Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Amber—who usually got along well with girls too young or unattractive to compete with her—encouraged the friendship. She found Jemima’s naive admiration and talkativeness a convenient means of informing herself on the others—as well as a source of entertainment to help her pass the long dull days. Furthermore, she took malicious delight in annoying Lettice. For Lettice had warned Jemima repeatedly against the association, but Lettice was no longer head of the house and Jemima was spirited enough to enjoy disobeying her.

She was about the same height Amber was, but her figure was slight and less rounded. Her hair was rich dark brown with sparks of copper in it; her skin fine and white and she had blue eyes with a sweep of curling black lashes. She was eager, vivacious, spoiled by her father and elder brothers, independent, stubborn and lovable. Now she sat on a stool beside Amber, her fingers clasped over her knees, eyes shining in fascination while Amber told her a story she had heard at second-hand of the King begging my Lady Castlemaine’s pardon on his knees.

Across the room Susan glanced at them and raised her eyebrows significantly. “How devoted Jemima is to Madame! They’re all but inseparable. I should think you’d be more careful, Lettice. Jemima might learn to paint.”

Lettice gave her a sharp glance but found her looking down at her embroidery, taking tiny precise stitches. For several years, ever since Lettice had returned home and assumed management of the household, there had been a low-current feud going on between her and this wife of the eldest brother. The other two women smiled faintly, amused, for they were all secretly a little pleased that at last Lettice had found someone she could not dominate. But they were not so pleased it sweetened the bitter gall of lost money: the new wife was still the common enemy of them all, and their little personal animosities of but minor importance.

Lettice answered her quietly. “I am going to be more careful in the future—for that isn’t all the child might learn from her.”

“Low-necked gowns without a scarf too, perhaps,” said Susan.

“Much worse than that, I’m afraid.”

“What could be worse?” mocked Susan.

But Katherine sensed that Lettice knew something she had not told them, and her eyes lighted with the prospect of scandal. “What’ve you heard, Lettice? What’s she done?” At Katherine’s tone the other two instantly leaned forward.

“What do you know, Lettice?”

“Has she done something terrible?” They could not even imagine what could be terrible enough.

Lettice threaded her needle. “We can’t discuss it now with the children in the room.”

Immediately Philadelphia rose. “Then I’ll send them to bed.”

“Philadelphia!” said Lettice sharply. “I’ll handle this! Wait until she begins to sing.”

For every night, after the children had gone to bed and just before they all retired, Amber sang to them. Samuel had instigated the custom, and now it was a firmly-established part of household routine.

The women fidgeted nervously for almost an hour, begging Lettice in whispers over and over again to send the children to bed, but she would not do so until exactly the time when they went every night. She returned from seeing them into the custody of their nurses to find Amber strumming her guitar and singing a mournful pretty little song:

“What if a day, or a month, or a year,

Crown thy delights

With a thousand glad contentings?

Cannot the chance of a night or an hour

Cross thy delights

With as many sad tormentings?”

When it was done the listeners applauded politely, all but Jemima and Samuel, who were enthusiastic. “Oh, if only I could sing like that!” cried Jemima.

And Samuel went to take her hand. “My dear, I think you have the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard.”

Amber kissed Jemima on the cheek and slipped her arm through Samuel’s, smiling up at him. She was still holding her guitar which had been a gift from Rex Morgan and was decorated with a streamer of multicoloured ribbons he had bought for her one day at the Royal Exchange. She was relieved to have the evening done and was eager to get upstairs where she could feel safe. Never again, she had promised herself a dozen times, will I be such a fool.

Lettice sat leaning forward in her chair, tense, her hands clasped hard, and now Katherine gave her an impatient nudge with her elbow. Suddenly Lettice’s voice rang out, unnaturally clear and sharp: “It’s not surprising that Madame’s voice should be pleasant.”

Henry, standing across the room, gave a visible start and his adolescent face turned red. Amber’s heart and the very flowing of her blood seemed to stop still. But Samuel had not heard, and though she continued to smile up at him she was wishing desperately that she could stop up his ears, push him out of the room, somehow keep him from ever hearing.

“What do you mean, Lettice?” It was Susan.

“I mean that any woman who used her voice to earn her living should have a pleasant one.”

“What are you talking about, Lettice?” demanded Jemima. “Madame has never earned her living and you know it!”

Lettice stood up, her cheeks bright, fists clenched nervously at her sides, and the lappets on her cap trembled. “I think that you had better go to your room, Jemima.”

Jemima was instantly on the defensive, looking to Amber for support. “Go to my room? Why should I? What have I done?”

“You’ve done nothing, dear,” said Lettice patiently, determined that there should be no quarrel within the family itself. “But what I have to say is not altogether suitable for you to hear.”

Jemima made a grimace. “Heavens, Lettice! How old do you think I am? If I’m old enough to get married to that Joseph Cuttle I’m old enough to stay here and listen to anything you might have to say!”

By now Samuel was aware of the quarrel going on between his daughters. “What is it, Lettice? Jemima’s grown-up, I believe. If you have something to say, say it.”

“Very well.” She took a deep breath. “Henry saw Madame at the theatre this afternoon.”

Samuel’s expression did not change and the three women about the fireplace looked seriously disappointed, almost cheated. “Well?” he said. “Suppose he did? I understand the theatre is patronized nowadays by ladies of the best quality.”

“You don’t understand, Father. He saw her in the tiring-room.” For a moment she paused, watching the change on her father’s face, almost wishing that her hatred and jealousy had never led her to make this wretched accusation. She was beginning to realize that it would only hurt him, and do no one any good. And Henry stood looking as if he wished he might be suddenly stricken by the devil and disappear in a cloud of smoke. Her voice dropped, but Lettice finished what she had begun. “She was in the tiring-room because she was once an actress herself.”

There was a gasp from everyone but Amber, who stood perfectly still and stared Lettice levelly in the eye. For an instant her face was naked, threatening savage hate showing on it, but so quickly it changed that no one could be certain the expression had been there at all. Her lashes dropped, and she looked no more dangerous than a penitent child, caught with jam on its hands.

But Susan pricked her finger. Katherine dropped her sewing. Jemima leaped involuntarily to her feet. And the brothers were jerked out of their lazy indifference to what they had thought was merely another female squabble. Samuel, who had been looking younger and happier these past weeks than he had in years, was suddenly an old man again; and Lettice wished that she had never been so great a fool as to tell him.

For a moment he stood staring ahead and then he looked down at Amber, who raised her eyes to meet his. “It isn’t true, is it?”

She answered him so softly that though everyone else in the room strained to hear her words they could not. “Yes, Samuel, it’s true. But if you’ll let me talk to you—I can tell you why I had to do it. Please, Samuel?”

For a long minute they stood looking at each other, Amber’s face pleading, Samuel’s searching for what he had never tried before to find. And then his head came up proudly and with her arm still linked in his they walked from the room. There was a moment of perfect silence, before Lettice ran to her husband and burst into broken-hearted tears.

NO FURTHER MENTION was ever made, in the presence of Samuel Dangerfield, of his wife’s acting.

The morning after Lettice had made her sensational disclosure, he called her into a private room and told her that the matter had been explained to his own satisfaction, that he did not consider an explanation due the family, and that he wanted no more talk of it among themselves, nor any mention to outsiders. Henry was told that he could either forgo visiting the theatre or leave home. And to all outward appearances everything went on exactly as it had before.

The first time Amber appeared at dinner after that she was as composed and natural as if none of them knew what she really was; her coolness on this occasion was considered to be the boldest thing she had yet done. They could never forgive her for not hanging her head and blushing.

But though Amber knew what they thought of her she did not care. Samuel, at least, was convinced that she was wholly innocent, the victim of bad luck which had forced her into the uncongenial surroundings of the theatre, and that she had been tainted neither physically nor morally by the months she had spent on the stage. His infatuation for her was so great, his loyalty so intense, that none of them dared criticize her to him, even by implication. And they were all forced by family pride and love of their father to protect her against outsiders. For though, inevitably, gossip spread among their numberless relatives and friends that old Samuel Dangerfield had married an actress—and one of no very good repute—they defended her so convincingly that Amber became acceptable to the most censorious and stiff-necked dowagers in London.