The Sins of Lady Dacey

The vicar intoned the words of the twelfth psalm, and the words wound in and out of her troubled brain.

“Help me, Lord, for there is not one godly man left: for the faithful are minished from among the children of men.

“They talk of vanity every one with his neighbor: they do but flatter with their lips and dissemble in their double heart.”

Her parents surely had double hearts and were possessed of vanity, thought Honoria miserably.

Her mind slid back to that morning after matins. She could see her parents seated comfortably in front of a small fire in the drawing room, placid and sure as ever, her mother with her gray hair piled up under a muslin cap and her twinkling humorous eyes which belied the fact that she had no sense of humor at all, and her father, thin and bent, cracking his knuckles in that irritating way he had and announcing that a marriage had been arranged for her.

Her thoughts had quickly ranged over the eligible young men of the neighborhood. Perhaps it was young Mr. Lance of the merry blue eyes and fair hair.

And then the blow had fallen. “You are to wed Mr. Pomfret.”

Mr. Pomfret was a mill owner of forty years, a widower reported to have bullied his wife into her grave, coarse and fat and vulgar.

To Honoria's shocked protests, she was told that Mr. Pomfret was very wealthy and it was her duty to marry the man chosen for her.

It was hard to break the pattern of eighteen years of dutiful obedience. But now, as the psalm finished and she knelt in prayer, Honoria clasped her hands and wondered if God really existed. What had she ever done in all her blameless life that such a marriage should have been arranged for her?

Sheltered by the high wooden walls of the family pew, she was spared the sight of Mr. Pomfret, but she knew he was in the pew behind and she felt she could sense his thick body waiting for her.

“Lighten our darkness, we beseech you, O Lord,” the congregation prayed, “and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night....”

Her lips moving soundlessly, Honoria prayed with all her heart and soul. “I do not want to marry Mr. Pomfret. Save me from him!”

But as she walked from the cold church with her parents, there was Mr. Pomfret standing in the porch with the vicar.

He leered at Honoria and then gave Mr. Goodham a vulgar wink. “I shall be calling on you tomorrow afternoon to arrange that ... er ... business.”

“Sound man,” commented her father, as they walked to their carriage through the slanting gravestones.

“I wish I were under one of those gravestones right now,” said Honoria, clearly and passionately.

“Hush. Fie! For shame. People will hear you!” exclaimed her mother. One parent on either side of her like jailors, they hustled her to the carriage.

“Not a word more,” admonished her mother. “We will talk to you when we reach the privacy of our own home.”

Tears blinded Honoria's eyes as the carriage rolled home in the darkness.

“Now,” said Mrs. Goodham when they had removed their wraps and were seated in the drawing room among the forbidding black Jacobean furniture, “we will make a certain allowance for bride nerves, but do not ever be so unmaidenly, so vulgar, as to subject us to another similar outburst. Have we not given you the best governess, the best of everything? Is this how you repay us?”

Honoria clasped her hands and looked at her parents with appeal in her wide dark blue eyes. She was still like a schoolgirl, for she had not yet been allowed to put her hair up and wore her brown hair in two long pigtails. “Are we so poor?” she asked. “Are we so destitute that I am to be forced into marriage with a man more than twice my age?”

“Pride goeth before a fall,” quoted her father severely. “Pomfret may be in trade, but he is a worthy man for all that. We have sometimes been distressed by signs of flightiness in you, Honoria. You need an older man to school you.”

“To beat me into an early grave,” said Honoria bitterly.

“You are insolent!” Mrs. Goodham stood up. “Go to your room and do not leave it until you have decided to offer us a full apology. Mr. Pomfret is calling tomorrow to make his proposal. You are not too old for a beating to chastise that saucy soul of yours.”

So Honoria went to her room and sat by the window, looking out into the dark night. If only she could run away. But she did not have a friend in the world. Her parents were of the gentry and considered none of the young ladies of the village suitable companions for their daughter. And yet they were prepared to force her into marriage with such a piece of vulgarity as Mr. Pomfret.

A tear rolled down Honoria's small nose. She looked out and up at the dark sky where one star twinkled among the racing, ragged clouds.

“Save me,” she said simply, “for I cannot bear it.”

The postboy sounded his horn and, a few moments later, the maid brought in the post bag.

“Why, there is one for you, Mrs. Goodham!” exclaimed Mr. Goodham. “It has a crest.”

He opened it and started to read, it being a husband's right and duty to read his wife's letters first. “Dear me,” he said over and over again.

Mrs. Goodham waited patiently. It was a wife's duty to wait until her husband had finished reading her post.

At long last, he said, “Bless my soul!” and handed it to her.

Mrs. Goodham took the stiff parchment and read the scrawling, spidery writing. “It is from my sister,” she said, just as if her husband had not read the letter several times.

“You did not tell me she had become Lady Dacey,” said Mr. Goodham.

“And a widow now,” said Mrs. Goodham, pursing her lips. “Lady Dacey! Who would have thought it.”

She had not seen her sister, Clarissa, since Clarissa had run off with a half-pay captain all those years ago. No one ever knew what became of the captain, but Clarissa's name had appeared two years later in the social columns as having married a Colonel Phillips. Four years after that there was another wedding announcement, this time to a Mr. Ward. Mrs. Goodham had then given up reading the social column, as had her husband, considering the information too frivolous for sober minds.

“How old is Clarissa now?” asked Mr. Goodham.

“Let me see, she ran away with that redcoat when she was sixteen. She must be all of thirty-five. But
Lady
Dacey, relict of the
Earl
of Dacey, and she wishes to
bring out
Honoria and says she could marry a duke. A duke!”

The fact that Clarissa, now Lady Dacey, had never been mentioned to Honoria because they did not want the girl to know she had such a scandalous aunt was forgotten. A title and wealth had washed all Lady Dacey's sins as white as snow in the minds of the Goodhams.

“Clarissa is, however, most insistent that we do not accompany our daughter to London,” said Mrs. Goodham. “She says we would
cramp
her style. Really! But the quality will have little foibles.” She gave an almost girlish giggle. “Just think, Mr. Goodham, our little Honoria a duchess.”

“Mr. Pomfret is calling this afternoon,” pointed out Mr. Goodham.

“But this changes everything. The man smells of the shop,” remarked his wife haughtily. “You must take out the fly and drive over to The Elms and tell him that matters have changed.” She studied the letter again. “Clarissa wants Honoria to leave as soon as possible, and we are not to bother about having clothes made for her because provincial clothes are not suitable for London.”

“Who's to pay for these London clothes?” demanded Mr. Goodham. “She will, of course!” said his wife. “I had better tell Honoria. Mind you, she cannot travel alone all the way to London. We must find someone suitable to accompany her.”

“Mrs. Perryworth, our vicar's wife, has a sister in London,” pointed out Mr. Goodham, “and she was saying t'other day that she should dearly like to pay her a visit.”

“Nothing could be more suitable.” Mrs. Goodham's eyes shone. “Call at the vicarage on your way to Pomfret's.”

She was childless. It was tacitly accepted that she was barren and the Good Lord had seen fit to make her so, but as her husband had had a distaste from day one of their marriage to the intimacies of the marriage bed, she sometimes wondered if he had been waiting for some sort of immaculate conception on her part. Her daintiness and prettiness hid the fact that she had a strong, well-educated mind. She did what she could for the parish and was grateful for the energetic help of Honoria Goodham, sometimes envying the young girl her rigid faith and delight in good works.

Mrs. Pamela Perryworth often longed to hear someone call her Pamela again. Her parents were dead and her two brothers in the navy and far from home. Her husband and the parishioners called her Mrs. Perryworth, as did Honoria. She often walked miles up on the moors as if to walk away her loneliness and frustration.

She eventually slowly turned her steps back toward the village. High winds were chasing torn dirty gray clouds across the sky. Rooks wheeled and cawed over the heather, tumbling about in the gale like acrobats, while a kestrel with spread wings soared majestically above them.

She thought about her sister, Amy, in London. She had not seen Amy for ten years. She had begged and pleaded to go and visit her, but her husband would say vaguely, “Maybe next year,” and next year would come and then another without his giving his permission.

Mrs. Perryworth was bored and restless. But she was used to being so, and often chastised herself for a lack of acceptance, a lack of humility.

She saw the Goodhams’ horse and fly outside the vicarage. She had heard of the proposed marriage for Honoria and disapproved of it heartily. She had begged her husband to stop the Goodhams from sacrificing Honoria, but he had listened to her in the cold, remote way he always seemed to listen to her these days and said he could not intercede between parents and daughter.

So instead of letting herself in by the front door, she went round the back of the vicarage and entered by the kitchen door and so went up the backstairs to her room, a bedroom of her own, for she had never shared a bedroom with her husband.

She sat down by the window and tried to calm her restless feelings of discontent, for the wind seemed to have got inside her very soul with its restless turbulence.

“Oh, God, am I to rot here till I die?” she cried aloud.

The door opened and her husband walked in. He was a tall man, handsome in a bloodless way. He had thick fair hair, a square face, and eyes like the North Sea, gray and cold.

“Did you call out?” he asked his wife.

“Yes, Mr. Perryworth, I thought I saw a particularly large spider.”

“You must descend immediately. Mr. Goodham has called. He has a most unusual request.”

Mrs. Perryworth gave a little sigh but dutifully followed her husband down the stairs to the vicarage parlor. She assumed Mr. Goodham had called with some request regarding the wedding arrangements.

The vicar went and took up a position in front of the fireplace. Mr. Goodham sketched a bow and then said eagerly, “Did you ask her?”

“I wish you to put the matter to Mrs. Perryworth yourself,” said the vicar.

Mrs. Perryworth sat down. Mr. Goodham flipped up his coattails and sat down opposite her.

“We have received most surprising news this morning. Mrs. Goodham's sister is the Dowager Countess of Dacey!”

Mrs. Perryworth looked at him in surprise. Was she supposed to congratulate him?

Instead she said mildly, “I did not know Mrs. Goodham had a sister.”

“We do not often talk of family matters. Yes. Lady Dacey wishes Honoria to go to London for her come-out!”

Mrs. Perryworth looked puzzled. “I had understood a marriage was to be arranged for Honoria with Mr. Pomfret.”

“Yes, yes, but naturally that is at an end. Lady Dacey says she has the best connections and that Honoria could marry a duke.”

The vicar's wife had a sudden mental picture of Honoria, with her girlish provincial gowns and her hair in two straight brown pigtails, and repressed a smile.

“Lady Dacey is most insistent that neither myself nor Mrs. Goodham go with Honoria. The aristocracy will have their little foibles,” added Mr. Goodham as if marriage into the breed automatically conferred eccentricity. “As you have a sister in London, too, Mrs. Perryworth, I was hoping I could prevail on you to accompany Honoria and stay with her as chaperon.”

Hope skyrocketed inside Mrs. Perryworth. London! Excitement, life, and color.

Carefully keeping her voice neutral in case any show of enthusiasm would cause her husband to change his mind, for it was obvious he approved of the idea, she said with head bowed, “I should consider it a privilege to escort Honoria.”

“Good, good!” The now proud father rubbed his hands. “The other matter is a question of time. Lady Dacey is anxious for my daughter to leave as soon as possible. But if next week is too pressing...”

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Perryworth calmly. “I shall send an express to my sister, Amy, for I would like to see her again.”

“So that's settled,” said the vicar with a cheerfulness he did not feel. He had been flattered that his wife had been chosen to go to a countess's household. But he had never before been separated from his wife, and he suddenly wondered what it would be like to sit writing his sermons with no graceful figure moving about the room or sitting sewing quietly in the lamplight.

“What does Honoria say to this?” asked Mrs. Perryworth.

“Honoria does not yet know, but she will do as she is bid,” said Mr. Goodham. He refused Mrs. Perryworth's offer of refreshment and took himself off to see Mr. Pomfret for what he feared would be a distasteful interview.

Mrs. Perryworth went up to her room. She stood for a long moment feeling joy surge through her. Freedom! She began to sing under her breath and pirouette about the room. The door swung open and her husband stood watching her. She stopped when she saw him and said with a self-conscious laugh, “I cannot remember when I last danced. I must get in practice for my role as chaperon.”

Something flashed in his eyes and he said sharply, “As a respectable matron it will be your duty to sit with the other chaperons. There will be no need for you to dance.”

Mrs. Perryworth could hear the grating sound of the prison doors slowly beginning to close. “Of course, you have the right of it as usual, Mr. Perryworth,” she said meekly.

He studied her long and hard and then appeared satisfied. When he had left, Mrs. Perryworth let out a sigh. She would go about her duties quietly and calmly. She composed herself and sat down to write an urgent letter to her sister.