Hope - Lesley Pearse [263]
Nell had been outraged at that, but Hope had pointed out that Lady Harvey had never done anything for the villagers, not even back in the days when she and Sir William had been wealthy.
Yet the sight of the yawning grave, already half-full of rainwater, suddenly made her feel utterly bereft. Taking Nell’s arm firmly, she drew her through the ranks of women holding black-edged handkerchiefs to their eyes and ignored their sharp, disapproving looks. Maybe they didn’t think anyone but gentry should come so close to the grave, but Hope felt she and Nell had the right to be among the chief mourners.
As the Reverend Gosling intoned the last words of the burial service, Hope looked down at the polished oak coffin with its brass handles and plaque bearing the inscription ‘Lady Anne Harvey, 1806–1855’, and thought of the burials in the Crimea. There were no coffins for those brave men; often their boots and clothing were snatched before they were even cold. They would be shoved unceremoniously into mass graves, the only marking a roughly made cross which would probably be lost in the first storm. Bennett, who had spent his whole life caring for others, might be in such a grave, while Lady Harvey could sleep for eternity next to her husband, marked by a marble headstone.
Hope was reminded too of the day they buried Meg and Silas Renton and how abandoned and angry she had felt then. Their grave was over by the churchyard wall, next to Prudence and Violet, with only the smallest and simplest of headstones. She remembered with a pang of conscience that she always felt jealous when Meg came here to put flowers on the children’s grave.
Yet the incident which set off Hope’s rage came later. Lady Harvey’s two sisters were standing in the shelter of the lychgate waiting for their carriage and Nell went over to them to offer her condolences. To Hope’s astonishment and outrage, they brushed her aside as if she were a beggar asking for money.
To Hope it was unbelievable they could be so callous as Nell had met the sisters before on innumerable occasions and had even attended both their parents’ funerals. Hope almost ripped into them, telling them that Nell had been far more than a loyal servant, she was also Lady Harvey’s one true friend. But angry as she was, she was aware that once she started she might very well follow it up with a loud proclamation that she was in fact their niece. Knowing that such an admission would only distress Rufus, Nell and her other brothers, she forced herself to turn her back on those women and lead Nell away.
The wake was being held at Hunstrete House, and it was very clear that common folk like the Rentons wouldn’t be welcome there. Rufus came running after them as they made for their waiting cab to go home, but Hope told him they had to get back for Betsy.
The bleakness in his eyes told her he understood the real reason they were leaving, and she urged him to go back to his relatives for a while, then perhaps join them later at Willow End.
The journey back seemed endless, and when they reached the mill at Chewton the river had burst its banks, flooding the road. The horse was reluctant to go through the swirling water at first, and Hope had visions of being forced to retreat and take the long way home. But fortunately he moved with a touch of the whip, and eventually they arrived home, very wet and chilled to the bone.
Betsy was screaming fit to burst because she hadn’t liked the milk Dora had tried to give her while they were out, and she latched on to her mother’s breast like a leech before Hope could even change her wet clothes. And Nell kept going on and on about the funeral and the sisters who had been so hurtful.
‘I shouldn’t have spoken to them,’ she said with a quiver in her voice.