“At such a late hour, wouldn’t it be kinder to deliver her to her rooms in town and maybe have Cook send down something cold?” said Daniel, ignoring Hugh’s proffered dry sherry and pouring a glass of Uncle John’s best whisky. “I’m sure she’ll be horribly fagged and not up to a room full of people in evening dress.” He tried to keep a neutral face, but Hugh detected a slight moue of distaste at the thought of entertaining the new schoolteacher his aunt had found. Since graduating from Balliol in June, Daniel had spent the first few weeks of the summer in Italy as the guest of an aristocratic college chum, and had developed a sense of social superiority that Hugh was dying to see Aunt Agatha knock out of his silly head. Instead Agatha had been patient, saying, “Oh, let him have his taste of the high life. Don’t you think his heart will be broken soon enough? When Daniel goes into the Foreign Office this autumn, as your Uncle John has taken such pains to arrange, I’m sure his friend will drop him in an instant. Let him have his hour of glamour.”
Hugh was of the opinion that Daniel should be made to understand his place, but he loved his Aunt Agatha and he thought any continued argument might lead her to think he resented Daniel being her favorite. Daniel’s mother, Agatha’s sister, had died when Daniel was only five, and his father was a strange, distant sort of man. Daniel had been sent to boarding school a month after his mother’s death, and Agatha had been his refuge in the Christmas and summer holidays. Hugh had always been torn about Christmas. He spent it at home in London with his parents, who loved him and made a great fuss of him. He would have preferred if they could have all gone down to Sussex to Agatha’s house together, but his mother, who was Uncle John’s sister, liked to be among her friends in town, and his father did not like to be away from the bank too long at Christmas. Hugh had been happy in the midst of piles of striped wrapping paper, huge mysterious boxes, and the dishes of sweets and fruits set all around their Kensington villa. But sometimes, when he was sent to bed and the music from his parents’ guests drifted up to his room, he would lie in bed and peer out the window over the dark rooftops and try to see all the way to Sussex, where no doubt Aunt Agatha was tucking Daniel in with one of her wild stories of giants and elves who lived in caves under the Sussex Downs and whose parties could be mistaken sometimes as thunder.
“Don’t be silly, Daniel. Miss Nash will stay here this evening,” said Aunt Agatha, bending to switch on the electric lamp by the flowered couch. She sat down and stretched out her feet, which were encased in Oriental slippers embroidered, rather strangely, with lobsters. “I had to fight to bring the full weight of the School Board to bear on the governors to hire a woman. I mean to get a good look at her and make sure she understands what’s to be done.”
The local grammar school was one of his aunt’s many social causes. She believed in education for all and seemed to expect great leaders of men to emerge from the grubby-kneed group of farmers’ and merchants’ boys who crowded the new red-brick school building out beyond the railway tracks.
“You mean you want her to get a good look at you,” said Hugh. “I’m sure she’ll be suitably cowed.”
“I’m with the governors,” said Daniel. “It takes a man to keep a mob of schoolboys in line.”
“Nonsense,” said Agatha. “Besides, you can’t just drum up teachers these days. Our last Latin master, Mr. Puddlecombe, was only here a year and then he had the nerve to tell us he was off to try his luck with a cousin in Canada.”
“Well, school had almost broken up for the summer, Auntie,” said Hugh.
“Which made it all the more impossible,” said Agatha. “We were fortunate that your Uncle John spoke to Lord Marbely and that Lady Marbely had been looking for a position for this young woman. She is a niece apparently, and the Marbelys highly recommended her; though I did get a hint that maybe they had an ulterior motive for getting her out of Gloucestershire.”
“Do they have a son?” asked Daniel. “That’s usually the story.”
“Oh no, Lady Marbely took pains to assure me she’s quite plain,” said Aunt Agatha. “I may be progressive, but I would never hire a pretty teacher.”
“We’d better eat dinner soon,” said Hugh, consulting the battered pocket watch that had been his grandfather’s and that his parents were always begging to replace with something more modern. The dinner gong rang just as he spoke.
“Yes, I’d like to digest properly before this paragon descends upon us,” said Daniel, downing the rest of his glass in a swallow. “I assume I have to be introduced and can’t just hide in my room?”
“Would you go with Smith to pick her up, Hugh?” said Agatha. “Two of you would probably overwhelm the poor girl, and obviously I can’t trust Daniel not to sneer at her.”
“What if Hugh falls in love with her?” asked Daniel. Hugh was tempted to retort that his affections were already engaged, but his matrimonial intentions were too important to be subjected to Daniel’s disrespectful teasing, and so he merely gave his cousin a look of scorn. “After all,” added Daniel, “Hugh is so terribly plain himself.”
—
Beatrice Nash was quite sure she had a large smut of soot on her nose, but she did not want to take out her pocket mirror again in case doing so roused the inebriated young man opposite her to further flights of compliment. She had checked her face soon after leaving Charing Cross, and he had taken the tiny gold mirror as some recognized signal of coy flirtation. Her book had been further cause for conversation, though he did not seem to recognize the Trollope name and then confessed he had no use for reading. He had even proffered the use of his small bag for her feet, and she had tucked her ankles hard back under the seat, fearing that he might whip off her shoes.
She had scolded him severely when they changed trains in Kent and he followed her into her chosen compartment. He had backed away, laughing, but the train had already started. Now they were stuck together in a compartment without access to a corridor. He was sunk into the appearance of a petulant doze, and she sat rigid, her back straight against the prickly fabric of the bench, trying not to breathe in the stench of stale liquor or feel the insolent proximity of his outstretched legs in pressed white flannels and shiny, buckled brown shoes.
She kept her face turned to the window and let the image of wet, green fields run freely across her eyes until the sheep, grass, and sky blurred into painted streaks. She wished now she had not refused the Marbelys’ offer to send a servant to accompany her. She had been tormented by Ada Marbely’s long discussion of what conveyance might be available to reach the station and who might be spared. She had been made to understand that her transfer was a very, very large inconvenience and that of course they could not offer to send her in the car, or send anyone from the permanent household staff. She had hidden her humiliation behind a firm claim of independence. She reminded them that she had traveled widely with her father, from the American West to the Kasbahs of Morocco and the lesser-known classical sites of southern Italy, and was perfectly capable of seeing herself and one trunk to Sussex, by farm cart if needed. She had been adamant and now understood that she had only herself to blame for being exposed to the indignities of traveling alone. She managed a small smile at her own stubbornness.
“All women can be pretty when they smile,” said the man. She whipped her face around to glare at him, but his eyes appeared to be still closed, and his face, round and sweating, remained sunk on its thick neck, wrapped in a greasy yellow cravat. He scratched at his shirtfront and yawned without covering his mouth, as if she didn’t exist.
It was the cheapest kind of rebuke, to call a woman ugly, but one to which small boys and grown men seemed equally quick to stoop when feeling challenged. While she had always playfully dismissed her father’s insistence on calling her his beauty, she believed she had a pleasant, regular face and took pride in a certain strength about the chin and a straight posture. That such an insult was a lie never seemed to reduce its effectiveness, and she could only bite her lip not to give him the satisfaction of a response.
The train slowed in a great hissing fog of steam, and she felt a flood of relief to hear the stationmaster calling, “Rye. Rye station.” She jumped up to take down her bag, lowered the window, heedless of the threat of flying cinders, and had her hand on the outside doorknob ready to open it at the earliest moment.