Deirdre and Desire (20 page)

‘And then what happened?’ mourned the vicar. ‘Reynard disappears like a puff o’ smoke and hounds were running round that great elm in circles. Climbed up it, didn’t
you? Not a whisker o’ Reynard in sight and the scent as cold as last Sunday’s dinner.’

‘Well, I told you, master,’ said John, ‘foxes don’t climb trees.’

‘This poxy one does,’ growled the vicar. ‘God! I’m mortal stiff. Sharp set, too.’

Wearily, he dismounted outside the vicarage and led his weary horse to the stables.

By the time he had rubbed down his mount and covered it with a blanket, warm from the saddle-room fire, and seen to its feed, the vicar felt every muscle had been wrenched out by some giant hand
and put back in all the wrong places.

Groaning heavily, he entered the small dark hall of the vicarage, shouting for Betty to come and pull off his boots. Betty was stooping over the second boot as the vicar sat on an upright chair
in the hall when he had a sort of feeling he was being watched.

He glanced up and saw a huddled figure on the first landing.

He sent Betty off to bring brandy to the study and waited until the maid had gone into the kitchen and closed the door behind her.

‘Come down,’ said the vicar, addressing the figure on the landing.

Deirdre rose and came slowly down the stairs. His heart smote him as he saw the telltale marks of tears on her pallid cheeks.

Silently she followed him into the study. ‘Don’t say a word,’ said the vicar, vigorously poking the fire, ‘until I get a drop of brandy down me.’

Deirdre slumped in a chair and the vicar sat behind his cluttered desk. Betty came in with the bottle and glass on a tray along with lemons and a jug of hot water.

She glanced curiously at Deirdre.

As soon as she had left, the vicar poured himself a large glass of brandy and tossed it off. He looked narrowly at Deirdre’s woebegone face, and poured another glass down him for good
measure.

‘That’s better,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Now, what’s amiss?’

Deirdre just shook her head dismally.

She wanted to tell someone, but surely anyone was better than this brutish father.

‘Well, I’ll need to guess,’ said the vicar. ‘Let’s start with Guy Wentwater.’

Deirdre turned as red as she had been pale a moment before.

‘Yes,’ said the vicar, tilting back his chair and putting his thumbs in his waistcoat, ‘him. I think you went and asked that wastrel to elope with you because you didn’t
want to marry Desire. I think he turned you down that night when you went to Lady Wentwater’s carrying them bandboxes. Fortunately for you, her ladyship was in residence or the worst might
have happened and you would have ended up with no wedding ring to show for it. Don’t you know Wentwater wants revenge?’

Deirdre looked at her father with her mouth open.

The vicar waited to see if she would say anything, and when she did not, he went on, ‘And somehow Desire got wind o’ it and went up to Wentwater’s and brought back them
bandboxes. Next thing you says you’re going to marry him, but you look so mortal scared o’ the man that squire and me decide he’s blackmailing you. So we ups to London to try to
keep you away from him as much as possible so you might guess we were on your side and tell us the truth. It came as a relief when I finally faced him and he agreed not to marry you. Now would you
like to fill in the blanks in my story?’

Deirdre hung her head. She was amazed her father had guessed so much and yet was not ranting or raving.

The need to unburden herself was great, and with a little sigh, she began. She told him the whole story from beginning to end, leaving nothing out, except the last meeting.

‘I’ll kill him,’ said the vicar savagely. ‘I’ll tell you why he did it.’ He related the story of driving Guy out of the county. ‘He’s weak and
vicious,’ ended the vicar. ‘You look as if you’ve had punishment enough, but, ’fore George, I cannot but wonder you were so taken in.’

Somehow, Deirdre found herself telling him of her love for Guy, of her dreams of the sort of love Minerva had found – ‘You know, Papa,’ she ended earnestly, ‘pure and
spiritual without any
lust.
’

‘Well, they’ve hardly got a marriage without passion,’ said the vicar drily. ‘Minerva and Sylvester are too well-bred to paw and ogle in public, but they can hardly keep
their hands off each other and it’s as well he married her sharpish or I would’ve been forced to run him up to the altar with my shotgun at his back.’

‘Papa!’

‘Gad’s ’Oonds, daughter! How d’ye think they came to have a child? ’Twas not by reading poetry to each other or by discussing the state of the nation.’

Deirdre stared at him wide-eyed, her eyes very green and sharp – ‘like that demned fox,’ thought the vicar sourly.

He put his elbows on the desk and leaned forwards. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’

‘No, Papa.’

Beads of perspiration began to appear on the vicar’s brow. ‘Your mother should tell you about these things,’ he said crossly, ‘but in truth, I don’t think she
knows. Eight children and she still thinks it’s all the fault of the stork. You’d think she was one o’ them Greeks, like Leda, to hear her, ’cept that was a swan.

‘Did Wentwater kiss you?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘And what did you feel?’

‘I felt as a girl in love should feel,’ said Deirdre. ‘Pure and spiritual and elated.’

‘Hey, ho. Desire, did he kiss you?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘And how did you feel?’

‘Wanton and lustful,’ whispered Deirdre.

‘Oh, tut, tut,
tut
,’ said the vicar sarcastically.

Deirdre flared up. ‘Think of the times you have preached against lust from the pulpit!’

‘Aye, but I hadn’t a word to say agin passion. Let’s get back to Wentwater. You did not see him after the night?’

‘I’m afraid I did. He . . . he followed me to Green Park. I went there one morning early to think things out. He must have been watching the house. He said he loved me. He said he
had spurned me for my own good. I asked him to elope with me.’

The vicar clutched his hair and gave it a yank. ‘Is there any more of this?’ he wailed.

‘Yes. I was to meet him at two in the morning in Green Park, but I did not.’

‘Well, thank God for small mercies. See here Deirdre, you have been playing a dangerous game. Wentwater does not care a fig for you, never has, and never will. He is determined to get
revenge, that is all. He wants to marry Emily, if anything. That way, he could anger me, and get himself a wife with a good dowry. But there is something in all this that does not add up. It looks
as if Desire put the fear o’ God into him, and Wentwater’s mortal afraid o’ me. So why does he still pursue the matter?’

He sat for a long time, buried in thought. Then he said slowly, ‘We never really knew much about these Wentwaters. Lady Wentwater seems to have been missed out of the peerage. Well, we
assumed she might have adopted the title and she seems harmless enough. But I wonder where the Wentwaters came from? I am going back to London.’ He thought of that pesky fox and a wistful
look crossed his face. ‘I’ll need to smoke out Guy Wentwater and make sure he never comes near Hopeworth again. None of you girls is to go near Lady Wentwater. I’ll call on her
myself and tell her why.’

He stopped and looked at the drooping picture of misery that was Deirdre Armitage.

‘You’ve made a sad mull o’ things,’ he said in a kindly voice, ‘but it’s all over.’ He stood up and came round his desk. ‘Off to bed with you.
It’s late and I have not yet had my supper.’

Deirdre stood up and faced him. Large tears began to roll down her cheeks.

The vicar wordlessly held out his arms and she rushed into them.

‘There, now,’ he said, ‘it’s all over.’

‘But I love him, Papa,’ choked Deirdre.

The vicar stiffened. ‘Then you will need to get over it,’ he said harshly. ‘Wentwater does not set a foot in this house!’

‘Oh, not him,’ wailed Deirdre, crying harder than ever.

‘Who, in Gad’s name?’

‘Lord Harry.’

The vicar’s pudgy hands tightened on her shoulders. He wanted to shake her and shake her until her teeth rattled. Instead he said wearily, ‘We’ll talk again tomorrow. Now off
to bed like a good girl.’

‘Oh, Papa,’ sobbed Deirdre, ‘I love you, too. I have been
such
a fool.’

‘You do, do you?’ grinned the vicar, suddenly feeling all the troubles of the world slip from his shoulders. ‘Well, that’s all right. Go and say your prayers.’

He stood beaming until she had left the room. But when Mrs Armitage came in some ten minutes later to ask him whether he was going to eat his supper or not, the vicar of St Charles and St Jude
was slowly banging his head rhythmically against the study wall.

Mrs Armitage assumed it was some mysterious masculine hunting ritual – men were so strange, quite like children – and retreated to tell cook and Betty that the master would no doubt
be ready to eat in a little while.

Deirdre was glad to have a bedroom all to herself again. She sat by the window, but this time she dreamed of seeing Lord Harry Desire walking in the lane. Why hadn’t she realized she loved
him before? Why had she hated her father so much? It was as if she had been looking at the world through a distorting glass, and now suddenly she saw things plain for the first time.

How bitter to realize you loved a man, right after you had successfully disengaged yourself from him.

Betty came bustling in, carrying a hot posset. ‘Mr Armitage sent me up with this and says you are to go right to bed.’

‘Very well, Betty,’ said Deirdre. ‘Perhaps I have made a mull of things but maybe I shall find a rich husband and then you and John will be able to marry.’

‘’Tis a pity it wasn’t that Lord Harry,’ said Betty. ‘But he was too handsome. Quite scary in a way. And don’t mind about me, miss, though it’s kind of
you to bother. Vicar’ll make sure I marry John before next harvest is out, never fear.’

‘That is wonderful, Betty. But how can you prevail upon Papa to do so?’

‘There are ways,’ said Betty, grinning. ‘Now, I’ll put the warming pan between the sheets and you slip into your nightgown.’

At last, when she was tucked up in bed, Deirdre said sleepily, ‘Betty, how do I learn Latin?’

‘I don’t know, miss. Why not ask Mr Pettifor. He has a deal of book learning.’

‘Very well, Betty. I do want to learn things.’

‘You can read and write, miss, and play the pannyforty. What does a lady need with else?’

‘Only, I have found I am really rather stupid, Betty.’

‘Oh, not you, miss,’ said Betty placidly, as she blew out the candles and lit the rushlight in its pierced canister beside the bed. ‘Miss Minerva, I mean Lady Sylvester, always
said as how you were the brains of the family.’

‘Then she was much mistaken,’ sighed Deirdre.

‘Ah, you’re young,’ smiled Betty, tucking the bedclothes about her, ‘and there ain’t a body in the whole wide world that don’t do stupid things when
they’re young. You’ll feel clever again in the morning.’

And with that, she quietly left the room.

A deputation of angry farmers called at the vicarage in the morning to curse the reverend for hunting over their fields while the spring crops were about to sprout. Added to
that the day was white with frost, so the vicar had two reasons not to tempt him to take out his hounds.

Instead of flying off to London to scour the clubs and coffee houses for Guy Wentwater, he decided to call on Squire Radford first.

Wentwater had always been on the dubious fringes of society, reflected the vicar. He was the sort of fellow who professed to know everyone, and yet no one knew him. He was unknown in
White’s or Brooks’s or Watier’s. He was never to be seen in fashionable saloons or drawing-rooms.

In the county of Berham, he was considered one of the upper set. But he only came on infrequent visits, and Lady Wentwater was considered something of a recluse.

Squire Radford listened eagerly to the ramifications of the story about Deirdre.

‘The thing that frightens me,’ finished the vicar, ‘is that she should go ahead and plan to do the same thing again, that she should ask him to elope with her a second time. Do
you think she’s addled in her brainbox?’

‘I think she is very young for her years and that she was very unhappy. Minerva had given her a role to play, the one of highly intelligent girl. And so she played that role and believed
in it. Suddenly it was not true and she felt lost and self-disgusted and silly. Sir Thomas Browne said that each man is his own executioner, and I believe that. My poor daughter chose to kill
herself by running away with a wastrel. If we do not destroy ourselves, we often find someone else to do it for us. Given a short time to recover, Deirdre will discover she is actually almost as
intelligent as Minerva led her to believe herself to be, but very young and sadly uninformed.’

‘Aye, but that’s not all, Jimmy,’ said the vicar eagerly, ‘she’s in love with him.’

‘Dear me!’

‘No, not Wentwater. Desire.’

‘And when did she discover this? It may be all part and parcel of her temporary madness.’

‘Mayhap. Anyway, the silly jade must discover this great fact
after
Lord Harry had broken the engagement and taken his leave. All that money! Jeremy Blewett’s said to be
richer than Golden Ball. If I was not so worried for my daughter’s sanity, I would’ve given her a beating. Now, there’s no hope.’

‘I would not say that,’ ventured the squire cautiously. ‘I could not help observing on the journey to Hopeworth that they were remarkably at ease with each other. The air
between them seemed to hold a certain intimacy.’

‘Best rush her back to London then.’

‘Ah, no. I think Miss Deirdre should be allowed a period of quiet and, if necessary, boredom.’

‘But what if Desire goes and gets married to someone else?’

‘He told you he had made enough money on ’Change and did not need his uncle’s money,’ pointed out the squire.

‘But some woman’s bound to snap him up.’