Kept (21 page)

It was in this spirit that, stepping out of the hotel after luncheon with the aim of taking another turn along the beach, he met with a calamity of such a nature as to send all his former fears flying once more about his head. Idling in the lobby, having transacted some minor piece of business with the desk clerk—a certain shovel of coals that might or might not have been added to his fire, a certain dish that
might or might not have been added to his supper menu—he became aware that a man who had just entered the vestibule was regarding him with the keenest of looks. Dewar turned aside, intending to return immediately to his room, but in an instant the man, whose features Dewar now believed that he half-remembered, was at his elbow.

“Now here’s chance. I said to myself when I came into the place that it was you, and d——d if I wasn’t right.”

“Well, yes indeed. How are you?”

Searching the man’s face, Dewar recognised a commercial traveller with whom he had had dealings in his Islington days, one, moreover, to whom every detail of his commercial misfortunes would be known. Striving vainly to compose himself—for he was conscious that he had gone very red in the face—he became aware that the commercial traveller was observing him with more than usual interest.

“Here on business, I suppose? Well, you look as if the world was treating you pretty comfortably. By the way,” the other continued, “didn’t I hear the fellow at the desk call you Roper or some such name?”

It was an innocent enquiry, but to one of Dewar’s febrile state of mind sufficient to goad him almost to frenzy. Stammering some excuse—he could not subsequently remember what he had said—he rushed from the vestibule into the street and, having ascertained that he was not being followed, took himself off to the promenade. Here, aided by cool air and the absence of onlookers, his head became clearer. He had met with a misfortune, he assured himself, but there was no reason why it should prove fatal. Doubtless he could no longer remain in a hotel where his assumed name might come to be generally known, but there were other establishments where the name “Mr. Roper” would attract no such suspicion. Accordingly, having allowed the greater part of an hour to elapse, he returned to Bates’s Hotel and, having made sure that the commercial traveller was nowhere to be seen, presented himself at the desk with the intelligence that a letter recently received required him to leave town instantly. Five minutes saw the matter concluded, and Dewar found himself out in the street once more with his valise in his hand. Fear, he now perceived, had made him cunning. Rather than transferring himself to a rival hotel—the thoroughfare in
which Bates’s lay contained two or three—he walked to a rather out-of-the-way part of the town, somewhat beyond St. Nicholas’s Church, and engaged a room in the house of a fisherman and his wife. Here he straightaway wrote to the two solicitors’ firms and to Carter Lane informing them of his removal, though not, in the final letter, offering any explanation for it. He spent the remainder of the day walking the shoreline (a presentiment having told him to avoid any region where he might chance upon the commercial traveller) and eating the frugal supper of sprats with which his landlady had seen fit to provide him.

Alas, Dewar’s troubles were far from vanished. Time hung heavy on his hands. Dull, rainswept mornings, which might have been tolerable in a commercial hotel, with a fire and the society of other men, were infinitely tedious to him in a fisherman’s cottage in Southtown. He took to wandering the beach, far down by the water’s edge beneath the flight tracks of the gulls and the murky sky, and in this way walked solitary miles along the coast path. There was a town to the south named Gorleston, full of picturesque cottages built of stone from the beach, and a lonely lake—the Breydon Water—populated only by herons and silent trees, but in neither of them did he find any solace. He had got into the habit—he remarked it during the course of these excursions—of muttering to himself as he walked, and the realisation was not pleasant to him. At the same time, labouring through the wind with his collar turned against his face, hands plunged deep into the pocket of his coat, he assured himself that his ordeal was nearly at an end, that another day—two days—would see him home. The tenement in Clerkenwell Court now seemed a kind of Elysian field and the clanging of the bells of St. James’s was celestial music when set against the endless sand and the harsh cries of the gulls. He was a Londoner, he told himself, and the placid Norfolk faces that dogged his every step mystified him.

On the third day of his sojourn in the Southtown cottage, two letters arrived for him by the first of the morning’s posts. Each was from one of the firms of Yarmouth solicitors he had engaged. Each begged to inform him that £150 had been received from his debtor, Mr. Nokes of Peckham, and that the money, less the firm’s commission, was there for him to collect. This intelligence, which Dewar
had calculated would only raise his spirits, had, curiously enough, the effect of deflating them still further for they offered proof—if further proof were needed—that the scheme in which he was engaged was altogether fraudulent. No creditor, he reasoned, having experience of creditors in his own line of business, would remit a sum of such magnitude in such a brief space of time. Surely such rapidity would arouse the deepest suspicion in those he had employed to collect it. There was nothing to be done, however, save to obey the summons, and into the town, carrying himself very circumspectly and with his hat pulled down over his eyes, Dewar went. Again, at both establishments, he—or rather Mr. Roper—was greeted with the greatest deference. In each case he was invited to read a letter in a fine italic hand, signed by Mr. Nokes of Peckham, berating him for his exigence but nevertheless acknowledging the extent of his obligations. In each case he quitted the premises with a cheque, drawn on the firm’s account, for slightly less than £150.

There remained only a single task to perform. Dewar’s money was by now nearly expended. Only a shilling and a few pence remained of the five sovereigns that Grace had given him a week and more ago. Yet each of the Yarmouth solicitors had, in addition to the cheque, presented him with a bill for six shillings and eightpence. Further funds would be required to pay his rent in Southtown. Following the advice of the most recent letter from Carter Lane, Dewar resolved to apply to Messrs. Gurney for some portion of the funds lately transmitted to his account from Lothbury. Calculating that half an hour would see him gone from the town, arming himself with the two solicitors’ bills by way of a reference, he stopped a passerby to enquire directions. Gurney’s Bank? Yes indeed, Gurney’s Bank lay in the very next street.

It was by now nearly midday. Knowing that the businesses of Great Yarmouth, such being the case in provincial towns, clung to the habit of a dinner hour and that the doors would soon be barred against him, Dewar made haste. Whether it was the flustered state into which he was thrown by his rapid transit or the general air of light-headedness which had afflicted him for some days past that was responsible for what now befell him is perhaps arguable. Nevertheless, it is certain that on reaching the teller’s desk, the following exchange took place:

“I should like to draw on some funds which I believe have been transferred here by your London agent.”

“What is the name?”

“Dewar.”

He corrected himself in an instant, but the instant was too late. The clerk’s eye was already raised in enquiry. Worse, a senior clerk with a beard and an eyeglass who happened to have overheard the exchange from his own desk to the rear now rose and made his way across the room. Another man might perhaps have brazened it out, made a joke of his absentmindedness, produced incontrovertible proof that he was Mr. Roper, but Dewar was not that man. He merely took to his heels and fled. Making his way wretchedly back to his lodging, he cursed himself for his incompetence while demanding of himself the question: what am I to do? A search of his pockets realised the sum of fifteen pence. There was only one thing that he could do. Reaching the house at Southtown, he made the welcome discovery that his landlady was absent: a moment later and he and his valise were once more out into the street. Sweat pouring from his forehead, looking wildly around him as he went, he walked hurriedly to the station. Four hours later, followed only by a fog that had risen in the Norfolk fields and pursued his train westwards across the flat, he was back in London.

MR. THACKERAY’S TOUR

Norwich—Hingham—Watton

Within, except where the rococo architects have introduced their ornaments, the cathedral is noble. A rich, tender sunshine is stealing in through the windows and gilding the stately edifice with the purest light. The admirable stained glass is not too brilliant in its colours. The organ plays a rich, solemn music. Six lady visitors, each with her guidebook and her attendant gentleman, were parading up and down the nave in the company of a fierce-looking verger whose eloquence was such that I declare I felt ashamed of my ignorance of my ecclesiastical history and slunk away to the gate of the cathedral school hard
by. Here half a hundred young gentlemen in tight black jackets and trowsers were playing tag or cockshies or purchasing hardbake off a tart woman’s tray, watched over by a kindly young master in a stuff gown who clearly envied them their relaxations—I know I did.

At noon we left the city by its western approach, passing the great house of Earlham, seat of Mr. Gurney, and the pretty village of Colney before emerging once more onto the hard Norfolk road. This is, I believe, a charming country, where the river winds through water meadows and osier beds, with little neat churches rising here and there among tufts of trees and pastures that are wonderfully green, and yet the whole curiously empty and forlorn. Where the people had gone, unless it were to help with the harvest, I do not know. At any rate, I saw none, except a solitary boy playing by the roadside at Wymondham, who enquired, “Would your honour like to see a big pig?” “Titmarsh,” I said to myself, following him into a sad little maze of allotments and yards of scuffed-up earth, “you
shall
observe the agricultural delights of the county and be a farmer yet,” but I must confess that the animal, found staring complacently from its sty, seemed a very unremarkable specimen. Still, it was a pleasure to hear the rascal prattle of the thirty shillings his mother
would
get for the carcass and the plate of pig’s fry he
would
have on slaughtering day and I confess quite reconciled me to the twopence which constituted our fee for the viewing…

Beyond Hingham—a neat town with a fine mere rippling at the wood’s edge—the land turned morose and dreary. A cart rattled by bearing half a dozen old men and women with shabby luggage piled up at their feet and not a tooth between them—paupers, said my friend, who knows the county well, bound for the workhouse at Watton. A brewer’s dray passed us, drawn by two great stamping horses, and I thought of its journey’s end: mine host in a white apron standing at his door, the barrels rolled down into the dim, cool cellar, the pretty barmaid drawing the drayman’s tankard. No such welcome, alas, awaited the old paupers. Towards Watton we came to a big house half hidden by trees with its boundaries fenced off by a high flint wall. This I was interested to see, being the abode of Mr. Dixey the celebrated naturalist. A smart lodge lay at the gate, with white ducks and stockings hung up to dry on the currant bushes, but there was no sign
of life. The gates themselves were locked and barred, and it seemed to me that Mr. Dixey, however strong his ardour for butterflies, does not care much for visitors.

Indeed this part of the country has a desolate aspect: tall trees shading the roadside, a horrid old ruined house that could have been the setting for one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and always the great brooding flat stretching on into the distance. A wind had got up and came soughing through the reed beds in the most melancholy way. Passing a gap in Mr. Dixey’s wall, where the stone had crumbled, I could not resist taking a peep into his parkland, but there was nothing except a pack of hounds chained up in an enclosure and a woman’s figure fluttering silently in the meadow before the house…

And so at length to Watton, a wide old marketplace with ostlers attending to their beasts at the rails and the George Inn, with its fragrant beds and the liveliest parlourmaid I ever saw, and an imperious old housekeeper to whom I would only say, “Madam, my chop would have been sweeter still had the serving girl’s thumbprint not stared up at me from the plate.”

—W. M. THACKERAY,
“A LITTLE TOUR THROUGH THE COUNTIES OF EAST ANGLIA,”
Cornhill Magazine
, 1862

 

W
henever I think of the life I led before I came here, it is always Papa to whom my thoughts return. Indeed, I sometimes imagine that of all the things I have seen & all the people I have known, it is only Papa that is real, that all the others are mere ghosts tapping at a door through which they shall never be admitted.

Papa has beautiful white hands with pink knuckles & long nails. His eyes are soft & large. His voice is slow & gentle. He holds down his cheek to kiss & he presses my forehead.

I can see him passing his hand through his hair laughing at the children pouring out his tea.

I can see him swinging his arms as he walks. I can see him looking out over the ship’s side & replacing his spectacles that are always slipping.

When Papa wrote his stories, he would draw the pictures for them as he worked: gentlemen on horseback, fine ladies conversing, all upon the margins of his manuscript book. Once when we were at tea, there came a tap at the window & looking out we saw Mr. Hannay, that Papa knew, waiting on the step. “That is the man I need,” Papa cried & set to work at once with his pen. And that is how the face in Papa’s
Cromwell
is not Cromwell’s at all but Mr. Hannay’s as he stood on our doorstep.

When I was one-and-twenty, Papa gave me a birthday dinner at Richmond. Such a bad dinner, Papa said, but we liked it so much, the two of us. When the things were cleared away, Papa called a little carriage & we drove home past the river through clouds & clouds of mist, & came through Barnes & over the bridge, & all the people were out in the street at Kensington, & I was so very happy.

All this is very vivid to me, very particular in its dimensions, as
if the years that followed had never been. And yet I know that had I foreseen them then, I would have wished them gone.

“When I am an old man,” Papa used to say, “you shall be married to a grand gentleman, & living in a fine house with company calling in carriages & footmen in powdered wigs, but perhaps I shall be allowed to sit & drink my glass of claret & watch my grandchildren grow.”

But now Papa is gone, there is no grand gentleman & no fine house, no company calling in carriages or footmen in powdered wigs, & the claret is all drunk up.

This morning Mr. Conolly comes. He is brought to my room by the butler, who waits outside until he is done.

I am sure that I saw Mr. Conolly before. But there is so much that is gone from my mind that however long I dwell on those old pictures I cannot find his face within their frames. Papa & Mr. Hannay, & Mr. Smith that was Papa’s publisher coming up to see him in a cab, but not Mr. Conolly. Who is a white-haired, civil, old, thin-legged gentleman of a kind I do not like. Who presses my hand and looks very searchingly into my eyes as he speaks.

I would that Mr. Conolly’s eyes looked elsewhere. At the butler waiting in the doorway, or the water jug & the teacups (they do not allow me a drinking glass, tho’ I have often asked for one). Anywhere but at me.

How do I find myself? Mr. Conolly begins by asking.

“I am perfectly well, sir, I believe,” I tell him.

You will excuse me, madam, he next says, if I ask you a question or two.

“If I can answer you, sir, I shall.”

I do not mean to answer Mr. Conolly. Who still presses my hand as he looks into my eye. Who is very impertinent.

“How long has the Queen reigned?”

“A dozen years. A hundred. I am sure the Queen would know, if there is a doubt.”

“If I wished to journey from London to Bristol, through which counties would I pass?”

“Indeed, sir, I should travel by air balloon. It is said to be most agreeable.”

I am surer now than ever that I saw Mr. Conolly before. Who proceeds in this manner for some time. Who finally takes his eyes, and his soft hand, and his thin little legs away from me and shuts the door behind him. Whose carriage, shortly afterwards, can be heard grinding up the gravel in the drive.

I am Isabel Ireland.

I am twenty-seven years old.

The Queen has reigned twenty-eight years.

If I wished to journey from London to Bristol I should pass through Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

The number of states of the American Confederacy is thirteen.

The Prince Consort is four years dead.

How do I find myself? Alas, I am altogether lost.

A conversation with my guardian, Mr. Dixey.

“Have you diversion enough, madam? Is there anything that can be got for you?”

“I should much like to read Miss Brontë’s novel
Agnes Grey
,” I say to test him.

“I believe we have it in the library. Randall shall bring it up to you. But something other than a book?”

“Indeed, sir,” I tell him, “I should like to see company.”

To this he says nothing. The book comes with my supper. I fall on it as hungrily as the food.

Papa hated to see me idle. If he found me in the drawing room with my feet among the sofa cushions, he would say, “Come, miss, let us take a walk around the gardens” or bid me to fetch a block from the study floor (it was on these that Papa did his drawings before they were taken away to the engraver). So I am always careful to occupy myself. I read my book. I mend my clothes—that is, when they are in need of mending. I study my situation. A man should make an inventory of any new place in which he finds himself, Papa used to say, and this I have accomplished. Thus:

I have two rooms for my private use: the one a sitting room, the other a bedroom.

The dimensions of the sitting room are twenty-four feet by eighteen feet; the dimensions of the bedroom fourteen feet by nine feet.

The dimensions of my sofa are six feet by two feet; of my desk four feet by three feet; of my table the same.

I am brought my breakfast at eight, my luncheon at one, my supper at seven.

I read my book. I mend my clothes. I study my situation.

Papa and I often talked of the man I should marry.

He will be an archdeacon living in the country, Papa would say, & you will have ten children, & write his charges, & make puddings, & be very severe on the dissenters.

Nonsense, I would say in return, he will be a navy captain with only one leg, & a great telescope fixed to his eye, whom I shall see but once a year when his ship is in harbour & who will shock me with his oaths.

Nonsense again, Papa would say. He will be Professor of Greek at Oxford & you will turn bluestocking & have solemn parties for the undergraduates & be very down on ladies who have not read Homer.

I think that Papa joked in this way because he feared that I should leave him, & that I joked with him because I feared it too. “Alas,” he would say, whenever a young lady’s banns were read in church, “another
old gentleman turning his face to the wall and wondering who shall bring in his slippers.”

“The old gentleman,” I would say, to twit him, “should bring in his slippers himself.”

All that was five years since. And now all those that I loved are gone from me, & there is no power on earth that shall bring them back.

I have been very ill. That is what they tell me, & I daresay it must be true, for there is so much that has vanished from my mind that only sickness could have dragged it from me. It is not for want of thinking—oh no, not that! Once, indeed, I tried to set down on a sheet of paper all that has passed since Papa’s death, yet found myself altogether defeated. The essentials were there in my head, I knew, but it seemed to me that I could not grasp at them & that they drifted through banks of vapour whose depths I could never penetrate.

I remember Papa dying, and the silence in the bedroom above our heads, and the servant rushing in crying, “Oh he is dead, miss!” and myself running to fetch Dr. Collins from his breakfast.

I remember the motion of a boat upon the water & Henry’s face—very white and grave—next to mine, & a ribbon fastened about my waist that, try as I might, I could not undo.

And—much later it seems to me—a woman’s voice saying, not unkindly, “Now put on your bonnet,” and I, very meekly, putting on my bonnet & stepping out into darkness & a jolting cab, tho’ where it took me I could not say.

For I can be good—oh so very good—when I wish it.

When I was a child, I had scarlatina. It was in Italy, with Papa, who was unwell too, & the two of us lay on our backs in adjoining rooms overlooking the sea with our arrowroots & our lemonades & were, I
think, very comfortable together. Now I lie on a sofa with a view of Mr. Dixey’s wild garden, & my treatment is this:

I have a draught of medicine, brought to me morning & night, which I am bidden to swallow.

I have Mr. Conolly to press my hand & ask me how I find myself.

I have the door locked behind me, for fear that I should injure myself.

I am glad that the door is locked behind me, for I should not wish to cause inconvenience.

Not to myself or to anyone else.

As for Mr. Dixey’s establishment, seeing that I have never been permitted to explore it, I have scarce an idea of its design. There may be a dozen rooms or a hundred; I have no means of knowing. And yet I have a vision of myself stealing about the place at night, a candle in my hand, opening doors that should not be opened, prying into chambers where Mr. Dixey would not have me go. No doubt it is very wicked of me to think these thoughts. But they have crept into my head unbidden, while there are other thoughts I would have kept there that have stolen away.

Yet though I may not turn keys & steal down staircases, I have eyes & ears, & there are things that I may deduce within the confines of a locked room. Thus, I calculate with certainty, there are nine of us in this house.

Mr. Randall, the butler, brings me my meals. He does not speak, except to ask if the food is to my liking (it is not!). Once, indeed, he pressed upon me a small book, saying that I should do well to take its contents to heart. When he had gone, I looked & saw that it was a tract,
Some Paths for the Craven Spirit
, of the kind that Aunt Charlotte Parker favoured. And which, knowing it to be dull, I did not read.

William, the footman, Mr. Randall’s viceroy, says not a word. Indeed, he lays down my tray and refills my water jug, scurries to the door and scrabbles with the key in such hot haste that I believe he fancies me to be a young sorceress ripe to turn him into a toad.

Mrs. Finnie, the housekeeper, attends on me each morning at eleven, there being certain feminine wants that a butler and a footman cannot between them be expected to supply.

Who is a sour old woman with hair of such a blackness of jet that it cannot be her own.

Who declines to be drawn by the most amiable pleasantry.

“It is a fine morning, Mrs. Finnie.”

“Indeed, ma’am.”

“But not so fine, I think, as it was yesterday.”

“Perhaps not, ma’am.”

There is no conversation to be got from Mrs. Finnie.

Then there is a cook, Mrs. Wates, on whom I never set eyes, & three maids, whose voices I hear about the house & whose figures I have glimpsed at a distance in the grounds. I confess that I should like to speak to them, to sit in a parlour with them, even, & listen to them as they talk. Yet such are the ways of this house that I know they would not wish to speak to me.

Sometimes I hear the scrunch of gravel on the drive & the sound of voices far below & know that visitors are come. Once there came a clergyman, for I stood on tiptoe to look out of my window & saw his shovel hat. Another time an old lady came walking at a great distance through the gardens & passed round the side of the house. What business she had I cannot imagine.

I am forbidden company, Mr. Conolly says, for there are foolish fancies in my head that conversation may excite. I confess that this makes me very unhappy.

But perhaps it is for the best.

This evening Mr. Dixey again comes to visit me. He says nothing at first, but merely regards me as if there were some question he wished to put but could not bring himself to ask it.

“I have finished
Agnes Grey
,” I tell him. “Are there other books I might see?”

“I shall have some brought to you,” he says. “Is there anything else you would wish?”

“Indeed, sir,” I say, greatly daring. “I should like to write a letter.”

“A letter! To whom would you wish to write?”

Alas, so hastily was the thought plucked out of my mind that I cannot immediately answer him. “I should like to write to my husband’s lawyer.”

“There is nothing that he can tell you that cannot be told by me.”

“Nevertheless, I should like to do so.”

He bows but says nothing. Later, with my supper, Mr. Randall brings me two books. They are Mr. Trollope’s
Framley Parsonage
and Mr. Jerrold’s
The Story of a Feather
. Knowing how much Papa disliked Mr. Jerrold, I leave the latter unread.

A dull morning, overcast & with rain. Mrs. Finnie arrives punctually at eleven.

“It is a fine morning, Mrs. Finnie.”

“Indeed, ma’am.”

“Even finer, I think, than yesterday.”

“As you say, ma’am.”

There are other fools in this house than I!

I confess that I have begun to make a study of Mr. Dixey. A study of the set of his features. Of the way he stands before me. Of the way he sits in his chair.

What is there to say?

My guardian is a tall man, somewhat elderly yet vigorous in his demeanour. He has grey hair & grey eyes that sit in his head like pieces of flint but conceal, I judge, a kindly & industrious nature.

He is very active in his pursuits, wears a pair of gaiters, seems ever to be returning from some walk, has on riding boots or carries a dog whip, &c.

There is no Mrs. Dixey, nor I think ever was.