The Land of Summer

by Charlotte Bingham

  Emmaline looked up at him in despair. How could he imagine that a person could be ordered to be happy, could be ordered to be grateful. It was absurd. You might as well order someone who was happy to be miserable!

  ‘What, Emma, you have to learn is to be accepting of the way things are here. This is the way of things, this is how they are, and we must accept that as a fact and not think that by questioning it we can change the status quo. You are in England, you are married to an Englishman, and whether or not you understand me, or indeed agree with what I have to say, is entirely your own business, since what you say or what you feel will have no bearing at all on how I view such matters, you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Julius,’ Emmaline said in a voice utterly drained of emotion.

  ‘I trust, Emma, that you will be happy from now on, that you will try to be happy,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Yes, I will try, Julius,’ Emmaline replied, clearing her throat, and at the same time determining to pull herself together. ‘Thanks to your frankness I now understand my position, and I shall take time to examine it before I conclude how best I may live here as your wife.’

  ‘Forgive me, Emma,’ Julius begged. This time it was he who cleared his throat. ‘So, where was I? Yes, it is perfectly clear, I think, to both of us, we have a clear understanding, do we not, as to how best you may live here as my wife, as you put it? As a matter of fact, if you think back, it was made abundantly clear in the wedding service how best you may live here as my wife.’ Julius smiled down at her, the look in his eyes suddenly tender. ‘You promised, if you remember, to love, honour and obey me.’

  ‘To love, honour and obey you?’ Emmaline’s heart sank as she remembered what now seemed to her to be such strangely medieval words. ‘Is this what you intend our marriage to be about, Julius? About loving, honouring and obeying each other?’

  ‘Naturally. Why else would we have been married in a church and repeated those sacred words? Now, shall we go in to dinner? You must know I am going away tomorrow, so I will need to retire early. Thank you, Emma, for being so good as to listen to me as you have. Perhaps you will be sweet enough to play to me after dinner. You have a fine touch, a very fine touch.’

  Emmaline knew she had been unhappy before, but in the ensuing days, with Julius thankfully absent, she found out something quite different, she found out the true meaning of the word misery. It was not just the confusion that unhappiness brings, it was not just the loneliness, it was the despair that accompanies all those emotions that turns unhappiness into utter misery. All of a sudden she thought she knew what it was like for Pilgrim to fall into the Slough of Despond.

  Day after day, as she forced herself to pretend to take a continuing interest in the domestic affairs of the house, she found herself wandering the corridors or the garden, turning everything over and over in her mind. Why had she come to England? Was it because she had wanted to marry a man she had been deeply attracted to, or was it to get away from her family? Or had she come for the sake of her younger sisters – had she made of herself some kind of willing sacrifice so that they would be freed? Or had she married just to, as the saying went, get a ring on her finger? The answer to all those questions was a most definite no. She had married Julius because he pleased her, because he was elegant and handsome, and from the moment he had danced with her she had quite lost her heart to the idea of his being her husband-to-be.

  Day after day she had also to ask herself whether she loved Julius now as she had done, as she perhaps should. The answer to that was also a most definite no. She could not now love him, surely? It was not possible. But, knowing that to be true, she had to admit to herself that she had once loved him. Therefore, for whatever reason, perhaps he too had once loved her, before she came to England? Therefore, had she done something – not the poem, long before that – had she said or done something which in the mind of a reticent Englishman could have destroyed that love? Had she committed some unknown social sin that had made him unable to go on feeling as he might once have felt?

  And yet.

  And yet it was Julius who had said repeatedly on the night of their wedding, How could I do this? What have I done?

  Was it something to do with his business? Was it that to which he had been referring? Or had she remembered it all wrong? Perhaps he was referring to something terrible that he had done that night. Had he committed a crime? Done something so terrible that he could not even tell his wife?

  Finally, unable to sleep or eat to any degree at all, Emmaline came to the only decision that she thought was possible. She would have to leave her husband and bury all the misery he had brought so unnecessarily into her life in a past which, however painful, would at least be short-lived.

  She had every reason not to stay. Although they were married in name, Emmaline knew that this was no marriage because there had not been what her mother sometimes referred to in a vague voice as the marriage act – and although, most unfortunately, Emmaline did not understand as yet what the phrase embraced, she was well aware that it, whatever it was, had not happened. She had also gathered, if only from novels, that if a man took a wife and then treated her as Julius seemed to be treating her, as a sister, the union could be declared invalid, leaving the innocent party to retain her innocence, and finally regain her freedom.

  She decided to write to her father and explain that she had made a terrible mistake, and that she would be coming home just as soon as she could book a passage, but then, facing the reality of the letter, day in and day out, she found herself strangely unable to pick up her pen. Finally when she did it was in words that made her ashamed of her inability to express herself in an original manner.

  Dearest Father, I do hope this letter does not find you as it finds me – most terribly unhappy …

  Emmaline put down her pen, suddenly hearing imagined words in her head, seeing her father reading the letter, hearing in her head just how he would mock her in front of her mother and sisters.

  Oh dear, Anthea, oh dear, girls, just as we all thought we’d got rid of her, back Emmaline comes, like a bad penny. Shall we suggest we change her name to Penny, Anthea? It would be appropriate, as well as amusing.

  Emmaline was well aware that everyone at home would laugh at her behind her back, while sympathising to her face. A few weeks would pass, but only a very few, before they would start reminding her that they had told her not to trust an Englishman, that they knew such a marriage wouldn’t last – that it had been doomed from the start. They would claim that they all knew she was doing the wrong thing, rushing headlong into marriage with a stranger, but they had not dared to tell her. After which they would set about privately pitying her, because they would know that her chances of marrying again were nil. She would be on the shelf, an old maid, a spinster, unfulfilled by either life or marriage. They would also say, behind her back, that they had known all along that Julius was just another English adventurer who was simply after Emmaline’s money, that there could have been no other reason why he had suddenly turned up on the family doorstep and set his cap at someone as plain as Emmaline.

  And that was all before they began to feel bitter and uneasy, thinking, no matter what their current circumstances – Charity already engaged, Ambrosia about to be the same – that she had brought shame on the family, and that their own future establishment would be threatened.

  Despite all these imaginings, once again Emmaline began her letter to her father.

  Dear Father, As you may know I am safely married, safely, yes, but unhappily. Oh, Father, please may I come home? If only you knew how miserable I have been made by Mr Julius Aubrey …

  Emmaline stared at the words she had written, and saw at once that they were self-pitying, and that, as old Mary their Irish maid had always said, if you feel sorry for yourself, dotie, there’s nothing for anyone else to do.

  So she tore the half-started letters up, and put them on the fire. And as she watched them burning, burning as fiercely as her spirit was grieving, s
he became aware that she might as well be burning her marriage, her time at Park House, because, aside from the servants who were all now her friends and, she was well aware, pitied her situation, she could see no one and nothing that had any point for her.

  ‘Here I go again,’ she scolded herself. ‘Here I go feeling sorry for myself. I must stop feeling sorry for myself, and think.’

  This was really where her innate misery lay. Her mind had become incapable of seeing things calmly, of finding a way out of the despair in which she had allowed it to be enveloped. She would, if she were her own best friend, be able to accuse herself of indulging her emotions to a ridiculous degree. She must pull herself together and make the most of whatever it was that life was presenting to her. To do less than that would be shaming.

  First things first. She would make a list. This had always helped her with her school work, and now more than ever it could help her again.

  She wrote Emmaline Aubrey – her sorrows, but that too looked so self-pitying that she scratched it out and wrote my sorrows out fifty times, as a punishment, and then threw that page too in the fire.

  Very well, Miss Emmaline Nesbitt, now is the time to sing, to play, but not to feel sorry for yourself.

  Oh, my Lord! She had called herself by her maiden name, not by her married name. Perhaps that was the trouble? In her own mind she was unmarried, not just in her body.

  What I must do is try to win Julius back by my own faith and diligence. I must win back not only Julius’s respect, but finally also his love, for I know he has felt, might still feel, something for me. Why otherwise do I find him looking towards me suddenly as if he would love to love me? Why has he on occasion stroked my hair with such a tender touch?

  She determined on one final effort, while recognising in herself an understandable reluctance to face any of the people who had witnessed her humiliation at the party. Carriages came and went leaving elegant engraved calling cards, but Emmaline gave it out through the servants that she was unwell, unable at the moment to attend At Homes, or return calls. Meanwhile, with Julius still away on business, she lay on a chaise longue in her dressing room, staring into the fire, and struggling with her despair.

  Happily the weather continued to be fine and warm, even as summer began to edge towards autumn, with the colours fading in the borders and on the roses as the garden started to go over. In the borders the herbaceous plants grew too tall to stay upright, their heads turning to seed pods and their leaves browning and curling at the edges, advertising in advance nature’s general move towards winter.

  Sometimes, although only at Agnes’s urging, Emmaline would snatch up a shawl and leave her room to wander round the grounds, picking the best of what was left of the roses, which she would then be encouraged by the ever faithful Mrs Graham to arrange into magnificent displays to be enjoyed by herself and the servants.

  At other times she would just sit in the shade of a large umbrella on the terrace watching blackbirds pulling worms from the lawns, and swallows building up their strength for the coming migration to warmer climes.

  It was as the first leaves of autumn began to fall that Emmaline started to write poetry, and unlike her tentative forays into letter-writing, she did not tear up the pages that she started to work on in her generous sloping hand.

  So easily did the first verses come that it was as if she had always done it, and so mystified was she by the process that when she had put down her pen she was startled to realise that she had no recollection of how or when she had begun. She found herself sitting on the terrace as was her wont, a fine lace shawl round her shoulders and a glass of freshly made lemonade on the occasional table Wilkinson always set out for her, with the notebook she used as an aide-memoire for household matters open in front of her, but instead of lists of household necessities, and suggested menus, she saw she had written a four-verse poem.

  She stared at it, reading it and re-reading it, each time understanding it less, incapable of judging its merit. The verses seemed to rhyme and they appeared not to be doggerel, yet, as she immediately realised, she could not possibly be the best judge of that if she was unable to judge the poem at all. Even so, just as the verses seemed to rhyme and to be written in the correct rhythm, they also seemed to express some of the emotions Emmaline had been feeling, although when she realised just how much of her soul she had exposed she quickly shut the notebook and left it locked in the bureau in the bedroom for several days, even imagining that when the time came to retrieve it she would find the pages to be blank, leaving her to imagine that she must have fallen asleep in the warm September sun and dreamed the whole experience.

  But when she did come to unlock her desk drawer and take out the notebook, there indeed the poem was, just as she had remembered it. So the following afternoon, once again left to her own devices, Emmaline wrote another – a longer poem that she was nowhere near finishing when Dolly clattered out on to the terrace with a tray of tea, and some delicately made watercress sandwiches.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Aubrey, but Cook sends to tell you that you’re to eat up all the sandwiches or she will want to know the reason why. She don’t like the sight of so much of her food coming back down to the kitchens again, so be a good lady, Cook says, and eat up good and proper.’ Dolly stood back. ‘Cook is worried about you, and so is Mrs Graham, and so is I, Mrs Aubrey. We all want you to be happy and smiling same as you were before the master’s birthday dinner.’

  Emmaline looked up, startled. She had had no idea until that moment quite how much the servants were all worrying about her. She felt guilty, as if she had brought them down by her misery-making and self-pity. She reached forward for a plate, and of course a sandwich.

  ‘Tell Cook I will try to eat the whole plate of sandwiches, and they are perfectly delicious,’ she instructed Dolly as the maid poured the tea for her. ‘And tell her that I will make more of an effort at dinner too. But tell her too that it is just a little difficult for a woman to eat on her own.’

  ‘That’s just what I said, Mrs Aubrey. I said since you are always on your own, the master away so much at the moment, your appetite is bound to drop off of you, same as it always does my mother, at certain times in particular.’

  Emmaline glanced up at Dolly. She had no idea what the young girl was talking about, but she was such a dear little girl she knew she must respond.

  ‘I shall eat like a horse from now on,’ she said, and Dolly quickly noted that her mistress was already sounding a great deal more herself.

  ‘I will tell Cook, right away I will. I will tell her that you will be eating for – that you will be eating more, eh?’

  There was silence after Dolly had clattered off, looking happily bright and perky. Emmaline ate as much as she could, and drank some tea, before once more picking up her notebook, fully expecting, yet again, to find that the poem had disappeared and she had merely dreamed it. But it was not so. The poem was there.

  Seeing her words again Emmaline felt oddly excited, as if she had been taken over by some invisible force that had become part of her and was now allowing her to express herself in a way she would never previously have thought possible. The more she read through her two finished works the more she longed to be able to show them to someone, just to see if they were passable.

  Of course! she suddenly realised as she sat sipping her tea in the pale glow of early evening. I could show them to the young man in the bookshop – to Mr Ashcombe! It was indeed a possibility, since of all the people she had now met at Bamford, there in Mr Ashcombe was someone who not only loved and appreciated poetry, but had achieved a first-class degree in English, which would more than qualify him to comment on the merits, or demerits, of her own verses. Naturally she would not be able to show him the poems as her own; they would have to be said to have been written by a friend, and because Emmaline herself had thought rather highly of them she had brought them into Mr Hunt’s bookshop for not only a second opinion but a far more qualified one.

 
It seemed to Emmaline, as she carefully locked her notebook away in her Davenport desk, that hers was a perfect plan, and what was more a feasible one too. With Julius still away on his business travels she had no worries about being spied upon. Moreover, while she was in town, she might even call and leave her card on Mrs Henry Bateson, who had done the same to her only the day before, calling and leaving another card with a message that expressed concern that Emmaline was unwell, and hoped she would soon be sufficiently recovered to be able to grace one of Mrs Bateson’s At Homes.

  It was colder the next day, with a chill wind blowing down from the north, hinting of bitter weather to follow. As her carriage drove Emmaline into town, she remarked to Agnes on the number of leaves that were now falling, and how soon winter would be upon them.

  ‘But then that’ll be a good thing for you, madam,’ Agnes replied, watching the branches of the trees in the park being shaken by the rising winds. ‘Getting married in the winter, like, means at least you’ll have something to look forward to: your anniversary. Thought of that should cheer you up during them long winter evenings.’

  Emmaline glanced at her maid, wondering whether the words had been said in true innocence or not, but seeing young Agnes’s open and unspoiled expression she realised that the girl was incapable of any sort of malice.

  ‘I do hope it’s not going to be a long, cold winter, Aggie. Not like the last one.’

  ‘Winter’s always long, madam,’ Agnes sighed. ‘Not always cold, but it’s always bloomin’ long, especially in England. If we was Spanishy winter’d be over in a second.’

  As instructed, the carriage stopped at the top of the street where Mr Hunt’s bookshop was situated, in order that Emmaline could pay a visit to her dressmaker in Lower High Street. Emmaline and Agnes hurried into the house, holding their bonnets down with one hand against the swirling wind. Here, while Agnes looked longingly at the silks and satins stacked in rolls on the counter of the crowded room, Emmaline was fitted for some new winter dresses.