Eliza’s Daughter

by Joan Aiken

  ‘You opened a bottle of wine! You had no leave to do that!’

  ‘There was no water in the house fit to drink.’

  He started a long harangue about the need for economy and respect for other people’s property. In the middle of it I simply walked away; I have never seen any value in argument with obstinate fixed ideas, and if ever there was a man with set ideas Edward Ferrars was that man. You might as well try to shift a granite gatepost.

  So, instead, I brought him a basin of chicken broth and a bannock which I had baked over the fire. (Fortunately the pantry, where the sacks of flour were stored, lay up two stone steps at the back of the house, and had escaped the flood; unfortunately it had become a refuge for mice.) There had been no time, as yet, to set dough a-rising.

  Mr Ferrars ate without comment for a while. Then he said, ‘But this is meat broth. Whence had you the meat?’

  ‘I killed a fowl.’

  ‘You killed a fowl? Were there not potatoes – turnips – carrots – in the store?’

  There had been; many of them rotten; these I had flung out to the dejected poultry, along with seventeen little pots of rancid dripping, and various crocks of sour milk and hideous mouldy lumps, nature unknown.

  I contented myself with saying that Mrs Ferrars needed the extra nourishment. Even in Byblow Bottom, where living was scant enough, I had never seen anybody closer to death from hunger, thirst and neglect.

  He gave a defeated sigh, passing his grimy coat-sleeve across his forehead, then stood and said, ‘I will retire now.’

  ‘I have made you up a bed, sir, in Cerne’s room; I believe Cousin Elinor will do better if she is alone and can sleep undisturbed.’ Ignoring his frown, I continued, ‘Where is Cerne, by the by?’

  ‘She went to nurse her sister – who had the fever – Cerne took it as well. I have just come back from burying them.’

  (Later I learned that he had also conducted two more funerals that day, and had sat at three death-beds.)

  ‘That is bad news,’ I said. ‘I am very sorry. Cerne was a kind person. Cousin Elinor will miss her greatly.’

  To this he made no reply, but said: ‘I must be at the church at five minutes to seven tomorrow to conduct the early service. Will you see that I am called in good time?’

  I nodded, and returned to the kitchen to set oatmeal and water in a pot over a banked-up fire, which I hoped would stay in all night. Sal had long ago trailed away homewards; I had made myself up a bed in Nell’s room, which was where I had slept on my previous visit.

  ***

  Next day, by great good fortune, Mr Grisewood the lawyer chanced to visit Delaford on business connected with the Manor House estate. He called at the parsonage, asking for Edward Ferrars, who was miles distant at the time, by the bedside of a stricken parishioner.

  Mr Grisewood made no attempt to conceal his dismay at the desolation in the village. ‘Merciful heavens! I had heard about the flood but had no notion it was half so bad! I must write to the Colonel directly. He would wish to be informed.’

  ‘Oh sir! Do you know where Colonel Brandon is at this present?’

  He hesitated. ‘No, my dear Miss FitzWilliam – it is true that we are not precisely certain. But we did have a communication, some months ago – it had taken that long again to reach us – announcing the Colonel’s intention to break his voyage and make a stay at Lisbon, before returning to this country. I shall write to him at Lisbon in care of the British Envoy there. He should know about matters here in the village. He may wish to return without further delay.’

  ‘That had not been his intention?’

  ‘No, I believe he had thoughts of rejoining his regiment.’

  ‘In the meantime, sir, do you think some funds might be advanced to provide assistance for people in the village?’ I had been through the village that morning, to find if any help might be procurable for the stricken parsonage. But I had found all other households in the same condition, or worse. I said to Mr Grisewood: ‘Their need is very acute. All their provisions were carried away in the flood, or rotted in the water. And the fever has killed many.’

  I did not add that Mr and Mrs Ferrars were almost as needy as their parishioners, but, on his promising to provide help, resolved to see to it that the occupants of the parsonage received their fair share of whatever was forthcoming.

  The Colonel, it seemed, had made provision before his departure in case of some such disaster (floods here were not uncommon, though this one was unusually severe); Mr Grisewood promised that coals, clothing and a stock of food should be sent from Dorchester directly.

  ‘Is it permitted to see Mrs Ferrars?’ he then asked.

  I said I thought this might be possible. Today she was more collected; had recognized me, after a few puzzled moments, had submitted to be bathed, and have her hair combed, had eaten a spoonful or two of porridge.

  Mr Grisewood came from her bedside looking shocked to death.

  ‘I must say – good gad! – it is fortunate, Miss FitzWilliam, that you arrived here when you did. Otherwise – I hardly like to think – why in the world did not Ferrars apprise me of the situation?’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘He has been worked almost to a standstill – out on his visits all the hours of daylight. And,’ I said moderately, ‘he has a great deal of pride.’

  ‘Stupid fellow,’ muttered Grisewood.

  He looked as if he expected to be offered some refreshment. I remembered the tiny glasses from that former visit. I said, ‘Can I offer you a glass of cider, sir? – Mr Ferrars has very little wine left, and what there is he – he reserves for emergencies.’

  Mr Grisewood’s expression suggested that he had tasted that cider before. ‘No, I thank you, my dear. I must be on my way. Perhaps I may chance to come across Mr Ferrars on my ride.—By the way, where is old Mrs Dashwood?’

  ‘I understand, sir, that she had gone to stay with a connection of the family – Sir John Middleton – very fortunately some weeks before the flood, and Sir John sent a message to say that she should stay with him until matters were in better train.’

  He nodded. ‘Ay, ay, Sir John is very good-hearted, he’ll keep the old lady as long as necessary.—I wonder, Miss FitzWilliam, if I might entrust you with the key of the Manor House at this time? I had meant to leave it with Mr Ferrars but – burdened as he is with so many cares at present – and you seem like a young lady with her head on her shoulders. (Indeed, it is most fortunate that matters have turned out as they have.)’

  I thought of Lord Harry ffinch-ffrench and my tarnished reputation in Bath. I did not allude to Bath, but said civilly that I would be happy to serve Mr Grisewood in any way that was required.

  ‘The Colonel plans to sell a piece of property. Since he has no heir, he has decided – well, that need not concern you. But I may need some estate maps, which are kept in his business room at the Manor. If I send a messenger out from Dorchester, could you be so obliging as to look them out for me if it becomes necessary?’

  I promised to do so, if given specific directions; Mr Grisewood bowed, appeared inclined to pat my cheek, but thought better of it and merely said, ‘I am very glad that you are here, Miss FitzWilliam,’ and took his leave.

  Mr Ferrars did not make any allusion to Mr Grisewood’s visit until two or three days later, when the stocks of coal and food had arrived and been distributed. Then he said coldly, ‘I understand that Mr Grisewood entrusted you with the key of the Manor, Miss FitzWilliam?’

  ‘Yes, sir, since you were out at the time. It hangs there, on the hook over the kitchen mantel.’

  – That Mr Ferrars did not at all like me, I was well aware. His dislike seemed to increase daily, but he kept it most thoroughly within check. The manifold and complex causes for this antipathy I did not try to disentwine. He was a difficult, disappointed man; something had gone badly amiss far back in his life; h
e seemed to have warm feelings for nobody, except his wife, to whom he was attached by a strong, gloomy, longstanding bond; in all other areas he steered his course by the star of Duty. The villagers, I had found, were not particularly fond of him, but they did very completely trust him and respected him as a good, if not a likeable man.

  ‘Oh,’ he mumbled now, looking at the key. ‘Um. Well. Yes, I daresay it may as well hang there.—Have the families at Crouch End been supplied with coals and fodder?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Amos Pollard carried them down in the farm cart.’

  Amos Pollard was the old man who took care of Edward Ferrars’ three emaciated cows.

  ‘How is my wife this evening?’

  ‘She finds herself a little better. She is able to read.’

  ‘Read . . . She would be better employed at her devotions.’

  ‘She has time for them as well,’ I said shortly.

  In fact for the past twenty-four hours, on a sustaining diet of eggnog and broth, Elinor Ferrars had been far more alert.

  ‘Where is Cerne?’ was one of the first questions she asked, and I saw no profit in concealment. Elinor, I judged, was a strong character; and so it proved. She sighed, and said she hoped that Cerne had gone to well-deserved joy and rest in the hereafter; the household had been undeservingly blest to have had her for so long.

  Little by little, as the days passed, I disclosed to Elinor the full state of affairs in Delaford. Luckily, by now, matters were on the mend; in the March breezes the mud was drying; those who were going to die of the fever had done so, and the rest, like Elinor, were slowly on the way to recovery. Edward Ferrars’ daily duties were not quite so arduous, or so painful. But still, he was out of the house during most of the daylight hours, and Elinor and I had time for long, meandering conversations. I grew, in those days, to have a considerable affection and respect for her. She, like her husband, was activated by a strong sense of Duty, but this was modified by a certain dry humour, apparent only now and then in brief subterranean murmurs – and never in the presence of her husband.

  ‘Do you –’ she asked tentatively, one day, while I was holding wool for her to wind – ‘I assume you must, since you have remained with her for over four years – do you deal comfortably with my aunt Montford Jebb?’

  I considered.

  ‘Comfortably? I am not sure. But reasonably, decently – yes. She has her quirks. And I respect them. She is not a tyrant. So long as the household runs according to her taste.’ After a moment I added, ‘And it is her household, after all.’

  ‘Are you warm enough? Well fed?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, and thought, warmer, better fed than you, poor devil.

  Very awkwardly, reddening a little, without raising her eyes from the wool, Elinor asked, ‘Do you by any chance know – has my aunt ever given you any indication – as to how she – as to her testamentary dispositions?’

  And I know who put you up to that question, thought I; it is not one that you yourself would ever in this world have asked; it is the voice of Edward Ferrars that I am hearing.

  And in some pity for her embarrassment I answered quickly, ‘No, Cousin Elinor, Mrs Jebb has never given me any firm indication of her intentions.’ Suppressing memories of various sour allusions to ‘folk spending their lives in expectations of dead men’s shoes,’ I added, ‘But her way of life is tolerably frugal. I do not believe that she has a large fortune.’

  Elinor made no reply. Perhaps she was hoping that a miserly way of life might denote handsome savings. I wished I could repeat to her in so many words Mrs Jebb’s statement, ‘They may as well know they can have no claims on my future consideration.’ But that seemed too harsh in her present state of enfeeblement. I said, ‘I think – I think you would be wise not to base any strong hopes on her goodwill.’

  A sigh was Elinor’s only rejoinder. She said irrelevantly, ‘It is queer, I talk to you so much more, and more easily, than I have with Nell.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you have lost the habit, perhaps. Nell seems to be at home so seldom.’

  ‘Never if she can avoid it.’

  Nell, I thought, prefers a snug berth.

  It seemed to me that Elinor missed her sister very much. More than her daughter. So many reminiscences, stories, illustrations coming from her began with ‘Marianne says –’ or ‘Marianne always used to –’ From these I constructed a picture of a lively, passionate, poetic person, quite different from Elinor herself.—And this Marianne had married a man almost twenty years her senior and had gone to the Indies with him. Why?

  It also, by degrees, became clear to me, during this period, that Edward Ferrars, although he went to great lengths to suppress the emotion in himself, nourished a decided resentment against his brother- and sister-in-law up at the Manor. Again, Why? Because they had so much and he so little? Because they were able to go off to the Indies, leaving him to look after the village, deal with floods and disasters and sickness, on a barely adequate stipend? – And yet Colonel Brandon, by all accounts, was a benevolent, well-disposed man – surely he could have made better provision? I noticed that if ever Edward Ferrars found himself obliged to refer to ‘the Manor’ he did so with a wry mouth and disparaging tone.

  ***

  When, after four or five days, Elinor began to appear more like the person I remembered, she surprised me, one afternoon, by asking me to look in a box in her clothes chest – for which she produced a key – and pass her out a bundle of papers.

  ‘No, not that one,’ she said, giving me back the bundle I first handed her. ‘It is tied with green ribbon and has the name Charlotte on the first page.’

  I found it – there were half a dozen in the box – and carried it to her – she still in bed but now propped up against pillows. The package was several inches thick. All the pages were covered in her spiky handwriting.

  ‘Is it a novel?’ I asked, curiosity overcoming good manners.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered – sighing, smiling, musing. ‘As you may see, I have written several . . . Charlotte was the second. I still think it the best. And it occurred to me that now, while I am laid by the leg, might be a good time to revise and make a fair copy.—Not that I entertain very high hopes of publication. But oh, a little extra money would be so useful!’

  I was immensely impressed by her industry and inventiveness. And somehow, in Elinor, it seemed so unexpected.

  ‘Does Mr Ferrars know? Has he read them?’

  ‘Good gracious me, no! He never reads novels. In fact he considers them vulgar, trivial things.’

  Indeed, I had noticed that as soon as we heard his characteristic slam of the front door she would slip the page she was working on under a sheet of blotting paper and replace it with a half-written letter to her sister, mother or daughter.

  ‘Do you know the names of any publishers, Cousin Elinor?’ I asked her.

  ‘If only my brother-in-law were at home! He is a reading man, a literary man, he would advise me. But my sister used to read novels and had several up at the Manor. I thought that I could take the address of one off the title-page. Chapman & Hall are names that I remember.’

  I asked if I might read the manuscript, and took it away to my bedroom, where I devoured it in a couple of evenings.

  ‘– Cousin Elinor, I think you are so clever! How did you invent such a tale, all out of your own head? The people are so alive – and their talk is so amusing! Those two dreadful vulgar sisters, who put upon poor Miss Charlotte so – and the funny old lady – and the stupid coxcomb, who thinks of nothing but his snuffbox – and the miserly couple, always resolved not to part with a single penny! You must have been in society a great deal, to strike them all off so shrewdly?’

  ‘No – no,’ she said, sighing. ‘Just the once.—But that was enough. You may meet such folk anywhere – not just in society.’

  I realized that th
is was true. There were plenty in Bath.

  ‘But truly, Cousin Elinor, I do think you should have it published. It is so very entertaining. Much more so than many of the novels that Mrs Jebb reads.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘in our present straits – which I will not deny are exceptional – any addition to our income would certainly be an advantage. Even Edward might be brought to agree.—I believe you intend to visit the Manor today, to find some maps for Mr Grisewood?’

  ‘Yes, I had planned to go this afternoon, after the flannel petticoats have been distributed.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Elinor, ‘I would be greatly obliged if, while you are there, you would walk into my sister Marianne’s boudoir (which is the room at the east end on the first floor, overlooking the rose garden), take a look at the books on the shelf, and write down for me the addresses of some publishers. That would not be a nuisance?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  On my visits to the kitchen in New King Street I had by degrees absorbed various of the culinary arts of Mrs Rachel the cook. These I was now imparting to Mrs Ashcott, a poor woman who had lost her husband and son in the recent fever epidemic, and was glad enough to have some work and distraction. After she, under instruction, had made a nourishing broth for the noon meal, and after Edward and Elinor had partaken of it, and he had ridden off to admonish various widely distributed parishioners, I made my way up to Delaford Manor.

  I had, I will not deny, long been curious to visit the abode of Colonel and Mrs Marianne Brandon, for several reasons, not least because a lofty brick wall and many clumps of trees protected the Manor from casual view; only its roof could partially be glimpsed among the treetops. Walking up the driveway that ascended to it, I found that it was a large, old-fashioned residence, built at least two hundred years ago. An orchard lay to the right, an enclosed garden to the left. The windows were mullioned, the brick-arched doorway was low and massive. The front door, however, opened readily enough to my great key, and I stepped inside with all those breathless feelings of awe, hesitancy, the guilt of being an uninvited trespasser, that accompany such a penetration into the abode of strangers who are not themselves present.