Moon Over Eden (Bantam Series No. 37) Page 6

  “A very sensible girl!” he told himself as he drove away. “She will be the saving of Gerald and undoubtedly they will deal very well together.”

  When there was no longer any sign of the carriage on the unkempt Vicarage drive, Dominica walked back into the house, shut the door and stood for a moment leaning against it as if she needed to support herself against a sudden weakness.

  Then she ran into the kitchen at the back of the house where she knew she would find her sisters.

  They were all there: Faith was cutting sandwiches and Charity and Hope were arranging the fruit in a wicker basket.

  They had been chattering as Dominica entered the room, but immediately they fell silent as they all turned their faces towards her, a question in their eyes.

  “What did he want?” Charity asked.

  Faith, throwing down the butter-knife, exclaimed:

  “You do not mean to say he has gone without the tea we are taking so much trouble over! How could you let him go, Dominica, when we all wanted to see him?”

  “He has gone,” Dominica answered in a strange voice, and walking to the table she sat down on one of the hard chairs.

  “What did he come about?” Hope enquired.

  She was not as pretty as Faith, but she had the same blue eyes and golden hair. She was, however, at sixteen, going through a tom-boy stage and her hair was invariably untidy and her finger-nails dirty.

  “Yes, what did he want?” Charity repeated impatiently.

  “He has asked me to marry his nephew!”

  Dominica knew that at first they did not believe her. Then as if the quiet seriousness of her voice convinced them, they stared at her wide-eyed and astonished to the point of what might have seemed ludicrous were Dominica not experiencing the same feeling herself.

  “He has asked you to do what?” Faith said at last.

  “To marry his nephew,” Dominica replied. “He is a tea-planter and the girl whom Lord Hawkston brought out to marry him...”

  She got no further.

  “Lord Hawkston?” Charity exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that he is a Lord?”

  “A Lord!” Faith interposed. “And he actually came here to the house! Oh, Dominica, how could you have let him go?”

  “He is coming back tomorrow to buy my trousseau for me.”

  There was a babble which made it impossible to distinguish anything anyone was saying. The words ‘trousseau’, ‘Lord’, ‘marriage’, seemed to be repeated over and over again and jumbled into a roar of sound which made Dominica finally put her hands over her ears and cry:

  “Stop! I must think! I must be certain I have done the ... right thing!”

  “If you really mean you are going to marry the nephew of a Lord, I cannot imagine you have anything to think about,” Faith said. “It is the most exciting, thrilling thing I have ever heard!”

  “Of course it is!” Hope exclaimed. “We can all come and stay with you. Do you think he would lend me a horse to ride? And there is fishing up in the mountains where the tea grows. I would not be any trouble! You will ask me, Dominica?”

  “She will have us all to stay,” Faith answered as Dominica did not speak, “but leave her alone now. Give her a cup of tea, Charity. Dominica, eat one of these sandwiches. They are quite nice and you ate practically nothing at luncheon.”

  “There wasn’t much to eat!” Grace said.

  She was small, fat and greedy and was always complaining she did not have enough food.

  “Well, you don’t go hungry at any rate,” Hope said sharply. “You never do.”

  “Stop squabbling, you two,” Faith commanded. “Can’t you see that Dominica is upset?”

  She put two sandwiches on a plate as she spoke and put them down in front of Dominica.

  Charity set a cup of tea beside her.

  “Drink it up,” she said encouragingly, “and then you can tell us all about it.”

  Prudence, the youngest, who was only nine, went to stand beside her oldest sister.

  “Don’t leave us, Dominica,” she said in a pleading voice. “We’ll never be able to manage without you.”

  Dominica put her arm round the child and drew her close.

  “That is what I am afraid of!” she exclaimed. “Oh girls, have I made the right decision? When I said I would do as Lord Hawkston proposed, I thought I would be able to help all of you.”

  “We can come to stay,” Hope said irrepressibly.

  “And you can give us all your cast-off clothes,” Faith said.

  “I expect he has lots of money,” Charity remarked. “Lords are very rich.”

  Dominica took a sip of the tea, then, as if it sustained her, she went on:

  “Lord Hawkston said that if I would marry his nephew he would give us enough money to be comfortable. I will be able to help you and I must somehow persuade Papa that you will need Mallika to come in every day to do the housework and not just once a week as she does now.”

  “She will have to help with the cooking,” Faith said quickly. “You know how bad I am at it. The stove will never work for me.”

  “But will Papa agree?” Dominica asked. “I am sure I ought to have said no! Besides it must be wrong to marry a man you have never seen.”

  “I expect he is tall and handsome like his Uncle,” Charity said, “and when he sees you, Dominica, he will fall madly in love with you and you with him. It will be just like a fairy-story!”

  Dominica put down her cup and rose from the table.

  “I do not believe it is true!” she cried. “Did Lord Hawkston really come to the house, or have I dreamt it all?”

  “It is true! It is true!” Charity replied. “I let him in! I fetched Papa, and think, Dominica, how exciting it will be to have a wedding in the family! Is Papa going to marry you?”

  Dominica looked at her sister with troubled eyes.

  “I do not think so,” she said. “I believe Lord Hawkston means to take me up to Kandy and I shall be married there.”

  “Then we cannot be bridesmaids,” Faith exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. “Oh, Dominica, I did want to be your bridesmaid!”

  “Why has the young man, whatever his name is, not come to Colombo to meet his Uncle?” Hope asked.

  “He is ill,” Dominica answered, “and his name is Gerald Warren.”

  “I think Gerald is quite a romantic name,” Charity murmured.

  “Warren is rather dull,” Faith said, “Mrs. Warren ... well, I suppose it sounds all right! It is a pity he is not a Lord.”

  “He will be one day, if his Uncle does not marry, and he says he intends to remain a bachelor,” Dominica said in a low voice.

  All three older girls gave a cry of sheer excitement and Charity exclaimed:

  “You will be a Lady! Think of it, Dominica! You will be a Lady and sit on the right of the Governor when you dine at Queen’s House.”

  For the first time since she had come into the kitchen Dominica smiled.

  “That possibility is a long way ahead. After all, Lord Hawkston is not old.”

  “I thought in Church that he looked about thirty-five or thirty-six,” Faith said. “I am rather good at guessing ages.”

  “I thought he was much older than that,” Charity contradicted. “But he looks distinguished. I would like to see him with a coronet on his head.”

  “I do not suppose he travels with it,” Dominica said with a smile.

  “What else did he...?” Faith began, then the bell on the wall pealed and there was a sudden silence.

  “Papa!” Faith exclaimed. “Charity, go and see what he wants!”

  “No, I will go,” Dominica interposed. “I am sure he wants me.”

  There was no protest against her answering her father’s summons. All the girls, with the exception of Dominica, were afraid of their father and even the thought of him was enough to change the subject of their conversation and the tone of their voices.

  Dominica walked to the kitchen table and picking up her cup of
tea drank from it. Then, as if it made her feel stronger, she went from the kitchen without another word.

  She walked along the narrow, rambling passage which led to the front of the house.

  The Vicarage had been built fifty years earlier in the grandiose Colonial manner which had given the first Vicar who had lived in it a background of pomp and importance.

  He had however been a rich man while the incumbents of St. Peter’s who followed him were poor and without private means to supplement the very modest stipend they were allowed by the Church Commissioners in England.

  Only Dominica and her mother before her knew how hard it was to keep such a big building clean, but she accepted the work it entailed as part of her daily life and made no complaints.

  The Vicar’s Study was an enormous room overlooking the garden and while the best pieces of furniture they possessed were arranged there, they still seemed sparse and miserably inadequate.

  The Vicar was sitting at his desk and when Dominica entered, closing the door behind her, he said sharply:

  “Why did you not fetch me to say goodbye to Lord Hawkston?”

  “He did not wish to stay to tea, Papa,” Dominica answered, “and he will be calling again tomorrow.”

  “He told you what he proposed?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “I accepted his proposition because I thought it was best for you, Dominica. After all, as His Lordship pointed out to me, I have six daughters who will all doubtless require husbands in the future.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “I would have wished to see the young man for myself,” the Vicar said, “but Lord Hawkston speaks well of his nephew and I know your mother, Dominica, would have been glad for you to marry an Englishman who has not been corrupted by the sin and depravity which I find so prevalent in this country.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Lord Hawkston has told you of his plans? That he should take you to Kandy and that you should be married there?”

  “I would have wished you to marry me, Papa.”

  “It is what I had always hoped to do,” the Vicar said. “But you know as well as I do, Dominica, that I cannot spare the time, and what is more, I could not contemplate the expense.”

  “No, of course not, Papa.”

  “I will give you my blessing before you leave,” the Vicar said. “And now, Dominica, I think we should both pray that you will have God’s help to sustain you in your new life, and that you will not fall short of the ideals and standards that I have instilled in you since you were a child.”

  As he spoke, the Vicar dropped to his knees beside his desk.

  Dominica knelt down on the floor in front of it.

  They were all used to their father praying at any time of the day that occurred to him besides taking part in the long Service of prayers he conducted every morning and every evening.

  Dominica was not the least self-conscious and, kneeling on the floor without any support, she clasped her hands together and closed her eyes.

  As her father burst into a long exhortation to the Almighty to preserve her from sin and temptation, Dominica said her own prayers, which were far simpler and indeed more comforting.

  “Help me, God! to be sure I have done the right thing,” she prayed, “and that Mama would have approved. It seems strange and somehow wrong to marry a man one has never seen, but I shall be able to do things for the girls! Please make Papa understand that they cannot manage without Mallika coming in every day, and make Faith able to look after Grace and Prudence.”

  She was so concentrated on what she was saying that she did not realise for a second that her father had come to the end of one of his lengthy exhortations and was waiting for her response.

  “Amen!” she said quickly.

  “The response should be, ‘Good Lord, Deliver us from Evil’,” her father said in an irritated tone.

  “I am sorry, Papa—Good Lord, deliver us from evil.”

  “Amen!”

  The Vicar rose to his feet.

  “We will pray a little longer when we are gathered together this evening, Dominica,” he said. “I feel that our prayers will be like an armour to protect you from the difficulties and temptations which may lie ahead.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  Dominica went from the Study leaving her father alone. She did not go back to the kitchen. Instead she went up to her bedroom.

  Over the mantelpiece there was a sketch of her mother.

  It had been roughly drawn by an amateur artist who had insisted on drawing Mrs. Radford soon after she was married.

  He had actually excelled only in water-colour, but he had been an efficient enough draughtsman to put some of his subject’s beauty down on paper and Dominica could fill in from memory all that he had left out.

  Mrs. Radford had been a very pretty woman. She had the same blue eyes as Faith and her hair was fair, but Dominica had inherited her small straight nose and the soft curve of her lips.

  The heart-shaped face was the same too, and the winged eyebrows, which gave her a balanced look, or what Lord Hawkston thought of as ‘sensible’.

  Dominica looked up at the picture.

  “What would you have told me to do, Mama?” she asked.

  She waited almost expecting to hear an answer, but there was only the buzz of the bees as they sipped the nectar from the climbing rose-tree whose blossoms reached the windowsill of her bedroom.

  “Suppose when we meet I hate him?” Dominica whispered. “Suppose he dislikes me?”

  Then, as if she received an answer to her question, she told herself she could return home.

  She would go up to Kandy unmarried, and if Lord Hawkston was mistaken and she and his nephew took an immediate dislike to each other, then she was quite certain he would realise his proposal was insupportable and would pay her fare back to Colombo.

  “In which case,” Dominica told herself practically, “I have nothing to lose, and if I should like him, then things could be very different.”

  What was important was that she would be able to help the girls.

  She knew that her father was growing more and more difficult to live with, and he had in fact made things very hard for all of them since her mother’s death.

  For one thing he grudged every penny that was spent on food. Next month would be Lent and Dominica knew he would try to insist on two fast-days a week.

  Even out of Lent they regularly had one fast-day and the money saved was given to the poor of Colombo, many of whom, Dominica could not help thinking, ate a great deal better than they did.

  Grace was always hungry and Prudence at all times had to be tempted to eat. Dominica was sure that it weakened her strength if she went for a whole day with nothing inside her but water.

  Actually she cheated where the youngest was concerned.

  “Why is Prudence having an egg?” Grace would enquire. “I thought this was a day of abstinence.”

  “It is medicine where Prudence is concerned,” was Dominica’s invariable reply. “It would cost Papa a great deal more if we had to send for the Doctor. I am sure she is anaemic.”

  “I’m anaemic too.”

  “You are just greedy!” Faith interposed disparagingly. “I do not see why we should have to go without food just to please Papa.”

  “It is not to please Papa, but to discipline ourselves like good Christians,” Dominica would say automatically.

  “Well, I would rather be a bad Christian and not feel so hungry!” Faith said sharply, “Anyway, there are some bananas in the garden and if there are half-a-dozen angels with flaming swords protecting them I still intend to eat one. It will at least stop my tummy rumbling!”

  Dominica often wondered what they would do without the garden where fruit grew wild and there were bananas, pawpaws, mangoes and many other fruits and vegetables indigenous to Ceylon.

  Her father of course stuck strictly to his fast and always emerged from a day of abstinence a little more harsh and, Domin
ica would think, more aggressive in his condemnation of evil and the sins of society.

  “When I am married,” she told herself now, “the girls shall stay with me and I must find Faith a nice husband. The others shall lead an ordinary existence in a household where one need not have to pray over every crumb of bread and be eternally conscious of the sins of humanity.”

  She felt guilty at such revolutionary thoughts, but she knew how impatient the older girls were with their father’s fanatical asceticism and she knew that none of them had any real affection for him.

  “I have tried to look after them as you did, Mama,” she said, looking up again at her mother’s picture, “but it has been difficult ... very, very difficult!”

  She knew it would be worse for the others once she had left, but at the same time she would be able to ensure that sooner or later they could escape from the restrictions imposed on them by their father.

  ‘What a pity,’ she thought, ‘that Lord Hawkston would not consider Faith as his nephew’s wife. She would make a much more willing bride than I shall be.’

  A bride!

  It gave her a strange, frightening feeling inside to think that she was to be the bride of a man she had never seen and had never heard of until an hour ago.

  Lord Hawkston arrived the following morning before Dominica expected him.

  She thought it very unlikely that he would appear before half past ten or eleven o’clock, but he must have let himself into the house because Dominica was down on her knees scrubbing the kitchen-floor when he walked in.

  She gave a startled exclamation as she saw his highly polished feet advancing towards her. Then she sat back on her heels and looked up at him, the blood suddenly rising in her cheeks in her embarrassment.

  “You were not expecting me?” Lord Hawkston asked in his deep voice.

  “N ... no, My Lord. It cannot be much after half past nine, and I thought you would not be here until later.”

  “I am an early riser,” Lord Hawkston said, “and we have a great deal to do, Dominica. I think the sooner we start, the better.”

  “I will get ready, My Lord,” Dominica said in a low voice.

  She was very conscious of the large scrubbing-brush in her hands, of the piece of coarse soap on the floor, the bucket of warm water beside her and the brown sacking apron she wore over her cotton dress.