Daughter of the River

by Daughter of the River (retail) (epub)

  ‘You knew, yet you still went on jumping?’ Maddy was aghast at such insensitivity.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Miss Fitzherbert rose to her feet somewhat stiffly and brushed away the mud that marred the green velvet.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you? Because this be holy ground that belongs to the church, that’s why. It should be treated respectful, not as a place to exercise your horse.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Miss Fitzherbert gave an arrogant glance about her. She was as pretty as Annie had described, with her stylish clothes and her sleek honey-coloured hair. Her features were small and regular, but her lower lip protruded, betraying a wilfulness she seemed determined to prove. ‘And where does it say anything about not riding here?’ she demanded.

  ‘It don’t need to say. Everyone knows this be consecrated ground.’

  ‘Sadly I have not had the benefit of your superior education.’ Miss Fitzherbert’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘I know none of these things. Really, all this fuss about a lot of dead people who can’t feel anything.’

  ‘Maybe they can’t, but us as is left can! And us don’t like to see our loved ones trampled on to make sport for someone as should know better.’ A thought occurred to Maddy. ‘This idn’t the first time you’m done this, be un?’ she accused. ‘Twas you as spoiled the graves the other day. And you was at Evensong afterwards when the vicar spoke up most particular. You was lying! You did know ’tis wrong to ride in here.’

  ‘He was talking about some stray animal, as I recall. It was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Yes it were, and you knows it! Don’t make things worse by telling more lies.’

  Victoria Fitzherbert gave an arrogant toss of her head and looked haughtily down her small, straight nose.

  ‘I refuse to stand here and be abused by a dirty country drab. If I wish to ride here then I shall. Now fetch my horse, my good woman, and help me mount up again.’

  ‘I idn’t fetching no horse and you idn’t riding over no more graves, not while I be yer.’

  ‘Don’t be insolent. Fetch my horse, I say.’ Irritably Miss Fitzherbert began slapping her riding crop against her thigh.

  Miss Fitzherbert might be gentry but Maddy had no intention of being intimidated. She was far too angry and distressed. ‘I tell you I idn’t fetching no horse and you idn’t riding in this churchyard again.’

  ‘Then I suppose I must fetch him myself. Stand aside.’

  ‘No.’ Maddy faced her, solid and resolute.

  The contrast between the two young women could not have been greater, the one smart and elegant despite her fall, the other shabby and slightly dishevelled in her cotton dress and shawl, her hair wildly disordered as usual.

  ‘Stand aside, I say!’ ordered Victoria Fitzherbert. When Maddy made no move she took a step to one side, then a step to the other, but her opponent was too quick for her and blocked the way.

  ‘It idn’t no use trying to dodge,’ Maddy declared. ‘You’m going back the way you come, and you’m going on foot.’

  ‘I have never heard such impertinence!’ declared Victoria furiously. ‘Stand aside, I tell you, or you’ll be sorry.’

  She raised her riding crop to strike a blow, but again Maddy was too quick for her. She seized the other woman by the wrist. It was no contest. Maddy’s grip had been strengthened by a lifetime of toil, she could wield a spade or an oar with the best. Victoria Fitzherbert had never done anything more strenuous than ride a well-schooled horse. With a cry of pain, she let the crop fall to the ground. Maddy kicked it far out of reach before she let go of the young woman.

  ‘Robbins, help me!’ cried Victoria, nursing her bruised wrist. ‘Where are you when I need you? Can’t you see I am being attacked and assaulted? Come and give this woman a thrashing this instant.’

  There was a movement where the footpath entered the churchyard, and from beyond the sheltering elderberry bushes emerged a groom. He looked the picture of reluctance and discomfort.

  ‘Come away, Miss Fitzherbert,’ he said uneasily. ‘Let’s be going home. I’ll fetch your horse.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with your eyes, man?’ snapped Victoria. ‘This woman has just assaulted me. She is preventing me from getting by. Do something!’

  The groom took a couple of hesitant steps further into the churchyard. ‘See here, young woman, just you step back a bit and let your betters be,’ he said in a voice that was meant to be authoritative but which failed by a large margin.

  ‘There be plenty who’m my betters,’ retorted Maddy, never once taking her eyes off the other woman, ‘but there idn’t none within spitting distance.’

  ‘Don’t stand there bandying words,’ declared Victoria, her anger increasing. ‘You’ve got a riding crop. Use it! Get this wretch out of my way!’

  The groom looked at the crop in his hand as if he had not noticed it before. ‘Miss Fitzherbert…’ he began miserably.

  ‘Do something, you fool, if you value your position!’ Victoria cried impatiently.

  The groom took another reluctant step forward, the crop raised half-heartedly in his grasp.

  ‘That’s far enough, friend,’ a new voice suddenly rang out across the churchyard. Of all people, it was Cal Whitcomb.

  How long he had been standing there observing the scene Maddy did not know; he seemed to have emerged from behind the church like a shadow. He moved forward until he was level with her.

  ‘I wouldn’t come any nearer, if I were you,’ he went on brusquely, addressing the groom. ‘I suggest we let the ladies sort this out themselves. If you were to take a hand I’d be obliged to join in, to even things up.’

  The poor groom looked intensely relieved at this unexpected intervention, but Victoria’s lower lip became more mutinous.

  ‘Obey your orders, Robbins,’ she persisted. Take no notice of this country oaf.’

  ‘Madam,’ continued Cal Whitcomb, ‘country oaf though I doubtless am, I am also head and shoulders bigger than your manservant over there. I assure you I will not let him intervene in your dispute with Miss Shillabeer.’ He spoke calmly, patiently, yet there was a determined undertone to his voice. Cal Whitcomb was not a man to be trifled with.

  ‘Come away, please do, Miss Fitzherbert,’ implored the groom. ‘I’d be no match for this gentleman, anyone can see that. And, besides, you know how much your father disapproves of his servants getting into fights.’

  Victoria’s mouth lost its customary pout and assumed a grim line. The inequality of a match between Robbins and this interfering newcomer was certainly obvious, and despite her wilful determination she also recognised in Maddy someone who had been brought up in a much harder school. For once in her life she was not going to get her own way.

  ‘Collect my horse, Robbins,’ she snapped. ‘We’re going home.’

  ‘I’ll fetch the horse and lead it back to the road,’ said Cal Whitcomb in a voice which brooked no argument. ‘You can mount more easily there; we don’t want any more leaping over gravestones on your way out, do we?’

  He strode over to the animal that was now grazing peacefully among the more neglected graves, and led it away, taking care to keep it on the path.

  Maddy watched as Victoria Fitzherbert and her groom followed in silence, one sullen, the other relieved. The sound of hoofbeats receding up the hill echoed from beyond the hedge. Then Cal Whitcomb returned.

  ‘They’ve gone, thank goodness,’ he said. ‘That’s a troublesome young miss if I ever saw one. I don’t envy her groom.’

  Maddy regarded him, not sure how to reply. She was struck by the enormity of the situation. For a brief moment a Shillabeer and a Whitcomb had been on the same side. Nothing of the sort had happened since the days of the war against Napoleon. She ought to be antagonistic towards Cal Whitcomb, but she was grateful for his intervention. The Fitzherbert female would have no compunction in having her thrashed, and Maddy had not relished the prospect of being beaten with a riding crop like a stray dog. She would have fought back, of cours
e, but she could well imagine the humiliation of the outcome. She was thankful that she had avoided it. Why, oh why, though, did her deliverer have to be Cal Whitcomb?

  She ought to thank him, she knew, if she could think of the appropriate words.

  ‘I was lucky you came in the churchyard when you did,’ she said at last.

  ‘It was mere chance. I was early for my meeting with the squire and decided to come and visit my family graves. I’d heard about a stray horse doing damage up here. I came to make sure that all was well.’

  ‘And was everything all right?’ She still had not thanked him, but the words stuck in her throat.

  ‘Father’s grave was untouched. I’ve not had time to go over to my brother’s yet.’

  She remembered then: Christopher Whitcomb, the elder son, was not buried in the family plot, for he had died of the cholera some years back. The victims of that epidemic had been laid to rest together under the dread warning, ‘These graves must never be opened’.

  The tears that overwhelmed her took Maddy completely by surprise. One moment she was perfectly composed, the next she was crumpled against her mother’s headstone sobbing as if her heart would break. Her grief had something to do with her recent confrontation with the silly, selfish girl who had thoughtlessly ridden her horse over her mother’s remains and, quite illogically, the fact that she could not bring herself to thank Cal Whitcomb.

  How long her bout of weeping lasted she had no idea, her sense of time and place had vanished, swept away upon her inexplicable storm of tears. Only as her anguish subsided and someone pressed a large handkerchief into her hand did she realise that Cal Whitcomb was still standing there.

  ‘I don’t know what all that were about,’ she exclaimed eventually, scrubbing at her eyes with the proffered linen. ‘I feel a gurt fool, giving way like that.’

  ‘It’s understandable. If some mindless idiot had galloped over my family’s graves I’d have been very upset too.’

  ‘You’d not have bawled your eyes out, though, would you?’

  ‘Perhaps not – at least, not in public,’ he agreed.

  The stiff formality had gone from his voice. In its place Maddy noted a touch of humour, which surprised her. She looked with concern at the crumpled handkerchief she was grasping. It was sodden with her tears.

  ‘I’ll wash un and…’ She stopped. How on earth was she to return it to him? A Shillabeer could hardly go up to Oakwood Farm and knock on the door. The Dart would flow uphill before that happened!

  He understood her problem immediately. ‘You’d best keep it,’ he said.

  ‘But ’tis good linen!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He saw her expression of dismay and. ‘Don’t look like that. My mother doesn’t give me a hiding every time I lose a kerchief these days. I’m too big for that.’

  ‘I suppose you be. You must be as tall as our Lew and I can’t reach to clip him about the ears no more, neither.’

  ‘Just as well for your Lew.’

  ‘It didn’t happen often. He’m a good sort, be Lew. No trouble really.’

  The day was rapidly assuming an air of unreality. What was she doing, standing here discussing one of her brothers with Cal Whitcomb?

  The peculiarity of the situation must have struck him too, for he said, ‘You know, I should think that today you and I have spoken more than all the other Shillabeers and Whitcombs put together this century. I don’t suppose our two sides have exchanged more than a few dozen words over these last fifty or sixty years.’

  ‘Less than that if you cuts out the swearing.’

  Unexpectedly they both began to laugh. Maddy had to admit that he was easy to talk to. He was quite the gentleman when he spoke, although he had kept the Devon burr in his voice, but then he had been educated at the grammar school at Totnes and not just at the village school. Although she was reluctant to admit it, she had been quite impressed by the way he had addressed Victoria Fitzherbert. He had tackled her as if he had been her social equal, without a hint of hesitancy or awe. He looked the country gentleman too, in his tailored brown coat, well-fitting breeches, and gleaming leather gaiters. Dressed up to the nines for his visit to Hill House, insisted her inborn animosity; but she owed him some charity.

  ‘You’ll be late for your meeting with the squire,’ she said, glancing up at the church clock to confirm her words. Then she gasped in alarm. ‘That can’t be the time!’ she exclaimed. ‘The menfolk’ll be back for their tea and I habn’t started putting in Mother’s plants yet.’

  ‘I’ve still a few minutes to spare, I’ll help you. You finish setting the plants out where you want them to go and I’ll begin putting them in.’

  I can’t be beholden to him again, I just can’t, she told herself, as he crouched down and began planting the alyssum where she had laid it out.

  In the absence of another hand fork or trowel he seemed quite content to dig in the soft earth with his fingers. This gave her the opportunity to make some remark worthy for a Shillabeer to deliver to a Whitcomb.

  ‘Bain’t you afraid of dirtying your hands, then?’ she taunted.

  He looked at his fingers, covered in mud. ‘I’ve plenty of time to wash them off under the pump before I go to the squire’s,’ he said, ignoring her attempted insult. ‘Besides, you’ve prepared the ground well, it isn’t any problem to dig like this.’

  She was overcome with shame. Her jibe had been unworthy. Hadn’t he come to her aid twice in one hour? And, anyway, her remark had been quite unjustified. She had noticed that his hands, beneath their covering of earth, were hard and calloused. The rest of him might resemble a gentleman but his hands betrayed that he was a working farmer.

  ‘This idn’t easy!’ she exclaimed suddenly, laying aside the snapdragon she had been about to plant.

  ‘What isn’t?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘Well, I should be thanking you, but I can’t think of naught to say when by rights I shouldn’t be talking to you in the first place.’

  ‘I understand what you mean. At least, I think I do,’ he said, the sharp spark of humour returning to his grey eyes. ‘It is difficult, I suppose, considering that you and I have both lived here in the village all our lives and this is the first time we have ever spoken to one another.’

  ‘Tis difficult right enough,’ agreed Maddy with fervour. ‘Father would have the hide off my back if he thought I was just breathing the churchyard air with you, never mind holding a conversation.’

  ‘You aren’t alone,’ he assured her. ‘I’ve no need to fear a beating from my mother, but I’d have the day I spoke to a Shillabeer served up for dinner, tea, and supper from now until Whitsun without a break. Of the two, I think I’d prefer to have a beating and get it over with.’

  She looked at him carefully, not sure whether or not he was joking.

  ‘We’m agreed on one thing then,’ she said. ‘Us must hope and pray no one finds out about today. Thank goodness ’tis market day up to Totnes, so few folks be about to see us.’

  ‘And I shouldn’t think either Miss Fitzherbert or her groom will be keen to spread today’s adventure abroad, do you?’

  ‘No, but that don’t help my predicament none. I still haven’t thanked you.’

  ‘No thanks are needed.’

  ‘Yes they be,’ she retorted hotly. ‘Us Shillabeers knows our manners, no matter what you Whitcombs think. I wants to thank you all proper and elegant, if you’ll only give me a minute to think of the words. ’Twould be easy if you was Henry Beer or someone like that.’

  ‘Then close your eyes and imagine I am old Henry if it will help.’

  She was almost caught out, half closing her eyes.

  ‘Oh you!’ she exclaimed irritably, opening her eyes wide again. ‘Don’t you go having me on, just because you’m a Whitcomb and you think you’m superior. I be determined to thank you, so here I goes.’ She hesitated, not even certain how to address him. The usual prefixes to the name Whitcomb that were bandied about at home were
singularly inappropriate. ‘Mr Whitcomb,’ she began in her best manner, learned at the village school, ‘I be most grateful for the way you come to my aid today. As our families having been daggers drawn since goodness knows when, ’twas most generous of you. You could’ve walked away and let me get a thrashing from that Fitzherbert creature’s groom. And thank you for helping mend Mother’s grave and getting in a mess when you’m on your way to the squire’s and everything. I were always taught that there wadn’t never no good in a Whitcomb, but I knows now that idn’t true – don’t let Father or the boys know I said that or the fat’ll really be in the fire. Oh, stop laughing! I knowd that didn’t come out right, but you knows what I meant to say.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, still chuckling. ‘And in turn I thank you for the most original and sincere speech that’s ever been addressed to me. Under the circumstances, I don’t suppose we’ll ever get a chance to talk to each other again. But let me assure you I’ll never forget meeting you, not until my dying day.’ And he began to chuckle again.

  ‘Gurt fool,’ said Maddy ungraciously.

  Before the day was out rumours of the confrontation between Maddy and Victoria Fitzherbert were spreading about Stoke Gabriel like a grass fire. In the mysterious ways of the village telegraph, no one would admit to being the source, but the story gradually became embellished so that in the most popular version the two women had been rolling about among the gravestones, tearing each other’s hair out. The cause of the conflict spread about too, causing an angry outcry. As a result Dick Matthews, the village glazier, was hastily summoned to the White House to replace several windows which had been broken in an outburst of stone-throwing.

  For some reason Cal Whitcomb’s presence during the fracas in the churchyard was never mentioned; Maddy never discovered why not, and she was too thankful to investigate further. Nevertheless, during the following days she began to feel strangely unsettled.

  For years her life had been busy yet uneventful, one day much like another with only the progressing seasons marking any change. Now, in a very short time, so much had happened that was new and disturbing. Normally the arrival of new tenants at the White House would have been enough to absorb her interest – and that of the village – for weeks. Used to a quiet life, she was finding damaged graves and skirmishes with high-born females almost too much to cope with, let alone being beholden to a Whitcomb.