Louisa Elliott

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  First of all Edward had a load of coal delivered. After that, with the children bundled like miniature coachmen, Bessie and Louisa went down every day before Christmas to supervise workmen and clean the cottage. Tiles were replaced and the locks overhauled, outer doors repaired and rehung in their age-skewed frames; and all at Edward’s expense. The landlord, as he had suspected, was reluctant to undertake the work immediately, and Edward had no desire to see Louisa and the children freeze until spring. On the morning of Christmas Eve, two workmen arrived with a load of white-wash to repaint the interior walls.

  Edward let them in and gave them instructions, then returned to Gillygate where Bessie was packing her own few things in preparation for the noon train to Leeds. A separate crate, containing china and pictures for Emily, stood in the hall.

  ‘Tell her I’m sorry about the blue vases and those little figurines,’ Louisa said, ‘but I don’t want to part with those. And if there’s anything in the way of furniture she wants — well, she’ll have to let me know before Thursday, because that’s the day we move. And what we don’t take is going straight to the salerooms. Blanche has already told me what she wants.’

  Tearfully, Bessie nodded. ‘I’m glad I’m going before you move,’ she confessed. ‘I’ll be able to remember the old place how it always was. Empty houses always put me in mind of death somehow.’

  Edward hired a cab to take Bessie and her luggage to the station; the parting with Louisa and the children in Gillygate was painful, yet, curiously, amongst the tears was a feeling of reconciliation. Their embraces were poignant, full with the knowledge of bonds being torn, of love and loyalty which were suddenly far stronger than the irksome frustrations of recent times. Aware that a link with her mother was going, and another, the house, would be gone within the week, for a moment emotion outweighed reason and Louisa was tempted to call a halt to everything, to beg Bessie to stay, to cancel the move and give back-word on the cottage; but as they stood in the open doorway, the curious eyes of a passer-by looked in, curtains twitched across the street, and indecision fled. With a brave smile for Bessie’s wave, Louisa gathered the children close and watched the cab down the street. Only then did she take them inside.

  By mid-afternoon on the 28th of December the house on Gillygate was finally cleared. With Tisha balanced against her hip, Louisa mounted the stairs for the final time, her footsteps echoing hollowly on the naked wooden treads. She went up to the second floor and into Bessie’s room, small and bare, with only a mark on the wall where the bedstead had rubbed as witness to her long occupation. Edward’s room, which for a while had been Uncle Will’s, with its empty rows of shelves. The larger room she had shared as a child with Emily and Blanche, its window revealing the Minster’s towers, clear behind a tossing web of twigs and branches.

  All clean, all empty, not a scrap of paper nor a mirror to reflect them, not a candle-end nor a duster, not even a forgotten broom to speak of the women who had lived and worked there for twenty years. She stepped back and the sound multiplied; she sighed and heard it repeated as though by ghosts. Pursued by memories, she tiptoed down to the next floor, examining each empty room in turn with no more than a cursory glance. Until she came to the best room, the one that fronted Gillygate; and there the ghosts of her mother and Robert were waiting. She stood for what seemed a long time without moving, clutching Tisha to her breast while silent tears poured down her cheeks. It was as though all that had happened here was continuing; she could feel it in the air, hear it, smell it like dying roses, a presence which had strangely been released with the emptying of the house. She had to leave; wanted to; although now the moment had come, like watching a loved one waving from a train, it was hard to turn away.

  Tisha twisted suddenly and patted Louisa’s face. ‘Mamma,’ she said plaintively, her baby lips quivering at the sight of her mother’s tears.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ Louisa sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Mamma’s coming now.’

  With one last look she turned and closed the door.

  For more than a week while they were working there, Bessie and Louisa had lit fires in every room in an attempt to dispel the damp. After two days of occupation and what seemed to Louisa a most profligate use of coal, the cottage was beginning to feel warm, and, with at least the larger pieces of furniture in place, it looked attractive.

  Packing-cases still occupied what would eventually be Tisha’s bedroom, but the kitchen was stocked with essential crockery and utensils. In the parlour Louisa had re-erected the children’s Christmas tree with its red streamers and silver star. Few of the chocolate animals and fancy biscuits remained, but most of the tiny glass ornaments her mother had kept for years had survived the move, glinting in the firelight as she came into the room.

  For a moment she stood quite still, enchanted by the blazing coals in the grate and their dancing reflections on walls and ceiling. The white-wash was clean and effective, throwing furniture and hangings into stark relief: Louisa was so taken with it she was almost convinced it was preferable to the heavily-patterned wallpapers currently in vogue. Her mother’s best winter curtains, of heavy maroon velvet, glowed with plummy richness, and although the Turkey carpet was past its best, along with the furniture it seemed to have taken on a new lease of life in this low-beamed room. Each item looked different, yet formed part of a whole which seemed to truly belong here.

  Her first impression, that the cottage would prove a haven, was suddenly intensified. It would respond to love and care and in return give back all the peace and contentment she craved. After years in which an atmosphere of crisis had prevailed, unhappy years which had seen the mangling of so many hopes and dreams, Louisa felt endowed with unexpected bounty. Running her fingers over the worn sofa back she thought of her mother, and wished she could have been there to see the cottage, to share the happiness which seemed to beckon like an old and valued friend; and it hurt that she could not.

  The date was poignant, too. Like the two-faced mask of Janus, the last day of the Old Year seemed to necessitate a looking back as much as a looking forward, an accounting of old sins and sorrows before the baptism of the future. In a year’s time, she imagined Mary Elliott’s death would be less painful, just as the second anniversary of leaving Robert had been easier to bear than the first. Both partings had been necessary, and, in many ways, not before time; what hurt was coming to terms with life afterwards.

  But that was part of the penance where he was concerned, she reminded herself, part of the two years’ hard labour she had earned for presuming to flout laws unwritten as well as those carved in stone. And now, please God, it was over: this place the safe harbour after the storm.

  Here, she and Edward could be happy, the children unfettered by noise and traffic and the cruel jibes of neighbourhood urchins. They had a garden to play in, woods and meadows downriver as they grew older, and sufficient income to keep them all from fear of the workhouse. It hardly seemed possible, yet it was all there, just waiting to be enjoyed.

  She heard the front door open and was momentarily startled; then Edward came in, laughing and stamping his feet.

  ‘Have you seen it?’ he demanded, pulling her with him to the window. ‘Look,’ he smiled, thrusting back the heavy curtains, ‘it’s snowing.’

  Great fat flakes were floating gently down, and like feathers lying softly one upon another, were gradually blanketing soil and paths and shrubs and walls. The black railings were tipped with it already, and across the river on New Walk, a solitary street lamp was enveloped in a mist of white.

  Louisa hugged his arm. ‘It’s like fairyland,’ she said, touched as much by his delight as by the beauty outside. ‘What were you doing out there?’

  ‘Finding some laurel,’ he laughed, ‘and a lump of coal. We’re a bit new and a bit remote to expect first-footers, so I thought I’d better be ready to let the New Year in myself.’

  ‘Goodness, I hadn’t thought of that. Who came last year? Oh, yes, it was the
butcher’s boy,’ she chuckled, ‘busy bringing luck to the whole street! He was as drunk as a lord by the time he got to us. Do you remember — Mamma was afraid he’d never get home, and gave him money instead...’ With a long-drawn sigh, she murmured: ‘New Year’s Eve – how things change in a year.’

  ‘It’s been hard going,’ Edward agreed, resting his arm across her shoulders. ‘Let’s hope and pray things are going to be better from now on.’

  For a while they stood looking out at the thickening snow; then he said: ‘In a couple of hours, it will be 1899 — the last year of the century. It sounds rather momentous, doesn’t it? Significant, somehow — as though we should finish it well, balance the books, put our metaphorical house in order...’

  There was a question in his voice, and she glanced up, seeing his eyes, shining with the snow’s reflection, upon her. With a smile she smoothed back a lock of hair from his forehead. ‘We’ve made a start, haven’t we?’

  He answered her smile, but his eyes seemed troubled. ‘I want you to be happy,’ he sighed, ‘and I want the children to be safe and secure. I don’t want anything else to hurt you.’

  Louisa pressed her cheek against his jacket and breathed deeply, trying to control wayward, see-sawing emotions. She could smell fresh air on his clothes and the scent of Pears’ soap on his skin. Hugging him tight, loving him so much she thought her heart would break, she whispered, ‘Nothing can, while ever I have you, nothing can.’

  ‘Oh, my angel, I wish that were true, how I wish it were true!’ There was a catch in his voice. Almost roughly, he grasped her arms and held her away from him; and for one startled moment she saw bitter conflict in his eyes.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said brusquely, taking the chair to one side of the hearth. He sat forward, hands clasped tensely between his knees, the firelight illuming only one side of his face, sharpening nose and cheekbone and jaw, deepening each small furrow of anxiety into stern lines of arraignment.

  ‘You know, our solitude here is quite illusory,’ he began. ‘We’re not in the depths of the country, Louisa, far from it. There’s a city out there, and thousands of people. A lot of those people know us both. Amongst my business acquaintances, I suppose it’s fairly common knowledge that I’m a bachelor, although,’ he added softly, ‘there have been one or two since I’ve been house-hunting who’ve assumed I’m lately married. And I haven’t denied it.’

  ‘Well?’ she asked, but her voice sounded squeaky with nerves. Afraid of what he was about to say, she clasped her trembling fingers together, hardly listening as he told her about his interview with the landlord, about the direct lie he had felt bound to utter.

  ‘But it made me think, Louisa, about things that, through force of circumstances, we haven’t yet considered. For instance, what happens when Liam goes to school? What will you say when you register his name and address, and have to give his next of kin?’

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘Well, love, we must think about it. What do we do? What do we say? Do we let people assume we’re married or do we clarify the situation, laying ourselves open to further gossip? Because our situation is hardly conventional at the moment—there’s no longer a third adult in the house to play chaperone—and people, being what they are, will simply put the blackest interpretation on it.’ He tugged at his chin, the eyes which held hers more anxious than ever. ‘I’m sorry, but they will.’

  Louisa jumped up from the sofa and began to pace the room as though pursued, as though sheer physical movement could prevent those unwelcome ideas from taking root. But take root they did, and, coming hard on the heels of that fleeting happiness, she wanted to rage and shout in protest.

  ‘Why,’ she spat out, ‘should we have to say anything. It’s no one else’s business! We’re doing nothing wrong – in fact our lives couldn’t be more scrupulous. It’s not as though you’re keeping me. We’re living independently, but in the same house, that’s all!’

  ‘I know that. You know that. The rest of the world doesn’t. And while it doesn’t bother me what people say, I do worry about the children. They’re the ones our situation will affect, that is, if we do nothing about it. Just as you and I were affected when we were young. Do you want that, for them?’

  Pain, like a knife, ran through her then. ‘No,’ she cried, ‘of course I don’t!’ She continued her anguished pacing, feeling as though the black sins of all the world sat on her shoulder. Hating herself, and furious with Edward for destroying those happy illusions, she had no eyes for his sorrow.

  With a sigh that seemed wrung from the depths of his soul, he said at last; ‘There is a way to put an end to speculation.’

  ‘Oh, and what’s that?’

  ‘We could get married,’ he said gently. ‘Make things legal and incontrovertible. Nothing need change between us – I simply want to put an end to gossip before it starts.’

  For a second Louisa’s heart leapt and plummeted all at once, leaving her breathless with amazement. ‘What a thing to say,’ she said at last, faintly, wondering why she felt so desperately hurt by the suggestion. ‘Marriage – for nothing more than respectability’s sake? I never heard such a thing! It’s – it’s immoral,’ she stammered, ‘I’m astounded you could even think of it!’

  ‘It wasn’t considered lightly, I assure you,’ he replied with sudden asperity. ‘I’ve thought of little else for days. I thought, for the children’s sake...’

  With a sharp gesture, Louisa mumbled an apology and turned her back, reluctant to face that kind of logic. Chewing her lip, fighting for mastery of her voice, she said: ‘It isn’t right, Edward. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. If we were to marry —’ Courage failed her and she broke off, unable to say that it would have to be wholeheartedly, a real marriage, or not at all.

  ‘Yes?’ he prompted.

  ‘I was about to say,’ she hesitated, ‘that anything less than a real marriage would be like cheating.’

  ‘I don’t see it like that!’ he exclaimed, rising to face her.

  ‘But I do.’

  ‘I know you still love him, but I’m thinking of the children!’

  ‘Forget Robert,’ she said angrily. ‘I’m thinking of us!’ At the sudden flicker of hope in his eyes, Louisa winced and shook her head, feeling the denial wrenched out of her like a premature birth. ‘I can’t, Edward-not now, don’t you see? I can’t!’

  He meant so many different things to her, and she loved him in as many ways. He had the protectiveness of a brother and the understanding of a friend; in times of stress his arms were a sure retreat, warm and comforting without the guilt and tension of sexual demands. And yet, Louisa realized, there had been times when she wanted him, moments which would have taken no more than one serious move on his part to break those fragile barriers. But such responses were the result of another man’s tuition, the crying out of her body for the fulfilment it had been coached to expect and enjoy. To use Edward to such base ends was worse, she felt, far worse than the sin of her relationship with Robert. To marry him for respectability’s sake would demean everything.

  Had she loved him less, it would not have mattered; because she loved him more than she trusted him to understand, she could not explain.

  As he retreated upstairs in hurt and weary exasperation, Louisa shivered, chilled by his departure. To have argued so soon in their new house, and at the turn of the year, seemed ominous. The little parlour’s magic was destroyed. Sadly, she banked down the fire, and setting a spark-guard before it she went into the kitchen to make some tea. While the kettle hissed she pulled her chair close to the range and slipped off her shoes, resting her feet against the warm oven door.

  She felt exhausted, drained. Although Edward’s motives were pure, his logic almost unassailable, she could not agree to those terms, nor could she make clear her own. On the one hand, his cool reason crushed her; and on the other, the weight of his generosity was unbearable, leaving her bowed between. She was hurt that in his detached,
male way he could not see that.

  He imagined, of course, that she nursed secret hopes of a reconciliation with Robert, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. The difficulty lay in the fact that she could not explain to Edward, who loved her, exactly what it was she still felt for the father of her children.

  The punishment for what they had shared felt like a public flaying from which she was still unhealed. If its severity truly equalled the crime, then what they had done was horribly and grievously wrong. If penance was necessary to forgiveness, Louisa felt she had already paid the price; but should the requirement be true remorse, she suspected her errant soul was still unshriven.

  For the beginning, for those months of happiness in Marygate, she could not be sorry; nor could she regret the friendship with Letty and Georgina which had flowered amidst the wreckage of her love for Robert. Above all, the children, innocent and beautiful, were a daily, loving beneficence.

  It was Robert she regretted, Robert with his charm and powerful appeal. He could still stir desires she had thought comfortably dead. The knowledge shamed her, denting her small and fragile store of self-respect. And if she could barely face that darker aspect of herself, Louisa could not admit it to Edward, whose love and esteem were as essential to her now as food and drink to a starving child. Even if she were to admit it, she reflected, he could never understand, for the crippling torments of sexual desire had surely never been his.

  But he loved her all the same. She knew it even though he had never said as such; and her silence hurt him. Recalling the flicker of hope in his eyes, and then that crushed look of weary resignation, Louisa wanted to weep. She loved Edward; understood his aloofness and that strangely romantic idealism. Like Chaucer’s verray parfit gentil knight, he had a pure and beautiful soul. He would give her his heart and his life. But what had she of value to give him in return?