To Love and to Cherish (7 page)

VI

“. . . J
ESUS DOES NOT
offer us a doctrine. He offers love, and love allows us to see beyond death. For death is nothing but a horizon, and a horizon is nothing but the limit of our vision. Love helps us see beyond the visible to the invisible, and to feel—”

“Reverend Morrell, Charlie’s touching me with his foot.”

Christy didn’t look up from the sermon he was trying to write. “You boys only have five minutes left to complete your essays,” he said in his schoolmaster voice. He crossed out “and to feel” and wrote, “to the very source of its counterpart, God’s love for us.”

“Reverend Morrell, Charlie’s shaking the table.”

He closed his eyes briefly and laid his pen down. He took out his watch, the old pinchbeck repeater his father had given him on his twentieth birthday. Before he could open it, it chimed five times, and immediately Charles and Walter Wooten slapped their books shut and scraped back their chairs.

“Have you finished?” Christy asked, eyeing the ink-stained papers they slid onto a corner of his desk.

“Yes, sir,” they assured him, fidgeting, eager to be off. Charles was thirteen; his brother Walter was twelve. In another year they would go off to school in Exeter. That is, if Christy’s twice-weekly tutoring in Latin, geography, and mathematics had the desired effect. They were normal, decent boys, neither bad nor brilliant; he liked them, but he might have forgone the lukewarm thrill of tutoring them had he not needed the extra three pounds a month Mr. and Mrs. Wooten paid him for the privilege.

“What’s your assignment for Monday?” he quizzed them. “Walter?”

“To finish the
Aeneid
and write a page on Mezentius and Lausus.”

“Charles?”

“To finish the
Aeneid
and write two pages on Nisus and Euryalus.”

“Correct. All right, you may go now.
Walking
, not running. And don’t forget your Sunday school assignments!”

They called back a glib promise in unison and disappeared down the hall. He heard Mrs. Ludd admonishing them for some new infraction, then the slamming of the door, and finally blessed silence. He took up his pen. “Faith is living with an emotional acceptance of those things to which we give intellectual assent—by acting as we believe. As we believe, so we become. With faith in life, life becomes more worthy of faith. With faith in ourselves, we accept ourselves more readily. With faith in God, we can feel more at home in the universe. Human doubts—”

“Warden Nineways is here to see you, Vicar.”

He looked up sharply. “What? But this is Friday,” he protested. “This isn’t our day to meet.”

Mrs. Ludd folded her arms, unimpressed. “Well, he’s here all the same. Got his big book under his arm, looking like Saint Peter at the gate. Shall I fetch him in, then?”

Christy put his head in both hands and pressed hard, as if he could squeeze the exasperation out of it. When he looked up, his housekeeper was still there, bland-faced, waiting for his answer. “Yes, of course,” he grumbled, “show him in. Don’t bring him any tea, though, or he’ll just stay longer.”

She smirked. “Forgot to tell you—Swan sisters stopped by while you was with Wootens.” Christy groaned, and the smirk widened to a grin. “Don’t you want to know what it was this time?”

“No.” He took a moment to tidy his desk. “All right, what?” he grumped, humoring her.

“Little doilies they made with their own two hands, cunningest things you ever did see. Said they’re for going over all the chair arms in your study. I told ’em you’d be thrilled pink, an’d probably want more.”

“How thoughtful,” Christy said, rolling his eyes. His housekeeper got immoderate glee out of the ingenious campaigns of his female parishioners, who were bent on convincing him that his living arrangements were inadequate and what he really needed was a sturdy, doily-making wife.

Chortling, Mrs. Ludd went out to fetch the churchwarden.

Thomas Nineways was a small, round, deceptively mild-looking man who took his duties as warden of All Saints Church with deadly seriousness. A right-facing cast in his right eye was responsible in part, but not completely, for his unfortunate resemblance to a frog, a circumstance in which a small proportion of the congregation—generally young boys under the age of thirteen—took enormous and uncharitable delight. Entering the study, he put his bulky church ledger on the edge of Christy’s desk and sat down in the chair he offered. “Before we go over the book entries for last week, there’s a little matter of business I’d like to discuss with you, Reverend,” he said portentously.

“Certainly.” Christy hoped the matter wasn’t the restoration fund for the Saint Catherine window. Subscriptions were lagging, and Thomas was upset. He honestly couldn’t understand why people didn’t care much about refurbishing two stained-glass depictions, side by side, of Saint Catherine being broken on the wheel and beheaded.

“Two things, actually. First, about Maundy Thursday.”

“What about it?”

“Some members of the vestry have expressed an interest in reviving the tradition of feet washing.”

Christy set down the pen he’d been fiddling with. “In what?”

“Feet washing. It used to be done on the Thursday before Easter to commemorate the new
mandatum
, or commandment, Christ gave his disciples at the Last Supper.”

“Yes, but that was—”

“It flourished until the time of William III, who didn’t care for the practice.”

“No, and personally—”

“Some of us think it’s time to revive it. Only among the men, of course; we don’t think it would be seemly among the women.”

Christy had a vision of bare-legged parishioners sitting on the altar rail, washing each other’s feet. “Who in the vestry is calling for this, ah, innovation, Thomas?”

“Oh, a number, quite a number, growing all the time.”

“Yes, but who, exactly?”
It’s nobody but you and Brakey Pitt. Admit it
, he thought crossly.

“Well, Brakey Pitt’s one. He’s the most vocal, you might say. There’s others too, but they’re more reticent, like.”

I’ll bet
. “Well, Thomas, I can say that I’ll definitely give it some thought. Is that all?”

“No, it isn’t,” he said severely. “The second thing is the matter of Tranter Fox. I have it on good authority that he was inebriated in public last Saturday night.”

“Was he? I didn’t think Tranter was much of a drinking man. What was the occasion?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say. The point is, it was after midnight, so it was the Sabbath, and some people are wanting to know what you’re going to do about it.”

“What
I’m
going to do about it?”

He nodded vigorously. “You’re the vicar.”

“That’s true. I’m not the constable.”

“But it’s a violation of ecclesiastical law to be disorderly on the Sabbath,” Thomas insisted. “And that’s not all. At Easter service, I had to get up three times and wake the man up out of a sound sleep.”

“Not during the sermon, I trust.”

The warden didn’t crack a smile. “I know your habit of leniency in matters like this, Vicar,” he said with heavy disapproval, “so I don’t expect you to take action. I’m just bringing it to your attention. That’s my duty, and I try never to shirk my duty.”

Christy rubbed his eyes. “You’re a conscientious man, Thomas, and that’s a fine quality in a warden of the church. Let me ask you something. Before Easter, when was the last time you saw Tranter Fox at a Sunday service?”

Nineways ran a hand over his iron-gray hair, which he wore in a short, bristling crop. “I’m not sure. A month or two ago? I can’t exactly call to mind—”

“It was Christmas Eve.”

“Christmas Eve! Well, there you are, aren’t you? If that doesn’t just go to show—”

“And you know I’ve been trying for over a year to get Tranter to come to services more often. Now, Thomas,” he said reasonably, “do you really think I should reprimand him the first time he sets foot in the church after staying away for four months?”

The warden tried to look thoughtful, as if he were considering the question. But Christy suspected that what he’d really like to see was some good old-fashioned justice, with Tranter chained up in the stocks and pelted with fruit by irate villagers. “I’m sure I can’t say about that one way or the other,” he begrudged at last. “I just think it bears watching. That’s all I’ll say, it bears watching.”

“And I know I can rely on you for that. Now, shall we have a look at the ledger?”

But they’d barely begun when Mrs. Ludd interrupted again, this time with a note. “Sorry, Vicar. Footboy up to Hall brought this for you.”

“Excuse me,” Christy murmured to the warden, who had sat up straighter when he’d heard the word “Hall” and was dying to know what the message said.
The Reverend Christian Morrell
,
Vicarage, All Saints Church
, was written on the envelope in a light but decisive hand—not Geoffrey’s. Christy opened it and read the one-sentence invitation inside. “Geoffrey and I would be delighted if you would join us for dinner this evening, at any hour that suits you.” It was signed simply “Anne Verlaine.”

He looked up. “Is the boy waiting for a reply?” Mrs. Ludd nodded. He pulled a sheet of paper from his desk drawer. Mimicking her ladyship’s informality, he wrote, “Thank you. I shall come at six-thirty. Christian Morrell.”

The pleasantest thing that had happened to him all day was the opportunity to fill his face with sincere-looking regret and say to Warden Nineways, “I’m frightfully sorry, Thomas, but I’m afraid I’ve got to go out.”

***

Lynton Great Hall lay a scant half mile beyond the last cottage at the bottom of the High Street, close upon the banks of the Wyck and nestled in the hollow of a miniature valley. The people of Wyckerley spoke of going “up to Hall” even though topographically that was an impossibility. The fact that Wyckerley overlooked the manor house instead of the other way around had never struck anyone as odd or the reverse of what might be expected, a circumstance attributable as much to the reverence in which the villagers had held their lord for close to four centuries as it was to the grandness, much faded of late, of the Hall itself. Christy knew every turn in the sunken, clay-colored lane, every tree, each new vista as the ground dropped gently away, not only in the way a man knows a road he’s traveled many times, but in the minute, intimate way a boy knows the landscape in which he’s grown up. Passing the familiar landmarks now, he saw a figure coming toward him on the road. Even at forty yards, he recognized William Holyoake, from his height and the breadth of his massive shoulders, the sturdy roll of his gait, and of course the black and tan sheepdog scampering at his heels. The two men came abreast, and William pulled off his hat, revealing thick, sandy hair and a ring from ear to ear in back where his hat had flattened it.

“Evening, Vicar,” he greeted him in his fine tenor voice—which rang out from the choir loft every Sunday with the clarity of a bell.

“How are you, William?”

“Well and brave, sir. Are you walking up to Hall, then? If I may ask,” he added diffidently, twisting his hat in his enormous fingers.

“Yes, I’ve been invited to dinner.” They both raised their eyebrows at that, in silent acknowledgment of the fact that such a thing had never happened while the old viscount lived. “And how are you getting along with our new squire, William?” Christy asked rather boldly. It wasn’t a discreet question, and William Holyoake was the soul of discretion. But they were friends, and Christy had an idea that just now William might be needing a friend.

“Well, sir,” he began, and stopped. He looked off to the west, squinting into the last of the sunset, as if the answer might be hidden in the cloud formation. His powerful profile looked hard and stony, boulder-like, the nose jutting down from the broad forehead like an exclamation point. “I’m thinking it’s possible that his lordship might not be a great one fer farmin’.”

Christy looked down to hide his smile, but he admired William’s tact. “It’s possible,” he agreed with similar caution. “Can you think of anything I could do to help you?”

He pondered that for a second, his shrewd blue eyes narrowing on Christy’s face. “Well, sir, I don’t just know. In truth, it’s . . .” He halted again, weighing his words. “It’s her ladyship I’ve been speakin’ to fer guidance of late.” He lowered his voice. “She’s raw as a new foal, Vicar, but she’s got a grea’ deal o’ common sense,” he confided, leaning forward and tapping his temple with a gigantic forefinger. “She
means
well, I’m sayin’. There’s rumors that is lordship means to go off to war any day, and after that we’ll have only her. If you ask me, things could be worse in that event. Much worse. If you take my meaning.”

“I take it very well.”

“And if and when that happens, to answer yer kind question, Vicar, I’d be grateful if you could help me to . . . to . . .”

“Advise her ladyship?” he suggested, realizing William was too respectful of his betters to say such a thing straight out. “I’d be happy to do the best I can in that regard.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Never mind that. Let me know when you need me, William, and I’ll do whatever I can.” He started to go.

“Have you seen that black stallion of his lordship’s yet, sir?”

“I have, William. He’s a right beauty, isn’t he?”

“He is that.”

“Geoffrey’s keen on a race between the stallion and my chestnut, you know.”

“I heard sommat o’ that, sir. Well,” he came right out, “will you do it?”

“I think not,” Christy said, his regret undisguised. “It wouldn’t be quite the thing, would it?”

“I expect not, sir.” William’s disappointment was the mirror of Christy’s. “And it’s a damn shame.” His honest face turned pink. “Oh, I beg yer pardon, Vicar, my tongue said it afore my brain heard the word, and I do beg—”

“Oh, put it away, William,” Christy snapped, irritated. “For God’s sake,” he added for good measure.

“Yes, sir,” the bailiff said alertly. “Well.” He put his hat on his head and smacked his hand down on the crown to anchor it. “I’ll bid you a fine evening, then,” he said, good humor sparking in his eyes. “A pleasure talking to you as always, Reverend Morrell.”