Hope - Lesley Pearse [259]
Nell shrugged. ‘She’s not one to think about other folk much. And of course I did my best to keep you in your place. Mother, Father and me, we weren’t too pleased when you used to go and play with Rufus. We didn’t want you getting ideas above your station, and neither did we want Lady Harvey to growfond of you. You see, we thought of you as ours. But sometimes I thought the whole world could see that you were born to gentry.’
They talked and talked until the small hours. There were shared memories of Meg and Silas to mull over, Nell’s viewpoint of her little sister’s childhood scrapes and triumphs, and there were new tales about the other siblings which Hope hadn’t heard before.
As one story after another was related, some with hilarity and some with sadness, Hope felt truly part of the Renton tribe, and if in the past, she had had the odd feeling she didn’t ‘belong’, she could see now that it was because of her position as youngest in the family, nothing else. Nell pointed out that being the eldest made her different too.
‘I had to help Mother when the little ones could play,’ she said. ‘I was washing and feeding babies when I was six or seven. I didn’t get to run about in the fields the way you all did. Matt had to be a man too, well before his time. That is just the way it is in a big family. But you, Hope, you were the little darling, everyone’s pet. We all made big allowances for you.’
Later, Nell went on to tell Hope about each and every time she was reminded of who her little sister’s real parents were. ‘You were never cowed by gentry. You’d stand out in the lane and talk to anyone who came riding by. You just couldn’t seem to understand that folk like us were supposed to be humble. And I was so frightened when you got older and you and Rufus became so close.’
‘But why?’ Hope asked with some amusement.
‘In case you became sweethearts later on,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t tell you how many nights I lay awake worrying about it. But I feel like a load has been taken off my shoulders now. If we hear Bennett is coming home tomorrow that will end all my worries.’
‘At least this has distracted me from thinking about him for a while,’ Hope sighed.
Nell got up stiffly from her chair, and held out her arms to Hope. ‘What will be, will be,’ she said as she embraced her. ‘I wish I could promise you he will come home, but I can’t. But whatever happens I’ll be right beside you.’
The autumn days went slowly by, each one a little colder, wetter or windier. It was dark by four in the afternoon, and mostly the weather was too bad to go out. Yet still no letters came from either Angus or Bennett.
Uncle Abel got word that post from both the Crimea and Turkey had gone astray. He also went to Winchester to the Rifle Brigade barracks, and was told that Bennett had not been reported dead. But by the same token they could offer no proof he was alive either for his name wasn’t on any of the lists of sick sent to Scutari. But from talking to a couple of soldiers who had been invalided home, it seemed their families hadn’t been informed either, and letters they’d written from hospital hadn’t turned up until after they’d got home.
Angus had definitely left the Crimea – there was evidence he’d boarded a steamer bound for Constantinople. Uncle Abel felt sure he had gone there to look for Bennett.
Hope’s anxiety had settled into a constant dull ache, but almost every day there was some distraction to take her mind off it. Two weeks after Albert’s death there was the inquest in Bristol, in which she and Rufus had to give their evidence. It lasted less than twenty minutes and the coroner pronounced it self-defence and complimented Hope on her courage.
Before they went home that day, Hope took Rufus to Lewins Mead to show him where she had lived. It was shocking to see the appalling conditions there again and Rufus thought it a miracle she’d survived it. But Uncle Abel told them later that plans were afoot for it to be pulled down, the river Frome covered over, roads widened and new houses with piped water and drains