The Weeping Ash (3 page)

He glanced around at her, drumming his fingers on the elbow loop, and she gave him a strained, nervous smile.

“Are those
tears
in your eyes? Why, pray?” he demanded, his voice sharp with suspicion.

“It—it is a little cold. And I was—just for a moment—missing my home,” Fanny stammered.

Her husband subjected her to a curious, raking scrutiny; there seemed to be anger in it, hostility, even jealousy; surely nobody, she thought in horror, could have told him anything about her brief acquaintance, nobody could have mentioned the name of Barnaby Ferrars? Nobody had known—not a soul—not even her sisters. Besides, none of them had ever been left alone to converse with Captain Paget. She had never been alone with him herself until now. And fortunately her father had not the least notion that she and Barnaby had ever exchanged more than a few words.

No, Captain Paget could know nothing. His next words reassured her.

“It is true, you are hardly more than a child,” he said. “When your father suggested that I might marry one of his daughters, I purposely picked you, as the youngest.”

“We—we did wonder why—when Kitty is so much prettier—” ventured Fanny.

“Pretty,” certainly, was not a term that could be applied to Fanny herself. Her face was a clear oval, with a pointed chin, a straight delicate nose, a pair of dark hazel eyes, and a sensitive mouth. A mole on her left cheekbone had been the subject of many malicious comments by her sister Kitty and was regretted by Fanny herself; she did not realize that it gave her face a pleasing touch of irregularity and that a fashionable lady in London would have placed a beauty spot in just such a position to add piquancy to the classic calm of her countenance. Her looks were not striking, but the eye of the observer, once caught, tended to linger on her; what seemed at first a serene, demure symmetry could break up in a flash to a most vivid awareness—intensity—sympathy of intelligence. Her hair, a shining, silky, hazel exactly the same shade as her eyes, was banded smoothly around her small nut-shaped head and knotted on the nape of her neck.

“Tush!” said Captain Paget rather shortly. “What are looks? When a flower is showy, the bees gather around. I wished to secure a bride whose fancies had not been—could not have been—allowed to stray. Your father assured me that this was so in your case.—
Is that the truth?
” he suddenly rapped out.

“Y-yes, sir!” lied Fanny, digging her nails into her palms.

“I am relieved to hear it! Let it continue so, always.—Now, at last, we are approaching Petworth,” he went on in a different tone, glancing out at the rain-streaked dusk. “Another ten minutes and we shall be at home, thank heaven. I hope those two idiots, and my sapskulls of servants, will have succeeded in arranging the furniture with some tolerable degree of order and comfort.”

“Was the house not furnished, then, sir?” inquired Fanny, immensely relieved at a change of subject.

“Would I be obliged to bring in furniture if it had been?” he demanded. “No—my cousin Juliana—for reasons best known to herself—chose to take all her furnishings and household goods with her to Demerara.”

By now they had reached the town of Petworth, of which little was to be seen in the twilight, save a tollhouse and a few timbered cottages. The carriage rattled through narrow, cobbled streets and shortly drew up on the graveled sweep in front of what could only dimly be seen to be a plainly built stone and brick gentleman's residence.

The door instantly flew open as the carriage came to a halt; Fanny's apprehensive gaze beheld what seemed like at least half a dozen persons waiting inside. However several of these were servants, whom Thomas instantly ordered to unpack the baggage; and he hustled Fanny through the door, pushing two young ladies and a child unceremoniously out of the way.

“Martha, Bet,
will
you shift aside? Pray, how do you expect me to get into the house? No, Fanny does
not
wish for a cup of tea—why should she need to maudle her insides and spoil her digestion with such stuff when dinner is only an hour or so away? She will do very well till then. Good God, what a hurrah's nest do I see here—what in the world have you all been
doing
with yourselves?” he went on furiously, looking around the hallway which they had entered. It was a medium-sized room which did, in fact, present a very forlorn appearance, with half-unrolled rugs, boxes in process of unpacking, straw scattered about, and a haphazard air of furniture standing in temporary positions.

“The carts only came with the furniture an hour ago—” began the taller of the young ladies.

“Be silent! Do not trouble my ears with excuses! Why could you not have sent a messenger to hurry them? No, I do not wish to hear any more now, thank you! Well, I will take Fanny up to my room now—I trust
that
, at least, has been set in order?” he said in such a threatening tone that both girls instantly chorused:

“Oh yes, Papa! And there is a fire lit—”

“Very well. And when we come down I shall expect this disorder to have been cleared away and dinner made ready. See to it!” he snapped, pushing Fanny before him up a narrow but short flight of stairs, around several corners, and at last into a fair-sized bedroom.

Fanny felt quite dazed. She had hardly been given time to take in her stepdaughters—apart from the fact that one was tall and pale, one moderately pretty, and one a mere child—or to make any acknowledgment of their welcome—and she
would
have liked a cup of tea! Doubtless her husband would feel better after his dinner, she thought, recalling her father's shortness before meals, particularly in Lent.

“Wh-what a pleasant room!” she ventured in a placating manner, glancing around her. The bedroom was scantily furnished as yet, with a chest, a small rug, a bed, and two chairs; a hastily kindled fire burned rather flickeringly in the grate. One charming feature was a large, semicircular bow window which commanded a prospect of dusk-shrouded lawn, rosebushes, and yew hedge: “How delightful this will be in summer—” Fanny was going on, wondering if it would be in order to voice a wish for hot water, when her husband said curtly:

“Take your clothes off.”

“What—?”

“Make haste—undo that dress.”

“But it was such a short way from the carriage—I am not at all wet—”

“Don't be a fool—do as I say!”

And as she was still slow to follow his meaning, gazing at him with startled eyes, he began himself pulling undone the fastenings of Fanny's striped muslin overdress—breaking a couple of tags in the process—dragged the garment off her shoulders, and tossed it on the floor. “Now your petticoat—don't just stand there staring!”

“But—”

“
Your petticoat, girl
!
”

Exasperated by her slowness, he kicked off his own boots and breeches, then flung her on the bed.

What followed was so appalling to Fanny that, though it was to be re-enacted over and over during the weeks and months to come, every grim detail of the first occasion remained stamped on her memory for the rest of her life. The furious intentness of her suddenly red-faced, blind-eyed husband on his own purpose, as he thrust and battered at her, panting, cursing, and muttering to himself, only, it seemed, occasionally noticing her existence enough to snarl, “Open your legs wider, idiot!”—the totally unfamiliar shock of the whole experience, and its suddenness—the complete disparity of her expectations with this aspect of Thomas Paget—all these things in combination worked upon Fanny with almost shattering effect.

Some ten minutes later, when her husband matter-of-factly pulled himself upright and began hunting for his breeches, which had got kicked under the bed, Fanny lay still, limp, gasping, and shocked, horrified not so much by the pain—though that was certainly the worst she had ever felt—as by her own ignorance and fear of what he had done to her, what damage he might have done, tearing and bruising areas of whose very existence she had not previously been aware.

“Well, don't lie there like a gaby,” he said irritably. “Get up and put your clothes on! Dinner won't be long. Some of those fools will be along soon, I daresay, with the baggage.”

“I'm bleeding—”

“So I should hope—or I'd have had a word to say to your father!”

“There's blood all over the sheets,” she said, beginning to sob.

“Well, tell the maids to wash them! Where's my cravat? Damn it, Frances, can't you be some help? Don't just lie there! I want to go out to the impress rendezvous and see if my placard has brought in any volunteers. For heaven's
sake
,” he broke out in exasperation, “I thought I had got myself a wife, not a whining little mawkin. I'll have you show me a cheerfuller face than that when I get back, my girl, or I'll know the reason why!” And, slamming the door to demonstrate his justifiable annoyance, he ran smartly down the stairs, shouting for Jem the bootboy to bring him his officer's greatcoat.

Fanny lay dazedly for a few minutes longer, then, hearing muffled footsteps on the stairs, she huddled among the untidy bedclothes and pulled the sheet over her nakedness.

* * *

Thomas Paget was a many times disappointed man. Indeed, by the middle of his life he had fallen into a habit of setting up his expectations so high that it was inevitable he
should
be disappointed; this was possibly the only way in which he found any gratification.

Son of an ineffectual younger son, in a family of decayed aristocracy, he had discovered in his teens that, while his cousins were all due to inherit money or places, the most that he could expect was to be assisted into a naval or military career by wealthier relatives, whether or not such a prospect was congenial to his taste. This was indeed done, a great-uncle bought him a commission in the navy, and Thomas might, with luck or ability, have prospered and risen in his profession; but luck was lacking; in his very second engagement—and that a wholly unimportant one, with a Spanish privateer—he was so unfortunate as to have the finger and thumb of his right hand shot away, thus rendering him ineligible for further active service. Other sailors might, perhaps, have surmounted such a disability; but Thomas Paget was not of this caliber. It is true also that he was not a favorite with his companions or superiors, being of a jealous, exacting, contentious nature, prone to argue the rights of every matter, however trifling, that touched on his own prestige or position; his messmates were thoroughly glad to see the last of him.

Having been on active service for so short a period, he could not hope for a pension, and the sole opening left him, after such an abbreviated naval career, was to become a “yellow admiral” or regulating officer, that is, a shore official of the press gang, which, by government warrant, seized men, whatever their calling, and forcibly enrolled them in the King's service at sea. A very few professions were exempt: fishermen, harvesters—also males under eighteen or over fifty-five; but these exemptions were often conveniently ignored. Every town in the country had its own press gang, varying in size from fifteen to thirty men, and each gang was commanded by an officer with naval rank, known as the regulating captain. Press officers were usually thwarted men, men whose careers, for one reason or another, had gone wrong.

Thomas Paget, in due course, had been lucky enough to marry a girl whose plainness had been offset by the fact that she sincerely loved him and had some money of her own, for she was the daughter of a wealthy undertaker. But Thomas had mismanaged her money, and his wife had disappointed him bitterly, first by giving birth to nothing but female children, and subsequently by a series of miscarriages and stillbirths. Perhaps simply because he was denied a son, Thomas became obsessed by longing for one; a son, a boy, who might be able to achieve everything that his father had not. And then—even more aggravatingly—his wife, after the fifth or sixth faulty birth, had, not died, but gone melancholy mad, so that she could not be divorced, or even put away without shocking expense, for she was not raving; she had to be kept locked in a room at the top of the house. At first, even then, her husband had not wholly given up hope of a son; even after her incarceration there had been a couple more miscarriages. After the second of these, Thomas
did
give up hope; unfortunately, even then, the first Mrs. Paget survived for another ten years, mumbling and crying and throwing her food about, while downstairs her husband silently raged and the acid of frustration ate into the fabric of his nature.

In the end Mrs. Paget mercifully died, of an obstruction of the bowel; Thomas lost no moment, as soon as the obsequies were over, in negotiating with his school friend, Theophilus Herriard, for the youngest and healthiest of his eight daughters; the rector must be delighted to get one of them satisfactorily off his hands before his own demise—for he was a failing man.

And now at last Thomas's fortunes seemed to have taken a dramatic turn for the better, with his cousin Juliana's astonishing offer of house and fortune. The loan of the house, indeed, proved a particular blessing, for neighbors in their previous locality had been saying—as neighbors always will—that the first Mrs. Paget, poor soul, had not died natural, there was something fishy and havey-cavey about it, a guinea to a groat her unfeeling husband, having failed to get a son out of her and spent all her money, had finally made away with her. By moving to a different neighborhood, therefore—and with a cast-iron excuse for doing so—Thomas had been able to leave all that disagreeable talk behind. He had, in fact, deliberately delayed his marriage until he could take his new bride directly to the new abode. Also—another stroke of luck—there was no press gang at either Petworth or Chichester, although there were gangs at Godalming, Littlehampton, and Shoreham; a gap ran clean across the county of Sussex, just at that point, so Thomas, who had previously been regulating officer of Gosport, applied to the Admiralty for a transfer and was graciously granted it. All he had to do now was comb the ungleaned area for a profitable supply of men at a shilling a head, garner the income from his mill at Haslingbourne, and enjoy the comforts of his new marriage. Life had indeed opened out for him.