by Joan Smith
“Do you like them?” he asked eagerly. “I meant to stop by on my way home, but shan’t have time now, very likely.”
“They look lovely. It must be very expensive.”
“It’s costing an arm, but I can afford it. All this money that I’m looking after—well, it isn’t really mine. I mean, if you have so much of everything, you have responsibilities to go along with it. Look at what happened in France because of the way the aristocracy treated the poor. Served them right to get their heads lobbed off. I was horrified to see how dark and damp the thatched cottages were, and half a dozen children crowded into one bedroom. What astonishes me is how they—the parents, I mean—didn’t raise a fuss about it sooner. They’re almost like children themselves, and someone must look after them. Oh, lord, don’t I sound patronizing! I don’t think I’m making myself very clear, am I?”
“I know what you mean.”
“What I’m trying to say is they depend on me, and I have to look after them as though they were my family. We haven’t a decent medical man in the whole community, only that snake-charmer of a Bieler. He’s still recommending hanging garlic around your neck, for God’s sake! I swear I saw little Jinny Pughe with a garlic around her neck, and she told me her mama told her to wear it so she wouldn’t catch a cold. And she running around the wet ground in her bare feet. I made all the parents take their children to the village and I paid for pattens for them, but getting them to wear them is something else.”
“You were always interested in shoes. Do you remember when they made Peg Watkins go to Buxtons to tend the cows, you gave her a pair of shoes?”
“Yes, I thought of Peg at the time. I wonder what happened to her.”
“She wears shoes now. I saw her in Tisbury—she’s married, you know.”
“That’s good; I hope he’s a decent fellow.”
“Oh, yes—he has a little farm of his own. Mrs. Peters tells me you might do something about a new school.”
“Yes, but first I must get a doctor—a real one—and heaven only knows where I’ll find one. I’m advertising in the papers. The school will be next. The children aren’t getting any kind of education, between leaving school in the good weather to pick stones for the roads and in the bad weather not being able to stand the draughty little building they call a school. There isn’t a footman or serving girl at the Hall that knows how to read. I asked Billie to fetch me The Observer the other day, and he brought me The Farmer’s Almanac. I hadn’t realized till then the appalling ignorance. And, of course, there is the matter of a vicar for the local church,” he added, with a sudden quizzing smile.
“You’re quite overburdened with it all,” Edith answered, only half joking.
“It’s a lot more work and responsibility than I ever counted on, for I never did a hand’s turn in my life till after my father died. And I haven’t been next or nigh my other two places yet. I have to make time to get over to Ratton Hall next week, and there are two days gone. Luckily I can count on Forringer and Sparks to see to things here. You will notice I don’t speak of sending Joe over to Ratton Hall so that I may make free with his wife, and don’t say it didn’t occur to you because I saw that look in your eyes.”
“I notice it occurred to you, too.”
“Am I to be held accountable for every thought that flits into my head? In that case I might as well hand Satan my soul and be done with trying to make anything of myself.”
Edith was happy, greatly relieved to see Helver settling down, trying to make something of himself, as he had said, perhaps without realizing he said it. In her heart she had always thought he would one day stop chasing girls. She looked at him with approval and just a little sorrow that he had to grow up so fast. It was so odd to hear him discuss serious problems. His greatest worry had been whether his nag had sprained a tendon, or his new jacket hadn’t one sleeve longer than the other, or whether his books would arrive from London. “You hardly have a minute for your flirts,” she said lightly, but she knew it wasn’t really a matter for lightness.
“Oh, I ain’t that busy!” he assured her, very much in his old way. “Still, I sometimes wish I was plain Mr. Smith and could move into one of those little homes I’m building and let someone else do the worrying. They’re going to be snug little homes, Eddie, with a front room looking out on the Avon. Wouldn’t it be nice to live there with no worries but getting the hay in and seeing the cows didn’t get into the garden? We’d put the children to bed early and sit in front of our fire; you could bring me a glass of ale and my pipe, and sit at my feet while I complained of my sore back.”
“Don’t we have two chairs, Helver?”
“Even a settle if you like, but, mind, you’d have to upholster it yourself.”
“And couldn’t we have just one servant to bring us both a glass of ale?”
He looked at her with his brows raised and a teasing smile. “I’m not sure I like my wife to be drinking ale. It will make her fat and so will having a maid to do her chores for her. Mrs. Smith is getting ideas above her station. Next she’ll be wanting a gig and pony to show off to the neighbours.”
“Oh, but I mean to raise my own chickens and save the egg money to buy the pony. And maybe if the Duke of Saymore takes a fancy to you—or me,” she added with a saucy smile, “he’ll make you his assistant bailiff, and we can take a trip to Bath.”
Helver raised a hand in protest. “Reality begins to intrude. You’re ruining my charming idyll, hussy. I was picturing just the two of us, with the world locked out.”
“No man is an island. Who was it that said that?”
“I don’t know, but he was right.”
The wind blew around the struts of the building, and they moved farther into the centre of the pavilion. “It’s cold,” Edith said, with a little shiver.
“If you weren’t Dame Durden’s daughter, I’d offer to warm you,” Helver said and laughed as she walked farther away from him.
“Well, I am Dame Durden’s daughter.”
“You don’t have to remind me. Did you give old Thorne his answer before he left?”
"No."
“He’s patient. When will you tell him?”
“When I decide.”
“It’s considered quite a settled thing in the village. If you don’t mean to have him, you ought to say so.”
“Who said I don’t mean to have him?”
“Lord, what a husband he’d make!”
“Much you know about it! He’d make a very good husband.”
“If I give him a job.”
Edith pouted and looked away towards the river. Helver walked off to the other side and began whistling, as though forgetful of her presence. After a few moments the shower stopped, and a few gigs were seen to pass by on the road. “It’s stopped raining,” Helver pointed out.
“I’d best go. Mama will be worried.”
“Especially if she knew you were with Bluebeard Trebourne,” he added sardonically.
“Yes, people would be taking me for your new flirt.” Helver gave her a long, serious look that made her uncomfortable; and, just to have something to say, she asked if he planned to go to London that spring.
“Not this Season. Haven’t I just been telling you how busy I am and have to go to Ratton Hall next week? I don’t think you take my reformation very seriously.”
“You said you still find time for your flirts.”
“Well, I lied. I’m so tired at night I’m not good for anything. I expect my hair will start silvering any day. Next thing I know my spine will stiffen, and people will start calling me ‘Dook.’”
“They’ve already started. Mrs. Peters called you that today.”
“Did she though?” he asked, rather pleased with this recognition of his eminence.
She nodded. “She said you’d make a good one, too.”
“I mean to,” he answered simply, looking very young and forlorn with his wet hair falling across his forehead, his collar
turned up around his neck. Looking at him across the pavilion, Edith felt she wanted to cry. Instead, she smiled a sad, wistful smile.
Helver regarded her levelly, then walked a half dozen steps towards her. “Don’t let the Dame push you into marrying him, Eddie. He’s not good enough for you.”
She waited to hear if he had any other suggestion to make, but, as he only went on looking, she said, “I’d best go."
She did not see fit to tell her mama that Helver had been with her in the pavilion, but before many hours the Dame discovered the fact for herself. The eyes of those passing in the gigs had been well occupied to discover the young people talking together. It was first assumed that the young lady was Bessie Sparks, but the mare tied to the railing had let out the secret, and before nightfall it was said in the village that Helver had another girl trailing after him. That nice little Edith Durden. Who’d have thought it of her, and she practically the Doctor’s wife?
Dame Durden was a strict parent, but she was not an unreasonable one. She felt she was well justified in protecting her only child from the lures of the local rake, and every daughter’s mother would have agreed with her. The meetings in the meadow had frightened her since they were not accompanied by the customary courting a serious attachment would have been. When she thought Edith to have been sneaking out behind her back despite her warnings, the Dame was seriously alarmed and laid down the law.
When she returned from Tisbury the next day she said, “I’ve heard from no less than three women in the village today of your meeting Helver at the pavilion yesterday, Edith.”
“It was an accident. We were only there a minute, to get out of the rain.”
“These accidental meetings occur too often to please me, and I must doubt their innocence when you hide them from me. Why did you not tell me?”
“I knew you’d be upset over nothing, Mama.”
“Well, I am upset, and I don’t call it nothing that my own daughter has turned deceitful on me. This time I mean to take action. You’ll accept Doctor Thorne before you become the scandal of the village. To hear you spoken of in the same breath as that De Courcy woman and Bessie Sparks! ‘I thought it must be Bessie Sparks,’ Mrs. Connery told me with her sly eye laughing at me. ‘Imagine my surprise to see it was Miss Durden.’ If he meant to do the right thing, he’d come to the door like a gentleman and not be sneaking off to meet you in corners.”
“We weren’t sneaking off!”
“No, and you’ll not be sneaking off. I hope I know my duty. Did he ever mention a word of marrying you? No,” she answered her own question, and her daughter could not deny it.
“I’m writing Dorion this day to say you accept, Edith. For your own good.”
“He has no position.”
“He’ll soon get one. I suppose Helver has been holding back on purpose to keep Dorion from being in a position to marry. Well, Tisbury isn’t the only living in England. A man of Doctor Thorne’s attainments might do better than a little church with a salary of three hundred pounds.”
“It’s not that. Helver just doesn’t like Dorion.”
“No, Joe Sparks is who he likes and never mind why.”
“It’s not true. He has nothing to do with Bessie.”
“Did he tell you so?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose he told you he hadn’t been near the De Courcy woman either, and the whole village clocking him in and out. He’s not good for you, Edith. Forget him. I’m writing Dorion, and in half a year’s time you’ll be thanking me when Helver is out chasing some other chit.”
“I think he’s changing, Mama.”
The Dame looked at her sharply. “What do you mean? Does he ever speak to you of marriage? Do you think that’s what he has in his mind?”
Edith thought he had been going to speak about it when he asked her not to marry Dorion, but he hadn’t. No, what he really meant was that he still found time for his flirts. Maybe not Bessie Sparks but certainly Lady De Courcy, and certainly another after her if she left. Edith had been waiting too long for him to grow up. Well, he had shouldered his ducal responsibilities just as he ought, but he did not mention marrying herself or anyone else. “No, I imagine that is not what he has in mind,” she confessed and felt ashamed of her foolishness, and angry at Helver for making her ashamed.
“I’ll write Dorion, then,” the Dame said and looked to see if Edith objected.
She sat a moment, then said, “All right, Mama. Write him that I accept.” Her voice was firm, not wavering in the least; but it was a strange, hard voice in which to be accepting a proposal of marriage. It was with a heavy heart that the Dame wrote the letter, but she wrote it.
Helver rode home from the pavilion to be railed at for the roof (still not fixed) and the rain pouring in. After dinner he locked himself in his office to get away from the family. He looked out on nearly total darkness, for the Hall sat in a vast park of private acres. Only a new moon showed the dark outline of trees against the paler sky. The scraggly pines stood above all the others, with here and there an elm recognized by its spreading branches or a willow by its leafy arms dragging down to the ground.
These few weeks of Helver’s life had been strange for him. He had first disliked to be so shackled with work, especially as he was so unprepared for it. But with Forringer’s help he was beginning to take the reins in his own hands, to take an interest in the doings of his “people,” as he was beginning to consider them. His obligations, though onerous, were satisfying; and it was with a feeling of accomplishment that he returned to the Hall at night. He would almost have liked to have stayed there, for it was tiring to arise at seven o’clock and be in the saddle or office till six o’clock, but the atmosphere at home was not congenial. There were the relatives nagging, and now Anne looking at him as though he ought to be playing with her. So he went out but with decreasing enjoyment of his old haunts. Even the dashing Milady had not amused him as formerly she would have. And it was not her lack of cooperation alone that was held to blame. That might have been overcome, he thought, had he considered it worth the while.
No, what he would really like to do nights was sit in front of a grate with just one pretty woman to talk to, to pet and cosset him and perhaps compliment him a little. The poorest farmer had that. Such a woman, of course, must be a wife; and though he had abhorred the idea of getting married, he came to see that, at a certain time in a man’s life, it was not only a possible thing to consider, but a positive desire.
More and more frequently in his mind the woman sitting at his feet was Eddie Durden. He could not have said exactly when this old playmate had turned into a wanted wife, hut somehow it happened. When she had cocked her head at him and said, “Well, I am a girl, Helver,” perhaps that was the beginning of it. At least from then on he had been very much aware that she was a female, and she hadn’t always seemed particularly like one. That she was a femme fatale was only a joke, but that she had a very eager suitor in Doctor Thorne was no joke. Quite the contrary. And she always spoke highly of him, so she must have at least some regard for the man.
Helver had been within a breath of asking her to marry him that afternoon in the pavilion, and he thought she might accept. But the Dame must be softened up first. With a girl like Eddie, things had to be done properly. He would go to the door with his hat in hand and tell the Dame the news. She might very likely throw him out, but at least he’d try to do the thing properly, and, if he had to, he’d elope with her. But first he’d try the right way. She had been in no hurry to accept Thorne, so she couldn’t be in love with him. He’d take the book over tomorrow and formally ask the Dame for permission to court Edith. And he’d return next day and every day till the Dame grew so tired of looking at his mongrel face that she would let him marry Eddie to be rid of him.
* * *
Chapter 11
Mrs. Hartford, the mother of Miss George, was passing by Durden Court that same day and stopped in for the sole purpose of seei
ng what she could discover about Edith and Helver Trebourne. Her interpretation of their meeting was that they had gone jauntering down the public road together, disappearing into an empty house. With such a story as this going the rounds, Dame Durden was happy to be able to say that Edith had just accepted an offer of marriage from Doctor Thorne, and the one meeting with the Duke of Saymore had been an accidental one at the public pavilion to escape the rain. She wondered if what Edith had told her was true. The fact was she no longer trusted her daughter one hundred percent, as she used to, especially where Helver was concerned. She couldn’t say that Edith had actually lied to her, but she had concealed the truth, which was nearly as bad. Mrs. Hartford’s news pleased the villagers, and it was of Edith’s marriage rather than her disgrace that they spoke the rest of the day.
Even a Duke of Saymore bent on getting engaged had his usual duties to perform; and it was not till late afternoon, after his round with Forringer, that he went to the Court. The Dame sat with her daughter in the parlour and was determined she would not move an inch throughout the visit. The book was given to her and dutiful thanks offered. A glance at the cover told her it was useless. How could anyone be so ignorant as to think Richard the Lionhearted, a Plantagenet, was a Tudor? The business and pretext for the visit over, Helver sought to put the meeting on a friendlier footing before broaching his real reason for calling.
“Here it is May first and no May Day revels, Dame Durden,” he ventured, smiling.
“I hope next year we may reinstitute them,” she said and forged on to let him know of the wedding. “Once Edith and Doctor Thorne are married we will have someone other than myself to take an interest in those historical events. Dorion is greatly interested in my project of restoring the past.”
Having heard as late as yesterday that the wedding was not definite, Helver asked, “Do you think they will be married by next year, then?”
“Long before that,” the Dame said firmly. “Edith has accepted his offer, and we mean to do it this spring.”