O’ROURKE IS waiting for me when I come back. He’s sitting by the fire, chafing his hands, a worried look on his face. “Dorothea, thank Heavens! Where have you been? Mrs. Wilson says you’ve been gone since ten-thirty, and now it’s nearly half past three!”
“Half past three!” I say, affecting gaiety. “Is it? How the time has flown.”
“So, where on earth have you been?” O’Rourke is standing now. He seems to possess the hearthrug like a husband.
I want to tell him how interesting it has been to talk woman-to-woman for all this time, and how Miss Ricketts is not at all the person I had taken her for—but I find I don’t like to be questioned in this way: “I don’t have to answer to you, Michael, do I?”
I am shocked to hear my words. I’ve never addressed Michael in this way in my life, and he shrinks back a little. “No, of course not. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to pry. But I’ve been so concerned about you; half-mad with worry, in fact. Wilson had no idea where you were, and—well, you are not used to the outside world, Dodo. Much has changed in ten years. Even strong men are not advised to cross Hyde Park without life preservers.”
“Oh, Michael.” I am overcome by all my old feelings of friendship. I take his dry old hands and speak more softly: “I’m quite capable of looking after myself, you know. I may have been housebound for ten years, but my brain is still intact. I’ve only been sitting inside a London cab, and unless highwaymen with pistols have returned to the streets, I don’t think I was putting myself in any danger.”
“Ah, well, you see, it wasn’t so much the cab ride; it was the destination. That’s what was worrying me. Wilson said you were most secretive about where you were going, and after that conversation about Augustus the day before yesterday, I feared you might be trying to intervene with his creditors. Some of these moneylenders live in the most unsavory places, as if it went against the grain for them to spend sixpence on a half-decent abode. You take your life in your hands to go there, I swear. And a woman with jewelry, good clothes, and so forth—I tell you, Dodo, if you had not come back within the next ten minutes, I would have set out and scoured all the dens in St. Giles until I found you.”
“Michael!” I squeeze his hands between mine. “What a hero you are!”
He laughs and starts to wheeze. “Rather a broken old one. But my heart is still true.”
I look at him sharply. I hope—oh, I hope so much—that he is not going to make a declaration. He seems to think better of it, because he laughs and says, “I have always valued your friendship, Dodo. Let nothing come between us on that.”
“No. I hope nothing will. I hope nothing has. I hope we shall always be honest with each other.” I look directly into his pale eyes. There is no flicker of guilt or guile. On the contrary, he is puzzled.
“What do you mean, Dodo? Do you not know that already?”
“I have always believed it. But I need to know: Can I still rely on you—in everything?”
“Why ever not?” He looks hurt. “Dodo, what is this all about?”
“My heart has been too wrecked to bear another betrayal.”
“Betrayal? Good God, Dodo, what do you mean? What new idea is this? You pain me, Dodo, you pain me. If you have no faith in me, I shall be obliged to end our friendship—and God knows what I shall do with my life then!” He looks quite haggard.
I am instantly mortified. How could I ever have doubted him. “Oh, no, Michael! I’m sorry. I didn’t wish to offend you. But I need to be sure that with you, as with no one else in the world, I can be safe and tranquil.”
“Safe and tranquil?” He smiles ruefully. “I could have wished for more, but let us keep it at safe and tranquil. You have my word on it.” He pats my arm and helps me sit down. Gyp waddles up and tries to jump on my lap; I ignore him, and he lies at my feet instead, too fat to protest. O’Rourke leans forward to pat him. “So your mysterious errand had nothing to do with Augustus?”
“No. Nothing to do with him at all.”
He shakes his head. “I’m blessed if I can guess who, then.”
“Oh, you’ll never guess.” I arrange the folds of my gown and can’t help a little smile turning up the corners of my mouth as I anticipate the surprise he will show. I wait a beat before I say, “It was Miss Ricketts.”
And indeed his eyes open so wide I think they might pop out from their sockets. “Miss Ricketts? Dorothea, what possessed you? Where did you find her? What did you say?”
“Well, Michael, I had come to the conclusion that the very thought of her has been poisoning my mind. It’s not a good thing to live with hatred, especially when it is born of ignorance. As none of you could tell me anything to the purpose, I decided I must see her myself. And Eddie gave me the courage to try.”
“Eddie? You’ve seen Eddie?”
“Oh yes, didn’t you know?” I forget that I have not seen Michael since. “He turned up yesterday, quite airy and genial, as if it’s been his habit for years to take tea with his mama. He’s such a handsome boy, isn’t he?”
“Is he? I’ve never noticed. In fact, I haven’t seen that much of him, lately. He’s either been up at Oxford or out and about in town. Spending money, Alfred said. Always spending money! But to turn up so suddenly! And to suggest, moreover, that you visited that woman!” O’Rourke looks appalled.
“He didn’t suggest it, Michael; I didn’t say that. But at least he was prepared to discuss her. He didn’t think I would spontaneously combust if I heard Alfred’s name and hers in the same breath.”
O’Rourke frowns. “He had no business to discuss her with you. He owed you more than that.”
“He owed me nothing, Michael. I have injured him badly. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And yet, when he walked back into that room, he was the same lively, generous child I remember. People don’t change that much, do they? Alfie has turned out exactly as I expected. He was always a good child—and now he is a devoted husband and father. And isn’t Carrie a splendid girl! A writer, too! And such a careful mother; she always has her eye on Lucy, even when she has her mind on other things. And the child has a very strong character; she quite reminds me of Kitty!”
“The Infant Phenomenon reborn. Let’s hope she won’t drive her father to the same pitch of distraction. But,” he says, giving me the most earnest of looks, “are you going to tell me nothing about your visit to Miss Ricketts?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I look at him carefully.
He looks back at me. “This is a new mood, Dodo; you are not usually contrary. The woman’s had an effect on you. I don’t like it; you should not have gone.”
“So you would have stopped me if you’d had the power?”
He looks discomforted. “Well, I would have tried to dissuade you, certainly. What on earth did you hope to gain?”
“The Truth, Michael.”
“And so you have it at last, do you—the Truth?” He gives me a dry look.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But Miss Ricketts has told me things—things I cannot repeat—which have given me a better understanding of her position.”
“You understand her position? That seems an odd way round, Dodo. After all, you are the injured party. And you say you cannot repeat these mysterious things?”
“It is very confidential. I may tell no one. Not even Kitty.”
“I see.” He looks exasperated, and not a little hurt; we have always been so confiding in the past. “Then perhaps you will at least tell me how Kitty is getting along? I assume that particular topic is not sub judice. Will there be money to rescue her? I cannot imagine you would have gone off on your jaunt to Miss Ricketts if your daughter were about to be turned out of her house by the bailiffs.”
“Oh, yes.” I inform him excitedly of Kitty’s plans for a new life: the music lessons in Fulham, and Augustus in the wine trade. “She feels a sense of purpose now, and is convinced that Augustus has turned over a new leaf.”
O’Rourke makes a disbelieving face. “I wish I had as much
faith in that man as she has—or pretends to have. But I hope they succeed, I really do. Kitty has always been a favorite of mine. When she is in the right mood, she positively sparkles.”
She does, and it always warms my heart to see her sparkling away—but the sad fact is that she lacks all application. That was Alfred’s great gift, a transcendent capacity for taking trouble, as Carlyle would say: all regularity and punctuality and determination. But Kitty was born into too much comfort; and even worse, she has shackled herself to a man who has never worked in his life. “Oh, Michael, I blame myself for so many of her troubles. I have given her a poor pattern to follow.”
“Nonsense! You are one of the best women I know. Even if you take it into your head to pay secret visits to ladies who are no better than they should be—and cause great agonies to your faithful friends the while.”
He tries to brush it aside, to make me feel comfortable. But I am not comfortable. And moreover, I shouldn’t be; I have a right to criticize myself even if he does not. “But I have never done anything in my own right, Michael. And Sissy’s no better—nor even poor dear Lottie, God rest her soul. Kitty has only had to look at the three of us to see we have given up our whole lives to serve the needs of men.”
He looks at me quizzically: “Is that so very bad? Are we men such awful tyrants?”
I look at his kind, wrinkled face, and know he has never in his life treated a woman with other than the greatest consideration. “Oh, you are so devoted to us and protective of our every need. But that is the trouble. You treat us as children.”
He groans and rolls his eyes: “You will be expecting The Vote soon.”
The Vote! That was the last cause I ever thought to espouse. “I’ve never thought of such a thing!” I rejoin. “Yet all the same how can it be proper for a woman to be married twenty years, then cast aside on a pittance? How can we lose the right to see the very children we have raised? Why do we have to go cap in hand for every bit of money that we need? If women made the laws, wouldn’t things be different?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sure Parliament would be a nicer place—full of teapots and sewing boxes.” He laughs.
He makes light of it. All men make light of it. As if any attempt to change things is ridiculous. And I admit that I have laughed, too, as Alfred poked his savage fun at Mrs. Pewgious dispensing tea, toast, and emancipation in the drawing room, while her children perfected lies and larceny in the kitchen. I turn on him: “Is it so singularly amusing for a woman to have ideas of her own? To wish to be a person as well as a mother? If one could be a writer, as Carrie is, or an actress like Miss Ricketts, one has some self-respect.”
“Miss Ricketts! Self-respect?” He starts, and makes as if to get up. “How on earth can you believe that of her?”
“Oh, you are prejudiced, Michael. She is a young woman of taste and delicacy. And she has suffered, too. She has lost all her chances through her association with Alfred.”
“So that’s what this is all about! Oh, Dodo, you are too gullible! Such women know what they are doing. She’s come out well from it. And she’s been clever enough to spin you some sort of tale to gain your sympathy.”
“On the contrary,” I say, beginning to warm to my theme. “It is clear that she has lost the best years of her life confined to a little house in Norwood, waiting on Alfred’s hour of arrival, playing second fiddle to all his other interests. She might have been as famous as Mrs. Siddons, you know; she might have been one of the brightest names of the century. But she’ll be forgotten. No one will remember Wilhelmina Ricketts as a great actress. And of course no one will even think of Dorothea Millar except as a footnote to the life of Alfred Gibson!”
O’Rourke has the look of a man watching the sun set upwards. “Well now!” he says, trying to gather his thoughts. “Well now, Dodo, I see your appointment with Miss Ricketts seems to have turned you into something of a Radical.”
“And why not?” I say warmly. “Alfred was a Radical; you were a Radical; and at one time every Radical in London passed through my house and held forth in my drawing room. The only surprise should be that I have waited until now to become a Radical myself!”
I hear a cough and Wilson is standing at the door. “Sorry, madam, I heard a noise. Did you call?” She gives O’Rourke a hostile stare as if she suspects he is upsetting me, and that she will, on my nod, eject him from the premises.
I reassure her. “No, we were becoming a little excitable, in the way of old friends. And as an old friend, Mr. O’Rourke will be staying to supper. I don’t want to hear a word about lack of provisions. If we don’t have sufficient, please purchase some more immediately.” I hand her the change from Eddie’s ten-pound note, which she takes with a mixture of uncommon satisfaction and bad grace.
“You see,” I say, when she has gone, “It is a revelation to me what money will do. It gives one a sense of power.”
O’Rourke looks at me miserably. “Power! Why should a woman want power, for Heaven’s sake? Why are you talking like this?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? It makes you all uncomfortable when a woman voices her views. Ann Baskerville once told me that she’d been called ‘immoral’ for daring to say Biddy Lipsom was a heroine. And Alfred wouldn’t employ Mrs. Casby for writing ‘a little too near the sexual side of things.’ You all get so angry when we don’t fit your molds. Women aren’t angels; why do you try to make us so?”
O’Rourke is dumbfounded. Poor man, it is not his fault. He rubs his hands together and tries to think of something to say. “Men don’t have things all their own way,” he says finally. “Many’s the poor devil whose life has been ruined because some woman has refused to marry him. Women have all the ‘power’ there, Dorothea. All the power of yea and nay.”
“One little moment of power, very early on when we hardly know how to exercise it. But once we are married … well, we can’t say yes or no then, can we?”
He looks embarrassed; he is afraid that I am about to delve into the secrets of the bedroom. But I’m not concerned with bedroom matters; I’m thinking of all the relations between men and women. I see how women are so delicately poised, so dependent upon the goodwill of their husbands for their very survival. As long as Alfred was content with me, I had everything I could wish for, but once I no longer pleased him, I was cast off with no redress. “And you know how even patterns of husband-hood go astray,” I cry. “How could I have thought, when we first met, that dear, doting Alfred would be so cruel to me?”
“I don’t suppose, back in those days, that ‘dear doting Alfred’ would have thought it himself. I think it caught him by surprise more than anyone that you and he were no longer suited.”
“But could he not see—could no one see—that it wasn’t fair to put me out as he did, to separate me from my children, my house, my servants—while he continued to enjoy it all unhindered?”
O’Rourke shakes his head. “No, Dodo, God knows it wasn’t fair. I suppose you could say that in general, Life’s not fair.”
I turn and blaze at him as if I were Kitty. “Then should we accept that there is no possibility of change? After all, Alfred wanted change more than anyone alive. He wanted the mean to be made generous, the debauched redeemed, and the lost to find a purpose in life. In fact, he wanted everyone to be in permanent good humor and sit around one great family table with a merry shout of God Bless Us All! How, then, could he be so adamant with me, his wife?”
O’Rourke stares at his hands a long time. “I suppose you weren’t part of his rosy fantasy, Dodo; you were reality. And he couldn’t endure the reminder that life sometimes went wrong, and that even the One and Only couldn’t will a happy ending for himself. And it enraged him to be so—so—how can I put it?”
“Powerless?” I suddenly understand Alfred’s rages, his wild behavior. It must have been terrifying for him to find everything slipping from his grasp: his reputation, his family, his self-esteem. In those moments he was as weak as a woman. “Is that why he di
d the Readings, to assert his mastery, to be up there on the platform in charge of the world once more?”
O’Rourke pauses. “You may be right. He couldn’t stop doing it. Allow me one more tour, Mikey, he’d say. I have to drown Poll again for the delectation of the masses. Word has got out and the public are already forming queues.” O’Rourke laughs, shortly. “But as he was confident of earning such great sums, I suggested he might at least pay you a little more each month.”
“That was hardly necessary,” I say quickly.
“Wasn’t it? I thought you were all for fairness. Do you think it was fair for you to manage on such a fraction of what he earned?”
He has caught me out. But I would never have demeaned myself to ask. “If he had given it freely, that is another matter, but you shouldn’t have mentioned it. Wilson and I were managing well enough.”
“I saw you struggle. And he must have felt guilty about it, because he was at pains to explain himself—over three or four pages at least—saying that he was practically in Queer Street because ‘everyone in the world’ was reliant on him and that he had no resources left to gratify a single extra demand. I have to rent half the habitable houses in London for my multitude of ungrateful dependants, and am obliged to keep a fleet of carriages for my daughters to attend soirees where, if I am lucky, they may find a husband or two apiece who will take them off my hands. I have to pay the exorbitant wages of the whole army of servants necessitated by the continual presence of house guests who stay so long I am thinking of having their names engraved on brass plates outside the front door. Not to mention that by some strange process unknown to me, every Person of Note who comes to London seems to fetch up on my doorstep, and, being admitted, proceeds to loll about in my drawing room and read my newspapers and sleep in my sheets, and use my hot water and eat his way through my larder and drink his way through my wine cellar, as if I were a Public Hotel! I swear that last week I came across a dozen or so gentlemen whom I did not recognise in the slightest, taking walks on my lawn and picking hot-house flowers for their buttonholes while smoking Havanas from my personal store!”
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