The Weeping Ash (43 page)

“
You?
Of what use are
you
?” he said savagely. “All you are good for—” And he added such a string of obscenities that she stood in stunned silence with her face the color of chalk, so frozen that she could not even put her hands over her ears. “Mrs. Baggot remains in the household!” he concluded. “So let me hear no more on this matter!”

However the arrival, soon after breakfast, of the one-legged Captain Holland, who was to accompany Thomas on his mission, raised the latter's spirits again, and he bade farewell to his family with a briskness that was his closest approach to geniality, and urged his daughters not to be idling during his absence but to work hard at their tasks, and perhaps he might bring them a ribbon apiece from London. “But only if you are good, mind,” he added.

Fanny, seizing advantage of this milder-seeming mood and the public occasion, displayed a note which had just arrived by messenger, and, as her husband turned to bid her a cold good-bye, said to him:

“Thomas, here is an invitation just come to hand from Lady Mountague, asking me to spend the day with her at Cowdray Park next Friday. Will it—will it be proper to accept?”

Thomas's expression betrayed his conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he did not wish to lose this promising and eligible connection. On the other, he wanted to deprive Fanny of any possible pleasure. After a moment's struggle, he replied shortly:

“Very well. You have my permission to accept. You must take the girls with you, Patty and Bet. It will be of value to them to study the usages of good society, to see how things go on in an aristocratic establishment.”

He climbed into Captain Holland's chaise, which was to carry both men to London. His daughters waved their handkerchiefs, the driver cracked his whip, and they were gone; Fanny stepped back into the house with a wonderful lightening of her spirits and sat down to write an acceptance of Lady Mountague's invitation.

The next few days passed in unusual and delightful good humor and calm; the absence of Thomas and the peevish melancholy spirit of old Mrs. Paget rendered the household so much more agreeable that there seemed a benign spell over the Hermitage. It soon became plain that Mrs. Baggot had been instructed by Thomas to keep a sharp watch over his wife, and for the first two days of his absence Fanny was half humiliated, half entertained by the pertinacity with which Mrs. Baggot followed her about wherever she went. By degrees, however, this surveillance slackened; it was evident that the nurse had received extra pay in advance for these services and that some of this had been laid out in spirits; on the third day she was not to be seen, and a strong odor of gin and peppermint was exuded from her chamber. Happy in the termination of this disagreeable espionage, Fanny now spent as much as possible of her time working in the garden, where her assistance was accepted by Goble with a sort of morose resignation. Even, very occasionally, her suggestions were followed, though never without modification, argument, and the lapse of a certain amount of time—“Do you not think, Goble, that a border of heartsease and forget-me-nots would look pretty around the wellhead, inside the brick path?” “Dannel it, missus, why do 'ee allus be ettling to clutter up the place wi' such dung-headed notions? Who needs posy flowers about a wellhead?”

“But it would be something pleasant for you and Jem to look at, Goble, as you draw the water?” At such a nonsensical suggestion he only snorted derisively and added, as if that clinched the matter, “'Sides, I can't shift they heartsease afore we gets a haitch o' rain; soil be unaccountable dry.” Yet, a few days later, the pansies and forget-me-nots would be planted around the well, just as she had envisaged them. She soon learned not to be too quick and obtrusive in her thanks, or she would elicit some sour, sarcastic snort and muttered comment about “Okkerd grummut fanteagled notions”; it was better to let a number of days elapse and then casually remark, “The pansies are looking well after the rain, Goble.” “That's as may be, missus.” A sniff. “Don't some mouldiwarp dig 'em all up, they'll maybe do.”

The garden was a pleasant place, these days, with Goble muttering Biblical texts to himself among his rosebushes in the formal beds, little Patty bouncing her ball against the stable wall, Bet with her needlework under an apple tree, and Jem tunelessly whistling as he scythed the grass; no Thomas in the garden house to reprove Fanny if she paused from her labors to stroll the length of the yew-tree walk and lean over the wall, gazing at the valley's green bowl, where a cuckoo called all day long.

On Friday there came a check to all this amiability. Little Patty appeared at breakfast with a thick red rash covering her face which, on further inspection, proved to extend all over the rest of her body. She was irritable, querulous, and lachrymose; bursting into a passion of screams and tears when Dr. Chilgrove, on being summoned, diagnosed a sharp case of nettle rash and recommended that she be kept in bed on a low diet.

“But I wish to go in the carriage!” she kept bawling. “Papa said that I might! It is not fair! It is too bad! I wish to see Lady Mountague's house!”

“Do not be such a little goosecap!” exclaimed her sister. “You cannot think that Lady Mountague would wish to see you like
tha
t
!”

“No, my dear, I fear you must wait for another time,” Fanny assured her. “Dr. Chilgrove says you are not well enough to go on an outing at present. You would not enjoy it. You must remain in bed.”

Fanny, indeed, was greatly exercised as to whether Thomas, on his return, would not feel that she had committed a dereliction of domestic duty if she deserted Patty to keep her engagement to Lady Mountague. Ought she to stay at home with the child? But as Thomas had particularly desired her to pay the visit, duty seemed to pull in two directions. And she was reinforced in her decision to go by Dr. Chilgrove, who said bluntly:

“The child is in no danger, ma'am. Bless me! What's a touch of nettle rash? You go off and enjoy yourself—Lord knows, you get out little enough. Besides, haven't you a whole parcel of women in the house—Susan Strudwick and little Tess and the baby's nurse girl and that other female, what's-her-name? If they can't look after one spoiled brat among them, you had best turn them all out of doors and hire some others!”

So the departure of Fanny and Bet on their day's pleasuring was rendered uncomfortable and discordant by the shrieks of little Patty, held forcible in her chamber by Tess and Mrs. Strudwick.

“You are the greatest beasts in nature and I will
never
forgive you,” she yelled from the window, running to hang out in her night shift.

“If she can bawl like that there's not much amiss with her,” remarked Dr. Chilgrove callously, hopping up onto his cob.

Despite this adverse beginning, the day was full of unexpected pleasures.

The drive to Cowdray Park was a delight. They took the road to Midhurst, which ran along the side of a gently sloping rise of land all the way, giving a view southward over the wide valley of the River Rother to the curving grassy Downs some five miles distant.

“Jem says the smugglers come along that river,” said Bet, pointing to the gleam of distant water.

“Ah, they do that,” said Jem, who was driving.

Fanny was quite astonished.

“But surely they do not continue smuggling, when the French may land at any moment?”

“Bless you, ma'am, a free trader bain't a-going to leave off trading and lose a fair profit just acos the government say we are at war wi' the Frenchies,” Jem told her pityingly. “In any case, 'tis the moonlighters as brings word most often as to what the Froggies are up to over there. Why, who do you think the Sea Fencibles are, as Prime Minister Pitt praises uphill and down dale? They're none but the Gentlemen, given a new name! When they flits back from Rouen or Lille with a dallop o' tea and a keg or two of eau de vie, they brings back a whole passel o' news about the disposition of the French forces. See, mum, now we be a-passing through Cowdray Park.”

Owing to the country's state of war, some of the green rolling slopes of Cowdray Park had been plowed and sown with a crop of wheat which in that hot summer was already well grown and shimmering under the cloudless sky; but presently they came to a shady stretch of oak and beechwood, massive trees, under which grazed fallow deer, strolling gracefully in and out of the shadows.

“Oh, Stepmama, are they not pretty!” exclaimed Bet, but Fanny sighed, remembering the deer in Petworth Park that had been the instrument of her first meeting with Liz Wyndham.

Now, emerging from the wood, they beheld a sad spectacle: a great stone mansion, almost a castle, some distance to their left, which had been completely gutted by fire; only a central portion, some casements and chimneys, and a few blackened pillars of stonework still remained. Fanny was very much struck; and Bet broke out in exclamations, protesting that the ruins of Cowdray Castle exactly resembled the scene of a novel that Martha had once borrowed from Mrs. Dawtry, the harp teacher.

Jem, obviously well informed as to Lady Mountague's place of residence since the destruction of Cowdray Castle, now turned the carriage down a cart track that led into a copse to the left of the road, and soon they pulled up in front of a small thatched house.

“Is
this
it?” exclaimed Bet, quite laughably dismayed. “You cannot mean to tell me that Lady Mountague resides
here
?”

But Jem had already jumped down to open the carriage door, and a curtsying maid was waiting to lead them into the house.

Lady Mountague's establishment was certainly quite other than Fanny had foreseen, and she could not help suspecting that it would shockingly disappoint Thomas's expectations of an aristocratic household where, unlike Petworth House, matters were managed with propriety and respectability. Propriety there was, but on such a small scale! It charmed Fanny but greatly disconcerted Bet. Lady Mountague, with her cook and footman, lived in a cottage not half the size of the Hermitage, and they were ushered into a tiny room, half filled, it seemed, with plants and birdcages. Since several large windows had been introduced into the south wall, the sunlight was dazzling, and it took several minutes before their eyes were accustomed and they could discern the occupants of the room. These were Lady Mountague, exactly as she had been at Petworth House, smiling, composed, and dignified in a wing armchair and—to Fanny's extreme astonishment—her stepdaughter Martha and a strange young man.

“My dear Mrs. Paget!” said Lady Mountague as Fanny curtsied to her. “I am so delighted you can spare the time to come and visit an old recluse such as myself. As a reward for your goodness I have prepared this little surprise for you—I hope it is a pleasant one!” she added, laughing. “One never quite knows what will be the result when close relatives meet.”

But it was plain that all the participants were happy with the present reunion. Fanny had always found it easiest to get on with her middle stepdaughter—though recently, to be sure, Bet's nature had improved as a result of not having to compete with her prettier sister.

Martha now ran to Fanny and gave her an exuberant kiss.

“Stepmama! Now I can make my husband known to you! Oh, I am so happy that Lady Mountague has been kind enough to arrange this meeting. This is Charley! Is he not a fine fellow! A real nonpareil! Aha, Bet! You little thought, last time you saw me, that on our next meeting I would be able to take precedence of you! I am an old married woman now—Mrs. Penfold, if you please!—and may go ahead of you up the stairs!”

“Only there are no stairs to be climbed at present,” said Lady Mountague, smiling. “Martha, my dear, why do you not take your sister and your husband to feed my peacocks—you will find a basket of stale crusts there on the sill.”

So, after Fanny had greeted her new stepson-in-law—he seemed, indeed, a pleasant, well-set-up young man, who behaved to her with the greatest civility and respect, but had a lurking smile in his eyes which seemed to suggest that when not on best behavior he could enjoy a joke with the best—the three young people walked out through a French window, leaving Fanny alone with Lady Mountague.

“Ma'am, I am so
very
much obliged to you for this!” exclaimed Fanny as soon as her stepdaughters were out of earshot. “My husband had strictly forbidden any inquiries to be set on foot regarding Martha—he will not hear her name mentioned, indeed!—but I have been exceedingly anxious about her. I am so delighted to discover that she has reached such a comfortable and safe harbor. How did it come about?”

“Oh, Charley Penfold is quite a favorite of mine,” said the old lady, smiling. “He was the son of my husband's steward but worked hard at his books—my husband had him sent to the Midhurst Grammar School and destined him for the church. But then he turned out a little wild, we discovered that he was engaged in running contraband goods with the local free traders, so it became plain that a clerical career was not for him. A couple of months ago Charley came to me in a very proper spirit, informed me that he had quite amended his ways and become a captain in the local Sea Fencibles. He told me, too, that he had married, and asked if he could rent one of my cottages on the Cowdray estate. I was glad to allow this, and even more so when I found that he had married Captain Paget's daughter. Indeed he is very anxious to be reconciled with his wife's family if it can be arranged.”

Fanny thought that Thomas's objections might not be insuperable once he learned that the young man enjoyed Lady Mountague's favor, however she could not engage to answer for her husband, and said as much. Then she inquired cautiously:

“Can the young man support a wife, ma'am?” remembering what Jem had said of the Sea Fencibles, that they were, in fact, merely the smugglers promoted to a more respectable-sounding name.