She wore a dress of cotton velvet (green, not mourning), even though the day was warm. Its waist was lower than was the fashion — lower, indeed, than had been the fashion for some years — yet it was unquestionably a dress made by a skilled seamstress. Its neck was high, and she wore a necklace of jet. She was fuller-bosomed, fuller- mouthed than Henrietta, and she put him in mind of a portrait on the grand staircase at Longleat House, a painting he had many a time gazed at as a boy — Reynolds’s subject a picture of inaccessible allure.
‘Do you have any family, Mrs Strange?’ he asked as she looked up.
‘No, Mr Hervey; my mother died many years ago and my father likewise almost seven years past, just after Corunna.’
‘Why do you say Corunna, ma’am? It is an uncommon reference, is it not?’
‘It was after Corunna that Harry came home to Southwold on furlough. He was a devout worshipper at the chapel of which my father was minister, as was his family. When my father died … well, I was quite alone; there was nowhere for me to go. Harry was a corporal and asked me to marry him. I think he did so out of kindness: we hardly knew each other. He was the finest of men — strong, gentle, dutiful. I came to live with his parents and continued to teach at the school. These past two years, though, both his father and his mother have been largely unwell and I have spent all my time, in consequence, nursing them both. They were so good to me, it was no hardship — well, perhaps a little tiring.’
Hervey paused before putting to her the concern that now troubled him as a man as much as an officer. ‘Forgive my directness, Mrs Strange, but how straitened will your circumstances be?’ (With only two hundred pounds she might purchase an annuity of, say, fifteen pounds at most — hardly enough to keep even the cottage roof over her head. And it would go intolerably hard with such a woman.)
‘I have some savings, sir: Harry sent home the major part of his pay, and there was a little family money. But I should not remain inactive even with sufficient income — though I will
To Hervey the solution was at once manifest. Not a fortnight before, he had received a letter from Elizabeth expressing her anxiety for her father’s school, at her own inexpertise and the exhaustion it wrought in him. ‘You find being a schoolma’am not objectionable, then, Mrs Strange?’ he enquired.
‘No, indeed, though there is little opportunity of an opening hereabout.’
‘Just so,’ he agreed. ‘See here, Mrs Strange, my father is vicar of a small parish in Wiltshire. He is having great trouble in maintaining his school for the village children. My sister helps but cannot spare all the time that is needed. There is a cottage set aside for a schoolmaster, and although the stipend is very small I think it might be adequate. You are, I believe, the very sort of person my father has need of.’
‘Mr Hervey,’ she smiled, ‘you are most kind, but you forget perhaps that my father was a dissenting minister. I hardly think it fitting for me—’
Hervey was undeterred, and stayed her protest. ‘Mrs Strange, my father has need of someone to instruct the children of the village in the elements of reading and writing, and in those of mathematics. I am sure that you can contrive to do that without offending against too many of the Thirty-Nine Articles!’ he laughed.
‘But I should be obliged to attend his church, should I not?’
‘John Wesley would have approved of piety wherever he found it, think you not, ma’am? But there is, indeed, an independent chapel in the village if the parish church were not fulfilling.’
She laughed. ‘I think we need not be so solemn! And how shall I apply for this position?’
‘That much I can do for you myself,’ he replied. ‘When might you be able to take up those duties, ma’am?’
She thought for a moment. ‘It will take me a week or so to conclude all that needs be done here,’ she said, ‘but then I should be ready. Sad as it will be to leave this place after so many years, it has now more unhappy memories than I should wish.’
‘“Thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore!”’
‘The Moabitess?’ she said, returning the smile. ‘But Ruth had a Naomi from whom to draw strength, whereas I have not.’
He smiled again. ‘You will at least find my sister agreeable, but I am afraid that for Horningsham it will be a long drive, Mrs Strange — first London, then Salisbury.’
‘Or a pleasant cruise from here to Portsmouth perhaps?’ she replied.
He laughed again. ‘You are right, ma’am. I am but a landsman, and regard the sea only as a barrier.’ He liked this keenness of wit. It reminded him of Caithlin. ‘Mrs Strange, the day is warm and I have taken much exercise: would you find it offensive if I took a little hock?’
‘Not in the least, sir,’ she replied at once. ‘And I, if I may, shall join you, for it was never by my own pledge that we were a temperance household, only out of respect for my family and then for Harry — which, I may assure you, is no less diminished now.’
‘I did not suppose it for an instant, ma’am,’ he replied.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THE INTERESTS OF THE SERVICE
It was a little before ten o’clock, and the morning was already hot, when a coach drawn by two quality middleweight greys drew up to Horningsham vicarage. The horses were not fresh, their shoulders were in a lather and the dappling on their quarters was accentuated by prodigious sweating. The coachman himself looked no fresher, his face grimy and his shirt almost black with the dust of the road. Down from the carriage stepped a tall man in his mid-twenties wearing white breeches, court shoes and the long-tailed coat of a Foot Guards officer, for all the world looking as if he were alighting in St James’s Palace yard to attend a levee. After stretching stiff limbs, brushing the dust from his shoulders and placing his cocked hat under his arm, he exchanged a few words with the coachman and walked towards the house. Vexed that no servant had appeared to assist with the horses, he was already disposed to some disdain of it. Here was no classical architect’s expertise, for sure; rather, was it the haphazard work of successive country builders. The oriel window was quite fine, he conceded, and there was about it a quaint charm, but the house did not betoken a well-endowed living: of that he was certain. He pulled the bell rope at the door, self-consciously adjusted the aiglets on his right shoulder and waited for an answer. At length (too
Francis was now in something of quandary, for the Reverend Thomas Hervey was at the school and his wife was with him. Elizabeth was taking a walk, and the only member of the family at home was engaged in what Francis judged to be an affair long overdue. This visitor from … (he had not quite heard) could not, in calling unannounced, presume upon him therefore. ‘It may be some time before anyone is at home,’ he said. To which the officer replied that he would wait indefinitely.
Meanwhile, in the drawing room, the overdue affair was reaching some conclusion. ‘And that is why I am late in coming here,’ explained Matthew Hervey. He was seated on a long settee, with Henrietta a further distance along it than he would have liked, and he was recounting, though not without interruption, his movements during the past momentous six weeks. ‘Believe me, I should not have been spared from garrison duties in Paris had it not been for these other necessities.’
‘Well, Matthew dearest,’ began Henrietta with a wry smile, ‘I should never have supposed that the profession of arms brought such intercourse, and with so
He hesitated. There was no mistaking the challenge that her smile belied. ‘Madam,’ he began (for her name was still not habitual with him), ‘do not think for an instant that …’ But it would have been better had he hesitated a
