Eliza’s Daughter

by Joan Aiken

  Yr obdt srvnt

  Elijah Swinton.

  The second letter was from Hoby . . .

  This one irritated me so much that I crumpled it and threw it over the side of the barco. And was visited, as I did so, by a sudden sympathy for Marianne Brandon, pacing in the pine grove as she read Willoughby’s appeal for help. What do they take us for? Parcels, to be picked up and unwrapped at will?

  But these thoughts were superseded by a heavy, a wretched, an overmastering grief for my old friend, my kind guardian and companion, so that I sat, for the remaining days of the journey, stricken, with my head in my hands, regardless of the churning current, the fresh, following wind, the animated scenes on the hillsides where grapes were gathering and oxcarts plied to and fro.

  For the vintage was now well under way.

  ***

  Sister Euphrasia had promised to send a pair of mules to meet me, with all my packages; present also at the anchorage, to my no small surprise, was little Sister Luisinha, who bore a pale and troubled countenance.

  ‘You have heard already then?’ she exclaimed, when she saw my tear-swollen eyes. ‘But no – how could you?’

  ‘Heard what, Sister?’ said I with a mournful premonitory lurch of the heart. But how could there be worse tidings than what I had already received?

  It seems there could.

  ‘The little one – the little Teresa – she has left us. She has gone to the Holy Mother.’

  ‘Left you? What do you mean?’ I repeated stupidly. ‘Died? But she seemed quite well – quite especially so, when I took my leave the other day. Did she have a seizure? What happened?’

  ‘It was yesterday afternoon,’ Sister Luisinha said, unaffectedly wiping her eyes with her veil as we rode slowly up the steep zig-zag hill. ‘The weather was fine so we took her, as so often, to the pool in the orchard; that was always her favourite place, ever since you discovered it. And there she sat, humming to herself in the way she does – did; old Sister Maria, who was with her, went to speak to Jorge about the vines, and Lady Hariot was coming over the grass, not too far away, when the Little One suddenly rose up and walked – walked – took several steps – which she had never done before, all the time she has been at Nossa Senhora – and she fell, poor child, into the pool. But before that she said something – Lady Hariot will tell you. Sister Maria ran back, and Lady Hariot was there, and they had her out of the water directly; she was in it no longer than the stroke of a bell; but that was enough to stop her heart which, you know, was enfeebled by what she had suffered before. She died instantly.’

  ‘Oh, poor Lady Hariot . . . ’

  ‘Lady Hariot has a strong spirit,’ said Sister Luisinha. ‘She bends like the bough of an ash tree; she will not break.’

  I saw that this was so when I went to Lady Hariot’s room where Triz lay, lapped in cloudy muslin and white roses, on her narrow bed. Lady Hariot rose from where she was kneeling and came to envelop me in a strong embrace, which I returned.

  ‘Oh, Lady Hariot! – Why was I not with you when it happened?’

  I felt the greater guilt, because my errand to Oporto had been so full of self-interest; I had wanted to see Willoughby; my other errands had been trivial pretexts contrived to give an air of virtue to the mission.

  But Lady Hariot said: ‘Listen, Eliza. You are not to reproach yourself. I think – I believe – that Thérèse wished to go. You had roused her mind from the slough where it had floundered for so long; enough so that she could see there was a way ahead for her. Out of this life into another. But – and do not take this hard, my dear girl – so long as you were with her, she did not like to leave you. It would have seemed ungrateful. Listen and I will tell you how she went. I was only a few yards away, coming towards her, and I saw her stand up – she, who had not moved from her chair for three years – she stood, she walked forwards, holding out her hands as if she saw something ahead, and she called out, quite clearly, ‘Come again, my dear Lord King Arthur, come again!’ And then she fell headlong into the pool. I and Sister Maria were with her immediately and pulled her out, but I believe her heart had stopped before she ever fell.’

  I received this in silence and remained so for a long time, looking down at the pale, motionless face which, now freed from its premature lines of suffering, looked like the ivory carving of some stern young angel.

  ‘Come again, my dear Lord King Arthur! It was the game we used to play.’

  How clearly I could remember little Triz, in the garden at Kinn Hall, saying, ‘I wonder what Sir Bedivere did after that? I wonder if he ever did see King Arthur again?’

  ***

  On the boat, coming up the Douro, my sorrow for the Duke had been tainted by anger and frustration, because I had hoped and planned to bring Lady Hariot and Triz back with me to Zoyland, where I was sure the Duke would receive them kindly. Now, with Hoby as owner, I felt this plan would not be possible. Would be out of the question.

  But the death of Triz showed me, in a flash, how idle it is to engender such plans and contrivances; Fate tosses them aside, like leaves in autumn gales.

  ‘Thérèse will be buried here, in the Sisters’ graveyard,’ said Lady Hariot, blowing her nose. ‘They hold her funeral tomorrow.’

  ‘I will ask Sister Euphrasia if I may sing with the choir.’

  ‘Of course . . . how queer. I had forgotten about your voice.’

  ‘What will you do, where will you go now, Lady Hariot?’

  ‘I shall have to see,’ she said doubtfully. ‘My sister is still far away in Brazil. The Portuguese royal family seem so comfortably established there, they show no signs of returning to Lisbon. I am really not certain where I shall go. Back to Porto, perhaps.’

  ***

  I sang a Gloria at the funeral service. And afterwards Marianne Brandon approached me. Up to that moment I had not seen her for a couple of days; I supposed she was keeping to her apartment until the service. The Sisters had no organ in their small chapel, only a piano. Marianne played for the service – very beautifully. I realized that compared with her I was no musician at all.

  ‘Will you accompany me into the orchard for a few minutes?’ Marianne said to me as we left the chapel.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  I followed her, a little puzzled, noticing that she limped even more heavily. I wondered whether or not to tell her about Willoughby.

  She made for the bench by the wall overlooking the huge view down across the city of Lamego, and we sat there for several minutes in silence.

  Then Marianne said: ‘Death clears one’s mind. Do you find that? It puts our own small doings in perspective.’

  I sighed, thinking of my dear Duke, and she went on musingly:

  ‘Even such is Man, whose life is spun

  Drawn out and cut, and so is done:

  The rose withers, the blossom blasteth,

  The flower fades, the morning hasteth,

  The sun sets, the shadow flies

  The gourd consumes, and Man, he dies.

  ‘Do you know those lines?’

  I did not, and looked at her with quick interest: to hear poetry coming from the elegant Mrs Brandon was something unexpected. But then I remembered those books in the boudoir at Delaford.

  Now she surprised me anew.

  ‘I owe you an apology,’ she said. ‘I have been angry with you for a long time – as perhaps you guessed.’

  It needed no acute intelligence to guess that, I thought, but remained silent.

  ‘From the start, I bitterly begrudged my husband’s interest in you,’ she said. ‘The more, as I was childless. I made it a policy to prevent him visiting you, or bringing you over to Delaford.

  ‘And therefore I was thunderstruck – outraged – mortified and infuriated beyond bearing – when I learned, after his death, that he had left you the Manor in his will.—Oh,
I have been provided for – financially – I have no reasonable cause for complaint; but to lose that house – the groves, the gardens – the mulberry tree –’

  For a moment she remained without speaking, choked, I thought, by emotion; she muttered something about ‘Norland’ which I did not comprehend.

  I, meanwhile, as may be readily understood, was wholly dumbstruck with incredulity.

  ‘Left me the Manor?’ I muttered stupidly after a while. ‘You mean, Delaford?’

  ‘Yes. Did you not know?’

  ‘How should I?’

  ‘Well, I suppose there is a lawyer’s letter awaiting you somewhere. Perhaps they did not know where to find you.’

  I said hoarsely, ‘That bequest seems to me utterly unjust. The Manor was your house – you had furnished it, you cared for it, you lived there – you loved it – ’

  I thought of the pleasant room overlooking the rose garden; the books on the shelf, pictures on the walls, the portrait of Willoughby hidden away between the pages.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Marianne. ‘Men build these houses. Women only occupy them for a short space. We come and go, my dear girl, like swallows. Delaford Manor was there before me, and will outlast me.’

  The same was true of Zoyland, I thought. It was built in the reign of Elizabeth; I could claim, at best, no more than temporary tenancy.

  And now I did not even need to do that.

  A new feeling, unfamiliar, came to startle me. Could this be happiness? Or at least a kind of wry appreciation. For such a neat, symmetrical pattern. One home is withdrawn, another provided.

  ‘Mrs Brandon: if the Manor has really been left to me – which seems to me utterly astounding and improbable – then, please believe me, you must always regard it as your home. That room – your books, your pictures –’

  ‘Oh? You have been there, in the house?’ said Marianne. She seemed rather surprised, not best pleased. ‘I did not know.’

  ‘Once – on an errand for your brother-in-law.’

  And another bubble of amusement burst inside me. Was Edward Ferrars going to have to swallow his chagrin and be obliged to receive me as a neighbour? As the Lady of the Manor?

  ‘You are generous,’ said Marianne. ‘You show more generosity than I have shown you; but’ – she exhaled a long breath – ‘I am informed that I had better make my peace with God and order my affairs. This cankered leg that I am plagued with does not respond to treatment. I am not to expect any extended future.’

  ‘Oh – poor Willoughby !’ I exclaimed.

  She looked up in amazed inquiry.

  ‘You have seen him? Here, in Portugal?’

  ‘Yesterday. I went – I have always wanted – ’ At a loss for explanations, I mumbled, ‘He is my father, after all.’

  With a faint smile, she said, ‘A fairly non-doing one, I collect?’

  ‘I had never met him in my whole life, so I did wish to see him, just once. And,’ after some thought, I added, ‘perhaps I am glad that I did. Otherwise it would always have been a question. Now, at least, I know him, what he is like.—He is like somebody who died years ago.’

  Sighing, Marianne rose and began to limp back towards the cloister. As she walked away, she remarked, ‘I only hope that knowing Willoughby does not put you off the male sex for ever. He was different when he was young, I assure you.’

  For a moment I considered trying to plead his case; but what would be the purpose? She was not for him, and never would be.

  Over her shoulder she added drily, ‘I shall probably make it my business to see, however, that he does not go hungry.’

  And I grinned, thinking of the forty milreis that I had deposited on the table. Women, it appeared, would always see that Willoughby did not go hungry.

  ***

  I went indoors and sought out Lady Hariot.

  ‘Listen, dear Lady Hariot, it seems that I have inherited a house. Will you come and share it with me? It is by far too large for one single woman.’

  ‘But – Good Heavens, my dearest child! – You will, for sure, find some man to fulfil that office – ’

  ‘I am not at all certain about that,’ said I. ‘In any case I am going to take my time about coming to any such decision. And there are many considerations which make my future marriage most unlikely. And Delaford is not too far from the country that you love – not too distant from Ashett and Growly Head. And one of the plans I have – for I am an heiress, I shall be wealthy – one of my schemes for the future is to oversee the children of Byblow Bottom, make sure they are properly treated and not left to the usage of people like Hannah Wellcome. And Dr Moultrie,’ I added, after a moment.

  ‘In that case,’ said Lady Hariot, ‘if such is your plan, I will come with you, and gladly. I do not care to be idle.’

  ‘There will be plenty to do.’

  ***

  I thought that I would wait a while, yet, perhaps for the solitary intimacy of the sea voyage, while we sailed up the coast to Coruña to pick up Pullett, before telling Lady Hariot my other piece of news: that, in the course of the next year, I was to bear a child.

  No, dear reader, I do not propose to tell you whose; that you may – if so disposed – try to puzzle out for yourself; I leave such unimportant matters to provide for the diversion of the idle-minded.

  But I can tell you this. My child will be a child of the wild. All she will derive – all she will need – from her father, will be freedom. And that freedom in her I will defend, so long as it lies within my power, from society’s jealousies, ambitions and rancours.

  I hope that the child will be a girl. I think it will be. And will have my hands. As the gypsy and Pullett told me, my hand has brought me luck. But, girl or boy, which ever it be, I shall nurse it and care for it myself. No child of mine shall be consigned to Byblow Bottom.

  And no, again, reader, I shall not marry Hoby. He has lost his chance.

  Perhaps I shall take to writing novels, like Cousin Elinor.

  Perhaps this is one of them.

  About the Author

  The late Joan Aiken was a scholar and a prolific author of children’s books and Jane Austen sequels and continuations. She is the author of Emma Watson, which completes Jane Austen’s posthumously published fragment The Watsons, and of Mansfield Park Revisited, a sequel to Mansfield Park.