by Joan Aiken
Was he now prepared to accept her as his true cousin? And if so, what difference might that make to their situation?
Silently slipping out of bed and putting on her gray stuff dress (for the morning was a cool one, although it promised to be fine later), Delphie continued to ponder about her cousin Gareth. What had he been doing, for instance, at Lady Dalrymple’s party, where he seemed so bored and angry? And what were the business affairs that kept him in London?
Wrapping herself in a shawl, Delphie softly let herself out and ran down the stairs. She had left a note for her mother, giving a few early shopping errands as the excuse for her absence, but she trusted that Mrs. Carteret would not wake, and that it need not be read.
Amusing herself with many wild guesses as to what Gareth intended to show her—a puzzle as to which she had no real clue whatsoever—Delphie walked lightly and rapidly in the direction of Piccadilly, threading her way along the narrow streets, passing many small carts and barrows proceeding in the opposite direction, loaded with greenstuff, eggs, milk, and other country produce for the markets of Soho.
She arrived early at the meeting place, but stood waiting with no fear of being accosted; at this hour of day only working people were abroad, and they were too busy to trouble her.
Presently, coming eastward along Piccadilly, she saw a little procession which at first she took for more market folk. There was a donkey, its panniers loaded, several very small persons, and one very tall one. When they came closer she realized to her astonishment that these were Gareth, accompanied by several of the children, three boys and a girl. Closer still she found them to be two of the older boys, Tristram and Arthur, little curly-headed Lance, and the red-haired Iseult.
“Good morning!” Delphie greeted them, smiling, when they came up to her. The children gave her cheerful greetings in return, but Gareth looked extremely grim, as if he now greatly regretted the impulse which had caused him to issue the invitation and was wishing that he could find some means to rescind it.
Observing his mood, Delphie made no attempt to break into his evidently somber thoughts, but calmly fell into step beside the children as they proceeded down St. James’s Street. She looked about this street with interest, for Mrs. Carteret had many times besought her never to go down it unescorted, since it was lined on either side with gentlemen’s clubs, and any unaccompanied female who ventured through it would naturally be taken for a harlot. But at this time of day not a face looked from any of the windows; the only people to be seen were cleaners, scrubbing front steps.
“Where are we going?” Delphie inquired of little Isa, who was walking beside her, casting shy looks up into her face, while the boys squabbled as to who should lead the donkey, and Gareth strode morosely ahead. They seemed to be proceeding in the direction of Westminster.
“Going?” The child opened large pale blue eyes in her thin freckled face. “Why, we are going to give poor Papa his breakfast, of course!”
“Indeed? I did not know that.”
“A different set of us go every morning,” confided Isa. “At first, we all wanted to do it. Now nobody does, very much; so Uncle Gareth said it would be fair if we all take turns.”
“I see. Certainly that does sound best. But why does nobody wish to go, now? Do you not want to see your Papa?”
Delphie was dying of curiosity. Where could Una’s husband be? She had assumed that he must be dead. If alive, why did he live apart from his family? She did not like to interrogate the child—the more so as Gareth, striding irritably ahead, was within earshot Why had he not previously mentioned the existence of the children’s father? But then he had not mentioned his sister, either. Delphie realized that she did not even know Una’s married name. And, since her husband was alive, why did he support his family so inadequately?
“Well, we want to see him quite,” explained Isa, with scrupulous honesty. “But we should love him more if he ever seemed pleased to see us. He is so busy writing his poetry always, you see.”
“Poetry? Your father is a poet, then, my little one?”
“Oh, yes; did you not know that? I had thought that everybody knew about papa,” said Isa naively. “He writes such beautiful poetry that I had thought the whole world knew about him!”
“Very likely they may; but, you see, I am not certain what your father’s name is,” Delphie explained, as the procession wound out across Westminster Bridge. Early mist was rising from the Thames; a few barges floated on the pearl-colored water, their reflections hanging motionless below them.
“Do you not? Oh, how strange!” Isa was evidently astonished that any person should be unaware of her father’s name. “Why, our father is Thomas Palgrave; Mama says he is the greatest poet of the century,” she added primly.
“Thomas Palgrave! Upon my word,” exclaimed Delphie, greatly startled. “You are certainly right in thinking that all the world knows about him; and I daresay your Mama may be right also in—in her estimate of his poetry. He is a very fine writer indeed; you may well be proud to have such a papa.”
“Yes, we are,” agreed Isa with a certain lack of enthusiasm, “only it is just not always very convenient having to take his breakfast and supper each day.”
Having crossed the bridge, Gareth now turned eastward along Lower Marsh Street Not very well acquainted with London south of the Thames, Delphie was soon quite lost, and had no notion where they were going; they crossed a wide, dirty thoroughfare, Blackfriars Road, and continued in an easterly direction.
“This seems a long way for you to go twice a day,” Delphie remarked. “Could you not live nearer to your father? Or he to you?”
“Oh, no!” Isa sounded surprised. “We, you see, live in Uncle Gareth’s house. And poor Papa is not able to move. At first we did not mind it; we thought it was quite an adventure; specially when Uncle Gareth bought the donkey to carry the things; and the boys still quarrel about who is to lead him.”
“He is a very nice donkey,” agreed Delphie.
“Oh, and he is so good! And it makes such a difference to carrying Papa’s clean laundry, and all the books he needs!”
Some eccentric recluse, was all that Delphie could conclude; a recluse who chose to live apart from his invalid wife and his ten children.
Naturally she had heard of Thomas Palgrave. Mrs. Carteret, exceedingly addicted to poetry, made a point of procuring his works from the circulating library as soon as possible after publication; she had read The Baron, The Lord of the Isles, The Troubadour, The Pirate, The Sultan’s Bride, The Count of Castile, and the rest of them. Delphie, who, on the whole, found that she preferred prose to poetry, had skimmed through these works, and could see their merit; certainly they had a fine and sonorous flow; yet, to her mind, they left something to be desired; she could not quite say what it was; she preferred the verses of Pope. But she was impressed by the fact that she was to meet (so it seemed) this well-known poet, and only perplexed that he seemed to live in such an insalubrious quarter of London. Now they had crossed Southwark Bridge Road, and were among even tinier and more twisting ways, where the streets were unpaved and small spotty children, very insufficiently clad, sailed chip boats in the gutter.
Delphie tried to recall what she knew about Thomas Palgrave, but found that her information was decidedly scanty. He was a younger son of a minor but respectably connected family in the West Country—Bristol? Plymouth?—he had come to London, made a great name for himself, and then—then? She did not know. He seemed to have sunk into obscurity again.
“Now we’re nearly there,” said Isa with an air of relief.
They had crossed—still continuing eastward—another wide main road, at an intersection where five roads met, presided over by a handsome but black and grimy church, whose bells were just ringing for early morning service.
“That’s St. George’s,” said Isa, skipping joyfully. “Now, Papa is just across the street. And the way back never seems so long. Sometimes Uncle Gareth tells us stories.”
&nb
sp; Opposite St. George’s church rose a high wall, intersected by a pair of iron gates. Outside these gates stood waiting a considerable crowd of nondescript-looking people, most of them carrying crumpled paper bags, or small dingy bundles, or loaves of bread, or jugs of milk. They looked shabby, resigned, yet expectant; and almost immediately Delphie realized why, as St. George’s clock struck half-past seven, whereupon a person appeared inside the gates holding an enormous key, and, with a certain amount of clanking and grinding, unlocked them. Instantly the waiting crowd began to move purposefully through; this was evidently a regular and familiar pilgrimage.
Arthur and Tristram led the donkey through, while Gareth paused and said something to the man with the key, who glanced at Delphie and nodded.
“What is this place?” whispered Delphie, walking beside Isa down a narrow entry inside the gate. Another locked door was opened at the farther end, which admitted them to a kind of lobby, across which they passed and so through another door into a yard. Here the boys, who had preceded them, were already tying the donkey in a businesslike manner to a large iron pump, covered with green slime, which stood beside a grating.
Delphie looked around her with amazement, and some consternation. The narrow paved yard where they stood was surrounded by a high wall, spiked at the top. Despite the clearness of the spring day, this place seemed both damp and stuffy; Delphie wondered if the sun, even at midday, was able to shine down into its murky recesses. In the middle rose an oblong barrack building, which was composed of a double row of houses, built back to back, with a number of doors along each side, and a row of chimneys like baluster knobs along the top. The dejected pilgrims, with their offerings of bread and eggs and jugs of milk and clean laundry, were now disappearing with the speed of rats into the various doorways. Tristram and Arthur had unloaded a number of supplies from the donkey’s panniers, and now disappeared likewise.
“What is this place?” repeated Delphie, this time to Gareth as he came up to her.
“This place? Why, it’s the Marshalsea,” he replied. “Have you never been here? Nor had I until five years ago. Now you see where the debtors of London are housed.”
He spoke with a kind of angry irony, as if he would have liked to make a joke about the place, but found it impossible.
Delphie shuddered; she had, of course, heard of the Marshalsea, where people who could not pay their debts might be imprisoned for ten years—fifteen years—twenty-five years—even for their whole lifetime; people died in there, she knew, babies were sometimes born; a dreary miasma of despair seemed to hang over the prison. It was not terrifying, exactly, but dank, sad, unutterably ugly and dismal.
Little Isa had run up the stairs with Lance, the youngest boy, she carrying a loaf, he a bag of apples; Delphie found herself temporarily alone with Gareth.
“Is the children’s father—is Thomas Palgrave in here?” she asked in a whisper—as if it mattered who heard them.
Gareth shrugged. “In here—ay, and has been ever since the birth of the younger twins. Here he remains, and who knows when he will come out? He has no talent for managing his affairs. However—come up and see him.”
He turned and led the way rapidly through one of the doorways, and up a flight of narrow stairs. The smell inside was bad: stuffy, and worse than stuffy; Delphie wondered, shivering, how many generations of prisoners had each left a layer of grime as they plodded out and in.
On the second story, Gareth stooped his tall head and led Philadelphia through a doorway into a small and rather cluttered room. The children were there already, bustling about: Tristram was lighting a fire in the tiny grate; Arthur was carefully placing books in a small deal shelf that hung crookedly on the wall; the two younger ones were placing bread, milk, marmalade, a plate, a napkin, a knife, a spoon, on the small table.
“Child, child!” said a rather querulous voice. “Mind what you are about! No—no—don’t disarrange my papers—leave them be! You had best occupy yourself by emptying the tea leaves out of the pot, and fetching my shaving water; that will keep your little fingers out of mischief! Run along with you; there is the can by the door, where some careless person left it yesterday. Tristram, my dear boy, can you contrive to make a little less smoke in your ministrations? We shall all be suffocated! No, boy, no! Do not fan the fire like that—you are sending great pieces of burnt paper floating all over the room. Most disagreeable! Ah, Gareth, my dear fellow, how are you? Delightful, delightful.”
“Thomas,” said Gareth, “may I introduce my cousin Philadelphia, who has been so kind as to accompany us this morning. Philadelphia, this is my brother-in-law, Una’s husband, Thomas Palgrave.”
“How do you do, sir,” said Philadelphia, curtsying and holding out her hand.
The hand she received in return was so damp, limp, and chilly that, she thought, it was rather like clasping a cold cooked leek. She gazed in wonder at this person who had made such a name for himself in literature, had sired ten children, and then, apparently, had so mismanaged his affairs as to be forced into this dismal retreat.
Thomas Palgrave, wearing a faded velvet gown and nightcap, sat in a small armchair, near the hearth where his eldest son was attempting to kindle a fire. He might be in his mid-forties. His face was beardless, thin, and transparently pale, but unlined; his nose was fine and straight; his eyes were of a dim grayish blue; his hair was scanty, thin, and weak, of a pale color somewhere between white and straw. His mouth was very small; too small, it seemed, to convey any expression save a kind of weary petulance. His feet, also very small, were clad in buff-colored silk stockings and carpet slippers. He held a pen in his hand, a notebook on his knee, and only raised his eyes from the notebook long enough to remark,
“Ah: Miss Cartwright; delightful; delightful,” before dipping his pen in a rusty metal inkwell which stood beside him, and adding a word or two to what he was writing.
The fire now beginning to bum brightly, Tristram found a frying pan in a box, a lump of butter somewhere else, an egg somewhere else, and began in a capable manner to fry the egg. Meanwhile Isa had returned, struggling with a heavy can of hot water and the empty teapot. Arthur poured a little of the water into a mug, found a stump of soap and a razor, and began to shave his father, who absentmindedly turned his neck and chin this way and that, allowing passage for the razor, while he continued to write in his notebook. Tristram filled a kettle with some more of the water and balanced it over the fire beside his pan, where it immediately began to sing.
Delphie, discovering that there was only one chair in the confined place, moved to the little bookshelf and studied its contents: various volumes of essays and poetry, a few works in Latin and Greek; the plays of Shakespeare.
Then she turned and inspected the somewhat airless chamber. It was small, certainly, but furnished with an eye to convenience, and with various humble comforts. There was a piece of furniture which appeared to combine being a bedstead below and a chest of drawers above (into which Isa was putting the clean laundry); the walls had been painted mustard yellow—by one of the boys? The painter had left a good many streaks, over which various prints and children’s drawings had been tacked up. The window (which looked into the dismal yard) was uncurtained, since little enough light came through anyway, but a dingy piece of carpet covered the floor. However, there were cushions, and a tablecloth, and a few homemade ornaments, probably also of the children’s construction; there was even a melancholy-looking canary in a cage, which, when Isa had finished attending to her father, she carefully fed and watered.
“Ah, I see, Miss—er—Cartwright is admiring my small library,” Mr. Palgrave remarked in his weary voice. “Small, but choice, I flatter myself! The dear boys refresh it every few days—take away something, bring something else. Even in this unpleasing spot, you see, Miss Cartwright, the philosopher may kindle his tiny lantern. Why, indeed, should he require more than a cell? And yet,” he continued, wiping his neck with a snowy towel, which Arthur offered, and then turning to the ta
ble, which now had a pot of tea, a fried egg, two nicely made pieces of toast, and a slice of ham, “and yet,” he said, taking a mouthful of egg and buttered toast, “yet, Miss Cartwright, he does require more.”
“I—I suppose so,” faltered Delphie, not quite sure where this was leading.
“He longs, Miss Cartwright,” said Thomas Palgrave, turning his pale eyes in her direction, “he longs for his nearest and dearest Thank you, child,” as little Lance spread another piece of toast with marmalade. Mr. Palgrave took a bite of it and heaved a martyred sigh. “Some prisoners, Miss Cartwright—some lucky prisoners have the inestimable comfort and refreshment of having their families always with them.”
“Indeed?” said Delphie hesitantly. “Families living in the prison—is that allowed?”
“Oh, dear me, yes. It is more the rule than the exception. In fact I think I may say that most of the—the inmates of this place have tender, devoted families supporting them with their permanent presence. I have made the suggestion to my own nearest and dearest. I have made it, I think I may say, several times. But”—he heaved another sigh, taking a swallow of tea—”but it was not to be! There are those in my circle who think not as I do—who think otherwise.” His pale blue eyes glanced momentarily in the direction of Gareth, who was impatiently flipping through the pages of Shakespeare.