Whatever Happened to Mary Bold Page 3
"I'll lay my life," said he and lifted the bags. "Come on up, they are all waiting to see you and there's Mrs. Baxter at the door furious that she didn't get first look at the traveller returned. Aren't you, Baxie?"
The comfortable elderly figure in apron and cap who was waiting in the doorway clicked her tongue at him in mock disapproval and beckoned for a youngster in livery to take the bags.
"The blue guest-room," she instructed and he hurried up the staircase.
Mrs. Baxter turned back to survey Mary as she came through the door with Katie at her heels.
"I declare, ma'am, you haven't changed by as much as a hair," she said.
Mary bent to kiss her and was heartily kissed in return.
"And this will be Katie," Mrs. Baxter said, smiling at her. "Come with me, my dear, and you can take off your coat and have a good wash. Those trains are dirty things for all they are so convenient. Miss Mary, they are all waiting for you upstairs, you can wash your hands and take your cloak off in there..." she indicated a room on the left of the front door, "and then Master Johnny will take you up. And I'll see that Katie is comfortable, you may be sure of that. You'll find it quite a party in the drawing-room, Miss Mary, for the Plumstead folk stayed on when your telegraph message arrived just to bid you welcome."
"And to hear all your adventures," added Johnny.
"Pooh," said Mary. "What adventures? Two long train journeys and a wretched Channel crossing do not constitute adventure, just discomfort and boredom."
"Did you encounter any Prussians?"
"We did. And very civil and helpful they were."
"Oh, you!" Johnny exclaimed with mock exasperation. "You are never overset by anything. Nothing is ever out of the common way for you! Go and wash your hands and I will wait here for you and be your herald."
Mary patted his cheek and disappeared obediently into the apartment on the left of the front door. Mrs. Baxter ushered Katie through the green baize door at the back of the hall. Footsteps were heard upstairs and Posy Arabin, a small slender person with a strong look of her mother but with her father's dark eyes and hair appeared at the top of the first flight.
"Is she come?" she asked Johnny.
"Yes," said Johnny "and she hasn't changed a bit."
"She won't be able to say the same of you," said Posy and laughed. "How old were you when we went to Paris?"
"Just fifteen."
"You've grown up a lot in four years," said Posy. "And you don't fall over your own feet. Well, not all the time."
Johnny made a hideous face at her and Mary emerging from the cloakroom laughed outright when she saw it. Posy pattered down the stairs and flung herself on Mary.
"Oh, it is good to have you home. Mama has been so worried about you but Papa just shakes his newspaper and says he dares say you know how many beans make five. As if that would help you escape the Prussians. But you did cut it fine, didn't you?"
Mary nodded.
"Let's go upstairs," Johnny said, "and then you'll only have to tell your story once."
CHAPTER THREE
So you are altogether without a medical man?
Mary was greeted with considerable enthusiasm. As we know, the Silverbridgians had departed to catch their train and the Countess had long since taken her departure but there seemed to be an army of Grantlys there, some of whom Mary had never met and who clamoured to be introduced to her. There were also some old friends from the Close whom she remembered well and all in all she was made very welcome. The Archdeacon was there, his hair whiter and his figure somewhat more portly than once it had been. He came to greet her taking both her hands in his own and smiling broadly.
"Well, well," he said, "well, well, well... it must be twelve years since we laid eyes on you, Miss Bold, and very happy we are to see you back. You had my sister Eleanor going about herself because she thought you might be caught in Paris by the Prussians but I understand that you gave them the slip."
"Indeed, Archdeacon, I believe ours was the last train to leave the Gare du Nord. We were very fortunate to be able to board, as I believe there were a great many left on the platform. People were paying vast amounts even for a place in the luggage van, you know, and they threw all the baggage out on to the platform to accommodate them. It was quite a pantomime, I promise you!"
"I believe you, I do indeed."
The Archdeacon was succeeded by Eleanor Arabin who put her arms round Mary and hugged her as her own daughter had done.
"Oh, Mary... my own dear Mary... it is so good to see you. We have been so worried."
"Oh, tut," said Mary and shook her head, "when there was nothing whatever to worry about. We were safe enough, Katie and I, though all our baggage was left behind. Three days on the way and not so much as a clean handkerchief between us. But we had a fine time buying new bags yesterday and filling them up with new clothes. Why, Mrs. Grantly, I declare, you have not changed by so much as a hair."
The Archdeacon's wife, who was also Eleanor's sister, shook her grey head in reproof and took Mary's hand.
"I am so very glad to see you, Miss Bold. It is such a long time...not since Eleanor's wedding, I declare, for I never seemed to be here to catch you during your short visits. The first time I was confined and the other time the Archdeacon had taken me to Bournemouth..."
"I heard of your loss," said Mary. "I was so sorry…."
Mrs Grantly smiled at her a little sadly.
"It is an old story now," she said. "But at the time I was much overset."
Mrs. Grantly had lost a child soon after Eleanor's wedding, the twin of her youngest daughter, Eleanor, now fifteen. Eleanor had been named for her Aunt but was called Nell.
The crowd about Mary grew and she was kept busy answering enquiries and recognizing old acquaintances and being introduced to new ones. Johnny thrust her down into a chair at last and provided her with a glass of sherry wine and the assembly gradually dispersed: the Archdeacon and his wife were to stay for dinner but the rest of the family were to go back to Plumstead with their children. Of the younger Grantlys only Henry and Grace Grantly were included in the party. They were to sleep there and go back to Crosby Lodge in the morning with their sons, Theo and baby Josh, the unconscious centre of this gathering. That night there was not to be one empty bed in the Deanery.
Over dinner Mary was constrained to tell them about her journey from Paris.
"We were warned," she told them. "My friends at the Salpêtrière told me I must go home. All foreigners were to be in some danger at this time as there was a scare about Prussian spies. Any woman more than commonly tall or speaking with a foreign accent was in danger of being set upon by a mob or dragged away to prison by the police. Monsieur Charcot himself sent a servant to buy our tickets and he came back and warned us to be there as soon as possible for there would be a great many wanting to go. So we wasted no time. My friends agreed to store my possessions, such as they were, mostly books, I fear, and we set off for the station and after a long wait we were there when the train came in and we found seats."
She shook her head.
"Such a scramble as it was. Katie was a marvel. I would have been knocked down and trampled underfoot a dozen times had it not been for her. Then they sent round ticket inspectors and all those without a ticket were told to be off and when they would not go porters carried them off bodily, men and women alike. And when they saw this happening the people in the other carriages barricaded themselves against the inspectors... my goodness, there was a fracas."
"I dare say there was. You were in France, after all," said the Archdeacon and it was clear from his dry tone he did not believe that that in similar circumstances there could have been a similar fracas in Waterloo Station.
"However, far more tickets had been sold than there was room for passengers," Mary went on, "so they started to throw out baggage from the luggage vans and people were allowed in there."
She started to laugh.
&
nbsp; "I don't suppose I should find such a situation funny, but it did have some comical moments. In our compartment was one woman I had seen before. She was a musician, a pianist. I had attended a concert where she played not a fortnight earlier. Her name was Madame ...no. Mademoiselle... Mademoiselle... dear me, I cannot recall..."
"Not Mademoiselle Henriette?" asked Johnny. "When I was in Town last week there were posters about a pianist of that name. She is to play at the Egyptian Hall next week and I am to go with my friend Jason. I am told she plays very well."
"The very one," said Mary. "She may be a fine musician but she is something of a termagant. She saw her trunks being hurled out of the van and she started to yell and shriek from the carriage window, you never heard such a hullabaloo, how she was an artist, how she had done what she could for the people of Paris and did not deserve such treatment, you never heard such stuff, and she was still yelling and shouting and abusing the railway people when the train pulled out of the station and when she turned back from the window at last she found that one of the people in the carriage who had been sitting on the floor had taken her seat and would not give it up."
"And did she have to sit on the floor?" asked Posy Arabin, wide-eyed.
"She did. Katie would have given up her seat but I would not permit it. She had not slept the night before and nor had I. And I did not feel inclined to pamper such a person. I fear I took her in dislike. As if her bags were more important than anyone else's, just because she played the piano. Vain creature. She complained almost all the way to Le Havre. That is to say, I fell asleep fairly soon but when I awoke, she was still whining about not having a rag to her back and abusing the railway. As if we were not all in the same case."
"When did you meet the Prussians?" asked Johnny.
"On the quay at Le Havre. They were examining our papers. Some of the people they turned back, mostly French people, but as soon as they knew Katie and I were English they let us by, though Katie was none too pleased to be classed as English."
"Why ever not?" asked Eleanor. "I would have thought at such a time she'd be glad to be English."
"Katy," said Johnny, "is as Scotch as porridge."
"Who is Katie?" asked Posy.
"I hardly know how to answer that question," said Mary. "She is my servant, I suppose, but also my friend, my colleague, my companion. I found her in Marienbad. Her mistress who was a Scottish nobleman's widow had just died there and she was stranded and starving because the hotel had seized all her mistress's goods and she hadn't a penny and not a word of German. I arrived as she was being ejected from the hotel and as I can speak a little German was able to settle matters for her and retrieve her own belongings, which had been seized with the rest. She has been with me ever since. She is splendid person, very well educated as the Scots so often are and a fine herb-wife. I am sure I do not know what I would do without her."
She looked around the table and smiled at her host.
"Now," said she, "that is quite enough about me. Let me have news of the family. I have had no letters for seven weeks for all the post from the northern ports was disrupted, you know. The last letter I had from you, Eleanor, was that one which told me that Johnny was going to Vienna. But I understand he is not to go now."
"No," Johnny said. "I am entered at Thomas's and go there for the Michaelmas Term. I like music, Aunt..."
"And he plays so well," said Eleanor regretfully, "my father would have been so pleased..."
"...but I wanted to do something more than play but didn't know what precisely. Then I found Grandfather Bold's diaries in a trunk when Mama was clearing things from the attics this summer. They were mostly about his patients and what ailed them and how he might treat them and I knew at once that I wanted to be a doctor, like him, and Father said, of course I should, if that was what I wanted and he made all the arrangements."
He looked affectionately up the table towards the Dean.
Mary looked across the table at her nephew and thought how like her own father Johnny had become. It could come as no surprise that he resembled him in nature as well.
"And you will not have to do without music, Mama," Johnny went on, "for Posy plays just as well as I do..."
"That's fiddlededee," said Posy who had been only very recently promoted from schoolroom supper to the dignity of the dinner table. "You know I don't and Si... Mr. Godliman would say the same if he were here."
"He thinks you very competent," said Johnny. "He told me so."
Posy blushed and Mary said, smiling,
"Who is this Mr. Godliman? And is he a judge?"
"Indeed he is," boomed the Archdeacon. "He is my curate. An excellent young man and most talented..."
"His mother," said Mrs. Grantly, "was the second eldest de Courcy girl, Amanda or Amelia, yes, Amelia it was, I recall, who ran away with the de Courcy boys' tutor. I dare say you might not remember the scandal, Miss Mary, it was some years ago not long before my father died. I remember, Archdeacon, you thought they had treated the child cruelly. She was timid, you know, and did not take when they took her to Town so the following year they left her at the Castle and took two of her younger sisters."
"Turkish treatment," observed the Archdeacon. "Just what one would expect of the de Courcy woman."
His wife raised her eyebrows in amusement at this disrespectful mention of their aristocratic acquaintance, then shook her head and remarked,
"It is not to be wondered at that she fell in love with the tutor, for he was a handsome creature..."
"The Godlimans are a Devonshire family, I believe..." said Eleanor. "Well born but not a ha'penny..."
"... and she had nothing to do all summer but sew her seam and practise her music," said Mrs. Grantly. "The Countess is a fool of a woman and I don't care who hears me say it. And her father took no heed of his family unless they cost him money. They ran off to Paris, I understand, and were married there and Godliman found work here and there in the cabarets while Miss Amelia took in sewing."
"Sewing!" exclaimed the Archdeacon, "Upon my word, I never heard that...poor child, poor child..."
"... some two years later, young Simon was born," his wife continued, "and poor Lady Amelia died."
"What a tragedy!" exclaimed Mary, "what happened then?"
"I can tell you," said Mrs. Grantly. "My housekeeper was parlour-maid at De Courcy Castle at the time and she told me that Mr. Godliman knocked on the front door after ten o'clock at night in a storm of wind and rain. He had a great basket in his arms with a scrap of tarpaulin over it and when the footman opened the door he thrust the basket at him and said, 'Tell your mistress that this is her grandson and his name is Simon.'"
"Is that really truly what happened?" asked Posy who was listening wide-eyed to this account.
"Lucas is most truthful," said Mrs. Grantly. "She said the tutor vanished into the rain after he said this and did not come back."
"Never seen from that day to this," said the Archdeacon. "He just disappeared."
"What did the de Courcys do?" asked Mary.
"What could they do?" asked Mrs. Grantly. "They could not keep it a secret, the whole household knew all about the basket and its contents. The baby was sent to the nursery and brought up with his uncles and aunts. The de Courcys have a long family and there were still two or three in the nursery at the time."
"And will they provide for him?" asked Mary. "His birth is no fault of his."
"In a fashion," said the Archdeacon. "He is made no allowance. What he has he earns. He was told that if he took orders the Castle living would be held for him, St. Simon's-under-the-Castle, you know. A fine Norman church but in poor repair, I fear. Godliman had no objection to this because he could see no alternative other than becoming a music teacher like his father. He is very talented in that direction."
"Talented hardly says it," observed the Dean dryly. "He is a fine organist, a most competent pianist and he is quite the best choirmaster we have had since my dear father-in-law died. They
are now almost what they were under his baton. Moreover, he can play any stringed instrument well and can do better than most on the flute and the other woodwinds."
"And he is a very fine teacher..." Posy put in, and blushed when the company all looked at her.
"He is also my curate," said the Archdeacon. "Lord George asked me whether I would take him on, demanded rather, you know his way. I had more than half a mind to refuse, I tell you, but Susan liked the boy and so did I, so I agreed. But I see very little of him..." he laughed his comfortable barking laugh, "if he isn't here playing the organ or drilling the choir he is teaching music to half a dozen students, our little Posy here amongst them. Yes, a fine young man and when he is in Plumstead the parishioners like him very well and he knows them all by name and the children too, which is more than I can say for Greene who has been with me for years. Or indeed for White who would be puzzled to know one from another."
"And is the incumbent at St. Simon's an old man?" Mary asked. "Is he likely to come in for the living soon?"
There was a short silence and then Johnny chuckled.
"As to that, who can say?" he said. "It could be tomorrow or it could be in twenty years. It depends whether the Reverend Cassius Jones lives to a ripe old age or breaks his neck over a rasper."
Mary stared.
"I fear," said the Dean smiling at Mary's bewilderment, "that Mr. Jones is devoted to hunting. His father breeds horses and he rides to hounds whenever he can and on his father's young horses which he accustoms to the hunting field."
"But... but..." protested Mary.
"I know very well what you would say," said the Archdeacon and shook his head. "I suppose it is most regrettable… most...but his mother who was very devout wished that he should be a parson. He was perfectly agreeable to this so he took orders and was then given the Castle living by the late earl who was hunting mad as we all know and fast friends with the father, bought all his horses from him. Seemingly young Jones impressed him by his horsemanship and they became friends."
The company nodded: the old Lord had died from inflammation of the lungs which had been the consequence of his having been deposited in a wet ditch with a broken thigh by a young horse unaccustomed to the chase.