Place of Confinement (6 page)

Mrs Bailey sighed pathetically – very much oppressed by this last melancholy truth. And, feeling, no doubt, that she had now explained and excused herself sufficiently, she turned towards the house.

Dido fell into a reverie of pity for the absent Miss Verney. She knew Tom Lomax to be extravagant, selfish and quite determined upon making his fortune by marriage. Any young woman who had – through love or folly – placed herself in his power was to be pitied indeed. Concern for the young lady must be her first thought. But it was not long before her mind turned with even greater compassion to the suffering of someone else – someone much dearer.

Tom’s father would be terribly hurt by the business.

Chapter Six

As Dido attended her aunt, and prepared herself for church, her mind was full of foreboding. The mystery of Miss Verney’s disappearance touched her more nearly now. Its speedy solution was more necessary than ever, but there was added the need for the
right
solution. Nobody in Charcombe Manor could now be more determined than Dido to prevent the business being bruited abroad, or more anxious to avoid disgrace and shame.

Mrs Manners noticed – and strongly resented – her niece’s preoccupation. Dido, she declared, was ‘as dull as a cat’.

‘I cannot get two words from you this morning, miss!’ she complained as she was helped from her carriage at the church gate. ‘I am not accustomed to such sulky silence.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Dido, hurriedly, as she climbed back into the carriage to retrieve her aunt’s salts and spectacles, shawls, cushions, walking stick and parasol, ‘but I have a great deal on my mind.’

‘On your mind! Why, what can
you
possibly have to worry about?’

‘Well,’ Dido began a little breathlessly as she balanced one last cushion upon her burden, tucked two prayer books under her arm, ‘I am worried about—’

She stopped because her aunt’s attention had now been drawn away by the approach of her brother, Mr George Fenstanton, who bounded up, officiously offering his arm.

‘Go away, George!’ Mrs Manners put such an emphasis of hatred into the three words that Dido dropped a cushion. She drew back into the shadows of the carriage and watched Mr George’s face redden. Beyond him she could see the little crowd of parishioners gathered in the sunny churchyard – all eyes turned towards the arrival of the manor party.

‘Now then, now then, Selina,’ he whispered, smoothing back his thin white hair and looking about him uncomfortably. ‘We must put a good face on things, you know. People are watching. Take my arm.’

‘No.’ Mrs Manners’ voice was low, but firm. ‘You may take my jewels from me, George, but I see no reason to pretend to anyone that I
like
you. Ah, Lancelot!’ She turned to her nephew as he approached and made a great show of taking
his
arm, bestowing upon
him
the privilege of supporting her into the church.

As Dido stepped slowly from the coach with her burdens she was almost inclined to pity George Fenstanton’s red-cheeked embarrassment, for there was quite a crowd assembled among the grass mounds, mossy stones and daffodils of the churchyard to witness his humiliation.

The return of the beautiful Selina Fenstanton to her family home would seem to be a matter of great interest to neighbours who had been content to know nothing of her for thirty years. They bustled about her now, eager to see how marriage, time and widowhood had influenced her, and exclaimed that ‘she was not changed at all!’, and that they ‘could scarcely believe it was thirty years since she had been married here in this very church!’

And more than one curious eye was cast in the direction of the rejected brother, walking alone through the crowd to the church door; head down, hands clasped behind him. But Dido found she could not quite feel compassion. There was about Mr George such an air of self-importance, such an ill-judged determination to impose his authority on all about him, that she could not but hold him responsible for his own discomfort.

It was well that she had such very interesting thoughts to occupy her, for she soon found herself jostled aside to stand quite disregarded against one of the sandstone buttresses of the little church. Other members of the manor party were stopping frequently in their progress from chaise to pew, hailing friends and exchanging remarks upon the weather. But no one spoke to Dido. Once burdened with the paraphernalia of a companion, a woman becomes invisible to society. Over the last weeks she had been reminded many times of this horrible truth, but it had not yet lost its power to hurt her.

However, invisibility provides an excellent situation from which to observe one’s fellow men. Dido bit her lip, clung to her burdens and watched. She watched Mrs Bailey attempting to avoid the attentions of a stout man in a canary-yellow waistcoat – watched her take refuge behind the scrubby yew bush which grew from the tomb of Mr Barnabas Finch (‘released from this vale of tears’). She watched Mr Lancelot Fenstanton – stepping away from his aunt now and talking with an air of benign patronage to a short pockmarked lad. The boy was twisting his cap constantly in his hands. He passed a note to Mr Fenstanton …

‘Miss Kent, may I speak with you?’ The voice was hissing so close to Dido’s ear that she felt its warmth on her cheek and took an instinctive step back.

Martha Gibbs was beckoning urgently at her side and, as Dido stared in bewilderment, she stepped away behind the buttress. There seemed to be nothing to be done but to follow her.

When they were both standing in long grass, pressed between the damp wall of the buttress and the slanting gravestone of Mrs Elizabeth Fosset (‘she wore her virtues like a crown of glory’), Miss Gibbs whispered, ‘She mustn’t see me talking to you.’

‘Who?’

‘Why, Mrs Bailey of course. She says I ain’t to say a word to you.’

‘That is rather inconvenient.’

‘I mean I must not say a word about Tish going and everything.’

Dido merely raised her brows and waited for her companion to explain herself; but the girl stood in silence for a minute, as if struggling to find a beginning.

Martha Gibbs’ awkwardness of manner was, unfortunately, not relieved by much beauty. Her face was long, her features heavy and, at present, her appearance was further marred by some remarkably ill-made curls which peeped from under her white straw bonnet – their ends frizzled from the hot poker having been applied too long.

‘Mrs Bailey is afraid you mean to interfere, you know,’ Martha began. ‘She thinks you mean to try to find Tish.’

‘And why should she be
afraid
of my … interference?’

Martha glanced about her, and seeing that there was no one by – excepting, of course, Mrs Fosset – she whispered, ‘I don’t believe she wants Tish found.’

‘I beg your pardon? I do not quite understand—’

But now she was begun, Martha seemed determined to have her say as quickly as possible. ‘I beg you, Miss Kent, to find her. I am so afraid for her, but I dare not do anything.’

‘But why should Mrs Bailey not wish to recover your friend? It is not much to her credit if a girl in her care disappears.’

‘It would make her and Mr B rich, though, wouldn’t it?’ said Martha bluntly. ‘Tish is always telling me Mrs B would get her fortune if she could. She says she is a wicked, jealous woman. And now she has been proved right. Tish has twenty thousand pounds, you know. And if she is never heard of again, what do you suppose will happen to the money?’

‘I hardly know.’

‘Why, it’ll stay in the hands of Mr and Mrs Bailey, won’t it?’

‘I suppose it might. But, my dear Miss Gibbs, I am sure your very natural concern for your friend is getting the better of your judgement. You cannot believe that Mrs Bailey wishes harm to come to Miss Verney…’ She stopped, for the look upon Martha’s face declared that she
did
believe it.

‘If she wants Tish back, why has she not had her pursued?’ Martha ran on hastily. ‘Ain’t that what a girl’s family is supposed to do when she goes off to Gretna Green? They chase after her and bring her back, don’t they?’

Though Dido could not help but smile at Miss Gibbs’ belief in a kind of protocol governing these events, she was forced to admit that there was some weight in her argument. ‘Has there been no one sent in pursuit of Miss Verney and Mr Lomax?’

‘No. Mr Lancelot behaved very odd from the beginning. I thought he would ride after her immediately. But he did not – for you and Mrs Manners were to come, you know, and he said he must stay for his guests. And now he
talks
about searching for her, but he don’t
do
anything. And Mrs B has never insisted on someone else being sent off to Gretna Green. Lord! Do you not see, Miss Kent? Tish was right: that wicked woman really does want to be rid of her!’

Dido stirred uncomfortably in the long grass as the damp began to penetrate her Sunday shoes. ‘It does seem a little strange that no very definite steps have been taken to avert a marriage.’

‘Oh Lord!’ cried Miss Gibbs. ‘They are going in.’ She seized Dido’s arm so violently the parasol fell down on Mrs Fosset. Miss Gibbs picked it up and balanced it hastily on top of the shawls and cushions. ‘You will not speak a word about what I have said, will you?’

‘No, though I do not know…’ But Martha had already rounded the buttress and was striding off after the rest of their party – skirts held inelegantly high to display sturdy black boots.

Dido paused a moment. Was it possible, she wondered, that Mrs Bailey was herself the greatest danger to the girl placed in her care? It was a shocking and melancholy thought. In more cheerful surroundings she might have discounted it entirely; but here in the gloomy shadow of church and gravestones, the thought seemed to take hold of her and chill her being. Young women – indeed women of any age – were so very much at the mercy of those placed in authority over them …

*   *   *

The chill deepened as Dido followed the manor party through the porch into a small, plain church of whitewashed walls, cramped benches and broad pillars, under a roof curved like a barrel.

There was a holy smell of cold stone, hymn books and candles – and an air of bleak austerity. The high pulpit was backed by painted boards on which were written the Creed and Ten Commandments in the hand of a century past. The windows were filled only with plain glass; and a marble monument in a side chapel showed a sleeping knight with his nose, his sword and half of one leg broken away.

Dido was looking about as she walked, and thinking that the church had perhaps suffered at the hands of Cromwell’s Ironsides, when her eye fell upon a familiar gentleman close beside her in a pew – and all at once the day began to wear a brighter aspect.

She stopped abruptly and the parasol, which was still balanced precariously upon the cushions, clattered to the ground again. The familiar gentleman turned quickly to retrieve it – revealing the face, and the smile, of Mr William Lomax.

She received the parasol in a nerveless hand; he bowed, his grey eyes half laughing, half indignant, as they took in the burdens in her arms and glanced at the retreating back of her aunt. He reached out. With some difficulty she shuffled the bottle of smelling salts into the crook of her arm, and his hand closed about her fingers, warm and firm. They both spoke together:

‘I did not know you were at Charcombe—’

‘I am come about this odd business of Tom’s—’

They stopped, smiled and stood looking upon one another, quite content to be silent for a moment as the sounds of the congregation shuffling into the pews echoed about them. He looked as handsome as ever, she thought; the same well-made figure and very distinguished profile. But he looked a little tired, or worried perhaps; the fine bones of his cheeks were rather more prominent than she had ever known them before – giving his face a sad, bruised appearance.

He began to speak again, but just then Mrs Manners – who had now reached the Fenstanton pew at the front of the church and was waiting for her cushions to be placed – turned back impatiently. She creased up her eyes and peered imperiously. There was a moment of recognition.

He bowed.

Aunt Manners stood stiff, unbending. ‘Dido!’ Her voice cut sharply along the crowded nave. ‘What are you doing, dawdling about
again?
I am not accustomed to being kept waiting.’

Dido was forced to hurry away, but her mind raced with a dozen half-connected thoughts. That the news of Tom’s escapade should bring him here was not surprising – she might have foreseen it … He had seemed glad to see her … Her aunt’s conduct was unpardonable …

Mrs Manners was now pointing imperiously at the place where her cushions were to be arranged and, as Dido hurried forward, she said, in a whisper so audible the bats hanging in the bell tower were probably able to hear it, ‘I am surprised at you for speaking to that man.’

‘I beg your pardon, Aunt?’

‘I am astonished that you should acknowledge acquaintance with a family which has used
my friends
so ill. Not there …
there,
’ stabbing with an impatient finger. ‘The red cushion is to go at my back.’

Dido bent to her task in resentful silence. But, as the church music men struck up the first psalm and the congregation rose to sing, she stole a look back along the aisle, her eye seeking out the firm, upright figure which appeared to particular advantage among the bulky forms of the surrounding farmers. Her cheeks burnt with indignation at his being blamed for the faults of his son. She looked until some sense told him that she was looking. He glanced up, caught her eye, and could not prevent himself from smiling affectionately before hurriedly returning his attention to his hymnal.

It was a delightful smile. A smile to lift her spirits to the barrel roof with the swelling voices, in a rush of pleasure which even the sour looks of her relative could not diminish. She would certainly not slight him on anyone’s account. Affection and justice both cried out against it.

Up in their gallery above the nave, the fustian-clad fiddlers plied their bows with enthusiasm and the old church rang with song. Dido Kent praised her maker and sang for joy that the man who loved her was close by. After two weeks of penance and insignificance his look of admiration was an exquisite pleasure, and she would not allow anything to intrude upon it – certainly not the disapproval of such a woman as Aunt Manners.