“He’s a proper lad,” she said, “is Mr. Ralph.”
“Does he spend much time at home, here?”
“During the week he’s up to Biddlefast lawyering, but most week-ends he’s to home.” She chuckled. “It’s kind of slow most times hereabouts,” said Trixie. “Up to rectory it’s so quiet’s a grave. No place for a high-mettled chap.”
“Does he get on well with his father?”
“Well enough. I reckon Passon’s no notion what fancies lay hold on a young fellow or how powerful strong and masterful they be.”
“Very likely not.”
Trixie smoothed her apron and, catching sight of her reflection in a wall-glass, tidied her hair. She did this without coquetry and yet, Alleyn thought, with a perfect awareness of her own devastating femininity.
“And so —?” he said.
“It was a bit of fun. No harm come of it. Or didn’t ought to of. He’s a proper good chap.”
“Did something come of it?”
She giggled. “Sure enough. Ernie seen us. Last spring ’twas, one evening up to Copse Forge.” She looked again at the wall-glass but abstractedly, as if she saw in it not herself as she was now but as she had been on the evening she evoked. “Twasn’t nothing for him to fret hisself over, but he’s a bit daft-like, is Ern.”
“What did he do about it?”
Nothing, it seemed, for a long time. He had gaped at them and then turned away. They had heard him stumble down the path through the copse. It was Trixie’s particular talent not so much to leave the precise character of the interrupted idyll undefined as to suggest by this omission that it was of no particular importance. Ernie had gone, Ralph Stayne had become uneasy and embarrassed. He and Trixie parted company and that was the last time they had met, Alleyn gathered, for dalliance. Ralph had not returned to South Mardian for several week-ends. When summer came, she believed him to have gone abroad during the long vacation. She answered all Alleyn’s questions very readily and apparently with precision.
“In the end,” Alleyn suggested, “did Ernie make mischief, or what?”
“So he did, then. After Camilla came back, ’twas.”
“Why then, particularly?”
“Reckon he knew what was in the wind. He’s not so silly but what he doesn’t notice. Easy for all to see Mr. Ralph’s struck down powerful strong by her.”
“But were they ever seen together?”
“No, not they.”
“Well, then —”
“He’d been courting her in London. Maids up to castle heard his great-auntie giving him a terrible rough-tonguing and him saying if Camilla would have him he’d marry her come-fine-or-foul.”
“But where,” Alleyn asked patiently, “does Ernie come in?”
Ernie, it appeared, was linked up with the maids at the castle. He was in the habit of drifting up there on Sunday afternoon, when, on their good-natured sufferance, he would stand inside the door of the servants’ hall, listening to their talk and, occasionally, contributing an item himself. Thus he had heard all about Dame Alice’s strictures upon her great-nephew’s attachment to Camilla. Ernie had been able, as it were, to pay his way by describing his own encounter with Ralph and Trixie in the copse. The elderly parlour-maid, a gossip of Trixie’s, lost no time in acquainting her of the whole conversation. Thus the age-old mechanics of village intercommunication were neatly demonstrated to Alleyn.
“Did you mind,” he asked, “about this tittle-tattle?”
“Lor’, no,” she said. “All they get out of life, I reckon, them old maidens.”
“Did anyone else hear of these matters?”
She looked at him with astonishment.
“Certain-sure. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Did the Guiser know, do you think?”
“He did, then. And was so full of silly notions as a baby, him being Chapel and terrible narrow in his views.”
“Who told him?”
“Why,” she said, “Ernie, for sure. He told, and his dad went raging and preachifying to Dame Alice and to Mr. Ralph saying he’d tell Passon. Mr. Ralph come and had a tell with me, axing me what he ought to do. And I told him, ‘Pay no ’tention: hard words break no bones and no business of Guiser’s, when all’s said.’ Course,” Trixie added, “Mr. Ralph was upset for fear his young lady might get to hear of it.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t reckon she did, though if she had, it mightn’t have made all that differ between them. She’m a sensible maid, for all her grand bringing-up: a lovely nature, true’s steel and a lady. But proper proud of her mother’s folk, mind. She’s talked to me since she come back: nobody else to listen, I dessay, and when a maid’s dizzy with love, like Camilla, she’s a mighty need to be talking.”
“And you don’t really think she knew about you and Mr. Ralph?”
“Not by my reckoning, though Mr. Ralph got round to thinking maybe he should tell her. Should he make a clean breast of it to Camilla and I dunno what else beside. I told him it were best left unsaid. Anyway, Camilla had laid it down firm they was not to come anigh each other. But, last Sunday, he seen her in church and his natural burning desire for the maid took a-hold of him and he followed her up to Copse Forge and kissed her and the Guiser come out of the smithy and seen them. Camilla says he ordered her off and Mr. Ralph told her it would be best if she went. So she did and left them together. I reckon Guiser gave Mr. Ralph a terrible tonguing, but Camilla doesn’t know what ’twas passed between them.”
“I see. Do you think the Guiser may have threatened to tell Camilla about you?”
Trixie thought this extremely likely. It appeared that, on the Monday, the Guiser had actually gone down to the Green Man and tackled Trixie herself, declaiming that Ralph ought to make an honest woman of her. For this extreme measure, Trixie said, perhaps a thought ambiguously, there was no need whatever. The Guiser had burst into a tirade, saying that he wouldn’t hear of his grand-daughter marrying so far “above her station,” and repeating the improper pattern of her mother’s behaviour. It could lead, he said, to nothing but disaster. He added, with superb inconsistency, that, anyway, Ralph was morally bound to marry Trixie.
“What did you say to all that?” Alleyn asked her.
“I said I’d other notions.”
He asked her what had been the outcome of her interview with the Guiser and gathered that a sort of understanding had been arrived at between them. An armed neutrality was to be observed until after Sword Wednesday. Nobody could do the Betty’s act as well as Ralph and for the Guiser this was a powerful argument. Towards the end of their talk, the old man had become a good deal calmer. Trixie could see that a pleasing thought had struck him.
“Did you discover what this was?”
“So I did, then. He was that tickled with his own cunning, I reckon he had to tell me.”
“Yes?”
“He said he’d make his Will and leave his money to Camilla. He said he’d make Mr. Ralph do it for him and that’d stop his nonsense.”
“But why?”
“Because he’d make him lay it down that she’d only get the money if she didn’t marry him,” said Trixie.
There was a long silence.
“Trixie,” Alleyn said at last. “Do you mind telling me if you were ever in love with Ralph Stayne?”
She stared at him and then threw back her head. The muscles in her neck swelled sumptuously and she laughed outright.
“Me! He’s a nice enough young fellow and no harm in him, but he’s not my style and I’m not his. It were a bit of fun, like I said, and natural as birds in May: no offence taken either side.”
Thinking, evidently, that the interview was over, she stood up and, setting her hands at her waist, pulled down her dress to tidy it.