The Saint and the Sinner (2 page)

Again there was silence until Mrs. Stratton said,

“That reminds me, I was telling you why you must forbid Pandora to go to Chart. That man is in residence, I believe.”

“The Earl?”

“Who else? I was told that His Lordship arrived two days ago, and you know as well as I do what that means.”

“I do indeed!” the Bishop said heavily. “And there is nothing I can do about it after the way he spoke to me when I remonstrated with him.”

“He is a disgrace to his name and to the neighbourhood,” Mrs. Stratton said positively, “and Lindchester will be agog with stories of what is taking place at Chart Hall and the people who are staying there.”

She made a sound that was one of disgust combined with irritation.

“Lady Henderson tells me,” she continued, lowering her voice, “that the women whom the Earl entertains are nothing but doxies and play-actresses. No decent man would be seen in the company of such creatures!”

“Lady Henderson,” the Bishop retorted, “should not soil her lips by speaking of the dregs of the London sewers! And I hope, Sophie that you will not encourage those who spread tales of what happens at Chart Hall. You know as well as I do that stories are often exaggerated and only harm those who listen to them.”

“It would be difficult to exaggerate anything that was said about the Earl,” Mrs. Stratton replied. “You are to forbid Pandora from going anywhere near the village. She is more likely to obey you than me.”

“I will tell her,” the Bishop replied, “and Prosper Witheridge, who will be returning tonight, can doubtless keep an eye on her.”

“The less he hears about Pandora’s relatives, the better! It might make him think twice about his offer of marriage,” Mrs. Stratton said spitefully, and Pandora heard the door of the Study close behind her.

She had stood without moving as she had listened to what was being said in the next room.

Now she heard the heavy footsteps of her uncle moving about as if he was collecting various papers, and then the Study door opened and closed again.

Pandora realised that she had been holding her breath for so long now that she was almost gasping for air.

Prosper Witheridge! Was it possible for one moment to entertain the idea of him as a husband?

He had been her uncle’s Chaplain for only three months, and because instinctively she had sensed that the way in which he looked at her was not that of a man dedicated to the Service of God, she had avoided him on every possible occasion.

But now, if her aunt had her way, she was to marry him!

She was well aware that as she was only eighteen and her uncle was her Guardian, it would be very difficult for her to oppose any decision he made about her future.

But, Prosper Witheridge!

Even to think of him made her feel as if her skin crawled, and as her father would have said jokingly, “There’s a goose walking over your grave!”

“I cannot marry him – I cannot!” she said aloud. “I hate him! There is something about him which makes me feel – revolted in a way I have never felt about any other man!”

But she knew that once her uncle had given his blessing to the betrothal, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for her to say or do anything to prevent the marriage from taking place.

“I hate him! I hate him!” she said again.

Then she shivered as she thought of the look in Prosper Witheridge’s eyes and of how his hands always seemed to be hot and clammy.

She felt suddenly as if the Palace was a prison in which she was incarcerated, and if she left it as Prosper Witheridge’s wife she knew that it would be to exchange a large prison for a smaller one, and she would never be free again.

“I cannot bear it!” she whispered beneath her breath.

Then she heard her aunt calling for her.

She ran across the room and into the hall to find that her uncle and aunt were ready to depart, the servants carrying their luggage outside to the travelling-coach.

“Where have you been, you tiresome girl?” Mrs. Stratton asked. “You are never there when you are wanted. You knew perfectly well that your uncle and I were leaving at half after ten.”

“I am sorry, Aunt Sophie, I forgot the time,” Pandora said meekly.

“Forgot! Forgot! That is all you ever do! As I have told you before, your head is full of holes. Now kindly behave yourself while we are away. Mrs. Norris will be coming over to sleep in the Palace at night, but she cannot be here before six o’clock in the evening, so you will have to look after yourself until she arrives.”

“Yes, Aunt Sophie.”

“Your uncle has something to say to you,” Mrs. Stratton said with a meaningful glance at her husband.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the Bishop said, as if he had forgotten what he had been told to say to his niece. “You are not, Pandora, to go riding anywhere near Chart Hall before we return. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Uncle Augustus.”

“Then kindly remember what your uncle has said to you,” Mrs. Stratton said sharply. “If you disobey him, Pandora, you will be severely punished when we return.”

“Yes, Aunt Sophie!

Mrs. Stratton swept to the front door and down the steps to the Bishop’s travelling-carriage.

It was a very impressive vehicle with his coat of-arms emblazoned on the panel of each door and the coachman and footman dressed in the livery of his ecclesiastical rank. There were four out-riders to accompany them on the journey to London.

As the Bishop went down the steps with Pandora beside him, he said quietly,

“Try to please your aunt, my child, and do not get into any mischief while we are away from home.”

“I will try, Uncle Augustus.”

For a moment the Bishop’s eyes rested on his niece as if he appreciated the sunshine glinting on her fair hair and in her pansy-coloured eyes.

Then a voice from inside the carriage said peremptorily,

“Augustus! We should be on our way.”

“Yes, of course, my dear.”

The Bishop stepped in, a footman shut the door of the carriage, and the cavalcade started off in a manner which, Pandora thought, should have been heralded with a fanfare of trumpets.

She watched them drive out of the courtyard and onto the short drive which led to the highway, and then she turned and went back into the Palace.

They had gone!

She was free, and yet any elation she might have felt was overshadowed by what she had just heard her uncle say.

Not realising where her feet were carrying her, she walked into her uncle’s Study.

It would have been a pleasant room if her aunt had not furnished it with mustard-coloured curtains and a carpet in which the same colour predominated, intermingled with various shades of brown.

The room looked austere with no flowers, no touches of colour to relieve the sombreness of it.

Yet the armchairs were well upholstered – for the Bishop liked his comfort – and his large desk was piled with papers, all of them neatly arranged.

Pandora had the idea that she was filed in a category headed, “Pandora Stratton – Niece and Object of Charity.”

‘If I had any money,’ she thought, ‘I would go to London and find myself some employment and make myself independent.’

It was an idea so revolutionary, so impractical, that she might just as well have thought of flying to the moon or living beneath the sea.

The very little money her father had left had been taken over by her uncle, and she presumed it would be used for her trousseau and to provide a dowry for her marriage.

Her marriage!

Again the idea seemed to strike at her as if it were a knife.

“What can I do? Oh, Papa, what can I do?” she asked aloud.

She knew that her father and mother would never have forced her into marriage with a man she did not like.

They had married in defiance of the Chart family, which had been horrified that one of their members should wish to marry someone so penniless and, to their minds, so unimportant as a Parson.

But when they met Charles Stratton, a number of them, Lady Eveline later told her daughter, had understood.

“Your father was such a handsome, attractive, and happy person,” she said. “I think my aunts, my cousins, and even grandmother, all of whom had disapproved, almost fell in love with him themselves!”

That was not to say, Pandora knew, that they would have sacrificed their important position in the Social World as her mother had done to live in a small Vicarage, and be, with very little money, supremely happy.

“Have you ever regretted marrying Papa?” Pandora had asked once.

Her mother laughed.

“Do I look as if I ever regretted being the happiest woman in the world?” she asked. “I adore your father and he adores me, and, what is more, we have an adorable daughter! Could any woman ask for more?”

It had certainly never seemed to worry her mother that she could not do the things she had done when she was a girl.

There was no question of going to London to Balls and parties in the Season or of accepting the invitations she occasionally received from the Prince Regent at Carlton House.

Instead, she was quite content to make the small Vicarage comfortable and attractive for her husband, and to skimp and save on everything else so that they could afford to ride together in the summer and go hunting in the winter.

It somehow did not seem incongruous that the horses which Charles Stratton had prized so much should have been responsible for his tragic death.

Pandora even in her grief sometimes thought it better that her father and mother had died together, because either would have been completely lost without the other.

That was the sort of marriage she wanted for herself, so how, having seen two people so happy, so content with each other, could she contemplate being married to someone like Prosper Witheridge?

It was not only that she shrank from him physically, he was also pompous, sanctimonious, and ready to criticise and find fault with everything, just like her aunt.

Her father had been extremely tolerant of the failings of others.

“They do their best,” he would say when someone was criticised, or, “We must give them a chance. People can only give what they are capable of giving, and often we ask too much.”

Prosper Witheridge would never think like that, and Pandora knew that he would have a great deal to say about the party that was taking place at Chart Hall.

Nobody in the Bishop’s Palace ever thought how much it hurt her to hear them disparaging the man who was her cousin.

He might be all they said he was, but she thought it would have been tactful if they had kept their condemnation of him until she was not present.

She had never met the present Earl of Chartwood because her grandfather, the fourth Earl, had died two months after the death of her father and mother.

He had been old and ailing for some time, and, as was to be expected, Pandora knew that he had hated his heir presumptive ferociously and had never allowed him to come to Chart Hall.

It was understandable because her mother’s two brothers had both been killed in the war.

The youngest had been a sailor, killed when he was only sixteen at the Battle of the Nile, fighting with Nelson in his magnificent victory over the French fleet.

The elder son, of whom Pandora had been very fond, had been killed at Waterloo.

Their father had been stricken not only at losing them but in knowing that the title and the Estate must now go to an obscure cousin in whom he had never taken any interest.

It had seemed that the succession was assured, but then suddenly his sons had been swept away from him and then his daughter had died.

As one of the villagers had said to Pandora,

“When your mother went, His Lordship just turned his face to the wall and there was no heart left in him.”

Pandora could understand because she felt the same, but it had been painful to learn that the fifth Earl of Chartwood was a very different man from what her uncles had been.

Stories soon reached Lindchester of his extravagances, of wild parties, of huge wagers laid on horses, of behaviour that was apparently so outrageous that people only whispered about it in Pandora’s presence.

Then, soon after his succession, the new Earl had come to Chart Hall and Pandora had hoped a little wistfully that he might invite her to meet him.

There were plenty of people both in the house and on the Estate to tell him where she had gone to live, but instead there were stories at Christmastime of what amounted to an orgy.

It had kept the gossips of the Cathedral town chattering like an aviary of parrots.

They talked of little else until he came for the second time, two months later. Then it appeared that the County families who had intended to call were too scandalised to do so.

When Pandora spoke to people in the village, they talked of changes and of the Earl himself with fear in their eyes.

Her aunt denounced him in no uncertain terms, and Pandora learnt that her uncle had called formally, not only to make the new Earl’s acquaintance but also to remonstrate with him about certain things that were being done on the Estate.

He came back both angry and affronted.

“It is a long time since I have been insulted in such a manner!” he said.

But he would not relate exactly what had happened, except, Pandora gathered, that the Earl had made a mockery of everything her uncle revered.

It was now June and Pandora guessed that the Regent would have left London for Brighton and the leaders of Society would have followed him.

Therefore, the Earl of Chartwood had, like most of his friends, moved from his town house to his country Estate.

There was no doubt that his arrival would result in the same excitement in Lindchester. The gossips would be waiting for each tit-bit of scandal that they could repeat and re-repeat to each other over the tea-tables.

Pandora knew it would hurt her because in disparaging the Earl she felt as if they also disparaged the name that had been her mother’s.

The Chart family had been playing their part in the history of England for centuries.

There had been Charts who had been Royalists at the time of Charles I, Charts who had fought with the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim, Charts who had played their part in India and in other parts of the world.