Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  Isa Blagden, arriving one day to look over the Casa Guidi, called on Wilson and found her lying in a dark room, huddled under the covers of her bed, the Bible in her hand and tears streaming down her face. Maria, who showed her in, was frightened and stood at the door shivering. It was all Isa could do to persuade Wilson to let some light in and dry her tears and tell her what ailed her; and when she did so, it made little sense. Disturbed, Isa proposed Wilson and Pilade should come with her up to Bellosguardo for the afternoon and, since no protest was made, she hustled the two of them into her waiting carriage and whisked them off at once, leaving Maria with instructions to be there upon their return.

  Wilson felt only dimly aware of Miss Blagden’s kindness but later came to realise this sign and evidence of human concern had most probably saved her that time from real madness. When she got home, she felt for the first time in months the need to write a letter, to commit her thoughts and feelings to paper and communicate through the medium of paper and pen with someone. But with whom? Her correspondence was in sad disarray. Writing to Ellen, never her most sympathetic correspondent, was dreary work since all she could think of were frantic pleas to tell her of Oreste and she grew tired of begging long before she reached the end of the first sheet. And Ellen never replied now, not even with a note, though money was sent to her as regularly as ever. Minnie Robinson still sent the occasional line but now Wimpole Street had been sold and she no longer had the doings of all the Barretts to catalogue her letters were empty things and difficult to respond to. As for Lizzie Treherne, to whom Wilson still felt drawn, she had done her best but, with four children now, she truly had no time to spare for letters, never having found them easy.

  There was of course Ferdinando, but she hesitated over opening her heart to her husband, who would in any case need her letter read to him and would be unable to answer of his own accord. She tried, but was not pleased with what came out, with the stilted words:

  — I have been unwell though not of anything infectious but rather a serious lowering of the spirits which I struggle to overcome. The days are long and the nights worse. I have presently one boarder only, a gentleman for a change, but see little of him. Pilade goes on well. I am attempting to wean him but it is I and not the child who is loth to finish the business.

  Did she want to write such weary stuff? Did Ferdinando wish to read it? No. The thought of it being read aloud was an embarrassment to her. But still the urge to express her feelings tormented her and at last, in defiance of that dislike she had felt on their last meeting, she sat down and wrote to the person to whom she had once been most close, to Mrs Browning. She begged pardon at once for

  — being so free as to presume I will be read but then, ma’am, you must blame yourself for encouraging in me that letter-writing soul. It is a relief to me to take up this pen and sit at a table and endeavour to sort out what I feel pressing in upon me and to know that if sense can be made of it you will make it. But I am mindful in the midst of my own troubles ma’am that you are not in good health for Miss Blagden has told me so and I am sorry to hear it and to think of you unable to leave your room and I am sorry too that the Rome winter does not prove as gentle as you had hoped. I trust that with spring just round the corner you will feel better. I would hope it could work some miracle for myself also but I fear the burden I feel upon my back will not be helped by fine weather. Ma’am, I have been reading my Bible and am left in no doubt that I have sinned and am paying the just penalty for sin and I repent strongly but to no avail as yet. Ferdinando and I being both your servants when we sinned were like unto brother and sister and broke a commandment which was made clear to me on reading the Scriptures. Oreste was the fruit of this sin and is kept from me because of it. Last night I opened my eyes when it was dark and feeling a sudden want of air opened the window when to my astonishment I was in time to see Oreste carried past in the arms of an angel and I wept and called out to him but there was no reply and soon they were gone up to the heavens and lost sight of. I knelt at once to pray and prayed most dutifully till morning when I expected a letter telling me Oreste had been taken. None has arrived but if his death took place as I saw the angel pass I would not hear from my sister Ellen for some time. Oh ma’am if only I had shown myself strong in the face of temptation! When the last trump sounds and I stand before the Lord our God and am judged I will be found wanting and know not what to do. I am like unto a leper here with all faces turned against me except your kind friend Miss Blagden and now she is gone too. The sin is recognised in me and people are afraid. Ma’am, what would you have me do to atone for my sin? Write and tell me and I will do as you say.

  But Mrs Browning did not write. Instead came a letter from her husband enclosed in a note from Mr Browning. Ferdinando’s was kind enough. He bade her to rest and eat well and soon she would feel better. He vowed that when they returned in the summer he would take her for a holiday. He even went so far as to say he missed her and Pilade, and would be glad to be home. Mr Browning was no less solicitous but she read exasperation in his advice to turn from the Gospels to the Psalms, ‘which may have a calming influence’. He did not mention his wife.

  She duly turned to the Psalms but found them equally disturbing. ‘O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there be iniquity in my hands, if I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me’ leapt out from Psalm 7 and so did ‘Let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end’. That was a plain reference to herself. Psalm 13 put her own question well – ‘How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?’ – without seeking to answer it. When she read how the Lord looked down and saw his people were ‘all together become filthy’ she trembled. Only the sudden arrival of three new boarders saved her from succumbing to the terror which filled her. One of the boarders was a clergyman, the Reverend Baron from Cheshire, and he, finding her at every turn with the Bible open, praised her devotion, which released from her such loud protestations of her unworthiness that he was stopped in his tracks. But he was a kind man and took the trouble to sit with her and show her the hope in the Bible, the comfort and joy as well as the gloom. Their Lord was a merciful Lord and if she had sinned as she believed He existed to forgive sinners. She should come with him to the United Reform Church in Florence and hear messages not of vengeance but of forgiveness.

  Wilson went and it was more the going that helped her than the services themselves. She went with the Reverend Baron and his wife and daughter and was consoled to be among such a party of cheerful worshippers. She was consoled, too, to have them in her house where they made an uncommon amount of noise and were certainly not easy guests but their beaming countenances and determination to look on the bright side of everything lightened the atmosphere immensely. Because she had to provide for the Barons and for her other gentleman who was still with her she was obliged to go out daily to market and this quite ordinary transaction restored some of her spirits. And there had been a few lines from Ellen, proving that Oreste so far from being carried to heaven by an angel was firmly rooted in East Retford and had grown another two inches. She still woke often in the night full of strange forebodings, but with the Reverend Baron to confide in and laugh at her wilder interpretations of what she had dreamed, she survived better. By May, when a note from Rome told her the Brownings’ party was about to come back to Florence, she felt much more stable.

  It was the Reverend Baron who pointed out to his landlady that her husband and his employers, about whom he had heard a great deal, would be lucky to get back to Florence ‘before war really takes hold’. Wilson, shut up in her own world all winter, was astonished to learn what everyone else in Florence had known for many a month – French troops had poured into Piedmont and 1848 was to be repeated all over again. Instantly, she thought of Ferdinando and whether he would go off to fight now as he had fought then. But he was eleven years older and a father of two – surely he would not take up arms? Her anxiety became pressing and now, every day, she had a new an
d urgent need to go out. In the market, she was told that it was Mrs Browning’s old hero, the French Emperor Louis Napoleon, who had landed at Genoa and pledged himself to help the Italians drive out the Austrians. Almost at once, there seemed to be a series of victories reported with which Wilson could not keep up. Nor could the Reverend Baron but he left immediately he heard in May that the Grand Duke of Tuscany had abdicated: that, he vowed, was the clearest possible indication of open war and he wanted to be away. He left the day Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel entered Milan in triumph. Wilson had no time to miss him and his family or her other gentleman, who had joined their party, before the Brownings were back, similarly propelled by the fear that they might be trapped because of war.

  As soon as she saw Annunciata, Wilson felt safe. What had happened to the girl? It took time for her to find out, but she needed no other evidence than her eyes to tell her Ferdinando had lost interest in the pretty maid. (It seemed Annunciata had fallen in love with one of the Papal Guard and was pining for him.) Ferdinando came to his wife in such an open way that she was reminded of the first advances he had ever made and she was stirred in a way she believed no longer possible. There was such relief to be found too in his physical presence – to be held by him, to feel his strength reassured her. And he seemed more alert than when he had left, less inclined to shrug and yawn and leave everything to her. Gradually it emerged that his concern for his country was the decisive factor in his changed attitude. This, he told her, was Italy’s great chance, far greater than in ’48, to rid herself of the foreign oppressor and unite to form a great power. If he had been young, nothing would have kept him from joining the Tuscan troops but as it was, he felt an old man and useless. She needed to console him and assure him he was far from old and found remarkable pleasure in restoring his self-esteem.

  Mrs Browning was hardly less excited than Ferdinando. Paying her first visit to the Casa Guidi Wilson was moved to exclaim, ‘Why, ma’am, you look so well!’

  Mrs Browning laughed and made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Oh, I am tired of being told so, Wilson.’

  ‘It is only I had heard from Miss Blagden that …’

  ‘Isa has not seen me since the happy news and it is that which restores me to near my old self.’

  ‘News, ma’am?’

  ‘Italy, Wilson, Italy! You, with your husband, and you ask what news? The news that makes every Italian heart sing, the news that liberty and freedom are abroad once more and this time we shall not fail!’

  ‘Oh, the war, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, the war, the war of right against might.’

  She found it all extraordinary. It was as though her old mistress were drunk, or light-headed with laudanum, so intense was her delight. The heat was fierce that June-102 degrees in the shade at one time – but Mrs Browning went out in it and seemed to have forgotten such scorching sun had once enervated her to the point of collapse. Pen had hung flags on the balcony of the Casa Guidi – one French, one Italian – and told her that he was paid in scudi to give to the war if he did his lessons well. To Wilson, they all seemed to be in a fever and like any good nurse she waited anxiously for the point of crisis, more concerned about the fate of Mrs Browning than about that of Italy. It came on July 9th. As she went to the market with Ferdinando, each shopping for their respective households – though since hers had shrunk to nothing Wilson had no real need to make the daily pilgrimage – the excitement was unmistakable and so was its nature. There were waitings and tears, and everywhere men sat dejected in front of their stalls while the women looked on, silent and shocked. Bells rang as though for a funeral and the first rumour was that both Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel had been killed. But then Ferdinando made sense of another rumour, that Napoleon had reneged, that he had made peace with the Austrians at Villafranca the day before and all was now over for Italian hopes. All she asked when he came back to tell her was, ‘Who will tell Mrs Browning?’

  It fell to her. Ferdinando was beside himself, alternately cursing and crying with such violence he frightened Pilade. He was in no state to break such news to a woman like Mrs Browning whose sensibilities were tender at the best of times. So she must do it. If she had known of how the Greeks slaughtered the bearers of bad tidings she might have taken longer to decide it was her duty, but, as it was, she saw no need to fear for herself, only for the person to whom she would relate the devastating news. Shown in to the Casa Guidi by Annunciata, she did wonder if it might be wise to tell Mr Browning first but he was not about. He had gone early, before it was too unbearably hot, to see if he could obtain a newspaper which might tell him what was happening. Mrs Browning was still in bed while Pen dashed in and out when he was not feeding his rabbits on the balcony.

  Wilson waited until he had gone and then spoke directly. ‘Ma’am, I have just come from the market. There is bad news of the war.’

  ‘Bad news? For us? For our cause?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. There is talk of an armistice.’

  ‘Between whom?’

  ‘The French and the Austrians.’

  Mrs Browning raised herself from her pillows and unable to speak, her hand at her throat, waited.

  ‘The French Emperor has signed a treaty at Villafranca and withdrawn. It is all over for the present.’

  Had she spoken with anything but sympathy? Was she not married to an Italian, with Italian sons? And yet Mrs Browning looked at her with hatred, her pale face growing steadily darker, and said, ‘Leave me.’ But Wilson was afraid to and advanced instead towards the bed, thinking to offer a drink or make a compress for her forehead. Again, she was told to leave and with such venom she recoiled. Miserably, she backed out of the room, not wanting to desert Mrs Browning and be held responsible for her collapse, if collapse there was to be. Pen, coming once more at a run to see his mother, was stopped and held by her and persuaded to come instead and play with Pilade. Mr Browning should be sent for and with Ferdinando still convulsed with grief and rage there was no one to send but herself or Annunciata. Taking Pen into her own house, Wilson set off, hurrying through streets that told their own tale. Everywhere French flags were ripped in half and trampled on and great gangs of young soldiers joined together to shout and curse the very name of France. All the time she dashed through the streets, fighting her way through the hubbub, Wilson looked for Mr Browning, knowing he must have heard by now and would surely be rushing to his wife’s side. They met on the Ponte Trinita, she seeing and calling out to him first. He crossed the bridge and seized her by the shoulders, shouting above the noise, ‘My wife? Does she know? Does she know?’ Wilson could only nod her head and turn with him to go back.

  In the cool of the entrance hall of the Casa Guidi Mr Browning paused and asked, ‘How did she hear? In what manner was the news brought to her?’

  ‘I told her, sir, coming as I did from the market where the news was fresh and thinking …’

  ‘Yes, yes, Wilson, but how did she seem?’

  ‘Angry, sir.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ And then he was off up the stairs with Wilson, panting behind, trying to fathom the significance of his relief. Why should he thank God for anger? Only, she supposed, because it gave evidence of spirit and life – he had not wanted to hear his wife was prostrate with shock. But by the time they both reached her bedroom it was clear that, whatever her first reaction, Mrs Browning was now in a world of her own. She neither spoke nor moved. Hovering in the doorway, Wilson heard Mr Browning plead with her to say something to him and then she listened while he tried to make out a case for the French Emperor, to argue this might not be the betrayal it seemed, and that all hope might not be lost. His voice, low and urgent, went on and on but there was never an answer. Slowly, Wilson returned to her own house, awed by such suffering. It made no sense to her, but then it never had. She remembered the bride of one year, alight with the happiness of those early celebrations when the Grand Duke had granted the first liberties, and thought how strange it was for an English woman to be so m
ad with joy. Now she was mad with grief. It was as though her father had died again, as though she had been injured to her soul.

  Throughout the next three weeks Wilson was banned from the Casa Guidi. When she might have been at her most useful, since she was so much more skilled in nursing than Annunciata, she was not allowed near Mrs Browning. She had given the instruction herself, saying she could not bear to see the person who had been the instrument through whom she had heard such infamous news. Mr Browning was apologetic. ‘You know her, Wilson,’ he said wearily, ‘she is not as other people, and you have far too much sense to take this personally.’ But Wilson found she did not have too much sense. Far from it. She did not feel in the least sensible but rather resentful on her own account. Could she help the news? Had she not thought of her mistress first? Had not concern been her prime motive in going at once to Mrs Browning? When she heard how a new doctor had been called in, all the familiar names having left Florence previously thinking it was to be plunged into war, she felt indignant – why was she not called in, she who knew more about Mrs Browning’s illnesses than any other person? She raged to Ferdinando about this Dr Grisanowsky, and even the assurance that he was a friend of Miss Blagden’s did not make him more acceptable in her eyes. There was talk of the doctor saying his patient might have suffered a heart attack – ‘Nonsense,’ said Wilson – and then that her lungs were seized up – ‘They always have been,’ fumed Wilson. There was even mention that recovery might be impossible. ‘They do not know her, who say that,’ said Wilson. ‘They will see – in time, when she is over this, she will mend.’