Winter Is Past (4 page)

She turned toward Rebecca with a smile. “Would you like to hear any more?”

“Oh, yes, please. Those are such cheerful songs.”

Althea played a few more hymns, then glanced at the girl. Her eyes were closed and her dark head leaned against the back of the chair. Althea rose from the instrument.

She stood gazing down at Rebecca. The child looked fragile and wan against the bright, brocaded pattern of the upholstery. Her burgundy hair ribbon slipped across a pale cheek like a rivulet of blood. Her thin hands lay over the blanket, the veins blue bumps upon the snowy skin.

“I'm not asleep, Miss Althea.” Her lips curved in a smile and she opened her eyes. “I was just listening to the music.” After a pause, she continued, “It was all about God, wasn't it?”

“Yes, it was.”

Rebecca looked toward the garden. “Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, dear.”

The little girl gave Althea a straightforward look. “
Abba
doesn't.”

“How do you know?”

“I've heard him say God is an outdated notion and no rational mind can accept Bible stories as anything but myths.”

Althea considered the parroted words, shocked despite herself. “Do you believe in God, Rebecca?”

Rebecca tilted her head back against the chair. “I don't know.”

Hiding her concern, Althea eased herself onto the arm of the chair and touched the top of Rebecca's head. “Why is that?”

Rebecca turned her eyes up to her. “I've never seen Him. I've never heard Him. Who is to say He is really there?”

Althea nodded. “You are absolutely right. If you have never felt His presence, you cannot say for certain He is.”

Rebecca studied her. “You have felt His presence, haven't you?”

“Yes, dear,” she answered with a smile, her hand stroking Rebecca's hair.

“What does that mean, ‘feel His presence'?”

Althea pursed her lips, considering how best to reply. “I'll show you.” Gently, she placed both her hands against the sides of Rebecca's head and turned it away from her, toward the garden. Then she removed her hands completely from Rebecca. “You can't see me, can you?”

Rebecca shook her head.

“You can't feel me touching you anywhere, can you?”

Again she shook her head.

“Now I shall stop speaking and you won't be able to hear me. Let's do that, shall we?”

Rebecca nodded her head.

Althea waited silently a little while, not moving. As the silence
stretched out, she forgot Mrs. Coates's earlier scorn, the impossible task Simon had assigned her, and the myriad distractions that had clouded her real purpose in this household. As God's peace descended upon her, she gazed out the windows at the black outline of espaliered trees against the brick wall enclosing the garden. The ground was a patchwork of snow and brown grass between the gravel paths.

“Miss Althea?”

“How do you know I'm still here?”

Rebecca turned toward her a face radiant with discovery. “I can feel your presence, can't I?”

Althea smiled at her.

“Let's do it again!” Rebecca cried happily, turning her gaze back toward the garden.

“Very well. But this time, don't turn around until I tell you to.”

Rebecca nodded happily.

They played the game several times, at Rebecca's insistence. The final time Althea quietly slipped outside the room and stood just beyond the doorway. After a while, she heard Rebecca's “Miss Althea? Miss Althea? Are you there? Where are you?”

Althea immediately stepped over the threshold. “Here I am. What did you feel that time?” she asked as she walked back to Rebecca's chair.

“I felt alone.” The child's deep-set eyes, so much like her father's, stared up at her in wonder. “I started wondering whether you were still there. The room felt empty. I waited a little longer, but then I couldn't help calling out.”

Althea knelt in front of her, taking both her hands in her own. “Sometimes we can't feel the Lord's presence, just as you experienced now. But once you
have
felt His presence, you'll know even then that He's still with you. Just as I was right nearby, just outside the door, God is always with you, even when you can't feel His presence. He promises us, ‘I shall never leave you nor forsake you.'”

“How can I come to feel His presence the way I did yours?”

Althea rubbed the back of the girl's hands with her thumbs.
“You invite Him into your heart. And you believe in your heart that He will come in.”

“Can I do it right now?”

Althea smiled. “Right now.”

The little girl bowed her head and said a simple prayer beginning with “Dear God.” Althea was unsure whether to tell her about Jesus, not knowing how the girl's father would feel about her evangelizing his daughter. Althea remained silent for the moment, knowing the Lord would guide her in that direction when the time was right.

For the present, she knew God heard the girl's prayer and would answer it.

 

A few days later Althea entered the house, the heavy front door shutting behind her with a
bang
on a gust of wind. She had had to bend her face downward during her walk, but the air had invigorated her. Surely if March were coming in like a lion, there was a good possibility it would go out like a lamb, she consoled herself as she wiped her boots against the mat in the quiet hall. She looked up startled at the sound of a throat clearing.

The housekeeper stood with her hands folded in front of her. She looked like a plump, curved urn, round on top and bottom, cinched in at the waist by her apron ties. Tight curls framed a face prematurely wrinkled, as if a sculpture's knife had slipped, leaving deep lines along her cheeks.

“Oh, pardon me, Mrs. Coates. I didn't see you standing there. May I help you with anything?”

“Yes, miss, if you please.”

Althea wondered at the subdued tone. “Let me just hang up my damp things and I shall be right with you.”

She joined the housekeeper in her sitting room.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” the housekeeper asked stiffly, gesturing toward the pot on the table before her.

Amazed, Althea took a seat at the table. “That would be lovely. It's quite cold outside.” She waited quietly as the housekeeper
poured the steaming liquid into a cup and covered the pot with a cozy.

Mrs. Coates sat down opposite her. A stack of correspondence lay on the small table between them. Noticing her glance, the housekeeper said, “Them's the replies.”

“The replies?”

“For the dinner he's giving.”

Not liking the way she was referring to their employer, Althea said, “The dinner Mr. Aguilar is hosting?”

“That's right. The replies've been comin' in. Most are acceptances.” Mrs. Coates sighed, her ample bosom rising. She pushed forward a sheet of paper. “I was working on seating arrangements when you walked in.”

“I see. How are they coming?” she asked, looking at the blank sheet of paper.

Mrs. Coates fingered the corner of the paper. “Not so well. You see, he—that is, Mr. Aguilar—hasn't been too clear about how he wants it. Only thing he told me was to seat him by—” she shuffled among the correspondence until she came to the right one “—Lady Stanton-Lewis.” She pushed the reply toward Althea.

Althea took the folded vellum. A hint of a floral fragrance drifted to her nostrils as she unfolded the creamy sheet. Lord Griffith and Lady Eugenia Stanton-Lewis accepted the invitation to dinner at the residence of the Honorable Simon Aguilar on the evening of the twelfth of March. Althea remembered the names Simon had mentioned the evening he was going to the opera.

She made a greater effort to recall them from her days in London society. She remembered the name was a good one, but that was all that came to mind. “Very well,” she said, “let us put her on Mr. Aguilar's right—unless, of course, we find someone who outranks her. We shall need to look at all the other replies to see where her husband ranks. Do you know if Mr. Aguilar has a copy of the
Peerage
in his library?”

“I wouldn't know. It's been many years since there's been any entertaining under this roof.” Mrs. Coates sat back in her chair
and took a sip of tea. “Before the missus died, they did some entertaining, but it was mostly amongst their own kind. There's never been what you'd call ‘society' here. I don't think they'd know much of such things.”

Althea noted the disdain in her tone but said nothing. She took a swallow of tea, then pushed away from the table. “I think I shall just look in the library and see if he doesn't have a copy. That will help us in these arrangements.”

“Very well, miss.”

Althea entered the quiet library. No one went in there on the days when Simon was at the House. She closed the door softly behind her, trying to decide where to begin. On the two occasions she had crossed this threshold, her mind had been too preoccupied with the coming interviews with her employer to take in her surroundings to any significant degree. Now she could enjoy the peace and comfort of this room. It reminded her of her father's library on his country estate in Hertfordshire.

She walked slowly into the long vast room, breathing in the scent of book leather and paper, over which lingered the acrid tinge of a spent fire in an unswept grate. Walls of bookshelves on two sides accentuated the length of the room. Stacks of books and paintings along the walls waited to be shelved or hung, as if in the years since the original order of the room had been established, more books, paintings and
objets d'art
had been accumulated but no time or interest found to place them properly.

Rich carpets covered the floors, muffling her footsteps as she ventured farther into the room. Heavy velvet curtains framed the wall of casement windows at the far end of the room.

Midway the length of the room stood a fireplace with a sculpted marble front. Gilt-framed oil paintings, one above another, hung around the fireplace from ceiling to wainscoting. The walls beneath were a rich red. A welcoming group of brass-studded leather chairs and a small, upholstered sofa faced the fireplace. Althea touched a leather armrest, remembering the hours she had spent as a girl curled up in just such a chair, safe from all eyes.

She rubbed her fingers together, noticing how grimy they had become. She examined the rest of the furniture more closely, noticing the film of dust over every surface. Brushing the dust off her hands, she decided that was a problem to be tackled at another time.

The rest of the room was given over to floor-to-ceiling bookshelves made of dark oak. She began examining the bookshelves, looking for a classification system. She found histories; biographies; works in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, which made her wish she could spend a few hours in that section; another section devoted to novels, including many of the newest; stacks and stacks of old issues of
The Times
and
The Observer
as well as the newer more radical publications like Cobbett's
Political Register.
There were countless political and philosophical tomes. Althea also came upon a stack of pamphlets containing Simon's name. Curious, she riffled through these, reading the various titles he had authored: factory reform, parliamentary reform, arguments in favor of a minimum wage, abolition of the tithe. The topics sounded altogether radical for a member of the Tory party. She placed them back in a neat stack.

Althea ran her fingers one last, lingering time over the spines of the books. The wisdom of humanity contained in a roomful of shelves, she mused, craning her neck upward. Solomon had written, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom….” But he had also begun the book of Proverbs with the preface “…the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”

Althea considered all the knowledge Simon had extracted from these centuries of human understanding and knowledge. But one thing he lacked, she thought, paraphrasing Jesus's words to the rich young man: the fear of the Lord, and without that, all the rest of the wisdom was in vain.

She finally spied copies of both Debrett's
Peerage
and
Baronetage.
They were placed in an area with some copies of
The Morning Post, The Court Guide
and
The Royalist,
a periodical known for its scandals and
on dits.
Clearly, Mrs. Coates's opinion that Simon
knew nothing of society was ill-formed, Althea thought as she picked up one of the two volumes on family names and genealogies.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Mrs. Coates, pairing off ladies and gentlemen for the dinner party, deciding who would escort whom into the dining room and where they would be seated.

“Oh, dear, Mrs. Coates, there is a surplus of gentlemen,” Althea said, looking at the invitations laid out in two groupings.

“Don't suppose he knows many society ladies. As I said, he's lived a very quiet life 'til recently, mostly working in Parliament and visitin' his family. He's brought gentlemen 'round now and then for a bite to eat and game of whist.” She eyed the scented note. “Never known him to entertain a female, leastways not here in his home.”

“Well, we shall just have to do the best we can with what we have. Perhaps some replies will still come in.”

As she located the family names in the books, she remembered more and more of the details from her two London Seasons. In the end there were only a few she didn't know what to do with. She supposed they might be colleagues of Simon's.

“I think we have done all we can this afternoon. You shall just have to consult Mr. Aguilar about these remaining names. You can show him our chart and he can pencil them in where he deems appropriate.” She considered. “Perhaps I shall mention to him the imbalance in the number of ladies and gentlemen.”