A Woman of Consequence

‘Indeed! Have you?’ His voice attempted indifference, but his face was all interest.

And Dido, sure that this was all the invitation he would allow himself to give, made only a hasty plea for his complete secrecy before entering upon an account of the governess’s true identity and the cause of her sojourn in Madderstone – suppressing only the existence of the child. She did not look at him as she spoke, fixing her eyes upon anything rather than his face – the brown decaying petals of Mr Paynter’s roses on the grave, the mossy stones of the wall, an old gravestone half-sunk down into the ground and lying aslant in the fog, the round arch of the church window with a candle glowing within.

Before she had been speaking for two minutes, his hand was once more upon the bough of the tree, his hat beating gently against his knee. His long sombre face, framed in clerical white, was fixed upon her, his eyes scarcely blinking. When she finished and finally looked up at him, he swallowed hard. ‘I cannot believe …’ He began in a voice of great emotion. But he was unable to continue.

‘It is all true, I assure you, Mr Portinscale.’

He looked hastily away. He beat the hat harder upon his knees. ‘It is extraordinary,’ he said in a struggling, uneven voice. ‘But of course,’ he said with a great effort to give his voice the certainty of the pulpit, ‘I cannot allow this information to change my decision. The Lord God judges us not by our titles and birth. The sin of self-murder is as heinous in the highest in the land as it is in the lowliest of mortals.’

‘I do not doubt it,’ said Dido earnestly. Her voice was low and, in the fog and the stillness of the graveyard, it had a close sound – as if they were within doors. ‘But, Mr Portinscale, I believe you must reconsider your decision. For I do not argue about rank – but only character.’

‘Character?’

‘Yes. Do you not see, that you have grounded your understanding of the lady’s character upon a false belief?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Forgive me,’ she said very quietly, ‘for alluding to those very personal matters which you were so kind as to confide in me. But you have believed for fifteen years that an illicit attachment was the cause of her refusing your offer of marriage, have you not?’

‘Yes, but …’ He stopped. The hat stilled in his hand; his face became very thoughtful indeed.

‘But,’ said Dido, ‘I beg you to recollect her words now in the light of your new understanding of her situation. She spoke of an attachment, she said that you would never witness her marriage to another man.’

She stopped and waited for him to consider. A crow settled on the slanting gravestone and set up a hoarse cry. She stole a look at the clergyman’s face and saw there amazement and dawning understanding – the beginnings of a revolution in his ideas, which was slowly doing away the resentment of fifteen years’ standing.

‘Her words were true, Mr Portinscale. She was attached, very unhappily attached, to a cruel, unworthy husband …’

He did not speak; but he did not need to. She could gather everything she wished to know from his face. There was dawning upon it a gentler look than any she had ever seen there before. All those lines which seemed to drag down upon his face were easing; his thin lips moving in the uncertain beginnings of a smile. There, beside that wretched grave, the woman he had loved, the woman who had been dead for fifteen years, was restored to him, her virtue unspotted – her character as perfect as he had once believed it to be.

There was, Dido was sure, only one thing wanting to secure Miss Fenn’s place here upon the holy side of the churchyard wall.

‘It was of course impossible for her to marry you,’ she said quietly. ‘But I am very sure that she wished it. That is why, when she was forced to refuse your offer, she tried to convey to you something of her reasons.’ She watched the tentative smile gain power on his thin, severe face. ‘Having discovered a good, religious man, so very different from her vicious husband, I make no doubt she wished very much that she might give him her affection and spend her life with him.’

Mr Portinscale was silent for a long while and then said only, ‘Thank you. Thank you, Miss Kent, for telling me this.’ Dido doubted it were possible for him to say more. But he took her hand and shook it warmly.

Then he excused himself and turned purposefully towards his church. As he walked away he put on his hat. And he put it on the very back of his head – with a sort of a tilt to it …

Chapter Forty-Two

Dido returned to the vicarage well pleased with the morning’s work and found a letter awaiting her in the hall: a letter which Margaret assured her she did not have time to read now, for if she did not begin preparing for the ball immediately she would look a fright and be a disgrace to her family …

Margaret was herself standing upon the stairs in curl papers, with a candle in her hand, and very eager for the moment of setting out. It always pained her to lose a single minute which might be passed at the great house.

But, since the letter was written in an unfamiliar hand, there was no restraining Dido’s curiosity and she began immediately upon opening it in spite of the torrent of chiding pouring over her head. Margaret retaliated by walking away with her candle – leaving not enough light to read by. Dido hurried into the parlour and knelt upon the hearth to catch the dull red glow of the fire.

The letter was from Mrs Pinker. Written in carefully rounded characters, it was an answer to that enquiry which she had sent before leaving Bath.

Dear Miss Kent,

I am much obliged to you for your letter I am sure, and regret I was not here to receive you when you was so good as to call upon me.

Well you ask me about Mrs Fenn’s child and I don’t know what I should say and I was very much minded not to answer your letter at all – for all that would have been so very ill-mannered. For a woman in my position should know how to keep other folks’ secrets. But she was a very pleasant lady and I was vastly sorry to hear she was dead and drowned in that pool. Which everyone is talking of now on account of it being written about in the newspapers, which I always say is the great evil of newspapers, for once a thing is written in them it does seem everyone knows about it.

And I am like you in thinking she didn’t murder herself, for all it says so in the newspaper. For she was not a mad woman – nor a bad one neither. And it would be a fine thing if you could find out the truth so they could put her in the churchyard. And so I have thought about it a great deal and I think I had better answer your question. Though I hope you will not tell it to anyone else – in particular that nasty fellow that came to my house two months back.

Well, you was right to think the poor lady’s child was a boy – for it was. Poor little Harry Fenn. I remember him very well indeed.

And I hope my telling you will, as you say, help you find out just what happened to the poor lady for she was a good woman and mighty fond of that little boy. And sometimes when she must leave at the end of her visit she would cry so I thought she would break her heart. And she would hold him and call him ‘my beloved’. Always ‘beloved’. That’s what he always was with her.

Yours Sincerely,

Deborah Pinker

Dido sat before the fire staring at this letter until Rebecca appeared. ‘Mistress says dinner’s to be on table in half an hour and the carriage is to be at the door the minute you’re finished eating.’ She hesitated and gave one of her rapid looks about the room as if ensuring ‘the mistress’ was not concealed anywhere within hearing. ‘You want me to help you with your hair, miss?’

‘No … No thank you …’

Dido fled to her attic, but, instead of arranging her hair, she sat upon the bed and continued to stare at her letter – her mind rearranging everything which she had thought she knew.

She remembered the passionate affection of Miss Fenn’s letter to the ‘Beloved’. I love you. I will always love you. No other woman will ever love you as I do. And at last she understood those words!