T
here is much that I would remember that I have forgotten. And there is much I remember that I would forget.
Last evening I had a curious presentiment that my guardian would come to my room & indeed it was so. He came bearing an ulster thrown over one arm & said if I wished it he would take me into the grounds & show me his dogs. Tho’ I have no great liking for dogs—certainly not of the kind my guardian breeds—& no great liking for my guardian’s company, I said I wished it very much. This seemed to please him, for he remarked that they were unusual dogs & I should not regret my choice.
“But you must be very quiet,” he instructed. “Indeed we must be altogether silent while we are in the house.”
I said that I would be very quiet.
Such a queer excursion! First we stole down the back staircase, where the moon shone through a great window & enveloped us in white, ghastly light. Passing through the servants’ hall, we came upon a room behind whose door a lamp still burned. “That is old Randall’s pantry. He has fallen asleep in his chair, I’ll be bound,” my guardian explained. Making not the least sound, he drew open the pantry door—I could see the old man fast asleep with his head on the table—& returned with a key that would admit us to the gardens.
I confess that I am of a singularly nervous disposition—altogether frail & fearful, Papa used to say—& that had I not had my guardian beside me & his arm to lean on, I should have been very much afraid. Viz., the trees rattling above us in the wind, a dark, cloud-strewn sky
& not a spark of light to be seen. As to where the dogs might be kept, I had no need to enquire, for we could hear them howling from afar. They are housed in a great barn, a full half mile from the house. This we approached—my guardian taking up a lantern which lay in one of the anterooms—whereupon the barking & snarling rose in a crescendo, & I wondered that the people in the house did not think there were burglars on the property.
For myself, I did not care for the dogs, which seemed to me great wolfish beasts, of a kind I never saw unless they are some breed of mastiff. My guardian, however, exulted in their company, reaching his hand through the bars of their kennels—they are all chained up against the hours of darkness—flinging them biscuits, &c., which he had brought in his trowser pocket.
I enquired—for it seemed to me that such animals must take a deal of labour—did Mr. Randall or any of the servants engage in their care?
My guardian said no, that he would not have the servants
interfering
—that was his word—in such business.
Seeing that I shivered at the cold, he immediately became solicitous. Would I take his coat to add to my own? Would I return to the house? Hearing that I should, he locked the door of the kennel room behind him, extinguished the lamp—the dogs seemed subdued & silent at his going—& set off across the darkling lawn. Next to the barn, I noticed, a high thorn hedge grew up in a square, with a wooden gate set into it, curious to see, yet even in daylight, I should guess, impenetrable to the eye.
“What is that?” I asked, as we passed there.
“It is nothing,” he said. “A part of the wood that I keep shut up.”
And yet it seemed to me that others of my guardian’s hounds must be kept there, for I am certain I heard a noise of movement & a snuffling that did not come from the barn.
And so we returned to the house, taking ourselves once more to my guardian’s study, where a fire still burned (for which I confess I was very grateful) & I was bidden to recruit myself with a glass of wine. It was by now very late—half past midnight—yet my guardian seemed disposed to talk, showed me a pair of avocets under glass. They are
curious birds with turned-up bills, which he said had been taken at the Breydon Water and set up for him by Mr. Lowne, the Yarmouth taxidermist.
I thought the avocets pretty birds but did not see why they should not remain at liberty on the Breydon Water. However, I said nothing of this.
Neither—though it was on the edge of my tongue—did I speak to him of the rose.
Sir Charles came out of his hole in the wainscot & ran silently about the floor, coming rather close to my skirts, which I did not like.
My guardian continues to observe me in the most marked manner. Looking once more at his display cases, at his insistence, I caught for a moment in the reflection of the glass his face regarding me. The look Papa’s face had when he drew his portraits, only, it seemed to me, less agreeable.
“Sir,” I said, when half an hour had passed, “I wish very much to write the letter of which I spoke.”
“Which letter was that?” he enquired, affecting forgetfulness.
“The letter to my husband’s lawyer,” I replied.
“Why do you wish to write to him?” he asked, by no means unkindly.
“There is much that I wish to ask him,” I faltered.
“You may ask me.”
“I would ask him.”
“Then you may do so.”
Nothing more was said. Presently he escorted me back to my chamber, pausing only to bow as he quitted me at the door.
It occurs to me that I am another of his avocets, set up by Mr. Lowne, for him to inspect at his leisure.
And then this morning another flower. The same white rose on the same silver salver. With no hint as to how it came here.
Yet I am not without resource in these matters.
Thus, when Esther arrives with the lunch tray, having first secured
the rose in my desk, I enquire, “Were any flowers brought to the house yesterday, Esther?”
“Indeed, ma’am, the master brought some from Lynn.”
“And what kind were they?”
Esther looks up from setting down the tray. “Why, roses, ma’am. & grown under glass, too, for there be none outside in this weather.”
I see. Or rather, I do not see.
Esther & I are very confidential. Indeed we talk for as much as ten minutes whenever she fetches my tray or retrieves it: I sitting in my chair; she performing certain little duties around the room for which I am exceedingly grateful. Thus I believe I can state with confidence of Esther that:
She is twenty-one years old.
She earns twelve pounds a year.
She has never left the county of Norfolk.
She has a mother & four brothers & sisters living in Fakenham.
She has read the Bible, &
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
&
Maria Monk
, but little else.
To be sure, her manner of speaking often bewilders me. She says “mawther” when she means “girl” & “du” when she means “do” & “dicker” when she means “donkey.”
But I must not mock her, for she is very kind to me, sympathises with my wants & wishes to ameliorate them.
The footman, who is her admirer, has gone away to London. Where, she says, he will write one day & “send for her.”
What should she do, I asked, when this summons came?
“Why,” she said, “go and do as he bade me.”
“What?” I said. “And give up your situation here?”
This, however, she would not answer. Feeling, perhaps, that I am confederate with Mr. Randall.
Once I asked her, “What should you do, Esther, if you could leave here & do exactly as you chose?”
“Why, ma’am,” she said, “I should take a husband, & have six chil
dren, & live in a cottage, & be happy I hope. Only I should take care that I wasn’t poor.”
And where should I go if I left here & could do as I chose?
I have not the least idea in the world.
I am lying in bed in the old house at Kensington, though it is not yet dark.
It seems to me that I have lain there for hours, waiting for the light to fade & the noises around me to cease.
Then I see that, though I have not been aware of her coming, Mama is standing at the door watching me. Mama, in a brown dress with her red-gold hair standing out from her face, & something in her hand which the light catches & plays with. How long she stands there I do not know, until Papa, coming briskly into the doorway, catches her in his arms & whatever she has in her hand tumbles down to the floor.
And Papa smiles at me.
I set this down exactly as it came into my head this morning, at about half past ten, as I sat at my desk with bright sunshine—for the spring is come—pouring in through the window.
Esther is my spy.
No, that is not quite true. Rather, there is much that Esther tells me, all incautious, that I would not otherwise know. It is like Papa, who would come back from the meetings of the committee at his club (which proceedings were of course secret) & talk endlessly of them from sheer amusement.
Of the other servants. Of the house. Of my guardian & his habits.
Thus I learn—something I might have guessed—that Mr. Randall, the butler, is a religious man, constant at his meeting, &c., pressing tracts both on those who would have them & those who would not.
That Mrs. Wates, the cook, was found dead drunk in her room
last Sunday; a great scandal that was somehow kept from the master, despite there being no dinner that night.
That Mrs. Finnie, the housekeeper, “gives herself airs,” is very hard upon the maids & in consequence much disliked.
I enquired of Esther: had she ever seen my guardian’s dogs? She said no, “but we hears them, ma’am, whenever we are about in the gardens or on the paths, & ’tis not a sound you would want to hear close by you.”
Esther says that she is happy in her work. That she has known worse. That she has been able to buy a dress out of her wages—she has promised to show me this dress!—& that a complement of six servants is better than a solitary employment. “For then, ma’am, the mistress is always around you, finding things for you to do, & making tasks where none existed just for the pleasure of it.”
There is a Lady Bamber, who got Esther her place, “but I do not see her now, for she does not come here. Indeed, Mr. Dixey sees no company.”
My guardian, I hear, is pressed for money. Indeed the men who worked in the gardens have all been paid off & William the footman has no substitute (much to the other servants’ annoyance, Mrs. F., in particular, thinking it a disgrace to occupy a situation “where no footman was kept”). Last week, it seems, there was very near an execution in the house, for a bailiff came from Lynn in pursuit of some debt & could only with difficulty be begged to leave.
Esther says that it is “well known” that my guardian owes eight hundred pounds in London, & that the servants worry that their quarter’s wages will not be paid.
“In which case, ma’am,” Esther says, “what will become of us all?”
And to the untended gardens, & the dogs in their kennels & Sir Charles Lyell in his hole in the wainscot.
And what will become of me?
Not all is lost from the world I once knew.
Thus in the recess of my desk there is a little japanned box that
Papa once gave me. How it came there I know not, for I do not recall its being with me in the days before I came to Easton. And yet it must have been, for the contents are such that only I could have put them there. Viz.:
the old, blunt-nibbed pen with which Papa wrote his
Marlborougha silhouette of me as a little girl, done by Papa’s friend Sir Henry Cole & framed on a square of white card
a lock of Mama’s hair, placed in an envelope, still rust-red & dated 17 May 1848
a jet brooch that I had from Henry when we were married
Henry’s ring, the seal from his watch chain, the locket with his mother’s portrait, &c.
a receipt that Aunt Charlotte Parker wrote me once for hardbake & which I always kept
a set of verses that Richard—Mr. Farrier, that is—gave me ten years since, & which ditto.
To place these objects on the desk before me is to fall prey to the queerest sensations, as if I stood at a little window looking in upon a crowd of people who smiled at me, waved & spoke all manner of things that I, alas, could not hear.
I see Papa writing at his book, with the ink staining his white fingers, & calling out for tea & bread and butter, & a printer’s boy waiting in the hall for some paper that Papa had promised.
I see Sir Henry cutting the silhouette & exclaiming, to quiz me, “Why, her nose is so snub that I shall never match the set of it, try as I may!”
I see Mama once more, seated on the terrace, with her hair tumbling around her shoulders & Brodie combing it out.
I see the jet brooch in Henry’s hand & the ring on his finger, the watch chain peeping from his waistcoat pocket.
I see Aunt Charlotte Parker’s white curls & her cap above them, which she says was very fashionable, only she meant the fashion of Queen Adelaide.
I see Mr. Farrier standing at the garden gate in his cutaway coat—being what the young men then used to call a “swell”—with the paper in his hand.
And then I see the room in which I sit, with its desk & its window & its locked door, & a little japanned box with a trinket or two & an old pen & some scraps of paper—nothing of the least consequence in the world.
The estate is in sad decline, Esther says.
The timber, cut two years ago & seasoned now, lies rotting in the woods for there is no one to take it away.
The grass grows up six feet high in the gardens & the panes in the glasshouse window crack in the winds & are never replaced.
The rats run wild in the barns & the keeper no longer preserves.
Mr. Dixey cares only for his dogs, Esther says.
When I was a girl I flew into the queerest passions. A drawing that I could not frame to my satisfaction, the thought that Tishy or some other girl did not love me—such things would anger me beyond measure & Papa would say that there was a devil in me & that at these times I knew not what I did or said. Dear Papa, who meant only kindness & would not blame me if he could.
Last night I flew into a passion.