! Uncle Peter presided. We drank champagne to the success of the new Member, and he stood with Helena on one side and Uncle Peter on the other receiving congratulations. I felt quite carried away by the excitement, and for a while forgot my difficulties.

  Back in London, the question arose: What was I going to do? It had to be answered.

  I went down to Frances’s Mission. I was surprised at the difference in her premises. She had a large house with many rooms in it. She told me that the old one was turned into a dormitory for the homeless.

  Peterkin and she worked in harmony. They had the same ideals; they knew exactly what they wanted to do. Peterkin’s gentle manner was a contrast to Frances’s brisk one. Each seemed to supply what the other lacked.

  “Ours,” Peterkin told me, “is a marriage of two minds in complete harmony with each other.”

  I felt a touch of envy. Both Helena and Peterkin had found happiness. I was the only one to whom that desired state would not come.

  When I suggested staying with them for a few weeks they welcomed the idea warmly.

  Frances said: “We have people who come down now and then to help … society girls often who feel like a change and have the urge to do good. Some of them are good but they like to say they’ve been. My father has made the place fashionable.”

  I came in contact with poverty such as I had never dreamed existed. I went into attics where women sat sewing all day, often in poor light; some had children to feed. I noticed these women’s eyes which looked as though they had sunk into their heads and I knew it was due to their working at their sewing half into the night—all for a pittance barely enough to keep them alive.

  Frances said: “We’re trying to get them to pay more for the work. I have some of them here sewing for us and I see that they get good food.”

  What I found most pathetic was the children. There was one little fellow—he couldn’t have been more than five years old—who had been a chimney sweep since the age of three. He was terrified of the dark, sooty chimneys and had run away from his master. Peterkin had found him wandering in the streets. Frances dealt with him in her usual brisk, unsentimental way. When I was there he was doing little jobs in the kitchen. The little one was in the seventh heaven bliss and his attitude towards Frances was one of idolatry.

  “It makes you humble,” said Peterkin.

  There was the crossing sweeper who had been run over and crippled—a boy of some eight years. Frances took him in and found him some light job he could do about the house.

  There were women whose husbands or paramours had ill-treated them. Their wounds horrified me. I learned a little first aid; I did some of the cooking; I turned my hands to several jobs; and like Peterkin, I felt humble, and so much better.

  There was one young woman to whom I took quite a fancy. Her name was Kitty. She came to the house one day when both Frances and Peterkin were out and I was the first one who saw her.

  She was in a pitiful state—unkempt and near starvation.

  She stammered something about someone’s telling her they’d help her if she came to this house.

  I gave her some soup—there was always a cauldron of soup s
immering in the kitchen. I spoke to her soothingly and told her we would look after her.

  She looked lost and lonely and frightened. She was, I could see, really a pretty girl.

  Frances came in and took charge and in a few days there was a great change in Kitty. She was bright and meant to enjoy life but she had had a bad time. She told us she had come up from the country to work in London. She had had a job as tweeny in a big house but the master had taken notice of her. The mistress found out and sent her packing with no money, no reference.

  “It’s an old story,” said Frances.

  I took a special interest in her; she seemed to like me too. She was very capable and almost took over the management of the kitchen.

  The house was sparsely furnished.

  “We don’t waste money on fancy stuff,” said Frances. “As much as my father-in-law has given us we still need more money.”

  There was a big room with a wooden table in it; this table was kept scrupulously clean and we used to eat there in the evenings. Dinner was usually between eight and nine o’clock and was generally a stew of some sort which was kept simmering on the fire so that it was ready at whatever time we sat down. After we had eaten we would sit there, with the candles guttering, tired after an exhausting day, and we would talk about the work we were doing and life in general.

  The memories of those evenings would stay with me all my life. I can still recall Peterkin’s hot anger about something particularly shocking he had seen that day, and Frances’s almost clinical approach; and the views of the other young people who had come to help. We talked far into the night, sometimes absorbed by the conversations, at others too tired to move even when the clock struck midnight.

  One day I had been out shopping and when I came in Frances was in the hall.

  “Oh hello,” she said. “Someone you know is coming to see me this evening.”

  “Someone I know?”

  “Brother Joe.”

  “Joe? How is he?”

  She lifted her shoulder. “He comes to London now and then and he always looks in on his little sister. Sometimes he stays for a few days and gives a hand.”

  “Is he here now?”

  “No. He’s been in and gone off somewhere on business. He’ll be back this evening. I didn’t tell him you were here. I wondered whether you wanted to see him.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I didn’t know.” I realized that she, like some others, thought that at one time there had been a rather special friendship between Joe and me which had petered out when the scandal about Joe’s father and Uncle Peter had been revealed.

  I wondered what it would be like meeting Joe again.

  He was there at the scrubbed wood table that evening. He had changed a little. He looked older and more solemn.

  He took my hand and shook it warmly.

  “How nice to see you, Annora.”

  “And for me to see you, Joe. How are you?”

  “Oh, quite well. It seems a long time …”

  “It is.”

  “You’ve been to Australia since.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m very sorry. I heard, of course.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you staying here long?”

  “I haven’t many plans. I am just spending a little time with Frances and Peterkin.”

  “They are doing a wonderful job here.”

  It was obviously trivial conversation. I thought, We are both a little nervous of each other. He is remembering how I caught him coming out of Uncle Peter’s study, putting those papers in his pocket. He is embarrassed about that and because I have lost my family and my home.

  How different life was for both of us since our first meeting in the Park!

  In the candle-lit atmosphere, amongst all the talk, the tension seemed to lessen. Once or twice Joe smiled at me at something which was being said, and I felt pleased to see him again.

  One of the helpers—an earnest young woman from a county family—was saying: “I met Reverend Goodson this afternoon. He is a little displeased with us. He says no good can come of what we are doing because so much of the money we are using comes from a tainted source. Those, my dears, were his very words.”

  I saw Joe flinch and then his mouth hardened. I knew he was thinking of the manner in which Uncle Peter was attempting to rehabilitate himself by giving so generously to charity.

  She went on: “I told him how you had rescued Maggie Trent from that savage she was living with and that you had saved her life, for he would surely have killed her. I told him about little Tom, bruised and terrified, who is too big for chimneys now and was still being forced up them. He would have gone mad, poor mite. He was scared out of his wits of being burned to death. And there are others like that, I said to the reverend gentleman. I said, ‘If they can save people like that, they are not going to look twice at where the money comes from.’”

  “You gave him something to think about perhaps,” said Peterkin.

  “The trouble with people like him,” said Frances, “is that they are not given to thinking. Their minds run in channels laid out for them. It saves a lot of energy to follow the set rules. Happily his opinions are of no importance to us. Joe, you’ll see a lot of difference in the houses since you were last here. We’ve extended, started new projects. We’ve had luck.”

  “Thanks,” said Joe rather bitterly, “to your generous father-in-law.”

  Frances looked steadily at her brother. She knew that he hated my Uncle Peter and that he could not forgive him for ruining his father; but she, in her calm commonsensical manner, wanted old hatchets buried. She took the long view. Whatever had happened had brought great prosperity to her world and she had to welcome that. She was doing more good, she reckoned, than any commission for the suppression of vice could have done. Frances believed in action, not talk.

  But she was fond of her brother and she did not want to spoil his visits by getting involved in arguments about which they could not agree.

  She changed the subject.

  “Annora has been working hard since she came here. I was going to suggest she take a day off. Why don’t you two take a trip up the river? There’s a lovely old-fashioned little inn I’ve heard a good deal about. They serve whitebait. It really is good, I’m told. I imagine you two have a lot to talk about.”

  Joe was looking at me expectantly.

  I said: “I should like that.”

  He smiled. “Then let’s do it.”

  Frances seemed satisfied. She then went on to talk about an extension to the kitchen which she was planning.

  It was pleasant on the river. We rowed down towards Richmond and found the inn near the grassy bank just past Kew. It was called the Sailor’s Rest. It looked charming. There was a garden in front facing the river; tables and chairs were set out.

  Joe tied up the boat and we went ashore.

  Over the food, which was served by a maid in a mopcap and a Regency-style dress, I asked Joe questions about what he was doing. He was living in the North with his parents, he told me. His father owned a cotton mill up there and that was their main interest now.

  “You are finding it satisfying?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s quite absorbing … in a way. I’m learning a lot about cotton and trade is good. It has increased tremendously in the last years. Hargreaves’ spinning jenny and Crompton’s mule have speeded up production and kept prices down. We export a great deal to Europe. Oh yes, it is interesting, but …”

  “I know, Joe, what you really wanted was to go into politics.”

  He was silent. Then he said: “It’s the reason why I don’t come to London very much. Every time I pass the Houses of Parliament I feel a terrible longing …”

  “Why don’t you try to get in?”

  He looked at me in amazement. “How could I … now?”

  “That is all in the past.”

  He shook his head. “As soon as one of us came into prominence it would all be
remembered. Annora, I cannot understand Frances taking his money.”

  “Frances has a very good reason, and she makes the best possible use of it.”

  “To take money from the man who ruined our father!”

  “I wish you could talk to Uncle Peter. I wish you knew him.”

  “I’d rather know the devil.”

  “Joe, you have to try to look at this coldly, calmly, without bias. You have to try to understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. There was an important post almost certainly about to be bestowed on my father—a chance to do good, to wipe the town free of vice. Your uncle looked on it as a stepping-stone to his ambitions. Moreover he himself was trading in vice. How ironical it would have been to have had him on the Commission! But as I say, he saw it as a stepping-stone to his ambitions. And trying to get it … he destroyed my father.”

  “And you tried to destroy him. But it seems he was indestructible.”

  “I cannot understand you, Annora. I think you are on his side.”

  “No. That’s not true.”

  “And Frances … there she is taking his money and saying, Thank you very much, dear Papa-in-law. I can’t understand my sister.”

  “I can. She takes it because she can make good use of it. And what is she doing with it but bringing help to those who so sorely need it? If she did not take it, think of how those people would suffer. She is saving lives, Joe.”

  “It is a question of morality.”

  “What is morality? Uncle Peter takes from those people who spend their money in an immoral way, you would say. But suppose they did not spend this money, it would not be going into the Mission. It might be spent on fine clothes, houses, horses. It’s a difficult question to answer, and I think Frances and Peterkin are right to take the money. In fact I think they are wonderful people.”

  “That money is given by your uncle, not because he wants to do good but because he wishes to be seen as a philanthropist, whose good works will wash away his past.”