What Empty Things Are These

by Crozier, J. L. ;

  ‘What is this, Mother?’ He was a little gruff, for he had not spoken at all for some time.

  ‘It is a letter, Toby, from a gentleman who will publish something I have written.’

  Still, my detachment continued, as if I had handed on, or put down upon a table, all of the anxiety of the last few hours. I was interested, merely interested, in what was here unfolding in my morning room.

  As soon as one part of life peels itself from another and moves on, see how many explanations are demanded! Somewhere in my mind I found this amusing, but took care not to smile as I gazed at my son.

  ‘And he will pay me.’ I believed in being thorough.

  Now I did venture a small smile, as if I expected Toby’s congratulations, while knowing, of course, that these would not come. My detachment played as if in a game, for I knew that Toby would behave as he would behave. He will behave as he believes his father would behave and would want him to behave in his stead.

  ‘Mother, how long has this been going on? What of Papa?’

  I regarded my son a moment. Remember he is a boy still. I sat a little straighter, for now I knew, a little wearily and bored with the necessity, that I must gather energies, gather myself back into this scene, and explain.

  ‘Toby, it is something that I can do in the circumstances—’ he took a breath to speak, but I forestalled him with a raised hand ‘—which are that your father, when he passes, will leave most of his wealth to you, as is right, of course, but very little to me.’

  Toby did not answer, though he clearly had meant to. He simply could not. I watched his face as all his cloak of pomposity finally fell away—and my own detachment with it—and he dwindled to a frightened, pale-faced child. It was evident that all he had truly heard of my speech were the words: when he passes. His eyes were hot and his mouth shapeless with unwept and unspoken grief. ‘No, do not say that!’ he burst out. ‘How can you say that? You, who adventured while he suffered!’

  Toby was gone through the door, his feet rapid on the stairs, up two flights to his room, with a slam at the end of it all.

  Left alone, I looked around the room, my morning room. It was, despite the theatrics of today, just as it had always been: pretty, presentable yet informal, filled with the things and the furniture that I loved. There was the sampler whose embroidered Bless this H… had not proceeded far since I had first begun it.

  When was that?

  Not long ago, yet so very long ago.

  I fancied this quiet room was relieved that all that trouble had gone from it; but with a weary exasperation, I sent my mind beyond, to each of the house’s storeys now nurturing a different tragedy in discreet rooms—Mr Hadley’s, Sobriety’s, Toby’s. I sighed and rose to say what I could; in Toby’s case, probably through his closed door, for, since the day twelve years before that Mr Hadley had first taken the red-faced bundle from me, Toby had learned never to allow his mother to comfort him. Rare tears had been for Nurse, and the display of control and manly accomplishment reserved for his father.

  ‘Toby, all of this bespeaks your grief—’ Upstairs, I crouched and murmured through my boy’s keyhole, to silence inhabited by a muffled sniff. I began again, ‘Toby, I am your mother—’ but felt I had no conclusion for this statement that could reach him, and rose to my feet. I was about to creep away, but paused a moment, bent again to the keyhole and said into it, ‘Remember that I love you, Toby.’

  Matters were similar at the door to Sobriety’s small chamber. I opened it a chink to venture, ‘Sobriety?’ but I addressed only my maid’s back as Sobriety lay clutched to herself on her narrow bed.

  Sobriety’s voice came strained and a little cracked. ‘I am sorry, I am not fit to talk right now. I shall be better soon…’ and I said, ‘Of course, of course,’ and closed the door.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  We Speak of Children

  We speak of children and the joy they grant a household, filled thus with a life that runs in little steps, and calls in little cries, and holds out its little arms for love. And this is so; it is the truth on many days and in many homes, where such is expected, and welcomed, and countenanced.

  But there are such homes that are not so, and we (who speak of children) tend not to speak of this. We do not speak of the hopes that mothers have of such a thing—of homes made bright by infants and children who laugh and play, and raise their eyes with trust and love; hopes that are dashed when the babe is taken, wrapped tight, and trained to be old before their time by fathers and governesses and tutors in schoolrooms, all creaking their sour disapprovals.

  We do not tell that, in these many, many cases, the little gentleman, stolen thus from she who would love and teach him, is taught instead to look askance. When next this boy gazes at his mother, it will be to disdain. He, the child, will turn the wheels about and it will be the mother reduced to meaningless chatter and fumbling, to childishness.

  And, yea, there are others in this land with bodies God has prepared to bear new life, who are betrayed by those placed above them and then cursed—at first for a failure to resist when resistance is beyond possible, and then for either of the only two outcomes likely thereafter: to bear a babe in disgrace and both condemned to shame and penury, or to seek the alternative…

  I blotted the pages of my journal and read again what I had written. It was a note, a message, a thought described to myself, and never likely, I knew, to see the light of public gaze. A thought, nonetheless, about we mothers whose children are stolen… It filled me with dreariness; a lassitude that had pooled deeper and deeper during all the long, long days gone by spent at a distance—as if perpetually in another room—from the child who did not love me. I thought of myself, and Sobriety, and little Mrs Farquharson. I went to close up the writing book. It is near unbearable to think on it, yet it surely not to do so cannot itself be borne.

  And yet to have written this—and it did come close, very close to an accurate expression of my thoughts—was a relief, a satisfaction in itself. All these years, without the words to say what ailed me. How did I bear it?

  I sat quiet for the remainder of my time with Mr Hadley, my hands folded and the clock filling the silent void with its ticking, until its chime.

  ‘Mrs Hadley, my dear, poor Adelaide!’ Mrs Courtney, Edith, entered like a gush of damp air. I saw that Sobriety had an eye on the ornaments as Edith ballooned past the Chinese snuff bottles clustered on lace by the door. My sister-in-law reached me without mishap, grasped me by the shoulders, and kissed my cheek. She turned to Toby, who was at his drawing, perched on a chair pulled up to the small table and surrounded by pencils and paper. He was still pale with misery and offence, but had recovered enough after

  luncheon in the dining room (he had forgotten his apparent resolution not to speak as he sat shivering over the soup, and agreed with me that the room was indeed as icy as any ancient Hebridean dungeon) to seek out my company and that of Sobriety in the morning room.

  ‘Toby!’

  Toby rose and stood, resigned to his aunt’s advancing attentions, while yet his hand still rested on the pencil with which he had been wrestling with the foreshortening of a knight in armour.

  Poor Toby. You know she will never notice either the drawing or that you have been busy doing it.

  ‘Toby, poor boy.’ Edith Courtney pulled him to her own armoured bosom and hugged him tight for such a time, rocking the small boy from side to side, that Sobriety and I exchanged glances. It seemed unlikely that the boy had enough breath in him to withstand his aunt’s embrace.

  ‘Oh, Toby, Toby, Toby, what a sad, sad time for you. You have been up to see your poor father?’ Toby’s answer was muffled by his aunt’s shawl.

  ‘Oh, my poor, poor brother. Oh, George.’

  Of a sudden, Edith held Toby at arm’s length and bent to look into his face. ‘Of course you have, poor lambkins. And you have been a b
rave boy, too, haven’t you?’ Toby managed to agree that he had. She turned him around and held him close to her side, where he stood at an awkward angle, more on one foot than the other, while she continued, ‘Look at you all, so very pale. What a tragedy this is!’

  ‘We are all very tired today, Edith, from the emotion, I believe. It has been a strain.’

  ‘Oh, my dear. Of course. But I have come with an invitation for you, Adelaide. Such a thing! You know that I have encountered a wonderful, most marvellous person. A spiritualist of extraordinary talent, Madame Drew, in London only these last few months and yet already the darling of so many who matter, and now at the very centre of my life, and…you would have been amazed, my dear Adelaide… She speaks to me of poor Mr Courtney’s enduring love. Because, you know, he comes to her especially when she is in trance. He is waiting for me from Beyond. It is so very moving!’

  I had heard very little before of the spiritualist, yet this revelation came as no surprise. Edith Courtney had long been apt to take passionate fancies to this lady or the other, who were often described as ‘prescient, you understand’, and she would lower her voice and raise her eyebrows with ‘she knows, my dear…’ This new acquaintance with a world of spirits was a thing of great value, I could see, that my sister-in-law held to herself, that was entirely her own, even while she had dared not speak of her beliefs in Mr Hadley’s presence.

  Edith’s voice faded into a tearful whisper, though rallying as she spoke, all the while searching out her handkerchief from her reticule. ‘It was so very comforting. I really thought of you, my dear, most particularly, and how comforted you would be…’

  I marshalled myself, watchful, even suspicious of a sudden. Edith, surely, had come to encompass me in some way. She would make me complicit in something, God knew what. A spiritualist now? Lord. Mr Hadley would have scoffed both loud and long.

  ‘I do not understand. It would be fine to hear of Mr Courtney’s love for you, but the comfort is yours, surely?’

  Mr Hadley, it was well known to all save his sister, had never held Mr Courtney in high regard. ‘That whining milksop’ was the usual descriptor, which rang now in my head. It was a business to keep a straight face, though I imagined for a moment the combination of Mr Hadley’s scorn for spiritualists and his contempt for the Courtneys.

  Surely he would cry: ‘Why would anyone wish to call the milksop back?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Edith’s voice regained strength. ‘I meant that she might speak with Mr Hadley’s soul for you.’

  Oh, Edith.

  ‘Mr Hadley is not yet passed on, my dear sister.’

  Edith, Edith.

  ‘Yet my dear, it does so seem to me that his soul hovers, does it not? It hovers outside his body—overhead, as it were—and he would be glad, would he not, glad to have you know how he is, of his love…?’

  Edith was stopped by tears for some moments, her face in her handkerchief and shoulders shaking, the seams in her bodice straining with each breath. I stood with my arm about her, head averted from the trembling bonnet. My own sensibilities, flayed as they had been these past two days in particular, were aware now as never before of Edith Courtney’s loneliness and her determined grip on continual grief as her only companion. I understood that she pleaded today for—positively grasped at—my companionship in this other world she had found for herself.

  See how much comfort she needs, and what she will grasp to find it. Poor Edith.

  ‘It has been hard, for my Mary is of a singularly narrow mind on this and will not see Madame Drew as the miracle she is. But I knew in my heart that you would be glad…’ Edith’s voice quavered once more.

  Poor, sensible Mary—but what on earth does Edith step into? Lord, where does she invite me?

  ‘If you wish it, of course, I will come with you, Edith. Yet we should be prepared for the possibility that she cannot speak to Mr Hadley.’

  She has leapt upon me as a fellow sufferer. She cannot even wait for my widowhood!

  Edith raised her head from the sodden handkerchief. ‘I really do believe it may happen, Adelaide. His soul…’ Her eyes were puffed and lined with a raw redness, her face blotched. I sighed a long, quiet breath.

  What can I say?

  ‘Well, you may be right. Of course I shall come.’

  She then visited a few moments upstairs with her brother, bending over his bed with a loud whisper, ‘We shall speak soon, I know it!’

  Downstairs, Edith grasped my arm and was as earnest as she could be. ‘Sister, Madame Drew will impress you as strong and upright, and able to lift your hopes and spirits as would surprise you, truly…’, and departed in a swirl that left the vase in the hallway teetering on its stand until I stilled it with one finger.

  The morning room returned to peace; we three glanced at each other, and after a pause, I said, ‘Poor Aunt Edith.’

  Sobriety and I sat once more, with all our silken sibilance and adjustment; Toby drew his chair back to the table. Soon, I would go up to Mr Hadley for my hours at his bedside with my writing box and papers; Cissy would receive instructions for the evening from Mrs Staynes. Delightful odours from the kitchen, conjured from the list of Toby’s favourites expressed by him at holiday intervals, would begin to reach to us.

  All was quiet, made the more so by the comfortable noises from both within and without the house, and the light through the window that wavered a little with the breeze shifting the branches outside.

  It is like—very like—any domestic scene with the adults and children in companionship, going about their separate occupations.

  Look at him. He is a child, after all.

  ‘Mother,’ Toby said, lifting his head from his drawing. ‘What was Mr Bazelgette’s tunnel like, on the inside?’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Toby touched his father’s head at the end of his own visit to him the next morning. I stood aside to allow him the door, and nodded to Cissy to return to the bedside. It was Sunday, and Toby and I were both dressed for church—a medley of sober blues in the pattern and trimmings for me, and Toby in a dark suit and waistcoat, a pin in his cravat like a memory of his father.

  Sobriety waited at the foot of the stairs. With her, cradling his hat in his long, thin, black-clad arm, stood Mr Gordon, attentive to the very tips of his out-bent elbows to both mother and son as they descended.

  ‘Ah, my dear Mrs Hadley, and Master Toby! So grown! So much the image of your father, and of course your dear mother!’ His face contorted with the effort of expressing both gladness and sympathy at the same time, his long black frame bent in a solicitude too much like crouching.

  For an instant I saw Mr Gordon in my mind, nibbling at cake with his mousy mouth, blinking at me with his tiny, mousy eyes. I glanced away from him even as I spoke.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Gordon.’

  He took my arm as the group descended the steps at the front door, but Toby very soon tugged so hard at my other hand that I must stop.

  ‘I must speak with you, Mother.’

  Mr Gordon moved on a few paces and waited, his Sunday smile fixed beneath his projecting nose. He bowed and tipped his hat to a couple clad for church, strolling on the other side of the road. His angles dipped and rose as if he danced but had little notion of the music.

  I looked down at my son, whose eyebrows pulled together and whose breathing came in puffs. What now, Toby?

  I knelt as if to adjust Toby’s cravat.

  ‘What is it?’ I reached for the cravat, but he pulled away.

  ‘Why is he here, Mother?’

  ‘Because he comes to accompany me to Church, Toby. It is kind of him, I suppose.’

  I could not help a small rise of impatience, and looked into Toby’s face. About to reprove him for risking a scene here on the street, I suddenly understood. Blood rushed to my face. I felt of an

  instant as
if a steaming kettle had doused me. There was Mr Gordon standing, too, his long hands in dark kid resting on the knob of his walking stick, his long body pale and thin beneath the dour propriety of his well-pressed cladding, no doubt redolent with his personal smells and perfumes. There were his black eyes waiting with their tiny points of light, his little nibbling mouth, his breath that might smell of stale tea or sherry…

  ‘Oh, Toby, no! I am not looking for… Oh, no!’ I turned my shoulder so that Mr Gordon could not see our faces thus agitated.

  How could I not have thought! ‘Toby, no, no. Absolutely not.’

  I put my gloved hand to Toby’s face a moment before turning to join Mr Gordon, glancing back to meet my son’s eyes. Absolutely not! It was a revelation. It left me shocked—aghast! Appalled!—at the thought that I must watch for such manoeuvring even before my widowhood, and embarrassed at my own naivety before my own son, and a recurring notion, even as my mind recoiled, of violation only narrowly averted, that this was my own fault.

  What a dolt I am, did I not know? I am the child, a child! There is no hope for me!

  Though at his side, I walked to the church at as great a distance from the lawyer as could be deemed polite. I looked around to see if I could read speculation on the faces of others strolling to worship, in twos or small groups, more numerous now as we neared the church.

  Lord! Who else might suppose it! Does the whole world muse on this?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Tristram James

  By A. Hadley

  Tristram James sat with all the gravity of his twelve years, his hat upon his knee, while all around him the women fussed about. His early arrival had caused a deal of excitement among the servants, and for his mother, under whose eye everybody save Tristram bustled—cleaning, straightening, setting the fire, carrying the young master’s bags to his room. Great skirts swung and rustled, heels pattered on the flags. Yet in the midst of all this busy work, Tristram’s face held no animation. It was as still as a pond, and as cool as the pebbles beneath water. His mother halted a moment, the keys to the linen cabinet in her hand, and wondered if there were melancholy there. Tristram had good reason for sadness, for all that the towering rock that had been his father had worked to make a stone of this boy…