Look With the Heart

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1819-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1819Erlina Sherwood stood looking helplessly at the flames soaring higher and higher into the sky.

She could hardly believe that her home was being irretrievably destroyed.

There was a resounding crash as part of the roof fell in and she felt her brother’s hand slip into hers.

“I don’t think we can save anything more,” he sighed.

“No, we must – not go near – it again,” Erlina managed to say.

There was just a small number of chairs and pictures, which she and Gerry, who was eleven, had managed to pull into the garden.

As it was in the middle of the night and they were some distance from the village, no one had come to help them.

The old servants, Dawes and his wife, could only stand motionless staring at the flames and weeping.

It was in fact Dawes who had caused the fire.

He had got out of bed in the night and the candle he had left burning by his bedside had toppled over onto the bed.

He did not realise at first that the bedclothes were burning and, when he did, he tried to put out the fire himself.

When the blaze became too strong for him to cope with, his wife ran screaming out of the back door.

It was only then that he hurried as fast as she could through the house to wake Erlina.

He told her what had happened and had admitted that it was all his fault.

Erlina quickly woke her brother, who was sleeping in the next room.

They pulled on some clothes and ran rapidly downstairs.

By this time the flames were completely out of control.

Sherwood House was very old, in fact it had been built in Tudor times and the wooden beams and floors were dry and quickly caught fire.

Erlina and Gerry had only managed to bring half a dozen pieces out through the front door and into the garden.

The flames were speedily destroying everything she knew and loved.

Another part of the roof then fell in with a deafening crash.

Then there was just the crackle of the flames with the skeleton of the walls silhouetted against night sky.

“What are we going to do?” Gerry asked.

It was a question that Erlina was already asking herself.

She knew that she had to think of the two old servants as well.

“We will have to drive into the village,” she said. “Thank goodness the horses are safe and untouched.”

The stables were fortunately built at some distance from the house and it was obvious that the flames would not reach them.

“What shall we do about the Dawes’s?” Gerry asked.

“We will take them with us,” Erlina replied. “Go and put Nobby between the shafts of the pony cart.”

Gerry ran off.

He was only young, but he was a sensible and helpful little boy.

Erlina walked towards the old couple.

“’Tis really terrible – terrible!” the old woman was sobbing. “Everything’s been burnt, everything!”

Her voice was almost incoherent and Erlina could do nothing but pat her shoulder.

“We have to be brave,” she murmured.

“‘T’were my fault, miss,” Dawes said. “There’s no one to blame but me.”

“It is something that might have happened at any time,” Erlina said consolingly. “The house is so old that I think I always knew that if there was a fire nothing could save it.”

Mrs. Dawes was still sobbing and the tears were running down the old cook’s cheeks.

Erlina felt like crying herself, but she knew that it would do no good.

“I have sent Master Gerry to fetch the pony cart,” she said. “We will then drive into the village and ask the Vicar if we can stay with him for the rest of the night.”

She did not wait to hear what the Dawes’s had to say, but walked off towards the stables knowing that she must help Gerry.

He had already brought Nobby, who was a most reliable old pony, out of his stall and she helped Gerry fit him between the shafts.

The pony cart was old like everything else they possessed.

She thought despairingly that, unless they were to lay down on the straw with the horses, they would not have a roof over their heads.

“Have you fastened the shaft on your side?” she now asked Gerry.

“I think it is all right,” he answered. “It is difficult to see in the dark.”

There were stars overhead, but no moon.

Erlina knew, however, that Nobby would find his way over to the Vicarage without any trouble.

She climbed into the pony cart and picked up the reins.

Then, as Gerry would have joined her, she told him,

“Lock the door of the stables. We don’t want the horses let out tomorrow if people come up here to look at the fire.”

“I don’t suppose they will want to walk so far,” Gerry commented, “except, of course, for the Vicar and his family.”

Erlina did not answer. She only waited while he closed the stable door and had pushed the bolt into place.

Gerry then climbed into the pony cart and Erlina drove carefully out from the stables and down the cobbled way to the front of the house.

The Dawes’s were waiting where she had left them, but there was now even less of the house standing than there had been before.

She could not bear to look at it.

She did not want to know that everything she possessed, including all her clothes, would soon be nothing but ashes.

There was just the small number of things that she and Gerry had rescued lying on the grass some way from the fire.

She wished that they had had time to bring the pictures of their ancestors from the dining room and drawing room.

She had always loved the one of her father, who had been the fifth Baronet. Gerry was now the sixth.

Erlina pulled the pony cart to a standstill.

She then told Mr. and Mrs. Dawes to climb in and Gerry jumped out so that Mrs. Dawes could get in first.

She was still crying and Erlina tried to think of something comforting to say.

But the words would not come to her lips.

Gerry told Dawes to sit beside his wife and he sat next to Erlina.

They then drove off down the drive.

Erlina did not want to look back at the blazing building against the dark foliage of the trees behind it.

She could, however, still hear the crackle of the flames and a faint breeze was blowing burning cinders over the lawn.

Then there was only the clip-clop of Nobby’s hoofs on the gravelled drive.

When they reached the gates, the fire was out of sight.

Then there were only the stars overhead and, when they turned into it, the darkness of the village with its empty and ruined cottages.

Erlina drove the pony trap on until they came to the grey Norman Church where she had been christened and later confirmed.

Her mother and father were buried in the churchyard in the family vault and it contained all the previous members of the family who had lived in Sherwood House since it was first built.

The Vicarage, which was beside the Church, was only about a hundred years old.

The window frames and doors were badly in need of paint and, as Erlina knew, there was a hole in the roof that had not been repaired.

Gerry rushed out and raised the knocker on the front door.

He knocked twice before a window opened and the Vicar put out his head.

“Who is it?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“It is me, Erlina Sherwood. Our house is on fire and, as we have nowhere to go, we have come to you, Vicar.”

“Goodness gracious!” the Reverend Piran Garnet exclaimed. “I will come downstairs at once.”

It took some minutes for him to dress before he opened the front door.

The Vicar, a middle-aged man, had always been respected and loved by his parishioners and now there were very few remaining.

As he saw that Gerry was waiting for him on the doorstep, he put his arm round the boy and pulled him close.

“What has happened, Gerry?” he asked.

“The house caught fire, Vicar,” Gerry answered, “and already there is almost nothing left – nothing at all.”

Erlina thought afterwards that it was characteristic of the Vicar to have taken everything in his stride.

He sent the Dawes’s to the kitchen and asked them to make some coffee for Erlina and themselves.

And he found a glass of cider for Gerry to drink.

After Nobby had been put in the stable, they went into the sitting room.

“It was Dawes who accidentally started the fire,” Erlina explained to the Vicar, “and he is terribly upset about it. But once the flames had taken a hold in the strong wind, there was nothing that anybody could have done to stop it.”

“I can understand that,” the Vicar nodded. “I will go up to the house first thing in the morning to see if any of the furniture can be saved.”

Erlina shook her head.

“There is no chance of that. Gerry and I managed to carry a few things out of the hall, but it was too dangerous to attempt to rescue anything from any of the rooms.”

The Vicar wisely did not let them talk for long.

He took them upstairs and told Gerry to get into bed with one of his two sons.

By taking his daughter into his bed with him and his wife, he provided Erlina with a bed too.

She knew only too well that there were no habitable rooms on the top floor as the roof leaked and there was no one left in the village to do the repairs even if the Vicar had been able to pay for them.

Before Erlina fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, she was wondering despairingly where she and Gerry could go.

How and where would they be able to live in the future?

‘Please God – help us,” she prayed, “please – please.’

*

When Erlina, with dark lines under her eyes, came down for breakfast the next morning she found Gerry already seated at the table.

The Vicar’s two children were also there and Mrs. Garnet was bringing in their breakfast from the kitchen.

She put the plates down in front of the children before kissing Erlina.

“I am so sorry,” she said, “sorrier than I can possibly say. How can such a dreadful thing have happened to you and Gerry?”

“I have already spoken to old Henry,” the Vicar said. “He saw the fire through the trees last night and walked up at dawn to see what had happened.”

“That was kind of him,” Erlina remarked.

She knew that Henry was an old man from the village who found it difficult to walk far.

“I am afraid he came back with bad news,” the Vicar continued. “The fire is subsiding simply because there is now nothing more left to burn.”

It was only what Erlina had expected.

At the same time she felt that it was a dagger-thrust in her breast.

“Henry gave the horses water and some food,” the Vicar went on, “and told me that the chickens were all right.”

Erlina could not even smile her thanks.

“Now don’t start worrying until you have had some breakfast,” Mrs. Garnet said. “Thank Heaven, we have hens, otherwise we would be starving to death like everyone else who is left in this benighted place!”

As she finished speaking, she walked back into the kitchen.

Erlina looked at the Vicar.

“Have you heard anything from the Marquis?” she asked him in a low voice.

The Vicar shook his head.

“We are living only on what the Bishop can send me out of charity,” he replied. “He has written to his Lordship, but there has been no reply.”

“I cannot believe it!” Erlina cried. “How can he behave in this appalling manner to you as well as to everyone else in the Parish?”

“I cannot understand it myself,” the Vicar agreed, “and Meldon Hall is becoming almost as dilapidated as we are!”

There was no need for him to say anything further.

Erlina had talked and talked about the dreadful conditions in which they were all living and there were no words left to describe the behaviour of the Marquis of Meldon with.

When the old Marquis had died five years ago, his son had come into the title and the large estate. And everyone had expected things to go on as they always had in the past.