The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  “Oh, what nonsense!” retorted Fanny with unexpected spirit. “It is not what happens to you, but what you are, that is important; and anybody can see, Scylla, how good and sweet you are. Why, Liz Wyndham is forever singing your praises—”

  “Liz Wyndham—another lost soul. In any case, I do not deserve them,” said Scylla, troubled. “If I were to tell you, Fanny—”

  They had reached the top of the hill, and stood a moment to get their breath and to look back over the valley at the little cluster of roofs climbing the hill, topped by the majestic oblong of Petworth House and the church steeple above it.

  Then they took their way down a short slope and up a steep, beech-bordered path into the woods beyond. “These are called the dillywoods,” Fanny said. “But what were you about to tell me, Scylla?”

  Somehow—though without having in the least intended to lay the burden of her confidences on Fanny—Scylla found herself doing so, in part at least, and discovered that Fanny appeared not in the least burdened by them but, on the contrary, sincerely happy to have a friend place such trust in her; and Fanny, in her turn, was soon revealing facts about her marriage to Thomas which she had hitherto felt it impossible should ever be exposed to another person, even to Liz Wyndham.

  “—So you see, dear Scylla, how it is that I feel strongly that it does not greatly matter what happens to a person—in the way of outside events, I mean—even things that may seem very shaming or degrading or dreadful—so long as that person preserves a kind of core—of self-respect, of integrity—oh, I express myself so badly,” Fanny exclaimed with impatience. “My father would have said it better, if he were still alive.”

  Scylla looked at her in amazement. “Better? And you seem such a quiet, gentle, unassuming little creature, who have spent all your short life in small, sequestered places!”

  “I do not believe it makes much difference where a thing happens,” Fanny remarked. “One may be a martyr for one’s faith as well at home as in the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Yes,” objected Scylla, “but Captain Phillimore did not violate my faith; there was no virtue on my side in fighting him off.”

  “Captain Phillimore’s motives are no concern of yours. Listen, Scylla,” Fanny said, standing still in the middle of the path to accentuate the importance of what she had to say, “you must learn to think of what he did to you, however hideous it was, as nothing but a—a kind of natural disaster, as if you had been caught in an earthquake. So long as your spirit did not consent, it need not affect you. We women are so frail. Our position in the world is so weak. The law says that I must obey my husband in all things. As soon as I marry, all my possessions are his; I have no right to anything of my own. Not even a room! But one stronghold we do have—one private place—and that is inside ourselves. Listen, I am going to tell you a very queer thing that happened to me ten months ago. It was when I had gone to London with Thomas.—You must know that before I was married to Thomas I loved—thought I was in love with—a young man called Barnaby Ferrars”—she lingered gently on the name—“but I had no portion, so he did not want to marry me. When we were in London—I—I thought I saw him in the street, and I could not resist following to see if it was indeed Barnaby.” Her voice trembled a little. Scylla glanced at her in total sympathy. “I had become separated from Thomas in a crowd,” Fanny went on, “and then, when I came up with the man, I found that it was not Barnaby; was nothing like him indeed. I think the shock of disappointment caused me to faint.”

  “In a London street? All alone? Good God, what might not have happened to you!”

  Scylla had been somewhat startled by her sight of London. Here, at the hub of the world, in Europe’s most sophisticated capital, she had seen streets and passageways as dark, dirty, evil, and full of menace as any in Kabul, Herat, Umballa, or the other Eastern towns she had visited.

  “Well, that is the strange thing. For when I returned to my senses—and it felt, Scylla, as if I had been away from my body not for hours but for days, even weeks—I found myself not lying down but leaning against a wall, by the river, in a street called the Strand. My return to consciousness was not sudden, but a slow and growing awareness of my situation. I felt that I had been walking arm in arm with somebody—or very close—I had been talking with some dear companion—”

  “A companion? Who?”

  “That is the strangest part! I do not know! Have you never woken from a dream, Scylla, certain that you have been in the company of the person you love best, in the world or out of it?”

  “Yes—but—”

  “And yet you are not positively certain of the identity of that companion?”

  Now it was Scylla’s turn to stop short and look intently at her companion. “No,” she said at length, and there was a wry resignation in her tone. “No, when I awake from those dreams I am never in any doubt as to the identity of my companion! But go on, Fanny. This is the queerest story I ever heard!”

  “Well, that is all there is to it! I woke, I knew I had been with somebody, but he was no longer there. The parting had not been a sudden or a painful one; more as if we both had small duties to perform and had gone our separate ways, knowing that it would not be long before we met again. And—and so I went on walking, alone by the river, and saw the sun rise—”

  Now, all of a sudden, recalling that instant, an almost ungovernable emotion did seem to take hold of Fanny; she turned aside for a moment, leaning against a beech tree, and hid her face in her hands. Scylla, immeasurably moved, laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Dearest Fanny—do not tell me if it distresses you—”

  “No; no; there is nothing more. It was just the recollection of that feeling—” She took a breath and went on. “I saw a priest enter a little church in the Strand. I followed him in. He was saying his early service. Afterward I went up and spoke to him—told him the story of what had happened to me and asked what I should do. Must I tell Thomas? I asked him. I knew Thomas would not believe such a tale. He would be so angry. The priest—he was a very old man—reflected about it and said that in his opinion I had no duty to tell Thomas about it. I asked if I might remain in his church for an hour or so—I did not feel equal to facing Thomas yet, I still had that strange feeling of otherness—and the priest, Father Duarte, said yes, I might stay there, he would go to his house nearby and bring me a little packet of food.” Fanny smiled faintly. “But he never did return, poor old man; after we were back in Petworth I read one day in The Times that he had died, been found dead in the street; perhaps on that same day. So—after a while—I went back to Thomas.”

  “And you never told him what had happened?” Scylla’s tone was awestruck.

  “I never told him. He was very angry,” Fanny said detachedly.

  “So I should imagine! And you never had this experience again—or any clear idea as to who the companion could have been? Do you believe that it was a real person?”

  “I do not know.”

  Both of them now walked in silence. The woods were beautiful, the trees nearly all bare by this time, silvered boughs and lichened, moss-covered trunks, the ground thickly carpeted in yellow and rust-colored leaves.

  “To think this was all so close, and I never came here before,” Fanny murmured.

  Across the valley they heard the church clock strike two.

  “Good heavens, have we been out so long?”

  Glancing at Fanny, Scylla was struck by her pallor. “I have kept you out too long—I have overtired you,” she said remorsefully. “I forgot that you are not in the habit of walking all day long, as I have been used to. Should we sit down for a while on a fallen tree? Or no, look, I have a better notion—is not that a little house, along there, at the end of that ride? Let us ask if we can rest there, until you are feeling more the thing—I can see that you are quite done up.”

  Remorsefully, she took Fanny’s arm and assisted her
to walk slowly toward the cottage. This had evidently been built to provide a picturesque focal point in the prospect across the valley from Petworth House; set in a clearing among the trees, it was provided with a row of counterfeit battlements and a tiny tower; the cottage itself looked to be no more than two rooms, but a thread of blue smoke issued comfortingly from the chimney, and the strip of garden, besides carefully tended vegetables, contained late roses, asters, and a fig tree dropping its great pale hand-shaped leaves across the forest path. Scylla had a sudden sharp recollection of her first encounter with Cameron, and the wild gardens of the ruined tomb, where fig branches had writhed among the cracked marble colonnades.

  “What a bizarre little place!” she said, knocking on the door. “It is like a gingerbread cottage in a fairy tale; I half expect an old witch to pop her head out.”

  “I believe I know who lives here,” Fanny was beginning when the door opened.

  “Good day! I have walked my cousin too far and tired her out,” Scylla said directly to the old man who stood in the doorway. “May we ask the favor of a seat by your fire for half an hour?”

  “Indeed you may.” Standing aside, the old man gestured them to come in. He was unusually tall, but thin as a cobweb; despite this frail appearance he moved briskly and had, Scylla noticed, an impressive shock of snow-white hair and two of the bluest eyes she ever recollected seeing. Cameron’s eyes were as bright, but a greener, sea-blue color; the old man’s were dark, hyacinth blue. When had she seen such eyes recently?

  They had come into a little kitchen, stone-flagged, neat as a ship’s quarterdeck. On either side of the hearth stood a Windsor chair, black and polished with age; but the old man carefully wiped each with a cloth before inviting his visitors to sit down.

  “I believe you must be Mr. Talgarth,” said Fanny quietly. “I know your son; I have seen him several times with Lord Egremont. I am Mrs. Paget, you know, and live in the house across the valley.”

  Of course! Scylla thought. Lord Egremont’s gardener had those brilliant dark blue eyes. She observed with interest that the name Paget aroused some reaction in the old man; it seemed as if a shutter had clicked open; the gaze he turned on Fanny was very intent.

  “I have heard my son speak of you,” he said.

  His voice was clear and deep-toned; no hint of a rustic accent in it, but an unfamiliar cadence; Fanny recollected that he came from Wales. She said, smiling:

  “Almost every time I have met your son, he has rescued me from some predicament; once, indeed, he saved my life!”

  “He was very happy to do it,” said the old man simply.

  “This is my cousin Miss Paget, who has just come from India.”

  “You will be finding it rather cold here, I am thinking,” said old Mr. Talgarth. “Perhaps you would take a drop of my mead?”

  He served the mead, which was very sweet and potent, in tiny, thimble-sized glasses; while he was fetching them from the other room Scylla, glancing inquisitively through the open doorway, saw a bed covered with a great woven coverlet, and two shelves of books. Reminded of the Holy Pir, she said:

  “You live here like a hermit, Mr. Talgarth!”

  “Ah, you see, I have a right to, now,” he said seriously. “I have done my little bit of work in the world and I need no more from it. My son comes by, when he can, to tell me the news; but he is away just now; Lord Egremont has sent him to look at gardens.”

  “Not a very good time, surely, just when winter is beginning?”

  Old Mr. Talgarth’s smile was like a sudden brilliant ray from the setting sun. He said:

  “My son is very obstinate, indeed! All summer he would not go because there was something that needed doing.” And he began to talk about his son’s work at Petworth House.

  After a while Fanny said to Scylla, “We had best be on our way; it will take us a good hour to walk home.”

  “Are you certain that you feel strong enough?”

  “Yes indeed; Mr. Talgarth’s mead has quite set me up. We are so grateful to you,” Fanny said to him. “Will you please remember me to your son when he comes back from his travels?”

  “I will do that.”

  “May we come again if we get lost in the wood?” Scylla asked as they left the house, and Mr. Talgarth answered:

  “You may come whenever you wish. Even if you are not lost!”

  As they walked off down the path he stood on his doorstep looking after them.

  On the way home they talked little; both were preoccupied; but there was no sense of awkwardness. Neither of them felt the need for speech, they were in harmony without it. Once or twice Scylla endeavored to slow their pace, thinking that Fanny must be tired; but she noticed that each time it was Fanny who soon began walking faster again.

  “I am hoping that we can get back before Thomas returns,” she explained as they crossed the bridge over the brook.

  “He cannot forbid you to walk in the woods!”

  “No; but while I am out my household tasks go neglected.”

  “Nonsense! You are the most punctilious housekeeper possible.”

  Fanny did not mention what she suspected would be Thomas’s main cause of objection to his wife and his cousin taking a long ramble together: the intimacy engendered, the confidences that might be exchanged.

  When they passed through the iron gate into the garden they saw that a carriage stood drawn up by the front door.

  “Oh, can it be Cal?” exclaimed Scylla joyfully. “I do hope so! I so long for you to meet him!”

  Hastening inside, they came on a curiously constrained tableau in the front hall: Patty, silent, excited, staring; Bet all elbows and angles, agape with curiosity; Thomas, evidently just returned, for he still wore his greatcoat; his whole aspect radiated dislike and hostility. If he had been a porcupine, Scylla thought, his prickles could not have been more evident. Cal, similarly garbed in a many-caped greatcoat, leaned as if wearied out against the stair banister.

  “Cal!” cried his sister rapturously, and in the same breath Fanny exclaimed:

  “Oh, it is our cousin! Thomas, why do you not invite him to sit down?”

  “Pray, love, have a care!” Trying for a light note, Cal eyed his sister warily as she rushed forward to embrace him. “You see I am not quite secure in my balance yet.”

  Puzzled, suddenly afraid, she hesitated, and then, a new nervous stiffness in his movement giving her a clue, she glanced downward and saw that he was supported on a crutch and had a wooden leg.

  Eighteen

  Country people said of that winter, 1798 to 1799, that it was the worst in living memory; nothing like it had been known for fifty years. The bitter cold that began early in December kept most of Europe ice-bound and immobilized until the end of March; even into April the frosts continued. Snow and more snow fell; the water froze in the wells, animals died of hunger, roads were blocked by snowdrifts. An envoy from Mr. Pitt took three months to reach Berlin. Austria declared war on France, but at first this made little difference; nobody could wage war in such weather.

  In England the expectation of an invasion from France was greatly diminished, and consequently Thomas had much less to occupy him. Meanwhile the Sussex roads were in so bad a state that for many weeks Petworth was virtually cut off. Tidings of the new tax on all incomes over £60 per annum, passed in December, did come through, and made Thomas quite as angry as Fanny had expected; how could Mr. Pitt, a good Tory, do such a thing?

  Thomas had a great deal to aggravate him at present. With a recently amputated leg, his cousin Paget was in no case to go off again to sea directly; indeed for several weeks Cal was obliged to keep his bed, the journey from Portsmouth having inflamed the stump and brought on a fever. Thomas had not even the satisfaction of being able to say that his young cousin was a mawkin or a mollycoddle, for Cal bore his pain with commendable fortitude and left his bed as
soon as he possibly could.

  Not surprisingly, an instant antipathy had sprung up between the two men. Cal represented, to Thomas, everything that he most disliked: the glamour of having traveled in distant places, of having taken part in battles on land and sea and acquitted himself creditably, so that he could not be put down as a namby-pamby or a coxcomb; then there was his poetry writing, which was disgusting enough in itself, and ten times more exasperating because the fellow had actually made two thousand pounds out of it and had, according to Lord Egremont, half of London talking about him.

  It was vinegar and gall to Thomas that Egremont had evidently acquired a high opinion of Cal, invited him to come and use the library at Petworth House, and meet flibbertigibbet guests, poets, painters, and other such riffraff. Not that Thomas was courting opportunities to meet such tedious society—but it was infernally irritating that his cousin should, apparently, be idolized by them, and he not even invited! “I know you are too busy,” Egremont sometimes said—a lame excuse if ever there was one. Also, naturally, the females at the Hermitage wasted half their time fluttering around the invalid, offering to read to him, sing to him, and God knows what; if the housekeeping did not get disgracefully neglected, it was only because Thomas, deprived of his normal outdoor outlets, had so much more time to pace about indoors, looking into everything. And that wretched sawbones, Chilgrove, was forever underfoot, telling Cal not to exercise his leg too much at first, not to try horseback exercise, not to be in a hurry.

  Meanwhile Thomas had interrogated Chilgrove, pretty sharply, several times, about the baby: could he detect any definite signs of backwardness, of slowness in development? The fool had hummed and hawed, said it was much too early to make a definite pronouncement, infants differed greatly in their rate of progress. But what about the tumble down the well? Dr. Chilgrove did not think that could have had any adverse effect. At the back of Thomas’s mind was another question that he could not ask: what about that period of time in London, as to which Fanny was still resolutely silent—what influence might that not have had on the unborn child? Sometimes, these days, Thomas could hardly bear the sight of his wife or her child. And it made him sick to see the way that fellow looked at her, with undisguised admiration and tender liking. Cal had discovered that Fanny could sing, could make up tunes for songs, and the pair of them spent whole evenings, sometimes, matching words to music, Fanny finding tunes for Cal’s poems—faugh, what an occupation for a pair of adults! It made it no better that Fanny always took care to have a piece of mending or needlework in hand, so that it could not be said she was neglecting her duties.