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‘She wrote,’ Mrs Parry explained. ‘About ten days later, Elizabeth, I had a letter from her. Not a long letter but sufficient to — I cannot say to set our minds at rest – but at least sufficient to tell us what had happened. I was very surprised. But at least I suppose she felt she had to inform us of her actions.’
‘And what were those, ma’am?’ growled Dr Tibbett, his eyes alight with triumph.‘She had fallen into sin and debauchery, that is what her letter told us!’
‘Run away with a man,’ translated Frank.
‘She wrote she was sorry to put me to any inconvenience,’ Mrs Parry said sadly. ‘She had not taken her belongings, her clothes, as to have been seen leaving the house with a bag would have occasioned questions. She begged me to dispose of them as I saw fit.’
‘No sense of her responsibilities,’ pronounced Dr Tibbett. ‘Moral weakness, ma’am, moral weakness, sadly seen so much now in Young Persons!’
‘When was this?’ I ventured to ask.
‘Oh, let’s see, six or eight weeks ago,’ Frank said. ‘It will be nearer two months than not. I must say I was surprised, too. She always appeared something of a little mouse. Who’d have guessed it?’
‘A dissembler!’ snapped Dr Tibbett.
The conversation was interrupted at this point by the departure of the remains of the turbot and the arrival of a roast leg of veal. When it restarted, the topic of my predecessor had been dropped by common consent.
After dinner Dr Tibbett and Frank Carterton took themselves to the library to smoke cigars and Mrs Parry and I returned to the drawing room. I was by now very tired after a long day and it was a great effort to stay awake, let alone make much conversation.
Mrs Parry took the opportunity to return to the subject of Frank’s proposed departure for Russia.
‘I knew, of course, that Frank would be sent away somewhere. But I had hoped it would be somewhere congenial, say Italy. Mr Parry and I travelled to Italy on our wedding journey. The climate was so gentle and the scenery so beautiful, I quite fell in love with the country. We stayed in a delightful villa on the shores of a glorious lake surrounded by mountains. From time to time there would be spectacular electric storms and the lightning would bounce from peak to peak. But Russia, whatever will he do there? To think that only about ten years ago we fought them in that terrible war around the Black Sea. Frank’s father was a cavalry officer, too, and might well have been present at some engagement there had he not blown out his own brains some years earlier.’
I was at a loss how to comfort her on any of these accounts, but soon the gentlemen returned and I was relieved of the necessity to try. I thought, as they came into the room, that Frank looked a little flushed and out of countenance. I wondered if there had been some argument. If so, it had not affected Dr Tibbett who seated himself with a practised flick of his coat-tails and effortlessly took charge of the conversation as before.
We were now treated to his views on the current situation in the Church of England. This, if he was to be believed, was beset by enemies on all sides. The forces of Disestablishmentarianism were marshalling their troops and infiltrating Parliament. Moreover, he
informed us, the Church was undermined by the growing influence of the Methodists without and the sinister intentions of the Tractarians within, to say nothing of the assaults of Darwinism and its pernicious theories.
‘I have read Mr Darwin’s book on the origin of species,’ I said brightly, seeing an opportunity both to prove myself a good conversationalist and to stop DrTibbett’s seamless diatribe for a moment or two. His booming tones were making my head ache. Mrs Parry sat nodding like an automaton and Frank stared up at the ceiling, murmuring assent from time to time although he probably had no idea to what. I suspected his mind was elsewhere.
A stunned silence followed my words. Mrs Parry looked puzzled. Frank took his gaze from the ceiling, raised his eyebrows and grinned. Dr Tibbett steepled his fingertips.
‘Not a suitable work to place in the hands of a lady,’ he observed.
‘My father bought it shortly before he died. He was reading it, in fact, on his last evening.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Dr Tibbett as though that explained everything.
‘Oh well,’ said Frank entering the conversation and with a gleam of mischief in his eyes. ‘I have not read it as Miss Martin has, but I understand Darwin and his fellow naturalists have it all worked out that Creation as the Bible tells it is all bunkum. The world wasn’t created in six days and there were all kinds of weird and wonderful animals about before the likes of you and me set foot upon the earth, is that not so, Miss Martin?’
Dr Tibbett cleared his throat. ‘I myself agree that we must interpret what the Old Testament tells us. It speaks of six days when, possibly, what is meant is six epochs. But as to monsters roaming the earth? We must class the majority of those with the mermen and maids and giant sea reptiles of the ignorant mariner’s fantasy.’
‘Even so, the world must once have been a very different place,’
I said. ‘They say where there are now seams of coal there were once great forests and I have a piece of shale—’
I was not allowed to finish.
‘My dear,’ said Dr Tibbett, ‘such things can be explained by the Great Flood in which the world was destroyed and then recreated. You clearly suffer from the confusion that can so easily be caused by placing such a work as Mr Darwin’s in the hands of Young People. My advice to you, Miss Martin, is when you have finished your daily chapter of Scripture, to read suitable works of fiction of an improving nature. There are some, I believe.’
‘James Belling has a collection of fossils,’ said Frank. ‘He goes off to Dorset and such places and digs them up. There are some pretty queer creatures among them. There’s nothing like them around today. Darwin has surely discovered something.’
‘I do not deny the existence of these bones,’ conceded Dr Tibbett. ‘I have viewed some myself. They are very curious. But that they are as old as claimed I doubt. The most extravagant calculation cannot make the world more than a few thousand years old. Nor can I agree that so many different creatures can arise from so few ancestors. Young Belling may well have found some interesting specimens and I accept that some species may have died out before the coming of the Great Flood.’
‘One does wonder what our own ancestors—’ Frank began.
He was not allowed to finish. Dr Tibbett, who had been arguing in quite a reasonable tone of voice until that moment, became red in the face and launched into a tirade.
‘I will not allow these things to be said! Man must be a superior being to the rest of Creation. It is inconceivable that he is an animal like – like an ape! If, indeed, he were, he would have created nothing himself. What of music, art, literature and philosophy? Will you count every civilisation the world has ever seen as mere chance? Did an ape build the pyramids? Did an ape cause Rome to rise? Were the immortal words of Homer penned by a chimpanzee? Different species of animal and fish may have
come and gone but Man himself has always been of superior intellect and ability. Man alone has a sense of the spiritual. Man alone can conceive of things beyond his immediate experience, which no mere beast can ever do.’
‘Well, sir, I confess I don’t understand it myself,’ admitted Frank, retreating before the fire in Dr Tibbett’s eye and the manner of his delivery. ‘The notion that our ancestors shambled about, barely upright, covered in hair, devoid of speech and – forgive me, ladies – any vestige of clothing, does seem a trifle far-fetched.’
‘Far-fetched?’ thundered Dr Tibbett. ‘It is more than that. That, if anything, sir, is bunkum!’
‘Have we not time,’ put in our hostess, ‘for a hand of whist before you go, dear doctor?’ Her manner, as we had argued, had been growing increasingly restive. Darwinism was of no interest to her and valuable time was being lost which might be employed in her favourite occupation.
It seemed we did. Frank set up the card table and although I was no expert card player, my earlier tiredness had abated and I’d acquired my ‘second wind’. I managed to acquit myself fairly well. The rest of the evening passed in quite a jolly way. Even Dr Tibbett relaxed his formal manner a little, although once or twice I caught him studying me when he thought my mind on my hand of cards. His look was neither antagonistic nor friendly, merely blandly neutral. Sharp though, for all that. I felt I was being slotted neatly into some scale of humanity. Dr Tibbett might not support the theories of Darwinism, but he had his own notions of mankind and womankind.
The visitor left the house around eleven. Frank went downstairs with him but returned immediately. He threw himself moodily into one of the chairs around the card table and picking up some cards at random began to deal them out in meticulously straight rows for no purpose I could see. Mrs Parry had gone up to her room where Nugent patiently waited to undress her mistress and take down the extraordinary edifice which crowned her head.
This meant I could also retire. I opened my mouth to say good night to Frank but he didn’t look up and appeared unaware I was still present. I made to slip out of the room. But unexpectedly Carterton spoke.
‘Wait,’ he said, ‘you will need a candle.’ He got to his feet, took a candlestick from a nearby side table, lifted it to light it at the gas jet and handed it to me.
I thanked him but my thanks were acknowledged only with a nod. ‘Good night,’ I added.
This at least brought forth a muttered ‘good night.’
As I passed along the upper landing a gust of chill night air made my candle flame flicker and I realised the front door was still open. I leaned over to see why. Dr Tibbett was still there, talking to Simms. But the conversation ended even as I looked. Simms handed him his hat and cane. I thought Tibbett was unaware of my observation but he must have sensed it for he suddenly looked up and I caught the full force of his stare. Automatically I retreated into the shelter of the turbaned boy candle-bearer. I was embarrassed; he would believe I was spying. I went up to my room annoyed by the whole silly little incident. I did wonder what he had been chatting to Simms about.
I was now dropping with exhaustion. Nevertheless there were some thoughts which buzzed around my brain and wouldn’t be dislodged as I climbed unaided from my clothes into my nightgown and unpinned my knot of hair.
There were no gas jets to be seen on this floor. The expensive convenience was restricted to the reception rooms. I sat before the rococo dressing table and began to brush my hair in regular long strokes as I had been taught by my one-time governess, Madame Leblanc. The amber glow of my candle was comforting and far nicer, I thought, than the hissing gas and its unrelenting hard bright glare.
In the corners of the room the shadows cast velvety veils. It would not be too difficult to imagine someone who stood there
and watched. I thought of Madeleine Hexham whose name had come up at dinner, not to everyone’s wish. I glanced around me. It was likely that I’d been given my predecessor’s room and that it was here she had planned her flight into the arms of her mysterious lover. Who had he been and where had she met him? How long had she been in this house before her abrupt quitting of it?
Had Tibbett and Frank Carterton had some exchange of words on her account in the library later? Had Frank been given some kind of dressing-down resulting in his returning so out of sorts after seeing Tibbett as far as the street door and delivering him there to Simms? It was unsettling to learn that Miss Hexham’s memory aroused strong feeling. She had probably come to this house just as grateful as I was to be offered the position of companion. She had left her modest baggage in the hall as I’d done and followed Simms up the staircase, wondering about her future. Had she not been happy here? My employer seemed very kind but Madeleine had not confided in her. I resolved to ask Frank who was, I suspected, something of a gossip when not sulking.
There had been at least a practical result of these events for me. Madeleine’s sudden departure had left Mrs Parry unexpectedly without a companion and, when she heard of my need to find such a situation, it must have appeared a gift. It did not make it less kind of her to have taken me in. But on the other hand, I was a little relieved of the burden of gratitude. A fair exchange was much more to my liking.
Finally my thoughts returned again to Frank Carterton, of whom I had received a mixed impression. He could be, if he set himself to it, quite charming and entertaining. He was also not above stirring up mischief.
To take matters a step further, was Frank right in his whispered suggestion that Dr Tibbett was paying court to my employer? I could well believe it possible. Mrs Parry was an attractive and wealthy widow. The clergyman-schoolmaster obviously stood high
in her esteem. Was that why Frank looked forward so enthusiastically to departing for Russia? He had no wish to be here on the day when he could call Dr Tibbett ‘uncle’?
I put down the hairbrush with relief and rose to go to my bed. I extinguished the candle and a kind of darkness fell yet unlike the total darkness of night I was accustomed to. My eyes adjusted to the gloom and I found I could clearly distinguish the shapes, if not the details, of the furniture. The glow came through the windows from the gas lamps placed outside at intervals around the square. Mrs Parry’s room was, I’d learned, on the opposite side of the house and overlooked the quiet green privacy of a pocket-handkerchief-sized garden. For me, the companion, it would be the noise of London astir from early morning onward and a view, albeit of the grass and trees in the middle of the square, yet obscured by the coming and going of vehicles and pedestrians. I pulled the curtain a little aside and peered out and down. At the moment it was deserted, the sulphurous yellow of the gas lamps below shining on the cobblestones. But even as I watched, I heard the click of a street door and a figure appeared from the house, threw a cloak round his shoulders with a debonair gesture and walked off briskly, swinging a stout cane.

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