Chapter Twenty-Three
It was certainly an ill-judged thing to neglect such an
opportunity of being honourably settled.
Oriel College
Dear Frances,
Everyone has gone to bed, but I must write to you at once because my budget of news is full. I had meant to start this letter on Saturday, but there was such a fuss it was impossible. I wish you had come, Frances. I told you your presence would have spared me much suffering.
I must begin on Saturday, when Mr. Midgecomb came as he had promised.
Oh, Frances! His wretched stammer was back.
It was the most dreadful interview from start to finish, and if I had not been able to stare at my needlework, and if Annabel and I had not been able to nudge each other’s foot throughout, I would surely have screamed with laughter or simply screamed.
You must not imagine we were alone with him.
Papa and Mama were both present, and Mr. Midgecomb soon managed to tangle himself so irretrievably in apologies and courtesies and repeating himself that Papa had to tell him his apology was accepted, just to move him on from the point!
(Mama was not best pleased with that, and I suppose she was nudging him with her own foot because he did not say much thereafter.) But little did any of us suspect, Mr. Midgecomb came armed with a thunderbolt!
It seems his grandfather the Earl Witherwood has died, and his uncle has inherited the title.
This would mean little, of course, except that this uncle, the new Earl Witherwood, is nearly sixty, childless, and not likely to marry, and Mr. Midgecomb’s own father has been dead these many years.
Frances, I could see Mama’s opinion of Mr. Midgecomb go from night to day before my very eyes, and I knew I was in trouble.
Mr. Midgecomb asked to speak with Papa. Mama scarcely waited for the door to shut before pouncing upon me and telling me she had decided we must not hold the young men’s prank against them any longer because it was clear Mr. Midgecomb repented of it, at least, and she had always thought him a good young man.
Even Annabel betrayed me, saying, for her part, she had always liked all three of them, and she would ever after have only good memories of the summer because see how her strabismus was improving!
(And it is, though not enough that she can do without the patch yet, by any means.)
Then Papa and Mr. Midgecomb returned, Papa only long enough to summon Mama and Annabel from the room.
Oh, Frances. I will never wish for another proposal for a proposal’s sake again. A wretched business. Mr. Midgecomb’s stammer gave me many moments to try to forestall him, but he refused to accede to them, so I might have saved my breath.
I was l-l-l-lovely. He h-had l-l-l-l-loved me from the f-f-first, etc.
etc. When he finally stuttered and sputtered to his conclusion, I had to wait a polite interval before saying with firmness made firmer by exasperation that I thanked him and was honored etc.
, etc., but did not think we would suit and never had thought it.
He turned purple and his eyes filled, and I felt myself a monster, so that when he was gone and Mama and Papa and Annabel came rushing back in, all I could do was cry.
That was Saturday and Sunday and Monday.
Reproaches on Mama’s part, regretful shaking of the head on Annabel’s part, Papa groaning unhappily, and me bursting into tears whenever they pushed me too far.
That was why I ran away on Tuesday. You mustn’t scream, Frances.
I did not go far, and it cannot really be called running away because Annabel could not be got rid of, but the important thing is that I did not tell my parents.
I told Annabel I was going with all the dozens and dozens of excursionists to the races in Port Meadow, and she fussed and fumed until she saw I was at my wit’s end and wasn’t going to listen.
What glorious fun it was! I won ten shillings on “Miss Coiner” at the Gold Cup and had several gentlemen praise my looks and try to speak to me, though I suspect they were drunk, but that isn’t the bit I wanted to tell you.
It is that I met Mr. Tilson at the betting post!
You might have beat us both down with a feather, we were so amazed, but I am relieved to tell you he didn’t waste time as Mr. Midgecomb had, apologizing and apologizing.
He only stuck his hands in his pockets and said hadn’t it been great good fun, though it ended in such a fuss?
Frances, I suspect Mr. Tilson was in his cups as well because he kept laughing excessively and told us a few things he likely would not have, had he been sober.
To wit, when the three young men first came to the Hall, Mr. Tilson wanted to wager on whether any of us young ladies could be won and how soon, but his two friends refused to take his bets!
I thought Annabel might faint, she was so shocked at this, but he didn’t even notice and only complained that he would have liked the money because luck was against him at the races in Winchester.
He said he tried to affect the outcomes in any case—to “interest Hearne in Miss Barstow” and “use Miss Barstow as interference” between Mr. Midgecomb and me(!) because he hadn’t given up hope his friends might risk a few guineas.
“And why shouldn’t I think that?” he asked.
“You had the longest odds, Miss Jarvis, and there was Adam laying out that book on strabismus where you might see it, and see how your eye is that much better! I wouldn’t be surprised if you caught someone, if only you had a little money to you.
Do you have a little money to you? I would happily repay you from my winnings. ”
Frances, I need hardly say that by this time heads were turning, and mortified Annabel was dragging me away with the strength of a dozen horses!
I daresay my own mouth hung open like a trap door.
In his stupor Mr. Tilson called after us, louder than ever, “But it’s all come to nothing, since you refused Midge, and Hearne has run off to see about his brother, and who knows when he will return.
Must you go so soon? Then good-bye, Miss Eveleigh, Miss Jarvis, good-bye. ”
Isn’t it all too shocking? Annabel was overcome and took to her bed the instant we got home (which conveniently spared her the blame for my disappearance), but I marched up to Mama and told her everything.
The gambling, the drunkenness, everything.
To think, these were the sort of people she had wanted me to marry, and wasn’t she glad now that I had refused Mr. Midgecomb?
When I had finished, Mama was no more able to hold up her head than Annabel, and I trust there will be no more reproaches of me, and I may do as I please.
The candles gutter and my eyelids droop, but I had to tell somebody, and you are the only one who knows all the players! How I wish you were here, that we might digest all this together.
Yours etc.,
Jane Eveleigh
Upon reading this astonishing letter, Frances could only rejoice that she wasn’t with Jane Eveleigh or indeed anyone, that she might wander Iffley Meadows and “digest” the news alone and undisturbed.
While she began by being amused—poor Mr. Midgecomb and his broken proposal!
—and indignant over Mr. Tilson betting on them, by the end she thought only of Mr. Hearne.
What did Mr. Tilson mean, saying, “who knows when he will return”?
If Mr. Hearne had gone to “see about his brother,” that must mean he had gone to Weymouth as he told her he would, but was that where the Hearnes would remain?
There were no answers, of course. Only more questions.
If only Miss Jarvis had not pulled Jane away so soon, who knew what more they could have learned from Mr. Tilson’s bibulous babbling!
Still, out of what she had been given Frances gleaned two titbits about Mr. Hearne: (1) he had recognized Mr. Tilson’s wager as ungentlemanlike and refused to participate; and (2) he had tried to help Miss Jarvis overcome her eye condition.
“Perhaps Mrs. Terry was right,” she murmured, rubbing the seed heads of the meadow grass between her fingers.
“That his good nature is genuine, not assumed.” But how much did these little proofs of goodness begin to counterbalance his duplicity?
On which scale of the balance should she place his proposal to her?
She read the letter again, but there was nothing more to be scraped from it.
Frances could only conclude that his offer had somehow been part and parcel of his ruse.
For if he truly did like her mind and her looks and her family as he had said he did, why would he then go away, never to speak again?
Never to try again? Why would he only ask her pardon but not return to see if the pardon had been granted?
Mr. Midgecomb had cared enough for Jane Eveleigh to do so, humiliating for him as it had been.
But not so Mr. Hearne. It had been three weeks since Pyramus and Thisbe.
Was it because he was away, wherever “away” was?
“Mama, there is something I must tell you.”
Mrs. Barstow wiped her hands on her apron, having carefully plucked the grasses from the slip-coat cheese preparatory to slicing it.
“Then tell away, darling. You likely have five minutes before Bash discovers what I am doing and comes to beg some of this on bread.”
“It is about Mr. Hearne.”
Her mother’s pause was brief, in which her eyes flew to her daughter’s face. Then she quickly lowered them and began to trace with the knife tip the lines along which she would slice.
“I did not say anything at the time, nor indeed until this very moment,” Frances began, “but Mr. Hearne—before we learned he was not as empty-headed as he pretended to be—Mr. Hearne asked me to marry him.”
Then Mrs. Barstow forgot all about the slip-coat cheese.
“Oh, my dear girl,” she breathed.