‘Why not?’
‘He is socially of a lower status, Vicar. His father is a carpenter.’
‘Does he – is he quite unaware of your condition?’
‘Quite unaware!’ She raised her head. ‘As you instructed me, I have told nobody. If you—’
‘Yes – er – yes. And you think if you married him he would never know?’
‘Of course he must know! I could not be so dishonest! I’m surprised that you could even suggest to me that I might cheat him!’
Ossie glowered at her. ‘Then what are you suggesting?’
‘If I had your permission to marry him, then I would go to him and tell him the truth. Oh,’ said Rowella, as Osborne started a protest, ‘not whose baby it was; but just that I was in this dire trouble and that marriage to him would save me from disgrace. If he – if he would give this child a name and a father’s love, then I would be a good wife to him and he would gain the advantages of marrying into a genteel family.’
The more he heard of it the more this seemed to him truly a way out, a better way out than he had ever dared to imagine. But it looked too easy. There were risks.
‘Do you love him?’
‘Of course not. But – but beggars can’t be choosers. If it saves me from disgrace – and you also . . .’
He winced. For a moment as they spoke a little twinge of jealousy had moved in him, to think of another man enjoying the voluptuous delights of her enticement; but the last three words brought him to his senses – his other senses.
‘What of your mother and Morwenna? They would have to be told – and persuaded.’
‘I think they could be persuaded if they knew my condition – and I told them that Arthur Solway was the father.’
‘By God, child, you seem to have this well worked out!’
‘For weeks I have thought of nothing else. How could I? My mind has been going round and round and round.’
He nodded. That made sense. He began to feel a little warmer towards her. If it all could be arranged in this manner the horrors that had haunted his bedside would begin to melt away.
‘You would keep everything else secret?’
‘Of course . . . It would be greatly to my advantage to say nothing of what has happened here.’
‘So . . . if this much you have planned in your little head, Rowella, have you also planned the rest?’
‘The rest? What do you mean?’
‘Well, how you would go about it?’
‘I could do nothing, make no real plan until I had your approval. But – but if I have that – if I have that I shall see Mr Solway in the library tomorrow and – and tell him everything.’
‘In the library, with others moving about?’
‘He has a desk which is quite separate. In a sense I shall – shall find it easier speaking to him in this way.’
‘And then?’
‘If he consents – if he consents I shall ask him to come and see you.’
‘Why?’
‘To ask for my hand. It will have to seem formal, in order to deceive Morwenna. There will be matters to discuss.’
‘What matters?’
‘He is very poor, Ossie. Very poor. As librarian he is paid £15 a year. He works hard in the evenings copying letters for Mr Notary Pearce. By that means he earns another £3 a year. His lodgings, I believe, are miserable and he studies half the night. It is going to be a hard life for me, but I do not complain: it is what I deserve . . .’
‘Yes. Well . . .’
‘But for the child, which will be yours . . .’
‘Yes? What is it you want?’
‘Perhaps some small present would help us to start in life together. It could be looked on as a wedding present to – to your sister-in-law. Morwenna would be pleased . . .’
‘How much are you suggesting?’
Rowella looked startled. ‘I had not gone so far as that. I was only – hoping perhaps that you might see your way . . .’ She began to sniff again. ‘If – if I could say to him that I would not come penniless it might make him look more favourably on – on what is proposed.’
Ossie rubbed his nose. The girl was a schemer; but if he could get out of it all this way it would be the most outstanding relief. With the new income from Sawle he could afford to be generous; it would be a pleasant enough attitude to take up: the benign and forgiving brother-in-law; it would make him popular with Morwenna and with Mrs Chynoweth. A woman caught in adultery. Cast not the first stone. He as a vicar would practise what he preached. Twenty-five guineas he could well afford – it would be more than an extra year’s salary for the miserable fellow – it would help to set them up. God be praised for such a happy outcome.
For effect he still hesitated. Then he said: ‘Very well, my dear. If your young man agrees to your proposition, send him up to see me. I will see that he gets a little present to encourage him and to start you off in life together.’
II
Arthur Solway did not come up the following day but the day after that. He came by arrangement when Morwenna was out taking tea with the Polwheles. Rowella had thought it better that Morwenna should not be in when Solway came the first time. It proved a fortunate decision.
Solway was tall and thin and spectacled. His shoulders were narrow, rather like Rowella’s, and he had a scholar’s stoop. His face was young and kindly and anxious and he was sweating with nerves. Not the sort of young man, one would have thought, to stand up to the vicar, who not only had his office but also his breeding and his class to support him; but stand up the young man apparently did. A low murmur within the room grew perceptibly to angry voices, chiefly Ossie’s. In the end it became very noisy indeed, and presently Solway half issued, was half ejected from the room and ran hurriedly from the house. Mr Whitworth slammed the front door behind him and returned into his study, which door was also shut with sufficient vehemence to shake the house.
Ten minutes later Rowella ventured into the room. Ossie was standing by the window clenching and unclenching his hands. His coat-tails shook with every movement, and his face was grim and red.
‘Vicar? . . .’
He turned. ‘Did you set him up to this, woman?’
‘Up to what? What is the trouble? Oh, God, has it all gone wrong?’
‘Well might you call on your God! Yes, it has gone wrong and will stay wrong! That insolent lickspittle! Had he stayed a moment longer I should have laid hands on him and given him the thrashing of his life!’
Rowella wrung her hands. ‘Oh, Ossie, what has gone amiss? Just when I was hoping . . . Just when I thought we had found a way out of this terrible dilemma . . .’
‘Amiss? Tell that jackanapes if he comes near this house again I’ll have him arrested for trespass and consigned to jail!’
She came up to his desk. ‘Tell me. It is only fair to tell me.’
He turned and glared at her. ‘This little present. In order to marry you – you, a fallen girl of fifteen, penniless, pregnant, without looks or family, he expects, nay demands, the ignorant donkey, a wedding present of a thousand pounds!’
She stood there with her hands to her face while he ranted on. The words ‘insolent’, ‘disgraceful’ and ‘impertinent’ repeated themselves at intervals. In a brief lull in the storm Rowella said: ‘I do not know what can have got into him.’
‘Nor do I! Nor do I! The impudence and effrontery of this cheap little upstart! Well, Rowella, you may dismiss him entirely from your mind. He is not for you, and you do not marry him with any blessing or small present from me! That I can tell you.’
‘I had thought,’ said Rowella, ‘I had thought at the very most that you would give us a hundred pound.’
Ossie suddenly went silent. ‘Oh, so you thought a hundred pound, did you? Are you sure it is not you who put a thousand into his head? Are you sure you did not say ten thousand?’
She gave a wail. ‘No, Vicar, no, I swear! I swear it on oath! How could I ever have thought such a thing?’
He stared at her. ‘I sometimes believe you are capable of anything! I wonder sometimes what evil genie presided at your birth. It cannot have been a man of God who fathered you. A dean. A dignitary of the church. A man given grace by the laying on of hands!’
Rowella burst into noisy tears.
Mr Whitworth abruptly sat down and put his elbows heavily on the desk. Anger might still be boiling in him, but the old anxiety was beginning to rear its head. ‘So at is to be done with you now?’
Rowella went on crying. Eventually through her tears she gulped: ‘Perhaps if I saw him again I might bring him to see reason.’
‘He must have known, he must have suspected that I had some other motive than to see you settled! Did you tell him, did you give him reason to suspect?’
‘No, no! Never! Never! I would not do that to you, Vicar, unless driven to it.’
‘And what will drive you to it?’
‘Perhaps if I see him again,’ she sobbed. ‘Perhaps I can bring him to see reason.’
III
She saw him again, and with infinite patience paved the way for another meeting between the two. Sweating, knees shaking, hands trembling, privately stiffened by a Rowella not present but always in the background, Arthur Solway stuck to his guns. Ossie went to a hundred, and then, as a last resort, to two hundred – more than his total additional stipend in a year from Sawle. Solway came down from a thousand pounds to seven hundred, but the gap was unbridgeable. Osborne might have been reminded, but was not, of the bargaining he had undertaken with George Warleggan when a suitor for Morwenna’s hand.
At last, as a last resort, Rowella began to show her teeth.
‘You don’t realize,’ she said to Ossie one day, ‘what poverty Mr Solway has endured. If you think him greedy, then think of what his family is and has seen. His father lives in Quay Street in a cottage belonging to the corporation. There are nine children, of whom only Arthur has been able to make a way for himself. The eldest girl has fits, the next boy is in service at the Cardews’, then there are three more girls; then a boy of three, another of eighteen months, and the mother is with child again.’
‘Breeding like rats,’ said Ossie.
‘Living like rats,’ said Rowella. ‘Oh, Vicar, please have some understanding of his position. Out of the money he earns he is trying to help his family. They pay two guineas a year rent for their cottage, and his father, who was ill last year, has fallen behind in the payment, so the corporation have seized all his tools and some of his furniture. So the father cannot earn the money to pay! He has applied for parish relief which has been offered him if he would go into the Poor House with his family. But you can see that that would mean separation from his wife and children and would destroy what little he has left. He is honest and industrious – like Arthur – but he is at present staying in the cottage in defiance of the corporation. The children are without shoes – they eat nothing but bread and potatoes – their clothes, which are given them by charitable neighbours, are in rags . . .’
‘You know a great deal about them,’ Osborne said suspiciously.
‘I went to see them for the first time yesterday in the forenoon. It makes your heart to ache!’
‘So now you can afford to be generous with them, eh? On my money! On two hundred pounds! That is what I have offered you! It is four times what you deserve—’
‘Sh! Sh! Morwenna will hear.’
He swallowed. ‘Merciful God, you have the impudence of a guttersnipe! I will listen to no more! D’you not suppose that if I went round to those creatures and offered them twenty pounds they would not be in a transport of delight? That you can give them with my blessing and one hundred and eighty will be left over to set you up after your marriage. That is my final word. Now please go about your duties. Return me the answer tomorrow at the latest or the offer will be withdrawn.’
‘Yes, Vicar,’ said Rowella. ‘Thank you, Vicar.’ And left him.
She was back the next day in the evening.
‘I could scarce get a word today, for Morwenna was in the room and everything had to be done with him very quick; but I gave him your message, Ossie, and he said no.’
‘No!’
‘Wait, please. I argued with him and pled with him but he said he would come no lower. He said – I do not understand these things, Ossie, but he said that it would cost us high to get a cottage and furnish it, and seven hundred pounds, he said, however wisely invested, and however hard he worked himself, would bring him in scarce enough to support me and bring up a family. That is what he said. I am very sorry. He is very determined.’
‘Then he may go to the devil!’ said Ossie explosively. ‘And you with him. This is extortion of the most flagrant kind! Damn you both! I say it deliberately. Damn you both! Get out of my room! And do not cry. That is a device you have tried too often. Get out, I say!’
‘In the end,’ wept Rowella, ‘I made him come down to six hundred. But I do not believe he will budge an inch below that, and if he will not, then I have lost a husband!’
‘I can only say,’ Ossie said, ‘that such a one as he would be well worthy of you!’
IV
Through it all and around it the household went on much the same as ever. John Conan Osborne Whitworth flourished and was noisy and aggressive, and everyone said he was just like his father; Sarah and Anne continued to learn a little French and Latin from Rowella, and could be surprisingly noisy and aggressive themselves when Papa was not about; Morwenna lived the busy life of a vicar’s wife but continued within herself to be profoundly reticent; the Reverend Mr Whitworth sounded out one or two of his friends on the prospect of getting himself elected a Capital Burgess of the town, but decided that any definite move in that direction must wait until George Warleggan returned at Easter; and the servants dusted and cooked and swept and whispered among themselves. Mr Whitworth continued to hold his twice-weekly whist parties, and when they were in progress Morwenna and Rowella sewed and embroidered together in the upstairs parlour, and conversation between them, never fluent, now seemed to have dried up altogether.
The following week Rowella brought a sheet of paper in to Ossie. She said: ‘When my papa was first taken ill of an apoplexy his right hand was frozen and so he could not write to the clergy in his charge. I was then but eleven years old but I wrote the best hand of the family, and he used to ask me to set down what he told me to write. Then I used to make a fair copy for his files. After he died I kept some of these for a keepsake and last month I asked Mama to send them to me. I have been reading through them. Here is one writ to a vicar in South Petherwin for getting a young girl with child. I believe – I believe he was suspended for three years . . .’
Ossie glared at her as if Satan had just entered his room. She put the piece of paper on his desk and slid furtively out. Ossie’s eyes flitted over the page, jumping sentences and then coming back to them.
Dear Mr Borlase, it said,
Aggravated as your guilt appears to be by many circumstances, I own I think little can be said in extenuation of it. For God’s sake, sir, how could you so entirely lose sight of the Clergyman, the Christian, the Gentleman, and violate at once the Rules of Religion, Morality, Hospitality, and even of Humanity itself? Look on the complicated miseries to which the woman, who has been unfortunately induced to make a sacrifice of her honour and her virtue, is on every side exposed, and consider whether there can be a more infamous, a more detestable practice than seduction. The Murderer, the Ravisher, whose violence affects the body only, are in many respects venial characters compar’d with the seducer.
But supposing this not to be the case, and that the accomplice of your crime was in every way a partner of your Guilt, was it for you to take advantage of a thoughtless inconsiderate girl? Had it not better become you to have used your utmost endeavour to preserve her from the misery and infamy she might have been afterwards wise enough to have avoided? Do not a thousand considerations suggest to you how much it was your duty to have
tried by every argument to reclaim her to a sense of Religion and Honour? Where, then, was the friend, the father, the brother? – such might you to have been to her: where was the disciple, the minister, the missionary of the Holy Jesus? . . .
With what face can you recommend and enjoin to the flock of Christ committed to your charge virtues which your practice and example declare to be unnecessary? How can you propose to awaken the hopes or alarm the fears of others by considerations by which you thus openly and palpably avow yourself to be uninfluenced? . . . But I despair of saying anything on this dreadful subject which you have not already heard or which your own heart has not already suggested to you . . .
Mr Whitworth stared at the sheet of paper much as he had a moment before stared at Rowella, as if the serpent were before him. Just after Easter the Archdeacon would be in Truro on his annual visitation, and Ossie had invited him to stay here . . .
He got up and tore the sheet of paper furiously into little pieces and flung it into the fire.
V
He said: ‘I have called you in here to tell you of my decision. I am paying you the courtesy of acquainting you with my decision before I inform your sister. You will be returned to your mother. You have proved unsuitable to teach my daughters or to companion my wife. Ever since you arrived, but more particularly since Christmas, you have been over-presumptuous and malapert, given to brazenness of conversation and insolence of manner. In your behaviour you have become uncontrollable, have flouted my advice and have made yourself free and wanton in the neighbourhood. I can do no more with you and leave it to your poor mother to try to effect a change. I shall make arrangements for you to be sent home early next week.’
She stood there in her brown frock. It was a garment which was slimmer fitting than usual, and it just hinted at some of the curves which had enticed him. He hated her now – unto death.
She said: ‘And the baby?’
‘What baby? I know nothing of any baby. What unfortunate brat you may have conceived as a result of your flaunting yourself about the town is entirely your own affair.’