Read Online The Diamond Waterfall by Pamela Haines - Free Book Online Page A

Lionel, but looking at Lily. She felt again his gaze on her. “We are not
all
savages up in Yorkshire. I remember that I was put—and you too, I think, Lionel—to learning the Collect for the day. I say it again to show there is no ill will—‘Doth a fountain send forth at the same place, Sweet water and bitter?’ “
    It is meant for me, Lily thought, hardly able to drag herself from the journey she had just made (bitter enough surely?) into the past. It is meant for me.

3
    I am sharp, Alice thought, coming down the stairs in the afternoon. The great wide wooden staircase into the empty hall with its patterned marble floor.
    So empty. No servants about. Papa was in London. He had been there for almost two weeks now, visiting Uncle Lionel. I prefer it like that, she thought. It’s better than when Uncle Lionel comes here.
I don’t like him.
He’s sharp too, but in a different way. I like much better Papa’s fine soldier brother, Uncle Thomas, who’s away serving in India now.
    An afternoon that was all hers. Her governess, half an hour ago: “Alice Firth, surely you can amuse yourself? A lovely home like The Towers … the garden, the orchard, the fountain, the copse. And in this beautiful September weather …” Perhaps to Miss Fairgrieves, who was rather elderly, just to be young might seem amusing?
    Down the great wide wooden staircase and into the hall. I am sharp, she thought. She saw herself, all of her, as sharp. Pointed. Spiky elbows, heels, toes, fingers. Sharp as a fox, always watching and waiting. I have something to watch and wait for, she thought. I must always be on my guard. Anything at all, probably bad at that, might happen at any time…. Sharp, watching …
    But only for myself, she thought. Sadly. It’s not as if I have a sister or brother to worry about. I am an alone child.
    She had said just that to Miss Fairgrieves on her first day as governess. “I am an alone child.” And Miss Fairgrieves had said, “You mean, Alice, an
only
child. It is called an only child, my dear.”
    But she had persisted. “I am an alone child. It is not the same thing,” she had said, “they are not the same thing.”
    She often persisted. They didn’t like that. Just as they did not like her being sharp. They call me that, she thought, when they are talking about me, for they talk about me a great deal even when I am there. Almost as if I were
not
there: “And how is the child doing—she is quite over the loss? That little upset after. She eats well? No more of that refusing to eat, eh?”
    It was then, of course, I became sharp. I felt sharp all over, like a needle. I did not want to eat. I did not want to put anything in my mouth because if I didn’t, if I
ate nothing,
then I would soon go to join Mama. (They said at the time, “If she doesn’t take something, she will join her mother soon.”) It was for Papa’s sake only that I ate again. So that he might not be sad twice.
    Gazing at her in the hall was the stuffed body of Grandpa’s black Clumber Spaniel, Pickwick. He looked very fierce always, even though his eyes were glass. She thought, What shall I do with the afternoon? Perhaps she could go and find Fräulein Schultz, the German governess. They were, in a way, friends. …
    Fräulein had been two years already at The Towers. Very fat, stouter even than when she’d first arrived, with a great soft moon face and little spectacles that looked lost. She’d just come back from a visit home to Germany and was still sad. She wept easily and often anyway, frequently dissolving in front of Alice, who would then coax or bully her into all sorts of concessions. German conversation would become English. … Although the subject of course was, as always, Fräulein’s brother Augustin.
    It must be better to be an alone child than to have a brother like Augustin. Younger