The maid needed no further urging. With a terse, “He’ll not get by me!” she was gone, lumbering off down the passage and clumping noisily down the stairs towards the voices below.
With automatic haste, Verena began ascending the second flight towards Mrs Peverill’s room. Then she halted. What ifBetsey failed? And if Mama had managed to sleep through the knocking, why should she wake her — to this?
If there was a tiny thought at the back of her mind that Mama might insist on speaking to Nathaniel, despite her daughter’s efforts to prevent it, she did not long allow it to worry her. Her determination was fixed. Nathaniel would not take Mama back!
A piercing whisper penetrated her thoughts: “Miss Verena! It’s all right, Miss Verena!”
All right? How could it be all right? Peering down, she saw the glow of the lamp moving up towards her.
“Betsey?” she called.
“Yes, it’s I, Miss Verena,” came the answer. “Don’t fret, now.”
Bemused, Verena crept back down the stairs and met Betsey in the passage outside her own room. There was an intensity of relief in the maid’s voice and face, eerily lit by the shadowy spill of light from her lamp.
“It ain’t him, Miss Verena, thank the Lord!”
Verena blinked dazedly. “Not Nathaniel?”
Betsey shook her head. “It’s that there Mr Ruishton, and he’s asking for you.”
“Mr Ruishton? At this time of night!” Then it struck her. “Dear heaven, it must be Unice! What has happened?”
Even as she spoke, urgent now with a growing dread — a different dread, but none the less painful — she was moving towards the head of the stairs, Betsey close behind her, holding high her lamp to light the way.
All thought of Nathaniel, of the principal worry of her life, left Verena in seconds. She had become so familiar with Unice these last few months, so fond of her, that the thought that something might have gone amiss concerned her deeply. The baby was not due for another two weeks or more. What could have happened?
“Mr Ruishton!” she called, seeing in the flickering light cast by Mrs Quirk’s own candle below the outline of Osmond’s figure waiting in the hall. “What has occurred?”
He broke into speech before she could reach the bottom of the stairs. “Miss Chaceley, I am sorry to disturb you at such an hour, but I did not know what else to do.”
As she moved forward, Betsey at her back, Verena saw at once, in the brighter glow, the distress of mind mirrored in Osmond’s features, pale with worry and fatigue.
“Oh, what is it?” she cried, grasping at his lapels. “Is she ill? Oh, heavens, tell me at once!”
“No, no, she is not ill,” he said, “Only she is before her time, and we are all at sixes and sevens, not having expected —”
“Do you mean that the baby is coming?”
“At any moment! She thought it had been indigestion last evening after dinner, but — oh, Lord, Miss Chaceley! My mother-in-law always comes to us, but she had not planned to be here for another week.”
Verena’s head was reeling as these words tumbled out. But their message was clear enough. “You would wish me to come to her?”
“I should not ask it of you, I know, but there is only her maid and the midwife —”
“Of course I shall come, Mr Ruishton,” Verena said at once. “I have no experience in these matters, but —”
“She will be comforted merely by your presence, Miss Chaceley, I know. Pray come. She is having a difficult time of it and I am…” His voice failed, and he was obliged to draw a painful breath. “Miss Chaceley, I cannot lose her!”
Verena gripped his hands, for she could not speak. There was no thought at such a time for the company mask she still maintained towards him, although for Unice there had beensome slight relaxation. It did not seem, however, as if he noted its lack.
Another voice chimed in, dissipating the sudden tension in the air.
“That will be enough of that, young sir,” said Betsey with all the authority of her years in service to a mistress who, like a child, needed more of a nurse than a maid. “You won’t lose her, not if I can help it.”
“You’ll come, too?” asked Osmond eagerly.
“Try and stop me.” In command now, Betsey grasped her younger charge’s arm. “Now then, Miss Verena, up we go and make ourselves fit to step abroad.” Turning to the landlady, she added, “Mrs Quirk, you must keep watch for my mistress in case she wakes and tell her what is going forward.”
