by Joan Smith
Edith knew well he was looking in her direction, but, even while she was flattered, she was afraid. Afraid she would have to take him, whether she wanted to or no. He looked very noble in the pulpit, where he occasionally made a guest appearance in Tisbury. He had a thin face, burning eyes and a well-shaped nose. He was strict and forceful with the parishioners, and a good speaker.
Out of the pulpit, she liked him less. Least of all did she admire him in motion. He did not walk like a man should. He had a creeping, flat-footed, shuffling sort of a walk. His heels did not strike the ground first as a man’s should, as did Helver Trebourne’s, for example. He made no sound when he moved. He could slip up behind you in church or in a shop and lay a hand on your arm before you realized he was there. She thought of it as a dishonest, sneaking kind of a walk. It was the least appealing thing about him, yet it was foolish not to like a good man because of the way he walked. There was much to admire in Doctor Thorne.
* * *
Chapter 3
Helver had been home for three days, and twice a day he thought of Eddie Durden—when he went to bed at night and saw her little note on his bedside table, and when he arose in the morning and saw it again. He rather wanted to go and see her for, with Travers, she formed what he considered his real family, and he was eager to tell her about his trip. But he had not been made welcome at Durden Court since he had become a man. In his youth he had been there on many a cold day, sliding down banisters, eating Tudor treats, reading the Dame’s books and drawing pictures. It was around the time of his involvement with the Widow Malone, his first public affair, that he had been hinted away. He supposed the foolish old Dame thought he had designs on Eddie.
It was Travers who urged him to go and see her. She was the only soul besides Edith herself who hoped to promote a marriage in that quarter. She was leery to see how that sassy chit of a Mary Gordon, the upstairs maid engaged to the groom, was rolling her eyes at him. But that would be only a vexation if he should start carrying on with her. Worse trouble loomed in the village in the form of a new widow that Helver did not appear to have yet run into. Fortunately, he was so busy about the estate he had not spent much time in Tisbury. A marriage would be the making of him, and a careful consideration of all the ladies in the neighbourhood had thrown up Edith Durden as the best match, so Travers asked him one day if he had seen Eddie yet.
“No, I suppose she’s still at the Court?”
“Indeed she is, and she must be dying of curiosity to hear all about your trip. Why don’t you drop over and pay her a call? The Dame doesn’t come here, you know.”
“I know it well, and she don’t much care for me to go there, either.”
"She'll let you call, now that you’re a duke. She isn’t that big a gudgeon.”
“I’m surprised the people who are smiling at me these days. Bathurst came posting all the way down from London to see me. He wants to make sure I’m in the Tory camp, of course.”
“I suppose you sent him off with a flea in his ear?”
“No, I was very civil to him, and didn’t wear my white hat, either. I expect I’ll become a Tory one of these days, like Papa. And the Dean of Salisbury came, too. Imagine, me receiving cabinet ministers and divines! What is the world coming to, Travers?” He looked as pleased as punch at these routine calls.
With a gentle insistence, Travers pointed out that there were three hours to dinner, and, if he hustled off before anyone else came to see him, he would have time for a cose with Edith.
The Dame was at a meeting of the Historical Society in Tisbury, and so Helver was not only admitted to the Court but allowed to stay an hour with Edith without so much as a chaperone. He found her staring into the grate, in which three quarters of an elm tree roared its flames up the flue, and it wasn’t even cold out. There was a book beside her, but her hands were empty and her mouth down-turned.
He walked in unannounced and stopped at the door to look at her. What a quaint little creature she was—hadn’t changed a bit.
“I’m home from the wars once again!” he declared, smiling.
Her eyes widened and lit up. She jumped up, sending the book flying, and ran to him. “Oh, Helver, did you really go to Elba and see Napoleon?” she asked, before even making him welcome.
“Certainly I did.”
“I wager you helped him escape,” she said, and meant it.
“Indeed I did not! You can admire an individual without sympathizing with his principles.”
“I know,” she said, a quick picture of Doctor Thorne flashing into her head.
“I still think him the greatest general of our time.”
“Well, Wellington beat him at Waterloo.”
“Wellington and Blucher and the rest of Europe put together. It took their combined forces and a good deal of bungling on the part of his own generals . . . But that is nothing to the point. I am happy he is beaten, once for all.”
He settled himself on an unpadded Tudor saddle seat before the fire and glanced to his companion. “What were you doing the rest of the time?” Edith asked eagerly.
“Booting around here and there.”
“Have you any new scars to show me?” A regular part of their clandestine meetings in the fields was for Helver to show off the various damages he had suffered in his exploits.
“No, but I fell into the Mediterranean. I was standing talking with Napoleon and a bunch of fellows, on a high cliff, too, and my foot slipped and I went tumbling right into the sea. Boney laughed as if he’d split his sides, but I wasn’t hurt. The Mediterranean is dandy to swim in, nice and warm. Talking about warm,” he said, moving back his saddle seat and running a finger around his collar, “the Dame would love it in Spain. As hot as an oven.”
“Did you go to Spain?”
“I spent three months there, becoming familiar with the flora and fauna. Especially the fauna.”
“I thought it was the Floras you’d be becoming familiar with.”
“Ignoramus! Hasn’t the Dame taught you anything? The flora are the flowers, and the fauna are the animals.”
“What animals do they have in Spain?”
“Not a decent horse in the whole country as far as I can see, and Italy was worse. They have the devil of a lot of oxen and swine. They cook the pork up very tender, too. In one place the waiter sliced up a suckling pig with a plate, just for show, you know. But their most outstanding fauna are their women. Dark eyes and lovely complexions.” His eyes took on a dreamy, reminiscent look.
“You look Spanish yourself, or Italian maybe. Latin, I mean.”
“I’m devilish glad I ain’t. You’ll never guess how they run things in Italy, Eddie. You can’t get next or nigh single girls.”
“You’d never minded groups before, Helver.”
He looked to see if she was roasting him and saw it to be the case. He reached out and chucked her chin. “Brass box. The Dame hasn’t succeeded in teaching you any manners, either. I thought you’d grow up into a nice little prude. How did you get so saucy? You should show a little respect to your elders. I’m a duke now, you know.”
“I know. You don’t seem like one. Should I be calling you 'Your Grace,' or genuflecting, or kissing your hand or something to show my respect?”
“Oh, if you want to be kissing me, never mind the hands. That’s for cardinals, or Popes. But you could quit joshing me, you hussy. I had Bathurst and a Dean from Salisbury to call, and they both treated me with more respect than you are. It’ll take me a few years to grow my hair grey and my spine stiff. I daresay it will come in time. But I was going to tell you how they manage their women. If you ask one to meet you somewhere, alone, I mean, for—well, you know . . ."
“For amor—isn’t that what they call it in Italian?”
“You’ve learned that much anyway, I see!” he said, laughing his old, easy laugh. “It’s hard to get one of them to slip away from her chaperone—they’re guarded something terrible. You have to slip them a note by their
maids, and in Italian, too. The best place to spot them is the churches. I saw a lot of nice churches. What they’ll do is tell you that after they’re married they’ll be very happy to have you for a lover! Can you beat that? After they’re married. I wouldn’t be an Italian husband for anything. There isn’t a one among them has a faithful wife. It’s a form of disgrace if a wife don’t have a lover on the side. I was never so shocked. They don’t mean widowed, either. I wasted weeks trailing after a doe-eyed widow in Florence. They mean that when they have a husband living, they’ll take a lover. A widow is no more free than a single girl. The only girls worth making up to in Italy are married. Really, I don’t think it’s worth the price. You’re a cavaliere servente, as they call it, but more servente than cavaliere. You’re expected to have only one amarosa at a time, and wait on her hand and foot. Running errands for her, and wasting time at operas and concerts and conversazione where the women all huddle at one end of the room and you’re stuck to stand around drinking rotten wine with men at the other. And for all you hear so much about their opera, they none of them listen to a note. They take their playing cards to their boxes and play cards and talk and flirt and don’t pay the least notice to the singers. I thought it was awfully rude of them, but the singers don’t seem to mind.”
“Was the trip a complete waste of time, then, as far as the fauna went?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” he answered with a smile. “The cavaliere servente is pretty well paid for his work. But for my money you can keep their fine ladies. The middle-class girls have it all over them for looks, and availability, too. And the husbands don’t seem at all jealous. You never hear of a duel. Though quite a bit of beating up goes on in dark alleys,” he said, rubbing a shoulder that seemed still to bother him after all these months. Eddie assumed it had received a good clubbing in some dark alley and smiled at him.
“Lucky they’re not jealous,” she said.
“Well, I would sure be jealous if I was married to one of them. They are smashing-looking women. But no prettier than Dame Durden’s daughter,” he finished up with a bow.
“I see you’ve learned some fine Italian manners. You didn’t used to bother letting on you thought I was pretty.”
He subjected her to a close scrutiny. “You’re coming along, now I take a good look at you,” he said mildly. “What have you been doing with yourself now I’m not here to keep an eye on you?”
“Oh, falling in love and breaking hearts and becoming bitter and disillusioned and things,” she answered airily, to repay him for being a cavaliere servente.
“How interesting! A new idea for you, Eddie, to be setting up as a femme fatale. I’ll be falling in love with you myself if you keep this up. Tell me all about it.”
“I must have my little secrets. An air of mystery is part of the bag of tricks of a femme fatale, is it not?”
“Yes, but a brown bombazine gown ain’t. Don’t try to gull me you’ve been breaking any hearts in that granny gown, with your hair screwed to your head in a ball like your mother. The girls in Italy wear it out loose. It looks lovely. I suppose the truth of the matter is the Dame has chosen a squire for you, has she?”
“No, she’s only been trying to, but I’ll choose for myself one of these days.”
“In other words, you’re growing up on me. I don’t think I like that.” He looked hard at her, but she didn’t seem much different than she had when he left, only a little prettier maybe. Something about the eyes.
“A young lady either grows up or dies, and I don’t care much for the latter alternative.”
“You could stay the same. I should have put a rock on your head before I left to stop you from growing. Now I suppose if I call on you or take you out for a drive, people will say I’m courting you.”
“How horrid for you! You’ll have to bring along Aunt Sara for a chaperone to protect your reputation till I’m married. Then you can be my cavaliere servente.”
“It was your reputation I was thinking of. And the Dame would be the worst of the lot. All the old biddies whisper behind their fans every time I wink at a girl or offer to carry her parcels.”
“Or slip her behind a door for a kiss. The old biddies do carry on so about nothing. It’s quite shocking!” she roasted him.
“Yes, and they’ll be worse than ever now I’m a duke. Uncle Egbert is already at me to get buckled, and Travers, too. Can you imagine me married?”
“No, I can’t imagine it at all,” she said truthfully.
“It’s the worst fate in the world for a man, to be stuck with one woman forever. I don’t know what induces all the fellows to plunge ahead and do it.”
“It seems Mama was right in her predictions,” Eddie laughed. “Only the other day she was bemoaning the passing of the old ways—the May Day revels and so on. She prophesied marriage would be the next thing to go by the boards.”
“Are you not having your May Day celebration this year?”
“No, we didn’t have it last year, either. I refused to get myself rigged out in a bunch of flowers and be borne aloft on the haywagon to be pulled through the roads, making a fool of myself. Mama wanted to make Sally do it, but she threatened to quit.”
“I always liked the Dame’s May Day revels. You looked very nice in that white dress, too, Eddie, with your hair out loose for a change. I was looking forward to it. And if you beat the quintain, you get to kiss the Queen of the May, too. A peck on the cheek, if you can call that a kiss.”
“You never beat the quintain yet but got hit on the back with the sack of flour every time you tried it, so I don’t suppose you would have beat it this year, either.”
“Still, there are lots of other opportunities at your May Day celebrations. The Tudor gentlemen knew what they were about. I think I might have worked one kiss in.”
“You used to work in quite a few of them. There was Hettie, that you took into the barn to show the five-legged calf that you’d pinned a stuffed white stocking on to make up the fifth leg. And there was Dorrit . . ."
“Lord, how do you remember all my past sins? That was years ago. But it wasn’t a Hettie or a Dorrit I was talking about this year. It was an Eddie,” he said with a smile. Helver didn’t even consider such a polite conversation as this a flirtation, but he began to realize from her blushes that Eddie had changed. Instead of telling him she’d empty the quintain bag of flour over his head if he tried it, as he expected she would, she was blushing.
“Lord, Eddie, I hope you’re not going to go all missish on me. I was only fooling, you know.”
“I know.”
“A fellow has to have someone he can talk foolishly to. They’ve been ragging at me at home about seeing bailiffs and making appointments and fixing the roof and all sorts of things till my head aches. I came here to relax.”
“Tell me some more about your trip, Helver,” Eddie said, to soothe him into a good humour and relax him. He entertained her for an hour with stories better kept to himself, then left, as he was not anxious to run into the Dame.
He didn’t escape her by much. The Dame had a view of his back riding home to the Hall as she came in her carriage up the lane. When she got into the living room, she asked Edith about the visit at once.
“He came over to tell us about his trip,” Edith explained, knowing she had done wrong in her mama’s eyes to let him stay so long. As he was now Duke of Saymore, no stern lecture was read.
“It was civil of him to call. I’m sorry I missed his visit,” her mother surprised her by saying. “But I trust he won’t make a practice of it. What had he to say?”
That he had been to the Congress of Vienna and to Elba to see Napoleon was brushed aside as no news, and that he had been busy chasing girls in four countries was, of course, not mentioned. “Did he mention the living at Tisbury?” the Dame enquired.
“No, he didn’t mention that,” Edith replied. Talking to Helver was never so down-to-earth as that.
“And you didn’t me
ntion it to him! What were you thinking of? He will be giving it to Hanely Barton or one of his loose friends if we don’t put the notion in his head. If he comes again, be sure to mention Doctor Thorne is looking for a post.”
“He didn’t mention coming again,” Edith said. This, at least, was welcome news and received no rancorous return.
* * *
Chapter 4
A few days passed without Helver returning to the Court, and the Dame’s suspicions were somewhat abated. It had long been Edith’s custom to ride in the track of land between her home and Helver’s, and she saw no reason to discontinue doing so. In fact, she was there rather more often than she used to be; but, with the fine spring weather to lure a girl outdoors, her mama did not tumble to it that her daughter’s rides had any other end than air and exercise. On her next outing Edith achieved her real goal and ran into Saymore. It was mid-afternoon and he was returning from some rounds with his bailiff, mounted on a fine bay stallion. He saw her from some distance and waved a hand and shouted to her. She reined in to wait for him.
“Hello, Eddie,” he said, “what have you been doing with yourself? Playing femme fatale to all your suitors?”
“That’s right. I just rode out for a bit to get rid of them,” she answered smiling. She hadn’t seen a soul but her mother, the servants and Mrs. Petrie, who came to help do the milking, since her last visit with Helver.
“You must give me a run-down on the pack. Start with the top dog. What’s his name?”
No suitor but Doctor Thorne had ever been allowed to do more than stand up once with Eddie at the local assemblies, and this intimation of a whole slew of men would be difficult to keep up. But at least she could name the top dog without shame. “Doctor Thorne is at the head of the pack,” she answered.