The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter (62 page)

“Fine.” The strain seemed to ease a bit when he looked at her younger sister. “Laurel. Are you enjoying school?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Sometimes. My literature teacher went to Queen Victoria’s coronation ceremony when she was my age. She’s interesting. But my French teacher is boring. She insists we speak nothing but French the whole hour.”

“
Oui?
” Mr. Raleigh replied with a cocked eyebrow. Laurel snickered appreciatively at this, and Elizabeth smiled and touched her sister’s sleeve.

“We’d best be going now.”

“Good days” were repeated and the two girls set out toward the vicarage. Mr. Raleigh watched them walk away, then turned to Julia. “May I accompany you part way, Mrs. Hollis?” he asked almost timidly but then sent a worrisome glance toward the church door. “Of course if you’d feel uncomfortable …”

“I would feel no discomfort,” she reassured him, and they started out across the green. She caught Aleda’s eye and motioned that she would be going on ahead. The girls would not be ready to leave, and would either accompany each other or some of the lodgers who usually lingered to chat. When they were out of earshot of any of the other worshipers, she added, “But I’m sure you understand I must respect my fiancé’s position concerning you and Elizabeth.”

“Yes, of course.”

Smiling to herself at the resignation in his voice, Julia went on. “But I must also tell you that I have changed my initial opinion of you.”

He turned incredulous eyes to her. “You have?”

She nodded. “Your having stuck it out at the school gives evidence that you have the strength of character to stay on the right path.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hollis! I’m overwhelmed.”

“But again, it’s not my opinion that matters,” she felt compelled to remind him.

A sigh escaped his lips, and they walked in silence, listening to the sociable hum of people still behind them and the caws of rooks winging across the green. “May I ask you something, Mrs. Hollis?” he said when the
Larkspur
loomed in sight.

“Very well, Mr. Raleigh.”

There was a pause, and then, “Is it true that Elizabeth stopped seeing the man from Alveley?”

Julia wondered how he could have learned such a thing but then remembered where he was lodging. “Yes. But I must tell you that she was having doubts about that relationship long ago.”

“I see.” Another paused lapsed, and then, “Do you think Vicar Phelps will ever change his mind and allow me to see her?”

“I believe anything is possible, Mr. Raleigh. You’ll just have to continue being patient.”

“I’m learning that patience is a hard schoolmaster, Mrs. Hollis.”

She gave him a little smile. “But the prize is worth it, yes?”

His tone softening, he replied, “Very much worth it.”

“You had Jonathan Raleigh over for
dinner
?” Andrew asked, incredulous, the next morning over their cups of tea, which the nip of the air had caused him and Julia to take in the
Larkspur
’s library with the door open a propriety-approving foot or so.

“He’s my children’s schoolmaster, Andrew,” his fiancée reminded him, with no trace of repentance in her voice. “How long are you going to carry this grudge against him?”

The tea in Andrew’s cup suddenly tasted bitter. He had gone through the latter part of the summer like a man who has inherited the world. Betrothed to the most beautiful, gracious woman in England, he had happily settled into village life and was living in harmony with his daughters in the vicarage. How long had he been allowed such bliss before Jonathan Raleigh decided to put an end to it.
Six weeks?

“You don’t understand. It’s
my
daughter he treated so despicably.”

“I do understand.” She leaned forward to rest a soft hand upon the back of his. “But everyone is someone’s daughter or son, Andrew. Should there be no forgiveness for anyone, then?”

“It’s not a matter of forgiveness,” he maintained adamantly. “It’s a matter of not wanting to risk the same thing happening again.”

“Life involves risk, dear. My late husband had an impeccable reputation, yet he betrayed his family.”

As cynical as he sometimes was about human behavior, Andrew still could not understand how Doctor Philip Hollis, with such a wonderful family, could have given gambling first place in his heart. Andrew had to ask God’s forgiveness more than once for having the guilty thought that he was glad the man had died. He was in danger of thinking it again if he did not return to the subject at hand, so he asked Julia, “What are you suggesting? That I should allow him to court her?”

“Not if you’re not ready.” She patted his hand as if he were a little child. In his present mood he should have minded, but he did not.

He wondered if she understood her power over him. She could render him silly with worry just by frowning.

“But I wish you would suspend judgment and allow Mr. Raleigh some more time to prove himself,” Julia went on, her green eyes shining as he brought her hand up to his lips.

His heart told him that it was a reasonable request and that as a Christian he was expected to do no less. “Very well, Julia. We’ll give him some time.”

The strike of half-past eight signaled it was time to leave for the school, where he would see the subject of their discussion soon enough. He drained his tea, bitter or not, and, with a glance at the door, coaxed her into a kiss. He would have stayed long enough for another, but she reminded him that it was not a good example for the vicar to be late for Monday chapel.

At the schoolhouse door he paused to listen. A curious absence of pandemonium greeted his ears. He opened the door to find thirty-two faces trained upon their schoolmaster, who was in the process of reading aloud from something Andrew knew he should have easily recognized, but the calm of the classroom had befuddled his mind.

“ ‘I am glad, my brother, that thou didst withstand this villain so bravely; for of all, as thou sayest, I think he has the wrong name.…’ ”

Mr. Raleigh glanced up at him and stopped reading. “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Mr. Raleigh.” Andrew nodded at the students. “Young men and young ladies.”

“Good morning, Vicar Phelps,” they returned politely. Even the Sanders boy, who had stuck his tongue out at him just a week ago as their wagon passed him on Market Lane, joined in the greeting.

“We were just enjoying a little of
The Pilgrim’s Progress
,” Mr. Raleigh said. “We read a chapter from it every day now.”

In spite of his promise to Julia, it vexed Andrew slightly that the young man had known something that he himself—even temporarily—had forgotten. But he covered it with a smile and said, “What a splendid idea.”

The smile seemed to take Mr. Raleigh completely by surprise, for a dazed look came over him. Andrew did not know how long it took him to recover, for having felt he had gone far beyond the extra mile, he turned to the students again and opened his Bible.

Chapter 36

Mornings in the dormitories of the Josiah Smith Academy were becoming uncomfortably cold as the term advanced. Philip strongly suspected economic factors were behind this. Why warm up two whole floors in the mornings when the students were only allowed a half hour to make themselves presentable for their classes and would not return to those same rooms until afternoon? Perhaps he would have agreed with such a measure had he been an adult, but when his cold bare feet fumbled on the frigid floor for his slippers of mornings late, he found himself wishing he could send Mr. Houghton, the headmaster, for laps around the grounds.

After Westbrook had barked orders to “rise and shine” on Tuesday morning, Philip surrendered the warmth of his blankets and threw his feet over the side of his bed, mentally preparing himself for the meeting of warm feet and cold floor. But he was not prepared for the puddle of water. He was about to launch himself back into his bed and under his covers when another sense revealed to him that it was not plain water in which he stood. “Ugh!” he cried disgustingly, jumping out to the corridor between the rows of beds.

Other boys stopped grumbling about the cold, some coming over for a look and a snicker. “Watch out,” Philip warned Milton Hayes in the next bed. Hayes sat up in bed and grimaced.

“You couldn’t wait, Hollis?” jeered someone whom Philip saw fit to ignore.

“I thought I heard Whitby in here last night,” Hayes said with an eye toward the lavatory door, behind which Westbrook had disappeared. “But I didn’t know they’d done that. I’m sorry about your feet.”

Philip rubbed his feet on the dry part of the floor while waiting for Westbrook to emerge so that he could show the monitor what happened and, more likely than not, be blamed for it. “Whitby has had it in for Patterson and me ever since—” Mention of his friend’s name filled him with a sudden panic. “Gabriel!” he called, running down the corridor between the beds. He was halfway to his friend’s bed when there was an awful loud thumping sound and a much worse sharp groan. Westbrook burst from the lavatory at the other end, his face half lathered, and several boys ran to the scene.

As he had feared, Gabriel lay in a puddle in the space between two beds. “Are you all right?” Philip asked, bending to give him a hand. But Gabriel groaned again and shook his head.

“I can’t move my arm, Philip.”

“Don’t tell me the whale got beached,” Westbrook said sarcastically as he came closer, ordering the boys aside. Philip flung a scathing look at him.

“His arm’s probably broken, Westbrook.”

That wiped the sneer from the prefect’s face. “Go get some help!” he yelled to no one in particular. Three boys scrambled for the door. In the turmoil that followed, Mr. Archer arrived with other housemasters, who carried Gabriel away on a stretcher. When Philip attempted to see his friend after classes were over, he was refused admission to the small infirmary by a stone-faced nurse. A broken arm was all the information she would give him.

The next day Gabriel Patterson was on his way back to Birmingham.
We didn’t even exchange addresses
, Philip thought sadly as he passed the empty bed the next evening.

On the eighth of October, early morning thunderstorms assailed Gresham again. Jonathan rose from his bed, found his slippers, and padded, bleary eyed, to the window. Rivulets of water ran down the glass, making Y patterns as they joined other rivulets.
They’ll be disappointed. Even if the rain stops soon, it likely won’t dry up enough by recess to set up the target
.

It was only then that he remembered what day of the week it was. Saturday. And oddly enough,
he
felt a small stab of disappointment.