The Secretary (26 page)

She went into the bedroom and lay down without removing her gown or her shoes. “Why, Papa?” she whispered, and the tears began to fall. “Why?”

After his little interlude with Clarissa in the hall, Anders went back into the ballroom and danced with his mother and then with Eleanor. It was only as he was leading her back to her mother that he looked about for Clarissa and did not see her. Perhaps she was still putting her gown in order? But it had been more than half an hour.

He went out into the corridor to look for her. She was not there, nor was she in the parlor or the drawing room.

“Mother,” he said when he went back into the ballroom, “have you seen Clarissa?”

“Not since after supper,” his mother said. “She hasn’t run away on you, has she?”

Anders stared out into the crowd. He wouldn’t put it past Clarissa.

He searched the rest of the house and enlisted Leo to check the gardens. She was nowhere to be found.

“Something’s happened,” he said when he and his friend met in the hall. “Something’s wrong.” But if Clarissa had left, where would she have gone? Anders rushed out into the street.

It was ten minute’s walk to Trevor Street. He ran it in five. When he got there his lungs were burning, but he rushed up the stairs to her flat anyway, and when he got to her door he raised his fist and banged on it.

There was no answer.

“Clarissa,” he called. “Open the door, please.”

Still no answer. Anders considered kicking in the door, but he knew he couldn’t. If she was in there, she clearly didn’t want to see him. If she wasn’t, it would be stupid to do damage to a flat that would only be hers for another hour.

He walked slowly back to Belgravia. When he reached Sidney House, Leo was waiting for him on the steps. He was holding something in his hands. “She left this on the mantle in the parlor,” he said, and he held out a slip of paper. It had been folded and his name written on the outside.

Inside, she had written,

Please, give me a little time.

That was all. Anders crumpled the note and stuffed it in his pocket. “What’s happened?” Leo asked.

Anders looked up at the bright windows of Sidney House. Inside, his guests were waiting. “I have no idea,” he said. “But I mean to find out.”

TWENTY-FOUR

November 10, 1809

Subject is a female child approximately five months old. Very sparse yellow hair, no doubt due to malnutrition, poor thing. Blue eyes. Pale skin. I have been feeding her goats’ milk since it seems to agree with her more than cows’. She sleeps about six hours a night and three or four more during the day. Overall, a quiet, calm child. She does not cry often. I think I will call her Clarissa. Lydia would have chosen that name if we had ever had a daughter.

I have some misgivings about this experiment of Roger’s. I think I will tell him when I have found the child another home. Until then I cannot risk it.

November 22, 1809

Clarissa can roll over on to her stomach now. She has been attempting to sit up but cannot do it alone yet. She babbles a little and seems fascinated by her reflection. I have been reading John Locke to her every evening as I rock her to sleep. I have not told Roger that I have been rocking her—he encouraged me to hold her as little as possible. But she seems comforted by it.

I have been speaking English to her, but next week I think I will switch to French, and then back to English in January.

Roger has still not chosen a name for his little girl. I have started calling her Cynthia.

December 9, 1809

I received word today that I have been granted a teaching position at Oxford for the Hilary Term. Roger was already planning on taking the position they have been offering since last year. We will go together.

I took Clarissa to see my parents this week. They accepted the story about her birth easily—I write to them so infrequently, and it had completely escaped my mind that I had not told them of Lydia’s death. They readily believed Clarissa was her daughter. Mother disapproved of me speaking French to her, but I will persevere.

I have decided to take Clarissa with me when I go to Oxford. If I cannot care for her, I will find a family in the countryside who can. But more and more I feel my resolve to abandon the plan weakening.

There was a knock at the door. Clarissa clutched the book to her chest, too frightened and bewildered to move. Then she heard Anders’s voice. He knocked again. Then there was silence.

Perhaps he had given up. Perhaps not. Either way, she could not see him until she knew what on earth she would say, and before that she had to finish reading the journal. She turned her attention back to her father’s cramped hand.

April 14, 1810

Clarissa took her first steps today after three months of crawling. She has been crying frequently as her newest teeth have come in, but today when I went into the study she smiled at me, stood up, and walked across the room. Nanny Bab was astonished. In addition to “dada”, she has learned to say “Bab” and “Wissa”. Not once has she said the word “mama”. It is a relief. Roger says it is a good sign that there are no residual memories of her mother lurking in her mind.

October 21, 1810

Nanny Bab threatened to hand in her notice today. Clarissa has taken to running all over the house, up and down the stairs, and poor Bab has been forced to chase her. I laughed all morning at the commotion and was finally forced to promise Bab a raise and escape to my office.

I notice that I have become rather less analytical in my recording. I will make an effort to curtail such sentimental comments in the future.

July 7, 1812

This morning Clarissa looked up from her book and said, “Papa, what is magic?”

“Magic?” I asked. “Why do you want to know that?” She looked at me in a way that seemed far too serious for a three-year-old and said, “Because I have just read that word, and I do not know what it means.”

I took the book away from her. It was a collection of fairy stories. I burned it. What would Roger say if he knew I had allowed her to read such tripe? I don’t know where they came from. Since she finished the last of the primers, it has been more difficult to find reading material that is not fanciful. She is nearly ready to begin reading some of the simpler philosophical texts. Perhaps until then, a little Shakespeare might not be too detrimental? Not
Midsummer Night’s Dream
or any of the other fanciful comedies, but perhaps Richard III?

August 30, 1814

We have begun conducting some simple engineering experiments. Clarissa is currently constructing an elevator to carry a ball from the foyer to the landing above. Perhaps after she had completed that, we will move on to some natural philosophy. She shows a great inclination towards mathematics. I will have to ask Roger to give her some private tutoring.

I saw Cynthia today as she came in to play. She and Clarissa spent a few moments studying the elevator and making observations and then went upstairs to Clarissa’s room. Clarissa has told me they are writing a play. I will have to ask her for the draft—if it is not a serious drama, Roger may want it taken away.

February 6, 1819

Clarissa has asked me for a new dress. When I asked her why, she said that all the other little girls she knew had pretty dresses. I explained that she was different from other little girls, and when she asked how, I could not give her an answer. “Cynthia does not have pretty dresses,” I said. “But Cynthia is pretty,” she replied, “and I am plain.”

Has all my work been for nothing? Will she reach the trying years and turn into a vapid young woman, obsessed with beauty and other superficial concerns?

We will begin reading Hume tomorrow. Perhaps that will bring her back.

June 17, 1819

Roger and I have had a falling out. I do not know what else to call it. He wants to take the experiment to the next phase. I cannot bear to. Clarissa is so happy, so free. How can I burden her with the cares of the world, of women, when she is so young? If she wishes to sew and embroider, then of course I will find someone to teach her. But I cannot support, have never supported forcing her to learn something she does not enjoy.

Enough.

Roger, when you read this, you will see that I have done my best. I will continue to do so, but I cannot force my beautiful, perfect Clarissa to become something she is not. I only hope that one day, when I tell her the whole truth, she does not hate me for the monster that I am.

It was the last entry. Clarissa looked up from the pages of the journal and saw that the sky was beginning to grow light. She was still wearing her ball gown and pearls. She clambered off the bed and splashed some cool water on her face.

He had broken ties with his best friend for her. He had been terrified that she would hate him. But had he loved her, as she had loved him? Had he ever told her that he loved her? Now that Clarissa thought about it, she wondered if she had ever told her father that she loved him.

When she had been eleven or twelve or thirteen, her childhood had not seemed very strange to her, especially because her best friend had had almost the exact same experience. Now she understood why, of course. And there had been moments, when she had been older, when she had wondered at her father’s reluctance to discuss anything even remotely romantic or fantastical with her. She had sometimes felt hurt by his seeming inability to understand that she was a woman.

But she did not hate him. She could not. He had been weak-willed, she saw now, but he had learned to fight back. And he had wanted her.

That would have to be enough.

But what about Anders? Cynthia had advised Clarissa not to tell him, but she had promised herself there would be no more lies between them. And he was her husband. She had sworn to stay beside him all the days of her life. Her father had not taught her to love, but he had taught her to do her duty.

She could not stay in the flat, anyway. It was morning, and it no longer belonged to her. She left the key on the tea table and opened the door.

Anders was sitting on the landing, still in his evening clothes. He stood and looked her up and down. She did not meet his eyes. “Take me home, please,” she said.

TWENTY-FIVE

March 1, 1833

Anders handed Clarissa into the carriage. She took a seat across from him. She had not spoken another word to him since they had left Trevor Street except to tell him that she still wished to leave for Ramsay that morning as they had agreed. She had disappeared into her chamber and he had not seen her again until they had met in the foyer a few hours later.

Now, as they neared the outskirts of London, his lost his patience. “Clarissa,” he said, “I promised myself I would not push you. But clearly something has happened. I wish you would tell me.”

From the bench beside her Clarissa produced a small leather-bound book. “I wanted to wait to give this to you until I could see your face as you read it,” she said softly. Then she handed the book across the small space and turned her gaze out the window again.

Anders stared down at the book. If this was what had caused the sudden disappearance of the woman he loved—for truly, it seemed as though the Clarissa he knew had disappeared—he was not sure he wanted to read it. He had to force himself to open the cover and begin to read.

January 21, 1810

Clarissa began crawling today. She has put on a significant amount of weight. Yesterday I began reading Plato to her. I have an idea to act out the parable of The Cave and see how she reacts. She is, after all, in the state of innocence Plato described.

In many ways, Roger’s experiment appeals to me immensely. Here is an opportunity to create the ideal woman, without any of my frailties, since she is not really mine. I know that she can rise above her birth, that even though she was born in a whorehouse, she can become a liberated, strong female. She will not need a man to care for her or to provide her with income. She will be free.

March 10, 1813

We have finished Jefferson’s journals
.
When I had closed the book, Clarissa said, “But if men must be forced to do what is in the interest of the greater good, how can it really be good? How is that liberty?”

She is a genius. And I have made her so. In that moment I saw myself as Pygmalion, molding my statue into perfect form. It was both satisfying and terrifying, for in that moment I also realized that someday I will have to tell her what I have done. What will she think when I explain that she was no more than an exercise in liberty?

But she is more than that to me. God forgive me, she has become my daughter. How can I, who has railed against all forms of human bondage, continue to exploit and manipulate this innocent creature?

October 1, 1816

Roger wishes to present our findings thus far to the Society of Natural Philosophy. But I cannot support such a scheme. I told him that he could do as he wished, but that I wanted my name left out. I have begun to consider leaving Oxford and pursuing another career. I see now that my hope that I might bring about social change by influencing the realm’s great minds was foolish. I must go where I can make a difference.