There was no reply and she knocked again, then, thinking the room was empty, she gently turned the handle and peeped inside. She saw Eliza curled up on the couch looking as though she were asleep, and, going over to her, she put a hand on her shoulder. She was even more alarmed when she saw that Eliza’s eyes were wide open and she was staring in front of her.
‘Ma’am,’ Beth said anxiously, ‘are you all right?’
Eliza gave a deep sigh but said nothing.
‘You look terrible ill, ma’am,’ Beth cried. ‘Shall I send Ted for Dr Hardy?’
Beth’s worried words seemed to rouse her mistress, who shook herself as though she had no idea where she was, rapidly blinking her eyes.
‘I was dreaming, Beth,’ she said, sitting up and putting her feet on the floor. ‘Daydreaming. Yet you can still have nightmares even when you’re not asleep.’
‘It was Mr Julius upset you, ma’am. I could tell by the way he left that something had happened. His face was ever so stern. He jumped into his carriage and cried “Drive off” in such a thunderous voice you would have heard it in the marketplace.’
‘He is not a man I like very much after all,’ Eliza said slowly.
‘I thought you did like him, ma’am, you and the master?’
‘Well, no longer.’ Eliza blinked her eyes again and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Then she got up and rubbed her hands together, because lying still for so long had made her cold. ‘Do you know Annie McQueen, Beth?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Huh,’ Beth said contemptuously, ‘not what you’d call “know”, ma’am. No thank you, is what I say. Someone I would never have anything to do with.’ Beth sniffed. ‘Anyway she ain’t here any more.’
‘Oh?’ Eliza looked at her in surprise.
‘She left the town some weeks ago, ma’am. No one seems to know for where. Good riddance I say. Gone and best forgotten.’
Shortly after, Eliza and Beth left the room, turning off the gas lights and blowing out the oil lamps which, with their soft rays, illuminated the large, pleasant room that had always been used for family gatherings and was full of happy memories ... Oh, what memories, Eliza had thought, lying there, almost too sad now even to recall them.
Guy had electric light at Pelham’s Oak, and there was electricity in the valley, but most of the people of Wenham considered it a luxury they could do without. Ryder as a forward-thinking man had found the idea attractive, but had not lived to put it into practice. Eliza felt that now it was like so many other things – something she could no longer afford.
She kissed Beth affectionately on the cheek, and then her old friend and servant stood at the bottom of the stairs, her hand clasping the newel post, as she watched her beloved mistress slowly make her way to the top.
Sorrowfully Beth turned towards the kitchen, putting out the hall light as she went.
She wondered if, after all, Eliza knew.
18
With the passage of time Guy Woodville could be said to have mellowed, even to have improved. No longer the wild young roué, he had settled down and become a country gentleman. He had, in his time, sown plenty of wild oats, but the affair with Agnes Yetman and its tragic consequence had unnerved him. It had shown him he was no longer the man he used to be. Nowadays he never seemed to stray, though the maids tried never to be alone in the room with him.
Guy had grown a little more portly, due to his love of good food and wine, and sat uncomfortably upon a horse. He had nevertheless become a horse breeder of some renown, and he ran his estate under the careful, but unobtrusive, guidance of his wife. Like his father before him, he had become something of a scholar. He read a great deal, and had begun to organise the Woodville archives with a view to writing the history of his distinguished family.
The knowledge that he had fathered two children outside wedlock without having the slightest idea what had happened to them may have had a sobering effect on him. Agnes had disappeared and, with her, her child, or so he thought.
George was very different from his father; his Dutch inheritance was very clear in him; he was thrifty, precise and hardworking. Carson, on the other hand, was a Woodville through and through. He seemed to have all his father’s faults, though on a smaller scale. Of course he was still very young, and there was plenty of time to develop.
George was several years older than Carson and took life much more seriously. At heart he was a Heering and, with their Dutch piety, every Sunday at Eton he diligently attended not one church service but two, or even three if he could manage to slip into the St George’s Chapel in Windsor as well as the services he attended at the college.
This piety was unnerving to one who had led a dissolute youth and who only entered church for special occasions: weddings, baptisms, funerals and the like. However, George was very lovable and, above all, kind. It was hard not to feel the presence of God more palpably in George than in other people. He was not over-virtuous so that he put people off, as some deeply religious people tend to be, but the joy of his belief showed in his face, his demeanour, his very love of life.
Emily was her father’s pet. She had always been so dainty, fragile and lovely, like a little porcelain figurine, with a bubbly personality and a sense of humour. Just to observe Emily was to feel more alive, and Guy attributed much of his change of character to the way he venerated his darling daughter, his desire to be with her and, above all, to be a model to her – someone of whom she could be proud.
And Emily, though she could be wilful and stubborn, reciprocated. She was every bit her father’s girl. They enjoyed walking and inspecting the fields and hedgerows; he taught her to ride so that she promised to be every bit as good as her Aunt Eliza. He taught her the love of the schoolroom and books, and instructed her himself in the periods when her governess was away. He loved her so much that he wanted her always near him and she was never sent to school.
Margaret, inevitably, was a little jealous of his idolised daughter; but it was so difficult to find fault with her. She loved her too, and if Emily kept her father contented and at home then Margaret was contented too.
Since Guy had changed his ways and stayed at home there had been very few visits to London. Guy began to have his clothes made locally, indeed to be even rather indifferent to their cut or quality. He preferred to loaf about in an old jacket and trousers, his shoes slightly scuffed, his waistcoat frequently stained with snuff or tobacco.
By his early forties Guy had assumed the air of a good-natured buffoon, a somewhat eccentric character who was loved, but also slightly derided, by those who knew him or worked for him. People tended to smile behind his back at his casual attire, his absent-mindedness, his awkward seat on a horse, his garrulousness. Occasionally drink still got the better of him. But in a few short years Guy had been transformed from a philanderer into an adequate husband, an earnest and loving father, and his children, each in their different ways, adored him.
Margaret, on the other hand, though universally admired, was loved by scarcely anyone. She was too virtuous, too efficient, too lacking in faults for anyone to be able to identify with her. Despite the devotion of her parents she had never valued physical love, and she found it hard to give it; to kiss or fondle her children when they were babies, or even to see very much of them. They grew up thinking of her as a rather remote mother, who was quick to find fault but sparing with her caresses. None of them could recall ever being cuddled or fondled by her; whereas the all-embracing, all-encompassing love of Guy, especially after he settled down and found happiness with his family, bound them all together.
Carson grew up to be a problem. Everyone said he would change, but they waited in vain. He was as handsome as Emily was pretty; fair, blue-eyed and very tall. He soon turned into a bully at his preparatory school, and his parents were asked to take him away because of physical violence towards a younger boy. For a time Carson was tutored at home. Even here he was beyond even the most patient of tutors, and it was only his elder brother, Georg
e, who seemed to have any control over him.
Maybe it was the many hours he spent with Carson, talking patiently to him, and then praying about him in church, that helped make George reach a decision about his future which was to have momentous and unexpected implications for his family.
In the summer of George’s seventeenth year he seemed restless and, because he was normally such a settled, even complacent, young man, no one could understand what was the matter with him. He spent hours locked up in his room reading; he was polite but mainly silent at meals. He spent further hours in earnest conversation with Carson, who began to try and avoid him. He even lectured Emily about the sin of vanity: she spent too much time looking at her pretty little self in the mirror.
On Sunday he went to church three times: in the morning, in the afternoon, when he attended the children’s service to which he forced his brother and sister to go, and then he was back again for Evensong.
The Reverend Lamb was not much liked by the Yetman and Woodville families – a dislike which went back to Eliza’s wedding and also the perfunctory, not to say offhand, manner in which he conducted all the baptisms for the family. Poor Carson had bawled for hours after being drenched by the Rector when he was baptised, and his nurses averred that the shawl of delicate Brussels lace in which he had been wrapped, and which had been in the Woodville family for generations, was ruined.
In the old, irascible Rector who had served Wenham now for many years George found a kindred spirit, a true man of God who concealed his vocation, his sense of the divine, beneath a stern exterior.
Had the Reverend Lamb been of another persuasion he might have been better as a monk attached to an order of silence, for he communicated badly. He found it difficult to express himself or show his true feelings and the real spirit of God that lay beneath.
That summer George spent a great deal of time at the Rectory discussing spiritual matters with the Reverend Lamb, who was astonished and startled to find a young man – and a Woodville to boot, nephew of the repentant sinner Eliza – of such deep and genuine piety.
George Woodville was lean, tall, bookish with a pronounced stoop. He was attractive rather than handsome, mildly myopic, with dark hair and the grave features of his mother’s side of the family. He was closest of the three to his mother – her chilliness did not upset him – and like her to look at.
He was not the least athletic, and at school he had been renowned only for his scholarship and his piety. He had made few close friends because he was not like other boys, unruly, rumbustious and preoccupied with worldly things. Above all, George had never shown the least interest in or curiosity about the opposite sex. On the other hand, neither had he experimented with that sin against the Holy Ghost which tainted so many of his fellow students: sodomy.
No, from a young age George Woodville was virtuous, his mind set on a much higher plane: on a knowledge and understanding of God, and obedience to His word.
It was with the encouragement and the stirring words of the Reverend Lamb in mind – ‘Go forth and spread the word of God’ – that, one summer’s afternoon, George stood looking at his parents, who were sitting in the gazebo in sight of the oak that Pelham planted. Margaret, industrious as always, sat embroidering, and his father, an open book on his lap, his head on his chest, hands linked across his stomach, was fast asleep.
It seemed such a peaceful, harmonious scene that George was loath to disturb it. As the eldest child he could remember the times when things were not so good between his parents, when there were many harsh words, even at table, but especially behind closed doors.
Margaret, seeing George standing hesitantly on the lawn, put down her needlework and gave him an encouraging smile.
‘Hello, dear,’ she said, beckoning to him, ‘going for a walk?’ She raised her face and sniffed the air. ‘What a lovely day. Shall I come with you?’
‘If you like, er, well, Mother.’ George kicked his heels on the ground and looked searchingly at his father. ‘Is Father likely to wake up, do you think?’
‘Oh, he’ll wake up sometime,’ his mother said, looking at her eldest with a fond smile.
‘It’s just that I’d rather, er, like to talk to both of you together.’
‘Now?’ Margaret looked surprised.
‘If that would be convenient, Mother.’
‘Any time is convenient to me,’ his mother said and gave a loud cough in the direction of her husband. ‘Guy,’ she called.
Guy snorted, sat up, dropped his book, blinked his eyes and looked rapidly round as if he had not the slightest idea what day it was, where he was or with whom.
‘Er, er,’ he began, shaking himself like a dog fresh from a good swim in the river.
‘George would like to talk to us, dear.’
‘Er.’ Guy blinked again, and as his son retrieved his book from the ground and placed it on a table beside him he said, ‘Talk? Talk about what, George?’
‘If it’s not inconvenient, Father.’ George perched nervously on a chair between his parents. The gazebo was full of old, comfortable furniture, and Margaret occupied the chaise-longue made of cane which enabled her to put her feet up.
Guy sprawled in a low cane chair covered with a rug, his back supported by cushions. The front of the gazebo was open to the air, the sides enclosed by glass. Protected from the wind it was an ideal spot on a sunny day, even a chilly one, and much favoured by the family.
About a hundred yards away Emily sat under Pelham’s Oak with a friend from a nearby grand house, Sarah Wills. Sarah Wills was the same age, and the pair were intimate friends, seldom apart if they could help it. Sometimes Sarah joined in lessons with Emily’s governess. Sarah and Emily were drawing a horse that stood in the field nearby looking rather enigmatically at them over the fence.
Suddenly the two girls put down their books and began to play with a skipping rope until they were breathless. There was much laughing and, for a few moments, her parents and brother watched, spellbound by the energy, vivacity and sheer beauty of the young Emily as, her long curls flying, she vied in turns with the much quieter Sarah to skip the greatest number of times.
‘Now, George,’ Guy said, reluctantly turning his head away, ‘I am fully awake. What is it that is important enough for you to interrupt my afternoon nap?’
Although Guy’s expression was severe, his voice was bantering, even light-hearted, but it was enough to discourage George, who, in view of what he was going to say, wished to get his parents, especially his father, in their most receptive mood.
‘Oh, well, Father,’ he faltered, standing up, ‘maybe it doesn’t matter. Another time.’
‘No, boy, no, I’m joking.’ Guy held out a hand. ‘Sit down.’
‘Of course he’s joking.’ Margaret eyed Guy severely. ‘Do go on, George. I’m all agog.’
‘Well – ‘ with a show of reluctance George resumed his seat, stretching his long legs out before him and adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles which helped to give him an appearance of such earnestness ‘– I actually want to talk to you about my career.’
‘Career!’ Guy looked surprised. ‘But you are the heir to Pelham’s Oak, George. Thanks to the husbanding of our fortune by your uncles, there is no need to worry about a career. None at all.’
‘Or does he wish to go into the family business?’ Margaret looked up with interest, neatly cutting a thread with a pair of small, sharp silver scissors. ‘After Cambridge, of course.’
‘No, Mother, nothing like that. The whole sordid subject of commerce and profit-making rather disgusts me. I do not mean to be offensive, Mother,’ he said hastily, pressing his glasses up upon his nose.
‘I’m not the least offended, but, my dear, please do go on.’ Margaret abandoned her sewing altogether. ‘You have me quite worried.’
‘I don’t think you will worry, Mother, when you know, so much as Father.’ George turned to his father, who was now sitting upright looking at him in comic disbelief.
‘G
o on, George,’ he said, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘Do get it over with, man. It can’t be that terrible.’
‘Well, Father, Mother.’ George stopped, choked, and then continued in a rapid voice. ‘I feel I have been called to the service of God. I can interpret my feelings in no other way. I have discussed this not only with the chaplain at Eton but with the Bishop, and also the Rector of Wenham. They all feel that I have a vocation.’
‘A what?’ Guy said peevishly, scratching his nose as if he didn’t properly understand. Then he looked across at his wife for clarification. ‘Do you understand what he’s saying, dear?’
‘I think,’ Margaret said a little faintly, as if fully aware of the impact George’s announcement would have, ‘I think our son is telling us that he wishes to enter the ministry, dear.’
‘The ministry?’ Guy barked. ‘The Church, do you mean?’
‘Yes, Father.’ George choked again, for he could tell from his father’s expression that his deepest fears were about to be realised.
‘You mean you want to be a vicar – you, the heir to the Woodville fortune, title and estate? Out of the question.’
Guy sank back as if the effort had cost him a good deal and, taking up his book again tried, with trembling hands, to find his place.
‘Guy –’ Margaret leaned towards him ‘– that is no way to treat George’s announcement. You can at least discuss it with him. You can see how difficult it was for him to tell us.’
‘I should think it was difficult.’ Guy thumped down his book again. ‘A vicar! A species I detest.’
‘I know that, Father. That’s why I dreaded telling you. The Reverend Lamb has been nothing if not good and helpful. He urged me to tell you.’
‘Ah, he’s the one who’s behind it all, is he?’ Guy cried, raising a finger in the air. ‘I shall have him dismissed from his living. I’ll personally speak to the Bishop.’
‘Guy, don’t be absurd,’ Margaret said calmly. ‘George, your eldest son, is trying to have a proper conversation with you, something he very rarely does now, by the way. He is obviously seeking our guidance and advice, as his parents, and you are doing nothing but uttering threats.’
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 41