She bows and leaves the room in her quick, businesslike way.
OF COURSE I remember that same-day haste. The moment a death was announced, the hurry to get into black, the sudden transition from color to gloom, the draping of the looking glasses, the drawing down of the blinds. Although my parents were not strict in these matters, all three of us girls were in half-mourning for months when Grandmama Millar died. How I hated the horrible smell of the dye, the heaviness of the fabric—and how glad I was that we did not come from a large family! Some girls I knew seemed never to be out of black, as uncles, aunts, cousins, sisters, and brothers all passed away in succession.
Although I had never seen Alfred in other than vivid colors, it had never occurred to me that he would not wear mourning for Alice. When he announced he had no such intention, I was shocked. But he was so adamant about the preposterousness of it all, and so eloquent about his reasons for breaching the “hideous custom,” that I decided to fall in with his wishes. I did not anticipate the dreadful scene that would arise on account of it only the day after Alice’s death.
Mama had not noticed my lack of mourning at first. She and Papa had been too blurred with tears, too distracted with the shock of it all, as they crowded into the narrow hallway and climbed the stairs to Alice’s room. And later, when we retired to the drawing room with its blinds down against the world, she’d seemed too exhausted to speak, lying back against the sofa cushions and closing her eyes. I did the same, my head aching and my ribs sore with weeping. Poor Sissy, conscious of the need to maintain decorum but bored with the silence and stillness of the room, crept up and sat next to me, leaning her head against my chest and kicking her legs against the edge of the Chesterfield—Alice’s once-favorite doll dangling unheeded from her hand. As she did so, I was filled with the most awful grief to think that we three sisters would never again embrace each other, or share delightful sisterly secrets, and I suspected that, in her own way, Sissy was feeling the same. I hugged her close: “Dear, dear Sissy! Don’t fret, I’m still here.”
And she put her hard, thin arm through mine. “Sing to me,” she whispered. “Sing as you used to when you put us to bed.”
Our whispers drew my mother’s attention. She opened her eyes, and as they lit on me, she was suddenly struck by my appearance. “Is your mourning dress not ready, Dodo?” she said with some puzzlement. She and Sissy were, of course, already shrouded in black. Even the wretched doll was rigged out in sable satin.
I felt as though I had violated the family’s grief by appearing before them in my light-colored gown, but I answered boldly: “I shan’t be wearing mourning, Mama. Alfred disapproves.”
“Disapproves?”
“Yes. He thinks it a repulsive habit.”
She was silent. Shocked. Uncomprehending. “Where does he get such ideas? It’s a lot of foolish nonsense. It’s all those Radical people he spends his time with—when he should be at home with his wife and child. Mourning is simply a mark of respect. Respect for our dear dead girl.” She leapt up and caught my hand, tears starting to her eyes once more. “Oh, Dodo, I hope you will not turn your heart away from her memory!”
“Mama, you know I will not.” I started to cry again, too. “You know I loved Alice as dearly as any sister could.” But when I looked down at my gown with its cheerful pattern of leaves and flowers, I almost faltered in my determination. “But I think Alfred is right, Mama. I think you should respect the Departed in other, more truthful, ways.”
“More truthful?” She rounded on me. “Are you saying that Papa and I are untruthful in our observations of respect? Your poor dear father is consumed with the most dreadful grief. He has been hardly able to articulate a word, as well you know.”
I did know, of course. I had seen his face when he first saw her corpse, and had felt the thudding of his heart as he’d held me in his silent embrace. “Oh, Mama, I am not blaming anyone. It is simply that”—I struggled to remember how Alfred had represented it to me—“it is simply Alice’s life that we must think of, not her death. It is her sweetness, her goodness, her patience. When you see what lovely hymns Alfred has chosen, and what a fine inscription he has written for her headstone—”
“Alfred’s been choosing hymns and inscriptions? Alfred?” She stared at me, aghast. “I’m afraid, Dodo, but this is beyond anything. Alice is our daughter. Papa and I shall bury her how we wish. Alfred may be clever with words, and have half of fashionable London at his feet—but he has no say in this particular matter.” She got up to go, pulling a reluctant Sissy by the arm.
I was startled. When presented in that way, Alfred’s actions did seem somewhat improper. But Mama did not understand him as I did. She had taken my innocent words of admiration and transformed them into words of blame. I felt a hot flush pulse through my veins. I loved my mother—never more than then, when we shared this terrible grief—yet I could not let her speak of Alfred in that belittling way. I clasped her arm: “Oh, but Mama, he is so very affected. You have no idea. Don’t forget that Alice died in his arms; in his arms, Mama. The shock was dreadful; he is inconsolable.”
She gave me a sharp look. “No married man has the right to be inconsolable over his sister-in-law. What has been going on in this house, Dodo?”
I felt my color rise the more. “Nothing at all, Mama. Nothing wrong, at any rate.” How I longed for Alfred’s facility with words! How I longed for him to be there with me to explain to her how chaste and honorable his affection was. But he was locked in his study and would let no one in.
“Indeed, I hope not.” She looked at me fiercely. “I trusted you with her, Dodo. I trusted you to look after her. I never expected to come to your house and find her dead.”
“Nor did we!” I cried in a passion. “Nor did we! We looked after her as well as could be. If only you had seen Alfred with her, how he always made sure she had something to do, or someone to talk to. Nobody could have been more careful of her—nobody! If you want to blame someone, blame me! Perhaps I overburdened her without knowing—made her stay up too late or walk too far in the rain. But, Mama, please believe me, she was entirely well when we left home. She told us she was going upstairs to read the new book that Alfred had given her. She even stood on the doorstep and waved us off with that lovely smile of hers.” I started to cry as I remembered it all. “Oh, Mama, don’t you think I wish and wish I’d stayed at home? Don’t you think I’ve wondered over and over again whether it might have been different had we been here?”
“I understand Alfred turned the Scotch doctor away. Why was that?”
“He didn’t turn him away. She had already left us, Mama; Alfred simply didn’t want her touched.”
“I should have liked her properly examined. By someone I trust—not some half-drunk incompetent willing to cover matters up for a guinea or two.”
“Cover matters up? What are you saying, Mama? What are you saying?”
“I wish to know—” She cast a look at Sissy, who was listening to everything with wide eyes, and stopped.
I realized she was overwrought and casting around for someone to blame, so I tried to hold on to the simple truth: “She had a seizure, Mama. The servants saw it happen. That is all. What else could it be?”
“You take his side very stoutly, Dodo.”
“There are no ‘sides,’ Mama! Alfred loved and respected Alice. He would never have done her the slightest harm. I can swear to that on my baby’s life.”
She shook her head. “You were always a trusting child, Dodo. Always ready to see the best in people. But there is wickedness, too, you know. Especially in men.”
I could hardly believe that she was saying this. “But not between Alfred and Alice,” I cried. “She was like his sister—or even his child.”
“He has his own child!” she snapped. “Why did he want mine?”
The door burst open and Alfred stood there. Very pale, very dishevelled—and as angry as I have ever seen him. “Is there no respect for the darling girl lying
in the chamber above us? Why are voices raised?” He glared at us both.
“I understand, Alfred, that you have taken it upon yourself to choose hymns and inscriptions for Alice. Don’t you think such things are best left to those closest to her?” Mama spoke quietly now. I could see she was frightened of his demented look.
“I want the best for her, that is all. The very best. Whatever I can afford—and more. But I shall do nothing either you or Mr. Millar disapprove of.”
“Well, we disapprove of these gaudy outfits, for one thing. I should like Dodo to show respect, even if you don’t.”
“Respect!” He ran his hand through his hair and began to pace the room, throwing wild looks at me and Mama. “Mrs. Millar, please do not believe I have anything but the greatest respect for Alice. A miserable paid Mute can wear black and drape himself in crepe, sniveling into his handkerchief to order. But I am grieving for Alice in my heart—in the very depths of my heart! I am missing her presence every minute, every second. Her image is stamped on my heart forever. She will always be with me, light and bright and lovely.” Tears ran down his cheeks afresh, and he bit his lip and turned away. “Dodo can dress as she wishes. She is a free agent.”
Of course I was not entirely free. Caught between Alfred’s wishes and my parents’ disapproval, I compromised. I knew my feelings for my sister could not be measured by the yardage of crepe I draped about my body, but there was a fitness in the traditional way of things that I respected. So, when the funeral came, I wore sober clothes and tied up my bonnet with a black ribbon. Alfred wore only an armband over his checked coat. The rest of the family were layered deep in black. The funeral was in other ways just as Alfred wanted it. Faced with his implacable grief, and the power of his will, my family agreed to his arrangements. My father was too ravaged to argue the case. “In the end,” he said, “a funeral is a funeral. Let us not fall out with one another over details and so forth.” So Alice’s coffin was draped in white, as Alfred had wanted, and the hearse was decked in wildflowers, as for a country wedding. The grave was newly dug at Alfred’s expense. No one else had lain there before, he said, and no one else should do so afterward—unless, one day, it was him. For the headstone, he’d taken a line from Byron: Snatched away in Beauty’s Bloom—Alice Millar, aged fifteen.
Alfred could not watch the coffin as it was taken down from her room, down the steep stairs to the street. But when we went down after it, he took a sprig of forget-me-not from the piled flowers on the hearse and put it in his buttonhole with a kiss. We held hands tightly all the way to Chiswick, and his grip was so strong I thought I might cry out in pain. Then we walked in silence from my parents’ house to the church where we had all worshipped for so many years.
I don’t remember the service. All I was aware of was Alfred’s ashen look. I did not go to the graveside, but Cousin George said he’d had to support Alfred as if he had been a sack of bones. “I really thought he might jump in to join her. I have never seen a man shake so dreadfully with grief.” It was raining, and all the men came back with their hair streaming from standing uncovered. Alfred’s face was so wet, I could not tell which were tears and which was rain. That night he held me as desperately as if he thought I would die, too.
“Do you believe in Heaven?” he asked, as we lay in the dark. “Do you think we shall all truly meet again, Dodo? That all pain and suffering will be over?”
“I believe so, Alfred.” I knew only this answer would satisfy him, and for the first time that week he smiled.
“God bless you, Dodo. God bless you forever.”
IN THE DAYS that followed, although he went to his study every morning, he did no work. O’Rourke came and tried to reason with him; but he became agitated, and O’Rourke said he feared for his sanity. Lottie was summoned and tried to recall him to his normal spirits, but even she failed. “If Fred is fixed on something, no one can deflect him,” she said. “You will have to let him be, Dodo. He will come round in time. It is not in his nature to be sad for long.”
More days went past, and Mr. Hemmings sent word that the deadline for his monthly manuscript was fast approaching. Alfred sent back to say that he was very sorry but it would have to be missed, that he was not fit to think, let alone write. I feared that maybe he would never write again; that we would fall into debt and have to move out of Channon Street, and take poorer and poorer lodgings until we were back with Mrs. Quinn, only this time with two babies, and no means of supporting them. I began to understand his fear of the Fleet Prison, the Foundling Hospital, the workhouse. I determined I would economize. I would give notice to Bessie. I would look after Kitty myself.
The morning after I decided this, I woke to find him gone, the pillow cold. I put on my dressing gown and crept down to the next floor. The study door was shut fast, but I imagined I could hear the scratch of a quill and the rustle of paper. I went back upstairs and dressed quickly, and took my breakfast in the drawing room so I could be ready to attend to him at a moment’s notice. I occupied myself by embroidering pansies on the velvet slippers Alice had begun to make for him, continuing from where she had left off. It encouraged me to know that I still had my old accomplishment, even though Alfred would never notice or praise me for it. I stitched for a long time, thinking of them both; of that agonized cry: My darling girl. I can’t do without you!
There was no sound from the study, except the occasional scrape of a chair, the faint tread of his footsteps as far as the window and back. Then I heard the front door bang and Bessie and Kitty return from their walk in the park. Kitty started to wake up and cry at being no longer on the move. I rose to tell Bessie to keep the child below stairs, but as I got to the landing, the study door flew open and Alfred shot out, pen in hand. He bent over the banister: “Is that my favorite daughter exercising her lungs in the stairwell? Bring her up, Bessie! Let the dog see the rabbit!”
“She wants feeding, sir,” said Bessie from below. “I doubt she’ll settle till she’s got some bread and milk in her.”
“Go and get it then, Bessie. Meantime, give the child to me!” He charged downstairs with his old enthusiasm and came up again with Kitty in his arms. He caught sight of me at the drawing-room door and smiled delightedly: “Look, Dodo. See how she knows her papa. See how she is transfixed by the Great Original, the One and Only.” Indeed Kitty was mesmerized by his face, with its big dark eyes, its shining features. She stared at him silently. Then, as he made faces at her—a whole panoply of contortions, eyebrows, mouth, chin—she began to laugh. And he laughed, too; and I laughed, and a gurgle of happiness rose in me that things, after all, would be all right.
I DIDN’T DARE tell him I was with child again. I hoped that maybe I was mistaken, that the shock of Alice’s death might have disturbed my functions. But in my heart I knew. How I wished I had sought advice earlier! Or that Alfred had. There was no possibility of approaching Mama now. She had decided Alfred was in some way at fault for Alice’s death, and that my loyalty to him compromised me, too. If it had not been for Sissy clinging so desperately to me, I truly believe she would have banished me from Chiswick altogether.
“You may come and see your sister whenever you wish,” she’d said to me one day after the funeral, as we sat watching Sissy—normally so active—lay out a game of patience at the card table, her bright golden hair at odds with the dry, dark stuff of her gown, her normal high spirits subdued. “She has already lost one sister; I would not have her lose two. You may sit with her here or take her for walks along the river. Alfred may visit in your company. But I can never—will never—let her loose in your household.”
I could hardly contain myself. “You speak as if I am not to be trusted!”
“You may be, Dodo. But that husband of yours makes up his own rules of decorum.”
“You liked it in him once,” I ventured. “That he was lively and didn’t hold to convention.”
She seemed to color a little. “When he was a single young man, it was excusable—attractive
even. But he has responsibilities now.”
“And he discharges them, Mama. We have a fine house, and servants, and all our bills are paid.”
“That is not the only measure of reliability.” She held my hands, looked in my eyes. “Is he … good … to you, Dodo?”
“Of course he is good to me,” I retorted. “He is excellent to me. I am the happiest wife in the world.”
And I would have been, had not the prospect of the expected infant weighed upon my mind in the most dreadful way. I longed to share my disquiet with someone who would understand how little I wanted a second child now, and how much I wished to be able to prevent more. But I could think of no one to confide in. The only married lady of my acquaintance was Mary Evans, but I did not know her well enough to discuss such an intimate matter. Suddenly it came to me: Lottie. She seemed to know so much about the ways of the world; she would help me if it were in her power. I determined to try her out on her next visit.
When she came, however, I was the one to be taken by surprise. “Well, Dodo, congratulate me! I am to be married,” she announced, embracing me warmly as soon as she entered the drawing room.
I was taken aback. I had heard nothing of a prospective lover. “This is such a surprise!”
“Is it? Surely not! I’ve known Tom such a long time. And so has Fred. Since the old days in Camden, in fact. Tom does not like society, though. He is rather reserved and doesn’t wish to impose on Alfred’s company now that he is famous. And his parents—the dearest couple—are not in good health, and he is much occupied with them.” A shade fell across her face.
“I am sorry to hear that. But tell me about Tom: Is he worthy of you? Is he handsome? And tall? And clever? And rich?”
She laughed. “Tom is good and kind and—in short—everything I could wish. But he only has what he can earn by the sweat of his brow. Like Alfred—except Tom has less idea of money than any man alive.”
Girl in a Blue Dress Page 13
