by Joan Aiken
‘What is all this about?’ demanded Nell, handing the paper back to me. She sounded puzzled and impatient. ‘I know nothing about writing novels. Why should you show this to me?’
‘The novel is by your mother,’ I said. ‘And she has five others hidden away in her bedroom chest.’
‘So?’
‘So she may be in a position to derive a handsome income from her writing. Life at Delaford Parsonage may in future not be on quite such a level of grinding poverty.—Provided, of course, that your father may be brought to accept the situation.’
‘That is not my affair,’ said Nell, even more impatient. ‘They must settle it for themselves.’
‘Don’t you want your mother to be a little more comfortable?’
‘What business, pray, is this of yours?’ she demanded.
‘Listen, Nell. You know that your grandmother is touched in her wits?’
‘Tiresome old biddy,’ muttered Nell. ‘What of it?’
‘Elinor – your mother – has a presentiment that she finds in herself signs of the same disorder. I do not know if she is correct in her guess. But she fears it, deeply. If she can profitably dispose of those six novels that she has written – with such labour, in secret – if she can do that, then she will be comfortably provided for, against – against such a dreadful contingency. There will be enough money for nurses, kind capable people to live in the house and take care of her. She need not fear a terrible old age of hardship and possible ill-usage. Do you see?’
Nell looked hunted. She said, ‘My aunt Marianne would help. She would be there. And Uncle Brandon.’
‘I doubt that. It is not known where they are at present. They might never come back to England. And you know that your father – is not a solicitous husband. Is out all day on parish affairs.’
‘Oh –!’ She looked even more harassed. ‘So, what am I supposed to do?’
‘You could go home and stand by your mother – if your father tried to raise objections to her novels being brought out.’
‘But I am engaged to be married!’
‘Yes, Nell, and I am going to tell you something about marriage. And about your husband-to-be. And about the death of his last wife.’
‘What can you possibly mean? What can you have to tell me?
She stared at me, red with outrage.
‘Listen, Nell, I was battling my way in the world while you were still a babe in the cradle. Now pay attention.’
I told her what I had heard from Mrs Widdence about Joseph Smethwick, about how his last wife had died. And the one before. And about what men can do to women whom they have at their mercy.
‘I don’t believe you!’ she declared obstinately. ‘It is all a pack of ill-natured gossip.’
I could see, though, that I had greatly shaken her.
‘By the by,’ I said, turning to summon Pullett. ‘Just before I left Delaford, Ralph Mortimer was asking for you. He had sold out of the army, it seems, and is now managing his father’s estate.’
‘What is that to me?’
But she looked decidedly thoughtful and I saw her standing still, for several minutes, poking at the ground with her parasol, in no particular haste to rejoin her companions.
***
I will not deny that my initial glimpse of the Duke of Cumbria gave me a stab of icy, hideous fright, taking me back in time, fifteen years or more, to the days when I used to patter along the village street, half-penny in hand, to the vicarage and the ministrations of Dr Moultrie. What Dr Moultrie did at that time I have never mentioned, and never shall; this narrative, as I have stated before, is intended for no more than a partial record of such events as I choose to recount.
Suffice it to say that most speedily did I come to understand that His Grace in no way (save that of most superficial appearance) resembled Dr Moultrie but, on the contrary, was a most upright, affable, high-principled and pleasant-humoured gentleman. Indeed I have never met his like.
It was inevitable that I should feel nervous and ill-at-ease during the opening moments of my first dinner, tête-à-tête with the Duke – which was also our first encounter. He had courteously given me time to rest, before we met, and to remedy the effects of the two-day drive from London. And at dinner he appeared in full ceremonial evening apparel, satin knee-breeches and velvet jacket, with a great smouldering emerald among the folds of his neck-cloth. I could have wished for Mrs Jebb’s rubies, old fashioned and table-cut as they were.
However a very few minutes sufficed to set me completely at my ease.
The Duke’s first appraisal of me was enough to set tears a-rolling down his cheeks.
‘Don’t mind me, my dear,’ he said, unaffectedly mopping his eyes with his table-napkin, ‘but you are so very like your dear mother that your appearance has been quite a shock to me. Indeed, I should have known you if I had met you in Zanzibar! No wonder Fantini was so excited when he saw you in Bond Street. Oh, good gracious me, it is such a great, great pity that you could not have been placed with your mother from the very start. What a deal of sorrow and trouble that would have avoided. What a zany poor Brandon was not to have permitted it. But he had some starched-up notion that, as your mother was his cousin and you therefore his cousin also, family tradition, family pride, whatever, required that you not be brought up by a fallen woman. So, what happens? He leaves you to your own courses and – inevitably – you fall too!’
‘Well, sir, as to that, I –’
‘– I believe, to his credit, Brandon had some notion at first of taking you into his own household later on. But Mrs Marianne put a stop to that, tiresome creature, with her romantic notions and fidgety prejudices. And then, of course, they went abroad.’
‘Have you met Colonel and Mrs Brandon, sir?’
‘No, my dear, but I have a great friend and neighbour, Sir John Middleton – he will be dropping in to take his mutton with us one of these days – I see him very often – who knows them well.
‘Now, my child, I don’t wish you to be under any anxiety or misapprehension about my intentions towards you,’ the Duke continued, passing me a dish of duckling with olives – we were dining very informally. ‘I shall not be making any amorous approaches towards you – that, indeed, I should regard almost as incest; (not but what it might be very agreeable,’ he added in parenthesis. ‘You are so very like your dear mother, you know). But, latterly, you see, she and I – such a relation, alas, was not possible betwixt us, for, as the result of a most unfortunate toss I took over a double oxer, my proclivities in that respect were wholly trammelled; in fact,’ he explained, ‘with the best will in the world, I can’t get it up. So you may regard me simply in the light of your kind old father-in-law, my dear; and – more’s the pity – that was the way in which, latterly, your dear mama also regarded me.’
‘But, sir – ’ a host of questions immediately rushed through my head. Did I dare to utter them? But the Duke having opened on such a comfortable, cordial basis, I thought that I did dare.
‘Well, my dear? What shall I call you? I cannot call you Eliza, like her; that would touch too tender a vein. I shall call you Lizzie – if you have no objection?’
‘None, sir, in the world. But – about my mother – I was given to understand by Dr Fantini that her sad death was caused by a disastrous childbirth; how – in the circumstances you mention – could this come about?’
‘Why, it was this way – the silly, silly girl,’ he said, hastily refilling both our glasses. ‘She thought to do me a good turn – make me a kind of present, you see. This house is not entailed, and I have often bemoaned the fact that I have not a son I can leave it to; I am fond of the old place, you see. And Stannisbrooke, my official heir by the Duchess, is such a dull, prosy lump of a fellow! I can’t stand to think of him here. Well, let that flea stick! I had a favourite nephew, my younger brother’s son, Michael Ravensworth,
who used to visit us; a captain in the navy he was, dear fellow – ’
‘Is he no more, sir?’ I asked gently, as the Duke wiped his eyes again.
‘No, the poor devil lost his life in that ill-fated Walcheren expedition. Sad waste! Sad waste! He was worth ten of my own son. I had far rather he had been my heir. But, this is how it was; he and Eliza put their heads together, and thought it would please me to know that she was increasing – that there would be a child about the house again – and, no question, it did please me, I was as happy as could be –’
‘But – good heavens,’ I said faintly, thinking that ‘put their heads together’ was hardly an accurate description, ‘the risk that she took – that they took – ’ And several different kinds of risk, I thought. For were they really so philanthropic in their motives, simply seeking to give the Duke an inheritor for his mansion? Or did they in fact love one another, was it an affair of the heart, rather than pure disinterested benevolence? For the Duke was, after all, twenty-seven years my mother’s senior, and Michael Ravensworth no doubt a handsome young captain, a dashing and romantic figure? Well, I should never know. Certainly not from the Duke, who had loved them both equally and seemed sincerely grieved. Perhaps – I could not help thinking – matters had turned out well for the Duke – though tragically enough for the younger pair – all of them being spared sad discord and disillusion in later days.
‘Did you ever meet my father, sir – Mr Willoughby?’
No, he said, he had not.
‘But my friend Sir John knew him well; Sir John will tell you anything you wish to know. Ah, he was a sad scapegrace, I fear. But still, as he is your parent, my dear Lizzie, we will not disparage him too much. As to his whereabouts now, I know nothing; but perhaps Sir John will be better informed.’
***
In the meantime it was strange – most strange and ghostly – to live in the great house at Zoyland where my mother, whom I had never met – not to remember at least – had contrived to leave such an imprint of her personality. There were dogs she had reared, birds she had tended – for Eliza, it appeared, was devoted to animals; she had owned parrots, monkeys, even a tortoise, a grass-snake and a hare; some of these, in the interim, had died of natural causes; some – the monkeys, for instance – had been found too poignant or too tiresome a reminder and had been dispatched to other homes; but a great red-and-grey parrot still sat on a perch in the morning room and once in a long while would raise its heavy head and scritch out, ‘Good day, Eliza!’ in a harsh voice that never failed to send a freezing shiver down my spine. An old spaniel, which had been her favourite, would sometimes come and sit with its head upon my knee.
In a drawer of her bureau, in the little room that she used as her study, I found papers – notes, jottings, household reminders – in a hand strangely like my own – a list of suggested gifts for the domestics at Christmas-time. And a footnote to the list: ‘But what shall I ever give him? So good – so universally kind – but already so amply supplied with all his needs – except the one – oh, me!’
And on a loose page at the end of this collection, I found some handwritten lines under the superscription, Willoughby:
In vain ye woo me to your harmless joys
Ye pleasant bowers, remote from strife and noise;
Your shades, the witnesses of many a vow
Breathed forth in happier days, are irksome now
Denied that smile ’twas once my heaven to see
Such scenes, such pleasures, are all past to me.
Poor Eliza! Sadly, sympathetically, I wondered how long my mother had continued to entertain such feelings for her faithless lover – and was mildly relieved, when I discovered, some months later, that she had not composed the lines herself, but merely copied them from the works of Cowper.
I visited her grave very regularly – sometimes with the Duke, sometimes alone. He, almost daily, brought fresh flowers to it – generally of a violet hue if it could be managed, for that, he said, was her favourite colour. The grave lay at the farthest end of the little churchyard which adjoined the pleasure gardens of Much Zoyland house, so that to reach it one need only cross the lawn and pass through a lych-gate.
‘I can see the stone from my bedroom window,’ the Duke told me fondly. ‘So, I think she cannot be lonely there. And it is a solace to me to see the stone.’
On it he had inscribed My dearly loved Eliza, and the date of her death.
Tucked into the volume of Cowper’s verses (in which I found the foregoing lines) I later discovered another piece of handwritten verse which touched me deeply:
To my Daughter
Dear Child! I cannot hear thee cry
I cannot see thy face
For us, all life must saunter by
And yield no meeting place.
Yet through Death’s final Gate, I trust
Thy countenance to see
That Doom, which turns us all to dust
Can hold no fears for me.
These lines I have found nowhere else, so concluded that they must be Eliza’s own.
Besides these things there were countless cushions that she had embroidered, tapestries that she had stitched, views and landscapes framed upon the walls that she had painted in water-colours or in crayons. There was a whole drawer full of fans – silk, ivory, lace, parchment, plumes – to which, sorrowfully, I added the one she had given me. There were her books – novels, chiefly, but also some volumes of essays and poetry – shelved in an alcove.
It was strange indeed, thus slowly to become acquainted with her.
There was even an old hack that she had been used to ride, out to grass in a paddock. I had never learned to ride in proper fashion – though, of course, with the boys, I had from time to time scrambled bareback over the moors on rough Exmoor ponies – so riding lessons now took their place on my timetable, along with singing and music lessons, languages and literature.
Although I had myself been a teacher at Mrs Haslam’s school, I was soon – though in the most kindly and considerate manner – made to understand that there were grave gaps and deficiencies in my education.
‘But sir – to what end is all this?’ I said to the Duke one day, when he handed me a volume of memoirs which he said would enlarge my knowledge of European history.
‘Education, my dear Lizzie, is an end in itself. You are already a young person of considerable parts; you have intelligence and a mind of your own; that mind requires to be fed; with learning at your command you need never be at a loss. You will have resources, you can entertain yourself. And,’ he added, ‘those about you.’
‘If I could be trained for some post or position,’ I said, thinking of Hoby and his waterways.
‘Ah; that, my dear, I am afraid is out of the question.’
The Duke spoke with kind finality, and went off on his own concerns.
While riding about the park at Zoyland, while dutifully following my mother’s example in stitchery (but without her proficiency), while practising my piano and taking voice lessons from Dr Fantini, a most exacting teacher – I had ample time to think and reflect and remember.
I thought of Mrs Jebb a great deal, and related her story to the Duke.
He, as always, displayed the liveliest interest in my narration. ‘You have such a knack of depicting character, my dearest Liz! I can almost fancy she were here in person. I am sure I should have taken great pleasure in her company.’
‘I am sure that you would, sir; and she in yours. But, to this day, I cannot determine whether she really did steal that first piece of lace or not. The gloves I know she took, but I am fairly certain that was just to tease the shopkeeper, who had been pestering her. But if she did it, what was her reason? Her motive? She commanded a comfortable income. She had no need to steal.’
‘I would hazard the guess,’ said the Duke, ‘that she was bor
ed, and needed the fillip of danger to enliven her days. Ladies, as well as men, need these stimulants, I believe. In my time I have known members of the fair sex who were wild gamblers. Or who followed the hunt like Valkyries.’
I looked at him in astonishment. His explanation was so simple, so obvious! And it occurred to me that the same explanation might account for my mother hazarding her life, taking her terrible chance.
And yet it never struck the Duke that the same conditions, the same constraints, might apply to me also . . .
‘Do sing your new canzonet, my dear,’ said the Duke. ‘I like it so much. And then we will fetch in Solomon, and you and he shall play those Haydn duets.’
Music was the Duke’s greatest passion. He was in ecstasies, listening, and was happy to sit for hours, beating time upon his buckskinned thighs – or on his kettledrum – and singing out loud whenever the music presented a theme that could be sung.
Naturally, as it was not yet July, and the Houses of Parliament were still in session, the Duke departed at intervals for his London mansion to take part in debates.
‘Later on I shall be wishful to bring you up to town with me, my dear Liz,’ he told me, ‘to bear me company as your lamented mother always did. Indeed I could hardly bear to pass a day without her! And I am growing to feel the same about you. But I must not be selfish, and you are better employed at this present in learning your books and singing your scales here at Zoyland.’
To tell truth, I wondered a little whether his wish for female company, my mother’s and now mine, was motivated in part to prove something about himself to the Polite World: that he could still command the affections of an elegant, accomplished young person. Or was it from pure affection? Affection, without doubt, played its part; I missed his company – always good-tempered, always well-informed and lively – when he was up in town. But it gave me more time to read, think and be myself.
