by James Wilson
At four o’clock, having returned briefly to the hotel to change my clothes, I presented myself at 10, Western Parade. A maid answered the bell and peered timidly out, as if she half expected to find a criminal on the doorstep. Before she could say anything, a voice from upstairs called:
‘If that’s Mr. Roper, Fanny, show him up! Otherwise, I’m not at home.’
The girl coloured, and smiled apologetically. ‘She doesn’t hear very well, sir,’ she said in a half-whisper, tapping her ear. ‘Probably thought I hadn’t opened the door yet.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Luckily I am Mr. Roper.’
The hall was dark, lit only by a stained glass fanlight that left little shimmers of red and blue on the tiled floor. She led me up to the first floor, and stopped at a door in the middle of the landing. It was already ajar, but she knocked on it anyway, and waited meekly until she heard the reply:
‘Come in!’
She gave me a conspiratorial glance, then ushered me inside.
‘Mr. Roper, miss.’
My first impression was that I was entering a hot-house. The atmosphere was warm and clammy, and spiced with a heavy smell of earth and leaf-mould and sap. There were plants everywhere: ranged along the mantelshelf; crowded on to table-tops; bursting like giant fireworks out of huge tubs arranged either side of the fireplace and around the walls. The effect of so much foliage was to give the air itself a greenish tinge that seemed to seep into every other colour – so that even the furniture and the pictures on the walls appeared to be covered with a thin dusting of mildew.
‘How do you do, Mr. Roper?’
It took me a second to find her: sitting in the furthest of a pair of Queen Anne chairs in the window, half hidden by the tendrils of what looked like a small tree. She was wearing a sombre purple dress, and a lace cap that would have seemed old-fashioned when Mary Wilson was a child. Her hands – shrivelled, and dappled with liver-spots – were carefully folded on her lap; but I noticed that she could not keep them from shaking slightly.
‘Agnes Winterton tells me that you saved her life,’ she said, as I began towards her.
I laughed. ‘She’s exaggerating, I’m afraid. Saved her from a nasty bruise would be nearer the truth.’
‘There’s often not a great deal of difference, when you get to our age. Anyway, whatever you did, I’m grateful to you. Agnes is a dear friend.’ She nodded to the empty chair. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Thank you.’
She glanced towards the door and smiled. Her face, I saw, as the light caught it, was older than her voice: the skin dry and seamed, and the eyes so sunken they appeared to be glittering through slits in a sheet of crumpled paper. It struck me with a jar that she must be almost eighty.
‘Would you bring us some tea please, Fanny?’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘That would be splendid.’ She waited until the maid had gone, then turned back to me and said:
‘Now, please. I’m on tenter-hooks. Agnes said you wanted to see me about one of our old girls. Not bad news, I hope?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s a relief, at any rate.’
She widened her eyes and nodded, encouraging me to explain why I was there. I said:
‘I’m aware that what I have to say to you may seem rather out of the ordinary. Well, no, it will seem out of the ordinary. And for reasons that will become apparent, I’m afraid I have to ask you to … to promise never to mention it to anyone else.’
She drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. ‘Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Roper, but I don’t feel I can do that.’
‘I give you my word, it’s nothing criminal. Or –’
‘That may well be. But the law is one thing, and one’s conscience is quite another.’
‘I don’t think your conscience will be troubled.’
‘Forgive me, but that’s not really something you’re qualified to say, is it? We scarcely know each other. I hadn’t even heard of you before this morning.’ She caught the severity of her own tone, and softened it with a smile. ‘I have to say that you’ve given me no reason to doubt you. But you must see that stopping Agnes Winterton being hurled out of her bath-chair, though very commendable, is not really a sufficient testimonial to your character, when what, in effect, you are asking me to do is deliver into your hands my freedom to judge what is right and what is wrong.’
‘Mm,’ I said, ‘well, I take your point. But the trouble is, it puts me in a very ticklish position. I’m not thinking of myself. My aim in coming here is to help someone who has already suffered a great deal – and I know that if she were ever to hear of it, it would only cause her more pain. And that, of course, is the last thing I want to do. So we’re at something of an impasse, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it seems we are, doesn’t it?’ But she said it carelessly, as if it were simply an automatic response, and from her abstracted gaze I had the impression she was still considering the problem. Finally she said:
‘Very well: this is what I will promise. I shall do as you ask just so long as I see no moral objection to it.’
They were, I knew, the best terms I should get – and the very fact that she had fought me so hard over them seemed compelling evidence that she was to be trusted.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
She rubbed her hands together. ‘Well, now.’
I cleared my throat. ‘A few weeks ago, I met a woman in a country church. It was the chancest of chance encounters: we were both taking shelter from the rain. But we got into conversation, and she told me something about herself. She was abandoned at birth by her parents, it seems, and grew up without even knowing who they were. The happiest moments, she said, in what was obviously a fairly wretched childhood – the happiest moments, in fact, of her entire life – were when she was at your school.’
‘Ah.’ She nodded, and let out a long sigh. ‘And would this young woman happen to have been called Mary Stone?’
‘Mary Wilson. But –’
‘Wilson, yes, of course. I’m still thinking of her maiden name. As you get older, it becomes more and more difficult to adjust, I’m afraid.’
‘Well,’ I said, shaking my head in wonder. ‘Did she write to you, then? About our meeting?’
‘No. But it wasn’t difficult to guess her identity, from what you said. It was a small school. We never had more than a few girls. And Mary is really the only one who would fit your description.’ Her eyes drifted towards the window. When she looked at me again, they were bright with tears. ‘This may sound unduly harsh, Mr. Roper, but when a man says he wishes to help a young woman whom he scarcely knows, there is usually a reason for it. Beyond, I mean, the natural impulse to do good. And more often than not, in my experience, I’m sorry to say, it’s the most obvious one. Sometimes he may not even be aware of it himself. But the result, in that case, can be even worse – because by the time he and … the object of his philanthropy discover his true motives, it is too late.’
I had expected this, of course, and was ready for it.
‘What I have in mind doesn’t concern my relations with Mary Wilson, Miss Robinson, but her own family’s. It seems to me that they are the root cause of her unhappiness, and that only they have the power to alleviate it. So my aim is to find them, if I can, and learn why they treated her as they did, and try to bring about a reconciliation. There is no reason why Mrs. Wilson should even know I am involved – in fact, it would clearly be better if she didn’t, and the family could claim the credit for initiating the rapprochement themselves.’ I hesitated, and then – without pausing to consider the full implications – added: ‘If it would make you more comfortable, I could sign a legal undertaking never to tell her anything about my part in the matter at all.’
She studied me closely for a few seconds, then smiled and said:
‘I don’t think we need to bring the lawyers into it, Mr. Roper. They do perfectly well without our creating more work for them. You have
convinced me that you are acting honourably, and that is enough. Let’s just shake hands on it, shall we?’
Her fingers were cold and tremulous; but when she finally found her grip, it was unexpectedly strong.
‘I do have to say, though,’ she murmured, as I sat down again, ‘that I’m curious to know what kind of a man can simply give up his own life on a whim, and take to being a knight-errant.’
‘I’m not sure I should call it a whim. But the truth is my life has rather given me up, and I’m at something of a loose end at the moment.’
She waited, giving me an opportunity to say more. When it became clear that I was not going to, she coloured slightly and dropped her gaze.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I should just be grateful, I suppose, that poor Mary has found a true friend at last. If you succeed in nothing else, it is a great thing, at least, for her to know that there is someone she can confide in.’
‘Is that the best I can hope for, do you think?’
She nodded sadly. ‘Frankly, I do.’ She reached out towards the tree standing next to her and – taking one of the long drooping leaves in her hand – began to stroke it absently, as you might a favourite pet. ‘I don’t dispute your diagnosis of her – I was going to say problem, but perhaps affliction would be a better word. But after thirty years, I think it’s very unlikely that anything can be done to put it right.’
‘Why? Are her parents dead?’
‘They may be, for all I know. But even if they’re not, you’d have very little chance of ever finding them.’
‘Because they’re foreigners, you mean?’ I asked, suddenly remembering Mary Wilson’s idea that she might be a Balkan princess, and imagining myself hammering at the gate of a half-ruined castle in the Carpathians.
‘I’ve no idea who they were, I’m afraid.’
‘Who placed her in the school, then?’
‘Her guardian, Mr. Cooper. I did try, on several occasions, to discover something from him about the family. But he was the discreetest man I’ve ever met, I think – which is one reason, no doubt, why he was charged with her care.’
‘What did he say when you asked him?’
‘He was always very pleasant.’ She smiled. ‘At the risk of sounding like a novel by Mrs. Braddon –’ her voice slipping surprisingly into a fair imitation of a worldly lawyer’s – ‘I am afraid I am not at liberty to say. The reputation of a very great family is at stake, Miss Robinson. Perhaps it would not be stretching things too far to say even the national interest.’
‘Heavens!’
‘Of course, this set my imagination racing, as it couldn’t fail to. My first thought – well, I’m sure you can guess what that was.’
‘Yes.’
‘But then I reflected that – even if her father had been no more than a distant cousin, and her mother a serving-girl – she would have been provided for differently. Not simply cast away in a house in Paris, and then sent to a school such as ours.’
‘I don’t quite follow that. I should have thought –’
She shook her head. ‘There would have been some acknowledgement of her position – if only to lessen the scandal if the truth ever did come out. And by bringing her up in a city where her presence was certain to be remarked upon, and entrusting her to strangers who – wittingly or unwittingly – could all too easily betray her secret, they were making it infinitely more likely that it would come out.’
‘But what if the strangers simply didn’t know her secret?’
‘There was bound to be at least one link in the chain who did, wasn’t there? And why take that chance, when you already have hundreds of royal servants whose loyalty you can count on absolutely, and scores of places you can hide a child without attracting –?’
She stopped abruptly as the maid appeared with the tea. Miss Robinson watched fondly as the girl manoeuvred a table in front of her, and then painstakingly laid everything out where it was in easy reach.
‘Will that be all, Miss Marion?’ she asked, when she had finished.
‘Yes, thank you, Fanny,’ said Miss Robinson, beaming up at her. ‘You’re very good to me.’
‘Thank you, miss.’ She gave me a quick sidelong glance and smiled. ‘Hope it’s to your liking.’
‘The kindest girl in the world,’ said Miss Robinson, as the door closed behind her. She lifted the pot with both hands, and started trickling tea into the cups. ‘When I hear what an awful time of it other people have with their servants, it makes me realize just how lucky I am.’
‘It may not be simply a matter of luck. Kindness tends to breed kindness, don’t you think?’
She flushed. ‘I’m glad to hear you say so, Mr. Roper,’ she murmured, nudging a cup in my direction. ‘That is my view, and I have always tried to live by it. But sometimes one has to admit that kindness is not enough.’ She hesitated. Then looking oddly at me, like a bird examining a worm, she said: ‘If it were, you would not be here now.’
‘Oh, you can hardly –’ I began.
‘Not that I mean to say that Mary is unkind, exactly,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘She has great natural affection. But it is invariably driven from its course. What starts as love always manages to curdle, somehow, into fear and suspicion. It’s as if … she is so convinced she will be rebuffed, she has to make the thing a certainty by her behaviour.’
‘There, I told you so: they hate me.’
She nodded. ‘We did our best, my sisters and I, to make her less fearful. It was impossible, of course, to undo the wrong that had been done to her – but we hoped we might soften its effect, at least, by giving her some of the experience of home and family that she had never known. And we tried to instil in her – as we did in all our girls – the belief that in bearing her own cross cheerfully, she was following in the footsteps of our Lord.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘But it was not enough, I’m afraid.’
‘I think you are being very hard on yourself, Miss Robinson. No one could have done more for her, I am sure, than you and your sisters did.’
‘I don’t say we were entirely unsuccessful. When I remember the Mary Stone who came to us at the age of nine, it seems something of a miracle that she turned out as well as she did. She certainly isn’t lacking in accomplishments. And nobody could doubt that she is a young woman with a strong feeling of religious duty. But that … that joyfulness that comes from knowing you are the beloved child of God, and that He delights in your existence – that, sadly, is a gift that has always eluded her.’
‘But that is a matter of grace, surely? Or of belief? In any event, it’s not something a school can be expected to teach.’
‘A school can be expected to teach the truth, Mr. Roper. And for a Christian, that is the truth, is it not? In most children, the feeling is already there, and they merely need to be guided to a grateful understanding of it. In a few, there is just a faint inkling – a tiny frail shoot, that requires constant care if it is ever to grow into a healthy plant. In Mary, there was nothing. We planted the seed – we tended it every day – but …’ She shook her head again. ‘I often thought that not the least of her parents’ cruelties to her was their choice of name. Mary Stone. As if it were not enough to cast her out, but they must curse her with barrenness, too.’?
‘Life seems to have connived with them,’ I said.
‘What, by banishing her to dusty Tenerife, you mean?’
That wasn’t what I’d meant, of course. But either she didn’t know about the still-born child, or else she assumed that I didn’t, so I merely nodded.
‘Even Tenerife produces the fig-cactus,’ she went on, pointing to a fleshy pea-green plant in the angle of the bay-window. ‘Mary sent that to me, as a present, while she was there. Not beautiful, you see, but fruitfulness of a kind.’
‘Well, we must show up life’s shabbiness, then, mustn’t we, by refusing to accept its judgement on her, and treating her better ourselves? You’ve done your part. Now it’s my turn to carry on the fight.’
‘
And I wish I could help you. But really, I don’t see how …’
‘Well, the first thing thing to try, I suppose, would be a direct appeal to Mr. Cooper. How might I set about finding him?’
She shook her head. ‘He wasn’t a young man, even then, so it’s quite likely he’s dead. And, even if he isn’t, I very much doubt whether he would be any more forthcoming with you than he was with me.’
I shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to be lost by trying. At the very least, if he is still alive, he might unwittingly let slip something useful. Would you still happen to have his address, by any chance?’
She shook her head. ‘I never had it, I’m afraid.’
‘How did you communicate with him, then?’
‘Through his bank. I do recollect that: Cox and Co. in the Strand. They sent a cheque every term for the fees, and if we required anything more we were to write to him there. It would be easier, he said, because he was abroad a good deal. India, I believe. I thought very little of it, because a lot of our girls’ parents made the same arrangement.’
‘And you’ve no idea where he lived, when he was in this country?’
‘None whatever. I’m sorry.’
For a moment I was at a loss. Then I said:
‘Well, there must be somebody in Paris who knows something about her, mustn’t there? You can’t simply set an infant up in her own establishment without offering some explanation of how she happens to be there.’
‘Perhaps. But, if so, I don’t know who he is. Or she is, more likely. Mary did mention a nurse called Adèle, but there must be ten thousand Adèles in Paris – and who’s to say the woman didn’t marry, and –’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Wait a minute.’ She shut her eyes, and clamped her brow with one hand. ‘Periwinkle. Periwinkle.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The feebleness of age. One’s mind becomes a sieve. The French for periwinkle?’
‘Pervenche.’
‘That’s it!’ – opening her eyes again, and holding up a quivery finger in triumph – ‘pervenche! That’s where she was brought up: the Rue Pervenche. It always struck me as such a quaintly rural name for a street in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. I don’t know how easy it would be to find the exact house. But if you could, well … then …’