Abigail by Malcolm Macdonald Read Free Book Online

Cots-wold turf and Cots-wold mud.
    “I’ve found out,” she said at last.
    “Found out what?”
    Their rambling had brought them close to the site hut and the carriage. Even though no one was in view, it was too close for comfort.
    “Something,” she said.
    “Oh good! I can’t tell you how glad that makes me.” He laughed.
    “After dinner I’ll beat you at billiards,” she said. “If we may be alone, I’ll tell you then.”
    ***
    At dinner Caroline was very scathing on the subject of electricity.
    “Dr. Collins says it will be most injurious to have these currents swilling to and fro beneath us and overhead as we sleep,” she told Caspar.
    “Oh?” Caspar pretended to take it seriously.
    “It’ll create magnetism that will interfere with our own magnetism.”
    “My dear, we already live and breathe, and sleep, in a magnetic field several thousand times stronger than anything our conductors will produce.”
    “You may. I’m sure I don’t. I would feel it.”
    “So would I,” Abigail said. “I’m very sensitive to magnetism.”
    Caspar smiled at Nick and shrugged. The gesture annoyed Caroline, not only for its implied patronage of her ideas, but also because she considered that Nick, being an architect, should eat in the servants’ hall, not at her table—never mind his being an old family friend.
    Abigail noted these undercurrents and relished them, for they helped restore an ancient conviction that she was above and outside the passions which moved the rest of mankind. Her own rages and delights were of an altogether different order.
    Toward the end of dinner, when conversation turned yet again to the plans for Falconwood, she even risked a little dart of her own.
    “By the way,” she said casually, “I saw no provision on your plan for a newspaper-ironing room. Such a pity.”
    “Newspaper-ironing room?” Caroline asked.
    “Yes. Louise Beaumont was telling me. Apparently it all started with the Prince Consort—in the year before he died, he took a strong objection to having folded newspapers delivered to the breakfast table. He insisted the footman should iron them first. And now all the royal residences have newspaper-ironing rooms. I thought Falconwood could be the first private house with the same accommodation.”
    “Oh, Abbie, you treasure!” Caroline was delighted as she turned inquiringly to Nick.
    “The menservants’ bootroom,” he said, “could go out into the corridor, leaving that room at the foot of the menservants’ staircase free. I don’t suppose it takes much space to iron a newspaper.
    Thus Abigail became the founder of an entirely spurious fashion. But it served Steamer right—the way he went on about Falconwood and all its wonders.
    Later, in the billiard room when she was one frame up and well into a break of forty, “despite these ridiculously hampering clothes,” as she pointed out, Caspar again asked her what was wrong.
    She smiled and sank the red ball in the far pocket with a convincing thwack! “I feel a bit of a fool, Steamer. When I wired you, I was in somewhat of a state. But I seem to have weathered it.”
    “Was it important?” He put the red back on its spot.
    “Not really. Well…yes. Yes, it was. I found out about men and women…and, you know, babies.”
    The red shuddered between the cushions guarding a pocket and failed to sink. But Caspar did not give his usual cry of mockery. He did not move from where he was.
    “Your ball,” she said. And when he continued to stare at her she asked, “What?” For his look was almost that of a prosecutor.
    “D’you remember the Christmas before last we were all at Maran Hill? And you came and told me you’d found out about the pater’s mistress? That girl called Charity? And you said he had children by her?”
    “I didn’t.”
    “Pardon me, Abbie, but you did. You said the children were ‘only Stevensons by Charity.’”
    “It was only a way of speaking. Good heavens—did you think I knew