Episode 150
I had only ridden a train about three times in total. So, counting today, one could say this was my fourth.
At this time of year, the Grand Lady, like the other nobles, would travel to the countryside to recuperate and escape the heat, where the weather was less stifling than in the capital. Naturally, Sasha went along too.
The Grand Lady hated trains. Unless circumstances left her no choice, she always insisted on taking a carriage, for she particularly loathed the noise of the train. Next, she detested the very idea of cramming dozens of people into a long, cramped space.
Even the train’s thoroughly segregated first-class compartment was no exception, so Sasha had quite a difficult time accommodating the Grand Lady’s uncomfortable mood. There was no leisure to enjoy the more comfortable ride compared to a carriage, or the scenery outside the window passing by incomparably fast.
Sasha sat in her seat and looked out the window. Unlike the small window of a carriage, the train window was much larger, and naturally, the scenery was far more visible. The pouring sunlight streamed in without any filter, so much so that Sasha had to furrow her brow.
Seeing that, the maid, Miss Iver, who had been about to lower the curtain, withdrew her hand, judging that Sasha seemed instead to be enjoying herself like a child. She watched Sasha furrow her eyes at the sunlight while still looking eagerly outside, then settled back into her own seat.
“Is this your first time on a train?”
“Oh, it isn’t my first time. I’ve ridden it a few times before, but I’ve never been this relaxed.”
When Sasha answered nonchalantly, Miss Iver stared at her with an inscrutable expression.
However, the gaze that might have seemed rude at a glance lasted only a moment, and she skillfully composed her expression.
The scenery outside the window changed once more. The train had now moved far from the small town where houses were scattered, and the outside was nothing but green and gray.
Just then, a knock sounded—rap, rap. When Sasha answered, a woman of fairly plump build stopped before them, pulling a tray laden with refreshments. Since she always had to send the attendant away when she was with the Grand Lady, Sasha willingly took out her purse and paid for two packets of biscuits and two cups of tea.
The door clicked shut again, and Sasha picked up one packet of biscuits. She was persistently pulling at the end of the string, unable to figure out how on earth it had been sealed, when Miss Iver reached out her hand, asking Sasha to hand it over. Miss Iver skillfully untied the knot and handed the packet of biscuits back to Sasha. It was nothing much, yet in that gesture, which seemed all too familiar, there was something that felt slightly alien to Sasha. Alien to the point of being a little embarrassing.
After thanking her, Sasha put aside the remaining packet, intending to give it to Wilson, who was outside.
“What sort of place is Milford?”
Sasha asked, handing Miss Iver her share of the biscuits. That’s right. They were heading to Milford.
The countryside among countrysides, far from the capital. They were heading to the place where Mr. Marlborough had lived with Aileen and the real Sasha.
“It’s countryside to the point that it can’t even be compared to Goldington. Even after getting off at the station, you have to take a carriage for quite a while to get there. There are many trees, so it’s rather cool in the summer, but the terrain is rugged, so it can’t be used as a resort.”
“Did Mr. Marlborough live there all his life?”
Miss Iver held the cookie in her palm without bringing it to her mouth.
She nodded.
“Yes. The master was born and raised there. Like the children of rural gentry usually do, he attended school in a distant city. After he grew up, he ran a match factory in the city with a friend, but one day, he suddenly quit the business entirely and returned to his hometown.”
Miss Iver began to speak slowly. Just as when she had stood in court a few days prior, she spoke in Sherman, but unlike then, she spoke quite fluently now, without stammering or slurring her words. Even setting nerves aside, it was a marked difference.
The foreign maid had not seemed foreign in the slightest from the moment she found Sasha. Having lived in this country for a long time, she had internalized the ingrained manners and habits unique to its people, far beyond merely speaking the language fluently.
“Anyway, even after returning to his hometown, he regularly went to Goldington without fail. To meet his friends. And on that particular day, instead of buying city sweets or the like to bring back as usual, he brought a child. They said the child had been standing still at the place where the station coaches came and went. He said he had tried to take her straight to a nearby police officer, but the child grabbed his pant leg right there and cried, saying she absolutely couldn’t go.”
Sasha had only asked a simple question, yet Miss Iver began to unfold the story in detail, as if she knew exactly what tale Sasha wished to draw out. Much more detailed than when she had answered Sasha’s probing for evidence when they first met.
“The lady of the house was furious the moment she saw the child he brought. Judging by the clothes the child wore and the way she spoke, she did not seem to be from an ordinary noble house. However, the child was a bit strange. Unchildlike, she neither cried nor made a fuss; she quietly watched us, and only when no one else remained around her did she huddle in a corner and sob, and she even muttered nonsense. I heard it all from outside the door…….”
“……”
“To put it harshly, she was a child who seemed a little insane, despite her refined appearance. And at such a young age. She would behave obediently the entire time, but the moment they tried to change the clothes she wore, she would lie down on the floor with her back to them in protest. If they tried to open the bag she brought, she would roll her eyes and fly at them. That child had many other aversions, too. She was afraid of riding in carriages, so she couldn’t properly go out to distant places, and she was afraid of water, so the master suffered great distress when he took her to play by the lakeshore.”
Blink. When she closed and opened her eyes, the surroundings had darkened in the meantime. Clouds had gathered over the train in that brief moment.
There was no longer any need to avoid the intense sunlight; she could comfortably admire the scenery outside.
“That child was really, truly strange, Mrs. Pincher. She would act like a mad child, then become as docile as an overly precocious child, and sometimes she would scream and cry that everything was frightening. She was really… strange back then, but the master accepted her and embraced her with love. It took several years for the child to calm down. And then……”
Miss Iver continued flatly.
“A stranger with an unfamiliar face came. An elderly man who spoke with a capital accent. The lady of the house, naturally assuming he had come looking for the child brought from the capital, quickly invited him in, but…… that child.”
“……Please continue, Miss Iver.”
“……That child fainted the moment she saw the man. The mental illness that had taken years to cure relapsed. The man had no choice but to turn back. Yet though he clearly knew the child, he absolutely refused to tell either the lady of the house or even the master who the child was, or who he himself was.”
Miss Iver crumbled a corner of the biscuit she would not eat, holding it in her hand.
Sasha could easily guess who that man was. Surely it was Theodore.
The servant whom the elderly lady had cherished most during her lifetime. The servant who had taken on all the menial tasks at Dilton Manor and known everything about his master’s circumstances.
“Having left without telling them anything, he came back like clockwork once a week and loitered about. That man. He no longer approached the child as before, but kept wandering around the house. And then…… that elderly lady came. The person said to be the child’s real grandmother.”
It was when the child was only ten years old. It was during the time when the Grand Lady was calmly maintaining the pretense with a fake who looked exactly like her real granddaughter. Thinking back on it, the Grand Lady had been in a strangely anxious state for years, ever since she brought Sasha in.
It was a time when, as if trying to relieve her anxiety, she would treat Sasha like her real granddaughter, then—as though feeling contempt for herself in doing so—would push the blameless Sasha away and hurt her, repeating the cycle. After being hurt several times, Sasha had completely locked the door to her heart against the old woman who acted as if she were torturing her with hope.
Thinking back, the old woman’s mood swings, little different from bipolar disorder, had become consistently indifferent at some point, and hearing this story, Sasha felt sure it must have been because the Grand Lady had found her real granddaughter.
Sasha fit the pieces of the puzzle she had never before dared to solve into place, one by one.
“What reaction did the child show upon seeing her grandmother?”
Sasha asked, passing Miss Iver her own cup of tea as if to let her catch her breath during the temporary silence.
Miss Iver looked at Sasha with an expressionless face once more. A fixed, inscrutable gaze. Yet there was no regret in her eyes.
It was also a somewhat familiar look. Yes. That was usually……. There was something similar to what the elderly lady occasionally felt when she looked at Sasha. Miss Iver was certainly looking at someone else through Sasha.
“That child was only ten years old at the time, Mrs. Pincher.”
Miss Iver said, taking a sip of tea.
“And yet, the moment she saw that woman, did she not wag her finger right then and there? Did she not sob and ask why they had abandoned her mother and father? Then she screamed at her to get out.”
“……Abandoned?”
Miss Iver nodded.
“Yes. She kept saying that, Mrs. Pincher. More than anything, I cannot forget the expression I saw on that person’s face at that time. The expression of that elderly lady who looked down on us haughtily the moment she descended from the carriage, as if she were entering her own courtyard as a matter of course. That person who had looked so noble, as if she had never groveled before anyone in her life—when a young child wagged her finger at her, she fell to her knees as if the world had crumbled, sobbing and apologizing.”