The Flood-Tide

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘A letter for you, ma'am,' she said, and lingered after handing it over, making significant noddings of her head and rollings of her eyes.

  ‘Very well. What is the matter, Jenkins? What is it you want?' Celia said impatiently, pausing in the opening of her letter.

  ‘Oh ma'am, haven't you heard? Terrible news, ma'am,' the maid said with relish.

  ‘What news? I haven't heard any news.'

  ‘Mr James Morland, ma'am,' the maid nodded importantly. 'Had a fall from his horse, a bad one, and was taken up lifeless, ma'am.'

  ‘What?' Celia cried out, but her attention was taken away at once by a strange moan from Mrs Skelwith, who half rose to her feet, and then sank back into her chair, deathly pale.

  ‘Good God, she's fainted!' Mr Somers said, and while he and the other ladies crowded around her, patting her hands and fanning her face, Celia shook her unfortunate maid and scolded her, and then, seeing the letter she had been given was from Morland Place, hastily opened it.

  Mrs Skelwith soon came to herself, and answered inquiries faintly with, 'I am quite well, quite well. Please, don't trouble yourselves.'

  ‘Are you sure, Mary?' Augusta asked, and being in an interesting condition herself, her mind naturally ran that way. 'Perhaps you may be in the family way? Have you thought of it, dear?’

  Before Mary could be obliged to answer, Celia, who had read her letter with some trepidation, said, 'It's all right. This is from Mary Morland, who explains it all. James had a fall and hit his head, but he is not seriously hurt, and will be quite well in a day or two. Jenkins, how could you be so stupid? Go away at once, and be more careful in future before you spread rumours.'

  ‘That was how I heard it, ma'am,' Jenkins said stubbornly. ‘I'm sure I can't help it if I'm told wrong.' She flounced out, and Celia turned to look at Mary with a sudden thoughtfulness, as several apparently unconnected threads came together in her mind.

  ‘Are you all right, Mary?' she asked abruptly, and Mary met her gaze with her usual calm.

  ‘Yes, of course. It was silly of me - but it is a little hot in here,' she said, and Celia let it pass.

  *

  The birthday celebrations were to spread over three days: on the first day a cricket match and horse races; on the second day a fair with all the usual competitions and quite a few new ones Jemima and Allen had thought up, finishing with fireworks and music; and on the third day a grand dinner and a ball.

  In spite of his accident, and the unpleasant and embarrassing interview with his father that had followed his recovery, James had regained enough of his aplomb to ride his chestnut in one of the races and even to smile when he won a pipe of wine. In the evening there was a quiet family supper, from which he could not well absent himself. Everyone was there to wish Allen a happy birthday and drink his health, and offer their presents, but when they settled down afterwards to sit about the fire talking, James excused himself by saying he had a headache and was going to bed.

  ‘Yes, you've had quite an energetic day, haven't you?' Allen said genially. 'You rode a good race, James.'

  ‘I hope you have not been doing too much,' Jemima said with some concern. 'If you wake up with a headache tomorrow, you must tell me, and we'll have the apothecary over straight away.'

  ‘I'll be all right, Mother,' James said, and kissed her, and went away, to prepare a bolster for his bed and slip out down the back stairs. He felt a little bad about it, especially since Mother and Father were being so kind, but he couldn't help it. He must see her, and tonight was his last chance, before her husband returned.

  The next day was the fair, and long before dawn the stallholders were setting up, and the fires were being lit for the cook-pits. By midday it was in full swing, and the fields around the moated house were filled with people and noise and heat and smells and a hearty holiday mood. The games and competitions were under way, the jugglers and entertainers, the dancing bear and the dog that walked on its hind legs, the travelling musicians, the fire-eater, the Educated Horse, the gypsy who told fortunes, the Eastern Mystic who walked on nails, and the sword swallower were all giving their shows, and people were eating, gawping, playing, talking, gambling, dancing, and flirting, just as the fancy took them.

  Celia Anstey, having shed her younger brothers at the cooked-meat stall, and her sisters at the gypsy's booth, wandered about in search of James, and finally found him, rather out of the throng, leaning against a tree and staring moodily at the bright scene before him. She went towards him eagerly, preparing to tease him a little and try to cheer his obvious sadness, when she suddenly saw what he was looking at, and stiffened. John Skelwith was standing at an ale stall nearby, talking to a group of his business acquaintances, with his wife on his arm. All Celia's hurt and jealousy rose up in her, and she walked over to James as stiff-legged as a threatened dog.

  ‘Well,' she said, and James started and turned to look at her, and then turned his head away and settled moodily against his tree again. 'Well, that's put a stop to your little game, hasn't it?'

  ‘I don't know what you're talking about,' James said wearily. 'Please, Miss Anstey, I don't want to be rude, but—'

  ‘No, I'm sure you don't want to be rude to me,' she said pointedly. 'After all, you need someone to confide in, and there can't be many people left you can talk to. In fact, Mr Morland, it may well be that I'm your only friend.’

  He pushed himself upright and turned on her irritably, like a bull goaded by flies. 'I have plenty of friends. I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't want to know. If you'll excuse me I'll—'

  ‘Stay where you are,' she said sharply. 'I say you need someone to confide in - someone who knows about you and Mary Skelwith.’

  He froze.

  ‘Yes, that surprises you, doesn't it? You thought no-one knew. You thought you had been very clever.'

  ‘There is nothing between Mrs Skelwith and me,' he said, and then, seeing it was no use to deny what she evidently knew, he gestured with his head towards the group he had been watching. 'Nothing, now. You see, he is back. It's all over, and if you were to speak of it to anyone, I would simply deny it, and then where would you be?'

  ‘You think it's all over? You poor simpleton. Don't you know she's taken to fainting? Poor Mary, she turns pale and faints away, and I wonder what can cause that? I don't suppose she's told him yet. He doesn't look as though she has, does he?’

  James stared at the talking group for a long moment, and then turned to Celia, his face rigid with anguish. ‘What do you want? he said in a low voice. Celia smiled, feeling her power over him at last, to make up for the years in which he had had power over her.

  ‘Be nice to me, Mr Morland, that's all. You danced with me a good deal at Shawes, and if you dance with me tomorrow at the ball, people will think your attentions are growing very pointed. Well, you have to marry some time, don't you? No one would be at all surprised if you were to ask for my hand. I'm a good match, after all, and you're only third son. Though, of course, people will see that I'm fond of you, too. I shall be very nice to you, I think, if you are nice to me.’

  She stepped closer, laying her hand on his arm and smiling up at him, and he looked down at her and saw the triumph in her smile and the apprehension in her eyes. He bared his teeth in what might charitably be called a grin.

  ‘You're a fool,' he said contemptuously, and shook her hand off, and walked away. Rage and chagrin burned her cheeks.

  ‘It's you that's the fool!' she shrieked after him. 'You'll see! You'll see!’

  But he did not stop, or even turn.

  *

  For days no-one spoke of anything but the Skelwith Scandal, and even after the first excitement had died down, the subject was revived almost daily for weeks, told and retold, losing nothing in the telling. Deliciously it was chewed over, how skimble-shanked old John Skelwith was cuckolded within weeks of his marriage by that young spike James Morland, a mere boy; and how, when the old man found out the state of affairs, he had
marched off on his own two bent legs, and broken in upon the Morland family in the middle of their family dinner to celebrate Master Morland's birthday to demand recompense. And how the lady herself, following her husband in the chaise as soon as she could get the servants to turn it out, ran in, practically en deshabille, and clutched her husband's arm, sobbing, as if she thought he was going to strike someone.

  York society was pretty uncharitable to the participants in the drama, finding their confusion and distress a matter for more mirth than sympathy, and Skelwith got shortest shrift of all, for it was generally agreed that when an ugly old man married a pretty young girl he must expect what he got, especially if he left her alone in the house for weeks at a time while he attended to business. Thus fame translated Mary at a stroke: she was a pretty young girl in this adventure, while at the time she married she was considered lucky to get Master Skelwith on account of being plain and twenty.

  Celia Anstey was much ridiculed for her part in the episode, which was entirely contrary to her expectations. To hear herself derided as a cross old spinster, so eaten up with jealousy because her infatuation with the young man was not returned that she tried to stir up a duel in which he might be shot, mortified her so severely that for days she shut herself in her room, sobbing dismally.

  ‘But what did you do it for, girl?' her father roared at her again and again. 'Did you want to make us a laughing stock?’

  It only added to her shame when she heard him say to John, 'Now tha mayst be thankful that Mary Morland turned thee down. It wouldn't do to be mixed up with that family now,' and to see John's patient sorrow as he bore the sting. In the end Sir John solved the immediate problem by packing Celia, her mother and her unwed sisters off to Harrogate to take the waters and keep out of the way until the affair died down.

  Various were the emotions of the Morland Family, immediately and afterwards, but amusement was not one of them. It was they, of course, who witnessed the wounded husband's rage, so great that it transcended for a short while his undistinguished appearance, so that while he stood blazing in the doorway to the dining room there was nothing ludicrous about him, despite his bowed legs, despite the day-old traveller's stubble on his chin, and the large old-fashioned wig knocked askew on his head. It was they, too, who saw his young wife cling to his arm and beg his forgiveness, and saw him suddenly begin to weep.

  The family dinner was broken up, the birthday ball cancelled at once, and on Allen, who should have been celebrating as the head of a happy, united and prosperous family, fell the burden of the interviews: with the miscreants, and with the outraged husband. The latter was the longest and most unpleasant, for while he sympathized entirely with Master Skelwith's anger, he had to try to soothe it, and to persuade him out of more violent and public expression of it. Skelwith was for casting Mary off, for calling James out, for horsewhipping him, for divorcing her, for having her whipped through the streets as a whore, for having them both put in the stocks in the Thursday Market, and finally for shooting him, her, and then himself to put an end to the unhappy business.

  Allen wisely let him rage for a time, and then began gently to persuade him that a public casting-off of Mary would do no-one any good, and would only bring him public odium. It was a delicate point, for John Skelwith assumed that public opinion would be with him, while Allen, who knew the world pretty well, was already convinced that it would find the old man's plight laughable.

  ‘Consider, sir, a divorce would need an Act of Parliament. It would be discussed in public places, written up in the newspapers. People would say - I'm truly sorry, but I'm afraid they would - that you weren't able to keep her, even for a few weeks.' Skelwith scowled, but Allen saw that he took the point. 'Consider again, the young woman is penitent, she has learned her lesson, is ready to make all amends that possibly can be made in such a sad case. Would it not be better to forgive her? You have the rest of your life to live with her. Would you throw away everything for one early mistake?'

  ‘Mistake?' Skelwith said dangerously.

  ‘Error. Crime. Sin. Call it what you will. She is young, sir, and high spirited, and I doubt she understood fully what she was about.' He was sure she did, but no matter. ‘She has learned her lesson. Why not let it end there?'

  ‘But the young man - he should not get off scot-free.'

  ‘I think you can safely leave him to me, sir,' Allen said. Skelwith cocked his head on one side.

  ‘Oh can I, sir? I don't think I can, sir. I think you will be lenient with him, your own son, sir. I want him horsewhipped. I want him—'

  ‘Yes, I know. But who is to do it?' Allen said quietly. There was a brief silence, and then Allen said, 'I shall deal with him, sir, with all the severity the case deserves, I promise you. You have my word on that.’

  When Skelwith finally departed, Allen leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes wearily. All the severity it deserves, he thought. 'God damn the boy,' he exploded aloud. 'Why couldn't he take his pleasures discreetly?’

  Edward put his head around the door. 'Did you call, Father?’

  No. Yes - send James to me. Where is he?'

  ‘He's in his room. I've been talking to him.'

  ‘Is he penitent?' Allen asked, without much hope. Edward shook his head.

  ‘Not a bit. He says that after the fuss you made over Maggie Henshaw, he gathered that if he had a mistress it would have to be a married one, and now he has done what you wanted you're upset about it.'

  ‘Upset!'

  ‘He said he didn't want to risk the brothel in Petergate, so what else could he do?' Edward shrugged. 'I suppose it's only what's done every day of the week in every town in the country, Papa. Men will take mistresses, and women will be unfaithful.'

  ‘But damn it, not a woman only just married! Why did he have to choose her, of all people?'

  ‘Well, Papa,' Edward said gravely, 'I think, oddly enough, that he is in love with her.' He hesitated before asking, 'What did you agree with Skelwith?'

  ‘I said I would give James the punishment the case deserved.'

  ‘I see. Yes, that's very subtle. Well, I'll go and fetch the miscreant, shall I?'

  ‘Yes, do, Ned. God knows what I can say to him. Where's your mother?'

  ‘In the drawing room. She's taking it rather badly. When I've brought you James, I'll go and sit with her.’

  *

  Mary and William had taken themselves out of the way as soon as they could, and Edward found his mother alone, sitting staring at the fire. He sat on the arm of her chair and put his arm round her shoulders, and said, 'Don't take it to heart so, Mother. There's no harm done.'

  ‘No harm done?' she said.

  ‘No - believe me. Skelwith has been placated, James will be rebuked, and the gossips will have a wonderful time for a few days, and then it will all be forgotten. If the old fool hadn't made such a fuss, it would never have got this far in the first place.'

  ‘You don't think he should have made a fuss?' Jemima said. 'Really, Ned, sometimes I just don't understand you. Not make a fuss when he finds his wife is having an affair with a boy several years younger than her, only weeks after their marriage?'

  ‘Well, what did he expect? It isn't such an astonishing thing, now is it, Mother? It's been going on since the world began, and will go on for ever. Half the literature of the world is about old men being cheated by young wives And what harm is there, in the end? It will all blow over, you'll see.'

  ‘But what about the sanctity of marriage?' Jemima cried. 'It is a holy sacrament.'

  ‘There was never anything sacred about that marriage, nor about two-thirds of modern marriages, I should say. She wanted his money, he wanted her youth, so they made a bargain. It's business, Mother, not a sacrament.'

  ‘Edward, don't talk like that, please. You have been brought up with better ideas, surely?'

  ‘Things are changing, Mother. Ideas are changing. People today don't just accept everything they're told. Religion is being set aside, when it d
oesn't pay.'

  ‘Edward!'

  ‘Oh, don't worry, Mother, I'm still your dutiful son. That isn't me talking. I'm only telling you how people think. Things are changing, and you can't turn the tide back. People want to decide for themselves what's right and what's wrong, and what to do with their lives. They're not content to be told, and to ask no questions.'

  ‘Very well, but we are talking of individuals, not these "people" with whose ideas you are so well acquainted. We are talking of young Mary Loveday ruined, John Skelwith deeply wounded and unhappy. And what about the child?'

  ‘Ah, the child,' Edward said thoughtfully. 'Well, I suppose it will be all the same to the child, one way and another. It will be born in wedlock, and if it has some other man for a father, I don't suppose it will ever know. Such things happen all the time.'

  ‘But not—' Jemima was about to say, but not in this family. And then she remembered the night of the ball at Shawes, and Allen's revelations about Marie-Louise's bastard child, who was, when all was said, her own brother. Her father, her dear, revered, beloved father, had sinned too. Edward was right. She burst abruptly into tears.

  ‘Oh Mama, please don't cry!' Edward dropped to the floor in front of her, knelt at her knees and tried to take her in his arms, more distressed than he could have expected. 'Oh don't, don't. There's nothing here worth that. You've never cried, Mama, never.'

  ‘I don't understand anything any more,' she whimpered through her tears and her hands. 'The whole world seems to have turned upside down. There's you - and James -and—'

  ‘Oh dearest, darling Mama, please don't cry! I'm still here, still your same Edward, and I'll always be here, I'll never go away, never change. And James—'

  ‘What will become of James?' she said miserably.

  ‘James will survive,' Edward said firmly. ‘He will always survive, even if the whole world goes up in flames. He is a salamander. Sooner weep for me than for James!' She fumbled for her handkerchief, and he drew his out and thrust it into her fingers, and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose and sat up, her old brisk self again.