The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (9 page)

When Beatrix returned from Rose Cottage with the letters that Grace Lythecoe gave her, she went upstairs immediately and put them into the bottom drawer of her dresser, under her stockings. She hadn’t been eager to bring them home, but she wanted to read them again and study them. Not right away, though. She was already regretting that she had agreed to try to find out who had sent them and why. Her first look at the letters had told her that this was not going to be an easy task.

Still puzzling over this mystery, she went downstairs and lit the paraffin lamp, punched up the fire, and began to deal with supper. Mrs. Jennings had made potato and sausage soup earlier in the day. There was a pot of it on the back of the range, and in the cupboard, bread and creamy yellow butter, a large chunk of yellow cheese, and some gingerbread. She had just put things on the table and was ladling soup into a blue bowl when she heard a sharp rap at the door.

“Oh, bother,” she muttered under her breath, for she was not expecting company and had looked forward to spending the evening alone. But when she opened the door, she changed her mind on the spot, for the person who had knocked was Mr. Will Heelis, holding his brown bowler hat in his hand.

“It’s not too late, is it?” he asked. “I’ve just got back from Kendal. I intended to be earlier, but the ferry was overdue. As usual,” he added with a crooked smile, for the ferry was notorious for its lack of punctuality. Everyone who had to cross from one side of the lake to the other had long ago learnt to live with the situation.

Beatrix stepped back and invited him inside. “No, of course it’s not too late,” she said happily, taking his coat and hat and hanging them on the peg next to hers. “I wasn’t expecting you at all, Will. What a nice surprise!”

“I wasn’t expecting you to expect me.” He put both hands on her shoulders. “Hello, my dear,” he said softly. “Welcome back. I am so very glad to see you.” And with that, he bent (for he was very tall and she was rather short), and kissed her.

Well! I expect you want to know what’s going on, don’t you? Here is a strange gentleman, appearing unannounced at the door of our Beatrix’s cottage after dark, and
kissing
her! What’s more, she is kissing him back, if I’m not mistaken. At least, it looks very much as if that’s what’s happening.

Oh, dear. If Mrs. Potter saw what we have just seen, she would be horrified and take to her bed immediately with a sick headache, likely requiring a visit from the doctor. Mr. Potter would be apoplectic. He would turn turkey-red and stamp all about the library, blustering and bellowing. And since he is a barrister and presumably knows his way around a court of law, he might even threaten to sue the gentleman in question for taking liberties with his daughter.

But if you have read the previous book in this series (that would be
The Tale of Applebeck Farm
), you know something that Mr. and Mrs. Potter do not know—not yet, anyway. This gentleman is no stranger, but Beatrix’s friend of several years. More importantly, he is her fiancé. They are engaged to be married.

And if you have not read the earlier book, I hope you will not be too scandalized to learn that the very proper Miss Potter is actually leading a secret life up here in the country, far from London and her parents’ prying and censorious eyes. A
very
secret life.

Now, to understand this extraordinary situation, you must first know something about Mr. Will Heelis, this bold fellow who has kissed Miss Potter once and is now kissing her for the second time, between whispers of how glad he is to see her and how much he has missed her since the last time they were together. But to tell the truth, Will Heelis is not in the least bold. In fact, by nature he is very shy. Painfully shy, according to his friends, especially with the fairer sex, and certainly not a man for whispering sweet nothings into a lady’s ear, even if they are engaged to be married. But Will has discovered that he is very much in love, and love lends boldness to even the shyest of persons, and so he is probably saying and doing things that he couldn’t possibly have imagined himself saying and doing if he weren’t in love. I’m sure you understand this, if you have ever been in love yourself.

Beatrix’s fiancé is a tall, trim, fit-looking man, broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, with fine eyes, a strong jaw, and a shock of thick brown hair that falls boyishly across his forehead. He is the son of Esther Heelis and the Reverend John Heelis, who was the rector of Dufton and later of Kirby Thore (a village on the main road between Appleby and Penrith). Unlike Beatrix, who had only one brother, Bertram, Will grew up in a family of nine brothers and sisters, four lively girls and five boisterous boys. They were close-knit and fun-loving, delighting in picnics and folk dances and frivolous games (none of which, of course, were permitted in Beatrix’s much more staid and status-conscious family). The five brothers went shooting and fishing together and played cricket and tennis and golf. Will was especially fond of swimming and bowling and billiards, and naturally good at every sport to which he turned his hand.

But Will had a sober side, as well. He served his articles of apprenticeship in London, was admitted a solicitor in 1899, and joined the family law firm, which had an office in Bump or Bend Cottage in Hawkshead, the small market town just two miles from New Sawrey. (The cottage is called Bump or Bend because you must duck as you walk past, for fear of hitting your head on a protruding part of the building. When you go there, you will see Will’s office, which looks pretty much as he left it, with his desk and chair and files and such, and many of Beatrix’s paintings, for the place is now a gallery.)

The firm of Heelis and Heelis, Solicitors, handled all kinds of legal affairs, but Will spent most of his time on property matters, so when Miss Potter began buying property in the area, it was natural for her to consult him. He knew when a certain piece of land was coming up for sale, what its boundaries were, what price it ought to sell for, and what it was worth. He could offer reliable, trustworthy advice to a lady from London who lacked experience in such matters but had her own money to spend (the royalties from her books) and was very willing to spend it on the right piece of land.

The land—that’s where it began. Beatrix and Will began looking at properties that came up for sale, walking across the hills and dales together, discussing the land and the buildings and the timber and the meadows and the livestock. They discovered that they both thought that the land should be left as it was, home to sheep and shepherds and small farms, and they worried that the growing demand from developers for holiday houses, bungalows, and villas would destroy not only the picturesque landscape but the traditional hill-country farms and commons. When Beatrix went back to London, Will wrote often to her, keeping her informed about possible purchases and about things that needed to be done or repaired or looked after, first at Hill Top Farm and then at Castle Farm, which she bought (on his advice) in 1909.

Their partnership began in that businesslike way not long after she arrived in the village and over the next few years, it ripened into a strong friendship. This was how Beatrix’s romance had begun with Norman, who had been her editor on the Little Books, and so it felt right to her. And since Will suffered from such shyness with the ladies, it might have been the only way he could have stumbled into love. And then—to their mutual astonishment—they became engaged.

If you will forgive me, I think I must retell this part of the story, which is told in
The Tale of Applebeck Farm
. It happened, you see, on the same night that the Applebeck dairy burnt, a year and a half before. This was a wildly exciting night for the villagers, who got out of their beds and ran to join the bucket brigade to try and put the fire out. It was also an exciting night for Will. He and Beatrix had gone for a walk in the moonlight, and he had at last been able to muster the courage to tell her what had been hiding in his heart for some time.

This is how he began: “I care for you, Miss Potter. I care deeply. I don’t suppose this is any secret to you—I am sure it has been increasingly apparent each time we’ve been together this last year, and perhaps even before.”

It had indeed become apparent, and Beatrix had observed it with growing uneasiness. It was not that she did not have warm feelings of her own. Oh, no, not at all! She knew how she felt and she was fully aware of the danger of it, for those warm feelings for Will Heelis were complicated by equally warm feelings of loyalty to Norman Warne and his family. (Norman’s sister Millie would surely be hurt if she found out that Beatrix was beginning to care for someone else.) And her parents—

Oh, dear. Well, that, of course, was the most significant complication, for Beatrix knew that her mother and father would oppose her relationship with Will Heelis in exactly the way they had opposed her engagement to Norman, and for exactly the same reasons. They would say that Will (who was, after all, just a country solicitor, the son of a country parson and his country wife) was not “the right sort of person” to marry their daughter. In fact, they still did not intend that their daughter should marry anyone at all, ever, but should stay with them at Bolton Gardens and look after them in their old age. And Beatrix (who was very modern in some ways and very old-fashioned in others) could not imagine marrying without her parents’ consent.

Well, you can see the dilemma she was in. So it was no wonder that Beatrix was uneasy, and that she would really much rather that Will had never found whatever had been hiding in his heart. She wanted to make him stop, but she couldn’t, for he hadn’t yet finished.

“Please do believe me when I say,” he was going on, “that I am not insensible to your feelings for Mr. Warne, nor to your difficulties with your parents. But I must tell you truly, and from my heart, that if your circumstances change—”

At that point, he had paused. Beatrix was not putting her fingers in her ears (that would have been terribly rude) but he could see by the look on her face that she did not want to hear what he had to say. Having opened the subject, however, he could not see any comfortable way to close it, and so he had taken a deep breath and stumbled on.

“I know your parents believe me unworthy. It is true—I
am
unworthy, and I should never wish to cause you a single moment’s unhappiness on my account. But if ... if your circumstances can ever permit you to consider having me, Miss Potter, my heart . . . my heart is yours. Truly, honestly, and eternally yours.”

I don’t know about you, but if I had been Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis had offered to give me his heart, truly, honestly, and eternally, I should not have hesitated one instant. I should have said, “Yes! Oh, yes, yes, yes!” on the spot. But our Beatrix (who had the foresight to see that matters were coming to a head) had already practiced her “no.” And so she delivered it, firmly and compactly.

“I do care for you, but our friendship must remain a friendship. I still have an enduring fondness for Norman, and my parents present a substantial obstacle to my living my life as I would choose to live it.”

Now, Will could have accepted Beatrix’s rejection and gone on about his business, as any well-mannered Victorian gentleman should have done. (I am perfectly aware that Queen Victoria had by this time been dead for a decade, but that doesn’t change the fact that Will and Beatrix are thoroughgoing Victorians, just as proper as you please. Neither would have liked being called “Edwardian,” for King Edward, while he was a very good king, had a very bad reputation for playing fast and loose with the ladies.) Will’s heart would, of course, have been completely broken, but humans are resilient, and it takes more than a romantic rebuff to do us in. I daresay our Will would not have mourned his loss forever.

But while this man may be very shy, he is also very stubborn, and upon due consideration, he did not find it convenient to take Beatrix’s “no” for an answer. Instead, he kept on pressing the subject, and after a little while, Beatrix found herself saying what was truly in her heart: that she cared for him very deeply, and that if her circumstances were different, her answer would be different. Her “no” might become a “yes.”

That was what he was waiting for. “Well, then,” he said (and I do think that we must forgive him that little bit of triumph in his tone), “if you would choose to marry me under other circumstances, I will be content to wait. Until your circumstances change,” he added firmly, “however long that may be. All I ask is a promise, Beatrix. As long as I have your promise, I can wait.”

A promise? Beatrix was utterly taken aback. She had said she cared for him, but she couldn’t marry him unless things were different. She had given the man an inch, and now he wanted a mile. This was entirely unexpected. She had assumed that he would accept her “no” and that would be that. They could go on as friends, being together when they could, enjoying each other’s company, just as before. But here he was, boldly demanding a promise! What in the world could she say that would satisfy him, be true to her own heart’s desire, and still protect her obligations? It was a challenge. A conundrum. A lesser woman would have been completely flummoxed.