Page 29 of Mrs. Merritt’s Remorse (Lord Dere’s Dependents #2)

‘Lydy,’ says his Lordship, ‘'tis your Picture to the utmost Resemblance.’

— John Shebbeare, Lydia, or Filial piety (1755)

After all the planning and plotting of the Iffley community, in the end the students’ recital never took place. When Egerton did eventually remember to send the invitation to Greenwood Hall, it was politely declined. Even more surprisingly, the entire Greenwood party kept to themselves after their return. While they had never attended service at St. Mary the Virgin, in the following days neither were they seen in the village or riding about the country. And even those who had declared they would certainly not call at the Hall after the tenants returned were affronted when no attempts were made by the Hall to call upon them .

“What can it mean?” demanded Mrs. Dere in the churchyard after the morning service. “If they mean to hide away from society, why return at all to Iffley?”

“Perhaps Mr. Beck is too ashamed of his conduct,” suggested Mrs. Lane, peeping behind her to ensure neither the curate nor any of the Barstows were within earshot. “I did not expect him to show his face here, at any rate, however much I would have liked to see Mrs. Merritt cut him. And imagine poor Mr. Egerton, if he had had to deliver his sermon with that man in the pews!”

“Poor Mr. Egerton indeed,” whispered Mrs. Bellew in an even lower voice. “Do you not think he has been out of spirits?”

“He has, he has,” agreed Mrs. Lane eagerly, the circle of ladies unconsciously contracting, and heads leaning in. “Everyone has noticed. Why, Mrs. Lamb said to me—”

“Mrs. Bellew, surely you are not going to repeat that woman’s idle gossip,” scolded Mrs. Dere, but her reproof was half-hearted.

“I—well—no, but it happens that I quite agree with what she said,” floundered Mrs. Bellew. “Which is, he has been low ever since Miss Hynde departed . He held up in the immediate aftermath, but as time passed, his depression increased.” Then, with a mischievous smile at the mistress of Perryfield she added, “But Mrs. Lamb did tell our maid Jemima one interesting titbit when the girl went to have the ale jugs refilled. It was nothing important, most likely, but…” A shrug.

Mrs. Dere would not stoop to take the bait, but thankfully Mrs. Lane did. “Bother, Matilda! Do finish your sentences, instead of throwing out lures.”

Appeased, Matilda Bellew dropped her pretense of indifference. “Very well, then. Mrs. Lamb said a letter from Cottrell Hall came for Mr. Egerton yesterday, and now Mr. Egerton has hired a horse to ride into Oxford this afternoon!”

This was met with muted gasps and unanswerable questions: “Do you suppose he wrote to his uncle and offered for Miss Hynde?” “Why should he go to Oxford?” “If he goes to meet his uncle, why does his uncle not simply come to Iffley?” “Should we ask Miss Egerton what she knows?”

Curiosity won the day, but when Cassie was applied to, she could say no more than, “My uncle has business in Oxford with his lawyers tomorrow morning and asked Philip to meet him there. What about neither he nor I know.” Both had guesses, but she refrained from adding this. They would all just have to wait and see.

Though she was wrong as to the cause, Mrs. Bellew did not miss the mark in observing Egerton’s lowered spirits. How could he help but be low, despite his resolve not to despair of Mrs. Merritt? In the week which had passed, he had already received three responses to his letters, and none offered employment. If anything, his income threatened to diminish, for, in addition to declining the proposed recital, Beck wrote tersely that he would be withdrawing Archie from Egerton’s tutelage after Christmas to send the boy to school in London, and would Egerton be so kind as to inform him?

Much as the shy child had grown on him, and much as he feared Archie would not like the change, Egerton could not be sorry for it, if it meant Beck also meant to return to town.

But even heavier on his heart than his unpromising career aspirations lay Mrs. Merritt. She seemed determined to avoid him. If he happened by when the parish lessons were ending, she chose to walk home with the children. If he called at the cottage, she sewed quietly beside her mother or made some excuse to leave the room. In church she kept her eyes lowered. With the recital idea abandoned, he had no excuse to ply her with notes or questions. Even a highly-anticipated dinner at Perryfield proved a frustration, as he got no more from her than polite phrases, and, try as he might, he could never catch her eye.

It could not be borne.

Did she no longer love him, or had she never loved him at all?

Had she kissed him simply because she liked kissing? It was more than she had granted Beck, truly, but it was not enough for Egerton. Not nearly enough. So, yes, depression had settled on him, depression and uneasiness.

When his uncle’s note came, it was as cryptic as his earlier letter, offering no reason for his summons. It likely concerned Miss Hynde, but he couldn’t muster any curiosity and only hoped she and Martha would not be there.

The sun had just dipped below the horizon when Egerton rode across the Pettypont, past Magdalen Tower and the Physic Garden into the Oxford High Street. He would have preferred to walk, but knowing he could not leave Iffley until the afternoon service was ended left him little choice. He had been further delayed, moreover, by delivering the news to Archie Wilson.

“You understand what I am saying, Archie? At the end of the month, you will leave us to return to London, to a new school your guardian has chosen. We will be sorry to see you go, for you have been a good pupil and well-behaved lad.”

“My mama is in London,” said Archie, his features lighting. “Then I will see her all the time.”

For the boy’s sake Egerton hoped so, though if Archie was illegitimate and his mother…no better than she should be, it was hard to say whether proximity could be considered a benefit of the removal.

“She loves me very much,” said Archie, more to himself than to his tutor, “and no one is as beautiful as my mama. Not even Mrs. Merritt.”

This last bit jarred Egerton, whose thoughts were never very far from Mrs. Merritt to begin with, and he felt a surge of fondness for the child, remembering that Archie alone of the rectory boys had seemed to prefer Mrs. Merritt to Felicity Hynde.

Passing the Angel Inn, Egerton almost smiled to remember his last visit there, when he dragged Mrs. Merritt out of Miss Hynde’s clawed reach. Miss Hynde’s temper—what a display! With the rumpus Felicity made, he had not even been able to enjoy the sensation of holding Mrs. Merritt close. Those working at the Angel might have forgotten the incident by now, but Philip had not, and he was glad his uncle Geoffrey had chosen the more fashionable Golden Cross Hotel on Cornmarket Street.

Ordinarily the High Street would be thronged with dons, duns, noblemen with their tutors and servants, gentlemen commoners, more humble commoners, servitors, and dreaded proctors on the lookout for miscreants to pull from taverns. But there were considerably fewer now because the Michaelmas term had ended the previous week. Egerton had spent many years among them all, first as a gentleman commoner and then as a fellow of Christ Church. He had not got into any more scrapes than the average undergraduate and far fewer than many, but it all seemed long ago now, and none of them paid any attention to the sober clergyman in his black coat riding by on an unimpressive nag. When the Terrys returned, would he have any choice but to don his old gown and rent a mean garret near the college? What had been perfectly sufficient a few months earlier now struck him as unendurable, and Egerton shuddered. How could that life possibly compare to the new vision which had replaced it, one of a snug vicarage quickened by the presence of his beloved Jane?

Jane.

Like a tongue probing an aching tooth, he returned to the problem of Jane. In good moments he told himself she loved him but avoided him because their separation was painful. A comforting thought, even if it changed nothing in their circumstances. In bad moments—well, in bad moments he thought he meant no more to her than Beck had, and that she had kissed him for comparison’s sake, or for amusement. Since she would not let him get near again, there was only one way of learning the truth: to ask her again when he could engage himself to her openly. And when, oh when, would that be? A year from hence? Two? Five?

But as Egerton reached the Carfax and clicked his tongue to his hired mount, he little knew how close his deliverance loomed. As the poet Cowper put it, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform,” and that mysterious way lay just inside the courtyard of the Cross Inn.

Compared to the Angel, not a fraction of the coaches arrived at or departed from the Cross, but nor did the Cross boast the Angel’s spacious yard. The narrow courtyard of the Cross was entered under an archway and was only wide enough for a single coach or wagon to turn around in, but it being Sunday, Egerton did not expect much of a squeeze. He dismounted in the street, however, to save himself ducking under the arch, and led his horse in by the reins.

Walled in on every side, the courtyard was lit only by two hanging lanterns and whatever light seeped through cracks in the window shutters. Which is to say, it was a dim place on a winter evening and made much more so by the elegant coach drawn up before the entrance, blocking what light the lanterns threw off. The coach had its own pair of globe lamps, of course, and a servant lad held a torch for the ostlers and stablemen, and it was by this lesser and uncertain light that Egerton saw a sight which stopped him dead.

At first he thought he must have been thinking so hard about her that he willed her into existence. For there stood Mrs. Merritt beside the coach, her back to him, her bonnet hanging down by its straps and her dark hair half tumbled. That is, there stood Mrs. Merritt, being thoroughly, willingly and reciprocally kissed.

By Alexander Beck.

For there was the gleam of the man’s emerald ring and there the particular angle at which he bowed his head to reach her lips.

Presented with this sight for the third time in as many months, Egerton—well—it must be stated that then Mr. Philip Egerton, fellow at Christ Church and vicar of St. Mary the Virgin in Iffley, thoroughly disgraced himself.

As Hex Wexham, ostler, age fifteen, would tell the story a hundred times in the next several days, “There we were, loading the baggage, like, for the gentleman and his sweetheart, when there was this great roar, and next thing you know, some madman lays hold of the gentleman’s collar and slings him across the court and then throws hisself on top, bellowing something about there’ll be no eloping while he’s got breath in him! And the other man starts swearing and yelling, and then they’re rolling about in the muck, and everyone is screaming, especially the sweetheart. She’s a-screaming, ‘Alex! Alex! Call the constabulary! Help! Help! O Alex! O Alex!’” Hex’s audiences particularly loved when he did the sweetheart’s voice accompanied by her hand-wringing, so it was no surprise that portion of the tale grew longer and more elaborate in the retelling.

“‘Oh, help!’ she cries. ‘Alex, my darling own, set upon by ruffians at the very door of the inn! What is the world a-coming to?’ She was fit to break your heart, she was, so pretty and so wild, and that must be what acted on the madman because all of a sudden his head whips around to look at her— snap! And he goes all still like a statue—”(here Hex would hold perfectly still longer and longer for effect) “—and then crack! the gentleman Alex lets the madman have it in the jaw! Down he goes, moaning and groaning, and we all woke up like and ran over to pin his arms and legs till the constable came.

“The gentleman Alex gets up, his eye all swole and wiping off his mouth because the attacker got him good, and he calls for Ed with the torch so he can see what was what. Then he says, thick-like, like he’s got a mouthful of porridge, ‘Edgeton, you lunatic. What is the meaning of this? You oughtter be locked away in Bedlam.’ And we’re all sitting on this Edgeton fellow, but he says, ‘I thought she was someone else you were a-kissing and eloping with.’ And the gentleman Alex throws back his head and laughs ha ha ha! ‘I know who you thought it was, you fool. They do look a lot alike, don’t they? That’s why she caught my eye in the first place, lovely Mrs. Mer—’ But then the man on the ground lets out another roar: ‘Don’t you be saying her name in public! Don’t you be dragging her name in your mud!’ And the gentleman Alex lets out another ha ha ha and says, ‘Looks like you’re the one in the mud, Edgeton. Let Mrs. M be our secret, then.’ And the sweetheart hangs herself around his neck and starts screeching, ‘Who? Who is Mrs. M, Alex? Who are you talking about?’ but he just puts his hat back on and stuffs her in the coach and gets in himself. So I say, ‘Sir, don’t you want to wait for the constable?’ But he flips me a half-crown and says, ‘You talk to him. You saw it all.’ And then he bangs on the roof for his coachman to go. And the last thing he does, he opens the window and yells, ‘Enjoy your time in gaol, and I hope never to see you again.’

“When the coach was gone, Edgeton just lay there. He asked if a Geoffrey Cottrell was come yet, and I was for keeping mum, but Ed went and said he wasn’t. And then Edgeton says we must send for Dean Jackson or Barnes the Censor Thingummy of Christ Church because, he says, ‘Though I wear no gown, I am a fellow of there,’ but then the constable comes, and we go through it all again, and he says, ‘Oh, no, you hothead. You can tell these things to the gaoler,’ and off he marches him!”

In essentials the faithfulness of Hex Wexham’s account was admirable, though he could not answer either of the two questions every auditor posed: (1) If the gentleman Alex was not eloping with the madman’s sweetheart, who was he eloping with? And, (2) then who was the madman’s mysterious Mrs. M? In his defense, with Beck gone and Egerton hauled away by the constable, Wexham had no one to consult for answers, so he eventually made up his own guesses, which the reader will be spared.

Egerton had plenty of time to dwell on the affair and to come to his own conclusions, however, during his confinement. As dark nights of the soul went, the city gaol’s dank holding cell provided a fit setting, as did the two companions who shared the space, both thankfully too stupefied with drink for conversation.

Beck had called him a lunatic and a fool, and Philip could not blame him. What could he say in his own defense? He had discovered his Jane beside a waiting coach sharing an eager embrace and had leapt to the conclusion that, for the second time in her life, she was eloping with a worthless rogue! Which meant his own kisses meant nothing to her, that her seeming repentance was a sham, and her supposed rejection of secrecy and avoidance of him mere ruses, meant only to throw Egerton off the scent while she plotted with Beck. Wheels within wheels.

With the volcano of rage, hurt and jealousy within him threatening to blow sky high, he had again flung himself on her “lover,” and all was going swimmingly, as revenge attacks went, until the screams of the lady finally penetrated his fury.

Screams which did not belong to Jane Merritt.

Screams which belonged, instead, to some other woman Philip had never before met and who, when he saw her face in the light of the coach lamps, was like a copy of his beloved made too quickly—the mouth looser, the nose shorter, the eyes rounder, the bosom more exposed.

Just remembering his idiocy made him groan again. And yet—as he sat there, jaw aching and limbs stiffening, odorous muck drying on him in crusty patches, he was conscious of a thread of something entirely different running through it all, like a vein of gold-flecked quartz traced through granite. Because all through his regret and mortification and his fear of what might happen next ran that precious thread, winding in and out. A thread of—could it be—?

Joy.

Pure elation.

Because Jane had not eloped again.

Jane was still his Jane, or would be, if he could manage it. Oh, Lord. However would he manage it now? Because now, this time through his own doing, marriage with Jane retreated even further out of his reach. The Bishop of Oxford would be obligated to take action now, grace having failed, and now Philip would also have to face the college’s dean Jackson or his deputy, Censor Theologiae Barnes. When they heard of his scandalous conduct, he did not doubt he would lose his fellowship as well as his temporary curacy, if he were not voided from his affiliations with Christ Church altogether.

How ludicrous was it, that he had wanted to hush up his Jane’s spotty past, only to out-spot her so lavishly! He, who apparently only required the spur of jealousy to metamorphose into a hot-tempered menace to social peace.

Now it would be she who was ashamed of him, for heaven’s sake.

A mirthless laugh escaped him then, loud enough that his sodden companions in woe raised bleary eyes. But he broke off and sprang up when the gaoler’s footsteps approached.

“Was there any response from Christ Church?” he asked. “I am a fellow there, and my discipline will be handled by the college, rather than the city—”

“So you said,” interrupted the unsympathetic man. There had been enough friction between town and gown over the years that Egerton’s peremptory demand only irked him. “And no. Term’s over, you know, so I wouldn’t count on anyone rushing to save you. Probably all off visiting. No word from your supposed uncle at the Cross Inn either,” he added, anticipating Egerton’s next question.

What on earth had happened to Uncle Geoffrey? Why would he arrange to meet his nephew and then neither come nor send word? Of course, he might have sent word to the rectory, and if he had, Cassie no doubt supposed her brother would learn for himself when he came to town.

“I must send another note,” said Egerton. “To my sister in Iffley. She will be anxious when I do not return. My good man, be so kind as to bring me paper and pen, and you will be well paid.”

“A coin for me won’t do you any good,” replied the gaoler, taking the one offered nonetheless and drifting away to fetch the items. “You’ll need more than that to pay your fine if you don’t want to sit in there until the next Assizes.”