Louisa Elliott

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  ‘You really shouldn’t put things off, Louisa. It would be better to tell them – get the anguish over quickly. Theirs as well as yours.’

  She looked up at him, and for the first time he noticed the rather stubborn set of her mouth and chin. ‘They’re my family, Robert. Let me do things in the way I think best.’

  He would have challenged that, but he knew it might be weeks before they were together again; it seemed pointless to waste the time in argument. With a small sigh, he kissed that stubborn, pointed chin, and gave himself up to the warmth and softness of her arms.

  They travelled together as far as Leeds, parting with dry eyes and unsmiling lips beside the hissing Liverpool express. Robert’s final kiss, almost filial in its brevity, went unnoticed among the covey of other embraces, noisy goodbyes, entreaties and promises to write.

  A porter held the door of a first-class carriage, and as the couplings gave a sudden, warning creak, Robert stepped inside. There was a final banging of doors along the platform, a shrill whistle, a shriek of steam, and then, with a final groan of protest, the Liverpool train pulled slowly away.

  As Louisa waved, she experienced a feeling of such desolation that, had it been possible to turn back the last few days, she would have done so. The void yawned, and she wondered what she had done. The past, in all its safe familiarity, was over, and the future lay before her like another country, peopled by strangers whose language she did not speak, whose customs she would never understand. Abruptly, she turned and walked away.

  Book Two

  1892–1893

  Let us off and search, and find a place

  Where yours and mine can be natural lives,

  Where no one comes who dissects and dives

  And proclaims that ours is a curious case,

  Which its touch of romance can scarcely grace.

  From ‘The Recalcitrants’,

  by Thomas Hardy

  One

  The week following Louisa’s departure became more intolerable with each passing day. Edward’s unease grew like a monstrous thing, until he was illogically convinced more harm lay in wait for her in the depths of Lincolnshire than had ever walked the courts and alleys of Walmgate. Yet he could put no name to it, could find no rational reason for the anxiety which kept him awake into the early hours.

  He dwelt on their brief interview that Saturday until he thought he would go mad for want of some explanation. It seemed against all reason that she should shun him so, especially after their recent weeks of closeness. He had basked in that renewed warmth, shared confidences with her, and, gradually, learned something about Robert Duncannon. Louisa’s view, naturally, but allied to what he recalled of the man, he began to understand in part the feelings which had wrought such devastation. Whatever his intentions, she had turned him down, for which Edward was profoundly thankful. He supposed the man was attractive; he was certainly possessed of great charm; but the Captain was of a different class. It would never have worked, even had marriage been on his mind, which Edward doubted.

  Suppressing his own opinions, Edward had listened patiently and with compassion, delighted by the intimacy of her hand on his arm as they walked together, a tentative smile and the first spark of genuine amusement. Confident she was over the worst of it, he had begun to relax, secure in the knowledge that they were friends again.

  Then, in one fell swoop, Albert Tempest’s irrational behaviour had destroyed that illusion. Louisa’s trust in him was shattered, he knew not why. He wished, desperately, that she could have told him exactly what had been said; nevertheless, his imagination burned with possibilities.

  In Fossgate, the temperature was arctic. Louisa’s name was never mentioned, but she stood between Edward and his employer like an invisible block of ice, freezing what had once been a passable relationship of more than twenty years’ standing. Edward could not, in all honesty, say that he liked Albert Tempest, but he respected him, saw him as a straight, if occasionally ruthless man of business who, in common with the rest of his class and contemporaries, attended Chapel regularly and paid his dues towards the relief of the deserving poor. Admittedly, he was irascible and intolerant, but he rarely interfered with the bookbinding side of the business, which was all that mattered to Edward.

  Nevertheless, the fact that his employer had revealed his knowledge of the Elliotts’ past, and with such apparent contempt, made Edward wonder for the first time what festering sores lay behind that bluff and blustering exterior.

  For some other, less explicable reason, the atmosphere at home in Gillygate was also strained. Mary Elliott was uncharacteristically sharp with Bessie and whenever Edward mentioned Louisa she either ignored him or changed the subject. She made it so abundantly clear that her daughter was not to be discussed that his anxiety doubled, and he began to suspect there was far more behind Louisa’s dismissal than he had been told.

  Sleeping badly, he tried to take consolation in his writing, but pain brought forth words which shamed him, an agony of longing and frustration so intense he could scarcely bear to scan the lines. In the close hours of the night, he examined his conscience until its tender fabric was almost threadbare, morbidly afraid that his feelings for Louisa surpassed the bounds of fraternal affection. Love, to Edward, meant the abnegation of self, a desire for the happiness and well-being of another, in which purely personal gratification had no place. By that rigorous yardstick, his affection for Louisa measured well, but the fact that they were first cousins, brought up within a much closer relationship, made him uneasy about the nature of that affection.

  Towards the end of that unbearable week, he longed as never before for the seven days’ holiday which was to follow and, in an unprecedented gesture of desperation, answered a long-standing invitation from a fellow poet in Whitby.

  They had corresponded for more than two years; each summer it had been suggested that Edward stay for a few days as the elderly schoolmaster’s guest. Edward had never refused outright, but the visit had been deferred each time as he found pressing reasons to keep him in York. For the first time, however, the city failed him; the heat was claustrophobic, and his unhappiness seemed locked within the walls of the Gillygate house. Longing to get away, he stood over Bessie as she laundered his best linen and pressed his only lightweight suit.

  With a sense of relief that was almost euphoric, he set forth on the Monday afternoon.

  The broad plain with its rolling wheatfields and open skies gave way, beyond Pickering, to the steep-sided valleys of the North York Moors. Climbing with dogged, chugging determination, the train twisted and turned its way through dark, sun-dappled woods, past narrow strips of cultivated land and rocky, dried-up stream beds. By the open window, Edward listened and watched, delighted by each turn of the track, surprise after surprise revealed like a nest of Chinese boxes, and as quickly whipped away. At Levisham the valley broadened, climbed again; thinning coppices gave way to steep, sparse moorland, ochre against a fresh blue sky. Sheep grazed between purple cushions of heather, scattering in alarm before the engine’s noisy, gasping approach; here and there, blackened, smouldering patches bore witness to the summer’s dryness. Firewatchers studded this length of line, armed with besoms and spades, but while Edward wished them rain, he hoped for a few days’ grace.

  The fine, dry weather held, breaking in a series of storms the night before his return. In borrowed oilskins Edward was escorted to the station by the schoolmaster and his wife, a jolly pair, who after forty years’ experience on that exposed coastline were quite undaunted by the weather.

  As rain dripped off roofs and gurgled in gutters, he thanked them for their kindness and hospitality, while the elderly lady presented him with a small, well-wrapped parcel, a suspicious twinkle in her eye. First, Edward pressed it, then he sniffed at it, and then he began to laugh. Four days’ close proximity to the smoking sheds along the east cliff had quite dispelled his partiality for kippers.

  ‘A little reminder of your holiday!’ she said w
ickedly, and, in spite of the rain, their parting was full of warmth and laughter.

  Amidst pressing invitations to return, Edward left them, two cheerful, sou’westered figures waving on the deserted platform. He opened a book, but did not read it; his thoughts were too full of the friends he had made, and long sunny days spent walking the cliffs, discussing poetry and prose, favourite authors and cherished ambitions. At dawn they had watched the fishing cobles leave, and in the evening counted their return, decks awash with gleaming herring. They had walked the length and breadth of Whitby, climbed the steep way to the church and visited the abbey ruins, where once, more than a thousand years before, the poet Caedmon had been befriended by the Abbess Hilda.

  Halfway across the Vale of York, with the Minster in sight, he suddenly realized he had given Louisa barely a thought since leaving. Momentary guilt gave way to reason: he had needed to get away, as she had. Recalling the fears which had plagued him previously, he almost smiled; they seemed faintly ridiculous now, as much the products of insomnia as of grief and disappointment. During his time away, he had slept like a child, relaxed by the sun and the soft sea air. Happier, more confident, he looked forward to her return, hoping her holiday had been as beneficial as his own.

  It seemed auspicious that he should see her tall figure ahead of him in the crowd beyond the barrier. Impatiently he handed in his ticket and hurried after her.

  ‘Louisa! This is a delightful surprise!’ He kissed her warm pink cheek. ‘What train did you come on?’

  ‘What train?’ she repeated faintly, suddenly bending to retrieve the parasol which had slipped from her grasp. ‘Oh, I – I came from Leeds. Wouldn’t you know, I fell asleep and missed the stop at Doncaster.’

  ‘How fortunate,’ he smiled. ‘If you’d been earlier, you’d have had to struggle alone. Look, it’s still raining — shall we have a cup of tea before we set out? It’ll give the weather a chance to clear.’

  ‘If—if you want to,’ she replied, making a fuss of her basket and gloves and the trunk which seemed to be in everyone’s way.

  Having settled her with the luggage in a corner of the tea-room, Edward sat opposite, a smile lighting his eyes as he studied her. ‘You’re looking very pretty,’ he remarked, and was both amused and gratified to see a small blush come to her cheeks. ‘Is that a new dress?’

  Louisa glanced down in surprise. ‘No. I’ve had it some time.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s your bonnet,’ he grinned, pretending to study it from every angle; her blush deepened. ‘Anyway, whatever it is, you look remarkably well. How was Blankney?’

  ‘Beautiful – wonderful. But you know Blankney – it doesn’t change.’

  ‘I keep saying I’ll go back there one day. Perhaps I will, next year. Do you know,’ he suddenly observed, ‘you don’t seem the least bit surprised to see me.’ Over the rim of his tea-cup, Edward saw a momentary flash of confusion in those wide blue eyes

  ‘Oh, Edward, I’m sorry. I was miles away. Still in Blankney, I think,’ she added with a faint, uneasy smile.

  ‘You were certainly miles away,’ he agreed, serious now. ‘I hope you’re not still worrying?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Albert Tempest.’

  The colour which had rushed so easily to her cheeks now drained away. ‘Oh, him! No — no, I’m not worrying about that. I’ve put it quite out of my mind, I assure you.’

  ‘Good,’ he said softly.

  ‘Now you’re looking worried!’ she said with a forced little laugh. ‘I really had forgotten, you know. I was startled, that’s all. Coming home’s made me realize that I’ve got a job to look for, and it won’t be easy.’

  ‘You could stay at home, help your mother.’

  ‘For a while, yes. Anyway,’ she added brightly, ‘don’t let’s worry about that. Tell me where you’ve been. Out in the sun somewhere, I can tell — you’re as brown as a berry!’

  He laughed. ‘Whitby,’ he confessed, and as he began to tell her of his visit she relaxed visibly, laughing about the kippers. Encouraged, he went into greater detail, describing his friends and the little sea-port with infectious enthusiasm; he told her everything that had happened, but not the reason for his going.

  In the days that followed, he noticed an indefinable difference in her. To all intents and purposes she was pleasant and cheerful; nevertheless, he understood that Albert Tempest was not to be mentioned. It also seemed as though the wall Louisa had erected around herself in the days of her distress had been immeasurably fortified, as though she held a secret to which she was determined Edward should not be party. It nagged at him, and he watched her covertly, but the bland façade never slipped. She was always there when he came home from work, and, fitting into the habit which had been re-established, she took up her sewing in the evenings and listened as he read aloud.

  Gradually, anxiety seeped away. Although he knew she was searching for some suitable employment, had been through more than one unsuccessful interview, it was something of a shock when she announced that she intended to take rooms of her own once everything was settled.

  Only when her mother took refuge in tears did Louisa’s guard show signs of breaking. In a voice which shook with equal reproach, she begged her mother to understand that she could not go on indefinitely without properly-paid employment. Emily had worked for what she earned, but since her departure the two older women had organized themselves very well. Louisa’s help was superfluous and largely inefficient; furthermore, she had grown used to her independence and wished to continue it.

  The truth of what she said could not be denied, but it did not prevent their attempts to dissuade her.

  Some three weeks after her return from Blankney, Louisa applied for a position at the Royal Station Hotel as a clerk. She wrote an excellent copperplate hand and had always been familiar with elementary book-keeping; she reckoned she might succeed.

  As Edward took her through some intensive revision, he brought up the problem of her references. ‘They’re bound to want to know what you’ve been doing for the last twelve months. What will you say?’

  She shook her head, unwilling to reveal Robert’s hand in her affairs. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps my old references will be enough.’

  ‘She can say I’ve been very ill,’ Mary Elliott said, looking up from her sewing. ‘She’s been running this hotel — for me.’ Her set, determined expression challenged either of them to find the flaw. ‘They won’t check, and if they do, I’ll tell them exactly what they want to know.’

  ‘Thank you, Mamma – that’s an excellent idea.’ Louisa knew enough about the day to day running of a small boarding house to satisfy the most informed enquiry, and her experience could be an added bonus.

  She returned from the interview flushed with success. The job was hers, subject to a month’s approval, and both pay and hours were reasonable. She would work in a private office with two other young women, checking and filing accounts and preparing clients’ bills. They did not handle cash: that side of things was dealt with by their immediate superior, a man.

  ‘Dear me,’ Mary Elliott sniffed at this piece of news. ‘Don’t they trust you? Or mustn’t you girls sully your hands with filthy lucre?’ She sniffed again as she totted up the week’s takings. ‘You should tell them your mother’s been running her own business for nigh on forty years — and never had sight of the workhouse, thank God!’

  Louisa sighed. ‘It’s just a job, Mamma —’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s the attitude. Men never credit us with more than half a grain of sense – frightened to death in case we get a bit of authority and make them look stupid!’

  ‘When did a man ever try to make you look stupid?’ Louisa demanded.

  ‘Not for many a long year, my girl, not for many a long year.’

  ‘They’re not all like that.’

  ‘No, but the worst type are the ones you’ll be working for — the petty clerks and under-butlers of this world. The jumped-up nothings, b
ent on improving their lot over the backs of women like you. You do the work, they reap the reward. So just be careful, and don’t try to be clever.’

  Thrilled by the prospect of independence, Louisa refused to be daunted by her mother’s opinions. After the iniquities of Blossom Street, she had high hopes of enjoying the job and doing well. Within the week, however, she was beginning to appreciate a spark of truth in her mother’s statements. There was pettiness, there was snobbery, there was the kind of jealous hierarchy she had heard about in servants’ halls, but never personally experienced. For the first time she began to understand that the position of governess, particularly in a grand house, had much to recommend it. A governess was alone, neither family nor servant, but she was her own mistress; a female clerk in a large establishment such as the Station Hotel was very low in the pecking order.

  With downcast eyes and occasionally gritted teeth, she did her work self-effacingly and well, determined to give no cause for reprimand or envy. The money she earned represented the independence she coveted, the freedom to spend part of her life, at least, with Robert Duncannon.

  On one of her rare visits, Blanche announced that there was a room available in the ladies’ apartment house where she lived, but Louisa dismissed that idea. Barely two weeks later, she was packing books and belongings in readiness for her move to furnished rooms off Marygate.

  Until then, none of the family had seriously believed she would go, but it proved useless to remonstrate. Against all their arguments of cost and inconvenience, she simply repeated what had been said a dozen times before, until Mary Elliott begged Edward not to argue with her. For his aunt’s sake he kept silence after that.

  On the Saturday afternoon, he helped stow her things onto the hired cart; and, as it drew away down Gillygate, offered to walk down with her to her new home. She refused but he insisted, gratified to see her look genuinely upset as she bade her mother goodbye.