Emily Hudson

by Melissa Jones

  Yours truly,

  Emily Hudson

  MISS AUGUSTA DEAN

  HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE, ROME

  BOSTON

  January 27th, 1862

  My dear Augusta,

  He has not made an offer.

  It seems I was mistaken in his feeling for me.

  I shall remain as I am—quite inviolate.

  I cannot write further.

  Yours truly,

  Emily

  NINE

  January days, February days. It did not feel as if there was anything new about the year, merely old snow and the birds still asleep. In a painful scene her uncle berated Emily for what she had done: for disfiguring herself, he forbade her to leave the house. If William were sympathetic he remained silent and did not take her part. Only Mary appeared to regard her with a new gentleness. Emily did not cry or storm or sulk. She did not pine. She bowed her head and sewed, barely lifting it to notice the comings and goings of William as he prepared to wind up his affairs in advance of his sailing. The watchfulness in the house made her tired. She knew that his mother did not want William to go, and that Mary’s spirits were low, although she could not guess the cause; and that her uncle, always so patently oblivious, chose to look away.

  She dared not ask about her future—whether she would go back to school; if she would be asked to get her own living. She tried to imagine being a governess. She could not. She did not know enough, and besides she would undoubtedly romp with the children and be dismissed.

  She worried about Captain Lindsay: how he did, if he fared better than she. She was glad that he was occupied, if gladness could be found anywhere in war. The music room became her refuge. Rarely did any member of the family disturb her there.

  William came to her one afternoon too dull for tears. He knocked upon the door.

  “You wish to speak to me, Cousin?”

  “I come to inquire how you do.”

  “Is this to be a farewell scene?”

  “You know I will not sail until the spring is properly advanced.”

  “Of course. I forgot. You are so precise in everything you do.”

  He pursed his lips. “There is no sense in taking an unnecessary risk.”

  “No.” Emily bowed her head and continued to sew.

  “You are recovering, I trust?” He spoke in a low and insinuating tone that she found unbearable.

  “My cough is quite healed, thank you.”

  “You know very well I refer to your heart and not your lungs in this context.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Oh, William, you have missed your calling. You should have been a doctor. All this talk of hearts and lungs.”

  He said nothing but merely waited.

  “Do you know what happened? Would you like to? I refused him.”

  William blushed. “I did not realize. I had understood that he did not make an offer after all. That can be quite … galling, I understand.”

  “He did not deny me, William. He offered me his hand and heart.”

  He took a step toward her and she tried to avoid his eyes. “And you refused?”

  They were in almost the same positions in the room that she and Captain Lindsay had occupied that painful day: her seated, he standing before her, but it was all different. William offered her nothing but his curiosity.

  She stood up and went to the window, her back to him, and began to pull down the blind.

  “Why did you refuse him?” He spoke with the old eagerness, the determination to know her.

  She was tired. Why not tell him? He could put it into a story. “He told me he had become aware of an illness in my family. He did not divulge how he came to know—”

  “People talk …” interrupted William.

  “He offered me his hand despite this. But I was ashamed. I do not wish to bring him trouble.”

  “I see.”

  She could not see his face because she could not bear to turn around and read his eyes.

  “You are on a sudden noble then, my dear.”

  “And foolish. I have little to look forward to now. I shall not marry.”

  Emily was minutely examining the brocade of the drapes and observing how much care and effort had gone into making objects in every particular so hideous.

  “What shall you do?” He sounded blank. “You will not marry, you say? Even if the right match could be found?”

  And now she turned on him. “There is no right match, William. There is only what we find!” Did he have some defect of the heart? Could he not see how she suffered?

  She tried to search his face but was blinded by her own tears. “We are not pieces on a chessboard, William—” And then she sat down, altogether cold and weak. “I cannot put together in my mind how he came to know. That is the nub of it. I cannot ask him now. But I would never have told him. When I refused him I thought that to have kept it from him would have been a wickedness, but now I am quite well I am no longer convinced. I am no longer sure of anything, the way I used to be.”

  “As I have said,” repeated William, very self-possessed, “people talk. It is a great human activity.” Emily did not reply. “I do not like to see you brought to this. I do not like to see you brought so low. You used to have such excessive joy.” This last was spoken in an undertone.

  “Could you leave me now? I am tired out.”

  “Certainly I shall. I bid you good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon, Cousin.”

  MISS EMILY HUDSON

  CORNFORD HOUSE

  BOSTON, MASS

  February 28th, 1862

  My dear Emily,

  Although it may seem somewhat peculiar to you to receive a letter from me when we are living beneath the same roof, nonetheless I feel, for the sake of clarity, that only the written word will do in this respect.

  I have been acutely troubled by your situation ever since our last interview. I can think of no other course than to ask you to accompany me to Europe. As you are aware, London is to be my initial destination.

  I can make this offer under the following conditions:

  • Neither you nor I shall mention Captain Lindsay’s name.

  • You will abandon your determination never to marry, but will once more be open to your fate.

  • We shall reside independently of one another and you shall pursue your interest in art on a course of study.

  • While you shall accept my financial protection this shall not be alluded to between us.

  I hope you can understand from the above that I entertain no greater wish than that you should continue to experience the world. Your qualities are rare and should not be denied a larger stage.

  For the purposes of adventure and all that we used to ponder together (in a summer that seems so long ago, but is ever present in my mind), rest assured that I will always remain your devoted friend.

  Yours etc.,

  William Cornford

  MR. WILLIAM CORNFORD

  BOSTON

  February 28th, 1862

  Dear William,

  I am moved. Beyond words.

  I accept.

  You are my very dear, very true friend.

  Emily

  “Why can we not sail next week?” Emily was pacing the floor of the music room. It had become a habit. With her frown and her pallor and her cropped hair she was like a different girl.

  “The sea air will be good for your lungs,” William said. “But we must not attempt to cross the Atlantic until later in the year, when the damp is not so pervasive.”

  “William, we will be aboard ship—of course it will be damp! And I am quite well. It is March now and I have not coughed in weeks. In any event, my health is my own affair.”

  “I have promised to take you with me; and this is how you express your gratitude?”

  She turned her face to the window but did not disguise the storm of tears.

  “Come, come. Sssh.” He approached her, but did not touch. “You are young. Your heart w
ill mend.”

  “What do you know about it?” She looked up at him, her eyes narrowed and streaming and bright with pain. She felt ugly to him.

  “We shall wait until the weather is milder. Besides, you must grow your hair. I am not taking a boy with me to London.”

  She bent her head to wipe her eyes and he saw the nape of her neck exposed, the bones. It was a pretty neck. He felt a peculiar distance from her, from himself, almost giddy.

  “Prepare your mind by reading about England. Turn to books. Books are the best cure,” he said, and left her.

  Emily sat before her uncle in the chair of judgment. The scene was changed from that of their first encounter; it was now altogether larger and grander, but it had become familiar, the feeling of blindfold fear and disgust. The bright hopes of Newport had faded, and this new journey she contemplated was merely an exhausted escape.

  “I cannot disguise the fact that I remain bewildered by your conduct,” he said. “To refuse such a gentleman—but let us not dwell on that. William assures me you will not change your mind.”

  “No, Uncle. I will not.”

  He appeared to be waiting for her to speak further, then continued. “What baffles me equally is my son’s affection for you: to settle upon taking you to London is well beyond any familial duty I would have expected him to perform.”

  “Yes.”

  His hooded eyes blinked at her. His hands were still. He looked at her as at an old adversary but one aware his enemy was changing: fragile and yet stronger.

  “You are determined to go away?”

  “Yes.”

  “What shall you do?” He had never asked her such a question before without being in control of the answer.

  “If William agrees I will enroll at art school.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I see. Allow me then to explain the arrangements that have been made for you. Up to the present time, I have supported you from my purse, believing you were soon to marry. As you have chosen to refuse the offer made to you, and appear to have no interest in securing another, I consider my obligation to you to be at an end.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Your cousin, William, however, sees fit to extend his bounty to you, which is independent of my own. He will cover your expenses from now on from his own fortune, while also providing you with a small allowance for what I believe is known as sundries.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I give you nothing, child.”

  “No, Uncle.”

  “You are like your mother, driving yourself to your own destruction. Go now. I do not want to look at you.”

  Leaving the room she encountered Mary in the hall.

  “I understand you are to be saved once again, Emily,” she said. Her voice betrayed sympathy and envy both. As always with Mary, Emily was taken aback by the power of her cousin’s feelings toward her.

  “It is true I am to go away.”

  “However did you persuade my brother to take you? He has always traveled alone.”

  “I did not. It was his own idea. After my recent—trouble, I imagine he thinks it might revive me. He is very good.”

  Mary smiled slightly at that, as if the concept of William’s goodness was amusing. “Better my brother’s intervention than to be left to my mother’s tender mercies,” she said, with her fierce, quiet bitterness. “Think of me as you journey to your new country. And remember, like my father, William always has reasons of his own.”

  Emily was moved by her cousin’s sympathy, closely touched by her advice, and for the first time she was struck by a new affinity with Mary’s bondage and the clarity of her vision, her honesty. She realized she had paid Mary very little attention during their time together, nor tried to seek her out or understand her, and for that she felt ashamed.

  She answered warmly, “Believe me, I will.” Thinking of the silence of the house after she and William had gone, she took a step closer. “And I will write to you, if you will allow me.”

  Her cousin, at one with the shadows of the house, reached out and took her hands. Holding them, she said, “I would like that very much,” and gave Emily the bare suggestion of a kiss.

  Emily had had few treasures to pack: her mother’s necklace (she had not asked for permission), her box of colors, her letters. She left her sewing things behind. Her aunt did not trouble to supervise her packing. She felt herself as a ghost in the house before she had left it. She saw little of William, who was busy concluding business in the city, working, visiting his acquaintance. The solitude was unbearable, but she bore it. She found she could not write to Augusta.

  But on the last morning, a letter in Captain Lindsay’s hand:

  MISS EMILY HUDSON

  ———HOUSE, BOSTON

  ———SQUADRON,

  ———REGIMENT

  April———, 1862

  My dear Miss Emily,

  Please do not trouble yourself by taking this as a resumption in our correspondence; it is only that I have heard you are to quit Boston and journey overseas. Allow me to wish you Bon Voyage, a good sailing and—above all—safe passage.

  I hope you will find in the Old World what you could not in the New.

  Sincerest good wishes,

  Captain J. C. H. Lindsay

  PART TWO

  TEN

  Nothing I can say will prepare you for London, so I shall not attempt it.” William was looking at her with all the old charm and warmth. They were on the deck, in powerful wind; Emily was in good heart and strong spirits. Her cousin, in all the detail of substantial color and eyes bright with reflected light, appeared more present to her than he had been in a long while. For the first time she realized he would now be her only companion.

  “But we land at Dover?”

  The old quizzical smile. “Indeed.”

  “Look—I contrived to force my hair into a bun!” She turned her head to show him the small coil firmly in place beneath her bonnet. “Admire it! You must. I am a young lady again.”

  “Barely.” The light shone on his face. “We will have to spend so much time explaining to every creature we encounter that you are not my bride.”

  She smiled at him, gentle, as if he were a child. “I am no one’s bride, William.”

  They stood, the sun falling on the backs of their hands as they gripped the rail, the sky wider, rounder, more infinite than ever; the sea swell a powerful promise of distance to be plowed through, wakes to be made.

  “I love it. I love the water,” she said.

  MISS AUGUSTA DEAN

  HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE, ROME

  34———SQUARE

  MAYFAIR, LONDON

  April———, 1862

  My dear Augusta,

  After all this time, I am arrived! Look, I have an address, a room of my own—more than a room, in fact, two—and my own key. It is all highly irregular: my extremely respectable landlady made it more than clear to William that I should not be by myself in this great and wicked city without a chaperone, and his response was uncharacteristically bland. Bright things to their own destruction, he must have thought.

  It is raw and cold. Damp. Pale light. I do not know how to describe it. I am still so full of journey and being shaken in carriages. But it is not as I would have expected springtime to feel. No real warmth. William said it was poised on the edge, and I will see by and by.

  My lodgings are in a house in a square not unlike my uncle’s in Boston: the landlady—if I can call her that without sounding impertinent—a widow of late middle age, has been forced to let her “drawing room floor,” as they call it, through straitened circumstances. Having nursed her husband in some retirement for many years, she appears not a little frightened by the world and, according to William, rarely ventures out, so I should feel quite safe. She and her servants occupy all the other floors of the house, so I am to be the only stranger. William assured me that her severity and reserve were the English way and will lessen once she becomes aware of my go
od character.

  I have a window box with flowers in it, and a view over the backs of houses that is all jumbled and irregular and new. Everything is new. I couldn’t believe it when my cousin made to go after depositing me here and I found myself saying, “So I am to live alone?” and he said, “Remember, it is what you wanted,” in an extremely serious voice, the one that makes me want to laugh. But he is right. It is merely that I did not intend to cause a scandal purely by breathing.

  William is to stay at his club in St. James’s Street so he will be nearby, and I am to register at the Women’s Art School in South Kensington as soon as I please. All bills are to be sent to him. And I am to explore! He will give me my pocket allowance at the beginning of each week (he does not want me to carry too much ready money), but he says I am to go to the bank at Pall Mall St. James’s and ask for Mr. Sinclair if there is ever an emergency and I am in need of funds.

  This district is beautifully laid out and quite modern, close to Park Lane and the Hyde Park, although I understand it is no longer the height of fashion and abuts an insalubrious place called Shepherds Market that I am to avoid. And—he stipulates—there is to be no walking after dark. It seems places change their character quickly here and I have no desire to test the truth of his advice. I have bought myself a little map with the street names on it (for daylight hours!) from a man in a street kiosk who could not understand what I was saying.