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Authors: Charles Palliser
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cried.
Miss Bittlestone looked coy and apprehensive at the same time: I shouldn’t say any more. It will only get me into trouble .
How intriguing , Effie said with the most seductive smile. We’re all longing to hear it .
Well , Miss Bittlestone said, you must promise solemnly never to breathe a word of it to a living soul . Then the old creature began: A few years ago there was a family living in . . . well, let’s just say a large town in the West of England. They had a daughter of seventeen. The father was a man of the cloth—dear me! I shouldn’t have said that! Anyway, he was a vicar and there was a young man who attended his church whose family was terribly grand and when he reached his majority he would inherit a vast fortune and one day become a viscount .
And something occurred , Effie suggested, between this fortunate individual and the vicar’s daughter?
They fell madly in love , the old lady gasped. Isn’t that romantic? But his relatives put every obstacle imaginable in their path and eventually removed him from Bath and carried him off to Brighton .
And did the young lady abandon herself to despair? Euphemia asked innocently.
As it happened , Miss Bittlestone said, her family took a holiday in Brighton just a week or two later and she found a means of communicating with her lover .
Richard , Mother said sharply. You’ve finished your tea. Take the umbrella back now .
I had no choice.
When I knocked at the front door of Mrs Paytress’s house it was opened by a man-servant whom I had not seen before. Short and stocky like a retired jockey gone to seed. I handed him the umbrella.
As I was coming out of the gateway of the drive I almost bumped into two people who were passing at that moment. They were an old man—who was carrying a huge leather bag—and a girl.
Good day , I said. Are you on your way to visit Mrs Paytress?
The old gentleman looked astonished at this greeting and professed not to know who she was so that I had to explain that I had taken him for Mr Fourdrinier.
But that is my name! he exclaimed.
It turned out that I had misunderstood Mrs Paytress. She must have heard of Mr Fourdrinier and his archaeological explorations, but she does not know him personally.
We both laughed once this confusion was cleared up. Then we introduced ourselves properly. I liked him immediately. His face is a type that I became used to in Cambridge among the dons. It is that of a child in a man of fifty: innocent, round-cheeked, and inquisitive. Behind his tiny round pince-nez glasses are a pair of twinkling eyes. From under his hat a few carefully-cherished locks of thin grey hair cautiously extend like tendrils feeling their way towards the light. When he is not speaking his lips are pursed with a worried frown so that he looks as if he might be wondering whether to jump across a deep chasm. His coat-pockets bulge with instruments—presumably for measuring and recording his finds—so that he looks like a professor pretending to be a naval officer.
He waved his hand at the girl and said: This is my niece .
I shook hands with Miss Fourdrinier. She is very pretty indeed and has a lovely modest manner. She looked down and said nothing. In fact, she did not utter a word during the entire encounter. It was hard to catch more than a glimpse of her sweet face now and then but eventually I pieced it together: delicate features like fine porcelain with the most charming little snub nose that made her look like a Meissen shepherdess.
We were going the same way for a while since they were heading for the Battlefield and we walked along together. I asked him about his interest in archaeology and in a rush of enthusiasm, he told me he was hoping to carry out an excavation on Monument Hill, the distinctive mound with the tower atop. Then he went on quickly: What is really interesting is that the local people still call it by its old name: “Fawler Hill”. Do you know Anglo-Saxon?
I’m afraid not
Miss Bittlestone looked coy and apprehensive at the same time: I shouldn’t say any more. It will only get me into trouble .
How intriguing , Effie said with the most seductive smile. We’re all longing to hear it .
Well , Miss Bittlestone said, you must promise solemnly never to breathe a word of it to a living soul . Then the old creature began: A few years ago there was a family living in . . . well, let’s just say a large town in the West of England. They had a daughter of seventeen. The father was a man of the cloth—dear me! I shouldn’t have said that! Anyway, he was a vicar and there was a young man who attended his church whose family was terribly grand and when he reached his majority he would inherit a vast fortune and one day become a viscount .
And something occurred , Effie suggested, between this fortunate individual and the vicar’s daughter?
They fell madly in love , the old lady gasped. Isn’t that romantic? But his relatives put every obstacle imaginable in their path and eventually removed him from Bath and carried him off to Brighton .
And did the young lady abandon herself to despair? Euphemia asked innocently.
As it happened , Miss Bittlestone said, her family took a holiday in Brighton just a week or two later and she found a means of communicating with her lover .
Richard , Mother said sharply. You’ve finished your tea. Take the umbrella back now .
I had no choice.
When I knocked at the front door of Mrs Paytress’s house it was opened by a man-servant whom I had not seen before. Short and stocky like a retired jockey gone to seed. I handed him the umbrella.
As I was coming out of the gateway of the drive I almost bumped into two people who were passing at that moment. They were an old man—who was carrying a huge leather bag—and a girl.
Good day , I said. Are you on your way to visit Mrs Paytress?
The old gentleman looked astonished at this greeting and professed not to know who she was so that I had to explain that I had taken him for Mr Fourdrinier.
But that is my name! he exclaimed.
It turned out that I had misunderstood Mrs Paytress. She must have heard of Mr Fourdrinier and his archaeological explorations, but she does not know him personally.
We both laughed once this confusion was cleared up. Then we introduced ourselves properly. I liked him immediately. His face is a type that I became used to in Cambridge among the dons. It is that of a child in a man of fifty: innocent, round-cheeked, and inquisitive. Behind his tiny round pince-nez glasses are a pair of twinkling eyes. From under his hat a few carefully-cherished locks of thin grey hair cautiously extend like tendrils feeling their way towards the light. When he is not speaking his lips are pursed with a worried frown so that he looks as if he might be wondering whether to jump across a deep chasm. His coat-pockets bulge with instruments—presumably for measuring and recording his finds—so that he looks like a professor pretending to be a naval officer.
He waved his hand at the girl and said: This is my niece .
I shook hands with Miss Fourdrinier. She is very pretty indeed and has a lovely modest manner. She looked down and said nothing. In fact, she did not utter a word during the entire encounter. It was hard to catch more than a glimpse of her sweet face now and then but eventually I pieced it together: delicate features like fine porcelain with the most charming little snub nose that made her look like a Meissen shepherdess.
We were going the same way for a while since they were heading for the Battlefield and we walked along together. I asked him about his interest in archaeology and in a rush of enthusiasm, he told me he was hoping to carry out an excavation on Monument Hill, the distinctive mound with the tower atop. Then he went on quickly: What is really interesting is that the local people still call it by its old name: “Fawler Hill”. Do you know Anglo-Saxon?
I’m afraid not
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