The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [343]
If Adelaide guessed what he meant, she gave no indication beyond a slight frown. Gilpin pressed on.
He really showed great wisdom. He dwelt – how as a Christian could he not? – upon the need for reconciliation. He dwelt upon the evil of ancient feuds. ‘The sins of the father, Miss Albion, cannot be visited upon the son.’ He dwelt, above all, upon the paramount need to save Fanny. ‘I think’, he said penetratingly, ‘that you know to what I am referring.’
‘I have not’, old Adelaide said invincibly, ‘the least idea.’
‘And yet, Madam,’ another voice came quietly but firmly from the doorway, ‘I believe that you have.’
And Mr Martell entered the room and made her a polite bow. Although told by Gilpin to wait in the covered carriage outside, he had entered the house and been quietly listening for some time.
Adelaide went pale, looked from Martell to Gilpin and then enquired acidly: ‘You brought this villain here?’
‘I did,’ the vicar confessed, ‘but I am convinced he is no villain. Quite the reverse, in fact.’
‘Kindly leave, Mr Gilpin, and take this villain’ – she deliberately used the word again – ‘with you.’ Her eyes seemed to fix themselves upon a distant point beyond the panelling. ‘I see, Sir, that even clergymen betray the trust of their friends nowadays. But my family are accustomed to dealing with villains, murderers and seducers, even if this is the first time that a clergyman has introduced them to our house.’
‘My dear Miss Albion.’
‘I suggest, in future, Mr Gilpin, that you keep your own company. You are not to approach my niece in Bath. Good day.’
If even Gilpin was reduced to speechlessness by this, Wyndham Martell was not. ‘Madam,’ he explained, calmly and politely, ‘you may abuse my mother’s family as much as you wish. If what you say of them is true, then I am very sorry for it. If it lay within my power’ – he raised his hand – ‘to take away my Penruddock ancestry by cutting off this hand, then I assure you I should gladly do it to save your niece.’
She stared at him in silence. Perhaps he was making progress.
‘I discovered that I resemble an ancestor about whom I knew little, and then that this man was held in contempt and abhorrence by the family of the young lady to whom my affections had already become deeply attached and who, without explanation, then rejected me because of it. But each generation, although we honour our parents and our ancestors, is still born anew. Even the Forest grows new oaks. I am not, I assure you, Colonel Penruddock and have no wish to be. I am Wyndham Martell. And Fanny is not Alice Lisle.’
‘Get out.’
‘Madam, I think it is possible that I can induce Miss Albion to defend herself. Whatever your feelings, would you not even allow me to attempt to save her?’
Gilpin chanced to glance, just then, at Mrs Pride and saw, clear as day upon her face that, whatever she knew from Fanny, she thought that Martell could save her too. ‘I beg you, consider above all the possibility of saving Fanny,’ he interposed.
‘A Penruddock save an Albion? Never.’
‘Dear heaven, Madam!’ Martell burst out in exasperation. ‘You will make your niece the inhabitant of a living tomb.’
‘Get out.’
He took no notice. ‘Do you love her, Madam? Or is she loved only as the servant of this family temple?’
‘Get out.’
‘I tell you, Madam, that I love Miss Albion for herself. In truth I scarcely care at this moment whether she is an Albion, a Gilpin, or’ – he suddenly found himself looking straight into the eyes of the tall, handsome woman, not unlike himself, really, who, he realized, was closely following his every word – ‘or a Pride. I love her, Madam, for herself and I intend to save her, with or without your leave. But your assistance might have greatly helped her.’
‘Get out.’
At a sign from Gilpin Mr Martell, considerably heated now, withdrew with him and a few moments later the sound of Mr Gilpin’s carriage could be heard leaving.