Dear Laura

by Jean Stubbs

  *

  ‘Why was Arthur Edgeley hanging round?’ Titus demanded, unable to keep every woman happy at the same time.

  ‘Protecting me from inquisitiveness, would you not think?’

  He was not prepared to argue the point, intent on a new conquest.

  ‘I shall not be able to call in this evening, after all,’ said Titus. ‘But we can see each other any day, Laura. And we must be careful after this furore!’

  ‘I think it would be best,’ Laura began cautiously, ‘if we saw very little of each other, and met only in company. A quiet musical evening, for instance, perhaps while Mrs Clayton’s niece is staying here?’

  He looked at her sharply, but she was detached and uncritical.

  ‘I was thinking how lonely you would be, all by yourself, Laura.’

  ‘I have become used to being by myself. I shall miss you very much, Titus, but it would be sensible to give no further cause for gossip. Do you not agree?’

  Why should he not? For this long chase was over, and he had grown tired of drama and scandal.

  ‘Drive home, Henry!’ Laura ordered, and settled back.

  ‘I have been puzzling over the question of a manager,’ said Titus gaily. ‘You have a poor opinion of my business head, I know. So I am looking round. Indeed, I must. I cannot do two jobs at once, and I have been there at all hours since Theodore died.’

  ‘You must do as you think best, of course.’

  ‘Some hard-working fellow who won’t mind earning his salary. Your own establishment, Laura, costs a pretty penny to maintain. And Theodore tied up a great deal of money in the boys’ education, and some for Blanche in the event of her marriage. Laura, your dressmaker’s bills are past comprehension, my dear!’

  ‘You sound exactly like Theodore,’ she replied idly. ‘Has your tailor been paid, Titus?’

  He shrugged and laughed, outmatched.

  ‘We are so alike, you and I, Laura. We should have made a fine pair, should we not?’

  ‘In one respect.’

  He glanced at her quickly and with some curiosity.

  ‘And has that fire died?’

  ‘I think this trouble has put it out for good.’

  ‘With me, you mean?’ Vanity aroused.

  ‘In every way,’ she answered, composedly. ‘One only loves once like that. Thank God, thank God.’

  ‘So you are not looking out for the chrism of love, Laura? Love’s own crown?’

  ‘“With sanctifying sweetness”? No. I have my freedom, such as it is. I am not seeking further bondage. There is much else in life, and I begin to discover it. So you are my good friend and good brother once again, and I love you as I did in earlier years.’

  He was silent: released, but somehow disappointed. She laid a hand on his immaculate sleeve and smiled out of sheer affection.

  ‘But I thank you for all the years, Titus.’

  He lifted the hand and kissed it, touched and pleased.

  ‘That fellow Arthur Edgeley is a dull dog!’ he observed, unconsciously on her wave-length, and interpreting it wrongly. ‘As a businessman I must pay him tribute, but as a man …’

  ‘He and his wife were happy together,’ she said gently, turning his unspoken disparagement aside.

  ‘That I find difficult to believe. How can one love the same woman for twenty odd years? It is beyond my comprehension.’

  ‘They were always so mannerly with each other,’ she said, remembering. ‘One felt the loving kindness, and then they had many interests in common. Perhaps that is the answer.’

  ‘It would not be mine. I court fire.’

  His eyes glinted as though they stared into flames.

  Fire can be rekindled, Laura thought. But did not say so.

  *

  ‘Should I clear away, ma’am?’ Kate asked. ‘And Miss Nagle says shall she bring Miss Blanche downstairs now?’

  ‘Yes, to both questions, Kate.’

  Laura rose, for musing had made her restless. But the smile she turned on her maid held contentment and promise.

  ‘You have been my friend, Kate, for many years, and I shall be yours. Do not leave me yet, I beg of you, and when you do I shall buy your wedding dress. So think of it, Kate, because we must choose a pretty one.’

  ‘I wish it was Mr Edgeley’s butler that I was promised to,’ cried Kate, overcome, ‘but it isn’t, ma’am!’

  26

  That shall be tomorrow

  Not tonight:

  I must bury sorrow

  Out of sight:

  A Woman’s Last Word –

  Robert Browning

  A FEW minutes later Blanche ran in to her mother, and dropped the copy of The Adventures of Herr Baby written by Mrs Molesworth.

  ‘What a careless little miss!’ cried Laura indulgently. ‘Here, let me smooth that page. The corner is quite buckled.’

  She drew the child to her and they sat side by side on the drawing-room sofa, fair head to fair head.

  ‘Now be sure not to worry poor Mama, Miss Blanche,’ Nanny cautioned, without any of her usual emphasis. ‘She has had a deal of trouble and must not be tired.’

  ‘You are not tired now, are you, Mama?’ Blanche whispered, one hand over her mouth as Miss Nagle retired.

  ‘Not in the least. I have been waiting for you, oh! so impatiently. Now where were we up to, and what has Herr Baby been doing since yesterday, I wonder? Here we are.’

  She read clearly and pleasantly, and Blanche dared to draw closer and finger the heart-shaped brooch at her throat.

  ‘Papa gave you that,’ she observed, as the reading finished. ‘And he gave me my doll’s house. He was very good to us, was he not? Only I was very naughty and that did not suit him, because he was a good man.’

  Her grey eyes held a question.

  ‘Papa loved you very much indeed,’ said Laura firmly, ‘but he found it difficult to say so. Gentlemen do not show their feelings as openly as ladies do. He may have seemed a little stern at times, but he loved you dearly and was very proud of you.’

  ‘Why was he? My pen-wipers had to be washed, Mama.’

  ‘He was proud of you because you were so pretty, and he knew you meant to be good.’

  ‘It would have been nice,’ said Blanche wistfully, ‘if he had told me so himself. It is a pity that gentlemen do not say what they feel.’

  *

  Laura had found the letters in the hidden drawer of his desk as he slept. Slowly, skilfully, she drew them out, held her breath as he turned and murmured, began to read as he slept again.

  From time to time she set down the pages and looked at that dark secret face on the pillow, which had totally eluded her for fifteen years. So this was what he could be? Tender and passionate, and sad of both tenderness and passion, and forgetful of his pride and righteousness.

  Why did you not turn to me? Laura wondered. I could have been all of this to you. Why did you give yourself to her?

  Then the discrepancies came upon her like phantoms, and she sat with the letters in her lap, pondering. For this was no buxom trollop, dark of hair and ripe of years, who would saunter up to a gentleman’s front door in her finery. This was a very young girl of great sensibility. One would have said, a lady.

  She mulled over every word Kate had said, and concluded that the woman had only been a messenger. Blackmail, perhaps? She re-read all of them minutely, and a fearful possibility occurred to her.

  Could Theodore be one of those men who procured a virgin, one such as Mr Stead had exposed in his Gazette articles.

  She looked again, picking up a clue here and another there, piecing them together in terrible fantasy. The girl had been a virgin, someone without protection but of good parentage who had taken up residence in a house.

  That woman was the madam, Laura thought, and sickened to think that such defiled hands had touched this package.

  The girl had not been the only one, either. Theodore spoke of others, taken and forgotten over a number of years. This alone
had taken root.

  And yet I fear the time when we may be parted. Then what dark roads must we tread? You with only the gift of making yourself pleasing to a man, and I with only the perpetual and degrading search for others who can never be to me what you are and could be. He will not let me see you, and I have been ill again. He even knows how much we mean, one to the other, and bleeds my pocket accordingly. But I should not mention this to you, since the money is of no importance. The money does not matter. Only you matter to me now.

  If he so much as brushes against me I shall vomit, Laura thought, revolted. She was lost in darkness, seeing the drugged child lying in the bed, waking to nightmare.

  She replaced the letters carefully in the package and restored it to its hiding place. Theodore snored fretfully on.

  *

  ‘Mama! You have not one of your headaches coming on, have you?’

  ‘No, my love. I have no headache at all.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Blanche, old and young at once, ‘you have a heart-ache because of dear Papa. Mama, I know my needlework is poorly done, but I should like to work a sampler for Papa, a big sampler.’

  ‘That should be possible, my love. What had you in mind?’

  ‘Oh, a very big one, with birds round the edges, and a long verse, and the churchyard where he lies. In silk, Mama, not wool.’

  Laura stroked the child’s pale hair and laid her cheek against the small face.

  ‘That would take very long, and you would have to be particular as to the stitches. If you worked it in silk we should need a fine linen, and one cannot pull out such thin threads without making a hole – should you make a mistake.’

  The child considered, swinging her legs, then put both arms round Laura’s neck and whispered, ‘Please, Mama!’

  ‘Well, I believe you want to do it so much that you will accomplish your task somehow. But I stitched such a sampler when I was a little older than you, and it took me two years to complete. Could you work so long and carefully and patiently as that?’

  Blanche nodded hard, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  ‘Have you thought of the verse, too, my love?’

  ‘Yes, Mama. Shall I recite it to you?’

  ‘If you please, my love. I should like that.’

  The child stood up as straight as if her slate were tied to her back, as it had frequently been under Nanny Nagle’s dominion. Hands clasped behind her, grey eyes looking into some image of heaven, strapped shoes shining, she opened her mouth and then remembered something else.

  ‘I feel it is only right that I should work a sampler for Papa, Mama. Do you know that sort of a feeling, when something is so right and proper that you must do it?’

  ‘Very well,’ Laura replied gravely.

  *

  The quarrel over dinner had decided her. As the housemaid and kitchenmaid produced chaos and Theodore turned from ill-temper to open tyranny, Laura hardened. His command to have her back again in their bedroom made up her mind. She could no more tolerate the accidental touch of his body than contemplate the terrors of which he had been so guilty. She followed him up the stairs, and took two capsules from her new bottle of sleeping pills.

  ‘Theodore,’ she said submissively, ‘I know you are very angry with me, but believe me I do not wish you to be ill as well.’

  ‘My head, my heart, my cough.’

  ‘Dr Padgett told me that you must not be excited in this fashion, since you are still weak from the influenza. He said that if you were to excite yourself too much you could suffer a severe – even a mortal – attack.’

  Transfixed, he stared at her.

  ‘I beg you to go to bed, and I will carry out the remedy he prescribed. It is quite a new form of medicine,’ said Laura composedly, ‘and designed gradually to soothe and relax the nerves and constitution. Dr Padgett has not tried it out before, but apparently it is all the rage in Vienna.’

  ‘Really? In Vienna? Ah, they know a thing or two that a stick like Padgett would never find his way about! What is it? Medicine?’

  ‘A very rare pill. A series of pills. To be taken, two at a time, with water, every twenty minutes.’

  ‘That sounds quite new, most unusual. You must not fail to remind me of the time. How many pills are there altogether?’

  ‘Eighteen. And I shall give them to you myself.’

  ‘Where is the bottle? I want to see it.’

  She laid a hand on his forehead and frowned as if to herself.

  ‘Theodore, I do not wish to alarm you, my dear, but you really cannot fret like this without serious consequence. I promise you that I shall come upstairs without fail, every twenty minutes, and give you the pills myself. You must lie very still and try to go to sleep. If you do go to sleep I can wake you sufficiently to give you the medicine, and I shall.’ She looked into his face now without distaste or shrinking. ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes, Laura. Yes,’ he replied, his fears temporarily allayed.

  A child, he turned back the covers and lay down in the great four-poster bed. A child, he accepted the morphine capsules two by two, each time a little drowsier and heavier and thirstier. And Laura trailed up the staircase, every twenty minutes, until he had taken the last by midnight.

  ‘Are you comfortable, Theodore?’

  He stared dully at the mane of pale hair, the pale silent face, and reached clumsily for her hand. She shrank back, clutching the wrapper to her breasts.

  ‘My – head. My – head,’ he said, slurring the words.

  Obediently, she laid one palm on his forehead.

  ‘You have no temperature. Does it ache?’

  ‘Dazed – feel – dazed. Thirsty.’

  She gave him water.

  ‘You are half asleep, that is all. Have you any pain, Theodore?’

  ‘Arms – heavy – legs – like – lead.’

  ‘It is nothing that a good sleep will not cure,’ she said, and added for his benefit, in seeming desperation. ‘You should not have disturbed yourself so.’

  ‘Blood – pressure – Padgett warned – me – send – for Padgett.’

  ‘Do take one of my sleeping capsules, Theodore. Then if you cannot sleep we will send for the doctor.’

  *

  She had been afraid lest he did not die, though Padgett’s warnings over the pills assured that a bottleful of them should be lethal.

  She sank into the chair by his side, hands over mouth, and stared at the deathly mask. She was still sitting there, white and frozen, when the doctor arrived.

  ‘I shall not go. I cannot go. Until you tell me,’ Laura whispered. ‘He is gravely ill, is he not?’

  ‘No hope, I’m afraid.’

  Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God.

  *

  Blanche cleared her throat and began.

  ‘Weep not for me, my children dear.

  Let hope forbid the flowing tear.

  What tho’ on earth I am no more?

  I am not lost, but gone before.

  Dear Lord, in thee I put my trust,

  And Angels guard the sleeping dust.’

  He had mumbled dully as she sat well away from him.

  ‘Dark road. Dark … road … dark.’

  ‘I never knew you,’ she whispered into the ensuing silence. ‘I never knew you. May God have mercy upon you and forgive you. Only He can. I cannot.’

  ‘Loved …’

  He had surmounted his final word, setting it like a lamp on the last dark road of all.

  *

  ‘And then, down at the bottom, between the verse and the churchyard where dear Papa sleeps, I want to put In memory of Theodore Augustus Sydney Crozier by His Loving Daughter, Blanche.’

  Laura sighed, smiled, and knelt before the child, holding her tightly.

  ‘That will be most beautiful, my love, and I know you can do it. You will not make a single mistake, and then your children shall see how clever their mama was when she was only eight years old.’


  ‘Are you crying for Papa?’

  ‘I think I am crying for all of us,’ said Laura.

  The clock, in its glass and gold-pillared seclusion, struck six times, soft and insistent. At the last stroke they separated, hearing Miss Nagle’s gentler knock on the drawing-room door.

  ‘I did not know, until Papa died, what a nice person you were, Mama,’ Blanche whispered, and kissed her, and held out her hand to the nanny so that she might be taken securely away.

  Ah, you men, thought Laura, looking through her window onto the March evening, how you cover up for one another. You set that woman Flynn up as Theodore’s mistress, and she lied for you. You allowed me to sit in that courtroom and suffer humiliation, so that he should not be exposed. But I knew, and I kept silent for the children’s sake. And after all, your protection of him protected me too. Though, if they had accused me, I should have told them what I had discovered and what I had done, and cried shame on them all.

  You make toys of us. Things to be possessed and then thrown away when you are tired of us. When will you understand that we have intellect and morality and passions even as yourselves? When will you use us not for what you want us but for what we are? You give us only one chance to escape from the seclusion of childhood, and that is the seclusion of marriage. We embrace this lottery with rejoicing and total ignorance. You do not allow us to use our own money, nor often to reclaim it if the marriage fails. We have nothing of our own but our faces and bodies, and we are taught to charm with them so that we may be bought.

  The Common became one vast golden space under the evening sky, and she hesitated to draw the curtains against such splendour.

  I am grateful to be given a year of seclusion in which to find myself, Laura thought, and then I shall make up my mind.

  You must make up your own mind, my love. Jealous, fearful, totally withdrawn now she would leave him.

  So I am no more alone now than I was then, she pondered. And I shall be seeking out of experience what I once sought in blindness. I shall not be taken in by appearances, nor beguiled with presents, nor be deluded by compliments. I have put away childish things. I have looked in a mirror darkly. I have seen myself face to face.