by Joan Smith
They chatted for a long time, and when finally he arose to go, she said, “You’ll do just fine as the Duke, Helver. I’m always here if you need me.”
“Why couldn’t you be forty years younger, Travers, so I could marry you? I don’t want ever to lose you.”
“Oh, you can do better than an old lady like me. What we must do now is find you a nice wife. Your flirts won’t like it, but they can’t be depended on. They’ve all been getting married off while you were away, you know.”
“All?” he asked with a teasing smile. “I’ll have to turn off half my tenant farmers and bring in some new blood if that’s the way they’ve been cutting up behind my back.”
A pretty little maid hustled past, casting a welcoming smile on the new master, and the look was returned with interest. Travers drew in a breath and surmised that Helver’s resolutions to do better had not quite firmed up yet. “She’s engaged to one of the grooms,” she mentioned casually.
“I’m just looking, Travers. Jealous?” he asked, and strolled back to his room.
* * *
Chapter 2
Some three miles west of the Duke of Saymore’s sprawling palace there nestled a homey Tudor mansion whose owner would not have exchanged it for the grandest palace in the land. It dated from the late fourteen hundreds and was of that beautiful stone yellowed with the minutest of vegetable matter accumulated over the centuries to turn the stone tawny. The windows were mullioned and leaded, the door a slab of oak five inches thick embedded with metal studs to reinforce it. It was ornamented by no gables, columns or pediments but stood in its original splendour, soaking up sun, rain and history and reflecting somehow both the elements and the past in its pure lines.
The Tudor atmosphere prevailed inside as well as out. No modern furniture or pictures were allowed to intrude in this den of antiquity. There was a Gothic spirit prevailing in the main hall, not Gothic run mad with finials and gargoyles, but the woodwork was panels in frames with some modest carving decorating the arches. The furnishings were heavy and not of a sort to encourage their being moved about. Cook had to fight to boil her water in a closed pan, and the joints were still roasted over an open fire in the middle of the kitchen. It was not unknown for the owner, Mrs. Durden, who termed herself Dame Durden after the Tudor fashion, to have a pig or calf roasted in her main room in the massive fireplace that could have roasted a horse without crowding.
Dame Durden’s chief delight was to live in the past. She outfitted herself in heavily embroidered, wide-sleeved gowns and possessed, though she only wore them in her boudoir, a pair of yellow silk bags with puffed toes that were the footgear of a lady from her favourite period. One of her few compromises with the century in which she lived was to use a fork at the table, but her knife at least she wore on her, like a good Tudor. She winced every time she saw a man use a handkerchief—newfangled contraption—and denigrated any male who wore a beard unless he had earned it by right of soldiering or advanced years. Her servants accepted her strange ways for, other than Cook, they were not much discommoded by them.
She was considered a little strange in the village, but she drove a two-horse carriage, she had a coat of arms, she was an educated lady active in the church and the Historical Society, she shopped locally and paid cash, and so she was accepted. They took her in much the same spirit as Farmer Stokes’s three-legged hen, which was also a good layer—with a little suspicion, a little laugh at her eccentricity and a grudging recognition of her worth. She was mentioned with a kind of shameful pride to visitors as Dame Durden of Durden Court, a Tudor home mentioned in all the guide books of Wiltshire.
Dame Durden was a widow and she lived with her one child, a daughter named Edgitha. Dissatisfied with the plain Marys and Elizabeths of Tudor days, the Dame had reached further into the past for a name for her child. Reverting deeper into the past was not despised in intangible matters such as a name. The queen of Edward the Confessor was good enough for the Dame, and she borrowed her name for the child. The modern Georgianas and Arabellas were anathema to her; and, in fact, she made it a point to call Georgiana Hartford Miss George, to show the family her opinion of such made-up names. The name Edgitha, being so odd and difficult of pronunciation, had dwindled to Edith on all occasions except those that required a signature.
Edith had more trials to bear than her name. Unlike her mama, she did not enjoy being pointed out as a quiz when she went to the village. Also, she would have liked to go more often to Tisbury, for she and her mother were fairly isolated at the Court. But running into the village was not encouraged by the Dame. Edith had been educated at home by her mother, had never gone away to even the village school. She hadn’t a single friend but her mama and the servants. Her mother fared a little better, but she sheltered Edith from too close a connection with common people, lest the mothers’ sons get ideas about marrying her. In short, Edith was lonely, with that gnawing loneliness of the young, waiting for their lives to begin.
In the main drawing room at Durden Court, Edith sat mending a tapestry with her mother. There was a deal of mending and patching done at the Court, to hang on to the dear relics of the past. Edith’s curls were not done up in a metal woven caul like her Tudor mother’s, but dressed neatly in a bun that had a Tudorish look to it all the same. Her face, too, might have come from a painting of the period. It was a little ivory oval of a face, with dark, serious eyes and a mouth that looked sad in repose but could tilt up mischievously when she was amused. She was not amused now.
“April fifteenth,” Dame Durden said. “It will seem odd not to be holding our May Day celebration.” An accusing brow was lowered at her daughter at this sad sentence. The reason it was not to be held was that Edith, though usually a compliant enough daughter, had dug in her heels and refused to be made a laughingstock by perching on a hay wagon to ride through the roads. At eighteen last year, she had become quite adamant in the matter. It was her first attempt at setting up her back against any of her mother’s schemes, and since that time she had begun to develop a streak of self-determination that was extremely unattractive in the Dame’s view.
The present bone of contention between them was in the matter of a husband for Edith. What they considered eligible varied widely. For the Dame, the blood in the veins was of paramount importance; but, for the daughter, it was the flesh outside the veins that mattered more, and, of course, a pleasant disposition. They neither of them gave more than the necessary passing thought to material considerations. The Durdens were not fabulously wealthy, but they had more than a competence.
“This will be the second year we have not held it. You must be getting used to the idea, Mama.”
“It is a shame to let the good old customs die out. No more cock-fights on Shrove Tuesday, no bonfires on Midsummer-eve, no white garlands hung over the lintels, no handball played for tansy cakes on Easter. Young ladies will next be taking into their heads not to get married.” These former gay revels were known to the Dame only through books, and it was really the last-named tradition that she wished to introduce for discussion.
“I don’t see any sign of that custom dying out, at least,” her daughter answered, choosing to make it a matter of general mores.
“It seems to be dying out in this house,” her mother said, getting to the point. “There is Doctor Thorne dangling after you any time this twelve-month with never a word of encouragement for his pains.”
“I cannot like him, Mama.”
“Not like him? My dear, your wits are gone begging. He traces his ancestors back to Earl Alfgar in the Saxon period, with never a drop of Norman blood in the entire family.”
“I wish he had a little Norman blood to warm him up,” Edith replied and refused to glance up to receive the withering eye she knew to be turned on her at this heresy.
“A minister of the Church of England doesn’t want warm blood,” she was told. “You forget Dorion Thorne received his doctorate degree at Oxford last yea
r with a double first. A highly educated and eligible gentleman.”
“And you forget, Mama, he has not yet found a living.”
“He won’t be long being offered a post. Why, the Tisbury living is vacant these six months. I shouldn’t doubt he’ll be offered that.”
“He won’t be offered it till Helver gets home,” Edith replied, for the living was one belonging to the Duke of Saymore.
“Why, he is home! Did I not tell you?”
The Dame knew perfectly well she had not told Edith this startling piece of news. In their dull lives the weekly visit of the higgler with his game and produce was talked about for hours, and the arrival back at the Hall of Helver would be discussed for weeks. Edith had not been told because her mother strongly desired to see her engaged before any visits with Helver took place. Like every mother with a nubile daughter, she was frightened witless of Helver Trebourne; yet his return could not be kept a secret, so she mentioned it in this seemingly casual fashion. Edith’s face lit up like the sun.
“Home? When?” she shouted and leapt from her chair, her end of the tapestry going to the floor.
“Sally told me this morning. She’s seeing one of the grooms from the Hall. He got back yesterday. He’s been to Elba to see Napoleon, the bounder. Can you beat that? He’ll be dashing off to Saint Helena next, no doubt, to resume the friendship.”
“I wager he will! It sounds just like him.”
“Indeed it does,” the Dame said sharply, and wondered that it should throw her daughter into such a paroxysm of joy. She foresaw a very bad spring developing. “He was always partial to Napoleon, and he calls himself an Englishman. Well, he’s part French himself, if it comes to that. The second Duchess was a Norman, and blood will tell in the end. What a trial that boy has been to his poor parents. Still, as he is back, he will be appointing a Vicar, and I shouldn’t be surprised to see Doctor Thorne chosen.”
It was the Dame’s firm resolve that as soon as Dorion Thorne got a post, he would marry Edith. She was nineteen years old and in need of a husband to settle her down. She was becoming very restless of late. Only natural that at her age she would be wanting to have a home of her own, a husband and a family. The Dame herself had been married at seventeen, and a mother at Edith’s age.
Edith frowned at her mother’s statement, for the views held by her parent were no secret from her. She, too, wanted to marry and leave Durden Court; but any gentleman she could care for at all was instantly castigated as a mongrel by her mother. Whatever the actual pedigree, the blood was not considered blood in any genealogical sense by Dame Durden if the true Saxon ichor was polluted by a Norman strain. And if the family could not be traced without a break to the tenth century, it was automatically assumed the records had been destroyed to conceal the taint of the Normans. She did at least give people credit for wanting to appear to have blood. But the matter of breeding aside, Edith found that when a gentleman was full of admirable qualities such as brains, manners and propriety, she could admire him, but she could not love him. She suspected, too, that the reason for this oddity on her part was that she loved Helver Trebourne, whom she did not admire in the least for any worthy qualities. Indeed, she knew only too well he hadn’t a worthy quality to his name.
Despite the five years age difference, the chasm of their social positions and their sexes, they had been much together in their youth. Both educated at home and no other youngsters living nearby, they had met in the fields that separated the two estates and become friends. All summer long they would ride together over the fields chasing rabbits and picking flowers, building a tree house and wading in the creek, spearing loaches. They discovered a marvelous cave and imagined themselves primitive creatures who had to store up every rock in the fields for their protection. Helver taught a young Edith how to make a fire from stones and straw, only it never lit for either of them. They once planned to run away together to join a monastery in France, for in this halcyon past it had not occurred to either of them that Edith was a female. In fact, she was called Eddie by Helver.
When the fact that she wore skirts, and occasionally had to be pulled across a stream or up a rock did occur to him, their easy meetings were about over. A young girl on the verge of womanhood was not allowed to roam the countryside with a buck whose reputation as a rakeshame was beginning to flourish. They were then together only infrequently, and usually under the eyes of some chaperone. But the friendship of their youth was a strong bond and there was no feeling of strangeness between them when Helver left. They still occasionally met by chance in the three miles of land between their homes, three-quarters of which belonged to the Saymores though it was used for riding by Edith, and there in that neutral territory they could resume their interrupted friendship.
“Did you really kidnap Peg Watkins?” a saucer-eyed Edith, now twelve, would ask, vastly impressed.
“Not kidnapped exactly. I was rescuing her,” the worldly seventeen-year-old explained condescendingly. “They’re going to send her to Buxtons to be a dairymaid, and Peg’s put in a panic by cows. Only that mugger of a tutor of mine got bitten by his horse and let out such a bellow he woke the whole town and landed in the roundhouse.”
“What were you going to do with her?”
“I thought your mama might like her to tend the chickens, Eddie. She’s awfully pretty. Or I would have looked after her myself.”
“How?”
“I had lots of ideas, only they’ve sent her off to Buxtons. She doesn’t have a pair of shoes, Eddie. Imagine that! I bought her a pair, and she was afraid to take them home. She used to put them on and dance—out behind the church, you know. At least she has a pair of shoes to take to Buxtons.”
Later the question was, “Did you really beat up your tutor at Oxford, Helver?” A “really” was necessary, for one could not quite credit that a sane man or boy had performed such acts.
“Oh, beat him up! Is that what they’re saying? It was only a tap on the cheek to make him accept my challenge. Called me a bloody pedant because I corrected him on a few points. He was only angry I knew more Greek than he did. Mind you, if I’d known what he meant I might not have done it, but I thought he was insulting me. Anyway, I’d have liked to have a duel. I wouldn’t have killed him.”
“Did they expel you just for that?”
“I’m not expelled, just sent down for the rest of the term. But I don’t intend to go back. The Bagwig took to raking me down for being impertinent to that dashed tutor, and, once you’re in his bad books, you’re for it: So I left before they kicked me out. Well, Papa never thought I’d get in at all, so I guess he ain’t much surprised. I’m not the first of my clan not to graduate. At least I got in, that’s something."
How was it possible for a young girl not to fall in love with such a rapscallion as this, especially when he was so exquisitely handsome? He was Eddie’s hero, and he looked exactly as a hero should look. Eyes so dark brown they were nearly black, and a tanned complexion that gave him the air of a Corsair. He had an interesting series of mishaps that decorated his body with an assortment of black eyes, bruises, limps and other irresistible allurements. And then, in their last meetings, he had become very thoughtful, bringing her a little book of French poetry that she couldn’t half understand, but she could see it related to “amour." He had helped her scamper up a tree so the bailiff wouldn’t see her and tell her mama, and warned her against the day when she should find herself in love. At the time he was in love himself with the Widow Malone. He informed Eddie she would know when she was in love by being so miserable she couldn’t eat or sleep or do a thing but think of the face of the loved one. Taking his word for gospel, she had realized that night she was in love with Helver, for she was sick with jealousy and lay awake for hours thinking of him and the Widow. He protected her from imaginary lechers who would try to make her drunk by smuggling a bottle of claret to the meadow, without drinking glasses, for her to become accus
tomed to its vile effects. He later brought a medicine bottle of brandy, but she was only allowed to smell this so she’d recognize the smell when it was offered to her.
She knew he was not quite a proper person, and, of course, she never heard a good word spoken of him either at home or abroad. He was “that Helver Trebourne,” who was killing his parents with his carryings-on, and one could not admire him; yet it was he and no other that she loved. If it was inevitable that she should love him, it was similarly inevitable that one of his bent for the dramatic should not find anything in her to cherish. There was no romance in a little girl you had grown up with. She required no rescuing from a wicked step-mother or guardian. She had no secret past to excite the curiosity, no foreign accent or graces to please the senses, no heroine’s face or form to inflame the libido. She was just Eddie Durden, whose only charm was in her familiarity and lack of criticism.
Like the sensible girl she was and knowing her feelings to be hopeless, Edith came to realize as she matured that her best course was to marry. When Doctor Thorne had singled her out for attentions, she had been flattered. He was well thought of, a very learned man, and would make an unexceptionable husband once he got a position. It was said by everyone that he was going places. He made himself agreeable to all persons in a position to do him a favour, and his easy manners, combined with his intelligence and education, made even a bishopric before he was fifty something not beyond him. His opinion of himself outdid that held by the world. He intended to be a bishop before he was forty.
A rising churchman needed a wife of impeccable background and adequate fortune; and a young gentleman of some human proclivities preferred also that she be neither old nor ugly, nor totally devoid of sense and humour. After carefully writing down a balance sheet of all the local ladies with their credits and debits, Doctor Thorne found Miss Durden to have more to offer than any other and decided to marry her. He was not unaware that she showed no great partiality for him; but an assiduous courting of the Dame and long discussions of their genealogical charts had assured him of the mother’s wholehearted support in his quest. He was not despairing of marrying Edith as soon as he got a post.
