Eliza’s Daughter (31 page)

***

I sang a Gloria at the funeral service. And afterwards Marianne Brandon approached me. Up to that moment I had not seen her for a couple of days; I supposed she was keeping to her apartment until the service. The Sisters had no organ in their small chapel, only a piano. Marianne played for the service – very beautifully. I realized that compared with her I was no musician at all.

‘Will you accompany me into the orchard for a few minutes?' Marianne said to me as we left the chapel.

‘Yes, of course.'

I followed her, a little puzzled, noticing that she limped even more heavily. I wondered whether or not to tell her about Willoughby.

She made for the bench by the wall overlooking the huge view down across the city of Lamego, and we sat there for several minutes in silence.

Then Marianne said: ‘Death clears one's mind. Do you find that? It puts our own small doings in perspective.'

I sighed, thinking of my dear Duke, and she went on musingly:

‘Even such is Man, whose life is spun

Drawn out and cut, and so is done:

The rose withers, the blossom blasteth,

The flower fades, the morning hasteth,

The sun sets, the shadow flies

The gourd consumes, and Man, he dies.

‘Do you know those lines?'

I did not, and looked at her with quick interest: to hear poetry coming from the elegant Mrs Brandon was something unexpected. But then I remembered those books in the boudoir at Delaford.

Now she surprised me anew.

‘I owe you an apology,' she said. ‘I have been angry with you for a long time – as perhaps you guessed.'

It needed no acute intelligence to guess that, I thought, but remained silent.

‘From the start, I bitterly begrudged my husband's interest in you,' she said. ‘The more, as I was childless. I made it a policy to prevent him visiting you, or bringing you over to Delaford.

‘And therefore I was thunderstruck –
outraged –
mortified and infuriated beyond bearing – when I learned, after his death, that he had left you the Manor in his will.—Oh, I have been provided for – financially – I have no reasonable cause for complaint; but to lose that house – the groves, the gardens – the mulberry tree –'

For a moment she remained without speaking, choked, I thought, by emotion; she muttered something about ‘Norland' which I did not comprehend.

I, meanwhile, as may be readily understood, was wholly dumbstruck with incredulity.

‘Left me the Manor?' I muttered stupidly after a while. ‘You mean, Delaford?'

‘Yes. Did you not know?'

‘How should I?'

‘Well, I suppose there is a lawyer's letter awaiting you somewhere. Perhaps they did not know where to find you.'

I said hoarsely, ‘That bequest seems to me utterly unjust. The Manor was
your
house – you had furnished it, you cared for it, you lived there – you loved it – '

I thought of the pleasant room overlooking the rose garden; the books on the shelf, pictures on the walls, the portrait of Willoughby hidden away between the pages.

‘Oh, no,' said Marianne. ‘
Men
build these houses. Women only occupy them for a short space. We come and go, my dear girl, like swallows. Delaford Manor was there before me, and will outlast me.'

The same was true of Zoyland, I thought. It was built in the reign of Elizabeth; I could claim, at best, no more than temporary tenancy.

And now I did not even need to do that.

A new feeling, unfamiliar, came to startle me. Could this be happiness? Or at least a kind of wry appreciation. For such a neat, symmetrical pattern. One home is withdrawn, another provided.

‘Mrs Brandon: if the Manor has really been left to me – which seems to me utterly astounding and improbable – then, please believe me, you must always regard it as your home. That room – your books, your pictures –'

‘Oh? You have been there, in the house?' said Marianne. She seemed rather surprised, not best pleased. ‘I did not know.'

‘Once – on an errand for your brother-in-law.'

And another bubble of amusement burst inside me. Was Edward Ferrars going to have to swallow his chagrin and be obliged to receive me as a neighbour? As the Lady of the Manor?

‘You are generous,' said Marianne. ‘You show more generosity than I have shown you; but' – she exhaled a long breath – ‘I am informed that I had better make my peace with God and order my affairs. This cankered leg that I am plagued with does not respond to treatment. I am not to expect any extended future.'

‘Oh –
poor Willoughby
!
' I exclaimed.

She looked up in amazed inquiry.

‘
You have seen him?
Here, in Portugal?'

‘Yesterday. I went – I have always wanted – ' At a loss for explanations, I mumbled, ‘He is my father, after all.'

With a faint smile, she said, ‘A fairly non-doing one, I collect?'

‘I had never met him in my whole life, so I did wish to see him, just once. And,' after some thought, I added, ‘perhaps I am glad that I did. Otherwise it would always have been a question. Now, at least, I know him, what he is like.—He is like somebody who died years ago.'

Sighing, Marianne rose and began to limp back towards the cloister. As she walked away, she remarked, ‘I only hope that knowing Willoughby does not put you off the male sex for ever. He was different when he was young, I assure you.'

For a moment I considered trying to plead his case; but what would be the purpose? She was not for him, and never would be.

Over her shoulder she added drily, ‘I shall probably make it my business to see, however, that he does not go hungry.'

And I grinned, thinking of the forty milreis that I had deposited on the table. Women, it appeared, would always see that Willoughby did not go hungry.

***

I went indoors and sought out Lady Hariot.

‘Listen, dear Lady Hariot, it seems that I have inherited a house. Will you come and share it with me? It is by far too large for one single woman.'

‘But – Good Heavens, my dearest child! – You will, for sure, find some man to fulfil that office – '

‘I am not at all certain about that,' said I. ‘In any case I am going to take my time about coming to any such decision. And there are many considerations which make my future marriage most unlikely. And Delaford is not too far from the country that you love – not too distant from Ashett and Growly Head. And one of the plans I have – for I am an heiress, I shall be wealthy – one of my schemes for the future is to oversee the children of Byblow Bottom, make sure they are properly treated and not left to the usage of people like Hannah Wellcome. And Dr Moultrie,' I added, after a moment.

‘In that case,' said Lady Hariot, ‘if such is your plan, I will come with you, and gladly. I do not care to be idle.'

‘There will be plenty to do.'

***

I thought that I would wait a while, yet, perhaps for the solitary intimacy of the sea voyage, while we sailed up the coast to Coruña to pick up Pullett, before telling Lady Hariot my other piece of news: that, in the course of the next year, I was to bear a child.

No, dear reader, I do not propose to tell you
whose
; that you may – if so disposed – try to puzzle out for yourself; I leave such unimportant matters to provide for the diversion of the idle-minded.

But I can tell you this. My child will be a child of the wild. All she will derive – all she will
need –
from her father, will be freedom. And that freedom in her I will defend, so long as it lies within my power, from society's jealousies, ambitions and rancours.

I hope that the child will be a girl. I think it will be. And will have my hands. As the gypsy and Pullett told me, my hand has brought me luck. But, girl or boy, which ever it be, I shall nurse it and care for it myself. No child of mine shall be consigned to Byblow Bottom.

And no, again, reader, I shall not marry Hoby. He has lost his chance.

Perhaps I shall take to writing novels, like Cousin Elinor.

Perhaps this is one of them.

The late Joan Aiken was a scholar and a prolific author of children's books and Jane Austen sequels and continuations. She is the author of
Emma Watson,
which completes Jane Austen's posthumously published fragment
The Watsons
, and of
Mansfield Park Revisited
, a sequel to
Mansfield Park
.