“Your father?”
She laughed again. It was a low mocking laugh which I had already come to associate with her.
“Hasn’t anyone told you of my shocking birth? You’ve met my father. Mr. Napier Stacy.”
“You mean he…”
She nodded mischievously, enjoying my vague discomfiture.
“That’s why I’m here. Sir William could hardly turn away his own granddaughter, could he?” The mockery went out of her face, and fear showed itself. “He wouldn’t. No matter what I did. I mean I am his granddaughter, am I not?”
“If Mr. Napier Stacy was really your father that is certainly true.”
“You say it as if you doubt it, Mrs. Verlaine. You must not do so because Napier himself acknowledges me as his.”
“In that case,” I said, “we must accept the fact.”
“I’m ill-e-git-i-mate.” She spoke the word slowly as though relishing each syllable. “And my mother…you want to hear about her? She was half gypsy and came here to work…in the kitchen it was. I believe I look very like her, only she was darker than I…more of a gypsy. She went away after I was born. She couldn’t live in a house.” She began to sing in a pleasant, rather husky voice:
“She went off with the raggle-taggle gypsies oh.”
She looked at me to see the effect of her words, and was delighted, because I must have shown that I was taken aback by this further revelation of Napier’s character.
“I’ve some gypsy in me but I’m a Stacy too. I’d never give up my goosefeather bed nor pluck off my high heeled shoes—not that I’m allowed to wear them yet. But I’ll have them, and I’ll have jewels in my hair and I’ll go to balls and I’ll never, never…never leave Lovat Stacy.”
“I am glad,” I said coolly, “that you appreciate your home. Now let us try this piece. It’s very simple. Take it slowly at first and try to feel what the music is saying.”
She grimaced and turned to the piano. But she was not attending; her thoughts were far away; so were mine. I was thinking of Napier, the bad boy who had brought such disaster to his home that he had had to be sent away.
“I often wonder,” said Allegra, apropos of nothing, “what became of that woman who disappeared.”
We were having tea in the schoolroom—the four girls and myself, for Sylvia was with us.
I almost dropped my teacup. I had tried to make people talk of Roma and yet it was a shock when they did without prompting.
“Which woman?” I asked—I hoped guilelessly.
“Why the woman who came down here and dug up things,” said Allegra. “People don’t talk about it much now.”
“At one time,” put in Sylvia, “they talked of nothing else.”
“Well, people don’t disappear every day.” I spoke casually. “What did you think happened?”
Sylvia said: “My mother says they arranged it all just to make a lot of talk. Some people are like that.”
“For what purpose?” I demanded.
“To be important.”
“But she wouldn’t have stayed hidden. How could that make her important?”
“It’s what my mother says,” insisted Sylvia.
“Alice wrote a story about it,” said Edith quietly.
Alice blushed and lowered her eyes.
“It was very good,” added Allegra. “It made our hair stand on end…at least it would if hair ever did stand on end. Has yours ever, Mrs. Verlaine?”
I said I could not recall its having done so.
“Mrs. Verlaine reminds me of Miss Brandon,” said Alice.
My heart began to beat fast in dismay.
“How?” I asked. “In what way?”
“Being accurate, as so few other people are,” explained Alice. “Most people would say ‘No, my hair hasn’t stood on end’ or ‘Yes it has’ and then tell some story very exaggeratedly. You say you can’t recall its having done so, which is very accurate. Miss Brandon was very accurate. She said she had to be in her kind of work.”
“You seem to have talked to her quite frequently.”
“We all talked to her at times,” said Alice. “Mr. Napier did too. He was very interested. She was always showing him things.”
“Yes,” said Sylvia. “I remember my mother’s noticing it.”
“Your mother notices everything…especially things that are not very nice,” put in Allegra.
“What wasn’t nice about Mr. Napier’s being interested in the Roman remains?” I asked.
The girls were all silent although Allegra had opened her mouth to say something.
Alice said suddenly: “It’s a very good thing to be interested in the Roman remains. They had catacombs, Mrs. Verlaine, did you know?”
“Yes.”
“Of course she knew!” scolded Allegra. “Mrs. Verlaine knows a great deal.”
“A labyrinth of passages,” said Alice, her eyes dreamy. “Christians used to hide in them and their enemies couldn’t find them.”
“She’ll be writing a story about that,” commented Allegra.
“I have never seen them, so how could I?”
“But you wrote about the disappearance of Miss Brandon,” Edith pointed out. “It was a wonderful story. You should read it too, Mrs. Verlaine.”
“It’s about the gods being angry and turning her into something else,” explained Sylvia.
“They did, you know,” put in Alice eagerly. “They turned people into stars and trees and bulls and bushes when they were offended, so it seems natural that they should turn Miss Brandon into something.”
“What did they turn her into in your story?” I asked.
“That’s the odd thing about it,” said Edith. “We don’t know. Alice doesn’t tell us. In the story the gods take their revenge and they turn her into something, but Alice just doesn’t tell what.”
“It has to be left to the reader’s imagination,” Alice explained. “You can turn Miss Brandon into anything you want.”
“It gives me a funny feeling,” cried Allegra. “Imagine Miss Brandon being turned into something, and we don’t know what it is.”
“Oh…exciting!” squealed Sylvia.
“Even your mother doesn’t know what,” teased Allegra. Then she cried out: “What if it’s Mrs. Verlaine?”
Four pairs of eyes studied me intently.
“Come to think of it,” said Allegra, mocking and mischievous, “she has got a look of her.”
“How do you mean?” I demanded.
“It’s the way you talk perhaps. But something…”
“I think,” said Edith, “that we are embarrassing Mrs. Verlaine.”
I was touched when Edith seemed to find some comfort in my company. It seemed to me reasonable that she should turn to me. Although she was nearer in years to the girls, I had been married and that must draw us together. She seemed to me a pathetic creature and I longed to help her.
One afternoon she asked me if I rode and when I explained that I had done a little riding but was far from proficient in the art she asked me if I would ride with her.
“But I haven’t the necessary clothes.”
“I could lend you something. We aren’t so very different in shape, are we?”
I was taller than she and not so slender but she insisted that one of her habits would fit me very well.
She was pathetically eager. Why? I knew of course. She was a nervous rider; she wanted to improve and she could do so by practice. Why should she not practice with me, so that when she went out with her husband she would be more accustomed to being in the saddle.
I gave in—with some misgivings—and she took me along to her room and I was soon fitted out in a riding habit—a long skirt, a tailored jacket in olive green, and a black riding hat.
“You look elegant,” she cried with pleasure, and I was not displeased with what I saw. “I’m so glad.” Her eyes were anxious. “We can ride often together, can’t we?”