Deirdre and Desire

by Beaton, M. C.

  She chattered on to him about this and that, but he replied to all her questions and commented on her topics with a lazy smile, like a father indulging a favourite daughter.

  Perhaps he will seek me out when we break our journey, thought Deirdre.

  But Lord Harry appeared content to spend most of the evening talking to Squire Radford.

  The squire had travelled a great deal, and it transpired Lord Harry had been to many of the countries the squire had visited.

  To her disappointment, both men took up the conversation where they had left off at breakfast and continued all the way to Hopeworth.

  On the outskirts of Hopeworth they heard the belling of hounds, the winding of the horn, and then streaking across the road behind his pack came the Reverend Charles Armitage with John Summer close behind him. He cleared the hedge beside the road and set off hell-for-leather over a ploughed field.

  They had a momentary glimpse of his flushed and excited face and then he was gone.

  He did not seem to have seen them.

  Squire Radford was deposited at his home, and Lord Harry’s carriage swung round the pond, heading for the vicarage.

  ‘How long will you be staying with us?’ asked Deirdre.

  ‘I shall not be staying at all,’ said Lord Harry, looking surprised. ‘I shall return to Town just as soon as I have paid my respects to Mrs Armitage.’

  Deirdre’s heart plummeted.

  But what else could he be expected to do? She had made it all too clear she did not want him.

  But she hung around anxiously while he chatted with her mother after their arrival, tactfully explaining he was the most desolate of men for he and Deirdre had decided they would not suit. Then he teased Daphne, saying she grew more beautiful by the minute, to which Daphne answered with a surprised, ‘I know.’

  Hearing that the little girls were at school, he decided to take his leave.

  Naturally neither Mrs Armitage nor Daphne dreamed of leaving Lord Harry and Deirdre alone to say their goodbyes.

  Mrs Armitage and Daphne were self-absorbed in different ways, Mrs Armitage with her imaginary illnesses and Daphne with her own beauty, but they had enough sensitivity to feel it would be monstrous awkward for poor Deirdre to be left alone to say goodbye to a man she had decided would not make a suitable husband.

  He bowed very formally before her, looking more serious than Deirdre had ever seen him look before.

  ‘I am to have my Season,’ said Deirdre. ‘I shall see you then, perhaps?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Squire Radford has given me a mind to travel. ’Tis a pity, perhaps, we are not to be married. We could have seen all those wonderful places together – Paris, Rome, Naples, Venice . . .’

  He bowed again and entered the carriage. The coachman cracked his whip, Lord Harry raised a white hand in salute, the carriage rumbled down the short drive, out into the lane.

  He was gone.

  Only dimly did Deirdre hear her mother’s anxious questions and lamentations on the end of a most suitable engagement.

  Lord Harry gazed placidly out at the country fields. He saw the lone figure of a peasant standing by the bend of the road outside Hopeworth, gazing intently across the fields.

  Wondering if the vicar had made his kill, Lord Harry signalled to his coachman to stop. He let down the glass and leaned out.

  ‘Watching the hunt?’ he called.

  The yokel turned slowly and took some time to bring Lord Harry’s face into focus.

  ‘No, zur,’ he said at last, touching his forelock. ‘I bee watching the crops grow. Just watching the crops grow.’

  Lord Harry waved his hand and the coach started off again.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said to himself, ‘whether the crop I have planted will ever come to maturity. Waiting for things, or people, to grow up can be a tedious business.’

  NINE

  The vicar of St Charles and St Jude wearily wended his homeward way, slumped over the pommel of his saddle. A string of oaths floated out behind him on the evening air.

  ‘I do believe,’ he shouted over his shoulder to his coachman-cum-groom-cum-kennel-master-cum-whipper-in, John Summer, ‘that there fox is an invention of the devil. I seen him, with my own two eyes. You saw him too, didn’t you John?’ he asked pleadingly.

  ‘That I did, master,’ said John in a comforting way. ‘Saw him with my own eyes. You ’member, the first find was close to Hans Wood and from then onwards, hounds’ heads were down and their voices singing well over half the afternoon. Must have run not short of twenty mile.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ mourned the vicar. ‘Reynard disappears like a puff o’ smoke and hounds were running round that great elm in circles. Climbed up it, didn’t you? Not a whisker o’ Reynard in sight and the scent as cold as last Sunday’s dinner.’

  ‘Well, I told you, master,’ said John, ‘foxes don’t climb trees.’

  ‘This poxy one does,’ growled the vicar. ‘God! I’m mortal stiff. Sharp set, too.’

  Wearily, he dismounted outside the vicarage and led his weary horse to the stables.

  By the time he had rubbed down his mount and covered it with a blanket, warm from the saddle-room fire, and seen to its feed, the vicar felt every muscle had been wrenched out by some giant hand and put back in all the wrong places.

  Groaning heavily, he entered the small dark hall of the vicarage, shouting for Betty to come and pull off his boots. Betty was stooping over the second boot as the vicar sat on an upright chair in the hall when he had a sort of feeling he was being watched.

  He glanced up and saw a huddled figure on the first landing.

  He sent Betty off to bring brandy to the study and waited until the maid had gone into the kitchen and closed the door behind her.

  ‘Come down,’ said the vicar, addressing the figure on the landing.

  Deirdre rose and came slowly down the stairs. His heart smote him as he saw the telltale marks of tears on her pallid cheeks.

  Silently she followed him into the study. ‘Don’t say a word,’ said the vicar, vigorously poking the fire, ‘until I get a drop of brandy down me.’

  Deirdre slumped in a chair and the vicar sat behind his cluttered desk. Betty came in with the bottle and glass on a tray along with lemons and a jug of hot water.

  She glanced curiously at Deirdre.

  As soon as she had left, the vicar poured himself a large glass of brandy and tossed it off. He looked narrowly at Deirdre’s woebegone face, and poured another glass down him for good measure.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Now, what’s amiss?’

  Deirdre just shook her head dismally.

  She wanted to tell someone, but surely anyone was better than this brutish father.

  ‘Well, I’ll need to guess,’ said the vicar. ‘Let’s start with Guy Wentwater.’

  Deirdre turned as red as she had been pale a moment before.

  ‘Yes,’ said the vicar, tilting back his chair and putting his thumbs in his waistcoat, ‘him. I think you went and asked that wastrel to elope with you because you didn’t want to marry Desire. I think he turned you down that night when you went to Lady Wentwater’s carrying them bandboxes. Fortunately for you, her ladyship was in residence or the worst might have happened and you would have ended up with no wedding ring to show for it. Don’t you know Wentwater wants revenge?’

  Deirdre looked at her father with her mouth open.

  The vicar waited to see if she would say anything, and when she did not, he went on, ‘And somehow Desire got wind o’ it and went up to Wentwater’s and brought back them bandboxes. Next thing you says you’re going to marry him, but you look so mortal scared o’ the man that squire and me decide he’s blackmailing you. So we ups to London to try to keep you away from him as much as possible so you might guess we were on your side and tell us the truth. It came as a relief when I finally faced him and he agreed not to marry you. Now would you like to
fill in the blanks in my story?’

  Deirdre hung her head. She was amazed her father had guessed so much and yet was not ranting or raving.

  The need to unburden herself was great, and with a little sigh, she began. She told him the whole story from beginning to end, leaving nothing out, except the last meeting.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ said the vicar savagely. ‘I’ll tell you why he did it.’ He related the story of driving Guy out of the county. ‘He’s weak and vicious,’ ended the vicar. ‘You look as if you’ve had punishment enough, but, ’fore George, I cannot but wonder you were so taken in.’

  Somehow, Deirdre found herself telling him of her love for Guy, of her dreams of the sort of love Minerva had found – ‘You know, Papa,’ she ended earnestly, ‘pure and spiritual without any lust.’

  ‘Well, they’ve hardly got a marriage without passion,’ said the vicar drily. ‘Minerva and Sylvester are too well-bred to paw and ogle in public, but they can hardly keep their hands off each other and it’s as well he married her sharpish or I would’ve been forced to run him up to the altar with my shotgun at his back.’

  ‘Papa!’

  ‘Gad’s ’Oonds, daughter! How d’ye think they came to have a child? ’Twas not by reading poetry to each other or by discussing the state of the nation.’

  Deirdre stared at him wide-eyed, her eyes very green and sharp – ‘like that demned fox,’ thought the vicar sourly.

  He put his elbows on the desk and leaned forwards. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’

  ‘No, Papa.’

  Beads of perspiration began to appear on the vicar’s brow. ‘Your mother should tell you about these things,’ he said crossly, ‘but in truth, I don’t think she knows. Eight children and she still thinks it’s all the fault of the stork. You’d think she was one o’ them Greeks, like Leda, to hear her, ’cept that was a swan.

  ‘Did Wentwater kiss you?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘And what did you feel?’

  ‘I felt as a girl in love should feel,’ said Deirdre. ‘Pure and spiritual and elated.’

  ‘Hey, ho. Desire, did he kiss you?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘And how did you feel?’

  ‘Wanton and lustful,’ whispered Deirdre.

  ‘Oh, tut, tut, tut,’ said the vicar sarcastically.

  Deirdre flared up. ‘Think of the times you have preached against lust from the pulpit!’

  ‘Aye, but I hadn’t a word to say agin passion. Let’s get back to Wentwater. You did not see him after the night?’

  ‘I’m afraid I did. He . . . he followed me to Green Park. I went there one morning early to think things out. He must have been watching the house. He said he loved me. He said he had spurned me for my own good. I asked him to elope with me.’

  The vicar clutched his hair and gave it a yank. ‘Is there any more of this?’ he wailed.

  ‘Yes. I was to meet him at two in the morning in Green Park, but I did not.’

  ‘Well, thank God for small mercies. See here Deirdre, you have been playing a dangerous game. Wentwater does not care a fig for you, never has, and never will. He is determined to get revenge, that is all. He wants to marry Emily, if anything. That way, he could anger me, and get himself a wife with a good dowry. But there is something in all this that does not add up. It looks as if Desire put the fear o’ God into him, and Wentwater’s mortal afraid o’ me. So why does he still pursue the matter?’

  He sat for a long time, buried in thought. Then he said slowly, ‘We never really knew much about these Wentwaters. Lady Wentwater seems to have been missed out of the peerage. Well, we assumed she might have adopted the title and she seems harmless enough. But I wonder where the Wentwaters came from? I am going back to London.’ He thought of that pesky fox and a wistful look crossed his face. ‘I’ll need to smoke out Guy Wentwater and make sure he never comes near Hopeworth again. None of you girls is to go near Lady Wentwater. I’ll call on her myself and tell her why.’

  He stopped and looked at the drooping picture of misery that was Deirdre Armitage.

  ‘You’ve made a sad mull o’ things,’ he said in a kindly voice, ‘but it’s all over.’ He stood up and came round his desk. ‘Off to bed with you. It’s late and I have not yet had my supper.’

  Deirdre stood up and faced him. Large tears began to roll down her cheeks.

  The vicar wordlessly held out his arms and she rushed into them.

  ‘There, now,’ he said, ‘it’s all over.’

  ‘But I love him, Papa,’ choked Deirdre.

  The vicar stiffened. ‘Then you will need to get over it,’ he said harshly. ‘Wentwater does not set a foot in this house!’

  ‘Oh, not him,’ wailed Deirdre, crying harder than ever.

  ‘Who, in Gad’s name?’

  ‘Lord Harry.’

  The vicar’s pudgy hands tightened on her shoulders. He wanted to shake her and shake her until her teeth rattled. Instead he said wearily, ‘We’ll talk again tomorrow. Now off to bed like a good girl.’

  ‘Oh, Papa,’ sobbed Deirdre, ‘I love you, too. I have been such a fool.’

  ‘You do, do you?’ grinned the vicar, suddenly feeling all the troubles of the world slip from his shoulders. ‘Well, that’s all right. Go and say your prayers.’

  He stood beaming until she had left the room. But when Mrs Armitage came in some ten minutes later to ask him whether he was going to eat his supper or not, the vicar of St Charles and St Jude was slowly banging his head rhythmically against the study wall.

  Mrs Armitage assumed it was some mysterious masculine hunting ritual – men were so strange, quite like children – and retreated to tell cook and Betty that the master would no doubt be ready to eat in a little while.

  Deirdre was glad to have a bedroom all to herself again. She sat by the window, but this time she dreamed of seeing Lord Harry Desire walking in the lane. Why hadn’t she realized she loved him before? Why had she hated her father so much? It was as if she had been looking at the world through a distorting glass, and now suddenly she saw things plain for the first time.

  How bitter to realize you loved a man, right after you had successfully disengaged yourself from him.

  Betty came bustling in, carrying a hot posset. ‘Mr Armitage sent me up with this and says you are to go right to bed.’

  ‘Very well, Betty,’ said Deirdre. ‘Perhaps I have made a mull of things but maybe I shall find a rich husband and then you and John will be able to marry.’

  ‘’Tis a pity it wasn’t that Lord Harry,’ said Betty. ‘But he was too handsome. Quite scary in a way. And don’t mind about me, miss, though it’s kind of you to bother. Vicar’ll make sure I marry John before next harvest is out, never fear.’

  ‘That is wonderful, Betty. But how can you prevail upon Papa to do so?’

  ‘There are ways,’ said Betty, grinning. ‘Now, I’ll put the warming pan between the sheets and you slip into your nightgown.’

  At last, when she was tucked up in bed, Deirdre said sleepily, ‘Betty, how do I learn Latin?’

  ‘I don’t know, miss. Why not ask Mr Pettifor. He has a deal of book learning.’

  ‘Very well, Betty. I do want to learn things.’

  ‘You can read and write, miss, and play the pannyforty. What does a lady need with else?’

  ‘Only, I have found I am really rather stupid, Betty.’

  ‘Oh, not you, miss,’ said Betty placidly, as she blew out the candles and lit the rushlight in its pierced canister beside the bed. ‘Miss Minerva, I mean Lady Sylvester, always said as how you were the brains of the family.’

  ‘Then she was much mistaken,’ sighed Deirdre.

  ‘Ah, you’re young,’ smiled Betty, tucking the bedclothes about her, ‘and there ain’t a body in the whole wide world that don’t do stupid things when they’re young. You’ll feel clever again in the morning.’

  And with that, she quietly left the room.

  A
deputation of angry farmers called at the vicarage in the morning to curse the reverend for hunting over their fields while the spring crops were about to sprout. Added to that the day was white with frost, so the vicar had two reasons not to tempt him to take out his hounds.

  Instead of flying off to London to scour the clubs and coffee houses for Guy Wentwater, he decided to call on Squire Radford first.

  Wentwater had always been on the dubious fringes of society, reflected the vicar. He was the sort of fellow who professed to know everyone, and yet no one knew him. He was unknown in White’s or Brooks’s or Watier’s. He was never to be seen in fashionable saloons or drawing-rooms.

  In the county of Berham, he was considered one of the upper set. But he only came on infrequent visits, and Lady Wentwater was considered something of a recluse.

  Squire Radford listened eagerly to the ramifications of the story about Deirdre.

  ‘The thing that frightens me,’ finished the vicar, ‘is that she should go ahead and plan to do the same thing again, that she should ask him to elope with her a second time. Do you think she’s addled in her brainbox?’

  ‘I think she is very young for her years and that she was very unhappy. Minerva had given her a role to play, the one of highly intelligent girl. And so she played that role and believed in it. Suddenly it was not true and she felt lost and self-disgusted and silly. Sir Thomas Browne said that each man is his own executioner, and I believe that. My poor daughter chose to kill herself by running away with a wastrel. If we do not destroy ourselves, we often find someone else to do it for us. Given a short time to recover, Deirdre will discover she is actually almost as intelligent as Minerva led her to believe herself to be, but very young and sadly uninformed.’

  ‘Aye, but that’s not all, Jimmy,’ said the vicar eagerly, ‘she’s in love with him.’

  ‘Dear me!’

  ‘No, not Wentwater. Desire.’

  ‘And when did she discover this? It may be all part and parcel of her temporary madness.’

  ‘Mayhap. Anyway, the silly jade must discover this great fact after Lord Harry had broken the engagement and taken his leave. All that money! Jeremy Blewett’s said to be richer than Golden Ball. If I was not so worried for my daughter’s sanity, I would’ve given her a beating. Now, there’s no hope.’