Love's Way (16 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Gamble was known to be assembling his herd from various points, becoming a fairly common sight around Grasmere, where his novelty was wearing thin. The children no longer pointed and stared when he passed by, but only stared. We saw virtually nothing of him at Ambledown because of some residual embarrassment and resentment over the Emily-Edward affair. It became my custom, in the dog days of that hot, hot summer, to take my sewing into the garden after dinner, to catch the evening breezes, and the evening antics of a pair of cardinals who cavorted in the beech trees nearby. Their sweet warble sounded so very human that I was mistaken more than once into thinking a person was approaching when they gave their first song of the evening. Strangely enough, when a gentleman came whistling up the lane I thought him a cardinal, and whistled back, in fun. I was carrying on quite a flirtation with the papa of the brood. Imagine my consternation to see Mr. Gamble come striding around the corner.

“Good evening, Miss Barwick. Is Edward at home?” he asked.

“He is visiting a neighbour, but he should be back soon.”

“Good, then I shall have a chance to rest, with your kind permission?”

I nodded, happy to discover he had not realized it was I who had answered his whistle. “I am endeavouring to copy something of your pretty country garden at home,” he said, looking at our tangled little jungle. “I cannot get quite the lush look of this one, somehow.”

“That will require several seasons of studious neglect,” I told him. After we had both looked our fill at what remained of summer splendours of sweet peas, roses, and honeysuckle, I broke the silence by asking after the ladies of Carnforth Hall, and, of course, the old earl.

“Uncle is about the same, not improved, but we have halted his decline by cutting him off the loll shrub. Not quite off entirely,” he added, “but we have cut him down to a bottle a day. The ladies are fine. How do you all go on here?”

“Very well,” I said, and sat wondering what subject I could introduce that would not erupt into a violent confrontation, for what weighed on my mind, of course, was his association with Wingdale, and his enclosure of the lakeside area.

“Dancing a great deal lately?” he asked, out of the blue, as it were.

My heart jerked, for I took the absurd notion that he was going to ask me to join him and Emily again, and the very memory of that evening always upset me. “I have hung up my dancing slippers,” I said in a strained voice.

“Surely you are not past your dancing days yet!” he said, drawing a set of cards from his waistcoat pocket. “Invitations for you and the others,” he went on, handing them to me. “We are having a ball. Emmie wants one, and if we wait much longer we will be into a year of mourning.”

I thanked him, excited at the thought of so novel an entertainment as a real ball. Such heady entertainments do not come every season, or even every year, in our quiet community. I was not so excited that I failed to notice Emily had become a cozy ‘Emmie,’ which sounded a significant change to me. Perhaps significant enough to indicate the ball was to announce an engagement.

“Are you still manageress of Ambledown, or has Edward usurped your place?” he asked. “I know he takes considerable interest in it now, in any case. I think it is a change for the better. Not to imply
you
were an inferior manager, but solely for his own sake. Poetry is well enough as a diversion, or a career for the few extremely talented who do not have a living to earn. For such as Edward, it is a waste of precious time.”

“I am happy to say he is cured of poetry. I have been put aside completely, relegated to the household chores.”

“Now you will be free to marry and set up your own household,” he said in a casual, uninterested way, looking up at the cardinals. “I don’t have any such colourful birds as these in my garden either,” he added, in much the same way. “Pretty little things, aren’t they? I wonder what’s inside their heads.”

It was odd to think of that walking piece of wickedness. Black Jack Gamble, sitting in a derelict garden and smiling at the birds, but as I regarded him, I saw he was indeed happy with these simple pleasures. “You missed the English countryside while you were away, I expect.”

“Missed it? I nearly went crazy. You’ve no idea how desolate I felt for the first months—years really. It took years to get into the way of a totally different life. And about a month to settle back into the old. I felt hot this afternoon, for the first time since I came back.”

“You’ll be winning the Fell Run again one of these years.”

“My youth is behind me. I think Edward could take me today, and
he
—well, he is still an ex-poet anyway,” he finished with an apologetic smile.

“Why did you stay away so long, if you missed home?”

“It’s a long way home, and a very unpleasant journey. I don’t like quitting what I have started. I went to make a fortune—it took a little while.”

“What line of work were you in, Mr. Gamble?”

“I thought we had decided you would call me Jack,” he reminded me. “To answer your question, I shipped over with John Company—that’s the East India Company—as a writer—clerk to you. I soon realized wielding a pen was not my métier. I made a bit of money in trading and bought into a tea plantation up north, at Darjeeling. When old Harkness, the major owner, had a couple of bad years,
he sold out to me at a reasonable price. The weather improved, as did my income. I expanded into cotton—that gown you are wearing might very well have been grown on one of my plantations. I see it is Indian muslin. Once you have accumulated a bit of a fortune, other enterprises open up to you. Trading with England, and so on. My rise was not so simple or rapid as I make it sound, when you stop to consider I spent fifteen years of my life there. The best fifteen,” he added in a strange voice. It was not grim, exactly, nor quite sad, though those two elements were included in it.

“You are still a young man, Jack.”

“Young?” he asked, surprised. “I am thirty-five. Thirty-five,” he repeated, shaking his head in wonder. “I can’t afford to spend another fifteen years becoming established here at home.”

This brought inevitably to mind his establishing himself as Wingdale’s partner in what I considered little less than a crime. My spine stiffened—I could actually feel it. “You are automatically established here, being Carnforth’s heir.”

“I understand your confusion. Actually what I ought to have said is that I wish to establish the community in a manner more pleasing to me. How’s that for arrogance?”

“You will soon be the equal of Captain Wingdale, changing the place to suit you. I hear you have got hold of the acres bordering the lake. If you destroy that lovely wilderness ...”I said, then stopped in my tracks. If he did, there was nothing I or anyone could do but mourn and complain.

“What do you think of bathing machines, Chloe?” he asked, leaning back and half closing his eyes to contemplate this new modern horror. “Of the type they are using at Margate and the other ocean resorts, you know. Do you think our lake waters too cold for bathers?”

“Why not establish a permanent fair while you are about it, with jugglers and roundabouts and swinging boats, to keep the tourists perfectly happy, as you empty their pockets?”

“I’d like a touch more of quality. A miniature Vauxhall Gardens, say, with a pavilion, Indian of course, a couple of thousand of lanterns, music, dancing ...” he rambled on, still in his ruminative pose, though I think he was peering at me through his partially closed eyes.

I could sit still no longer. I jumped to my feet, feeling a strong urge to box his ears. Instead I said, “I must go inside now. You are perfectly welcome to wait for Edward here in the garden, if you wish.”

“Don’t be an ass, Chloe,” he said, reaching out with incredible speed to seize my wrist and prevent my leaving. “I have no intention of turning the place into a circus.
I
have to live here too, you know.”

The pressure on my wrist was so tight as to be painful. As I wrenched free, I looked to read his expression. He was laughing at me.

It seemed a good time to change the subject of conversation. We talked without further outbreaks of ill humour for another quarter of an hour, when Edward at last appeared around the bend astride his old mare.

“Mr. Gamble, Chloe—what the deuce are you doing sitting out in the dark?” he asked.

I had not noticed it was beginning to darken. Looking towards the horizon, I saw the sun was setting in an orange-red haze that promised no rain, no relief. “Waiting for you, sluggard,” Gamble answered unceremoniously. “Your sister has kindly beguiled the time away with her charming company. We haven’t quite come to blows yet, but your arrival is timely.”

“Come inside and have an ale,” Edward offered.

“I have been gasping here the past hour, hoping she would take the hint and offer me one,” Gamble replied.

“You’ll never get anywhere hinting with Chloe,” Edward said. “It is best just to come out and ask for what you want.”

“I shall bear that advice in mind,” Jack replied, looking at me in a quizzical way. He offered his arm to walk to the front door, while Edward went around to the stable.

“Oh, Chloe, I thought it was Tom with you in the garden, or I would have joined you,” Nora said when we entered the saloon.

“Why, don’t you
trust
me, Mrs. Whitmore?” Jack asked with a teasing smile. “Or is it only that you would have enjoyed my company?”

“Neither one!” she said, flustered. Then as she realized what she had blurted out, she went into stammering apologies till Jack blandly advised her that next time he would send for her—to protect himself. Only then did she realize he was joking, and settled down sufficiently to resume her netting.

“I see you have got a new carpet, Mrs. Whitmore,” he went on, with a twinkle in his eyes there was no trusting.

“Chloe has wanted one ever since she saw now nicely you are redoing the Hall,” she answered, smiling and nodding. “She is always singing the praises of your work.”

“She has already complimented me on it. I have an Indian blanket that would go very well on your sofa, if you would accept it,” he said, directing his speech to Nora alone. Never a glance at me.

“That would be lovely. We have noticed how the rest of the room looks shabby, with the new carpet. That is the trouble with buying anything new; it makes all the rest look so old.”

“Especially when it
is
old,” I said, defeated.

Edward joined us, and the two men went into his study, not deeming business suitable for the ears of ladies. They were closeted for the better part of an hour, with a second order of ale going in at the end of thirty minutes. I was on thorns for Jack to leave, that I might discover from Edward what matter was discussed.

“What on earth were you talking of for so long?” I asked as soon as we had privacy.

“A horse. Jack is selling me an excellent mount. He picked it up in London for Emily, but it is too frolicsome for her. She is frightened of it, and I have agreed to buy it.”

I was disappointed, and also apprehensive. “What price did you pay for it?”

“Don’t worry about the cost, Chloe. It was a bargain, and I am not to pay for it till I have the money.”

“But how much? What is the price?”

“A fair price. Cheap, in fact,” he said, and would say no more, which tended to convince me he had been rooked.  Neither did I think the purchase of a mount had taken an hour. Edward had no notion of haggling over prices. There had been more than the mount discussed, but between Nora and myself, we could not wrench it from him.

“We talked business, of course, farming business,” he admitted at last, before locking himself back up in his study, with a sly, secretive look on his face.

Chapter Fifteen

The Leroy house lately sold to Wingdale was torn down, the cellar filled in, the park cleared, and ten little new excavations dug for the cottages that would replace it. Wingdale had his crews out beginning to lay the bed of a new road, straight as an arrow, as threatened. In the normal way, I would have been ill with worry and frustration, but as it happened there was an anxiety closer to home to bedevil me.

Edward was running madly into debt. The mount purchased from Gamble proved to be no ordinary jade, but a beautiful piece of horseflesh that cost more than a hundred pounds certainly, though Edward would not admit it. It was the second best mount in the neighbourhood, outclassed only by Jack’s own Arabian. Edward’s was a Barb, a sweet goer. A horse, even such an expensive one, would hardly put us in debtors’ prison, but the mount was only the beginning of his folly. Nora held me to be partly accountable, which made me feel all the worse. I had been lamenting from time to time the sad dilapidation of Ambledown, which gave my brother the corkbrained idea to call in architects—in plentiful supply at that time with the imminent building of a whole village nearby. Like the horse, they were going “cheap” (and like the horse, I think Gamble had something to do with nudging him on to it).

The house itself is built of stone two feet thick. It stands four square, solid, and will stand for several hundreds of years. The dilapidation occurs mostly at the openings, where the water has eased its way in around windows and doorframes. There the stone is perishing, and wanted replacing, as did some of the window frames and doors. There is an ornamented battlement on our left facade added on by the Tudor ancestor who had delusions of grandeur. His original idea was to match it with another on the right side, but he must have run out of money for it was never built. The battlement, which is crenelated, was in some disrepair around the top. This proved to be the last straw, as far as cost went. A group of six men came and began erecting a scaffold, whose building alone took them three days. An antiquarian was called in for consultation to ensure getting all the details quite accurate, as to materials and methods of workmanship.

“Edward, we cannot
afford
it!” I moaned, more than once. It became a refrain. I was as tired of saying it as he must have been of hearing me. “I hope you have not been so foolish as to take a loan from Wingdale.”