To Love and to Cherish (12 page)

Money, or rather, the lack of it, is becoming something of a problem. Geoffrey purchased half his commission on credit, and since the estate isn’t completely settled yet, most of the ready cash has had to go to pay off his debt to the Royal Commission. How ironic that the Viscountess D’Aubrey is at present nearly as penniless in this great rambling pile of a house as she was when she was a mere abandoned wife in Holborn. The lawyers say the situation is temporary, so I don’t worry about it overmuch. But I find it singularly unamusing that, for the second time, England’s inheritance laws are playing havoc with my life.

26 June

Every day, the beauty of this place seduces me a little more. The neighborhood abounds in gloriously picturesque walks, and even though the villagers think it not quite proper of me to tramp about on my own, unescorted and unchaperoned, I do it anyway. Not to defy their conventions, but because I can’t help myself—I’m lured out of the house by the droning of bees in the clover or the rising song of larks, and before I know it I’m walking in a red sunken lane, too narrow for two carts to pass abreast and nearly covered over with the leafy arching trees. Sometimes William Holyoake’s dog accompanies me, but if not, I’m quite alone. I missed the clean outdoors much more than I knew, living in filthy, noisy London all those years. There’s an old Roman ruin the natives call Abbeycombe, set back from the Plymouth toll road, only half a mile from here. I go there often and lose myself among the old stones, gazing up at the clouds or down at the wildflowers that spring out of the rubble. A peacefulness comes to me there; I feel as if I’m getting clean. Other times, I go to the old abandoned canal, surely the most melancholy spot in all of Devon. I’m rarely as sad as that still, lonely, lifeless place, and so it cheers me up. I’ve tried to sketch it any number of times, but I can never get it right.

The groundsman at Lynton Hall, a creaky, white-haired Scot named McCurdy, has banished me from the gardens for incompetence. Now I’m allowed to weed and nothing else. It’s true that I have no green thumb, a minor tragedy in my life since I dearly love flowers, but if I were a sturdier person I might ask Mr. McCurdy where he gets his nerve. That ruined, overgrown series of terraces behind the house is no Haddon Hall, I could tell him, no Chatsworth, no Woburn Abbey. Someone should take it in hand. Even I, the floracide, can see the gorgeous possibilities under the bronzed and matted azaleas, the thorny, tangled vines of roses and clematis and anonymous creeper. Apparently the person who takes it in hand is not going to be me. But if it’s Mr. McCurdy, I’ll eat my hat.

Inside the house, I’m not quite as useless. Mrs. Fruit grows dimmer, and her housekeeping duties devolve a little more each day upon me, by virtue of there being no one else. Even so, without the ready money just now for anything except basic improvements—the leaks in the roof, for instance, and the fireplaces that smoke—there isn’t that much to do. One lone woman doesn’t require a great deal in the way of tending, nor does she make much of a mess. I try to think up projects for the staff—cleaning the library, airing and dusting books that haven’t been opened in fifty years—but even with that, the maids have little to do by two or three in the afternoon. No one seems fazed by this idleness, so I’m left to conclude that it’s been the status quo for some time.

So. After I’ve pretended to advise Mr. Holyoake on farming, dairy, and sheep herd matters, after he’s politely pretended to weigh and accept my advice, I’m much at my leisure. I sit in the sun, I walk along the river. I sketch and write. The villagers are standoffish—although I daresay they think exactly the same about me. Everyone is courteous, but there’s an underlying servitude to their courtesy that disturbs me. “M’lady,” they call me, and the laborers actually pull at their forelocks when they greet me, like feudal serfs. At the same time, I’m too reserved (enervated?) to go visiting and calling and card-leaving, all that tedious protocol one has to endure, even in this relative backwater of society, to initiate the laborious process of friend-making. The Vanstones have called on me once, and a stiff, unsatisfactory time was had by all. She is tiresome; he is ambitious. On the whole, I like him better. At least there’s a sharp mind operating behind the suave mayoral smoothness. He’s a handsome man in his way; hard and a bit driven, one senses, but intelligent, certainly, and probably interesting under the stiffness. But perhaps I’m too hard on Miss Vanstone (“Do call me Honoria”). She’s merely inherited her father’s ambition, after all; but because she’s a woman, her only outlets for it are husband-hunting and social-climbing. Such is often the fate of our sex.

Honoria’s cousin is a young lady named Sophie Deene, a charming, guileless, pretty girl who makes me feel like an old crone. After church last Sunday, she waited on the steps with an old school chum who was visiting from Devonport (no secrets in Wyckerley); I watched them as they stood there in the sunshine, laughing together, playfully bumping shoulders, youth and joy and innocent hope shimmering around their blond heads like auras. God, how I envied them! I went home alone, feeling sorry for myself, and spent the rest of the day wishing I were twenty again and that the last four years of my life had never happened. Not a new wish, and as fruitless as usual.

My only other visitor is Christy. He’s come three times, and invited me to tea at the rectory twice. Obviously Geoffrey asked him to take me under his wing. (An arresting image; I picture myself at the Archangel’s side, surrounded by his enormous feathery arm, warm and comforting, protecting me from harm.) But even if he only comes because Geoffrey asked him to, I look forward to his visits with impatience, and take more pleasure in his company than I dare let on. I can come closer to being myself with Reverend Morrell than with anyone else—a huge, seductive, powerful relief, and the last thing in the world I’d have expected. We talk about everything. So far he hasn’t tried to convert me, but he wants to know how I “got this way.” I tell him a little of my life story—not much, and only the happy bits—and he ponders it in his careful, thoughtful way, making no judgments. He actually
prays
for me. I know this because he told me so, straight out, without a blush. It gave me the queerest feeling—which I hid with a nervous, bitter laugh. What does he say to his God about me? I would love to eavesdrop on his monologues with the Lord. I don’t think it’s pity Christy feels for me, fallen woman though I am. No, not pity. For some reason, I do believe he admires me. I’ve never been the object of admiration of a man like Christian Morrell before. I don’t know what to think of it. I think of it quite a good deal. His frankness about his own life continues to disarm me. It there’s a dishonest or even a disingenuous bone in this man’s body, I’ve seen no sign of it yet. He’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. He fascinates me.

His house is beautiful. It’s not as old as the church, which is Norman and very impressive in its own way. The parsonage is a hybrid Tudor-Renaissance affair built in the late fifteenth century, with later additions that are remotely Jacobean—mullioned bow windows, a tower with floor levels different from those of the house, and more detail and decoration because the new parts are of sandstone rather than the hard Dartmoor granite. It’s not a quarter the size of Lynton, and much cozier, of course, quite mellow and romantic. His study is appropriately book-lined, but the books spill out into the hall and halfway up the stairs. The reading lamp on his big desk stays lit half the night, I’m sure. I imagine him sitting there sometimes when I’m restless with insomnia, listening to my clock tick away the hours. He writes his sermons at that desk, and I like to picture him rehearsing them to the empty room late at night, striding up and down a bit, gesturing in the right places. He reads a great deal, but he’s not one of those clergymen who live only to write theological tracts, and actually
minister
only when absolutely necessary. Christy cares about every single person in his parish, and he has no qualms about showing it. They, in turn, adore him—why would they not? The men admire him, the women want to take care of him, and the girls . . . well, within the confines of a sacramentally sanctioned union (one assumes), the girls simply
want
him. I see it every Sunday when he greets them on the church steps, and it amuses me. In a way. But—I don’t want him to choose any of them. No, not even the lovely Sophie Deene, and certainly neither of the silly Swan sisters, nor Miss Mareton, nor any of the others. He’s too good for them. Much too good for all of them.

That sounds very odd, on rereading. Motherly? Good Lord, the last thing I feel toward Reverend Morrell is motherly. Proprietary? I suppose. I flatter myself that we have a special relationship, and I find the thought of another woman—another
person
—hearing the things he says to me, private, confidential, fascinating things about his hopes for his life, his fears of failure—the thought of him sharing them with another person makes me feel . . . diminished. Cheated? I might almost say betrayed, but that’s too much—and—it exposes the vanity in all of this.

Reverend Morrell is not like me. He is open, generous-spirited, candid, unashamed of sharing his feelings. That’s why he confides them in me, and I’ve made the egoistic mistake of fancying that he confides them in no one else.

On reflection, I feel slightly ridiculous.

I can’t write any more.

Except that it’s a good thing that I keep this journal. It helps me to see the folly in my thinking early on, and no doubt saves me from a great deal of humiliation.

IX

L
AMMAS
D
AY
,
THE
first day of August, fell on a Tuesday. All the Lynton Hall Farm workers were given a half-holiday, and Christy was gratified to see their employer setting an example by attending the brief church service at midday; she even joined the procession of worshipers carrying loaves of new wheat down the aisle, as an offering of the first fruits of the harvest. He blessed the loaves and gave a very short discourse on the meaning of Lammastide, distracted, as usual, by Anne’s quiet presence in the manorial pew. After the service, he asked if she would wait for him a moment while he spoke to his curate on a church matter; he had a favor to ask her.

A warm wind was blowing wet gray clouds up from the coast. Midsummer had passed, but the air was still sweet and mild, with no hint of autumn yet in the sturdy breeze. Christy finished his business with Reverend Woodworth and went to look for Anne. He found her in the churchyard, prowling among the old lichen-covered tombstones. She looked up when she heard the squeal of the lych-gate latch, smiling at him as he came toward her. She wore a dark brown cape, and just then the wind snatched the hood off and ruffled her hair. He felt the now-familiar lurch in his chest and attributed it to the simple fact that she was beautiful. More so each time he saw her. It was true; she hardly even resembled the pale, tense, monosyllabic woman he’d met beside her father-in-law’s deathbed four months ago. Nothing wrong with recognizing that, was there? He wasn’t
blind
, was he?

“I’m inordinately fond of graveyards,” she said by way of a greeting, trailing her long white hand across the pocked forehead of a granite cherub. “I often walk in the D’Aubrey family plot, just as the sun is setting. I haunt it.”

He could rarely fathom her moods. Her smiles were either brittle or soft and inexpressibly sad, and they almost never reached her eyes. She said bitter things with the soft smile and vulnerable things with the brittle one, keeping him off balance and anxious for her. “I like them, too,” he told her. “I come here at night sometimes. I’ve never felt morbid about it.”

“No, well, you wouldn’t.” She waved at the sea of leaning headstones around them. “The souls of all these faithful departed have gone on to their just rewards, haven’t they? In fact, you’d have to say they’re better off now than they were when they were among us, at least the good ones. Wouldn’t you, Reverend?”

She loved to tease him about his faith. He didn’t mind it; he had an idea it was as much herself she was mocking as him. “That’s true. I can’t say I’ve ever actually
envied
any of these faithful departed, however. Which must mean my faith in the ecstatic hereafter isn’t as rock solid as it ought to be.”

She sent him a knowing smile, acknowledging his favorite rhetorical device with her—saying what she was going to say before she could say it, thereby defusing her argument. “Aren’t you going to commend me for participating in that rather pagan ritual you just presided over?” she asked archly.

“If you’re referring to the blessing of the loaves, that’s
traditional
, not pagan. I hope you’ll join us on Plough Sunday next January.”

“Plough Sunday? Don’t tell me you bless a plough!”

“I do. The farmers carry it inside and set it down in the chancel, where it sits in muddy state all during the service.”

“Good Lord.”

“Exactly.”

She laughed, a lovely tinkling sound he could have listened to forever. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“It was two things, actually. Have you heard of our penny readings, Anne?”

“Your what?”

“It’s a misnomer; they don’t cost a penny, they’re free. If you haven’t heard of them, it’s because we haven’t had any for a few years. They used to be held in the vicarage meeting room, once a week for an hour or two on Friday evenings. Mrs. Vanstone gave them. She’d usually read from the classics, but popular novels as well, or poetry, history—anything that took her fancy and wasn’t too difficult, since the audience was mostly working people.”

“Mrs. Vanstone? The mayor’s . . . wife?”

He nodded. “She died about three years ago, and not long after that the readings were discontinued.”

A look of horror crossed her face. “You aren’t asking
me
to start them up again!”

“I think you’d be very good at it.”

She made a disbelieving sound, not quite a snort but close to it. “Why not get
Miss
Vanstone? I should think that would be exactly her cup of tea.”

“She was asked to take them over,” he admitted. “They . . . weren’t as popular. No one came.”

“Ah.”

Her tone made him feel he had to defend Honoria. “She had a different style from her mother and people didn’t care for it as much. She . . .”

“She was snooty and supercilious and they loathed her?”

He sent her a look of forbearance. “She wasn’t quite as natural and engaging a reader as her mother,” he corrected. “Now, if you were to take them over—”

“
I
—”

“—you’d fill the hall every Friday night.”

“Oh, rot. Well,” she conceded on second thought, “I might at first, but only because they’d come to gape at me. After the novelty wore off, I’d be no more successful than the unengaging Miss Vanstone.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I’m not good with people.” When he laughed at her, she added, “Especially people in groups.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.” She folded her arms.

“How? Have you spoken to groups before?”

“I don’t have to.”

“I take it that means no.” He sighed. “It gets easier,” he said gloomily. “A little. Not much,” he amended in a flash of candor.

Now she looked at him with interest. “Don’t you like it?”

“It’s not a question of liking it. Part of my clerical vocation involves preaching, which means my ‘sermonic effectiveness,’ as we used to say in divinity school, determines in some measure the effectiveness of my ministry.”

“But, Christy, you preach a fine sermon!”

“No,” he said flatly, “I do not. Anyway, we’re not discussing me. I really wish you’d consider the penny readings, Anne. You could try one,” he coaxed, “and if it went well, you could think about a second one.”

“Why does it have to be only one person?” she fretted, nervously smacking the pockmarked cherub on the head while she spoke. “Why couldn’t it be several, taking turns? Men as well as women?”

“Now, that’s a fine idea! There’s a meeting this Friday of the deacons and the vestry in the hall—why don’t you come and suggest it? You’d be extremely welcome, needless to say. A committee could be formed, with you at its head, and the whole business could be planned in a couple of ad hoc gatherings. That’s really a splendid idea. Thank you for proposing it.”

She looked nonplussed. Then she began to laugh. “You know, you’re not half as clever as you think you are, Reverend Morrell. In fact, you’re as transparent as a glass of water.”

He grinned, unrepentant. What a pleasure it was to make her laugh. “Will you do it? Come to the meeting on Friday?”

“Oh, Christy!” she wailed.

“Please.”

She glared at him, weighing her choice. Now she was hammering on the cherub with her fist. “Oh, all right,” she finally grumbled.

“Excellent. You won’t regret it.”

“I regret it right now.” But she smiled when she said it. “And I’m afraid to ask you what the
second
favor is.”

“Maybe you should be. It’s a bigger request,” he admitted.

“I refuse to teach Sunday school.”

“Not that,” he said, chuckling. “Can you stay a few more minutes? I’d like to show you something.”

They left the churchyard and went down the narrow alley between tall hedges at the back of his house. They passed the vicarage garden on the way, neat and tidy as always, the fruit of Arthur Ludd’s constant attention.

“Oh,” Anne said enviously, “what a pretty garden. You’re lucky to have it. Mr. McCurdy has forbidden me to work in ours.”

“Forbidden you? Why?”

“I kill things.
He
says. Of course, he thinks he’s Capability Brown.”

He laughed again. “Have you had any word yet from Geoffrey?” he thought to ask a moment later.

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. He almost never writes to me.”

“Do you write to him?”

She turned on him one of her brittle smiles. “But of course. Faithfully, once a week. I’m nothing if not a dutiful wife, Reverend Morrell.”

He let that pass; when she was in this mood, prickly and sardonic, nothing he said could suit her.

He took her arm so she wouldn’t stumble in the stony alley behind the house. For some reason touching her, even in this meaningless way, seemed too intimate a thing to do in silence, so he said as they went along, “I hear you’ve been making good progress on improvements to the estate cottages.”

“Yes, well, it’s a beginning. There’s not enough money right now to do as much as we’d like. But Holyoake says the harvest will be good this year, and after that we’ll be able to do more. Christy, what on earth was Edward Verlaine thinking of, to let things go so badly? Some of the conditions I’ve seen are absolutely shocking, a
disgrace
.”

“He always claimed he had no monetary incentive to keep the cottages up. He said improving them would attract more families to the neighborhood, and he was afraid the increased population would raise the poor rates. So he made a deliberate choice to keep new people out and the old people in damp, unsanitary, derelict housing.”

She made a disgusted sound. “That’s criminal. It ought to be against the law.”

“He said it was good business.”

“Is this a very poor parish, then?” she asked doubtfully. “I haven’t seen any real suffering yet. But perhaps I wouldn’t; perhaps I’m shielded from it.” She looked as if the thought disturbed her.

“There’s poverty, of course. In bad years, after the poor law provisions for the district give out, sometimes private charity—my bailiwick—is all that stands between some people and the workhouse. We muddle through with the various benefit clubs the church organizes, and doles of food and clothing for the truly destitute. But I’ve always thought we could do more, and that philanthropy isn’t the only answer.”

He took her hand to negotiate the rough stile over a fence separating the church close from open pastureland. On the other side he stopped. “The grass is wet; this is far enough, we needn’t go in.”

She peered around, trying to discover what he could want to show her in a bare yellow field. She gave up and looked at him quizzically.

“This is glebe land—meaning the ecclesiastical parish owns it. Nearly nine hundred acres.” He pointed. “It stretches south to the eastern tributary of the Plym. As you can see, it’s uncultivated; it’s lain fallow since the time of the sixth D’Aubrey earl—Geoffrey’s the eighth.”

She nodded. “Yes?”

“I had an idea that the poorest farm laborers in the parish could work it. Cultivate it and plant the crops they need to survive in the bad years—most years, for many of them.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” she said, nodding approval. “It ought to have been done long ago.”

“I agree.”

“Why wasn’t it?”

“Because there’s no money for tools and seed. I was hoping to persuade you to donate them. At least for the first year.”

She faced him, her lovely features full of surprise. He watched her without speaking, and gradually the surprise changed to thoughtfulness. She turned to gaze out across the rough, stubbly landscape, eyes narrowed, fingers lightly patting her lips. “I’d have to consult with William,” she said slowly.

“Naturally.”

“If he said it was feasible and he had no objections . . .”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve already asked him.”

She raised her eyebrows at that. “Have you?”

“He’s for it.”

“Is he?” Suddenly she smiled, and Christy felt as if sunshine had broken through and dazzled him. “Then it’s done.”

He blinked at her. “Really?”

“Why not? Geoffrey won’t care. I’ll write to him, of course, but I can tell you now that he won’t care. Oh, I’m glad for the chance to do something! I’ve felt so useless at times, not knowing how I could help. This is a good solution.”

“You make it sound as if we’ve done something for you, when it’s exactly the reverse.”

She had an appealing, vaguely foreign way of shrugging her shoulders. She leaned back against the stile, surveying the field with a more proprietary air than before. He took the opportunity to stare at her—something he was always trying not to do. It was folly to tell himself that all she’d brought into his quiet life was friendship and frank conversation. He thought about her too much for that to be true. The days when they didn’t meet seemed flat and routine to him, incomplete. He caught himself saving up stories or bits of conversation to share when he saw her. He kept her in the back of his mind, seeing the world through her eyes, thinking,
Anne would laugh at that; this would surprise her; that would put her hack up
.

She turned to him suddenly. “Christy, are there so many poor people that they could cultivate all nine hundred acres productively?”

“No, thank God, not all of it.”

“So the rest would continue to lie fallow?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

She brooded. The wind pulled at her hair, blowing it across her cheeks. The colorless sky had leached the green from her eyes; they were smoke-gray now and narrowed in thought. “What if . . . what if Lynton Hall tenant laborers worked the other acres in the spare time I gave them? Half a day a week, say, taken out of the time they usually work on estate lands.”

“You would do that?”

“I don’t know; Holyoake would have to advise me. Maybe others as well—lawyers from Tavistock, Geoffrey’s solicitors. Of course, the Hall Farm has to come first; I can’t get around that, and it’s my first responsibility. But—if the rest of this land were planted in grain crops and vegetables, and the produce sold for money that would go toward worthwhile projects in the parish—your bailiwick—wouldn’t that profit everyone? The workers’ lot would improve in time, so the taxes on the poor would go down, which would be to the benefit of the rate-paying gentry. Wouldn’t it? Tell me if that makes sense.”