A Night in Cold Harbour

by Margaret Kennedy

‘We saw it,’ said Stephen. ‘Henrietta said at once: His mind must be disordered. And he had some kind of seizure, in May, didn’t he?’

  ‘He had a fall,’ said Charles slowly. ‘But I believe they think nothing worse.’

  ‘How did he strike you, when you were there?’

  ‘Altered. Unlike himself. But rational enough. Nobody could claim, I think, that he’s unfit to have the care of his own money.’

  ‘Lunacy cases are always tricky,’ agreed Harry. ‘But supposing he grows worse? Eh? This shock … this bereavement, it remains to be seen how he sustains it.’

  ‘Venetia will see that he sustains it,’ grumbled Stephen. ‘At least until her wedding day!’

  ‘If he should … grow worse …’ said Charles, ‘… if it should become necessary … what’s the law, Harry? When there is no will?’

  ‘I can’t say offhand. I must look it up. But I believe it would be locked up until his death and then divided equally amongst his children.’

  ‘Five thousand pounds apiece.’

  ‘No, Stephen old boy, only four. You forget Frank.’

  ‘He don’t need money. He’s as good as a Nabob already. However, we must keep a sharp look-out. If Venetia is concealing any alarming eccentricities … Henrietta says she’s damnably clever.’

  ‘We knew that a long time before you married Henrietta,’ said Charles. ‘Yet, it’s an odd thing, one can never put Venetia in the wrong. She does nothing. It’s those about her who take leave of their senses; they do stupid, sometimes unscrupulous, things, which always turn out to her advantage. Don’t you remember when you stole that strawberry jam, and she ate it? You got the whipping, Venetia got the jam.’

  ‘I remember nothing of the sort. But in this case her interest is perfectly clear. She’ll persuade us, if she can, that my father is rational. We must judge for ourselves.’

  They thought this over as the great oak trees of Slane Forest sped past them. Charles at last exclaimed:

  ‘We used not … we never … now that Jenny is gone, things are suddenly very bad. We are the worse without her.’

  ‘Ah, poor Jenny,’ agreed Stephen. ‘We must never forget her goodness to us as children.’

  ‘I don’t mean that, exactly. Some … some tie has gone with her. While she lived we never talked … quite as we are talking now.’

  ‘She was goodness itself!’

  ‘Yes, Harry, she was. Now it has gone, and we are the worse.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Stephen, ‘that to discuss money at such a time … perhaps you are right. We’ll drop the subject … at least until after …’

  It could be safely dropped. They understood one another well enough. Nothing more was said about their father’s state of mind until Cranton’s pottery, in all its ugliness, burst on them as they went down the hill.

  Charles then said:

  ‘That confounded place! All the trouble began there. This pother about infant apprentices.’

  ‘Is it true he’s got some of them at the Parsonage?’

  ‘He’s hired the mother of some of them to nurse Tibbie. And he has engaged a …’

  Charles broke off and looked thoughtful.

  ‘Engaged a what?’

  ‘A knife-and-boot boy. Who will, I imagine, be sent packing now that poor Jenny … I must say I sympathise with Venetia over that. The child is a by-blow of Brandon’s.’

  This interesting topic kept them busy until they were entering Stretton Courtenay. Here their bereavement became more inescapable. Villagers watched them with long faces. They grew solemn and alighted at the Parsonage with becoming decorum.

  Tearful servants took their hats and told them that Miss Venetia was in the breakfast parlour. They found her, not in tears, for she had never been known to weep, but more agitated than they had ever seen her. She kissed them each in turn and spoke more quickly than usual.

  ‘I’m so very sorry, you’ve come too late to see her. The coffin has been closed. But you’d better go up directly. My father is there.’

  ‘How does he take it?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Better than one might have expected.’

  In silence they trooped up through the darkened house. Not one of them but had some memory of Jenny’s room, visited only whenever they had wanted anything. Not one of them but wished that he had thanked her oftener.

  At the foot of the coffin knelt an outlandish person in a bright pink coat. Charles recognised it as one of his own, worn long ago for hunting, and left behind at the Parsonage. A narrow, bald head turned. A ravaged face peered at them.

  ‘Good God!’ whispered Harry.

  Does he know us? wondered Charles. I scarce knew him. I must have seen him before without a wig. But that coat …

  ‘What day is this?’ asked their father.

  ‘Wednesday, sir.’

  ‘Then you’ve come in time. We don’t lay her away until tomorrow. Kneel, if you please. We must pray for forgiveness.’

  They knelt round the coffin and he quavered the Sacramental Confession. Charles felt it to be appropriate enough. Stephen was shocked, and, as soon as he could, began to repeat, in a determined voice, a more suitable petition.

  ‘Eternal rest give unto her, O Lord.’

  His father gasped, almost as if in protest. After a moment’s hesitation, Charles and Harry took up the response.

  ‘And let Perpetual Light shine upon her.’

  ‘May the souls of the righteous, which die in the Lord …’

  ‘Rest in peace.’

  They then knelt in silence until Harry, who felt that he had had quite enough of it, scrambled to his feet. The others rose and followed him out of the room.

  ‘I think that I shall go for a little saunter,’ said their father. ‘It’s a sweet evening and I don’t like this dark house.’

  ‘Should you not change your coat, sir?’ ventured Charles.

  ‘My coat?’ He glanced down at it. ‘Ah! That must surprise you. But I have no other, you know.’

  They exchanged glances.

  ‘I’ve had the misfortune to lose my keys. My closets and chests are all locked. I can’t get at my clothes. Or my wigs.’

  ‘We’ll find the keys,’ said Charles, conducting the old man to his own quarters. ‘Could the women not find them?’

  ‘I consulted Venetia …’

  ‘Here they are! Look, sir! All here, in their locks. You may open your closets quite easily.’

  ‘Come back, have they? Venetia said I must be mistaken.’

  The old man pulled off the gay coat, which was far too large for him, and Charles hunted for a wig.

  ‘I’m glad that Stephen conducted the service,’ said Dr. Newbolt. ‘I could not have ventured. Perpetual Light, you know, can be a very terrible thing. I once … but the thought of it doesn’t appear to alarm him.’

  Charles persuaded him that they had not just been burying Jenny and that the funeral was on the morrow.

  ‘But Stephen will … will …’ he cried anxiously. ‘I don’t feel as though I should be able …’

  ‘No, no, don’t exert yourself. Nobody expects … Stephen will do it all. If I were you, sir, I should lie down for a little. You look exceedingly tired.’

  ‘Ay. Tired to death. I shan’t go for a saunter. I think I’ll go to bed.’

  ‘And I’ll tell them to bring you something … a warm drink … Then you might be able to sleep.’

  Having seen to this Charles joined his brothers, who were eating cold meat with very long faces.

  ‘Venetia,’ said Harry, ‘declares she knows nothing about the keys.’

  ‘They were all in their locks when we went to his room. I hope he remained in the house.’

  ‘No. That’s the worst of it. He ran out in that clown’s rig, over to the church, to parley with the grave-diggers. Half the village saw him.’

  ‘Yet Venetia insists that he is taking it calmly,’ broke in Stephen.

  The worse! The worse! thought Charles again. Without her w
e are baser. So much disregarded, yet so powerful! A part of what we were and are no longer.

  He wondered why human creatures should imagine themselves as so distinct from one another, each a complete entity, defined by an unalterable character. He saw the Newbolts as elements in a crucible, each continually altering and modifying the rest, and the nature of the whole determined by the most powerful agent. Withdraw it, and all would be transformed.

  And it’s so, he thought, in all communities. Half of what we do is really done by others; what befalls them befalls us. ‘We are members one of another.’ He said:

  ‘He wants you, Stephen, to officiate tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank God for that!’ said Stephen. ‘I hope we may get through it without any distressing exposure.’

  4

  THEY GOT THROUGH it with tolerable decorum, although Romilly’s absence provoked comment. The messenger sent to Cheltenham had been unable to trace him. Dickie Cottar’s behaviour also attracted attention. He took up a solitary station midway between the gentry, grouped round the grave, and the villagers, grouped respectfully in the background. The cobbler, who was a wit, suggested later, amidst guffaws, that the boy must have thought he should play proxy for Squire.

  Dr. Newbolt, neatly dressed and supported on either side by Charles and Harry, gave no trouble. Yet, within a week, it was generally reported that he had lost his wits and that his family were seeking to put him in a Bedlam. The red coat had been but one incident. He screamed out in the night. He would not drink his chocolate, declaring it to be poisoned. And all had witnessed his eccentricity on the Sunday. He would not preach from the pulpit, declaring himself to be unworthy. In the address which he then gave from the chancel steps, Perpetual Light, infant apprentices, peccata mundi, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were piteously confused.

  Opinion ran strongly against Venetia. It was said that she had lost no time in turning Kitty off before the gentlemen should arrive and ask questions. And many shook their heads over Parson’s alleged madness. Keys which vanished and then returned? If that was a delusion might it not have been a ‘two-legged delusion’? Who was to say that his chocolate did not taste bitter? Miss Venetia, to be sure, had taken the cup and drunk it off, but she had not left a sip for any other witness.

  These mutterings in their most lurid form were epitomised by Sukey Hollins.

  ‘Miss Jenny,’ she told Dickie, ‘was murdered dead because she was sorry for poor folks. And old Parson will be put away, for that he brought us out of Cranton’s. They puts away anybody that goes against ’em.’

  Dickie did not contradict her. He half believed it and he was debating his own future. Common sense, together with some adroit eavesdropping, had assured him that he would shortly become an infant apprentice himself, hundreds of miles away, unless he scarpered. He had made up his mind to run off and join the Walking People. That was a hard and dangerous life but the only life he knew which offered freedom. He hoped to get his victuals by playing the fiddle; there were always pence for a fiddler. His playing had improved of late. Jenny had driven him to practise every day and had taught him a number of country dance tunes. He would have been off immediately after the funeral if he had not felt some responsibility for Jenny’s father. The old man had been kind to him and was now, so Dickie suspected, in great danger. They were driving him into a Bedlam amongst them. A little vigilance at keyholes made that perfectly plain, for they talked of nothing else. The gentlemen were all declaring that he was crazy. Miss Venetia, she was against them but only because she wanted to get all the money, or so they thought. Dickie felt that his old friend would have been in less danger if the gentlemen thought he had his wits, and the lady had advocated a Bedlam.

  Life at the Parsonage had somewhat altered Dickie. Good food and plenty of sleep might account for it. He had grown sturdier and bolder. A closer observation of the gentry and their ways had aroused in him a dormant spirit — that spirit which Jemmy the Finger was to condemn, five years later, as likely to get him hanged before his beard sprouted. He was by no means prepared to allow that his own fate, or Parson’s fate, could be settled out of hand by others. On the contrary he felt an impulse, proper only in his betters, to alter the course of events, if he did not happen to approve of it. He thought that something should be done, and that he should do it.

  He decided to take Parson with him when he ran away. With his fiddle he might make shift to keep food in their bellies, and Parson might have his value among the Walking People. He could baptize their infants. He could marry them, from time to time, thus giving any tramper’s woman the right to call herself an altar mort and to turn up her nose at a mere walking mort. Church weddings were expensive and over-permanent. The trampers generally took new partners once a year, and a parson who fell in with this custom, against which Dickie could see no objection, might be very welcome in the Cold Harbours.

  Having formed this resolution Dickie sought out his patron. He began by stating his fears for his own future.

  ‘Don’t alarm yourself,’ said Dr. Newbolt. ‘I promise you shall never leave us. I won’t suffer it.’

  ‘But, sir … you might not be here yourself for very long.’

  ‘I shan’t die yet,’ said the old man sadly.

  ‘Nay, but … I beg your pardon for speaking of it … but they’re plotting for to put you in a Bedlam.’

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘ ’Tis the truth. All the village knows it. There’s a-many says you an’t in your right mind. Day before Miss Jenny was put away you wore a red coat.’

  ‘I … I … I had lost my keys. What nonsense is this?’

  ‘They say you was deluded. And then the chocolate …’

  Dickie broke off, nearly silenced by the face of misery before him. But these things must be said. He forced himself to continue the list of eccentricities, item by item.

  ‘Perhaps I might be a little …’ admitted Dr. Newbolt at last. ‘I’ve sometimes wondered … these troubles … all so new, so unexplained … But they would never shut me up. No, no! They would let me stay here. I do no harm to anybody.’

  ‘An’t there a law that a parson must have his wits? You might be forced to go, for to make room for another parson.’

  ‘Yes … yes … I had thought of that, in any case. I doubt if I’m fit, nowadays … Stephen … but Stephen would keep me here. He would never …’

  ‘You’d not be master, though. I’d be sent northward.’

  ‘Never. I should never agree to that. Don’t be uneasy, Dickie. My wishes will be attended to. And don’t speak of such things again. You forget your place. You are only a child. You don’t understand … all this is vulgar gossip. You must pay no attention to it.’

  Dickie retired. He had made a beginning and broken the subject.

  On the next day a stranger came to the Parsonage, a physician from Severnton, said to be an acquaintance of Harry’s. This person strolled coolly into the study and asked a number of questions, professing a strong interest in the Four Horsemen. Dr. Newbolt might have suspected nothing, and chatted freely, had he not now been upon his guard. Dickie’s warning supplied an inkling as to the drift of these questions. He gave short answers.

  In the end the sinister visitor took himself off. For nearly an hour after that he sat talking to Charles, Stephen and Harry in the breakfast parlour. It occurred to Dr. Newbolt, waiting uneasily to hear him go, that they had all now been at Stretton Courtenay for ten days. Why did they stay? The funeral was over. There was nothing for them to do. They were all busy men. Why did they not go home?

  I’ll just stroll by the window, he thought, feeling that this might be a little ungentlemanly, but that he must set his mind at rest. He did so and heard the stranger saying:

  ‘… as well treated there as he is here. They take none but men of family. In my opinion, a private establishment seldom answers. There is not the same vigilance, and the expense …’

  Dr. Newbolt walked away again. He returned to his st
udy where he was taken with a trembling fit which lasted for a long time. The visitor was gone before it was over.

  ‘That was a surgeon from Severnton,’ said Dickie, bringing in the newspaper. ‘He’ll come again. He an’t sure yet. You answered him so cleverly.’

  ‘Perhaps … perhaps … I might be … my children! My children! Why? They would never … I don’t know what to think. I mustn’t think only of myself. I must consider their happiness. But …’

  ‘You’d best scarper. I shall.’

  ‘Scarper?’

  ‘Be off to some place they’ll never find you.’

  ‘I never heard that word before.’

  ‘ ’Tis a word they have on the roads. The Walking People they have their own way of talking. I’ve learnt it, listening to ’em.’

  ‘Do they indeed. Scarper! Tell me some others.’

  ‘Why … they call a man a homey, and a drink a bevvy, and a bed a letty. And when they says eggles, that’s a church.’

  ‘Eggles? Ecclesia! Homo … lectus … scarpare! Why, Dickie, this is Latin. Was once Latin.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dickie impatiently.

  ‘It must be very old. It must come from the time when people going from one country to another could all understand one another, since all spoke Latin. Can you tell me more?’

  Dr. Newbolt became so much interested that it was difficult to keep him to the point. At last Dickie said:

  ‘The Walking People, they could tell you more. They an’t so bad when you get to know ’em. I’ve a mind to join ’em. They goes where they likes and does what they likes. That’s more than you could say for most poor bodies. Scarper … or run off … it’s what I shall do this very night. And … oh, sir … I wish you’d do the same. I don’t like to leave you.’

  ‘I must seek advice, I think. I must consult Eccles. That’s a friend I have, in Lancashire. I’ve been expecting to hear from him. I wrote to him, some time since, on a business matter. I wonder I don’t hear from him. I think … I think I’ll go to Eccles.’

  ‘Do they know where he lives?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think so.’

  ‘Then they’ll come after you. They’ll never come after me, that’s sure. There’ll be no enquiration for me. But you … if you want to scarper you must fox ’em. There’s a trick that would serve, but it wants money. Have you a few guineas about you, sir?’