She left the house carrying a flower basket and gardening gloves, having no intention of being questioned by Ellen as to why she was setting out in flimsy garments and indoor footwear. She idled along one of the lower flower beds and then, when the gardener's back was turned, hid basket and gloves behind the raspberry canes, walked down the blind side of the wall enclosing the kitchen garden, and darted across the few yards of greensward to the wood. She was sure nobody had observed her leave but she was wrong. The Colonel had been watching her from his sitting-room window ever since she passed out of doors, and when he noticed the unconventional manner of her departure he put down his paint brush, rubbed his nose, and went downstairs to collect his field glasses.
In point of fact, Henrietta's behaviour during the last few days had puzzled him. Although he could understand her rather secretive high spirits now that Adam had returned to work and written two cheerful if noncommittal letters home, he was at a loss to know why his daughter-in-law should go out of her way to advertise to everyone about her that she was so confoundedly cock-a-hoop. It showed in the sparkle that never left her eye, in her glibness when he asked her what kind of day she had spent, and, above all, in her restlessness, that had her glancing at the clock every so often, as though Adam might appear at any moment when she knew quite well that he was in the north. Then there were her regular disappearances on that cob of hers, and the fact that she always took an identical route, through the paddock copse and down to the river, where she crossed the footbridge and could be seen for a moment through a gap in the trees passing along the towpath before being lost to view behind the willows.
He was very far from being a suspicious man, but she was guileless enough to arouse any man's suspicions and as the days passed he began to wonder what mischief she could be engaged upon, and why she went about it with a mixture of nonchalance and secrecy. He was not seriously worried, however, until he witnessed that casual stroll along the borders and sudden dart for cover. To pretend to be gardening, and then pursue her usual course on foot and wearing house slippers seemed to him nonsensical. He trained his glass on the gap and waited, finding a fixed point and holding the brass cylinder steady by resting it on the window-ledge. In this way, he recalled, he had once saved his life, spotting an ambush laid by that wily old rascal Soult on the French side of the Adige. In five minutes she reappeared, walking briskly, as though she had a definite purpose in mind, and he made his decision, If she was up to anything likely to introduce fresh discord into the house he was going to do his best to scotch it while Adam was still at a distance. That chimney-sweep business had made everybody miserable, and life had taught him to value domestic tranquillity above every other state of mind.
He went into the stableyard and summoned Michelmore, telling him to saddle the skewbald and saying that he fancied an hour's ride in the woods. Michelmore, who had been enjoying a nap in the tack-room, took his time about saddling up, and helping the old fellow on to the mounting block. Then, looking up at the sky, he prophesied rain within the hour, and this interested the Colonel who fancied himself as a weather prophet, so that they got into an argument, the Colonel declaring that the thunder heard earlier in the afternoon was well to the west, and that whilst Surrey might get a storm Kent would not. Michelmore, declaring that he, as a Kentishman, qualified as the better judge, persisted in his point of view, pointing out that birds were flying low and there was cloud across the river, and for some minutes the Colonel forgot the purpose behind his ride and only recollected it on seeing Henrietta's basket half-hidden in the raspberry canes. Then, telling himself that his ability to concentrate was deteriorating, he turned the skewbald towards the trees and was riding through them when the first local thunder pealed out and the horse nodded his head, as though signifying agreement with Michelmore.
3
They had not been fishing ten minutes before the first of the heavy raindrops fell and Miles, glancing up, said there would be a heavy thunder-storm in a matter of minutes and that they had best take shelter in the bower on the far side of the islet. He was right. Moments later thunder crashed out and rain began to fall in vertical sheets, so that they abandoned their gear and ran for it.
Looking back on the incident, as she sometimes did in the years ahead, Henrietta fancied that Miles Manaton must have had influence with the Devil to be able to summon up a storm out of a clear sky, for here, within hailing distance of the towpath, he would have been obliged to take no for an answer, and she could have put a term to any persistence on his part by recrossing the ford at the expense of a ruined pair of slippers. On the left bank, however, where the bower was situated, the channel was deeper and timber ran right down to the water. There was no path here and the sycamores and horse-chestnuts behind the building completely screened anyone using it.
She followed him without hesitation, however, for now the rain was heavy and although the islet was no more than fifty yards wide her fichu was sticking to her shoulders when she ran across the threshold and into his outstretched arms.
She thought then that he was merely taking sly advantage of their dash for cover and when he kissed her on the cheek she did not resent it, but only said, mildly, “Now, Miles, do behave yourself, rain or no rain,” but his grip on her tightened, and then he was kissing her mouth, so that she had to exert all her strength to break from him. She was at a loss to find words to express her displeasure and sought a moment's respite wrestling with the damp ribbons under her chin, and taking off her crumpled hat. Then, as she straightened herself after placing it on the bench, she saw that he was staring at her in a strange disquieting way. His eyes were hard, and his woman's mouth was set in a prim, downcurving line, as though he found her resistance insulting.
She said, “Why are you looking at me like that?” and he replied, levelly, “Because you practice one set of rules and pretend to another! How long do you expect a man to dance on the end of your bonnet string, Henrietta?”
His arrogance amused her, so that for a moment she forgot to be frightened at his tone of voice, or the way his insolent glance played over her, from her slippers to the crown of her head. It was a baleful, menacing glance. He might even have been measuring his distance with something repellent. She said, at last, “What set of rules? If you think you can just…just grab me, and kiss me without so much as a by-your-leave, you’re very much mistaken, Miles Manaton! If you had asked for a kiss I might have said yes, but I’m not one of those silly creatures who would think it a great privilege if you raised your hat to them in public!” and she turned her back on him, half-inclined to march off into the hissing rain but deciding that this would leave him with the honours, particularly as she would have to wade the stream to regain the towpath.
He was checked for a moment reassessing the situation. In his career as master-masher Manaton had met with any number of temporary rebuffs, but he had usually anticipated them. Women, in his experience, could be divided into three categories, the genuinely innocent, those who used innocence like a fan or twirling parasol, and those who, when it came to the point, enjoyed both chase and kill. He had slotted Henrietta Swann into the last category, deciding that she was a basically sensual little pigeon, and that once firmly within his embrace she would stay there with no more than a murmur or two of protest. His sharp observation told him, however, that her indignation was genuine, so that it followed he had made an error of judgement, and that she really belonged in the second group, flirting with innocence, and prepared to retreat into it until she had regained the initiative. It was difficult to hurry this kind of courtship and unfortunately there was not much time left, for his furlough expired in a day or so, and her husband might appear on the scene at any moment, so that both factors contributed to the course he decided upon, a feigned withdrawal under a mantle of resentment, with the object of putting her in the wrong, and giving him a chance to make a second storming approach. He looked at the rain gratefully, hoping the thunder would roll and the lightning flash, for it was his
experience that most women were upset by thunder-storms.
He said, glumly but reasonably, “I’m sorry, Henrietta I didn’t mean that. But you must realise you have given me reason to hope.”
He did not think of this as a fiction and in a sense it was not, for she had made no play of convention, or even modesty, during their association. She had ridden with him all over the neighbourhood, and had been seen by any number of local folk. She had listened to and laughed at stories most men would have hesitated to recount to a young married woman. But it seems she did not regard it in this light at all for she said, though less emphatically, “No woman likes to be…well, pounced on in that way. I’m sure I don’t, anyway. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Miles, and it's been very agreeable, so why did you have to do that and spoil things?”
He now began to doubt if Henrietta belonged to any one group for surely, by now, anyone but a half-wit would have had an inkling as to how such a relationship would end, so he went off on a fresh tack, saying; “You’ll catch a bad cold if you stand there under those drips with that fichu sticking to you. Take it off, you’re dry underneath,” and when she hesitated, “Good heavens, Henrietta, you don’t think I’d harm you? I’m terribly in love with you.”
It says much for Miles Manaton's technique that this was accepted at face value and that his confession, spoken without benefit of faltering voice or heavy sigh but as a statement of fact, made a direct appeal to her emotions. It was a speech right out of the books of Miss Yonge and Mrs. Henry Wood, and nothing remotely like it had come her way in the past. Makepeace Goldthorpe had wanted to marry her for cash, and Adam, over the years, had shown her a great deal of affection, but he had never once admitted to being in love with her, and suddenly she felt ashamed of having encouraged him to that extent.
She said, turning back from the door, “Undo the knot, for I can’t reach it,” and presented her back to him, with the innocent object of getting rid of the fichu and wringing it out. It did not occur to her that he would regard this as unconditional capitulation, and even when he had loosened the knot, and the ends of the fichu were freed, she felt no sense of alarm, for she now saw him as an unhappy bewildered boy, who could be kept in check by a few gentle pats and a gentle kiss on the cheek and brow. Then as the fichu fell away, his arms shot round her and locked under her breasts, and his mouth was close against her neck and she understood she had entirely misjudged him, not only as a lover but as a man. His grip told her that he was beyond pleading with, and also that she was neatly trapped and would be very fortunate to escape from this encounter without staking everything she valued on the outcome of the next few minutes. Her first impulse was to scream and kick at his shins but then she realised that she could never put up more than a token struggle, and that the only possible alternative would be to employ the kind of tactics he had used in getting her into this kind of situation. She fought down her panic and said, “I’m so frightened, Miles. If my husband ever found out…” and then stopped to see what advantage she had gained, if any.
It was appreciable. He was familiar with this last-minute, pre-surrender bleat, accepting it as the small change of victory. He said, “Why should he, until it's too late for him to get you back?” and then, as his hands slipped over her breasts, she thought of Lady Isobel's fate, and it seemed to her so credible that it came storming right out of the printed page, so that she thought she would faint on the spot. She managed to hold on, deciding that if that happened there was no doubt at all how a man of Miles Manaton's character would act. In less than a minute he would have her stripped and in one minute more past and present would have retreated out of sight, leaving nothing but an appallingly bleak future, for her instincts were serving her well enough now, and she had no doubt that he was absolutely ruthless as regards women, ruthless, cruel, and without scruple of any kind.
It was this, perhaps, that restored to her a measure of courage and cunning, so that she was able to say, leaning her full weight on him, “I daren’t go back there afterwards, Miles. If you want me so much then let's run away. Now. At once!” and before he could find a suitable reply to this she turned in his embrace and began showering him with kisses so that he thought, fleetingly, “Why, damn it. I wasn’t wrong at all! She's no more than a genteel whore posing as a virtuous wife,” and her proposal that he should abduct her seemed as specious as all her other artifices, something that could be forgotten as soon as the rain had stopped drumming on the roof.
He would say one thing for her, however. She certainly knew how to rouse a man, and that husband of hers must have taught her a trick or two, for she was now kissing strumpet fashion, and using her thighs and fingers like a trained mistress coaxing her lover into a giving mood. It would not have surprised him very much if she had not broken off the embrace in order to tear off her clothes and suddenly he wanted to laugh, not only in triumph but at her terrible impatience that was feeding his vanity in a way he would not have thought possible a moment ago. He said, breathlessly, “Wait…over here…” and lifted her on to the broad wooden bench, flattening her and groping under the folds of her flimsy dress, with the intention of securing a grip on the waistband of her drawers, but then a strange thing happened. In the very moment he hooked his fingers under the tape a great red bubble soared and burst in front of his eyes, and he fell sideways, striking his temple a sharp blow on a projecting edge of the stone wall.
It occurred to him, vaguely, that the bower had been struck by lightning, and that he and she and everything about them had gone up in a puff of smoke but then, his vision clearing somewhat, he saw her standing over him, with her copper hair a disordered mop, and her eyes fixed on him with a look that was as close to hate as he had ever seen in the eyes of a woman. The expression communicated something to him, and his hand shot up to the crown of his head, coming away wet and sticky, and then he noticed that she was holding a triangular piece of stone, of the kind that were laid one upon the other to form the wall, and he half-recognised the relationship between her expression, the piece of stone, and the sudden enlargement of his head. Even so he rejected the idea that she could have struck him, and the notion of a thunderbolt returned to him to add to the imponderables.
Then, but still through a reddish haze, he saw her move swiftly across the floor and make a grab at her hat and fichu, and it was this evasive movement that restored him to something like full conciousness, so that he let out a wild bellow of rage and flung himself forward just as she reached the entrance of the bower.
He almost caught her. His fingers hooked in the neckband of her dress and there was a long ripping sound as the material parted all the way down to the waistband, exposing the criss-cross lacing of her corset. The jerk delayed her flight for a second or so, pulling her sideways against the doorpost, and it was while he was straightening himself for a renewed pounce that a second blow, far more painful than the first, struck him in the groin, doubling him up like a jack-knife and bringing him to his knees with a yelp of agony.
He knew then there was no question at all of her innocence, and that she had not struck him on the head in panic but because his head had offered the easiest target when he had been reaching for her drawers. This second blow, deliberately aimed at his crotch, was a calculated one, and minutes passed before he realised she was no longer there to pay the price for such a terrible outrage. He crawled round in a half-circle and sat with his back against the post, rocking himself to and fro and trying to decide which area of pain claimed the most attention, his bleeding skull, his grazed temple, or his violated genitals. Then, to his disgust, he vomited, bowing his head to the floor. He was crouched there, like a wounded animal, when the Colonel came in and stood looking down at him.
4
When he emerged from the wood and made for the footbridge, it was already raining hard and the Colonel had half a mind to retreat under the trees and wait for it to stop. Then it occurred to him that she would be soaked through in a matter of minutes, and probably very frightened ou
t here alone in a thunderstorm, so he rode over the bridge and turned downstream towards the line of willows, now masked by a curtain of rain that was bucketing down on him and running into his boots. He did not mind a wetting but he began to be very worried about Henrietta, and urged the skewbald into a trot until he drew level with the ox-bow that he had painted more than once, for a variety of wild flowers grew here and over on the islet he could sometimes see waterbirds too shy to nest along the open reaches. She could, he reasoned, have gone but one way, straight down the towpath, but he could only guess her destination. It was probably Twyforde Green, the village two miles downstream, or possibly the side road halfway along that led, ultimately, to Mrs. Halberton's place, at Broad Oak. Then it struck him that her manner of departure precluded both possibilities. If she had been going as far as Twyforde Green she would have taken the cob, whereas, if she had intended visiting Olivia Halberton, there would have been no secrecy about her departure. The more he considered it the more disturbed he became. There was a man in it somewhere, and the fact that there was did not surprise him, for he had often questioned his son's wisdom in leaving a spirited girl like Henrietta unchaperoned for weeks at a stretch. She was probably enjoying a flirtation with one of the young bucks around here, for it explained her archness, her frequent disappearances and, above all, the way she had quit the house that afternoon. He thought, glumly, “Well, I daresay there's very little to it. She's plenty of commonsense at bottom but if Adam should hear of it the whole damned house will be in an uproar again,” and he turned up his collar and crammed his hat over his eyes, with the intention of seeking her somewhere between here and Twyforde Green. Then, as he kicked the skewbald's flanks, he saw her, or someone very like her, a dishevelled figure with skirts bundled up, running from the trees and into the river less than fifty yards from where he sat his horse.
God is an Englishman Page 48
