Over the noise of his own voice, proclaiming this defence to his inward ear, that word companion had been ringing like a descant, chanted in another voice — artless, plaintive and rustic. It figured in the tune that he whistled and had struck up when he saw the inn. Some person there, one of the sluts there, used to sing ballads very prettily. She had been something of a favourite with him on that account, although he could remember nothing else about her. Molly? Betty? What did it signify? She had been no better than the rest, save for a voice which had taken his fancy.
Last night when you were sweetly sleeping,
Dreaming in some soft repose,
I, a poor girl broken … broken hearted,
Listened to the wind that blows.
The voice faded. His thoughts sank away. The forest was very silent. Last year’s beech mast, still thick on the track, muffled the sound of his horse. Yet he had an uneasy notion that he was being watched, subjected to a vengeful stare from no human eyes, but from the beings to whom this silent wilderness belonged. He remembered something read once, a myth of the ancient world, of dryads, unseen by the traveller, who stared so hard after he had gone by that he dared not look round. In this place, if anywhere, such beings might linger on; he understood for the first time why men had been afraid of them.
They stared at him until he came within a mile of Slane Bredy where he found an inn which provided ham and eggs. Whilst eating he chatted with the landlord. Very few people, so the man said, now lived in Slane St. Mary’s. These worked for nobody. They raised pigs on the wasted Knevett property and talked a lingo which nobody could understand. Services were no longer held in the church. They were a heathen lot and cared little for parsons. Their children, frequently got in incest, were often fourpence in the shilling and sickly-looking. All those with a spark of energy or intelligence had moved away; the rest were dying off and were buried, without ceremony, in the forest, which was rapidly encroaching upon Squire Knevett’s fields.
‘The forest,’ explained the man, ‘she comes back amazing quick, once folks are gone. Fight enough we have here in Bredy against them trees. Stands to reason. They was here first and they mean to be here last, I reckon.’
This epitaph upon man’s effort depressed Romilly. As he rode home he reflected upon the superior wisdom, the tranquil felicity, of those who are content to do nothing at all. Leisure for its own sake was considered by the poor to be the greatest of the privileges enjoyed by their betters. He remembered an old labourer sitting on a bench in the sun by a cottage door, who had explained that he no longer worked because his children supported him and had insisted upon ‘making a gentleman’ of him. What better occupation could a man have than to ride at ease through the plantations towards Stretton, smelling the sweet scent of hawthorn, listening for the nightingales, observing the warm hues of the summer dusk? I might myself have asked for no more, thought Romilly, if I had some companion. I was not always so solitary.
Of a sudden the twilight was full of her, sharing every mood, every thought, silent when he was silent, sunk in the same reverie, exclaiming when he exclaimed, startled by an identical discovery. Oh come back! Come back! he cried to her. I can’t live without you.
A moment later he saw her walking towards him through the trees. He felt no amazement. He drew rein and waited.
The dusk was kind to her, wiping out the changes which had so wrung his heart. The restless, hurried gait was abandoned; she walked slowly, as she used to walk long ago, swinging her bonnet from her hand. He sat very still, scarcely daring to breathe, as she drifted towards him like a phantom from the past. She came very close to him. He could see her face — her smile, pensive and serene, neither young nor old but timeless. Then she went on. She passed him by and vanished into the shadows. She had not seen him there. He began to believe that she would not have heard him, had he called to her. She had not come to him, drawn by his need of her. Some other power now possessed and ruled her; she had but passed him on her way to some other, more abiding, joy. She had left him and his world far behind her, and those outward changes which had formerly shocked him scarcely signified at all compared with this one.
All bitterness against her subsided as he perceived the truth. Having once fully beheld her he could think of her with awe and tenderness as one whose company he had never deserved and might not presume to keep.
He rode soberly home. His mother was alone in the drawing room, looking so forlorn that he suddenly offered to play backgammon with her. He was already aware that this mood of exalted resignation would not last for very long. It would not for ever protect him from Charlotte. He had yet to discover that it might, at a lower pitch, recur and let him in for a good many games of backgammon.
5
THE RAGGED STRANGER in church had been a Mrs. Hollins — one of Cranton’s people. Dr. Newbolt learnt these facts from his clerk, who always managed to know everything. He observed to his daughters at dinner on Monday that he thought it his duty to visit her, since the black valley was still, presumably, within his parish.
‘But my dear sir!’ exclaimed Venetia. ‘Suppose they should all take to coming to church? There are hundreds of them. You could never possibly visit them all.’
‘In that very unlikely event, I should be forced to engage a curate.’
‘Which we have been begging you to do for years. As it is, you exert yourself more than any other clergyman I ever heard of.’
‘In the meantime this poor creature is undoubtedly one of my flock.’
‘I hope she’ll be grateful. Her appearance was discouraging.’
‘A word or two of advice might alter that. They are very rough people down there, you know. I shall ride over one morning this week.’
Jenny now interposed to point out that nobody working for Cranton would be at home in the morning, adding that the hours at the pottery were from six-thirty in the morning until seven in the evening, on a short day.
‘Jenny knows everything,’ laughed Venetia. ‘You don’t need a clerk, Papa.’
‘Mrs. Tawney told me,’ said Jenny. ‘She had thought of sending Peter to work there, but she thought those hours too long for a child.’
‘They would never force children to work for those hours,’ asserted her father. ‘It would be inhumane.’
‘She’s a foolish creature, Mrs. Tawney,’ said Venetia.
‘The boy must work, you know, and all apprentices work hard.’
‘Goody Cottar, over at Millthorne,’ said Dr. Newbolt, ‘thinks of putting that grandchild of hers to work at Cranton’s.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Jenny. ‘Dickie? Dickie Cottar?’
‘Ay, that’s the lad. Old enough to keep himself now, and Crowther has no work for him.’
‘Not at Cranton’s! Not at Cranton’s!’
‘It’s not a pleasant place, to be sure. But he’ll work under shelter, which is more than many do. I expect he’ll bless himself, in the winter, to be working snugly by those great warm ovens.’
‘No,’ said Jenny again. ‘He must not.’
‘That’s for his grandmother to say. This is very good mutton, my dear. May I trouble you for another slice?’
It was Jenny’s business to carve, but she made no move to do so. She sat quite still, as though thunderstruck.
‘Dickie Cottar,’ said Venetia, ‘has always been a great favourite with Jenny, I believe.’
‘He’s very clever,’ said Jenny, finding her tongue again. ‘He can read and write. I think it might kill him to work in that place, I do indeed.’
‘Shall I carve a slice for you, Papa?’
‘If you will, my dear, since Jenny seems to think more of young Cottar than of our dinners.’
After a few minutes’ silence Dr. Newbolt added kindly:
‘One is sorry to see these little creatures put to work so early. But we must remember, Jenny, that these things are ordained by Divine Providence. Some are born high. Others humble. Some to labour. Others to rule. It is the duty of eve
ry man to be content with his lot, with the station in life to which God has called him.’
Jenny burst into noisy tears.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t believe God ever called any child to die of potter’s rot for two and sixpence a week. It’s we who say that such things have to be. We could change them. I’m sure we could, if we wished. I don’t believe that God is pleased at all. I daresay He’s in the greatest of a rage about it.’
Her tone and manner so much startled them that they scarcely listened to her words. All her anxious diffidence was gone. She not only used the terms, she spoke in the high defiant voice, of an angry child. Venetia began to laugh, upon which Jenny jumped up, slapped her face, and ran, bawling, out of the room.
‘This is no laughing matter,’ said Dr. Newbolt rather sternly. ‘I’m afraid she must be very unwell.’
Venetia looked grave and agreed. Poor Jenny! She had been quite unlike herself. This was not the only instance of eccentricity which she had been obliged to observe. She mentioned others.
‘She exerts herself too much, always going about amongst the poor people. Might not a change of air and scene …?’
He thought that it might. It was, he remembered, ten years since Jenny had spent a single night away from Stretton, and he had a notion that, on some former occasion, she had made him uneasy and had been cured by a change of air. They agreed that she must be despatched, as soon as possible, upon a long visit to Charles or Stephen, whose wives could scarcely object, since Jenny would be certain to make herself useful, wherever she went.
‘I had meant to speak to you of this before,’ said Venetia. ‘I thought you should know. It’s such a very great pity that she should take any particular notice of this boy, or give him notions above his station.’
Her father frowned, and she managed to blush. He had always refused to listen to the stories about Dickie’s birth; it was, he thought, indelicate of her to refer to them. But, though blushing, she persisted.
‘Just now we are a good deal more intimate with the Brandons than we ever were before. Amabel and I are very great friends. And … Mr. Brandon … comes here so much….’
Half smiling he took her point, although he said nothing. Trouble over Dickie Cottar might be unpropitious. There was no doubt that Romilly admired Venetia. All the Newbolts would rejoice if it came to a match.
‘Jenny will forget about it, once she is away,’ said Venetia. ‘Until she goes we can set her mind at rest by promising that the boy shall not be sent to Cranton’s.’
‘We can’t promise, my love, and break our word.’
‘No indeed, sir. In any case, Cranton’s is too near. But I believe they send children from here, sometimes, to the cotton spinners, down in the North.’
‘No children from Stretton,’ he said quickly. ‘I don’t like that business at all. The parishes binding the children can procure a settlement for them at the end of forty days, and so be rid of them for ever. In that case the poor children would not have a single human being to protect them, supposing they should be misused. If Dickie is illtreated at Cranton’s he can always come to me.’
‘Very true, sir.’
With a lighter heart, convinced that matters could easily be smoothed over, he left her and went to his study. He found Jenny waiting for him. She had dried her tears but she still spoke at a higher pitch than usual and she looked at him steadily, without ducking her head and glancing sideways. All this disconcerted him.
‘Papa, I’m very sorry for my conduct at dinner. It was wrong. But Dickie must not be sent to Cranton’s. Many of the children die there very soon.’
‘You mean the potter’s rot. They don’t get that now. They have a machine, I believe, for grinding the flints.’
‘The children put to be scrubbers are all as white as millers with the flint dust, Mrs. Tawney says, and breathe it into their lungs. And there is poison from the lead …’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. If there were any truth in this, no parents would allow their children to work there.’
‘Mrs. Tawney refused. But … my dearest father … I have a request…. You told me, some weeks ago, that I might engage an extra servant here, some boy for the knives and boots and to run errands….’
He checked her with a raised hand.
‘No, my dear! Impossible. Not young Cottar. Any other child in the parish … you must know what I mean?’
She nodded sadly.
‘I don’t like to raise such a point. If we should take particular notice of the child, just now, there would be talk. That would be most unfortunate at a moment when we all hope that Romilly has come home to settle. Those old stories should be quite forgotten. Personally, I never …’
He was about to say that he never had believed a word of it, but could not, since he was a truthful man. He had not believed it originally; for the past couple of years he had never caught sight of Dickie without regretting the particular cast of his eyes, his nose, and his mouth.
‘Poor Bessie Cottar, you know, was a woman of very bad character. But I would be less resolute, since you feel so strongly, if we hadn’t Venetia’s comfort to consider. Have you thought of that?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Jenny simply. ‘She means to marry Romilly.’
This was not the way to put it. He frowned.
‘It’s too early to … but you must have observed … he pays her a great deal of … if anything comes of it we must all be delighted. The sort of match she deserves.’
‘Do you think that the Brandons will be delighted?’
‘They are all very fond of her. Want of fortune could be the only … but there I think we shall surprise them. You’ve all been scolding me for keeping no curate. In that, and in many other ways, I’ve had Venetia in mind, ever since your dear mother’s death.’
‘I know that, sir.’
‘I’ve been a careful man. A saving man. With a good living, thrift, and your mother’s fortune kept intact, I have been able to lay by a good deal. When Venetia marries she will have twenty thousand pounds!’
Jenny knew so little of money that the sum meant nothing to her. She supposed it was all that he had got, but she could not guess what impression it might make on the Brandons.
‘She can marry whom she pleases!’ declared the old man joyfully. ‘But this … this is better than anything we could have hoped. If it should be so! She won’t be torn from us. She’ll live no more than a mile away. We shall see her every day.’
‘I know that would make you happy, Papa.’
‘You too! Our beloved child! Such a marriage would make me perfectly easy in my mind, not only on her account but on yours. I shall have her near me while I live. When I die she can give an agreeable home to you.’
‘You mean … live … at the Priors … with … with …’
‘Where else? This marriage provides for you both. At my death you must have gone to one of the boys. But the Priors will be an even pleasanter home for you. A sister is always dearer than a sister-in-law.’
The injustice to herself in this scarcely struck Jenny. Since she had been so improvident as to catch no husband she must expect to pay for it. She knew that penury and dependence lay in wait for most old maids and that many more women might remain unmarried could they hope that some provision would be made for them other than a dowry. Nor did she know how to fight for herself.
Of what she could be capable, when fighting for another, she now discovered fully for the first time. After a short pause she heard herself say:
‘Then you won’t help poor Dickie?’
‘I don’t think I should be justified in doing anything.’
‘Then I must write to Romilly.’
‘What?’
‘I must tell him what is happening to a child, on his own land. I don’t suppose Romilly knows of Dickie’s existence. He had gone away to London before the child was born and I’m sure none of the Brandons will have mentioned it. And he’s not been back here long enough, or m
et enough people, to have heard of it anywhere else. He’s not ungenerous. Not a monster. When he knows that his very existence injures poor Dickie, he’ll take steps to prevent it.’
‘Have you gone mad? The indelicacy … a young woman … a lady … writing to a gentleman….’
‘I’m not young. And if Romilly cared for delicacy he and Bessie Cottar would never have met.’
‘Venetia … have you no regard …’
‘She can fend for herself. A child can’t.’
‘I forbid you to do it. I solemnly forbid … promise now that you will never do such a wicked thing!’
‘I don’t think it’s wicked, if there is no other way.’
‘I shall never forgive you … never speak to you … I shall … I shall …’
What should he do? Disown her? Turn her out of the house? Deprive her of all indulgences such as … such as … at the moment he could not remember what indulgences in particular were accorded to Jenny. There must be a long list of them, since he knew himself to be a singularly indulgent parent.
‘Go!’ he said at last. ‘Go upstairs. Go to bed.’
To dismiss her as though she had been a naughty child was all that he felt able to do; she was looking uncommonly like one.
She went upstairs, but not to bed. The contest had sharpened her wits. She was always powerless against Venetia but this was chiefly because she had made it her maxim never to think if thought could be avoided. She never defended herself by foreseeing or avoiding possible onslaughts; to forestall them would have entailed too much reflection. On Dickie’s behalf, however, she was willing to think. She saw at once that some effort would be made to get her out of the way. Communication with Romilly would be put out of her power. She had better, therefore, write to him at once. The letter need not immediately be sent to him, but she must have it composed, written, addressed and sealed, in case of an emergency.
To count fifty was, she had discovered, a soothing exercise in moments of agitation. She did so now. Then, smiling, sure of herself, she sat down at her desk and took up her pen. Venetia, seeing her just then, would have diagnosed a transport. Without hesitation she began:
A Night in Cold Harbour Page 9
