Saraband for Two Sisters

It was as though she were constantly with me. I used to read her letters again and again. She described Far Flamstead with its quaint folly to me so that I could see it clearly, and when she wrote of her husband I sensed that she thought him wonderful. Yet at the same time there was something which she held back. I couldn’t help thinking of them together ... as Bastian and I had been, and I was filled with a bitter envy. Soon after my eighteenth birthday my father’s ship returned. That was a day of great rejoicing in our household. My lassitude dropped from me then, for not only had my father returned, but my brother Fennimore and Bastian with him. When the news came that the ship had been sighted there was the bustle of excitement and preparation which I remembered so well. My mother shone with an inner radiance and the whole household seemed to come alive. Only at such times would she allow herself to contemplate the hazards of the journey. That must have been a very happy trait to possess.

We rode down to the coast to greet them as they came ashore. My father embraced my mother first as though he was never going to let her go again, and then he looked around for his daughters. It was difficult explaining so much in a few breathless sentences. My mother had evidently practiced how she would tell him so that he should suffer no unnecessary anxieties even for a few moments. “We are all well and happy, Fenn. But so much has happened since you have been away. Our darling Angelet has married, most happily, and Bersaba has been ill but is now quite recovered. It is too much to tell now.”

My brother Fennimore embraced me, and so did Bastian. I felt myself flushing with bitter anger, wondering how much of the change he noticed. “Let us get back to the house,” said my mother. “I can only think that you are back ... safe and well.”

So we rode back to Trystan Priory-myself between Fennimore and Bastian. I told them as briefly as I could. I contracted smallpox; Angelet was sent away to stay with Carlotta and there had met her husband. We had recently had the news that she had married and everyone seemed pleased with the match. “Bersaba!” cried my brother Fennimore. “You have had smallpox. But it is a miracle!»

“Yes,” I agreed. “The miracle of love, I suppose. You can imagine what Mother did for me. And there was Phoebe to help her. The blacksmith’s daughter, you know. Her father turned her out and I brought her to the Priory. She seems to think that makes her my slave for life.”

Bastian said nothing, but I could sense his emotion and I felt elated. It was at this moment that I started to come alive again.

There was the well-remembered atmosphere of festivity about the Priory. My father was delighted to be back, so concerned about what had happened in his absence. As we came into the house he had me on one side of him, my mother on the other, and kept pressing my arm against him and I knew how thankful he was that I had survived.

Everything had to be told him in detail. Angelet’s letters had to be produced. He wanted to hear how I had gone to the midwife and how my mother had nursed me. He sent for Phoebe and thanked her for what she had done, and she said it was nothing to what I had done for her and she’d give her life for me. There were sentimental tears in their eyes, and I felt like an outside observer looking on at the scene; and all the time I was conscious of Bastian. We supped in the hall that night and it was like long-ago days, for the servants were at the table too. The only thing that was missing was the massive old salt cellar, which a hundred years ago used to stand in the center of the table, dividing the members of the household and their guests from the menials. It now stood in the kitchen as a sort of ornament and memento of other days. My father sat at the head of the table and Mother beside him, with Fennimore on my mother’s left hand and I on my father’s right. Bastian sat next to me.

Everyone was happy, for the servants loved my father and regarded him as the best of masters. I once remarked to Angelet that their regard for him was due in part to the fact that they saw him rarely. It is so much easier to love someone who is not always there to irritate and inspire something less than loving. I remember how horrified she was, and how we argued about our father and the servants and our different

 characters, hers and mine. “You’re a sentimentalist, Angelet.” I clinched the discussion with that remark, for I invariably had the last word. “And I am a realist.” I could always nonplus her with words, but now of course she had escaped from me. She was the one who had had the fine adventure; she was the one who had made the good marriage. So that was a merry meal except for the fact that my father regretted the absence of my sister. He would have liked to have her living a few miles away and to be here with her new husband on this occasion.