The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [361]
He saw the hair bristle on the back of Pride’s neck. Dear God, this was the lighted match that was going to set off the powder keg. He tensed, bit his lip.
Pride gave a quiet laugh, and shook his head. ‘Well, well. I reckon a young man gets a job where he can, Your Lordship. Don’t you? As for Mr Cumberbatch, he isn’t any enemy of mine.’ He turned his head round to look at the Deputy Surveyor and gave him a forester’s smile. ‘Not at present he isn’t, anyway. Of course,’ he turned back to the young peer, ‘if Mr Cumberbatch makes so many inclosures that he ruins me, and my children go to the poor house, you might say he makes himself my enemy whether I like it or not. I only came here, Your Lordship, hoping you could help, so that Mr Cumberbatch and me could stay friends.’
Even the Chairman smiled broadly now, and the young peer gracefully indicated defeat.
‘I think,’ said the Chairman, ‘we have met the Pride of the Forest. Perhaps this would be a good moment to adjourn.’
The white-haired woman waited nervously in the big empty church on the hilltop. She had not told her husband about her rendezvous.
When Mr Arthur West had married Louisa Totton they had produced two sons and four daughters; the sons had been brought up to make their way in the world, the daughters to obey – first their parents and then their husbands. When Mary West had married Godwin Albion it had been on the clear understanding that she would obey him, and so she always had. It was no small thing for her, therefore, to be having a secret assignation in Lyndhurst church; and especially when the man she was meeting had such a dangerous reputation as Mr Minimus Furzey.
Women were always forgiving Minimus. They had been all his life. Minimus, the smallest, the last child of a large family, the pet, the one who could get away with the things his brothers and sisters never could. He was so charming that women could forgive him anything. Men, especially husbands, did not always forgive Minimus. Nor did fathers.
His family had not been shocked when Minumus became an artist. They were all talented. His grandfather Nathaniel had taken up the law and become a solicitor in Southampton. His father had also followed the legal profession but graduated to London and prospered. His eldest brother was a surgeon, the next a professor. Two of his sisters had married rich men in the city, and it was these two who had provided Minimus with the modest income that allowed him to follow his inclinations without any financial worries.
Three years ago Minimus had come to the Forest and decided he liked it. He was not the first artist of his time to do so. If Gilpin in the last century had written of the picturesque beauty of the Forest, numerous artists and writers had come to visit in recent years. The author, Captain Marryat, whose brother had bought a house on the old smuggling route known as Chewton Glen, had even immortalized the area in his The Children of the New Forest twenty years before. ‘Is it the play of the light on the heath or the beauty of the oaks that brings you artists here?’ one enthusiastic lady had once asked Minimus.
‘Both, but principally it’s the railway,’ he had replied.
The fact that the Forest was full of humble Furzeys who were undoubtedly his relations neither embarrassed nor even interested Minimus. About all social matters he had a reckless innocence. It was not that he ignored social conventions: he only had the vaguest idea of their existence. If something felt agreeable, Minimus usually did it and he was genuinely surprised when people became angry. This included his relationships with women.
Minimus did not set out to seduce women. He found them delightful. If they were charmed by his boyish innocence; if they thought him poetic and wanted to mother him; or if perhaps he found himself suddenly drawn to some pretty young woman: to Minimus these were all wonders of nature. He scarcely stopped