His house is beautiful. It’s not as old as the church, which is Norman and very impressive in its own way. The parsonage is a hybrid Tudor-Renaissance affair built in the late fifteenth century, with later additions that are remotely Jacobean—mullioned bow windows, a tower with floor levels different from those of the house, and more detail and decoration because the new parts are of sandstone rather than the hard Dartmoor granite. It’s not a quarter the size of Lynton, and much cozier, of course, quite mellow and romantic. His study is appropriately book-lined, but the books spill out into the hall and halfway up the stairs. The reading lamp on his big desk stays lit half the night, I’m sure. I imagine him sitting there sometimes when I’m restless with insomnia, listening to my clock tick away the hours. He writes his sermons at that desk, and I like to picture him rehearsing them to the empty room late at night, striding up and down a bit, gesturing in the right places. He reads a great deal, but he’s not one of those clergymen who live only to write theological tracts, and actually minister only when absolutely necessary. Christy cares about every single person in his parish, and he has no qualms about showing it. They, in turn, adore him—why would they not? The men admire him, the women want to take care of him, and the girls . . . well, within the confines of a sacramentally sanctioned union (one assumes), the girls simply want him. I see it every Sunday when he greets them on the church steps, and it amuses me. In a way. But—I don’t want him to choose any of them. No, not even the lovely Sophie Deene, and certainly neither of the silly Swan sisters, nor Miss Mareton, nor any of the others. He’s too good for them. Much too good for all of them.
That sounds very odd, on rereading. Motherly? Good Lord, the last thing I feel toward Reverend Morrell is motherly. Proprietary? I suppose. I flatter myself that we have a special relationship, and I find the thought of another woman—another person—hearing the things he says to me, private, confidential, fascinating things about his hopes for his life, his fears of failure—the thought of him sharing them with another person makes me feel . . . diminished. Cheated? I might almost say betrayed, but that’s too much—and—it exposes the vanity in all of this.
Reverend Morrell is not like me. He is open, generous-spirited, candid, unashamed of sharing his feelings. That’s why he confides them in me, and I’ve made the egoistic mistake of fancying that he confides them in no one else.
On reflection, I feel slightly ridiculous.
I can’t write any more.
Except that it’s a good thing that I keep this journal. It helps me to see the folly in my thinking early on, and no doubt saves me from a great deal of humiliation.
IX
LAMMAS DAY, THE first day of August, fell on a Tuesday. All the Lynton Hall Farm workers were given a half-holiday, and Christy was gratified to see their employer setting an example by attending the brief church service at midday; she even joined the procession of worshipers carrying loaves of new wheat down the aisle, as an offering of the first fruits of the harvest. He blessed the loaves and gave a very short discourse on the meaning of Lammastide, distracted, as usual, by Anne’s quiet presence in the manorial pew. After the service, he asked if she would wait for him a moment while he spoke to his curate on a church matter; he had a favor to ask her.
A warm wind was blowing wet gray clouds up from the coast. Midsummer had passed, but the air was still sweet and mild, with no hint of autumn yet in the sturdy breeze. Christy finished his business with Reverend Woodworth and went to look for Anne. He found her in the churchyard, prowling among the old lichen-covered tombstones. She looked up when she heard the squeal of the lych-gate latch, smiling at him as he came toward her. She wore a dark brown cape, and just then the wind snatched the hood off and ruffled her hair. He felt the now-familiar lurch in his chest and attributed it to the simple fact that she was beautiful. More so each time he saw her. It was true; she hardly even resembled the pale, tense, monosyllabic woman he’d met beside her father-in-law’s deathbed four months ago. Nothing wrong with recognizing that, was there? He wasn’t blind, was he?
“I’m inordinately fond of graveyards,” she said by way of a greeting, trailing her long white hand across the pocked forehead of a granite cherub. “I often walk in the D’Aubrey family plot, just as the sun is setting. I haunt it.”
He could rarely fathom her moods. Her smiles were either brittle or soft and inexpressibly sad, and they almost never reached her eyes. She said bitter things with the soft smile and vulnerable things with the brittle one, keeping him off balance and anxious for her. “I like them, too,” he told her. “I come here at night sometimes. I’ve never felt morbid about it.”
“No, well, you wouldn’t.” She waved at the sea of leaning headstones around them. “The souls of all these faithful departed have gone on to their just rewards, haven’t they? In fact, you’d have to say they’re better off now than they were when they were among us, at least the good ones. Wouldn’t you, Reverend?”
She loved to tease him about his faith. He didn’t mind it; he had an idea it was as much herself she was mocking as him. “That’s true. I can’t say I’ve ever actually envied any of these faithful departed, however. Which must mean my faith in the ecstatic hereafter isn’t as rock solid as it ought to be.”
She sent him a knowing smile, acknowledging his favorite rhetorical device with her—saying what she was going to say before she could say it, thereby defusing her argument. “Aren’t you going to commend me for participating in that rather pagan ritual you just presided over?” she asked archly.
“If you’re referring to the blessing of the loaves, that’s traditional, not pagan. I hope you’ll join us on Plough Sunday next January.”
“Plough Sunday? Don’t tell me you bless a plough!”
“I do. The farmers carry it inside and set it down in the chancel, where it sits in muddy state all during the service.”
“Good Lord.”
“Exactly.”
She laughed, a lovely tinkling sound he could have listened to forever. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“It was two things, actually. Have you heard of our penny readings, Anne?”
“Your what?”
“It’s a misnomer; they don’t cost a penny, they’re free. If you haven’t heard of them, it’s because we haven’t had any for a few years. They used to be held in the vicarage meeting room, once a week for an hour or two on Friday evenings. Mrs. Vanstone gave them. She’d usually read from the classics, but popular novels as well, or poetry, history—anything that took her fancy and wasn’t too difficult, since the audience was mostly working people.”
“Mrs. Vanstone? The mayor’s . . . wife?”
He nodded. “She died about three years ago, and not long after that the readings were discontinued.”
A look of horror crossed her face. “You aren’t asking me to start them up again!”
“I think you’d be very good at it.”
She made a disbelieving sound, not quite a snort but close to it. “Why not get Miss Vanstone? I should think that would be exactly her cup of tea.”
“She was asked to take them over,” he admitted. “They . . . weren’t as popular. No one came.”
“Ah.”
Her tone made him feel he had to defend Honoria. “She had a different style from her mother and people didn’t care for it as much. She . . .”
“She was snooty and supercilious and they loathed her?”
He sent her a look of forbearance. “She wasn’t quite as natural and engaging a reader as her mother,” he corrected. “Now, if you were to take them over—”
“I—”
“—you’d fill the hall every Friday night.”
“Oh, rot. Well,” she conceded on second thought, “I might at first, but only because they’d come to gape at me. After the novelty wore off, I’d be no more successful than the unengaging Miss Vanstone.”
>
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I’m not good with people.” When he laughed at her, she added, “Especially people in groups.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.” She folded her arms.
“How? Have you spoken to groups before?”
“I don’t have to.”
“I take it that means no.” He sighed. “It gets easier,” he said gloomily. “A little. Not much,” he amended in a flash of candor.
Now she looked at him with interest. “Don’t you like it?”
“It’s not a question of liking it. Part of my clerical vocation involves preaching, which means my ‘sermonic effectiveness,’ as we used to say in divinity school, determines in some measure the effectiveness of my ministry.”
“But, Christy, you preach a fine sermon!”
“No,” he said flatly, “I do not. Anyway, we’re not discussing me. I really wish you’d consider the penny readings, Anne. You could try one,” he coaxed, “and if it went well, you could think about a second one.”
“Why does it have to be only one person?” she fretted, nervously smacking the pockmarked cherub on the head while she spoke. “Why couldn’t it be several, taking turns? Men as well as women?”
“Now, that’s a fine idea! There’s a meeting this Friday of the deacons and the vestry in the hall—why don’t you come and suggest it? You’d be extremely welcome, needless to say. A committee could be formed, with you at its head, and the whole business could be planned in a couple of ad hoc gatherings. That’s really a splendid idea. Thank you for proposing it.”
She looked nonplussed. Then she began to laugh. “You know, you’re not half as clever as you think you are, Reverend Morrell. In fact, you’re as transparent as a glass of water.”
He grinned, unrepentant. What a pleasure it was to make her laugh. “Will you do it? Come to the meeting on Friday?”
“Oh, Christy!” she wailed.
“Please.”
She glared at him, weighing her choice. Now she was hammering on the cherub with her fist. “Oh, all right,” she finally grumbled.
“Excellent. You won’t regret it.”
“I regret it right now.” But she smiled when she said it. “And I’m afraid to ask you what the second favor is.”
“Maybe you should be. It’s a bigger request,” he admitted.
“I refuse to teach Sunday school.”
“Not that,” he said, chuckling. “Can you stay a few more minutes? I’d like to show you something.”
They left the churchyard and went down the narrow alley between tall hedges at the back of his house. They passed the vicarage garden on the way, neat and tidy as always, the fruit of Arthur Ludd’s constant attention.
“Oh,” Anne said enviously, “what a pretty garden. You’re lucky to have it. Mr. McCurdy has forbidden me to work in ours.”
“Forbidden you? Why?”
“I kill things. He says. Of course, he thinks he’s Capability Brown.”
He laughed again. “Have you had any word yet from Geoffrey?” he thought to ask a moment later.
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. He almost never writes to me.”
“Do you write to him?”
She turned on him one of her brittle smiles. “But of course. Faithfully, once a week. I’m nothing if not a dutiful wife, Reverend Morrell.”
He let that pass; when she was in this mood, prickly and sardonic, nothing he said could suit her.
He took her arm so she wouldn’t stumble in the stony alley behind the house. For some reason touching her, even in this meaningless way, seemed too intimate a thing to do in silence, so he said as they went along, “I hear you’ve been making good progress on improvements to the estate cottages.”
“Yes, well, it’s a beginning. There’s not enough money right now to do as much as we’d like. But Holyoake says the harvest will be good this year, and after that we’ll be able to do more. Christy, what on earth was Edward Verlaine thinking of, to let things go so badly? Some of the conditions I’ve seen are absolutely shocking, a disgrace.”
“He always claimed he had no monetary incentive to keep the cottages up. He said improving them would attract more families to the neighborhood, and he was afraid the increased population would raise the poor rates. So he made a deliberate choice to keep new people out and the old people in damp, unsanitary, derelict housing.”
She made a disgusted sound. “That’s criminal. It ought to be against the law.”
“He said it was good business.”
“Is this a very poor parish, then?” she asked doubtfully. “I haven’t seen any real suffering yet. But perhaps I wouldn’t; perhaps I’m shielded from it.” She looked as if the thought disturbed her.
“There’s poverty, of course. In bad years, after the poor law provisions for the district give out, sometimes private charity—my bailiwick—is all that stands between some people and the workhouse. We muddle through with the various benefit clubs the church organizes, and doles of food and clothing for the truly destitute. But I’ve always thought we could do more, and that philanthropy isn’t the only answer.”
He took her hand to negotiate the rough stile over a fence separating the church close from open pastureland. On the other side he stopped. “The grass is wet; this is far enough, we needn’t go in.”
She peered around, trying to discover what he could want to show her in a bare yellow field. She gave up and looked at him quizzically.
“This is glebe land—meaning the ecclesiastical parish owns it. Nearly nine hundred acres.” He pointed. “It stretches south to the eastern tributary of the Plym. As you can see, it’s uncultivated; it’s lain fallow since the time of the sixth D’Aubrey earl—Geoffrey’s the eighth.”
She nodded. “Yes?”
“I had an idea that the poorest farm laborers in the parish could work it. Cultivate it and plant the crops they need to survive in the bad years—most years, for many of them.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” she said, nodding approval. “It ought to have been done long ago.”
“I agree.”
“Why wasn’t it?”
“Because there’s no money for tools and seed. I was hoping to persuade you to donate them. At least for the first year.”
She faced him, her lovely features full of surprise. He watched her without speaking, and gradually the surprise changed to thoughtfulness. She turned to gaze out across the rough, stubbly landscape, eyes narrowed, fingers lightly patting her lips. “I’d have to consult with William,” she said slowly.
“Naturally.”
“If he said it was feasible and he had no objections . . .”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve already asked him.”
She raised her eyebrows at that. “Have you?”
“He’s for it.”
“Is he?” Suddenly she smiled, and Christy felt as if sunshine had broken through and dazzled him. “Then it’s done.”
He blinked at her. “Really?”
“Why not? Geoffrey won’t care. I’ll write to him, of course, but I can tell you now that he won’t care. Oh, I’m glad for the chance to do something! I’ve felt so useless at times, not knowing how I could help. This is a good solution.”
“You make it sound as if we’ve done something for you, when it’s exactly the reverse.”
She had an appealing, vaguely foreign way of shrugging her shoulders. She leaned back against the stile, surveying the field with a more proprietary air than before. He took the opportunity to stare at her—something he was always trying not to do. It was folly to tell himself that all she’d brought into his quiet life was friendship and frank conversation. He thought about her too much for that to be true. The days when they didn’t meet seemed flat and routine to him, incomplete. He caught
himself saving up stories or bits of conversation to share when he saw her. He kept her in the back of his mind, seeing the world through her eyes, thinking, Anne would laugh at that; this would surprise her; that would put her hack up.
She turned to him suddenly. “Christy, are there so many poor people that they could cultivate all nine hundred acres productively?”
“No, thank God, not all of it.”
“So the rest would continue to lie fallow?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
She brooded. The wind pulled at her hair, blowing it across her cheeks. The colorless sky had leached the green from her eyes; they were smoke-gray now and narrowed in thought. “What if . . . what if Lynton Hall tenant laborers worked the other acres in the spare time I gave them? Half a day a week, say, taken out of the time they usually work on estate lands.”
“You would do that?”
“I don’t know; Holyoake would have to advise me. Maybe others as well—lawyers from Tavistock, Geoffrey’s solicitors. Of course, the Hall Farm has to come first; I can’t get around that, and it’s my first responsibility. But—if the rest of this land were planted in grain crops and vegetables, and the produce sold for money that would go toward worthwhile projects in the parish—your bailiwick—wouldn’t that profit everyone? The workers’ lot would improve in time, so the taxes on the poor would go down, which would be to the benefit of the rate-paying gentry. Wouldn’t it? Tell me if that makes sense.”
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