The Devil Defeated

Chapter one 1818-1

Chapter one

1818“Who do you think I have just seen?”

Rosabelle burst into the dining room as she spoke and her sister Dorina looked up from the end of the table, where she was spooning a pleasantly smelling stew onto a plate and said sharply,

“You are late, Rosabelle.”

“I know,” she replied, “and I am sorry, but I have seen the Earl!”

“Where did you see him?” Peter asked with his mouth full.

“In the Park,” Rosabelle replied.

Dorina walked round the table to put the plate of stew she had just served in front of her sister and said crossly,

“I have told you before, Rosabelle – and you have to listen to me – you must not go into the Park now that the new Earl is home, unless he invites you to do so!”

“We have always been allowed to go in the Park,” Rosabelle replied. “Why should he stop us?”

“Because he owns it, silly!” Peter answered.

Peter was eleven and at the age when he thought all girls were silly anyway and he added as if his sister did not understand,

“He could have you up for trespassing if he wanted to, so Dorina is right and we should keep out of the Park.”

Rosabelle pouted and she looked very pretty as she did so.

“I think you are all very disagreeable!” she said. “It was very exciting seeing the Earl. He was riding with three other very handsome gentlemen.”

“Did he see you?” Dorina asked.

“I was with Rover in the bushes and I crouched down so that he would not notice me.”

“You must promise me not to go in the Park again,” Dorina insisted in a firm voice, “and that includes the woods!”

Rosabelle and Peter gave cries of protest.

“But we must go in the woods, Dorina, we always have! If they are out of bounds as well as the Park, we will only be able to walk along the dusty road, which will be terribly boring!”

“I know, I know,” Dorina agreed, “but please, do as I say! I am sure if the Earl sees you, he will think you are intruding and that would be a mistake.”

“I don’t see why,” Rosabelle countered rebelliously.

She was just fifteen and at the age when she resented being told not to do something. At the same time, like Peter, she loved her elder sister and as a general rule they were both extremely obedient. Since Dorina, after her mother’s death, had taken over the running of the household, she had, in fact, found that they were very little trouble.

The door of the dining room opened and her father came in.

The Reverend Prosper Stanfield was an exceedingly good-looking man.

His hair, which was just beginning to turn grey, was a little untidy and there was a vague look in his eyes which meant that he had been enjoying his work in the garden and had no wish to be taken away from it for anything so unnecessary as a meal.

The Vicar had always been intensely interested in gardening and especially in developing rare species of cactus.

But since his wife’s death, which had made him so desperately unhappy that Dorina had feared for a time that he might take his life, he had concentrated fiercely on his gardening to help him forget his loneliness.

Now she noted as he sat down at the table that he had remembered to wash his hands and she said gently in a voice that showed how much she loved him,

“Have you had a good morning, Papa? I feel sure that your plants are doing well in the sunshine.”

“They are, indeed,” her father replied. “In fact I think that last one which you laughed at because it was so small, is at last beginning to grow.”

“You must show it to me after luncheon,” Dorina suggested.

She walked round the table to put his plate of stew in front of him and handed him the vegetables.

She noted as she did so that Rosabelle had taken so little cabbage that it was almost invisible on her plate. Peter, however, had helped himself to so many potatoes that there were only three left for his father.

Dorina said nothing and, having poured out a glass of cider for her father which was a present from a local farmer, went back to her own chair to help herself to what was left of the stew and vegetables.

Although she never complained, it was very difficult to provide food the family enjoyed without overspending the very small allowance her father could give her for the housekeeping.

If it had not been for Nanny’s skill in managing to obtain an occasional duck, chicken or pigeon from the farmers’ wives who came to Church on Sunday, they would have existed on a permanent diet of rabbit and scrag-end of beef because it was cheap.

Nanny was a good but plain cook and everything that came to the table, while nourishing, was not exciting.

However, Dorina could not think only about food, for she had too many other worries, the most important being at the moment how they could afford to send Peter to a good school, preferably Eton, where his father and his grandfather had gone before him.

If she was not worrying about Peter, it was about Rosabelle, who was growing into a pretty young woman who was becoming exceedingly conscious of her appearance.

She was, therefore, continually asking for new gowns, bonnets and shoes, all of which, unfortunately, cost money.

Now because she was annoyed with Dorina for rebuking her, Rosabelle said to her father

“What do you think, Papa? I saw the new Earl this morning! He was riding the most magnificent horse, a black stallion, which is quite different from anything that has been in the Yarde stables before.”

“The new Earl?” the Vicar repeated as if his thoughts were far away. “He has certainly taken a long time in coming home.”

“He has been in France,” Dorina said, “with the Army of Occupation and it is only recently that its numbers are being reduced and so many soldiers are returning.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” her father replied, “and it is a good thing that Yarde will have somebody to look after it again and, of course, the estate.”

“I hope the Earl will realise what should be done,” Dorina added in a slightly repressive tone.

Her father did not answer and Rosabelle piped up,

“I heard Mrs. Champion telling Nanny that they had a riotous house party up at the Big House this weekend. She said there were ladies glittering like Christmas trees and the amount the gentlemen drank must have emptied half the cellar!”

“That is only gossip,” Dorina exclaimed, “and you should not repeat such stories!”

“I am telling you only what Mrs. Champion said to Nanny.”

“I don’t suppose they knew that you were listening!”

“How could I help it,” Rosabelle asked, “when Mrs. Champion is so deaf that she always shouts?”

Dorina decided it was undignified to go on arguing.

She thought it was a mistake for Rosabelle to be too interested in what was happening since the Earl’s return and she tried to change the conversation by talking to her father about his garden.

But the children were thrilled that something new was occurring in the quiet village of Little Sodbury, where everything appeared to be the same, month in, month out.

“I would like to see the Earl’s horses,” Peter was saying, “and I suppose there is no chance of my riding one?”

“You are to stay away from the stables!” Dorina told him, “as I told you to do, as soon as the Earl arrived four days ago!”

“They like my going there,” Peter protested. “Old Hawkins says I am as good at rubbing down a horse as any of his stable lads and you know, Dorina, he has let me ride around the paddock dozens of times.”

“That was very different. We knew the old Earl very well and he was very fond of us. I have explained to you both over and over again that we cannot take advantage or impose ourselves on the new Earl until we have met him and until he proves to be as kind as his uncle was.”

“Suppose he does not want to be kind to us?” Rosabelle asked. “Then what are we to do?”

“Manage on our own!” Dorina said sharply.

She looked across the table at her father, whose thoughts were obviously far away and after a moment she said,

“I was wondering, Papa, as the Earl did not come to Church on Sunday, whether it would be correct for you to call on him?”

The Vicar looked at her for a moment as if what she had said had hardly penetrated his mind and then he replied,

“I expect, if his Lordship wants me, he will send for me. In the meantime, I am too busy, my dear, to drive up to Yarde, only to find it to be a wasted journey.”

Dorina did not point out to him that it would take him less than ten minutes to drive from the village up to the front door of the Big House.

She had, however, the uncomfortable feeling that it might well be a waste of time if in fact the Earl had no wish to see her father and sent him away.

She therefore said quietly,

“I am sure you are right, Papa. Perhaps we shall see him in Church next Sunday.”

She thought as she spoke that it was very unlikely.

The whole village had been desperately disappointed that, after the Earl’s arrival at his ancestral home four days ago, there had been no one in the Yarde family pew at any of the Services that took place on Sunday.

The congregations, because they were unnaturally curious, had been larger than they had been for some time and even Dorina had found herself glancing continually in the direction of the West door until the Service started.

Now, because of what she had heard since the new Earl’s arrival – and gossip flew on wings round the small village – she was quite certain that he was not a churchgoer and, if they should ever meet him, it would be by chance rather than by his showing any interest.

Carrying the plates and the empty bowl that had contained the stew into the kitchen, Dorina found Nanny dishing up a large sponge pudding and covering it with strawberry jam.

“Mind your father has a big helping,” she said, as she fetched the warm plates from the oven, “he’s not eating enough at the moment to keep a mouse alive.”

“He ate all the stew I gave him,” Dorina said, “and I think he enjoyed it. It was delicious, Nanny.”

“I does me best,” Nanny said sharply, “but no one can make bricks without straw and unless you’re all to starve next week, you’ll have to ask your father for some more money.”

“It’s no use, Nanny. He has none,” Dorina replied. “I did the accounts with him last night and he was wondering how he could afford to buy a new cactus that he had heard was growing well in Kew Gardens.”

“Well, all I can say,” Nanny said tartly, “is for goodness’ sake, Miss Dorina, persuade the Vicar to grow food, especially vegetables.”

Dorina laughed and it was a very pretty sound.

“Mama tried that once, but she failed, Papa really loves his cactus and I have often thought it is because he has always wanted to travel to visit Africa and Brazil! As he plants and grows his cacti, that is what he is doing in his imagination.”

“And that’s about all we can afford these days,” Nanny said, as she handed Dorina the plates and put the pudding gently on top of them.

Then she opened the kitchen door and Dorina carried the food into the dining room.

When she had gone, Nanny gave a sigh and sat down on one of the hard chairs by the kitchen table.

She was over sixty and, after she had been standing for a long time, her legs hurt her and in the winter she often had a touch of rheumatism, which hurt her even more.

But she was not thinking of herself or her aches and pains, but of the children she had loved ever since they were born and how unfair it seemed that they should have to try to exist on so little when, according to reports, money was being thrown about like water up at the Big House.

Everything that happened in Little Sodbury was related to Nanny almost as if she had a right to it.