The Angel and the Rake

Chapter One ~ 1892-1

Chapter One ~ 1892Angela Brooke knocked at the door of the small cottage.

It was opened after a while by a small girl of about ten.

“’Mornin’, miss,” she said when she saw who it was outside.

“How is your mother?” Angela asked her.

“She’s ’ad a good night, miss, but the twins be that ’ungry she don’t know ’ow she can cope with ’em.”

Angela gave a little laugh as she walked down the narrow passageway that led to the bedroom of the cottage.

On the bed in the sparsely furnished room was a woman holding one baby in her arms while the other lay beside her.

“Good morning Mrs. Marsh,” Angela said. “I hear you have had a good night.”

“I’m all right, Miss Angela,” the woman on the bed replied, “but these boys was shoutin’ at me soon as dawn broke for more milk than I can give ’em.”

Angela put a parcel down on the bed as she said,

“I have brought you something for that. Mama always said that the best thing to produce milk was yeast, so I called at the brewers yesterday and they gave me a large pot of it.”

“That sounds strange,” Mrs. Marsh remarked.

“It does not taste very nice,” Angela told her, “but try and take it otherwise the twins will suffer and I can see that they are going to be big strong boys just like Ben.”

“That’s what I ’opes,” Mrs. Marsh replied. “But if they goes on as they are now, they’ll eat us out of ’ouse and ’ome!”

She laughed at her own joke.

Angela, having put the yeast she had brought beside the bed, opened the parcel.

“I looked through what Mama always called ‘The Baby Box’ last night,” she said, “and I found a shawl and two little woollen coats, which the twins can wear until they grow too big for them.”

“That’s real kind of you, Miss Angela,” Mrs. Marsh exclaimed. “You’re an angel from ’Eaven, that’s what you are, and there’s no one in the village wouldn’t say the same.”

Angela smiled.

She was becoming used to being told that she was an angel.

It was the reason that she had been christened ‘Angela’, which she knew was derived from the Greek word ‘angelos’.

She remembered her mother telling her how, when she was born, she looked so pretty that both the nurse and the doctor had exclaimed,

“She is like an angel, Lady Brooke, and no one could ask for more when they have a child.”

“I never have asked for more,” Angela’s mother had said softly, “and you have looked like an angel and been like one ever since you arrived here.”

“That is the nicest thing you could say to me, Mama,” Angela had replied and kissed her.

It was sad that her mother was not alive today.

She knew how interested she would have been in knowing that Mrs. Marsh, who already had five children, had now produced twins.

It was going to make the difficulty of feeding her family worse than it was already.

Angela wished, as she had so often wished before, that they could employ more men on the estate.

But, if things were difficult for the Marshes, life was also very difficult for her and her brother, Trevor, to keep their heads above water.

She left the Marshes’ cottage and walked back through the village.

She then started up the long drive towards The Priory.

As she went, Angela was worrying.

It was something that she did consistently these last months because, when her brother was in London, she was left to cope with all the complaints and difficulties at home.

Only this morning, before she had gone into the village, the gardeners had told her that they needed more tools.

She knew if they did not have them, it would be just impossible for them to provide the house with vegetables. Also the tools were essential to keep the rest of the garden tidy and free from weeds.

It was ridiculous, she knew, to expect only two men, who were both getting old, to do so much.

In her father’s day they had eight gardeners, most of whom were young and active.

Since her brother had inherited the Baronetcy, things seemed to have gone from bad to worse every year.

She was not jealous of Trevor being in London and she could hardly complain as all his friends were there.

But it was very dull in this part of Hertfordshire where she saw very few people.

She first struggled to try to keep The Priory as comfortable as it had been in her parents’ day.

Yet she knew that it was a hopeless task.

They had only one old couple to look after a house consisting of thirty bedrooms, huge sitting rooms, a Picture Gallery and an extensive library.

There was also the hall, where originally the Monks had sat at a long refectory table for their meals. It was in the hall that they had welcomed each and every traveller and nobody was ever turned away unfed.

The Brookes had come into possession of The Priory more than three hundred years ago after the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII.

Then it had lain empty until Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and she had had no intention of restoring the Priories and Monasteries to their original owners.

Therefore they became presents, which she gave to those who had served her well and were loyal to her.

The Brooke who had received The Priory and the estate in which it stood had been a sailor and a good friend of Sir Walter Raleigh.

He had retired with many honours and a sum of money that seemed to him a fortune.

He had been succeeded by his son and it was one hundred years later that a Baronetcy was given to the Brooke who lived at The Priory.

Angela’s brother was the ninth Baronet and exceedingly proud of his ancestry.

Unfortunately it did not provide him with the money that was so badly needed to keep up The Priory and the estate.

It was therefore becoming, Angela thought miserably, more and more dilapidated.

It still looked incredibly beautiful from a distance and yet, as Angela knew only too well, it was desperately in need of repair.

Part of the roof leaked and the ceilings in two of the State bedrooms had fallen down.

The diamond-paned windows had lost a great deal of glass and the rooms themselves were crying out for paint.

Angela walked on slowly.

As she saw the sun shining on The Priory, she thought, as she had often done before, that it was unconquerable.

It had stood there resolutely for a great many years and it had survived the invasion of Cromwellian troops, who had killed the Brooke of the time because he was a Royalist.

It had flourished during the Restoration of King Charles II, but had sunk into neglect in the reign of Queen Anne.

This was because the Brooke who had owned it then was fighting the French under the Duke of Marlborough and had no time to attend to his possessions.

The Priory had luckily flourished under their grandfather.

He had, as a young man, inherited a large and unexpected fortune and he had spent a great deal of his money on The Priory and the estate land.

But like so many other rich men, he had believed that his money would last for ever.

In the last few years of his life he had been forced to make vast economies.

Most fortunately at the time when Angela’s father had inherited The Priory, he had been married to an heiress, not because she was rich but because he loved her.

The Priory then blossomed once again.

Everybody who visited it would exclaim at its beauty and the comfort they found there.

Then, when Angela’s mother had died, the money that she and her husband had spent so lavishly died with her.

Her father had five sons and three daughters and he had left his vast fortune so that, if one of his children died, the others would inherit their share.

It took Angela’s father some time to realise just how poor they now were.

However, it was her brother who had to face the grim truth that he had very little money and what there was would not be sufficient to keep up The Priory.

He had gone to London determined somehow to earn some sort of income.

However little it might be, it would surely contribute something towards their food and to the upkeep of The Priory itself.

“How can we have possibly let it get into the state it is in now?” Trevor asked Angela despairingly the last time he was at home.

She did not bother to answer as they both knew that, if one owned a large house without being able to care for it properly, it would fall into disrepair.

It grew worse year by year and month by month.

It was The Priory that had eventually driven Trevor to go to London.

“I will find something to do,” he said confidently. “I have a great number of friends there who were with me at Eton and Oxford University who I am sure will help me if they can.”

He did make a little money and Angela thought that it very clever of him.

One rich man wanted to purchase a number of fine horses, which Trevor had been able to provide for him.

He made a small commission for himself over the deal.

Another wanted a house that was large enough so that he could entertain his large family and his many friends.

But it must be near enough to London for him to be able to return to it at night after enjoying a good dinner.

It had taken Trevor a little time to find the right property for him.

Finally he had found exactly what his friend required and again received a commission on the purchase price.

Angela could not help regretting that so much of what he made had to be expended on staying in London.

Although his lodgings were cheap and not very comfortable, they seemed expensive to her.

As she drew nearer to The Priory, she could see that one of the windows on the top floor had fallen forward.

This must have happened yesterday and she wondered if old Higgins, who was the only man in the house, would be able to repair it.

If she asked the carpenter to come up from the village, it would cost money.

She thought it unlikely, however, that Higgins would be able to do it, as he was suffering from rheumatism.

He was finding it difficult even to carry a tray with steady hands and he was not likely to be able to use the tools that would be required for the job.

She remembered wistfully the old days when there were four young footmen in the hall and at least one of whom would have made short work of nailing back the window.

Now the footmen were gone. Their uniforms with their crested silver buttons and white breeches were stored up in the attics.

As she then remembered the attics, she thought that she should go up and check to see if everything was all right and that there were no leaks when it rained.

She had neglected them for over a month and the rain had seeped in through one hole in the roof.

It had damaged some curtains that had been stored there when her mother had replaced them with a better and more expensive velvet.

The curtains had not been wanted, but Angela had wondered if they were not better than a number of those that covered the windows now.

Some of them had become torn and were badly faded.

Because she knew that she must do something about the window, she hurried up the last part of the drive.

She reached the courtyard in front of the huge oak door that had stood there since The Priory had been built.

Angela often thought that it was a Herculean feat for Higgins to open it in the morning as it was so heavy.

It was open now and Angela walked inside.

As she did so, she saw a top hat lying on the refectory table,.

She stared at it for a minute and then gave a little cry.

The hat had not been there when she had left and she knew at once that Trevor had come home.

She ran into the hall and along the corridor that led to the small drawing room where they habitually sat.