What Empty Things Are These

by Crozier, J. L. ;

  I came to this point in my discourse on paper—if such it could be called—and found myself unable for the moment to continue. There was a thread of some thought, I knew, if I could but catch hold of it and pull. It could very well lead to strange, if not dangerous places. Might I ask ladies to step outside their position thus? Most likely not. And yet, what was I considering, as my theme? Might folk consider me as one would regard a revolutionary with an incendiary device?

  I wiped the pen, put it down and placed my hand over my eyes. Writing might indeed be considered an incendiary device, I thought, and then: Well, I have moved beyond writing about the weather, at least!

  Perhaps I had taken a step. Though I could not be sure of it.

  I folded the paper and placed it in my box. I will think further about it.

  Mrs Charles brought herself, at last, to visit. There was no surprise to this, given the dish in the hallway now held three of her calling cards. There was no surprise that the lady came alone, without her husband—a wealthy but thin and vanishing presence who went about Society making very little impression, it seemed—and without any other company but her coachman.

  Mrs Staynes opened the door to her, let her in, and went to tell me of the visitor. Mrs Charles stood very still in the hallway, a medley of sombre tones from bonnet to hem—soft greys of two kinds, a charcoal, a sober blue like a painter’s notion of distant hills. She looked about herself, just a little, for of course she had never before been to this house. I glanced about too—I could not help it—and thought that it would do; then found myself irritated that how my home appeared to her should so concern me.

  I shook her hand. The woman’s face was a deal paler than I had ever seen it before; new lines dragged her mouth down, spelling a despondence, I thought. And yet, she held her elegant head high, and still her expression spelled dominion; but she was, undeniably, sad.

  ‘You wish to see George, of course,’ I said, for I had, after all, no wish to put Mrs Charles in the position of having to ask. She made a slight bow of her head in assent, and I led the way upstairs and to Mr Hadley’s chamber. To George’s chamber, I essayed to myself. It was Albert on watch by the bed, and I hesitated a moment before calling him away, which I felt I ought to do out of kindness, so that the door could be closed to leave Mrs Charles alone with Mr Hadley. With George. With my husband. With Mrs Charles’s lover. I do not suppose it matters overmuch, in the end, if Albert wonders at this.

  Albert waited on the landing, while I descended to my morning room. In perhaps a quarter of an hour, the bedchamber door opened and closed, and I went to greet Mrs Charles at the bottom of the stair. In silence, we touched hands (it could not be said there was any grip) at the front door, and then Mrs Charles was gone.

  It was after luncheon that the men arrived together—the

  policeman and the very superior gentleman, Mr Farquharson himself. Guests were rare; strangers even more so, especially on my account. Mr Hadley had, on occasion, been visited by men who evidently felt they were well enough acquainted with him to arrive at his front door. I myself knew these friends of his (if they could be called so) not at all when they arrived, and barely when they departed.

  And now all these new strangers do wash up upon my doorstep. And on my own account! It was a taxing thing for me, to stand alone and shake the hands of strangers.

  Indeed, Mr Farquharson was very much of a type with Mr Hadley’s

  former visitors, though this time come to visit me. This fact in itself was disconcerting. It made me feel, somehow, like an interloper, though I dwelt here. I felt myself a child interfering in adult deliberations, even while I was mistress of this house. A few minutes before, I had been chattering with the women in the kitchen, about the machine and the useful work it could be put to once they knew how to make use of it. Moreover, I had been laughing with them, not like a lady of the house at all, and in this I felt somehow found out by this gentleman and the policeman.

  These two, furthermore—and here I experienced a squeeze of irritation, embarrassment at my littlest servant’s inept fumbling—caused excitement to Cissy that was very evident, perhaps even to the visitors, as she took hats and coats and Mr Farquharson’s cane (mother-of-pearl inlay, and largely ebony, with some exquisite carving of intertwined leaves). The whispering between Mrs Staynes and Cissy, which, while taking place at the darker end of the hallway, was nonetheless obvious, and I was aware of the urgent hissing as if through my very skin. I glanced at Sobriety, who hurried away to join Mrs Staynes in chivvying Cissy back to the kitchen.

  What must he think!

  The inspector held out his hand to me even as the servants’ agitation moved to the nether reaches of the house, and introduced his companion.

  ‘Mr Farquharson insisted, Mrs Hadley, that he should meet the very brave person—’ The inspector corrected himself with a glance at the darkened tunnel of the corridor. ‘The persons who saved his youngest son…’

  The larger gentleman stepped forward before the inspector had finished, impatient perhaps at having to wait upon such an introduction by a lesser man. It was an impression confirmed by his failure to glance at the inspector; and emphasized in the cut of his frock coat, and the fine embroidery on his waistcoat, surpassing in quality anything my brother Harry might wear and at least the equal to Mr Hadley’s day apparel. I wonder if he shares Mr Hadley’s tailor?

  Mr Farquharson reached for my hand and bent over it, and I underwent another moment of confusion. His very cologne water was exactly Mr Hadley’s, and brought to mind Mr Hadley himself, as if he had risen from his bed. I felt that I stood next to myself and watched all of the bravado—nay, authority—of the past weeks fall away and leave me once more the child, the perpetual child bride of drooping posture, of drooping character, entirely unimpressive, stupid with uncertainty and incompetence…

  Mr Farquharson kissed my hand. ‘Dear lady, words cannot express my gratitude.’ I murmured something—Lord knows what— in response.

  And then of course there was the problem of the household itself being at sixes and sevens after our trip to town yesterday. There was nothing sorted, and this felt monumentally as if we had been found lacking on this occasion of our first proper visitors. My first proper visitors. I had not had time to carry through my own plans for a rearrangement. The gentleman and the inspector could not be shown into the morning room, which was strewn still with piles of haberdashery and encumbered by the sewing machine, but into the drawing room, even though it was my intention that this be closed up in favour of my own receiving room. This in itself, I was aware, would be the cause of upset for Mrs Staynes, for the drawing room must always be the centre of the domestic; it was the hearth, the temple antechamber of the moral family. Yet, somehow and despite Mrs Staynes, and any attendant army of housekeepers, matriarchs and patriarchs, and any number of unexpected visitors, I was quite determined it would be closed. I was for a moment very vexed that circumstances had thus caught me out.

  I felt myself tremble a little—and my mind to…to wring its hands, as it were—for everything was so out of its pattern, the house so full of oddments. The future for us all was so uncertain and this uncertainty given emphasis the more, indeed, because of all these objects cluttering the house.

  And here were these visitors—all these visitors—come to witness its irregularities.

  I collected a small part of my wits and rang the little bell that stood on the mantel.

  As of the day before, Inspector Broadford was not entirely a stranger to me. It was he who had, eventually, resolved the problem of the ladies who had come bearing the stolen child to Hampstead’s police station, the child by then hoarse and whimpering, his little face a rough red with high distress.

  We had presented an unaccustomed scene—and Sobriety and I had glanced at each other at its oddness, relieved to be amused in this rough and strange environment (and reassured with the doughty pres
ence of Mr Brent behind)—as we told our story over the racket. Several men in uniform stood frowning, hesitant to relieve us of this stolen but animated property. Inspector Broadford was out when we arrived, undertaking some duty or other, but to everyone’s relief returned in not too long a time. He sent an officer forth with the baby cradled in a stiffly woollen arm, in search of a wet nurse in the town. The noise withdrawn, the story was told yet again. Yet where it came to the details of the young girl’s description, we had both thought it best to be vague, for neither of us, it seemed, could abide the thought of the girl’s arrest. Mr Brent followed our lead, stolid and silent. We could not tell what age the young person had been; we were not certain what clothes she had been wearing.

  This, the deliberate lack of detail in the story told the previous night, made me shift a little in discomfort and glance every now and then at the inspector. He did not, however, demonstrate any sign of suspicion, I thought. And how, in any case, would I be able to discern what is in his mind?

  Mrs Staynes, her face so set as to appear done in wax, appeared at the door in belated answer to the bell, and I asked her for tea. What on earth is the matter with everyone? ‘And would you ask Sobriety to take some with us,’ I said. After all, Sobriety, too, was a heroine of the hour, whatever the dramas now being enacted elsewhere.

  The inspector and Mr Farquharson sat at either end of the formal settee—Mr Hadley’s settee as I was coming to see it, for this was, I felt, his room, with his portrait, the manly hunt upon the wall, and the large, stout and tasselled settee for guests of note. Mr Farquharson

  had in his cravat an ebony pin, and wore large golden rings on his hands. I was eased somewhat at seeing these: Mr Hadley would have pronounced them vulgar.

  I thought a moment. George would have pronounced them vulgar.

  I sat a little straighter at this, watched how Mr Farquharson placed his hands firmly upon his knees. His gaze was a deliberate one—the eyes dark and the muscles just a little tight around them—and he considered every ornament, vase and figurine, landscape by academician, and formal portrait, and halted at one.

  ‘I know this gentleman, ma’am. I have been introduced (a very good style of portrait, too, if I may say). He is your father? Your father-in-law? A fine man; many have heard the name of Hadley in the City.’ He raised his right hand in emphasis, as he spoke in an accent that held a memory of the north.

  He spoke thus, and my cheeks grew hot. Squabbling and

  contradictory emotions blended, in a few long moments, into a simple resentment, even while I could not identify to whom this emotion referred. Was it Mr Farquharson that I so resented, or Mr Hadley? For an instant, I saw the face of my father, but I turned from that.

  ‘This is my husband, sir, who lies upstairs very ill.’

  Mr Farquharson bowed his head. ‘My dear madam, what a great pity. Please accept my best wishes for Mr Hadley’s speedy recovery. It is not only his family that has need of him, of course, but I understand his friends, his Party, and the nation, too, have great expectations of Mr Hadley not only in the City but in the corridors of Parliament.’

  Does he tell me he knows this because he moves amongst those who feel so? I struggled to know what the man was truly saying. Does he merely flatter me by saying so, about my husband? Does he tell me that our families are socially allied? Yes, I fancy that is what he does.

  Mr Farquharson’s face folded into an expression to encompass, I surmised, sympathy and gallantry combined. ‘I am sure Mr Hadley could want for no more angelic a nurse than his beautiful and plucky young wife. Your care must be a tonic in itself.’

  I was tempted, but then decided against frankness. George’s passing is our business, I told myself. And in any case I do not think I desire that conversation.

  I bowed my own head rather than respond. The inspector nodded and beamed. Small, energetic, ruddy and square, his was an emphatic presence, as if outlined in sharpened charcoal.

  Mr Farquharson spoke again, rising as if to take his leave.

  ‘Ma’am, I shall not wait for tea, although that is most kind. I have business to attend to, I’m afraid. Please accept my deepest thanks once again for the rescue of my son and an invitation…’ He searched an inside pocket. ‘For Mrs Farquharson expressly bade me ask, when she had me come in her stead—for, of course, she has had a shock or two!—to beg you to attend a gathering at our establishment on Thursday next? In the evening.’

  He withdrew from his pocket his card of introduction and an invitation (of most elegant production, with decoration and embossing and on quite heavy card of excellent quality), which I took. ‘Many of the best people are expected, and this is to be an occasion for building friendships.’ He smiled and shrugged as if in self-deprecation. ‘There will be music and a supper, and perhaps some may care to dance—we have a fine room for it.’

  ‘Most kind, most kind.’

  There followed a moment, and then another, before I realised I stared at the two cards as if I had never seen suchlike. My heart thumped as if I were a girl once more (and I set aside any notion for the time being of Mr Farquharson’s vulgarity) that my personal attendance was required at such a grand occasion, for it did sound as if it might be grand. I composed an expression upon my face that said I was quite accustomed to such invitations in my own right.

  Mr Farquharson spoke into the momentary silence. ‘Of course, we were not aware of Mr Hadley’s lamentable state of health. We are happy, naturally, to accept with pleasure the presence of any escort you deem suitable.’

  I essayed a smile. ‘I shall be pleased to come.’ I searched my mind for a gentleman who might accompany me, and stayed the panic that tinkled through me like a shower of shattering glass. Mr Gordon? Lord, no… Harry? Save me! ‘I am certain my brother Dickie would be pleased, also, to accept.’

  Mr Farquharson once more bent over my hand and left there a small wet patch. ‘Excellent!’

  Do I tremble at this invitation? Oh I hope not!

  I rang the bell for Cissy to hurry with Mr Farquharson’s hat and coat, and went to farewell him at the door, leaving the inspector for the moment on his own amid the well-polished hush of Mr Hadley’s ornaments.

  Back soon, to a smiling and repeated bowing between me and the inspector; I was minded of marionettes jerking sadly out of time with each other, and gave him an assurance that tea would be right along.

  And still the inspector made no conversation. What does he wait for?

  There was a short silence, which made itself felt as it sat stubborn despite the many busy noises of the world outside the window—the rumble of wheels, hurrying feet, somebody’s raised voice. A young man’s, I thought, and wondered if there would be an answer. It all added to a jumble in my mind, which persistently included the oompapa of a waltz…

  I felt I must drag my attention back from thoughts of social triumph, the murmur and laughter of gentility, the hiss of gaslight, the waft of cologne, the swing past of many colours… Instead, there was the brief racketing through my consciousness of that young, misery-hardened voice and its despairing contempt—done up all tight and smelling sweet, and I flinched from it.

  I must, I knew, calm my thoughts, and I took a breath to do so. ‘The wind has died a little since yesterday, has it not?’

  ‘Indeed it has, ma’am.’ The inspector smiled. The silence settled back into place. I studied him to see if he were as discomfited as I by this, and whether he in turn studied me. I saw no sign of this.

  Thinking to turn from dark thoughts to light and from awkwardness to delightful speculation, I began to compose in my mind the note I would send Dickie directly the inspector was gone. How surprised he will be!

  Suddenly Sobriety was with us and shutting the door behind her, while the inspector was on his feet until she had sat down. He smiled again, this time at Sobriety, looking from beneath his eyebrows and then dropping his eyes when sh
e glanced up and down.

  ‘I hope you are well, Miss Mullins, and recovered from the excitements of yesterday?’ I watched Sobriety wave away the inspector’s concern with a little movement of her hand.

  He has come so very far to pay his call on us. And then I saw, suddenly, as if I were myself the inspector, the shape of Sobriety’s face and how it settled after smiling without fuss into its accustomed oval, her eyes steady, aware and stoical; how the smoothed darkness of her hair sat above the dusky grey and rose of her gown, how the bow of her lips had strength and warmth, were soft and curled with ready humour. I glanced back at the inspector, though his attention had turned so completely from me and to Sobriety.

  ‘Ladies, I too have come by especially to thank you for your heroic efforts.’ This time he included me in his glance.

  I said, ‘Oh, hardly that,’ and Sobriety and I laughed, self-

  conscious, leaning toward each other and each slightly pink. I once again regarded myself in my mind’s eye and wondered at the difference in my response to the inspector from that to Mr Farquharson. Mr Hadley would have scoffed at the inspector’s station in life—and would no doubt have had something to say about the man being seated in our drawing room. And yet, the inspector was likeable and made me comfortable, to confess the truth, in my own house. And something of this sense at least, I realised, was due to relief at Mr Farquharson’s having departed, taking his resemblance to Mr Hadley with him, though he had so flattered me with his invitation.

  ‘Nay, if only all of our citizens were as sharp-eyed and willing. Although…’ He glanced up at Sobriety again and waggled his head. ‘Of course, I would also argue that ladies need take care a situation will not overwhelm them.’

  ‘This was no matter for concern, since there was only one very small malefactor and three of us—and one of us a man,’ Sobriety said at last, for he did seem to be addressing her above all. She looked quickly at me, for there was a sense between us—at least I felt it to be so—that we each continued to protect the girl, at least a little. Sobriety’s attention then flicked back to the inspector, perhaps lest he interpret for himself our shared glance.