She told Denzil rather more, saying that she intended to whisk the fugitive clear out of the county and hide her where her husband and father-in-law would be unlikely to find her. And as anticipated she found him a willing ally, prepared to involve himself further by escorting Stella all the way to the Midlands, where Henrietta had decided she could find a safe, if temporary, refuge with Edith Wickstead, former vicereine of the Swann territories in the eastern counties and wife of the present manager, Tom Wickstead, one of her husband's most reliable lieutenants.
Her mind flew to Edith instinctively. Long ago, before she had even met the woman, Edith Wickstead, then Edith Wadsworth, had been madly in love with Adam and had admitted as much when challenged by Henrietta at the time of the Staplehurst train crash. But despite this, or possibly because of it, the two women had become very close friends during the crisis period, and now Edith was safely married to that merry-hearted, black-eyed Tom Wickstead and had three children and a pretty home in the wooded area between Peterborough and Oundle. It would not be necessary to do more than telegraph in advance, asking for hospitality for a week or so, and Edith was perhaps the only person in the world whom Henrietta could confide a matter of this delicacy.
The wire and following letter could wait. Her first priority, as she saw it, was to head off any possible attempt on the part of the Moncton-Prices to enforce the return of her daughter. With this intention uppermost in her mind, she ordered Denzil Fawcett to harness his trap for a drive to Courtlands that same afternoon. Stella, he assured her, was welcome to stay at the farm for as long as she wished, and he told her privately, as he was harnessing up, that his father had ordered the family to say nothing concerning her presence there. As regards this, he added, they were lucky. His father had had unsatisfactory dealings with the Moncton-Prices over horses and had long since formed the opinion that they were gentlefolk in name only. They had not only cheated him but also insulted him into the bargain and Fawcett senior—a dour, unforgiving man, of strong Methodist persuasions—disapproved of them root and branch.
Reassured on this point, Henrietta set out in the Fawcett trap, having dispatched a message to Tryst by one of the farm lads to the effect that she was dealing with unexpected business on her husband's behalf and was unlikely to be home before dusk.
He said little as they jogged along and Henrietta, for her part, was glad of it, for her mind was in a turmoil from which only one hard line resolution emerged. Sir Gilbert Moncton-Price was to be confronted and no promises made to bring about Stella's restoration to her husband. For the rest she would have to rely on her wits and, if necessary, on bluff.
They had covered perhaps two-thirds of the distance before Denzil voiced the thought uppermost in his mind.
“What's to become of her, ma’am? Suppose he claims her in a court o’ law? He could, couldn’t he? Wouldn’t she be forced to go back there, and be whipped by that brute she married? I’ve heard of such cases, and if it happened I’ll make no bones about telling you what I’d do if I came to hear of it. I’d break his damned jaw, and that's a fact. Aye, an’ wring his neck too, if I had to!”
“You can leave threats to me,” she told him, with an approving sidelong glance at his heavy, glowering face. “Meantime you’ll be pleased to give me your promise to remain outside with the trap while I go in for her things. This is a matter for lawyers, Denzil. You’ve already done us all a better service than we’ve a right to expect.”
He said, scowling, “I done nothing, Mrs. Swann. Or nothing I woulden do fer any decent young woman, lost in open country of a night. But there's nothing I woulden do for Miss Stella.” He paused for a moment before adding, unhappily, “Can’t never think of her as Mrs. Moncton-Price. Or Lady Moncton-Price or whatever it's proper to call her now.”
“Well, we think alike in that respect,” said Henrietta, grimly, “and she’ll not be that much longer if I have anything to say in it.”
She noticed then that he seemed to cheer up as he said, passing his horny hand over his brow, “Can you… well… cancel out a marriage? I mean, without one party taking it into their heads to get clean out o’ the country, along o’ someone else?”
“I’m told that it can be done,” Henrietta replied, and left it at that, but he was obviously exploring a variety of eventualities and behind them all, buried in a fog of uncertainty, was a tiny flame of hope. Hope of that kind, she supposed, never really died, and after all why should it in his case? Stella, in a moment of mischief, had once blown upon the tiny spark, making it glow a little.
She said, carefully, “Will your family think it a scandal, you travelling with her to Peterborough? I’d take her myself, of course, but that might put the Moncton-Prices on her track,” and he replied, staring straight at her like a great, moonstruck ox, “Me? I’d take her to Timbuctu if need be. Not that it’d advance me in her eyes, but then, I woulden expect that. Me and Miss Stella, it was all… well… something I liked to think on when I was going about the work. You woulden ever tell her what I told you, back at the big house, ma’am?”
“No,” Henrietta said, “or not without your permission,” and then, responding to a stab of irritation that a man as huge and loyal and capable as Denzil Fawcett should be at the mercy of a silly girl's caprices, “I’ll tell you what I think, Denzil, and it's something else that will remain a secret between us. I wish she had taken it into her stupid head to run off with somebody like you, and it's not the first time I’ve thought it.”
To her surprise the statement did not embarrass him, but rather the opposite, restoring to him something of a countryman's pride. He braced his wide shoulders, flicked his whip, and said, stubbornly, “At least I’d ha’ taken good care of her. She wouldn’t have had to run from me in the middle o’ the night! Will she ever get over what happened to her over there?”
It seemed to indicate, she thought, that he was not quite so bucolic as he looked, and might well have been putting two and two together, distilling something approximating the truth from Stella's talk on the way from his spinney to the farm. She said judiciously, having decided to take one fence at a time, “She's young, Denzil, and the young can put most things behind them. She’ll soon be herself, providing that I can get it into her head that she won’t have to return there.”
“Ah,” he said, guardedly, “but Mr. Swann might take a diff ’rent view,” and she replied, sharply, “In matters of this kind Mr. Swann will take my advice!” and it seemed to comfort him.
They turned in at the drive about four in the afternoon and the forecourt of the long, rambling house seemed deserted. She told Denzil to wait under the stable arch and got down, returning to the front of the building, climbing the four steps, and giving the bell pull a resolute tug. The bell did not seem to work, so she rapped defiantly on the door with her umbrella handle and continued hammering until the door was opened by a shambling old servitor, who asked her, none too civilly, whom she sought. She thought, “This place is a ruin, lived in by creatures who belong on a racetrack rather than in a respectable household,” and once again it occurred to her that Adam's habitual judgement must have deserted him altogether when he capitulated to Stella's importunities to become Mrs. Moncton-Price.
“Who do you suppose I’m here to see?” she demanded, tartly. “Not you or one of the stablemen. Tell Sir Gilbert Mrs. Swann is here, and wishes to speak to him at once!” and she pushed past him and swept into the hall, taking a seat on a worm-eaten stool that stood there, very insecurely she thought, like the rest of the fittings and furnishings she could see.
The man mumbled something and wandered off. Left to herself, she sniffed the air, wrinkling her nostrils with distaste. “There's damp rot hereabouts unless I’m mistaken,” she said aloud, and the sound of her voice was like a whistle in the dark. Her resolution faltered a little, however, when the man returned with the old villain in his wake. She gave him a swift, interrogatory glance, deciding at once that he was unlikely to show the least embarrassment at meet
ing her and would almost surely exchange bluff for bluff when confronted with his villainy. He seemed outwardly courteous, however, for he said, with a small bow, “My respects, Mrs. Swann. We’ll go into the drawing room. Will you take tea with me?”
His cool impudence took her breath away, but she replied quickly, “No tea, thank you. I’ve a trap waiting and I shan’t keep you long,” and he said, with the ghost of a smile, “At your service, ma’am,” and then motioned her into a big room with French windows, the windows, no doubt, from which Stella made her escape.
There seemed no profit in bandying words with him so she said, as soon as the servant had closed the door behind him, “It won’t surprise you to learn I’ve come for my daughter's things. Not all of them, of course. I’ll make do with some of her clothes and necessities, so have somebody pack them. The rest can be sent on later.”
His pepper and salt eyebrows rose an inch as he said, “She arrived home safely? I’m glad to hear of it. I wasn’t deeply concerned, except for her foolhardiness. A lass who can sit a horse as she can would be likely to know every gatepost between here and Twyforde Green, by dark or daylight. Did she explain her extraordinary conduct?”
She could have fallen on him then with her umbrella. In a way he was already putting the onus of this ridiculous situation upon her. She had expected extreme truculence, icy politeness, violent abuse even, but not a mixture of irony and forbearance from a man who, twelve hours before, had plotted to deflower his own daughter-in-law. For a split second, no more, she questioned the truth of Stella's rambling story, but then her mind cleared and she realised he had had plenty of time to rehearse his approach and had probably coached his son into the bargain. She said, flatly, “Of course you’ll deny everything. You would have to. Anybody would, unless he was mad as well as unspeakably vile! Ring for somebody to get me those things…”
But he interrupted her, saying, very reasonably, “Come, don’t be in such a hurry, Mrs. Swann. I haven’t the least idea what your daughter told you concerning that silly escapade of hers and you don’t have to confide in me unless you wish. All I’m concerned with is that she should return here before tittle-tattle gets about. That won’t serve your family or mine, Mrs. Swann. You surely agree with me as to that.”
She realised then that her position was not quite as strong as she had assumed it to be. The bare bones of Stella's story concerning both him and his son were barely credible to anybody who had had a Christian upbringing and had been raised, moreover, in the south country, where life was softer and more civilised than in her native north. On the other hand, there seemed no other course but to lay down her entire hand and let him make what he could of it.
She said, clasping her hands on her lap, as though to prevent them doing violence on him, “See here, Sir Gilbert, there isn’t going to be a scandal if I can help it, but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to expose my daughter to the risks any decent girl would run in your house and company. As to getting her back here, you can put that out of mind. Before we let that happen my husband would fight you and yours through every court in the land, and I dare say we should come out of it with less mud on our backs than you or your precious son. She's never coming back, you understand? Never. I haven’t digested everything she told me, for much of it seems to me as dirty a story as one would be likely to hear outside of a brothel. But I’ve heard sufficient, and believe sufficient, to understand this marriage never was a marriage, and the law has a way of meeting that contingency. Or so my attorney assures me!”
She was relieved to note, in the blankness of the expression his seamed old face at once assumed, that she had rattled him, and went on, more confidently, “You see, Sir Gilbert, you’ve taken altogether too much for granted about us—my husband and me, that is. He's well known and well respected in the city, whereas I’m not the ninny most women of my kind are, or like to pretend they are. I was brought up in a mill town thirty years ago, when things were far rougher than they are today. Neither am I the kind of person to be imposed upon, for ever since I married Mr. Swann he's encouraged me to look things in the face and call a spade a spade when necessary. That girl of mine isn’t going to drag out her life tied to a man who isn’t fit to be anybody's husband. Neither is she going to be at your disposal as a brood mare. You talk of scandal. Well, nobody wants it, and everyone in our position hopes to avoid it, but there are limits to the price one is prepared to pay for hushing things up. Your price is far too high. You follow me so far, I hope?”
“Perfectly,” he said, and although she could not have sworn it, there was respect in his voice. “There is one aspect, however, that you appear to have overlooked. Would anyone believe a story like that without proof?”
“The latter part of it? Perhaps not, for it's hard to believe any man who sits on a magisterial bench would seduce his nineteen-year-old daughter-in-law. They would have to believe, however, that my daughter was still a virgin and that after more than six months as your son's wife. That would go some way, I think, towards getting her an annulment.”
He seemed to consider this a long time. Sitting there, with the sour whiff of damp rot in her nose, Henrietta began to wilt a little, but she hoped she did not betray it and waited patiently until he said, reaching over her shoulder for the bell cord, “You’re a remarkable woman, Mrs. Swann. Quite remarkable, if I may say so. Very well, I won’t fight, providing the case is handled with discretion and that can be done with your husband's kind of money. Just keep my name out of it, that's all I ask. For if you don’t I’ll hit back at you somehow, you can depend upon it. It's bad enough being saddled with a son like mine, without having to pull his damned chestnuts out of the fire in public. I’ll send the rest of her things over by carrier, unless your husband would prefer fetching them in one of his… er… carts!”
He could not have said anything more calculated to make her master her nervousness, or add fuel to her extreme indignation. A tradesman's daughter herself, she had always taken pride in the name of the man she had married, a name, she calculated, that was not only more honourable than his, but went back a good deal further into the social roots of the nation. She stood up, meeting his bland stare unflinchingly, and said, “I don’t think you’re in any kind of position to insult us, Sir Gilbert. My husband's in trade now but neither one of us has to apologise for that. Our money comes to us honestly, hauling goods about the country. Your kind live off the poor, generation by generation, without putting a penny piece back into the country. How did you come by this house, I wonder? Not by hard work, certainly. More probably by shipping negroes to the plantations. Or by taking the winning side in some quarrel between two sets of thoroughgoing rascals centuries ago! Maybe that's why you think you can treat everybody but your own kind as if they were animals. Maybe that's why you produce children who can’t even reproduce themselves, something any peasant in the land can do without much difficulty. I’ll tell you something else while I’m here. I never did like the idea of having grandchildren derived from your kind of stock and opposed it from the start. Well now, praise God, it can’t happen, and I’d see my daughter dead before I gave you a chance to alter that. Either you get those things or I walk through this ratty old house and help myself. And if you or any of those broken-down old wretches of yours try and stop me I’ll bring charges against you for common assault. And don’t think I couldn’t either. There's a young man awaiting me outside who could break everyone's head in this place and would take pleasure in doing it at a word from me.”
His expression had not changed, or not much. He was still looking at her, now with a curious intentness, his bloodless lips creased in a half-smile. Then, quite suddenly, his frame lost its rigidity and he looked, she thought, incredibly old and tired, as though all his years of dissipation had caught up with him in a single moment, causing him to lose interest in the game he had been playing with her up to that moment. He approached the bell rope with queer, shuffling steps and tugged it half a dozen times. She heard a cracked bell
echo somewhere in the house as he went towards the door and threw it open.
“Danvers will get your daughter's trunk,” he said, as the old man came hobbling to answer the summons. “You there—” he addressed the old ruin as though he were a dog “—take Sopworth up to Madam's room and tell her to pack what she finds in a bag and bring it out to the forecourt.” Danvers nodded and disappeared again, and for a moment Henrietta thought Sir Gilbert would follow; Henrietta took a step towards the main door but Sir Gilbert hurried past her to open it, holding up his free hand in an arresting motion, so that she paused near the threshold.
“I said it once and I’ll say it again,” he said, getting hold of himself, so that his bearing was now that of a stiff, rather courteous old man, showing a guest to her carriage. “You’re a remarkable woman, Mrs. Swann, and a credit to that husband of yours. You’re right about one thing but wrong about another. We did make a fortune in the slave trade, but there was a time when my side of the family was capable of breeding women with your kind of sparkle. We lost the knack, somehow, inbreeding with the wrong sort. You’d show more care with horse-flesh, unless you wanted a string that looked well in the paddock but couldn’t last the distance, or fell at the first fence. For all that I meant what I said about hitting back at you if you cause a stir. I’ve got my pride, too, or what's left of it,” and he nodded briefly and turned away, leaving her to descend the steps and cross the forecourt to the trap. A few minutes later the old servitor Danvers came out carrying a pigskin holdall and Stella's reticule, that he placed in the back, whereupon Henrietta said, “That's all, Denzil. Drive me home, please,” and was ashamed to realise that she was trembling so violently that he must have noticed her extreme agitation, although he had the sense not to comment on it.
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