governess ever stayed for long, âMrs Blakeâbeing inclined to ask far too much for far too little wages, so that no matter how sorry one felt for âthe childâ one had really no alternative but to pack and go.
They had packed, therefore, all Orielâs nurses and nannies, one after the other, and taken their leave, sometimes without a word, sometimes with an unleashing of sentiment from which, in order not to recoil, she had hidden herself away behind her smile.
âMy poor child, what is to become of you?â
âOh â I am quite well, thank you, nanny.â
And then, having waved a fond farewell, there had been an equally warm welcome when, the next day or the day after, the new nanny â or, as she grew older, the new governess â came bustling through the door. Not always in the best of tempers.
âI had expected your mother to be here to meet me.â
âYes. Of course.â She had learned, at a very young age, to protect her motherâs reputation by lying to her motherâs domestic staff. âAnd so she would have been had she not been called out so urgently. She asked me to apologize. I have put the kettle on.â
â What! A child of your age playing so near the fire, with hot water. What are you thinking of?â
âWhy, nanny â of making you a cup of tea.â
And, as she spoke the gentle, soothing lies, Oriel â no stranger to fire and hot water at any age â would offer her smile as a token of her good intentions, a guarantee that she would brush her hair and her teeth each night, would keep her pinafores clean, would ask no awkward questions and â although this was not immediately understood â would answer none.
âWill your mother be long, then?â
âOh â Iâm afraid I canât say. She has gone to visit a friend who has been taken ill â¦â So that if Evangeline did not happen to return until very late that night, or not at all, there would be no need for further explanation.
Oriel the peace-maker, the smoother of sharp-edges and awkward corners, no trouble to anyone, who, when she outgrew her final governess, had set off without complaint in the company of strangers, on hazardous coach journeys which had taken her to the school in Carlisle, the school in Penzance, the school in Paris, the school in Florence. Returning in the summer holidays always to a different address. A new house, a new town, new furniture more often than not, always new servants. Sometimes to be greeted by her mother, but just as likely to find only an indifferent parlourmaid waiting to tell her that Evangeline had been called away. By Matthew Stangway, she had presumed, smiling at that too. And when she finally and quite suddenly admitted to herself that he was her father the shock had been so slight that she realized she had known it all along.
âMr Stangway is our special friend,â Evangeline had always told her. âShould we find ourselves in any little difficulty it is to him we should turn. So comforting.â
âYes, mamma.â
âIt is essential, you know, my love, that one should have a measure of gentlemanly protection. Women of our sort, after all, were not created to be self-reliant. And since your dear father is no longer here to be relied upon, then he would surely have wished us to be grateful to Mr Stangway â¦?â
âOf course, mamma.â
No more had ever been said, maintaining a fiction which had become the natural fabric of Orielâs life, an essential part of the shell, glossy and smooth as pearl on the outside, somewhat sharper-textured within, which had, from a very young age, enclosed her. So that she had found nothing incongruous in the lectures her mother regularly gave her on the subjects of good conduct, virtue, and morality.
âOne must not only be good and clever, my love,â Evangeline told her, âone must be seen to be so. In fact, one