“Mama!”
“I know … I know … I b-beg your p-pardon, dearest.”
Nothing was more painful than that Mama should apologise for what she could not help. But at all costs, she must keep her countenance until they were safely indoors. Even Mrs Quirk must not hear the lamentations that were bursting to erupt at this very moment. Fortunately, the woman slept like a log and was always abed early, and would besides be unlikely to hear anything through the two floors that separated her own apartment from Mrs Peverill’s bedchamber on the second floor. It was rare that Mama was subject to these fits in the daylight hours.
Nevertheless, Verena’s heart raced with anxiety, and she was obliged to croon and to plead what seemed like a thousand times before the carriage finally set them down at Mrs Quirk’s door.
As always, Betsey opened to them, holding up an oil lamp which she kept lit against their coming. The redoubtable maid took in the situation with one glance at her mistress’s face.
“Oh, lordy, not again!”
“Betsey … oh, Betsey,” uttered Mrs Peverill brokenly.
“Up you come, ma’am, there’s a good girl,” ordered Betsey in a brisk whisper, putting a stout arm about the thin mantled shoulders and drawing Mrs Peverill towards the stairs. She added over her shoulder, “I’ll see to the mistress, Miss Verena. Do you get yourself out of that fancy gear, quick as you can. It’s going to be a long night.”
By the time Verena had changed, donning a thick flannel dressing-robe, and hurried from her own chamber that was situated next to the parlour, and up the one flight of stairs to the larger room above, Mama’s heartrending sobs were already filtering through the closed door.
“Don’t — let him come! Oh, Betsey — don’t let him hurt me!”
“That’s enough now, that is. He won’t be allowed to come,” the maid was saying, gruffly passionate.
Verena entered the room and closed the door behind her, crossing to the bed where Mama was lying hunched in a pathetic heap, weeping into Betsey’s copious lap.
“Just such a gathering — just such pleasures,” she jerked out. “They look, they look, but they do notsee.”
“Hush, Mama,” Verena soothed, exchanging a speaking glance with Betsey over her mother’s head, as shudders shook the thin frame.
The significance of her words did not escape either of them. “It’s the company,” whispered Betsey. “She ain’t ready for it.”
“Too much remembered pain,” Verena agreed on a note of compassion. For it was all too obvious that the memories had come crashing back, and Mama was not capable of the sort of control that Verena herself had mastered. “She is too weak, too worn down,” she said, low-voiced.
“Is it any wonder?” snapped the maid.
Verena shook her head. “No, and I know what triggered it.”
“Don’t we both, Miss Verena?”
For Nathaniel, as they were all too well aware, would use just this kind of occasion to twist the knife, hell-bent on whipping up his own demon of jealousy.
“He f-flatters me,” quavered Mrs Peverill through pathetic little sobs. “He calls on them — praising me — speaking of my b-beauty … what beauty, Betsey?” A wail of agonising distress left her lips. “What beauty have I left?”
Her sobs intensified, and tears started to Verena’s own eyes. That ever-present rage burgeoned anew. Readily could she have pulled the trigger this time were Nathaniel to be in front of her now. This time her courage would not fail her. To what had poor Mama been reduced, so that even here, even how, when everything must be behind her, she could still be so easily overset? Oh, but to have him here at this moment. Verena’s hatred of him would serve to make her execute the fell deed — though she should hang for it.
The charm of him in company, as he waited only for the moment his flattering attentions to his wife drew others to congratulate his good fortune. And then heaven help Mama! Hot and cold … hot and cold … and here was she, knowing full well the effects of such conduct, allowing herself to be even vaguely moved by the machinations of Mr Denzell Hawkeridge.
But the task of soothing Mama into quiet — a task that occupied the two women most concerned with Mrs Peverill’s welfare for the better part of the night — left little leisure for reflection, and her annoyance with Mr Hawkeridge was relegated to the back of her mind to be dealt with at some more convenient time. When she sought her own bed at last, she collapsed into an exhausted sleep, yet waking again too early and very little refreshed.
Dragging herself upstairs, Verena cautiously opened her mother’s bedchamber door. Finding both Mrs Peverill and Betsey still sunk in deep slumber — Mama always slept like onedead after these draining emotional outbursts — she closed the door and left them. Poor Betsey needed her rest, too. Would that she might have slept as soundly herself. Sighing, she crept downstairs and dressed in the cold chamber, the ashes in the fireplace not having had the benefit of Betsey’s early morning attention. She hardly cared what she put on, as long as it was warm, choosing an old cherry gown of kerseymere with a low waist, long sleeves and closed to the throat.
Mrs Quirk had already lit a fire in the parlour, which was warming up nicely, but Verena found herself too restless, her mind churning, to remain indoors. Glancing out of the window, she saw that although the skies were overcast there had been no fresh fall of snow in the night. It must be safe enough to venture forth.
Donning her pelisse and bonnet, she set out, hands tucked within her muff, fighting a brisk wind as she headed not for the square patch where the snowman had been built — and where she might come under undesirable notice from a certain unnamed pair of eyes — but crossing the London Road to fetch up at the common. She did not want to meet anyone. She wanted to think.
Trudging with some care across the grass, for it was still patchy with iced snow, her thoughts were not happy. Could Mama ever forget? How long would it take? What would it take? Absence was not enough, it seemed. Mama was becoming daily more agitated at the prospect — which she appeared to consider inevitable — that Nathaniel would catch up with them.
Should they consider going abroad? Verena had thought of it. Italy, perhaps, where the sun might wash away the bleak memories more readily than it appeared this winter emptiness could do.
For herself, Verena was haunted less by the memory of the painful years of Mama’s misery, and more by the nightmare ofthat hideous last day — it seemed a miracle now that they ever had managed to get away — and those appalling final moments when Nathaniel had unexpectedly returned.
