A Woman's Estate (14 page)

“Mr. Lydden?” he interrupted. “Am I not to be Cousin
Bertram?”

“I had to be asked,” Abigail said, laughing. “I would not
wish you to think of me as a bold and forward—” She stopped speaking as the
door opened and Arthur strode in scowling ferociously. “Oh, my,” she exclaimed,
“I had better take myself off at once. I
hope
the catastrophe that
engendered that expression has nothing to do with mine or me, but I don’t wish
to find out.”

Chapter Nine

Abigail need not have taken so much care to elude her son. She
had underestimated Victor. He had quickly come to the conclusion that it would
not be possible for him to begin school before the beginning of the next term,
and dismissed the subject to be taken up at a more suitable time. Victor’s mind
was not on school but on his new fishing rod. Eustace had explained how to use
the complicated mechanism and had demonstrated a few times, and Victor’s
natural self-confidence had made him certain he could duplicate his half
uncle’s expertise in no time. However, his attempts after he had left his
mother the previous night had not been a great success. Victor felt he needed
time and privacy to work on mastery of that fishing rod.

Since Mrs. Franklin had been made aware of Sir Arthur’s
invitation to fish, and her son-in-law, the gamekeeper Price, had assured her
that no one carrying a gun would be allowed anywhere near either great house,
she made no objection when, over breakfast, Victor said he would like to try
his luck, and when he was finished went off to fetch his rod. Daphne followed
her brother, and Victor was normally so accepting of her company that Mrs.
Franklin gratefully turned her attention to practical matters, such as deciding
which of the children’s clothes must go to the laundry maid.

But this time Victor did not want his sister’s company.
Daphne could be adoringly admiring, but she could also laugh at him most
heartily when he came a cropper. He had no desire for her to see him tangle his
line and catch his hook on branches and reeds ten times in a row, so he grabbed
his rod and ran down the stairs as quickly as he could. Daphne went to her room
to fetch a shawl and bonnet. She was quick about it because she knew her
brother would be impatient with any delay, but still she was barely in time to
see him disappearing down the stairs. She ran after him, calling his name aloud
until he stopped, reluctantly, between the doors to the morning room and the
drawing room.

“You can’t come fishing with me,” he said. “Fishing is a
man’s sport. You would only be in the way.”

“No, I won’t,” Daphne protested, but weakly. It was true
that her father had never taken her with them when he and Victor went fishing
or hunting, although he had been willing to have her along at other times.

“Yes you will, Daph,” Victor insisted. “You’ll want to talk
all the time and you mustn’t. The fish can hear through the water, and talking
frightens them. Father told me so.”

Daphne, who had been almost ready to give in, was filled
with righteous indignation. “That’s not fair,” she complained. “You know I
don’t talk when you tell me not.”

“It’s different for hide and seek,” Victor snapped
irritably. “Then it’s only for five minutes. This time it might be hours.”

“Well, I still don’t have to talk,” Daphne said reasonably.
“I could pick flowers and—”

“No! I said no, and that’s all!” Victor yelled. “Pick
flowers! You silly thing, you don’t know anything about fishing. You’ll make a
shadow on the water and frighten all the fish away. I’m going alone, I tell
you.”

The door to the morning room opened. “Victor! Daphne!” Hilda
scolded. “You are acting like little animals. Ladies and gentlemen do not
quarrel in public and do not raise their voices in so crude and coarse a
manner, even in private.”

“Sorry,” Victor mumbled, and made good his escape out the
door before Daphne had a chance to speak.

Although Daphne realized from various exchanges she had
overheard between her mother and Hilda that the two were not often in
agreement, she knew quite well that Abigail did not approve of loud arguments,
either. She, too, spoke an apology, but she was not quick enough in getting
away. Hilda began a long lecture on proper behavior, modesty, and the
unsuitability of Daphne spending so much time with her brother. The subject had
little in it to hold Daphne’s attention, particularly since she did not like or
respect Hilda.

She did not fear her step-grandmother either, knowing her
mother would not relish Hilda’s interference. Besides, Daphne thought
resentfully,
Victor
was the one who had yelled. The injustice of being
scolded for her brother’s sin fixed Daphne’s mind on the other injustice Victor
had done her. He had no right, she felt, to say she would be a bother, without
really finding out whether she would be or not. She
could
be quiet, and
she did not need to pick flowers where her shadow would fall on the water. As
Daphne came to this conclusion, Hilda shook a finger in her face, which
startled her and fixed her attention.

“You are a naughty girl, and your mother spoils you
dreadfully and will ruin your life,” Hilda pronounced awfully. “A girl must be
obedient to her brother. Remember, when he comes of age, he will be your
guardian until you are married, and—”

“No he will not,” Daphne retorted. “Mother is my guardian.
Mother says men have peculiar ideas about what will make women happy, so Victor
will have no control over me, and
if
I choose to marry, arrangements
will be made, Mother says, so that I will not be a victim of—of any bad habits
my husband might develop.”

Daphne was not certain what she had said to make Hilda’s
mouth drop open in shock. Perhaps she should not have admitted that she knew
husbands could be less than perfect. Nonetheless, she was not so concerned that
she failed to take advantage of having reduced Hilda, at least temporarily, to
speechlessness. Hurriedly Daphne dropped a perfunctory curtsy and fled out the
door by which Victor had escaped, since that was nearest. She ran as fast as
she could toward the shelter of the wood, expecting every moment to hear
Hilda’s strident voice calling her back—and, indeed, she did hear a faint voice
crying her name just as she reached the trees, but she ran on until she could
truly say she heard nothing.

It was not until she stopped to catch her breath that Daphne
realized she had better stay out of the house at least until lunch. She was not
at all sure Mrs. Franklin could protect her from more of Hilda’s lectures, and
if she sought out her mother and Hilda recounted to
her
what Daphne had
said about husbands, her mother would get that funny look that somehow hurt Daphne
to see. Daphne was annoyed with herself. She should have said “man” instead of
“husband” the way mother always did—she would not be a victim of any
man’s
bad habits. Oh well, it was useless to cry over spilled milk. Very likely Hilda
would not say anything because she knew Mother would be annoyed, not
sympathetic, if she and Victor were called spoiled. But she had better stay out
of sight. Daphne looked around the wood and realized she had run right onto the
path Sir Arthur had taken yesterday. That was not surprising. Victor had gone
out the door that would take him most directly to that part of the wood, and
naturally she had not tried to push through the brush but had taken the open
path when she came to it. Daphne stood and looked down the inviting trail of
grass. If she followed Victor, he would be very angry. Well, he would be angry
if he
knew
, but what if she came so quietly and remained so quiet all
the time that he did
not
know she was there. Then, when he had caught
his fish, she could come out and
prove
that he had been unfair to her
and that he should take her the next time he went fishing. Delighted with her
plan, Daphne started down along the path, quite certain she knew the turns that
would take her to the pool and the meadow where the kingcups and yellow iris
grew.

Victor’s successful escape from Hilda and Daphne put him
into a good humor, and he trotted along the path until, not far along it, he
reached the first branch. He turned, and after a somewhat longer walk than he
remembered—which worried him a little—he found the fork where the right-hand
path led to the pool and the one on the left, Sir Arthur had said, led to
another place farther upstream. Sometime in the future he might try the
upstream spot, but for now Victor wanted a fairly open area in which to learn
to cast.

At first Victor was rather tempted to cast from the clearest
area. Then it occurred to him that when Daphne escaped from Hilda she might
follow him. Victor wrinkled his nose in irritation. Daphne was a nuisance
sometimes, but he had found a place yesterday where she would not see him even
if she did follow.

There was an old, half-dead fir whose dense net of
intertwined roots and heavy layer of needles had so choked the ground that
nothing more than a little sparse grass grew near it. The hollow formed in the
brush that lined the river was hidden by a slight curve of the bank, and so
many of the lower branches had fallen from the tree that there was room enough
to cast. Moreover, over the years, the bank of the river had been washed away
so that several of the heavy roots protruded out over the water, making a
platform on which one could balance quite easily to land a struggling fish.

Victor remembered that Sir Arthur had told him there were
paths direct to those places, but he did not want to spend the time looking and
he was roughly dressed so he just wormed his way along the bank to this haven.
When he arrived, he paused and listened suspiciously, but there was no sound of
Daphne calling him, nothing beyond the ordinary sounds of any wooded area. He
hesitated once again in his preparations when a brief crackle in the brush
behind him made him look around and sigh, expecting to see a tearstained and
disheveled sister, but she did not appear and the sound was not repeated. With
a sense of relief, Victor loosened what he thought was a suitable length of
line and made his first cast.

No one would have called what he achieved the work of a
master fisherman, but at least the hook reached the water without catching on
anything behind him or over his head, which was more than Victor had expected
from his experiences in his room the previous evening. He reeled in, feeling
hopeful, and tried again. The second cast, unfortunately, was less successful,
dropping into the water just beyond the roots of the tree and catching on
something underneath so that Victor had to lie down and feel around in the
water to free his hook.

Not wishing to go through that struggle again, Victor made
his third cast standing on the roots as near as he could get to the water. This
was the most successful thus far, and he felt it was not an accident. There was
a “right” feeling about the way the line had snapped forward over his head.
Reeling in and loosening more line, Victor tried several times more and succeeded
more often than he failed—and the last time he reeled in he noticed a pucker in
the water not far from where his line had gone in.

A quiver of excitement, a slightly quickened beating of the
heart—marks of the true game fisherman—passed through Victor. He knew the
weather was not the best for fishing, but perhaps his repeated casting had made
the fish think there were many insects on the water. With a somewhat trembling
hand, Victor threaded his hook with bait, which he had not bothered with
before, took his stance on the very edge of the roots, and concentrated his
whole being on the feeling of casting “right” while his eyes fixed on the spot
where he wanted the hook to go.

As he began his cast, he again heard the crackle in the
brush and perhaps the sound of a stick snapping under a foot, but he did not
turn his head or relax his concentration. He no longer minded if Daphne
arrived, in fact, it would add to his pleasure if she were there when he hooked
a fish. The line flew out, straight and true. The hook hit the water just where
Victor had wanted it to go, and under the water Victor thought he saw a swirl
of movement. He took a deep breath with excitement, just as a tremendous push
catapulted him into the water.

Naturally enough, Victor’s first sensation was such rage
that he nearly opened his mouth to scream. He felt a hand groping for his
shoulder and tried to twist around onto his back and grab it, fully intending
to pull Daphne in with him, for he assumed that it was she who had pushed him
into the water out of spite. However, he discovered he could not twist around.
There was a hand on his other shoulder too, and both hands—large hands that
could not possibly be Daphne’s because she could not reach so far—were pressing
him down into the water.

Daphne walked along the path, taking more care to be quiet
than to arrive quickly. After all, there was no reason to arrive sooner than
later. It would be rather dull, she knew, waiting for Victor to finish his
silly fishing, and even when he did and she came out of hiding, she did not
expect much welcome. Victor did not like to be proved wrong, which he would be
if Daphne were so quiet she did not interfere with his fishing, and he would be
annoyed. At that thought, Daphne nearly turned back. She hated it when her
adored brother was angry with her. However, just then she came to the side path
toward the pool and realized that Victor would never take her with him when he
went fishing if she did not now show him she could be quiet.

Determined not to be left behind again, Daphne turned into
the path, but she was filled with doubts and she had gone a way along before
she realized that this path seemed different from the path she had taken
yesterday. It was narrower and the angle at which it met the main path was sharper.
Daphne hesitated, and then went forward again. The path was perfectly clear.
She could not get lost. If she did not find the fork that led to the pool, she
could just go back the way she came. She walked on, her eyes scanning ahead for
the familiar fork so that she did not notice two other paths joining, the one
she trod, one right, one left, some ten feet apart. There! The sense of triumph
Daphne felt nearly made her say the word aloud when she saw the fork, and she
automatically took the left-hand path and went along it. Then a branch caught
at her gown, and when she edged away toward the other side, a thorny bush
scratched her cheek. Daphne stopped. This was wrong, she was certain now. She
had walked side by side with her mother along the path to the pool, and no
branches had touched her. This path was much too narrow.