by D. J. Taylor
“I’ll tell you,” Mrs. Wates said. “And the master, too. But we had better do what the gentleman says. Look, the girl’s stirring. Take a hand, will you, Margaret Lane. Esther! Go to the wagon and ask the man to drive up to the door.”
With some difficulty, for her legs dragged heavily beneath her, they brought Sarah to her feet and half propelled, half carried her to the vestibule. Turning around to look for William, Esther saw that he had disappeared. Hastening back along the street as Mrs. Wates had directed, she found the wagon driver and his cart and explained the situation to him. A quarter of an hour found them trundling back in the rickety hold through the pitch-dark, silent back route. Lying next to her in a resting place improvised out of shawls and travelling blankets, with her arm done up in a sling, Sarah cried quietly to herself.
“Oh, Esther,” she said once. “I’ve gone and brought him into trouble, isn’t that it?”
“No one has brought him into trouble but himself, I think,” Esther replied. Nonetheless, she was conscious of a great disappointment, of some scheme in her life, momentarily grasped at but unfulfilled. How splendid it would have been, she thought, if she and William could have danced together in the brightly lit room before the crowd of ball goers. Calling the scene into her mind for a moment, she remembered a particular air that had caught her fancy and softly hummed it under her breath. The wagon trundled on. From time to time, when they moved out of the avenues of trees and hedgerows to a crossroads where the moonlight fell directly onto the path, she peered into the gloaming, searching for the sight of a tall figure plodding in the wagon’s rear, but there was nothing there, only the black trail of the trees and the mist rolling in across the distant fields. A church clock struck the hour, the wheels creaked beneath them, the carter coughed stertorously into the dark, and by degrees they made their way home.
(XI)
It was very soon agreed that William must leave the Hall. The upper servants sat in judgement, the master was consulted, the medical man who had attended Sarah at the ball drove up in his gig and the deed was done. Mrs. Wates, although several times questioned by Mr. Randall and the other servants, stuck to her story: that she had observed William and Sarah as they danced, overheard a scornful expression pass William’s lips as the latter fell clumsily against him and watched as Sarah flung herself forward onto the burning logs. Sarah, who might have corroborated or denied the account, kept to her bed, where Mrs. Finnie administered drops of laudanum to her and dressed her burns, and said nothing. In her absence a terrible air of gloom descended upon the house. William, seeing that the general feeling of the servants’ hall was against him, took himself to his own quarters and was rarely seen about the place.
“It is always the same when a servant is given notice,” Margaret Lane explained, as she and Esther laboured in the scullery one winter afternoon. “William won’t see out his month, you mark my words.”
Beyond the window dark shadows were already hastening across the square of beaten earth and the kitchen garden. In the upper storey of the keeper’s cottage an oil lamp flickered and then went out.
“I think it is very unfair,” Esther said. “If anyone knows truly what happened it is Sarah, who will not speak.”
“I know what is unfair,” Margaret replied. “It is us two girls having to clean out this scullery and attend to the lamps at twilight.”
Esther acknowledged the truth of this. In the absence of Sarah and William, most of the work of the establishment had devolved onto Margaret and herself. Each afternoon at four, consequently, she followed Mr. Randall about the house with a tray on which lay the tapers used to light the oil lamps and a brush and pan with which to sweep up the debris that fell from the ancient wooden shutters. The rooms seemed very melancholy to her at these times, and there were afternoons when she quailed at the prospect of the Dixeys in their gilt frames staring across the darkened rooms while Mr. Randall went about his business.
The old man seemed to sense her disquiet and to sympathise with it, for there came an afternoon when, as they returned to the pantry with the tray and the unused tapers, he enquired, “Are you happy in your work, Esther?”
“Indeed, I have nothing to complain of, Mr. Randall.”
“Another girl would reckon it hard to do another person’s work. I think she would. Tell me, Esther, is there any religion in your house at home?”
Though she went in awe of him as a source of authority second only to Mr. Dixey, Esther had hitherto taken little notice of Mr. Randall. He seemed to her merely a futile and occasionally querulous old man, debarring himself from conversation and society by virtue of his religious observances. Looking at him now as he sat in his easy chair with the amenities of the butler’s pantry arranged around him, she was suddenly thankful for the question.
“My father went to chapel all his life. Although my mother used sometimes to mock him for it. He is dead now, a long time.”
“Indeed? There are always those that will mock the servants of the Lord. I am not speaking of your mother, Esther, but of the world in general.”
And after this Mr. Randall favoured her, conferred certain duties that had previously been hers onto Margaret Lane and implored her occasionally to drink a glass of Madeira on the grounds that it was “especially suited to ladies,” and Esther was glad of the impulse that had led her to talk of her father and the old days at Lynn.
Finally, though, there came a day when William’s trunk lay by the great door in the hall and the carter’s wagon stood in the driveway waiting to carry him to the railway station. The sight of the trunk, bound up with lengths of twine, and with his things folded up and placed in a bundle on its surface, was poignant to her, for it reminded her of the day she had come to Easton Hall and their walk home through the shadows of a summer evening. It was a dreary day towards the end of December with the clouds streaming in above the bent-back trees and a curious air of restlessness about the house and its grounds, as if people moved there unseen and the rattling at the windows and doors was made by invisible hands. For an hour that morning, as the trunk lay in the hall and the carter sat stoically under his cape and the rain fell over the weeping elms, Esther looked in vain for him. Greatly daring, she stole up to his room under the eaves, but the door was open, the bed stripped down and the only trace of him a few twists of tobacco and a snuffed-out candle lying on a table by the bedstead. She picked up one of the twists of tobacco and put it in the pocket of her apron. Downstairs in the hall Mr. Randall passed her with a copy of the master’s newspaper pressed under his arm.
“Let me not be ashamed, O Lord,” he said, “for I have called upon thee: let the wicked be ashamed and let them be silent in the grave. Do you know the psalm, Esther?”
“No, Mr. Randall, but I should like to read it someday.”
In the servants’ hall an air of tension prevailed. Mrs. Finnie was in a black mood, advertised the disappearance of a sheet from the laundry cupboard and spoke of giving notice. Margaret Lane dropped a dinner plate and was roundly upbraided by Mrs. Wates: “For I don’t know what girls is coming to these days,” Mrs. Wates remarked in vexation. “There is that Sarah Parker still lying abed and no work to be got out of her, and Esther here mooning about the place all on account of some young man who were better gone six months since, and Margaret Lane fair to play at ninepins with the master’s crockery.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Wates, I am truly sorry,” Margaret cried bitterly, for she regarded the cook as her protector in the house.
“You are a silly girl,” Mrs. Wates told her, “and should go away from here and marry some man whose dinner plates you can smash, and his dinner burn, rather than the master’s.”
And then Esther felt sorry for Mrs. Wates, with her waxen face and her shaking hand and the grey hair coming adrift from its pinioning down her broad back, who would never marry anyone.
In the end, when she had all but given up hope, she met him in the kitchen garden, coming back from the keeper’s cottage. He had take
n off his footman’s clothes and was wearing an old suit of black with a cracked billycock hat jammed down over his head.
“Now, Esther,” he said, seeing her mournful expression. “You did not think I would go without saying good-bye, surely?”
“It is hard to know what to think sometimes.”
“But it’s not as you suppose, Esther. I am still Mr. Dixey’s man, even though I am going from here, and have his commission. You may tell that to the old cat in the kitchen if you like.”
“I shall say nothing of the sort.”
“But see here, Esther, I shall miss you, and I don’t mind saying so. You watch out for a letter, do you hear? It takes more to part folk than distance, you know.”
Then, perhaps thinking he had said enough, he moved off around the side of the house to the waiting cart. Esther stood for a long while in the kitchen garden with her head held down, hearing the wind rush in her ears and the bending of the trees until there came a raised voice from within the house calling her name and she moved inside.
(XII)
Esther sped up the staircase. The letter that Sam Postman had put into her hand ten minutes before lay pressed into the pocket of her apron. Reaching her bedroom, she closed the door behind her, sat down upon the bed, took the letter from its hiding place in her lap and laid it facedown upon the coverlet. Her heart was beating very fast, both with the effort of her run upstairs and a greater agitation that she was unable to disguise, and for a moment she clasped her hands around her waist to steady herself. But there was nothing to be done, no agency that would take the letter away from her or return her to the tranquil state in which she had existed before it had arrived, and so she tore it open and stared eagerly at the single sheet of paper that lay within.
17 SWAFFHAM GARDENS
Seven Dials
London W.
Dear Esther,
I said as I should write to you, and I hope you’ll grant that I’m as good as my word, which is more than some are. How are the people at the Hall? I wonder. They have no love for me, I expect, nor I for them. As for me, I’m faring tolerably, with a snug little billet and a place that suits me well. Not in service, you understand, for I have done with all that, but in the commercial line. There are kinds of business that I put in folks’ way and kinds of business that they put in mine—I can’t say more than that. Just at present I’m a-nursing of my face, on account of a fellow who was shy of paying me a debt, but it’s nothing to cry about, I daresay. Mind you, be a good girl and drop me a line if you have anything to tell and I shall write again soon with more news from
Yr. obedient servant,
Wm. Latch
This brief paragraph Esther mused over for some time, not understanding the half of it and alarming herself very much over the half that she did understand. The references to commerce and business escaped her entirely, but she fancied that William had begun to draw apart from the world that she and others like her inhabited. This realisation disquieted her, for she knew that she remained in the place he had left, but she approved what she saw as his progress through the world. She had seen pictures of fashionably dressed persons in the magazines that lay around the servants’ quarters—gentlemen in high hats and natty topcoats—and she wondered if William, moving about the city in this great adventure of his, wore these things. His being hurt—bruised about the face—scared her, but she supposed that it was something that men, or a certain kind of man, did, and the thought of William’s great height and strength caused her to reflect upon his assailant with scorn. “The idea of anyone hurting him,” she said to herself as she brooded over the sheet of paper. The brooding was pleasurable to her, and she sat quite still on the bed for some moments, first musing over one sentence, then another, then dwelling on William’s signature, inscribed with a great flourish at the foot of the page. So engrossed had she become that she altogether failed to notice that the door had swung open and that someone was regarding her from the portal.
“What have you got there, Esther?” came Sarah’s voice sharply. “What is it you are looking at?”
“I suppose a girl may look at a letter if it is sent to her,” Esther remarked mildly, folding the sheet of paper into a square, pushing it into her apron pocket and turning to face her visitor.
Since her accident Sarah had gone into a decline. Esther had hoped that once she had been pronounced cured by the doctor, she would return to their shared bedroom, but Sarah had preferred to remain in the attic room to which they had conveyed her on her return from the ball at Watton. Staring at her now as she stood in the doorway, a curiously pursed look about her lips, Esther was conscious of how strange she seemed.
“Why, Sarah, you do look queer. Whatever is the matter with you?” On the instant a memory of the girl flitting around Mrs. Wates’s kitchen the previous day gave her the answer. “You have been drinking vinegar again! I am sure it is very bad for you to take such stuff. And Mrs. Wates would say so too, if she knew.”
“You are very hard on me,” Sarah said disconsolately. She sat down on the bed and ran her fingers over her parched mouth. “There are few enough things that a girl can take comfort in.” She glanced about her once or twice, as if grasping at a thought that had eluded her. “Who is your letter from?”
“It is from William.”
“What does he say?”
“That he has a place. Not in service. A business.”
“I had a letter once,” Sarah went on. “About Joe. But I never saw it again. Did you take it, Esther?”
Esther said nothing.
“I know I could not read it, and that is very stupid of me. But it would have been a comfort to have it near me. Like your letter from William, I daresay.”
“You must not drink the vinegar, Sarah. It will make you ill, I know it will.”
Sarah rocked gently backwards and forwards, her arms clasped around her knees. “I have such a pain. Not in my arm. That is all healed now. In fact I never think of it. But in my head.”
“You should see Mrs. Finnie,” Esther said sympathetically, “and ask her for some drops of laudanum. She has a bottle, I know.”
There were beads of perspiration on Sarah’s forehead, though the air in the bedroom was chill. Her face seemed grey with fatigue.
“It is all right. I feel better now, indeed I do. But there is a message for you, Esther, from Mr. Randall. He says you are to go to him immediately. Gracious, Esther!”—and here Sarah gave a laugh that was not at all pleasant to hear—“What a thing it would be if you were to marry Mr. Randall. Why, I should have to call you ‘ma’am,’ and Mrs. Finnie and Mrs. Wates would have to be civil to you at supper and help you to the pudding.”
“It is wrong of you to say such things, Sarah, and I shan’t listen to you.”
“Why is it wrong of me? I think I should like to be a butler’s wife. I should have as many headaches as I liked and no one to scold me.” And here, somewhat to her surprise, Sarah put her head in her hands and began to cry. Esther stood over her for a while, uncertain as to which of these demands had the greater claim on her time. Then, with the fingers of her right hand still clutched around William’s letter where it lay in her apron pocket, she sped back down the stairs.
(XIII)
In William’s absence an air of dereliction had fallen over the place. It was as if his departure had brought some greater upheaval amongst the lives of those who remained there that none of them could fathom. Mr. Dixey went on his errands alone; the hot water for his shaving was taken up by Margaret Lane in a teakettle, for, as she said, she could not manage the great china ewer with which William had ascended the stairs each morning a half hour after dawn. An occasional gentleman or lady came to call or to eat luncheon, even more rarely two of them together, but the dishes that Mr. Dixey ordered up were of the plainest kind, and Mrs. Wates despaired, for, as she truly remarked, what was the point of having a receipt for a hollandaise sauce if one was never allowed to make it? Hastening down the back stairs and into
the servants’ hall—very desolate in the daytime with the fire unlit and the last night’s crockery still lying on the table—Esther found Mr. Randall in his pantry. He was seated in the big armchair, comfortably enshawled in a wolfskin rug, so comfortably in fact that he might almost have been asleep, but when he saw her he pulled the rug from his shoulders and rose to his feet.
“I am glad to see you, Esther. Will you sit down?”
Esther did as she was bidden, wondering what Mr. Randall wished to say. He had a doubtful look on his face—very creased, it seemed, from his half slumber—and his fingers turned over an iron key that he held in the palm of his hand.
“Now, Esther,” he said, moving the key between his fingers so that, try as she might, Esther could not but look at it. “Here is a question for you. How many people reside in this house?”
“There are six. Now that William has gone.”
“There are seven,” Mr. Randall corrected her. “How are there seven? I shall tell you, Esther. You shall not think you have been deceived, I hope, for there has been no deception. You know the west wing of the house?”
“I have never been there.”
“No. The rooms are empty and shut up. They have not been used since before I came here, and that is many years ago. But see, one of them is not empty and not shut up. Or rather…” The key was very ancient and antique, Esther saw, with a large, much-ornamented hinge. “There is a lady lives there. Mr. Dixey’s ward. An invalid.”
Feeling that something was expected of her, Esther said, “What is the matter with her?”
“What is the matter with her? It is hard to say. The master has had doctors to see her. Their opinion is that her mind is troubled, that she does not know herself. That is why she lives as she does. Do you understand me, Esther?”
Esther nodded.
“Naturally, it is Mrs. Finnie that looks after her. Who attends to her wants. But we are shorthanded, Esther, and there is need for another…. I wish you only to take up Mrs. Ireland’s meals and attend on her. Just as if she were a guest in the house.”