Kept (22 page)

He has read Papa’s books & indeed those of other literary gentlemen that Papa knew.

Yet there is something mysterious about him. Viz: his habit, when
asked some question, of not replying; his habit of regarding me as if I possessed some piece of information of which he was dearly in want; his habit of casting his grey eye around my chamber as if something was hid there that he could not discern.

Henry, as I now recollect, used to talk of him occasionally, saying he was a man to whom he owed much, that the Dixeys were thought to be “queer people,” whatever that might mean, that this Mr. Dixey had some reputation as a naturalist & scholar, &c., that his name could be found in the catalogues at the British Museum and so forth.

This is all that Henry said, & having little interest, I asked no more.

My guardian’s face is clean-shaven with deep lines etched into the loose skin. He has long, delicate fingers and a way of saying “That will do very well” or “I had not remarked it” when something is drawn to his attention—trivial expressions, no doubt, but as they are part & parcel of the man, I set them down.

As to his interests, the other day he fetched a slowworm that he had found on the path & concealed in his pocket for his amusement; the week before, a bat nestled in moss upon a saucer that he believed he could nurse back to health. When I shrank from these objects—the bat with its pinched little face & evil claws I could scarce stand to look at—he expressed surprise, saying that he supposed certain things were not to others’ tastes. This I thought very singular, but somehow characteristic of him.

And then last evening a most curious encounter, whose elements will long remain with me.

It was very late—gone eleven indeed—pitch-dark outside with a high wind blowing, but I had been amusing myself by singing snatches of old songs—it was something Papa and I used to do in days gone by—& had not thought of going to bed. Just as I assured myself that I absolutely must retire, there came a knock at the door, very loud and distinct, & in answer to my enquiring a turning of the key & my guardian’s tall figure standing in the doorway. Again, he stared at me for a full half-minute without speaking, went to the window & stared into the night, & finally remarked:

“The hour is very late.”

“I had not noticed it,” I lied.

“You are quite comfortable here?”

“Indeed, sir. Very comfortable.”

“I cannot offer you company. But there is conversation, if you wish it.”

“I do wish it.”

I had thought he would seat himself on one of the armchairs in my chamber. Instead he bade me follow him through the open door—he had a lighted candle set near the wainscot which he now retrieved. In this way—he leading, myself following, with my skirts gathered up in my hand to guard against the dust of the bare boards, our two shadows in monstrous relief against the wall—we proceeded along a corridor to a great silent landing, with moonshine streaming through the window onto the balustrade, climbed a flight of stairs & came eventually to a far-off room where lamplight glowed under the door.

His study, my guardian explained. He seemed very anxious that I should explore it and stood by my shoulder, indeed, as I examined it, like a small boy with his boat that his female relatives are bidden to admire.

Indeed my guardian’s study is a very singular place, unlike any other gentleman’s room that ever I saw. Picture, if you will, two or three great high bookcases extending almost to the ceiling, so that it must take a stepladder at least to ascend to their topmost shelves. And then a number of squat glass cabinets, all agleam with the light from the fire, and filled with the queerest objects: a stuffed pine marten poised on the bough of a tree; several animal skulls and pieces of bone; lichens and ferns set under squares of glass. Several of these exhibits I confess I did not overlike—viz., a wolf ’s head on a plinth, a stoat preserved so ingeniously that he seemed ready to strike the grey mouse that lay at his feet. Turning from them, I all but fell into the arms of a great brown bear who stood in the corner of the room in such a lifelike attitude that I could scarce prevent myself from crying out.

I must not mind old Bruin, my guardian said. Who in life craved but tender shoots and honeycombs.

There were, in addition, several little tables set against the wall on which lay trays of what I could not fail to remark as birds’ eggs,
all neatly labelled, thus:
Philomachus pugnax
,
Rallus aquaticus
,
Circus aeruginosus
. These, I will admit, took my fancy & I browsed among them for some time.

“What, pray, are these, sir?” I enquired of a pair of reddy-brown specimens, reposing on a saucer of moss.

My guardian seemed gratified by my interest.

“They are osprey’s eggs. A bird the Scots call the eagle fisher, and very hard to come by in these times.”

Much as I admired the eggs, there seemed something sad in this admission. That it were a great tragedy for the hen bird who returned to her nest to find them gone.

“It is a pity,” I said, “that they could not have hatched, and allowed the world two more ospreys.”

“As to that, madam,” he remarked, “I fear that I cannot agree with you.”

After that no more was said about eggs.

I suppose that I must have remained in that room an hour. I remember that there was a moon shining on the garden & an owl that flapped at the window, & the warmth of the fire being very pleasant.

My guardian is a restless man. He does not sit easy in his chair but stands up repeatedly to poke the fire, take down a book, inspect one of his cabinets, &c.

He is the possessor of a great fund of curious information, so that I should now think myself tolerably able to answer the most searching questions on the breeding habits of the lynx, the manufacture of otter snares, &c.

One very droll incident occurred, which I must not omit. By my guardian’s chair, as he sat, I noticed there lay a saucer of milk. This I supposed the perquisite of some cat that I had not yet seen. Presently, though, a tiny mouse popped its head through a hole in the wainscot, darted forth to the saucer & began to lap up the milk, apparently oblivious to the fact that great people were talking above its head. When I drew my guardian’s attention to this—for I confess to a slight horror of mice—he smiled & said Sir Charles (he is named after Sir Charles Lyell, the great geologist) was a pet & had the run of the place, & stooping down put out his forefinger, which the mouse saw
& scrambled up almost the length of his shoulder, so that I could not help but laugh, it being so very humorous to hear a gentleman talking while a mouse ran in and out of the folds of his coat.

A very curious aspect of our conversation, which I here set down as fully as I can recollect it.

“Who made the world?” my guardian asks.

“Why, God made it.”

“And yet there are those who say he did not.”

“Indeed then, who else would be able to form us in the manner that we are and give us life?”

This was the answer that Papa always gave his friend Mr. Lewes in debates of this kind. My guardian acknowledges it with a nod of his grey head.

“Some men would say that the world made itself.”

This seemed to me such a blasphemy that I cried out, “But out of what materials? And who placed them there?”

At this my guardian seizes Sir Charles, who has been polishing his whiskers in the region of his master’s collar, and continues: “And mice? Did God make them? Or were they once some other thing?”

“A mouse is a mouse.”

“But he might not always have been so. The rocks are older than the Bible.”

“And yet, sir, they are all a part of God’s purpose.”

As am I, & my position here, & what will become of me, of which I would know more, when it pleases God to tell me.

And then a greater mystery even than my guardian’s questionings.

Waking early this morning, at six of the clock, with the wind still beating against the eaves and a grey dew beyond the window, I entered my chamber to find a white rose upon the desk. A single white rose lying upon a silver dish, the thorns neatly trimmed from its stem.

I enquired of the servants—Mr. Randall, who fetched me my breakfast, Mrs. Finnie, who came to me at eleven, the tall footman who brought my lunch—yet none of them could account for it.

I have been thinking of Mama.

Although, to be sure, it is twenty years since I saw her & fifteen since she died. Which I remember above all, the funeral at Kensal Green, and Papa in his black coat, and Sir Henry Cole, Papa’s friend, standing at the grave, & all of us quite broken down with our grief. At the thought of poor Mama, who would never again laugh or comb out her red-gold hair as she sat on the terrace, or kiss me & tell me to be a good child, & all the other things that we recollected her for.

Papa and Mama met at Worthing, where he had gone to write his book & she to take the air with Aunt Charlotte Parker. Their carriage broke its axle on the Brighton Road & Papa was very gallant, summoned a cab & escorted them to their hotel, which I thought a very romantic story. When they were married, they lived in an old brown house in Kensington. One day when I was a girl, Papa told me to put on my hat & I walked with him across the gardens to a house where a gentleman in a travelling cloak with a great beard coming down over his shirtfront sat at breakfast over a silver teapot. This, Papa said, was Mr. Tennyson.

I remember Mama reading to me from the beautiful silk books that lay on the round drawing-room table.

And Mama sitting on the terrace with all her hair tumbling about her shoulders & our servant Brodie combing it out.

And Mama putting me to sleep in a dear little room with two little beds & some pictures. One was of a good boy doing a sum & another of a sleepy boy yawning on his way to school, & then over the door hung Daniel O’Connell, who I fancied would make the most horrible faces to frighten me.

And Papa’s figure in the doorway as he regarded us & his shadow in the firelight as he stooped down to bid us goodnight.

And then we were at Paris & Mama was ill & she went to live
with a doctor in a big house with a great garden full of little paths, & sometimes I would spend the day with her & run after her down the long slopes. And Mama would become quite like a girl again & play with me for hours at a time until Papa & the nurse came out to find us. And Papa would say that we were his two darlings & that the happiest moment of his life was when he came along the Brighton Road (Mama said that he had his head in a book & scarce noticed her) & saw the carriage with its broken axle.

Sometimes Mama would fly into a temper & throw the cup that she had in her fingers to the ground or beat her hands upon her chair in a passion, tho’ it was a puzzle to me that anything could distress her. Yet I was never frightened of Mama at these times, for I knew that she loved me & would not bring me to harm.

Mama herself said as much.

Then the doctor said it was better we should not go to see her anymore & we came away to England. I remember Papa’s face in the diligence that fetched us from Paris, & the lamp swinging from the jolting road, & Papa scolding me for some trick I had played, & thinking that I should see Mama again & be consoled.

And yet I never did.

And when she died—I was twelve then & had a great friend called Tishy Cole, & Papa was writing his life of Sir Thomas More—it was as if someone I had known long ago & then forgotten had come back to haunt me. And I resolved never again to forget Mama, & her red-golden hair, & running down the slopes of the doctor’s gardens. Which I have not done to this day.

It seems to me that I am very like Mama.

I too have a room where I sit & am brought things & people are very kind to me.

I too have my tempers & my frets.

I too have my red-golden hair, which is like Mama’s, altho’ I think not so long.

And yet Papa, & all the others on whom I might rely, are gone from me forever.

Once, before Henry & I were married, I tried to explain to him about Mama, & the doings at the French doctor’s house, & other things—of Mr. Farrier, even, & what had passed between us—but he shook his head, smiled & said that it did not signify.

Of all flowers, there is nothing I detest so much as a rose.

And now, all unexpected, there is
an addition to my circle
(as Mrs. Brookfield, who we knew in the old Kensington days, & was very kind to us, would say when she had some lion to tea).

This lunch hour, instead of the tall footman who never speaks, there comes bearing my tray one of the maids, the yellow-haired girl whom I recollected seeing from my window. Very sturdy & carrying her burden before her as if it weighed no more than a teacup.

“Where is William?” I asked, the tray having been set down & the girl bobbing her head.

“Please, ma’am, he has gone away.”

I fancied that William’s going away was not to her liking.

“And you are to take his place?”

“If you please, ma’am.”

Upon which she gave me a look such as I have often seen in the faces of those that serve me: as if she were wary of what I might say or do & wished that the door were open behind her.

“You must not be afraid of me,” I said. “Indeed you must not, for I mean no harm. What is your name?”

“Esther, ma’am.”

She would not say more but busied herself about my desk & shook out a sofa cushion that had disarranged itself, in such a way that I was very grateful to have her company. Plainly my situation—the room, my papers, &c.—interested her for I saw her dart several eager looks as she went about her work.

When she had gone, I listened to her footsteps tripping along the passageway until there came a moment when I could not distinguish them amidst the other noises of the house, & then another moment when they were altogether gone.