The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter (41 page)

“How may I assist you this morning, Mr. Langford?”

“A needle and some thread, please,” Seth replied, reluctantly adding, “and half a dozen tins of beef.”

“Got some mending to do, eh?”

“Some,” Seth admitted. The repairs on the outbuildings were wreaking havoc with his clothing, and now two shirts and a pair of trousers had rips, as well as one of Thomas’s shirts. He had sewn a button on a shirt once years ago and thought surely he could learn to mend as well.

The shopkeeper spread his hands authoritatively upon the counter. “May I offer you some advice, Mr. Langford?”

Seth wasn’t sure he wanted advice this morning but nodded.

“You need more than one needle. They’re easy to lose, you see. One falls between the cracks of a stone floor, and you’ll be hard pressed to find it.”

“How many would you recommend?” Seth asked, relieved that it was nothing more personal.

“Smallest pack is a half dozen. That oughter do you rightly for a couple o’ years.” The shopkeeper’s walrus mustache widened over a grin. “Unless you’re particular clumsy. I have a cousin over to Horton who can’t tie his own cravat without gettin’ a thumb caught in the knot.”

Seth had to smile at the mental picture that evoked. “A half dozen, then.”

“They’re in a rack over by Mrs. Kerns if you’d care to get them whilst I fetch some more tins from the back. Just got a shipment in early this morning, and I ain’t had the chance to uncrate it all yet. Thread’s on the same rack, by the way.”

While Mr. Trumble disappeared behind his curtain, Seth went over to the rack near the draper’s table and perused the display of needles. But making a selection wasn’t as easy as he would have thought, for some packages contained the words “darners” and “quilters” and “upholstery.” Mr. Trumble still hadn’t reappeared, so he considered asking the woman standing at the table for advice. Had she looked up at him, as she did earlier, he would have felt no shyness in speaking to her, but she seemed to be unaware that he stood only three feet away.

There was something about the way she stared longingly at a bolt of blue cloth that touched him. He began to watch her while pretending to examine packages of needles. The green dress she wore was exceedingly faded and bereft of any lace or trim. Her straw bonnet, frayed at the edges, was trimmed with a limp red ribbon. Clearly she could not afford the cloth, but she could not tear herself away from it either. But soon he noticed the resignation alter her face—an expression that suggested there were very few pretty things in her life. She turned from the table, murmuring soothing noises to the infant on her shoulder as she made her way to the door. Mr. Trumble reappeared at the same time the bell jingled with her exit.

“Got your beef here.” Mr. Trumble raised eyebrows at the sight of the woman passing on the other side of the glass shopfront but said nothing about, her and came around the counter. “I take it you’re havin’ trouble findin the right needles?”

“Yes,” Seth replied. “I didn’t realize there were so many types.”

The shopkeeper picked up a red paper package. “
Sharps
is what you want.”

“But aren’t they all supposed to be sharp?”

“That’s a good one, Mr. Langford!” Mr. Trumble declared, slapping a knee.

Seth, who had not meant to make a joke, smiled. Then he sobered at the memory of the woman. “She’s poor?”

Mr. Trumble did not ask of whom he meant but glanced at the empty window and sighed. “No poorer than any of the factory workers’ wives. But her husband’s wages have to stretch to provide for nine children. I offered to let her have that bolt at cost, but I take it she decided against it.”

For once there was no levity on the good-natured face. “I do all I can to help folks, but I have to stay in business.”

“Yes, of course.” An impulse took hold of Seth. “I’d like to buy the cloth.”

“You? Didn’t know you was that serious about learnin’ to sew.”

“Not for me—for that woman. At your regular price, of course. Will you deliver it?”

“Why, I’d be happy to!” the shopkeeper declared, grinning widely.

“But you mustn’t tell her who bought it.”

“No, of course not.” Mr. Trumble cocked his head to study Seth. “You’re sort of like that Robert Hood, ain’t you?”

“Who?”

“You know—that fellow from up to Nottinghamshire. He gave lots of money to poor folk. And he had a fondness for green clothes.”

“Oh.” Now embarrassed, Seth decided to hurry the process along. Reaching for the first spool of thread that caught his eye, he made a move toward the counter. Mr. Trumble hurried back behind the counter and tallied up the purchases, including the bolt of organdy, with a pencil and paper.

“That’ll be four and sixpence,” the shopkeeper said, turning the paper so that Seth could see his ciphering. Seth gave it a cursory glance out of politeness and paid. He was on his way through the doorway a few seconds later, his needle and thread tucked into the pasteboard box containing the tins, when he noticed the young woman who sang hymns at chapel alighting from a wagon right behind his. A boy of about fourteen sat at the reins. Seth recognized him right away as one of the guinea sellers.

Seeing the boy reminded him that he hadn’t asked Mr. Trumble about purchasing chickens, but he was loathe to go back into the shop with one of the Sanderses present, even if she was so kind as to give them a cake.

But he was gentleman enough to wait and hold the door open for her. She thanked him and they exchanged unsmiling nods as she went through it. On to his wagon he went, storing his box in the bed. He was just about to give the reins a twitch when from behind him came a curious sound.

“Pot-rack?”

Seth twisted around to peer at the wagon behind him. The boy seated at the reins was working hard at studying the facade of
Trumbles
. But there lurked just the hint of a smile on his lips. Pressing his own lips tightly together, Seth snapped the reins a little more sharply than he had intended. As Bonny and Soot broke into an immediate trot, he heard it once again.

“Pot-rack?”

This time Seth did not look back.

“I knew everybody had that Langford fellow figured all wrong,” Mr. Trumble told Mercy as he scooped out and weighed five pounds of sugar.

“Yes?” Recalling the face that had practically glared at her at the door, she thought,
Has he only murdered five people instead of ten?

She wasn’t in the best of moods anyway. Jack and Edgar, nervous about their first day at school, had traded cuffs and jabs and kicks all the way. They were too far away in the bed of the wagon for her to seize them by the collars, as she had a mind to do, and they ignored her orders that they stop. To make matters worse, Fernie had egged them on by mugging faces at them over his shoulder.

“ … paid for it himself, he did.”

Realizing she had fumed through the first part of Mr. Trumble’s sentence, she begged his pardon.

“Mrs. Kerns.” He lowered his voice. “Do you know the Kernses?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Poor as last year’s corn, bless their souls. Well, Mr. Langford, he sees Mrs. Kerns starin’ at that bolt of organdy you so admired … you know, the Wedgwood Blue?”

“Yes, that was the one.”

“When she left here, he tells me to send it to her. Paid full price for it too. He didn’t ask for any discount. Then he says not to tell her who it’s from.”

“He did?” Mercy asked, even though Mr. Trumble had the reputation of being truthful and surely wouldn’t make something like this up.

“Aye, right in front of my eyes. Everybody has him pegged for a rotten apple and turns out he’s a phlebotomist.”

Fernie was looking especially pleased with himself when Mercy climbed up in the wagon seat. She didn’t care to know why but spent most of the trip homeward wrapped up in a pleasant daydream about how surprised the poor woman Mr. Trumble had mentioned would be.
You just can’t tell about people
, she thought. It was reassuring to know that someone with the capacity for kindness occupied Mrs. Brent’s cottage, even though he clearly wanted no contact with anyone else.

Of course if I lived next to my family, I don’t think I’d care to be neighborly either
, she thought, feeling an immediate stab of guilt for her lack of loyalty. She was as much a Sanders as any of them, and that’s how it would likely stay for the rest of her days.

Chapter 25

Why, this is going just fine
, Jonathan told himself after having each student introduce himself or herself to the others. He had been told that there would be ten new students, not counting the three graduating from Miss Hillock’s class in the next room, so it seemed that they should get to know one another. It would certainly help him to attach faces to the names he had memorized.

Even his welcoming speech—he had chosen the one about the ship after all—was received well by them. Only two children, brothers with hair the color of straw, had looked at each other and snickered behind their hands. Jonathan had decided to allow it to pass as if he hadn’t noticed. There would be ample time to assert his authority in the coming days, and he hadn’t wanted to mar the morning with a reprimand.

Presently, Vicar Phelps would be arriving to conduct Monday morning chapel. That thought made him anxious, and surely the minister had qualms about being anywhere where he was present. But there was nothing he could do about that.

The former schoolmaster, a Captain Powell, had drafted a comprehensive daily schedule, so Jonathan knew that it was time for Aleda Hollis to go to the piano in a back corner of the classroom and accompany the students in the singing of hymns. He took up a hymnal Mr.

Sykes had allowed him to borrow from the church, for having been a believer for only six months, he was unfamiliar with many of the hymns on Captain Powell’s list. He had never stood in front of anyone, much less a roomful, and led singing, but he looked to Mrs. Hollis at her desk in the opposite corner, and sure enough she sent back a reassuring smile that helped considerably.

“We will sing ‘Abide with Me,’ ” Jonathan announced. He gave a nod to Aleda at the piano, and the first chords were struck, followed by youthful voices joining in.

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide:
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!

Even as he directed and sang the first verse, Jonathan noticed that some students were as unfamiliar with the hymn as was he. They were supposed to sing three hymns, but he wondered if perhaps the time would be spent more productively at learning only one thoroughly. On impulse he raised a hand to signal for Aleda to cease playing. “Why don’t I read each line twice and then you repeat after me? That way those of us who aren’t familiar with it can learn the song.”

Six hands shot up. “But Captain Powell never did it that way,” a girl with brown braids said when Jonathan called upon her. The other five bobbed heads vigorously in agreement.

“Well, that’s fine, but we’ve several new students, and I’m not familiar with this hymn myself.” Heads swiveled in all directions to gape at each other, as if he had announced he didn’t know the alphabet.

“But you’re the schoolmaster!” one boy called out.

Jonathan was again tempted to allow the indiscretion to pass without comment just this first morning, but he happened to catch Mrs. Hollis’s concerned expression.
If you allow control to slip away, you’ll never regain it
, seemed to be the silent message she was sending.

“You must raise your hand, Mr. Casper,” he said, then noticed a relaxing of Mrs. Hollis’s posture.

The boy obeyed and lifted his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Casper?”

“But you’re the schoolmaster.”

“That’s correct.” Jonathan gave a helpless smile. “But you see, this is my first day as a schoolmaster. So I’m learning as you learn.”

Heads again turned in all directions as students sought one another’s faces. Somehow, Jonathan felt he had made an error, but he was compelled to be honest, so what was he to do? Fortunately, the students obediently echoed the lines of the first verse. They had gone through it twice and were singing it along with the piano again when the door opened and Vicar Phelps walked in. He stood against the wall and listened to the singing, his face expressionless except for a softening when he glanced over at Mrs. Hollis. There was nothing in Captain Powell’s notes that told who was supposed to greet whom on Monday mornings, so Jonathan cleared his throat and said, “Good morning, Vicar Phelps.”