To Love and to Cherish (4 page)

Nothing. Open a book, call for tea. Endure.

Footsteps on the stairs: a timely interruption. I hope it’s—

I
T WAS
S
USAN
. “M’lady,” she said, patting her chest, panting a little from the climb, “‘scuse me fer interruptin’, but I thought you did ought t’ know that Reverend Morrell’s come to see ’is lordship.”

“Reverend Morrell? He’s here, now?” A glance at the mantel clock told her it was almost nine o’clock.

“Well, ’e might still be here. See, ma’am, Violet answered the door an’ put ’im in the blue parlor, but then Mrs. Fruit come an’ told ’im ’is lordship’s away an’ you was indisposed—which is what you said when you wouldn’t come down to supper.”

“Then—he’s gone?” Her chair scraped sharply on the floor when she stood up.

“Well, ’e were talkin’ to Mrs. Fruit when I come up to tell you, so I can’t say but what ’e might still be here. Shall I—do you want me to—”

“I’ll go myself.” Anne brushed past Susan in the doorway and hurried down the narrow steps, wondering at her own urgency. As starved as she was for human contact, she was also profoundly unfit for it tonight. Besides, what could she and the Archangel have to say to each other? She slowed her steps as she neared the blue parlor, hoping he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t.

Her heart sank; the heaviness of her disappointment amazed her. Violet was pulling the heavy draperies across the windows on the other side of the room. “Where is Reverend Morrell, Violet?”

“Why, ’e left, m’lady. Mrs. Fruit was just now walkin’ ’im to the door.”

“The courtyard door?” The maid nodded. “When?”

“‘Alf a minute ago.”

Anne gathered up her skirts and rushed back down the hall the way she’d come.

The housekeeper was nowhere in sight. Anne threw open the courtyard door and started down the two shallow steps. Under the gatehouse arch twenty yards away, Reverend Morrell heard the door hinges creak, and whirled around; in the pale light of a thin quarter moon, the white of his shirt gleamed as bright as a candle. For a long second, neither of them moved. Then, in unison, they started toward each other, and met in the center of the weedy flagstone courtyard.

“Reverend Morrell,” she said, nearly as out of breath as Susan had been. “I’m glad I caught you. They just told me you’d come—forgive me for not greeting you.” They touched hands briefly, Anne wearing her blithest social smile.

He wasn’t in clerical garb tonight—his sober suit looked brown or dark blue, it was hard to tell in the murky light. What would she have taken him for, she wondered, if she hadn’t known he was a minister? A barrister? No, he was too . . . vigorous, too physical for such a sedentary occupation. Not a scholar either, for the same reason, although his face was intelligent enough for it. An architect, perhaps. Yes. A master builder, the sort of man who constructed churches rather than preached in them.

“It’s very late,” he was saying apologetically. “I really came to see your husband, just to ask him a question. When Mrs. Fruit said you weren’t feeling well, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

She’d forgotten how consoling his low voice was. “No, she was mistaken. As you can see, I’m quite well. Won’t you come in? Now that you’re here—”

“Thank you, I’d better not.” He peered at her as if he didn’t believe she was quite well, and she wondered how he could know. If she cried so much as one tear, her eyes always gave her away, but tonight she hadn’t been weeping. “I didn’t know Geoffrey was away,” he explained. “I only wanted to ask him a question about his father’s gravestone.”

“Ah.” She folded her arms and took a step back. Now that she knew he wasn’t staying, she couldn’t decide whether she was glad or sorry. “I suppose he’s left all of that to you, the details about the stone and the epitaph and so on.” She made her voice sympathetic, inviting him to complain of the imposition, or to say something about how typical it was of Geoffrey.

But he declined the invitation. “Yes,” he said mildly, “and now the stonecutter wants to know what to carve on the headstone.”

Something made her say, “And do you really imagine, Reverend Morrell, that Geoffrey would care?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe not,” he admitted after a moment. “But I had to ask.”

“Yes, I suppose. Perhaps I can advise you, then. If you left it to Geoffrey, I’m afraid he might suggest something profane.”

She thought he smiled slightly at that. Just then the house cat, an overweight tabby called Olive, sidled out of the shadows under the archway and began to rub her rotund sides against the vicar’s ankles. He bent and picked her up. The lazy animal straddled his muscular forearm and let all four legs go limp, nuzzling his hand with her cheeks and purring like a machine. Anne smiled to herself, imagining Reverend Morrell with birds on his shoulders, a squirrel or two at his feet, maybe a lamb in his arms: St. Francis of Wyckerley.

“What epitaph would you advise, Lady D’Aubrey?” he asked lightly. The shameless cat arched her back voluptuously when he scratched behind her ears.

“Mmm, something simple and unambiguous, I should think. What you want to avoid is the suggestion that Geoffrey had any actual fondness for his father. ‘Rest in peace’ would probably cover it. Or—in your line of work, I suppose you would prefer ‘
Requiescat in pace
?’” Why was she talking like this? She was almost baiting him—she reminded herself of Geoffrey!

His fine eyes measured her in that steady, tolerant way which would undoubtedly earn him a place in heaven. She reached up to pet Olive’s head; their fingers touched before Reverend Morrell moved his hand back, out of reach. “When will Geoffrey return?” he asked, ignoring her facetious question.

“I really couldn’t say. He went to an auction in Exeter to buy a horse. I thought he might have mentioned it to you.”

“No, he didn’t, but I’ve been away myself.”

“Tending to your flock in the nether regions?” Now, that really was too much. She bit her lip. “I beg your pardon, I’m not fit for company tonight. It’s—I have a headache,” she fabricated, “and that always makes me insufferable. Don’t pay any attention to me.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” The gentleness in his voice alarmed her, but not as much as the understanding in his eyes. The last thing she wanted was to be understood by Christian Morrell.

“Not unless you’re a physician as well as a priest,” she said shortly. “Thank you for your concern, but I assure you my ailment is physical, not moral. At least for the time being.”

He set Olive on her feet carefully and straightened. “I’m sorry. I won’t keep you any longer.”

Immediately she regretted her words—again—but she had no hope of detaining him now. And why would she want to, really? Her ambivalence was making her tired. “Good night, Reverend. I’ll tell Geoffrey you came. If some sentimental fit seizes him and he decides he wants something kindhearted chiseled on his father’s stone”—even now, she couldn’t shake off this childish sarcasm—“I’m sure he’ll let you know.”

“I’m sure.” He made her a slow, deliberate bow—she’d have called it an ironic bow, except she didn’t think irony was in the vicar’s straightforward lexicon—and left her in the darkness.

***

 . . . “Is there anything I can do to help you?” he asked me. Which means he believes I need help. God, I hate that, loathe the thought of him feeling sorry for me! It’s why I sent him away, wanted him gone, wasn’t even polite to him. Now I’m paying for the mortal sin of rudeness, because I’m alone again. And tonight is one of those nights when solitude is absolute hell.

IV

M
ISS
S
OPHIE
D
EENE
was leading the children’s choir in the second verse of “O Sons and Daughters, Let Us Sing!”

That Easter morn at break of day,

The faithful women went their way

To seek the tomb where Jesus lay.

Alleluia!

The shrill but sweet voices filled the church, which was packed this Easter morning, and brought smiles to the faces of many in the congregation, anxious or indulgent depending on the hearer’s relationship to the little choristers. Miss Deene herself, pretty in a flowered blue frock and a little white jacket, was looking happier and more relaxed with every chorus, and Reverend Morrell recalled how worried she’d been all week about her debut as precentor of the children’s choir. He made a mental note to compliment her after the service—that is, if he could get anywhere near her; Sophie had more beaus than any girl in Wyckerley, and most of them were sitting in the nave right now, beaming at her with lovesick adoration.

That night the apostles met in fear;

Amidst them came their Lord most dear,

And said, “My peace be on all here.”

Alleluia!

From his chair in the presbytery, Christy gazed out at his congregation. He knew everyone, of course, some better than others, because he’d lived his whole life among them. What troubled him was that, even after a year as their vicar, except for a few, he still knew the people best as neighbors and friends, not as parishioners. Christ the Good Shepherd was his model, but the men and women to whom he regularly administered the sacraments of communion, baptism, and marriage could in no way be called his “flock.” Last night he’d had a dream—he remembered it now for the first time, his memory tripped by the sight of Tranter Fox, one of his favorite but also one of his most recalcitrant parishioners, sneaking into the service late and sidling belligerently into a back pew. Tranter had figured in the dream by standing up in the middle of Sunday service and shouting out with aggrieved wonder, “Say,
you
ain’t Reverend Morrell!” Christy had looked down in horror and seen that, instead of his vestments, he was wearing the old buckskin trousers and kneeboots he used to wear when he raced his horses. “No, it’s me,” he’d insisted, “it’s Christy, you know me!” He held up his Bible, solid proof of his calling, and before his eyes it metamorphosed into a magazine edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” He couldn’t remember the rest—mercifully; the congregation had probably tarred and feathered him, chanting “Imposter! Imposter!” all the while.

When Thomas first the tidings heard,

How they had seen the risen Lord,

He doubted the disciples word.

Alleluia!

The trouble was, more often than not he felt like an imposter. “This is natural,” Reverend Murth, his favorite professor at theological college, had assured him in a long letter just last week. “Be patient, Christian. Soon enough the great burden of pastoral enlightenment will fall on your shoulders, and you will understand how to minister as one who bears in himself the wounds of Christ.” So far, Christy couldn’t see any signs of it. The gentle shadow of his father followed him everywhere, unintentionally reminding him of who the real vicar of All Saints still was, at least in the minds and hearts of those who had loved him.

Christy fingered the edge of the page of notes he’d folded and slipped inside his Bible. His teachers had frowned on the practice of carrying notes into the pulpit; a sermon should sound spontaneous, they’d decreed, even if the minister had spent hours memorizing it. All very well in theory, but Christy had learned through painful experience that his sermons went on forever when he preached them without notes—and sometimes even with them—and the primary emotion they summoned from his hearers was relief when they were finally over. He was afraid that even his concise, carefully reasoned, most philosophical discourses failed to persuade anyone to change his behavior, much less his mind, at least not for long. The mind was like a pendulum: a forceful sermon might move it from its habitual position, but sooner or later it always swung back into place.

The sound of slow footsteps on stone made him look up. Every head in the church swiveled to watch the couple moving up the center aisle of the nave at a pace that, depending on one’s point of view, was either sedate or indifferent. If the Viscount and Viscountess D’Aubrey didn’t quite look to the manor born yet, it wasn’t, at least on Geoffrey’s part, for lack of trying. His new lordship wore an Oxford gray coat and trousers with a bright and no doubt deliberately provocative cornflower-blue waistcoat and a wilting clutch of violets stuck in his buttonhole. He’d worn black to his father’s funeral and had warned Christy afterward that it was for the last time. “Better to scandalize the neighbors than play the hypocrite,” he’d declared, lips curling in the characteristic sneer Christy was learning to dread.

The neighbors might be scandalized—it didn’t take much to shock the people of Wyckerley—but avid curiosity was the dominant expression on their faces at the moment. Lady D’Aubrey, at least, was in suitable mourning; she wore the same plain black gown she’d worn to the funeral, with the same veiled black hat. Today she’d pinned the veil back, though, as if in defiance of the fascinated stares she must have known she would receive. Her odd, inimitable foreignness was on display again, and Christy attributed it to something more than her rather eccentric jet jewelry or the fact that her clothes looked more European than English. He couldn’t define it more precisely than a certain worldliness in her manner, and he felt frustrated because the key to the intriguing essence of her still eluded him.

He broke off from his own worldly speculations, realizing the choir had piped its last alleluia. The members were taking their seats in the chancel and the congregation was training on him those looks of passive expectancy that always unnerved him. The pulpit was an ornate Jacobean affair at the top of four steps, surrounded by a carved mahogany rail; it was impossible not to feel that something special, something beyond the powers of an average human being, was required from anyone with the temerity to mount those steps and face the waiting audience, armed with nothing but a Bible and a handful of scribbled pages.

He chose Corinthians instead of Colossians for the Epistle, and St. Mark’s story of the first Easter for the Gospel. The message he wanted to convey in his sermon was a simple, compassionate one, that although faith was a gift that had been given by God to all men, even Christ’s disciples were amazed and astonished by his Resurrection, which he had prophesied to them again and again. How understandable, then, that so many people today, who had never known Jesus as a man, lacked true faith in him as the Son of God and the Savior of all mankind. Lack of faith was not a sin in and of itself, he argued, but simply a failing, a misfortune that could be overcome by prayer, perseverance, and God’s help. Today was the day we celebrated God’s love, the day when the gift of faith was there for the taking.

After half an hour or so, Christy had finished his prepared sermon. But he was reluctant to stop; he hadn’t truly touched them yet, hadn’t quite said what he really meant. Against everything he knew, including his own better judgment, he began speaking
ex tempore
, repeating earlier points, rephrasing them slightly. He had done this before and knew it was futile, and yet he couldn’t bring his sermon to a close until the message of the Resurrection in all its hope and glory had been communicated.

Hopeless. Once again the lesson of diminishing returns had eluded him, for with every sentence, every passing minute, he heard himself falling farther from the goal. At length he summed up, and when he finished, he imagined a silent but unanimous sigh of relief.

His sense of failure weighed on him for the rest of the service. As he consecrated the bread and the wine, though, it came to him that in one way his dismal sermons kept things in proportion: since the Eucharist was the centerpiece of the service—indeed, of the Anglican faith itself—at least his parishioners were in no danger of losing proper perspective due to the brilliance of his oratory.

Fortunately, God in his wisdom had made an Easter morning glorious enough to persuade the sourest skeptic of the truth of the Resurrection. Feather-pillow clouds floated high in an azure sky, and the song of birds in the treetops sounded like the very soul of joy. Shaking hands with his parishioners on the church steps, Christy felt both humbled and relieved, knowing that the petty weaknesses and failings he agonized over every day were actually, in the true scheme of things, utterly insignificant. The Lord had a Plan—on a day like this, it was easy to believe it—and the well-meaning incompetence of one country parson was hardly likely to endanger it.

“Hell of a sermon, Reverend Morrell,” Geoffrey told him, the bright gleam in his eye the only indication that he was being facetious. “Your words were an inspiration. I’ll go forth and sin no more.”

“Then my sacred ministry is a success,” Christy returned with the same fatuous solemnity. In church, he’d thought Geoffrey looked healthier than he had a week ago at his father’s funeral; but out here in the inconsiderate April sunshine, that proved to be an illusion. His cheekbones stood out like blades in his gaunt face, and the set of his mouth looked pained and unnatural. But he was sober for once, and Christy supposed that was something.

He made a short bow over Lady D’Aubrey’s hand and asked how she was settling into her new home.

“Quite well, thank you. Except for the sad circumstances that brought us to Wyckerley, we’re extremely pleased with our new situation.”

He was certain now that her perfect, friendly propriety was a mask. But what did it conceal? Sadness? Contempt? Smiling politely, she complimented him on his sermon, the altar flowers, the music. When she turned away to speak to Dr. Hesselius, he felt a curious stab of dismay, noticing that she greeted the doctor with exactly the same bland, impenetrable courtesy with which she’d just treated him.

More well-wishers were waiting to shake his hand. He praised Miss Pine and Mrs. Thoroughgood on the beauty of the flowers they’d painstakingly arranged at dawn this morning, and he thanked Sophie Deene for a splendid job with the choir. Tolliver Deene, Sophie’s father, invited him to supper next Friday, and he accepted gladly. Tolliver and his brother-in-law, Eustace Vanstone, owned the two largest copper mines in the district. Deene was a thoughtful, educated man, and Christy always enjoyed his company. Pretty Sophie was an agreeable companion, too, not only because she was easy to look at, but because her brand of flirtation was lighthearted and pleasurable, not exhausting.

“Fine sermon today, Vicar,” Dr. Hesselius told him with every evidence of sincerity, while he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for the pipe he’d been longing to smoke for the last hour and a quarter.

Christy smiled and said thanks, recalling the doctor’s half-closed eyes and slack jaw toward the end of his discourse. But then, Dr. Hesselius always looked tired. Some people blamed it on too many patients, while others said it was because he’d recently married a woman who was twenty years his junior.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Lily Hesselius agreed, showing her teeth and widening her kohl-black eyes at Christy admiringly. “I don’t know when I’ve heard a more stirring and
invigorating
talk, Reverend Morrell.”

Mrs. Ludd, Christy’s housekeeper, called young Mrs. Hesselius a brazen hussy. She was from the big city—Exeter—and consequently an alien; her extroverted manner didn’t sit well with some of the more reserved residents of St. Giles’ parish, and her interest in her husband’s friends, perhaps his male friends in particular, had been taken by some for indiscretion—at best. Christy didn’t judge; he liked her and was inclined to take her vivacious goodwill at face value.

More pleasantries were exchanged, and then the doctor and his wife moved away. Captain Carnock took their place. “Good talk, Vicar. Lost you there at the part about free will and the cosmology of good and evil, though,” he boomed. Captain Carnock was a recent arrival to the neighborhood, only four years or so. “Still, ruddy good show and all. Keeps ’em thinking, what?”

Christy thanked him, taking a half step back from the captain’s broad, imposing belly. He wasn’t in uniform—he’d retired from the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars several years ago—but his military bearing was still so prominent that he gave the impression of being in stripes and brass insignia no matter what he wore. “Mayor Vanstone tells me you’ll be joining him on the bench at the next petty session,” Christy mentioned.

“Yes, and I know at least one man I’ve got to thank for it.” His homely face broke into a grin and he clapped Christy hard on the arm. “Vanstone told me you put in a word for me with the old viscount before he passed. That smoothed the way, sir, and I appreciate it.”

“I told Lord D’Aubrey I thought you’d make a fine magistrate, which is nothing but the truth,” he demurred. “It was he who passed your name to the lord lieutenant.”

“All the same, I doubt I’d have succeeded without your help.”

Christy smiled and shook his head, but said no more. Old D’Aubrey had grown increasingly remote in his advancing years; at a time when the county needed a new justice of the peace, he was too isolated from the people to have any idea as to who might fill the vacancy. Christy knew Captain Carnock to be outspoken, upright, and shrewd, and had merely passed that information along to his lordship before his last illness had incapacitated him completely.

The captain reached for his hat and snatched it off, and Christy turned to see Miss Weedie at his elbow. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said softly, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Captain Carnock made her a smart military bow, declaring, “Not at all, dear lady, not at all, we’d finished our talk. Good afternoon to you, Vicar. Ma’am.” Bowing again, he pivoted and went down the steps, his back straight as a musket barrel.

For as long as he could remember, Christy had thought of Miss Jessica Weedie as an old maid, even though she couldn’t have been any older than he was now when, twenty years or so ago, she’d first taught him his letters in the village school. She was shy and awkward, and filled sometimes with a strange, restless energy; she called herself, with disarming accuracy, “a bit of a mess.” It wasn’t that she looked particularly spinsterish; in fact, there was still something girlish in her tall, gawky figure, even though her yellow hair had begun to streak with silver. The old maid quality came from an acute reserve of manner and a timidity that intensified around members of the opposite sex. She was blushing now, her smooth cheeks glowing a pretty shade of rose. “I beg your pardon,” she repeated, twisting her gloves in her hands. “I only wanted to remind you about our little tea party this afternoon, Reverend.”