by Joan Aiken
‘This is a good berth,’ said Pullett. ‘This is the best berth I ever was in. Or you, for sure, Miss Liza. Mind you never do anything to offend His Grace.’
Pullett had struck up a cordial relationship with Mrs Budgen, the housekeeper at Zoyland; and the two ladies spent hours together, mulling over the talents, propensities and defects of my mother, and deciding which of my qualities descended from her.
‘That hand, now! Wherever can she have had it from? Her mother’s was the same. But we don’t know who her father was.’
‘Some gypsy, for sure.’
They nodded their heads sagely together.
The Duke, surveying my hands with concern, though without the least repulsion, told me that if I wished he would pay for the best surgeon in Europe to operate on both hands, reduce my number of fingers to the norm and alter the large hand to ordinary dimensions. I thanked him most sincerely, and said I would give the matter a great deal of thought before coming to any decision, an attitude of which he approved.
Pullett was against tampering. ‘Leave matters be, Miss Liza,’ she said. ‘As ye were made, so should ye remain. Doubtless Providence had some end in view.’
Another counsellor of the same opinion was Tark, the head groom, who used to accompany me on rides when the Duke was in London.
‘Never touch that elf-hand, Missie,’ he said. ‘’Twould be fell unlucky. And so I’ll tell His Grace, if you wish it.’
‘Why, Tark? I believe you, but why?’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘My old grandma had gypsy blood. From Savernake Forest she come, where there was a big tribe of ’em, those days. And she’d say that a hand like yours, with six fingers, was mighty lucky, and a sign that, soon or late, it’d win ye your heart’s desire – some such thing.’
‘I see. Well, it has been lucky once already,’ I said, remembering the rescue of Triz. What a long time ago that seemed!
I told the Duke about my friendship with Mr Bill and Mr Sam, and he was deeply interested.
‘I have all their verses, of course. And I believe your Mr Sam comes sometimes to lecture in Bristol. Would you wish to hear him, if he does so again?’
‘Oh, sir! Could I? Could I?’
‘No reason in the world why not.’
Indeed, in the autumn of that year, I do not recall whether it was October or November, the Duke was kind enough to take me, as he had promised, on a special excursion to Bristol, to hear Mr Sam speak on literature at Mangeons’ Hotel. The Duke had lately been suffering somewhat from the gout, and thought a course of treatment at Bristol Hot-Wells would not come amiss; so thither we proceeded with both objects in view.
I will not conceal that to leave Zoyland for a few days now and then, to tread the streets of a city, visit shops and circulating libraries, was no great hardship for me. The Duke hired a house in Dowry Square and sent servants and linen ahead to make sure that all would be comfortable, since the weather was sharpening and setting in for what later became a memorably cold winter. Meanwhile, over on the continent of Europe, Napoleon’s empire was collapsing into ruins.
And I sometimes wondered if, now that the fighting was as good as over, Colonel Brandon and his lady would return to England – though, even if they were to do so, as matters now stood it did not seem likely that this event would affect me in any way.
In Bristol – despite the attractions of Hot-Wells, the Pump Room, the shops, the coffee houses and the excellent public library – I was, of course, devoured, possessed with one expectation, one feeling only – the thrilling knowledge that soon I was to see my dear Mr Sam again.
The Duke cautioned me, very kindly, very solicitously.
‘I am afraid, my dear, that you may find him sadly changed. I have heard from several sources that he is not a well man; he drinks intemperately and, they say, takes a deal too much laudanum. Eh, bless me! These poetical fellows, they do drive themselves with a cruel spur.’
On the night of the lecture, the Duke’s agent procured for us excellent seats in the front row of the ballroom at Mangeons’ Hotel, so that I was able to see only too well the sad changes in my dear Mr Sam.
He arrived late, with no apology for this, and proceeded to talk with terrific speed and intensity. His subject was Shakespeare.
The very moment he began speaking, I forgot all about his changed appearance – he had grown stouter since I saw him last, and therefore looked shorter; his face was plumper and flushed, and his hair somewhat thinning, lighter and greyer in colour than I remembered; his eyes remained exactly the same, large, dark, soft and dreamy; his clothing was decidedly soiled and unkempt, neckerchief disordered, and his right leg greatly swollen.
But his voice carried me straight back into the past. He spoke without notes and, as I say, very rapidly, yet each word came clear as a hunting horn. Listening, I was transported in a flash to the bridge over the Ashe River. He seemed to be speaking directly to me.
He was talking about Hamlet. ‘Compare the easy language of common life in which this drama opens, with the wild wayward lyric of the opening of Macbeth . . . Then the shivery feeling, at such a time, with two eye-witnesses, of sitting down to hear a story of a ghost . . . O heaven! words are wasted, to those that feel and to those who do not feel the exquisite judgment of Shakespeare!’
I listened, rapt, as the words poured out of him in precisely the manner that I remembered – a wonderful, exhilarating, sparkling spate. This man is a genius, I thought. No question about it. He is a genius.
At the close of the lecture there was tumultuous applause. Mr Sam hardly heeded it. He gave a perfunctory sort of bow, making for the door, stumbling somewhat.
‘Do you wish to step up and speak to him, my dear?’ said the Duke kindly. ‘Let us go round to the back of the stage.’
But, by the time we had done so, Mr Sam was making for the lobby of the hotel.
We pursued, and caught him close by the entrance.
‘Sir!’ said the Duke. ‘Mr Coleridge! My ward, here, Miss FitzWilliam, wishes to recall herself to you.’
Mr Sam looked at me vaguely. His eyes, I saw, were darkly bloodshot and their black pupils reduced very small. He was sweating and pale as lard. His hair was lank with the sweat and greatly disordered.
‘Sir! Mr Sam! Don’t you remember me? Back in Somerset? At Ashett? At St Lucy’s church? How you and Mr Bill used to take me for walks?’
‘Ashett?’ he mumbled. ‘Ashett? – No, no, I do not remember. Excuse me –’ and he pushed hastily past us, and out into the gusty cold rain which was falling.
I was quenched with shock and disappointment. The transition from the nobility and brilliance of the lecture to abrupt, ugly reality was too severe; I held tight on to the Duke’s arm, almost fainting from pain and grief.
Fortunately the Duke’s coach was close at hand – he was always well served in such matters; he and Tark helped me to my place and we were soon back at the house in Dowry Square, where fires were burning, and the Duke obliged me to drink a glass of warm wine.
‘You must not blame him too much, my poor child; I have talked with his doctor, who informs me that he is suffering terribly from rheumatic heart disease and erysipelatous inflammation – not to mention the atrocious quantity of laudanum and brandy that he regularly imbibes. We should rather wonder that, in such a case, he is able to deliver a lecture at all – let alone such a one as we have just been privileged to hear! Bless me! How the sparks did fly. Poor fellow! Poor fellow! They say he is all to pieces. Even his friend Mr Wordsworth did not scruple to describe him as a rotten drunkard and an absolute nuisance.’
I could not sleep all that night, but tossed and turned, soaking my pillow with tears, and came to breakfast so heavy-eyed that although we had planned to stay in Bristol and hear the other seven lectures the Duke counselled against it.
‘You will only distress yourself all over again, my
child. Rather return to our own library and read over the man’s poetry to yourself; that, after all, still remains and will always be his monument, when he is long underground.’
‘I daresay you are right, sir,’ I said faintly. And so we returned to Zoyland. (In fact, as we heard afterwards, several of the later lectures were cancelled, due to Mr Sam’s ill-health.)
‘And I do not believe that the Hot-Wells have had any good effect on my gout, whatsoever,’ said the Duke.
***
Not long after this, Sir John Middleton came over to Zoyland, bringing with him his cousin the elderly Mrs Dashwood – even skinnier, vaguer, paler, more fly-away as to white hair and untidy raiment than she had been when I had seen her at Delaford; but still, it seemed, clinging tenaciously to life.
‘Bless her, she likes an outing,’ said Sir John comfortably – he was a burly, cheerful, red-faced man, who looked as if he would be more at ease striding through a pheasant copse than sitting in somebody’s drawing room being offered sherry and biscuits. ‘And to tell truth, m’wife sometimes finds her a trifle fatiguing – m’wife’s mighty close to her confinement, now, y’know, so small matters become irksome which, at an easier time, would never trouble her. Some of the old lady’s little ways – her habit of talking to houses, about birds, y’know.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ said I. ‘When she was at Delaford –’
‘Just so! Just so!’
Mrs Dashwood was wandering about the room, ignoring the glass of ratafia which had been poured for her, crooning to herself and sometimes murmuring a few words.
‘But we hear cheerful news from my cousin Elinor,’ Sir John went on, once assured that his elderly relative was doing no harm. ‘Elinor, it seems – believe it or not – has writ a book! And found some publisher fellow prepared to print it! And sport the blunt to the tune of one hundred and ten pounds! Pretty handsome, hey? And they, the publishers, are prepared, as well, to take on five other books that she has been scribbling away at all this time – why, bless my soul, Elinor was always such a quiet, civil-spoken lass; who would ever have expected so much inventiveness to have been fermenting away inside her head? Now, if it had been Miss Marianne, always up in the boughs over something – But Elinor! You could have knocked me down with a feather when the news came. And, if the books take – and these publisher fellows appear to think it altogether probable – that will make a most advantageous change in the circumstances at Delaford Rectory – which, I venture to say, have been pretty straitened. Cousin Elinor writ a very pretty letter to m’wife to say they would soon be happy to have the old lady back with them again. Young Nell’s home, it seems.’
I sighed, thinking that to have Mrs Dashwood back would place yet one more burden on Elinor’s shoulders. Yet she was fond of her mother; no question of that.
‘Did she say – did you gather – how Mr Ferrars had taken the news of his wife’s authorship?’ I inquired.
Sir John gave me a broad, conspiratorial grin. ‘Now there’s a pompous, puritanical, touchy, self-regarding fellow if ever I met one,’ he said. ‘Reading between the lines, y’know, I fancy he didn’t like it above half. But some friend of theirs had shown the book to the printer-fellow – not Elinor herself, it seems – so he couldn’t blame her. And the blunt will come in mighty handy – no question of that. Since Brandon and Mrs Marianne are still away, the Lord only knows where.’
‘My ward wishes to know, Sir John,’ said the Duke, ‘whether you have any recent knowledge as to the whereabouts of her father, Willoughby, you know.’
‘Why, bless me, yes!’ said Sir John. ‘Had a letter from Willoughby not above two months back. Poor devil! Poor Willoughby! Such a pleasant, good-humoured neighbour he used to be, and had the nicest little black bitch of a pointer as ever I saw.’
‘Why, sir, what has become of him?’ cried I.
‘Ah, well, you see, he outran the barber, got himself gazetted, had to sell up. Came to a complete smash, and if he’d not left the country pretty smartly would have found himself in Newgate. At the last he borrowed £250 from me, but I don’t regard it; I doubt I shall ever see it again,’ he added to the Duke in a low voice.
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ said I. ‘But what became of Miss Grey, his wife?’
‘Ah, she died, some while since. By all accounts, he didn’t grieve overmuch. No, poor fellow, ’twas a false scent – full cry in the wrong direction – all his heart, all his regrets, were fixed on Miss Marianne. ‘If only I’d stayed with her,’ he was wont to say to me, ‘I should be a better man now.’ Mind you, I always held that to be a load of fustian; for Miss Marianne was not a lady to live on bread and scrape. They would have been in the basket just as soon, or even sooner, with his gaming ways, and she with no fortune to bring him.’
‘So what country is he in now, sir?’
‘Why, in the letter he writ me he said he was off to Portugal – Lisbon, I daresay. Living is cheap there, I understand, now the French have been rompé’d; and the poor deluded fellow – having picked up from some piece of gossip that Brandon and his lady proposed making a stay in Portugal on their way back from India – I truly believe that Willoughby goes there in hopes he might gain a glimpse of Mrs Marianne; though, for the matter of that, I fancy Brandon would as soon send a bullet through his chops as not. Ay, the two of them did stand up together once, to my knowledge. Fegs, Brandon has a touch of steel in him, withal he’s such a quiet, mumchance sort of fellow.—And damme, after all, he paid to rear the other fellow’s daughter all those years!’
‘Myself, Sir John!’ I reminded him.
‘Ay, bless me, so you are; begging your pardon, my dear! You’ve no look of Willoughby, that’s why I forget; Willoughby was such a black-haired, black-avised romantical sort of fellow, all the young ladies were setting their caps at him. But you, now, I dare swear, take after your mother.’
‘Yes, she is the image of her mother,’ said the Duke, smiling at me fondly.
‘I always had a notion,’ went on Sir John, who seldom listened to what other people said if it was more than two or three words in extent, ‘that Brandon and his lady went abroad because of Willoughby. There he was, you see, only forty miles off at Combe Magna, making it known to all and sundry that he still hankered for Mrs Marianne; what is a poor husband to do in such a case? No, depend upon it, if they knew that Willoughby had gone overseas, Brandon would bring her back in the bounce of a cracker.’
Presently the Duke took Sir John off to look at his coverts – and to converse, no doubt, in a more masculine and confidential manner; I was left to entertain Mrs Dashwood.
She was still wandering, prowling, fidgeting and gazing at my mother’s water-colours.
‘There’s a bird in this house,’ she remarked.
‘Several, ma’am,’ I said. ‘A parrot, two canaries, a goldfinch –’
‘No, no, a bird, a bird. A bird.’
She had said the same thing at Delaford, I remembered. Where there was no bird.
‘What kind of a bird, ma’am?’
‘A caged bird, a prisoner bird.’ She looked at me very intently, frowningly, and yet I felt she hardly saw me at all. It seemed as if she searched for something buried deep down in my very essence.
‘My daughter Elinor, my daughter Marianne, my daughter Margaret – where are they now? Where are they? Are they well?’
‘Your daughter Elinor is well – you will surely see her soon,’ I soothed the poor lady. ‘She has written a book.’
‘A book, a book?’
I picked up a volume of Camilla from a small table.
‘A book like this. It is called Charlotte. It will be published.’
She nodded, thoughtfully. I could not tell whether she understood or not. But she seemed to take in some intelligence.
‘And Margaret?’
‘Up in London. Enjoying the pleasures of society,’ I sa
id, though I doubted if this was the case.
‘And Marianne? My beautiful Marianne?’ Her voice trembled.
‘She is with her husband – Colonel Brandon,’ I said quickly. I hoped that what I said was true. ‘You remember Colonel Brandon – so kind, so good?’
Sometimes I felt as if I were in a play, the only human character acting among a cast of puppets – Brandon, Marianne, Willoughby, Eliza – puppets or masked characters, whom I was never to be permitted to meet.
I persuaded Mrs Dashwood to come into the small dining room – as the men still remained out-of-doors – to eat a nuncheon of cold fowl, fruit and cake. Then, with Pullett’s assistance, she was induced to lie down upon a day-bed in a cool chamber and rest.
But still she kept casting anxious glances about her and crying pitifully, ‘There is a bird, a bird, a bird in this house. Please let it fly away! House, house, answer me! Where is that bird? Why will you never let it go free?’
Chapter 12
After a year at Zoyland, as my voice had greatly improved under the tutelage of Dr Fantini – or, so said Dr Fantini – the Duke began to invite professionals down from London, musicians and singers, and to hold performances of operas and oratorios, Armide, Orfeo, Jephtha and so forth, in which I sang the lead parts. And he would give house parties on these occasions.
It was understood, at such times, that though I sang in the performances and sat at the Duke’s table during mealtimes, I was not to be spoken to by his guests. It might be all very well, was the Duke’s view, on informal occasions, if such old friends and connections of the family as Sir John Middleton should come visiting, for me to engage in conversation with them; but on no account was there to be any social intercourse between myself and persons of the ton, of Polite Society.
