The Strange Adventures of H

by Sarah Burton

  While Diana was neither allowed visitors nor to pay visits, was kept short of money, and her wardrobe was curtailed to the barest essentials, she said, she had found bills of sale from milliners and manteau-makers which suggested that her husband’s whore lived in a far finer style than his wife. One day she had made so bold as to follow her husband to see where he went, and saw this bona-roba, this lady of delight, and was astonished to find that her coach, dress and equipage far exceeded her own. But worse than this, she said, far worse, was to see how happy Mr Pincher was to see this fine piece of dirt, how civilly he conducted himself towards her, how solicitous he was to her comfort, how interested he seemed in her conversation, and how gaily he laughed at her pleasantries. Worse than the fact that he lavished such vast sums of money on his concubine, he was also generous with his mirth, his humour, his smiles and his kisses, spending them all freely on her, when he never even had a kind word to spare for his wife.

  It was when Diana had felt emboldened to complain to Mr Pincher of her competitor for his affections that he had given her the last and most severe beating which had sent her running out of the house in the middle of the night, fearing for her life.

  Although Diana’s appearance was like to expose my whereabouts to my family, which was most unwelcome, she did bring me news of my sisters, for which I hungered. Clarissa continued high and mighty, as was to be expected, and delighted in her husband’s elevation to town mayor.

  “Oh, God, should Clarissa but get a sniff of the things my husband accuses me of, she will not scruple to cut me off as she did Grace! I cannot bear to think of it.”

  “Poor Grace,” I said.

  “Disgrace, more like. Clarissa says she lives most infamously.”

  “Grace lives?” I exclaimed. The last time I had seen Grace was coming out of the workhouse just before I had tried to make an end of myself on London Bridge. Having seen her state then I had thought it unlikely she yet lived. But Diana had learnt from Clarissa that Grace not only thrived, but, wonder of wonders, dwelt in London, and even greater wonder of even greater wonders, was supported by our other sister Frances – presumably now discharged from the army!

  This was all wonderful and surprising news, and I immediately expressed a desire to see Frances and Grace, but Diana threw up her hands in horror at this, and said Frances was no better than Grace, that she was in a sad and disreputable condition, and ran an ale house by the river, which was known to be little better than a brothel. This clearly made an end to the matter as far as Diana was concerned, and I was about to remonstrate when I realised that this would not sit well with my supposedly respectable state as the widow of a well-to-do mercer, so I swallowed down this unexpected joy and, with a placid smile, covered my resolve to somehow get the address out of her and later make my own enquiries after my other dear sisters.

  60

  I found myself in the unpleasing position of wishing to give my sister refuge, but being unable to conduct my normal business while she was resident in my house. I was anxious to keep her away from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, as not only my existence but my whereabouts would then be known to my aunt, and all should then come out, but fortunately Diana was, having found me, equally anxious to avoid our aunt if possible and to keep her unhappy story between only us two. I sent to the usual visitors I expected over the next few days to say I was unwell and could not see them, but this situation could not last, and I had no idea how long Diana planned to remain with me. She had no other friends in London, and I certainly did not want to make her feel unwelcome when her only option was to return to her husband.

  I also did not know what to do with her. She and Clarissa had been my least favourite sisters so we had no stock of friendship on which to build. More problematic was the fact that I had never acquired the art of doing nothing, which she, in common with all respectable women of her class, was used to. She did not read nor draw, and she had no desire to be seen about while she was so bruised and marked. The feeling inside the house was also affected, as Janey and I could not be so familiar or natural with each other as we were wont. Diana showed a polite interest in Mary but clearly disapproved of her spending so much time with me, but most of all of me harbouring an unmarried woman servant with a child. (I had not had time to invent a dead husband for Janey.) She could not understand, now that she had apprised me of Aunt Madge’s whereabouts, why I was not anxious to see her, although Godfrey was good enough to remind us both that she could receive absolutely no visitors. She also puzzled how her aunt’s secretary knew where to find me, though my aunt had never let the family know that she knew my whereabouts. I gave such flim-flam answers to these queries that she would have been a fool not to suspect all was not what it appeared.

  Janey put up with Diana’s rudeness towards her and kept Mary with her as far as possible, but I knew she too was aching for Diana to be gone, and a return to easy normality. Between us we fitted Diana out with clothes, but though Diana was much nearer Janey’s shape than my own, she was reluctant to wear Janey’s clothes, though they were nice, new and clean and, though simple, not unfashionable. Janey bore all this with a good grace but I missed hearing her singing about the place, an activity curtailed by Diana begging her to “stop making that abominable noise”.

  Even so, everything could have passed off without too much difficulty, had everyone stuck to the rules, but things began to fall apart when, quite unexpectedly, Charlie turned up. I had heard the doorbell and assumed Janey would send whoever it was away, but he apparently bounded up the stairs past her before she had a chance to prevent him and fairly burst into the room where I was sitting with my sister. A more experienced lover would not of course have done this, fearing to find me with another man, which would not have been obliging to anyone concerned. But Charlie did not know the score.

  My heart turned over twice: once at the sight of Charlie, who was no less appealing than in my fantasies, and once again at the immediate difficulty of explaining him to my sister. Evidently not expecting to find me in company, he nevertheless kept his composure and made a low bow to us both.

  I introduced him to my sister, who I was surprised to notice, blushed and giggled like a green girl at meeting so pretty a young man, and I was thinking how to get rid of him when he announced, to my horror, “I am come for another lesson, madam!”

  “Another lesson?” asked Diana, pleasantly intrigued. “What’s this, H?”

  “Mr Carroll is… my… dancing master! He is come to give me my dancing lesson! I had almost forgot!”

  “Oh how thrilling!” Diana clapped her hands. “May I watch?”

  I managed to turn my back to Diana while facing Charlie so I could look at him most meaningfully as I said, “I am so sorry Mr Carroll, but you cannot give me my lesson today, for my sister has come to visit unexpectedly.”

  “Oh, don’t mind me!” exclaimed Diana. “It will be diverting, I am sure. Please, H, I insist. I have put you out too much already.”

  I gave Charlie an agonised look, and he seemed suddenly to understand, but proved most naughty, as he said, with a winning smile, “Well if your sister doesn’t mind… your movement does require some attention, madam. Now, what shall we begin with? How about ‘Fain I Would’? Or ‘Lady Lie Near Me’?”

  I was appalled and glared at him.

  “But we have no music!” I protested. “The musician must have forgot too! We will have to leave it, I am afraid, Mr Carroll.”

  “Oh, I can play!” offered Diana, and fairly ran across the room to the spinet and began riffling through the music. She sat down. “Now, what shall we begin with? Oh, look, here is ‘On The Cold Ground’! Oh you have all the latest things, H.”

  And so it came about that Charlie gave me a dancing lesson, while my sister played, and to see Janey’s expression when she put her head round the door made the prettiest picture I had seen for a long time.

  It was as well that Diana faced the wall as she played, for whenever Charlie came close to me as we danced
, he took the opportunity to kiss me, whispering “I love your eyes, I love your lips, I love your ears,” and though I fought to withstand the onslaught I fairly wilted in his arms.

  “Stop it, Charlie!” I hissed. “Why did you come back? You were not supposed to come back.”

  “I want another lesson,” he repeated.

  “You don’t need another lesson,” I said.

  “I did not say I needed one. I said I wanted one,” and he clasped me by the waist and pulled me close against him as we twirled and turned and I could tell that he did indeed want one.

  “Oh, Charlie!” I meant to exclaim, but half-sighed.

  “I am to be married next Friday. I will never see you again afterwards. So how can you refuse me now?”

  I confess I couldn’t think of one good reason why I should refuse him now, excepting the presence of Diana.

  “Think of it, H. In only a few days I am to be locked into a loveless marriage, until death do us part. I may never know happiness again. If I were a soldier, going off to war, you would grant me that favour, would you not? Well it is as good as the same thing. I beg just one night with you, and then I swear you will never see me again.”

  I became aware that Diana had stopped playing and was watching us.

  “Will you have a lesson, Diana?” I asked, a little too gaily, breaking away from Charlie.

  “Well… I shouldn’t object to learn a new step or two,” said Diana, blushing again.

  “Very well. Show her, Mr Carroll. I must send Janey to the post with a letter.”

  “Oh, but you can’t leave us!” exclaimed Diana in genuine panic, as I headed out of the room. It took me a moment to gather her meaning, so out of the habit was I of conventional social intercourse.

  “You will be quite safe!” I assured Diana. “Mr Carroll is a most gentlemanly gentleman. Here, I will leave the door open. I will only be in the next room.”

  I left Diana standing open-mouthed and went next door to write a note to Charlie telling him I would leave word at The Black Dog when he could see me, as I was now as determined as he to have my night of bliss.

  Diana was exceedingly flushed when I returned and did I not know Charlie better I might have begun to wonder whether he had been practising on her. She laughed and chattered in a flustered way, hiding her poor missing teeth behind a fan she had begged from me, and though Charlie was charming to her, I felt she noticed as keenly as a rival might that his eyes followed my every move.

  It was with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded him to leave, pressing the note in his hand as I did so. When he had gone, Diana was unusually quiet and remained so for the rest of the evening and went to bed betimes saying her head ached from all the dancing business. I sat up chatting quietly with Janey while we mended some stockings (for though I dressed well, I was ever frugal in my habits), and I hoped she would not quiz me about Charlie and I refrained from doing the same about William.

  61

  I quickly calculated that the following Monday would be the earliest I could see Charlie, and that it would have to be a daytime assignation, Monday night being sacred to his uncle, whom I could not put off. I knew I could get him safely away long before Lord A made his customary visit. (I guessed from the way Charlie spoke of his uncle that he had not the slightest inkling of the nature of the liaison between Lord A and myself.) I was just returning from the coffee-house, where I had left a note for Charlie, when I met Godfrey coming to my door. He carried a letter for Diana which had been sent to her at my aunt’s house. I hoped it might offer some path to a solution to her troubles, as I needed her out of the way by the time Charlie came on Monday.

  “I’ll wager it is from that beast of a husband, begging her to come back,” said Godfrey. My aunt, he added, was much better, though still weak from her illness, which cheered us both.

  We found Diana in the parlour, and she went white when the letter was produced and seemed to fear its contents too much to read it herself so asked me to do so.

  “‘Dear Mrs Pincher,’” I began reading. “‘I would apologise for expressing myself rather too forcibly during our interview last week, were it not for your disgraceful and dishonourable reaction: to quit your home, your husband, and, most unnaturally, your children.’”

  “My children are safe at school!” exclaimed Diana. “I should never have deserted them!” and commenced weeping at the mere thought of this dereliction of maternal duty being ascribed to her. “This is his way!” she sobbed. “He says it, or writes it and therefore it is true! He is a lawyer down to the very bone.”

  “‘In view of your shameful conduct,’” I continued, “‘and the sin which I choose not to name, for which reason we removed to London, in hopes of a reformation of your conduct… ’”

  “My conduct!” she cried. “It was he who promised to reform! A fresh start, he said.”

  “‘… I consider it in your interests, more than anybody’s, that you return home immediately, before I am obliged to retail the details of your infamous behaviour to your family and friends.’”

  “Oh, God! God help me!” cried Diana, her face in her hands.

  “‘Yours faithfully,’ – he has underlined ‘faithfully’.”

  Diana was quiet for a long time, rocking slightly, her head still in her hands. I put my arm around her shoulder and said, “Will you send a reply?”

  “What is the use?” she moaned. “This is blackmail. I shall have to go back.”

  “No, madam!” exclaimed Godfrey. “You cannot, under any circumstances, go back to that brute! Look what he has done to you! And he will do it again, you know that as well as I.”

  “I have no choice! You don’t understand, do you? You are a man, and H is a widow: you may both do as you like. But I am a married woman. Mr Pincher can turn my name to dirt. Besides, I have no money. How can I live?”

  “I have money!” I cried. “I will look after you.”

  “I will never see my children… ”

  This gave me pause for thought.

  “We will get a lawyer – another one – one who will expose his lies, and get him to settle an annuity on you, and put it in writing that the children may live with you, or at least let you see them.”

  Diana looked at me with real anger in her eyes.

  “What fairyland do you think such lawyers live in, H? They all stick together. Half the women in the country would leave their husbands if it were that simple! He has already threatened me with the madhouse, and has a doctor – whom, needless to add, I have never met – waiting ready to put his name to a paper to say I am out of my mind. He will stop at nothing to get me back, or silence me for ever.”

  I continued to remonstrate with my sister and at least succeeded in eliciting a promise from her to do nothing hasty, to remain with me a few days longer at least, in the hopes that during that time I could persuade her not to return to her tormentor and think of how to set her up in independence and in safety. Although I was most anxious to be rid of her, I was not yet so selfish I would sacrifice her happiness to my convenience.

  62

  The next day I was enjoying an hour of reading in peace (as Diana claimed she was bored when I read) as Janey was accompanying my sister for a turn about the park, and Mary was having her rest. It was a beautiful day and after a while I laid my book aside and went to the back window and watched the people enjoying the sunshine in the park. As I increasingly found myself doing, I realised I looked out for Charlie. I watched a little boy trundling his hoop with gathering expertise across the grass, until his path crossed that of an unwelcomely familiar figure. It was Jasper, carrying a great basket of flowers, and he was headed for the little alley that ran behind the garden. I fairly shot down to the back door to head him off. I opened the door just as he was about to knock.

  “Well, if it ain’t—”

  “Yes, it is Miss Dollie, for you know perfectly well this is where Miss Dollie lives, and in any case I wish you would call me Halcyon, or H, or anything
, and I also wish you had not come as it is most inconvenient and not according to our understanding.”

  “Sorry Dollie,” said Jasper, looking nothing of the sort, “but I am about urgent business. I bear tidings of great import!” He hovered, and then presented me with the flowers.

  “I suppose you will not go until you have told me, so do so and be gone.”

  Taking this as an invitation to come in, he did so, and ran up the stairs, two at a time. I hurried after him and followed him into the drawing room. He pulled off his hat and turned it in his hands, evidently brimming with emotion.

  “Ring the bells and send for the sexton! The old man is dead,” he announced.

  I thought at first this was another of Jasper’s impenetrable expressions which in actuality meant nothing.

  “And your news?” I asked.

  “My father is dead,” he explained.

  “Oh, I am very sorry to hear it. Truly, I am sorry, Jasper. But you cannot stay here. Please go.”

  “You do not understand, Dollie. My father is dead.”

  “I understand you perfectly Jasper. I perceive you are upset and I am sorry for it. However—”

  “You see before you the Earl of Tewkesbury. I am my own master: master of my own fortune, master of my own destiny.”

  “Congratulations, my lord. Now, go, and come and see me another day.”

  “By Jupiter, I love you, Dollie!” he declared.

  “Love me?” I cried, knowing that a declaration of this kind – from Jasper, at any rate – had to be dealt with swiftly and harshly. “Love me? What if you do? How far will that go at the Exchange for new shoes? Will the grocer take it for current coin? I can neither feed nor clothe myself with words! If you must express your feelings, do so with your purse. That is a language I understand and value.”