The Elderbrook Brothers (44 page)

‘I see the idea,' Felix said. ‘Get children, honestly if you can. That's your motto, Mrs Meldreth.'

‘What if it is?' She laughed. ‘Don't you agree? It wasn't
my
fault I only had two, let me tell you. And girls at that.'

‘Meaning that girls don't count, eh?'

‘Well, they're not the same as boys, you must admit.'

‘Freely,' said Felix. ‘Your whole theory is based on the fact.'

‘Oh, you know what I mean, Felix.' She sat back against her cushions, giggling joyously. ‘I must tell Kate that.'
And, Kate happening to enter the room at that very moment, she began retailing the conversation to her.

‘Oh, come!' Felix protested. The beginnings of embarrassment took hold of him.

‘Really, Felix,' said Kate, when the recital was over, ‘for a clergyman you do say the most improper things! Such a comfort!'

In the pleasure of seeing her amused his composure was instantly restored. She had blue eyes like her mother, and a warm dark voice. And even in the eyes, so candid and serene, there was a darkness, the glowing darkness of an inviolable secret. Felix could not but admit to himself that the future Mrs Turnbull had charm. So nice to know that she was suitably disposed of.

THE annals of English village life offer no support to the theory that ‘free love', or the enjoyment of nuptial delights without marriage, was invented by Bloomsbury intellectuals in the nineteen-twenties and imposed by them on a war-weary generation. That new fashion in morals was by Mercestershire standards a very old fashion; and Mercestershire folk, they would have you know, are in all respects as good as their neighbours north and south of them. They are as respectable and on occasion as censorious; they do not at all hold with loose living; but the notion, if it were put to them, that when lovely or unlovely woman stoops to folly she is thereby debarred from honest marriage would be repugnant to their common sense.

Heads were shaken, and malicious smiles exchanged, when the first rumours of Hilda's bad luck got about; but for six on seven years she had been known to the village as a pleasant decent girl, who minded her own business but had a friendly word for everyone, and only a very few, and those few of her own sex, affected to believe that by her lapse from virtue the Hilda they had liked and accepted as one of themselves had suddenly
become a monster of depravity. True, her case was worse than Sally So-and-so's, for Sally had succeeded in dragging her man to the altar three weeks after her confinement; and far worse than that of the cowman's daughter down Durnford whose baby, by a miracle of contrivance, had been actually born in wedlock. It was worse than these not only circumstantially but because it was so much more surprising. Those other girls had asked for trouble and no one lifted an eyelid when they got it. But Hilda had been, if anything, a little too standoffish with the fellows, it was said; she kept obstinately mum, moreover, about who was the father of her child, treating as something too silly for anger the sly reiterated hint that it was Mr Elderbrook; and taking one thing with another it all went to show that the quiet ones were the worst. Hilda called her baby Caleb, an outlandish name which told nobody anything; and, apart from Hilda herself, only Matthew and Ann and the local registrar, a man of high professional rectitude who positively enjoyed frustrating the curious, knew that Caleb, though his legal surname must necessarily be that of his mother, was registered as Caleb Elderbrook.

Caleb in his first months of life was a healthy and happy specimen of his kind. The neighbours soon got used to the sight of Hilda and her pram in the Upmarden lanes on fine afternoons, and scarcely one of them but stopped to look and admire. Before he was many weeks old they had almost forgotten that she had not come by him honestly, and if they did remember they did not care, being perhaps instinctively at one with Mrs Meldreth in this matter.

But there was one who did not forget, and could not help caring a little. Will Dorsett, the carrier, had struck up a kindly nodding acquaintance with Hilda years before, on her first appearance in the district. He had always liked the look of her and enjoyed passing the time of day with her. During years of plying between railway station and village, and with frequent occasion to call at the Elderbrooks' back door, it was something he had learnt to look forward to, this friendly exchange
of small news and views. He had in effect watched her grow from a raw seventeen to buxom young-wo manhood. In his fancy he knew her very well, and found it not easy to think ill of her, no matter what she had done, or how she had let herself be taken advantage of. Virtue in woman was a jewel indeed, but fifteen years of marriage with a fretful coldblooded wife, who was now mercifully gone to her reward, had disposed him to the heresy that warmth of nature was itself something of a virtue, and that it was better for a woman to be too kind than too cunning. In fine he had conceived a powerful fancy for Hilda and was eccentric enough not to be entirely put off by her present equivocal situation. He was too shrewd to believe all he heard, and too stubborn to be deflected from a chosen course by what others might say or think of it. He was also, for a man of his years, unusually diffident, especially in his dealings with women. He supposed himself to be no great catch for a girl, a simple fellow and rather the worse for wear, and the very thing that kept other honest men at a distance encouraged him to try his luck. Someone, he didn't ask who, had found Hilda persuadable. Regrettable though that was, and a shame to see a nice girl getting into trouble, it gave grounds for believing that she might be willing to marry him if he asked her in the right way, with no suggestion that he was doing it out of charity. For he had taken her measure long ago: with all her careless good nature and common sense she had always had an air of independence, of asking favours from no one, and calamity had not reduced her spirit. That was Hilda all over, he told himself, and because it was like her he admired it and was ready to take her part against the world. The one palpable difficulty was how, without asking straight questions, to discover whether or not she was still occupied with her unknown lover, whom so many declared to be Mr Elderbrook himself.

But even that difficulty resolved itself when the time came.

‘I don't believe all I hear,' said Will, apropos of nothing in particular, but with a significance Hilda did not miss.

She glanced at him appreciatively, with the friendliness he knew so well, and with the addition of a shyness that was less usual in her. What he did not believe, what his experience with the late Mrs Dorsett made it impossible to believe, was the silly rumour that Matthew Elderbrook, with his wife's knowledge and consent, was living as the husband of both women, an oriental fantasy which found fitful, playful expression in the nudges and slow smiles of taproom cronies, growing bawdy and confidential on a diet of small ale.

When he suggested Hilda's walking out with him she said:

‘What's the good?'

‘Mean you don't want to?'

‘It's not a question of what I want. It's what's sensible. You better think again, Mr Dorsett.'

‘Will to you,' said Dorsett. ‘Well, I've thought again, and I'm of the same mind. How about it?'

‘You know what people'll say?'

‘Maybe I do. Maybe I don't care.'

Plain speaking was Hilda's way. ‘They'll say my baby's yours.'

Will Dorsett nodded. ‘Well?' He shrugged and smiled. ‘Pity he isn't, in a way. Suit me all right.'

‘Go on with you!' Hilda laughed.

She laughed in order to clear the air, to gain time, to prevent things going too fast. First, if anything, must come the walking-out, the time-honoured probationary ritual that made for mutual understanding and committed no one to anything. And then … well, we'll see.

‘What about tomorrow evening?' said Will. ‘In Church Lane. Seven o'clock.'

She stood silent, considering deeply, lost in astonishment at the discovery that he meant what he said, and perhaps more.

Misinterpreting her silence he said, staring at the ground: ‘I'm not up to any tricks, girl. I mean honest by you.'

‘I know that all right,' she said quickly.

In later talks, during those golden autumn evenings, they
reverted often to the subject of young Caleb. She was warmed and comforted by Will's goodness to her; she had always liked him in a neighbourly way; and she found less than no difficulty in becoming fond of him. But her astonished gratitude to him for wanting her, and her growing sense of a responsive desire in herself, left one axiom of the heart untouched. When the question of marriage came up she made it crystal clear that nothing would induce her to part with Caleb.

‘Well, why should you?' said Will. ‘Plenty of room. He won't quarrel with mine.' Will was childless.

‘I thought maybe you knew, Will. Mrs Elderbrook wants to adopt him.'

‘Why?' Will asked. Though by now he could guess why.

‘Because she has none of her own. And can't have. They want to make a gentleman of him,' she said bitterly.

‘Well … wouldn't you like that?'

She did not answer. He saw that she was on the point of tears.

‘Because if you wouldn't,' he said, with a quick change of tone, ‘we won't have it, my dear. You come along and be Mrs Dorsett, and I'll teach young Caleb how to saddle the mare, soon's he's big enough. We'll be as snug as you please. See?'

Hilda said no, and fully believed it was her last word. She said it wouldn't be fair to him, and that she mustn't go out with him any more. Wisely disregarding these gestures of despair, Mr Dorsett took an early opportunity of calling on Mrs Elderbrook and explaining his intentions, which were by now as firm as they were precise. If the girl would have him, he said modestly, speaking as though to the girl's guardian, he would marry her any day she liked to name; and it was to be clearly understood that he must have the baby too.

‘We shall miss him dreadfully,' Ann said. ‘We were hoping she would leave him with us. Don't you think that perhaps, later on …'

‘You can't part a mother from her baby, ma'am. It wouldn't be right.'

Ann watched him shrewdly. ‘You've been very frank with me, Mr Dorsett'—a village carrier might be Will or plain Dorsett, but Hilda's betrothed had a new dignity—‘and I do appreciate it very much. But let me be frank too. Between ourselves, you surely don't want to begin your married life with another man's child in the house?'

Dorsett flushed. ‘I want whatever Hilda wants, ma'am.'

So saying he rose to his feet; and Ann, offering her hand, said warmly: ‘Hilda is a very lucky girl. And I'm sure she'll be a good wife to you.'

‘If she'll have me, ma'am,' he said, taking nothing for granted. ‘Thank you.'

Before the handshake was quite ended Ann tried yet again: ‘I think we understand each other, Mr Dorsett?'

‘I hope so, ma'am.'

‘Maybe some day she'll be willing to change her mind about Caleb, don't you think? When, I mean, she has another child to care for.'

His sternness relaxed. A smile slowly dawned in his face. ‘Ah well! Who knows?' He stared at distance. ‘Yes, I think maybe you're right, ma'am,' he brought out at length. ‘But'—he smiled, looked mysterious, came as near winking as his invincible respect for Mrs Elderbrook would permit— ‘mum's the word, mind!'

BEFORE October was out, Felix arrived at the conclusion that his coming to Stanton had been a grave mistake, and one for which a bitter price was being exacted. He knew now, or thought he knew, why he had hesitated so long before accepting that invitation. His apparent reasons had been, he now thought, nothing but a series of elaborate disguises for the real one. Devotion to an arduous duty, reluctance to take his hand from the plough (how promptly the stalest phrases slipped from the tongue), a stiff-necked pride that forbad him to admit to
ill-health: of these only the last and least creditable would he allow to have been entirely sincere. Behind them all had lurked fear, fear of a challenge which to refuse would unman him and to accept would work only havoc and disaster, if not humiliation. During these latter years, ever since a blundering emotional episode in France in the days when he was still a private soldier, he had driven himself with too tight a rein to be capable now of easily yielding to his heart's wish. With charity for all sins but his own, he had schooled himself in the notion that the only happiness he could legitimately ask of life was the happiness of ministering to others, of lightening, if only by a feather's weight, the burden of the world's misery. But here at Stanton existence was too pleasant. To drift on the placid tide of an uneventful routine was too easy. He had time on his hands. And Satan, that oldfashioned but convenient fiction, was at his old tricks. Felix's mind was no longer his own. All thoughts went the same road, and his prayers for deliverance, because his heart was not in it, became a hollow form and a mockery of God.

The crisis of his self-discovery came in a dream. He dreamt he was involved in a fox-hunt, now as a spectator, now as unwilling participant. Scene after scene flitted by, to the sound of yapping hounds. At moments he was the fox, dragging himself along with bleeding pads and parched swollen tongue; at moments the huntsman, blowing his ribboned horn; at moments himself again, detached but not free, aloof yet not aloof, a homeless soul entangled like a snared bird among the persons of his fantasy. The grinning masks of the local gentry confronted him. They were like dressed-up apes, yet recognizably his neighbours. They called him by name. They slashed at him joyously with their crops. They grinned and grinned, laying bare their dog-teeth. But the name they called him by was not his own, and he looked round him in a fever, from face to face, in search of someone, he didn't know whom. The yapping and galloping rose to an intolerable pitch; fields and hedges came racing to meet him; and suddenly
his horse bucked, the world turned upside down, and there he was, there someone was, lying dead in the grass. He woke, spent but calm.