the scholar's sweetheart 5

 

Chapter 5

 

The search of the servants’ rooms and belongings yielded nothing, including checks up the chimneys, and out of the windows, lest anything was dangled on a thread, a trick Jasper knew. The servants all waited downstairs whilst George and Mrs. Hudson, the housekeeper, undertook the search, Larkin being too old for such things. Larkin was essentially a pensioner already, and Evelyn advanced George the difference in pay in cash.

Mary was found to have an apron dirty with mud, the mark of her knees pressing into earth quite apparent, on an apron discarded in her room and not sent to the laundry.

“And if you got muck on your apron from kneeling, knowing that you smuggle periodicals into church to read, I don’t think you were praying,” scolded Mrs. Hudson. “If you were one of the kitchen girls, you might have been careless gathering herbs from the kitchen garden, for the gardeners gather the flowers to be brought in to be arranged, and I can only think of one reason why a girl might kneel in the dirt!”

“Oh, and what’s that, Mrs. Hudson?” asked Mary.

“Don’t you act the innocent to me, miss! Whether it was a groom, one o’ them gyppos, or a gentleman, you’ve been into a man’s trouser fall to give him pleasure with your mouth, and it doesn’t do your reputation any good, even if you ain’t sleeping with him.”

“I never did!” cried Mary, in lively horror.

“I saw you slipping out before these thefts began; aye, and you met up with some gentleman in the lane, because you were seen. Still, I suppose it’s better than biting the hand that feeds you by stealing.”

Mary sobbed.

“You are unfair!” she cried.

“Well, then, how else did you soil your apron so?” demanded Mrs. Hudson.  Mary could give no reasonable answer.

She scowled sullenly when Mrs. Hudson docked her pay and made a note of it for leaving dirty linen in her room with no good reason.

“And I’ll leave off a note about your lewdness in the hopes you’ll change your ways,” said Mrs. Hudson.

 

oOoOo

 

“I can’t help wondering if Eusebius Reckitt is behind it, look you,” said Jasper, to his crony, Evergreen, who was Woodlock’s younger brother.

“Gentlemen don’t filch things,” scoffed Evergreen.

“N....no, but suppose something he said put someone in mind that it would be good to get the gypsies blamed?” said Jasper. “I didn’t mean he’d been in the house and done it, whateffer.”

“You make me laugh, picking up on that Welsh accent.”

“Diw! My grandmother iss Welsh, and she accepted me without argument,” said Jasper. “And it is a pretty accent.”

“Well! You aren’t laying out a case against that old grundiguts for nothing,” said Evergreen.

“No, and I wondered if you were up for japing him just for the sport of it, because he is a nasty fellow, and upsets my tutor and used to get him into trouble for the fun of it when they were growing up,” said Jasper.

Evergreen brightened.

“What had you in mind?” he asked.

Jasper spoke for several minutes, and Evergreen had to hold his sides with laughing.

 

oOoOo

 

Eusebius Reckitt was fond of playing the church organ in the mornings to start the day well. It has to be said that this was less to make a joyful noise unto the Lord than to make a pompous noise unto the glory of Eusebius Reckitt.

He was put out to find that certain drones were playing continuously whilst he tried to play, and that the notes of the middle octave were afflicted with a certain level of vibrato which Bach had never indicated in any of his scores. As Bach was Eusebius’s favourite composer, whose works tended to the minor keys, and the drones were in major key combinations, the sound was not so much otherworldly as like nothing on earth.

Eusebius discovered that the drone effect had been achieved by the jamming of folded paper down the keys to hold them down, and removed these unwanted adjuncts. But nothing could stop the vibrato, including lower c which positively farted. Eusebius slammed out of the church in a temper, cuffing the boy who pumped the organ and conveniently forgetting to pay him. The boy went to complain to the vicar that Mr. Eusebius hadn’t paid him for his attempts to make the organ sound like a donkey braying and breaking wind both at once, and accepted a groat from the Reverend Reckitt, and fled as he heard the sounds of intemperate rage in the voice of Eusebius, who was shown to know some very naughty and unecclesiastical language.

The reason for this unholy outbreak of temper was the mayhem wrought in Eusebius’s room by Honeysuckle, a nanny goat belonging to the Widow Hodges, who did the vicar’s laundry, but who confined Honeysuckle when linen was laid out on hedges to dry, since Honeysuckle’s culinary tastes were ecumenical, and sun-dried undergarments seemed to her to be a delectable treat. Being offered a room in which such dainties were to be found in a basket, as well as a bunch of flowers in a vase was, to her, a high treat.  Evergreen had procured her whilst Jasper was doctoring the organ, and the boys kept cave for each other in getting her upstairs and into the correct room.

Then they jumped out of the window as the stumping of Eusebius’s feet was heard coming in from the church, landing into a roll on soft grass.

“Now I must go and sort out the organ so it sounds good again,” said Jasper, who had used tape as an addition to the flaps allowing the air into the pipes to effect the vibrato.

Eusebius stormed down the stairs complaining about the goat. Honeysuckle followed him, in the hopes of something more appetising, and came upon the vicarage maid, who was used to the goat, and took her home by the expedient of walking ahead of the creature with a posy of dandelions. Thus, by the time the rector had unravelled what Eusebius was complaining about there was no goat, only mayhem. The open window had carried away any smell of goat; and as the youthful Eusebius in a temper had been known to throw things about, his father made mild tutting noises, and recommended tidying up.

“You aren’t taking it seriously, father!” cried Eusebius. “I wager Cornelius had something to do with it, and with spoiling the organ.”

“Cornelius would not harm the organ; he knows how much it means to me,” said Augustus Reckitt. “Are you sure it is spoilt? That’s a serious accusation.”

“It made weird noises!” cried Eusebius. “Someone had set up a drone by jamming it with paper, and it was vibrating!”

“Show me,” said the rector.

Eusebius strode over to the church, pursing his lips as his father waved him to the bellows. Augustus Reckitt was every bit as musical as his son, but preferred the pastoral care of the souls in a village to the dubious honour of training a choir in a city. He sat down, and played Bach’s little fugue, with great speed and verve, impressing Jasper, who had shot up the organ pipes and was hiding behind them to avoid being caught. Greenwood had returned to complete the chores he was neglecting for the pleasure of pranking Eusebius, bribing his next sister up, Hesilla, to cover for him and swear he had not left the camp if anyone asked.

“I can see nothing wrong with this organ,” said the rector.

“It... it was farting!” said Eusebius. “And all the paper jammed in...” he tailed off; the paper he had pulled out of the jammed drone was gone.

This was because it was in Jasper’s pocket, both to spook Eusebius, and because scrap paper always came in useful.

“Eusebius, my boy,” the rector’s voice was soothing. “You really do need a repairing lease. You are overwrought and imagining things.”

“I did not imagine it! Ask the boy who pumps! And what do you think happened in my room?”

“I will ask him,” said the rector.  “As to your room, I do recall the incident when you were thirteen....”

Eusebius flushed. “I... I don’t know what came over me then, but this was done by a goat! I saw it!”

“To be sure, to be sure,” said the rector. “I fancy even village life must be too much for you. I shall see about renting a quiet messuage, and a kindly housekeeper to look after you.”

“Are you suggesting that I am deranged or something?” demanded Eusebius.

“It is the kindly interpretation of your bad behaviour, and odd assertions, which seem all of a piece with your accusations against the gypsy tribe, and your misinterpretation of the dancing dogs,” said Augustus Reckitt, putting an arm about his son’s shoulders.

The arm was thrown off with a rough shrug, and the rector’s lips tightened.

“You are behaving very oddly, Eusebius,” he said. “Now, I shall help you straighten out your room, and I suggest you go back to bed, and I will send up your meals on a tray.”

Eusebius was shaken; his father did not believe the terrible things that had been done to him! He was almost ready to welcome a day in bed, being pampered.

Jasper, meanwhile, came down from his perch, and made his way back, by circuitous route, to where he was supposed to be, or at least, one of the places he might be expected to be, currying the horses and speaking to them in an odd patois of Rom, Welsh, and English. He hugged himself in glee that the rector was questioning the sanity of Eusebius. It was a cruel thing to do to a man, but Jasper was very fond of Cornelius, who had never belittled him for being a gypsy, who admitted when he did not know something, who did not talk down to or condescend to his young charge, and who, moreover, might be about to become a second father in the way Jasper had never seen Woodlock, who was more by way of being an uncle to him.

 

Meanwhile, the rector called on Adam, the boy of all work, who also pumped the organ. Adam was an orphan, and Reckitt had taken him in as a servant rather than have him put on the parish. Adam worked diligently, if given orders, but could not be described as clever.

“Tell me, Adam, did the organ make odd noises?” he asked the boy.

“Ar,” agreed Adam. “Ain’t it s’posed to?”

“Not really, no,” said Reckitt. “In what way were the noises odd?”

Adam stared at him, mouth half open.

“Well, it made noises like it allus do,” he said. “I pump un, an’ whoever sits at it attacks it with hands an’ feet, an’ it groans like a cow.”

“Are you saying you noticed nothing different when Mr. Eusebius played this morning to how it usually sounds?”

Adam considered.

“Naow, not really,” he said. Adam was tone deaf, and did not care for the sound of the organ, but he was paid extra for pumping it, and was saving his groats to buy land with one day.

 

Adam was sent for Cornelius, who had just run Jasper to earth over the lessons he was truanting from.

“Diw! The village scholars have a holiday, I thought I had one, too,” said Jasper, with shameless mendacity.

“The arrangement was, every weekday morning until you caught up,” said Cornelius. “I know; it’s a glorious day. We could take your books into the paddock if you liked.”

“That would be famous!” said Jasper.

At this point, Adam turned up.

“If you please, Mr. Cornelius, the rector wants to speak to you,” said Adam.

Cornelius made an exasperated noise.

“Please inform my father that I do have a paid job here, in preparing Mr. Jasper for continued education and that I am not available to dance attendance on him at all hours over whatever Eusebius is imagining I have done this time... I will write a note for you,” he added, seeing Adam’s slack jawed incomprehension.

He had brought Jasper’s books down, with thoughts of a bribe of working outside, and shuffled them as if he could conjure paper.

Jasper produced one of his pieces of scrap for him.

“Ah, thank you,” said Cornelius. His note was brief and pithy, and a more or less direct expression of his exasperated words, with the addition that he would be free after nuncheon and would attend upon his father then.

It was still early enough in the morning that the rector would have to kick his heels for a few hours, since Jasper was only half an hour behind his lesson schedule, and Cornelius had, in any case, been occupied with the accounting of payment in kind for the work of several of the gypsies in clearing and cutting dead wood in the coverts.  The old marquis had seriously neglected the place, and frankly, the gypsies were a boon, as they would work for kind, saving Imogen’s money, as providing food and a proportion of the wood cut was relatively easy. Not that Imogen minded paying and investing in the estate, but Cornelius knew how Evelyn hated relying on her money.

The rector received the note, and blushed with shame that he had disturbed his son at the important job of schooling the marquis’s son, who may not be the heir, but was plainly a much loved son of the household, by marquis and marchioness alike. He frowned a little over the phrase ‘Whatever Eusebius imagines me to have been doing now,’ wondering if this implicated Cornelius in somehow causing Eusebius to think that the organ had developed problems; certainly Cornelius had the knowledge to jam notes to make a drone. Then his conscience smote him; he had always taken Eusebius’s word over that of his younger sons, and it appeared that he had been wrong to do so.  And for a younger son, cast always as the villain of minor vicissitudes, perceived or real, it must be very trying to deal with.