The Rector's Daughter (Part Two of The People of this Parish Saga)

by Nicola Thorne

  History was repeating itself, Carson thought, as Prince effortlessly climbed the last half-mile to the house.

  He passed the farmer from the home farm who was clipping his hedge, and stopped to talk to him. Edwin Crook’s family had farmed the home farm since the beginning of the previous century, and one of Margaret’s first acts when she became Lady Woodville had been to save the family from eviction, since when the Crooks had been grateful and loyal tenants of the Woodvilles.

  ‘Afternoon, Master Carson,’ Edwin Crook said, touching his forehead.

  ‘Afternoon, Edwin,’ Carson replied. ‘I see you’ve got some fine new heifers in the lower field.’

  ‘Bent on improvin’ my stock, zur.’ Edwin gestured towards the big house. ‘Seems a lot going on at the Oak.’

  ‘Yes.’ Carson glanced once more at the workmen scurrying around the scaffolding like busy ants.

  ‘You must be getting very excited ‘bout your weddin’, zur,’ Edwin grinned toothily.

  ‘I am,’Carson affirmed.

  ‘Well, if your bride is anything like your mother you will be a fortunate man, and we shall all be well off. Your mother was a lovely woman and we miss her, zur.’

  ‘I’m sure you will like my bride very much,’ Carson said. ‘She will be a worthy successor to my mother.’

  ‘I already know Miss Yetman, zur. I sings in the church choir. She has a great gift for music, a beautiful voice.’

  ‘She has indeed,’ Carson said wearily. How many times did people appear to be trying to console him for her lack of looks by pointing out her great gift for music and other virtues.

  Of what use was music in the marriage-bed?

  ‘We hope all your family will be there on the day, Edwin.’ Carson took up the reins again.

  ‘Oh, we will, zur. And oi’ll be singing my ‘art out in the choir. We’s practising already.’

  ‘That’s great news.’ Carson raised his whip in a salute and turned swiftly away, watched by a rather puzzled farmer who stood staring after him, scratching his head.

  Everyone thought that Connie Yetman was a very odd choice for the heir to Pelham’s Oak, known for his liking for pretty girls.

  There were some who unkindly said it was on account of her money.

  When Carson had stabled his horse, rubbed him down himself and given him his oats, he made his way slowly towards the house, where even now he was conscious of the pre-wedding bustle. Lights were going up in the trees in the grounds, and the location for the marquee for the common people, the estate workers, had already been marked out.

  Inside, servants were hurrying about in preparation for the dinner his father was giving for Connie, and about which, for some reason, he appeared inordinately excited. Indeed, for days, weeks even, his father had been a different man from the melancholy creature Carson had known since his mother had died; a man irritable and querulous, driven to drink by debts and his fears for the future. At least now that burden had been taken from his mind, and for this alone Carson, who had sorely tried his parents during his youth, felt he had made compensation. The effect on his father had indeed been remarkable.

  Arthur came ambling towards Carson as he entered the house.

  ‘Your father was anxious about you, Mr Carson.’

  ‘Anxious, why?’ Carson looked on the hallstand to see if there were any letters or messages for him.

  ‘It’s a most important occasion. He thought you might have forgotten, sir.’

  ‘Forgotten the formal party to introduce my future wife? Unlikely!’ Carson said with a mirthless laugh and, at that moment, the door of the small parlour opened and Guy emerged, raising his hands with pleasure when he saw his son.

  ‘Carson. I thought ...’

  ‘Father, I wouldn’t forget a night like this.’ He looked at his watch. ‘There is plenty of time to change before dinner. Besides, everyone knows everyone. Why are you so excited? Why is everyone dashing about as though there was a fire?’

  ‘Ah, but I have a special surprise.’ Guy gleefully rubbed his hands together. ‘A very special one.’

  ‘And what is that, Father, may one ask?’ Carson’s voice was distinctly bored.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you now, would it?’ Guy gave a school boyish giggle and disappeared back into the parlour, shutting the door behind him.

  Carson looked at Arthur, who also had raised eyebrows.

  ‘Have you any idea what is the nature of the surprise, Arthur?’

  ‘No, sir.’ The butler shook his head. ‘But an extra place has been laid for dinner for an unexpected guest. We were given our instructions at the last minute.’

  ‘Well, that can’t be very exciting,’ Carson replied, and went up the stairs to his room.

  When Carson, who had been reluctantly shrugged into white tie and tails at the last moment by the footman sent to fetch him, reached the drawing-room, it seemed already bursting with people. He spotted his Aunt Eliza and Uncle Julius; his cousins Dora, Laurence and Sarah Jane; Sarah Jane’s brother Bart, Sophie, Connie, of course, and Miss Fairchild – all of whom were grouped around a rather plump but striking woman in a very beautiful evening-gown whom he had never seen before.

  He stood on the threshold for a moment, and when he saw Connie gazing wistfully at him he wished so much that he could retreat, go back to his room, throw himself on the bed and go to sleep, forget the whole thing.

  However, by now everyone was aware of his presence, and Guy, coming over to him, murmured:

  ‘Last but not least, Carson, as usual.’ He then took him by the arm and drew him towards the crowd.

  ‘I am very sorry, Father.’ Carson bowed nervously to the assembled crowd, but his eyes were held by the strange woman, who also seemed interested in him. She was not tall, but she had presence. She held herself well and added inches by rather high heels. Her hair was piled high on her head in the Edwardian style favoured by women of a certain age. She had a fringe, and loose ringlets clustered to one side of her face behind her ear; her full-skirted gown with its deep neckline was of sapphire-blue, and a necklace of diamonds sparkled at her throat. The mounds of her beautiful breasts were daringly visible. Carson swallowed uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, Carson,’ the stranger said after their mutual inspection was over. ‘I can see you don’t remember me.’

  ‘I ... er.’ Carson searched deeply in the recesses of his memory.

  ‘This is your Aunt Agnes.’ Guy seemed bursting with pride. ‘Formerly Agnes Yetman, now Mrs Wendell Gregg, fresh from the United States of America.’

  Agnes extended her hand in a friendly greeting. ‘I am your aunt by marriage, as the sister of Ryder Yetman. I was only teasing. You were scarcely three when I left home.’ She then enfolded him in an embrace, and he was conscious of an overpowering, almost cloying sweetness. Scent and femininity – something he couldn’t quite place. He wanted to rest his head on that comfortable bosom, to encircle that broad waist with his arms. Painfully, instead, he broke away, murmuring: ‘How do you do, Aunt Agnes?’ And then the spell was broken and everyone started talking at once.

  ‘And engaged to be married –’ Agnes gave him a roguish look ‘– to my little half-sister Connie, of all people!’ Agnes reached for Connie’s reluctant hand and drew her towards her. ‘What a very fortunate young lady you are, Connie dear, to find such a handsome husband.’

  ‘Yes, Agnes,’ Connie mumbled, staring at her shoes. She wore the pink satin that Mrs Pond had created especially for this occasion and, as she had known she would, felt horrible in it. It was too old for her. It had too many pleats and flounces, it was a dress for a dowager, and yet the colour was too young. It made her look scraggy, virtually bosomless, and when she saw the well-upholstered breasts, the frank sensuality of her half-sister, and Carson’s reaction to her, she had felt she could scream. There were more than twenty-five years between Agnes and herself, yet she felt small, mean, and totally wretched.

  Agnes turned deliberately to talk
to Julius Heering, Guy fluttering about by her side, clearly delighted at her presence. And, indeed, Agnes did seem quite at home in a house she had seldom visited, and moved at ease from Julius to Sophie, from Laurence to Bart Sadler, to whom she talked for some time. Her poise was assured, elegant, as she stood with a glass of champagne in her hand. She was, she seemed to proclaim, a woman of the world, widely travelled and light-years away from that Agnes Yetman, a spinster of over thirty, who had vanished with an air of mystery about her many, many years before.

  ‘Do you remember Agnes?’ Carson at last asked Connie as they stood apparently dumbstruck by the apparition. Connie shook her head.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Why did she go away?’

  Miss Fairchild, hovering anxiously behind the betrothed pair like the good fairy at a christening, intervened in a low voice, eager to display her superior knowledge.

  ‘She was a very restless young woman,’ she said in a hoarse whisper, ‘never satisfied. Agnes always thought herself a cut above everyone else. However, she has done well to go to America and marry a millionaire.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Carson looked impressed. ‘And where is he?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Ah!’ Now he understood. ‘Then she has inherited all his money?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Miss Fairchild grew thoughtful.

  Dora Yetman, technically Connie’s great-niece, though she was older than her by some years, now joined them. Ryder and Eliza’s only daughter was a tall girl with strong features, copper-coloured hair and an extrovert personality. She wore for the evening’s occasion a long green dress which was not particularly stylish since, like her mother, Dora was much more interested in horses and country pursuits than fashion. Yet her dress became her, it suited her colouring, and Carson idly wondered why his cousin had remained unmarried and even, it seemed, unattached. Her name, as far as he knew, had never been linked to that of a man.

  Dora giving the engaged couple a friendly smile, being on good but not intimate terms with both, said:

  ‘I must say, Uncle Guy seems very taken by Aunt Agnes. He seems to have acquired a new lease of life.’

  ‘I daresay she’ll be going back to America,’ Miss Fairchild said sharply. ‘From what little she told me, it would appear she has business interests there.’

  At that moment Arthur, moving in a stately manner like a drum-major, caused everyone to stop talking and made a formal announcement that dinner was served. Forming themselves into pairs, led by Guy and Agnes, the company solemnly processed to reassemble in the dining-room.

  Nothing had been spared to impress Agnes with the splendour of the occasion. Guy sat at one end of the long table and Sophie at the other. On Guy’s right sat Agnes, and on Sophie’s right, placed there intentionally, was Bart who was now considered by those in the know to be walking out with Sophie. His calls to the house were frequent and he behaved punctiliously; taking her for drives, naturally with her children, or calling for tea, naturally with them too. Consequently they were seldom alone, an anomalous state of affairs which Sophie found depressing. She felt she didn’t know exactly where she stood with him; whether his intentions were honourable or his mention of marriage, not repeated since he had first mentioned it, sincere.

  Yet he attracted her and, slowly, she had found herself unbending with him, and she increasingly thought of him, if not as a prospective husband – he was so reticent on the subject – as a friend. So, as he unfolded his napkin and leaned in a confiding manner towards her, she bent an ear, a smile on her face, as if to a familiar.

  ‘A very wealthy lady, I understand,’ he said sotto voce.

  ‘So she says.’ Sophie’s expression was sceptical.

  ‘What do you mean “so she says”?’ Bart murmured.

  ‘Well, it’s very mysterious, isn’t it, for her to come back unannounced, to stay at the Crown in Blandford, not to contact any of her relations at all – after all, she is Wenham-born – and then she is seen merely by chance by my mother and me one day in Blandford.’

  ‘I don’t think you should take it so amiss.’ Bart still kept his voice low. ‘Having left so long ago, she naturally wishes to have time to find her feet. Sophie, when are you coming with me to see the stone?’ He lowered his voice even more, and there was a degree of urgency in it. The sudden change of topic surprised her.

  ‘Is it ready?’

  ‘You know it’s ready. It’s ready to be engraved. All I wait for now is your approval.’

  ‘I have been so preoccupied, so busy,’ she replied with evident unease. ‘The wedding is almost upon us.’

  ‘Poor little thing,’ Bart crooned maliciously, ‘a fine bride she’ll make.’

  ‘She will make a fine bride,’ Sophie hissed back. ‘Don’t be unkind.

  ‘You can hardly say Carson is in love with her. I never saw a bridegroom look so awkward in my life. Half scared to death, if you ask me.’

  ‘Carson has been a bachelor too long.’ Sophie looked at her neighbour meaningfully. ‘He is probably nervous at such a big step. A big step for any man ... or woman,’ she added. ‘Besides, he’s slow to show his feelings.’

  ‘That’s not what I hear. He has shattered a good many hearts in the district. Prudence Dimmock, who works for my brother, has had her heart broken by him. Says he promised marriage, and has threatened to throw herself into the river.’

  ‘Then it is high time he settled down,’ Sophie said reprovingly. ‘Besides, Bartholomew Sadler, despite your protests you gossip too much and, if you ask me, pay too much attention to it.’

  Sophie’s school-mistressy attitude amused and disarmed Bart. Unlike any woman he had ever fancied, she intrigued him. Getting her into his bed would indeed be a conquest, and one worth waiting for. He pretended to be chastened by her reprimand and applied himself to what was on his plate.

  Eliza, on the other side of Carson, was watching Agnes carefully but surreptitiously. Agnes, she knew, blamed her for what had happened to her; her exile in Weymouth, her treatment as a pariah by her family. It was not true, but Eliza could understand the reason for her coolness as they had greeted each other. On the other hand, Agnes’s appearance startled her. She doubted that she would have recognised her had she met her on the streets of Blandford. She had always had character, but now she was a personality; distinct, mature, formidable. On Eliza’s other side her son Laurence also seemed riveted by the appearance of his father’s sister he could scarcely remember; the enigmatic Aunt Agnes, who had left Wenham in the 1880’s to be seen and heard of no more.

  ‘Why did Aunt Agnes go to America, Mother?’ Laurence asked conversationally.

  ‘She was always ambitious,’ Eliza replied. ‘Wenham bored her and I think the New World appealed to her.’

  ‘And she was never heard of again?’

  ‘She never kept in touch. We never knew where she went. She left some years before Ryder and her father died. Agnes was always dissatisfied. Always yearning for the moon.’

  ‘Well,’ he said with a meaningful nod towards Guy, ‘she seems very satisfied now.’

  Perhaps, of all people in the room, Eliza was the only one who knew exactly why. She had known of the affair between them. She had arranged for Agnes to be removed to where she had her baby. She knew why – and she observed it with some alarm – her brother Guy was simpering over Agnes, completely excluding from his attentions the bride-to-be, who sat shyly next to him, her importance eclipsed by the vivacity, the grace, the savoir-faire of the woman on his other side.

  Connie picked at her food; next to her, Carson also lacked appetite both for food and conversation. Miss Fairchild opposite was alarmed by the silence, the lack of rapport, compared to which Guy’s absorption with Agnes was irritating. He and Agnes chatted away, openly flirted with each other as though no one else was present. Miss Fairchild simmered. She was also regretfully of the opinion that Connie’s dress did not, after all, suit. The colour was wrong, the style ageing. It had also been a mistake t
o apply the curling tongs so vigorously to her hair, which frizzed up above her face like that of some native from the South Seas. And if only Carson would smile ...

  Oh, how apprehensive she was that something would go wrong. How she longed for the day of the wedding, and to know that her little chick was, at last, safely married.

  Next to Miss Fairchild was Julius, a man of few words, who also seemed unnaturally preoccupied. Miss Fairchild found she had little to say to him, but on her other side was Laurence and, leaning past her with a polite smile – she took no notice, her eyes on the pair opposite – Julius said:

  ‘How is your project coming along?’

  ‘Which project?’ Laurence asked over Miss Fairchild’s head. ‘We have several.’

  ‘The one in Dorchester.’

  ‘It’s coming along very well.’ However, an anxious expression flitted over Laurence’s face. ‘But we don’t see too much of your friend Mr Wainwright.’

  ‘He’s not my friend,’ Julius expostulated indignantly. ‘I have never even met the man to my knowledge.’

  ‘But your bank provided us with references.’

  ‘Oh, did it?’ Julius’s lofty tone implied that he was way above this sort of thing. ‘Then he must be all right; but please don’t refer to him as “my” friend.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so anxious to disown him.’ Laurence sounded annoyed with his stepfather. ‘He is already behind with his payment and the situation is a little worrying.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Sarah Jane, overhearing the conversation, leaned over to her husband. ‘I tell you, everything will be well. Bart vouched for him. He knows him very well.’

  Whereupon Bart, hearing his name, looked up.

  ‘You vouched for Mr Wainwright, didn’t you, Bart?’ his sister said.

  ‘Vouched?’ Bart looked perplexed. ‘I never “vouched”. I merely introduced him to Laurence.’

  ‘Everyone seems anxious to distance themselves from my client,’ Laurence said angrily, ‘and leave me in the lurch.’