CHAPTER THREE #2
She interrupted Sir John without ceremony. “Pray forgive me, sir, but I believe my mama is unwell.”
“Then you must go to her, my dear,” he agreed at once, rising to his feet.
Verena rose and went straight across to Mrs Peverill. One full glance at her mother, and all concern over Mr Denzell Hawkeridge flew out of her head. She knew that look.
Mrs Peverill’s features were drawn, and beneath the apparent idle chatter, for Mama was almost as accomplished as herself at maintaining a company face — and heaven knew how much she’d had need of it! — Verena recognised the tragic note that signalled the onset of a hysterical outburst.
Throughout the mercifully short carriage drive home, Mrs Peverill, wrapped in a woollen mantle, hung on convulsively to the cloaked figure of Verena at her side. Her breathing was shallow, and she was barely able to obey her daughter’s vehement plea.
“Softly, Mama, softly, I pray you. Not here. Not yet. Only hold yourself in until we reach home.”
“Home!” uttered Mrs Peverill in a breaking voice. “We have no home.”
“Hush, Mama,” begged Verena. “Don’t, pray.”
“Oh, Verena … oh, my love…”
“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 not see.”
“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 one dead 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 of that 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.
They had been creeping down the stairs, both clad suitably for travelling, but lightly for late summer’s warmth, Verena in a cloth riding habit and a beaver hat, Mama in a linen greatcoat dress with a straw bonnet, adorned with ribbon.
Betsey had called to them from the hall below that the coach had been loaded up and was ready to go.
“Come, Mama, quickly,” Verena had begged, easing her mother down with an arm about her waist.
Mrs Peverill, hustled into taking this terrifying step towards a freedom that she had only expected in death, was in a state of benumbed anxiety, unable to believe that this was really happening.
“The servants,” she muttered. “You know Nathaniel insists that our differences remain strictly private.”
“Have no fear, Mama,” Verena soothed. “They all believe we are going to the seaside for your health.”
But inwardly she fumed. Differences? Well, let him call it by that innocuous name if he wished.
It had mattered no longer. In a few moments they would be gone, free of his influence forever, and the wilting flower that had been Mama would bloom again.
As for the servants, how dared Nathaniel demand privacy?
By rights, his activities should have been shouted to all the world that they might have known of Mama’s wrongs.
None the less, it had ever been Verena’s care to attempt concealment from the domestic staff, though she had believed they must have been both blind and deaf to be unaware of the unnatural events that had taken place in this house.
“Do get a move on, Miss Verena,” Betsey hissed from the bottom of the sweeping stairs, straightening her own black pelisse that had become disarranged from her exertions.
“We are coming,” Verena returned, but oddly the staircase began to seem endless. Mama’s physical weakness slowed her down, and her progress, step by painful step, began to rack Verena’s nerves.