the marquis's memory 11

 

Chapter 11

 

The vicissitudes of the Reverend Coot were more than that wight could bear, and whilst the ladies were in Ipswich, shopping, he quietly packed, and took himself out of the vicinity.

News of this was brought to the Running Buck by Goody Suckling, wife of a yeoman farmer, who brought milk to the rectory and the inn, as well as to sundry other people who turned up their noses at goat milk.

“I’ll write to the Bishop of Norwich, whose see covers Ipswich and regions,” said Geoffrey, and proceeded to do so, castigating the vicar as unchristian and also a coward and a knave for running out on the parish under the least provocation, and no proper regard for God’s creatures.

“Not that thass much good goin’ tu church, there be-ant much singin’ out,” said Pigeon. “Ar, and the hymns he chooses be fancy ones wass we do-ant know.”

“I’ll take the service on Sunday,” said Geoffrey. “I do have minor orders, for having a classics degree. Do we have an organ?”

“Ar, and thass played by Miss Gooding, the doctor’s sister,” said Pigeon.

“I’ll stroll down to see her, then,” said Geoffrey.  “First house over into Much Hadding, yes?”

“Or in other words, a hundred yards down the Much Hadding road,” said Pigeon.

Geoffrey strolled down to the doctor’s house, a brick edifice of Tudor origin, with stone edged windows, tall oriel windows on the ground floor, low, square on the upper floor and probably set low to accommodate the pitch of the roof taking up part of the first storey. Built in an ‘L’ shape, Geoffrey estimated it to have four or five rooms on each floor, and more than adequate for the siblings.  There had once been a Mrs. Gooding, it seemed, who slipped quietly out of life with her first child one chilly November morning, and Miss Gooding had come to care for her bereaved brother, whose hopes of a house filled with children had been dashed.

Geoffrey rang the bell.

Dr. Gooding  came out behind the maid who answered.

“Hah, so you do need me,” he said.

“I came to call on your sister, as it happens,” said Geoffrey, mildly.

“Well, you can take yourself off; I want no ne’er do well rakehell talking to my sister.”

“Those are fighting words; I have never, in all my adulthood, been called a rakehell, except implicit from that damned vicar, who decided that my efforts to avoid killing Sarey the sow and thus breaking my arm and my head was evidence of moral instability. I don’t see it, myself; perhaps you can explain?”

Gooding blinked.

“I… well, I thought Coot knew what he was talking about. He said you were here to debauch the village maidens.”

“And that, he made up out of whole cloth. Oh! Is that why they follow me about, giggling? Hoping I’ll debauch them? I’m not interested; I have a courtship to pursue, why bother with village wenches?”

“Well! You ain’t surely courting m’sister? You can never have met her.”

“I want to talk to the organist of the church,” snapped Geoffrey. “Coot’s done a runner, as doubtless Goody Suckling has told you. I hold minor orders and I wanted to discuss an emergency church service with her.”

“For goodness sake, Henry, let the poor man in; I’m not about to be ravished in my own home, even if the young man was a rakehell. You know what an idiot Coot is,” said Miss Gooding, joining the fray, arms akimbo.

Geoffrey raised his hat to her.

“Miss Gooding,” he said.  “Allow me to introduce myself; Geoffrey Calver, Marquis Calver, visiting the vicinity to put in order my distant connection’s profligacy towards his offspring. I can understand that Philip-Paul Seward is not a glowing example of my familial connections, but I assure you he is several times removed, if not as far removed as I would like, which would be several circles of hell downwards.”

  “You never said a truer word, my lord,” said Selina Gooding, crisply. “Thomas is an academic, and very learned with regards to diseases. He’s a firm believer in Leuwenhoek’s animalcule theory.”

“Really?” said Geoffrey, interested. “My respect for you increases, in that case, doctor. I can see why you find the setting of bones a relative tedium. Why don’t you take on a partner who is more inclined to the mechanical work, but who would respect your desires to wash thoroughly to get rid of animacules?”

“Because nobody who can pay my bill will have me out, and I can’t afford one,” brayed Gooding.

“Well, now, if that’s the case, I am happy to finance a doctor ready to do the rough and ready work, if you will research and treat disease,” said Geoffrey. “Not to mention a good program of inoculation.”

“That, I do do,” said Gooding.

“Excellent; and you will stay to luncheon, my lord?” said Miss Gooding. “Annie has been making raised pies with my own receipt, a layer of pork, a layer of apple, a layer of rabbit – or chicken, but rabbit is what we have, with Johnny Barnard paying to have his septic hand treated with a rabbit – and a layer of sage and onion stuffing.”

“It sounds delicious,” said Geoffrey. “Now, about your organ-playing.”

“Yes, I have to go slow with the new ones the Reverend Coot likes, not knowing them,” said Miss Gooding, “It doesn’t make for a good sing-song.”

“No, and that’s why, on Sunday, you’re going to play them in with something rousing, and we shall have ‘All Creatures that on Earth Do Dwell’ to open, which may disrespect Coot’s ignominious flight from the creature known, I believe, as Marigold; but it should please the congregation.  ‘Oh for a Thousand tongues to sing,’ the tune Lyngham; not too new for you?”

“I know Lyngham,” said Miss Gooding. “I like to take it fast.”

“Splendid,” said Geoffrey. “I hate a service where the organist is dragging us into a dirge.  Anything you like?”

“‘The Lord’s My Shepherd;’ ‘Belmont’ is a lovely old tune.”

“Good, that should do it,” said Geoffrey.  “And I can tie all those together.”

“Good luck,” said Miss Gooding. “I’ll play them in with ‘In Peace your sheep may graze.’”

“Perfect,” said Geoffrey. “What about ‘Zadoc the Priest’ for playing out?”

“Can’t do that,” said Miss Gooding. “Not with Dame Spalding’s paramour being named ‘Zadoc.’”

“Some parents have rats in their attics,” said Geoffrey. “That’s a solecism I now know not to commit.  How about a bit of Vivaldi?”

“Summer? Yes, I know that,” said Miss Gooding.

“Oh! Do you give lessons on fortepiano and organ if good enough?” asked Geoffrey.

“I… well, I could,” said Miss Gooding, absently rehearsing some very difficult fingering of a piece written for violin.

“My ward, the oldest child of Seward, is being taught how to be a lady by Miss Congreve; I would like her to have a passing acquaintance at least with the fortepiano, and if either of the other Misses Congreve want lessons, I am happy to extend the offer.”

“Miss Effie Congreve plays the fortepiano with sufficient ability to take my place if I am indisposed, so long as she knows the tune; I think Miss Alethea has covered the basics, but I will be happy to do what I can,” said Miss Gooding. 

“Excellent!” said Geoffrey. “And once we have a basic sort of doctor to patch up the ordinary tumbles of life, we shall be doing very well, and hopefully a real vicar by next week too.”

 

 

oOoOo

 

The ladies arrived home on Saturday, in a flurry of fine muslins, having opted to have some readymade gowns furbished to their tastes and fitted to their forms to more readily have enough. There would be more gowns to get for winter, and then for the next year’s season, and those would be purchased in London. Simon escorted them to the cottage which had grown somewhat in the meantime, and the Murfitts installed at the far end, and ready to take over, absorbing Patty into the servants’ quarters along with Betty.

“It seems to have moved very smoothly,” said Effie, quite shaken at being installed tenderly in a chair, with tea provided, and informed that dinner would be half an hour, if that suited her, in the dining room , and  the young misses time to lie down for ten minutes if they wanted before dressing for dinner.

“Why do we have to change clothes several times a day?” asked Pip.

“To give the ladies who don’t have to actually keep house something to do,” said Alethea.

“Alethea!” said Effie. “Although, perhaps at that, it’s not that far off the truth.”

“It’s about who can afford the time, as well as the clothes, to be leisured,” said Alethea. “And I am very grateful to Pip – yes, I know, so you need not worry – for giving us the opportunity to be more leisured, so I won’t complain too much about changing gowns several times a day. Though at home, perhaps we could limit it to changing for dinner?”

“That seems fair enough,” said Effie.

 

oOoOo

 

The ladies went to church as a matter of habit – at least, on the part of the Misses Congreve – and in some trepidation on the part of Pip, who hoped that the vicar would not recognise her and berate her for whatever real or imagined crimes he might come up with.

The music was nice, not the usual dirge, and Pip found herself humming along to it.

Her shock can only be imagined when Geoffrey ascended to the pulpit.

“Good folk of the Haddingtons,” said Geoffrey, “I do have minor orders, but I hope my tenure here is very short, as I have written to the bishop, and signed it with all my names, to terrorise, blackmail, and otherwise coerce him into letting us have a vicar soonest. In the meantime, as little more than a lay preacher, I ask your forgiveness for any shortcomings.  And in light of the role played in my being here, on the part of Sarey the sow: and the vicar having left, on the part of Marigold, the goat…”

“And Sweet-Pea, Rose-Bud, and Lupin, her kids!” called out Widow Spalding.

“And indeed, Sweet-Pea, Rose-Bud, and Lupin, on whom I hope the Good Lord smiles, let us open with ‘All Creatures that on Earth Do Dwell,’” said Geoffrey, without a crack to his voice.

Miss Gooding took the adaptation of the 100^th psalm at a cracking pace, and the congregation found themselves singing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

“Ar, thass a proper hymn,” approved Gaffer Keeble.

“I have taken for the text today one from ‘Genesis,’” said Geoffrey. “About how Noah gathered two of every kind of animal to go into the ark.  I suspect that in the case of some there were a great many more when they left, but as the image of Noah looking for his Sunday best robe, and discovering stray bunnies humping in his clothes chest is not one I want to dwell upon, let us move swiftly on.” He read the tale, and moved on quickly. “Now we shall sing ‘Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing,’ and reflect that the animals also praise the Lord in their way. I rested on the foreshore last week, and listened to the larks pour forth a praise more worthy of the ears of the Lord than anything we humans can produce, for we overthink things.  So, let us join the lark in praise, and sing!”

After another good sing-song, Geoffrey regarded the congregation.

“I’ll make this brief,” he said. “Some of you know who I am, and that I briefly lost my memory, but apart from the former vicar, I was a stranger amongst you, yet you took me in and treated me as one of your own. I salute a good, Christian community, despite the supposed shepherd for your flock, and I will not forget this. I have been making this service very much about the animals, because they are God’s creatures, too, and who knows but that there was not a reason that Marigold and her kids were the last straw for Coot, to try to teach him to be a better man. I hope he will learn. I am no paragon, but I am not as black a sinner as he tried to make out, but I’m like all of you – I do my best to do what is right. Can any of us do more? Now, I don’t know how long it will take to get a new vicar, but I propose that each of you submits your favourite hymns to Miss Gooding, and she will choose three every Sunday, and the gentry will take turns to pick a reading. I hope there are no weddings booked; and nobody had better die because I don’t know how to run a funeral service.”

There was laughter.

“What about being born?” asked Gaffer Keeble.

“What, Gaffer, are you with child?” asked Geoffrey. There was more laughter. Geoffrey went on, “At the moment, we have no shepherd but the Good Shepherd himself, so, let us sing ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’ and sing it like we mean it.”

The congregation went out, talking amongst themselves and plainly buoyed up by the marquis taking enough interest to do his best in the place of their missing vicar.

Effie stopped to speak to Geoffrey as they filed out.

“That was a pretty good extempore service,” she said. “But I’m not putting Sarey in the pulpit next week, however much she may be one of God’s creatures.”

“No, the church would never accept a female pastor,” said Geoffrey. “Perhaps we should ask Ragged Robin.”

“That goat is a sinner,” said Effie, firmly. “A drunkard, and a troublemaker. Where has the Reverend Coot gone?”

“I have no idea, and I can’t say I care,” said Geoffrey.  “When told you were dressing an orphan in Ipswich, who was to be my ward, Murfitt informs me that he declared that you had sold your soul to the devil, and forsaken Godliness for a mess of pottage in the form of ribbons and furbelows.”

“Dear me, I knew he was a fool, but not how much of one he was,” said Effie.