Swithin sneered at him, but with such an inconsequential face the expression was difficult to read. Prendergast thought he was going to sneeze as he brandished his handkerchief still. “It is a subject dear to my heart at the present time,” he added, smiling to Holly, who had just heard of his approaching nuptials.
Dewar glanced toward them. “Tell me, milord,” Prendergast went on, “have you informed Parsons yet that he is retired? I planned to visit him tonight, and would not wish to mention it if he is unaware of the fact.”
“No, I haven’t told him yet.”
“Oh dear, it is well you asked the question!” Holly exclaimed. “What a dreadful way for him to discover he is unemployed. What are your plans for him, Lord Dewar?”
“I have no alternative employment in mind for a septuagenarian,” he answered. He saw at once that Miss McCormack was again displeased with him.
“The days will be very long for him, cooped up in two rooms. He is used to being busy,” she pointed out.
“He is too old to work.”
“Yes, real work is beyond him, but some sinecure must be found,” she answered.
“In any case, I shall say nothing till you have spoken to him,” Prendergast said, arising to hasten his steps back to his beloved, and happy to be able to delay the visit to Parsons. He took a polite leave, with once more special thanks to Miss McCormack and Dewar.
Eager to win favour with Holly, Swithin began to mention a series of unlikely occupations for Parsons. “He might be my penman for the new
drame
I am creating,” he said, looking to see how she was impressed by this plan. She felt the tail of hair tickle her ear, and reached to put it up, totally ignoring his remark. “A tragedy based on Boadicea,” he went on. “You may imagine what led me to that subject.” His little yellow eyes were sparkling with passion.
“Who is Boadicea?” she asked.
He smiled fondly. “The historical figure I refer to, but I use her, of course, as a vehicle for a living female whom I much admire, as William subtly hinted at a parallel to Elizabeth in his
Julius Caesar.
It is not an original idea to use history as a parable for the present.”
“What living character do you refer to?” she asked, mildly curious, no more.
“Naughty girl!” he chided, batting his handkerchief. A delicate odour of lavender assaulted her nostrils.
Sir Swithin’s conversation was not always as proper as it might have been and, as she feared she had wandered into impropriety with the question, she let it drop. “What would Mr. Parsons’s duties be in all this?” she asked.
“He could act as my scribe. My calligraphy is beautiful—quite a work of art but, unfortunately, it is illegible. I use a style adapted from the illuminated manuscripts of the medieval age. Lady Halton was so impressed with a note I sent her last year that she mistook it for an
objet d’art
and framed it. It was writ on parchment during my medieval period. It was not at all important—only an apology, in verse, for not being able to attend a levée she had called me to.”
“It is thoughtful of you to suggest it, Swithin, but that would be only a very temporary employment, for the while you remain here,” she said.
“Dear lady, I am so
enchanté
here that I may stay on indefinitely.”
“You may think so,” Dewar announced from across the room, from which location he had been listening to the conversation with an ironic smile on his face.
“He jests,” Swithin told Holly. “Dewar adores my company. Our souls march in harmony—well, dally along in harmony, let us say. But your point is well made, Kate. We must find Parsons a permanent
coin
in which to await eternity. The scriptorium at the Abbey suggests itself as the ideal spot. A schoolmaster must feel at home surrounded by the marks of his profession—books, pens, ink pots. You could use him to make a fair copy of that pandect on the
drame
you have been compiling these ten years, Dew. How does it progress, by the by?”
“Slowly. I am revising the Elizabethan period at the present.”
“Don’t overwrite it, dear boy, and let all those lovely visions be lost in revisions.”
“That sounds like a good post for Parsons,” Holly said.
Dewar nodded his head in acquiescence. “Shall I speak to him then?” he asked.
“It is hardly for me to say!” she said, feeling she was being roasted for taking so lively an interest in his doings.
“Very true, but somehow you always
do
say, and it would make things easier if I knew what you want done at the beginning,” Dewar said, with an innocent stare.
There was an interruption as Homberly and Foxworth were shown in, not entirely sober. Falling onto a chair in the middle of the room, Rex said to Jane, “Dewar tell you?”
“He has been telling us about Mr. Parsons’s retirement,” Jane answered.
“Eh? Ain’t talking about a dashed parson. Me and Foxey have decided to wear our horse’s outfit for the romps after the play, after all. Ain’t going to be a bear. Somebody else can be a bear. The pelt would fit you, Swithin.”
“It would fit, but it would not
suit,
silly boy.”
“True. Got a point there,” Foxey mumbled. “Idle can’t growl. Can hardly talk.”
“Hardly talk?” Rex shouted. “Never shuts up. Worst clapperjaw I ever met.”
“Don’t talk right. He chirps, but he couldn’t growl worth a tinker’s curse.”
“Methinks Mr. Prendergast would feel quite at home in the bearskin,” Swithin suggested.
“I’m sure he would enjoy to do it!” Jane said at once.
“Oh yes, he has a great sense of fun,” Holly agreed.
Before Swithin could enter on any more insults, Rex lurched to his feet to secure a chair closer to Jane, and engaged her in some conversation. Dewar quietly arose and joined Swithin and Holly on the other side of the fireplace. She was curious to hear the details of the trip from him. “How is Billie?” she asked. “Does he show any improvement yet?”
“A little. It will be a gradual process. Dr. John has his instructions for the treatment. The boy’s spirits are considerably improved.”
“I am so glad. My uncle is very happy with the house he hired. And I am very happy with Mr. Prendergast’s appointment,” she told him, with an approving smile.
“We will all be happy to have you back with us at the Abbey. After keeping all my promises to you, I have a few words to say on
your
behaviour, ma’am. You were left in charge of the stage properties. May I know why you so cavalierly abandoned your duty?”
“I abandoned my duty? No, sir, I must take exception to that. It was
your
tardiness in dealing with Parsons’s retirement that made my presence at the school necessary. You did leave me some latitude in the matter of attending to your duties in your absence, if you will recall. I made sure you would be more concerned for the instruction of the children than the amusement of the villagers.”
“You mistake my priorities.”
“Amusement always comes first, does it? Sir Swithin has already outlined your pleasure principle to me. You must forgive me if I cannot agree with it. I see pleasure as a privilege, earned by first attending to one’s duty. The boys require an education; we do not actually need the frivolity of a play.”
“Mankind does not actually require anything to subsist but a cave and a slingshot. As society progresses toward civilization, more and more refinements are considered necessary.”
“Yes, we know what rarefied heights that philosophy reached in France only recently, where Louis was so civilized he bankrupted the nation to provide his luxuries. But you refer, in your own case, only to such refinements as Delft tiles and fountains in your dairy, I collect? Were you happy with the fountain, milord?” she asked icily.
“Not completely. I had the shepherd’s nose recarved. The modeling left something to be desired. That was not the refinement to which I referred, however. As far as that goes, a fine and stately home in good repair is part of my people’s heritage. They will not live in it, but they like to know it is there, to visit on public day, and to point out to visitors. They appreciate it; it gives them a feeling of being civilized."
“You cannot be civilized till you can read and write.”
Swithin, wishing to join the talk, said, “Actually, Kate, that is a misconception. The delights of reading a good sonnet or play are not negligible, but....”
“The delights of a play are negligible to those who go hungry.” She stopped then, as she was speaking in anger, and implying as well something that was not quite pertinent. So far as she knew, there were actually no starving people in the neighbourhood.
“Pray continue. You have my complete attention,” Dewar said, regarding her with one brow raised to a dangerous level, his nostrils pinched. “We have got the path put through Evans’s place, we have tended to the orphanage and the roof, and to Billie McAuley; we have got the school a new master and Miss McCormack’s friend a post. What else remains to be done? We grasshoppers on the lawn of life occasionally give a thought to duty.”
“When you have the welfare of so many in your keeping, you should give more than an occasional thought to it. But it was my intention to thank you this evening, Dewar, not deliver yet another scold. And so I thank you.”
“You are welcome—may I now know which of my people are
starving?”
“None. You have performed well recently. I suppose you have earned a few hops on life’s lawn.”
Swithin sighed peevishly. “If we must be insects, let it be dragonflies, with beautiful iridescent wings. Or butterflies, flitting through life, sipping nectar where we may.”
“An apt simile,” Holly agreed.
“I have a certain talent for a simile. And you, dear Kate, will be the ant at the picnic of our life. Life for some certain few transcends the everyday business of earning bread. I am of those few, and so is my dear coz. You are not cut out for it, but you will partake of it on your own level, sewing costumes for us.”
“Never again!” she said, in a steely voice.
“You must. The arts are vital. Someone must write the poetry for others to read and enjoy, and to use as a gauge—an interpretation, if you like, of life’s mysteries. Only think if dear William had not written his plays. The world, you must own, would be a poorer place. Who cares if he was a little inconsiderate of his wife—leaving her his second-best bed was a gratuitous insult, and unworthy of him, but we must forgive such a man all. And since the glorious plays have been writ, they must be kept alive by performances. It is fallen to the lot of the more sensitive spirits—Dew, myself, our little group—to fulfill this function. Cultural envoys to society at large, you might say. A species of genius, really,” he finished up.
“I understood a genius to be involved in original work,” she parried.
“You have been reading French, Kate! How clever of you. I take credit to myself for enlarging your horizons. Genius was perhaps too grand a word, but how boring life would be if we never flattered ourselves.”
“Not much danger of that!” Foxworth said.
Homberly was in some danger of falling asleep, and Foxey becoming obstreperous. Dewar decided to take them home before they became even worse nuisances.
“You will be at the Abbey tomorrow, Kate?” Swithin confirmed.
“Yes, if Dewar will notify the students in some manner that school is cancelled for one day.”
A slight inclination of his head was the only reply he made before saying his good evenings to everyone.
As they drove home, Swithin whined gently, “She is a hard woman to satisfy. She will keep me on my toes.”
“You overlook Mr. Prendergast.”
“She does not love him. Did you not observe the pretty smile on her lips when we entered the saloon? Much brighter than she wore with him.”
“I noticed.”
“But a very daunting woman. She can shrivel a man’s confidence in two seconds. I found myself comparing her to an
ant,
imagine! How degrading, and it was not what I meant at all. The fact is, Dew, I begin to wonder about myself. Do we do right to fritter life away in idle pleasures? When you asked her who was starving, I had an overwhelming urge to say ‘Let them eat cake,’ and that would have been an unforgivable levity in her eyes. I think—oh, dear boy, you will never believe it—I think, after the play, I am going to Heron Hall to spend some months attending to estate business. The very thought appalls, but Kate must not find my affairs untended, or she will find me morally inferior, as she so obviously does you. Are you listening to me?”
“I’m trying not to. I wish you would be quiet.”
“Too cruel,” Idle lisped, and fell into sulks.
At times, it seemed impossible the play would ever be ready for performance in mid-December. There were the usual number of unlooked-for vexations. The weather turned unpleasantly harsh, causing many of the chaperones to remain home, and the actors to complain as they stood about the draughty refectory hall trying to keep warm at the flames from the two fireplaces.
The Misses Hall’s oranges were not ripening at a rate to ensure maturity in time for distribution. Rex continued muttering his lines, rubbing his ear and then his belly in consternation, and displaying none of the swashbuckling manner his role called for. Foxey, though he was now reduced to a minuscule part, was never present for it, but out marauding through Dewar’s coverts. Otto Wenger proved not so familiar with the role of Mercutio, after two years, as one might have hoped.
Reverend Johnson developed a declamatory style not at all in keeping with the sedate, natural effect Dewar was striving for. The actors complained at being able to wear nothing more exciting than their everyday gowns, and took to adding bows, feathers, and glitter on their own, again ruining the overall effect strived for. Worst of all, the star of the production, Juliet, was not coming up to scratch.
With the best will in the world and a really staggering amount of work, Jane could not remember all her lines. Her dog-eared book sat at her elbow from breakfast through lunch, dinner, and her nightly cocoa. She became so weary with Juliet that she actually broke down and cried one day at rehearsals. Fortunately, this occurred on a day when her mother was not at the Abbey. The outburst made a strong impression on everyone, particularly the gentlemen.