‘I’m a wicked girl, Mr Radford, but I’m that miserable, I want to die.’
Squire Radford sat down and stared at the vicar in horror.
The vicar miserably shuffled his feet. ‘Didn’t seem wrong at the time,’ he mumbled. ‘There was Bella breakin’ her heart for a baby, and there was Betty like to have as many as she wanted. How was I to know she would turn agin John? I did it for the best. Women,’ said the vicar passionately, ‘are allus weepin’ about something. Never could take them seriously.’
The squire folded his lips in a thin line. Then he said, ‘Where is John Summer?’
‘Up at the vicarage.’
The squire rang the bell.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked the vicar.
‘Put this matter right,’ said the squire sternly. ‘Ram, go to the vicarage and bring John Summer back with you.’
When the servant had left, he turned to the vicar and Betty. ‘Charles, the minute John Summer gets here, you will marry John and Betty. No. Not a word. Then you will go to London and tell Annabelle she must give the baby to Betty.’
‘But the hunt!’ wailed the vicar. ‘Tomorrow’s the hunt.’
‘You nearly drive a young girl to suicide,’ said the squire. ‘You fail to do the decent thing by marrying them because in the first place you do not want to pay John enough to keep a wife, and in the second, you wish the baby for your daughter. Yet you pay John’s debts therefore encouraging his vice of gambling. Because of Betty’s agony, you nearly lose your own life. I am trying to right a terrible wrong and all you can think about is hunting.’
The vicar suddenly burst into tears, knuckling his eyes with his chubby fists. ‘You are right, Jimmy,’ he wailed. ‘I’m evil. I’m always doin’ evil things. Woe is me! “For the good that I would do I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Romans, chapter VII, verse 19. Soon as it’s right and tight, I’ll go to Philpotts and tell him to find another vicar.’
The vicar’s sobs grew louder. Betty stood up, took a few steps forward, and sank to her knees in front of the vicar and put a timid hand on his sleeve.
‘Don’t take on so, master,’ she whispered. ‘I was mad. I did agree, like you said. Men don’t understand these things. Don’t cry, Mr Armitage. We’ve all been a little mad. Please don’t cry. As long as I get my baby back, I’ll never want for anything again.’
But the vicar’s conscience was tearing him apart and he would not be comforted. The squire reflected that no one would have thought the reverend to have so much salt water in him.
Two days later, still heavy-hearted and exhausted with weeping, the vicar arrived in London and went straight to his daughter, Annabelle’s.
His heart smote him when he walked into the drawing room. For once the baby was not crying, and Annabelle, very flushed and very pretty, was singing to it.
The vicar had brought Betty with him but insisted she wait outside in the carriage. He did not want her further distressed. He felt his already over-burdened conscience could not bear one straw.
‘Papa!’ cried Annabelle, running up to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Do you stay with us? I know, you have come all this way just to admire your grandson.’
The vicar had thought he had cried himself out, but at those fell words, he began to cry again, great tearing sobs racking his chubby body.
Alarmed, Annabelle sent for her husband. The Marquess of Brabington strolled into the room and looked amazed at the crumpled sobbing heap that was his father-in-law.
‘What on earth is the matter? My love, fetch some brandy. Come, Mr Armitage, you sound as if all your hounds have the distemper.’
‘A pox on my hounds and my hunt,’ cried the vicar.
The marquess began to look seriously worried. For once, baby Charles was in a high good mood and roared with laughter every time another paroxysm of sobs shook the vicar.
A servant came in with a bottle of white brandy and glasses. The vicar weakly took a gulp, blinked and drained the rest of the glass, hiccupped and stared miserably down at the floor.
‘Now reverend,’ said the marquess very gently, ‘you really must let us help you in your distress.’
Annabelle turned quite white. ‘A death!’ she cried. ‘Who is it? Minerva? Daphne?’
The vicar miserably shook his head. He gave a great gulping sob, poured another glass of brandy, drank it down and stood up and squared his shoulders.
‘I am come,’ he said, ‘to take baby Charles back to his mother.’
‘His mother!’ exclaimed Annabelle. ‘You have discovered who she is?’
The vicar closed his eyes. He dearly wanted to lie but his terrible conscience would not let him.
‘It’s Betty’s baby,’ he said quietly. ‘Our maid, Betty.’
‘But why did you let us think you had brought the baby from a foundling hospital?’ wailed Annabelle. ‘I have tried and tried to love the poor mite as if it were my own, but Charles cries and cries. He probably knows his mother is missing him.’
‘You appear to have caused everyone a great deal of distress,’ said the marquess, ‘but I confess I am relieved to know that Charles will be returning to his mother. Annabelle has been behaving so badly. I did not know what had made her change so much. But she told me the other night that she was determined to be as good a mother as Minerva, and the more the baby cried, the more she thought she was a failure. In fact, both Annabelle and I have been hurting each other quite dreadfully.’
He put his arm about his wife and pulled her close to him. ‘We discovered the other night, my Annabelle,’ he said softly, ‘that we are more in love with each other than ever we were. Will you break your heart if Betty has her boy back?’
Annabelle blushed and shook her head. ‘I have felt so guilty. I thought the child would never love me, and it was because I was useless as a mother and therefore as a woman. How could you persuade Betty to do such a thing, Papa? Surely the boy is John Summer’s. I would have thought you would have made them marry each other.’
‘They are married now,’ said the vicar heavily. ‘Betty’s outside. I’ll fetch her in.’
The marquess and Annabelle looked at each other. ‘I hope you are not distressed by this, my sweeting,’ he said.
‘It is a little hard to part with him,’ sighed Annabelle. ‘But he did cry so much and he was always so angry. I shall cry a little. But only after Betty has gone. Oh!’ She put a hand up to her suddenly scarlet cheeks. ‘What shall we tell people?’
‘More lies,’ sighed the marquess. ‘We will say that Mr Armitage has taken his grandson to Hopeworth and that we will follow in a few days. Then we will leave for Paris. It will be a very long second honeymoon and the death of our son will be announced while we are away. The few servants that will have to know the truth of the matter will not gossip. Society will quickly forget that we even had a son.’
Betty came in and dropped a curtsy. Charles was lying in a cradle in front of the fire.
‘Coming home with Ma, then,’ said Betty, scooping him up. One small baby fist went out and clutched very tightly onto the bib of her apron.
Betty bent her head and rested her cheek on the baby’s dark hair. She stood very still. Tears ran again from the vicar’s eyes and Annabelle turned away to hide her own tears.
‘Let us go then, Betty,’ said the vicar. ‘John is waiting.’
The marquess cleared his throat and tried to lighten the emotion-charged atmosphere.
‘Are you going to visit Daphne?’
The vicar shook his head. ‘Returning to Hopeworth.’
‘Then, good hunting!’
Mr Armitage turned about, his face heavy with remorse and grief.
‘’Fore George,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll never hunt again.’
SEVEN
Mr Garfield spent the remainder of the night tossing and turning, images of several different Daphne Armitages flitting through his brain.
He tried to cling to the idea of a vain, frivolous gir
l who cared for nothing but fashion. Then he would remember Daphne kneeling by the road in an old gown, pleading for his blessing; Daphne pretending to be mad; Daphne cooking that repulsive meal, hugging Bellsire and Thunderer, and defying the guests to harm one hair of their coats. Then there was the Daphne of the Review in Hyde Park, warm and pliant and passionate in his arms, and Daphne of Brighton, lit up from within so that it almost hurt to look at so much beauty.
He got out of bed and bathed his face, wrapped himself in his dressing gown, and sat down at the writing desk. He began to jot down all he knew about Daphne until he came to the subject of the ball he had just attended.
And here was yet another Daphne, glittering like a diamond with something dark and haunted at the back of her eyes.
At last he decided that his hurt pride had caused him to damn her without a trial. Gently bred girls like Daphne did not go around rejecting suitors without one word of explanation.
He decided to call on her after he had had a few hours’ sleep.
But the sun was high in the sky by the time he woke up, a sun that was rapidly disappearing behind an encroaching veil of mist.
By the time he stepped out of doors, the air had that shivery, sooty smell it always carried before London was about to be enveloped in a really sickening, choking sort of fog.
He was very keyed up and nervous by the time he reached Lady Godolphin’s house in Hanover Square. What if she would not see him?
His first feeling when Mice told him that the ladies and Mr Archer had gone to the British Museum was one of anti-climax followed by one of disbelief. They could not have gone to the British Museum of all places!
With a glint of humour, Mice volunteered the information that Mr Archer had been much put out, but Miss Daphne had been most insistent that they go.
When he arrived at the British Museum he decided to wait in the hall for Daphne and her party to return. They had only just left, having had to wait for another twelve people to make up the tour, since the rule was that fifteen people were to be admitted at one time, neither more nor less. He wondered what Mr Archer thought of it all.
Mr Archer was having a most miserable time and praying that none of the ton should see him in such an unfashionable place and with such unfashionable company.
Daphne looked like a dowd. Without the benefit of curl papers or curling tongs, her hair lay flat and smooth, dragged almost painfully back from her forehead and fastened in a bun at the nape of her neck. On top of this hideous hairstyle she wore a depressing kind of felt hat, usually sported by cooks and persons of that order. In fact, Daphne had borrowed it from one of the chambermaids. She wore a drab brown dress, a drab brown cloak, and horror of horrors, half boots. No lady, as Mr Archer knew, had worn half boots for ages. Definitely out of fashion.
He felt his misery complete when, on entering the open courtyard of the museum, Daphne took out a pair of small, ugly steel spectacles and popped them on her nose.
After some minutes brooding, Mr Archer became determined to make the best of things. He would stroll among the art treasures, languidly asking a few intelligent questions, thereby showing himself to be one of the virtuosos who knew art and literature as well as they knew the cut of an expensive coat.
Alas, for his dignity. No sooner was the party of fifteen gathered together than the guide appeared, a squat, swarthy German, who set off at an enormous pace, hustling them along, cracking jokes, making lewd double entendres as the ladies were breathlessly whipped past nude statues, urging everyone ever forward when any of them showed a disposition to linger.
They charged through rooms full of stuffed animals and birds – many of them seemingly in a state of decay. They were only allowed a glimpse of various arms and costumes – rushed breathlessly around a collection of minerals, then antiquities from Heraklion, Pompeii, and Egypt. The Rosetta stone, several large sarcophagi, numerous statues and bas-reliefs from the French collection which had fallen into the hands of the British in 1801 were admired for the space of about ten seconds and then they were off again at full gallop, into the room full of Mr Towneley’s collection of marbles from Greece and Rome. There was a fine statue of Diana, also one of a woman with a startling expression of indignation and terror on her face as if the invading party had just woken her up. Through the manuscripts they hurtled – forty-three volumes of Icelandic literature, presented by Sir Joseph Banks, forty-one volumes of decisions of the commissaries who settled the property boundaries after the great fire of London, a glimpse of the Magna Carta – and then they were back in the hall again with their rude, loud guide holding out his hand for money, which nobody gave him, all being in a breathless state of fury and exhaustion.
If it had not been for the company of Mr Archer and Lady Godolphin, Mr Garfield might not have recognized Daphne.
A slow appreciative smile crossed his face. She looked terrible. She looked dowdy. She looked a mess. She looked adorable.
The elegant Mr Garfield, whose heart had remained for so long untouched, fell head over heels, utterly and completely, right at that moment, with Daphne Armitage. Something finer had been added to the sheer physical desire to possess her. He wanted to cherish her, take care of her, give her his children. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss away the shadows of worry from her eyes.
He wanted to punch Cyril Archer on the nose.
Daphne did not see him right away since her view of the world was blurred by the spectacles – courtesy of Lady Godolphin’s second footman.
It was Lady Godolphin who spotted him. ‘I’d know those legs anywhere,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘Mr Garfield.’
Daphne stood there miserably, her hands going up to take off the hideous glasses.
He would find her like this.
She had woken up that day with his face in the forefront of her mind. She longed for him. She cursed herself for having lost him. How on earth could she ever have believed her own father capable of …
But there was a sort of brutal side to the vicar. A vague memory haunted Daphne of the reverend rolling behind a haystack with a giggling country girl after the harvest had been brought in. There was the time her father had taken his whip, right in the church, to that wicked suitor of Annabelle’s. And an innocent mind like Daphne’s, half-attracted to, half-afraid of the deep dark secrets of the marriage bed, was quite prepared to believe the worst of anybody. Only look at Lady Godolphin! Age had not dimmed her splendid lechery, nor custom staled her infinite variety of beaux.
Then there was the Countess of Oxford, Jane Elizabeth Harley, that notoriously unfaithful lady. So varied was the paternity of her children that they were called by the wags the ‘Harleian Miscellany’, the title of a work published by her complaisant husband.
There was Byron, now in exile. The rumour of his affair with his half-sister, Augusta, had reached even Daphne’s chaste ears.
And the Prince Regent himself – always falling in love with elderly ladies. Daphne naively believed that only the young and fit had a right to fall in love.
But she still felt miserable and guilty over having believed such a slur on her father’s character.
Much of her hopelessness had been relieved by the robust support of Lady Godolphin. There was something comforting about a lady who never seemed to be shocked at anything.
But even Lady Godolphin could not help her now. Daphne knew she looked terrible. She had thrown all her armour away. She was not clever or bright or sophisticated. She was quite sure her only attraction for Mr Garfield had lain in her beauty.
Lady Godolphin cheerfully urged Mr Garfield to return with them to Hanover Square – ‘for if you was wantin’ to see the museum, don’t. Not that there mightn’t be something interesting, except that Grimaldi of a guide won’t let anybody stop for breath.’
Daphne stood with her head turned away, conscious of the possessive presence of Mr Archer standing very close beside her.
Mr Archer was wary of Mr Garfield. His normally dim intelligence s
harpened by jealousy, he felt sure Mr Garfield had only come to the museum to see Daphne. Daphne looked remarkably Friday-faced so perhaps it was as well he should see her thus. But, thought Mr Archer viciously, Daphne is not going to shame me by looking like a frump. If needs be, I will threaten her again.
A rather nasty look crossed his beautiful features causing Mr Garfield to think that Archer was like some paintings. Much better when seen from a distance.
Short of telling Mr Archer to go and Mr Garfield to stay, Lady Godolphin did not know how to resolve the situation. She noticed the amused glint in Mr Garfield’s eyes as he watched Daphne and also noticed the way Daphne’s colour came and went.
When they were all settled in the drawing room at Lady Godolphin’s, Mr Garfield, very much at his ease, chatted of Brighton, and this and that. Daphne asked shyly about Mr Apsley, although privately she did not care one rap for that callous young man’s welfare, and Mr Garfield smiled and said Mr Apsley was in love again and therefore restored to his normal, cheerful, non-interfering self.
Mr Archer looked sulky.
Mr Garfield apologized for his prolonged absence from the polite world but explained he had been much engaged with his business. Mr Garfield was urged to describe his business to the ladies.
Mr Archer yawned rudely.
Lady Godolphin marvelled that such a man as Mr Garfield who came from an aristocratic family with so much money should engage in trade.
‘I was one of the first troops to go out with Wellington to the Peninsula,’ said Mr Garfield. Daphne thought of him in uniform and her mouth went dry.
The fog had thickened outside and the candles were lit, a branch of them on the mantel above Mr Garfield’s head sparking copper glints in his thick hair.
Daphne Page 14