Louisa Elliott

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  ‘That’s good of you, Bessie. Were you with her when...?’

  ‘No, Miss, I wasn’t. Mr Edward was with her. I was downstairs, having a bit of a cat-nap. He came down looking terrible. I asked him had she gone and he just nodded, sat down in the chair and went to sleep. Just like that. Right odd, I thought. Anyway, I came up and sat with her — didn’t want her to be on her own...’

  Bessie began to weep; huge, heaving sobs which made her flesh quiver. ‘She was a fine woman,’ she choked as Louisa comforted her, ‘so respectable, you’d never have thought —’

  Louisa patted her shoulder, wanting Bessie to know that she understood, there was no need to say more.

  ‘She worked that hard, and it was all for him. Mr Edward, I mean. And she was so good to me. I don’t mind telling you, Miss Louisa, if it hadn’t been for Miss Elizabeth, I’d have been dead years ago.’ She sniffed noisily and found a handkerchief to wipe her eyes and nose. ‘She found me after I’d run away from the poorhouse, hanging round the station, begging. They took me out of the gutter, her and your dear Mam, and made a decent woman of me.’ As her memories took over, Bessie burst into a fresh fit of weeping; it was all Louisa could do to persuade her to leave that cold and lonely room.

  ‘You’ve repaid them both in good service, Bessie. No one could have had a better servant or a kinder friend. I know that – and so did Aunt Elizabeth. Now come down and get that cup of tea I’ve made.’

  Elizabeth Elliott had been a spinster, but for nigh on twenty years she had passed as a widow; it seemed too cruel to have to divulge her true estate now that she was dead. Although the problem seemed insurmountable, it was solved unwittingly by Dr Mackenzie. In a state of exhaustion himself he completed the details of death automatically, murmuring odd, abrupt words of consolation.

  ‘Well, Mr Elliott, if you’ll pardon my saying, it’s a relief and a blessing. The poor woman suffered dreadfully with her bronchitis. A shock, yes, but you’ll get over it. You’re young, your mother was old. Save your pity for the widows and orphans.’

  Stunned into silence, Edward, Louisa and Bessie left him to make his own exit. Looking at the piece of paper the doctor had left, they saw that Elizabeth Elliott was marked down as a widow.

  The decision had been made for them.

  Mary Elliott wept. She grieved for the suddenness of her sister’s death when she had expected to die herself, and for the fact that she was too ill to do anything to help. As her nephew sat by her bed, she shed more tears, remembering that she and Elizabeth had visited each other rarely in the last fifteen years, and more from duty than pleasure at that. The past welled up in her memory, and she looked at the man by her side, seeing in his place the withdrawn, solitary child he had been.

  ‘You can’t stay there on your own, Edward. You must come back to us.’

  He glanced up, and for a moment, as his eyes held hers, she saw a spark of old, half-buried resentment. With a wry smile, he said: ‘You haven’t the room.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she assured him in a passable imitation of her normally brisk tone. ‘We made a place for your Uncle William when he needed us – you can have his old room at the top of the house, and pay me what you gave your mother. You’ll have a home and someone to look after you, and I shall have a room permanently filled, which will suit me very well.’

  ‘What about …?’ He broke off, slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Now there’s no need to bring that up: it was a long time ago. The situation no longer applies. Besides, Louisa’s living in with the Tempests now. Blanche won’t come back, and Emily will be married in the spring. What am I to do without all my chicks?’ she asked with a coaxing smile.

  ‘I feel we should think it over,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Well, you think about it. My mind’s already made up. I’d love to have you back again — you’ll do me good.’ She smiled suddenly, recalling long winter evenings when the girls had been young. ‘No one’s read to me since you left, and I’ve missed that, you know. All those lovely stories, and your beautiful poems, quite took my mind off all that boring mending!’

  Although he felt he was being cajoled and flattered, Edward slowly nodded. To be closer to Louisa, he wanted to come back.

  ‘Good,’ his aunt smiled, ‘I’m glad that’s settled. Come whenever you’re ready.’

  It was more than a week before the funeral could be held. The group of mourners was small, the brothers in Lincolnshire now dead, their families unable to send representatives because of the weather. Cousin John wrote for them all, describing the frozen wastes around Blankney and Metheringham. Mary Elliott had nodded as she read his letter, recalling the landscape only too well, with little to protect it as the east winds swept in from Russia, bringing snow in great, obliterating swathes. The Vale of York might be flat, but the wolds and moors of the East Riding stood between it and the bitter expanse of the North Sea; and while the city might not be as healthy, with the onset of old age, a milder climate was preferable. And here, at least, the snow had turned to rain.

  The hearse, drawn by two elderly black horses complete with nodding ebony plumes, moved off at walking pace, followed by an ancient carriage hired to transport the little band of mourners to the cemetery. Because of the epidemic, demand was high, and the old and dusty conveyance set Blanche alternately sneezing and complaining. Louisa calmly informed her sister that she had a choice: if the carriage was insufferable, she could walk the mile and a half to the cemetery. With a loud, unladylike sniff, Blanche shook her head and wedged herself more comfortably against Bessie’s ample frame. She might have wished for a cleaner, more modish form of transport, but Blanche was unlikely to refuse this novelty. Indeed, there was an air of shared importance among the women in spite of their grief; accustomed to walking, or at best travelling by tram, this journey was rare enough to be savoured. It showed in their faces as they glanced out at halted pedestrians, men doffing their caps as the hearse passed by.

  Past the soaring mass of the Minister’s west front, down Petergate, with its steep-gabled medieval shops and inns, down narrow Colliergate and into Fossgate, where Albert Tempest had his printing premises. In the manner of tourists they all leaned across to look at Edward’s place of work, although it was not entirely strange to any of them. The tall and narrow brick building, like the one sober man in a group of inebriates, seemed to be supporting the twisted and overhanging gables of its much older neighbours.

  An increasing air of genteel decay degenerated into the more obvious poverty of Walmgate, a long, shabby street which fronted a maze of tiny courts and yards to either side. Shop fronts were grimy and dark, windows broken and patched with board, the wares they displayed elderly and unappetising. Crumbling tenements, gin shops and beerhouses abounded, doing regular business even on this wet Wednesday afternoon; unkempt women with painted faces touted for custom, shoving aside groups of ragged children who sheltered in the warm alehouse doorways.

  Facing his aunt, Edward noticed her sudden pallor, the averted eyes, could almost hear the thoughts that flitted through her mind: ‘There, but for the Grace of God...’ In her black alpaca dress, the cape with ruffled taffeta trim and gleaming jet embroidery, she looked the epitome of the respectable middle-class widow she purported to be. But her black-gloved hands shook as she clasped her beaded reticule and watered silk umbrella close upon her lap. Her fingers fondled them like a rosary, seeking reassurance, as though these things defended her and set her apart from the women who plied their trade along this dirty street.

  Blanche sniffed again. ‘Shameless. Quite shameless. I wonder someone doesn’t attempt to clear them off. They’re an affront to respectable people.’

  No one replied. In the taut silence, it seemed that they were all, except Blanche, aware of the slur of illegitimacy, of the commonly held belief that any cohabitation outside marriage was tantamount to prostitution. Mary Elliott closed her eyes.

  Edward was suddenly thankful of the opportunity to draw everyone’s attenti
on to the pillared Tudor house attached to the inner face of Walmgate Bar, to mention the hidden portcullis and the massive outer defences of the barbican. The city’s long and intricate history fascinated him, but he was saddened by its decay. In recent times the open strays beyond the walls had all but disappeared, but at least the rows of modern houses were neat and clean. They relieved the crushing poverty of medieval slums where running water was unknown except on a day such as this.

  Despite Edward’s valiant efforts to distract them, the almost jaunty atmosphere in which they set out had deserted the little group. Not overly religious, nevertheless, as their carriage halted before the daunting Ionic porticos of the cemetery chapel, a feeling of judgement was upon them all. Cowed by its size and strangeness, the six stood small in pews designed to hold three hundred mourners, alongside a sarcophagus which was surely too grand for Elizabeth Elliott’s humble oaken coffin. It seemed they were all, in some way or another, a party to the sins of which she was guilty. The funeral service was a reminder of mortality, for them a haunting evocation that one day they too must meet their maker and answer to the charges laid against them.

  ‘... For we consume away in this displeasure: and are afraid at Thy wrathful indignation. Thou hast set our misdeed before Thee: and our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. For when Thou art angry all our days are gone: we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told...’

  There was little comfort in the words of the psalm, and even as the priest read the obsequies, praising Elizabeth’s piety, each wondered at the depth of his knowledge.

  Through lashing rain the bearers carried the coffin down the little hill towards the plot where William Elliott’s grave lay opened and ready to receive his sister’s body. The tall and simple headstone lay face up on the crushed and muddied winter grass.

  ‘Patient in great Tribulation,’ the words said, and Louisa thought how appropriate it was. Her elderly, ailing uncle William, who had come to live with them just months before he died, had been a gentle man. Good and kind, despite his poor wandering mind. She had not wept for her aunt, but she wanted to cry for him.

  The priest scattered a few lumps of wet clay onto the coffin. ‘... commit her body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life...’

  His voice droned on, the rain poured down, and for the first time Louisa noticed, and was horrified by, the number of fresh graves, heaps of mud and snow topped by beaten wreaths of laurel and yew. Shivering, she longed to drag her mother away, back to the carriage, out of this freezing rain.

  At last the final words were uttered, the service over. There was the sound of horses approaching slowly from the gate; looking round, Louisa saw that it was another cortege, and that grave-diggers hovered, waiting to fill in the grave. There were so many more to be opened.

  Bessie wept openly, and had to be helped by Louisa and Emily; Edward took his aunt’s arm as they followed Blanche back to the hired carriage. Their driver carefully negotiated the turn, halting by the cemetery gates to allow a contingent of Dragoons to pass.

  From her vantage point by the window, Louisa watched their approach, the oppression of the funeral still at the forefront of her mind. The officer at the head of the troop glanced briefly at the carriage, then at Louisa, his eyes holding hers for a second before he was crossing their path, obscured from sight by the carriage’s interior. She turned her head to look out of the opposite window, but when he came into view she could see only his back. It had been hard to tell, because they looked so alike in those dark, enveloping cloaks, but she was almost sure that the officer was their visitor of the previous week.

  Once home, distracted by the domestic bustle of the funeral tea, Louisa put the incident from her mind. Ham and tongue sandwiches in wafer-thin triangles of bread were served in the front parlour, and on the sideboard cakes were arranged on lace-covered china plates. Her mother had brought out the Crown Derby tea-set and monogrammed silver, relics of the Temperance Hotel days, for the occasion.

  With eyes brimming, Mary Elliott fondled one of the spoons, recalling her sister, the good times they had enjoyed in those early years, flushed with their own success. ‘If only...’

  ‘Try not to upset yourself,’ Edward murmured.

  ‘I know. I suppose it was a blessed release for her, poor soul.’ Sighing heavily, she dabbed at her eyes. ‘Life’s strange, though. You think you know what lies ahead, then something happens – something so unexpected, it changes everything.’ She sighed again, and the tears slid down her cheeks unchecked. ‘I ruined all her wonderful plans. I don’t think she ever forgave me.’

  Edward denied it, but he knew his mother had not forgiven easily.

  ‘And Will—poor Will. That they should both go with barely a year between them! There were six of us, you know —and now there’s only me, and I was the afterthought! It doesn’t seem possible, somehow — those days are gone forever, and now your mother’s gone, nobody remembers.’

  ‘Remembers what, Mamma?’

  ‘Oh, the old days, the days when we were people to be reckoned with round Blankney and Metheringham.’

  Blanche sighed and raised her eyebrows, but Edward silenced her with a look. ‘Mother told me those stories,’ he said, wanting to comfort his aunt, to reassure her that the history of the family, or part of it at least, would always rest with him.

  ‘I remember Uncle William meeting us off the train at Lincoln,’ Louisa said fondly. ‘Do you remember, Blanche? When we travelled on the carrier’s cart to Metheringham, before they got the railway. It seemed a hundred miles — I used to think we’d never get there.’

  Edward smiled. ‘That journey seemed to take forever. I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa every summer when I was small. They had the most beautiful garden, with an orchard. It used to seem like the Garden of Eden to me,’ he admitted. ‘I always thought of it whenever that bit of the Bible was read. And I felt so sorry for Adam and Eve, being cast out – because I never wanted to leave, either.’

  He tried to recapture that image of summer, of tall trees and dense hedgerows, of corn-poppies and wild roses, and the rough dryness of his grandfather’s calloused hand surrounding his. But then he remembered leaving, like a prisoner under escort, and the bleakness of his mother’s company on the long journey back to Darlington. To those other relatives, the ones he could never recall without a shiver. As a child he could never understand why he could not live with his grandparents the whole year through.

  ‘I don’t know how you could bear to leave Lincolnshire,’ Louisa said to her mother, and there was a sudden silence.

  His aunt’s eyes darkened, and Edward sensed that it was down to him, to his unwelcome existence. But with a tired smile she turned back to Louisa and said: ‘We didn’t have much choice, dear. Lincoln was off the beaten track – York was thriving, with the railway and everything. It’s central, you see, people passing through. Good for business.’

  At a lull in the conversation Blanche stood up, smoothing her elegantly cut skirts. ‘I really must be going, Mamma, and you look tired. Why don’t you let Louisa take you up to bed?’

  Mary Elliott nodded. ‘I will, in a moment, dear.’

  Edward went to fetch Blanche’s cloak from the hall, and as he did so, the doorbell rang.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he called to Bessie, ‘I’ll answer it.’

  The man who stood before Edward was a stranger.

  ‘Sir,’ he began hesitantly, ‘forgive my intrusion, but I believe there has been a bereavement in the family?’

  Mystified, Edward nodded. He took in the cut of the clothes, the suggestion of a privileged background in the voice.

  ‘There has been a bereavement,’ he said slowly, ‘but I’m sorry, I…’

  ‘Of course, my card.’ The stranger produced an embossed visiting card from an inner pocket, and passed it to Edward. ‘If Miss Elliott is too indisposed to receive me, would you please co
nvey my sincerest condolences.’

  Beneath the formal phrases, Edward detected some genuine emotion. For a second he was nonplussed. Aware of his own lack of manners, he stood back, inviting the stranger inside, out of the rain. Under the hall light, he looked at the name on the card: Captain R. D. Duncannon, 1st Royal Dragoons. The name meant nothing to him.

  ‘I doubt Miss Elliott is too indisposed to see you, Captain,’ he began, and then disarmingly admitted his confusion. ‘I’m sorry, which one do you mean? I have three cousins by that name.’

  ‘Miss Louisa Elliott.’

  Expecting Blanche’s name, Edward was surprised afresh. ‘If you would care to wait just one moment...’

  He went through into the parlour, and a moment later invited their visitor in. As the man hesitated in the doorway, Louisa’s sudden blush was revealing. Recovering, she crossed the room, her hand outstretched in greeting. ‘Captain Duncannon,’ she said breathlessly, ‘it really is most kind of you to call.’

  His elegant bow took them all by surprise. Blanche quite forgot that she was leaving, while Emily’s smile was almost smug. But as Mary Elliott turned her head to look up at him, Edward caught the man’s sudden shock of recognition. All at once he knew that this was their mysterious visitor of a week ago. Somehow he had heard of their bereavement and assumed that Mary Elliott had passed away.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ Edward said quickly, and drew out a chair for him beside the window. ‘It’s most kind of you to offer your condolences on the death of my mother, Captain, but I must confess, I was not aware of your acquaintance. However, I believe you’ve already met my aunt...’

  As Blanche was introduced, Louisa murmured something about tea. With her return from the kitchen, Edward noted that she had regained her composure. But whereas she firmly ordered her eyes in every direction but the Captain’s, his were not so well-disciplined. He answered the other women but his attention was on her. Reading every glance, Edward was shocked. So much so, he lost the thread of the conversation.