Page 23 of Mrs. Merritt’s Remorse (Lord Dere’s Dependents #2)

How should the sons of Adam's race

Be pure before their God?

— Isaac Watts, Hymns and spiritual songs (1707)

Christ Church Cathedral

Oxford

14 November 1802

Mr. Egerton,

Recent alarming reports of your involvement in an altercation have reached my ears, reports unbecoming a priest and a fellow of Christ Church. Please write to me at once with an explanation and consider this a warning against the loss of your temporary curacy.

With sincere goodwill,

Rt Revd John Randolph

Iffley Rectory

Iffley, Oxfordshire

16 November 1802

My dear uncle,

I was grieved to hear that your ward Miss Hynde continues to resent the abbreviation of her visit to us, but your agreement that it was for the best gives me much peace. Indeed, I assure you, sir, the protection of Miss Hynde’s reputation and innocence could not have been more important to me than to you. You may have guessed the reason for this, uncle, though I have never yet spoken of it.

In short, I had thought in the fullness of time to apply to you for Miss Hynde’s hand in marriage. Whether she herself guessed this I do not know, but after her time in Iffley I cannot not say I am at all confident I might one day win her. If she has opened her heart to you or to my cousin Martha, you might best advise me. That is, if Miss Hynde suspects my sending her away was motivated by jealousy , and if she now lives in expectation of an offer from me, tell me at once, and I will do the honorable thing sooner, rather than later, though I imagine she would refuse me in her current mood. If you and Martha do not believe she has divined my intentions, however, I would prefer to wait, not only to give her time to forget Mr. Beck, but also until I am better situated to support a wife and family.

I anxiously await your reply.

Please give our love to Martha and our compliments to Miss Hynde.

Your loving nephew,

Philip Egerton

Cottrell Hall

Oxfordshire

18 November 1802

My dear nephew,

I advise you to put Miss Hynde from your thoughts. If she has any expectation of an offer from you, she has said nothing of it. Nor would I recommend that you act precipitously, making an offer when none is required. Furthermore, as her guardian, I would be loath to approve a match where there was so little to live on as a modest fellowship and temporary curacy.

Your loving uncle,

Geoffrey Cottrell

And who could say how long he could maintain even those, Egerton thought gloomily. He had replied to the bishop’s note, of course, and after five days of silence could only hope that no news was good news.

“What does my uncle say?” asked Cassie, when the Tommies and Archie had been excused to the schoolroom. She had recognized the hand on the letter as soon as Polly placed it beside her brother’s plate, and though Philip had not shown her the one he sent to Cottrell Hall, he had discussed it with her, and she had been on tenterhooks for him while they waited for the reply.

He tossed it across the table. “Read for yourself. You may do so in less time than it would take to tell you the contents.”

And while Cassie found this to be true, she went thrice through it, hiding behind the sheet of paper until she might school her expression. Her uncle Cottrell was always terse, but this —! What good would it do for her brother to receive the bishop’s pardon, if he still lost Felicity?

Carefully she folded the letter and slid it back across the cloth. “It is very short, even for my uncle.”

“He does not waste words,” agreed Philip.

Worrying at her lip, she stopped with an effort. “What—will you do?”

“Do? In regard to Miss Hynde? Nothing, it appears.”

He frowned, but it was not a frown of unhappiness so much as one of meditation.

“But Philip! Will you so easily abandon…all your plans?” When he did not respond, Cassie busied herself with collecting crumbs from the tablecloth and depositing them on Archie’s plate. “Or do you only mean to postpone them? Perhaps my uncle only meant to say, after all, that since Mr. Spacks has not yet given up the ghost and made the living available, and since Felicity is angry with you—with us—why not set your plans aside for the moment?”

Unfolding the letter again, her brother scanned it once more. “I suspect your interpretation is an optimistic one, Cass, for I do not read encouragement of my suit here.”

“Because you haven’t the income yet! He makes no other objection, Philip.”

He considered this, drumming his fingers on the sheet of paper. “No, but he might easily have said something like, ‘wait until the living is yours.’ I wonder if he is having second thoughts about promising it to me.”

At this she gasped. “But he did promise it to you! Even if my uncle disapproves of you marrying Felicity, he would not be so lost to honor as to rescind his offer of St. Lawrence Church! Why, it is one thing if he will not approve of you marrying Felicity and another altogether if he deprives you of the means to marry at all!”

“Mm.”

The clock chimed, and Cassie knew he must go to join his pupils, but she reached a hand across the table to halt him. “Wait, Philip. There’s no help for it if you are determined to be discouraged, but—are you? That is…unless—unless you have changed your mind?”

His gaze met hers sharply. “Why do you say that?”

“I mean—I mean—unless you decided, on second thought, that you and Felicity wouldn’t suit.”

“Why should I decide that?” he asked.

His sister heard the mild challenging note in his question, but she loved him too well to mince matters. She tried to downplay the seriousness of her next words, however, by beginning to stack the empty dishes. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said dryly. “It isn’t as if you and Felicity grew particularly close in her short time here. If anything, her visit rather injured you in her esteem. Not that I expect her feelings for Beck to endure long, with nothing to feed them, but the fact that she could admire such a person does not say a great deal about her judgment.”

“It speaks to her youth,” was his quick reply. “There is no denying Beck is a dashing fellow, one more apt to win favor than a clergyman. She—would not be the first to be swayed by a man’s charms into acting foolishly.”

Though he did not name names, Cassie’s thoughts unconsciously followed his. “Very true. And if Mrs. Merritt is anything to compare with, Felicity will be improved by the experience.”

“You think Mrs. Merritt improved by her…mistakes, then?”

“Of course I do,” she answered. “Surely her Roger Merritt could not have been any handsomer than Mr. Beck, and Mr. Beck is far wealthier, yet she was not at all tempted on this occasion, despite his attentions. That shows hard-won wisdom. And repentance. A truly silly girl would fall again into the same errors.”

“Mm.”

“Oh, don’t grunt at me, Philip! Moreover, look what her wisdom is costing her—this time she has resisted a match against the wishes of arguably the most influential person in her family’s life. You must have seen how Mrs. Dere was stone and ice to the Barstows in church on Sunday.”

“I was too distracted by Mrs. Dere being stone and ice to me,” he joked. “I’m afraid she blames me in equal measure for the failure of her plans, as if I had counseled Mrs. Merritt to refuse Beck! I warned her against him, I admit, when I suspected him of merely flirting with her, but I had nothing to do with her rejection of his proposal—”

“But surely, had Mrs. Merritt consulted you, you would have been equally against her marrying such a man!” pressed Cassie. “After what we know of his relation to Archie! Barring a miracle, I do not think he would make any woman a good husband. Certainly he will not be a faithful one.”

Her brother’s gaze fell to the tablecloth, and the thoughtful frown reappeared. “No. If Mrs. Merritt had asked my opinion, I would not have had her marry him.”

“I am glad to hear you say it. I would think little of your own wisdom if you had. Poor Jane! She will need our kindness now, between Mrs. Dere’s anger and this new scandal. The younger Mrs. Barstow told me at church that Mrs. Merritt will not be venturing from Iffley Cottage for the time being. In fact, her sister Miss Frances will be taking over the parish school with me.”

“Not venturing from Iffley Cottage?” he echoed.

“For heaven’s sake, Philip—you heard all the chatter on Sunday. As if she hasn’t endured more than her share of staring and pointing, talking and whispering.”

“At the risk of exciting your wrath, I persevere in saying—and she would agree with me—that Mrs. Merritt had only herself to blame for that initial period of staring, pointing, talking, etc. when she came to Iffley. And the fact that there is a second uproar is, I’m sorry to say, directly attributable to there having been a first .”

His sister only shook her head at him. “Oh, Philip, how blind and pitiless you are.”

He stared at her. “Blind? Pitiless? What on earth?”

“Blind and pitiless,” she repeated. “If you cannot see—I mean—if you don’t realize your part in it all. Especially since it was you who—made this mole-hill into a mountain!”

“My dear sister, I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about.”

“Haven’t you? I am talking about you getting into that tussle with Mr. Beck! If not for that, who besides we and the Barstows would even have known that he tried to kiss her again? And none of us would have said a word, just as we didn’t say a word after the Greenwood ball. But because you couldn’t keep your temper, the matter went on—long enough to attract Harry Barbary and Mrs. Dere and Mrs. Lamb and all Iffley! Yes, Philip, I assign the shares of blame differently. I consider the misfortunes Jane will now have to face—to be largely attributable to you .”

Astonishment silenced him, and in that silence she added with uncharacteristic spite, “And then, while she is shamed and talked about, you receive pats on the back and admiration for your ‘manly chivalry’ (apart from the bishop’s note, of course, but even that reprimand I suspect to have been pro forma ). Therefore, unless you apply equal ruthlessness to your estimation of Felicity Hynde, I will consider you all-around unjust.”

When he recovered his voice, he demanded, “Am I wrong, Cassie, in thinking you are not overly fond of my uncle’s ward?”

“Me?” she cried, blushing and already beginning to regret her rash speech. “I—I—If you love her, Philip, and tell me she will be my sister, I will love her with all my heart. Meanwhile, I am not un fond of her.”

“Saints preserve us from such lukewarm fondness, then,” he took refuge in teasing. But his color was high, and he pushed back his chair, rising. “Very well. If I have so contributed to Mrs. Merritt’s wrongs, I will seek her out at the Cottage, Cass. The least I can do is to apologize for making things worse for her.”

Egerton did not fulfill his promise immediately when the day’s lessons were finished, however. The truth was, the morning had upset him, and despite the little jokes he had made to his sister and despite the icy rain, he set out on a long walk, the wretched weather in keeping with his mood.

So must Hercules have felt, when he lopped off one head of the Hydra, only to have two sprout in its place! As if the Miss-Hynde situation were not sufficient trouble for the day, Mrs. Merritt’s woes must also fall to him?

Let us take things in order, he counseled himself, absently splashing through a puddle. Which meant he must begin by thinking about Miss Hynde.

Felicity, rather.

Was it hopeless with her, or not? How was Egerton to interpret his uncle’s letter?

Geoffrey Cottrell did not say his nephew was to put her out of his mind forever ; nor did he say he would continue to withhold his blessing after Philip gained the living of St. Lawrence Church. The overall tone of the letter, however, could hardly be called encouraging. Was Geoffrey Cottrell merely writing in his usual curt manner, or did he intend to forbid his nephew permanently?

Two months ago the puzzle might have tortured him. Yet today it did not.

And the fact that it did not made him far more apprehensive.

Had Miss Hynde lost her luster in his eyes?

At the least her conduct had dispelled his blind enchantment.

She was pretty as ever, to be sure, still golden like an angel in her looks. But had an angel ever such a temper? Was an angel ever so undiscerning? Did an angel ever yearn so stubbornly for something so…worthless? To have attacked Mrs. Merritt out of jealousy! To envy Mrs. Merritt’s unsought power over Beck!

At his reading in, among other articles, Egerton had assented before the congregation to Article Nine, “whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil,” but it was one thing to assent to a general truth and another altogether to apply it to one’s beloved. Though he would not have said it aloud, Philip had believed in his heart that, where mankind might incline to evil, dear Miss Hynde surely only inclined to kittenish naughtiness, pet-like peccadilloes.

Moreover, Philip had called Miss Hynde “young” when speaking of her to Cassie, as if the flaws now made manifest were common to youth. But while youth could explain some of what he had seen, it could not explain all.

The truth was, to this point Philip had always considered innocence—Miss Hynde’s innocence in particular—a synonym for purity. Or, at least, “purity” of the pureness available to mortal beings.

But what if this was not correct?

What if—what if a young lady’s innocence indicated no more than that she had never been put to the test?

Halted by the shock of his thought, he stood motionless for some time, attracting the regard of sheep huddled under nearby trees to escape the rain. They studied him through their unsettling rectangular pupils, but Egerton was too disturbed to notice.

What if the clearness of Miss Hynde’s eyes demonstrated no more than the innocence of untested youth, and was by no means a window to an immaculate, untainted core?

It would mean—horrible thought—that there was ultimately no difference between a Mrs. Merritt and a Felicity Hynde, except that the former had been tried and had failed, while the latter’s moral strength remained untested and therefore unknown.

However disturbing this conclusion was to him, he was conscious of an equally disturbing corollary: he was relieved that he had not yet told Miss Hynde of his feelings.

Why? Why should relief be uppermost? And why should that relief be so sweet it contrarily made him unhappy?

If I am relieved, it must mean I do not want to marry her after all. But that was nonsense. Felicity Hynde had been his object for several years now, and was he to abandon his pursuit at the first obstacle? If he did, what would become of all his plans, when each stepping stone led logically to the next in the path?

At last the rain ceased, and Egerton found himself in St. Nicholas Road before the Minchery Farm, his boots and the hem of his greatcoat muddy. The farm had once been a small priory of Benedictine nuns, suppressed centuries earlier under Cardinal Wolsey, and though the long principal building was now used as a farmhouse, it was still possible to observe traces of its former life as a chapter house and dormitory. When less preoccupied, Egerton would have admired the ancient stonework encasing the coupled windows and imagined the size of the cloister-garth, but on this occasion he did not even spare a glance, merely turning on his heel when he caught sight of it to retrace his steps to Iffley.

He must be honest with himself, he thought. If only to himself.

It was just as well that his uncle disapproved the match at present. Because, lack of money aside, at present neither Egerton nor Miss Hynde were of the proper mind to make it a success. If it would ever take place, Miss Hynde must conquer both her feelings for Beck and her resentment of Philip, and Philip must learn to love Miss Hynde in toto . That is, foolishness, temper, and all.

Either that or sacrifice his long-held plans.

This was as far as introspection and an hour’s walk could take him before he reached Church Way again and the Iffley Cottage gate. While nothing had been resolved, and he must wait on time and chance, Egerton felt his peace restored. Toward Miss Hynde and his uncle, at least.

There remained his interview with Mrs. Merritt. And, to judge by the acceleration of his heart and sudden tightness of his collar, he must be less confident of this particular outcome.

Squaring his shoulders, Egerton opened the gate.