The Captain's Return. Elizabeth Bailey

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СКАЧАТЬ Filmer was a gentle female, a great many years Annabel’s senior, but they shared a common bond in the isolation of an existence without the support of a husband. Charlotte’s daughter was grown up now, and had last season gone to London as companion to the Tenison chit—a piece of good fortune for which Mrs Filmer was still thanking Providence.

      “Oh, I am perfectly happy to have Solomon for the villain,” said Jane merrily. “Why, he looks a very devil, with that hooked nose, and his horrid black clothes. Thin lips are a sign of meanness, you know, and he has the horridest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met. Set so narrow and close.”

      Annabel could not help laughing as she placed the pebble among the growing pile beside her on the bench. “Jane, you are outrageous. What appalling prejudice! I pity your pupils, who are obliged to look to you for example.”

      “Fiddle! I am responsible only for their deportment and their performance in the dance. I have nothing to do with the formation of their minds.’

      In fact, as Annabel knew, Miss Emerson was one of the more popular teachers at the Guarding Academy in nearby Steep Abbot. Jane had a deceptively demure manner in social situations, but among friends—which term wholly encompassed her students—she exhibited a liveliness of mind, and an endearing warmth that made Annabel sorry for her circumstances. But Jane would have none of it.

      “Don’t waste your pity on me, Annabel, for I am perfectly content with my lot,” she had said gaily. “I learned early to be so. I was ever a “plain Jane”, and it is unlikely I should have caught myself a husband, even had it been possible for me to make a come-out.”

      Annabel might doubt this privately, but she had said no more on the subject, feeling the more thankful for their friendship that permitted Jane these small respites on her one free Saturday each month. Her company was a boon to Annabel, who could only admire the generosity of heart that left Jane with neither malice nor envy towards others, in particular the more flamboyant and adventurous of the Guarding teachers—like Desirée Nash, who had broken away earlier this year and ended by marrying Lord Buckworth.

      “But don’t you think, if Solomon Burneck had been Sywell’s son,” asked Mrs Filmer, bringing the conversation back to the point at issue, “that the Marquis would have got rid of him?”

      “Oh, yes,” agreed Jane, setting one graceful leg over the other so that the soft white muslin slithered, “if Sywell knew. You don’t suppose he counted up his by-blows, do you, Mrs Filmer? They must be all over the countryside!”

      “Jane, you shocking creature!” protested Annabel. “Pay no heed to her, Charlotte.”

      But Mrs Filmer was plainly amused, though she tutted in a fretful way, too. “She is right, of course. Oh, dear, how wretched it is that that dreadful man should be able to scandalize everyone even from beyond the grave!”

      “What I want to know,” said Jane more seriously, reaching absently for one of Becky’s pebbles and playing it between her fingers, “is whether you had this from your usual source, Annabel. You get all the news before the rest of us only because Aggie Binns tells it to your Janet. It is too bad!”

      Aggie Binns was a wizened diminutive creature who lived a short way from Annabel in a cottage near the village pump. Aggie had been taking in laundry for around thirty-five years, and was the main source of all the gossip emanating from the Abbey. This was because she had for years now been the only female willing to set foot in the place.

      “It is not Janet. Janet would scorn to listen to Aggie’s gossip. It comes to me through Young Nat’s mother. You know she helps Aggie with the laundry.”

      Young Nat, who inhabited with his mother one of the little workman’s cottages across the green, was by way of being Annabel’s handyman, although he spent a part of each day working the smithy at Farmer Buller’s place at Steep Abbot.

      “Yes, but if Aggie had known a tidbit like this,” pursued Jane, “she would not have kept it to herself for so long.”

      “Very true,” agreed Charlotte. “The wretched woman does nothing but spread evil everywhere she goes, dragging that little laundry cart.”

      The conversation was suspended for a moment as the diminutive Miss Lett, coming up with another treasure, spied the theft perpetrated by Jane Emerson and set up a protest.

      “Oh, I do beg your pardon, Becky,” uttered the culprit contritely, holding out the errant pebble.

      “Say thank you,” reproved Annabel as her daughter snatched it away.

      A pair of big blue eyes peeped defiantly up at Miss Emerson under the red-gold mop of hair, which young Miss Lett invariably refused to allow to be confined under the mob cap suited to her years.

      “I don’t think Becky feels that I deserve to be thanked,” commented Jane on a tiny laugh, “and I’m sure I don’t blame her. It is a pretty pebble, Becky, and I am very sorry for taking it away without asking you.”

      Rebecca cast a doubtful glance up at her mother’s face.

      “There now,” said Annabel. “Miss Jane didn’t mean it, you see. Now say thank you politely.”

      Instead, Becky’s gaze came back to “Miss Jane”. With a sudden bright smile, she offered her the pebble to hold. It was accepted with becoming gratitude. Matters now being settled to everyone’s satisfaction, little Miss Lett thought proper to return to her labours, leaving the ladies free to pursue their interrupted discussion.

      Jane was vehement in her suspicions of Solomon Burneck. “If Aggie Binns had it from Solomon that he is Sywell’s by-blow, it is certain that he intended for it to be repeated.”

      “Yes, but she didn’t have it from Solomon,” objected Annabel. “She got it from his cousin.”

      “What cousin? I didn’t know he had a cousin.”

      “Had you not heard? Apparently this female cousin came to the Abbey in a panic, having heard that Solomon had fallen under suspicion of the Marquis’s murder. It was she who let it out to Aggie.”

      “How foolish! Or doesn’t she know what Aggie is like?”

      “That’s just what makes me think Solomon intended for it to be spread abroad,” said Annabel.

      Charlotte was instantly convinced. She nodded wisely under the frill of her cap that rippled with the movement. “Yes, I see what you mean, Annabel.”

      “No, I think we must vindicate Solomon,” decided Jane, in an abrupt about-face, dropping Becky’s pebble back among its fellows. “Unless his cousin has a reason to lie for him, it must be true. And one can scarce blame him for concealing it before this. I mean, if one had a father whose conduct was so excessively shocking, one would be at pains to hush it up. And Solomon Burneck has always condemned the Marquis. He has forever been quoting that piece from the Bible which instructs us that every dog must have his day. Yes, Solomon is certainly innocent.”

      Annabel could not help laughing. “You are readily convinced, Jane. I only hope you may not be made to look nohow by yet more dreadful revelations that prove him guilty beyond doubt.”

      Before either of her visitors could answer this, a call from the kitchen interrupted them. A woman of dour aspect, tall but sturdy of figure and clad in the grey low-waisted gown СКАЧАТЬ