Rustication (24 page)

[This is the next of the anonymous letters relating to the case and it is addressed to Maud Whitaker-Smith. It is the only one that has survived that was received by someone living outside the district.
Note by CP
.]

Saturday 2
nd
of January, 2 o’clock.

E
ffie went off to Thrubwell despite the heavy fall of snow overnight and the low sky threatening more. Old Hannah came struggling through the drifts very late and gave Mother a letter. It was from Boddington and informed her that he has sold the claim on her father’s estate on these terms: A cash payment of two hundred pounds—which exactly clears the outstanding bill for the costs—and a third share of the proceeds if the suit is successful. And the purchaser will bear the future costs of the suit.

I was horrified and pointed out that the property in dispute is worth thousands of pounds.

I suspect that Boddington himself has secured it at a knockdown price. I will tackle him about that on Monday.

Then Mother started talking to me about our precarious social and financial position. She said:
I just want to see your sister settled while I’m still able to
.
And that will be hard because we are tainted by association with your father
.

I said:
Tainted! That’s so unfair. It was wrong of Father to have borrowed money without authority, but since he intended to repay it, it can’t be called embezzlement
.

Mother was silent for a moment and then said:
I should warn you, Richard, that you might hear worse allegations against him than that
.

Worse than fraud and theft?

3 o’clock.

Been thinking about Betsy’s attitude last night. The fact that she wanted cash and not a gift is actually reassuring. She simply sees what we did as a transaction—nothing more than that. There will be no awkwardness as long as I pay her. No nonsense about
liking
or
not liking
or
getting sweet
or anything like that. I will offer her enough money this very night to give me the gratification I desire. I almost began to think that I was becoming fond of her. That would be absurd. She is an instrument of pleasure and if I do her no harm and even bring her some solace and delight, there is nothing to reproach myself over.

6 o’clock.

Spent the afternoon working on a poem for Guinevere. Those dancing eyes fizzing at me. That naughty little face—half painted doll, half wicked scallywag.

It started snowing heavily again and Mother ordered me to go and meet Euphemia. I didn’t object because it occurred to me that I might encounter the Quance girls and find the opportunity to give my poem to G without her stiff-necked sister noticing. I set out half an hour earlier than I needed to and waited near the Rectory. After about twenty minutes I saw them approaching. I hurried towards them and without saying anything I pressed the paper into her hand and began to walk on. I heard footsteps hurrying behind me and when I turned found Enid approaching me scowling with rage. I had not thought she had so much passion in her. I’m sure she was angry that I had preferred her sister but what she said was:
How dare you attempt to compromise a member of my family in that way
.

Compromise
, I said.
You’re the last person in the village to object. If these letters have any credence, you’ve committed the act of darkness with that debauched rake
.

I turned my back on her and hurried on. I met Effie just the other side of Stratton Peverel and she didn’t seem at all grateful at the sight of me. We’d only gone a few paces when she started telling me she had been into the shop earlier that day on her way to Lady Terrewest and heard people gossiping about the letters. She said that someone there had parroted my “foolish idea” that Mrs Paytress had written obscene letters about herself as a way of diverting suspicion. I said I had not meant that and did not believe it for a minute but she became angrier and angrier and at last she told me to walk on and leave her alone. Mother had given me a lantern so I thrust it into her hands and strode on ahead. The snow was quite deep by now and was being blown into my face.

I had got to this side of the village when away to my right I caught a glimpse of a light moving. There were no farmhouses or cottages just there and it was odd that someone should be out in the woods and meadows in that weather.

Was it the perpetrator of the outrages? In the hope of catching him in the act, I struck into the fields and was soon lost in the darkness with all physical features blanketed by snow. I blundered about and at last saw the lantern. It seemed to be heading back toward the village but where had it come from? I saw the shape of a barn several hundred yards away. Had the bearer of the light been coming from there? There seemed nothing else in that direction. I followed the glow over fields and across fences and climbed gates in an attempt to catch up with it.

My pursuit led me back into the village through lanes that ran behind the houses. As my quarry drew near the church I managed to get closer. The man went round to the back of Mrs Paytress’s house and passed in through a side-door. I was almost certain it was the jockey-like man-servant of hers whom I had seen a couple of times.

I suppose there could be an entirely innocent explanation for what I saw and yet I cannot dismiss from my mind that idea of a man-servant carrying out the offences on the orders of his mistress. In that case, what was the
ripe morsel of gossip
?

I need to go back tomorrow and find out more.

11 o’clock.

I have little more than eight shillings in the world. I hope one will be enough to persuade Betsy tonight.

½ past 1 o’clock.

[A passage in Greek letters begins here.
Note by CP
.]

A little after midnight I went to her room and woke her up. She smiled when she saw me. I held out my hand and raised the candle over it so that she saw the shilling. She looked at it and then stared up at me. I thought she was going to make some protest. Was she now going to say she
didn’t
want money?

No, because she reached out for it saying:
Is that how you want it to be, sir?

I don’t know what she meant by that but I snatched my hand away and dropped the money in the pocket of my nightgown and said:
You’ll get that only if you’re a good girl
.

She looked up with her hair falling over her forehead, quizzical, timid. Then she moved over to make a little space beside her and I managed to squeeze into her tiny bed. Our heads were touching. I wasn’t sure what to do or say next.

She said:
What would you like for your shilling, sir?

My voice croaking a little, I said:
I’ll leave that to you, Betsy
.

She rolled up the sleeve of her nightgown and spat into her hand as if she was going to do some heavy job in the kitchen. Then she pulled up my nightgown and began to rub my cock very gently. It was already halfway stiff and in an instant it was like a rod of iron.

I leaned forward to kiss her but she drew back and frowned and said:
Kissing is for my best boy and he’s the one I’ll wed
.

So be it.

Then to my surprise she knelt on the bed and bent over me and took my cock in her mouth and worked on it with her tongue and it was the most wonderful feeling and after just a few moments of bliss, I spent.

Δ

She wouldn’t put her lips on mine but she would do that other thing! How did she know that trick?

I gave her the shilling and came back here.

[The passage in Greek letters ends here.
Note by CP
.]

· · ·

Memorandum:
OPENING
BAL
:
8s. 1½d
.
EXP
: To B:
1s
.
FINAL
BAL
:
7s. 1½d
.

4 o’clock.

Have hardly slept. Was so upset that I broke my promise to myself and smoked again. Something about her manner made me feel foolish and in the wrong.

Sunday 3
rd
of January, 10 o’clock.

R
ose and went out very early. About 5 or 6. Had to know about that man I followed last night to Mrs Paytress’s house. I started from the place where I had picked up his trail and tried to find the footprints he must have left before I had encountered him. Unfortunately, so much snow had fallen overnight that there were no tracks at all except those of birds and rabbits and mice and
such small deer
.

I headed towards the barn I had seen last night and found it was ruined—roofless and open to the elements. However, there were some small outhouses beside it. They seemed to be derelict and abandoned but one of them had a padlocked door. I kicked away some of the snow that had fallen overnight and found dark streaks of blood.

I looked around and spotted something strange on a gate about eighty yards away. I went closer. It was a grotesque doll some eighteen inches high that had been nailed to the gate.

As I walked away I looked back and saw a man dressed as a farmer examining the object. I hope he didn’t spot me.

I was on the road home when I saw Lucy Lloyd coming towards me. She was alone. I decided to walk on staring at her all the time to give her a chance to acknowledge me. When she was about forty or fifty paces away she glanced at me quickly and then gazed straight ahead and walked past me. I could not bear to be snubbed again so I turned and ran back and called out:
This is too bad! You’re cutting me again!

She looked furious and walked on.

I said:
I know what is going on. Someone is spreading the vilest untruths about me
.

She said—and her voice was trembling though whether with anger or fear I could not tell:
I have no idea what you’re talking about
.

I said:
Don’t try and play the innocent
.

She looked over my shoulder and said:
My father and mother are behind me in the carriage. I only descended to take exercise
.
Please let go of me
.

I had not even realised that I had taken her hand in mine. I released it. I said:
Have people told you things? What have you heard?

I’ve heard nothing
.

I said:
You’re surely aware that disgusting libels are being published about young women in the neighbourhood—including my sister
. She feigned a smirk of perfect innocence that goaded me beyond endurance. I said:
The letters make allegations against you as well
.

She stepped back as if I had raised my hand to her. What a look of outraged purity came over her face.

I said:
Mrs Quance repeated one of them at the Greenacres’ two nights ago and all but named you
.

She put her hands over her face and turned away.

I said:
You’re pretending to be shocked. You’re writing those letters yourself, aren’t you?

Now at last she gazed at me in astonishment—or a good simulacrum of it. She said:
It’s your friend Mrs Paytress who is writing them. With that man-servant. Everyone knows that
.

Her man-servant?

That ugly bent little man who is employed in her stables
. She smiled in an unpleasant manner and said:
They say he is her paramour. They say
. . .

I cannot write the filthy words. Now I understood the hints those old men had been making during dessert. That was why that sinister dwarf was out last night planting the fetish. He writes the letters with her and takes them to the post.

I must have stood there like a lummox.

How do you like your own medicine, Master Shenstone?
she asked with a smile.

At that moment I became aware of the sound of hooves and wheels and turned to see an open carriage come to a halt a few dozen yards away. In it were her father and mother.