Girl in a Blue Dress

by Gaynor Arnold

  The day after she was twenty-one, they married. I did not attend the ceremony, but Wilson made them a wedding cake, and on their return we drank a toast. It resembled a funeral more than a wedding, though. The weather was icy, and the champagne seemed to freeze my lips as I raised the glass to drink. Poor Kitty, I thought. She’d lived all her life as the daughter of a great man and might have looked forward to a grand reception at Park House—silver, mirrors, candles, flowers, and a dining table stretching to infinity. Instead she had to make do toasting her future in front of a fat old woman and a grim-faced servant, with Gyp barking at Augustus’s heels.

  “Well, Kitty,” said Augustus. “You’ve done it! You’ve defied the Great Man.”

  “Serve him right!” She laughed, although I sensed panic under her laughter. “It’s time someone stood up to him. Beg pardon, dear Mama, but you never did, did you? So he expects everybody to cave in sooner or later. But Augustus and I are made of sterner stuff.”

  “Yes indeed!” Augustus kissed her ardently, and I wanted to cry, because I knew no one would ever kiss me in that way again.

  “God Bless you both!” I said, with tears in my eyes. “Look after her, Augustus, won’t you?”

  “I can look after myself!” said Kitty.

  I only wish she had been able to.

  19

  WHEN WE HAVE FINISHED OUR TEA, SISSY SUGGESTS, to my surprise, that we should tour the whole house and see what things I might like to take away with me.

  Louisa looks suddenly wan. “Would you mind if I don’t come with you? My head is so bad, I need to lie down.”

  I look at the poor thing, such a lump of misery in her plain black gown, her hair scraped back so unbecomingly. I take her hand: “I hope you’ve chosen something for yourself, Lou? I shouldn’t wish to deprive you of any keepsakes from your father.”

  She looks awkward, flushes—and I see in a flash that they have already picked over his belongings. “I’ve already got his traveling pencil case,” she says. “And the little mirror he used to carry in his pocket so he could make sure his hair was tidy!”

  “Not that it ever was,” I add.

  She looks at me with the sudden recognition of a shared memory. “No, it would spring up like a jack-in-the-box, wouldn’t it?” She laughs, a lovely free, open laugh, and I see the child she used to be.

  “Oh, Louisa, my dear Mouse!” I go to her; hold her in my arms. She is soft and cushioned, not brittle as Kitty is. We resemble two cottage loaves.

  She lays her face against my bodice. “Oh, Mama! What shall I do? What shall I do? I miss him so much!”

  “We all do, Lou. But it has to be borne.”

  She lets herself be embraced, then pulls away suddenly, as if stung. “I’m sorry, Mama, I must go upstairs. I must lie down again.”

  “You are always lying down, Mousey,” Sissy says gently, but with submerged exasperation. “It’s a little morbid to be moping around all the time doing nothing. If you don’t want to help me, why don’t you go to the seaside for a week or two? Muffin’s offered to have you at any time. You can amuse young John and Leticia. It may help you forget.”

  She glares at Sissy. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to forget. I want to remember—and he’s already starting to fade!” She makes blindly for the door and blunders through, her handkerchief at her face.

  Sissy shakes her head at me. “I can do nothing with her.”

  I remember Lottie’s words when Alfred was similarly steeped in grief. “Allow her some time,” I say.

  We get up and walk slowly around the ground floor. Sissy flings open doors and ushers me into rooms like a majordomo, and I try not to be annoyed by her patronage. The house is familiar yet strange. Colors have been changed, some new furniture bought, but the rooms are much the same. We progress up the red-carpeted stairs to the drawing room with its long windows overlooking the garden; then to the library, still with its complement of books; and then up a half-landing to our bedroom—my bedroom, as it became for that unhappy year, and then his again. Sissy hesitates, then opens the door. The light floods in as it always did, but now the tree has grown up outside, and the autumn sun flickers through its branches, making patterns on the walls. Our big brass bed is still there, but with a more somber quilt. The marble washstand is the same, with its nice blue jug and bowl—and the hanging wardrobe with the oval looking glass in the middle. But there is a new round table by the bed, with a new lamp on it; and my dressing table has gone, and his chest of drawers has been moved in from the dressing room next door. On top of it are a small looking glass, his dressing case, and his tortoiseshell brush and comb. Over the mantel is an etching of a view of the Alps, and on the shelf a pair of candlesticks and a clock. Otherwise no ornaments. The room seems so plain, so sad. I want to embrace and love it.

  Sissy stands in the middle of the room. “There’s not much here, as you see, except his clothes.”

  My heart jumps. “Clothes? Oh, may I see?”

  She opens the wardrobe, and there they are: his favorite checked traveling coat, his silk-braided evening coat, a red-quilted smoking jacket, and others I do not know—all brushed and immaculate. On the shelf, a pile of trousers folded neatly. And above them, dozens of waistcoats in a blaze of pattern. Along the bottom, his boots—six pairs, shiny as the day they were bought, but worn down in the heels from his endless walking. I see the shape of his feet in them, see his quick walk and the way he stood as if ready to spring forward on the instant.

  She crosses the room and opens the drawers. Shirts—dozens of them. I walk over and bury my head in them: lavender; “O Mistress Mine;” that first night; the hornpipe; dancing till our feet ached. “I’d like to have one.”

  She shrugs. “Well, there are plenty.”

  I look around for the sight of any intimate object. But it is as if he has removed everything of himself from the room, except for his clothes. My eye lights on a small inlaid chest in the corner. It has a curved top and a small ivory escutcheon. “What is in there?”

  She shrugs. “It’s locked, and I can’t find any key that will open it. I need to get Mercer with some sort of tool. But it’s a pretty thing. I don’t want to break it.”

  I have a moment of blinding enlightenment: a key that opens nothing in the house; a little intricate key that I have seen him with a million times, taking it out of his coat at night, placing it carefully with his watch and chain, and putting it back again next day. I had always assumed it was a key to a cash box at his office. But this little chest looks made for it.

  “Which coat was he wearing that day?”

  She looks at me, startled. But she goes to the wardrobe and pulls out an alpaca jacket. I put my hand inside and feel for the slim opening within the pocket which he had made in all his clothes. For my most pertinent pencil, he said. At the bottom there is metal. I draw it out. We look at each other. My heart is racing.

  “Try it.”

  I bend with difficulty and put the key in the lock. It fits perfectly, turns easily; it has been kept oiled. Sissy and I open the lid. We stare down at something white.

  It is a woman’s frock. I know it; I know it very well. I lift it gently from its folds, the smell of camphor rising up around me.

  Sissy is puzzled. “Whose is it? Yours, Dodo?” Although she would have been hard-pressed to imagine when I would last have fitted into something so small.

  “No,” I say, pulling it up to its full height. “It belonged to Alice.” I recognize it as one of the five new gowns she had made before she came to live with us. It is almost thirty years old.

  We look at it in silence. Sissy turns to me: “Did you know?”

  I shake my head.

  In the bottom folds of the frock is a little calf-bound book. I pick it up. It is The Lyric Poems of John Keats, her own copy, given by him. I remember her taking it with her everywhere, tucking herself into corners, reading till her eyes gave out. There is a single sheet of notepaper acting as a marker, and the volume f
alls open at “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The third stanza is underscored in pencil. The writing on the marker is in his hand: This book belonged to my darling Alice, who adored to read about love, and who awakened love in all who knew her. Especially me. Especially me. Especially me.

  Sissy takes the book from me, reads the words on the paper. Her face flushes.

  “He wrote that? Is that why Mama—?”

  “No, she never saw it, I’m sure. Nor did I. Alfred took the book away from her bedside the night she died.”

  My heart is thumping. I know what Sissy is thinking. It does seem a loverlike thing to have written. But for Alfred, love was such a radiant feeling that he never stopped to divide it into what was suitable for a wife, or for a sister, or for a friend. All the same, I am struck at the depth of his feelings. He must have taken the frock from her closet during one of those vigils he used to keep after she died, sitting alone in her room, sometimes with a candle, sometimes in the dark. I imagine him burying his face in her frock as I have buried mine in his shirt. I imagine him taking the delicate white muslin, folding it very carefully, and putting it in the little chest. And taking her favorite book, and reading where she had marked. Adding his own words, tucking the book into the deepest creases of the gown, closing the lid, and locking it. I realize that all the time we were married he must have kept the chest in his dressing room and the key next to his heart. He must have looked at its contents in private, enjoyed endless moments of grief: Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.

  “Anyway,” Sissy says stoutly, “Mama was wrong about Alfred. He was a man of morals.” Then she colors. I know what she is thinking: Wilhelmina Ricketts.

  We have not spoken of Miss Ricketts, and I can see that Sissy does not acknowledge Miss Ricketts’s existence. And Miss Ricketts, in her wisdom, has clearly kept out of Sissy’s sphere. But as I stare down at this little chest, I wonder what other intimate objects he left behind, and what else that loathsome woman has managed to lay her hands on. A thought occurs to me: “Where is his watch?”

  “Alfie has it.”

  Thank God. I shouldn’t want Miss Ricketts to have the thing that was always with him, that was literally closest to his heart. I can see Alfred now, drawing it out by the chain with his usual flourish, opening the case swiftly, checking the time, and then spinning it back neatly into his pocket in a way that never failed to amuse the children.

  “And Alice’s ring?” I ask her. “What became of that?”

  “He wanted it buried with him. I made sure it was.” Sissy strokes the fabric of the gown as if it is a sleeping child. “It was her dying wish, wasn’t it? That he should wear it forever?”

  “Did he tell you that?” He told the story so often I wonder if he’d come to believe it in the end. “It wasn’t strictly true, you know; she was insensible when we found her. But he was so devastated with grief, I don’t think he remembered it rightly.” Or, rather, he changed it to what he wanted it to be; but I don’t tell Sissy that.

  Sissy shakes her head. “He was quite distracted, wasn’t he? I remember you arguing with Mama. And I remember Alfred coming into the room with tears streaming down his face and his hair all awry—telling you both to be quiet. Young as I was, that impressed itself on me. The way he was so wild and yet so severe, and moreover dressed in a bright blue waistcoat with the buttons done up the wrong way.”

  “Yes, he was quite beside himself in those first few days. He said that when he died he wanted to be buried in the same grave with her. Mama said the idea was indecent, a married man and a single girl. But he was so deranged with grief, Papa said it was better not to argue.”

  “Well, he’s buried in the Abbey, now. Mother need have no fears; Alice can rest unmolested.”

  “Oh, Sissy, that Abbey business! You know how he hated all that stuff and nonsense! Why did you let it happen?”

  She shrugs. “The Public. There were demands.”

  I nod. Of course. The Public.

  We sit together for a while, lost in our own thoughts. Then we close the chest and lock it. I take his shirt in my arms and we leave the room. We continue around the whole house, collecting items on the way, and when we have finished, Sissy insists that I go home in the carriage. She says it is ridiculous to attempt to take a huge tea chest in a hansom cab, and that I shall need the services of her footman Robert to take it up the stairs—so I accept. I have forgotten that the old brougham is such a comfortable vehicle, and I ride home in style.

  WHEN I GET back, I find O’Rourke and Kitty are in attendance. They are surprised to see the carriage, and intrigued by the box Robert lugs up the stairs together with the carpetbag of letters.

  “Mama!” says Kitty, jumping up the moment I come in. “Wilson says you’ve been to see Aunt Sissy! Is that true?”

  “I have indeed.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She pouts, like a child.

  “Because I wasn’t aware that I needed your permission, Kitty.”

  She flushes. “Not permission, Mama. Only—why did you go? What did you say to her? Did you see Mousepatch or Eddie?”

  “I saw Sissy. And Louisa. And Mrs. Brooks. And that strange man, Mercer.”

  “The one who lurks in the hall, holding a silver salver, looking disapproving?”

  “The same.” We laugh. Kitty and I always did find the same things funny.

  “But what did she say?”

  “Many, many things.” Kitty is crowding me as usual. I shoo her off. “Give me some space, child. Let me take off my bonnet and shawl!” I turn to O’Rourke, who is keeping out of the way on the window seat. “Michael, I hope you’ve not been waiting long.” I notice he has a pink carnation in his lapel today.

  “Not at all! And I’ve been royally entertained by Kitty. She can make a story out of anything, exactly as her father could. And Wilson has provided us with many excellent cups of tea.”

  Oh dear—more tea! I ease myself down by the fire. “Well, I can hardly believe that I’ve seen not only Sissy, but Lou as well.”

  “I’m surprised they let you past the front door. They guard that place like a prison!” Kitty looks cross, as though she wished they had not let me in.

  “Well, admittedly, she hid away at first. Hoped I would give up and go away, no doubt. But when I started to help myself to the ornaments—”

  “Mama, you didn’t!” Kitty looks up with a pleased expression quite at variance with her words.

  “Well, not quite, but I ordered a box from that Mercer man, and when she thought I was about to take things away unobserved, she had to face me faute de mieux. And I’m glad. She is my sister, after all—and I believe we have come to something of an understanding. Most excitingly, I’ve brought back some wonderful mementos.”

  “More things to dust, I’ll be bound,” Wilson remarks, coming back into the room. “This place is enough of a museum already.”

  “It’s a very nice place,” says O’Rourke. “I won’t have anything said against it. I am always most comfortable here.”

  “Well, gentlemen callers don’t have to keep it all clean. And gentlemen callers can sit and drink tea all day with no thought to the cost involved.”

  “Wilson!” She may take liberties with me, but I cannot allow her to bully my guests.

  “Oh! Master’s collar!” Kitty has fished it out from the top of the box and is holding it up like a diadem.

  “Good Heavens,” says O’Rourke. “I’d forgotten all about that poor hound—how you’d call to him, and he’d run the opposite way! Alfred loved to demonstrate that singular prowess of his. He’d cry, ‘Here, Master!’—and the dog would set off like a rocket straight to the coal hole. It never failed.”

  “Now, don’t meddle with things!” I pull the collar from Kitty’s hand and put it back. “Time enough for that, later.”

  “Talking of which, madam,” says Wilson more loudly. “Are Mrs. Norris and Mr. O’Rourke staying for luncheon? I’ll have to go to the pastry cook’s for a meat pie this
very minute, if so.”

  “Why not?” I’m feeling buoyant. “Let us have two meat pies—veal and fowl! Let us have oysters, too, and a bottle of wine! Let us lunch in style. I am sure the housekeeping will stretch.” For a moment I feel like Alfred, who adored impromptu feasts.

  Wilson goes out with a certain Look on her face, and I know the man at the pastry cook’s will be in for some hard dealing. But I feel very blithe somehow, so I ask Kitty to bank up the fire, and while we are waiting, I tell them what has happened—some of it, at any rate. Kitty clearly knows nothing of what Augustus has told me, so I can’t explain the reason for my adventure. But she is pleased that I have stood up to Sissy, and have had some of my own things returned.

  “You have more correspondence, I see.” O’Rourke indicates the carpet bag full of black-edged letters.

  “More people I don’t know, I expect. But it’s good of them to write.”

  “Sissy has been inundated with correspondence!” remarks Kitty. “I’ve seen them in her sitting room, all neatly stacked. And I’ve had dozens myself, and so has Alfie. In fact, Mama, I can hardly believe there was enough paper and ink in the world to accommodate them all.”