The Weeping Ash (61 page)

If the captain were likely to deal out a further horrible piece of unjustified punishment—

“I don't think I had better go, Gasgoyne,” she said in a low voice.

“
Please
, miss! For God's sake! The captain'll have me over a gun barrel if you don't!” he snuffled. “I'm bruises from me head to me heel as it is—look!” He held out his skinny little hands, which were, indeed, covered with black weals and cuts. “And you should just see me back—He said he'd slit my tongue if I didn't fetch you directly!”

“Slit your tongue? He couldn't do
that
!”

“Miss, he
meant
it! And he could!”

“Oh—very well.” With a helpless sigh of anger and despair, she flung a shawl around her shoulders and followed Gasgoyne along corridors and companion ways to the door of the captain's great cabin. Scylla had never set foot in it, though she knew where it was. Gasgoyne tapped on the door, then stood aside to let her through.

* * *

Despite the final outcome, which was inevitable from the start, Scylla would always be glad to think that she had fought as hard as she was able and had managed to do quite a bit of damage before Captain Phillimore finally overpowered her. She kicked, she scratched, she bit his thumb till her teeth met bone, she nearly dragged off his ears, she tore at his hair and beard. The fight was conducted in a panting, stifled silence, because she was too proud to scream for help and reveal how stupidly, how gullibly she had walked into his trap. So
this
was what Cameron really feared for me, she thought at one black moment; how ironic that it should happen, not when or where he expected it, but on the very sea passage that he had taken such care to arrange for us.

Phillimore was drunk, of course, but not so drunk as to be totally inarticulate. “I don't doubt that this is what you are in the habit of doing with
your brother
, Miss Paget,” he panted at one point. “Well, now you are going to have the privilege of doing it with an English gentleman.” For reply, Scylla sank her teeth in his arm and he dealt her a ringing blow which would, she thought, almost certainly result in a black eye next day.

At last he rolled off her, almost insensible from drink and physical effort. She dragged herself to her feet and stood looking around the room, which was in a considerable state of disorder. Chairs had been overturned, the handsome mahogany table had a great scratch across it; several glasses had been broken, and Scylla's arm had been cut quite deeply by a shard from one of them; there was blood all over the floor.

He had locked the door and put the key in his breeches pocket. From there she retrieved it, let herself out, and left the door swinging. Let anyone who passed think what they would; at this moment she did not care. Feeling sick with rage and disgust, she made her way staggeringly back to her own cabin, flung herself on her bunk, and lay staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

* * *

In a way it was fortunate that, on the next day, the
Tintagel
entered the Bay of Biscay. From dawn the turbulence began. Mrs. Whiteforest was too desperately ill even to look up from her pillow; as the ship pitched and rolled, and toilet articles skidded about the floor, Scylla congratulated herself that she had a good reason for not going to take the air as usual, and a plausible means of accounting for her black eye. She could say that she had fallen against the bunk or the cabin door.

In spite of these dismal satisfactions, it was a long, wretched day. The sky outside the port was dark, the ship's motion was horrible, and she had her hands full with Mrs. Whiteforest and little Chet, who was not ill, but very frightened of the strange way in which everything around him was going up and down or sliding to and fro.

Presently, too, it occurred to Scylla that there was something strange and unusual about the atmosphere of the ship. Outside her door she could hear considerable commotion—running feet, excited voices, questions, shouts. Perhaps another French boat had been sighted? Perhaps the
Tintagel
was on fire, sinking? The thought of having to descend to the orlop deck in these circumstances was frightful; in trepidation Scylla waited for an order to do so. With a sinking heart she opened the door at the sound of a knock.

But the person outside was Cal.

He stared at her in silence for a moment or two, taking in the bruises, the contused cheek, the rough bandage that she had put on her own arm, the black circles under her eyes.

He held something small in his hand.

“I found this,” he said. “I picked it up.”

It was her camel-hair ring.

After a moment she muttered, “Don't mind it, please, Cal, pray don't mind it; it's of no consequence, I swear!”

Next instant they were in each other's arms, trying to console each other, weeping, murmuring childhood words of endearment.

“We can't talk here,” said Cal at last. “Come to my cabin.”

“But—Gough—”

“He and the others are having a meeting in the wardroom. Come.”

Gathering up little Chet, Scylla brought him along too; Mrs. Whiteforest had finally accepted a dose of laudanum and was in a merciful sleep.

Once in Gough's cabin they turned to face one another again. “Listen to me,” Cal said urgently. He looked pale and grim but composed now. “Captain Phillimore has disappeared.”

“
What?
But he—”

He laid a finger on her lips.

“Never mind that! Just listen to this, Scylla.
He has disappeared
. The whole ship has been searched for him. He is not to be found anywhere. So—it can only be concluded that he must have fallen overboard. Everybody knows that he was in his cups last night—at least three sheets in the wind. He had drunk a huge quantity of brandy—all the officers saw him. He must have gone on deck for a breath of air to relieve his head. It blew very hard as we were entering the bay. He could have slipped and gone over the side without anybody noticing. That is what must have happened.”

She could not speak. She stared at Cal, huge-eyed.

“There will be an inquiry when we reach port,” Cal went on. “So long as it cannot be said that anybody had a particular reason to wish the captain ill, Forsyth and MacBride think that it will be accepted that he fell by accident; it seems half the fleet can attest that he was a heavy drinker. But
if
it could be suggested that anybody had a grudge against him—then that person would be in deadly danger. Do you see?”

She did see. She muttered, “He was such a hideous beast—there must be twenty—thirty—fifty people aboard the ship who are glad he has gone.” Suddenly the gross, hateful image of the man rose in her mind; she clutched Cal's arm. “Are you
sure
he is gone? Not—not sleeping off his debauch in some corner?” She imagined Phillimore thrusting his way along the corridor, bawling for her brother. Alive, and in the flesh, he did not frighten her; absent, possibly in hiding, he had much more power to terrify.

Cal met her eyes straight. “No, he is gone. You can be sure of that.”

He put his hands gently on either side of her face, cupping her cheeks.

“Scylla—I hate to ask it of you, but it is desperately important that you behave as if
nothing had happened
. Can you do that?”

She nodded, gulping back the tears that his gentleness had brought to her throat.

His face worked, momentarily, as he looked at her, the black winged brows nearly met over his nose. He muttered, “That
monster
! He deserved far worse—” Then, urgently, “Scylla! Are you all right? Are you—did he—?”

Taking a long, gasping breath, she shook herself as if to throw off the horrible image and said firmly:

“I am going to forget him. There is nothing the matter with me. Don't distress yourself—
pray
! I shall soon come about. And—and I shall take care to remember your warning.” Trying for a normal tone, she added, “What will happen to the ship, now, with the captain missing and the first lieutenant on board the captured French boat?”

“Forsyth has signaled for Howard to come back and take command here. I daresay Howard will send Forsyth over to the Frenchman in his place. Forsyth is really a capital fellow—equal to
anything
.” There was an intensity of meaning in his eye as he added the last words. Scylla longed to put the question that was in her mind: “How did you
know
what happened? And who else knew?” but she knew that she must not. She drew another long, shaky breath and said:

“I had best return to my cabin. We should not—should not seem to be speaking too particularly.”

“No, you are very right.” He opened the door and glanced out. “The coast is clear—you may go now. There will be no harm in your keeping your cabin while we are in the bay—any female might! Be of good heart, love—”

His lips brushed her cheek, then as she turned to retrace her steps toward her cabin he walked swiftly in the other direction.

* * *

Contrary winds kept them in the Bay of Biscay for six days, and during that time the
Tintagel
rolled so wildly that her deck seemed to be perpetually at a forty-five-degree angle. Sea water splashed through their port, the wind howled in the rigging, and it was wretchedly cold; Scylla began to realize that her wardrobe was not adequate for northern latitudes.

Off Ushant they encountered and captured another French privateer, and during the action Cal was wounded in the thigh.

Scylla let out a gasp of horror when she saw him next, his leg a mass of bloodstained bandages; but he told her cheerfully that it was no great matter.

“In fact it is all to the good, for I have the surgeon's orders to keep my cabin for a day or two and can begin to set down a poem about the Romans and the Gauls that has begun to fidget me.”

As always, Scylla wondered at his power of detaching himself from a past trouble and engaging his mind in new schemes. It was a faculty in which she was totally lacking, and in spite of the wild weather and the constant necessity for attending to little Chet and Mrs. Whiteforest, she had spent a hideous week. Try as she would, she could not drive out the idea that Captain Phillimore was still alive, somewhere concealed about the ship, and likely to make violent entry into her cabin one dark night. Sleep was hateful because she dreamed about him constantly and would wake with dry mouth, clenched hands, and thudding heart, certain that she must have screamed aloud; but fortunately her screams were silent, internal ones, and not audible to her two companions.

At last, rounding Ushant, they came into the English Channel and, suddenly, halcyon weather. Scylla was able to go up on deck once more, and, since her black eye was now fading and her bruises nearly healed, she found it possible to meet the friendly eyes of the officers with a calm demeanor and a steady presence. She told herself that it did not matter which of them knew what had happened to her, the important thing was to maintain her dignity as if nothing had occurred at all.—But she would be careful never again in her life to let a man come closer than arm's length. Meanwhile the
Tintagel
was certainly a far pleasanter place without Captain Phillimore's aggressive presence and malicious innuendoes; she could remain on deck for hours now with little Chet, watching the coast, as the Lizard, Start Point, and Portland Bill slid past, identified for her by whoever chanced to be on the quarterdeck at the time.

“See, ma'am; it's so dry ye can see the stubble fields atop the cliffs!”

The visible coastline of England, so long wished for, dreamed about, and imagined, could not fail to excite her; she began wondering about her Paget cousins, what they were like, what kind of a place they lived in.

Cal hobbled up on deck and joined her in time to see the Needles Lighthouse with its white cliffs behind.

“It is a cursed bore,” he said. “Howard thinks that the officers will not be able to quit the ship until the inquiry has been held. But the sooner you are off the scene, the better it will be! I have been asking Gough—he is a native of Portsmouth and he says it is no more than a few hours' journey by chaise to Petworth. I believe you should take little Chet and travel to our cousins directly.”

She was troubled. “And leave
you
? But suppose—”

“Suppose nothing. Do not put yourself in a pelter! I will join you as soon as I may, and then we will post up to London, leave little Chet with his uncle, and enjoy ourselves seeing the sights. Very likely our cousin Juliana has a house in town as well as the one in Petworth—after all, Rob said that he met her at Almack's.”

“So he did.” Scylla felt a faint comfort at the recollection; it seemed to create a link between Cameron and these unknown relatives. “But what about your leg, Cal? Does it pain you very much? I do not see how you will be able to enjoy London if you can hardly walk.”

“Oh, fudge. It is only a trifle. Would you believe it, that fool of a sawbones wanted to take it off—only, I believe, because he has invented his own patient circular saw for cutting through smashed thighbones! But I told him I was not having any such thing.”

“I should think not, indeed!”

She shuddered at the thought.

After an early and bumper harvest had been gathered in, there was plenty of time, during the weeks of August and September, for rumors about the French invasion to proliferate.

Thomas and his troop of volunteers drilled continually; other troops were formed in smaller villages. All male persons of an age between fifteen and sixty-three in each village were enumerated. Plans to lay waste the country should the French land were finalized; by every sweet-smelling golden haystack, by every barn packed to its eaves with grain, lay sticks and kindling ready piled to burn up the winter stores before the French could lay hands on them.

During all this national excitement it was not surprising that small personal affairs, such as the untimely death of poor mad Miss Fox and the mysterious accident to the Paget baby, should quickly sink from the public memory and be forgotten. Thomas was fortunate in that respect. Fanny sometimes thought, sadly and wryly; at a time when the whole country stood on guard, who would stop to ponder about the drowning of a poor half-witted spinster? Or wonder how a baby came to fall down a well? The weather, too, favored Thomas and his various projects; in week after week of dry hot sunshine his additional wing to the house was quickly completed and the workmen paid off.

For some weeks the newly completed rooms stood empty and unfurnished.

“Very likely we shall never need them,” Fanny remarked one day in early October as Thomas was about to mount his horse and depart for a meeting of the local captains of Fencibles and volunteer groups at Midhurst. “After all, we have heard no more from your cousins in India; perhaps, with the state of the war so uncertain, they have decided not to come to this country at present.”

Thomas remarked, “I need a better room to work in; as soon as the cold weather begins, I shall move my papers from the garden room into one of these.”

Let the warm weather continue a long time yet! was Fanny's first thought.

Outside the Angel Hotel in Midhurst, after Thomas's meeting, he encountered the bizarre but impressive figure of Lady Mountague, wearing an amazing gauze tulle confection on top of her old-fashioned high-piled coiffure, a fabulously expensive Norwich shawl, with loose threads dangling from it, over gingham skirts kilted up like those of a farmer's wife to reveal a pair of stout country boots.

“Hey-dey, Captain Paget!” she greeted him briskly. “When are you going to invite me to your house to drink a dish of tay and see how that pretty little wife of yours goes on?”

Thomas fell over himself with expressions of welcoming hospitality. Had not liked to take the liberty—so very kind and condescending of Lady Mountague—his poor house always open to her—

“Well, my friend, since we can hardly expect the fine weather to last much longer—and since the French may land any day, in which case I daresay you will be busy enough—shall we say tomorrow?”

Thomas assured Lady Mountague that her ladyship would be immeasurably welcome at whatsoever hour she chose to present herself at the Hermitage.

“Very well, my friend! At half past ten or thereabouts you may expect me, for I am an early riser. But you are to tell your wife, mind, that she is not to put herself at all out of her way to prepare a nuncheon for me—whatever she may chance to have in the house will do for me capitally—a slice of bread and cheese, some apples—anything of that kind.”

Thomas again expended himself in assurances that, without taking any especial pains, not the least in the world, his family would yet contrive to make her ladyship feel as comfortable as if she were in her own home; he then returned to Petworth at a gallop, resolving to inform Fanny that she most instantly bespeak a turkey from the poulterer, a saddle of mutton from the butcher, and order Mrs. Strudwick to prepare a plumb pudding, a blamange, an apricot pie, some cheesecakes, and as many creams and jellies as she could contrive in the time.

Not finding Fanny indoors, he looked for her in the garden and discovered her, to his great displeasure, standing in the yew-tree walk, looking over the wall into the Shimmings Valley. He said angrily:

“How many times have I told you, Frances, not to be wasting your time in this dawdling manner, gazing over the garden wall into the fields?”

Fanny replied composedly, “I was observing the great quantity of blackberries on the hedges running down to the brook. I have already picked all the fruits off our own hedges and those in our Glebe Path down as far as the stile.” Thomas now observed for the first time that she wore an enveloping apron, carried a crooked stick, and had over her arm a basket piled with black, shining berries. “If you do not object, husband, I will send Tess and Bet down into the valley to gather some of those berries; Mrs. Strudwick and I are busy making bramble and apple jelly in order to use up the windfall apples which would otherwise go to waste.”

Often, these days, Fanny felt herself to be living a strange kind of double life. With part of herself—the everyday part—she regulated her household, maintained as equable a relationship as possible with Thomas, and presented a calm face to the world; the other half, watching as it were, from a distance, lived in a continual state of apprehension, if not downright terror, endeavoring to suppress the suspicion, the dread, that grew in her from day to day. What was this man, her husband, who seemed, in general, so wholly preoccupied with trifling economies, with social anxieties, with small, niggling points of behavior? Did these irritating, trivial shortcomings really constitute a whole person? Did they preclude—or conceal—larger, more horrifying faults—
wickednesses
?

Because a man was snobbish or penny-pinching, did that render him incapable of murder? Or false witness against his wife?

“Oh—ahem! Well, it would certainly be a great folly not to take advantage of such a plentiful blackberry crop—”

As Fanny had guessed, the notion of something for nothing was particularly attractive to Thomas. “But before the girls go fruit-picking, Frances, I wish the house thoroughly cleaned and redd up—” and Thomas informed Fanny of Lady Mountague's forthcoming visit and his orders to Mrs. Strudwick. “Now I must be about my business, for I have a great deal to attend to.”

Fanny was about to return indoors when she was appalled to observe the jaunty figure of Major Henriques, very sprucely attired in a riding jacket that was a little too nipped in at the waist and padded as to the shoulders, astride of one of Lord Egremont's hunters, which was picking its way carefully along the dry, slippery valley-side path.

“Holloa there, my charmer!” called Henriques, looking up and giving Fanny a detestably ogling smile. “Were you waiting there for me? I'll wager you were! What a fortunate circumstance that I chanced to come this way! I wonder what can have prompted me to do so? Shall I climb up the wall like Romeo?”

With a look of freezing scorn, Fanny instantly turned her back and withdrew to the house. She was infinitely dismayed to discover that Henriques had returned to the town and could only be thankful that Thomas had left before the major rode by. Her spirits were not raised by noticing the figure of Mrs. Baggot, most unsuitably clad in a muslin wrapper and what looked more like a boudoir cap than anything a respectable person would wear out of doors, strolling along the yew-tree walk, yawningly collecting a bundle of rosemary sprigs to make the lotion with which she frequently anointed her glossy ringlets. If she should chance to see Major Henriques, or to have heard his voice, Fanny was dismally certain that the news would soon get back to the ears of Thomas.

Meanwhile there was plenty to do indoors. Without wholly countermanding Thomas's orders, Fanny contrived to arrange for hospitality on a slightly less disproportionate scale to welcome Lady Mountague on the following day and made sure that the house was in a reasonably respectable degree of order. Then she enrolled Tess, little Patty, even the reluctant Bet, in the immediate business of making preserves. The whole house was redolent with the hot scent of the boiling fruit, and everybody's fingers were stained purple with blackberry juice. For once the atmosphere in the Hermitage was one of cheerful, almost festive bustle.

Fanny's careful planning for the morrow, though, was quite overset by Lady Mountague herself, who arrived that same day, shortly after two. Fanny, espying the phaeton through the kitchen window, gasped, flung off her apron, rubbed unavailingly at her blue-stained fingers, and then ran out to welcome her ladyship.

“The very minute I returned home after seeing your husband,” announced Lady Mountague, “I recollected that tomorrow was the day assigned for planning my next week's harvest supper with my steward.”

Planting her stick firmly in the gravel, she allowed Fanny to help her carefully down from the carriage, then gave the latter a hearty kiss. “So—since your husband had made such a point that an impromptu visit would not derange you in the least—I e'en tucked up my skirts and posted over directly.”

“Ma'am, you know that you are wholly welcome whenever you choose to come,” said Fanny. She laughed, displaying her blackened fingers. “You will not object to take us as you find us—we have been putting up blackberry preserves.”

“Making bramble jelly!” exclaimed her ladyship. “The one occupation I prefer above all others! Lead me to your kitchen—I will engage to stir the cauldron without allowing the syrup to burn—or peel apples—or perform whatever task you choose to assign me!”

She was as good as her word, and even the scandalized Mrs. Strudwick was soon persuaded to accept her presence with equanimity. “Ah, her ladyship's true gentry,” she confided to Fanny in the pantry. “They can go anywhere.”

It was to such a scene that Thomas presently returned. Lady Mountague, wrapped in one of Mrs. Strudwick's aprons, and with a towel spread over her gingham, was skimming purple froth from the top of the boiling jelly with a wooden spoon and depositing it in a small pot, while the rest of the household cut up more fruit and chopped a new loaf of sugar into small lumps.

“Fanny, I believe this panful is ready to pour into the jars; it sets like curd cheese as I skim it off,” said her ladyship. “Mercy—here is your husband—I daresay hungry for his dinner. But you must know, my dear man, that jam making takes precedence over all other household activities; you must be prepared to forfeit your dinner today and make do with a slice of cold mutton or some cheese; we are too busy to attend to your needs.”

Thomas nearly dropped dead of shock. The freezing glare he directed at Fanny would have annihilated her had not Lady Mountague been there to support her. As it was—all his exhortations proving insufficient to move Lady Mountague from the kitchen to the parlor, or to make her wait while a turkey or at least some roast mutton was prepared for her dinner—his glowering, baleful presence in the kitchen soon became so discomposing to his children and servants that Fanny diplomatically suggested they should all adjourn to the garden to eat bread and jelly, cheese and fruit, in the hot October sun under the golden leaves of the cherry trees.

“Besides, you have not seen little Thomas yet; also I want to ask your advice, dear ma'am, about a hundred and one things in my flower garden.”

The displeasure of Thomas, at learning that his son and heir had not yet been displayed to Lady Mountague, was very evident; but Fanny explained that he had been sleeping so peacefully, under the watchful eye of Jemima, that it had seemed a pity to wake him.

Now, however, having been fed, he was brought out to lie on a blanket and kick his legs among the rest of the party.

Lady Mountague leveled her lorgnette at him.

“Hmm! A remarkably large infant, certainly.” Thomas appeared gratified. “I must aver,” Lady Mountague continued, “that I have never brought myself to regard infants in the dribbling, crawling stage of their development with any degree of
pleasure
—but still, yours appears a fine, stout child. How old did you say he was?” When told the child's age, she remarked, “Good gracious, should he not be showing a few more signs of progress by now? You say he has not yet even attempted to
roll ove
r
? Dear me!”

Fanny here swiftly put in that Dr. Chilgrove appeared quite satisfied with the baby's rate of development, but the damage had been done; Thomas's brow was as black as thunder. Observing this, Lady Mountague calmly remarked, turning the subject:

“Is it not capital news that has come to London regarding Nelson's victory over the French at Aboukir Bay! If our land forces were but as well ordered as our navy, we should have nothing to fear.”

Since Thomas appeared hardly better pleased by this speech, Lady Mountague then proceeded to ignore him and told Fanny that she had received word of some remarkable poems by a new and unknown author which were shortly to be published in the capital. “My correspondent—my cousin Chevenix-Beauchamp—tells me they are works of powerful genius, that nothing has been seen to equal them since Dryden! My cousin has promised to let me have a copy as soon as they are off the press.”

Much addicted to poetry herself, Fanny eagerly inquired the name of the author, but of this Lady Mountague's correspondent had failed to inform her; she knew, however, that the publisher was John Murray, and that one of the poems consisted of a long, heroic saga recounting the exploits of Alexander the Great. Here Thomas's lips slightly formed the word “Stuff!” but, like his daughter Patty, he was too much in awe of her ladyship to let the sound come out.

Then, taking pity on Thomas, Lady Mountague remarked to him:

“Captain Paget, that is a very pretty little species of pavilion at the end of your grass walk—” indicating his garden room. “I trust you will indulge the curiosity of an interfering old woman and take me to see the interior? I am persuaded that it must command a very find prospect out over the valley.”