Cross of Love

CHAPTER ONE - 1864-1

CHAPTER ONE

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1864Crows wheeled and circled in the bleak winter sky, while the mourners huddled over the grave beneath. The chill in the air was not more bitter than the chill in their hearts.

What will we do without him? How will we manage?

The man they were laying in the earth had been their vicar and, in some ways, their father. In their tiny, remote village of Fardale, there was nobody else to care for them, and they remembered now that the Reverend Colwell had exhorted them, praised them, chastised, defended and loved them.

Now he was gone, struck down by a chill he’d contracted visiting a sick parishioner on a snowy night.

For a while he’d seemed to rally, then failed again, finally sinking into pneumonia, and fading gently away.

They all felt his loss, but none more so than the pale, distraught girl who kept her eyes fixed on the open grave, and closed her eyes as the first clods of earth hit it. She was Rena Colwell, the dead man’s daughter.

Beside her, a much younger girl, wearing a shawl over her head, slipped her hand into Rena’s, offering and giving comfort. She had the work roughened hands of a maid of all work.

“Let’s get going, miss,” she urged.

“Just a few more minutes, Ellie. I want to talk to the curate who read the service. Why don’t you go on to the vicarage, put the kettle on and make a few sandwiches? He’ll probably want to join us for tea before he leaves.”

But when she approached the haughty young man, who’d travelled over from a distant parish to read the service, he made no bones about his eagerness to depart. He preferred the city and was clearly appalled by this backwater village.

“Have you heard anything about who may be coming to take Papa’s place?” Rena asked.

“Well, it’s hardly the best situation, but there are always plenty of hacks who’ve lost hope of anything better.”

She stiffened at the implied slur on her father, but he blundered on, oblivious.

“So I should think somebody will turn up any day now. It’s a pity there’s nobody living in that huge house I passed on my way here. A great man always lends tone to a place, besides bringing employment.”

“The last Earl of Lansdale died ten years ago,” Rena said. “Nobody seems to know who the next one is, or if there’s anyone at all. The family may have died out. The Grange has stood empty since then.”

“Then it’s a bad business. Well, I must be going. I’ve got dinner waiting for me at my hotel.”

Rena trudged home alone through the twilight, her heart heavy. In the kitchen she found Ellie, the only servant the vicar had been able to afford, ready with tea.

The two young women sat together companionably in the kitchen, drinking tea in the fading light.

“He was never the same after your Mama died,” Ellie said.

“That’s true,” Rena sighed. “It’s strange to think that a year ago today she was still alive. And then she collapsed and died, and something went out of him. He was always very sweet and gentle to me, but I can’t help feeling he’s happier now.”

“What are you going to do, miss?”

Rena gave a wry smile. “I don’t know. That curate made sure to remind me that I shall have to move out of here soon. I’m glad, of course. The village needs a parson. But I don’t know where I’ll go.”

“You could be a teacher, miss. You know ever so much.”

“Well, I read a lot, but I’m afraid I don’t know enough to be a teacher or a governess. I could care for children, but nobody around here is rich enough to hire me. In fact the only thing I’m any good at is keeping house.”

Ellie gave a little scream.

“You can’t be a housekeeper miss. What would your Mama have said?”

“Mama wouldn’t have approved,” Rena agreed. “Her family were ‘gentry’ who thought themselves above a marriage with the clergy. They were very shocked when she fell in love with Papa.

“But I must earn my living somehow, and I’d be glad to hear of any honest employment before I have to leave here.”

She gave Ellie a rueful smile. “I’m afraid I can’t afford to keep you on – ”

“That’s all right miss. Mum’ll be glad to have me home now our Gladys has married. Besides, it’s time I reminded Bert I was alive.”

“Bert?”

“The butcher’s boy, miss. He’ll do very nicely for me.”

Ellie departed next morning in search of whatever success she might have ensnaring Bert. Rena was left alone in a draughty, echoing house, knowing that soon she would be homeless.

Reared on the virtues of thrift and industry she immediately set about searching for a situation. Although she’d told Ellie she wasn’t qualified to be a teacher she tried to obtain a teaching post. She would try anything that was honest. But it was January, and no school was hiring teachers.

She placed her name on the books of a couple of agencies. One summoned her to an interview in a town so distant that she had no hope of getting there. Another offered an interview twenty miles away. She walked the distance, got caught in a rainstorm and arrived sodden and covered with mud.

On the way home she was given a lift by a local carter, who dropped her a mile from the vicarage. She trudged home, collapsed with a chill and managed to struggle to bed.

She might have died but for the baker’s wife who came to see how she was managing these days, found her in bed with a raging fever, and summoned the doctor.

For the next fortnight a group of women took it in turns to care for her and feed her. In her feverish ramblings she relived moments from the past years.

It had been a gentle, loving life. She could remember, as a little girl, riding on her father’s back as he crawled round the drawing room on all fours as she cried “More, more!”

Sometimes Mama had had to rescue him from the little tyrant.

“Your father’s tired, my darling.”

And Papa had always said, “No, no, my dear. I like to see her happy.”

And it had been a happy life, but without excitement. She had once ventured to say so. And dear Papa had been shocked.

“A virtuous woman, my darling child, seeks her fulfilment in the quietness of home, and not – ”

How many lectures had started this way! A virtuous woman did not answer back. A virtuous woman endured the misfortunes of life in silence. A virtuous woman turned the other cheek.

“But Papa, there’s this horrible girl at school who bullies me, and sometimes I want so hard to smack her.”

“A very natural reaction, my dear. But you must not yield to anger. Answer her with calm strength.”

She’d tried calm strength and the bullying had turned to mockery. But one day she had answered back, and discovered she possessed a tongue sharp enough to silence bullies. She had not told Papa, but she had suffered agonies of guilt at deceiving him.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” she whispered now.

And the baker’s wife mopped her brow and murmured, “Poor soul. She’s delirious.”

For years it had been like that, secretly growing into a firmer and more determined character than was suitable in a clergyman’s daughter, and having to hide it from her parents, who would have been appalled.

When she was fourteen a troop of players came and set up their stage on the village green. She had been entranced. Her parents had taken her to a performance, and she had been so thrilled that she had blurted out,

“Oh I would love to be an actress one day!”

They had been devastated. That a child of theirs could even contemplate such an immoral career had reduced them to shocked despair.

Mama had wept. Papa had talked about a virtuous woman.

But because they loved her they soon persuaded themselves that she was too young to understand her own words. They had comforted and forgiven her.

But Rena had never again confided her longing for a more colourful life, even for outright adventure.

She recovered. Her nurses said goodbye and left her. She came downstairs to find the place empty and her larder filled with nourishing food. She sought them out and tried to thank them, but they all professed ignorance.

Nor would the doctor allow her to mention his bill, which he declared had been paid. For the first time Rena was realising how much the village loved her as well as her father.

It was heart-warming, but at the end of two months she still had no job. As far as possible she ate vegetables grown in her own garden, and eggs from the chicken she kept.

Daily she expected a letter to say that a new parson had been appointed, but from the bishop there was only silence. Both the village and herself had been left in limbo.

“What am I going to do?” she asked herself again and again.

Now was surely the time to embark on that adventure for which she had always yearned. But how could she arrange for that to happen? An adventure was something that came to you, and if one thing was for certain it was that no adventure was going to find her in this tiny backwater that the world had forgotten.

The village which was in an obscure part of the country was seldom visited by anyone outside. This was because the great house in the centre of it, which had been there for ten or more generations, had stood empty and neglected for ten years, since the death of the Earl, Lord Lansdale.

Rena vaguely remembered him, an old man who took no interest in the people who lived in the cottages which belonged to him. He employed very few servants in the house and regrettably few outside, so the villagers knew that they could not look to him for employment.

He had no money. The house, known as The Grange, that he had inherited on the death of the previous Earl, had merely given him a place to lay his head. It did not provide the money to keep it going.

“Nor can he sell the house or any of the lands,” Papa had confided to her, “because they are entailed. They must be passed intact to the next heir.”

“But suppose there is no next heir, Papa?”

“Then it’s a bad business, and everything falls to rack and ruin.”

Sometimes he had visited The Grange, taking Rena with him. The old Earl had liked the child, and once shown her the tower which perched incongruously high up over the centre of the building.

That visit had thrilled her, but the Earl had grown giddy and had to be rescued, and she was never allowed up there again. Nor was she invited to visit the house again, which made her sad, because it was a beautiful place, and she loved it despite its dilapidation.

Her last ever visit had been made ten years earlier, when she was twelve. The old Earl had died in the night, and his funeral was held in The Grange’s private chapel. Like all the other villagers, she had attended. And, like them, she had hoped that soon a new Earl would arrive, put the place in order and bring prosperity back to the neighbourhood.

But it didn’t happen. The Grange, the estate, the fields, all fell into a further state of decay. And the people’s despair grew deeper.

The only excitement just now was the rumour that somebody had come, or was coming, to open up The Grange. Bearing in mind what Papa had said about entails, Rena wondered if this meant a new Earl.

For a day or two the village buzzed. But then nothing happened, and the buzzing died down.

One day Rena went to her father’s study, where he had written his sermons and where she could still feel his presence. As though he were still there, she found herself saying,

“What can I do, Papa? Where can I go, and who can I ask for help?”

She sighed and waited, as if she would hear her father speak and tell her what to do. Then almost as if the words had been said aloud, she found herself thinking of the cross which had been found in the wood, behind The Grange.

She had been about twelve when it had been discovered by some men working amongst the trees. Her father had been asked to inspect it, and had found something that might at one time had been a large, rather roughly made cross but which was now left with only its centre trunk.