by Joan Aiken
The place was dusty and deathly cold. A caretaker had been appointed but he, like so many others, had perished in the recent epidemic, and no successor had yet been found. I ran up the broad, shallow oak staircase, hoping that the upper floor might not be so chilly, and found my way along a wide passage-way to Marianne’s sitting room. This had been made inviting with modern furniture, chintz curtains, shelves of books, many water-colours on the walls (chiefly by Marianne herself, I guessed, recognizing local scenes) and a piano. The windows looked out over the enclosed garden, which contained a great mulberry tree and a yew-arbour. It was a pleasant room, and I imagined how the sisters must have spent many hours here together, on spring mornings or autumn afternoons, talking, reading, perhaps playing duets or singing. More and more I began to realize what a loss Marianne’s company must be to her sister. Somehow, hitherto, I had found in myself a prejudice against Marianne Brandon; she possessed so much, and her sister so little; but now I began to feel a sympathy for her, wondered if she was homesick, if she missed Elinor, how she had occupied herself in the Indies, or, now, perhaps, in Portugal? Did she not long for her books, her piano, her sheltered rose garden with the mulberry tree in the corner?
Hurriedly, feeling like an interloper, I jotted down the addresses from the title-pages of various novels. (Why did not Elinor borrow some of them? Surely Marianne could have not the slightest objection?)
As I closed the first volume of Evelina, a paper fell out from between the pages.
It was a drawing – a pencil portrait by the same hand that had created many of the pictures on the walls.—It was a portrait of a man, a young man with dark hair, brilliant black eyes, a sensitive mouth and a handsome, lofty forehead partially concealed by a soft windblown lock of hair.—I found myself studying this unexpected trove with a strange intensity. The fact that it had been tucked away between the pages of a book, rather than displayed in a frame on the wall, seemed to suggest that it had a special significance for its owner. Could it be Colonel Brandon? But no, his likeness, along with that of his wife, hung in the rectory parlour; Colonel Brandon’s hair was brown, not black, and somewhat receding; his eyes were of a greyish tint, not dark and sparkling; so this could not even be a portrait of him at a younger age. Besides, Marianne had not known him at a younger age; he had already been five-and-thirty, Elinor told me, when her sister met him. And I was sure the likeness had been taken by the hand of Marianne, it resembled the portraits of Elinor and Mrs Dashwood on the walls.—No, this was certainly not Colonel Brandon. I peered more closely at the drawing, to see if any further clue to the identity of the handsome stranger might be discovered, and was almost able to convince myself that I detected a hastily scratched letter W among the ruffles of the cuff at the foot. Had the Dashwood sisters any acquaintance whose name began with a W? I would ask Elinor, if I found a suitable opportunity. I found in myself a strange, an eager curiosity to know the identity of this person – among other reasons, because he bore a certain resemblance to my dear Mr Sam.—Then I laughed at myself, returning the portrait to its hiding-place. Descrying a resemblance to Mr Sam had put me in trouble once already.
Running downstairs, hastily, like a thief, I made for Colonel Brandon’s business room. It was here, Edward Ferrars had told me, that maps were kept.
On my way I passed the cellar entrance. ‘You might,’ Edward Ferrars had observed, stiffly, ‘you might, if you are up at the Manor, be so obliging as to check the cellars, to ascertain that flood-water has not seeped in. Do not omit to provide yourself with a candle.’
So – provided with candle – I checked the cellars. No flood-water, but wall after wall, rack upon rack of dusty bottles up to the brick-vaulted ceiling. Port, claret, Malaga. Constantia. Cognac. Diabolino. Why in the world, I wondered, when the village was dying from the effects of drinking filthy water, had not Edward Ferrars availed himself of this plenty?
I had half a mind to carry a couple of bottles back for the comfort and benefit of myself and Elinor. In the old Byblow Bottom days I would have done so without a second thought.
What prevented me? Some buried prohibition. I could not analyse it.
Up the stone steps again, blowing out the candle, I found my way into the large cold orderly office, with its big table and its maps, from which Colonel Brandon superintended the running of his property. It was so bleak, so dull, and yet it gave me a curious sense of comfort and security. In such a room as this, I thought, I too could run a business and feel useful.
Then, for the second time, I was brought up short.
For on the wall, behind the bare desk, hung two miniature oval portraits, framed in simple twists of gold. The pictures, at first glimpse, appeared to be of the same girl; until one realized that the two had different-coloured hair. One, with a serious countenance, was dark, like the portrait of Marianne Dashwood in the rectory; the other, Titian-coloured, smiling, could have been myself! I gazed at it for many minutes in total astonishment; then swiftly picked out the required maps, shut the business-room door and, trembling, crept away down the sloping drive and back to the parsonage.
There I discovered a most unwonted state of affairs.
Elinor, who for the past few days had risen and dressed herself in the afternoon, but still remained upstairs, had now ventured below and established herself in the parlour. Edward had returned home unusually early from his parish duties, and was with her. And they were in the midst of an argument.
‘I tell you, once and for all, I will not countenance it,’ I heard him say, coldly and flatly. ‘It would be wholly unbecoming. No right-minded person who is in any way connected with a clergyman in holy orders ought to be capable of even entertaining such an improper – such an ambition.’
He stopped short as I came round the screen which I had installed in order to prevent the worst draughts from blowing from the front door straight through the house to the kitchen.
‘Oh. It is you. You are back,’ he observed needlessly. ‘I see that you found the maps; I hope they are the right ones. Mr Grisewood’s messenger is waiting in the kitchen. You had best take them to him directly.’
When I came back from doing so, Edward had gone out into the garden, slamming the door behind him, as was his wont. He could be seen through the window, digging with great difficulty in the wet and heavy soil.
I said: ‘Cousin Elinor, you are not warmly enough dressed. You are shivering. Wait, and I will fetch you a thicker shawl. And the fire wants mending.’
Edward Ferrars, like most men, was incapable of maintaining a decent blaze. His frugality permitted no more than a handful of smouldering sticks. When I had fetched warmer wrappings (observing with concern that the calico gown Elinor had put on might have been made for somebody twice her girth) and had coaxed the fire into a mild radiance, I said, ‘I brought the addresses you asked for.’
She sighed. Her fine, careworn face did not change its expression. After a moment she answered, ‘I am afraid it was a wasted errand. Mr Ferrars will not consider such a scheme.’
‘He forbade you?’
My blood boiled within me. For two pins I would have run out into the garden and launched a furious tirade against the man, as he dug there, doggedly, in the cold wind. What right had he to frustrate his wife’s efforts? When they were intended for the benefit of both?
Elinor was going on soberly: ‘Edward, you see, has family in London. His mother – a wealthy society lady; his brother, his sister-in-law. They would not care for it to be known that any connection of theirs could be involved in such an activity as writing novels. And he is – he is a man of the cloth –’
‘There is nothing wrong in writing a novel! Think of Fanny Burney! She is a lady-in-waiting at Court – so I have heard.’
‘That would be no recommendation to Mr Ferrars.’
‘You could publish anonymously. “By a lady”. Many do that.’
‘Yes,’ she said
doubtfully. ‘But how would I convey the novel to the publisher? Or engage in correspondence? And I do not think I could – no, I could not – run flat counter to Edward’s wishes.’
‘But it is unfair!’
She gave me a long, candid look from her grey eyes, which seemed larger because of the shadowed hollows in which they were deeply sunk.
‘All of Edward’s life has been so very unfair, Eliza. He was the elder son of a wealthy parent, and yet, because of a wilful, vindictive act by his . . . by a member of his family, he received only a younger son’s portion, and a penurious portion at that. If it had not been for Colonel Brandon’s bounty, we should be beggars, Edward and I. And – and Edward finds it excessively hard, at any time, to accept favours. I do not repine at our situation here in Delaford, because I am so very fond of Marianne. She and I have no secrets from one another, and there can be no envy or rancour between us. Never, never. But Edward and the Colonel have – have little in common, except for a sense of rectitude. It grates on Edward to be obliged, continually, to receive aid and indulgences from the Manor. Just in order to survive.’
And not so many of them, I thought. Now I was sorry that I had not brought that bottle of Constantia wine.
‘Indulgence? What indulgence does he receive? He works harder than any bailiff.’
‘Eliza, it is no use. I am sorry now that I raised the subject. Let us talk of something else.’
I was longing to ask her who the young man might be – the subject of the portrait hidden between the pages of Evelina. But now some scruple prevented me. The handsome young man was Marianne’s secret, not mine; I could not betray her confidence.
So I said instead: ‘Cousin Elinor, who are the young ladies – one with dark hair, one of them with m-my c-colouring – in the two miniatures that hang on the wall above the desk in Colonel Brandon’s business room?’
Elinor appeared startled to death. ‘I have never been in that room – ’ she began. ‘I never had occasion to – when I was at the Manor – ’ talking rapidly, I could see, to bridge the gap while her thoughts raced. For it was plain that even if she had not been in the room, had not seen the miniatures, she knew, or could easily make a guess as to whom the subjects of those two portraits must be.
‘One of them was s-so like me!’ I stammered. ‘Cousin Elinor, could she – could she have been my mother? And – if so – who was the other one? Were they sisters?’
There followed a silence. Then she said, ‘Eliza, I am sorry. I am not at liberty to answer your questions. You will have to address them to Colonel Brandon.’
‘But how can I? He is not here!’
The door slammed. Edward Ferrars had come back into the house. We could hear him impatiently scraping his shoes with the brush by the kitchen door. Then he entered the parlour, wiping the wet off his hair.
‘It rains too hard to work outside any more. And there is somebody riding this way along the Bath road.’ He frowned. ‘It looks like Mrs Jebb’s servant Thomas.’
Chapter 7
In many ways, I was happy enough to be driving back to Bath with Thomas, catching a glimpse here and there of daffodils in cottage gardens, or a clump of primroses budding under a hedge.
Nobody enjoys feeling unwelcome, and I had felt so, more and more, latterly, in the presence of Edward Ferrars. His cold eye was singularly reluctant to meet mine; always a bad sign; I had heard him say several times to Elinor, ‘Surely we can manage without her now? You and Mrs Ashcott can surely manage?’ when he thought I was out of hearing. Which filled me with impotent rage, because I knew that Elinor would never contradict him, though she was still far from having made a return to complete health. I knew that without my vigilant eye about the house, fires would dwindle and die into ashes, linen would go unwashed, and evil-smelling little dishes of left-over food would begin to proliferate again in the larder, and would reappear on the dining-table as apologies for meals, because nobody in the kitchen had the resolution or the inventiveness to concoct more nourishing fare.
I had grown fond of Elinor, and believed that she deserved better at life’s hands than lonely privation shared with a gloomy, disappointed man. Learning that her daughter Nell had travelled south with the Lauderdales, and was again in their mansion in Berkeley Square, I seized the opportunity, when Elinor wrote to her, of enclosing a short note of my own, stating in firm terms that it was Nell’s plain duty to come down to Delaford for a period and take some of the burden off her mother’s shoulders.
(Meddling in other people’s affairs has never yet brought me any advantage – or them either, in general; but I never seem able to remind myself, beforehand, of this melancholy truth.)
In honest fact, I was glad to be leaving Delaford. I had grown very weary of the continual stench of mud, soaked thatch, and rotting vegetables. I had missed my music (the Ferrars’ piano, after standing for ten days in half an inch of water, would never be the same again), the singing, the teaching – even my lazy pupils. I had missed Mrs Jebb’s tart, hard-headed company, and the friendly gatherings in the kitchen with Mrs Rachel, Pullett and Thomas. Strange as it may seem, I had even missed Pug.
But the tidings of the New King Street household, now imparted by Thomas, filled me with dismay and apprehension.
‘Why I made bold for to come and fetch ye, Miss Liza,’ he explained as we drove along. ‘Missus ain’t been her old self, not nohow, since ye went away.—Or, to put it otherly – she have been her owd self.’
Thomas always found it difficult to express himself without laborious beating of the air. He had to drop the reins and clench his fists; luckily the horses were old and meek. ‘She’ve been the same way she were before, when she were Took.’
By ‘Took’ I knew he meant the time when she was committed to Ilchester jail for eight months awaiting trial for theft.
‘What was she like then, Thomas?’
‘Bad.’ He shook his head many times. ‘On the loddy. Brandy, too. Mr Jebb, poor gentleman, he couldn’t abide it, but there were no way to ease her mind, no way at all, save she kept on with the loddy. And, Lord bless ye! what a deal she did use to take! Two quarts a week, in double-distilled brandy. Made her right dull and dazed-like, I can tell ee, for days on end. Then – after it was brought in Not Guilty – she pulled herself up, like, and come right to rightabouts. But now – and it’s a fair trouble to us in the kitchen – she’m back on it agen, Miss Liza. I got to keep fetching her more and more from Mr Watkyns.’
Mr Watkyns was the druggist who kept the pharmacy on the corner of Cheap and Union Streets.
‘Oh, the devil, Thomas! Is she dull now, and dazed-like?’
‘Terrible, if you’ll believe me, Miss. I and Rachel and Pullett just hope that you can someway fetch her out of it.’
Well, I thought, with the confidence of youth, and why not? I had made myself thoroughly useful in Delaford, why not in Bath?
But the first sight of Mrs Jebb was enough to strike chill into my heart. And, previous to that, another trifling occurrence had disconcerted me very much: as I alit from the chaise in New King Street, taking great care not to jolt a basket of eggs I had brought from Delaford, I came face-to-face with Mrs Busby, chief of Mrs Jebb’s whist-playing cronies. To my dismay, she drew herself up, turned her face sharply away from me, and puttered hurriedly on down the street.
‘What’s amiss with her?’ I demanded of Thomas.
He looked troubled, but said, ‘Pullett’ll tell ye, Miss,’ leading the horses away to the livery stable.
Pullett said, ‘Go and see Missis first, love. And after, I’ll tell ye.’
So I went to see Mrs Jebb, who lay on the sofa in her parlour, with the shades pulled half down.
Her greeting was a compound of bitterness and sarcasm.
‘Humph. So you’ve deigned to come back, hey? Grown tired of your virtuous kin? Hey? Or did they show you the door?’
I said: ‘Ma’am, I am sorry to see you in such poor case. I had hoped to find you out of doors, enjoying this pleasant spring day.’
‘Hah! A fine chance of that I’d have, when all my friends give me the go-by. Show myself in the street? You’d think I had the pestilence!’
A dismal suspicion stirred in my breast. During the hard-driven weeks at Delaford, my encounter with Harry ffinch-ffrench and his friends had sunk to the bottom of my mind. Other matters were of greater moment. But was that wretched affair not lost to view, as I had fondly hoped?
‘Is all this my fault, ma’am?’
She went off at a tangent – as was often her way when she wished to administer a reprimand – launching into a mumbled tirade against cocksure, self-seeking, puffed-up folk who thought of nothing but displaying themselves in public even when their talents were nothing out of the common, and who required fine clothes and bedizenments – vanity, vanity – outrageous vanity. And to what end? For the applause of a lot of old quizzes, Puts, and fud-duds.
I saw that, while she was in this frame, there was no sense in opposing her with rational argument or excuses. She wished to castigate me – well then, let her, if it did her good.
‘Ma’am, I believe you are hungry,’ I said – for this was often the case, when she fell into this cantankerous mood – ‘Let me fetch you a biscuit and a glass of Constantia.’
‘Hah! You think to soft-soap me, girl. Well, you won’t!’ But she drank the wine when Pullett brought it – the biscuit she impatiently waved away – then sank into a sudden heavy sleep, which alarmed me, for she lay so very inert, snoring loudly.
