Chapter Twenty-Five
Such a battle could not be fought without sustaining a great loss of men. I…lament, in common with the British Navy and the British Nation…the fall of the Commander in Chief…a Hero whose name will be immortal.
Everyone did take sides.
The rift ran through Iffley in the week that followed, dividing neighbor from neighbor.
Mrs. Terry felt Mr. Hearne should be given another chance.
The Chaunceys and Lanes and Mrs. Bellew stood with Mrs. Dere, as did the lower orders, who knew on which side their bread was buttered.
Cool nods were exchanged in church. Mrs. Lamb fretted over how to please all sides while being the repository of mutual complaints.
“If he is so innocent, why does he not then come?”
“I hear the Eveleighs forgave all, but the girl still refused to marry that other one, the friend of his.”
“Heaven forbid anything should happen to the baron, or Mrs. Dere would evict the Barstows from the cottage before his headstone was engraved.”
“I, for one, call them ungrateful. One price of being a rich man’s dependent is that one must do what one is told.”
Coldness and gossip. Gossip and coldness.
And as the days and weeks passed, Frances wondered if it had all been for nothing, for Mr. Hearne did not reappear.
Nor did he answer the replies sent from Perryfield and Iffley Cottage which had caused such controversy.
Had he lost interest? Having secured his pardon, had he gone his merry way and found other things to distract him while Iffley seethed and fumed and wondered?
September passed. Jane Eveleigh’s notes gradually ceased to mention any of the three Christ Church Students.
By October Frances was not the only one to think Mr. Hearne had forgotten them. By October, indeed, all but the principals began to forget Mr. Hearne.
She knew Mrs. Dere had not forgotten, however.
The Barstows were once again invited to dinner, but while the baron looked ready to weep to have them there and presented them with gifts of new music and books, his niece continued frosty.
Perfectly polite and correct, but unapproachable as a glacier.
Even to Frances’ timid attempts at peacemaking she did not unbend a fraction.
And then November came, with the news of Trafalgar and Lord Nelson’s death reaching the London papers, to be carried outward to every corner of the country as swiftly as the mail coaches could travel.
The nation plunged into mourning, and when the Day of Thanksgiving commanded by His Majesty was observed in Iffley’s Church of St. Mary the Virgin, all the Barstows were outfitted in black crape.
“I am a hypocrite,” Sarah Langworthy whispered to Frances as they sat in their pew behind the Deres. “Because I suspect I am more thankful for my Horace coming safely through the battle than I am for the victory itself.”
Frances squeezed her hand, saying nothing.
For if Sarah felt herself a hypocrite, what was she, Frances?
Whose own mixture of gratitude and mourning owed as much to self as to the nation?
Because it must be confessed, if only in the secret recesses of Frances’ heart, that she was thankful Iffley at last had something more absorbing to think about than whether Mr. Adam Hearne deserved forgiveness, and she was mournful in that he seemed as much lost to her as Lord Nelson was to England.
When the calendar turned to December, however, Sarah, for her part, dried any remaining crocodile tears.
Though still wearing black ribbons, she could hardly hide her smiles because her dear Horace would be among those accompanying the admiral’s remains to Greenwich, which meant he would be granted leave through Christmas before being recalled to participate in Nelson’s January funeral.
Cocking her head to listen to Sarah singing as she walked through the house, Mrs. Barstow smiled. “How happy she is! It warms my heart. And I am scarcely less looking forward to seeing him again, my surrogate son.”
“He’s a favorite,” agreed Frances around an inexplicable tightness in her throat. She and her mother sat working on shirts they were sewing for the parish.
Mrs. Barstow glanced at her, and her smile acquired a secret quality. “But there is another daughter I would see happy…”
Frances’ head lifted. Had her discontent been so obvious? She had done her best for months now to hide it, hoping that if any leaked out it would be attributed to the trouble with Mrs. Dere and her faction.
“I mean dear Jane,” Mrs. Barstow continued, eyes on her sewing. “Since baby Pippa’s birth she has been not as strong as I would like, and we thought it would lift her spirits if you were to visit her and Philip. You might play with the baby and keep Jane company.”
“But—for how long?” Frances sputtered. “An afternoon?”
“Dear me. An afternoon would hardly be worth the trouble. You know their village is a little out of the way. I was going to ask the baron if his coachman might drive you.”
Recovering, Frances said, “Of course I am happy enough to go and see the Egertons, and for however long you and Jane think best, Mama, but I did want to see Horace as well when he returns at Christmas.”
“Yes, yes. If Jane and Philip are not ready to have you leave them yet, we will simply send for all of you. Now go and pack your trunk, dearest, and I will dash out the necessary notes.”
Frances had not been five minutes in the Egertons’ cozy parsonage before she decided her mother must have excessively high standards for Jane’s health, if she thought her daughter sickly or low-spirited.
Indeed, Frances could not vouch for ever having seen her second older sister appear more blooming.
She sat embroidering a gown for baby Pippa, humming and giving the baby’s cradle regular nudges to keep it rocking, while her husband Philip worked at his desk, glancing up from time to time to regard his little family fondly.
They were such a picture of domestic happiness that, if not for their eager welcome of her, Frances might have felt herself de trop.
“I cannot think what Mama meant,” Frances said to her sister. “She made me think I would find you pale and exhausted and blue, yet you are nothing of the kind.”
“I did have a little cold last week,” chuckled Jane, “but I didn’t give it to our pretty little mousy mouse, thank goodness.”
Of course this drew the proud father to stand over the cradle while both parents beamed upon their pretty little mousy mouse, and Frances bore it with what patience she could, but when she felt she had indulged them long enough, she resumed.
“Is it that Mama wanted me out of the house?” She bit her lip.
“Was it that she thought I looked sickly and low-spirited?”
“If you did it was no surprise, after all the nastiness of the autumn,” returned Jane. “I hope Iffley has put their differences aside, in light of greater events?”
“If you mean, is everyone speaking to everyone else again, yes, they are. A discreet veil has been drawn over the past. Even Mrs. Lamb has ceased to harp upon the subject, though she continues to pull faces and tap her nose knowledgeably when she sees me. Last week she even caught at me and hissed, ‘We’ve learned, haven’t we, Miss Barstow?
Learned there are some names best not mentioned anymore, like that of Mr. Hearne. ’’”
Jane laughed at her sister’s mimicry. “I do rather miss Mrs. Lamb. We have busybodies here, but none so all-seeing and all-knowing as she. I hope you didn’t agree with her, however, about nevermore mentioning Mr. Hearne because I fear it’s too late.”
“What do you mean ‘too late’?” Frances demanded, her stomach taking a sickening dive. “Have you heard something about him?” She glanced toward her brother-in-law who, like Messieurs Hearne, Midgecomb, and Tilson, had been a Student of Christ Church. “Has—has he returned to Oxford?”
Was this the secret? That he had returned to Oxford, but not Iffley, and her mother had sent her away so she wouldn’t learn of it?
“He has,” said Jane carefully, her eyes on her embroidery. Philip had resumed his seat and was mending his pen with singular focus.
A tight little pain lanced her then, as if it were her own heart being shaved down by Philip’s pen knife.
Well, then.
There it was.
All that fuss for nothing. At long last Adam Hearne had returned to Oxford, but he had not bothered to call in Iffley, where the door to Iffley Cottage, at least, remained open to him.
Taking a steadying breath she replied with elaborate unconcern, “I declare. What a storm in a teacup. I should inform Mrs. Lamb at once that we ought all now to lower our guard. Among the thousands of people in Oxford, the chances of randomly encountering one in particular are very small. Especially if that one does not wish to be encountered.”
“Ah,” said Philip, “but it’s much more difficult to avoid such an encounter when not surrounded by the thousands of Oxford, but indeed only two other people.”
“What?”
“Frances, darling, Philip has invited Mr. Hearne to dinner,” Jane interjected quickly. “And he has accepted.”
“What? What? I-I-I did not know you were acquainted.”
“I am some years older,” Philip admitted, “but I remembered him as a stripling whom even the more prosaic tutors acknowledged as something of a genius.”
If she hadn’t been distracted, Frances would have buried her head in her hands at this reminder of how badly she had been fooled, but she didn’t even think to, under these circumstances. “But what do you mean by inviting him to dinner, if you know him so little?”
“Darling,” said Jane again, setting her embroidery aside and forgetting even to rock baby Pippa as she leaned forward in her eagerness, “to tell the truth, Mama and Lord Dere arranged it all. They put their heads together when—when the little war in Iffley broke out—and decided you and Mr. Hearne should be given the opportunity to see each other again, but away from—away from the rumpus.”