After some time, he heard the sound of bolts being drawn back and Mice’s large white moon of a face peered cautiously around the door.
‘Oh, Mr Garfield, sir,’ he said. ‘The ladies are abed. Miss Daphne arrived home not a half hour before in the company of Lord and Lady Sylvester. Lady Sylvester saw her put to bed and then left.’
Mr Garfield fished in his pocket and drew out a gold coin. ‘Do you think, Mice,’ he said, ‘that you could ask Miss Daphne to step downstairs?’
Mice looked doubtfully at the money. A guinea now might mean no job on the morrow. On the other hand, Lady Godolphin was not likely to stir out of bed, not now she had company in it.
‘Very well, sir,’ he said, cautiously pocketing the money.
Mr Garfield was led into the Green Saloon. Mice busied himself lighting the fire and then left.
The clocks ticked sonorously. The fire crackled in the hearth. Mr Garfield began to think she would not come.
And then the doors were opened and Daphne entered the room and smiled at him shyly.
‘I came to tell you, Miss Daphne,’ said Mr Garfield, feeling stiff and pompous, ‘that I have constrained Mr Archer to flee the country. He will not trouble you again.’
‘Thank you,’ said Daphne. ‘Oh, thank you so much. Lord Brabington assured me you would deal with the matter.’
‘You have seen him? Ah, then you know the mystery of the baby. I can find it in my heart to be sorry for your father. Why is it such a beautiful innocent as yourself could believe something so vile?’
‘So many vile things happen,’ said Daphne, blushing, ‘and everyone in London society whispers about them and pretends to be shocked although they are not in the least. There are so many things I do not understand. All is rigid propriety and manners on the surface, and underneath …’ She gave a shudder.
He turned away a little and Daphne studied him anxiously. Had he only come to tell her about Mr Archer? He looked so handsome with his thick copper hair gleaming in the light and his heavy-lidded eyes surveying her so strangely.
‘We have had a very informal introduction to each other, Miss Daphne,’ he said at last. ‘I confess I have not behaved very well towards you … not in the way I should have liked to behave.’
So he had not wanted to kiss her. Overwrought and tired, Daphne began to feel angry.
‘I am not in the way,’ he went on, ‘of mauling gently bred ladies in Hyde Park nor for that matter do I often kiss strange country wenches by the roadside.’
‘It is very late,’ said Daphne crossly. ‘I am exceeding grateful to you for having rid me of Mr Archer and I would like to stand here and listen to a catalogue of your virtues all night, but I confess I am monstrous tired.’
He looked at her with irritation. ‘Miss Daphne, I was about to explain my honourable intentions of courting you at length so that we might get to know each other better. My thoughts of you are of the purest.’
For one brief moment, it seemed as if Annabelle had taken over Daphne, as she tossed her head and replied without a blush, ‘How very disappointing.’
He made an exasperated noise and walked up to her and pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her breathless.
‘You are a shameless baggage,’ he said at last, giving her a little shake. ‘If you say such bold things to me, you are not to be trusted. I always thought you should have a keeper. You are going to marry me soon.’
‘Yes, Simon,’ said Daphne Armitage demurely. ‘Kiss me again.’
He smiled down at her, and this time drew her very gently against him and slowly bent his lips to hers, brushing her mouth softly with his own, then deepening the caress as he felt her begin to quiver in his arms.
She seemed to turn to fire and flame and he lifted her into his arms, carried her to a chair by the fire where he set her on his knees, and then began to make love to every part of her that he could decently reach.
His senses soared and rocketed, the chair creaked and protested under their frenzied writhings, and just as Mr Garfield had boldly moved from the decent to the indecent, just as his mouth was lovingly beginning to trace the contours of one bared breast, a screech like an apoplectic parrot stopped him dead.
Lady Godolphin stood in the doorway, a candle in one hand.
‘Upstairs to your bed, miss,’ she said sternly to Daphne, ‘and I will have a word with you later. To think a gently reared girl like yourself should allow any gentleman to see her in such des-habillies. Go!’
Daphne straightened her gown and looked shyly up at Mr Garfield.
He took her hand in a firm clasp. ‘We are to be married, Lady Godolphin.’
‘Oh.’ A smile of pleasure and relief spread across Lady Godolphin’s features. ‘Nonetheless,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to leave carryings-on like that until after the wedding. I was never more shocked.’
‘How is Colonel Brian?’ asked Daphne sweetly.
‘Oh, ah,’ said Lady Godolphin, turning pink. ‘He has decided to stay with us for a little.’
‘I shall go to Hopeworth tomorrow,’ said Mr Garfield, ‘and obtain Mr Armitage’s permission to pay my addresses to Daphne.’
‘We’ll all go,’ said Lady Godolphin. Better to get Arthur away from the fleshpots and temptations of London, she thought. He wouldn’t find anything else to do in Hopeworth except pay attention to herself.
Squire Radford stood in the shelter of the hedge at the bottom of the garden and watched the squat figure of the vicar going about his parish rounds.
His horses and hounds were to be put up for sale at Hopeminster the following week.
The vicar had not resigned his living. He had not gone to see the bishop. Instead he had returned to Hopeworth, set Betty, her husband and baby up in style in a trim cottage, and then proceeded to try to turn himself into a saint.
From matins to evensong, the church was open seven days a week. The parishioners were visited by their vicar as they had never been visited before. The poor of the parish were taken care of as they had never been taken care of before. The vicar counselled, advised, helped and preached.
He was more unpopular than he had ever been in his life before.
His congregation quailed before his ranting sermons. They were tired of being harangued into atoning for their sins.
Villagers hid behind their furniture and pretended to be out when they saw his shovel hat bobbing past their cottage windows. Mothers began to threaten their children with, ‘If you ain’t good, the Reverend Armitage’ll come and get you.
Squire Radford sighed. Charles was dismal company. There were no more friendly suppers and sharing a bottle beside the library fire. The vicar no longer drank anything stronger than lemonade. He was even running an anti-tea campaign.
The Squire noticed the vicar was on his way to the Hall to pay a visit to his brother, Sir Edwin Armitage. Well, it couldn’t happen to a better fellow.
Sir Edwin quailed when he heard his brother had come visiting. Lady Armitage promptly declared she had the headache and Josephine and Emily refused to accompany him downstairs. Josephine had at last become affianced to a middle-aged squire over in Hopeminster and Sir Edwin was only too glad to have one of his daughters finally engaged. He blamed the Armitage girls at the vicarage for having enticed away all the best beaux, forgetting that they had found their husbands in London and not in the neighbourhood. It was only a small consolation to him that Daphne was marrying someone very ordinary in the person of Mr Archer.
Sir Edwin minced into the drawing room and looked nervously at the squat figure of his brother. Sir Edwin was dressed as usual in the height of fashion, his clothes more suited to a Bond Street lounger than to a middle-aged country baronet.
The vicar greeted him with, ‘“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of the world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”’
Sir Edwin polished his quizzing glass on his sleeve and then
surveyed his brother. ‘You sound like a demned radical,’ he said.
Undeterred, the vicar ploughed on. ‘“To obey is better than sacrifice”,’ he said conversationally, ‘“and to hearken than the fat of rams …”’
‘What the dooce are you on about?’ demanded Sir Edwin crossly. ‘Been at the communion wine?’
‘No, I have not,’ said the vicar wrathfully. ‘I shun all liquor. I abominate tea.’
‘Splendid,’ said Sir Edwin maliciously, ‘for I have just received a pipe of very rare port from town and was going to offer you some, but now I don’t need to.’
The vicar’s left eyelid twitched.
‘Got Josephine pushed off onto a squire, then,’ he remarked with somewhat of his old manner.
‘Ah, yes, a most estimable man. The sale of your pack and your horses has caused great excitement in the county, Charles. I wonder you bear to part with them. Do you not feel you are taking all this religion rather seriously?’
‘It’s my job to take it seriously,’ snapped the vicar. ‘I’m a man ’o God.’
‘And to what do we owe the pleasure of this second coming?’ demanded Sir Edwin.
‘Your daughters have not been to confession.’
‘Oh, tut! Tut! Really, Charles, you go too far. They will go to confession if they wish. We have all been doing very nicely under the gentle and undemanding care of Mr Pettifor, your curate. We are not used in Hopeworth to having to suffer under the tongue lash of a Methodist.’
‘I ain’t no Methody,’ howled the vicar, ‘and if I weren’t such a good man, I’d call you out for that.’
‘Oh, call yourself out of my house,’ said his brother wearily, ‘and come back when your fevered brain has cooled down.’
The vicar stomped out of the Hall and made his way home. He intended to spend the rest of the afternoon studying his Bible. Soon he was cosily ensconced in his study, reading St Mark, scowling horribly and moving his lips as he followed the words, ‘For from within out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within and defile the man.’
‘True. Terribly true,’ muttered the vicar with gloomy satisfaction.
His study door crashed open and his daughter Diana stood on the threshold. Her wild mane of hair was windblown and her eyes large, sparkling and defiant in her thin, high-cheekboned face.
‘Has Daphne said anything to you?’ she demanded.
‘No, my love,’ said the vicar sweetly.
‘Then there’s no hope,’ said Diana, wearily slumping down into a battered leather armchair on the other side of the desk. ‘Funny. Daphne was always the meek one and yet I thought she’d somehow make you change your mind.’
‘About what?’
‘About me going hunting.’
‘Alas, my poor child. I have brought you up in sin and wickedness. I am to sell that terrible indulgence of mine.’
‘Stop this rubbish!’ screamed Diana. ‘Stop it, I say. Do you know what cant you are talking? Do you know what you are doing? You are selling off piecemeal one of the best packs in England. You are terrifying the parishioners with your ranting ways. You are driving people away from the church.’
She lowered her voice and leaned one elbow on the desk, fixing her father with bright, wild eyes. ‘Listen, Father. One day you let me go with you a little way, up on the rise above Hopeworth. Do you remember? It was two years ago. We trotted up that deep-rutted lane with the day breaking from purple to gold; we looked down on the farms and the mist-coiled river. Do you remember the golden beech woods in the early sunshine, all those drifts of yellow leaves falling about the mossy roots? And the excitement! The tension building up. Do you remember John Summer’s cry, “Gone away”?’
‘Stop!’ said the vicar, putting his hands over his ears.
‘No, I will not stop,’ said Diana. She stood up and leaned over her father as he sat with his head bowed. ‘I suggest you go straight to church now and ask the good Lord to take your addled brains out and tuck them back the right way again.’
She slammed out, crashing the door behind her with such force that the whole vicarage rocked.
The Reverend Armitage sat there for a long time. Then he put on his hat and wearily went out and along to the church. He entered by the side door and sat down in one of the pews, enjoying the novelty of looking up at the pulpit instead of looking down from it.
Mr Garfield’s expert was doing very well. Now gold leaf glinted on the wings of the cherubim up on the roof, and already the worm-eaten pews at the back had been replaced with new oak ones.
He bent his head in prayer. It was a muddled half-formed prayer for guidance. Before he had prayed on his knees, ferociously and earnestly promising to atone for his sins. Now he asked for help in a friendly way, rather as if he were talking to Squire Radford.
At last he rose and went out into the peace of the early evening. All at once he felt very normal and ordinary. He could not quite explain it, but he felt neither very good nor very bad.
He took a deep breath of fresh air. It smelled of evergreen and woodsmoke and damp, rotting leaves.
Squire Radford heard someone whistling Brighton Beach and twitched the curtain and looked out of his library window. The Reverend Charles Armitage, whistling jauntily, was strolling up the drive.
The squire let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Ram,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘the very best port, I think, and set two places for dinner.’
The vicar strolled homewards after an excellent dinner, well content with the world. It was pleasant to feel comfortable inside his own skin again.
A blustery, jolly wind was tossing the bare branches and a hunter’s moon rode high above.
The sight of two carriages drawn up outside the vicarage door made him pause, his pleasure momentarily dimmed by the thought that the bishop might have come to call.
Then he espied Lady Godoiphin’s lozenge on one of the panels.
Whistling cheerfully, he walked into the vicarage parlour.
The whistle died on his lips.
Daphne, Mr Garfield, Lady Godolphin, Colonel Arthur Brian, Diana, Frederica, and his wife were all lined up, obviously waiting for him. He thought uneasily that they looked like a jury deliberating on a particularly nasty murder.
‘Hey, ho!’ said the vicar. ‘What’s to do?’
Daphne rose to her feet. ‘I must have a word with you in private.’
‘Oh. About something you’ve all cooked up between you by the look of it,’ growled the vicar. ‘Very well, miss. You may follow me.’
He led the way into the study and closed the door behind them.
‘Now, miss,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I may hope for good news? That’s Garfield in there.’
‘You may ask for good news on one condition,’ said Daphne primly.
‘Which is?’
‘I will marry Mr Garfield if you keep your hunt …’
‘Done! Already decided on that.’
‘And if you allow Diana to go hunting.’
‘Now look, Daphne,’ said the vicar, ‘it does you credit. Thought you wanted to marry Archer?’
Daphne looked at her father in amazement and then realized he did not know the story of Mr Archer’s coercion. She could only hope he never did. For if he did he would demand to know what had prompted Archer to think he had a hold over her.
‘No. I do not want to marry Mr Archer. I will marry Mr Garfield. But only if you allow Diana to hunt.’
The vicar thought of the Garfield fortune, he thought of the triumph of having another successful marriage in the family, he thought of Diana hunting with him and frowned. But he could deal with that in the future. He might find a way around it.
‘Very well then,’ he said.
Daphne pulled forward the copy of the Bible that the vicar had been reading earlier.
‘Swear on the Bible, Papa.’
‘Not even trusted by my own
daughter,’ grumbled the vicar. But nonetheless, he pulled forward the Bible and said, ‘I solemnly do swear that Diana may go hunting with me.’
‘Oh, Papa,’ laughed Daphne. ‘Now I have tricked you, for I would have married Mr Garfield whatever you said.’
‘Minx,’ said the vicar. But he could not help grinning at her happiness.
They went back to the parlour, arm in arm. Daphne shouted the good news and everyone cheered, even Mrs Armitage, although she did not quite know what she was cheering about.
‘Glad to see you in your right mind, Charles,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘We was told you’d gone all rantin’ and ravin’ and striking fear into the hearts of everyone.’
Had he? To the vicar it all seemed like a bad dream.
Daphne and Mr Garfield were standing over by the window, gazing into each other’s eyes, and the vicar heaved a sentimental sigh of satisfaction.
‘When can we go hunting, Papa?’ came Diana’s voice at his elbow.
‘Hey, what! Well, as to that, Diana,’ said the vicar with a furtive look round to make sure no one was listening. ‘There’s one little bit of a condition.’
‘Which is?’
The vicar mopped his brow. ‘I would like you to wear an old coat and breeches o’ the twins when you come out with me,’ he said. ‘And tuck that hair o’ yourn under a hat. Don’t want no one to know there’s a female with the hunt. Wouldn’t do, you see.’
‘Oh, is that all,’ laughed Diana. ‘I will gladly wear boy’s clothes. I do not want to be a girl anyway and I am never going to marry.’
Daphne caught the last part of this exchange. ‘Diana, I know that you will fall in love one day and be as happy as I.’
‘Pooh!’ said Diana Armitage as she thrust her hands in the pockets of her riding dress. ‘Never!’
Daphne turned back to her fiancé. ‘Do you really love me?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Now, haven’t I told you enough?’ smiled Mr Garfield.
Lady Godolphin’s voice was raised in the corner.
‘Arthur,’ she was saying, ‘I feel I should urge Diana to be careful and always ride sidesaddle. Young Miss Betts, her that was so pretty, well she would ride astride just like a man and she went and broke her hymnal before the wedding day and her husband kept screaming she was Haymarket ware.’
Daphne Page 16
