Time Squared, page 7
“So I went to Cambridge,” the captain said, “and surprised myself with a growing inclination toward the church. I must be outdoors, and the life of a country parson began to appeal. Collecting specimens, you see.”
He shot her an amused glance, seeming to say, Can you picture me as a parson? Pausing on a small bridge, Eleanor decided that she could, in precisely these rustic clothes and precisely this gentle country. She tried to remember what the local parsonage looked like, and pictured herself as a clergyman’s wife. That was what her father had prepared her for, knowing that she needed to be outdoors and active, just like the captain. As they stood together amiably, Eleanor felt rueful at the loss of a peaceful life, the loss of a possibility, a dream—nostalgic for what she wouldn’t have, now that she was the ward of an ambitious aunt.
“In the end, my father pulled me out of Cambridge and arranged a commission. I resented it at the time, but it was the right decision.”
“And here I’ve always thought young ladies were the pawns moved around by their parents. And their guardians,” Eleanor added, and met his eye candidly, acknowledging what neither of them could say. “But of course another of the pieces on the board is a knight.”
“Old men sending young men off to war,” the captain agreed. He smiled and shook his head again, continuing along the path toward the farmyard. Its funk reached a distance, and soon they heard the chatter and grunt of sociable animals. Rounding the stables, they walked among Mrs. Crosby’s flock of prize chickens pecking away at the straw and muck—pecking into the pigpen, and through the open stable doors—one rooster shaking his green tail feathers, a gleam of aged bronze.
Struck by something, the captain bent to pick up a chicken, cradling its hastiness against his tweed jacket, the bird’s head darting this way and that.
“They’ve got five toes.”
“Dorkings,” Eleanor told him. “They’ve always had the breed at Preston Hall. They’re good layers and the meat is superior. Lately my aunt has learned from her steward that they were probably introduced into Britain by the Romans. Like mosaics and apples, I suppose.”
He looked entirely charming: those eyes, those curls, that warm smile, holding the chicken expertly. Court me with chickens, Eleanor thought. Then she heard voices and saw her aunt coming from the house with her steward, Mr. Stickley. Mrs. Crosby halted, putting her hand on her voluble steward’s arm to silence him.
“Here you are,” she called, walking over. “And Mr. Denholm?”
“Gone home. As I must,” the captain said, stooping to release the chicken. Mr. Stickley signalled a stable boy to fetch the captain’s horse, a fine buckskin stallion. Scarcely a moment passed before he legged it up into the saddle.
“Until this evening,” he said, and rode off.
* * *
“Explanation,” her aunt demanded, having waited until they reached her sitting room.
“I’m afraid I’m rather hungry,” Eleanor said, throwing herself on the sofa and unlacing her boots. “After such a morning.”
Her aunt didn’t ring the bell.
“Mr. Denholm was unbearably rude,” Eleanor said, tossing her boots aside and flexing her toes. “His brother is going to India, and I think he’s upset about the captain leaving. But when I said as much—and sympathetically, Aunt—he thanked me for enlightening him about his feelings. A few more jabs and he left. The captain was embarrassed, and hinted at some unpleasantness with their father, although of course he couldn’t say what.”
Mrs. Crosby rang the bell, not quite looking at Eleanor as she spoke. “I wonder if your indifference when he left Yorkshire might also be a factor.”
“I thought of that, too,” Eleanor said. “But I imagine a mild flirtation—on his side, I mean—can dwindle very easily to nothing.”
“Mr. Denholm needs to marry.”
“I don’t see why. He can’t be six-and-twenty.”
“It’s true he seems young for his age, but his father insists.” Seeing Eleanor’s frown, her aunt added, “No, I haven’t spoken to the colonel. Lady Anne got it from her son, and you know very well she can’t keep anything quiet.” Mrs. Crosby checked herself. “I speak, of course, as her very close friend.”
“‘Love your enemies’ the Bible says.”
“I have no enemies.”
“‘And do good to them that hate you.’”
Her aunt paused to consider this. “At least to their faces,” she agreed. “Behind their backs one can be more resourceful.”
When Eleanor laughed, Mrs. Crosby said, “I imagine the colonel has known for some time that the captain is bound for India. Of course he’s anxious for a grandson.”
“And yet,” Eleanor said. “I remember you saying the colonel was a third son himself. The two eldest died in Kent, while the colonel survived two decades of war abroad.”
Her aunt started nodding, then halted and looked at her coolly.
“I see,” was all she said, and they were silent until the housekeeper opened the door.
* * *
As they drove toward Ackley Castle, Eleanor felt as if she were nailed inside a coffin. The cloudy evening light seemed thin and she felt breathless, trapped, the future pressing in on her, a darkness at the edge of her field of vision. This is dread, she thought. She dreaded seeing Mr. Denholm, suspecting he was capable of being even ruder than he’d been that morning.
The colonel would be worse. Eleanor pictured a martinet, as thin as a knife, bullying his heir and poor overborne Mrs. Denholm, who had retreated into melancholy. Hypochondria, that useful new word. Her aunt had told Eleanor that Mrs. Denholm’s illness recurred unpredictably. She would wake up one morning unable to walk and only rediscover her legs some weeks later, rising from her chair like a phoenix. Most physicians felt that such a wandering illness was hysteric in origin. Melancholic, hypochondriac. Imagined, really.
Eleanor couldn’t see herself succumbing to imaginary ills, but perhaps marriage to Mr. Denholm would wear her down. It struck her that marriage might not just be Eve’s Burden but God’s Test. Eleanor was facing a test; that’s what had started. Although her father had disliked the thought of a God more judgemental than loving. It was a sour and depressing belief, he said, that cast a pall over far too many lives.
Just as dispiriting to picture were the marriage negotiations: the colonel asking not just for the inheritance of Goodwood but for such a grand dowry that Mrs. Crosby hesitated, bargained, and chipped him down until they reached an acceptable compromise. Acceptable, that is, to the older generation. In the end, Eleanor would be truly trapped, and Mr. Denholm ordered by his father to accept what he obviously no longer wanted, once he’d thought it through.
What he neither wanted nor needed, Eleanor thought, glimpsing the richness of Ackley Castle through the trees. Soon they turned down the drive, crossing the old moat on a gravelled dike. Inside the walls, she was surprised to see the family waiting courteously outside the great wooden doors to the tower. Mrs. Denholm was in an invalid’s Bath chair and her husband was standing behind her: a tall, thin upright man. A knife, as Eleanor had suspected.
Yet his expression was welcoming and Mrs. Denholm seemed far from oppressed. As they stepped down from the carriage, Mrs. Denholm gave them a lovely smile. Eleanor saw no sign of fretfulness, and the colonel nodded courteously as he walked toward them. Certainly he was commanding. Used to being in charge. But that was hardly surprising in a senior army officer tested in years of war.
“Mrs. Crosby. Miss Crosby,” he said. “It’s been far too long.” With his strong handsome features, he looked like Captain Denholm. Or rather, his son—hanging back near the entrance—took after the colonel. Mr. Denholm looked far more like his delicate dark-haired mother, who would have been a beauty when young and healthy.
“My dears,” Mrs. Denholm said warmly, and took Mrs. Crosby’s hand.
Eleanor found it a puzzle. She couldn’t imagine that the happy-tempered lady in the chair had peevishly called her son back from Yorkshire, and wondered if Mr. Denholm had used a letter from his mother as an excuse to escape a flirtation that was getting out of hand. He was so mercurial, Eleanor had no idea. Now, walking forward, bowing, saying her name quietly, he looked much different than he had in the morning, subdued and apologetic, with a downward tilt to his head like a well-trained dog that had misbehaved and knew it.
“I was told you’d grown, Miss Crosby,” the colonel said, walking them toward the castle. “Which is just as well, since you must have been all of ten years old when I last saw you.”
“I believe I was rather a spindly little girl,” she replied. “My father used to call me his crane fly.”
“Your excellent father,” Mrs. Denholm said, entirely unperturbed as two footmen carried her chair up the steps. “I do remember you as being rather skittish. Blond curls and such dark eyes.”
“Hazel,” her aunt said. Apparently one was supposed to ignore the chair. “In some ways, my niece hasn’t changed.”
“An innocent,” the colonel surprised her by saying.
“Perhaps we should say genuine,” Mrs. Denholm said. “To your credit, Miss Crosby.” The footmen put her chair down inside the door, one of them moving smoothly behind it to push her.
“I’m more often accused of being blunt,” Eleanor said, following Mrs. Denholm into the castle. “I’m surprised your sons didn’t mention that.”
Captain Denholm looked amused; his brother as if he agreed with her. Yet Eleanor was distracted as she walked further into the tower and her eyes adjusted to the penumbral light. To every side were suits of armour and weapons hung on the ancient walls. Swords hung above their scabbards and pikes with long oiled shafts. A wide wood staircase curved toward a higher floor, and behind it were stained glass windows with scenes from the Garden of Eden: Eve with her hand on the head of a lamb, a lion lain down, his yawn lordly in the sombre evening.
As Eleanor craned to look up at them, the low sun emerged from the clouds and splintered through the windows. Fragments of rich-hewed light struck the armour, the colours breaking into shards of yellow and crimson and indigo as they fell into fragments on the grey stone floor.
“Oh! How wonderful!” Eleanor cried. “It’s like being inside a kaleidoscope.”
She turned a slow circle, clasping her hands in delight at the riven colours, there for just a moment before they fled, the sun disappearing again behind the clouds.
“I couldn’t have been here before at this hour,” she said, coming to rest. “I would have remembered this. How extraordinary!”
Eleanor realized the others were watching her indulgently, and wondered why people always looked at her that way. The brothers had smiled at her just as complaisantly when they’d first met in Yorkshire, gazing down at her like gods on a clever young mortal. There was another time in London, she couldn’t think quite when, but she’d found herself alone in a street. “You shouldna be here,” a tiny ragged Scotswoman had said, taking Eleanor’s elbow to lead her away. They didn’t do it with others and she had no idea why they did it with her.
“You certainly aren’t shy any longer,” the colonel said. “Not a timid gel. When Mrs. Denholm got up a simple family supper to make sure you were comfortable.”
“That’s so kind,” Eleanor said, following Mrs. Denholm’s wheeled progress through a series of grand chambers. They didn’t pause. Mrs. Denholm didn’t play chatelaine, showing off her domain. But they went slowly enough for Eleanor to admire the high frescoed ceilings, the great carved mantles, the devout and bloody paintings on the red flocked walls.
Mr. Denholm walked beside her silently, his brother a few steps behind with her aunt. Mrs. Crosby hadn’t fussed Eleanor with instructions, and she was determined to try to treat the Denholms naturally. Yet as the magnificence continued, one room opening into another, Eleanor began to understand what it meant to be heir to ten thousand pounds a year—what it might mean to be his wife—and grew terrified.
Finally they reached a pleasant sitting room where the Denholms obviously spent much of their time. The scent of flowers blew through the open French doors and the latest books were stacked on tables, with sheet music scattered on a new pianoforte. A magazine caught Eleanor’s eye. She grasped it like a lifebuoy.
“Mr. Dickens’s new maga,” she said, leafing through it. “He said he planned to start another novel this month. It seems he has.”
“Perhaps my father can read it for us after supper,” Mr. Denholm said, a hint of treacle in his voice. Eleanor didn’t like it, but remembered what his brother had said about the difficulties of being their father’s heir.
“As the ladies wish,” the colonel replied with model courtesy.
“It would be a treat,” Eleanor said. “It used to be, at home. My father read so beautifully.”
“Mrs. Denholm is right, as she always is,” the colonel replied. “Your father was an excellent man. Precisely the sort of clergyman one wishes to seed throughout England. My wife knows, Miss Crosby, that I’m in favour of a national initiative to civilize the British native, sending out a cadre of well-trained missionaries. The usual lackadaisical clergy have led England into a sorry state. I don’t know which is worse in a backwater like Yorkshire. The peasantry, the yeomanry, or the aristocracy.”
Eleanor bristled, but her aunt touched the back of her arm and she reined herself in, only meeting the colonel’s eye. He was looking at her keenly, and she realized he didn’t mean a word he’d said.
* * *
When the time came for supper—the doors closed and the fire crackling—two footmen wheeled in a round table already set with silverware and flowers. They positioned it close to the fire, lighting the candles and pulling up chairs to the butler’s silent instructions.
“If you wish to be seated,” the colonel said, inflexibly correct.
Afterward, the footmen wheeled in savoury courses on a succession of carts as the butler almost invisibly served, appearing like a shadow at their elbows.
Yet Mrs. Denholm began to fidget, apologizing, unable to make herself comfortable. Her cushion irked her, and the angle of the back of her chair. A note of petulance entered her voice (“I am cramped !”) and for the first time, Eleanor could imagine Mrs. Denholm writing to demand her son come home. As she wheeled herself restlessly back and forth, the ticking of her bath chair and the constant rolling of laden carts made the room resonant with wheels. Eleanor could almost hear the old drawbridge rising outside, the creak of ancient winches and pulleys, the dull echoed thump of wood meeting wood as the bridge locked itself in place.
She started feeling trapped again, unable to think of anything to say to Mr. Denholm, who sat to her right. He couldn’t seem to think of anything to say to her either, concentrating on his supper, while on Eleanor’s other side his mother grew more and more petulant, finally shoving her dish aside irritably, her fork clattering to the floor.
“Mrs. Denholm got up a simple family supper to make you feel comfortable.” Perhaps not. A long formal dinner would have been excruciating for the poor lady, although when Eleanor gave her a sympathetic smile, Mrs. Denholm looked fierce.
“Well,” the colonel said, seeing this and standing, taking the role of the wife signalling withdrawal of the ladies from the dining table. “I’ve been extorted of a reading from Dickens. Perhaps we can join you later in the library.”
Turning to Eleanor. “You will, of course, excuse our unconventional ways.”
Eleanor smiled reflexively and rose, giving a brief regretful glance at her half-eaten chicken. They were only partway through the meal and she was still hungry, always suffering from a healthy appetite which required bowls of porridge or bread and cheese when they arrived home from more fashionable dinner parties, where young ladies were supposed to subsist on two peas and a prawn. Fortunately, when she and her aunt came into the library, they found plates of sweetmeats and bowls of fruit on a table, the footmen ready to serve, the shadowy butler directing the staff with almost imperceptible nods of his head.
Eleanor hadn’t managed to talk to her aunt. The moment they’d left the room, they’d been surrounded by busy aproned housemaids frantic to lead them to closets and help them to everything they might require, from pitchers of hot water to soap to (whispered) rags should this be your time, miss. If Goodwood was a great echoing ear, then Ackley Castle was an anthill, an untold number of soft-footed servants moving ceaselessly through its rooms and corridors, answering needs before they were expressed and preventing talk by their presence.
Aunt, she might have said. This is dreadful. How would I breathe here?
How will I breathe here?
Mrs. Denholm didn’t join them in the library and no mention was made of her absence. When the gentlemen came in, the captain managed to catch Eleanor’s eye and smile apologetically. She fell into his sympathy, and for a brief moment felt warm and happy. Then she remembered that she shouldn’t, or couldn’t, and in some confusion she looked around for his brother, finding Mr. Denholm leaning against a window sash staring moodily into the darkness.
Edward Denholm clearly wanted nothing more than to slip outside and disappear. But his father was already standing before the fire, magazine in hand, waiting for them to settle. When all were ready save his son, a sharp, impatient, nearly invisible clench of the colonel’s fist brought Mr. Denholm immediately back to himself. He hurried toward some chairs, which had been set out in a theatrical line, as if this were a box at Covent Garden and the colonel occupied the stage. Throwing himself in the nearest chair, Mr. Denholm looked around with ill-
concealed annoyance, and a footman brought him a plate of fruit directly.
“The old curiosity shop,” Colonel Denholm remarked, and Eleanor smiled at the description of his household, before realizing it was the title of Mr. Dickens’s new number.
