Chapter 51
Mr Severin had called and was closeted with Mr Constantine in the latter’s study, and everyone in the house knew it.
This could only mean one thing: an offer of marriage.
The girls, discovering this, were in uproar.
Miss Macintyre threw up her hands and said that even she could not be expected to keep order in such circumstances.
Lessons would be resumed later, when everyone was calmer, and suitable punishments decided upon.
Italian verbs even more hideously irregular than the ones that had gone before might be memorised.
‘Allie, you never told us!’ Beatrice said accusingly, after another thundering progress up the stairs to Allegra’s tiny bedroom.
‘This mysterious gentleman is here to offer for you, I can see from your moony expression that you’re going to accept him, so you must have known about it, possibly for ages, and yet you never said a word to us!
You have been shockingly clandestine in your behaviour, and deceived us terribly, not to mention Mama.
I wonder you dare look us in the face, personally. Faces.’
‘You could have told us when the letter came,’ Cecilia added, not to be outdone in indignation.
‘We all saw him, and spoke to you of it and of him, but when we asked you what its contents were, you fobbed us off, saying that you hardly knew him, which was, we now see, untrue! Instead, that would have been a perfect opportunity for frankness. Sisterly frankness.’
‘Yes, it would,’ Allegra agreed hastily, before Bianca chipped in with something perfectly ridiculous in the same vein.
‘I’m sorry. It’s been rather difficult. Have you seen the story in the periodical – the very affecting one about the man looking for his son for so many years, and finally going away without meeting him?
’ She was sure they must have done; reading material was always eagerly seized upon in the Constantine household, at least by Cecilia, and by the others in imitation of her.
Furthermore, parts of the tale had a slightly salty edge that would be bound to appeal to them all; a suggestion that such a piece wasn’t quite appropriate for their eyes and must be devoured discreetly, when nobody was watching.
They looked at her with dawning understanding. ‘Mr Severin is the young gentleman in the story, who was adopted?’ Cecilia asked, her face a picture of wonder. ‘It’s all true? I thought it was just a fiction, but you’re saying it isn’t?’
She nodded. They’d agreed a tale to tell her sisters, and anyone else who asked. It was rather neat, she thought. ‘Mr Severin has been desirous of pressing his suit for some while, and I was aware of that, and wished he might, because I fully return his sentiments. But he had scruples.’
Her sisters had subsided now, in a row upon her narrow bed, elbowing each other for space but attentive enough. ‘Scruples!’ said Bianca, her eyes round. ‘How thrilling.’
‘He knew only that he was adopted, and of Caribbean origin, but nothing more until very lately. He has been searching for his real parents for many years, with no success, but recently he came across the story we all read, recognised that he must be the subject of it, and immediately contacted the writer, just as the end of the tale suggested. He has been able now to meet his father and talk with him.’
‘He hadn’t left after all, on the next tide!
’ Cecilia breathed. ‘He was staying, in secret, to see if his son reached out to him. He designed it on purpose so it would be his choice, the son, in case he did not want to acknowledge his humble father because he is a fine gentleman now! It’s so noble, I can hardly bear it!
’ Tears stood in her eyes, Allegra saw, and possibly in her own, too.
It wasn’t true, but… it was, in a way. Max had written and told her every detail of his real first meeting with his father, and she had been deeply affected.
‘He recognised the woman’s name, you see, on top of all the other details that were less specific.
Celestine was his nurse, as he had always thought, who came to England with him and sadly died here.
He never knew she was really his mother all along, and gave him up so that he would have a better life. ’
They were all of them weeping now. ‘They should have put that in the story,’ Bianca managed though her sobs. ‘That’s the best part!’
‘The writer did not know,’ Allegra said, blowing her nose.
‘That is, he was not aware, because the sailor was not either, that the son was in ignorance of his mother’s true identity as well as his father’s.
Perhaps he will write more now, to finish the story properly.
But you see, Mr Severin felt he could not link his destiny to that of another person, when he remained ignorant of his origins, and could therefore tell a prospective bride and her family nothing.
But now he does know, and he is not ashamed, and hoped that I was not.
Of course – of course – I am not, and luckily Mama and Papa are not either.
And so we can be married, finally, and that is why he is here.
I couldn’t tell you before everything was resolved so satisfactorily, in case it wasn’t, and now you know all. ’
It seemed her sisters were prepared to overlook her transgressions now.
‘It’s so romantic!’ Cecilia said, her eyes shining damply.
‘So much better than my silly fantasy about bodies in coffins and mysterious robed figures. It makes me think that the Gothic is sadly outmoded, in this new century, and tales of real life and real people, like this, are to be in fashion now. But even that doesn’t matter, not really, because we are so happy for you, Allie!
’ And they all embraced, in a confusion of tears and laughter and sadly creased muslin.
‘And you can have my bedroom for yourself, Bea!’ Allegra finished, when at last she had emerged relatively unscathed.