Henry Osmond Easter was driving down to Ippark to see his brother Joseph. The visit had been rather delayed because ever since that extraordinary young woman had met him in the park he’d led a busy social life attending one function after another, and sometimes two or three in an evening until he reached the one that she was attending too. For if he was honest with himself, and apart from his carefully acquired poetic sensibilities, he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he was very taken with her. He’d never met another young lady quite like her. She didn’t seem to mind what she said or what she did, so he never really knew quite what to expect of her. And that trailed gunpowder into every meeting. To say nothing of the mystery that had kept all knowledge of this branch of the family from him and his sister, and Joseph too presumably. As soon as he got to Ippark he would ask Joseph what he knew about it.
The Easter country seat was set in the Sussex fields six miles south of Petersfield. It was a fine square red-brick house, built in the time of Queen Anne, with a suite of spacious high-ceilinged state rooms that were impressive but the very devil to keep warm in winter. There were two curved wings on either side of the main building, which housed the stables and the kennels, the game room and the dairies, and before the south front the stone steps of the drawing room gave out onto a prospect worthy of Mr Capability Brown, with a wide lawned terrace and a rose garden where guests could promenade in summer and beyond that, rolling green fields, thick woods and copses, and the long lush acres of the estate, dotted with grazing cattle and distant sheep like balls of cotton wool. Henry loved it, even in cold weather, and would have given anything to have been the owner of it. But sadly being the second son that wasn’t possible.
When their father died Joseph had explained the situation in words that still stuck in his brother’s mind like burrs to sheep. ‘I’m the owner now,’ he’d said, with the splendidly careless arrogance of a newly ennobled twenty-five-year-old. ‘You’ve got an allowance. Quite handsome, I’d say. And Jane has a dowry so she can get herself a good husband when the time comes. We’re all taken care of.’
‘What am I to do?’ Henry asked, caught in the bewilderment of sudden loss.
‘Whatever you like,’ his brother said. ‘That’s the beauty of it.’
‘Am I to continue at Harrow?’
‘Of course you are. Why ever not?’
‘And go to Cambridge?’
‘If you want to. I did, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t.’
‘But where shall I live in the hols?’
‘Here if you like,’ Joseph said. ‘Or in Grosvenor Street. Or both places. It’s up to you now. You may come and go as you please. I’m off to see to the dogs.’
But Henry didn’t want to come and go. He wanted to belong. To be the master of his own house. To be an important person like his father and his brother. And at a mere fourteen years of age he knew he had no importance whatsoever. No rank, no status, no importance, and as far as he could see no chance of any. It was horribly demoralizing, worse than his grief.
He was demoralized for the next three years until he went up to Trinity. But almost as soon as he got there, he found the solution to his problems. He would become a poet, that most admired member of the literary fraternity. He would make his name, acquire fame and fortune and the admiration of women, be his own man. From then on he worked towards that happy goal.
He grew a beard and moustache. In fact he grew several beards and moustaches until he found the one that suited his new image of himself. He dressed with bohemian stylishness, in bold coloured coats and extravagant boots and the most elaborate cravats. He bought a gold-topped cane and learned to drive a four-in-hand. And he sat up into the small hours drinking claret and discussing Poetry and Life and Art with his poetic friends. The fact that he never actually got around to writing any verse didn’t worry him unduly. There was time enough for that later. That was the easy part.
When he left Cambridge and went to London to apply himself to his chosen career, he was annoyed to discover that his poems didn’t emerge onto paper in quite the same brilliant style in which he imagined them in his head. But he felt certain he would achieve the brilliance he wanted sooner or later and in the meantime he had acquired the cachet of poet, which was enough to be going on with. It had made him the centre of attention at his brother’s wedding.
And it had certainly impressed Caroline Easter, which was very gratifying because she wasn’t the sort of young woman who was easily impressed. There had been times during the last few dizzy weeks when he’d wondered whether she might not be the sort of woman who could be a poet’s muse and inspiration. Until then his image of such a lady had been rather hazy. He’d felt she would be beautiful, of course, in an ethereal sort of way, vague and drifting and detached from mundane affairs, but passionately attached to her particular poet. Now he was beginning to imagine quite another style of inspiration, forthright and bold and exciting. To say nothing of romantic, for it was highly romantic to be the centre of a mystery. I’ll ask old Joseph, he promised himself as his carriage rumbled him along the dusty road to Petersfield.
Unfortunately old Joseph was surrounded by guests when his brother arrived and it wasn’t until after dinner the following day that they found themselves with the time and privacy to talk to one another and even then it wasn’t for very long. Henry had gone into the red drawing room to get away from a garrulous dowager who wanted to discuss Shelley, and to his delight, his brother and sister-in-law were there before him, sitting on either side of the fire with the dogs at their feet and brandy glasses in their hands.
‘Join us,’ Emmeline said, indicating the decanter. ‘Who are you hiding from, my dear?’
‘Mrs Mullins,’ he said, helping himself to brandy.
She grimaced, her little round face full of mischief between her long swaying curls. ‘She’ll not think to look here. She likes company. And the louder the better, I fear.’
‘Is Jane to join us?’
‘No,’ Joseph said. ‘Prefers her husband’s company these days.’ And he grinned his agreement of such good sense. ‘Can’t think what the world’s coming to.’
But Henry sighed and the sigh wasn’t lost on his sister-in-law.
‘You miss her, my dear,’ she said sympathetically.
‘I do rather.’
‘You should get yourself a wife,’ Joseph said. ‘That’s my advice.’
‘I can’t do that until I’m an established poet.’
‘And when will that be?’
He gave an honest answer. ‘I couldn’t say.’ And he sighed again.
‘Marry first and be a poet later,’ Joseph said. ‘That’s my advice.’
Emmeline gave him a little warning grimace and turned her full attention to her sighing brother-in-law. ‘How have you been faring in London?’ she asked him.
It was the perfect opportunity to tell them his news. ‘I have met up with an entire branch of this family that I never knew existed,’ he said, ‘which I find mighty mysterious.’
‘Ah!’ his brother said easily. ‘They would be the newsagents I daresay.’
‘The same.’
‘Did you visit?’ Joseph asked.
‘A few times. Why don’t we know them, Joseph?’
‘Couldn’t say, old thing,’ Joseph said without much concern. ‘Never have as far as I can remember. Some sort of feud, I believe. Ages ago of course. Before our time. I think it was our great-grandfather started it. Quarrelled with a woman called Anne or Nan or somesuch. Was there a woman called Anne or Nan d’you know?’
‘There still is. Nan Easter. She’s the manager of the firm.’
‘Good Lord!’ Joseph said. ‘Fancy that, Emmeline. She must be a hundred. What is she like? Did you get to see her?’
‘She’s like Sheffield steel,’ the poet said, ‘sharp and grey, with a cutting edge.’
‘Oh I say,’ his brother applauded. ‘That’s very good. And what about the others? What are they like?’
So Henry told them all about Will and Euphemia and Caroline, describing the latter at such length and with such warmth that Emmeline understood the state of his affections at once. ‘We must invite them here, Joseph,’ she said. ‘It would be interesting to meet a whole family of new relations all at once.’ She was rewarded by the eagerness on Henry’s face.
‘Can’t say I fancy Sheffield Steel,’ Joseph said, gulping the last of his brandy. ‘But the younger members of the family sound as if they would be good company. Ask ‘em, Henry.’
‘Oh, I will. I will,’ Henry said. ‘On the very first opportunity. Depend on it.’
‘And if you don’t find an opportunity, make one, eh?’ his brother said.
But in the event it was Joseph who made the first opportunity and he made it for his brother. Although because it was an act of charity, he made it secretly. The day after Henry returned to town he rode up to London himself to seek out an old friend of his from his Oxford days, an old friend who was now the editor of the Weekly Herald.
After pleasantries and an ample lunch he came straight to the point. ‘It’s about my young brother,’ he said. ‘Fancies himself as a poet. I’d take it uncommon kindly if you would throw the odd job in his direction, just now and then.’
So an odd job was thrown. On the morning of the next ball of the season, after two days spent miserably indoors because of torrential rain, Henry received a letter commissioning him to compose a series of three odes on British heroes: Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. He was cock-a-hoop about it, for it meant that he was being recognized at last. And he couldn’t wait to tell Caroline.
He spent the entire day in a fever of excitement, looking forward to the ball, which was easy and pleasant, and trying to compose, which was far more difficult than he had expected. Inspiration did not descend from the clouds. In fact by the end of the afternoon he was beginning to suspect that he’d been given an impossible subject because he really didn’t know very much about this long-dead hero except that he’d fought the French and been killed at the battle of Trafalgar. And rhyming was impossible too. The only one he could think of for hero was Nero, which wasn’t appropriate, while as to finding a rhyme for Nelson … Nevertheless he took his notebook to the ball. Perhaps Miss Easter would inspire him.
It took him some time to discover where she was, for the ball was being held at the Montacute’s and their ballroom was enormous and gave out into a series of terraces that led to the garden. But eventually he saw her standing on one of those terraces, leaning her arm against an urn full of roses and honeysuckle, talking to Euphemia, with her grandmother and Mr Brougham and her brother beside her.
He walked over to her at once, his notebook still in his hand.
‘I do declare you’re composing a poem,’ she said, addressing him without preamble, in that forthright way of hers, and gazing at him so directly she quite took his breath away. She really is a very pretty girl, he thought. Her eyes are so fine, so dark and passionate, and her hair quite beautiful, clustering thickly about her forehead and swinging beside her cheeks in ringlets so glossy I can hardly bear not to touch them. While as to her mouth, why that really is most delicious, so wide and generous and outspoken …
‘Yes,’ he said as casually as he could. ‘A commission, you know. From the Weekly Herald.’
‘How thrilling,’ she said. ‘What is it about? Do tell. Are we allowed to see it?’
‘Not just yet,’ he said, closing his notepad quickly before she could see the mess he was in. ‘Takes a bit of doing, does an ode.’
‘What is it about?’
‘Admiral Lord Nelson.’
‘A great hero,’ Nan Easter said. ‘But the man was small.’
‘Did you see him?’ Euphemia asked, eyes wide. ‘Did you actually see Lord Nelson with your own eyes?’ What a marvellous thing to meet a hero face to face!
‘Several times,’ Nan said.
‘What was he like, ma’am?’ Henry asked. ‘If I may make so bold as to ask.’ Now this was more like. This could turn out to be the inspiration he needed.
‘He was quiet,’ Nan remembered. ‘An unassuming sort of feller, riding about town with his lady-love. He wore a patch over his blind eye, I remember. A gentle looking man. You’d never have thought he was a hero. Not to look at him.’ What a long time ago it all was, that terrible battle of Trafalgar. Before these children were born, when John and Billy and Annie were little more than children themselves. And yet she remembered it all so clearly as if it were yesterday. ‘We’ve took an unconscionable time to honour him.’
‘He was our greatest hero, wasn’t he?’ Euphemia said. Mrs Flowerdew had told them all a great deal about him. In fact he and the Duke of Wellington were the only two men she’d ever approved of.
‘Without Lord Nelson,’ Mr Brougham told them, ‘Napoleon would have invaded this country in 1805. We had troops stationed all along the south coast waiting for him but, even so, if he’d landed we would have been hard put to it to defend ourselves. I dread to think what would have become of us.’
And one of those troops, Nan thought, was my Calverley Leigh. I wonder where the old rogue is now. Now he was a handsome crittur and no mistake, the love of her youth and such fun.
The fiddles were striking up the quadrille.
‘You could dance with me if you wished,’ Caroline said to Henry. Papa hadn’t arrived yet, so this was just the chance, even if she did have to be – well, rather forward to take it. It was just as well Bessie was out of earshot.
‘Honoured,’ he said, bowing to her. And he led her happily away.
As their feet followed the complicated patterns he told her that his family would like her to visit them at Ippark and she told him, most diplomatically, that her father was rather busy and that it might not be possible to arrange a visit just at present. And they spoke of the quarrel that had kept their two branches of the family apart for so long and agreed that it was positively ridiculous, indeed it was. And when the dance was done and they walked out onto the terrace again, they returned to the subject of the ode.
‘How much have you written?’ she asked.
‘Not a great deal,’ he confessed. ‘It’s uncommon difficult to find the rhymes.’
‘Poor Nelson,’ she said. ‘I always think he must be jolly cold on his column.’
Cold on his column, Henry thought. How extraordinary she is to think of a statue being cold. But it was the perfect first line.
‘“Cold on his column Nelson stands“,’ he declaimed, pulling his notebook from his pocket and writing as he spoke. ‘“His iron sword in iron hands.” What do you think?’
‘Wonderful,’ she applauded, admiring his dark eyes. Oh, he looked every inch a poet. ‘Except …’
‘Except?’
‘Well, he only had one, you know.’
‘One what?’
‘One hand.’
‘Poetic licence,’ he said, suddenly feeling quite cross. It was the first good couplet he’d been able to conjure up and he wasn’t going to reject it for mere verisimilitude. Now she’d spoilt herself, pretty though she was. There was no need to go pointing out every single little error.
‘He only had one eye too,’ she observed.
‘Yes. I know that.’ Everybody knew that.
She looked out at the ballroom, checking to see whether her father had arrived. ‘Nan says he could see a deal better with one eye than most of us can see with two.’
The second couplet materialized. He wrote again. ‘With one eye he could see. A great deal better than you and me.’ It wasn’t perfect but it was a start.
‘You are a muse,’ he said, feeling quite warm towards her again. ‘A poet’s muse. Before I danced with you I could hardly write a word. Now. Well, you see how it is.’
Caroline was thrilled. ‘A muse!’ she said, enraptured. Why, it was like something out of a romance.
‘All the great poets have been inspired by women,’ he told her, sliding his pencil behind his ear. ‘Dante, Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Byron …’
‘Henry Osmond Easter.’
‘If you were the woman,’ he said, feeling full of power and daring. ‘Oh, how splendid creation is! You see how I write now that you are with me.’
‘It is an honour,’ she said, wondering breathlessly just where this extraordinary conversation was leading them.
But neither of them were to find out, for at that moment Will suddenly strode through the crowd to join them, talking as he came and signalling to his sister with a stern glance sideways that she was to be discreet. ‘My dance, I believe, Carrie.’
‘Such a splendid evening,’ Euphemia said, panting up behind them to take Caroline by the arm and move her two steps sideways and out of danger. ‘Your father has arrived,’ she whispered.
But John Easter was already upon them. ‘You will please to follow me, Caroline,’ he said. ‘Your grandmother wishes to speak with you.’
He was walking her away before anyone had a chance to say anything else.
So many emotions eddied within the little space they enclosed with their bodies, John’s fury, Euphemia’s anxiety, Henry’s confusion, Will’s embarrassment, all so strong and so sudden that Caroline had no time to respond to any of them. It was hard enough to cope with the force of her own emotion which was something new and powerful and very disturbing and yet reminded her of the feelings she had at a wedding. She wanted to go on talking to Henry, to go on feeling this new excitement, whatever it was, to go on. But the force of her father’s anger pulled her away, drew her feet after him, so that she followed almost without volition. She sensed that Will was saying something to poor Henry, because she could hear his voice, soothingly polite, but everything was happening much too quickly. Euphemia was holding her arm, her head so close that they were cheek to cheek, smiling sympathy and warning and affection all mixed up together. I can’t just walk away like this, she thought, and she turned her head to glance back at her poet and was thrilled and upset to see how bleak he looked, standing tall and white-faced on the terrace with his notebook still in his hand.
‘I will ride tomorrow,’ she mouthed at him. And then they were inside the ball room and the crush was between them and she couldn’t see anything except backs and shoulders and head-dresses that were much too tall, wretched things. ‘Why do people have to wear such ridiculous head-dresses?’ she said crossly to Euphemia. ‘Sticking up in the air, getting in everybody’s way!’
‘Come and dance,’ Will urged. ‘It’s no good getting cross.’
But although she soon danced herself into a good humour again she was still annoyed by her father’s peremptory interruption and hurt to think how much it must have upset poor Henry. And she made up her mind that she would apologize to him on her father’s behalf the minute she saw him again.
The next morning it was drizzling with rain.
‘You don’t want to go riding in this,’ Bessie said with obvious satisfaction.
‘Yes, I do,’ Caroline said. ‘It will soon clear. You’ll see.’
And it did. After the first half hour or so. But by then Caroline didn’t care what the weather was doing, for Henry was already in the Park when she arrived.
‘I am so sorry for the way my father behaved yesterday,’ she said, trotting up to him. ‘It was most ill-mannered to cut you. He makes me ashamed.’
‘It’s of no consequence,’ he said gallantly. ‘No consequence at all.’
‘It’s all on account of that stupid quarrel,’ she said. ‘I do think it’s ridiculous.’
‘So it is,’ he agreed, riding as close beside her as his palamino would allow. ‘But we are above such folly, are we not?’
‘No,’ she admitted ruefully, ‘I’m afraid we’re not. The truth is, he forbade me to spend any time with you at all. I may greet you when we meet, out of common politeness, he allowed that, but we ain’t supposed to talk. He don’t approve of you.’ And then, aware of the stiffening of his expression and afraid that she’d upset him, ‘Oh, not because of anything he’s heard about you, just because of who you are. An Ippark Easter, you see.’
He should have been annoyed, but he wasn’t. He was thrilled to be the subject of such a ban. It was romantic, the sort of thing a struggling poet ought to expect. ‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,’ he said, sitting straight and proud on his palamino.
‘I think it’s downright hateful,’ she said. It had upset her to have to tell him. ‘I don’t share his opinion at all, do I Pheemy?’
‘No,’ Euphemia said, ‘neither of us do.’
‘I think he’s quite wrong,’ Caroline said emphatically. Now that the truth was out she wanted Henry Easter to know exactly what her feelings were. Even though she wasn’t entirely sure herself. Oh, it was hideous to cut him. Indeed it was. Especially when he was so noble and handsome.
‘He has been alone for a very long time,’ Euphemia explained. ‘Living alone, I mean, with no wife, you see. I think that may be why he is harsh sometimes.’
‘He had no right to cut you,’ Caroline said passionately. ‘Nor to forbid me to talk to you. That ain’t natural.’
‘No,’ he said with equal passion, gazing straight into her eyes. ‘Nor possible.’
That odd excitement wriggled in her belly and for a second or two she found she was breathless and didn’t know what to say. Then her horse shied and had to be coaxed and the three of them walked on without speaking for a yard or so.
‘You don’t mean to obey your father,’ he said, breathless with daring and exertion.
‘Not in every particular,’ she said, feeling very bold even to be saying such a thing.
‘I think you are quite right,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it is necessary to take a stand. All poets take stands. Think of Lord Byron.’
They all thought of Lord Byron for several further yards.
‘Where shall you be tonight?’ he asked.
‘At the Drury Lane Theatre,’ Euphemia said, ‘with Nan and Mr Brougham.’
‘What good fortune,’ he said, beaming at them. ‘I shall be there too. Who knows, we might meet in the interval.’
‘You see what a noble spirit he has,’ Caroline said, as she and Euphemia were driven home after their ride. ‘It’s downright ridiculous of Pa to forbid us to meet. He’s a splendid young man, don’t you think so, Pheemy? So forgiving and kind.’
‘And artful,’ Euphemia said.
‘Oh yes, indeed. Wondrously artful. What shall I wear tonight?’ And then as another thought struck her, ‘I wonder if I could persuade Aunt Matilda to invite him to Edward’s wedding?’
But Aunt Matilda was horribly resistant, even to the very broadest hint her niece could devise, and Henry Osmond wasn’t invited.
Caroline was jolly annoyed. It was too bad. It really was. Especially when everybody else was there. And especially when she couldn’t comment on the lack of invitation without appearing to show too familiar an interest in the young man. Which wasn’t the case at all, of course. Her interest in him was purely literary. Wasn’t it? But really? Out of common politeness, you’d have thought Aunt Matilda could have made an effort, no matter what Papa might say.
It was a boring wedding too, on a freezing cold day and with everything veiled and hidden as if nature had dropped a shroud across the whole affair. There was a heavy mist that morning rolling against the doors and windows in great clouds of objectionable dampness and all the trees were dripping.
The wedding guests arrived at the church under umbrellas, and the women all covered their bonnets with scarves so that it was hard to tell who they all were, and the bride wore a veil so thick you couldn’t see her face at all. She and Edward gave their responses in silly little voices as though it were all a great secret. Not that anyone could hear them anyway with so many people coughing. Uncle Billy was making a noise like a cracked trumpet, which didn’t please Aunt Matilda. And when the ceremony was over and the new Mr and Mrs Edward Easter walked in procession to the porch, what with guttering candles and seeping mist, the light in the church was so poor it was impossible to do more than catch a glimpse of their frozen faces.
And then as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was raining when they came out of the church and the waiters at the reception were so slow that all the food was congealed and cold long before it reached the table. Caroline was jolly glad when the whole business was over and the bride and groom had been tucked into his new carriage under her new travelling rug and brisked away towards their honeymoon with the rain spraying from their wheels.
‘Thank heavens that’s finished,’ she said to Euphemia as they trotted back to Bedford Square. ‘Now we can get on with the rest of the season. If it ever stops raining.’
Her father was glad to have the wedding over and done with too. ‘The sooner it is autumn and Caroline is safely away in the country the better,’ he said.
‘Poor old John,’ Billy commiserated. ‘Children are the very devil. Don’t I know it.’
‘Yours,’ Matilda told him sternly, ‘have always been exceedingly easy, all things considered.’
Nan and Billy grimaced at one another, remembering Edward’s debts, and John squinted at his own furious thoughts.
‘I must confess,’ Matilda went on, ignoring them all, ‘that it’s a relief to have both my darlings happily settled and with all their little childish problems over and done with. How happy my dear Edward must be now, away on his honeymoon, without a care in the world.’