Charles left the office without another word.
From Loxe he rode to the inn at Patesbridge, where he ate an early luncheon, and drank three glasses of brandy. He sat long over his third glass, glad of the brandy’s comfort and warmth, which, as it spread through his veins, gradually quelled the rigor that had seized his stomach in its chill spasms. He found, too, now he knew the worst, that while one part of his mind remained darkly clouded, the other was working well enough. He was able to think; to accept, at last, the inevitable; even to plan accordingly. It was not, after all, the first time that events in his life had been such as to make it unbearable to him. And the remedy now was as before.
On leaving Patesbridge, he returned to Hainault, where his clerk sat eating his lunch in the office. Charles, with a word of apology, sent him on an errand to the spinning-shop. He then emptied the cashbox, tipping the coin into two linen bags, which were easily stowed away in his pockets. Almost as soon as the clerk returned he again left the mill ‘on a matter of business’ and rode home to Grove End. He had a well-prepared excuse for returning at this unusual time, but to his surprise it was not needed, for his wife and daughter were away from home. They had gone to Chacelands, the maid said, for Master Anthony’s birthday party. Mrs Winter had called for them in the carriage soon after luncheon. Master Dick would be there too. Mrs Winter intended collecting him from his office in town.
‘Didn’t you know about the party, sir?’
‘Yes, but I had forgotten it.’
He went into his study and removed what money there was in his private cash-box. He then went upstairs and packed a bag. Downstairs again, he spoke to the maid.
‘Will you tell Mrs Yuart when she returns that I have been called away on business.’
‘Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.’ She opened the front door for him. ‘Will you be gone long, sir?’
‘Just give her my message,’ Charles said.
He left no note for Katharine this time. He would write later, saying goodbye to her and the children, perhaps when he reached Liverpool. Perhaps later still, aboard ship, on his way to America.
Now, by a roundabout route, he made his way to Pibblecombe Halt, where he would board a train that would take him on the first stage of his journey. Six years before, he had done this same thing; had slipped away from his native district in just this furtive, inglorious manner, with the sick sense of failure heavy upon him. But this time there could be no return, for it meant facing criminal charges; possibly even imprisonment; and he could not bear the thought of that. Even if the court were lenient with him, he could never hold up his head again; not here in this place where he was known. Nor could he bear the thought of facing his wife and children again, once they knew the nature of his offences.
It was difficult to believe that fate had twice singled him out in this way; twice brought him to ruin and ill-repute; but so it was, and he must accept it. Life in England was finished for him. Almost he felt, at this moment, that life was finished for him altogether; and across his mind’s eye there flashed a picture of a man falling from a great ship, to vanish into the waters below, which closed above him, in the ship’s wake. Would he end it that way? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But if so, he told himself grimly, he could do it with much less trouble in the waters of the Cullen, down below. But no, he thought, in sudden revulsion: at least he would spare his family that. And there would be time enough to decide, one way or the other, on the long voyage to America.
He was now on the road to Newton Ashkey, which skirted the grounds of Newton Railes. Occasionally, through a gap in the trees, he would catch a brief glimpse of the house; but after a while he schooled himself to keep his gaze fixed on the road. The sight of the place was too painful to him; too closely connected with all he had lost. Soon, however, he had forded the stream that marked the end of Newton Railes land. Now the road ran with the Chacelands estate, but nothing could be seen of the house itself because of the high boundary wall surrounding the park.
From the church at Newton Childe came the sound of the clock striking four. Presumably, by this time, Anthony’s birthday celebrations would be in progress. Certainly his guests should be there by now. And, the September day being warm and sunny, with a pleasant south-easterly breeze blowing, they might very well be out in the gardens, playing croquet, perhaps, or taking a stroll before tea. Charles, passing so close to the place where his wife and children now were, was overcome by a sudden longing to see them once more, for the last time, and to bid them goodbye, from a distance, without their knowledge.
Confident that this could be achieved, he turned in at the first bridle-gate he came to and rode across the park, keeping to the higher ground, most of which was covered in trees. Thus hidden, he rode slowly on, until in a while he came to a place that afforded him a view of the house. A little further, descending now, and in another moment or two he was looking across at the south front, with its orangery flanked by loggias, and its lawn sloping down to the sunken garden, where fountains played over bronze nymphs sporting with dolphins in the lilied pool. And there on the lawn, as he expected, the small family party was gathered: Ginny and George, with Katharine between them; Dick a little way behind; and Susannah talking to Anthony.
A table and chairs had been set out, and three servants came and went, bringing the paraphernalia needed for taking tea out of doors. A maid began unfolding a cloth to spread on the table but while she was flipping it open there came a strong gust of wind that carried it clean out of her hands and sent it billowing over the lawn. The maid ran after it; Susannah and Anthony went to help; but then, just as they stooped to retrieve it, Anthony’s white terrier puppy came bounding swiftly across the lawn and flung himself bodily onto the cloth, snapping and yapping at those parts that continued to ripple in the wind.
Charles, sitting his horse in the distant beech grove, could see his family quite clearly: Susannah in her seersucker frock, striped in different shades of green; Katharine in white, a straw hat on her head; and Dick, standing a little apart, his hands in the pockets of his white flannel jacket. The voices of the group came only faintly across the distance and he could not hear what was said. But their laughter came clearly enough and the sound of it, especially Susannah’s, was almost more than he could bear.
God! What a fool he had been, risking so much and losing it all! His living. His honour. His family. In one way, as he well knew, he was already a stranger to his wife and children and had been for years. But somehow he had assumed that once he regained his old position, understanding would be restored, bringing back the love and respect which he, as husband and father, had every right to expect from them. Now that would never be; they were lost to him irrecusably now; and if he was already a stranger to them, a stranger he would remain forever, remembered only with shame and distress. Katharine, perhaps, would pity him, but his children would not. And what was pity, anyway, compared with all he had forfeited?
Emerging from these sombre reflections, he felt that a great deal of time had elapsed, though he knew it could only have been a few minutes. But now, as he looked across at the little group gathered on the Chacelands lawn, the people seemed further off than before, as though the tenor of his thoughts, by moving forward into the future, had already increased the distance between him and them. They had the appearance of a group captured in a picture, and he suddenly knew that, whatever the length of his life would be, this was how he would remember them: his wife and children, in company, laughing together in a sunlit garden.
He turned and rode away from them, but instead of returning the way he had come, he struck off in a direction that brought him round to the front of the house and so down to the main carriage-road. He would save himself three miles this way, and if the lodge-keeper saw him pass, well, what did that matter now?
At roughly the moment when Charles reached the road, Martin, driving a pony-trap, was turning in at the main gates. Beside him, on the seat, lay a wooden box containing a new, ‘improved’ magic la
ntern, made by John Betty of Birmingham, complete with a set of fifty slides: his birthday gift to Anthony. Also in the trap was a large basket filled with fruit from the mulberry tree at Railes, which had plimmed and ripened early that year, together with some bunches of grapes from the greenhouse vines which Katharine, in other days, had tended with such loving care.
Although he saw the rider ahead, coming towards him at a hand-gallop, he could not at first believe who it was, for Yuart, as he knew, had not visited Chacelands since his quarrel with George six years before. But Yuart it was, sure enough, and Martin, in surprise, drew rein and stopped. Yuart now drew near and almost it seemed, when he recognized Martin, that he too intended to stop. Martin saw the look on his face, ‒ saw his hands pull on the reins ‒ but then, as quickly, the man changed his mind and, giving the reins a sudden twitch, he put spur to his startled horse and rode swiftly past, going full gallop towards the gates. Martin, looking back, called after him, ‒ ‘Yuart! Wait!’ ‒ but got no response; and in another few seconds, Yuart, with scarcely a check, had ridden clattering through the gateway, to vanish from sight into the lane.
Martin freed forward again. The encounter had taken him by surprise and he wondered what it could signify. Then, a flick of the reins and he moved off, still puzzled and faintly anxious, but telling himself that in a short while the mystery would be resolved. So, as Charles rode swiftly away, leaving his family behind him forever, Martin drove on towards Chacelands House, where they were waiting for him.
Books by Mary E. Pearce
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The Old House at Railes: A heartwarming rags to riches Victorian family saga Page 43
