Louisa Elliott

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  A sudden flush of shame started in Louisa’s breast and flooded her entire body. She glanced at her mother’s sleeping form and wondered whether she had sensed that girlish passion, the romantic fantasy in which she healed her cousin’s broken heart, and he discovered that he had loved her more all along. It was a young girl’s fantasy, born of innocent adoration, not adult desire.

  Perhaps her mother had been anxious? She was only fifteen, while Edward at twenty-seven was a man, grieving and possibly, in her mother’s eyes, vulnerable to temptation.

  So the bud was effectively nipped, and shortly after that he was gone from the house, with Aunt Elizabeth demanding enough to occupy most of his free time, discouraging her niece’s visits as she did so. Although Blanche, like Emily, had always been welcome there.

  Swamped by that remembered heartbreak, Louisa turned abruptly from the window. At the time she had blamed Edward, convinced he had a choice. He had abandoned her, rejected her love when she idolized him. Then, had been more than just her protector, he had been her hero.

  She had never really forgiven him for that. Suddenly she needed to know, needed to set things straight.

  In the kitchen Edward was still in his dressing-gown, pouring a cup of tea. He looked up in surprise, then, with a smile, reached for another cup. ‘Did I disturb you?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t asleep. I haven’t slept well all week. Change, I suppose,’ she murmured, unwilling to admit to nightmares, or doubts that she was doing the right thing. Sipping at the tea, she said: ‘This place is hard to leave.’

  ‘I imagine it must be,’ he agreed. He sat down with his back to the window, his face in shadow.

  ‘Leaving,’ Louisa said hesitantly, ‘It made me think of the time when you were leaving here – you know, when you went to live with your mother.’

  He shifted in his chair. ‘Why, what were you thinking?’

  ‘You’ve often said it was because your mother needed you. I wondered,’ she said slowly, not looking at him, ‘if there were other reasons?’

  Louisa knew she was on difficult ground, but the question had been like a stone in her shoe for years. ‘Was it because of me?’ she asked, ‘Did Mamma make you go because of me?’

  She heard his indrawn breath. When he spoke, his voice was very controlled, very even. ‘Why should you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, suddenly feeling foolish. ‘I just did. But I wish you’d tell me – I need to know.’

  ‘Is it so important?’

  Louisa nodded, not knowing why it was so vital to have the truth confirmed, when every instinct told her she knew already.

  ‘It’s a long time ago – I don’t remember what it was about. In fact, my clearest memory is one of surprise. Your mother seemed angry and upset, and I wondered what it was I’d done. At the time, I was more concerned with my own sense of loss, and I hadn’t... It was…’ At a loss for words, he shook his head. ‘I just didn’t understand.’

  ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘Goodness, Louisa – it’s ten years ago! I can’t recall what was said. I only know she wanted me to leave. She stressed my mother’s position — if you remember, she’d just retired and taken that little house. You girls were growing up, needing more room, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Edward, I’m not a child. That’s not what she meant, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know what she meant,’ he said stubbornly, ‘and I didn’t ask.’

  ‘You must have known,’ Louisa whispered. ‘Do I have to spell it out!’

  ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘Weren’t you insulted?’ she demanded, refusing to leave it. She remembered romantic innocence, when marriage had seemed little more than an extension of playing house, and the fulfilment of love a matter of sleeping in the same bed. A blush of shame swept through her on his behalf.

  ‘In a way, yes. More shocked, I think. Nothing could have been further from my mind. Nothing,’ he repeated softly. ‘But I suppose her fears were understandable. She was only doing what she thought was right — it’s a mother’s duty to protect her daughters.’

  Despite having her suspicions confirmed, Louisa was suddenly angry. ‘Protect them!’ she exclaimed at last. ‘Against what? Against whom? Against someone who loved them – against someone who loved me! That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Me! Why?’ she cried. ‘Was I so wicked, even then?’

  ‘This conversation,’ he said painfully, ‘is pointless, Louisa. Let it cease now, for pity’s sake. Why be upset about something which happened so long ago? It doesn’t matter — it’s dead and gone.’

  ‘Is it?’ She went over to the window, staring out at the little pots of herbs, ranged along the wall which divided their yard from the next. ‘When you left — I didn’t understand. I felt betrayed, bereft of the only person who’d ever really cared about me. No one offered me the slightest scrap of comfort at that time, Edward – not even you. I remember,’ she said bitterly, ‘trying to see you, waiting for you on your way home from work. But all you would say was that it was for the best.’

  ‘And it was.’

  Her vision of the trees and grassy ramparts blurred. ‘But I thought you didn’t love me anymore,’ she whispered, ‘and I couldn’t bear it — it tore me apart. I was heart-broken, but you didn’t understand!’

  ‘Louisa, I couldn’t...’

  ‘You saw me as a child, didn’t credit me with a woman’s feelings, a woman’s understanding. You should have explained!’

  ‘How could I?’ he demanded, his voice torn with pain and suppressed anger. ‘It would have been like — like corruption! Your love was so trusting, so innocent. How could I taint it with ideas like that? Ideas even I found defiling. You would have turned from me in disgust.’

  There was an appalled silence between them, a minute or more in which both considered the enormity of what had been said.

  With difficulty, Edward said: ‘It hurt me too. I didn’t think of you in that way – I couldn’t put even the suggestion of it into your mind. So I said nothing. What was there to say? And in the meantime, I suffered. Don’t think it was easy to leave you, to keep silent. It wasn’t. I loved you – I missed you. I missed being here. Imagine how it felt, Louisa – I’d lost not just poor Maud, but my family as well!’

  He was suddenly quiet, head bent. Feeling his pain, Louisa was truly ashamed. She had never thought of it like that. She had never seen the enormity of his loss, only her own.

  ‘Losing you,’ he said quietly, ‘was like losing a limb. And knowing how miserable you were, only made everything else harder to bear.’

  The parallels of distress caused by truth withheld hit her with such force she wanted to weep. After a moment she went and knelt before him, laying her face against his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, Edward,’ she whispered, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know — why didn’t I know? If only you could have told me.’ Shakily, trying to thrust the shame away, she said: ‘I blamed you. And Aunt Elizabeth for keeping you away. I was wrong, I see that now. Can you forgive me?’

  He turned to her then, holding her to him for a moment, hiding his face against her hair. She felt the awful raggedness of his breathing, the struggle for self-control; and if there had ever been doubt as to the depth of Edward’s feelings, it was suddenly swept away. All the love she had ever felt for him, suppressed under a stone of remembered disillusion, welled up and overflowed. But with the words on her lips, she bit them back. What was the point of telling him she loved him and always had, when she was beholden to another man?

  That tight little kernel of new-found wisdom drove her away from his side. Leaning over the sink, she splashed her face with cold water, and, with the towel still in her hands, stood looking out at the ramparts. Birds were singing in the trees, free and unfettered; a blackbird pecked at a few crumbs in the yard, then flew up towards the wall. Between the trees, Louisa saw it, turning its head this way and that as though admiring the vie
w.

  Suddenly she wanted to embrace the morning, ached to draw great breaths of soft, rain-washed air deep into her lungs, to escape from the confines of this house with its tangled, suffocating emotions.

  ‘I must have sat by my window every morning this week,’ she said slowly, ‘about this time, wishing I could see the Minster. Foolish, isn’t it? When you want to see it in summer, it’s impossible for the trees, and in the winter you forget to look.’ She sighed. ‘There must be a moral in that somewhere...’

  Edward stood up. By the door he paused and turned. ‘I think I’ve had enough of morals for one day.’ There was huskiness in his voice, and he cleared his throat. ‘It’s too late for games of truth and consequence, Louisa, far too late. Tomorrow...’ He broke off, wrenching the door open with unnecessary force. ‘I’m going out for a walk.’

  ‘Edward, wait!’ She hurried after him, stricken by that sudden anger. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m leaving tomorrow. I had to know – don’t you see?’

  With his hand on the banister, he stood for a moment, frowning. ‘In that case, I hope it makes you feel better, but I don’t want to hear any more. You can’t change anything – nor can I. It’s best forgotten.’

  ‘All right, I understand.’ Humbly, she asked: ‘But can I come with you? A walk would help.’

  He seemed on the point of refusing, but at last he nodded and continued up the stairs to change.

  When she came down, Edward was waiting in the hall, umbrella at the ready.

  Determined to ease the tension between them, she made a joke of his caution, and in the same spirit he smiled, swinging the umbrella like a cane as they walked the shadowed length of Gillygate. It was too early for rumbling carts and bustling humankind; the streets were deserted and alive with birdsong. A pair of sparrows fluttered to safety as Edward and Louisa passed by, while stalking cat eyed them with disgust.

  He slowed his steps as they passed beneath the heavy mass of Bootham Bar. Louisa would have walked on, up Petergate, but he touched her arm, leading the way through a covered alley on their left.

  ‘If it’s the Minster you want to see, this is the view to have,’ he smiled, and they emerged into a narrow lane of shuttered, brick-built cottages.

  Like a great ship in full sail, the west front of the Minster was suddenly before them, dwarfing the flotilla of buildings around it. Louisa paused, smiling in admiration. From a distance, she thought, the Minster was simply there, visible from each point of the compass for miles around; close to, its soaring perfection caught the breath, lifted the eyes, and slowed the hurrying step. Caught, aware of their own insignificance, the two stood silent, dazzled afresh by that supreme illusion of light and grace, designed to raise souls, as well as eyes, to God.

  United in thought and feeling, there was no need for words. Between gathering clouds, the rising sun shone out, casting the great west front into sudden shadow, but along the length of Minster Yard it was briefly brilliant, and Louisa gratefully raised her face to its warmth. Lifted by the Minster, her spirits were alight, no longer oppressed by the past, nor even by thoughts of an uncertain future. To be happy now was the thing, and to be aware of it.

  And she was, here, this minute, with Edward beside her. It mattered not at all that less than half an hour ago he had reproved her for grasping at straws of understanding, that tomorrow she would be gone. For the moment, York, in all its somnolent, early-morning beauty, was here to be enjoyed; the empty streets, that brilliant light and long, dramatic shadows, were theirs alone.

  She thought how fragile happiness was, a fleeting thing; but the city was forever, solid and reassuring, a place where nothing ever really changed. It had stood, in one form or another, through invasions, plagues, massacres and civil wars, for eighteen hundred years; it would survive her leaving, still be here, undaunted, when she returned.

  A cloud crept over the sun, shadows disappeared and the Minster’s brilliance dimmed. In that diffused light, Louisa noticed movement. Beneath a low Tudor archway, figures were stirring, urchins no doubt too poor to claim a roof in that sagging tenement. At their approach, a child was pushed forward to beg, a girl, by the tattered remnants of skirt and shawl; she wore a pair of gaiters round her thin legs, but no shoes.

  They stopped, each appalled by the child’s pathetic form, her dirty, ugly little face. Louisa swallowed hard; no matter how often she saw such abject poverty, she could never get used to it, never forget that there were thousands living like this throughout the city. It was rare, however, to be approached so directly.

  ‘Have you a mother?’ she asked, as the child stopped some yards short of them. The girl stared blankly, and Louisa repeated the question. Eventually, pointing back towards the doorway, she nodded. As Edward searched his pockets Louisa slipped off her shawl, ignoring his staying hand.

  ‘They’ll only take it from her,’ he said, as she handed it over.

  ‘And will they let her keep the money?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ he murmured.

  The child ran back. Avid hands reached out and she was gone from sight, into the shadows.

  ‘Are we fools, Edward?’

  ‘Probably,’ he sighed. ‘If so, I’ll always be one.’

  With the first spots of rain, Louisa shivered. Despite her protests, Edward slipped off his jacket and draped it round her shoulders, raising the previously-despised umbrella with the merest ghost of a smile.

  ‘Kindness should not lead to pneumonia,’ he insisted, and she slid her hand gratefully into the crook of his arm.

  They walked back through the park on the north side, but the lush green lawns and flowering shrubs went unnoticed. The rain began in earnest, pattering a steady tattoo on their makeshift roof and drawing them closer, while the even crunch of gravel underfoot seemed to stress their solitude.

  ‘In a way, I’m glad,’ he said at last. ‘That – back there – has put things into perspective.’

  Understanding, Louisa nodded and pressed his arm. ‘Yes, it has.’

  ‘I shall miss you,’ he said with feeling. ‘But I promise I won’t die of it.’

  She laughed, a little shakily. ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ he added gravely.

  They walked on in silence, then, with the incident still on his mind, Edward said, ‘They say Dublin’s even worse — the poverty, I mean. The worst in Europe.’

  Inwardly, she recoiled at the thought. ‘Don’t — it’s bad enough here.’ A moment later, with as much brightness as she could muster, she said: ‘You’ll write to me, won’t you? Every week? Tell me all you do, how many books you sell, every change you make to the workshop. Then I’ll be able to see you in my mind, and imagine you there.’

  Keenly, she looked at him, noting the fine lines around his eyes, shadows beneath the cheekbones accentuated now by a close-trimmed beard. Was he really so much thinner, or had that fuller growth disguised it? He looked harder, less the romantic poet than the lean, tense man of business. She squeezed his arm, reassured by its muscular solidity beneath the linen of his shirt. ‘And you mustn’t work too hard. Give yourself some time off. Go to Whitby again if you can — the sea air will do you good.’

  A warm smile deepened the lines around his eyes; in a curiously intimate gesture, he covered her hand with his own, as though he needed to sustain that pressure. ‘If I have time, I will. What I plan to do is go back to Lincolnshire.’

  ‘To see your father?’

  ‘If he is my father.’

  ‘And if he’s not?’

  Edward shrugged. ‘If he isn’t, then he isn’t — there’s nothing lost.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  The smile faded. ‘Only a little more time.’

  Early next morning, Moira arrived with her trunk and, damp-eyed, Bessie saw them all into the carriage which waited to take them to the station. Strangely devoid of any emotion, Louisa subjected herself to another embrace, and, with a sigh, stepped into the carriage with her mother and Edward. She forced a smile and a wa
ve as they drove away.

  At the station she was all efficiency, ignoring her mother’s anxious fussing and Moira’s nervous excitement. Edward, with a grim frown, ordered the girl onto the train and his aunt to oversee Louisa’s personal possessions; between them, he and Louisa saw the rest of her trunks and bags safely stowed. With ten minutes to go and nothing more to occupy them, for a helpless moment they simply stood and looked at one another.

  Beset by sudden panic, Louisa bit her lip, wondering what she was doing, why she was leaving, when all she wanted to do was stay. She caught bleak despair in Edward; then he reached for her hand and gripped it hard. The feeling passed and she breathed again.

  ‘That’s it,’ he whispered. ‘Fight it. Don’t give way, please don’t give way.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she promised.

  ‘Good. Otherwise your mother will go to pieces, and I’ve got to get her home!’ He laughed, shortly. ‘Remember that!’

  Arm in arm, they walked back to where Mary Elliott stood by an open carriage door. Moira was busy arranging Louisa’s things in what she hoped were the most convenient places. It was a first-class compartment, reserved exclusively for them.

  Smiling through tears, Mary Elliott issued last-minute instructions as though her daughter had never travelled before. Desperate to be gone, her stomach tied in several different knots, Louisa glanced at the slow-moving clock a dozen times; then, too soon it seemed, doors were being slammed up and down the platform.

  Suddenly, it was all too quick. She kissed her mother and hugged Edward, feeling his arms tighten in a fierce embrace. She was conscious of the buttons of his jacket biting through the silk of her gown, the sharp, clipped hairs of his beard prickling her cheek; and then the unexpected softness of his mouth on hers. A sharp tingle of surprise ran through her, and she clung for a moment, kissing him back.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ he whispered as he released her. Briefly his fingers touched her cheek. ‘If anything should go wrong, if you should need me —’