The Devil And Drusilla

He had not expected to discover anything about the missing men and women on an occasion such as this. He moved about the grounds of Lyford House, being bowed to and responding with his most pleasant smile, his cutting tongue for once not in evidence. He was thinking, not for the first time, of the vast difference in life between the few fortunate men and women who surrounded him, and the vast mass of people at the bottom of the social heap.

Men—and women like the missing girls.

Here food was piled up in plenty on beautifully set tables. Elegantly dressed men and women talked and laughed in the orange light of the late afternoon’s sun.

For the unlucky in their wretched homes a meagre ration was laid out on rough boards in conditions so vile that the workers on his estate would not have housed pigs in them. Their clothes were ragged, and the men and women who wore them were stunted and twisted.

Devenish shivered. He thought of Rob Stammers’s surprise when he had ordered that the cottages on his estate should be rebuilt and the men’s wages increased so that they might live above the near-starvation level which was common in the English countryside.

It was when he was in this dark mood which sometimes visited him at inconvenient times that John Squires approached him and asked diffidently, ‘If I could have a serious word with you for a moment, m’lord, I should be most grateful.’

‘As many serious words as you like,’ he responded. ‘But what troubles you, that you wish to be serious on a fête day?’

Squires coloured. He was a heavyset fellow in early middle age, ruddy of face, a country gentleman who was also a working farmer.

‘It’s this business of the missing wenches, m’lord, but if you prefer not to talk about it here, we could perhaps speak later—’

‘No, speak to me now. I have had one conversation about a missing wench since I arrived in the district, and another will not bore me.’

‘Very well, m’lord,’ and he launched into a lengthy story of the miller’s daughter in Burnside village who had disappeared six months ago.

‘A good girl, her father said, until a few weeks before her disappearance, when she became cheeky and restless, and not hide nor hair of her seen since. Just walked out one evening—and never came home.’

His words echoed those of Hooby. Devenish decided to test him.

‘And why should you—or I—trouble ourselves about missing girls?’

Squires stared at him as though he were an insect, lord though he might be.

‘They are God’s creatures, m’lord, and I have learned this afternoon that others are missing. It troubles me, particularly since one of them, Kate Hooby, was the miller’s daughter’s best friend.’

‘Strange, very strange,’ Devenish remarked, as though he were hearing that there was more than one lost girl for the first time. ‘I share your worries about this. They cannot all have decided to run away to London to make their fortune on the streets.’

John Squires decided that he might have been mistaken in his first judgement of m’lord. ‘Then you will cause an enquiry to be made, m’lord.’

‘Indeed, I shall ask Mr Stammers to make a point of it.’

‘My thanks then. The miller is a good man, and what troubles him must trouble me.’

Devenish watched him walk away, and decided that since the matter had been raised now by two others he might safely speak of it without any suspicions being aroused as to why he was doing so. He looked around for Drusilla and found her immediately. Despite the fact that she was carrying a fat baby boy, he decided to make a beginning.

‘You are encumbered,’ he drawled. ‘Pray sit down, the child is too heavy for you, and sitting will be easier than walking.’

He waved her to one of the stone benches which stood about the lawns, and saw her settled before he sat down beside her.

‘You know,’ Drusilla observed quietly, watching him as she spoke, ‘you are quite the last person, m’lord, whom I would have thought would wish to sit next to a woman holding a baby boy dribbling because he is teething. It only goes to show how mistaken one can be and should teach us all not to jump to over-hasty conclusions!’

‘If you did not look as demure as a Quaker saint, I would think that you were bamming me, Mrs Faulkner.’

‘Oh, dear, no, m’lord, just wondering what you have to say to me that is so urgent that you cannot wait until I shed my burden. And, by the by, do the Quakers have saints? I rather thought that they didn’t.’

Robert, watching them from a little distance while he talked to Miss Faulkner, was surprised to hear Devenish’s shout of laughter and wondered what Mrs Faulkner could have said to cause him to behave so informally.

‘If they didn’t, they ought to have,’ Devenish finally riposted. ‘I never thought that I should have to come into the wilds of the country in order to find a woman who would give me a taste of my own verbal medicine.

‘Let me confess that I do have an ulterior motive in sitting by you. John Squires has just been telling me the surprising story that several of the local wenches have disappeared mysteriously. Have you mislaid any? Or is the Faulkner estate so considerately managed that no one from it has absconded to London to make their fortune?’

‘Now, m’lord,’ responded Drusilla seriously, wiping the little boy’s dribbling mouth with her lace-edged linen handkerchief, ‘this is not a matter for levity. The parents of the girls are most distressed, and no, none of my people has disappeared.’

‘I stand corrected, or rather, I sit so. I see by your reply that I must take this matter seriously. Does that child have an endless supply of water in his mouth? Both you and he will be wet through if he continues to dribble at this rate.’

As though he knew that Devenish was referring to him, the little boy leaned forward, put out a wet and sticky hand, and ran it down the lapel of his beautiful coat before either he or Drusilla could stop him.

‘Oh, dear!’ Drusilla pulled him back with one hand and put the other over her mouth. ‘I should never have consented to sit by you whilst I held Jackie. He is quite the liveliest child in the Milners’ family, and I have been looking after him to give his poor mama a little rest.’

And then, without having meant to, quite the contrary, she began to laugh as Devenish fished out his beautiful handkerchief and started to repair the damage, his face an impassive mask—although his mouth twitched a little.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began. ‘I shouldn’t laugh, but, oh, dear—your face.’

‘No, you shouldn’t,’ said Devenish agreeably. ‘But then, as you have just rightly pointed out, I am responsible for my ruined coat by having first waylaid you and then allowed you both to sit by me. You do realise that he’s about to be sick all down you at any moment?’

‘No!’ Drusilla leapt to her feet and, quite instinctively, thrust Jackie at Devenish so that she might begin to mop herself.

Devenish didn’t need to mop himself because, having caught Jackie, he dextrously up-ended him and held him at arm’s length so that he christened the grass instead of his already ruined jacket.

‘Goodness me!’ Drusilla exclaimed, scrubbing herself. ‘I might have guessed that your invention would be as sharp as your tongue.’

The fascinated spectators to this unusual scene included a startled Robert and Miss Faulkner who stood aghast, her mouth open in shock, as that aloof Lord of Creation, Henry Alexander Devenish, Fourth Earl of Devenish and Innescourt, turned the squalling Jackie right side up and began to wipe him clean with his handkerchief.

Jackie, who had started to cry when subjected to this briskly sensible treatment, ceased his roaring immediately when Devenish told him sharply, ‘Now, my man, stop that at once, or I shall be very cross.’

Drusilla said faintly, ‘How in the world did you manage that? No one has ever been able to quieten him before once he has begun to cry. You really ought to offer yourself to the Milners to replace the nursemaid they have just lost. She was fit for Bedlam, she said, if she did not resign on the instant.’

Devenish, who had pulled his gold watch from his pocket with his right hand whilst he held Jackie in the crook of his left arm, and was circling it above his absorbed face, said abstractedly, ‘I had a baby brother once.’

The Milners, who had just been informed of the brouhaha which their infant had caused, arrived on the scene to find their usually rampant offspring blowing bubbles of delight at Devenish as he tried to grasp the swinging watch.

‘Oh, m’lord,’ gasped Mrs. Milner. ‘Oh, your beautiful coat, you shouldn’t, you really shouldn’t—’

‘Not at all,’ remarked Devenish coolly. ‘Since I have been informed that this is the first time today that he has behaved himself, I think that I really should, don’t you? For all our sakes.’

And since the Lord of All, as Drusilla privately called him, made such a statement, no one present dared to contradict him.

For some reason poor Miss Faulkner was the most disturbed by Devenish’s behaviour. Later, her niece could only think that she had the absurd notion that it brought dishonour on the Faulkner name that he had arrived at such an unlikely pass.

She said sharply to Drusilla, ‘My dear, I told you no good would come of your assisting the Milners’ monstrous child. Look at you both! Your dress is ruined, and as for Lord Devenish’s coat—’

‘Very helpful of you,’ remarked Devenish smoothly, ‘to be so wise both before and after the event. You are quite right. Both Mrs Faulkner and I will be happy to be relieved of continuing to look after the incubus, and I’m sure that you will be delighted to care for him instead, seeing that his poor mama is already in the boughs over him—or so I am informed,’ and he thrust Jackie into the astounded Miss Faulkner’s arms.