Styx and Stones

by Carola Dunn

  “Shush, do! ’E’s just nodded off.” The admonition came from a diminutive woman with the small, pointed face and twitching nose of a dormouse. She wore a buttercup-yellow overall and house-slippers, and wielded a mop. “Begging your pardon, miss, I’m sure,” she added, taking in at a glance the unexpected caller’s quality.

  “No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to disturb Mr. Paramount. I’d hoped for a word with him. I’m Lady John’s sister, Miss Dalrymple. And you’re …?”

  “Wotherspoon’s the name. Mrs. I obliges Mr. Paramount mornings, but Tuesdays being Mr. Popper’s day off, I stays all day. ‘Is man, that is. You’d best step in, miss, if you don’t mind the kitchen, for ’e might wake up agin any minute and call for ‘is tea, and I could ask ’im, will ’e see you.”

  “I don’t mind the kitchen,” Daisy assured her, stepping in.

  By the look of the place, the ground floor had once been one large room. Partitions now divided the narrow, windowless hall from Mr. Paramount’s room, indicated by Mrs. Wotherspoon with a finger to her lips, and from the kitchen on the other side.

  For the old man, it was a frightful come-down from his life at the big house. Daisy reminded herself that Johnnie had invited—in fact, expected—his uncle to remain in residence with the family. Nonetheless, she empathized with Mr. Paramount’s reluctance to hang on as his nephew’s dependent after his brother’s death. She felt exactly the same about her cousin Edgar, after all, and she had never expected to inherit Fairacres.

  Still, she didn’t blame and ostracize Edgar as Mr. Paramount did Johnnie and Vi. “I’ve brought an invitation,” she said, following Mrs. Wotherspoon into a small but well-appointed and spotless kitchen. It looked as if it had been modernized, with gas stove and hot-water geyser, when the old gentleman moved in. “Lady John would like Mr. Paramount to come to lunch one day this week.”

  “Bless ’er ’eart, ’e don’t go nowheres, miss. Sit down, do. You’ll take a glass of lemonade? It’s ’omemade, not that stuff in bottles.”

  “Thank you, I’d love some. Mr. Paramount never leaves the house?” Daisy asked, as the daily turned to the larder.

  “’E don’t ‘ardly walk no more, miss.” Mrs. Wotherspoon emerged with a bedewed pitcher. “Not but what I expect ’is lordship’d send a car?” Looking rather anxiously at Daisy, she leaned back against the sink, jug in hand.

  “Of course.”

  “And a couple of men to carry ‘im? Though it wouldn’t take more’n one, so little and frail as ’e’s got. But ‘e wouldn’t go, miss, not the way ’e goes on writing them letters.”

  Daisy perked up. “Letters?”

  “To the lawyer, miss, and the courts, and Mr. Nesbitt that’s our Member, and even the papers, the which hasn’t printed ‘em in more years’n I can tell. Two or three times a week, Mr. Popper pops down to the post with a bunch, har har my little joke. Nor nobody but the lawyer don’t answer ’im no more, but ‘e goes on a-writing for all that, and ’oping for to get the ‘ouse back. Truth is, miss, ’e’s a lonely, bitter old gentleman.” The phrase was pronounced as if she had heard it somewhere and stored it up.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Daisy said gently, touched by her obvious solicitude.

  “Yes, well, I does me bit to keep ‘im entertained. ’As a little gossip, we does, when I goes and does ‘is room. ’E’s still interested in the goings on in the village, ‘e is and it gives ’im a break from holding that pen. ‘Is hand gets that tired. Shakes something awful it does sometimes, and ink all over the place and you should just ’ear the laundrywoman complaining. I don’t do laundry,” declared Mrs. Wotherspoon, suddenly sternly on her dignity.

  “I don’t blame you. Has Mr. Paramount thought of writing in pencil?”

  “Oh, ‘e does, miss, for what ’e calls ’is rough drafts, whatever they may be when they’re at ‘ome. The paper that gets thrown away in this house, it’s a scandal. ‘Well, Mrs. W,’ ’e says to me, ‘I might as well ‘ave wrote a book for all the good it’s done me.’ But ‘e won’t give in, ’e won’t, not if it was ever so.”

  With this obscure but triumphant pronouncement, Mrs. Wotherspoon handed Daisy her glass of lemonade, folded her arms, and watched with grim satisfaction as the cooling liquid disappeared.

  “Thank you, that was delicious and most refreshing.” Daisy set the glass down on the table and stood up. “Well, I don’t suppose it’s any good waiting to see Mr. Paramount. It doesn’t sound as if he’s likely to relent towards my sister and Lord John.”

  Mrs. Wotherspoon shook her head mournfully. “Bitter, ‘e is, like what I said. I’ll tell ’im you come by, though, miss, and maybe it’ll soften ‘is ’eart.” She ushered Daisy out.

  It was still too early to put in an appearance at the Vicarage, but Daisy did not want to slog up the hill to the house only to turn round and come back down. She crossed the lane, intending to sit for a few minutes in the ancient stone coolness of the church.

  Mr. Paramount was definitely a suspect, she thought, passing through the lych-gate. He was bitter, he knew the village gossip, and he wrote letters by the dozen. His manservant, Popper, might know the truth, and he might even be glad of a sympathetic ear to pour his worries into. The sympathetic ear was a role Daisy filled with ease. But how … ?

  “Miss Dalrymple!”

  She looked around. The vicar—no, it was the professor who stood among the tombstones, waving vigorously. His academic gown was easily mistaken for a clergyman’s cassock. What was more, today he had on his head a shovel-hat of the sort favoured by Victorian churchmen, which had probably lain around the Vicarage unworn for decades until he absentmindedly picked it up. Daisy could not imagine the diffident Osbert Osborne wearing such conspicuous headgear.

  The vicar did not affect a cassock outside the church either, come to that; fortunately, for it would have cramped his gate-climbing style.

  Though Daisy was still annoyed with the professor over his insulting Latin tag, she strolled along the path towards him. He did not come to meet her, but kept his place facing a large angel of pinkish polished granite.

  Daisy couldn’t see anything very fascinating about the angel. It was about three-quarters lifesize (if the word could apply to a mythical being), with spread wings and what looked like a beret on its head—presumably a halo. Its back turned to the path and the church, it perched on a pedestal about eighteen inches high. Both angel and pedestal looked relatively unweathered, quite new by country churchyard standards.

  “Look!” crowed the professor gleefully. “This almost restores my faith in human nature. I do believe, my dear young lady, that you are capable of comprehending the humour.”

  Blasted cheek, Daisy thought, after condemning her as lacking understanding. “Humour?” she asked. “It seems to me a singularly frightful object.”

  “Yes, indeed, the angel is the epitome of Victorian sentimentality. But come and read the epitaph-nil desperandum, it is in English, not Latin. Regular contemplation thereof does as much for my digestion as my little walks.”

  Intrigued, Daisy stepped off the gravel path and joined him. Though the gilt was wearing off, the letters engraved upon the pedestal were easy enough to read:

  James Absalom Paramount

  1815—1886

  Life’s a Jest,

  And all things show it.

  I thought so once,

  But now I know it.

  “Amusing,” said Daisy politely, quite unable to comprehend the chortles now emanating from Professor Osborne.

  Producing a handkerchief from somewhere in the depths of his gown, he wiped his eyes, still chuckling. “Excuse me, my dear Miss Dalrymple,” he said. “I dare say further information will be of assistance in appreciating the full flavour of the jest. Allow me to enlighten you.”

  “Please do.”

  “James Paramount—the father, I believe, of the present old gentleman of that name—was a progressive man for his time. He was one of the first Englishmen to be cremated upo
n his demise, a disposition he insisted on in his will, much to the distress of his wife, who feared he would be unable to rise at the Last Trump.”

  “Good heavens!”

  “On the contrary, ha ha!” cackled the professor. “To continue: The incumbent of that period, of a like mind, refused to permit interment of the ashes within the church, alongside generations of ancestors. Paramount, I hasten to point out, would have been profoundly indifferent to such a fate, being a free-thinker. However, Mrs. Paramount’s pleas softened the reverend gentleman to the extent of consenting to a small cinerarium, designed by the deceased, to be placed in the churchyard.”

  “The pedestal?” Daisy guessed.

  “Precisely. The verse, I need hardly add, was enjoined by Paramount’s will, encompassing, as it did, his view of existence.”

  “He wouldn’t have wanted an angel, though.”

  “How right you are! For a number of years his widow respected his wishes, but at length the impropriety of the entire lack of religious sentiment associated with his tomb overcame her sensibilities. Arguing that the angel was an addition, not an alteration, to his requirements, she caused that monstrosity to be erected in the hope of placating the Almighty. Soon thereafter she went to her own demise, trusting in a merciful God to reunite her with her husband in the Paradise in which he did not believe.”

  “I wonder if the late Mr. Paramount now regards the Afterlife as a jest, too,” said Daisy, smiling.

  “I knew it,” cried Professor Osborne in delight. “I knew you would appreciate the irony, though you are, no doubt, a church-goer.”

  “Occasional, I’m afraid,” she confessed. “Mostly when I’m staying with people who assume one will go.”

  “Afraid? My dear young lady, why afraid? Do you fear the thunderbolt of an angry Deity? It is perfectly rational to regard a religious service as an occasional social obligation. Why, I frequently attend chapel in my college. It is expected, but ceteris paribus, one might as well celebrate the rites of Zeus or Jove. Better yet, of Athena/Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom. She would be worthy of enthusiastic worship, did she but exist!”

  “So you don’t share your brother’s faith, Professor?” Daisy said ironically.

  The professor guffawed. Speechless with laughter, he had to take out his handkerchief again to mop away the tears. At first rather flattered by her success in amusing him, Daisy became irritated. He was, after all, too easily amused.

  The church clock came to her rescue, striking four. “I’m expected at the Vicarage for tea,” she said. “Are you coming?”

  “I shall follow shortly. Pray don’t take it personally if I say that my intention is to avoid the drawing room this afternoon, nam multum loquaces merito omnes … I shall take my tea in Ozzy’s study.”

  One didn’t have to be a Latin scholar to put loquaces and omnes together and come up with a sweeping generalization on the loquacity of all women. Professor Osborne was a fine one to talk, Daisy fumed, when he had just blathered on at quite unnecessary length to tell a mildly entertaining story.

  As she took the path to the gate leading directly from the churchyard into the Vicarage garden, again she found herself sympathizing with Mrs. Osborne. The professor must be a trying guest. Hard on the vicar, also, to have to play host to a brother who was an outspoken atheist. Or not too hard, perhaps—Daisy recalled his friendship with Amos Gresham, the atheistic farmer.

  Mrs. Osborne had complained about the vicar and his brother holding such learned discussions she could scarcely understand a word. Perhaps they argued their respective views on religion. Though the vicar had given up on Gresham, he might feel an obligation to call his brother back to the Church, while the professor doubtless found it amusing to undermine a clergyman’s faith.

  Would he also find it amusing to write anonymous letters?

  He bemoaned female garrulity: How much village gossip had he absorbed while staying at the Vicarage? How long had he been there? When had Johnnie received the first letter?

  Yet another suspect, Daisy groaned silently, knocking on the Vicarage front door.

  7

  The maid who answered Daisy’s knock was a sturdy young woman with a pudgy, sulky face. She looked like the sort of servant who might forget to serve tea to the gentlemen when neither her mistress nor the cook was there to chivvy her. Dora, was it? No, Doris.

  “Thank you, Doris,” Daisy said with a smile as the maid opened the drawing-room door to show her in. One never could tell, she might be a useful source of information sometime. She appeared old enough to have been in service at the Vicarage during at least the latter part of the War, when Johnnie had been spied on.

  Doris didn’t breach etiquette—or her own sullen nature—so far as to smile in response, but she gave Daisy a look that was almost cordial. “Miss Dalrymple, ma’am,” she announced.

  The room, like the house, was of a size to fit a Victorian family. It was probably frightfully draughty in winter, and even on this summer day it was gloomy, with its dark, heavy furniture and sombre wallpaper. The tea-table was set up on the far side, near the open windows. Four ladies were in attendance.

  A slight, faded woman in blue started up from her seat and fluttered to meet Daisy. “So kind,” she faltered breathlessly. “I don’t expect you remember …”

  Fortunately, Daisy did. “Of course, Mrs. Lomax,” she assured the brigadier’s wife. “How nice to see you again.”

  “So kind …”

  Seated behind the tea-table, Mrs. Osborne intervened. “Mrs. Lomax is our chairman this year, Miss Dalrymple,” she announced with a severe glance at that flustered lady, who promptly retreated to her chair. “The rest of the committee is delighted to second my invitation to you to speak to our members tomorrow.”

  Daisy was not pleased to learn that the request for her services had not been agreed upon beforehand by all those involved. Still, whoever was chairman, the committee was obviously controlled by the vicar’s wife, and she had presumably taken the concurrence of the others for granted.

  She poured Daisy a cup of tea. “Ceylon, in your honour,” she said with a heavy-handed playfulness. “You see, I noted your preference.”

  Though she really did prefer Indian, Daisy was tempted to express a craving for Oolong. She murmured something polite, accepted a piece of gingerbread—presented already sliced, she noted, after the professor’s depradadons—and took a seat.

  “You are acquainted with Miss Prothero, I understand,” Mrs. Osborne went on.

  “Not properly introduced, I fear,” the white-haired old lady tittered. “How do you do, Miss Dalrymple. We all anticipate your lecture with the greatest pleasure.”

  “Thank you,” Daisy said, with a sudden qualm. Having accepted the invitation thinking only of her quest, without the foggiest idea what she was going to talk about, she hoped no one would ask. Hastily she turned to the fourth member of the committee. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”

  “Mrs. Gresham.” Mrs. Osborne’s tone was dismissive.

  Farmer Gresham’s wife? She was a dark, pretty woman, a few years older than Daisy, dressed in a neat, unpretentious navy frock. Her Sunday best, perhaps—except that her husband was an atheist, so possibly Sunday was just another day of the week.

  “How do you do, Miss Dalrymple,” she said composedly, in a soft voice with a slight but definite Kent accent. “I know our members will be grateful to hear about something different for a change.”

  “I hope I’ll manage to interest them,” Daisy said with a friendly smile.

  Mrs. Gresham’s answering smile was quizzical. With a glance half challenging, half mocking at the vicar’s wife, she said, “I shouldn’t worry. For most of them, the meetings are an excuse to get out of the house. They will even sit still for a lecture on flower-arranging, a genteel occupation few have the leisure to indulge in.”

  Daisy laughed. “What a relief! How long am I expected to blather on?”

  Mrs. Osborne firmly retrieved the reins of the c
onversation. “Half an hour is the usual. We have a general meeting first, and tea afterwards—urn tea, I’m afraid—so if you can be at the Parish Hall by three, Miss Dalrymple, that will give me time to introduce you and—You don’t want to do the introduction, do you, Mrs. Lomax?”

  “Oh no, you’re much better at it, Mrs. Osborne,” the brigadier’s wife yielded, rather regretfully. “I’m always afraid of muddling things when I can’t take my time.”

  “Speaking of time,” said Mrs. Gresham rising, “it’s time I was on my way home to get my husband’s tea. High tea, that is, or supper, as I dare say you’d call it, ladies. Excuse me, please. Miss Dalrymple, I look forward to hearing you tomorrow.”

  “And I look forward to seeing you again.”

  “Don’t trouble to see me out, Mrs. Osborne,” said the farmer’s wife, unnecessarily, as Mrs. Osborne showed no sign of budging. “I know my own way.”

  Silence reigned until the door closed behind her.

  “Impertinent creature!” snorted the vicar’s wife.

  “Educated above her station.” Miss Prothero nodded wisely. “It never does.”

  “We invited her to join the committee,” Mrs. Osborne explained to Daisy, “because the Women’s Institute was, after all, founded for the edification of that class of person.”

  “And it is not affiliated with the Church,” put in Miss Prothero. “Mrs. Gresham does not attend Church.”

  “Nor even one of the dissenting chapels,” said Mrs. Lomax, her indeterminate face tight-lipped with disapproval. Daisy wondered whether, ineffective as she seemed, she could be writing anonymous letters to her husband and the others.

  Mrs. Osborne took up the tale: “I decided … we decided it would look better to have an outsider on the committee, and to pick a Baptist would offend the Methodists, and vice versa. Disgracefully quarrelsome, these nonconformist sects! So I … we chose Mrs. Gresham as the least of a multitude of evils.”

  “A mistake!” Miss Prothero declared, a glint in her bright brown eyes as she dissociated herself from the choice. “I always said she would not be properly appreciative of the honour.”