Girl in a Blue Dress

by Gaynor Arnold

  “I daresay,” I murmur. “I shall write to him tomorrow.”

  I should so much rather I had nothing to do with the man—but we are inextricably connected and I have a feeling that if I do not see him, he will force my hand with some unpleasantness.

  That first night I hadn’t been blind to his effect on Kitty and I’d had to listen with indulgence as she rattled on about him for days afterwards. He is very handsome and tall, isn’t he? And very mysterious and romantic. But Kitty was always prone to sudden attachments and I’d taken her words as no more than hero worship. She and I had never been in the habit of sharing confidences; and at the time I was too distracted to pay her my full attention. Dr. Phelps was in almost daily attendance on me, but nothing he could do seemed to lift my heavy spirits or make me more alert. I dozed wherever I could and on more than one occasion fell asleep at the supper table, sliding sideways and dropping my knife and fork with a crash. Alfred would give me an impatient look, as if I were doing it on purpose. Indeed, he could not forbear to joke about it whenever we had company: Dodo, as you see, is a veritable Sleeping Princess—albeit of a slightly more mature and substantial appearance than is normally associated with that personage. I fancy any regular Prince would have a job to wake her—kiss or no kiss—let alone raise her from her bed and carry her off in his arms. Yours Truly himself—for all his superior powers—is hardly up to the task!

  Through all this, Augustus was much in evidence. He would turn up in the late afternoon—usually yawning and asking for coffee—and proceed to lounge about, trying to amuse himself while Alfred was occupied in writing. He’d bring sweetmeats for the children, and sometimes he’d help Georgie sail his boat in a tin bath on the kitchen table, or build a house of cards with Louisa, or make a little sketch of Kitty. Sometimes he even spoke to me. But more usually he draped himself elegantly in some corner and read the newspaper. After which he’d stay for supper, where he’d rarely address a remark to anyone except Alfred, and then it would be about some subject to which the rest of us were not party. It was odd to see him there in his loose, fashionable clothes, and I was never comfortable with his sardonic observation of us all. Suppertimes were noisy events (Alfred always insisted the children should dine en famille), but Augustus remained detached from it all, idly examining his (rather long) fingernails or staring at the contents of his glass as if there was something more amusing to be seen there. Alfred would preside at the head of the table and, when I was able, I’d take the foot. Sissy would sit at Alfred’s right hand, helping Georgie with his fork and spoon and ensuring that the servants cleared away promptly between each course. Kitty would habitually hold forth, trying to capture all the attention for herself, attempting to better her father’s stories or criticize his jokes until he’d eventually lose patience and tell her to hold her tongue. Lou would smirk to herself and Eddie would pipe up, Shall we cut her tongue off, Papa? And Alfred would reply, Yes indeed! Cut it off and fry it in butter so that it is of at least some use in this world! Augustus would laugh in his staccato, hollow way; and Kitty would blush.

  After supper, Alfred would tell the children stories; and the men would then smoke for an hour or so before setting off into the night. Alfred had always enjoyed nocturnal jaunts, and I was used to him putting on his greatcoat and muffler at some ungodly hour, saying he needed an infusion of London streets, and then creeping back into my bed at five in the morning, cold as ice. But he’d always gone alone, like a dreamer or sleepwalker, drawn into the life of the city. These excursions with Augustus were different. He didn’t tell me where they went.

  “Alfred seems much taken with young Mr. Norris,” said O’Rourke one evening when he called only to find him absent yet again. “I’ve not had a proper conversation with him for weeks. In fact, I’ve no idea how The Weaver of Silver Street is going—if at all!”

  “He spends all his spare time with that young man,” I said. “If Augustus were a woman, I’d be quite jealous of all the attention he enjoys.” In fact, I resented anyone who took up Alfred’s time, who took him away at the only part of the day when I had him all to myself.

  O’Rourke fiddled with his cravat pin. “You know, I’m surprised at Alfred. He’s normally such a good judge of character.”

  I looked at him quickly. “Do you know something untoward about Augustus, then?”

  O’Rourke sucked his teeth. “Nothing untoward, exactly. Only that he has a poor reputation with money. You know the type of thing—gambling, horse racing, lavish expenditure in all directions. They say he’s run through half his father’s fortune already, and is set fair to finish the process by the end of the year.”

  I was relieved; it was only money—and in money matters, Alfred was sharp as a needle. “But if Augustus chooses to ruin himself, that’s not Alfred’s fault. In fact,” I said, pondering it further, “I expect Alfred is doing his best to guide him towards the straight and narrow path.”

  “Do you really think that, Dodo?” O’Rourke looked disbelieving.

  I wasn’t sure; I suspected Augustus was not a man who could be guided much on anything. But that would not stop Alfred trying. Alfred always believed every life could be reclaimed. “Why not?” I said. “Just think of Utopia House.”

  “Ah, dear old Utopia House.” O’Rourke sucked his teeth again.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing, Dodo. Nothing at all.”

  But I knew why he’d said it that way. After all, I too, had questioned the intensity of my husband’s interest in that particular scheme. It was one thing to campaign for women of a certain sort to be brought from their ways, but I did not see why Alfred had to be involved in such detail with their daily lives. However, I’d taken comfort that Miss Brougham was always at his side; and that she never failed to find him helpful and ingenious: Your husband is a marvel, she wrote.

  He has drawn up plans for every room, and every item needed in the room: a picture of Our Saviour with the Children; a vase where each inmate can put wild flowers to cheer herself; a table with a New Testament which she can learn to read and study; a simple coverlet on each bed. And he has sketched out all the plots in the garden where each woman may work and raise her produce; and the kitchen where others may make the meals. He has drawn up a weekly bill of fare—and directed how the women should have their dress—plain, clean cotton in a modest style; nothing reminiscent of their former ways. And he has addressed the women so beautifully, and read the Bible to them so movingly! I swear they were all in tears.

  I could imagine it. Although I didn’t have to imagine it, because he talked about it himself. He’d come home and stand by the fireguard and poke the fire, and tell me how he’d encountered some new young inmate called Sal or Annie, as beautiful as though the very Sun of Heaven shone from her eyes. “But she knew nothing of right or wrong, Dodo. She’d never heard the words of the Bible, never known indeed that there was a Bible to have words in it to guide her path and redeem her spirit. Never known anything but brutality and vice. Never known there was anything but coarseness and deceit. You can’t blame such girls for the lives they’ve led, can you, Dodo? You can’t despise them. You should rather despise the men who have made them that way, the country that allows such things to flourish!” And he’d pace around, his face flushed, shaking with anger.

  So why should I not believe he might have a mission to save even a dissolute man such as Augustus? “You do not have much faith in your best friend,” I told O’Rourke, “if you imagine such a callow young man could turn him to evil ways.”

  “Oh, Dodo!” O’Rourke seized my hand. “You are always so ready to believe the best in Alfred—and I love you for it. But even the One and Only can make mistakes. This so-called friendship with Norris will come to a bad end, mark my words.”

  Sadly, that proved to be the case. And I was blamed for not seeing the harm, for not preventing it.

  The discovery happened suddenly. It was a Sunday evening; the household was quiet, and I’d been h
alf-listening to a duet Kitty and Augustus had been playing, a favorite sentimental song of Alfred’s that made them stop and whisper and start again. The halting rhythms had lulled me into a dream in which numerous and very handsome young ladies were competing for the honor of singing before the Queen. Kitty was due to step forward in all her finery, but had forgotten her music, and the Lord Chamberlain, got up in a very large powdered wig, began to berate her: “What are you doing?” he kept asking. “What are you doing?” His voice became louder and louder and I woke up to find Alfred standing white-faced at the open drawing-room door, his hand still on the doorknob: “What are you doing?” he cried. “What is the meaning of this?” I turned and saw Kitty and Augustus standing bolt upright—Kitty by the piano, Augustus by the sofa next to the stuffed owl; and looking equally startled. Kitty was pink; Augustus paper-white. Kitty spoke up defiantly, saying there was no need to “go on so.” After all, Augustus had only given her a kiss: “That’s allowed, isn’t it? Uncle Charley and Uncle Muffin kiss me all the time!”

  Alfred seemed to leap the whole length of the room. I thought he was going to attack Augustus with his bare hands, but he stopped two feet short of him: “How dare you kiss her! How dare you put your hands on her! It’s unspeakable!” I had often seen him angry, but only once—on the night of Alice’s death—had I seen him lose his self-possession so completely. His eyes were danger lamps, his whole body rigid, as if it were costing him everything he had to keep control. He gestured at Kitty: “Go upstairs, child—now, I tell you—now!” But Kitty did not move, and it seemed as though he had no strength to force her, but turned back to Augustus: “As for you, Norris—after all I have done for you, after all we have shared! Get out of my house—and don’t come back!”

  Augustus lifted his graceful hand and made a sound as if to interrupt, but Alfred raged on: “Don’t say a word; it is futile. Go—and keep away. I never want to hear from you again. And, by God, don’t even dream of communicating with Kitty!”

  I stared at them. It all seemed unreal, like a melodrama, and I half-expected them to stop and consult their scripts and start again. Augustus opened his mouth to speak, but seeing Alfred’s furious expression, shrugged his shoulders and walked past him through the open door, trying to look insouciant and muttering something about “not being in the theater now.” But Kitty ran at Alfred and pummeled him with her fists: “You can’t send him away. I love him!”

  Alfred held her off by the wrists, glaring at me the while: “Love, you say? Love? What’s been going on? What horrors have been taking place under my own roof? Have you condoned this behavior, Dodo?”

  I shook my head dumbly. My mind was whirling. It seemed only yesterday that Augustus had been bringing Kitty presents of sugar mice and kaleidoscopes—and now it appeared he’d been sitting on the piano stool, kissing her on the lips and touching her bosom. I looked at her pink face and mutinous expression. Why should Augustus be making love to a mere child? Yet when I looked again, I could see that Kitty had grown fuller in her figure, and that she had put her dark hair up in a very grown-up manner—in short, that she was no longer a child. And I was shocked and ashamed to think she had come to womanhood without my realizing.

  Alfred pulled her across the carpet with a face like thunderclouds: “But it was going on under your nose, Dodo! Under your very nose! Here in your own drawing room! What kind of mother allows that? How can I ever trust you with our children again?”

  I could think of nothing except how much at fault I was, how narrowly Kitty had escaped disgrace. Alfred was right: What kind of mother fails to notice her child being seduced by a grown man, and a man of ill reputation at that? What kind of mother misses the vital looks, the stolen caresses, the significant phrases that should have put her on her mettle? I begged Alfred’s pardon, begged Kitty’s pardon, begged God’s pardon. I blamed my tiredness and the medicine. I raved hysterically: Forgive me, forgive me! I fell to my knees in a heavy heap, and had to be taken upstairs by a consortium of three or four servants. As I lay on the pillows with a cold compress on my head and the taste of laudanum on my lips, I could hear Kitty making a terrible wailing sound in a far-off room, being comforted by the steady voice of Bessie—and I blamed myself more than ever, because I knew I should have had my daughter’s confidence, and that it is a mother’s role to protect her children, no matter what. I was too absorbed in my own error to consider that it was Alfred who had first brought Augustus among us.

  Alfred’s threat was, needless to say, carried out to the letter. We never saw Augustus again—and Alfred made sure Kitty was always chaperoned by Sissy or one of the servants when she went out. He never once mentioned Augustus’s name; and it seemed that the man who had recently been almost a member of our family was, at a stroke, deprived of his whole existence. I suppose I should have been forewarned by such implacability on Alfred’s part, such an ability to excise a once-loved person from his life like a malignant chancre. I should have known that with Alfred there were no half-measures. But at the time, I was so glad to be rid of Augustus that I failed to question Alfred’s capacity to act in such a thoroughly cold-hearted way.

  As it happened, Augustus had not quite vanished from our lives. He made a final appearance in an unexpected way: when James Bartram came out the following winter, there he was again in the person of Miles Danvers, with his flat drawling voice, sardonic character, and easy grace. A villain, of course—but a charming villain, a man of promise who yet had chosen to go to the dogs, a man who seemed to be humorous and clever but who had no moral heart. The virtuous James Bartram weds the faithful Madeleine, and Miles Danvers ends as a broken wreck, floating in the Thames with no one to attend his funeral except the crossing boy to whom he has given his last sixpence. Yet when James Bartram looks at his friend’s dead body, he puts his hand over his face and weeps: And I could see him again, not pale and expressionless, but handsome and free, his long curls blowing back in the wind as we took the steamship across Lake Geneva on the last leg of our last journey together. I see him now, staring into the distance, his cheek flushed, his face so handsome and full of hope, his body so graceful and young. God knows I should prefer that he had died then, when he was still dear to me, than come to this dreadful end.

  I couldn’t help wondering what Augustus made of this literary valediction, and whether he had suffered half as much in paying court to Kitty as I did for not noticing it. And suffer I did. Alfred made sure of that, believing that I was no longer capable of caring for my own children and that they were better off entirely under my sister’s control.

  IT GRIEVES ME even now to think it was I more than anyone who was warm for bringing Sissy among us; that it was I who not only set the seed of the enterprise, but who cultivated and brought it to fruition. How deeply I rue that day! Yet how could I have known? There had been nothing to suggest that the arrangement would not be to mutual advantage. Sissy had grown up to be amusing company (albeit with an inclination to be sharp at others’ expense). She was a great admirer of Alfred’s work and could mimic his characters almost as well as he. Every time I’d visited Chiswick, I kept thinking how delightful it would be if she could join us in London; and with the birth of each of my children, the prospect seemed more and more attractive.

  By the time Georgie was born, the matter had become pressing: I was failing in my health and, although Bessie did most of the hard work, she had only one pair of hands, and Alfred said that it was wrong to expect a half-educated girl to instill our children with all the proper thoughts and feelings, to instruct them in their manners and hear their prayers. He always ran up to the children himself as soon as he came home, and played with them and read to them in his inimitable way—but he could not always be there. Sissy, by contrast, had an excess of time on her hands and fretted at her secluded life in a place where there was “nothing to do except grow older.”

  For a while I did not dare to broach the subject for fear of upsetting Mama. The old wounds had not healed and Alfred
was still largely persona non grata in the Chiswick household. However, with Ada increasingly weakened by consumption, and with a baby and toddler to keep an eye on as well, I decided to sound out Sissy’s views.

  “I fear Mama will never agree to let you go,” I’d said, as we strolled along the laburnum walk, baby Georgie in my arms and little Eddie toddling and tumbling by my side as he searched for pebbles in the path.

  “I am twenty-four, Dodo. I can do as I please. Mama cannot bear a grudge against Alfred forever—and if she does, well, she will have to do so and there is no help for it. She cannot stand in my way.”

  “But I fear it is selfish of me, Sissy dear. You should be marrying and having children of your own.”

  “Oh, that!” she’d declared, picking Eddie up from a fall, and dusting him down and hushing him as if she had been a nursemaid all her life. “I’ve yet to find a man I would remotely consider worth sacrificing myself for. Mama and Papa do their best, of course, and we have an endless procession of tight-collared young men coming to hold teacups in the drawing room every Sunday. Even Cousin George has been talked of again since poor Lily passed away. But why should I hide myself in Coventry of all places when I could be at the heart of London society! Indeed, the more I think of it, the more certain I am!”

  Needless to say, Alfred was delighted at the prospect of my clever—and undoubtedly handsome—sister joining the family. He himself fetched her from Chiswick in the carriage and carried her (she was very slim and light) all the way up to the drawing room, while the children lined up with Union Jacks. Alfie blew a fanfare on his tin trumpet, and even Ada made an appearance in Bessie’s arms, clapping her thin little hands in welcome like the cherub she was.