Dora was standing by the scullery door with her apron thrown over her face, in a flood of tears, and a scatter of broken shards of a dish at her feet. Lucy was standing shrinking against the dresser, while Rosie could just be seen peering over Dora ‘s heaving shoulders from her place of safety in the scullery. Eliza was standing with both hands balled into fists on the scrubbed wood of the kitchen table and her face was scarlet with fury.
‘You clumsy limb of Satan!’ she was roaring as Tilly came to the top of the stairs. ‘If there was a scratch on the floor you ‘d trip over it, you clumsy creature! That’s the third plate you’ve broken this month and this time you pay for it, Missy, and pay hard. I won’t have you breaking the china over our heads like this for want of a bit of –‘
‘Eliza!’ Tilly said, lifting her voice above the hubbub. ‘Eliza, what is going on?’
Dora lifted her head from her apron, peered at Tilly and went off into another even louder paroxysm of weeping, and Lucy at the dresser began to whimper as Eliza whirled and glared at the stairs.
‘This – this lump of idiocy don ‘t know she’s alive, Mum, and so I tell you! She wanders around in a dream all because of some stupid notions of her own and breaks your dishes and wastes my time and I won’t have it, you hear me? I won’t have it!’
‘I am sure we can sort this out: Tilly said soothingly and came down into the kitchen. ‘Now, Dora, you tell me. Why is Eliza so angry with you? What have you done?’
‘Done?’ Eliza said wrathfully. ‘What has she done? So busy whispering to Madam out there that she lets the best big platter we got go sliding out of her hands and there it lies, as much use as she is, and I wish it was she who was in pieces at my feet, for she’s no more use than a pile of broken pottery at that and fit only to be swept up and thrown out!’
‘Eliza: Tilly said and looked at her directly. ‘I am speaking to Dora, if you please.’
Eliza opened her mouth, took a breath as if to speak and thought better of it, and set to work on the pastry that was lying on the table in front of her, beating it to submission in a way that made Tilly think at the back of her mind that tonight’s pies might lack their usual lightness of texture. Tilly turned to Dora and said quietly, ‘Now, Dora, stop that caterwauling at once and speak to me.’
Dora gulped, snorted, sniffed and managed to obey and Tilly put a hand on her shoulder to push her out into the scullery, nodding at Rosie to leave them. Rosie went with alacrity, scuttling out to the kitchen to set to work with ostentatious busyness, turning the handle of a mincer fixed to the other side of Eliza’s table, nodding to Lucy to come and help her feed the pieces of meat she was grinding into the hopper. And Tilly went and leaned against the shelf at the back of the scullery and said quietly to Dora, ‘So?’
Dora snivelled but managed to speak. ‘I spoke out of turn, Mum. I shoul’n ha’ said nothin’, but it was only meant as a joke, like. I never knew she’d get into such a takin’.’
‘What did you say?’ Tilly was patient. Sorting out servants’ squabbles was a necessary part of a day’s work for any lady running a household and she was luckier than most; it was a rare enough happening at Quentin’s. But she still knew how to cope. ‘You had better tell me, for if you don’t I cannot know how to deal with the matter at all. I need to know whether it is right that you should pay for the broken dish, you see. If you were indeed at fault, then of course you must. But if it was not entirely you to blame –’ She stopped invitingly.
‘Oh, Mum!’ Dora said, looking as though she would start wailing again, given the least encouragement. ‘I only said to Rosie as Eliza was looking tired and not surprising seein’ what time he went last night and all.’
Tilly tilted her head in puzzlement. ‘Who went where last night?’
‘Why, her follower, Mum. Her Mr Reagan, Mum, what visits here. He stayed till gone three last night, creeping out up the area steps like a burglar! I saw ‘im on account I woke up when I ‘eard ‘em whisperin’ out there.’
Tilly was dumbstruck. She had never attempted to control Eliza’s friends in any way, and had over the years been most concerned that she might be missing her chances of marriage and motherhood because she made so little effort to meet potential sweethearts, but Eliza had always stoutly denied any interest in such nonsense. To hear now that she had a follower and one who visited her late at night was a revelation.
‘He left at –’
‘Yes, Mum, three o’clock. I got a clock o’ my own, and I checked.’ There was a little glitter in Dora’s eyes now, as though she was beginning to see that she might have her own back on the hectoring Eliza. ‘It ain’t the first time neither. My room sees right over the area steps on this side of the ‘ouse like and I always ‘ear people come and go. And he comes late, after you’ve all had your dinner, like, and we’ve cleared up and gone to our beds, and stays late, too. But never so late as last night. And I just said to Rosie –’
‘Yes,’ Tilly said; trying to accommodate this information about someone she had always known so well and never doubted to be anything but totally honest in every way was difficult, to say the least. ‘And I must tell you that it is none of your affair. Such visitors as Eliza chooses to have are her own affair and the hours she keeps are also none of your business. She is my housekeeper, not a cook or maid only, and as such is entitled to privileges you may not have. So you must stop spying on her from your room – and if you do not then I shall see to it that you are moved to the other side of the house, which as you know is not so agreeable since the outlook is not so pleasant, and then you will not be able to meddle at all. I am not surprised that Eliza was angry and especially so if your silly gossiping made you clumsy. You must pay for the plate if Eliza says so. She is in charge of such matters and I will not interfere. Now, go and apologize to Eliza for being so ill-mannered as to gossip about her and then be about your work.’
Dora’s face crumpled as though she were going to weep again, but Tilly looked at her so sternly she thought better of it, and wiping her nose on the back of her hand, she went up to Eliza at the kitchen table.
‘I beg your pardon, Eliza,’ she muttered. ‘Like Madam says, I’m sorry I gossiped about you.’
‘Hmph,’ said Eliza, not looking up as she slapped a round of pastry over a pie dish and with expert fingers trimmed the excess away to leave it neat and ready to be filled with the meat mixture which Lucy and Rosie had now finished. ‘That’s as may be. Now, get on with your work. There’s the dinin’ room waiting to be set and the drawin’ room to be checked and hot water jugs for the evenin’ to be prepared. Be quick about it, now.’
Gratefully the three maids escaped and Tilly stood waiting till they had all vanished past the green baize door and then looked at Eliza.
She finished the pie, having filled it and poured in the gravy and seasoning, and then set the last trimmings in place on the top before sliding it into the oven behind her and straightening her back to stand without turning, staring down at the range.
‘Dear Eliza,’ Tilly said gently. ‘Why did you not tell me you had a follower? I am so happy for you – I wouldn’t have you think for the world that you need keep such a matter a secret from me. I rejoice for you, indeed I do!’
‘Oh, Mum,’ Eliza said. ‘Oh, Mum,’ and turned and looked at Tilly and then did something that amazed and alarmed Tilly in equal measure.
She burst into tears.
Chapter Fourteen
TO SAY THAT Tilly was aghast was to put it at its very lowest. She had never seen Eliza so distressed. There had been times in her very early days in the household, as a child of little more than thirteen years or so, when, in a state of almost overwhelming heroine-worship for Tilly, the young Eliza had been exceedingly emotional. But never like this, Tilly was sure.
She sat in the chair beside the kitchen range, rocking herself almost frantically and weeping copiously into her hands, which she held over her face, in the main silently, though the occasional tearing sobs escaped her.
Tilly could only crouch at her feet and stroke her knee and murmur at her and wait for the storm to pass, while at the same time attempting to control the great wash of anxiety that overcame her.
Eliza was her prop and stay, the centre of the house and therefore in many ways the centre of Tilly’s life. Duff was her best beloved, Jem was her good friend, and she was dealing as best as she could with her current fascination for Silas Geddes, but Eliza – Eliza was Eliza, as much a part of Tilly as her hands or her head. To see her in such a state of unbridled misery could only be an occasion of great agitation in Tilly herself.
Not that she showed it. She just remained there beside Eliza until the storm at last washed itself out and the tears dwindled and Eliza let herself be gently persuaded to lie against the back of the chair, exhausted and drained, her eyes closed, the puffy lids red and painful to look at above the streaked round cheeks.
‘Please to tell me what it is, Eliza!’ Tilly said at length. ‘I can’t help you if I don’t know.’
At last Eliza opened her eyes painfully and looked bleakly at Tilly. She looked so desolate that Tilly felt her own eyes sting with tears of sympathy.
‘It’s a sorry story, Mum,’ Eliza said at last. She was very hoarse from all her weeping. ‘I’d thought to have different news to tell you – difficult in one way, perhaps, but – well, not this, Mum. I never expected this.’
‘Expected what, Eliza?’ Tilly was as gentle as she knew how to be. ‘Please to start at the beginning.’
‘The beginning –’ Eliza said and then, extraordinarily, managed to twist her face into a sort of smile. ‘You could say it was the parson learning me to read at home in the village what begun it all, Mum. If I’d never learned to read I’d ha’ been better off.’
‘Eliza?’ Tilly said, puzzled and fearful now. Was the poor girl losing her mind in some way?
Eliza shook her head. ‘Oh, it’s just a stupid fancy of mine, Mum. It’s the reading circle, do you see.’
‘Not entirely,’ Tilly said candidly. ‘I can’t imagine what could happen there that would make you so very – so unhappy. It is but a church meeting, after all, as I understood it, well supervised and run by the vicar.’
Again Eliza’s lips twisted in a sort of ghastly smile. ‘Well, so it is, Mum, as far as what happens there in Cottage Place goes. But it’s where you meet people, ‘n’t it? You thought it was all for females, Mum. But it wasn’t. Like I said, we had gentlemen visitors from time to time –’ She swallowed hard. ‘Some of ‘em every time.’
Tilly began to understand. ‘What’s his name, Eliza?’ she said gently.
‘Reagan, Mum. Octavius Reagan. Irish o’ course, but I didn’t – I mean, I was never one to hold things against people. A person can’t help bein’ what they are and he was born into popery, I said to myself, so it’s no blame to him – especially as he was coming to our church now. I mean, I thought he’d left all that. So I didn’t fret over it. And like I said, he seemed good enough for them at St Paul’s to have him there and he went to services and all. The vicar seemed to like him – oh, so good looking, Mum! So very good looking!’
Clearly Eliza was not speaking of the vicar of St Paul’s and Tilly sighed a little at the yearning note in her voice.
‘You were beguiled, I think, Eliza.’
‘Well, Mum, he was such a gentleman and read so lovely and wasn’t a bit insolent when he was about me, the way some men are. I got used to the silly ones, what makes eyes at you and calls it making love when it’s nothing of the sort. It’s only trying to be clever. He never tried to be clever, do you see, always the perfect gentleman, quick to take off his hat and bow, and ever so carefully spoken. A lovely voice, and very good at talking real long words. I thought I’d found my special one, like it says in the stories in my magazine, Mum, I really did.’
‘Has he been unkind to you, Eliza?’ Tilly thought she could probe a little now, for Eliza was beginning to recover. Some of the swelling about her eyes had gone down and her face was less woebegone. She was sitting up more erectly, too.
‘Unkind? I s’pose you could call it that.’
There was a long silence then, as Eliza sat staring over Tilly’s shoulder at the window with glazed eyes. Tilly gave her a few moments and then said a little more briskly, ‘Well, Eliza?’
‘He – he said as we’d get wed. I told him, very direct, I told him, as I was a good woman, and wouldn’t have no nonsense from no one as wasn’t man enough to do the proper thing. So he said we’d be wed, but then I said as I could never leave you, no matter what and he said that would be no trouble, we could still be wed and live close by and I could come and work here with you in the days, as long as he had the nights, and I thought, well, it seemed all right, Mum. I knew he had only a little money got from his dad or so he said, and was looking about him for employment as a farrier which was his trade he said, in Ireland, though I have to say he looked more of a gentleman than that, but he loved horses and knew about them well enough, so I thought, well, we can get him a nice berth hereabouts and I can go on lookin’ after you and Quentin’s and it’d all be lovely.’
Her eyes filled with tears once more but they weren’t the desperate ones of a while ago, and Tilly said nothing, knowing it would be better for Eliza to shed them. After a while Eliza blew her nose and wiped her eyes on the corner of her apron and started again.
‘I should ha’ guessed, I s’pose. A man what’s got no occupation and always dressed so smart and has time to read so many books – he’s read more’n me and you know how I reads night after night, Mum – I should ha’ known he did more sitting about than anything else, but there it is. I suppose I wanted to think well of the man I was to wed.’
‘But you are not to be wed, now, Eliza?’ Tilly was trying not to let her heart sink at the thought of losing Eliza to marriage, for she knew perfectly well that whatever scheme Eliza devised for working at Quentin’s by day, it would never really serve. Tilly would lose her for good and the thought was a painful one. But she wanted to be fair to Eliza, and if her feelings were engaged and she wanted to wed this man, however unsuitable she, Tilly, might think him, then wed him she would and with Tilly’s aid and blessing. She would do all she could to see that this man married Eliza, if that was what Eliza wanted.
The tears spilled over again and tracked down Eliza’s cheeks. ‘No, Mum,’ she said huskily. ‘Here you are – it was – I found it this morning under my pillow when I made my bed.’
She pushed a piece of paper at Tilly, who took it and sank back to sit on her heels on the hearthrug. It was a sheet of writing paper, thin of quality but dressed with fancy scroll decoration that bled through to the other side. It was the sort of cheap showy stuff sold by door-to-door pedlars to cooks and housemaids and offered in fairgrounds as prizes on the shot-gun ranges. Tilly glanced up at Eliza.
‘You’d best read it,’ Eliza said drearily. ‘It’s all there.’ Obediently Tilly bent her head and began to read, though it was not easy, since the handwriting was rather like the scrolls on the notepaper, over elaborate and very showy.
‘My dear Eliza, it is with regret that I pen this missive, my dear heart, as I did not wish to hurt you, not at all. When I started our friendship, I do not deny I thought it all a great gas, you are very merry and funny. But I did not intend it to be more than a gas. You see, dear Eliza, not to beat about the bush, I have a wife in Belfast. It was agreed with her I should go and set us up in England or in America if I could not find the right opportunities in London, and I have not found those opportunities, as I will not be any longer a poor farrier, to that I have sworn. I have better things in me than that. So I shall be sailing off to Canada on the next ship out of Liverpool for a ticket to Montreal is a better buy than a ticket for New York or Boston, and I can always work my way south and anyway I do not wish my wife to know where I have gone for she is no great shakes to me and I know you would not tell her even if you knew her which you do not. By the time you read this letter, I sh
all be well away on the train so do not seek to find me, not that you would I think, for all you said you loved me, as did I love you, as far as I was able, but you should not have spoke of weddings, my dear Eliza, for it alarms a man powerfully, does such talk. Especially when he is as I am, with three small ones already on his quiver at home in Belfast who even if I do not see them again are of my blood and quite enough too. I trust that you will remember always that I thought you a fine bonny girl and a fair armful of joy. I hope you had joy of me as I of you. I bid you good luck and say you need not worry more about leaving your good mistress, on account of you do not have to. I hope you will wish me well in my journey to Canada which they tell me is a wild country but good in opportunity. Yrs. v. obediently. Octavius Aloysius Reagan, Esq.’
There was a long silence as Tilly gave the letter back to Eliza, who sat and stared at it for a long while. Then Tilly said with real care, ‘Oh dear, Eliza. I am so sorry.’
‘Not as sorry as I am,’ Eliza said harshly. ‘That I should have been so beguiled! It makes me sick, it does. It makes me fair sick.’
She looked down at the paper in her hand and then with a vicious twist of her wrist hurled it into the firebox of the range. It lay there in the embers for a moment and then flared into life, making a sudden vivid picture of Eliza’s face before it curled and died in a heap of ash that could not be seen against the coals. They both watched it and then at last Tilly moved and got to her feet, wincing a little at the way her limbs had become numbed by her prolonged crouch beside Eliza.
Eliza became aware of that and at once jumped to her feet and made Tilly sit in the rocker. ‘Oh, Mum, I should be ashamed to worry you so! I would never have said a word if it hadn’t been for – well, if Dora hadn’t – I thought no one knew, do you see, and it never entered my head that nasty creature was spying on me. I’d take it kindly, Mum, if you let her go. She’s not that good at her work and I could do with someone with more sense, I truly could. You can give her a good enough character to get a new situation and then we can see her away. I’d not be able to keep up my head, you see, with her watching me and knowing.’
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