Eliza’s Daughter (22 page)

‘Sir, I must apologize. But I have been very much occupied.'

He glanced around the little room with dissatisfaction.

‘This place will not do. You shall accompany me, if you please.'

‘But to where? I have a friend – in Clerkenwell – who will very shortly be expecting me – '

Pullett had refused to come to Bond Street to hear me sing. She said it was not respectable, and no good would come of it.

‘Ah, I shall not detain you long, at this present,' Dr Fantini said. ‘But I wish to show you something which will perhaps enjoin you to listen to what I have – I have to propose, relating to your future.'

Very doubtful and hesitant indeed, I was yet thankful for any excuse to leave Mrs Widdence's showroom. I made her a brief explanation, which she accepted curtly, and followed the white-haired gentleman through the crowd and out to the street, attracting various stares and comments, a few favourable, many detrimental or sneering, on my way to the door. Outside, I was led to a carriage, among the many which blocked the way, and noticed that it bore a coat of arms on the panel and was driven by a very superior-looking coachman.

‘Sir, where are we going?'

‘Only to Grosvenor Square,' Dr Fantini assured me. ‘Then you shall be conveyed onwards to your place of lodgement, if you so wish.'

The ride to Grosvenor Square was brief and performed in silence.

We drew up before a handsome mansion on the south side of the square, and I was escorted by my companion into the house – ushered through the door by a bowing servant – and taken up a flight of stairs into a morning room.

‘Now,' said Dr Fantini, ‘I must ask you to look at that portrait on the wall.'

It was a life-sized head, very beautifully painted. The signature was Thomas Lawrence. And it was a portrait of my mother – done when she was perhaps five years older than my own age at that time.

‘Good heavens,' I said faintly. And again, ‘Good heavens!'

Mechanically, I pulled up a chair, sat down upon it and continued to study the portrait. Dr Fantini allowed me to do so in peace for many minutes. Then he said quietly, ‘Now, my dear Miss, will you allow me to have my say?'

‘Of course, sir.'

‘Your mother was a lady named Elizabeth Williams. Am I right? And you were born around the year 1793?'

‘To the best of my knowledge, sir, yes.'

‘Your mother left you in the care – as she had promised to do – of Colonel John Brandon. And she herself chose to go to London to – ah – pursue a career in opera. She, like you, had a voice of remarkable power and – ah – range. But she happened to be heard, singing the part of Elena in
Elena e Paride
by my employer, the Duke of Cumbria, who was so greatly taken with her voice and – ah – appearance and demeanour, that he – that he invited her to become part of his household.'

‘Made her his mistress?' I suggested.

Dr Fantini gave me a severe look.

‘My dear Miss, my master the Duke is not – is not a man to be trifled with. He is a man of strong character and integrity. At that time he was twenty-seven years older than Miss Williams, he had for many years been unhappily married and lived separated from his wife and from their three children. He was greatly occupied in government affairs, being, at that time, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He became deeply, deeply devoted to Miss Williams and remained so. He preferred to have her always with him – whether down at his house, Much Zoyland at Alderbrooke in Wiltshire, or at this house in London. He could not bear to be apart from her for more than a day.'

‘Sir! Please tell me! Where is my mother now?'

‘Your own birth, Miss Eliza, had put your mother in peril of her life. She was told by her medical attendant that to have another child would certainly kill her. This was a great sorrow to her, as she felt a deep obligation and love to my master and would have wished to bear him a child. But it was not to be. He forbade it. He cherished her, he told her, more than any child.—However in the end she was allowed to have her way. Two years ago it was found that she was increasing.—And the prediction was right. She died in childbirth, and the child died also.'

After a moment I said faintly, ‘Where is she buried?'

‘At Much Zoyland. Would you wish to visit her grave?'

‘Of
course
I wish it! Of
course
!' I burst out, and then – I could not help it, too many blows had been struck at me during this dreadful day – I fell into a passion of crying and flung myself down flat on the richly carpeted floor.

Dr Fantini behaved with compassion. In silence, he allowed me to have my cry out, then raised me up and escorted me to a bedchamber where, behind a closed door, with napkins and lavender water, I could repair the ravages to my eyes and complexion.

When I emerged, Dr Fantini was waiting for me with a glass of strong, sweet wine.

‘What is this?' I asked, sipping it warily.

‘It is port. The Duke – like Mr Pitt – prefers port to claret. Also, he owns a vineyard in Portugal. Now, Miss – are you feeling more the thing?'

I said that I was.

‘My offer from the Duke is to take you back to Much Zoyland. There, if – if you are both of a mind to such a scheme – he undertakes to provide for you, have you educated, your voice trained –'

‘It has already been trained,' I objected.

‘Ye-es,' Dr Fantini rejoined distastefully, ‘ – not very
well
trained, Miss.'

‘Oh.' Could I, I wondered, endure the prospect of
more
training,
more
education? Still, I did wish to see my mother's grave. And to meet somebody who had loved her so much. I could talk to the Duke about her. And – who knows? – he might have tidings of Willoughby.

Besides, I could always leave Much Zoyland, if the Duke and I did not agree.

‘The Duke knows about my – my reputation? And where I come from?'

‘The Duke is exceedingly well-informed about almost everything.'

‘I shall tell him all my history.'

‘Very good, Signorina.'

‘Another thing – I have a friend, maid, companion – whom I shall wish to have with me.'

‘By all means,' Dr Fantini said graciously. ‘That will be most conformable.'

So matters were arranged.

The Duke of Cumbria always dressed in a full suit of old-fashioned clothes. He wore a bulky horsehair wig, which must have weighed several pounds. His coat bore great cuffs and massive buttons, and was stiff so that the skirts stood out; his ruffles were long and always dazzling white. The heels of his shoes were higher than is now common – for the Duke was not a tall man, though at all times a most impressive figure; and the shoes were ornamented with silver buckles, very polished. His face was much seamed and grooved, with care, and grief, and age, his skin somewhat pale; but the black eyebrows above his deepset eyes exceeded in size any that I have ever seen. His voice was very thunderous, though never harsh.

When my mother had first known him she was eighteen, and he forty-five; and they had been together for about fifteen years when she was carried off untimely. So he was now more than sixty, but looked older; he moved slowly, with a stoop, except when on horseback. He played no instrument himself, except the kettledrums; but he loved to hear playing and singing, and took care to ensure that the people about his household should be proficient in the musical arts. His private secretary, Solomon Mayhew, played the piano with brilliance; his steward was a gifted fiddler; even the little page-boys were encouraged to sing and whistle.

Much Zoyland, the Duke's favourite seat in Wiltshire, was a huge old rambling house, built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth on the ruins of an abbey. It was spacious, with wide grassy courts, but also with small cosy low-ceilinged rooms; with great draughty halls, and also narrow passageways. Some of its doorways were so wide that a chaise-and-pair could have driven through; others so narrow that a thin person had to turn sideways to pass between the door-posts.

I grew to love it dearly.

‘This is something like!' said Pullett, looking about her with approving eyes, as we drove up the long avenue and had glimpses of formal gardens with bright beds and clipped hedges. ‘This is the kind of place I can settle in.'

Her responses to the Duke were in the same favourable spirit. ‘He've got a mighty queer ring, but it's a good one; blue and grey mixed; like the sky before sun-up, when you don't yet know, will it be fine or driply.'

***

Before going to Zoyland I had an assignation that I was obliged to keep, though with no great eagerness for it.

On Sunday I went, with Pullett in reluctant attendance, to see Nell Ferrars in Kensington Gardens. I had written a note appointing a meeting there.

‘She'll never, never come,' said Pullett, who had known Nell – and thought very little of her – since early childhood. ‘You think that one would bestir herself to leave her great connections and come to see you? – not after what happened!'

For I had given Pullett a pretty clear idea of my ill-success in Bond Street. And, to do her justice, she had not said ‘I told you so.'

I said, ‘I think Nell may come. She may even bring her great connections with her. To jeer, perhaps. Or simply out of curiosity.'

I had written in my note to Nell: ‘I would like to speak to you for a few minutes on a matter of great import concerning your mother. I hope very strongly that you can spare the time for this meeting.'

‘Well, I'll
be
!' exclaimed Pullett, after we had taken a couple of turns up and down the Broad Walk. ‘There she does come, to be sure!'

‘And she's brought some of her great friends with her.'

To my great despondency, she had with her Uncle Robert Ferrars and his wife the shrewish Lucy.

‘Odso, Mistress Fitz,' drawled out Robert Ferrars, as the trio came up to us, ‘I fancy, don't you know, you had best return to Bath and the young ladies' school; ecod, you had indeed; a London audience seems to find you a trifle lacking in
coloratura,
hey?'

‘Don't be a fool, Robert,' stated his better half. ‘The young ladies' school won't have her back.'

‘Miss Ferrars. I should like to speak to you privately,' I said to Nell.

‘Zooks, here's a fine coil! What's so woundily exclusive that
we
can't hear it?'

‘If Miss Nell wishes to tell you later, that is entirely her own affair. But she may prefer to keep the matter to herself.'

– ‘I'm sure I don't care,' said Mrs Ferrars sharply. ‘Come, Robert!'

Affronted, they dropped a few yards behind, while Pullett walked on ahead.

‘Well? What is this private communication?' Nell sourly demanded.

I pulled a letter out of my reticule and handed it to her. It was from the publishers John Murray at Number Twelve Albemarle Street.

It said, ‘Dear Madam, at your request, knowing that you do not propose a long visit to the Metropolis, we have read your friend's novel with much greater celerity than our normal office procedure permits us, and we are now happily in the position of being able to tell you that we are entirely of your opinion about the Work. We, like you, think it a most delightful and captivating tale, and that it will be sure to take the public fancy. We are pleased to offer these terms for its publication' (terms were here stated) ‘and wish you will now favour us with your friend's address, so that we may be in communication with her personally. You informed us on your visit last week that she had a number of other novels already written. My partner and I shall be most eager to peruse those also, and hope that we may be in a position to make her an offer for them as well, following what we are certain will be the success of this one.'

‘What
is
all this about?' demanded Nell, handing the paper back to me. She sounded puzzled and impatient. ‘I know nothing about writing novels. Why should you show this to me?'

‘The novel is by your mother,' I said. ‘And she has five others hidden away in her bedroom chest.'

‘So?'

‘So she may be in a position to derive a handsome income from her writing. Life at Delaford Parsonage may in future not be on quite such a level of grinding poverty.—Provided, of course, that your father may be brought to accept the situation.'

‘That is not my affair,' said Nell, even more impatient. ‘They must settle it for themselves.'

‘Don't you
want
your mother to be a little more comfortable?'

‘What business, pray, is this of yours?' she demanded.

‘Listen, Nell. You know that your grandmother is touched in her wits?'

‘Tiresome old biddy,' muttered Nell. ‘What of it?'

‘Elinor – your mother – has a presentiment that she finds in herself signs of the same disorder. I do not know if she is correct in her guess. But she fears it,
deeply.
If she can profitably dispose of those six novels that she has written – with such labour, in secret – if she can do that, then she will be comfortably provided for, against – against such a dreadful contingency. There will be enough money for nurses, kind capable people to live in the house and take care of her. She need not fear a terrible old age of hardship and possible ill-usage. Do you see?'

Nell looked hunted. She said, ‘My aunt Marianne would help. She would be there. And Uncle Brandon.'

‘I doubt that. It is not known where they are at present. They might never come back to England. And you know that your father – is not a solicitous husband. Is out all day on parish affairs.'

‘Oh –!' She looked even more harassed. ‘So, what am I supposed to do?'

‘You could go home and stand by your mother – if your father tried to raise objections to her novels being brought out.'

‘But I am engaged to be married!'

‘Yes, Nell, and I am going to tell you something about marriage. And about your husband-to-be. And about the death of his last wife.'

‘What can you
possibly
mean? What can
you
have to tell
me
?

She stared at me, red with outrage.

‘Listen, Nell, I was battling my way in the world while you were still a babe in the cradle. Now pay attention.'

I told her what I had heard from Mrs Widdence about Joseph Smethwick, about how his last wife had died. And the one before. And about what men can do to women whom they have at their mercy.

‘I don't believe you!' she declared obstinately. ‘It is all a pack of ill-natured gossip.'

I could see, though, that I had greatly shaken her.

‘By the by,' I said, turning to summon Pullett. ‘Just before I left Delaford, Ralph Mortimer was asking for you. He had sold out of the army, it seems, and is now managing his father's estate.'

‘What is that to me?'

But she looked decidedly thoughtful and I saw her standing still, for several minutes, poking at the ground with her parasol, in no particular haste to rejoin her companions.

***

I will not deny that my initial glimpse of the Duke of Cumbria gave me a stab of icy, hideous fright, taking me back in time, fifteen years or more, to the days when I used to patter along the village street, half-penny in hand, to the vicarage and the ministrations of Dr Moultrie. What Dr Moultrie did at that time I have never mentioned, and never shall; this narrative, as I have stated before, is intended for no more than a partial record of such events as I choose to recount.

Suffice it to say that most speedily did I come to understand that His Grace in no way (save that of most superficial appearance) resembled Dr Moultrie but, on the contrary, was a most upright, affable, high-principled and pleasant-humoured gentleman. Indeed I have never met his like.

It was inevitable that I should feel nervous and ill-at-ease during the opening moments of my first dinner, tête-à-tête with the Duke – which was also our first encounter. He had courteously given me time to rest, before we met, and to remedy the effects of the two-day drive from London. And at dinner he appeared in full ceremonial evening apparel, satin knee-breeches and velvet jacket, with a great smouldering emerald among the folds of his neck-cloth. I could have wished for Mrs Jebb's rubies, old fashioned and table-cut as they were.

However a very few minutes sufficed to set me completely at my ease.

The Duke's first appraisal of me was enough to set tears a-rolling down his cheeks.

‘Don't mind me, my dear,' he said, unaffectedly mopping his eyes with his table-napkin, ‘but you are so very like your dear mother that your appearance has been quite a shock to me. Indeed, I should have known you if I had met you in Zanzibar! No wonder Fantini was so excited when he saw you in Bond Street. Oh, good gracious me, it is such a great, great pity that you could not have been placed with your mother from the very start. What a deal of sorrow and trouble that would have avoided. What a zany poor Brandon was not to have permitted it. But he had some starched-up notion that, as your mother was his cousin and you therefore his cousin also, family tradition, family pride, whatever, required that you not be brought up by a fallen woman. So, what happens? He leaves you to your own courses and – inevitably – you fall too!'

‘Well, sir, as to that, I –'

‘– I believe, to his credit, Brandon had some notion at first of taking you into his own household later on. But Mrs Marianne put a stop to that, tiresome creature, with her romantic notions and fidgety prejudices. And then, of course, they went abroad.'

‘Have you met Colonel and Mrs Brandon, sir?'

‘No, my dear, but I have a great friend and neighbour, Sir John Middleton – he will be dropping in to take his mutton with us one of these days – I see him very often – who knows them well.

‘Now, my child, I don't wish you to be under any anxiety or misapprehension about my intentions towards you,' the Duke continued, passing me a dish of duckling with olives – we were dining very informally. ‘I shall not be making any amorous approaches towards you – that, indeed, I should regard almost as incest; (not but what it might be very agreeable,' he added in parenthesis. ‘You are so
very
like your dear mother, you know). But, latterly, you see, she and I – such a relation, alas, was not possible betwixt us, for, as the result of a most unfortunate toss I took over a double oxer, my proclivities in that respect were wholly trammelled; in fact,' he explained, ‘with the best will in the world,
I
can't get it up.
So you may regard me simply in the light of your kind old father-in-law, my dear; and – more's the pity – that was the way in which, latterly, your dear mama also regarded me.'

‘But, sir – ' a host of questions immediately rushed through my head. Did I dare to utter them? But the Duke having opened on such a comfortable, cordial basis, I thought that I did dare.

‘Well, my dear? What shall I call you? I cannot call you Eliza, like
her
; that would touch too tender a vein. I shall call you Lizzie – if you have no objection?'

‘None, sir, in the world. But – about my mother – I was given to understand by Dr Fantini that her sad death was caused by a disastrous childbirth; how – in the circumstances you mention – could this come about?'

‘Why, it was this way – the silly, silly girl,' he said, hastily refilling both our glasses. ‘She thought to do me a good turn – make me a kind
of present,
you see. This house is not entailed, and I have often bemoaned the fact that I have not a son I can leave it to; I am fond of the old place, you see. And Stannisbrooke, my official heir by the Duchess, is such a dull, prosy lump of a fellow! I can't stand to think of him here. Well, let that flea stick! I had a favourite nephew, my younger brother's son, Michael Ravensworth, who used to visit us; a captain in the navy he was, dear fellow – '

‘Is he no more, sir?' I asked gently, as the Duke wiped his eyes again.

‘No, the poor devil lost his life in that ill-fated Walcheren expedition. Sad waste! Sad waste! He was worth ten of my own son. I had far rather he had been my heir. But, this is how it was; he and Eliza put their heads together, and thought it would please me to know that she was increasing – that there would be a child about the house again – and, no question, it
did
please me, I was as happy as could be –'