‘In the church vestry.’
Once married to her he might hope to be safe — from memory, from Ellen’s bright eyes, from his mother’s forlorn looks. He might hope to end this miserable indecision which swung from schemes for their banishment to evenings at backgammon. Venetia would deal with them. She would cure these onslaughts of feeling so liable to invalidate all the pleasure of self-indulgence.
‘Come back with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll tell the whole country that I have offered and you have accepted.’
‘Without a word to my father? Oh no! That would never do.’
‘He’ll consent, won’t he?’
‘Probably.’
‘When do you expect him home?’
‘At any moment.’
‘Then I’ll wait and ask him. We’ll get him to come back with us. Will that satisfy you?”
She laughed and he asked again:
‘What more can I do?’
‘You seem to be very sure of my answer.’
‘I am. You mean to marry me, if you can, and I think it might do very well.’
‘You’ll have to marry me if you insist upon speaking to my father. And you’ll have a sad time of it. Charlotte will forbid the banns. My four brothers will rush to my defence. Charles and Harry will come from London, in a post-chaise. Stephen will come by coach from Dorset. Frank will set sail from India. Charles will call you out. Harry will bring an action. Stephen will denounce you from the pulpit. There’ll be nothing left of you for Frank to thrash.’
‘What devoted brothers! Why are they so fond of you?’
She continued in this strain, laughing at him and refusing to take him seriously. But, for all that, he thought he could detect a certain tensity; she was listening, while she laughed, on the alert for sounds of her father’s return.
He said at last, in order to make her jump:
‘I think Dr. Newbolt must have got his boots off by now. He’ll be in his study, I take it? I’d better go to him.’
‘Why … he’s not back yet.’
‘Oh yes. He came back ten minutes ago. I heard his horse in the lane.’
To his delight, she jumped. They went to the study which was dark and empty, since Romilly had heard no horse in the lane. Venetia could scarcely conceal her vexation.
‘I can’t think what keeps him,’ she exclaimed. ‘He never stays longer than fifteen minutes unless they are dying.’
‘Shall we go to the gate and see if he’s coming?’
‘Yes.’
She hurried out of the front door declaring that if her father did not show up soon Romilly must positively go back to the Priors without her. He must do his duty, and dance with poor Louisa Arbuthnot. And then, in the midst of a sentence, she broke off with a cry of surprise:
‘Who are all those people? How strange they look! Good God! My father’s horse!’
A little knot of people was trooping towards the Parsonage. One of them led the horse. The rest supported Dr. Newbolt, who shambled along amidst their encouragements and exhortations. At the sight of the couple by the gate several voices broke out:
‘ ’Tis Squire….’
‘Oh Miss….’
‘His Reverence….’
‘A sad accident….’
‘A seizure….’
‘We don’t rightly know….’
‘We found him on the ground, a-sobbing and a-weeping….’
They led him into the house. Servants came running, one of whom was despatched for a physician. He sat in his study, answering none of their questions and staring at them in a bewildered way. Presently he asked for Jenny.
‘We’ve sent for her,’ said Romilly. ‘She’s at the Priors.’
‘Ay. Bring her back. Bring her back. But take care of the moon. It’s very light. Very late. I must have a word with her. She was perfectly right, you know. Perfectly right. No child should work for Cranton.’
3
EARLY ENQUIRIES AT the Parsonage next morning brought a reassuring report. Dr. Newbolt had slept well and was, to all appearances, fully recovered. Romilly was quite ashamed at his own dismay when he heard this. Had the old man turned out to be very ill nobody could, at the moment, have asked for his daughter’s hand. There could have been a propitious delay. This recovery left no loop-hole for retreat. The awkward dilemma must be faced; how far must a man of honour deem himself committed by the scene in the garden last night?
Marriage with Venetia might be a diverting fantasy. Any obligation of that sort was a disagreeable fact. If there was none it would be wiser to avoid her for a while. Yet personal enquiries at the Parsonage, later in the day, would have to be made; to omit them would be outrageously uncivil, save for a very valid excuse. Within half an hour Romilly discovered a regard for Latymer so strong that it obliged him to accompany the poor fellow as far as Severnton, on the first stage of his journey. Dr. Newbolt might, in the meantime, take a turn for the worse. Seizures are unaccountable things. By Friday he might be very ill indeed.
Friday’s report was a disappointment. The physician now pronounced his patient to be perfectly recovered and doubted whether there had been any seizure at all. Dr. Newbolt, on Thursday, had refused to keep his bed. He would not even remain in the house. He had insisted that he must revisit Cranton’s and would have ridden over if Mrs. Brandon had not intervened. On learning of his obstinacy she had insisted that he should at least be driven over in her chaise.
‘I suppose I ought to call today,’ said Romilly, when he had heard about all this.
Charlotte declared that it was not in the least necessary, whereupon he set off at once, still in the greatest confusion of mind. At one moment he thought that it might be a very good thing to marry Venetia. At the next, that he must now do so, whether he liked it or not. And then, again, that nothing said by either of them on Wednesday night could be, or ought to be, taken seriously.
He chose the road through the village, the more formal approach to the Parsonage, a route which he generally avoided since it involved recognising and nodding to so many people. Today there was a confounded amount of nodding to be done since the entire population seemed to be standing at doors or hanging out of windows. They were all staring up the road. Yet there was nothing to be seen save a puny boy carrying a large bundle and a small fiddle. He too seemed to be going to the Parsonage, and the appearance of Romilly, striding after him, created, apparently, an enormous sensation. More and more villagers flocked into the road to gape at them. Romilly heard a woman at a cottage door call to someone within:
‘Quick! Quick! Come and look! Here’s the both of them. Here’s Squire himself!’
Quickening his pace he caught up with the child a few yards from the Parsonage gate, and wished him good day. For that he got a hard black stare, but no audible reply. The face was oddly familiar although he was sure that he had never seen the lad before.
‘Do you live hereabouts?’ he asked.
‘Ay.’
‘I don’t remember seeing you. What’s your name?’
‘Dickie.’
‘Dickie what?’
‘Cottar.’
The name had some echo. He could not locate it.
‘And where do you live?’
‘With Miss Jenny.’
‘What? Miss Jenny Newbolt?’
‘Ay.’
‘At the Parsonage?’
‘Ay.’
‘How long have you been there?’
‘I han’t been there yet. I’m a-going there now. Parson, he sent for me so soon as he came out of his fit. For to clean their boots.’
‘You have a fiddle, I see.’
‘Ay.’
‘Shall you play it to Miss Jenny?’ asked Romilly, smiling.
‘Ay.’
By now they had reached the house. Without another word the boy went on, round to the kitchen door.
Romilly paused for a moment before ringing the bell. Awkwardness or insolence? The little encounter had been oddly disconcerting. The name of Cottar was
not completely unfamiliar. But he was sure that he had not heard it for many years. He must ask Ellen. And then, as he rang the bell, he thought of Slane St. Mary’s as having some connection with the name. The Cottars might have been Knevett’s people, which would explain the scowl and the surly replies. But in that case he had better not ask Ellen.
A servant took him to the study where he found Dr. Newbolt walking up and down in manifest agitation.
‘Come in, my dear Romilly. Come in! I’m very glad to see you. Very glad indeed. We have much to discuss.’
Good God! thought Romilly, remembering his own quandary. She must have told him already. She’d lost no time. Had she also written to her brothers?
‘Sit down! Sit down! You’ll be shocked. I’m sure you had no more idea of it than I had. That man Cranton, you know, is a monster. An inhuman beast.’
No, no! All safe. This hullabaloo has nothing to do with her.
‘What has he been up to, sir?’
‘I saw him yesterday. You must know that on Wednesday … by the way, I must thank you for your kindness that evening….’
‘You quite startled us. We feared …’
‘I made a very shocking discovery that evening. Wednesday evening…. I am now talking about Wednesday. I’ll tell you …’
The story was hard to follow. Mrs. Hollins, Sukey, Tommy, jiggers, saggers, candles, a bowl of soup, and the possible origin of the expression ‘poised’ were inextricably confused. Dr. Newbolt confessed that, when he awoke on Thursday morning, he had wondered whether it might not be a kind of dream.
‘But I was determined … yesterday I rode over … no … stay … your mother was so kind as to … I drove over … I saw this fellow Cranton.’
He paused and gave one of those wild stares which had been so alarming on Wednesday night.
‘He … he … he owns to the whole of it! Not a trace of shame. Perfectly cool. Asked me why he should employ men and women for work which children can do at half the cost? Says he treats them as well as anybody else. What’s to be done? How are we to deal with him?’
‘In what way, sir?’
‘There will be, of course, an outcry when these facts are known. But how shall we set about it? Should we begin by consulting a lawyer?’
‘You think he may have broken some law?’
‘Of course he has. He is making slaves of these people. Slavery has been abolished in these islands. Any man, once he has set foot on British soil … Somerset’s case …’
‘Somerset was a black, sir. And, if these people don’t like to work for Cranton they can refuse. They are free.’
‘That’s what he had the assurance to tell me. I wonder you should swallow it. They can’t help themselves. I spoke to some of them, before leaving yesterday. They say he won’t engage a man unless this man’s children work too; that saves him the cost of apprentices. If they were to leave him, and failed to get other employment, they might come upon the parish. And then their children might be taken from them.’
‘That sounds,’ said Romilly, ‘as though the law supports Cranton.’
‘Impossible! In this country! In this enlightened age! But, if it is so, the law must be altered. You must agree, I think. Especially since Cranton would never have come here if your father had not sold him the land.’
‘I’m very sorry that he sold it. But it’s no longer my land. I am not responsible …’
‘As a Christian are you not responsible? When we encounter misery and oppression, must we not exert ourselves? The matter must be raised in Parliament. You must set your fellow on to it … your legislator … what’s his name? Lestrange.’
Romilly had a borough in his pocket which he had disposed of to a neighbour with political ambitions. When he explained that he could not give such orders to Lestrange the old gentleman began to lose his temper.
‘The man’s a legislator. You put him up to make laws for us. You would not, I suppose, have put him into Parliament had you thought him unworthy. Have you no sense of your duty in the matter?’
‘He’s a Tory,’ said Romilly. ‘That’s good enough for me. I should not have put in a Whig.’
‘Whigsh? Toriesh? Have they not the same Christian dutiesh? To defend … defend … Liberty … Magna Carta … Bill of Rightsh …’
The old man was almost choking. Romilly, fearing that another fit might have occurred, retreated in alarm to the bell. But then a promising idea occurred to him:
‘Should you not begin by consulting the Bishop? He’s a legislator, and should know more than I do on the point of Christian duty.’
This was well received. It had a soothing effect. Dr. Newbolt’s cheeks faded from purple to pink again, as he declared that he ought to have thought of this step himself.
‘He’s an excellent man, I believe,’ said Romilly.
‘Oh ay, and always very civil. I’ll lose no time. I’ll go to him at once. He ought to know of it as soon as possible.’
If Bishop Summerfield could not shut the old boy up, thought Romilly, nobody could., He took advantage of the lull to escape, since this was clearly no moment to open the topic of Venetia.
She was, however, waiting for him in the hall.
‘How can the surgeon call him recovered?’ he said at once. ‘He’s not himself at all. He can talk of nothing but Cranton. Useless to introduce any other topic.’
‘I know. I know … Jenny is not uneasy, but I …’
She paused for a moment, listening, as though she feared to hear some unwelcome sound. Then she said hastily:
‘I think you’d better go now. Don’t see him … avoid him if you can, till he’s over this. He’ll want you to join him in some mad scheme, and grow angry if you refuse, and quarrel with you.’
It was almost as though she were pushing him out of the house, and all the while she had that anxious, listening look. If he was eager to be gone, she was quite as eager to be rid of him.
He took the way home by the garden and the churchyard so as to avoid all those staring people in the street. As he crossed the lawn he heard a sound which might explain her discomposure. Somebody, inside the house, was playing the fiddle.
It could only be that surly child. Not bad, he thought, listening. Not bad at all. Better than one might expect. Quite spirited. But why in the world should it trouble Venetia?
4
‘I COULD NEVER have believed,’ said Bishop Summer-field, that a man of education, by no means half-witted, could have contrived to live so long in the world yet know so little about it.’
He said this to his old friend Canon Wilder, to whom he had repaired as soon as he got rid of Dr. Newbolt.
‘They’re a rustic lot, over on the other side of the forest,’ said Wilder. ‘And he’s lived there all his life, han’t he? Got the living very young?’
‘That is so. I don’t suppose he’s come across anything of the sort before. The Brandons are good landlords. They’ve always treated their people well. There’s no great poverty there. I suppose poor Newbolt imagined this to be an universal rule, and thought of a master potter as some kind of squire. He’s too old, his mind is too set, for discoveries of this sort. I failed to convince him that, in industry, these evils are inevitable.’
‘Nobody told him about Economy?’
‘If they did he never listened. I tried to explain to him that economic laws are as inflexible, as fixed, as the laws of nature. We can’t alter them. We might as well forbid water to flow downhill.’
‘We do that, to a certain extent,’ said the Canon. ‘We’re always defying the laws of nature. If water flowing downhill becomes inconvenient, we build a lock.’
‘Wa-a-a-ah!’ said the Bishop.
He always made a noise like this when Wilder chopped logic, and had been doing so ever since they were at school together. But an obstinate craving for honesty still drove him to discussion with his old friend, whenever he felt unsure of his position. He growled for a while, and then thought of an answer.
‘We don’t build a lock when the river is in violent flood. We wait for a convenient season. It is by dint of Economy that we are beating the French.’
‘Did you tell Newbolt so?’
‘I did.’
‘And he said that, in that case, no good would come of it, even if we do beat the French?’
‘Yes. How did you guess that?’
‘It’s what I’d have said myself, if I thought, as he does, that Economy is a subtlety of the Devil.’
‘I was obliged, in the end, to tell him not to meddle with matters which don’t concern the Church. He’s an old man. His language to me I can overlook, though he did call me a Pharisee. But if he says in the pulpit one tenth of what he said to me we shall all be set by the ears.’
‘May he say it when we have beaten the French?’
‘Wa-a-a-ah!’
‘Are you quite easy in your own mind about it?’
‘No. When we threw out Whitbread’s Bill … not that I thought it a good Bill … I was troubled by some of the facts which came to light. I daresay something might be done. But it’s no work for silly old men who know nothing of the world. Enthusiasts do more harm than good. Newbolt seems to imagine that politicians are philanthropists.’
‘Most ungentlemanly,’ agreed the Canon, shaking his head. ‘Hodge at the plough had better think so, perhaps. Which is why you won’t allow Whitbread to teach him to read. But we have known better as long as we can remember. We should not be here if we had not.’
‘Wa-a-a-ah!’
‘We should be raising pigs in a tumbledown parsonage at the other end of nowhere. Severnton Close is a great deal pleasanter. We are here because we know that our cathedral, although built by Christians, was paid for by Jews who wanted to keep their teeth in their heads.’
‘I never knew that!’ protested the Bishop. ‘Bless my soul! I don’t believe it.’
‘You will, when you’ve read my History of Severnton.’
‘Which I can’t do until it’s written.’
‘I’m still digging up facts. So don’t say Wa-a-a-ah! And remember that we have always treated our Jews a little better than other nations have. Some did worse than pull out their teeth, whenever money was wanted.’
A Night in Cold Harbour Page 11