Midsummer's Eve

"No, no!" I cried. "We very much want you in it. Mama thinks it will be fairly easy until we get the baby. What then ... when we have to take it home to England?”

"We could invent a marriage which was fruitful in a short time, and a husband who came to an untimely end.”

"You're going too fast, Jake," said my mother. "Let's get Helena in the right frame of mind. Let's not think so far ahead as that. Annora is being so helpful with her.”

"I am going to tell her that you know and understand," I said, "and that you don't think she is wicked or anything like that. I'll tell her that Papa says it often happens and there is nothing for her to be ashamed of because she loved John and he loved her; and it was only due to his proud family that it turned out like this.”

"You're putting words into my mouth.”

"But you do feel that. You're not condemning Helena.”

"Heaven forbid.”

"I'll tell her that. I'm going to see her now. She'll be lying on her bunk as she almost always is. I am glad we all know. Now we can do something about it.”

I went back to the cabin. As I thought, she was there lying on her bunk.

I said: "Come down, Helena, where I can see you. I've told my parents. My father says it happens to lots of people and it isn't going to be so very difficult. They know exactly what we shall have to do.”

She had climbed down and stood facing me.

I went to her and put my arms round her. She clung to me and again that desire to protect her swept over me.

Now that we knew, Helena was a little brighter. She had lost that desperately frightened look. She was often sick and felt ill but some of the despair had gone. I think that from then on she started to think about the baby and, in spite of everything, that could not fail to bring her some joy.

She was probably meant to be a mother; and I think that if she should have married John and settled down to bringing up a big family she would have found perfect happiness.

She did spend quite a lot of time lying on her bunk. Pregnancy was not easy with her but I think the mental anguish had been greater than physical discomfort.

I spent a good deal of time with Matthew Hume; we were becoming good friends. Jacco got on very well with Jim Prevost. Jacco would, in due course, join my father in the management of Cador and he was already learning something about the estate and that meant he had a knowledge of what was going on in some of the farms.

Jim Prevost would talk of little but the land he was going to acquire and therefore he and Jacco had a good deal in common.

Matthew Hume interested me because of that earnestness of his. He was a man with a purpose, and very unusual, for although he was ambitious to a great degree to succeed in what he was doing, it was rare to find such an ambition which was not self-centered.

He had brought one or two books with him and the subject of all of them was prisons.

He could hold forth eloquently. He had seen the inside of Newgate once when he had gone there with Frances to visit one of the people she had been looking after and who, she believed, had been wrongfully accused.

"Frances is wonderful," he said. "So strong. She could force her way in anywhere.

She has a way with her. Oh what a place, Annora. Dark high stone walls without windows.

It's opposite the Old Bailey at the west end of Newgate Street. I shudder every time I see it. Do you know there was a prison there in the thirteenth century? Imagine all the people who must have been locked up there. The suffering, the misery that has gone on in that spot! It's not the original building standing there of course.

It was burned down during the great fire of London. This one was built over a hundred years after that in 1780. You've heard about the Gordon Riots? Well, it was almost destroyed then by fire and lots of the prisoners were let out. People don't care about prisoners. They put them away to be rid of them. They are a nuisance. A child steals a loaf of bread because he is hungry and he goes to the same place as a murderer.

It's all wrong. People don't care enough. That great lady, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, worked hard for . I am privileged to have met her.”

"Did she come to Frances's Mission?”

"No. I wrote to her. I told her of my interest in prisons and prisoners and she invited me to call on her. I went to see her in her house at Plashet. It was a great experience.