Davy gave his arm to the frail, elderly gentleman who sat beside Mrs. Bentley. As the man stood, it was easy to see that he had once been a giant of a man, but that time had weathered him down to a gaunt frame of sinew, muscle, and bone. The old fellow walked unsteadily up to the front of the room where Constable Bentley assisted him to a chair. A hush fell over the room. “Mr. Ironholder has a story to tell us all,” the constable said. “Please, give him your attention. He has been ill recently, and his voice is not strong.”
An expectant hush fell over the crowd.
Chapter 58
Tiffany sat back down in her chair.Grandfather?The thought gave her a chill. Her stomach felt as if she had swallowed scalding tea the wrong way. She watched as the fragile old gentleman settled himself into the chair.
“Thank you for giving me the chance to tell this story,” Mr. Ironholder said. “I hope that you are right, that there is a chance that you have found my granddaughter. But it is difficult to know after all these years.”
“Tell us what happened all those years ago, and how you lost track of your daughter and her child.”
“Pride,” Mr. Ironholder said. “Pure, sinful pride on my part. If I had it to do all over again. . .” He paused and didn’t say anything further for a few minutes. He stared off into the distance, then took out a large handkerchief, wiped his eyes and blew his nose with a mighty honk.
“My daughter went to work at the local inn. I didn’t want her to do it, but she insisted that she wanted her own money. Good girl that she was, she always brought home half of whatever she earned.”
The old fellow nodded his head for a moment, almost as if it was too large and heavy for the once-muscular neck.
“Whilst she was working at the inn, she met a fellow. He was a stable hand at the same inn. Since he worked there, she started stepping out with him. We thought nothing of it. He was a pleasant fellow. Good company. My daughter brought him home once or twice to dinner.”
Mr. Ironholder stared out into the distance, as if he could see the lost daughter.
“They was fixin’ to set up housekeeping,” he went on. “Posted the banns, and we were at the third Sunday of reading them out when this fellow comes up the aisle.”
“Rupert, you can’t do this,” the gentleman sings out. “You are humiliatin’ all o’ us.”
‘What’s it to ya,’ Rupert hollers back. ‘You threw me out, an’ I’ve been takin’ care o’ myself ever since. I’m going to be gettin’ married.’”
The old man paused again. “There was a great big, raucous, an’ when the church settled down, Rupert explained as to how he was the second son of a knight. The knight that used to own the manor house where Old Elizabet and the other servants tuck it over.”
There was a general stir in the room at this announcement. Some people had been aware of how Old Elizabet and her people came to be there, others were not.
“Ye’ll be disowned an’ disavowed from the family,” says the fellow who was doin’ the interuptin’.
“An’ this is diff’rent from how it has been these past three years? In what way?” Rupert hollers back. “You might be my brother, or you might have been before ye dis-associated yerself, but ye’ve no right to say who I marry.”
“An’ with that, Rupert turns around, looks my daughter an’ the preacher straight in the face, an’ says, “I’ll be here at this altar next Sunday. I keep my promises.”
“Then my daughter ups and says, ‘I will be there.’ An’ just like that a heap o’ misery was born.”
“You say a heap of misery,” Constable Brooks said. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, it weren’t enough for this older brother to tell Rupert who he could marry, he tried to get him turned off. Seems he might could a done it too, but the innkeeper was o’ sterner stuff than you might think, or perhaps you might say he had greater heart than wisdom. Or maybe someone else with influence had a hand. He din’ turn off neither my daughter nor my son-in-law, regardless o’ their antecedents they kept on workin’ there at the inn.”
The old fellow paused, hacked a cough, and wiped his face with his much-abused handkerchief. Old Elizabet rose from where she sat, made her way up the table and poured a glass of water from a pitcher that was sitting there.
When she offered it, Mr. Ironholder took it and drank down nearly half. “Thank ‘ee, Miz Elizabet. Talkin’ is thirsty work.”
“But they stayed together. How could that have made you lose your daughter?”
“Pride. My folk have always been good, solid yeomen stock. Nary a laird or nobleman to the lot. Barrette was of similar family, but he earned himself a knighthood and gave himself airs. We set a great store by our origins, holdin’ that hard work an’ honesty was far the better than some trumped up title. We taught our littles our family lines, an’ could say them back to before the Romans.”
There was a little stir of awe at that. But Constable Brooks raised his hand, and the susurrus of voices stilled.
“So what affect did this have on the young folk?” the constable asked.
“Well, they stopped comin’ ta see us, the missus an’ I. She was wroth with me, and would na speak to me for months. Swore at me for a stiff-necked old fool. But she was a good woman, an’ loyal, so she did not gainsay my word as head of the household.”
The old man stopped speaking, and took another sip of his water. “When my daughter’s time of layin’ in came around, she was across town at a ramshackle boarding house. Wife ta one o’ the stable hands my son-in-law worked with tolt my wife, so she knew that we were grandparents, but she din’ let on.”
