More Deadly than the Male

by Graeme Davis

  One day, the child came crying to our house. It was the old story; aunt Dorothy had been so unkind to aunt Annabella! The little girl said she would run away to India, and tell her uncle the general, and seemed in such a paroxysm of anger, and grief, and despair, that a sudden thought came over me. I thought I would try and teach her something of the deep sorrow that lies awaiting all at some part of their lives, and of the way in which it ought to be borne, by telling her of Miss Phillis’s love and endurance for her wasteful, handsome nephew. So from little, I got to more, and I told her all; the child’s great eyes filling slowly with tears, which brimmed over and came rolling down her cheeks unnoticed as I spoke. I scarcely needed to make her promise not to speak about all this to any one. She said, “I could not—no! not even to aunt Annabella.” And to this day she never has named it again, not even to me; but she tried to make herself more patient, and more silently helpful in the strange household among whom she was cast.

  By-and-by, Miss Morton grew pale, and grey, and worn, amid all her stiffness. Mrs. Turner whispered to us that for all her stern, unmoved looks, she was ill unto death; that she had been secretly to see the great doctor at Drumble; and he had told her she must set her house in order. Not even her sisters knew this; but it preyed upon Mrs. Turner’s mind and she told us. Long after this, she kept up her week of discipline with Miss Cordelia; and walked in her straight, soldier-like way about the village, scolding people for having too large families, and burning too much coal, and eating too much butter. One morning she sent Mrs. Turner for her sisters; and, while she was away, she rummaged out an old locket made of the four Miss Mortons’ hair when they were all children; and, threading the eye of the locket with a piece of brown ribbon, she tied it round Cordelia’s neck, and kissing her, told her she had been a good girl, and had cured herself of stooping; that she must fear God and honour the king; and that now she might go and have a holiday. Even while the child looked at her in wonder at the unusual tenderness with which this was said, a grim spasm passed over her face, and Cordelia ran in affright to call Mrs. Turner. But when she came, and the other two sisters came, she was quite herself again. She had her sisters in her room alone when she wished them good-by; so no one knows what she said, or how she told them (who were thinking of her as in health) that the signs of near-approaching death, which the doctor had foretold, were upon her. One thing they both agreed in saying—and it was much that Miss Dorothy agreed in anything—that she bequeathed her sitting-room, up the two steps, to Miss Annabella as being next in age. Then they left her room crying, and went both together into Miss Annabella’s room, sitting hand in hand (for the first time since childhood I should think), listening for the sound of the little hand-bell which was to be placed close by her, in case, in her agony, she required Mrs. Turner’s presence. But it never rang. Noon became twilight. Miss Cordelia stole in from the garden with its long, black, green shadows, and strange eerie sounds of the night wind through the trees, and crept to the kitchen fire. At last Mrs. Turner knocked at Miss Morton’s door, and hearing no reply, went in and found her cold and dead in her chair.

  I suppose that some time or other we had told them of the funeral the old squire had; Miss Phillis’s father, I mean. He had had a procession of tenantry half-a-mile long to follow him to the grave. Miss Dorothy sent for me to tell her what tenantry of her brother’s could follow Miss Morton’s coffin; but what with people working in mills, and land having passed away from the family, we could but muster up twenty people, men and women and all; and one or two were dirty enough to be paid for their loss of time.

  Poor Miss Annabella did not wish to go into the room up two steps; nor yet dared she stay behind; for Miss Dorothy, in a kind of spite for not having had it bequeathed to her, kept telling Miss Annabella it was her duty to occupy it; that it was Miss Sophronia’s dying wish, and that she should not wonder if Miss Sophronia were to haunt Miss Annabella, if she did not leave her warm room, full of ease and sweet scent, for the grim north-east chamber. We told Mrs. Turner we were afraid Miss Dorothy would lord it sadly over Miss Annabella, and she only shook her head; which, from so talkative a woman, meant a great deal. But, just as Miss Cordelia had begun to droop, the general came home, without any one knowing he was coming. Sharp and sudden was the word with him. He sent Miss Cordelia off to school; but not before she had had time to tell us that she loved her uncle dearly, in spite of his quick, hasty ways. He carried his sisters off to Cheltenham; and it was astonishing how young they made themselves look before they came back again. He was always here, there, and everywhere: and very civil to us into the bargain; leaving the key of the Hall with us whenever they went from home. Miss Dorothy was afraid of him, which was a blessing, for it kept her in order, and really I was rather sorry when she died; and, as for Miss Annabella, she fretted after her till she injured her health, and Miss Cordelia had to leave school to come and keep her company. Miss Cordelia was not pretty; she had too sad and grave a look for that; but she had winning ways, and was to have her uncle’s fortune some day, so I expected to hear of her being soon snapped up. But the general said her husband was to take the name of Morton; and what did my young lady do but begin to care for one of the great mill-owners at Drumble, as if there were not all the lords and commons to choose from besides? Mrs. Turner was dead; and there was no one to tell us about it; but I could see Miss Cordelia growing thinner and paler every time they came back to Morton Hall; and I longed to tell her to pluck up a spirit, and he above a cotton-spinner. One day, not half a year before the general’s death, she came to see us, and told us, blushing like a rose, that her uncle had given his consent; and so, although “he” had refused to take the name of Morton, and had wanted to marry her without a penny, and without her uncle’s leave, it had all come right at last, and they were to be married at once; and their house was to be a kind of home for her aunt Annabella, who was getting tired of being perpetually on the ramble with the general.

  “Dear old friends!” said our young lady, “you must like him. I am sure you will; he is so handsome, and brave, and good. Do you know, he says a relation of his ancestors lived at Morton Hall in the time of the Commonwealth.”

  “His ancestors,” said Ethelinda. “Has he got ancestors? That’s one good point about him, at any rate. I didn’t know cotton-spinners had ancestors.”

  “What is his name?” asked I.

  “Mr. Marmaduke Carr,” said she, sounding each r with the old Northumberland burr, which was softened into a pretty pride and effort to give distinctness to each letter of the beloved name.

  “Carr,” said I, “Carr and Morton! Be it so! It was prophesied of old!” But she was too much absorbed in the thought of her own secret happiness to notice my poor sayings.

  He was and is a good gentleman; and a real gentleman, too. They never lived at Morton Hall. Just as I was writing this, Ethelinda came in with two pieces of news. Never again say I am superstitious! There is no one living in Morton that knows the tradition of Sir John Morton and Alice Carr; yet the very first part of the Hall the Drumble builder has pulled down is the old stone dining-parlour where the great dinner for the preachers mouldered away—flesh from flesh, crumb from crumb! And the street they are going to build right through the rooms through which Alice Carr was dragged in her agony of despair at her husband’s loathing hatred, is to be called Carr Street.

  And Miss Cordelia has got a baby; a little girl; and writes in pencil two lines at the end of her husband’s note, to say she means to call it Phillis.

  Phillis Carr! I am glad he did not take the name of Morton. I like to keep the name of Phillis Morton in my memory very still and unspoken.

  *Following the Battle of Worcester (pron. “Wooster”) in 1651, the future King Charles II hid in an oak tree to avoid the Roundheads; oak became a Royalist symbol thereafter.

  †A nickname for Oliver Cromwell, derived from “Oliver” in the same way that “Ned” is derived from “Edward.”

  ‡Lambs whose mother
s died in delivery, and which were reared by hand.

  A GHOST STORY

  by Ada Trevanion

  1858

  Little is known about Ada Trevanion. Online genealogy sources say she was born in 1829 at Bifrons House in Kent, and died in 1882. An obituary—in the Parsons Daily News of Parsons, Kansas, of all places—says she was “the daughter of Henry Trevanion and of Byron’s half-sister, Georgiana Augusta Leigh,” which accords with the information from genealogy sites. In 1829, Bifrons House was home to Byron’s estranged wife and their daughter Augusta (Ada), better known today as Ada Lovelace, the mother of computer programming. The London Gazette of May 8, 1866, mentions Georgiana’s death and the passing of her estate to Ada: amusingly to American readers, the law firm handling the probate is named as Booty and Butts, of Gray’s Inn in London.

  If the woman herself is something of a mystery, at least some of her work remains to us. She published a sizable collection of poetry, titled Poems, in 1858: The Saturday Review for November 27 of that year called it “a good specimen of what mediocre poetry really is.” Whatever that reviewer’s opinion, Ada’s poetry continued to be published in great quantity, in magazines such as The Illustrated Magazine, the Ladies’ Companion and Monthly Magazine, The New Monthly Bell Assemblée, The Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance, and The Keepsake.

  Her fiction is considerably more elusive. “Judge not, that ye be not Judged” appeared in the Ladies’ Companion and Monthly Magazine, 1855, and “A Lover’s Quarrel,” in The Home Circle, 1849: both appear to be conventional stories, aimed at the magazines’ predominantly female readerships.

  “A Ghost Story” is also very feminine in nature, dealing with the relationship between a teacher and pupil at a girls’ boarding school. Some feminist commentators have seen hints of a homoerotic side to this relationship, but that may be in the eye of the beholder: the text itself suggests a respectful friendship rather than romance, and a trust which leads the ghost to place responsibility for her family’s future in the hands of the protagonist.

  I will relate to you (said my friend Ruth Irvine), the whole history, from the beginning to the end:

  Some years ago my father sent me to Woodford House—a ladies’ school at Taunton, in Somersetshire, of which a Mrs. Wheeler was the principal. The school had fallen off, before I went, from fifty pupils to thirty; yet the establishment was in many respects a superior one, and the masters were very efficient.

  Mrs. Wheeler and a parlour-boarder, with the two teachers, Madame Dubois and Miss Winter, and we thirty girls, composed the household. Miss Winter, the English teacher, slept in a small room adjoining ours, walked out with us, and never left us. She was about twenty-seven years of age, and had soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description. They were of a greenish brown, and, with the least emotion, seemed to fill, as it were, with light, like the flashing brilliancy of moonshine upon water. At half-past six in the morning it was her duty to call us, and about seven we came down-stairs. We practised our scales, and looked over the lessons we had prepared the evening before, till half-past eight, when Mrs. Wheeler and Madame Dubois made their appearance; then prayers were read, and after that we had breakfast of coffee, and solid squares of bread and butter, which was very good the first part of the week. Breakfast over, Mrs. Wheeler took her seat at the head of the table, and the business commenced.

  Mrs. Wheeler was a tall, stout person, with a loud voice, and a very authoritative manner. She paid assiduous attention to our deportment, and we were often assured that she was gradually falling a victim to the task of entreating us to hold up our heads.

  Madame Dubois was a little old, shrivelled woman, with a very irascible temper. She wore a turban on her head, and kept cotton in her ears, and mumbled her language all to mash. At one o’clock Mrs. Wheeler shut up her desk, and sailed out of the room, while we proceeded up-stairs to dress for our walk. The dinner was ready on our return at three. This was a plain meal, soon over; and after it Miss Winter took Mrs. Wheeler’s place at the long table, and presided over our studies until tea at seven. I thought this interval the pleasantest part of the day, for Miss Winter was clever, and took great pains where she saw intelligence, or a desire to learn. I was less with her, however, than many of the girls, because, as one of the elder pupils, I was expected by Mrs. Wheeler to practise on the piano for at least three hours daily. The study was a large, uncarpeted room, with a view of a spacious flower-garden. Some part of most fine spring and summer days was spent in this garden. I liked being there better than going for a walk, because we were not compelled to keep together. I used to take a book, and, when the weather was not too cold, I sat much near a fountain, under the shade of a laburnum-tree which hung over it. I wonder if the fountain and laburnum-tree are there still?

  Woodford House was rather famous for mysterious inmates. There was Mrs. Sparkes, the parlour-boarder, who always took her breakfast in her room, and was rumoured to have come by sea from a distant part of the earth, where she and the late Captain Sparkes (her husband) had rolled in gold. It was understood that if she had her rights, she would be worth ten thousand a year. I am afraid she had them not, for I suspect her usual income amounted to little more than one hundred. She was very good-natured, and we all liked her; but our vague association of her with the sea, and storms, and coral reefs, occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as her history. Then there was a fair pale girl, with bright curling hair, who, found out, or thought we found out, was the daughter of a Viscount, who did not like her. She was a very suggestive topic; as was a young Italian, who had in her possession a real dagger, which many of us believed she always carried about her. But I think all these were outshone, on the whole, by Miss Winter, who never talked about her relations, called at the post-office for her letters, in order that they might not be brought to the school; and, further, had a small oak wardrobe in her room, the key of which she wore around her neck. What a life she had with some of the girls! and how lonely she was, too! for she belonged neither to Mrs. Wheeler nor to us; and it was impossible to be on very friendly terms with Madame Dubois.

  Poor Miss Winter! I never troubled her with impertinent questions—and perhaps she felt grateful to me for my forbearance; for my companions, one and all, declared that she “favoured Ruth Irvine.” I was not popular among them, because I studied on half-holidays, and in the hour before bed-time, when we were left to our own devices. They tried to laugh me out of this; but they couldn’t; so they hated me as school-girls only can hate, and revenged themselves by saying that “my father was poor, and I was, for this reason, anxious to make the most of my time while at Woodford House.” This taunt was intended to inflict severe mortification, as a profound respect for wealth pervaded the school, which was, of course, derived from its head.

  I suspect I over-studied at this period, for I became a martyr to excruciating headache, which prevented me from sleeping at night; and I had, besides, all kinds of awkward habits and nervous affections. Oh! Mrs. Wheeler’s earnest endeavours to make me graceful; her despair of my elbows; her hopelessness in my shoulders, and her glare of indignation at my manner of entering a room!

  I spent the summer vacation this year at Woodford House, for my father was abroad, and I had no relation kind enough to take pity on my homeless state, I was very dispirited; and my depression so much increased the low, nervous fever which was hanging about me, that I was compelled for some days, to keep my bed. Miss Winter nursed me of her own accord, and was like a sister to me. Now that the other girls were gone, she was quite communicative. I learnt that she was an orphan, and had a brother and three sisters, all younger than herself, who were used to consult her on every occasion of importance. I liked to hear about them much: I believed them to be wonders of talent and kindness. The brother was a clerk in some mercantile house in London: the sisters were being educated at a school for the daughters of military men. The affection which united her to this brother and
these sisters seemed to me to be stronger than either death or life.

  The teacher’s holidays never began until long after ours; but in the summer vacation they were allowed to take pedestrian excursions; and Miss Winter would return from these to my sick chamber, laden with mosses and wildflowers. I used to feel it a great consolation, amidst the neglect and contempt of others, that she was attached to me. When the day for her departure came, she gave me “Coleridge’s Rhymes of the Ancient Mariner;” and I was to keep it always, and never to forget her if I never saw her again. I do not think she spoke thus because she felt any foreboding of ill, for she was very happy in her quiet way; but she never allowed herself to look forward with much hope to the future. I got a letter from her, to say that she had arrived safely at her brother’s lodging in the City, and was going to Dover, where her sisters were staying, and begging me not to fret for her sake. I tried to be cheerful, but time passed wearily without her. Every morning, at breakfast, I heard for the twentieth time of Miss Nash, who so appreciated the advantage of spending the vacation with such a person as Mrs. Wheeler, that she could scarcely be induced to leave Woodford House. She never complained that the piano in the back-parlour had several dumb notes, or that Rollin’s “Ancient History” was not the most cheerful specimen of polite literature. It was uncharitable; but I couldn’t help it—I hated Miss Nash. The latter part of the day was more agreeable: I was usually invited to tea and supper by Mrs. Sparkes, and was regaled in the front-parlour with seed-cake and rolls, likewise with currant-wine. I should have enjoyed these entertainments exceedingly, but I had written a poem in four cantos, in which the late Captain Sparkes figured as a pirate, and was shot for a voluminous catalogue of atrocities; and this secret lay like a load of lead on my mind, and prevented me from feeling at my ease with Mrs. Sparkes. It was after an evening spent with this lady, and in the absence of Mrs. Wheeler, who had gone to London to arrange about receiving a new pupil, that—that it first happened.