The Forest (80 page)

‘You could go on the stage, Miss Totton,’ Martell declared with an amused shake of the head and a warm glance in her direction. ‘Your cousin, Miss Albion,’ he observed, ‘is a most amusing companion.’

‘I am delighted you have discovered it,’ said Fanny, but she looked tired.

The light-hearted conversation came to a sudden end, however, with the entrance into the room of old Mr Albion. With one hand he leaned on a silver-topped stick; the other arm was supported by Mrs Pride. His silk breeches and waistcoat and cravat were in perfect order; his snow-white hair was neatly brushed; his several days’ growth of beard was not shaved but trimmed close. His eyes, old though they might be, were the most startling blue that Martell had ever seen. His coat hung loosely; he was thin and frail; but as he moved slowly across the room to an upright chair, he seemed to have discovered an almost fierce old dignity with which to meet his guests.

As is often done when a very aged person is in a room, people took turns to come and speak to him. Martell, as the visitor, went first. After the usual compliments, which were well enough received, he remarked that they had all enjoyed his daughter’s company in Oxford that spring. It was hard to be sure, but this seemed to please the old man less. Martell then remarked that he was come recently from Dorset and was planning to proceed to Kent, since this sort of geographical information usually opened up a conversational response of some kind.

‘Dorset?’ Mr Albion enquired, then looked thoughtful. ‘I’m afraid’, he confessed regretfully, ‘I never liked it much.’

‘Too many long hills, Sir?’ Martell offered.

‘I never leave here now.’

‘I understand you travelled to America,’ Martell attempted, still in hope.

The old blue eyes looked up at him sharply. ‘Yes. That’s right.’ Mr Albion now appeared to be considering something and Martell supposed he might be about to make some reflection upon the subject. But after a few moments it seemed that if he had been going to, he had thought better of it, for his eyes wandered to Louisa instead and, raising his silver-topped stick he pointed to her. ‘Very pretty, isn’t she?’

‘Indeed, Sir.’

Mr Albion seemed rather to have lost interest in Martell now for he pointed at Louisa again. ‘You’re looking very pretty today,’ he addressed her.

She bobbed a curtsy and, smiling, took this as a cue to come to his side, where she knelt down very charmingly by his arm.

‘Are you comfortable down there?’ the old man asked.

‘I’m always comfortable’, she said, ‘when I come to talk to you.’

It being plain that the old man had no further use for his company, Martell withdrew while Fanny went to make sure there was nothing her father needed.

‘I feel sorry for Miss Albion,’ he murmured to Edward. ‘Where did you intend we should go tomorrow?’

‘To Beaulieu, if the weather’s fine,’ said Edward.

‘Could we not ask your cousin to accompany us?’ Martell suggested. ‘It must be grim for her being in this house with her father all the time.’

Edward agreed and thought the plan a good one. ‘I shall do my best,’ he promised.

After this, Fanny returned and Martell had the opportunity to talk to her for several minutes. She seemed to recover her former cheerfulness somewhat and they enjoyed a little of the pleasant conversational intimacy they had experienced at Oxford, but as well as appearing rather older, there was, he thought, a hint of sadness, even tragedy in her person, now that he saw her in the setting of her home. She must get away from here, he decided. Someone must save her from this. But he could quite see that such an escape would not be easy. Perhaps the visit to Beaulieu might raise her spirits. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Edward approaching the old man. Young Totton’s affable manner, he supposed, would do the trick nicely.

‘I think, Sir,’ Edward addressed Mr Albion with a charming smile, ‘that Louisa and I shall beg you, if the weather is fine, to let us steal our cousin Fanny from you for an hour or two tomorrow.’

‘Oh?’ Mr Albion looked up quite sharply. ‘What for?’

‘We mean to visit Beaulieu.’

For a second, not even that, a tiny shadow might have appeared on Louisa’s face, but in an instant it was gone. ‘Oh, yes!’ she cried. ‘Do let Fanny join us. We shall not, I’m sure,’ she declared, ‘be gone for more than half the day.’ And she gave Mr Albion a smile that really should have melted him, had he not looked away.

‘Beaulieu?’ They might have announced an intention to travel up to Scotland. ‘Beaulieu? That’s a long way.’

No one quite liked to point out that it was scarcely more than four miles from where they were, but Edward, to his credit and with a pleasant laugh, remarked: ‘Scarcely further than we have come to see you today. We’ll be there and back in no time.’

Mr Albion looked doubtful. ‘With my sister away and in my state of health …’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘There’s no one else to take care of matters …’

‘You have Mrs Pride, Sir,’ said Edward.

But this interference in his domestic arrangements did not suit Mr Albion at all. ‘Mrs Pride has nothing to do with it,’ he snapped.

‘I think’, Fanny interposed gently, not wanting to see her father upset, ‘that it would be better, Edward, if I remained here.’

‘There,’ Mr Albion said crossly, yet with a triumphant gleam in his eye. ‘She doesn’t even want to go.’

This was so outrageous that Martell, who was not used to being crossed himself, could scarcely remain in passive silence. ‘You will permit me to observe, Sir,’ he said quietly but firmly, ‘that a brief excursion might benefit Miss Albion.’

Had this intervention done any good? For a second or two, as Mr Albion sat, his head momentarily sunk down in his cravat, in total silence, it was impossible to tell. But then, suddenly, it became all too clear. The old man’s head shot up on its stalk so that he suddenly looked like an enraged old turkey. The neck might be withered but the startling blue eyes were blazing. ‘And you will permit
me
to observe, Sir,’ he shouted, ‘that my daughter’s health is none of your concern. I am not aware, Sir, that the arrangement of this house has passed into your hands. To the best of my knowledge, Sir’ – and now he raised his silver-topped stick and drove it down into the floor with all his force, to accentuate each word – ‘I – am – still – master – of – this – house!’

‘I had no doubt of it, Sir,’ answered Martell, flushing, ‘and I had no wish to offend you, Sir, but merely …’

Mr Albion, however, was no longer of a mind to listen. He was white with rage. ‘You
do
offend me. And you will oblige me, Sir’ – he spat out the words with venom – ‘if you make your observations in some other place. You will oblige
me
, Sir’ – he seemed to be struggling to rise from his chair now, grasping the arm with one hand and the stick with the other – ‘if you will leave this
house!
’ This last word was almost a shriek as, unable to get up, he fell back into the chair and began a gasping cough.

Fanny, now white herself and obviously fearing her father was about to have an apoplexy, gave Martell an imploring look and, with some hesitation – in case Mr Albion really was having a fit and Fanny in need of assistance – he backed into the hall, followed by Edward and Louisa. Mrs Pride, by now, had already miraculously appeared and, having inspected her employer, signalled to the visitors that it was safe to retire.

Once outside, Edward shook his head with some amusement. ‘Not a great success, I fear, as a visit.’

‘No.’ Martell was still too surprised to say much. ‘That is the first time’, he remarked wryly, ‘that I have ever been thrown out of someone’s house. But I fear for poor Miss Albion.’

‘Poor, dear Fanny,’ said Louisa. ‘I shall go back there this afternoon, Edward, with mother.’

‘Well done, Louisa,’ her brother said approvingly.

‘They say there’s bad blood in the Albion family,’ continued Louisa sadly. ‘I suppose that’s what it is. Poor Fanny.’

An hour later, after she had helped Mr Albion to his room and sat with Fanny while she wept, Mrs Pride slipped out of the house and made her way across to Mr Gilpin’s.

The weather was perfect the following morning when Edward and Louisa set out with Mr Martell. Unfortunately, because Mrs Totton was already engaged, Louisa had been unable to go back to see her cousin; but she had sent Fanny a most loving letter, which the groom had taken across that very same afternoon, so her conscience was clear.

She really felt quite cheerful, therefore, as the carriage bowled up the turnpike towards Lyndhurst where they meant to pause briefly before crossing the heath. Mr Martell was in a conversational mood. It was very agreeable, of course, to be asked questions so attentively. Although always polite, she noticed that if Martell became interested in a subject he would pursue it, at least in his own mind, with a relentless thoroughness that she had not encountered before but which, she acknowledged to herself, was proper in a man.

‘I see, Mr Martell,’ she remarked upon one occasion, ‘that you insist upon knowing things.’ And this he acknowledged with a laugh.

‘I apologize, my dear Miss Totton, it’s my nature. Do you find it disagreeable?’

He had never addressed her as ‘dear Miss Totton’ before, nor asked her opinion of his character.

‘Not at all, Mr Martell,’ she said with a smile that had just a hint of seriousness in it. ‘To be truthful, no one in conversation ever asked me to think very much before. Yet when you issue such a challenge, I find it to my liking.’

‘Ah,’ he said, and seemed both pleased and thoughtful.

The village of Lyndhurst had changed very little since the Middle Ages. The forest court still met there. The King’s House, somewhat enlarged, with a big stable block opposite and extensive fenced gardens on the slope behind, was still essentially the royal manor and hunting lodge it had always been. There were two gentlemen’s houses in the near vicinity, one called Cuffnell’s, the other Mount-royal; but Lyndhurst’s scattering of cottages only really amounted to a hamlet. The status of the place was signalled rather by the fine church which, replacing the ancient royal chapel, had been erected on Lyndhurst’s highest piece of ground beside the King’s House and could be seen like a beacon for several miles around.

They paused only briefly at the King’s House before going to look at the racetrack. This was an informal affair, laid out on a large expanse of New Forest lawn, north of Lyndhurst. There were no permanent stands: in the usual manner of the age, people watched the races from carriages and carts if they wanted a better view.

‘One of the attractions here’, Edward explained, ‘is the New Forest pony races. You’d be amazed how fast they can run and they’re wonderfully sure-footed. You must come back for a race meeting, Martell.’ And something about the look on Martell’s face told Louisa that he probably would.

They set out for Beaulieu now. The lane to the old abbey, which ran south-east across open heath, left Lyndhurst from just below the racetrack. In so doing, it passed by two most curious sights, which immediately engaged Martell’s attention. The first was a great, grassy mound.

‘It’s known’, Edward explained, ‘as Bolton’s Bench.’

It was the great Hampshire magnate the Duke of Bolton who, early in the century, had decided to take the little mound where once old Cola the Huntsman had directed operations and raise it into a great mound that overlooked the whole of Lyndhurst. The duke was well known for these sweeping alterations to the landscape. Elsewhere in the Forest he had arbitrarily blazed a huge straight drive through miles of ancient woodland because he thought it would make a pleasing ride for himself and his friends. But what struck Martell even more than Bolton’s man-made hill was the great grassy earth wall that stretched across the landscape just beyond it.

‘That’s the Park Pale,’ said Edward. ‘They used it once for catching deer.’

The huge deer trap where Cola the Huntsman had once directed operations was still an awesome sight. Enlarged even further some five centuries before, its earthwork wall strode across the landscape for almost two miles, before making a mighty sweep round into the woods below Lyndhurst. In the clear morning sunshine the great empty ruin might have been some prehistoric inclosure in a genteel world; yet the deer of the Forest were still there, men still hunted; only the turnpike road nearby and the church on Lyndhurst rise had altered the place since medieval days. And who knew, as they gazed at the earthwork in silence, if suddenly a pale deer might not appear from beside the green hill of Bolton’s Bench and run out across the open ground?

It was at this moment that they heard a merry cry from behind them and turned to see a small open chaise coming round the track behind Bolton’s Bench; inside it sat the sturdy figure of Mr Gilpin, who was waving his hat cheerfully. Beside him was a curly-haired boy. And on the other side of the boy sat Fanny Albion.

‘Oh,’ said Louisa.

They all walked into the abbey together. Mr Gilpin was in high good humour.

He had been surprised by Mrs Pride the housekeeper’s call the day before, yet rather intrigued and delighted to do something to help Fanny. He quite agreed with her that Miss Albion needed to go out with her cousins, especially after the behaviour of old Francis Albion. But he pointed out to her that, if the old man continued in his present mood, it would scarcely be possible to extract Fanny.

But while Mrs Pride acknowledged that this was true, she also assured him: ‘Some days, Sir, Mr Albion sleeps right through the day and would not even know if Miss Albion were out.’

‘You think tomorrow might be such a day, do you?’ the vicar asked.

‘He was so excited this afternoon, Sir, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘I do believe’, the amused Mr Gilpin remarked to his wife, after Mrs Pride had gone, ‘that she’s going to drug him.’

‘Is that proper, my dear?’ his wife asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Gilpin.

So he had set off very cheerfully that morning in his light two-wheeled chaise. Calling at the school on the way, he had also collected the Furzey boy. He knew he shouldn’t, but the child had such a sparkling intelligence that it was almost impossible to resist the temptation to educate him.