The Patient Bridegroom

Chapter One ~ 1872-2

Finally he found his way to the kitchen.

It was there from Marlow and Mrs. Marlow, who had been butler and cook since he was born, that he learned the ominous truth.

From the moment that he had left for India and his uncle had taken over, Basil Burne had started to economise on everything.

He dismissed most of the staff, not only in the house but on the estate.

“We couldn’t believe it, Master Michael,” Mrs. Marlow related in a tearful voice, “and I kept thinkin’ you’d come back from India and stop what that wicked man was a-doin’.”

What that wicked man was doing, the Earl was to discover, was to take every penny that he possessed and put it into his name.

Holding Power of Attorney, Basil Burne had sold every share that his nephew owned.

At the same time he sold everything he could find in The Castle that was not entailed on to succeeding Earls.

Fortunately there was not a great deal that was not entailed.

But things that had belonged to his mother had gone and his father’s superb collection of snuffboxes of which he had been exceedingly proud.

Early next morning, after a sleepless night, the Earl drove into Oxford to see his father’s Solicitors.

It had not been a fast journey.

There were only two horses left in the stable, which had been kept by his uncle for him to use up to the last minute before he disappeared. They were getting on in age and would travel only at a pace that suited them.

Without any help the Marlows had looked after Basil Burne as best they could.

He told them bluntly that they could stay with him and he would provide their board and lodging, but they would have no wages.

“No wages!” the Earl exclaimed in horror.

“What could we do, my Lord?” Marlow asked. “If we left, it meant the workhouse.”

“I cried and cried and pleaded with him,” Mrs. Marlow joined in, “but he wouldn’t listen. There was no one we could turn to for help.”

“What did the Vicar have to say to all this?” the Earl asked.

“Oh, he left a year after your Lordship went to India,” Marlow replied. “Mr. Basil told him he wouldn’t pay his stipend so there be nothing he could do but go.”

“So you mean the Church is closed.”

“Someone comes from the other Parishes about once a month. Otherwise the Vicarage be shut up and I’m not sure who has the key of the Church.”

When the Earl confronted his father’s Solicitors, he had difficulty in choosing his words because he was feeling so angry.

They should at least have written to tell him what was occurring.

The Solicitor facing him across the desk was an elderly man who, he learnt, had at first been entirely hoodwinked by his uncle.

“He told me, my Lord, that things were difficult on the Stock Exchange,” the Solicitor said, “and a great number of your father’s investments had fallen in value. So he thought it only right that he should economise.”

“Do you realise,” the Earl asked him angrily, “that the pensioners have not been paid for three weeks and before that they were receiving only a pittance? I gather that they are now on the verge of starvation.”

“I did not know that, my Lord,” the Solicitor replied. “Of course when the news came through that the Viceroy had been murdered, your uncle would have then expected that your Lordship would come home.”

“So he then took everything that he had not taken already,” the Earl said sharply. “The servants tell me that he has gone to America.”

“If that is true,” the Solicitor answered, “it will be extremely difficult to get hold of him. America is a very large country and so it would cost your Lordship a great deal of money to bring a case against him.”

“Which, as you are well aware,” the Earl retorted, “I do not now have.”

As he drove back to The Castle, he wondered despairingly what he could do.

He had travelled home comfortably and had had a number of things to pay for in India before he left.

He had taken only a little money with him when he went out in the first place.

He then relied on his salary for all that he required.

The Viceroy had been most particular in not allowing his young aides-de-camp to run up large debts.

He made it possible for them to have ample pocket money while everything else, more or less, was provided for them.

The Earl realised now that he had nothing in the Bank and his entire fortune, if that was the right word for it, consisted of under twenty pounds.

He had intended to cash a cheque at his Bank in London.

However in the end he had just boarded the first train that would bring him back to The Castle.

‘What am I to do? What the devil am I to do?’ he asked himself over and over again.

He knew frantically that he had to do something.

Then suddenly he felt as if the man he had loved and admired so much was guiding him.

‘There must be someone,’ he told himself, ‘from whom I can borrow enough to at least keep my people from starving.’

He had not missed, as he drove through the village, that the cottages all needed the thatch on their roofs to be repaired.

Windows were broken, gates were falling down and it was so obvious that not a spot of paint had been applied in the four years that he had been away.

He remembered that in his father’s day the village had been one of the prettiest in the whole County and people who had come to gaze at The Castle always admired the village as well.

Now the only word to describe the situation was ‘appalling’.

“I must have money,” the Earl said and it was a cry for help.

It was then that he knew the answer.

Adjoining his estate was that of Lord Frazer.

He was an enormously rich man whose father had made a fortune in shipping.

He had come down from the North because he wished his son, who had been to Oxford University, to get to know the right people.

The present Lord Frazer had quarrelled with his neighbour, the tenth Earl of Rayburne, over a wood.

It was a very fine wood on the boundary between the two estates.

The Earl of Rayburne, Michael’s father, had said that without question it belonged to him and always had.

Lord Frazer had contested this by producing an ancient map and it depicted the wood as belonging to what was now the Frazer Estate.

The two old gentlemen fought fiercely for what they each believed to be their rights.

Shortly before his death, his father had told him that he was still getting rude letters from Lord Frazer, complaining that their gamekeepers had been in Duncans Wood and interfering with his game.

“His game indeed!” the Earl had exclaimed. “I have never heard such impertinence in my life! Those pheasants have been ours since the thirteenth century and no amount of maps will ever convince me that I am wrong.”

When Michael left for India, he had forgotten about Duncans Wood.

Now he thought that if he agreed to let Lord Frazer take it once and for all as part of his estate, he might lend him enough money to take his own land back to normal.

He had no idea what it would cost, but it would be a large amount.

At least his experience in India with the Viceroy had taught him how to make fertile an area of land that was growing nothing.

Natives who had very little knowledge of farming were shown how to produce crops and carry livestock successfully and the means by which the Viceroy had succeeded in the famine areas made him feel that he could do the same.

After all the Rayburne Estate was not as large as India.

The Earl, therefore, told the old groom, who was driving him, to proceed to Watton Hall.

Wicks, who had been with his father for over twenty years, said with the familiarity of an old servant,

“Your Lordship won’t get no change out of that Master of Watton Hall. He’s been a-fightin’ against us ever since he come there.”

“I know that,” the Earl said, “but I have an idea that might well tempt him.”

He thought that Wicks knew what he meant, but he did not comment.

He had learned how the servants had managed to keep alive after his uncle had gone.

There were a few vegetables from the garden because the old gardener had remained in his cottage, having nowhere else to go.

They snared rabbits and even managed to shoot a wild duck or two on the lake.

“The swans flew away a long time ago,” he had been told, “after Mr. Burne refused to let us feed them.”

Everything the Earl was hearing about his uncle made him hate him more.

Yet Basil Burne was safely on the other side of the Atlantic and out of reach.

The Earl doubted that he would be in the slightest perturbed by what anyone felt about him in the land he had left.

The only thing that really mattered, the Earl knew, was to find enough money so that the pensioners and children in the village would not starve.

Those who were still working on the land had received nothing in wages since his uncle had guessed that he would be returning from India.

The Earl kept on turning over and over in his mind how shocking it all was.

While he had been so happy in India, he had no idea that his people were suffering, his fields were growing weeds and his Castle was, day by day, becoming more dilapidated.

The horses turned in at the drive leading up to Watton Hall.

It was infuriating to see how well-kept everything looked and the two lodges had very obviously been recently painted as had the iron gates with their gold tips.

It would be ridiculous to say that Watton Hall in any way rivalled The Castle.

Yet it was a prepossessing large mansion and in its own way very impressive. It had been built in the Georgian style early in the reign of Queen Victoria.

As the horses drew up outside the porticoed front door, the Earl could not help feeling that his appearance would be a great surprise to Lord Frazer.

He did not feel nervous, only slightly uncomfortable.

Then he remembered how his relative, the Viceroy, had always won everyone over to his side. It was by what the ladies in the Hill Stations called his magnetism, charm and charisma.

He had, the Earl remembered, a quite deliberate way of speaking and those who met him found him easy-going and informal.

At the same time he had a dignity and bearing that made it impossible for anyone to be unduly familiar.

The Earl remembered too that those who worked for him loved him both for his kindness and for his efficiency.

Surely, he thought, with the Earl of Mayo to guide him, he could get help from anyone, even from Lord Frazer!

The butler, who was very smart and the two footmen in the hall, looked at him in some surprise.

He gave one of the footmen his hat.

Then he followed the butler down a wide passage into what he thought would be either the library or Lord Frazer’s study.

It turned out to be the study and the owner of Watton Hall was sitting there at a most impressive desk.

The inkpot, the pen holder and the candlestick to seal the letters with were all made of solid gold.

“The Earl of Rayburne to see you, my Lord,” the butler announced in a stentorian voice.