Frenchman's Creek

"Hey, Duke, hey, Duchess," he had said, "go seek, go find," throwing a sweetmeat across the room and on to her bed, so that they clawed at the curtains, and tried to spring upon it, yapping horribly the while, and Dona, her fingers in her ears to thrust out the sound, swept from the room and downstairs to her waiting chair, white, and cold, and angry, to be met with the hot street smells and the breathless vapid sky.

Once more the coach shook and trembled in the deep ruts of the country road, and this time it was the nurse who stirred - poor wretched Prue, her foolish, honest face all heavy and mottled with fatigue, how she must grudge her mistress this sudden inexplicable journey - and Dona wondered whether she had left some young man forlorn in London who would prove false in all probability and marry somebody else and Prue's life would be blighted, all because of her, Dona, and her whims and fancies and savage ill-humour. What would poor Prue find to do at Navron House, but parade the children up and down the avenue and through the gardens, sighing for the streets of London hundreds of miles away. Were there gardens at Navron? She could not remember. It all seemed so long ago, that brief visit after she had married. There were trees surely, and a shining river, and great windows that opened from a long room, but more than this she had forgotten, because she had felt so ill during those days, with Henrietta on the way, and life one endless business of sofas, and sickness, and smelling bottles. Suddenly Dona felt hungry, the coach had just rumbled past an orchard and the apple trees were in blossom, and she knew she must eat now, at once, without more ado, on the side of the road in the sunshine, they must all eat - so she thrust her head out of the window and called up to her coachman: "We will halt here for a while, and eat. Come and help me spread the rugs beneath the hedge."

The man stared down at her in bewilderment. "But, my lady, the ground may be damp, you will take cold."

"Nonsense, Thomas, I am hungry, we are all hungry, we must eat."

He climbed down from his seat, his face red with embarrassment, and his companion turned away also, coughing behind his hand.

"There is a hostelry in Bodmin, my lady," the coachman ventured, "there you could eat in comfort, and rest perhaps; surely it would be more fitting. If anyone should pass this way, and see you by the side of the road. I hardly think Sir Harry would like…"

"Damn it, Thomas, can't you obey orders?" said his mistress, and she opened the door of the coach herself, and stepped down into the muddy road, lifting her gown above her ankles in a most brazen way. Poor Sir Harry, thought the coachman, this was the sort of thing he had to contend with every day, and in less than five minutes she had them all assembled on the grass by the side of the road, the nurse barely awake blinking her round eyes, and the children staring in astonishment. "Let us all drink ale," said Dona, "we have some in the basket beneath the seat, I have a mad desire for ale. Yes, James, you shall have some." And there she sat, her petticoats tucked beneath her and her hood falling away from her face, quaffing her ale like any beggaring gypsy, handing some on the tip of her finger for her baby son to taste, smiling the while at the coachman to show him that she bore no malice for his rough driving and his obstinacy. "You must both drink, too, there is plenty for all," she said, and the men were obliged to drink with her, avoiding the eye of the nurse. She thought the whole proceeding unseemly, as they did, and was wishing for a quiet parlour in a hostelry, and fresh warm water where she could bathe the children's hands and faces.

"Where are we going?" asked Henrietta for the twelfth time, looking about her in distaste, holding her dress close to her so that the mud should not stain it. "Is the drive nearly finished, and shall we soon be home?"

"We are going to another home," said Dona, "a new home, a much nicer home. You will be able to run free in the woods and dirty your clothes, and Prue will not scold you because it will not matter."