The Weeping Ash

  On the ground floor sounds of domestic activity could be heard in other rooms: a brush wielded on a mat, the scrape of a shovel in ash, a knife being sharpened down below in the basement kitchen. Anxious to avoid encounter with any of the servants, Fanny picked up the gray shawl Bet had procured for her the evening before, which had been left on a chair in the hall; thus equipped, she found a glass-paned door leading into the garden, unlocked it, and slipped quietly through and out into the crisp autumn morning, huddling the shawl tightly around her slender arms and shoulders.

  The door gave onto a flagged path which skirted the house. The first thing that met Fanny’s eye, as she stepped out, was the tree that had so excited Thomas’s wrath on the previous night.

  It was a graceful young ash, perhaps thirty years old, tall, well shaped, its topmost boughs reaching already as high as the roof of the house. The smooth silver-gray trunk was still no thicker man a ship’s mast, but the upper branches were already beginning to spread wide. The fingerlike, pinnate leaves, which in the windy night had swung and signed and shaken so wildly, now hung calm in the morning light, their color, already nipped by the first frosts, a delicate, radiant pale gold; the branches that had groaned and wailed like the strings of some giant’s harp now held their elegant position unmoving against the cool sky. Yggdrasil, thought Fanny—for among the Rev. Mr. Herriard’s theological library there had also been many books on mythology and Fanny had read them all—Yggdrasil, Odin’s ash tree, the sacred stem, the axis that holds earth and sky together; and her heart lifted, in acknowledgment of the tree’s peaceful gold-and-silver beauty.

  Beyond it lay a drift of mist, beyond that a hillside shouldered up on the far side of a small, deep valley. No houses were to be seen.

  Fanny carefully tiptoed the length of the house on the flagged path, then took a diagonal across a dewy lawn to reach the edge of the garden, which, she now saw, occupied an extensive, wedge-shaped terrace of land. Beyond the boundary wall the ground appeared to drop away steeply.

  Descending a short, shallow flight of steps, Fanny found herself on a lower level, a long, grassy walk which ran the entire length of the garden on its valley side. The walk was screened from the house by a yew hedge; on its far side a low wall gave onto the valley; beyond this wall the drop was quite steep—from ten to twelve feet—so that the garden seemed bounded by a rampart.

  Fanny caught her breath at the beauty of the prospect over the wall: in the bottom of the valley, visible here and there between drifts of mist, a clear brook meandered, its course marked out, from curve to curve, by an occasional oak or clump of osiers; beyond the brook meadows ran up steeply to the top of a small hill crowned with a spinney; and beyond this hill a higher, darker mass of woodland stretched away into the distance. To the north of the ridge the country flattened out into a blue expanse of weald—plowland, pasture, and small patches of copse extending far away to a distant line of blue hills on the horizon, possibly thirty or forty miles off. Perhaps London lies there, thought Fanny, whose notion of distance was very inexact; and she strained her eyes, searching for smoke or the hint of a city on the misty plain. Barnaby had gone to London to be with his regiment until it sailed for India; perhaps he was there still…

  Fanny did not know how long she stood absorbed, the morning sun warm on her cheek, drinking in the beauty of this landscape. As long as I can come here, she told herself; as long as I can see this—even if only once a day—I shall be able to bear anything.

  Having formed even this small plan comforted Fanny a little; she felt as if she had been able to make some effort to regulate her new life. Then, recalling to mind that the breakfast hour must be fast approaching, she turned to ascend the steps and retrace her way to the house.

  She had, overnight, wholly abandoned any notion that she might ever find it possible to love Thomas Paget. Try as she would, she could discover in him no quality that she could admire, or even like; he might conduct himself with rectitude in his professional sphere, no doubt he did, but at home he was churlish, parsimonious, unloving to his daughters, and apparently so completely lacking in delicacy or sensitivity that he neither knew nor cared if he subjected his wife to severe physical suffering.—He was unlovable, that was all there was to it.—Obey him, though, Fanny must and would; she would take pains to carry out his will in domestic matters and do her best to ensure that day-to-day life in the Hermitage ran smoothly. This she resolved, and hastened toward the garden door so that her lateness for breakfast on the first morning should not be an immediate cause for his displeasure.

  Reaching the flagged path, she hurried along it; but the flags were smooth, slippery with dew that was almost frost, and she slid on one of them and would have fallen, had not a hand grasped her arm from behind. A voice exclaimed solicitously:

  “Careful, ma’am! They stones be main gliddery, yet!”

  “Oh, thank you!” Fanny gasped, recovering her balance with an effort.

  Turning, she found herself looking up into the dark blue eyes of a tall young man who had jumped forward to catch her, dropping the lawn scythe he had been carrying; he wore a gardener’s hessian apron, and his curly black hair was tied back with a piece of bast; his face and hands were brown as those of a gypsy. Long, and strongly boned, his face looked as if it wore a habitually serious expression, but now it broke into a smile, with a flash of very white teeth, as he released her arm, and she stood up straight, shaking her blue dress to rights.

  “Eh, it would never do for the new mistress of the Hermitage to slip and break her ankle, first morning out! That’d be a bad omen for sure, that would!”

  “But one which you have luckily averted!” Fanny said, smiling too. “Thank you—no harm is done. I am much obliged to you for your quickness. You must be the gardener; but I am afraid that, as yet, I do not know your name.”

  “It is Andrew Talgarth, ma’am.”

  “Did—are you—” Are you one of the servants that my husband brought with him? Fanny wanted to ask, but the phrase, somehow, seemed inapplicable to the tall, black-haired young man who stood so easily beside her holding the scythe which he had picked up again. “Do you belong to Petworth, or did you come here with my husband?” she finally said.

  “I was working here as gardener, ma’am, before you came, for Madame Reynard, the French lady, and then for Miss Juliana—but I dunna belong to Petworth. I come from Breconshire, from the Black Mountains; Lord Egremont fetched my father an’ me here, a long time since, to work in the Petworth House gardens and park; and then he asked me to help lay out the garden here, for Madame Reynard, when he had this house built for her, sixteen, seventeen year agone.”

  “So long ago as that?” asked Fanny, surprised. “You hardly look old enough!”

  “I’m thirty-two, ma’am, but I’ve been a gardener’s boy ever since I was weaned, as you might say,” he answered, smiling. “Born with a trowel in my hand. My da was used to work for a mort of different gentry, all over the country, laying out their pleasure grounds—afore he settled down with Lord Egremont, up at Petworth House yonder.”

  Talgarth gestured toward the western end of the garden where, Fanny now noticed, beyond a stone barn, a high wall, and a pair of coach houses, there rose the red-tiled roofs of the town. Beyond them, higher still, severely rectangular, the stone portico and slate roof of an impressively large mansion could be seen. It seemed almost as big as a castle.

  “Dear me, is that Petworth House? I had no notion that it was so close. Or so large! Does your father still work for Lord Egremont?”

  “Nay, he’s retired now, ma’am; Lord Egremont builded him a liddle house, up in the dilly woods yonder”—Talgarth gestured across the valley—“where he has his bean plot and his gillyflowers an’ his pipe an’ ’baccy, an’ plays his fiddle; but he still danders over to the big house, now an’ now, just to make sure all’s well wi’ the garden. Lord Egremont, he do set great store by my da’
s opinion; anything new that’s to be done, he likes my da to come and talk it over. Tending a garden, ma’am, be like to rearing a child, I reckon. You do grow mortal attached. Seems you’re bound up, forevermore, to a plot where you’ve once set your spade in the marl—like as if you been tethered to it with bass bark—and you can’t noways forget it.”

  In demonstration of his point, he pulled a hank of bast from the pocket of his apron and wound a twist of it around two of his fingers.

  “I can quite understand that,” said Fanny. “You have made a very beautiful place out of this one, indeed.”

  She looked about it with simple pleasure. On the level area between the house and the long yew hedge there was a formal garden, flower beds intersected by narrow brick paths. Although it was late in the season, the beds, between small clipped box hedges, blazed with color and were beginning, now the sun grew warmer, to give off sweet, aromatic odors. Beyond the formal garden beds the turning leaves of two small sturdy cherry trees growing in the lawn made splashes of red-gold; a shrubbery of lilac bushes and evergreens lay between the house and the stone barn; fruit trees were carefully pleached against a distant high wall; climbing roses grew up the side of the house and against two small summerhouses at either end of the yew-tree walk, their tendrils still smothered with late blossoms. Bees hummed in a lavender hedge, which had been clipped once and was flowering again. Although it was no great estate, the garden, perhaps half an acre, had been carefully planned so as to give the greatest possible variety and to seem larger than it was.

  “The kitchen plot an’ orchard’s over yonder behind the wall,” Talgarth said, pointing toward the barn. “There’s aplenty late beans yet, do you fancy ’em, ma’am—artichokes—medlars—pears—an’ some fine Ribston pippins. ’Tis time they were picked; if the master sees fit, I’ll be setting to that today—”

  His voice died as a door slammed behind Fanny, and he glanced past her, politely touching his black forelock. “Morning, sir!”

  Thomas’s voice exclaimed angrily:

  “Frances! What in the world are you doing out here? I have been seeking you all over the house! Did you not hear the gong? Why do you not come to morning prayers?”

  Through his indignant tones the church clock could be heard chiming eight. Fanny had spun guiltily around at the first sound of his voice. She almost slipped again on the greasy flagstone; but this time Talgarth made no move to assist her, and she recovered herself by laying a hand against the house wall.

  “I—I am sorry, sir. I was just coming, indeed—”

  Thomas looked both incensed and mistrustful; he held his watch in his hand; his mouth was set in a hard line; his suspicious gaze moved from Fanny to the gardener, as if he had detected them plotting against him.

  “Truly I had no notion that it was so late,” faltered Fanny.

  “And yet you can clearly see the church clock from the garden! Go indoors at once; I will speak with you presently. As for you,” Thomas said to the gardener, looking at him with a marked lack of liking, “you are Talgarth, I infer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What you are doing so close to the house at breakfast time I do not know, but since I see you here I may as well tell you now—your first task for the day shall be to cut down that tree there.”

  He gestured toward the ash.

  “Cut it down, Captain Paget, sir?” Talgarth’s voice was startled; he looked as if he could hardly believe what he had heard.

  “Oh no!” Fanny cried out piteously at the same moment, forgetting that she had been told to go indoors. “Oh, pray, sir, do not have it cut! It is so beautiful!”

  “Frances! When I wish for your opinion I will invite it; otherwise, I must request you to be silent! Besides, did I not just order you to go inside? Yes—cut it down,” Thomas commanded the gardener. “The tree is by far too close to the house; whoever planted it there must have been clean out of his senses. It blocks out the light from the parlor and my bedroom; it is bound to bring damp—insects—probably disease. And its wood will furnish us with a plentiful supply of firewood—though why I should trouble myself to give an explanation of my orders, I do not know! You may commence at once; by the time breakfast is over, I wish the tree to be gone.”

  Talgarth, however, stood his ground.

  “Begging your pardon, I’m sure, sir, but I can’t do that,” he said, wooden-faced.

  Thus calmly contradicted, Thomas flew into a cold fury, which Fanny observed with terror. The visible marks of rage were two white spots at either side of his nostrils, a congestion of the eyes, and a quickening of his breath. He said in a gritty voice:

  “And what, may I ask, is your justification for this insolence? Do you wish to be dismissed out of hand?”

  “No, sir,” replied Talgarth calmly. “But Miss Juliana—Lady van Welcker, as she be now—she did say to me that, while she were away, she didn’t wish for no big changes to be made in her garden, no trees nor hedges cut down, nor new paths laid, naught o’ that nature, for she be main fond of it the way it be now, an’ wishes it kept so, in memory o’ the lady as she left it to her, Madame Reynard. Miss Juliana were particular fond o’ this ash tree, sir, for Lord Egremont himself gave it to the other lady; I wouldn’t hurt it for the world, or go agin her wishes in such a matter. Anyhows,” he added practically, as Thomas, clenching his hands, drew a breath of fury, “I believe it hain’t in your power, sir, to go again Miss Juliana’s wish, for she did tell me, afore she left, as how she’d had a lawyer’s piece writ out for ye to sign, as named all those things ye could do about the place, an’ those ye couldn’t.”

  The silence maintained by Thomas for some moments after Talgarth’s words appeared to indicate that this shaft had gone home; evidently such an agreement had been signed, which, in the exasperation of the moment, he had overlooked; but Fanny felt fairly certain that, now it was recalled to his mind, the severe rectitude and rigidity of his nature would prevent him from taking any further action to contravene it. This was not likely to sweeten his temper, however, and Fanny now had sufficient discretion to step softly in through the open door without attempting to catch the eye of Talgarth, who still stood, in a perfectly respectful attitude, awaiting his master’s further orders.

  Without waiting to hear what these might be, Fanny hastened to the dining room where she found the remainder of the household assembled, the servants with expressions of hungry resignation, while Paget’s children appeared startled at this variation from routine, and decidedly impatient. Fanny slipped in to align herself with her stepdaughters, and a moment or two later Thomas strode into the room with a brow as black as thunder.

  Without pausing an instant, he snatched up the prayer book from the sideboard and began reading rapidly:

  “‘Almighty and most merciful Father, who has safely brought us to the beginning of this day…’”

  Outside the window, Fanny could hear the gardener’s footsteps crunching away along a gravel path.

  * * *

  After breakfast, when Fanny had a moment alone with Thomas, who had eaten the meal in ominous silence, she thought it best to apologize again for her lateness and did so speedily, before she had time to lose courage.

  Thomas listened without comment and then said:

  “Very well; pray do not let it occur again. Frances! I trust that you will remember your position in this household as my wife. You are no longer a child, among your sisters, but a woman grown, and must comport yourself as such, with suitable dignity and reserve.”

  “Yes, sir.” She could not bear to look at his face; she kept her eyes, instead, upon the three-fingered hand, holding his cocked hat.

  He said, “I do not wish to discover you laughing and talking with menservants—with any such persons. It is wholly unbecoming to your station. You are married to me now; please keep this in mind at all times.”

  Fanny did not feel she
was at all likely to forget, but his look was so forbidding that she merely repeated her apology.

  “I am going out, now, on impress business, and shall very likely be absent until the late afternoon,” Thomas went on. “I have directed Patience to bring her slate and copybooks down to this room where you may give her her lessons until noon. Then I have instructed Kate to wait on you with the housekeeping books and a list of the stores, so that you may be fully conversant with the running of the household. And you had best discuss with her the disposition of the furniture and make certain that the pantry and all the closets have been set in order. This afternoon you may go out into the garden, but pray do not go unescorted—either take one of the maids or, better, have Bet and Martha accompany you.”

  Rather faintly, Fanny inquired, “May I not go into the town?”

  Bending a frowning glance upon her—while he gave her his instructions, Thomas had kept his gaze averted, as if the sight of her was displeasing to him—he said:

  “Why should you wish to do that? You can have no need to buy any article yet, surely? Your father assured me that he had expended on you sufficient funds to equip you with all the usual bride’s gear?”

  “Oh yes, sir, he did, of course—” Fanny’s voice trembled at the thought of her father, parting with guineas he could ill spare to buy her linen. “I—I merely had a wish to inspect the town, to see the streets—and your daughters might enjoy it also.”

  “I prefer that you do not,” Thomas said shortly. “If there is some particular necessity, such as thread, or lamp oil, you may send one of the servants to buy it.”