Chapter Twenty-Two
Bottom: O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall!
Flute: [as Thisbe] I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all.
“Why, Mr. Hearne!” exclaimed Mrs. Terry when he appeared in the doorway of the schoolroom some minutes after Frances.
“You have decided to play the scene after all. I imagine your unexpected appearance will double the delight of the audience, and I give you points for sheer nerve. Though perhaps you actors cannot resist any opportunity to practice your art.”
He had the grace to appear chagrined by her possible double meaning and merely bowed.
“Well, there, George!” she turned to address the rector’s former pupil who stood with open playbook. “You are excused from your role as deputy mechanical and may now enjoy the performance with the rest of us.”
But George drew his lanky frame up to its full height, thrusting out his chin. “I don’t know that I ought to let Hearne here participate. Not after he and his friends spent the last month making ass—making oxes, rather—of us!”
“Dear, gallant George,” Mrs. Terry wheedled, taking his arm.
“What does the Good Book say? ‘To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.’” She delivered this with her usual twinkle, and small blame to George Denver for feeling his offer to champion them did not receive the appreciation it deserved.
Mr. Hearne’s rueful gaze swept the little company. “I’ll go away, if you prefer. Miss Barstow left it up to me, but I, in turn, leave it up to you.”
Of course everyone thought the scene would be a hundred times better with him as Bottom, and if the summer had shown them anything, it was that Mr. Hearne was a good actor.
Therefore, when the audience members filed in, Mrs. Lamb taking a queenly seat in the first row and nodding with condescension at Iffley’s humbler residents, her gasp was the loudest when Quince announced, “This man is Pyramus, if you would know,” and Mr. Hearne appeared.
It wasn’t a long scene, especially without the running commentary from the Athenians, but it was long enough and Mr. Hearne talented enough that Frances found herself hiding smiles from the moment he opened his mouth.
And when he beat Gordon the “Wall” for not revealing Thisbe to him, she even laughed along with the spectators.
Very well. If he can put it all aside for ten minutes, so can I.
Stepping forward on her cue, she laid her cheek against Gordon’s shoulder and sighed, “O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans, for parting my fair Pyramus and me!” And when Thisbe spoke of kissing the Wall’s stones, she gave her brother’s cheek a hearty buss, drawing a laugh because the amazed Gordon hunched his shoulder up at once to wipe it away.
But it was Mr. Hearne who gave the greatest surprise, even if nobody knew it but Frances. For when Pyramus bid her kiss him “through the hole of this vile wall,” and she pressed her face to the “chink” formed by her brother’s fingers, the strangled squeal she then let fly was entirely genuine.
“I-I-I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips—not your lips—at—not at all,” she stammered.
Through the circle of her brother’s fingers she saw Mr. Hearne’s beautiful lips curve fleetingly. The same lips which, Frances could have sworn upon her honor, had just brushed her own.
She stumbled through the rest of the performance, never daring to lift her eyes again from her book.
When it was finished, this audience too leapt up in applause and crowded about, clamoring and laughing, and it was another several minutes before Mrs. Terry clapped her hands to invite them all to refreshments, and Frances finally worked up the courage to seek out Mr. Hearne.
But those several minutes had been enough.
He was gone.
There was no dance without paying the piper, however, and the next morning a note summoned Frances to Perryfield.
“My dear girl, when I heard Mr. Hearne returned and that Mrs. Terry allowed him to come amongst you all again to play Bottom, I could scarcely credit it,” Mrs. Dere said in her most Mrs.-Markham-Dere manner.
Which is to say she had Frances admitted to the drawing room instead of the cozier morning room, and she stood at the mantel with Frances seated before her.
Even Lord Dere had been enlisted to add to the gravity of the situation, but knowing his fatal soft-heartedness, his niece by marriage was determined to do all the talking.
“For all her good intentions, Mrs. Terry’s judgment cannot always be relied upon,” Mrs. Dere continued, “but I thought yours could, Frances. You know what a firm believer I have been in your sound judgment.”
“Madam, I do not believe any harm was done,” Frances began, which was mostly the truth and only the least little bit a lie.
“No harm? How could it not be harmful, after the disgrace in which those three young men left Greenwood Hall, for one of them—the perpetrator—the chief instigator, mind you—to come right back and find doors flying open to receive him?”
The only thing worse than Mr. Hearne making a fool of her and then, without her permission, kissing her, was being forced to defend him, and Frances’ blood boiled.
“I say again, madam, that no lasting harm was done. He felt an obligation to keep his word about the performance, and he did so. I cannot fault him there because I felt that same obligation. It was why I didn’t just send word to Mrs. Lamb to cancel it.
But, after the scene ended, he departed straightaway, without even taking leave of anyone, which told me he was as aware of the disfavor in which we held him as much as anyone could wish. ”
Her benefactress considered this in icy silence, arms crossed beneath her bosom, and when the baron cleared his throat, preparatory to making some peace offering between the two, her wrath flashed out to consume him as well.
“That Mr. Terry fails to show the proper regard due to you, sir, his patron and chief parishioner! If he knew on which side his bread was buttered, he would exert himself to control his wife. She should set the example in the parish, not go behind the backs of her betters to undermine them! Insubordinate clergy must be made to—”
“Now, Alice,” soothed the baron, “dear Alice…”
“It is true that Mrs. Terry did not believe any serious evil of Mr. Hearne,” Frances leaped in again, this time to protect kindly Lord Dere, “but whether she was right or wrong to admit him to the rectory, it hardly matters now because it is finished. The scene is finished; his obligations in Iffley are finished; and we will never see him or his friends again, unless we choose to haunt Tom Quad or the Cathedral. We would do better to forget them all now.”
Mrs. Dere sniffed at this, but being at bottom a reasonable woman, the storm began to abate, only to regain strength when Frances mused, “The ones more likely to cross the young men’s paths in the future are the Eveleighs.
Oriel College is very near Christ Church.
Do you suppose Mr. Midgecomb will still dare to pay his addresses to Miss Eveleigh?
Or that, if he does, the Eveleighs would give their consent?
She preferred Mr. Hearne, of course, so perhaps the case is moot. ”
“The Eveleighs!” repeated Mrs. Dere, a frown of terrific displeasure marring her lovely brow.
“Never again will Dorothy Eveleigh be trusted to introduce perfect strangers to our community. I do not doubt that Mr. Midgecomb will try his chances. A person who would not balk at hoodwinking innocent people will think nothing of continuing to press his advantage. I wish them well of such a son-in-law, but we, at least have been spared.”
“Would you object, madam, if I were to call at Greenwood Hall to speak with Jane? It seems awkward to go from seeing each other every day to not at all, and she has been wronged by them as much as the rest of us.”
It was not that Frances particularly missed Jane Eveleigh, but she had liked her once upon a time, and curiosity now gnawed at her vitals.
Not only Frances’ vitals, apparently, for Mrs. Dere gave a short nod, not even waiting very long to consider.
“I have no objection. You might even warn her against compounding the injury, if she continues to nurse tender feelings toward any of them. If I were her parent, I would exact a promise from her, that she would expel any and all of them from her heart, as I hope you will, Frances.”
Without volition, Frances felt again the warm, feathery brush of Mr. Hearne’s lips against hers, but with an effort she fought it off, that she might tell another mostly-truth: “As we have discussed before, I was in no danger of marrying any of them.”
“Yes, but if I recall, your chief objection to Mr. Hearne was his limited intellect, and now we see it was only an imposture.”
“But having been a victim of that imposture, madam, I cannot say it added to his charms. No. I believe I was never in danger, even when you were more favorably disposed toward them.”
The jab was small but telling, and Mrs. Dere yielded, saying no more on the subject. The visit ended with the mistress of Perryfield even offering Chauncey and the cart again, to carry Frances to the Hall, an offer gladly accepted on the warm day.
Having made her escape, Frances took a roundabout route, driving Chauncey by way of Church Cowley to come at Greenwood Hall from the east.
“Liar,” she murmured aloud, but so quietly that even Chauncey did not hear her over the jingle of his harness and rattle of the cart wheels. “Frances Barstow, you lied this morning. About two things.”