Historical Short Story: A Trick Of The Light

HISTORICAL SHORT STORY BY JOANNE DUNCAN

In this story, set in 1877, Gile’s painting captured the scene perfectly – but who was the mysterious woman caught in the background?

It was in the late spring of 1877 that an old friend of mine from Oxford, Giles Probert, came to stay.

On the face of it, we didn’t have much in common.

I was a country curate on a modest stipend, Giles a suave man-about-town and talented amateur artist.

For me, April had been mainly taken up with visiting sick parishioners. He’d spent it in Paris.

He arrived at my lodgings on the Saturday evening and, the following day, we were invited to the rectory for lunch after morning service.

Marianne, the rector’s daughter, listened eagerly to my friend’s account of a recent exhibition at which he’d been introduced to acquaintances of Messieurs Monet and Renoir.

I wondered if she found him handsome, and the thought depressed me.

The three of us settled on the lawn afterwards and Giles unpacked something that resembled a small suitcase but was, he explained, a portable box easel incorporating everything required by the modern-day artist.

“I bought it in a shop in Montmartre,” he said, picking up a tube of paint.

“It enables you to work en plein air with the subject directly in front of you, as the Impressionists do.”

“Oh, Mrs Frobisher waylaid me after church,” I said, reminded of this by the fact that Giles had positioned himself facing that lady’s garden. “She’s asked us all to tea.”

“Bother!” Marianne muttered under her breath.

Mrs Frobisher was her least favourite neighbour, always dropping hints to the rector about his daughter’s allegedly unladylike behaviour.

“Your flock keeps you busy, James,” Giles said.

Perhaps I will provide myself with a mount tomorrow so I can explore the countryside while you attend to your duties.

“I’m sure the Swan will oblige,” I said.

It was the village inn’s fly that had collected Giles from our railway station the previous evening.

The afternoon drifted by. Giles dabbed at his canvas and Marianne read, her straw hat tilted to shade her eyes from the sun.

I had just dozed off for a moment, or so it seemed, when the church clock chimed and I discovered it was already half past three.

“Have you finished your picture, Mr Probert?” Marianne asked Giles. “May I see?”

As I sat up, he turned it round to show her.

“That’s odd,” she said, frowning. “It looks as though there’s a young woman standing behind the trees with her back to us.

“I can just make out something that might be a hat, and there’s a sort of pinkish-grey area that could be part of her skirt.”

Giles’s eyebrows rose.

“All unintentional, I assure you. I simply put in what was there.”

“What do you think, James?”

I peered at it.

“I’m not quite certain.”

This was my first encounter with anything in the Impressionistic style and it didn’t help that the trees, a row of hawthorns marking the boundary of the rectory garden, were heavily laden with blossom.

Giles had succeeded in capturing the shimmering haze of a sunny day, but the result was that I could scarcely distinguish one object from another.

“I must be imagining things,” Marianne said, sounding unconvinced. “For a moment, it reminded me of Laurel Frobisher.”

“Mrs Frobisher’s daughter?” I said, surprised. “Isn’t she Lady Clairmont now?”

She nodded.

“When I was fifteen and Laurel a year older, she and my brother used to meet by those trees on summer evenings.

“They were screened from the Frobisher house by an arbour and, on our side, only visible from my bedroom window.

“I’d glance out and she’d be there, waiting for him.”

“Were you and she close friends?” I asked.

“Not really. In fact, when I heard she hadn’t replied to William’s letters once he’d returned to university, I decided she was a vain, empty-headed flirt!

“But I realise it wasn’t altogether Laurel’s fault.

“Her mother had brought her up to believe that the whole point of a beautiful young lady’s existence was to charm the opposite sex and I suppose she needed someone to practise on.”

“The practising paid off, by the sound of it,” Giles said.

“She married a rich baronet at the age of twenty-one, if that’s what you mean, though Sir Horace struck me as a chilly individual and at least thirty years too old for her.

“William would have made a far nicer husband.” Marianne’s

smile faded.

“Lowton Grange is only an hour’s drive from here, but I haven’t seen Laurel since the wedding. I do hope she’s all right.”

“We’re due at her mother’s in less than five minutes,” I said. “Why don’t we ask her?”

“Are you acquainted with my son-in-law, Sir Horace Clairmont, Mr Probert?” Mrs Frobisher, who’d evidently decided Giles was worth cultivating, simpered as she poured tea.

“He and my daughter took a house in London last summer following their bridal tour.”

“Regrettably not,” he said politely, and I seized my chance.

“Are they in town at the moment, Mrs Frobisher?”

But she was supervising the handing round of sandwiches and cake and didn’t reply immediately.

“I beg your pardon,” she said at last. “No, they’re staying in the country for now.

“Sir Horace has never cared for the London season and only made an exception last year for my daughter’s sake.”

“At least that means you’ll be able to see something of them while the weather’s good,” I said with a smile.

Again, she hesitated.

“I wouldn’t presume. Not unless Sir Horace were to send for me. A slice of cake, Mr Probert?”

“You have been to Lowton since the wedding though, haven’t you?” Marianne’s question was blunt.

“You don’t understand, dear. Sir Horace has an estate to run. He can’t be transporting his mother-in-law hither and thither.”

“But Laurel writes to you regularly?”

“One day, Marianne, you may come to appreciate that married women have a great deal to occupy them, not least when they find themselves in the higher ranks of society.” Mrs Frobisher stood.

“Mr Probert, would you care to walk in the garden? Pray bring your teacup.”

“James, I’m worried,” Marianne whispered the moment we were alone.

“And I’m positive Mrs. Frobisher is, too.”

“You think something isn’t right?”

“Remember the chapter in ‘Jane Eyre’ where Jane hears Mr Rochester’s voice calling to her from many miles away?

“And how we agreed that such a thing – a reaching out of one mind to another – might be possible under certain circumstances?

“I believe Laurel has somehow found her way into Mr Probert’s painting without his even being aware of it and that it’s a sign she needs our help.”

The others returned before I could reply.

Shortly afterwards, we took our leave.

As the maid opened the door, however, I exchanged a glance with Marianne before turning to Giles.

“Would you mind waiting for me at the rectory? There’s some parish business I forgot to mention to Mrs Frobisher.”

The next minute, I was re-entering the drawing room.

“I know Marianne can be tactless at times,” I said to its astonished occupant, “but if you are uneasy about your daughter, I can bring the dog cart round from the rectory and drive you to Lowton this very afternoon.”

I half-expected her to order me out of the house, but instead, she gazed at me with troubled eyes.

“You’re right,” she said finally. “I am uneasy. It’s as if Laurel wants to keep me at a distance.

“I told myself I was being tactful in not intruding – but if you really think I ought to go, I’ll pack a bag.”

A solitary blackbird sang from the top of a hedge as the rector’s old bay cob trotted slowly homewards through the dusk, but my mind was on other things.

All my apprehensions as to the kind of welcome we’d receive at the hands of
Sir Horace had proved unnecessary.

It transpired that he’d embarked on a tour of the Highlands in search of rare botanical specimens, leaving his young wife behind with only a handful of rather dour servants.

I was willing to believe him guilty of a lack of imagination rather than deliberate unkindness.

The fact remained that Laurel must have been very lonely and it was doubtless only pride that had prevented her admitting as much to her mother.

I felt I’d done the right thing in persuading Mrs Frobisher to let me drive her to Lowton.

Whether I’d also done the right thing in leaving Marianne and Giles alone together all this time was another question entirely.

Recently, I’d hoped that Marianne and I were reaching an understanding, but how on earth was I supposed to compete with a man as personable and urbane as Giles Probert?

It was a great pity, I thought sadly as I led the weary horse back to his stable, that the rector hadn’t invested in a carriage that held more than two persons.

“James.” A cigar end glowed in the darkness.

“Giles?”

“I just wanted to say goodbye.

“The fly will be picking me up at your lodgings shortly. I plan to catch the late train.”

“You’re leaving tonight?” I was startled.

“Not much point in my staying now, is there?” he said dryly.

Don’t look so surprised, old chap. You must have had an inkling of what I was up to, or you wouldn’t have hurried Mrs Frobisher off to Lowton.

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“What, not even after Marianne caught me out? That was supposed to be a private joke, by the way.”

As I stared at him, still mystified, he grinned back.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been completely honest. Sir Horace and I belong to the same London club, and I did meet Lady Clairmont last year.

“When she learned that a friend of mine was curate of the parish in which she’d grown up, she told me of her youthful dalliance with the rector’s son.

“She even described the spot they’d chosen for their trysts.

“I’ve thought ever since that it would make an enchanting subject for a sketch – especially if the lady were to be hidden in the picture so cleverly that no-one but she and the artist would ever know.”

“It was deliberate?”

Finally, I understood. Giles’s visit had been prompted by Sir Horace’s absence, news of which had probably reached him through club gossip.

His “exploration of the local countryside” would have taken him straight to Lowton, along with his charming sketch and persuasive manners.

Marianne had been correct, it seemed, in believing that Laurel required our urgent help.

If Giles’s plans had succeeded, she was the one who would have suffered.

Remembering those silent, watchful servants, I doubted the pair could have evaded discovery.

“It’s just my bad luck,” he was saying now, “that, in addition to a son, the rector has a sharp-eyed daughter.

“You may as well keep the canvas,” he added as he walked off. “Think of it as a wedding present.”

I decided to call at the rectory on my way home.

Despite everything, I felt suddenly light-hearted.

Why had Giles talked of a wedding present?

Was there something else I’d missed, in addition to the figure in the painting?