The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [302]
Because he had just been feeling the same thing and because he liked her, for the first time in his life Puckle tried to put a complex idea into words. ‘It’s the trees,’ he said, with a nod towards the hull. He paused for a moment, wondering how to put it. ‘When we go, Miss, there isn’t much left, really. Not after a year or two in the ground, anyway.’
‘There is your immortal soul, man,’ Gilpin interrupted his reverie to remark firmly. ‘Pray do not forget that.’
‘I won’t, Vicar,’ Puckle concurred politely, if not, perhaps, with great conviction. ‘Only trees,’ he said to Fanny, ‘not having souls they say, when they’re cut down, they get another life’ and he waved all around him now. ‘Sometimes, down here,’ he added, with simple feeling for the mystery of the thing, ‘I feel as if I was inside a tree.’ He smiled at her, eager, yet a little embarrassed. ‘Funny, really. Stupid, I expect; but a man like me doesn’t know much.’
‘I don’t think it’s foolish at all,’ said Fanny warmly. But she got no further, for Mr Gilpin indicated with a cough that he and Mr Adams had had enough and a few moments later she found herself out in the bright sunlight again.
Louisa had started to laugh. ‘I do declare,’ she cried, ‘that strange fellow looked exactly like a tree himself. Did you not think so, Mr Martell?’
‘Perhaps,’ he agreed with a smile.
‘Yet I liked what he said.’ Fanny turned to the landowner hopefully.
‘I agree, Miss Albion,’ he replied. ‘His theology may be deficient, but these peasants have a kind of wisdom, in their way.’
‘It is hard to believe,’ Louisa maintained, ‘that such a creature is a man at all. I believe he is a troll or goblin of some kind. I’m sure he lives under the ground.’
‘As a Christian, I may not agree,’ Martell laughed. ‘Although I know what you mean, my dear Miss Totton.’
It was time to depart now. The Tottons with Mr Martell would take the lane that led across by Sowley to Lymington; Mr Gilpin wished to take another track that would bring them across the heath towards the ford above Albion House.
Before they parted, however, Mr Martell came to Fanny’s side. ‘My stay here will shortly end, Miss Albion,’ he said quietly, ‘but I fully expect to return. I hope when I do I shall find you here and that I may call upon you.’
‘By all means, Mr Martell. Although I fear I cannot answer for my father, it seems.’
‘I can assure you, Miss Albion’ – he looked her straight in the eye – ‘I am quite prepared to brave his wrath.’
She inclined her head to hide her pleasure. ‘Then come by all means, Sir,’ she softly said.
Minutes later, with young Nathaniel tucked beside her, she was bowling across the wild heath with Mr Gilpin, her heart singing in the breeze.
Puckle stayed down in the ship for a while after the visitors had gone. Though he despised the Tottons, he had been glad to speak to Miss Fanny Albion. He had liked something in her blue eyes. But after her departure, as he gazed sadly round the great wooden space, the thoughts that had troubled him returned with even more insistence than before.
In a few months’ time Miss Albion would still be here, in the Forest. But where would he be, cut adrift?
What had he done? What could he do about it?
The chaise had drawn up by Albion House, and Mr Gilpin had just handed Fanny down and was conducting her to the door, when he turned to her casually and remarked: ‘There is something, by the by, which I had been meaning to tell you, Fanny. Do you recall that we spoke of your grandmother and of her marriage?’
‘Why, yes, indeed,’ she answered brightly. ‘We were going to look it up, were we not?’
‘Indeed. And as I chanced, a little while ago, to be examining the parish register in Lymington I took the liberty of casting back to see what I could find.’
‘And did you find it?’ She felt quite eager.
‘Yes. I think so, anyway.’ He paused. ‘It may come as a surprise, perhaps a shock.’
‘Oh?’
‘Of course, such connections in any family, especially