Chapter Twenty #2
“After a fashion,” said the woman in querulous tones.
“That is, I thought we would surprise him. Not here, thus, but when we arrived at the Tree Inn, the good proprietress encouraged us to come straightaway, that we might see the play. Adam! Adam! Won’t you introduce us to each other?
And do you see who is with me? Though it has been so many, many years, I daresay you will guess his identity. ”
Taking advantage of the opening Mr. Eveleigh’s passage had made, the woman marched up the new aisle to the stage, extending a hand to Mr. Hearne, which he slowly, reluctantly, grasped. Then, his bare throat working, he assisted her up.
The cast crowded inward unconsciously, each one eager to see what was unfolding, and Frances wrapped her arms about her middle.
Because why was Mr. Hearne so pale? As pale, almost, as that of his older double below.
She could not read his face, but she could see its usual blank cheerfulness had been wiped away.
“Mr. Eveleigh.” He too had to clear his throat, but then his voice emerged steady.
“Mr. Eveleigh, may I introduce you to my mother, Mrs. Nicholas Hearne? And—my—my older brother there—” he gestured to his twin who still stood beside his chair in the third row “—Mr. Reginald Hearne. Madam, Reginald, may I present our hosts here at Greenwood Hall, Mr. and Mrs. Stanton Eveleigh.”
“And their daughter,” Jane piped up. “Miss Eveleigh.” She gave Mrs. Hearne a little smile and bobbed a curtsey. “What an unexpected pleasure, madam, to have you join us. I do hope you arrived in time to see the entire play. Was not your son’s performance delightful?”
Mrs. Hearne’s eyes narrowed at this address. Apart from the dark color of those eyes, Frances did not think she resembled her son at all. Not like the brother did.
“I did see most of it, and I did enjoy it,” she answered. “But then, Adam has so many intellectual and creative powers, I cannot say I am surprised to discover yet another field for his genius.”
His “genius”?
A cannonade of coughs and smothered guffaws met this statement, and though Frances managed to pass off her own response as part of the general respiratory chorus, she wondered how even a mother could be so deluded.
The next instant she repented her participation in the derision, however, fearing for Mr. Hearne’s feelings.
Even a dog knew when he was being laughed at, after all, and Mr. Hearne was no dog.
Before she could think how to make up for her callousness, Mr. Midgecomb leaped into the fray, thrusting himself between Frances and Mr. Hearne.
“Heh heh. He is indeed talented, Mrs. Hearne. Talented but—apparently overcome by his joy at seeing you and Mr. Hearne again. Allow me to introduce myself and the many, many others, and I do beg the Eveleighs and Barstows to assist me if I forget anyone.”
Reluctantly Mrs. Hearne tore her gaze from her younger son and turned for the courtesies to be satisfied.
There were indeed a great number to be named, including Frances’ older sisters and their husbands, but probably no one present was much the wiser after it had been accomplished.
By the time it was ended, however, Mr. Reginald Hearne had come to stand at the edge of the stage below his mother and brother.
At this distance Frances could see the clear distinctions between them, Mr. Reginald having blue eyes, scattered strands of silver in his dark hair, and some thickness around the chin and midsection.
His complexion, too, lacked his brother’s health and tended toward a grey pallor.
There was a hardness, too, about his mouth, and Frances thought that, if it had been Reginald Hearne who came to Greenwood Hall that summer, she and he would never have become friends.
“You never told us you had a brother,” Jane Eveleigh accused playfully, giving Mr. Hearne’s shoulder a tap.
“Did he not?” rejoined Mrs. Hearne, winding her arm through her younger son’s.
“It has been some time since they’ve seen each other.
And some time since I have seen Reginald, but our paths crossed in Weymouth.
We have so much news to share with each other, Adam!
I could not tell it all in a letter. And now that your play is finished, I must beg you to come away with us at once. ”
“Come away?” echoed Jane, and for the first time in days Frances felt in accord with her. What? Would he go, and so suddenly? “You wouldn’t leave so abruptly, Mr. Hearne, would you?” Jane almost wailed.
Her obvious distress provoked the opposite response in Mr. Midgecomb.
His brow lowered, and he said through a stiff jaw, “That’s indeed sooner than we hoped, but we understand.
Such is life! Family reunions and all, right, Adam?
” He punctuated this with a bracing clap to his friend’s shoulder.
“It would be stupid of you to refuse. Downright blockheaded. Thick, even.” Each of these adjectives Mr. Midgecomb accompanied with a shake of that same shoulder.
And, indeed, he must have been persuasive, for Mr. Hearne seemed to wake from a daze, and he gave his friend one short nod.
Appearing satisfied, Mr. Midgecomb bestowed a smile on the company.
“Ahem. So you see, no begging on your part will be necessary, Mrs. Hearne. Tonight’s performance was, in fact, the culmination of our time here.
We all of us would only have stayed another few days to conclude our visit in Iffley.
To take down the stage, set things to rights, wind up affairs, you know.
Then back to Oxford with the three of us!
So you go right ahead and go now, Adam. John and I will manage the rest.”
“Yes. But…there’s something I’m forgetting,” said Mr. Hearne, sounding almost like himself. “Something…tomorrow. So perhaps, madam, I could meet you and—my brother—in Oxford next week. Then I might help Midge and John with the winding-up business.”
“Oh, please do stay a little longer,” breathed Jane.
“I just said we don’t need your help with the winding-up business, you dunce,” snapped Mr. Midgecomb. At this abuse, a disapproving murmur rose. They were almost used to Mr. Tilson denigrating Mr. Hearne’s intelligence by now, but they had never before heard Mr. Midgecomb so forget himself.
Before she was aware of it, Frances stepped forward to say placatingly, “You mustn’t blame him, Mr. Midgecomb.
The obligation he refers to is the Pyramus and Thisbe scene, I believe.
If you recall, we had told a few of our—neighbors—ones who were not acquainted with the company here—that we would perform that scene for them at the rectory tomorrow.
But—but—I daresay they will understand if it must be cancelled. ”
“Mrs. Lamb will take fire if we do,” muttered Gordon behind her.
“I wouldn’t think of cancelling,” Mr. Hearne said, his old sweetness returning to him. “I’m very standfast. Headfast? Sendfast?”
“Steadfast,” Frances suggested.
He beamed at her. “That’s it! Yes. I’m very steadfast.”
“If you want nothing to do with me, simply say so,” Reginald Hearne spoke up in almost a growl. “What’s fifteen odd more years?”
Mr. Hearne turned to blink at him in owlish, exemplary Mr.-Hearne fashion, which only succeeded in exasperating his newfound brother.
“What ails you? Stop that. Why do you look at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you haven’t two thoughts in your head to rub together.”
Mr. Hearne’s lips parted in, admittedly, his most vacant expression. “Dear me. Oh, no. I have a thought. Just the one, though.”
“Which is—?” demanded Reginald Hearne, when he did not continue.
Mr. Hearne nodded. “Yes. Which is, all this time—the fifteen odd years you referred to—I thought it was not that I wanted nothing to do with you and my father, but quite the opposite. I thought you and my father wanted nothing to do with me. That was how I interpreted the long separation and my mother’s unanswered letters.
What a frightful misunderstanding. Think how much time has been lost.”
“Oh, Adam!” said Mrs. Hearne. “How could you tease, when we are reunited at last? After what I’ve suffered? You are teasing, aren’t you?”
“What you’ve suffered, Mother?” returned Reginald Hearne. “I think it’s my brother here who’s suffered something—a blow to the head, most likely, for I don’t remember him being as stupid as this. He was young, yes, but not a halfwit.”
A collective gasp met this rudeness, and the new Hearne brother was eyed reproachfully. Because poor Mr. Adam Hearne! How the insults were raining down upon him tonight, and he, so harmless and handsome!
“Have you been injured, Adam?” his mother fretted, raising tentative fingers to the back of her younger son’s head, as if the wound might have been recently inflicted. “I wish it had not been to your brain. You, with all your honors and firsts!”
Had she announced Mr. Hearne’s nomination to the Royal Society, she could not have drawn more startled looks from the gathering. What maternal delirium was this? Or had Oxford standards really fallen so low that such a one as Mr. Adam Hearne could be considered a model academic?
He leaned away from her probing hand, giving an uncomfortable chuckle. “I am perfectly well.”
“Is that so?” drawled the unpleasant Reginald. “Then you’ve been fibbing most abominably, Mother. For she has spoken ad nauseum of your distinguished career at Christ Church, dear brother, to the point at which I might be tempted to club your brains out myself, if only for some reprieve.”
Mr. Midgecomb had been smiling nervously throughout this discussion, running a finger under the neck of his Athenian robe.
“We had better give you Hearnes your privacy,” he bleated.
“And I know our kind hosts have supplied a delicious collation in the drawing room. Shall the rest of us repair there?”
Mrs. Hearne, for one, paid him no attention, being still too concerned for her younger son. She
pressed the back of her fingers to his forehead. “Is it a fever, then? Heaven forbid. That would break my heart. Fevers in both my boys!”
At this Reginald Hearne rolled his eyes. “Come, madam. Let us do as the young man suggests and save discussion of private matters for when we are alone. If some knock or disease has driven your golden boy into this early dotage, you must bear up.”
“Pardon me,” spoke up Mr. Stanton Eveleigh, “but I feel compelled to say, Mrs. Hearne, that no harm that I am aware of has come to Mr. Adam Hearne while he has been under my roof. If he is—different—or changed—from how you remember him, you would do better to ask Mr. Midgecomb or Mr. Tilson their opinion on the matter. For my part, and I believe I speak for not only the Eveleigh family but also for the Iffleyites whom you have met this evening, I declare he has been, both in health and in character, the same person throughout his stay as he was when I first met him in Oxford during the last term.”
She acknowledged this with a bow of her head but said nothing, leaving the Eveleighs and the Iffleyites with no alternative but to do the polite thing and retire to the drawing room, despite their confusion and unanswered questions.
And because Mr. Midgecomb and Mr. Tilson remained behind, they could not even be applied to.
“That was ridiculous,” Maria declared, when they were all being carried home in Lord Dere’s coach an hour afterward. “I wanted to know what was happening. Everyone did. But no one talked about it!”
“We could hardly gossip like mad, when those we were talking about might enter the room at any moment,” replied Frances sensibly, though she too was frustrated.
“But they never did come in!” said Maria. “And so we wasted that time talking about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when no one really cared anymore.”
“We ought to have cared,” her mother sighed, reaching to squeeze her arm. “You all did such a marvelous job. It’s almost too bad you aren’t professional actors, for if you had been, I would have bought tickets at once for your next show.”
“Indeed,” agreed the baron. “A most delightful production. I too am sorry I will never see it again.”
“You might come to the rectory tomorrow and see the Pyramus and Thisbe part of it,” Gordon said, “unless you think Mr. Hearne won’t turn up, Frances?”
“A day ago—two hours ago, even—I would have said of course he will turn up,” Frances admitted. “But now I don’t know. Perhaps we might ask George to read Bottom’s part, since he will be at the rectory as a matter of course.”
“But what do you think Mrs. Hearne mean about Mr. Hearne being such a genius, when we all know he is—he is—quite the opposite?” Maria demanded.
“She must have been mistaken,” said Gordon.
“But how could she be?” Mrs. Barstow asked anxiously. “A mother knows her own child. She might exaggerate his virtues, but not to that extent, surely.”
Mrs. Dere drew a deep breath, and when she spoke a chill fell over Frances.
“You are right there, Camilla. Things have a very suspicious appearance, I’m afraid.
It is as well that those young men—all of them—leave Iffley as soon as possible, for if they have been dishonest with us, they have all borne a part in it. ”
“Oh, no, madam,” breathed Mrs. Barstow. “Surely not all of them.”
“It is all or nothing, Camilla. You must see that. I do not know what possible explanation they could give now which would satisfy,” Mrs. Dere persisted.
“If Mr. Hearne has been playing a part with us—if he has been pretending to be…a simpleton…when he is nothing of the kind, it was undertaken with his friends’ cooperation, and it is we who have been made to look the fool. ”
Silence fell for the remainder of the ride. And though every atom of her wished she could argue with her benefactress, that she could defend Mr. Hearne from such a charge, Frances unhappily could find no fault with Mrs. Dere’s summary of the problem.