The Weeping Ash (68 page)

“Did they love one another?”

“It is possible,” Scylla had to admit. “I have sometimes thought… They dealt so happily together, with his poetry and her music.”

“Possible? Say rather, inevitable. Your brother such a contrast to—How could she help it? And Thomas intensely jealous, no doubt?” Liz added dryly, “How does he behave himself to you?”

“Oh—he has been friendly enough.” Scylla was not going to mention that look in Thomas's eye. She went on, “But now—after this—as Cal's sister—I am not sure how he will feel—I believe he thinks that Cal and Fanny somehow connived together to do the deed.”

Liz said, “Would it not be best if you were to come and stay here with us? You must necessarily feel uncomfortable, alone in the house with Thomas, and only those two dismal girls as chaperones.”

“Well—indeed I must say that I should be only too thankful—that house is horrible to me now. But perhaps it is my duty to stay there and comfort the girls—” Scylla began doubtfully.

“Fudge! Let their father do that. Do you go home and pack your things—I will send down a carriage for you in an hour's time. Indeed we shall be glad of your company!”

Acknowledging to herself her own relief at being thus firmly taken in hand, Scylla returned to the Hermitage. The house which, only three days before, had been so cheerfully brimming with life and activity was like a stricken place, mournfully silent, except when a gust of January wind elicited in some quarter the wild keening wail which made the servants shiver and exchange looks pregnant with ominous meaning.

“It were a-waiting—all the time—for summat to happen,” commented Tess, helping Scylla pack her clothes. “I'll be out o' this place so fast—when me time's up—you 'on't see me for dust!”

“Tess,” said Mrs. Strudwick, putting her head around the door, “have you seen Master's old pea jacket? Missus was on at me t'other day to sew on a couple of buttons that were coming loose, and I can't seem to lay me hands on it anywhere.”

Tess disclaimed any knowledge of it. “But there's Master a-coming down the stairs this minute, ask him himself, why don't you?”

“I'm half afeered to speak to him, he looks so mazed and dreesome.”

Indeed Thomas, when applied to, glowered at the housekeeper and told her not to pester him with trifles at such a time; and then, apparently recollecting, he said that he had given the jacket to a beggar several weeks ago.

“Well, I never!” muttered Tess to Mrs. Strudwick out of hearing. “I never knew Master give anything away afore—leastways, not something that still had some wear in it!”

“Saves me a job,” said Mrs. Strudwick, and returned to the kitchen.

Thomas followed Scylla to her room, where she was packing a few books into a box.

“Why, what is this!” he exclaimed in great displeasure, looking at the stripped, tidy chamber. “I do not understand. What is going on here?”

“I am removing myself to Petworth House,” Scylla told him composedly. “Mrs. Wyndham has invited me.”

“
Removing to Petworth House?
But why should you do such a thing?” He seemed really shocked and disturbed; much more so, Scylla thought angrily, than at the news of Fanny's arrest.

“I do not wish to remain here, Cousin.”

Now he became angry. “You cannot leave me like this! What about my poor girls—with no one to comfort or advise them?”

“They have you, Thomas,” Scylla coldly pointed out. “For the rest, they must manage as I presume they did before you married Fanny.”

“It will look very bad if you leave me! People will say that it looks as if we have quarreled—as if you do not trust me!”

“To tell you the truth,” Scylla replied, vigorously knotting a cord around her box, “I do not care a groat what people say. You and my brother had quarreled—I think it best that I leave your house.”

Glancing about her, she stepped toward the door. “No! I shall not let you slip away as easily as that!” cried Thomas.

He moved swiftly to intercept her and grasped her by the wrist. Even with only three fingers, his grip was unnervingly strong.

“Thomas! Will you please let me go!”

“No, I will not!” Now he had both wrists. “Can you not see—do you not realize—what your presence means to me? You cannot leave me now! You are my one comfort, my one hope for the future—the only star in the blackness that surrounds me!”

She exclaimed in horror, “You should not be saying these things to me! You are not yourself! I wish to hear no more—pray be silent and do not give me pain by talking in this manner. Have you no thought for Fanny—for your wife?”

As only answer, he encircled her with his arms and kissed her violently, repeatedly, bruising her mouth, while she struggled in vain to free herself. Indeed, she was amazed at his strength; short, thin, sallow, unassuming Thomas seemed to have the vigor, the tenacity and power, of a man twice his size.

“I love you, I love you!” he panted. “You and only you! I do not care any more what you may have been to other men—which, I must confess, did trouble me at first. But now my love for you has grown so great that I can overlook such considerations—” kissing her furiously and beginning to thrust her toward the tidy bed. “I must have you! I must and will make you mine.”

Sobbing with rage, Scylla managed to tear herself loose from him and ran to the door. Snatching the key from the lock, she slammed the door as he started after her, and locked it on the outside. Then she ran to the front hall. Her luggage could be fetched later—she would return to Petworth House on foot. But outside the door she found Lord Egremont's chaise waiting for her, and her larger bags already bestowed in the boot. She had only to put on her pelisse and go. She had left the Hermitage only just in time, she told herself. Her lip was beginning to swell up—she would have to tell Liz that she had knocked it against the bedpost. Describe the scene that had just passed she
could
not—it was too horrible, too disgusting.

* * *

Scylla remained at Petworth House for a number of weeks. Her life there settled into a quiet routine. Other visitors came and went, but she saw little of them, Lord Egremont and Liz fully comprehending that she preferred dinner on a tray in her room or in the library.

Almost every day she went to visit Fanny in the jail at Chichester; one of the Egremont carriages was placed unreservedly at her disposal. Fanny's demeanor on those visits was always the same: quiet, uncomplaining, withdrawn. She expressed thanks for whatever was brought her in the way of fruit, reading matter, and clean linen. She would not accept pity or sympathy, reiterating that the calamity had been her own fault. She never asked why her stepdaughters did not come to see her.

The family at the Hermitage were far from happy. Permission had been given, after the inquest, for the funeral of the murdered child. This took place privately at night, little Thomas being interred next to his grandmother. In spite of the precautions taken to keep the ceremony secret, however, word leaked out, and a number of townspeople made their way to the spot and watched in silent hostility while the tiny coffin was lowered into the ground. As Thomas and his daughters hastily climbed into the carriage afterward, a voice cried: “Murderers! Who killed your own child?” and the crowd shook their fists and booed. Handfuls of snow and stones from the roadside were thrown after them. Later that night several ground-floor windows were broken, and the word MURDERER was written on the door in red paint. Thomas was obliged to keep the downstairs windows shuttered, even in the daytime, to protect his daughters from the hostility of his neighbors, who walked down the lane and stared at the house as if they expected to see somebody emerge from it red-handed.

Scylla heard this news from the Petworth House servants, who were perfectly well informed as to local feeling. Rumors about the illness and death of Thomas's first wife had now percolated through the town, and suspicion had swung back from Bet to her father; it was generally agreed that a man who had murdered his first wife would think nothing of doing away with his child; any question as to
motive
was easily dismissed. “'E be a broody, niggly sort o' fellow—likely the child grizzled and riled 'im. Or maybe he were where he didn't oughter be, making up to the nurse girl—an' the child woke, an' seed 'im there!” Poor Jemima came in for some suspicion, and so did Scylla—she had to give up walking in the town after one or two shouts of “Paget's whore!” had disconcerted her in the street.

After four weeks the case was due to come up before the Petworth magistrates. Lord Egremont had instructed his own solicitor, a man called Burrows, to act for Fanny, since Thomas, both in public and private, continued to accuse Fanny of having committed the crime, so that Throgmorton, the Paget family lawyer, could hardly act for her. No word had come yet from the
Asp
or from Cal. But one evening, a couple of days before the court was due to sit, Lord Egremont came into the library where Scylla was sitting. He looked harassed and perplexed, as he so often did these days.

“I have the man Goble here,” he told her.

“Oh? What does he say?” Scylla inquired eagerly. She was much inclined to think that in Goble there lay some clue to the whole affair.

“Oh, I do not know! He is a strange fellow, a little touched in his wits, I fear. He spun a long rigmarole about the ghost of Paget's dead brother—I think he would have me believe that
he
came back from the next world and committed the murder. A most unlikely notion! He did say one thing that struck me, though,” pursued Egremont. “It seems that when he can't sleep he rambles about the Hermitage garden, which he did on that particular night; though, from his account, somewhat
after
the time when the crime must have been committed; and he says that first he saw a ghost, or Token, flitting about—the ghost of poor Ned Wilshire, he asserts; and then, later, he saw Thomas Paget himself come through the gate from the Glebe Path and enter the Hermitage by the garden door.”

Scylla's interest quickened. She asked, “Was Cal with Goble at this time?”

“Yes. The two of them were sitting quietly in the little shelter at the end of the yew-tree walk. Cal said to Goble, ‘Hush, there goes Paget. Don't let him know we are here, I've no wish to be further embrangled with him.' I asked Goble was he sure, and he said he could not mistake; Paget was wearing a waistcoat and an open-necked shirt.”

“An open-necked shirt? On a snowy night? Goble must have been dreaming!”

“Well, so I began to think; especially as, at that point in the tale, he ran off into a long Bible quotation about the children of the unrighteous. I fear that his evidence would be laughed down in any court.”

“He said nothing more? He did not mention anything that was on his mind, that had been troubling him?”

Egremont gave her a quick look.

“No, he did not. But I felt that he was troubled. What makes you ask?”

“I think he divulged something to my brother—perhaps confessed something he had done. But I have no right to speak of it—my brother did not tell me what it was. It was a confidence.” Uncontrollably she burst out, “Lord Egremont! Suppose they find Fanny guilty—what then?”

“My dear, there is no need to be looking so far ahead. This is only a preliminary hearing, you know, at the Magistrates' Court. Next will come the Assizes—by which time, more evidence may have come to light.”

“But suppose they do find her guilty?”

He said reluctantly, “It is very unlikely that she would hang. She might serve a life sentence in prison—perhaps thirty years.”

“Thirty years!”

“Very likely she might be transported to one of the penal settlements in the colonies.”

This information was of small comfort to Scylla.

Meanwhile the Admiralty had divulged that the
Asp
had been ordered to the Mediterranean, with dispatches for Lieutenant General Charles Stuart, now campaigning against the French in Minorca. Lord Egremont had sent messengers posthaste to intercept the ship at Plymouth, where she would be likely to put in to take water, but, as ill luck would have it, she put in at Falmouth instead and set sail before they could catch up with her. The
Asp
was a particularly swift vessel, and, though messages were sent after her by other ships, it was plain that Cal could not be expected back within a couple of months.

The Magistrates' Court session was brief and businesslike. Fanny, brought back to Petworth for the occasion, appeared pale, quiet, and collected, dressed in a plain black gown with a veil over her head. Thomas was in court, but he did not approach her, and she never looked in his direction. Formal evidence was taken. Fanny's solicitor announced her intention of pleading not guilty, and the session was adjourned “pending the return of further witnesses, at present unavailable.” Public curiosity was aroused by the plural case of “witnesses”; whom else, besides Lieutenant Paget, could this denote? From mouth to mouth passed the information that the gardener at the Hermitage, Henry Goble, was to have been called, but he was missing; had not been seen for several days. Where could he be?

An unpleasant feature of the proceedings was the behavior of the accused's husband, Captain Paget. Dr. Chilgrove had endeavored to prevent his being called, on the grounds that he was suffering from “mental incoherence” and was so shaken by what he had undergone that no reliance could be placed on his testimony. The objection was set aside, however, and he was called, but immediately burst into a loud, screaming denunciation of his wife, “who had turned his son into a half wit,” and became so hysterical that he had to be led from the courtroom. This outburst increased the public prejudice against him, and he was booed, while a murmur of “Shame” went up as Fanny was led away back into custody. Indeed, her solicitor demanded that she be released on bail, but this the magistrates refused to allow, giving the reason that her incarceration was for her own protection.