Page 122 of The Sisters of Sea View
“Of course you did.” He held her gaze. “As you will no doubt face every challenge this life throws at you. I fully expect to read about you in print one day—accounts of the brave, bright, and accomplished Emily Summers.”
For a moment longer they stared at each other, then he looked down at his little finger.
Following his gaze, she recognized the ring she had seen in his room. “I have not seen you wear that before. Is it your signet ring?”
His eyes flashed to hers, then away again. “Um... no. Not exactly. It was a gift.” He shifted and said, “Well, I have kept you standing here long enough. Good night, Miss Summers.” He bowed and started toward his room.
Emily watched him go, an odd ache in her chest. “Good night, Mr. Stanley.”
24
The Bathing was so delightful this morning ... that I staid in rather too long.
—Jane Austen, letter
On Sunday afternoon, Viola returned to the poor house and told Mrs. Denby about her misadventure of the previous afternoon.
“Good heavens! Thank the Lord you are safe,” the woman exclaimed. Then she added, “Mr. Butcher was here earlier and mentioned that a fishing boat capsized near Otterton yesterday at about that same time. A fisherman’s son drowned.”
“Oh no. I am sorry to hear that.” Viola thought for a few moments before asking, “Why does that happen?”
“I don’t know. The sea is unpredictable.”
“No, I mean, why does God protect some people and not others?”
“I don’t know that either, my dear. I wish He promised us all peace and safety, but He does not.”
Viola looked at the woman with interest and a shiver of foreboding. Jane Denby had lost her parents, sister, and husband. Was there more to her story?
“Your mother must have been so relieved,” Mrs. Denby said. “Or did she box your ears for going bathing on such a day?”
“Both!” Viola chuckled, then sobered, noticing the woman’s expression take on that wistful sadness she had seen once or twice before.
Viola hesitated, then said gently, “May I ask, did you and your husband have any children?”
“We did, yes. A son.” Her face contorted. “But he went bad.”
“Oh no. I am sorry. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t mind you knowing. No one has asked me about Robbie in years, yet he is never far from my thoughts.”
She looked into the vague distance, regret lining her face. “We did not raise him to behave like that. My own son, a thief. How the shame and grief bowed us down. His crime, his name reported in the newspapers.”
She slowly shook her head. “Worse yet was what he stole. Lace, from Mrs. Nicholls’s shop. Lace was even more valuable then—before machine lace came about. He was caught when he tried to sell it. Said he did it because the dealer paid us so poorly. And I think he resented the Nicholls family, because they were more successful than we were. I told him to stop blaming others. To accept responsibility for his own actions.”
She sighed. “I don’t know if he ever repented, though he tried to convince the judge he’d never do the like again. They transported him anyway, to New South Wales, wherever that is. If he’d been a woman, he might have got off with a few months of hard labor. But he was a man, though still young and foolish.” Her thin lips trembled.
“My husband, God rest him, tried to comfort me, saying it was not our fault—or at least, not entirely. But we must have done something terribly wrong. We tried our best, though no doubt we could have been better parents. I suppose we spoiled him, being our only child. Whatever the reason, nothing in this life has made me feel more of a failure. Not my sorry education, or poverty, or being reduced to living in a poor house.”
Viola’s heart squeezed. She thought of Mrs. Denby’s happy nature. How did a woman who’d suffered so much remain cheerful?
Mrs. Denby went on, “The proverb says to ‘train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ I have held to that hope—that although on the other side of the world, Robbie would one day return to what he learned in our home.” Her mouth puckered. “If he lived that long. I know it is possible, nay, probable, he is long dead.”
“Is there no way to find out?”
“Not that I know of. If he did die, I pray he repented before his final breath and asked the Lord to have mercy on his soul.”
Throat tight and eyes burning, Viola whispered, “So do I.”
