Eliza’s Daughter (3 page)

Where was Lady Hariot, meanwhile? Why did she never come to visit her daughter? Poor woman, she had been brought down after the birth, as many are, by the womb-fever, and lay for weeks between life and death, but with death, so said old Dr Parracombe, much the likelier outcome. For weeks he rode daily to Kinn Hall, and would sometimes call at our cottage to see how the babe throve; and seemed no little astonished, given the difficulties of her birth, that she prospered as she did.

‘But indeed, Mrs Wellcome,' he always pronounced, ‘you and your daughter are a pair of notable foster-nurses.' And Hannah Wellcome would curtsey, and beam at him, and say, ‘Ah, 'tis the love we give them, sir.'

Even after she had escaped from the danger of death, Lady Hariot was confined to her bed for many months, and was so terribly weak that it was thought the most dangerous folly for her even to be permitted to see her child – conducive to over-excitation and strain upon the faculties. And after that she was taken abroad to some island, Madeira, I believe, where she stayed with her sister, for the warm sun there to bring back her health. So, for months we heard no more of her.

Once in a great while, Squire Vexford might stamp in to inquire after the child. He was a hasty, hard-featured man with thin lips and small angry eyes; it was known in the village that the Vexford property was entailed on a male heir, so he was sadly displeased that the outcome of all Lady Hariot's trouble was a mere daughter, and even more so when told that his wife might be unable to bear further children. He consequently paid scant heed to the child's progress or welfare, but would thrust his head in, cast a brief glance at the cradle, snap out a question or two and then stamp on his way, after the otter-hounds or along the track to the salmon pools in the upper windings of the Ashe river. More often it would be the Squire's man, Willsworthy, who called; and he was a close, silent customer who at all times kept his thoughts to himself. Only, once in a way, when his eye lit on Biddy Wellcome, a queer sudden glow would come into it, like the glimmer on a piece of fish that has lain in the pantry too long.

My frequent duty in minding the two babies meant a decided curtailment of my liberty to roam out and hope for a meeting with Mr Sam and Mr Bill; but, with a child's sober-minded realism, I believe I had long since understood that my outings with those two men were not to be looked for as something I might depend on; they were not for human nature's daily food. I was lucky beyond all deserts and expectation to have had them at all. And – I later understood – they had fed my mind with such thoughts and pictures and imaginings as would stand me in good stead through many troubles to come.

There remains one more singular event that is connected in my mind with those happy rambles. It was after I had returned from one such outing – I think to the Cain and Abel stones, high up on Ashe Moor, which stones prompted Mr Sam to tell me a queer story about Cain and his little son Enos, a tale of the boy asking his father the reason why the squirrels would not play with him. Mr Sam's stories all had some element of puzzle about them; I had to think and think, to ravel out their meaning.

I returned home late and, as was my habit on such occasions, crept in as quietly as a mouse through the kitchen door, for I knew that, on principle, if she heard me come in, Hannah Wellcome would give me a slippering. It was not that she greatly cared where I had been, but on account of all the tasks she had been obliged to undertake herself, lacking my services. Luckily I could hear that she and Tom and Biddy were in the parlour, fuddling themselves with green cider. I therefore crept up the narrow stair to the little crevice under the eaves which was my sleeping-place. It had no window, but plenty of fresh air came in through the thatch.

On the way, I passed the boys' room where I could hear them tossing, thrashing and teasing one another, as they would continue to do for half the night.

‘Hollo? Is that you, Liza?' whispered Rob, as I tiptoed by their door.

Rob was Rob Hobart, my chiefest friend among the boys. Hob, or Hoby, or Hobgoblin, I called him. His father, I believe, was the Post-Master General, his mother had sold cockles on the Strand in London. He was a lanky, freckled, yellow-headed fellow with a nimble tongue and bright wits; he was for ever leading the other boys into trouble, but then as often extricating them from their difficulties by some combination of bold inventiveness and shrewd sense. As a companion, if he was ever on his own, I liked him very well; but he seldom
was
on his own, being sociable and popular with the other boys. And in their company he descended to their level of teasing and abuse, would address me as ‘Liza Lug-famble', or ‘Funny-fist', or ‘Mistress Finger-post'.

However on this evening he seemed mild and friendly enough, slipping out to join me on a kind of landing-shelf at the top of the steep little stair below my closet.

‘A lady came driving through the village this afternoon in a chaise and pair,' he whispered. ‘And she asked if you lived here.'

‘Oh, Hoby! And I not here!' For the first and only time I regretted my wanderings with Mr Bill and Mr Sam. ‘Who in the world can she have been?'

‘She left no name, she would not stop, she was with a fine gentleman, and he was wild to get on, or they'd never reach Bristol before dark –'

‘Bristol? They were fair and far out of their way, then. But who can it have been?'

‘Blest if
I
know,' said Hoby. ‘All I can say is, she was fine as fivepence, with feathers in her hat and rings on her fingers. She said she'd have liked a glimpse of you and sorry it was not to be. She said, from the look of me, she could see that I was a trustable lad' – he chuckled at this, and so did I, thinking how wide of the mark the strange lady had been in her judgement, even farther than from the road to Bristol – ‘so she handed me a keepsake to give you and here it is.'

He passed me a smallish object, long and thin, swathed in a wrapping of what felt like coarse silk, tied all around with many threads.

‘What can it be? And who,
who
was she? Did she leave no name? What did she look like? Was she handsome?'

‘Umm. . .' Hoby began, but I knew he was no hand at making a picture in words. And just at that moment, the passage door opened to the front parlour, letting out a shaft of lamplight.

‘What be all that mumbling and shuffling?' bawled an angry voice.

‘Mizzle!' hissed Hoby. He fled back to his own quarters and I scrambled off with haste to mine, as a heavy step started up the stair. I thrust the mysterious token, whatever it might be, into a cavity of the thatch where I was used to hide apples or cakes if ever I was given one.

Tom Wellcome stood breathing heavily at the top of the stairs for a moment, letting off sour fumes of cider, then plumped back down, but left the parlour door open so that I dared not stir.

Naturally, after this I lay wide awake on my pallet for at least an hour, tormented by curiosity as to the identity of the strange lady. Could she be the wife of Colonel Brandon who paid for my upkeep? Was the strange gentleman Colonel Brandon himself? But if so would he not have stopped and asked to speak to Hannah Wellcome? Often I had wondered why he never came to see me; other guardians and protectors did, once in a great while, visit Byblow Bottom, but he, never; nor did he ever write or send a gift. Only the money arrived regularly from some bank in Dorsetshire with a regular exhortation to me to be a good girl and mind my books. So this small object, whatever it might be – it was the size and shape, perhaps, of a comb or a pair of scissors – would be the very first gift I had received in the whole of my existence. Palpitating with excitement I fingered and felt it, over and over, but could not solve the problem of the many threads that bound it round. So my curiosity must wait, unassuaged, until first light.

Long before cockcrow I was awake, gnawing and nibbling at the threads with my sharp child's teeth, until at last they gave way and the white silken wrappings unfolded to reveal an object which I had seen pictured in the
Gentleman's Magazine
at Dr Moultrie's, but never in actuality, for it was not the kind of article made use of by the women of Ashett and Othery. It was a fan made from delicate strips of ivory, rubbed fine as threads and jointed together, I knew not by what means. For some time its beauties and intricacies eluded me, since I was unable to solve the mystery of the opening clip.

Later, after breakfast, I was able to catch hold of Hob, behind the chicken shed, and ask for his help.

‘Here, Goosey! It works like this,' he said, easily pushing back the catch with his thumb and flipping the fan expertly open. He then wafted it to and fro, giving me such languishing looks over the top, raising and lowering his brows, eyeing me sideways under his thick, sandy lashes, that I was soon reduced to helpless laughter.

‘Oh, Hoby, you are so funny! Where did you ever learn to do that?'

‘Never you mind, young lady.' Deftly, he snapped the fan shut and restored it to me. ‘That is how the gay ladies of Bristol go on, and it is no business of yours, not for another ten years.'

Hoby's father occasionally toured the western counties in the course of his duties, and would then carry away his son for a few days' pleasuring.

‘But I say,' he added, ‘you owe me a good turn, little one, for if Biddy Wellcome had been in the house you'd never have laid a finger on that fan. You had best keep it well hid.'

Since I dared not conceal the fan anywhere indoors, I stowed it in the hollow of an oak that grew in a little coppice where we used to gather firewood. Here – if nobody else was by – I would luxuriously fan myself, raising my brows, lowering my lashes and glancing sideways out of the corners of my eyes in faithful imitation of Hoby's performance.

I did not show my treasure to Mr Bill or Mr Sam. Young as I was, instinct told me that such a toy as a fan would be of no interest to either man. They were absorbed by matters of the spirit, or of the wilderness, cataracts and tempests, rocks and rainbows; a fan, a trivial feminine trifle, would be to them an object of indifference, if not scorn.—Thus early, I taught myself to divide life into compartments, turning a different countenance to each person with whom I came into contact.

***

The next event worthy of record came at the season of Michaelmas when I had achieved, I suppose, my seventh or eighth year. Mr Bill and Mr Sam, deeply mourned by me, had quitted our neighbourhood and sailed to foreign lands; Germany, I believe. In my childish heart their absence was a continual ache; at each street corner, if I went into Ashett, I looked for Mr Sam's floating black locks and flashing eyes, Mr Bill's Roman nose and lofty height; I could not truly believe that they would never come back, and I made endless forlorn plans for the celebration of their return, tales that I would relate to them, secret wonderful places I would show them; I do not know how many years it took me to understand that none of these plans would come to fruition.

Meanwhile the two babes, Thérèse and Polly, had grown into small, fair, curly-headed children, wholly unalike in their natures, but resembling each other in one respect, in that both were unusually late in learning to talk. Biddy Wellcome, as she slopped about her careless housework, never troubled to address them except to bawl out a command or prohibition; that, I suppose, may have been one reason for their lack of linguistic facility. And Polly, like her mother, was naturally stupid, slow at learning anything, even when it was to her advantage to do so. Thérèse (whose awkward foreign name had long since, by everybody in Byblow Bottom, been abbreviated to Triz) was, conversely, very far from stupid, but she remained delicate and somewhat listless; would sooner forgo some treat than be obliged to take trouble for it. So she did not bestir herself to speak, seeing no advantage to be gained thereby. When I was with them, I defended and protected Triz a great deal of the time from the overbearing greed and selfishness of Polly, who could be quick indeed to grab any good thing for herself once she had become aware of it. And as a result of this, little Triz had become, in her quiet way, very attached to me.

She had a word for me: ‘Alize,' she would murmur, smiling trustfully as I approached. ‘Alize.'

As I say, it was the festival of Michaelmas. Dr Moultrie had gone off, grumbling very much, to officiate at the funeral of an Over Othery parishioner who had been so inconsiderate as to die just then. So I had a holiday. Down at Ashett, a hiring fair, a three-day annual event, was in full swing. Shepherds, farmhands and dairymaids would come there from all over the country to offer themselves for employment, in hopes of bettering their condition. Also, I knew, there would be jugglers and peepshows, music and dancing, gypsy fortune-tellers, toys and fairings for sale. But I had no heart for Ashett; the streets where Mr Bill and Mr Sam were no longer to be expected made me feel too sad; and in any case I had no money to spend.

All the boys from Byblow Bottom, whether bastard or born in wedlock, planned to go junketing; they had saved money, mostly ill-gotten from poaching, and looked forward to a day of pleasure.

‘You can come along of us, little 'un, if you like,' said Hoby to me good-naturedly. ‘I'll give ye six pence to spend.'

His mates growled very much at this offer. ‘Wha'd'we want with
her?
She'd be nought but a trouble.'

Regardless both of them and of Hoby, I shook my head, though I had a lump in my throat big as a Pershore plum.

‘No. I don't want to come.'

‘Not want to see the fair? But Hannah and Tom are going down to buy tools and calico.
Everybody
's going.'

‘I don't want to.'

‘Ah, she's cracked. Bodged in the upper storey,' said Jonathan disgustedly. ‘Besides being faddle-fisted. Who wants her? Come on, leave her.'

Hoby still tried to persuade me. ‘You'll like it, Liza. Indeed, you will.'