“They’re betting five to four on Hampshire,” remarked Anthony. “I’m not so sure, are you? Carter’s the opening batsman, I see, and Beauclerk’s bowling. Trust him to bowl first, of course!”
Lord Frederick Beauclerk was known to be somewhat autocratic in his dealings with the MCC; but this was only to be expected from the son of a Duke and one, moreover, who was a very fine cricketer.
“Odd thing about cricket, though,” replied James. “Unites men in very different walks of life. There’s Beauclerk, son of a Duke, playing against Holloway, who used to be an ostler, so I’m told!”
“Both sportsmen, that’s what matters,” returned his friend. “B’God, he’s done it! Bowled Carter for a duck!”
Thereafter the game occupied all their attention as they watched Lambert, a renowned all-rounder, punishing the Hampshire side. At the end of the first innings, he had stumped three, caught out three and bowled one for a duck. When the MCC came in for their first innings, he acquitted himself equally well with his bat, and had knocked up the highest score of the game, not out, when stumps were drawn.
“Magnificent!” exclaimed James, as they made their way through the crowd to the stables. “Pity about Osbaldeston, though — didn’t get a look in this time, did he?”
“Bad luck,” agreed Anthony. “But when he’s in good form, now there’s a hitter! He was at Eton, hounds, first-rate shot, and with a handy bunch of y’know, but a bit before my time — a splendid man to fives, into the bargain. Only a little chap, but plenty of bottom — good-humoured fellow, too. You were quite right, James,” he added, as they climbed into the curricle and spent several tedious minutes getting it clear of the other traffic and onto the highway. “I did need diverting, and cricket was just the thing — capital notion of yours.”
As they proceeded on their way to Paddington, they gave themselves up to that delight of all cricket enthusiasts, the talking over of past matches they had watched and the personalities who had played in these events. It seemed no time at all before they drew up outside the grey stone house where Dr. Gillies lived. Roses were blooming in the small, white-fenced garden, and many-hued pansies lined the flagged path which led to the door.
“What a capital place!” exclaimed Anthony, involuntarily. “It looks so neat and trim, just the right setting for a country doctor. But I daresay you’ll be looking out for a house of your own hereabouts before long, since you’re soon to become leg-shackled, poor devil! Heigh-ho! Friends are never the same when once they’ve quitted their carefree bachelor existence for the bonds of holy matrimony. I daresay it will be long enough before we watch cricket together again.”
James grinned. “Doing it too brown, Tony. I can tell you’re envious.”
“I, my dear fellow? No such thing — I don’t aspire to matrimony, assure you.”
“I might suppose it to be sour grapes on Cynthia Lydney’s account, were I not pretty certain that you never had the slightest tendre for her.”
“How well you interpret my state of mind. In fact, she was the last female I should ever have wished to have as a wife. No, our mutual friend Durrant is very welcome to her, and I believe no couple could be better suited.”
“Cynical devil, ain’t you?” retorted James as he sprang down from the vehicle, hauling two parcels after him on to the pavement. “Look, I’ve a better notion than your awaiting me at the Red Lion. Why not stable your equipage there and come back to join me here? Dr. Gillies and his sister are hospitable people, and won’t care to hear that I’ve left my friend at the inn. Besides, I may be a little while with them, since they’re sure to wish to drink my health over the betrothal. You know how it is.”
Anthony demurred a little, but was eventually persuaded that it would be putting the doctor and his sister to no inconvenience.
“Good,” said James. “I’ll go on in, then, and prepare them for the signal honour awaiting them.”
With these words, he pushed open the white gate and, picking up one of the parcels, started up the path to the house. Anthony meanwhile turned his curricle expertly in the narrow road and drove it into the yard of the neighbouring inn, where an ostler received it deferentially.
He then strolled back to the house. There was no sign of James or of the second parcel, so evidently both were now within doors. He raised the knocker.
James himself answered the door and ushered his friend into a neat parlour bright with the evening sunlight. Two elderly people were sitting there, and both came to their feet as Anthony entered.
“This is my friend Shaldon, of whom you’ve often heard me speak,” began James, presenting Anthony first to the lady. “Tony, this is Mistress Betty.”
Anthony bowed. “How d’you do, ma’am?”
Oddly, Mistress Betty made no reply. She was staring at him as if thunderstruck.
In a moment, all traces of colour left her cheeks, leaving them white and pinched. She moved forward a step, staggered, and would have fallen, had not James promptly leapt forward to support her.
She uttered a choking cry and gasped out a name.
“Neville Stratton!”
Mistress Betty had never been in such a luxurious room as the small salon at Alvington Hall. For a moment she felt overawed by the evidences of wealth — the thick Aubusson carpet, the claret coloured velvet curtains caught back in bands of gold braid, the highly polished mahogany furniture, and the elegant ormolu clock on the mantelshelf. Then her eyes came to rest on the man in the wing chair, his leg swathed in bandages and supported on a footstool.
Two people much changed by time and circumstance, they faced each other as they had often done in the past in the humbler setting of the cottage at Rye.
Anthony placed a chair for her, and silence fell on the room for a while.
“Do you recognise this lady?” asked Anthony presently, in a quiet tone.
The Earl stared without speaking at the woman seated opposite. Her once bright hair was now grey and her face creased by the wrinkles of time; but her features and expression struck an instant chord of memory within him.
He nodded. “Ay, she’s Mrs. Lathom, right enough.”
Anthony released a suspended breath.
“Should you be in any doubt,” said Mistress Betty, “you will surely recognise this.”
She unfastened from her neck the locket which she always wore and passed it to Anthony, who rose to hand it to his father. With trembling fingers, the Earl opened it.
The bright countenance of Dorinda smiled out at him across the years.
A spasm of pain contorted the Earl’s face. He closed the locket with a snap and handed it back.
“I should scarce have recognised you again, Mr. Stratton.” Unconsciously, she gave him the name by which she had always known him. “You are greatly changed — and not, I fear, in the best of health. But I knew your son at once. It was as if a ghost had stepped out of the past. He is very like you once were.”
Her eyes studied Anthony again, noting now a firmness and resolution in his countenance which had been lacking in that of Mr. Stratton.
“And yet unlike,” she murmured, almost to herself.
“I did come back to see you, y’know, after that last time,” said the Earl, defensively. “You may suppose that I totally abandoned you and the child, but it was no such thing. There was a devilish old hag living next door, and I questioned her; but beyond admitting that she’d seen you go off in a chaise with the child, she kept mum. I couldn’t find anyone who knew where you’d gone.”
“That was because I didn’t wish anyone to know. At that time, my heart was filled with hate towards you, and the last thing I wanted was to have you follow me.”
“You let slip something to your maid, though, did you not, ma’am?” asked Anthony.
She nodded. “I worried over that afterwards, though I hoped an ignorant country girl such as she was would most likely forget what I’d said. I told her I was going to Paddington, a village near London.”
�
�She recalled that it was London,” replied Anthony. “I suppose to a country girl London would appear invested with glamour, and therefore it stuck in her memory. But she forgot the name of the actual village.”
“As I’ve already explained to you, sir, I took the child there thinking that my brother, Dr. Gillies, might be able to save it.”
“And had you been known under your formal title of Mrs. Lathom, we must have discovered you before this. My friend Somerby often spoke of his mentor Dr. Gillies and of Mistress Betty, both of whom had been so kind to him during his years as a medical apprentice. But of course there was no reason to suspect any connection between Mistress Betty and Mrs. Lathom.”
“My brother never found it natural to refer to me as Mrs. Lathom. We had met so rarely after my marriage, you see, until I went to live with him as a widow. In the old days it had been Betty, in the family — my full name is Elizabeth — and he had spoken of me to others as Mistress Betty. He did make an attempt at first to call me by my proper title, but soon gave it up and reverted to the ways of our childhood. I suppose no one has called me Mrs. Lathom for close on five and twenty years.”
The Earl had been paying no attention to their conversation for some time now, immersed in his own thoughts.
“Daresay you did hate me,” he said, at last, returning to an earlier remark Mrs. Lathom had made. “Don’t think I relished the part I had to play, but what could I do? I couldn’t afford to alienate my father, dependent as I was upon him financially. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, and all that, but everyone knows he was a tyrant, especially with his own family! It’s easy for others to say they’d act in this way or that, but in the end it’s he who pays the fiddler who calls the tune. Damn it all, my hand was forced, choose how!”
The final words came out in a burst of angry self-justification.
Mrs. Lathom’s eyes rested on him with a hint of compassion.
“All that has long since gone by, Mr. Stratton — my lord,” she said quietly. “Time has laid healing fingers on my wounds. As for you, your health is not good, and dwelling on past sorrows will not benefit you. I should not have come here at all, but that I needed to do so, in justice to your son.” She sighed. “The sins of the fathers have been visited on the children, as the Good Book says. But now at last your surviving son has his own again. As for the little mite who expired soon after I brought him to my brother, he is at peace. May God rest him and my beloved daughter.”
Patch was delighted to see his mistress at home once more. None of the other humans seemed to understand so exactly what a dog liked, or to have the time to provide it; a sedate walk on a lead through the village, for instance, could not compare with a wild scamper through the wood such as he was enjoying at the present moment.
Helen had been glad of the excuse to escape for a time from the Rectory drawing room where James and Melissa were sitting with her parents. She wished to be alone with her thoughts. James had given his family a full account of the events of the past few days: how Mrs. Lathom had been found and brought to Alvington to inform the Earl that the child of his first marriage had died in infancy, and that therefore Anthony was the rightful heir to Alvington.
She was thankful, as they all were, to know that Anthony’s uncertainties were now over; but she still could not rid herself of a lingering suspicion that he might be suffering some pangs over the loss of Cynthia. James had laughed this off when she had voiced it, repeating to her the words which Anthony himself had used.
“He said she was the last woman he’d have wished for as a wife. No getting beyond that, is there?”
Helen’s common sense told her that there was not; but in the present state of her emotions, common sense counted for little. She could not entirely dismiss the notion that Anthony might have been making an attempt to conceal his chagrin from James. At times she was still haunted by the mental image of Cynthia and Shaldon dancing together in all the intimacy of the waltz at Cynthia’s come-out ball. The look he had bestowed then on his partner had certainly not been cold and indifferent.
Her reverie was interrupted by an outburst of barking from Patch at a little distance away, and she moved quickly towards the sound. She found the dog standing at the base of an elm tree hurling defiance at some creature perched high among the foliage.
“Silly boy!” she scolded, peering up to try to see what was the cause of all this commotion. “Stop that odious noise at once!”
The dog obeyed for a moment, but broke out into protest again when the unseen creature leapt in a flash to another branch.
“It’s only a squirrel, stupid. Now stop it, do! Do you hear me?”
“It seems he doesn’t,” remarked an amused voice behind her. “Patch, you young fool, you can’t climb trees, so you’d best abandon the hunt.”
Helen turned quickly and saw Anthony. The dog whisked round, too, a low growl in its throat; but seeing its mistress give a smiling greeting to the newcomer, it changed its tactics, bounding joyously towards him.
“Down, sir! No, I shall not permit you to sully my garments with those doubtless filthy paws!” chided Anthony, bending to pat the dog. “Try to be more worthy of the company in which you find yourself.”
Helen laughed. “Mine or yours, sir?”
“Can you doubt I meant yours?” he asked, with a smile. “Do you mean to walk with him much farther? If so, perhaps you’ll not object if I accompany you? I was on my way to call at the Rectory, but there’s no hurry for that.”
Helen replied that she herself was just about to turn back, and for several moments they strolled along together in a leisurely way, saying nothing. Presently she felt the silence becoming oppressive and nerved herself to speak.
“I am so glad that at last all your difficulties are resolved, sir,” she said, a trifle awkwardly.
“You are very good, but why all the formality?” he asked, giving her a keen glance. “I thought we had agreed on using first names when we were alone together?”
“I — well, yes, but that was before—” He raised an enquiring eyebrow, and she continued, “Before we knew for certain that you were indeed Viscount Shaldon. It was so difficult to call you by any other name — Mr. Stratton would have made you seem a stranger!”
“You are making me feel a stranger now, Helen,” he said, gravely.
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I don’t mean to do so.”
“Is it because,” he asked, with another searching glance, “you’ve any particular reason for setting me at a distance?”
The unexpected question brought a rush of colour to her cheeks which she tried to conceal by turning her head away to watch the dog cavorting ahead of them.
“How absurd you are,” she reproved him, in a light tone. “Why should I have?”
“Only you can know. Yet there is something different in your manner towards me, Helen.”
She caught her breath. Had she betrayed herself?
“What nonsense!” She forced a laugh. “Of course there’s not!”
“No? Well, maybe I imagine it,” he replied, in the tone of one who was far from convinced. “It occurs to me that possibly there may be something on your mind. Have you any news to give me?”
“News?” she repeated in astonishment.
“Yes. You would tell me, surely, since we’ve recently shared so many exploits together? Besides, everyone must know soon enough, when the notice appears.”
She was staring at him now in frank bewilderment.
“I fear I don’t in the least understand you, Tony,” she said in a more natural manner. “What notice are you expecting — what do you mean?”
“Do you wish to keep it a secret for some reason? I refer, of course, to the notice of your betrothal.”
“My betrothal — oh!”
Now she understood, and to her annoyance she was blushing again.
“May I wish you happy?” He made a strong effort to infuse the right degree of congratulation into his tone. “Lydney’s a lucky dog. He don’t de
serve you, but who could? All the same, you’ve known each other a long time, and seem to deal extremely well together. I wish you the best of everything, my dear Nell” — there was no mistaking the sincerity of this — “now and forever. And if at any time you should need a friend—”
He could manage no more, and fell silent, looking away from her.
“But — but you’re mistaken, Tony!” she cried. “I’m not betrothed — to Mr. Lydney or anyone!”
He turned quickly with a sudden exultant light in his eyes which made her pulses leap. It died away in a moment, leaving his face sombre.
“Unpardonable of me — I seem to have anticipated events. I was quite certain that Lydney must have seen you before you quitted Town.”
She nodded. “So he did.”
“And did he not speak?” asked Anthony, incredulously. “He confided in me that he certainly meant to do so. Oh, Lud, I beg your pardon, Nell! I have no right to question you in this way. You must be wishing me at the devil! I am once again trying to act the part of a brother, and you’ve told me often enough how much you dislike that. Pray forgive me.”
She smiled at him a little tremulously, for some very chaotic feelings were stirring within her.
“I’ll forgive you this once, provided you promise not to repeat the offence. But even though you are not my brother, Tony, I haven’t the least objection in the world to answering your question. Mr. Lydney did make me a declaration before I left Cavendish Square.”
“So you refused him.”
It was a statement, not a question; but she nodded, taking care to avoid his eyes, which were now fixed intently upon her.
“And yet I could have sworn that you were attracted to him,” he said, almost in an accusing tone.
“Well, so I was, in a way,” she replied, with her usual candour. “In the way that most girls will find themselves attracted to any personable gentleman who sets out to flatter and please. That’s human nature, isn’t it? But there must be a deeper feeling involved before one thinks of marriage.”
“Yes, you would realise that from the start, having before you the example of your own parents’ happy marriage.” There was bitterness in his tone. “I was not so fortunate.”
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