Lovers' Vows (10 page)

She would be told to keep herself in the background, and Dewar could get on with making love to Jane. Holly was curious enough by this time that she voiced no objection to the substitution. She had been sitting in her uncle’s office helping him tote up his columns of figures for the men’s quarterly wage, and was happy for an excuse to leave. She was dressed in an aging brown gown, and had thrown her uncle’s old jacket round her shoulders as the room was chilly. She wore it still when she entered the room where the voice lessons were to take place. Dewar looked a little surprised when she replaced Lady Proctor but, as she settled quietly down with her sewing, he soon forgot her presence.

The lesson going forth seemed like the greatest nonsense to Miss McCormack. She could not understand how Jane could stand in a corner with her back to the room, whispering in a loud voice. The words she was told to speak too were utter nonsense, but Jane did it all with perfect, unquestioning obedience, just as she obeyed all her mother’s injunctions. After forty-five minutes of this exercise, she was allowed to sit down and rest, while he outlined breathing exercises she must practice in her spare moments.

What benefit was to be derived from placing her hands on her stomach to feel it rise and fall was not apparent to anyone but the teacher, but it held great importance in his view, the aim being to breathe in for a count of forty, which even Holly, doing the exercise by herself, found impossible. “You might practice this one too, Miss McCormack,” he said to her. “Your voice is strong, but a little better control of your breathing would not go amiss. Oh, and as you are here I should like to discuss with you the costumes and staging. You recall we mentioned doing the play as it was staged in Shakespeare’s time.”

“Yes, with seating on three sides, but have you not had the proscenium built already?”

“It is only begun. It is not too late to alter it. It seems to me an excellent time to try the circular stage—on a small scale, you know. Movable chairs will be used in the refectory hall, so it is only the stage that need be built. The requirement of a balcony for the famous balcony scene lends itself well to the Shakespearean stage. It will show to better advantage in the round than behind the proscenium. We’ll have to have some spaces curtained off behind for changing. I read somewhere that singers entertained before a play, and of course there was some light juggling-type act as well to follow.”

“Tootles Seymour!” Jane exclaimed. “He is a famous juggler in these parts, Lord Dewar. He can keep four balls aloft at once. He performs at the fairs. Why, when he was young, he once spent a season at Bartholomew Fair, in London.”

“Excellent! Where do I find him?”

“In your stable,” Holly told him. “He is one of your stable boys. Strange you did not know it.”

Dewar said nothing, but a long glance directed on the speaker told her he was not happy with her comment. “Is there any other talent lurking in the village?” he asked. “Dancing dogs, clowns....”

“I had not thought this the sort of cultural treat you had in store for us. Classical drama you mentioned in the beginning,” Holly pointed out.

“It was the custom in Shakespeare’s day, and a custom we English have not strayed far from yet either. There is still a comedy to follow the tragedy at the licenced theatres. After the catharsis of a good tragedy, we want a laugh to put us back in spirits before we go home. All seriousness and no fun makes Jack a dull boy.” A passing glance at the sewing basket in her lap gave Holly the idea she was being accused of dullness.

“I don’t think you need worry about an excess of seriousness, Lord Dewar,” she shot back hastily.

“I do not consider what
I
do as entertainment merely. If I were not a nobleman, this would be my life’s work. We cannot all be seamstresses. To each his own talent.”

“Holly is an excellent seamstress,” Jane said, sensing some tension in the atmosphere, and wanting to alleviate it.

“Thank you, Jane, but unlike Dewar, I would not spend my life on my hobby, for choice.”

“What would you do, ma’am, if you had freedom to create a profession for yourself?” he asked.

“I don’t know, exactly,” she said, disconcerted to have become suddenly the centre of attention. “Something useful, worthwhile, to help people.”

“Putting on entertainments helps people,” he said simply. “Have you not noticed all the bustling, happy activity in the village since we began? Man does not live by bread alone. Bread and circuses have long been recognized as man’s twin needs. It is the latter that caters to their higher instincts too. We have got Mrs. Abercrombie doing some heavy reading of Shakespeare, and that will do anyone a world of good. Soon, we will have a musical committee practicing up songs and instruments. Ladies are turning their minds to Italy to discover what costumes will be appropriate, and will incidentally expose themselves to something of Italian culture. And our little Juliet is improving her lungs,” he finished up, with a smile at Jane.

“Everyone
does
seem happier lately,” Jane pointed out to her cousin.

“Everyone but Miss McCormack,” Dewar added, with a questioning look at Holly. “That is very odd too, for since I have come, Johnson has got his orphans’ funding increased. I had thought my failure to attend to that was the cause of your—disapproval?” he said, selecting the last word with care. “What else bothers you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“When a lady says ‘nothing' in that tight-lipped way,” Dewar said, “it usually means we have only scratched the surface of the problem. What is it? What else has not been done, Miss McCormack?”

“Well then, if you insist, I think one thousand pounds a paltry increase when you are spending more than twice that sum on your dairy. Some more of it might have gone to St. Alton’s.”

“It is not a question of either-or. One thousand was the sum Johnson mentioned.”

“Yes, and if you had made him Romeo instead of Friar Laurence, he would have said a hundred! What about the roof of the church, and Mr. Prendergast....”

“Holly!” Jane exclaimed, shocked at such plain speaking.

“I have not noticed anything amiss with the roof of the church, but I remember we discussed how it should be repaired on a former occasion.”

“I don’t know how you expect us to raise the money when every spare minute is taken up with this play. And, if you had been at church on Sunday, you would have seen the rain pour in.”

“I rather wondered whether it was not my absence from church that had angered a minister’s daughter,” he said, with a knowing nod.

“How did you know Holly’s papa was a minister?” Jane asked.

“I believe Altmore mentioned it. Well, perhaps it is my duty to show some moral leadership. I shall be in church this Sunday, ma’am, rain or shine. Now, tit for tat! We were discussing Elizabethan theatrical...”

“Excuse me, Lord Dewar, but we were discussing the leaking roof of the church, and not your attendance at it,” Holly corrected.

“You have led the horse to water—give him a chance to catch his breath before you make him drink. About the play, we shall have our thrust stage, with minstrels singing before, and possibly
entr’actes,
with a rustic entertainment afterwards if Tootles will oblige us. That will serve the triple purpose of cheering us up after the tragedy, of drawing the villagers into all our festivities, and—what will please you, Miss McCormack—it will amuse the orphans. More than those prickly shirts are likely to do, I dare to suggest. We’ll give them sugarplums as well, to satisfy their physical hunger.”

“Oranges would be more appropriate,” Holly said, her temper abated at his plans. “They used to sell oranges at the plays in those days, I believe.”

“So they did! A nice touch. We’ll have some of the female servants carry them in baskets through the audience. Your maids, from Stonecroft. Mama has a knack for hiring the ugliest females in the country. The girl who brought your sewing down to you the other evening...”

The two ladies exchanged a silent, knowing glance in mutual acknowledgement of Man’s roving eye. “I am not blind, after all!” he defended. “Nor quite immune to female charms. I do not expend all my artistic appreciation on directing drama. I can see a barn by daylight.”

“By candlelight too,” Jane teased, her little white teeth sparkling, and a dimple showing in her left cheek.

“Even better by candlelight,” he agreed readily, with a close observation of her. For a long moment he looked at Jane, while a soft smile played on his lips.

“A pity the audience will not be able to see you at closer range,” was all he said, but it was said in a voice that set Jane to blushing, and that caused Holly to think it a wise precaution to provide a chaperone. Then he arose and took his leave of them both.

It was difficult to go on expressing wrath with Lord Dewar’s pursuit of pleasure when it gave incidental pleasure to so many others along the way. Since he had driven into Harknell in his elegant travelling carriage and announced he meant to produce a play, the whole village had blossomed out in a way never seen before. The autumn used to be a time for hibernating in Harknell, for putting away the silken gowns of summer, for drawing into one’s own house and waiting for spring.

This autumn, the pattern was changed. Everyone, even including Mother Nature, conspired to defeat the autumn doldrums. St. Martin’s summer came and lingered for weeks. The ladies, a bit embarrassed to say outright they were buying new outfits to impress Dewar, made a mention of the warm fall: so like spring, really, that one felt the urge to have a new
chapeau.
Bonnets were often
chapeaux
since his coming. Letters, too, had a way of turning into
billets-doux,
and mutton into a
ragoût,
at least in conversation that had assumed a Gallic air to match Dewar’s.

But it was more than the accent that was French. A real
joie de vivre
had crept into their lives. It was impossible to say just how it had happened, but it was everywhere in evidence. Idle or latent talents came into full bloom under his encouraging aegis. Miss Lacey was discovered to have a bent for music. This came out one day when Dewar was seeking madrigals for the minstrels to sing before the play. Miss Lacey, whose name was Irene (and who was soon being called that as often as she was called Nurse), happened to know a few of these ancient tunes. Dewar immediately led her to the piano to play them for him, and to sing the words. She was reluctant at first but as his praise rose so did the volume and the quality of execution.

Holly, observing silently, saw that his intention was to stick poor Irene with the job of teaching these airs to others, and practice them up for the concert, as he had indeed done before the day was over. Irene was also saddled with the task of seeking out other such tunes, as two were of course not sufficient for a half hour’s performance. He was lavish with his praise. Miss Lacey’s heart swelled to hear herself described, within her own hearing but behind her back, as ‘marvelously talented—a very dab with the old Elizabethan music.’

It became evident that every member of the group had some formerly hidden accomplishment that could be of use to Dewar. Mrs. Abercrombie, with her new interest in Shakespeare, was diversified into Elizabethan stage architecture, and put in charge of ferreting out the proper adornment to turn the refectory hall into a replica of Shakespeare’s theatre.

Mrs. Raymond, who prided herself on the tricks she had taught her three poodles, was in the process of making them pink ruffles and urging them on to new heights of trickery. As she was possessed of this ‘wonderful way with animals,’ she was in charge of teaching them to dance, hop through hoops, and play leapfrog.

Mr. Homberly, who had made a very good horse’s nether end, proved equally at home wrapped in a bearskin retrieved from Dewar’s attic, and was learning to walk on his hands and balance a ball on his nose. “Got the horse’s rig beat all hollow, by the living jingo, but she’s deuced hot.”

Mrs. Bartlett and her spouse (Citizens of Verona in the drama and retired innkeepers in the village) were set to discover the receipts for mead and Elizabethan victuals. Holly knew well enough her chore was to be the most onerous of all, the overseeing of the costumes, and wondered that Dewar did not get on with praising her into work, as the job could not be done in a week.

Lady Dewar’s sole function was to deride everything and complain of the erratic comings and goings of her son and guests and, even more, of the infernal banging in the refectory hall where the stage, complete with balcony, was now in place and in the process of being painted, under the direction of Mrs. Abercrombie.

On the first day the company met at the Abbey, they were taken into the hall to view the stage, and to hear the countess’s litany of woes. “Madge Abercrombie never did have two bits of wit to rub together,” she said, in no low voice. “Why is the stage so high? That is what I would like to know. The seats are so far below it we’ll see nothing but boots and buskins.”

This lament nudged Mrs. Abercrombie into a defence of her set. “The stage was always six feet above the ground,” she pointed out, ostensibly to Dewar, but aimed halfway between him and his mother,

“You have done a superb job, as we have come to expect from you,” Dewar answered, dismayed to think his mother was right about the stage being too high. He had no wish to make his audience stand, as they would have to do to get a proper view of the stage. “A pity we cannot build galleries, to make optimum use of that wonderful stage you have designed. The little foot railing is exquisite, by the by. I wonder if it would not show to better advantage if we lowered the stage a bit.” It must, of course, be lowered at least three feet, but with the designer’s sanction.

“Six feet was the height given in both books I used,” she assured him.

“Oh, quite! Exactly the right height, if we could only have the galleries. Mama, however, is very stubborn about it,” he said in a conspiratorial voice. “To humour her, shall we just lower the stage a bit instead? I don’t wish to deprive anyone of a good look at that foot railing. And the curtains and inner gallery as well are superb. Where did you come by that tapestry?”