Girl in a Blue Dress

by Gaynor Arnold

  But Alfred never acknowledged such perceptions in real life. Only once—when he’d been complaining about Mary-Ellen’s inefficiency in cleaning the grate, and by implication, my inefficiency in supervising her—did I speak up. “You know, you’re rather like Richard Masterman,” I said (lightly, of course, so as not to offend him).

  He looked startled: “Good Lord! Because the maid doesn’t clean the fender properly?”

  “No, because you are always finding fault with your wife.”

  He considered for a brief moment. “Well, I may put you right when you make an error, Dodo dear. But have I ever made you give up any person you loved, any thing you cared for? Have I gradually squeezed the life out of you until you are reduced to a faded wraith? Have I caused your demise in a silk plush bedroom hung with portraits of my disapproving ancestors, and laid you in the earth with much weeping and all too tardy promises to make amends?”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Of course not, Alfred. But—”

  “It seems to me that, far from fading away, you are positively bursting with health, positively thriving on the company of Yours Truly and his not inconsiderable fortune.” He laughed and caught me round the waist and pretended not to be able to get his arms to meet on the other side.

  I persisted, even while I dreaded his response. “But you would like me to be different. Own it.”

  He laughed. “Different? Well, only in that we can all be better, Dodo. We are all imperfect. It is the human condition. But marriage is for better or for worse. And you and I have not done too badly, have we? And as for the aforesaid Mary-Ellen, surely it is possible for her to clean one small grate without depositing black-lead on the hearth tiles, the fender, the tongs, the poker, and sometimes even the mantelpiece? One cannot approach within two feet of the fire without becoming a veritable Blackamoor. Perceive!” And he held up his palm and smeared it over his face till he looked like a surprised recipient of Mrs. Betterby’s Foreign and Native Child Catechism Corporation. And of course I laughed, as he knew I would. And it stopped me in my comparisons, as he also knew it would. And in that moment I realized how evasive he was about anything that touched on his own character. It seemed an odd thing for a writer. But when I’d remarked on it to O’Rourke, he’d laughed and said, “Oh, Alfred does things by instinct. It wells up from the depths of his heart and passes by his head entirely, so although he writes what he knows, he doesn’t always know what he writes.”

  I suddenly remember—O’Rourke! Poor fellow, what will he be thinking? I hurry my steps along and as soon as we arrive at the anteroom I ask Grayhead what has happened to my companion. “You mean the gentleman in the gig?” he says, somewhat disdainfully.

  “I do,” I answer, with equal disdain.

  “I believe he is still waiting. In the stable yard.” He waves his hand grandly, and I step outside and see O’Rourke sitting in the gig, the horse fretting a little. O’Rourke is blue with cold.

  “Have you been sitting here all this time?”

  “All two hours and twenty minutes.” He consults his pocket watch with a wry smile. “You and Her Majesty are obviously the best of pals.”

  “Did they not take the horse away? Or offer you any refreshment?”

  “They were distinctly frosty. When they heard my Irish brogue I think they expected me to start demanding Home Rule and making a dash at the Queen’s Person. And then they were confused as to what to make of me; in attendance but not invited, neither servant nor gentleman. In short, I think I embarrassed them.”

  “I am sure the Queen would have wanted you to be looked after.”

  “Oh, you know her mind, now, do you?” He raises his eyebrows.

  “Yes, Michael, I think I do. She is much misunderstood.”

  “Well, well. You surprise me. But come on up, Dodo, or I shall be turned into stone, and incapable of so much as holding the reins to drive you back.”

  I get up with some considerable effort on both our parts, and we set off back through the gates. He turns to me: “Do you fancy a little trot around Hyde Park? The horse would appreciate the exercise.”

  I should like to oblige him, but I am unsure. “I don’t know, Michael. Only four days after the funeral, to be riding with another man in a gig!”

  “You were happy enough to ride with me here. And who’s to notice, anyhow?”

  I cannot explain it. It’s irrational, I know, but riding around the park seems different—too pleasurable, somehow. “In any case, it’s getting dark.”

  “I see.” He is silent for a moment, then clicks the horse into a trot. After a while he looks sideways at me. “I take it Her Majesty did not allude to anything too unanswerable?”

  “No. Her Majesty has a proper sense of decorum. But I had a feeling she knew of the estrangement, and that it was not of my choosing.”

  “Well, I daresay she reads the papers.”

  “Yes.”

  I am not a friend of newspapers. Even now, when I read them, I fear to come across some disparagement of him: accusations that he was venal, greedy, vulgar, or hypocritical. If only he had not encouraged such speculation by making our differences so public! Lord knows, I tried to dissuade him from announcing our situation to the world, pleading that such domestic matters were no concern of anyone but ourselves. But he would not have it. The Readers have a right to know, he insisted, in that dogmatic way of his, as he secretly composed the list of all my failings as a wife and mother. But I cannot feel that the Readers’ rights were as paramount as he claimed. After all, they were as nothing when it came to Miss Ricketts. He clearly never felt the obligation to tell them about her in several paragraphs of black ink.

  Miss Ricketts. Bewitching Miss Ricketts. Ever since Kitty spoke of her light gray mourning and her hat with the “very smallest of veils,” I have been prey to that view of her, as over and over again she turns and looks at me with a mocking countenance. I always try to put the picture from me, but this time a sudden curiosity comes upon me and I decide to ask O’Rourke what I have always vowed I would never do. “How well did you know Miss Ricketts, Michael?”

  O’Rourke coughs prodigiously and suddenly begins to pay a great deal of attention to the conduct of the filly, who is trotting along perfectly nicely as it is. “Miss Ricketts?” he says rather vaguely, frowning as if at a distant memory, a name that is hard to place.

  “Yes,” I say, somewhat sharply. “Wilhelmina Ricketts. I think there is only one.”

  “Not well at all.” He flicks the whip. “In fact, I met her on a few occasions only.”

  “And what opinion did you form on these few occasions?”

  He sighs. “Dodo, why are you dragging this all up now?”

  “Why are you reluctant to tell me?”

  “What good will it do? Are you determined to add to your pain? Is Alfred’s passing not enough for you?”

  “I’ve never pressed you before, have I? I’ve never asked you to be disloyal. But Kitty says I must admit the truth.”

  “I’ve told you the truth. She was simply a nice-looking young woman. No prettier, certainly, than many others. Not very well educated, as far as I could ascertain. But with a certain appeal in the way she held her head. And with a certain charm in the way she talked. I could see from the start that Alfred was taken with her.”

  A cold feeling runs through me. “You didn’t tell me that at the time.”

  “But you know how Alfred was taken with many young ladies, and never any harm in it. To be honest, he was something of a father to her.”

  “He was old enough to be one, certainly. Kitty was the exact same age.”

  “Well, that’s what he said, Dodo: ‘Imagine if she were Kitty or Louisa. Without a father, and fallen on hard times? Would not I—would not you, Michael—wish there were a well-disposed person to come to their aid?’”

  “Hard times? Well, she was hardly a Dick Crawley or a Little Amy, was she?”

  O’Rourke scratches his nose. “Maybe not. But all the same,
she and her mother lived pretty much on the edge—that’s what he told me, at least. Always on the edge of destitution and debt, trying hard to remain respectable.”

  “Ah. That would have struck a chord.”

  “Well, you know how generous he was when his heart was touched. I can never forget that he gave me thirty guineas so I could set myself up to marry Clara. How was I to criticize him for helping someone else?”

  “So, are you saying that it was merely a matter of money between them?”

  “Yes—I mean, no. Well, not in that way. Or not very much. Oh, Heavens, Dodo, you’re confusing me!” He flicks the whip again. We travel on in silence. Then he murmurs in a low voice: “If you want the complete, utter, unvarnished, out-and-out truth, Dodo, I suppose I suspected something. There now! But I told myself I was wrong, that I was imagining things. And it was easy to do that, wasn’t it? Because Alfred always made sure you saw things exactly as he saw them. If he said it was an innocent friendship, another of his charity cases, then it was. It was so much simpler to agree than to challenge him. I was a coward not to do it, though. I let you down.” He’s becoming agitated and breathless.

  He was a coward; I cannot deny that. Yet I cannot blame him wholeheartedly. I, of all people, know how hard it always was to make a stand against Alfred’s certainties. In fact, I cannot think of a single person who did. “You didn’t let me down, Michael. No more than I let myself down, at any rate.”

  He shakes his head. “I should have had the courage to speak when things were in the bud, before he’d let himself get drawn in beyond recall. Although I don’t imagine my feeble powers of persuasion would have accomplished much.” He smiles wryly. “He’d have sent me away with that iron-hard look of disapproval and the conviction that somehow I was the one in the wrong.”

  I knew that iron-hard look only too well. I remember first seeing it when he spoke of his parents, his jaw tight, his eyes flinty: They will do as I say from now on. I’d been taken aback then; the expression had seemed so out of character. But, as time went on, I became more familiar with it, usually in response to some action—or inaction—of mine. Many an evening I would quake in anticipation as I heard his foot on the stair, or saw his reflection in the mantel glass as he came into the room. Would he take me in his arms and give me a resounding kiss? Or would he see only my untidy dress and the pins falling out of my hair? Please, Alfred, I would beg him beneath my breath, please be pleased with me. It was not his wrath I feared; I knew he would never be so low as to strike me. It was his coldness, the withdrawal of his love that made me hold my tongue when I would rather have spoken, and submit when I would rather have resisted. Like Celia Masterman, I would have done anything to keep him happy. And no doubt it was the same for O’Rourke and all the others who lived in the fitful light of his eye.

  We continue around the park. The streetlamps are already lit and they give the trees ghostly auras. The sound of our wheels gets louder in the cooling air. O’Rourke finally turns into the thoroughfare that will take us home. There is an elegant house on the corner where the lights are already blazing. A cluster of people is coming out. A woman in a stylish green hat looks up at me, and a man laughs.

  I imagine they know me, that they are talking about me, sitting up in a gig with a man who is not my husband. I feel my cheeks burn. I turn to O’Rourke: “Tell me the truth; was it common gossip? At the beginning, I mean—when I was so conveniently away in Leamington. Did everyone speak of him and Miss Ricketts?”

  He answers quickly now: “Well now, people will say all sorts of things when an older man takes an interest in a younger woman. Montague made his usual jokes about the ‘Great Hypocritical.’ And Thackeray couldn’t resist referring to ‘people living in Gibson-houses.’ But truthfully, Dodo, it was idle talk. There was nothing to gossip about.”

  “Would you have told me if there were?”

  He pauses a long time. “Would it have made you any happier?”

  “It might have prepared me. You can’t imagine the shock I felt when it all came at me so suddenly—like a locomotive. For all our disagreements, I never thought he would put me out of my own house.”

  “We were all shocked at that, Dodo.” He looks glum. “To be honest, I felt he was not the man I’d known all those years—and loved more than any man I had ever met. What he did then was shabby.” I catch the glimmer of a tear on his cheek. He has both hands on the reins, and cannot wipe it away.

  “Did he speak about her?” I am determined to press him now I have begun.

  “Only as I have already said—to sing her praises as an actress; to tell me what a difficult time she and her mama were having; to remark on her prettiness and grace and his determination to do something to help her in her profession. But once Lord Royston was over, she and her mama both seemed to disappear as if they were living in Timbuktu—although I gather it was only Peckham or somewhere. He never mentioned her to me again.”

  He is tantalizingly vague. “But before that—you saw them together?”

  “Not exactly together. I sat in on rehearsals a few times and he’d be his usual self, jumping up and down, telling everyone what to do, like J. Samuel Soapstone. She’d stand there next to her mama—meek, and a bit awestruck. But she knew how to make an entrance all right. Once she came downstage, slowly and gracefully, then stopped, lifting her head and asking him in a very coy manner whether that was ‘as he wanted her.’ And he said, ‘Perfect, exactly right.’ He whispered to me: ‘That girl will have’em all in tears, mark my words.’”

  My mouth is dry: “And did she?”

  “Yes, I confess. She was totally heartbreaking. And he was heartbreaking, too. They were heartbreaking together.” He shakes his head. “Good God, now I look back, it should have been obvious … but for some reason it was not.”

  We have arrived back home. Wilson must have been looking out for us, because she is at the door immediately: “Come in quick, madam. You must be perished.” She helps me down.

  “It’s Mr. O’Rourke who’s frozen. He had to wait two hours and twenty minutes while I was inside!”

  “Well, he would take you in the gig.” She looks at his pinched face and relents. “But if he’d care to come in, I’ve got a good fire going.”

  “Not today.” He looks relieved that he will not be forced to answer any more questions. But he seems rather sad, too. “I shall call tomorrow, if I may. And you can tell me all about your new friend, the Queen.” He clicks the horse into a trot and drives off.

  “I don’t think his day turned out how he imagined,” says Wilson.

  14

  “MR. NORRIS CALLED WHILE YOU WAS OUT,” WILSON says casually, when I have taken off my bonnet and cape and am back in front of the fire.

  “Augustus?” I am astounded. “What did he want?”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t tell me; I’m only a servant.” Wilson pulls a table close to my chair, puts the lamp on it. “But he left you this. ‘Be sure to see she gets it,’ he says. As if I’m in the habit of forgetting my duties.”

  It’s a note, on my own notepaper, in Augustus’s cramped hand. I take it. I’m not sure I want to read it. “Thank you,” I say. I don’t open it. Wilson hovers around me expectantly.

  “Well?” I say. “Is there something else?” I know perfectly well what.

  “The Queen, madam. What was she like?”

  “Much as in her pictures. Shorter than I expected, though. And a bit stouter, perhaps.”

  “I meant, in character. Was she very severe?”

  “No, not at all. Very kind, in fact, very agreeable. We got on excellently. I find we have much in common. A surprising amount.”

  “You see?” She looks triumphant, although I can’t imagine why she is taking the credit. For getting me into mourning, perhaps. For not showing myself up. “And is she as sad as they all say?”

  “She is very sad, certainly. She cannot stop talking of her dead husband, poor woman.”

  “Poor woman.” She looks
at me meaningfully.

  “I have more excuse. Alfred is hardly in his grave.”

  “That’s as may be. But you’ve been thinking of him every minute these last ten years. Don’t think I haven’t seen you sitting and reading his books and letters over and over. I don’t need to be one of them clairvoyants to know what’s been going on in your mind.”

  “Well, he was my life, I suppose …”

  “And Mr. Wilson was mine—after Davie was took. And then he was took in his turn. But there’s no point in grieving over what can’t be changed.”

  “No point? Oh, Wilson, were you not angry?”

  “Angry?”

  “Have you never raged against the unfairness of it all?”

  She looks uncomfortable. “A bit, maybe. When I was at my lowest. But I picked myself up and took myself in hand. It’s all for a purpose, I said.”

  “It’s hard to see the purpose, though, isn’t it?”

  She is silent. Then she clears her throat: “I’d better go and see to your supper. And you’d better open that letter of Mr. Norris’s. He was most particular you read it.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Wilson.” She goes. I open the letter.

  Dear Ma,

  Forgive ths scrawl but I did not expect to find you out. Kitty says yr always at home. I am in consultation wth my solicitors and thr is something I need to ask on Kitty’s behalf. I wd appreciate an appointment at yr earliest convenience.