Dame Durden's Daughter

by Joan Smith

  It was his intention to go the next afternoon. In the morning he took the Dame’s carriage into Tisbury to mea­sure his study and speak to the lumber merchant about the price of oak. He forgot no detail that was to his own ad­vantage and intended to get Eddie’s present from Saymore transformed into an oak-panelled study for himself.

  His trip to the Hall was delayed till after luncheon, and, upon the Doctor’s arrival, Helver quickly nipped out the back door and went straight to the Court. He knew this was unconscionable behavior, to be sneaking behind a man's back to play up to his bride-to-be, but that one look from Eddie’s eyes had sent him reeling. He must convince her not to marry Thorne.

  “What a pity!” she said when he was shown in. “Dorion has just gone over to the Hall to see you.”

  “No, it’s Mama he’s seeing.”

  “Oh, you knew he was there.”

  Dame Durden looked up sharply at this. “What exactly was it you wanted, Helver?” She had stopped suspecting his motives when he gave Dorion the living, but saw that, as she might have known, he was up to something.

  He had never felt such a fool. “I wanted to see you,” he told her.

  She calmed a little at this, and he went on to explain. “It has not been quite settled I am to give your daughter away. I mentioned it to Dorion, and we agreed I should speak to you on the matter.”

  “I have no objection. If Edith likes it, it would be quite proper, I think. You are the lord of the village.”

  “I would like it,” Eddie said, looking at Helver with a blank expression that told him nothing.

  As his plans to see Edith alone had failed so miserably, Helver decided to leave at once, but the Dame detained him. She took him to the stables to ask his opinion of re­building them. Her bailiff thought it necessary, but Doctor Thorne’s warning regarding the venality of bailiffs had set her to wondering.

  She didn’t know quite how it was, but, since Dorion had come, she seemed uneasy about every­thing. He was quick to point a fault in all her friends and the villagers and, of course, most particularly in the Saymores. The dreadful idea was beginning to emerge that Dorion wasn’t quite as fine a gentleman as she had always supposed. Dorion didn’t think any work necessary in her stables, but, knowledgeable as he was in other fields, she could not but wonder when she saw wood three-quarters eaten away by rot, whether on this matter he was in error.

  “You’ll have the barn falling on the heads of your cattle if you don’t get this set to rights,” Helver told her at a glance.

  She then asked him several questions about the milking sheds at the Hall, which she had heard to be in a state of renovation, with some modern improvements she was in­terested in. The house must remain a Tudor museum, but she was not so insane on the matter that she scorned mod­ern methods in her work areas. This took a long time, for Helver was enthusiastic and, by now, well informed about such agricultural affairs. They examined the stables, and, when they returned to the house chilled from their outing, a warm drink seemed to be in order.

  Doctor Thorne re­turned before Helver left and felt himself doubly blessed to have had the Duchess’s ear to himself and the honour of a call from His Grace. That he had also managed a fifteen minutes’ stroll with Lady Anne through the Saymore rose garden, telling her how much fun she would have at his little Sunday School with pretty Edith reading her sto­ries, added to his high spirits. His Grace must not think of leaving till he had been informed of the Sunday School. Dame Durden, having already heard of her and Edith’s duties in that regard, departed with a crackle of her stiff skirts to have the stables measured.

  “Not a bad notion,” was Helver’s bland comment. “But I don’t think memorizing the Bible and that sort of thing much use.” “These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel”—the old familiar, meaningless phrases from Deuteronomy surfaced in his mind.

  “That will be up to my wife,” Thorne replied. “Edith has been kind enough to offer to undertake setting up the school. A good pastime for a vicar’s wife, I think you will agree, Your Grace.”

  Helver smiled to see Eddie’s discomfort in her new role. “In that case, there is no fear of an overdose of memoriz­ing. Have you learned the alphabet yet, Eddie?”

  “Oh, yes. You are reverting far into the past to remem­ber my difficulty with it. In fact, I was only five when I had the alphabet off by heart.”

  “You were at least six, my girl. I was either eleven or twelve, for I remember I had my tutor—young Hackett—copy it out for you, with an animal or something for every letter. Hackett didn’t come to us till I was eleven.”

  “I don’t remember,” Edith lied blandly, yet she still re­membered aardvark, bat, cat, dog as well as if it were yes­terday.

  “Your friendship with each other goes back a long way,” Dorion said.

  “Your fiancée has a shockingly bad memory, Doctor. Did you know that?” Helver asked, with a teasing smile at Eddie.

  “As long as she remembers she is a minister’s wife, I think we may count on her good sense not to lead her as­tray.”

  “I daresay she won’t be forgetting that.”

  “Perhaps you two would like to be alone,” Edith said, acutely aware that Helver was bent on mischief and in an excellent position to perpetrate it, knowing her so much better than did Thorne.

  “No, stay, my dear,” Thorne said. It was the first time he had ever called her by such an endearment. “You and the Duke are old friends.” Edith looked in vain for an edge of irony in this. Finding none, she remained seated.

  “We have been friends from the cradle,” Helver told him. “Almost like brother and sister, in fact.”

  Thorne smiled warmly at this, always happy to see the closeness of Edith to the Duke. “A wonderful thing, friendship,” he began to preach. “I hope your friendship will not flag only because your sister,” he smiled at Edith, “is about to be married. Indeed, I hope that in time, Your Grace, you will come to regard me as something of a brother.” Having failed as a father, he was willing to go for the next best thing. “An older brother; one who is al­ways willing to give his help, advice, when they may be needed. My door will always be open to you.”

  “You have mentioned before your willingness to guide me, Doctor Thorne. I shall bear it in mind if I find myself in need of such help.”

  It was settled that Helver was to give the bride away, after which interlude Helver tried to leave but was de­tained by the Doctor. “Might I trouble you, Your Grace, for another rendition of that delightful ballad you and Edith were so kind as to sing for us the other day? 'The Ladye Bessie,’ I think it was called.”

  Edith’s anger with Helver began to shift to Thorne. If Helver had come to make mischief, Dorion was only too eager to egg him on to it. He always did everything in his power to encourage the friendship between them, and she decided she must show him a lesson. She would be as friendly with Helver as even her groom-to-be could wish and perhaps his eyes would be opened. “Very well. I al­ways like singing with Helver,” she said, and gave him, to his great surprise, a sweet smile. So sweet, in fact, that he looked automatically to Dorion for some signs of offence but found none.

  They sang the song and again, as on the day before, an encore was not only asked but demanded. “Let’s sing something else,” Helver said. “There was always a ton of music in that old parson’s bench in the hall.”

  “We don’t have a parson’s bench in the hall,” Edith ad­vised him.

  “You used to. Don’t you remember the time we were sliding down the banister and you cracked your head against the back of it?”

  “My arm, you mean. I couldn’t move my elbow for a week, and you gave me horse liniment for it. But I don’t know what bench you mean. It was an old chest there.”

  “Yes, so it was. I remember it now—with brass corners and leather straps around it.”

  “It’s in the study, with a potted fern on it.”

  It was dragged out, and its contents called up more share
d memories from the past, each of which was gone into with readiness by Edith, with frequent little peeps at Dorion for signs of disapproval. So far from disapproving, he sat nodding benignly on her while she flirted with the most handsome, dashing, reckless blade in the kingdom. Thorne urged them to reminisce, inserting the words “brother” and “sister” from time to time, though he must surely have seen that no such relationship now existed be­tween them. When they returned to the instrument to sing “Blowzie Bella,” he excused himself for a moment.

  For one song they thought nothing of his absence, but after two they began to look at each other questioningly. “What can be keeping Dorion?” Edith asked.

  “Maybe he doesn’t care for our music.”

  “He asked us to play.”

  “So he did.”

  Edith felt guilty after her performance and said rather penitently, “I daresay he disliked our talking so freely of the past.”

  “Oh, no, he liked that. He even seemed amused at your flirting. What are you trying to do, make him jealous?”

  “I wasn’t flirting.”

  “Well, whatever you were doing, I wouldn’t like my fiancée to do it with another man. He’s always throwing you at my head. Serves him right. Come on, we’ll find a nice warm love ballad and see if that brings him back. How about . . ."

  “He is not doing that!” she charged angrily.

  “Isn’t he? You wouldn’t be left alone with another man if you were engaged to me.”

  “Well, I’m not engaged to you."

  “I know,” he said curtly, “but it’s damned odd your lover doesn’t show any signs of jealousy when you’re act­ing almost as though you were.”

  “Dorion is above jealousy.”

  “Then he isn’t human!”

  “Don’t you dare call him a snake again, Helver. We’re the snakes, both of us.”

  “We’re not doing anything. But we could be. I could be making violent love to you for all he knows. Why doesn’t he look after you?”

  “He has a better opinion of you than that, and of me, I hope.” Whatever about herself, she knew in her heart Do­rion's opinion of Helver was not high, and why didn’t he come back?

  “He has no high opinion of anyone except possibly him­self. Very much aware of human failings; he’s said so more than once."

  “You told him we were like brother and sister. Why should he be jealous? He only wants us to remain friends.”

  “Why the deuce should he want that? He’s got the living—unless I am expected to confer further honours, or sal­ary, for the privilege of making free with his wife.”

  “How dare you say such a thing! Only you would place such a construction as that on his trusting actions. You speak as though—oh, Helver, I’m ashamed of you!”

  As angry as she was with her fiancé, she couldn’t believe him capable of any such villainy as Helver had mentioned. Mama was right, and Helver was a deep-dyed villain. How could such an idea have occurred to him?

  Helver felt somewhat ashamed of himself when he saw the shocked look on Eddie’s face.

  After allowing what he considered sufficient time for Helver to have been softened by love songs, Doctor Thorne returned to mention Evans’s creeping infirmity, ever so casually, and hint that it was getting on to time to think of retiring him. But the subtle words died on his lips. He saw the two staring at each other, obviously in the mid­dle of a fight.

  “What, a family squabble?” he asked, with one fast, fierce look directed at Edith. “What will His Grace think of you, my dear?”

  “His Grace is about to leave,” she said.

  “Doctor Thorne stands on the formality of calling me so, Eddie, but we, I hope, are on a closer footing than that,” Helver said. “I hope you don’t mean to sink me to ‘Your Grace,’ only because you are about to become a vicar's wife.”

  “If her memory is so feeble, I must call you Helver, too.” Thorne suggested playfully.

  “Why not, Dorion?” Helver asked, smiling sardonically. “After all, we are all about to become one big happy fam­ily.”

  “Quite so. Quite so. All one happy family, and we must not leave out Her Grace.”

  “Let’s add Dame Durden for good measure,” Helver added and strode to the door.

  “I hope you don’t leave us in anger, Helver,” Thorne said, walking rapidly after him.

  “Not in the least. I plan to do myself the honour of re­turning tomorrow. We families must keep the ties close.”

  “Indeed, we must,” Thorne agreed, holding the door for the Duke. Immediately Helver had left, he turned in wrath on his bride. “Fool! What did you say to upset him?”

  “You should he asking what he said to upset me! I should be your first consideration,” she shot back, furious with both of them.

  “My first consideration is not to lose His Lordship’s re­gard. He can do us a world of good if we play our cards right.”

  “What is our trump card, Dorion? Me? Am I the queen of hearts?”

  “Ha! Ha! Very sharp. He has a keen regard for you. You did well to play up to him a little. You are something more than a sister to him, I think. That can be turned to good account. Oh, not that any impropriety must arise! Scandal and gossip would be worse than anything for my career. A woman’s smiles, however, can accomplish a good deal in this world. Especially with men of Saymore’s kidney. And mind it is to go no further than smiles.”

  “Saymore is not the sort to be satisfied with smiles,” she told him and marched angrily from the room. She went upstairs to consider the vileness of the world. She was shocked at Helver’s idea that Dorion would use her to advance himself, but more shocked that it was true. Helver was an acknowledged rakeshame and that he would come up with such an idea shouldn’t shock her, but it did.

  And how could she come to terms with Dorion’s suggestion of going along with it? Was he so blind, so trusting and basi­cally innocent as to think any man would demand no more than a smile for conferring large favours? She regretted deeply that she had ever allowed herself to be talked into this marriage. She had accepted it half to avoid being hurt by Helver, and now it seemed that was to be thrown into the bargain. She argued with herself whether she could call off the wedding and how it could be done. Thorne would be adamant, and it would require Mama’s support.

  She remained in her room through dinner, claiming a headache. Her mother came to her later; and, to give her a hint of the way things were going, she said, “I cannot like Dorion’s scheming to get himself into Helver’s good graces, Mama.”

  The Dame had a good inkling this was going on, for Dorion spoke quite openly in the family. “It is a pity he is in a position where he has to do so. A great pity for one of his superior breeding to have to stoop to his inferiors, but the world is hard. Dorion must behave now in a way we none of us like, for the sake of his future. That young man is going far, Edith, and you at his side.”

  Edith felt her position was more in advance than at his side and frowned. “I don’t think it is proper for Helver to be here so much. It gives an odd appearance.”

  “Dorion is broad-minded. He doesn’t mind about that. He is above jealousy. For myself, I do mistrust Helver’s motives. His coming here when he knew Dorion to be at the Hall was ill-done. But we know what he is. His past is not such that it leaves any doubt. A series of entangle­ments with females of all sorts—he has no character. None at all; and, if he comes again, I think you must be busy, Edith.”

  “I think I must; but it is Dorion who ought to have said so, not us.”

  “It would not occur to him to suspect such treachery. He places too much reliance on the title. In that one small matter I do think he is out in his judgement. To see him trotting over to the Hall to make up to Dora Trebourne is not what I ever expected of him.”

  “I have been unhappy with his behaviour ever since Helver returned. I must confess, Mama, I have doubts about marrying him.”

  “I know you have, my dear,” her mother said quietl
y. “Helver has gone out of his way to turn your head, but it is pure mischief. He has no more thought of marrying you himself than he would marry any of the other scores of girls in this county he has ruined. I hope you are not so simple-minded as to hope for that, love. His blood lines quite aside, he is too high for us. Gentlemen in his walk of life, aristocracy as they consider themselves, do not marry such as you. And if it’s a title you want, well, a bishop is also a lordship, you know.”

  “Helver is not—I don’t think he’s quite as bad as he’s made out,” Edith defended, but her defence was weak after his afternoon’s work.

  “I have taken care that the reports of his more-infa­mous conduct do not reach your ears. There is no reason for young ladies to hear such tales. Enough that you know he is not respectable.”

  “I am no longer a young lady. I am about to be mar­ried, and surely I can know the whole now.”

  “What you suspect he has in mind in coming here—to turn you away from a good marriage for a brief flirtation—is the sort of thing he does regularly. A dozen times Dora Trebourne has lamented to me of his conduct when visiting relatives; and, if his own mother cannot turn a blind eye to his conduct, it would be madness for you to do so. You made the right decision to marry Dorion and forget Helver. Don’t be turned aside from it by his flashing eyes or you’ll regret it the rest of your life, Edith.”

  So even Mama was not totally unaware of the danger in those flashing eyes. Edith smiled when her mama thought she ought to be serious and repeated her warnings at more length before leaving her daughter with a headache some­what increased, and a heavy heart. Very likely Mama was right—but what if she wasn’t? What if Helver was truly bent on reforming, as he said he was, and what if he loved her as he hadn’t any of those other scores of girls? Then, too, while Dorion might have to truckle a little to Saymore to ingratiate him, he did not have to encourage herself to play up to him. That was ill-done of him; but it was inno­cent folly, being unaware of the way it would be inter­preted by a man such as Helver.