The Quickening and the Dead

by J C Briggs

  When she was twelve, he thought to marry again — his daughter needed a mother, and, besides, he had succeeded to a better living at Lissoy in the county of Westmeath. An income of two hundred pounds, a respectable house and farm, made him attractive to a younger widow, Mrs Catherine Hodson — who had nothing much beyond the fifty pounds a year left by her husband, and a desire to be better off.

  Annie’s life was not unhappy with the new stepmother, but she remembered her own mother well enough to draw a contrast which was unfavourable to the new Mrs Deverall. For her father’s sake, she tried to love her new mother. But she was glad to be of little account when a boy was born. She was sure of her place in her father’s heart.

  And then he died. Annie was fourteen. That was the beginning of her silence. Mrs Catherine Deverall lost her home and her two hundred pounds. What the Reverend left, she claimed for her son, of course. There was no special provision for Annie. Why should there be?

  There was little room for Annie Deverall at the cottage where widowed Mrs Deverall took refuge, and no room at all for her at the house of the gentleman her stepmother took as her third husband. No room at all for a pretty stepdaughter. Mrs Deverall had been fond of the Reverend Deverall, but she would prefer to forget him. And her son had never really known him; he would find his father in Mr Michael Murray, the gentleman farmer. However, there was employment to be got for the pretty stepdaughter with the former Mrs Deverall’s milliner cousin in London. There Annie was sent. No one asked if she wanted to go. Mr Michael Murray looked at her with some sympathy. Difficult to tell what she was thinking, she was so silent. Still, it wasn’t his concern, and Catherine obviously didn’t much care for the girl.

  And she took nothing with her, except twenty pounds to be paid to the milliner for her apprenticeship and a little picture. And her father’s voice. Now, she willed it to come, her eyes tight shut. But she could hear only the voice of the lady.

  ‘And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cuni; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightaway the damsel arose and walked.’

  Lady Pirie stopped reading. It was time to go. She felt she had failed. She said goodbye to silent Annie Deverall, and made her way along the cold passageways. What could be done? And she thought of someone who might help, someone whose words she had read, who had written to the poor girls in the prison at Coldbath fields, words which she had remembered:

  ‘You will see, on beginning to read this letter, that it is not addressed to you by name, but I address it to a woman — a very young woman still — who was born to be happy, and has lived miserably; who has no prospect before her but sorrow, or behind her but a wasted youth…’

  Words written by a man who must have a fund of compassion for the girls to whom he was offering a second chance. She would write to him to ask him to come to see Annie Deverall.

  Chapter 3: A December Vision

  I saw a poisoned air, in which Life drooped. I saw Disease, arrayed in all its store of hideous aspects, and appalling shapes, triumphant in every alley, bye-way, court, back street and poor abode, in every place where human beings congregated — in the proudest and most boastful places, most of all. I saw innumerable hosts, foredoomed to darkness, dirt, pestilence, obscurity, misery, and early death. I saw …

  Dickens put down his pen. Powerful stuff, he thought. The article was for Household Words, the weekly periodical he had established earlier in the year. Gloomy, though. Still, it could go in on 14 December, and he had an idea for a piece about a Christmas tree for the week after. Brighten it, he thought, for Christmas.

  But it was what he had seen on his way home. Dark already. November dark, and bitingly cold. Cutting through Covent Garden from Wellington Street, he had seen savage-eyed urchins darting about on their naked feet, seizing what shreds of leaves, bits of offal and rotten potatoes they could lay their hands on.

  He had seen a wretched girl sitting on the pavement, bare feet bruised and blue in the cold. The eyes were closed in the gaunt face and there was, in her attitude, such a look of exhaustion that Dickens stopped. Chalked on the pavement were the words: I am starving. The girl must have sensed his presence because the eyes opened and the girl looked at him. Was it recognition that Dickens saw then? He didn’t know, but there was something — an appeal, something unspoken flashed between them. The girl saw two large and luminous eyes gazing at her which seemed to say, ‘I know you, and your suffering.’ And Dickens saw the tears welling from the exhausted eyes, which closed again. He found a half crown in his pocket, put it into the thin hand and went on his way towards Oxford Street.

  He had seen faces, shadows in gaslight: an old woman with a face fallen in, dragging a little girl with her; a wretched woman with a child in her arms, attempting to sing some popular ballad in the hope of wringing a few pence from a passer-by; a young man with the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped face of the gin-drinker; a muddy, wretched, slouching boy sweeping a crossing. An Italian boy, too, the other day, with a face like an angel, an angel in rags.

  And he had seen a terrible face, a beetle-browed, hare-lipped youth clad in a bundle of rags, which it held together with one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot; its teeth chattered and it stared at him. What am I, thought Dickens — persecutor, devil, ghost? He put out his hand to stay it. It twisted out of its garment, and Dickens was left standing alone with the rags in his hands.

  And in the shadow of All Souls Church in Langham Place, he had seen a young man toss a flower into the gutter. A glimpse of a troubled face — young and disappointed.

  Then he had gone home to write his piece. And to read an interesting letter.

  The letter was from Lady Pirie who was a prison visitor to Newgate. She wondered if he might visit a poor girl, Annie Deverall, who was on remand for the murder of Doctor Lancelot Plume. Lady Pirie had tried to help the girl, but the significant thing was that Annie Deverall would not speak, had not spoken since her arrest. Lady Pirie knew of his work for the home for fallen women which he had established in Shepherd’s Bush. Miss Coutts, with whom Dickens had founded the Home, had shown Lady Pirie the letter which Dickens had written to the female prisoners at Coldbath Fields, and Lady Pirie, much struck by the compassion shown by Dickens, thought he might be able to help Annie Deverall. No one else had been able to reach the girl, not any of the lady visitors, not the prison chaplain. She would be brought to trial in a few weeks, and the evidence against her was compelling.

  Well, well, Doctor Plume of Weymouth Street, the street into which he had wandered and where he had looked at the house. There’s fate in this, he thought. Inscrutable as yet, but fate, in the guise of Lady Pirie, required an answer. He wrote his reply. He would, of course, visit the young woman. Tomorrow.

  Dickens studied Annie Deverall intently. She had been brought to the receiving room by the wardswoman, Jenny Ince. It had seemed to Dickens as though Jenny had been leading a blind girl. Annie Deverall made no sign that she knew or understood what was happening to her. She allowed herself to be pushed into the chair, her head bowed, and there she had sat, unmoving, never raising her head.

  He looked at the narrow hunched shoulders in the dark dress, and at the thin hands tightly clasped so that they seemed all bone, the knuckles raised white into sharp peaks. He had seen her gaunt face only briefly when her head had risen involuntarily as she sat down. Just a glimpse of a pale oval. A portrait in wax, he had thought. A death mask.

  He had spoken as gently as he could, asking her if he could help her, if he could do anything for her. If she would tell him her story, he would see that she had a lawyer to represent her. Was she guilty of the crime of which she was accused? She must tell the truth, and then she could be helped. If she were innocent, and he was sure she was, she must speak so that witnesses could be found to support her case. Would she look at him, let him see her face? If only she would look at him, she would see that he meant to help her.

  Annie Deverall hea
rd the kindly voice. She understood the questions, but they had no more meaning for her than the shrieks and yells that she heard from the corridors of the gaol. It was a man’s voice, not the lady’s. It meant no harm. But it was no use. She kept her eyes closed, listening, listening for the voice she wanted to hear. But, there was only the stranger’s voice.

  Dickens felt helpless. He knew that if she looked at him, he could gather all his power in his own eyes. He could will her to speak, but there was only a silence which thickened in the little room, wrapping itself round the girl like a shroud. She will die, he thought — whether on the gallows, or here in the gaol. She is willing her own death.

  Jenny Ince felt the silence, and moved her feet to break it. Dickens looked at her. She shook her head. No use, she was telling him. There was nothing to do but go. He made a sign to Jenny that she should take the prisoner away. Jenny came forward to take the girl’s arm and help her to her feet. Annie stood up, and as she did so, the chair tottered. Annie put out her hand to steady herself, and something dropped to the floor.

  Jenny was quick. She picked it up. Annie gave a cry — the first sound she had uttered since the policeman had found her in a lodging not far from the doctor’s house. Dickens saw her face clearly now. Her eyes were open, and in them he saw a look of such grief and loss, so fathoms deep, that he was shocked to his heart’s core.

  Jenny spoke. ‘I knows, dearie, it’s yours. You shall ’ave it back.’

  Something unlocked in Dickens. This was a chance. ‘Let me see.’

  Hearing the command in his voice, Jenny obeyed and handed him the object. Annie stared at him with wide, terrified eyes, but she did not speak. He avoided those eyes and looked at the little picture he held in his hand. It was a miniature in a paste frame that had once been gilded, but was now tarnished and cracked. The subject was a girl of about seven years. A beautiful child with a delicately tinted complexion, bright eyes and dark, curling hair. He turned it over to find written on the back in faded ink the words: My dear one, thee, my daughter.

  He spoke without thinking. ‘Miranda?’

  Annie Deverall covered her face and wept as if her heart would break. And Jenny led her, unresisting, back to her seat.

  Dickens and Jenny waited a long time. And then the poor blotched face looked up into the eyes of the man who had spoken her name. The name that her father had given her, the name that her stepmother had taken away after his death.

  ‘You are Miranda? Miranda Deverall, and this is your picture?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I … cannot.’ From somewhere deep within herself, a hoarse whisper emerged. It had, Dickens thought, the faintness of solitude and disuse. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground, so expressive of a hopeless and lost creature that his heart contracted in pity.

  ‘You did not kill the doctor?’ Dickens was certain she had not. There was a mystery to be plumbed here.

  But, she did not answer. She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes again. Dickens could see that she was exhausted, as though the two words she had spoken had taken her little strength.

  ‘Jenny, will you fetch some water?’

  Jenny went out. Should he persevere, or ought he to leave it? Come back again? But she might retreat into her silent world, and the connection would be lost. This was the moment. It might be the only moment in which there was chance to save her.

  He said her name again. ‘Miranda.’

  Her eyes opened. So dark with pain that it was impossible to say what colour they were, but there was something in the shape of the face that was a faint echo of the picture. If this were she, then, perhaps, her father had written the words. The words were Prospero’s, addressed to his daughter, Miranda, in The Tempest. Try it. He weighed the risks — but swiftly — save, or destroy? Courage — persevere.

  He kept his voice low, though his hand shook a little. ‘What see’st thou in the dark backward and abysm of time?’

  It was her father’s voice she heard. Infinitely gentle, tender. She looked up into eyes that seemed so luminous that they compelled her to speak. And in that low, hoarse, unused voice, Miranda told Dickens something of her past.

  Perhaps, Dickens thought as he listened, she had once been a beauty. Surely the girl in the picture would have become beautiful. He saw how life had wrecked her — some of her teeth had gone, and the dark, curling hair looked scanty now, dried out. The rosy-tinted skin turned yellow as wax.

  Not wanted, she had been despatched like a parcel to the unknown cousin in London. Torn up by the roots. And, as if that were not violence enough, there she had been apprenticed to a trade which was not millinery.

  Chapter 4: A Life Thrown Away

  Miranda Deverall had taken her last look at the quiet churchyard where her father had been buried with her mother. She had wept there. She had walked for the last time in the garden of the old grey house and looked at the pear trees with their blossom as light as a dusting of snow. She went down the green slope to stand beside the little River Inny where, with her father, she had seen otters play, and trout leaping in the summer, their scales shining in the dappled light. She dipped her handkerchief in the cool water and bathed her hot eyes.

  She was put in the charge of a family going to London, Mr and Mrs Westcourt and their two children. Mr Westcourt was selling his land at Ballymahon. They were grand people by the new Mrs Michael Murray’s standards, connected to the Edgeworths, titled people in the great house of Edgeworthstown, and they were willing to take Annie to London. Mrs Westcourt’s nursemaid had gone home to Glassan — she could hardly manage the journey to London without a nursemaid. Of course, they would pay Annie’s travelling expenses — it was the least they could do. She was competent with children, wasn’t she? The question occurred somewhat belatedly to Mrs Westcourt, but Mrs Murray was able to assure her that Annie was very good with her own son.

  It was true. Miranda was fond of the little boy who called her Ana — his version of Miranda. Mrs Murray took pleasure in turning it into Annie. Somehow, she felt, it put the girl in her place, in that uncertain region between poor relation and servant girl, which Miranda occupied for a very short time in the lovely old house that belonged to Mr Murray. So began the process of Miranda losing herself. Not to be found again until a stranger said her name in a little, twilight room in Newgate Prison.

  The train took them from Athlone to Dublin where they stayed two nights in an hotel so that Mr Westcourt could complete his land sale with the solicitors. And Annie was found to be competent enough to take care of the little ones when the Westcourts dined out. It was very convenient, too, that Annie could sleep in the children’s room so that Mrs Westcourt was spared the nuisance of feeding and dressing them.

  They sailed from Dublin on the Princess Alice, a ship bound for Liverpool, and then New York, taking so many hundreds of emigrants away to America, away from poverty and famine. Then the train took them to London. It was on this last leg of the journey that Mr Westcourt, a kindly man, fond of his children, if wary of his wife whose fortune he had married, suggested, in his diffident way, that Annie might be engaged as their nursemaid in London. The children liked her and she managed them very well. Granted, she hadn’t much to say for herself, but she talked to the children and that was what counted.

  In the brief silence that followed, Miranda Deverall’s life was poised between happiness and misery. Not that the three concerned knew that. But Mrs Westcourt had a girl’s life in her hands. She threw it away.

  Mrs Westcourt’s narrow blue eyes looked at Miranda. Mrs Westcourt wasn’t a beauty, but she had been brought up to believe she was — which is the next best thing, even better, perhaps. Her mirror showed that she was elegant; her dresses fitted perfectly; her fair hair was fine and shining and artfully arranged to make her small head look somehow fragile. She was pale with fine, delicate skin, but the blue eyes were too small, the lips were too thin, and already, there were fai
nt lines traceable from nose to mouth. She would fade. Not that the short-sighted blue eyes saw those things in the glass.

  She could see, however, well enough, the curling dark hair and the long lashes curved like a fan on the delicate, rose-tinted cheek; she thought about the curiously green-gold eyes and the surprised look of gratitude that Annie had given to her husband. A quick look before the eyes were lowered again, then the face resumed its usual submissiveness. Mrs Westcourt remembered her mother saying, ‘Get a plain nursemaid. She’ll be grateful and she’ll do as she’s told. Pretty ones are —’ her mother had paused — ‘unpredictable.’ She looked at Annie again, a cold, appraising look. Mr Westcourt looked out at the passing landscape.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘we shouldn’t interfere.’

  Mr Westcourt didn’t answer. It didn’t really matter. Just an idea.

  From Euston, the Westcourts went away with their children to the comfortable house in Tavistock Square. The children were put to bed in the charming nursery with its rocking horse and toy cupboard, its blue papered walls and white paint, the nursery where Miranda Deverall might have slept her innocent sleep, listening to the soft breathing of two little children who would have loved her.

  The housekeeper put Annie Deverall in a cab for Amelia Hodson’s respectable house in East Street, a stone’s throw from the St Marylebone Workhouse, and just a few streets from Weymouth Street where Doctor Lancelot Plume’s blood now still stained the paving stones which edged the grass.

  Chapter 5: The Death of Innocence

  It was dark by the time Dickens came out of Newgate. He did not want to enter the wheeling, jostling life of the city; he stood reflecting on the passers-by rushing onward in one perpetual stream of life, utterly unmindful of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within the massive walls, perhaps not even knowing, or if they did, not heeding, the fact that they passed within one yard of a fellow creature, bound and helpless, whose hours were numbered.