Free After Alice by Gregory Maguire Page A

They’ll be waiting for this.”
    Lydia stood. “Rhoda, keep at your beans.” The kitchen maid was flummoxed, as if caught between a constable and a clergyman and unsure whom to obey. At Lydia’s insurrection Mrs. Brummidge took a sluice of air between her teeth and backward-­whistled it in. But she said no more about it. She placed the tray with the lemon barley and some drinking glasses and a plate of morning cake upon the pastry table. She retreated, as if the refreshments were about to detonate. She trained her eyes on the floor. Rhoda settled her rump back on her three-­legged stool.
    Lydia didn’t speak again, but picked up the tray. She led with her shoulder through the swinging door into the passage. When she was halfway along, she heard Mrs. Brummidge hiss at Rhoda, “Unseemly!” with the same tone of scandal she might have used had she been saying “Strumpet!” or “Baptist!” She does have her opinions, does our Mrs. Brummidge, thought Lydia. She was stymied for a moment at the parlor door, which was closed. How does one knock and open a door while carrying a tray? How did Rhoda ever manage? Balancing one edge of the tray against her bosom, Lydia freed her right hand to knock. Then she went through, into the male preserve of Pater, Mr. Darwin, and that handsome Mr. Winter.
    The light was bright. The breeze off the Cherwell delivered an odor of June mud, backwashed with essence of meadow-­grass and a whiff of cow. Mr. Winter was quiet and attentive, lifting on his toes before the open window. His hands were clasped in downward prayer. His eyes did not tilt toward the door. Nor did those of Pater or of Darwin. But Lydia could hardly blame them. They were expecting no one more exotic than Rhoda.
    She set the tray down on top of the closed harmonium. Her back turned to them, Lydia listened intently to the men. Darwin seemed to be reading from his own manuscript, line by line. Pater was commenting in words of solemn circumspection. It reminded Lydia of the way the local boys would beat the bounds of the parish every year, with peeled willow wands and high hilarity. Of hilarity there was none from Darwin, nor from dear father, but the intensity of thrashing seemed to her the same. Every yard of statement needed to be tested for soundness. What Mr. Winter was adding, other than devotion to the holy cause of thought, was unclear.
    Lydia rotated at the hip, waiting for a pause in the proceedings so she could offer to serve. Mr. Winter against the bright window was a silhouette. His hair was silvery blond and sleek. His form was neater even than it had seemed in the kitchen. How nice that he wasn’t lost in one of those sexless black gowns in which the scholars tramped about, hooting in sunshine and huddling in rain.
    A patch of shadow in a darker corner of the room shifted from beside the aureole afforded Mr. Winter. Lydia started, making a small, contained movement. Was Alice hiding in here all along? Impossible. But the shape was childlike. “Mercy upon us,” she said with displeasure. Darwin paid no mind. Pater looked up. She could not turn toward Mr. Winter.
    â€œLydia, whatever are you doing?” said her father.
    â€œI am here to deliver a beverage, Pater, as requested by your other guest. I had been told there was a child. I see I had not been told everything.”
    The creature came forward. His countenance was of a very un-­English hue. He was of Africa, or from some plantation in Hispaniola or Barbados or the like. His skin was shiny as oiled mahogany. Hair cropped as if for nits. With undisguised thirst, he cast his glance upon the drink. “Yes, this is meant for you,” she said. His hands came out to clasp the glass before she had filled it. For an instant she saw his hands were gammon-­pink upon the palms. This surprised her, as the boy was otherwise as coal-­dusty as a sweep at the end of his fourth flue of the