Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [580]
“Any day,” she smiled. “I fear we may not meet again.”
She had done it. She had got rid of him, quite painlessly.
But something was wrong. As she gazed at him now, she could sense it; his fingers were trembling, there was something in the attitude of his bowed head; he was clearing his throat. Just before he spoke, she saw it coming, with horror.
“Miss Shockley,” he had to clear his throat again. He glanced up at her face, saw shock, but ploughed on. “Before you leave I must say something to you.”
Should she stop him now? Was it crueller to cut him off or listen? She flushed with embarrassment at the choice. He saw the flush, mis-interpreted.
“I believe – you have been kind enough to let me be your friend . . .”
“Of course.” But it was only a whisper. What should she do?
“I have observed that you are very different in your attitudes to most young ladies of your station.”
Was she? Or was it only a pose? Faced with the awfulness of Mr Porters she was not sure.
“I realise of course that I . . .” he faltered. That he was not a gentleman. It was too painful. He could not say it. “That I am a modest man with a modest fortune, but I dare to hope that you are aware how greatly I admire your extraordinary qualities of mind.”
It was so terrible. For indeed, in his way, he was a better man than most she had met. But . . . he did not even understand. They would not be received.
“Should you reconsider your intention to leave, Miss Shockley, it would do me the greatest honour to . . .” again he paused, suddenly uncertain of what expression to use . . . “ask for your hand.”
It was over. She was completely silent. She tried in her mind to frame words of kindness, but they would not come. She sat, staring at the richly patterned carpet on the floor.
The silence seemed eternal.
At last, feeling he must say something, he spoke.
“It is a remarkable coincidence, Miss Shockley, that you and I are already connected.” It had been his trump card, to be saved for use in time of social need. In the long silence, it seemed he might as well play it now. “My grandfather’s cousin lived here in Sarum, only he spelt our name differently: he was Canon Porteus.”
His claim to gentility, to a sort of cousinship with her. It was worse than anything she could have imagined.
“Thank you, Mr Porters. But I am afraid my mind is quite made up.”
He hung his head.
“May I hope?”
Why, why did she hesitate when she must be firm? Because she was embarrassed and could not find words? It was no excuse.
“I am truly touched, Mr Porters, but you see, I am quite determined to nurse.”
“Should you ever reconsider . . .”
“I thank you.”
He got up to leave.
“A curious coincidence about the canon.”
“Yes indeed.”
Then he had gone.
She would have to go and nurse now.
On October 21, 1854, the Salisbury Journal quoted the Times article on Scutari. It also noted that a letter from one Lieutenant Henry Foster, of the 95th, who had visited Scutari, completely denied there was anything amiss with the conditions there. It seemed, the Salisbury Journal concluded, that the Times correspondent was acting upon mere hearsay.
“Perhaps Miss Jane,” Mrs Brown, the cook, suggested, “it’s as well you didn’t go after all.”
On October 22, a letter came for her.
It was from Africa.
My dear Niece,
Our dear friend Crowther, the astounding negro clergyman of whom I have told you so much, has returned in the Pleiad from a triumphant expedition up the Benue, which is you may remember a tributary of the Niger. He feels that the several kings and chiefs he encountered are ready for Christianity – praise God. Crowther speaks still, and most movingly of his meetings in England three years ago with that great man Palmerston and our queen and consort of Windsor. Indeed, it must surely have been thanks to royal interest in our mission that the government sent us the Pleiad. When I tell him he is lucky he only smiles and tells me – “God provides”.
Jane had long admired the extraordinary black missionary Samuel Crowther with whom her uncle