Chapter Twenty #2
“She is trying to take us back,” Louisa was saying, with the bluntness of a nearly five-year-old, as she would say.
“I am not going. I have decided. I have the best room, the fish, Cece and the dog from the home farm that is nearly mine, and I am not going back to the cold house, and if she makes me, I shall be so dreadful that she sends me here again within the week.”
“She is not going to make us go,” Rosalind said. “She is going to try to make the man with the book think we are not happy. So, we must be careful not to seem unhappy, which is difficult, because the surest way to seem unhappy is to be told to seem happy, and then everyone overdoes it.”
“I do not have to talk to her,” Tabitha said, checking.
“You do not have to talk to her. Cece said so. Stand close to Cece and look at your plate; it is what I do when I am cornered; it works perfectly, and no one can prove anything.” Rosalind paused.
“Do not lie to the man with the book, though. If he asks you a thing, tell him the truth. Because the truth is that we are happy, and happiness is hard to fake and easy to mean, and he will be able to tell the difference. We do not need to act. We need only fail to perform the thing she wants performed.”
Cecilia withdrew before they saw her, and did not tell them she had heard, and added the whole of it to the account she kept, the one with no name.
The second day was a siege with excellent manners. Mrs Norwood toured the house with Mr Sefton at her shoulder, asking after the routines in a way that meant to sound like interest but amounted to an audit.
“And the children rise at what hour?”
“Seven. Breakfast at eight, lessons until noon. They are out of doors every afternoon that the weather allows, but many afternoons it does not.”
“In December?”
“Especially in December. Children kept indoors all winter grow strange. These three manage it on rather less provocation than most.”
“And their health? The middle child looks slight to me.”
“Tabitha has always been slight. She eats better than she did, by Mrs Fenn’s account, and sleeps the night through more often than not, which she did not when she first came to us.”
“You keep a close account of how a child sleeps.”
“I keep a close account of everything, Mrs Norwood. It is the only way I have ever found to be certain a house is running as it should.”
“And discipline?” Mrs Norwood had moved them into the schoolroom now, where the slates were set out, and a vase of the last greenhouse flowers stood on the sill, because Cecilia put flowers in every room a child used and made no apology for the expense of it.
“Children of disrupted habits often want a firm hand. One wonders whether kindness alone is equal to it.”
“Kindness is not the opposite of firmness. I am extremely firm. I am firm about lessons, and bedtimes, and I do not raise my voice to enforce any of it because I have never found a raised voice to enforce anything but resentment.” Cecilia straightened a slate that did not need straightening.
“Rosalind does her sums whether she likes them or not. Tabitha practises for an hour daily. Louisa apologises when she is in the wrong, which is rare, because Louisa is rarely in the wrong and knows it. That is discipline, Mrs Norwood. It is only that it is built on something other than fear, which makes it slower to install and a great deal more durable once it holds.”
Mr Sefton wrote for some time.
He asked, before the morning was out, to speak with the staff, and was given Mrs Fenn, who received him in the still-room with the particular courtesy she kept for people she intended to give nothing.
“You have been in service here how long, Mrs Fenn?”
“Two-and-thirty years, sir. I have outlasted three dukes, and I expect I shall outlast a fourth, though I would not say so to his face.”
“And the new Duchess. In your judgment, is the household well managed?”
“I have buried two mistresses of this house and served a third who never troubled to visit it. This one is in the kitchen at seven and on the nursery floor at eight, and she knows the name of every soul under this roof, which is more than her predecessor could be brought to learn in a lifetime.” Mrs Fenn folded her hands at her waist. “You may write that down, sir. You may underline it if your pen will take the strain.”
“Would you call it a settled household, in your view, or a hasty one? You were here when the marriage was made.”
“I have seen hasty, sir. Hasty is a master who weds at Michaelmas and has forgotten the lady’s name by Lady Day. This one lays a place for Her Grace at his own table every evening of his life, and chooses to sit in it. You may make of that what your office requires.”
“Some would say,” Mr Sefton ventured, in the mild voice of a man whose office required him to venture it, “that a marriage made quickly, for a legal purpose, is not a foundation a child should be asked to stand on.”