by Dean, Anna
She turned reluctantly in the direction of the new town and her eye followed the dusty white road which she could see leading out of the cluster of cottages, and zigzagging on up an open slope of grass and gorse, towards such a wide, bright expanse of sky as always signals the presence of the sea. And she wished again that she might return directly to the house.
She had already lost a great deal of time, for Mrs Manners had found other errands for her to perform which ‘would be no trouble at all since she would be in the village anyway’. And she had been obliged to seek out a laundress suitably versed in the science of washing good lace, as well as delivering several letters to the post office and helping the young postmaster to distinguish the directions in her aunt’s careless, old-fashioned hand, deciphering for him the tangled letters of Worcestershire on one cover and convincing him – with some difficulty – that another was directed to Bristol, not ‘Beef-tea’ as he had averred.
Now she was almost overwhelmed by impatience.
And, in point of fact, brown medicine was not even wanted today; her aunt’s symptoms were no longer of the ‘enervating’ sort. This morning there were ‘sharp palpitations’ and a ‘frantic throbbing’ of the temples – the illness, it would seem, had turned ‘hectic’. And only red medicine was of use against hectic symptoms – unless there was an outbreak of ‘fluttering biliousness’ – in which case the white variety would be required. But Dido had not quite courage enough to return empty-handed, lest the very absence of the antidote precipitate an enervating attack.
So she started up the road towards New Charcombe. The sun grew stronger, warming the gorse bushes until they smelt of freshly baked cake, and making the white dust of the road dazzling. As she walked Dido puzzled over many things. She puzzled over why someone at the manor might wish to deny being Mr Brodie’s friend – and how the lie might be sustained after the gentleman’s arrival; she puzzled over the fishwives’ cryptic information; she puzzled over Miss Gibbs’ lack of rest and Mr Fenstanton’s fondness for horrid tales …
But she arrived at the top of the hill and the beginning of the new town with glowing cheeks, a dusty petticoat – and no answers to any of the puzzles in her head.
Before her, a street or two of good white stone had been laid down across the turf of the cliff top and there were a few dozen completed houses. There were some people of quality determinedly taking the air, but a great many more workmen building houses to accommodate the visitors and invalids who were yet to find their way here. Wherever Dido looked there were scaffolds and barrows; grimy young lads mixing mortar, and solemn masons in their caps and aprons dressing stone.
She smiled at the memory of Mr George Fenstanton’s panegyric on the place. But, as she started along the broad mall which topped the low cliff, she felt the power of the seaside in a lifting of her spirits. A pleasant breeze was ruffling the tops of the waves and setting the bright awnings of the bathing machines a-flapping down on the beach. Gulls wheeled overhead. The sun sparkled on the water, and also upon the clean white stones of the new buildings, making them appear as bright and fresh as the waves themselves.
About halfway along the mall there was a space for benches laid out. A heap of stone and several lengths of wood declared that the masons and carpenters had not yet completed their work; but there were two or three seats already built and these were occupied by some retired military men and dowagers such as frequent watering places in the unfashionable times of the year.
And then, as she approached the spot, Dido discerned another figure – young and long in the leg – a figure which had an unpleasantly familiar look …
Her pace slowed. There was no mistaking the gentleman sitting there with his legs sprawled across the pavement, one hand resting upon the silver head of a cane as he thoughtfully perused a letter. It was none other than the man who had lately caused such a stir at Charcombe Manor – Mr Tom Lomax himself.
She faltered, half determined upon hurrying away; but at that very moment he turned his head and saw her. He jumped immediately to his feet, sweeping off his hat, putting up the letter and making a hurried bow.
‘Miss Kent! Why, of all the birds of the air, you are the very one I have been hoping to fall in with!’
Dido made her curtsey and approached him warily. His thick, pale hair shone in the sunlight; his features were certainly well-looking, though rather marred by scrubby sidewhiskers and a small, wet, sulking mouth. And the stare he was presently turning upon her was unpleasant – sly and uneasy. It was a year and a half since their last encounter, and they had not parted on the best of terms, for Dido had then taken it upon herself to save two other young ladies from his heartless scheming.
His impudent, familiar manner irritated her exceedingly, yet she could not help but wonder why he wished to talk to her – and what he might have to say about Miss Verney.
‘I suppose,’ he said abruptly, returning his hat to his wind-ruffled head, ‘that the Fenstantons and Mother Bailey have been all making me out to be a scoundrel.’
Dido made no reply, but cast down her eyes. One of the dowagers – seeing all and hearing nothing – smiled indulgently upon them as if she suspected a romantic encounter.
‘Ah!’ cried Tom. ‘I see that they have.’ He shrugged up his shoulders in a pretence of ease and indifference. ‘Well, I am sure I don’t give a damn what they think of me at Charcombe Manor. They can go to hell for all I care! But,’ he added anxiously, ‘I would wish you to know that I am innocent.’
She looked up in surprise.
‘I know no more about what’s become of Miss Verney than you do,’ he said with a kind of impatient pleading. ‘I returned the girl safely to the manor. I saw her walk in through the house door. You must believe me, Miss Kent.’
‘Why, Mr Lomax, I am surprised to find that you should wish for my belief.’
‘But I do,’ he said, leaning upon the back of the bench. Dido recalled that he was a young man who always avoided the exertion of the perpendicular if he could. ‘At least,’ he added after a moment’s pause, ‘I wish for your assistance.’
‘You wish me to help you…’
‘… find Miss Verney.’ He smiled and tapped his stick against the leg of the bench. ‘Well, there is nobody quite like you for poking about. That is, Miss Kent,’ with an elaborate bow, ‘there is no one quite like you for solving puzzles.’
She coloured – a circumstance which did not go unnoticed by the watchful dowager, who now touched her companion upon the arm and pointed out the couple with a very meaning turn of the eyes.
‘I thank you for the compliment, sir,’ said Dido. ‘But, I fear I must decline the commission.’ She would not, for the world, have him think that any trouble she took in the business was undertaken for his convenience.
‘Damn it!’ he cried fretfully. ‘I need someone to help me. I am persona non grata at Charcombe Manor now. I cannot even set foot over the threshold. I can do nothing to prove my own innocence.’
‘Hmm.’
‘You do not believe me!’ he cried resentfully. ‘You think I am lying about taking Letitia back to Charcombe Manor.’
Dido looked out over the cliff’s edge, beyond the sands and the bathing machines to the sea and a distant ship with its gleaming white sails and circling retinue of gulls. ‘In point of fact,’ she admitted, ‘I am rather inclined to believe your account of the young lady’s return. Or rather, I think that you believe it to be true – I do not think that you are deliberately lying.’
‘Why, I am glad to find I have your good opinion!’
She kept her eyes upon the ship. ‘I certainly have a very good opinion of your prudence.’
‘By which, you mean to say that you think me selfish and scheming.’
‘I have certainly had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you are no fool. And I am quite sure that if you had persuaded Miss Verney into an elopement you would have found a better method of concealment.’ She met his eyes. ‘Somethi
ng safer than this extraordinary story of her returning to the house – a story which seems to cry you out a liar to the whole world.’
‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is a point well made.’ And, just for a moment – for no more than the space of a heartbeat – he brought the tips of his fingers together in a considering gesture; a gesture which was so very suggestive of his father that Dido drew back, confused and uncomfortable. ‘So, you will help me prove my innocence?’ he urged.
‘Ah! Pardon me, sir, but I did not quite say that I believe in your innocence.’
‘But if you do not think—’
‘I do not think you are lying. But – if I may be frank upon this matter—’
‘Oh, I beg that you will!’ he cried. ‘There should be no secrets between you and me.’
‘Very well, then. I confess that I remain uneasy about your behaviour towards Miss Verney. In the past, Mr Lomax, I have found myself unable to approve some aspects of your conduct. I have had reason to suppose you mercenary in your search for a bride.’
Tom threw back his head and laughed.
‘Do you deny it?’ she asked. ‘Do you deny that you are trying for a match with Miss Verney, for the sake of her fortune?’
Tom prodded thoughtfully at a broken fragment of stone with the tip of his cane. ‘I deny that I have abducted Miss Verney.’
‘But you do not deny that you are pursuing her fortune?’
‘No, I don’t deny it.’
‘Well, then, you will certainly get no help from me in your scheme. But I may attempt to seek out the facts surrounding Miss Verney’s odd disappearance – in order that she may be found and restored to her friends.’
He smiled at that.
Dido did not like his seeming so happy. Mr Tom’s happiness was too often secured through the suffering of someone else. ‘But,’ she added firmly, ‘I shall do nothing at all to promote your marriage to Miss Verney.’
He sneered and rattled his cane against a leg of the bench. ‘That might be a little ill-advised, Miss Kent.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘I only mean to say,’ he continued, watching her closely, ‘that in promoting my marriage, you would be furthering the cause of your own.’
Heat flooded Dido’s cheeks. She could neither speak, nor look at him; she turned her eyes away to watch a herring gull gliding up the breeze above the stark ribs of a new roof.
‘It will not do to be so very disapproving,’ he laughed. ‘For you and I both know that it is my little difficulties with my creditors which keep my father from marrying again. He thinks himself too poor to take a wife. But let me get an heiress to settle my debts and you could be a married woman by Michaelmas!’
‘I do not understand your meaning, sir,’ she said, exerting herself to speak calmly.
He only laughed.
Shocked and shaking, she could trust herself to remain no longer. She turned and began to make her way blindly along the mall. But he raised his cane, pointed it at her retreating back and called, ‘You understand me, Miss Kent. And you know that you and I are natural confederates in this business.’
She fled against the salt breeze, her hands shaking as she clutched her pelisse about her. She wanted only to escape, to get beyond the cruel gaze of his eyes.
All at once the open mall which had, minutes ago, seemed all cheerfulness and refreshment was become a place of torture. It was too straight, too wide. There was no avoiding that terrible stare; she seemed to feel it as an ache upon the back of her head.
She was now passing the broad steps which fronted the town’s newly built public rooms, and she saw that a large wagon was drawn up on the road. Like a hunted fox seeking cover, she hurried forward and escaped to stand on the steps, where the sides of the wagon hid her from Tom’s view.
She stood quite still in the deep shade, trembling with relief as the pain upon her neck eased. She pressed a gloved hand to her mouth.
What did he know – what did he suspect – of how matters stood between her and his father?
She could not bear that he should know – and laugh. The vulgar sneer seemed to pollute what was most dear to her. But was she also doubting herself? Did some part of her pain spring from the suspicion that he had guessed aright?
Dido stood for several fugitive minutes in the shadow of the wagon – whose gaily painted sides declared it to belong to the travelling theatre company of one Mr Isaac Mountjoy. And, in the shelter Mr Mountjoy provided, she forced herself to face her own schemes – to name them to herself. What was it, exactly, that she had planned as she sat beside her aunt’s bed?
To find Miss Verney, and so get herself to Belsfield. And once there she hoped to … reach an understanding with Mr Lomax? To achieve an engagement public enough to relieve her of Doctor Prowdlee’s attentions?
Yes, she confessed it to herself, that was her plan.
But there was no denying that it would be a long engagement. No marriage could take place until the debts which Mr Lomax had assumed for his son’s sake were all paid. Two or three wretched, interminable years must be waited through. Two or three years spent as a ‘visitor’ in Margaret’s house, becoming every day more contemptible in the eyes of the world.
Tom’s marriage to a wealthy woman would certainly be to her advantage. But she was not quite so unprincipled as to sacrifice another woman’s happiness in the cause of her own.
At least, she hoped that she was not. And, after all, she told herself, once she was returned to her family, it would be for Miss Letitia herself to decide whom she married, would it not? In searching for Miss Verney, Dido was by no means directly promoting her marriage to Tom.
Chapter Eleven
‘Ah! Fair damsel, what is it that troubles you?’
Dido looked up in alarm as the voice boomed over her head, and saw a man as large as his voice hurrying down the steps from the colonnaded front of the rooms. He was wearing a canary-yellow waistcoat and had a slightly familiar look.
‘Ah me!’ he cried, pressing his hands to his brilliant breast, ‘I would give the world to ease the sorrow from your lovely countenance!’
Dido stared.
He came to a standstill on the step beside her, and bowed deeply. ‘Isaac Mountjoy at your service, madam. May I be of any assistance to you?’
‘You are very kind, sir,’ she replied, and at the same moment remembered where she had seen him before: it was in the churchyard. He had been talking to Mrs Bailey. ‘But I have only stopped to catch my breath. I am in no need of assistance … Unless you could direct me to the house of Mr Sutherland.’
‘Indeed I may, for I am familiar with the physician of that name. If you will but step this way, madam.’ He beckoned her out of the wagon’s shelter and pointed along the street to a substantial house which stood alone near the end of town, and close beside the path leading down to the beach. There was – as yet – only one building beyond it and that was the town’s inn, standing very new and fine and white-fronted where the ground began to rise up to the downs.
Dido thanked the gentleman for his help. He bowed again more extravagantly than ever and intimated that his day – perhaps his whole existence – had been rendered meaningful by the privilege of being allowed to be of use to her.
As she fled from his compliments, Dido wondered a little that such a man as this should be a member of Mrs Augusta Bailey’s wide circle of acquaintances … Or perhaps he was one of those ‘second rate’ persons who sought continually to connect himself to the unfortunate woman …
* * *
The physician’s house was so new built that the little plot before it was still choked with stones and shavings of wood, and Dido was obliged to employ her knuckle upon the door for it yet lacked a bell. But a fine new board above the door informed her that the premises were occupied by Doctor Angus Sutherland, ‘qualified and experienced practitioner in all modern systems of medicine’; which modern systems included ‘the methods of Electricity, Animal Magnetism and the Medicinal
Application of Mud’.
As she noted this information in compliance with her aunt’s instructions to find out all she could about the town’s medical advisor, Dido fervently hoped that with all his modern systems Doctor Sutherland was also conversant with the mysteries of old-fashioned brown medicine; for she was more anxious than ever to complete her errand and escape the town. Even now, from the very corner of her eye, she could see, far back along the straight terrace, the figure of Tom Lomax; he appeared to be watching her and she wished very much to get beyond his reach.
The house door opened, letting out a fine scent of broiling chops and sausage, and revealing an elderly, indeterminate female in black who might have been a rather grand housekeeper, or a slightly shabby relative. She shook her head sadly. She was very sorry, but Mr Sutherland was not here. He had been called away from his breakfast more than two hours ago to a gentleman who’d been took sudden up at the inn. Dido might step into the parlour and wait if she wished, but she did not know how long the doctor would be, because there was no knowing, was there, when folk were took sudden?
No, Dido agreed regretfully, there was no knowing; and she said that she would walk up to the inn to search for the elusive Mr Sutherland.
But, just as she turned away from the house door, she saw Tom again. He had taken a seat upon one of the benches and, with his long legs stretched across the pavement and his hands folded upon the head of his cane, he had every appearance of sitting it out until she was obliged to pass him again.
‘I wonder,’ she said quickly, before the woman could close the door, ‘whether there might be another way back to Charcombe Manor – rather than the road through Old Charcombe.’
‘Why? Are you from the manor?’ The tone was more genteel than that of the fishwives – but there was the same air of impertinent curiosity. The doctor’s relative (surely a relative, or she would not presume so far) peered at Dido with weak blue eyes as if wondering whether she had seen her before.
‘Yes,’ said Dido, ‘I am come on a visit.’
‘Oh!’ It was a long drawn-out exclamation. ‘Well he don’t go there, you know.’