It was as though she had become one of them now, and I was left, back to being on my own.
• Sixteen •
Time marched on, as it has a tendency to do, and I continued my studies with Miss Walker.
Time, which had not stopped for me, had marched on for everyone else as well. My father, at forty-four, had not changed at all, save for a new wrinkle or two around the eyes, which he attributed to much laughter. He said he had no interest in trading these lines for a smoother appearance, since such a trade would mean relinquishing the considerable joy he had in life. As for Mother and Aunt Helen, they were both thirty-two now. Guests often commented how much like a young woman Mother still looked—a girl even! And the same was certainly true of Aunt Helen.
But there was a difference.
For while Mother had already been married for fifteen years at this point, Aunt Helen had never been married for even a minute.
“She is like Penelope, entertaining and rejecting suitor after suitor,” my father observed with a wry grin, “but with one difference: there is no Odysseus in sight, no earthly reason for her to turn all these men away.”
“Perhaps there is no earthly reason,” Mother said, “so perhaps there is a divine one?”
“How do you mean?” my father asked. “Surely you are not suggesting that Helen is preparing to pledge her life to some church.”
“Of course not. I only meant that perhaps Helen does not want to marry for anything less than love.”
“Love!” my father scoffed. Then, catching the expression on Mother’s face, he amended that scoffing. “I am not saying, my dear, that love does not matter. Indeed, where would you and I be without it? But we met when the bloom was still on your rose.”
“But if you are saying that the bloom is off Helen’s rose, then you are saying it is off mine as well since we share the same face. Are you saying that I am some sort of old hag now?”
“Hardly. If anything, you are more beautiful than ever. And, of course, by natural extension”—and here he coughed nervously—“Helen is as well. But she is a little old to still be seeking a first husband, and to be doing so at such a leisurely pace! I must confess, I have long suspected that we would one day be compelled to house a spinster aunt, but I had always assumed that spinster would come from my side of the family, not yours.”
My father had never stated, explicitly, how he felt about Aunt Martha leaving. This was not something I could question him on, but hearing his words now—the sardonic sentiment warring with an unmistakably wistful undercurrent—I suspected he felt both relief and loss.
As did I.
. . . . .
The stream of men had started appearing not long after the party celebrating Mother and Aunt Helen’s birthday.
One man after another presented himself at our home.
They would come to call, invite Aunt Helen out for a stroll in the park, always inviting Mother too for propriety’s sake. If the stroll went well, and the strolls always did, further invitations would follow: from my parents asking the men to dine with us, from the men inviting my parents and Aunt Helen to some entertainment.
“Do you like any of them particularly?” I asked Aunt Helen one day when we were alone together.
“I do not know that it is a matter of ‘like,’ ” she answered. “But at least they pass the time.”
Given his comment at the twin birthday celebration that “I always thought Frederick had stolen the jewel in the crown when he married Aliese, but now I see there are other gems in the world,” it took Herbert Dean a surprisingly long time to find his way to our door.
Herbert Dean had been a friend of my father’s for as long as I could remember. Another writer who rested on a pile of family wealth, like my father he could write what he wanted without being overly concerned what the wider world made of that writing. He was neither particularly tall nor short, neither particularly thick-haired nor bald, neither particularly fat nor thin. Despite what Mother had always termed his “indolent life of unwed leisure,” he was a chiefly pleasant human being with regular brown hair and regular brown eyes to match. In appearance, he was average down to the bone. In personality, he was inoffensive, although he did present one slight advantage over the previous men: he was unstintingly generous with his purse, lavishing upon Aunt Helen all manner of fine gifts and always insisting on paying for everybody—it was Mother who told me this—whenever a group went out.
One night, when Herbert Dean had purchased six tickets to the opening of an operatic play called Patience at a new theater called the Savoy—Mr. Dean said he was thrilled at the prospect of the new theater, lit entirely with electricity; Mr. Dean said that it would be nice for once to see a show in the autumn where not only would he be able to see the show, but he would also not have to worry about freezing while doing so!—it turned out at the last minute that the Tylers could not go. Kit was sick, Mrs. Tyler would not leave him, and Mr. Tyler would not leave her.
I was very worried on Kit’s account when I heard of this, but I must confess to being overjoyed when it turned into a boon for me after no other couple could be located to take up the other two tickets.
“Why don’t we bring Lucy with us?” I heard Mr. Dean suggest to my father. “I think she is old enough now to enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan, and Helen loves her niece so. You know, I do not mind spending money and getting something in return, but I detest the notion of spending and receiving nothing. At least this way, one of the two remaining tickets will not go to waste.”
My father having consented, I rushed to get ready.
Once the opera started, however, it could not hold my interest.
A languid love for lilies does not blight me!
Lank limbs and haggard cheeks do not delight me!
And what in the world did This costume chaste/Is but good taste/Misplaced mean? Or I do not long for all one sees/That’s Japanese for that matter?
Perhaps, I thought, I was not as cultured as I’d deemed myself to be.
But that was not it, or not entirely.
In our rush to take our seats, we had sat in haphazard fashion, with me somehow winding up dead in the middle, the two men flanking me, the women flanking them. And whatever Gilbert and Sullivan might have to offer—and, judging from the roars of the crowd, they must have offered something—it could not compete for my attention with the drama playing itself out on my left.
That was where Mr. Dean sat.
I studied his profile as he, in turn, studied Aunt Helen’s. I wondered what that was I saw on his face. Was that love? Was it some other feeling that I had no familiarity with? Whatever it was, it captivated him the whole time we were there. He was getting nothing out of this opera itself, despite his words to my father earlier that when he paid for something he liked to get something in return.
I could not stop thinking about this “love” thing, questioning it, turning it over in my mind to look at all sides. I understood, had been given to understand, that love was what my parents felt for each other at first sight. And I had taken this fact for granted. But how did it happen between people, really? And how, having happened, did it then grow?
If it grew between Aunt Helen and Mr. Dean, I supposed that eventually he would become my uncle. Was I to be a witness, on this very night, to such an outgrowth of feeling between these two adults to my left? Was I to see new adult love firsthand?
But as I craned my neck forward, not so much as to be obvious and yet just enough to take in Aunt Helen, I saw that perhaps this was not to be. For it did not matter how long Mr. Dean gazed at her, she only had eyes for the stage. When the audience laughed, she laughed, and so quickly that it was impossible to tell if she was laughing of her own accord or merely following their lead.
At one point, only one, I saw her turn her head to him, bestowing upon him a smile of tolerance and gratitude. It did not look very encouraging to me, but he seemed to take it so. In an almost shocking public display, I saw him take his hand and cover
one of hers with it. But she allowed it to rest there for only the briefest of seconds before snatching hers away again so that she might clap in glee at something being enacted upon the stage.
And so it always ended the same, even for Herbert Dean. A man would ask my father’s permission to ask for Aunt Helen’s hand in marriage, that request would be passed on, but without the delay my father had imposed upon Mr. Brockburn’s request, and Aunt Helen would answer no.
Always, the answer was no.
. . . . .
“What is she waiting for?” Aunt Martha demanded outside of Aunt Helen’s and Mother’s hearing.
Aunt Martha, now age fifty-one, had managed to age more than anybody, her graying dark nimbus of hair growing a little lighter, a little thinner.
Aunt Martha had been exiled for a time after her rift with my parents over Aunt Helen, but my father had no inclination to allow that rift to remain permanent, nor was Mother inclined to make him.
“I only have one living relative in the world,” I heard him tell her one night, when Aunt Helen was out with one of her suitors.
“What about us,” Mother said, “your wife and daughter? What about your parents?”
“I didn’t mean you,” my father said, “and you can hardly call my parents ‘living.’ ”
“That is true enough,” Mother conceded.
“I merely meant that Martha is the only person I have known going all the way back to earliest memory, who is still worth knowing, and I do not wish her banished from my home permanently. She has so little joy in her life, I cannot see why we should not share some of ours with her.”
“So long as you can prevail upon her not to try to get us to toss my sister out again,” Mother said finally, “I see no reason why she should not return.”
And so, every Sunday, Aunt Martha came to dine with us after church. But she was always careful now, always careful to not spend time alone with Aunt Helen or to be heard to be critical of her, at least not in either Aunt Helen’s or Mother’s presence.
Indeed, Aunt Martha had developed a new tactic. Presenting herself as the soul of generosity, she said that she could think of any number of available and suitable men off the top of her head that might wish a union with such a woman as Aunt Helen.
I wondered what these “number of available and suitable men” would be like. Probably one foot in the grave and the other foot on another continent, far, far away.
“Perhaps I could arrange … ?” Aunt Martha left the question open-ended one afternoon when Mother and Aunt Helen were out and my father had taken a rare break from his work, joining us for tea.
“I am sure your heart is in the right place, Martha,” he said, showing an assurance I did not share, “but I do not think that is the solution. I am sure that Helen already knows, through Aliese, that I am perfectly prepared to lavish a generous dowry upon her and pay for any marriage that might come her way. Were we to present her with a parade of men now, it would look as though we were trying to force her out. You tried that once. Aliese will not tolerate it again. And, I must confess, I have grown accustomed to having her sister here. It may not always be easy, but at least it is never dull.”
“But I don’t understand,” Aunt Martha said. Then she again added, “What is that woman waiting for?”
It was a question we all should have liked an answer to, although for some of us, we wanted the question answered solely for the purpose of satisfying curiosity and not because we had any desire to see that matter resolved in a direction that would mean marriage.
I must confess, it would not necessarily have suited me for Aunt Helen to marry. Oh, it is not that I minded the notion of marriage so very much. In fact, the idea of a big celebration did hold some measure of appeal, particularly since I considered I was of an age now where I might play some sort of pivotal role at such an event. And it is not that I did not want Aunt Helen to be happy; I did, very much so.
But were Aunt Helen to marry, she would no doubt move out from under our roof. It was inconceivable that she would remain on here after taking her vows. If she were to marry, she would be expected to go live under her husband’s roof or under some other roof they both picked out, unless of course that husband could not afford a worthy enough roof, like Mr. Brockburn so long ago had not been able to, but in that case such a suitor would not even be entertained in the first place. And I did not want her to go away. I loved Mother more than I loved anyone else, but I did not want to live in this house again without Aunt Helen.
Still, the fact that Aunt Helen remained unmarried?
It was a mystery.
• Seventeen •
The morning after we went to the Savoy to see Patience, I walked over to the Tylers’ next door to see how Kit was feeling.
I had by now been to the Tylers’ home many times since they had moved in. On the outside, it was not very dissimilar to ours—large and made chiefly of stone—but the inside was different, far different than it had been under the previous owners. While the furniture was all well chosen, there was an undeniable comfort to even the smallest picture, as though Victoria Tyler’s personality had permeated all that surrounded her.
It took so long for someone to answer my knock, I was beginning to think no one was at home, but that didn’t make sense, so I persisted. At last a servant answered. In one hand she held a cloth that she was using to cover her nose and mouth.
“Is young Master Ty—,” I began, but she wouldn’t let me finish.
“You must go, miss,” she spoke hurriedly. “No one is allowed in, save for the doctor. Master Tyler is very sick. It’s the typhoid.”
I tried to ask further questions but was prevented doing so when she, in an act no servant had ever performed upon me before, shut the door in my face.
“Typhoid,” I said to myself, my pace slowed on the walk back home after what I’d heard. It was confusing. I knew that typhoid had killed off Queen Victoria’s consort Prince Albert, but that was before I was even born, and I didn’t know much else about the disease. Prince Albert had died of it nearly twenty years before, though. Surely it could not still be so deadly.
Feeling the urgency of life all of a sudden, I hurried on.
Arriving home, I did not even spare a moment to remove my cloak before heading straight to my father’s study and pounding on the door, hard.
“Yes?” I heard him call, in a voice that sounded put out at having been interrupted, but I did not care at that point.
I opened the door. When my father looked up and saw that it was me, saw the expression on my face, his own expression softened.
“What is wrong, Lucy?”
“What is typhoid?” I asked without preamble.
One thing about my father: no matter what else might be happening, he never could resist the opportunity to show off his knowledge of a thing.
“Typhoid fever,” he said, “is an acute infectious disease acquired by drinking infected water. Symptoms include high lingering fever and intestinal discomfort, chills, prostration, and, I am sorry to be indelicate here, diarrhea. At the end of the first week rosy spots appear on the victim’s chest and abdomen. The disease takes approximately three to four weeks to see its way through to its conclusion.” Suddenly he laid down his pen, looked at me closely. “Why do you ask? What makes you want to know about typhoid?”
“Because,” I said, “I went next door to see how Kit was feeling and was told that he has it.”
“Oh.” His eyes turned serious. “Oh, that is very bad.”
“But is it? Is it really? Prince Albert died of it so long ago. It cannot still be so very deadly, can it? The servant said I could not even see Kit, that no one could except the doctor.”
“Oh, it is still very deadly,” my father said. “The servant did right to turn you away.”
“You mean Kit could really die from this?”
“It is a possibility.” His expression was solemn only for a moment. “But let us hope for the best. You must not visit y
our friend again until the danger has passed, but in the meantime I will ask around to see if I can learn more.”
“Do you think it would be all right,” I asked, “for me to write letters to Kit? It must be frightfully boring, being in bed for so very long with nothing to do. At least I might take his mind off it for a bit.”
My father studied me. “You are a kind girl, Lucy, aren’t you?” Then he took up his own pen again, effectively dismissing me. “By all means, write your letters to Kit. But you should be warned: It is entirely possible that he will be too sick to read them. And, above all, you mustn’t expect any reply.” He paused, did not meet my eyes. “There may never be any reply.”
October 11
Dear Kit,
It feels strange to be writing you a letter when I have never done so before. How are you feeling?
Oh, I could hit myself in the head for writing that! “How are you feeling?” Of course you are feeling wretched, and that is why I have to write to you!
Hmm … what can I write here that will take your mind off your own troubles? We went to see the new Gilbert and Sullivan opera at the opening of the Savoy last night. But no, I suppose that won’t interest you. For one thing, it was you being sick that prevented your parents from going, which in turn enabled me to go. Then, too, I cannot imagine it is much fun reading about an opera when opera involves singing and you cannot hear that in a letter.
If you will only get better soon, if you will get well enough that I can come see you, I would gladly try to sing for you whatever I can remember from Patience. It will probably only be a line or two, and those lines incomprehensible, but they should be enough for you to know that you have missed nothing if you have never seen Gilbert and Sullivan.
Your friend,
Lucy Sexton
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