Read A World Apart for Free Online Page B

one. Can you tell me? Or shall I continue with Saturn and Mars and Venus and — ? Oh! Now I remember. It’s Ganymede.’
    â€˜No, no, child. That will be sufficient.’ Further discussion on this topic could be embarrassing. Interesting that Jupiter had moons. His father had not told him so. ‘Tell me, how old are you, child?’ he continued.
    â€˜Four, sir, but I’ll be five in just one month, three weeks, five days and…’ she looked at the grandfather clock at the end of the room, ‘eight hours.’ De Havilland sighed. His own son, aged seven, could not even tell the time. He paused, thinking. The child must enjoy his children’s acceptance. He would put the matter to the test.
    â€˜Come with me, child. We will go to the schoolroom.’ He took her hand, and they walked together along the dark-panelled corridor, hung with ancestral portraits. Neither of them gave a backward glance to the two women who stood mute in the library. He opened the schoolroom door without knocking and strode inside. The larger-than-usual windows revealed a panoramic view of the sweeping classical gardens for which the Great House had a reputation. Dwarfed by the size of the room, a small man in his thirties, with thinning hair, dressed in waistcoat and trousers, his cuffs frayed, stood at a blackboard. The two children turned to stare at the intruder, wordless. The boy was dressed in a black skeleton suit, its braid anchored by large white buttons, the girl in a white muslin frock with a pale blue sash set high on the waist. Suddenly the boy beamed at Eliza.
    â€˜Hello, Angel! You’ve come to visit us? How wonderful!’ He jumped from his seat, ran to Eliza’s side, and took her hand. ‘I can count to a hundred now,’ he said. As Harry led Eliza to the window, De Havilland turned to study his daughter. She had sat open-mouthed throughout the entire intrusion. It would be good for her to see that one of her own sex actually relished learning. She had always hated lessons. But the viscount knew that for a woman too much learning was a disadvantage, calculated to drive suitors away. Louisa could not afford the luxury of scaring off any likely young man who chanced her way. She had begun to develop her mother’s corpulence, and the sides of her mouth drooped in a perpetual scowl, exactly like her mother’s.
    The servants soon became used to Eliza’s daily journey to the schoolroom. The tutor taught the three children literature, mathematics, geography, science, and classics. When lessons were over the trio played in the garden, took their midday meal together, and created pastimes for themselves with the wealth of materials at hand. They dressed up for plays, with Eliza prodding the other two to join her in taking parts in the plays of Shakespeare, Marlow, and Goldsmith. Their tutor taught them chess and backgammon and whist.
    It was to be expected that Eliza would become a mean chess player. Harry took his thrashings at chess and cards in good part, but Louisa did not. She was three years older than Eliza, and she could see for herself in the looking glass what the maids whispered to each other — that she was much less pretty than the little village child with the golden hair.
    As Eliza blended with the fabric of the Great House, her horizons broadened in other ways. Visitors who asked to see the viscount’s children at their studies might visit the schoolroom. Eliza would sometimes be introduced to a great aunt or a young cousin as she sat with her classmates. She learned to curtsey and to make small talk if the visitors signalled an interest in it. One day, a man in a tall hat entered the schoolroom and sat on a stool in a corner. Eliza could not help but notice his angular body, the way his skin stretched over his cheekbones and his recessed eyes, giving his face a hollow look that reminded her of a skull.
    â€˜Ignore me, Harcourt,’ the visitor