by Betty Burton
Mother wept as I had seen her do only once before, on the day that Jaen was married. Now, though, she was an old woman weeping. Like an aged mother seeing off a son who goes to war, her tears brimmed, ran and dripped in a constant stream. She wept silently. As Will rode off down Howgaite I put an arm about her shoulders – and she let me.
In unspoken agreement we did not admit Christmas Day to enter the house. Last year had been so vastly different.
Mother went down to the church, but only briefly. She came back with the news that banns had been called for Henry Goodenstone and Amelia Eames-Coates.
“And he an’t doing himself a bad turn there,” she said. Which was true; for the Coates Estate, which was close to Havant in south Hampshire, was large and they owned rich properties in eastern countries.
We sent Johnny-twoey to spend the day with his family, and told Dicken that if he saw to the beasts in the morning, we would do the rest of the watering, feeding and milking. We said little to one another and Mother went to bed as soon as we had eaten supper.
That night I had the first of the recurring dreams that fever my sleep. It was not one of the more unbearably terrifying of dreams. The entire night was a pink-coloured canvas in a gilt frame, blank except in one corner where, never moving, were two minute figures: a woman in the silk dress Mrs Warren had got made for me linked arms with a stiff doll-like figure of a man. Hovering like a kestrel was a silver fish with a head at either end of its finless shape. It quivered but, like the figures, never moved. It was a still, silent dream, so that I do not know why I should have awoken on Boxing Morning trembling and relieved that the night was over, for there were none of the sucking whirlpools or shifting sands or falling into bottomless wells that came later and were understandably frightening.
When, on a steep slope, a person misses their footing, stumbles and begins to run headlong, it is the direction of the first step that implies the entire flight.
In the January of 1790, I received a message which was to be my first step in running headlong.
The message must have caused great speculation and comment in Cantle, and at the Dragon and Fount in particular, for it was Dicken who saw it arrive and came hurrying for me on his rickety legs that were by now as bent as though he were permanently ducking under a low roof.
“Master Jude. Come quick. Ol Blackwell have rode over from the Big House with a message. He’ve still got on his gold buttons under his cloak.”
Oliver Blackwell was a young Cantle man, who had been taken on in the Goodenstone kitchens as a small boy and was now famous for his rapid rise to an unspecified position where he wore gold buttons, ribbons and braid, and often travelled with Young Harry, or Squire Goodenstone as he was lately called – in his hearing at any rate.
Grand, handsome when his teeth were hidden, his wig well-kept and plentifully powdered, Ol Blackwell was without doubt Cantle’s most esteemed son. He was about my own age but, because of our virtual isolation, knew me only distantly, as did all Cantle children. He therefore addressed me with the name which was written on the letter he carried.
“Miss Nugent, my master sends his compliments and requests a reply at your earliest.”
He stood, allowing Dicken the full treat of inspecting the spectacle of ribbons and gold buttons, whilst I read the note.
“Miss Nugent, As you may have heard, I have lately become engaged to a lady of a sweet nature, whose philanthropic views I believe you would find of interest. Please attend at Park Manor at eleven on the morning of Thursday.” This was followed by a flourish of curlicues which I took to read Henry Goodenstone, JP.
This was the first missive of any kind that I had received and I was forced to reply on a page torn from my journal.
“Dear Mr Goodenstone, If Thursday was not Blackbrook market then I would be pleased to call upon you. I could come on Friday at the same time if this should suit you. You need not send another message unless Friday is not suitable.”
I did not sign it, nor did I possess wax for sealing, but my message – as if it mattered at all – was safe in Ol Blackwell’s illiterate hands.
Having received no further message, I started out for Park Manor on Friday morning just after the church bell had struck the half-hour, cutting across the fields by Chard Lepe and over Raike Bottom so as not to have to go via the ford and the eyes of Cantle village.
I had been forced to read Young Harry’s note over and over again to Mother. She questioned me about philanthropic views, wondered how I could be interested and speculated on what it could mean.
“I hope she don’t think we got money. If she thinks we got money you tell her we an’t hardly got enough to keep body and soul together. Don’t go pleading poverty, but don’t let her get you saying we can put up even a brass farden for church candlesticks or hassocks. We been kneeling on bran bags long enough without no trouble, and we can go on kneeling for a good whiles yet.”
It did not take much for her to become fidgety about the security of our ownership of Croud Cantle.
“Don’t let on about nothing. If any of They thinks that there’s as much as a shilling going into anybody’s pocket except theirn, then they a go after him like a ferret after a rabbit.”
I tried to assure her that it was unlikely that the holding had anything to do with my being summoned up to the Big House. “Philanthropy is giving something away. We never did settle anything about the books,” I said. “It’s something like that, I’ll be bound.”
“They never gives nothing away for nothing. It’s how everything comes to be theirn in the end.”
Just as I was going she came close and said quietly in my ear, even though we were the only two in the yard, “Don’t get mixed up in nothing, Jude. There been too much mixing up and that, one way and another, with that place and this.”
“What do you mean? Mrs Trowell?”
She did not reply, but frowned at me as though I was hiding the answer to something she was puzzling about.
“You all right, Mother?” I asked.
Her face suddenly cleared and she looked about her as though she had not been aware where she was.
“A course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?”
That moment of puzzlement was something that I had seen a few times lately. Sometimes I thought that she could hear something that was inaudible to me; other times she would look at me as though I had suddenly lapsed into a strange tongue. Once, just after Will had gone, I noticed her sitting beside the pile of logs on the hearth and picking off small pieces of moss as though she was attempting to steal something from under my very eyes. She would watch me until she thought that I wasn’t looking, then lower her hand, pinch off a wisp of moss, secrete it in the palm of her hand, then unobtrusively transfer it to a fold in her shawl. I wondered if, perhaps, she was remembering a childhood game and replaying the moves, but did not convince myself.
I thought of Will as I walked quickly over the frozen furrows of Howgaite fields. I watched coots on the little Chard Lepe pond, and thought of Will. I made mental notes, for my journal, that some hazel catkins were so forward that they had already stretched to their fullest extent, and saw two nettle-creepers fussing about low in the hedgerow as though ready to nest. I tried not to think of Will and hoped that as the time and distance between us grew I should not think of him so often.
This time I went directly up the great drive to Park Manor and round to the side entrance. A little servant took me to Mrs Cutts’ room. Mrs Cutts looked at me as she had done on a previous occasion – as though I had done her harm – and called me ‘Miss’ with contempt. I have never known anyone to walk with such whisk and jingle as Mrs Cutts. She led me to the hexagonal library where I had first encountered Mrs Trowell and where she had so delightfully recited from the play, Hamlet.
The last time that I had seen Squire Goodenstone – how impossible to suddenly think of him as squire – was over eighteen months previously, when he had arrived out of the blue at Croud Cantle. The change
in his appearance was very surprising. He wore the plain, short jacket and dark waistcoat of a country gentleman; his boots sported no ribbons; his neck-cloth was soft and amiable. Most surprising of all was his hair. It was covered by neither wig nor hat: in fact, he had little to cover, except for a fringe over each ear across the nape of his neck. He had given up being a ridiculous dummy for fashionable clothes and had acquired some dignity.
He addressed me formally with a “Good morning, Miss”, in his high, unmanly voice and thanked me for coming. He began awkwardly, saying that now that the banns had been called, he and the Hon. Amelia Eames-Coates were soon to be married. He went on to say that this lady was of the most charitable and virtuous kind.
“In fact, she is of such a noble mind that there is nothing that she does not do to try to understand and forgive others.”
I said that I was very pleased that he was so fortunate. He peered at me somewhat, as though to fathom something more under my polite comments.
“So the past is the past. There’s nothing anybody can ever bring forth in the future that will ever disturb the lady who is to be my wife.”
I wondered if he had called me here because he suspected that I was capable of “bringing something forth”. I was annoyed at the suggestion.
“I can’t believe there’s anybody I know of like that, Mister Harry,” with an emphasis on the “I”. “And as far as I am concerned, your past, your present and your future is not of much interest to me so long as you keep your hands off my mother’s land.”
He looked astonished.
“What interest should I have in that little corner?”
“The same interest your family have had in every other little corner of this valley.”
I was being over-bold and knew he would think me insolent, but I could not stop myself. “There was a time when every field in Cantle belonged to the people here, and now you’ve got them.”
He was not at all roused by my fieriness, replying mildly, “It was not unlawful, not plundered, you know.”
I was pleased with myself for holding back the retort that if it were not plunder then it was pillage and, in any case, the outcome was the same: the people had lost their land and now he held it.
It was a strange meeting. But then I had never had an encounter with him that was otherwise: Old Sir Henry’s funeral; the vestry and Howgaite Path; this same library, when he had brought Mrs Trowell to Park Manor, and lastly, his unaccountable call at Croud Cantle. For a girl who, by his standards, was a peasant, my relationship with Harry Goodenstone was a strange one. Aside from that of servant, the only other relationship that may take place between a village girl and masters and masters’ sons is a squeezing, fondling, ravishing one. Masters believe it is their right. My father, master of Croud Cantle, had taken the milk-maid. The only part of the story that was unusual was that he eloped with her. Harry Goodenstone had only looked at me once in that way, and I do not believe that he was overly serious.
Although there must have been a score or more of servants grooming the great mansion of Park Manor and preparing food for its occupants, no sound filtered through to the room in which we sat. The book-lined walls deadened all sound except the crackle of burning logs, the gentle clock, clock, clock of a swinging pendulum and the sound of our voices, which seemed to travel no further than the foot or two that separated us.
I was aware of the eccentricity of our situation and wondered if it occurred to him. That a powerful and wealthy landowner should write a polite invitation asking a village girl to call; that she should sit in his library and talk as though to an equal; that a housekeeper of the calibre of Mrs Cutts should bring in cups of chocolate and small biscuits.
Before today, I had seen nothing in Harry Goodenstone except a silly man who behaved like a youth that wanted his own way. But, I supposed, since he had been able to stand up to Old Sir Henry and had gone his own way living with Mrs Trowell, flouting convention by bringing her to Park Manor, he might not be altogether the silly fop-doodle that he appeared to be. I discovered that I had a small spark of regard for him, the kind of spark that is as disturbing in people we despise as blemishes and faults are in those we like or love.
He waved me to sit in a chair closer to where he was.
“There was a time, a year or so back, when I might have wanted to take your land. Take it and try to obliterate it. But that is not possible, is it? If I could dig a pit a thousand feet deep to try to gouge out the past, I should not succeed. I assure you that I have no desire to own your small-holding, even if it were possible to do so. In any case, I believe that my,” he gave an odd smile, “hated plot was sold to the Estate years ago.”
In the dead-sound, unreal atmosphere, I felt no restraint on what I might say.
“Mister Harry. It isn’t any secret to me what my father did. He infected my mother’s life, Mrs Trowell’s life and Mary Holly’s; and I think yours, too. He made money out of buying human beings, transporting them from their homes like beasts and selling them.”
He made no response, but sat watching my face with a puzzled expression.
“I feel that he ought to have infected my life as well, but it’s queer, I haven’t any real feeling about him one way or the other – it’s almost as though it is something I read of. If you’ve got any fears that my mother or me’s going to be any bother to you about that connection, then you can put them out of your mind. My mother’s like you; she’d dig a deep hole if it’d make it go away. She don’t want anything except to forget it. She hadn’t ever talked about it, not till Mrs Trowell came. I liked Mrs Trowell. Isn’t that strange? I liked her very much.”
He still did not respond. He stopped looking at me and turned his gaze into the flames licking the burning log. I absently read book titles. I had nothing more to say. Our conversation had taken such a turn that the original reason for my coming seemed to have been forgotten. When I looked back at him I saw that his eyes were brimming tears that he made no attempt to hide.
“Jealousy. I have always been . . .” He trailed off, gazing back into the fire. Suddenly he roused himself, rubbed his hand down his face, pinched his nostrils and rubbed his chin, as though awakening from a doze. “If we could get rid of the worst things by gouging out the places where they happened, the earth would be a honeycomb.”
I nodded. Had the more serious Harry Goodenstone always been there under the ribbons and buttons and over-sized hats, as his hairless scalp had been there under his wigs, or had he changed? I still did not like him greatly, but I did see a human being that I had not seen before. But perhaps the change was in me.
“Well, now. To the purpose of my note.” He seemed to be searching for a way to start. “You read and write.” I nodded. “Warren taught you. It was just Warren teaching you. He gave you lessons. Tell me how you did it.”
“It was a bit haphazard. It had to be fitted in when it could.”
“It did not interfere with your proper work?”
“When he lived in Motte I used to go on Sundays and he would give me things to do, work, things to copy. Sometimes when I saw him in Blackbrook I gave him what I’d done, then he would tell me about it next time I saw him. I don’t sleep much, so I had all that time, practising my letters by candle.”
“Could you not have done it otherwise – I mean than working at night?”
“It would have taken a lot longer. I learned quite quick. In a year, about.”
“When ..? Is ..?” He scratched his chin, and again I noticed a sensitivity when choosing his words, a maturity perhaps, that I had never noticed in the past.
“What I mean is, are you spoken for? In marriage. When shall you marry? You seem to have managed to escape so far. I am surprised. You are . . . you must have attracted many of the young men in the four parishes. You have good looks. I should say you’re tough and strong: make a good wife for any farmer, a girl like you.”
I bridled inwardly. Master and village girl. He would not dream of making such a personal
comment to the Hon. Amelias of his world. I should say you got noble blood in your veins milady. Good record for sons in your family: make a good wife for any lord!
“I’m no longer a girl and I have a bent leg.”
I had no idea why I should have said such an extraordinary thing to him. A bent leg. It is true that the injury I received on Tradden had never properly mended, but I had never thought about it a great deal. But suddenly it seemed that the badly-knit bone was very significant. For the life of me I could not have said why.
“That has never been an obstacle to marriage.”
“I shall never marry.”
He started to say something, but changed his mind. He began again. “Could you run a school?”
Without hesitation I said, “Yes, I could. I could do it very well.”
My mind and my stomach were churning at the possible outcome of this conversation. An answer to a prayer that I had never prayed. Fulfilment of a dream that I had never dreamed.
This was what I wanted.
The unspecified need that I had tried to explain to Jaen crystallised. I needed to be given a school in which to teach. Had he mentioned some other project, that might have been my unspecified desired object. But he said, Could you run a school? and at once that became my ambition.
“What if you were offered the chance to do so?”
“I should jump at it.” I looked at him directly, daring him not to be playing jokes on me. “I should seize it, take the chance in both hands and nobody should make me let it go.”
He smiled at my enthusiasm. I knew then that he was serious.
Later, after an hour of discussion, I was once more walking down the long drive. I found myself the first and only teacher in the first and only school in Cantle.
The details were not set then, but the unusual wedding gift of a “small school for the poor children of your village, Henry”, that had been requested by the Hon. Amelia Coates (a kind and philanthropic lady), was going to be provided.