The Baldaya Children

2

The Baldaya Children

    Nancy Jeffreys was the daughter of a respectable family of Sussex gentlefolk who had disgraced herself and her family in the year 1800 by running off with a Portuguese gentleman who was only very vaguely known to his Embassy as an extremely minor sprig on the vast and shady Baldaya family tree. The gentleman had been not only Roman Catholic, which was enough to damn him eternally in the eyes of respectable Sussex gentlefolk in the year 1800, but also married, which had immediately put the whole thing beyond the pale. So Nancy’s family had cast her off and refused to mention her name ever again. Luckily for the offspring of the union, the Portuguese lady who had had the misfortune to be the Senhor’s legal wife had very shortly thereafter died, it was said of a broken heart, and he had married Nancy but a few weeks before their daughter was born.

    This legitimizing of both the union and its product had not made the affair any more acceptable to the respectable Portuguese gentlefolk amongst whom the gallant Senhor had been used to move, and after several years struggling for some sort of social acceptance on his very minor country estate, he had entrusted the estate to a cousin and gone off to seek his fortune in the East. Complete with wife and children. He had settled on the western coast of India and there gone into trade jointly with two men of around his own age: a merchant of his own race and a cheery Englishman who made no bones about being an uneducated fellow who had come out to the Indies to seek his fortune.

    The partnership had prospered and all had gone swimmingly until the day on which the Senhor came home to his white house with its vine-swagged deep verandahs to find his servants in floods of tears and his wife run off with an Indian princeling. Possibly Nancy Jeffreys Baldaya had become bored with life as the wife of a prosperous India merchant: she was prone to boredom, was Nancy. Swearing horribly, the Senhor had girded on his pistols and his sword, and dashed off into the hinterland in pursuit of the pair. He was, not altogether surprisingly, never heard of again.

    That left little Nan (for Nancy) and even smaller Dominick, Daphne and Dicky. Nancy had firmly imposed the English diminutive of her eldest little girl’s name, and even more firmly named the boys and the second girl for her own relatives, ignoring her husband’s wishes in the matter—Nancy had been like that. The Senhor had endeavoured to use Portuguese versions of the boys’ names, easy enough in the case of little Dom, but rather more difficult with Dicky, in especial as his mother had encouraged him to refuse to answer to anything but “Dicky,” or at a pinch, “Richard”—Nancy had been like that, too.

    Senhor Baldaya’s Portuguese partner immediately wrote home in an effort to contact the children’s relatives. After ten months had elapsed with no reply to any of his several letters, it became fairly evident that there was not going to be one. The Baldayas were a powerful family and if they wished to have nothing to do with these dubious little fruits of the loins of one of their least distinguished representatives, there was, realistically, very little that anyone could do. Neither of the partners could leave the business in order to spend an appreciable period in Portugal sorting out the ownership of the estate which should properly have come to Dom, and there was the additional point that the Peninsula War was now in full swing. After some consultation they decided that the Englishman should take the children. It was true he was unmarried (though not that there was no woman in his house) but then, his Portuguese partner already had a houseful of children of his own, and the four little semi-orphans would be better off with a man who could give them his whole paternal attention and not one sixteenth of it each.

    It might have been supposed not only that Senhor Baldaya would never be heard of again, but that Nancy Jeffreys never would, either. And in fact the cheery John Edwards and his partner did not suppose it, and, though she was a woman of a remarkably sanguine temperament, neither did the Portuguese lady from Macao who was the partner’s wife; and so, very sensibly, none of them encouraged the children to hope for news of Nancy.

    But one cloudless day, in the year that Nan turned fifteen and Dom fourteen, Nancy was heard of again. There was a terrific rumpus in the street outside Mr Edwards’s house, Nan, Dom, Daphne and Dicky ran to the grilled windows, as did most of the large household of Indian servants, and all stood transfixed.

    “An elephant! Coming here!” gasped Dom.

    “THREE elephants!” shrieked Dicky.

    So it was. Three elephants, one with an extraordinarily elaborate howdah, plus a horde of attendants, several of them on horseback and garbed in plumed turbans. It was immediately evident to the experienced Baldaya children that these were private elephants and not the kind that were hired out for work, for they were, though rather dusty, elaborately and beautifully painted as to their heads and trunks.

    “Perhaps it’s the maharajah that Uncle John is hoping to do business with,” said Nan as the entire entourage turned in at the gates of Uncle John’s house.

    “Those are not maharajah elephants, Nanni baba!” cried their ayah immediately.

    Nor they were. They were a rajah’s elephants, as it turned out, but only a minor rajah’s, and in fact had been sent by the minor rajah with whom the children’s mother had run away. John Edwards would have been prepared to fight for the children if necessary: particularly for Nan and Daphne, for he could not think little European girls would be happy as the inmates of an Indian zenana: but it was not that: the rajah had plenty of children of his own. No: quite the reverse: the rajah had sent the Baldaya children their little sister.

    It was not that Nancy had died: she was apparently hale and hearty and, according to the ayah accompanying the little girl, very fat. When she left she had been remarkably curvaceous but not what could have been called fat, by any stretch of the imagination: John Edwards blinked, rather, at this piece of news. However, clearly the rajah was happy with the fat Nancy. And one could only trust that the ayah was right and that fat Nancy was happy with the rajah. Nancy had produced several sons for him, and as he didn’t take much account of girls and had plenty anyway, should he wish to form alliances with his neighbours by marrying them off to their sons, he had been perfectly willing to let the little girl be sent to her half-Portuguese, half-English relatives. Her name was Amrita, so either the rajah’s will had been stronger, in the matter of names, than Nancy’s, or, as indeed seemed likely, Nancy had gone over almost completely to the Indian side. The child was but four years old, and though she had wept, according to her ayah, when her mother waved good-bye, she had cheered up once the palace was out of sight. –Dom and Dicky nodded fervently at this: they couldn’t imagine anyone not cheering up, at riding in a howdah on a private elephant!

    So Amrita had come to live in John Edwards’s big, rambling white house, and was soon quite part of the family, chattering away in broken Portuguese to her half-siblings and their friends, and in even more broken English on “English days.”

    Then, the year that Nan turned sixteen and Dom fifteen, the elephants came again. This time it was with the news that Nancy had died in an epidemic. The Rajah himself had been very ill but was mercifully recovered. Whether as thanksgiving for this recovery was never quite clear, but he had sent with the elephants a train of bearers, and a fortune in gold and jewels for Nancy’s five children. Three elephants, their mahouts and the fortune were for the children to keep, but the bearers would be going back.

    He had also sent one of his sons, and it was this young man’s arrival which was to set the cat among the pigeons and change the Baldaya children’s lives for ever. Because the Rajah’s son fell overwhelmingly in love with Nan.

    At sixteen, Nan Baldaya was a short, curved person, not nearly as curvaceous as her mother had been when last seen in the white house with the vines, but sufficiently. Her skin was a thick, ivory-tinted cream, not the whey or mottled pink of English complexions but that pale shade sung of by the Indian poets, and before them the Persian poets, for centuries. Little wonder that “Raju”, “the little rajah” as his bearers and his father’s women all affectionately called him, who was a highly educated young gentleman, fell instantly in love with her. Besides, she had also a deliciously curved, laughing red mouth and deliciously rounded, dawn-tinted cheeks, huge dark liquid eyes with ravishingly long, thick, curled black lashes, as feted by both poets and artists through the ages, and, to Raju perhaps the most enchanting touch of all, not black hair, but riotous, thick, tangled glossy brown hair with golden lights in it.

    Perhaps a man of less sturdy Nonconformist English conscience than John Edwards would have let the little rajah, who was clearly a charming, gentle-mannered young gentleman, take Nan without benefit of clergy, Roman, Indian, or otherwise, but to John Edwards that was inconceivable. But marriage was clearly out of the question: the Rajah would have hit the roof at the mere suggestion. As, indeed, the boy’s entourage did not fail very quickly to point out.

    Most fortunately Nan did not reciprocate Raju’s passion. In fact she laughed her merry laugh when he professed his undying devotion and said she was too young to think of that sort of thing, and anyway, what on earth would his father say? So Raju, with the relieved connivance of his entourage, went on his way with a broken heart, and the two households of the firm of Garvão, Baldaya & Edwards, Importers and Exporters, breathed sighs of relief.

    Nevertheless it had been, as Senhora Constância Garvão did not fail to point out to the two middle-aged partners, a Warning Sign. It was high time they should be thinking of Nan’s marriage! And while a match between her and their Martinho would not be wholly unsuitable, they had in mind a Portuguese lady, for the eldest son. Though perhaps in a year’s time they might think of her for João? And there could be no objection, none at all, to “Domingos” for their little Constância! The two kindly, plump, middle-aged Portuguese whom he had known for over twenty years beamed at John Edwards, and he suddenly felt quite utterly and completely alien to them and their round, complacent, yellowish faces that the Indian sun had but made yellower, and their fat, black-garbed, heavily beringed Portugee forms, and to all their concerns and to everything that was theirs. Which was ridiculous, of course. Why, twelve years back Constância had nursed him through cholera! He agreed that they must think it all over very seriously, refused their kind offer of dinner, and went back to his own house for a long brood.

    The upshot of the brood was that he decided Nan must go home. No, not to Portugal, Heaven forbid! To be married off to the obscure seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh cousin, and a Roman Catholic to boot? No: home! To England! And come to think of it, the boys could go, too: why had he never thought of it earlier? God knew he had the money: they must go to a decent English school for gentlemen’s sons!

    Naturally Nan refused to hear of any such idea. A battle royal raged in the Edwards house for three solid weeks. Then John called her into his study.

    “Nan, my love,” he said heavily: “I don’t wish to quarrel with you any more. But I think you don’t realize your position.”

    Nan looked at him warily but allowed herself to be sat down. John Edwards then explained very clearly the choices that were hers should she remain in India. They did not include any hope of Martinho Garvão, but Nan did not look particularly dashed at this news. But they did include the distinct possibility of being married off to one of Senhor Garvão’s less prominent merchant friends or one of their wet-behind-the-ears sons, and they did include the possibility of ending up in the zenana as the slave of “that damned little heathen of a Raju” as John Edwards did not scruple to call him in his own language, in the privacy of his own study. Failing those options, he had a feeling that Constância Garvão might insist on shipping her off to Macao to her own family, who would be only too willing to marry a well-off part-English girl whose mother had disgraced herself to any one of their numerous impoverished part-Chinese, part-Portuguese cousins. In fact the very best she might hope for, if she stayed here, was to end up in a convent like poor Anna Sortelha.

    Nan pointed out forcefully that it would be no better in England: she would be married off to an obscure cousin there, too, for Uncle John must know that Mamma’s family had long since washed their hands of her and her children! Could she not just stay here with him: could not things go on just as they had?

    John Edwards scratched his square chin slowly. “Aye, well, there’s the rub, you see. I’m not your true uncle, my love, and Constância’s already naggin’ at me that it ain’t proper for a young lady of your age to be livin’ in my house. And I dessay as your fine English relatives would say the same.”

    “Fine English relatives! They deed not even acknowledge eet, when my Papa wrote to say he and my Mamma were married! And even Uncle Érico gave me a christening present, I’ll say that much for our Portuguese relatives! And to Dom: he steell has hees silver mug!”

    “Aye, well, that ain’t nothin’ to do with the case. Constância’s right: ’tain’t decent.”

    “Rubbeesh!” cried Nan, bursting into angry tears.

    John rubbed his chin again and decided they’d give it a month or two—see how things went.

    By the end of three months it was clear that things were going from bad to worse. Not only Martinho Garvão but also Mathias Sortelha had offered for Nan’s hand. True, they were both distinctly wet behind the ears and also true, neither of their fathers knew what they were up to; but also, and unfortunately, true, they had at least both had the guts to make the offer to John’s face. Besides them a fat, wealthy baboo from the town had kindly offered to overlook the facts of Nan’s being European and having a disgraced mother, and that their offspring would be chee-chee and thus hard to marry off suitably in his own community, and marry her. He was a widower, yes, but he had grandchildren of Nan’s age.

    So John called Nan into his study again. Nan burst into floods of tears, declaring that she would not leave. John replied grimly it was that or go to Constância’s house: people were beginning to gossip. The cats were already hinting she was her mother over again and drawing their skirts aside: had she not noticed? Nan screamed out they were horrid beasts. John could not but agree, but pointed out that that was what human nature was like. Under the curls and prettiness Nan was as sensible as he, so she gulped and sniffed and said yes, he was right. Only what could she do, she couldn’t possibly marry any of those horrid boys!

    John Edwards felt a strange sort of gladness come over him as Nan said “horrid boys”. He looked at her doubtfully. Nan sniffed again and said that even if they went to England, it wouldn’t answer, because what about poor little Amrita? She would be treated shamefully in England, because John knew what the English were like! John did, indeed: he’d overlooked that point. He stared at her in consternation. Finally he suggested weakly that Amrita might be left behind with him. Nan pointed out grimly that when she’d merely gone to the hills with the Fereira girls and their mother for a week, Amrita had pined and refused to eat. This was true. John bit his lip.

    “I suppose,” said Nan in a shaking voice: “you couldn’t marry me, could you?”

    “What?” croaked John.

    “I like you best of anyone I know. And you aren’t married.”

    “My dear child—!”

    “Prema wouldn’t mind. She wants to go back to her village and become a Buddhist nun. We were talking about it only the other day.”

    Prema was the Indian lady who lived in John’s house and had borne him three sons and four daughters, the former now settled in the counting-house of Garvão, Baldaya & Edwards, the latter all safely married off to suitable chee-chees like themselves.

    John goggled at the blushing Nan. “Did she put you up to this?”

    Nan nodded hard.

    “By the—BHAI!” shouted John at the top of his lungs. “Fetch Prema Memsahib, jooldee!”

    As anyone who knew both Prema Mookerjee and Nan Baldaya might have guessed, after that it was pretty much all over bar the shouting. John didn’t have much say in the matter, really. But he discovered he didn’t all that much want to argue with the pair of ’em! So John and Nan were married, and little Constância Garvão and Daphne Baldaya threw petals at the bridal couple and dreamed of the day when they might be walking down the aisle under clouds of lace at the side of, respectively, handsome, dashing Dom Baldaya and handsome, dashing João Garvão. And Senhora Garvão nodded complacently and said to her husband that it was the most sensible solution, after all; and then, Nan was half English, the cousins in Macao would have found that a hard pill to swallow. Senhor Garvão agreed; he usually did.

    Of course Nan was not “in love” with John. But she loved him very deeply, in fact had loved him for the greater part of her life. And bluff, cheery John found himself shatteringly in love with his new little wife and was happier than he had ever imagined the boy from the Devonport streets could be. And a not inconsiderable factor in their joint happiness was the point that John, because of all those years of experience with Prema, who had been a widow and far more experienced in the ways of love than he when she came to live with him, didn’t know how to behave in bed like an English lout from off the streets of Devonport, but only like a middle-class Indian gentleman, of the breed that believes that “in a country where the women are loved, there the gods are happy.” Added to which Prema stayed on long enough to make sure that Nan was properly loved, and to see her baby born.

    So everything in the garden was rosy and in the whole of the great landmass of India you would not have found a happier couple, white, black or in-between, than John and Nan Edwards.

    Then, the year that Nan turned nineteen, and baby Johnny was one year old, the cholera came again, and John Edwards died.

    Nan mourned him deeply and sincerely, but with a household to run and the estate to settle, she did not have very much time for private weeping.

    Stolid, sensible John Edwards had not left his affairs entirely in the hands of his business partner, even although in all the years of their association Senhor Garvão had never once given any indication of wishing to cheat him. Instead, he had appointed an English merchant friend from Bombay as the executor of his will and trustee of Nan’s and tiny Johnny’s large inheritance and the considerable fortunes which he had been administering for the children. Mr Mannering duly arrived from Bombay and was frankly rather stunned at the amount his old friend’s estate came to. He had known John was a warm man, and a man who knew how to keep household, but—!

    Since the pretty little widow, to his great relief, was not draped in impenetrable black lace veils and wailing into a black-edged handkerchief, the which he had sort of had a feeling was what Portuguese widows did, he felt emboldened to say: “Why, my dear Mrs Edwards, one can almost say John was a bit of nabob!”

    Nan’s eyelids were red and swollen, though as Mr Mannering was a trifle short-sighted this had escaped his notice; but she laughed a little and said: “Yes, he used to say so sometimes heemself, when he was een a funning mood!”

    Mr Mannering smiled but after that became very thoughtful indeed. He asked Nan a lot of questions about her mamma’s family, not revealing his relief at how nicely spoken she was, even though she had a definite foreign accent, and then asked about her papa’s family, with particular emphasis on the fate of Dominick’s inheritance. Nan answered as best she could, wondering what he had in mind.

    Nothing happened for several weeks after this, except that Mr Mannering and Senhor Garvão spent a lot of time closeted together with the firm’s books. And one of John’s half-Indian sons, even more swollen as to the eyelids than Nan, Daphne and little Amrita, came and did an inventory of every single item in the house. Slightly hampered by Amrita’s decision to “help.”

    Then Mr Mannering sent word that he would most particularly like an appointment with Mrs Edwards and her brothers. What he got was a meeting with Mrs Edwards, her brothers, both of her sisters, and her late husband’s half-Indian son, not to say assorted ayahs and bearers and such-like who kept popping in and out on very flimsy excuses—but fortunately he had been in India for many years, and was not disturbed by it. Mr Mannering thought that Mrs Edwards should think seriously, for her brothers’ and sisters’ sake (he had not realized whose child Amrita was), of selling out her interest in the firm and removing to England.

    “But—” began Dom.

    “Eet can’t hurt to listen,” said Nan sensibly.

    Looking at her with great approval—the which he himself did not realize was due not only to the absence of wailing and black lace veils, but also to the presence of pink cheeks and riotous brown curls, for like many respectably married, middle-aged, middle-class merchants of his type he was an innocent in many ways—Mr Mannering explained that he had several very kind letters here from persons in Bombay who were prepared to use their influence to see the family established “at home.” And though he knew they were used to the life here, still, what future could there be for them?

    Nan had been making Dicky work very hard at his English over the past few years; therefore he immediately pointed out, fluently but sourly, to his elder brother: “That’s true, Dom. You know that the Garvãos weell never let us help to run the business: there ees Martinho and João and horrible Theotonio all determined to have their fingers een the pie! And besides, they’re all eediots: what sort of mull weell they make of eet? We weell see our fortune go down the drain, once Senhor Garvão hands over to them!”

    Mr Mannering had also had that impression: he looked at Dicky with great approval but did not go so far as to agree aloud with this outspoken speech from a young gentleman of a mere thirteen summers.

    Dom looked sulky. “But what could I possibly do een England?”

    Mr Mannering thought that Dominick could purchase a small country estate. Dom goggled at him.

    “Ooh! Could I, too?” squeaked Dicky.

    “Most certainly, Richard, should you wish to. Or of course you might prefer to pool your funds and buy something rather larger. The property will naturally have farms attached, and of course you will hunt, if that appeals, Dominick, and shoot your preserves.”

    “You mean that we shall be gentlemen!” said Dicky with a giggle. –Being at that age. Dom gave him a repressive look. Being himself at the age where a giggling younger brother must strike as embarrassing.

    “Shall I be a lady?” asked Daphne, her face lighting up.

    Daphne was very pretty, and only fifteen: Mr Mannering beamed upon her. “Most certainly, my dear Daphne, and you may have a come-out and be presented at the Court of St James’s, if you wish!”

    “That’s the court of the English Royal family!” hissed the well-informed Dicky loudly as his sister looked blank.

    Mr Mannering smiled and nodded, and Nan said feebly: “Yes: there ees a tairribly kind letter here from a Mrs Colonel Padgett, saying her sister would be delighted to present Daphne at the Court.”

    Mr Mannering smiled and nodded.

    “What about me?” said Amrita in a tiny, tiny voice.

    “My dear little girl! You would go with your brothers and sisters, of course!” said Mr Mannering very kindly indeed.

    Amrita was sitting on a sofa next to her big sister: Nan took her hand firmly. “Yes.”

    “We—we shall have to theenk eet over, sir,” said Dom nervously, glancing at his oldest sister for support; for he had been accustomed all his life to let Nan make his decisions for him.

    Mr Mannering agreed that of course they would, gave them considerable detail of just how much they could expect to realize from the sale of their interest in the business and the winding up of John’s estate, and, after the customary tray of refreshments—with some excellent barfees, better than any he could get in Bombay!—took his departure, bowing and smiling.

    In his wake the Baldaya family lapsed into Portuguese.

    “What about Cook?” said Dicky on an aggrieved note, taking the last coconut barfee.

    “We can’t leave him behind!” piped little Amrita.

    “Amrita baba, he may not wish to come,” said Nan, hugging her. “He is an Indian, after all.”

    There was a short pause.

    “So is she,” noted Dom.

    Nan’s sweet mouth firmed. “If we go, we must make a pact never to refer to the matter again. There’s no way the horrid English could ever find it out, she is no darker than many of the Portuguese girls.”

    Dicky got up and came unaffectedly to examine Amrita’s hands. “Doesn’t show,” he reported tersely.

    “Exactly,” said Nan grimly.

    “Can I come, then?” gasped Amrita.

    Nan kissed her forehead. “If we go: yes, certainly, darling. We shall all go, or none of us.”

    “I suppose,” said Dicky on a reluctant note, “that if Dom stayed behind, the Garvãos might let him marry Constância or Maria and let him into the business. But they’d never let both of us.”

    “No! I’m not staying by myself!” said Dom in alarm.

    “No,” agreed Nan placidly. It did not occur to her to point out that as Dom was now eighteen, she herself being turned nineteen, it might be supposed to be time he was starting to stand on his own two feet. Nancy Jeffreys would certainly have pointed it out; but then, Nan’s character was most unlike her mother’s.

    “I suppose,” said Dicky after deep thought, “mali would have to stay behind.”

    Nan agreed, adding that the gardener was a Hindoo, and would not want to cross the water.

    “But what will happen to our house?” gasped Amrita.

    “A very nice family will buy it and bring up lots of children in it,” replied Nan very firmly indeed. “What better fate could a house hope for?”

    Amrita nodded. “I suppose the elephants can’t come?”

    “No!” cried Daphne scornfully.

    “Would they get sea-sick?” asked Dicky.

    No-one knew, but Dom decided it was probable. Amrita decided they were Hindoo elephants and would not like to cross the sea, and everyone breathed stealthy sighs of relief, for Amrita was extremely fond of the elephants and would have spent every minute of her waking hours with them, if permitted. But even in easy-going Portuguese-Indian households little girls had to do their lessons sometimes.

    “What do you think?” said Dom to his sister that evening, as he lounged on the verandah in a long chair, puffing a cigar.

    Nan was leaning against one of the heavy stone columns of the deep verandah. She sighed. “I don’t know, Dom. England will be cold, I suppose. But Dicky hit the nail on the head when he said the Garvãos won’t want to let you two in the business.”

    “Yes. I’d be no good at it, anyway. –And it’s no good here for you girls, you know. Well, everyone knows about Amrita, of course. Only ’tisn’t just that,” he said glumly: “it’s Mamma. The cats are already beginning to say Daphne’s too much like her for her own good.”

    Nan sighed. “Yes. But from what I remember of Mamma, and from what John said of her, I don’t think Daphne’s got a fraction of her brains.”

    Dom thought it over. “Makes it worse, then.”

    “Mm.”

    “Better go, then,” he pronounced.

    “Mm... With dear John gone, I don’t feel there’s any reason to stay.”

    Dom thought it over. “Me neither.”

    It took a lot longer than that, of course, and a lot of discussion and letter-writing. But when the Sortelhas asked for Daphne (and her share of the family fortune) for Romão Sortelha, Nan’s mind was made up. Romão was a truly horrid boy: spotty and stupid and greedy, and everyone knew he had a chee-chee mistress in the town! She said nothing of the offer to her sister, for Daphne was just silly enough to decide, on the strength of the offer’s being made, that she must be madly in love with Romão—never having given him as much as a passing thought in her life, needless to state. They would sell up, and go.

    So they went.

    They travelled to Bombay to take ship, and there met up with Mr Mannering’s sister, a Mrs Cameron, her companion, a Miss Gump, and her two middle daughters, Miss Alethea Cameron and Miss Horatia Cameron. (“Allie” and “Horry”). They were around Daphne’s age and after a short initial period of staring like inimical cats, the three swore eternal friendship. Rings, indeed, were exchanged, and locks of hair. It helped that Daphne had dark eyes and dark curls and the two Miss Camerons were fair: there was no question of rivalry. Nan observed the flowering of this hugely sentimental friendship with some horror: it was not the sort of thing she had ever felt prompted to indulge in; but she knew that Daphne was like that: there had been several eternal friends at the Catholic girls’ day-school she had attended. And, as the florid-faced Mrs Cameron did not fail to note with a hearty laugh, at least it got them all out from under their feet! The meek Miss Gump, once her employer was safely out of earshot, whispered to Nan that it was better than officers; and Nan could not but agree: there were several English officers on board, going home on furlough. And as they were, almost without exception, going home to wives, anything that kept the three girls’ attention off them could not but be a good thing.

    Miss Gump and Mrs Cameron were also nominally in charge of two depressed-looking children, country-born, who were being sent “home” to English boarding schools: Frederick and Sally Hutchins, aged ten and eleven respectively. Dicky took them in charge immediately. Freddy did not even make an attempt to inform him that at an English school the boys would pretty soon call him a dashed dago. Though he knew in his heart it was what Papa would have said.

    Besides the Camerons’ group and the officers, the ship was carrying not a few other English persons going home, and though Mrs Cameron said with one of her hearty laughs that they would be a merry crew, Nan did not need the timid look Miss Gump cast her to realize it would be no such thing. Possibly because her brother had made her aware of the Baldayas’ financial status, and it had dawned that Dom would do nicely for Allie or Horry, or Daphne for her son Frank, at present up at the university, but possibly also because she was a good-natured woman, Mrs Cameron did not labour the point to Nan of the social distinctions that prevailed amongst the first-class passengers on the good ship Leander. But the point did not need labouring: the other ladies on board saw to that.

    Broadly speaking, there were three groups of first-class passengers and the Baldayas were placed firmly at the bottom of the third. The top group was composed of the ladies and gentlemen who sat at the Captain’s table. Captain McMurtrey was a dry personality who did not appear in the least impressed by the persons who sat at his table, but possibly it was not he himself who was responsible for placing them there. The second group appeared to consist of an assortment of other civilian passengers, male and female, and only some of the officers. Nan could see this was so, but she could not see why. The third group was composed of persons like the Camerons, with connections in trade, and the rest of the officers. Of course a select few officers also sat at Captain McMurtrey’s table, including a pale, weedy young major who was distinguished by nothing much but a very pink nose. Nan could not see why he had been thus honoured, and ventured to say so to Miss Gump.

    “He is a Jerningham, my dear!” the angular, faded lady hissed. There was no-one within earshot, but Miss Gump was like that: self-effacing to the point of invisibility. No doubt in the occupation which was her lot she had learned to be.

    “Well, yes,” said Nan feebly.

    “They are connexions of the Hammonds, my dear!” she hissed.

    “Oh,” said Nan blankly.

    Miss Gump gave a repressed titter. “The Marquis of Rockingham’s family, my dear Mrs Edwards! Not the heir, of course. The Marquis has a young son. He was married... let me see. The year after Waterloo, was it?”—Nan was becoming accustomed to the way in which English persons dated recent history, and did not react to this peculiarity in Miss Gump. “But at all events, it was in the Court Circular!”

    Nan would have been very happy to spend the voyage quietly in the company of the self-effacing Miss Gump, Amrita, and baby Johnny, but it was not to be. Certain eyes had not failed to note the retinue—the positive retinue!—of Indian servants who had come aboard with this “Mrs Edwards” of whom no-one had ever heard, and it was not very long after the initial period of getting over the initial mal-de-mer, before certain questions were asked. Mrs Cameron answered them quite frankly, but with a gleam in her eye: she was aware that the ladies had immediately relegated herself and her daughters to the least distinguished group of first-class passengers. Pretty soon the phrase “nabob’s widow” began to circulate, and pretty soon after that a Mrs Halcutt, who was a very grand lady indeed, suggested to Captain McMurtrey that Mrs Edwards should be asked to sit at his table. Captain McMurtrey wouldn’t have minded, though not much in the petticoat-line himself; but the ship was very full, and his table was made up. “You’ll be giving up your place, will you, Mrs Halcutt? That’s very generous of you indeed, ma’am!” Mrs Halcutt retired, duly discomforted. However, she then did her best to take Nan up. But Nan, though very polite, did not wish to be taken up, and did her best to avoid the gracious dame.

    Life aboard ship went on fairly uneventfully for some little time. But the ladies did not fail to remark that the officers, far from flattering the three young girls with their notice, had one and all become admirers of Mrs Edwards. This did not precisely count in Nan’s favour, even though she did not particularly encourage them. But a pleasant smile and an apparent willingness to sit and listen constituted encouragement enough on a long sea voyage, especially in conjunction with the curls and the eyes. There was, however, safety in numbers, and not the most avid dame could discern that Mrs Edwards favoured one of the officers above another. And as the good-natured Mrs Cameron was careful not to breathe a word about Nan’s mamma, no-one could say she was just like her.

    Mrs Halcutt, besides being quite incredibly grand, was also the sort of lady who takes it upon herself to see that other people are kept incessantly busy and amused for their own good. So she pretty soon decreed that the Captain must give a ball. This sort of folderol usually occurred when there were ladies aboard, and as it was becoming more and more the custom for wives to go out to India to join their husbands (and consequently back to England in order to deliver the children to school, and so forth), Captain McMurtrey was more or less resigned to it. So “the Captain’s Ball” was pretty soon organized. There was not much room for dancing in the first-class saloon, but Captain McMurtrey did not expect for one minute that that would deter Mrs Halcutt. And nor it did.

    What with settling the estate, making up their minds what to do, and waiting to get a passage, it was now nearly a year since John Edwards’s death, but Nan was still in her blacks. Mrs Halcutt questioned her closely and graciously decided she might come out of them. Nan, however, quietly refused, but said she might permit Daphne to dance, if Mrs Halcutt thought it would be acceptable? Very pleased to be thus deferred to by “the nabob’s widow”—she, too, had sons and daughters of a marriageable age, and she was not, in actual fact, as grand as all that, when back on her native soil—Mrs Halcutt indicated that it could not be ineligible.

    After the decision had been made Nan shook in her shoes, wondering if it had been a terrible mistake. But fortunately Allie, Horry and Daphne were all so overcome by being allowed to attend a grown-up ball in their best party dresses that, far from flirting unbecomingly with officers, they remained in a continuous state of  blushing inarticulateness for the entire evening.

    Nan and Mrs Cameron got them off to bed at last, though the dance was still going on, and Nan staggered out into the fresh air to recover, and leant heavily on the rail.

    “My God,” she muttered to herself in Portuguese.

    “My sentiments exactly!” said a deep English voice from behind her.

    Nan shrieked, and leapt.

    One of the most august personages from the Captain’s table came up to her, eyes twinkling in the starlit night. “Mrs Edwards, is it not? Seen ’em off to their bunks, have you?”

    “Yes, sir,” said Nan weakly.

    Sir Hugo Benedict leant on the rail beside her. “Hellish stuff, all this chaperoning, ain’t it?”

    “Yes, eendeed! I feel quite drained!” said Nan with feeling.

    He chuckled. “Aye, you would do! I remember my wife was the same, the year she brought our eldest daughter out.” He chatted pleasantly about his family for a little and before long let it be known that he was a widower.

    There was a little pause.

    “So I know what it is like,” said the middle-aged Hugo Benedict very kindly indeed.

    “Yes,” whispered Nan, swallowing hard. “Pray do not be sympathetic, sir, or I shall weep.”

    “Aye,” he said; suddenly, though it was not at all the thing, gripping her black silk shoulder very hard.

    Forthwith Nan collapsed in a terrific storm of tears.

    Hugo Benedict did not evince any surprise at this behaviour in the normally calmly smiling little Mrs Edwards. Nor did he recoil in horror, as Nan had now had time to realize was the pretty general reaction of Englishmen when faced with any sort of strong emotion—not that Senhor Garvão was much different, true. Instead the burly baronet patted her back gently. The overwrought Nan threw herself against his broad chest and wept and wept.

    After that encounter, things took a pretty expectable course, given that Hugo Benedict was fed up with his bachelor life and that Nan was very pretty, and that he had considerable charm, and besides was independent-minded enough not to care very much what her antecedents were; and given, too, that he reminded Nan, just a little, of dearest John, and that they were together in a confined space on a long sea voyage...

    Of course the baronet’s court of the unknown Mrs Edwards was remarked upon. But Hugo Benedict was wealthy enough—and certainly old enough—to suit himself in the choice of a second wife. So although certain persons aboard Leander remarked that Mrs Edwards might consider she had done pretty well for herself—a merchant’s relict, and half-Portuguese, too!—no-one said anything to the faces of the two persons most nearly concerned. Except Dom and, surprisingly, Miss Gump.

    Dom buttonholed his sister at around the time Leander left the coast of Africa behind her and said grumpily, in the language they had both grown up with: “I say, are you in love with this Benedict fellow?”

    “Not ‘in love’ as such,” said Nan thoughtfully. “But I like him very much. And I miss being married.”

    Dom looked at her dubiously. “He ain’t John, y’know.”

    “He seems a very kind man, Dom.”

    Dom pulled his ear. “Could all be put on. To impress you.”

    “I’ve thought of that,” said Nan tranquilly. “But Dicky and Amrita truly like him. And I don’t think they would, if he was merely pretending. Children see through adult hypocrisy, you know.”

    “Aye, that’s a point. Shall you have him, then?”

    “I think I might. It isn’t that we need the money!” she said with a little laugh. “But of course it would establish us all most creditably. Well, you’ve seen the way that dreadful Mrs Halcutt and her cronies fawn upon him! And funny little Major Jerningham tells me his house is nigh as fine as Daynesford Place; and that is high praise, indeed!”

    “Eh?”

    “Well, I gather that’s the Marquis of Rockingham’s principal seat, Dom!” she said with a gurgle.

    “I’m getting sick of that name,” he noted thoughtfully.

    “Me, too! But seriously, Dom, Sir Hugo seems so very kindly and good-natured. And speaks just as he ought of his son and daughters, and of hoping to see his son’s first child”—here Nan blushed a little—“by the time we reach England.”

    “Mm.” Dom thought it over. “Captain McMurtrey likes him,” he pronounced. “Must be a decent fellow.”

    Nan had also noticed that the dry-mannered captain of the Leander, who very clearly did not much like any other of the passengers at his table, liked Hugo Benedict. She squeezed Dom’s arm. “Yes.”

    “Come for a stroll round the deck,” he said with a little sigh.

    They strolled on slowly. It was very hot: a wind blew, but it was a hot wind, whirling down out of a blazing blue sky. Neither Dom nor Nan noticed, really: he was wearing a straw hat and she a lace shawl over her head, and carrying a parasol. After a while Dom took it off her and held it for her, as she hadn’t been managing very well in the wind.

    “Don’t do it for our sakes,” he said abruptly.

    Nan squeezed his arm again. “I shan’t. But I do have to think about establishing the girls creditably. And of Baby Johnny’s future.”

    “Yes.”

    “And Sir Hugo will be able to send Dicky to a really good school!” she added with a smile.

    Dom grinned. “That’ll put Master Freddy Hutchins’s nose well and truly out of joint, won’t it? Will Dicky wear it, though?”

    “What, being brutally thrown together with a crowd of boys of his own age?” said Nan with a gurgle.

    “I get you!” he agreed, sniggering. “Be bossing them unmercifully within two hours of his arrival at the place! Dare say he will form them all into a regiment or some such before we can turn round. I say, remember that time he organised the Sortelha boys and Ram’s and mali’s little brats and—oh, the two younger Garvãos, of course; and in fact the entire junior class of the S. João das Lampas School!”

    “Oh, yes! With the turbans and the puttees and the sticks!” said Nan, laughing.

    “It was a frightening sight,” he agreed. “Yes: he’ll take to school like a duck to water.”

    “Yes. Sir Hugo was at a school called ‘Weenchester’,” she said carefully. “Have you ever heard of it, Dom?”

    “No,” he said cheerfully. “Dare say if he was there, it’ll be a good one.”

    “Ye-es... Mrs Halcutt says the best schools are Eton and Harrow.”

    “Doesn’t say any of her brats are at them, though, does she?” he noted.

    “No!” choked Nan, laughing very much, and hugging his arm. “So you won’t mind if I do marry Hugo, Dom, dearest?”

    “No. Best thing you could do. If you’re sure you—um—like him enough,” he said awkwardly.

    Nan beamed upon him. “But of course, silly! That’s the easiest thing of all to tell! I knew that the very first time I saw him: do you recall? We went to dinner, but Daphne and the Camerons and Miss Gump were all feeling queasy, and there was scarce anyone else dining. And at the Captain’s table there was only the Captain himself and Sir Hugo and pink-nosed little Major Jerningham!”

    “Uh—aye. Well, can’t remember precisely who was dining. Noticed most of the fellows were laid low, however.”

    “Yes, well, it was Sir Hugo. He looked at me across the room and...” Nan laughed a little. “Well, one just knows when an attraction is there, Dom!”

    “Ye-es... He never spoke to you, though.”

    “We had not been introduced!” said Nan with a loud giggle.

    “That’s true,” said the boy who had grown up amongst the proper Portuguese bourgeoisie.

   Nan looked at him with affectionate amusement but said only: “Well, everything is all right in that department, Dom, take my word for it!”

    “Good.”

    “And fortunately he has a son, so the family will not feel that we are usurpers,” she added calmly.

    “Mm? Oh! Good God, see what you mean!”

    “Yes. I think it will work out. –You do like him, don’t you, Dom?” she said anxiously

    The fate of the Baldaya children hung in the balance for an instant.

    “Oh, Lord, yes! Very decent sort of a fellow indeed!”

    “Good,” said Nan, sagging with relief. “I’ll let him ask me, then.”

    Dom looked at her with some awe and did not enquire how little Nan could let or not let a large middle-aged baronet of determined character request her hand in marriage. He had a strong feeling that she was capable of controlling any number of determined baronets twice her age.

    Miss Gump’s approach was considerably less direct than had been Nan’s brother’s and in fact they had been talking for some twenty minutes before it dawned on Nan that the faded lady wished to question her tactfully about her feelings for Sir Hugo. She smiled very kindly and assured her that she felt a true affection for him, and was sure he did for her, and that she thought they could make each other happy.

    Miss Gump then burst out with a tangled story in which wicked lords, horrid castles, hooded monks and an unfortunate experience a lady friend of hers had once had with a draper were all inextricably mixed. Nan very sensibly did not try to untangle the threads but reminded her that Major Jerningham had visited at Blythe Hollow, Sir Hugo’s house, and did not the name have a happy ring? Kindly not mentioning imprimis, that Blythe Hollow was an Elizabethan manor, not a castle, secundus, that Sir Hugo had not been elevated to the peerage, and tertius, had Miss Gump never read that enchanting work of fiction, Northanger Abbey? Miss Gump was much comforted, though pointing out that “Hollow” held a damp ring, and there would probably be damp in the linen cupboards.

    Nan assumed that this domestic note indicated the fuss was over, and was thus considerably surprised when she bent forward, touched her hand with her own thin, liver-spotted one and said anxiously, turning an unlovely mottled puce: “But my dear, will he be good to you?”

    Nan replied without a tremor that she was sure he would be. And reminded Miss Gump that a man who loved little children must surely be a good man. This apparently reassured Miss Gump that Sir Hugo would not, once he had immured Nan in his less than baronial home, torture her with hot irons, beat her brutally, or introduce her to a roomful of headless previous wives. Or, indeed, do whatever it was that involved the hooded monks. –Were they perhaps Franciscans? And was it a common bogie, in Protestant England? Nan was to puzzle over the point, off and on, for quite some time.

    So the engagement of Sir Hugo Benedict and Nancy Baldaya Edwards was duly announced, and once Leander had reached England and Nan and her family had been introduced to Sir Hugo’s family, the two were very speedily married.

    Sir Hugo’s son was not best pleased, true, but as he was a stuffed-shirt of a young man with whom, the genial baronet confessed ruefully, he himself had nothing in common, and as he had a small property of his own five miles away from Blythe Hollow, and as, to boot, the grandchild just produced had turned out to be a boy, thus assuring the succession away from Nan’s offspring, he confined himself to privately expressing the opinion to his wife that the neighbours would say Papa-had turned doating in his old age.

    Sir Hugo’s eldest daughter was married and lived in faraway Yorkshire, but she and her husband came down to Kent for the wedding, and though Elizabeth privately thought Nan too young for Papa, she only expressed this thought to her husband. The two younger daughters were frankly thrilled. It was so Romantick! And now they would have a real mamma to bring them out! They were but fifteen and ten, and as their mamma had died some seven years since could not really remember her, especially not Mina, the younger, though Susan was sometimes sure she remembered her exactly.

    Sir Hugo did not, of course, propose immuring Nan at Blythe Hollow, although it was a very pleasant house indeed. His life was that of the fashionable person of his day, and he spent several months of the year in London, and usually at least a month or two paying country visits, where he might or might not hunt a bit or shoot a bit as the weather dictated. He took Nan up to London very soon after the honeymoon, and had a perfectly lovely time taking her to concerts and the opera, and so forth. After a little it dawned that she was attracting rather too much favourable notice from his gentlemen friends, and indeed from gentlemen who were scarcely friends at all, but the merest nodding acquaintances; but he was not of a jealous disposition, so he merely made a mental note to keep a dashed close eye on her when they were in the metropolis. For she was not quite up to snuff, just yet.

    Nan enjoyed herself greatly, but she was quite glad when, on finding she was increasing, Hugo decided that country air would be better for her. Home was nicest, she said to him with a happy sigh as they ate breakfast together in their own morning-room on their first day back. The genial Sir Hugo blinked a bit and patted her hand and said: “Yes, my love,” in a strangled voice. So it was pretty plain to Nan, who was very far from stupid, that he loved her as much as her dearest John ever had. So she was glad that she was going to have his baby and glad that she could truly say she loved him and his home and his little daughters.

    She did not say, then or later, for it would only have hurt his feelings for nothing, poor dear Hugo, that she missed India dreadfully: not just the long, hot, languorous days of fair weather, but even the grindingly heavy, unbearable pre-monsoon days, when you felt as if each breath would be your last, for an immense weight was crushing your chest; or the soaking weeks when the rains had come and you could not step outdoors without being instantly drenched, and everything dripped, the closets grew mould, and snakes were washed out of the downpipes. And she missed the food terribly, even though she had with her Sita Ayah, who was her own ayah, and Rani Ayah, who was Amrita’s ayah, both of them only too willing to invade Blythe Hollow’s kitchen and use up a month’s supply of sugar on trays of barfees, dishes of halwa and bowls of goolab jamoons! But perhaps most of all she missed the smells of India: the strong, sometimes languorously spicy, sometimes overpowering, sometimes bitterly acrid, but always wonderfully rich and vital smells of the great subcontinent.

    Perhaps Nan was not “in love” with Hugo, any more than she had been with her dearest John. After all, he was more than twice her age and not himself of a romantic disposition—and not precisely a romantic figure, being tall, burly and balding, with a distinctly middle-aged silhouette. But she was truly very, very fond of him. And found life with him rather more fun than it had been with John, for Hugo had considerable charm and a great deal of humour. Added to which he knew just as much about pleasing the lady in his bed as had John. So Nan was very happy.

    And as Nan was happy, the children were, too. Dicky was blissfully content at Winchester, knocking the living daylights out of any boy who dared to call him a dago, breaking his arm falling out of a forbidden tree, hitting a cricket ball through the refectory window, getting himself gated for being caught inserting a bagful of slowworms into Mr Carthew’s bed (the Greek master: Greek was Purgatory, if not worse, to Dicky Baldaya)—and generally having a splendid time.

    Dom was happy, too. His was a happy nature, but this was the first time in his life that an older gentleman had gone out of his way to treat him—well, like a grown-up fellow! It never dawned on him that his strong-minded new brother-in-law had been horrified to discover just how gentle and biddable he was. Sir Hugo put it down to his having been brought up by a parcel of women and servants. But he had too much sense to endeavour forcibly to change Dom’s nature: he merely encouraged him to get out hunting or shooting a lot, to socialize with the young men of the suitable families of the neighbourhood, and to ride out round the estate with him and his agent on business as much as possible. To his relief Dom did seem, after some months of this sort of treatment, rather less of a namby-pamby than he had done on his arrival.

    Daphne and Amrita were both happy: Daphne largely because she had not been sent to a strict girls’ school for a year to knock her into shape (Mrs Cameron’s suggestion), nor given a good strict governess for a year to knock some sense into her head (Mrs Cameron’s alternative suggestion), nor sent to (horrors!) Mrs Halcutt’s house to spend a year in Mrs Halcutt’s schoolroom with Mrs Halcutt’s daughters (Mrs Halcutt’s suggestion once the engagement had been made public). Instead, Miss Gump in person had come to be her governess. Miss Gump was an experienced governess, but that did not mean that she managed to teach Daphne much in the way of geography or sums. Which was all right, Nan had not expected her to.

    But Miss Gump, largely because she did not understand a word of Portuguese and had only the most basic Hindoostanee (“panee”—one glass of water, “doh panee”—two glasses of water, and “ekdum!”—straight away, being about the sum of it), and spoke neither of the other two Indian languages that Daphne knew, did greatly improve Daphne’s English, and taught Daphne, over the course of a year, and incidentally Nan and Amrita also, a very great deal indeed about how things were done, in England. –Needless to state Miss Gump herself was not merely happy, she was in a state of positive beatitude, and had wept all over Nan when, on learning her position with Mrs Cameron would terminate once they reached her native shores, Nan had mooted the governess scheme with her.

    Amrita was simply happy that she was with Nan and Ayah. Though she missed mali, and the elephants, and Cook. But gradually the memories faded, for she was still not quite ten years of age.

    Nan’s baby was a girl, the which was silently felt by all the members of the household over the age of about fifteen to have been a merciful dispensation of a kindly Providence. Because Sir Hugo’s daughter-in-law was quite horridly jealous of Nan, even though she herself had produced a boy, and Nan’s having a boy would not have gone down at all well. As it was, Mr and Mrs Everard Benedict were graciously pleased to present the new infant with a silver bowl and spoon for her christening present. Sir Hugo was thrilled with his new daughter, and declared she looked like a wee, pink, crumpled rosebud. So they christened her Rose Nancy Daphne Domenica Benedict and called her “Rosebud”.

    And the proudly beaming Daphne and Dom stood godparents. Which probably they should not have done, never having so much as set foot in a Protestant church until they debarked upon the shores of England. But Sir Hugo didn’t give a damn, and the innocent local vicar never thought that the new Lady Benedict and her relatives might not, unlike the rest of the world that mattered, have been received into the Church of England.

    So everything in the garden was rosy once more for the Baldaya children.

    Then, the year that Nan turned twenty-one, when Rosebud was but six months old, Hugo Benedict died in a hunting accident.

    He broke his neck and died instantly and could not have suffered: but of course it was the most dreadful shock to his wife and family. For, if he had been middle-aged, he had been exceedingly hale and hearty with it, and after all, this was England, not India, where a fever could take anyone, however seemingly fit they were. Nan was terribly jolted: for life had begun to seem so fixed and stable. And then, to lose two husbands in scarce three years!

    Left to herself she would probably have retired to her room and simply wept for days on end. But she was not granted much time for private mourning. For one thing, the little Benedict girls were in a state of shock and someone must look to them, and Miss Gump, though genuinely fond of the children, was the sort who goes to pieces in a crisis. And the house would not run itself. And then there was Hugo’s lawyer to see and the whole business of the matters Hugo had been managing for her since their marriage to be sorted out. And unending streams of neighbours come to offer condolences and pay their respects, for Hugo Benedict had been very much liked in the neighbourhood.

    Perhaps it was as well, as it turned out, that Nan was immediately plunged into activity. For a week after the funeral Everard’s wife turned up in her carriage and, black-edged handkerchief pressed to her perfectly dry eyes, informed Nan in a lachrymose voice that of course she quite understood her position, and there was not the least hurry in the world, but if it was not too terribly inconvenient, she would like to see about moving some of her favourite pieces in from “the old house.” While Nan was still recovering from this shock she added that of course the girls would be perfectly welcome to live with her and Everard, perfectly welcome, but after all, it was not as if they did not have a new mamma, was it? And then, her delicate state of health—she was increasing, but she was a tall, raw-boned and vigorous young woman who had scarce had a day’s illness in her life—would, she feared, preclude her giving the girls that watchful care which at their ages they needed.

    Nan went very white. “We’ll go,” she said tightly.

    With a great flutter of the black-edged handkerchief Everard’s wife cried out that of course that was not what she had meant, not at all! Dearest Nan must take her time! –And by the way, if perhaps just a gentle hint could be dropped in Troope’s ear that continuing to address her as “Mrs Everard” was highly unsuitable, after the sad tragedy?

    Nan drew a deep breath. Only the thought that she must not, for the sakes of Susan and Mina, not to mention little Rosebud, quarrel with their relatives, prevented her from screaming at the woman. “I’ll tell heem. He’s getting on,” she said grimly.

    Possibly this reaction was what the new Lady Benedict had intended, for she agreed that the butler was indeed getting on, and what did Nan think of a suitable little pension? Though he had not, of course, been with the family all his life! She did not believe there was a tied cottage free, but then she was sure he had relatives he might go to, such persons always did have scores of relatives, did they not?

    “He has not,” said Nan grimly. “I am surprised you do not know hees story, Felicia. He may come weeth me, eef you do not weesh to retain his services. But eef he weeshes to retire, I shall see to eet myself that he has a suitable pension.”

    The junior Lady Benedict at this cried out very much, but ended by accepting the offer. The fact that Everard himself rode over the following day, looking very shamefaced, and took it all back did not, perhaps not surprisingly, weigh with either Troope or Nan.

    “No,” said Nan as the shamefaced Everard urged her to stay. “Eet would be better not.”

    So they went. Nan, Dom, Daphne, Dicky, Amrita, little Johnny Edwards, Susan and Mina Benedict, baby Rosebud, Rosebud’s Nurse, Rosebud’s nurserymaid (having burst into tears and declared she wouldn’t serve that cat Mrs Everard, not if it was ever so), Sita Ayah, Rani Ayah, Miss Gump, Troope, Nan’s three Indian bearers, two of Hugo’s Kentish footmen who had begged her to take them with her, Hugo’s middle-aged groom, who had not precisely begged, though there had been a desperate look in his eye, and Hugo’s red-eyed gentleman’s gentleman, who had said firmly that Mr Dom would need someone to look after him. Plus Dom’s groom, the boy who looked after Dicky’s and the Benedict girls’ ponies, all of the said ponies, Amrita’s talking minah-bird, and, last but by no means least, Sir Hugo’s French chef. Who had said majestically that he could not reconcile it with either his tr-rrr-aining (about fifteen R’s) or his conscience to stay on in a ’ouse where he would be ordered to make le rosbif well-done and not permitted to serve his sauces exquises. Privately Nan thought his sauces were fairly horrible but she smiled nicely and said was he sure? Because she thought that Mr—that Sir Everard would expect him to stay on. M. Lavoisier replied with dignity that M. Everard had an estomac very particulier, miladi. Nan had observed that Everard picked at his food: she nodded weakly, and said of course she would love to have him, if M. Lavoisier was sure? M. Lavoisier was sure.

    It was quite a cortège.