The Sealed Letter (12 page)

"It's no worse than 'Orrible Murders, in my humble opinion," says Helen, and goes on to the next. '"mary ann do come home. You labour under an illusion.' Or here, Nan, listen to this: even more pathetic, but it must be a code. 'The one-winged dove must die unless the crane will be a shield against her enemies.'"

"What kind of code, Mama?"

"Murderers hatching their plots, perhaps?"

"Enough," barks Harry. "Do you want to give the girl nightmares again?" He holds out his hand for the paper, and watches it shake. Feminine evasions, equivocations, he's caught her out in those before, over the years. Never a barefaced lie. Never till last night: "Miss F has begged me to stay and dine with Rev & Mrs. F."

"Perhaps I do. Nightmares are said to clean out the brain, like purgatives," says Helen, meeting his eyes for half a second. Like the glancing of fencers' foils.

"What's a purgative?" Nan asks.

"Now now, you know not to pay Mama any attention when she's in one of her nonsensical moods," says Harry, folding up the
Telegraph
so tightly the paper wrinkles.

***

Upstairs, to check on Nell. She asked for water half an hour ago, he learns, but fell back asleep before the nurse came back with it. Her cheeks are cotton stained with strawberry.

Into his study, to begin a letter to his brother.

Dear William,
Dear Will,

I would to God you were in London. I find myself in a position of peculiar discomfort and could do with your sound

I could do with your sympathetic yet objective counsel. Something seems to have

Something has occurred which has given rise in me

Something has occurred which has led me to >m a suspicion of my wife behaving in a way I suspect my wife.

No, it's impossible. The words "Dessert can't last three hours," set down in spidery lines of ink and posted to Gibraltar, would sound demented.

General William Codrington would write back from Gibraltar with uneasy warmth:
I rather believe you've got a little carried away, old boy. Too much time on your hands? These half-pay stints are the devil...

Harry tears the draft into very small pieces before he throws it into the elephant's-foot basket.

His sisters? Equally impossible. Jane lives in London, so he could speak to her face to face, at least, but what could he tell her? She's never liked Helen, but that won't prepare her to listen to a mass of vague, outrageous allegations. Her face would turn pinched with distress.

No, broaching this subject to anyone in his family, without an iota of proof, would only cause embarrassment. It's not sympathy Harry wants, besides, but a thread to follow through this labyrinth. Someone who understands already; someone who can help him decide whether what he guessed, in the darkness of last night, is a paranoid invention or the rank truth.

***

"My dear Admiral, how it gladdens our hearts to see you again after so long," cries Mrs. Watson. "I was remarking to the reverend only the other day, how much we've missed your company—and that of your wife," she adds after a minuscule pause.

His old friend is looking rather older; she's more papery at the temples. At his wife's side, the snowy-bearded Reverend Watson nods like a jack-in-the-box.

"You're kind to say so," says Harry, dry-mouthed. Until they left Malta, several years before him, the Watsons were his closest intimates. Since then, a few civil, pedestrian letters on either side. He hadn't yet thought to look them up, since getting back to London; the friendship seemed like something folded away in tissue. But here he is sitting on a horsehair sofa in the Watsons' dull fawn drawing-room, in one of the less fashionable, but still genteel, parts of London.

"Are your charming children well?"

"Nan is," he says with difficulty, "but Nell's suffering from a very bad cold on the chest."

He listens to the expressions of sympathy, recommendations of liniments and plasters. He stirs himself. "Your wards, are they still with you?"

"Alas, no; residing with relatives in Northumberland," Mrs. Watson tells him. "The reverend and I are a lonely Darby and Joan, these days."

They have nothing to do, Harry realizes; any visit is a welcome one. He takes a long breath, and plunges in. "You were always so very good to my wife, Mrs. Watson, even at times when she tried your patience sorely."

"Oh—" she waves that away. "I was always glad to play my part. How is dear Helen, if I may still call her that?"

How to answer? "Good, as to her health. As to her character..."

The seconds go by. "It's always been a singular one," remarks Mrs. Watson, eyes on the faded blue carpet.

Harry forces himself on. "Over the years in Valetta, during those congenial Sunday visits—you and I often touched on her manner. Its ... wildness, its irregularity."

"Alas, yes," says Mrs. Watson. "Hers is a constant struggle, and she's always had my sympathies."

From the reverend, an abstracted "Mm."

"I do hope there's been some amelioration, since your return to the bracing moral climate of the home country?" she suggests, her head on one side like a sparrow.

Harry shakes his head.

A little escape of breath from her thin lips, which are only slightly darker than her skin. "I feel sure—pardon the liberty, dear Admiral—I've always felt sure that Helen will reform, if you'll only tell her straight out what you expect of the mother of your children, without softening or prevarication. I'm afraid a free rein unleashes the worst in such a nature." She pauses. "If you were to entrust the task to me, I would accept it as my Christian duty to try to impress upon her—"

"It's too late for such conversations," interrupts Harry. "Recently—" That sounds slightly more considered than
last night.
"Recently, I must tell you in all confidence that I've come to suspect—"

Her gaze is owlish.
What big eyes you've got, grandmama,
he thinks irrelevantly, though Mrs. Watson can't be more than ten years older than his wife.

"That it's not only her manner," he goes on gruffly. "That here in London, her conduct itself—that she might possibly have actually stepped beyond the bounds of—beyond the bounds." He makes himself produce a brief account of last night.

Mrs. Watson's mouth forms a tiny circle. She turns to meet the reverend's watery eyes.

Harry's shocked them, he knows it. "But I have no proof," he winds up, "and I'm aware that jealousy's the besetting fault of older husbands."

"No!"

Her roar makes him jump.

"You, Admiral—the kindest, the least suspicious—" Mrs. Watson presses her fingers to her mouth, then takes them away. "The only wonder is that you've tolerated the intolerable for so long."

Harry stares at her. "You knew?" he asks in a boy's squeak.

"Not for sure. We only feared, didn't we, my dear?"

Another speechless nod from the reverend.

What shocks Harry is what lies behind the shock. Beneath the rage, beneath the mortification, he's feeling something he has to recognize as relief.

She's risen and crossed the room; she perches beside him on the horsehair sofa. "We never dared speak out. We hinted, we probed on occasion, but how could we put words to our dreadful deductions, when you were too gallant to hear a word against her? In conscience, we couldn't take it upon ourselves to be the first to accuse the mother of your children, without firm evidence—but I can tell you now, it seemed to us in Malta that Helen's dealings with various man-friends were consistent with the worst interpretation!"

Various man-friends?
Harry's head suddenly weighs too much for him; he drops it into his hands. The points of his collar prick his jaw like knives. He tries to answer, but all that comes out is a sob. The tears stop up his mouth: slippery in his palms, soaking his beard, spilling into his collar and cravat. Salt as seawater but hot. He's weeping like a child, weeping for all the times over the years that he's shrugged instead, weeping for all he hoped when he stood up in that chapel in Florence beside his dazzling little bride and said so ringingly,
I do.

Beside him, Mrs. Watson waits.

Finally he clears his throat with a sound like a rockfall. "I've been an utter idiot," he says into his wet fingers.

"Never that! Only the best of husbands." Her voice is as sweet as a mother's. "We considered you as a martyr among men, didn't we, Reverend?"

"We did," confides the old man.

Harry is mopping himself up with his handkerchief. "Well," he says through the folds of cotton. "No longer."

"No," agrees Mrs. Watson. "There comes an end to forbearance. For the little girls' sake—"

At the thought of Nan and Nell, he almost breaks down again.

"—not to mention your own. For the sake of religion, and, and decency itself," she goes on, "you must prove her guilt."

He balks at the word. "Or otherwise. It's still possible—"

"Of course, of course. It must be investigated, that's the word I was looking for," she assures him. "Enquiries must be made."

"How—" Harry breaks off. "It's all so tawdry."

"That's why it had much better be put on a professional footing at once, oughtn't it, Reverend?"

"Oh yes, at once, my dear."

"So that a man of your noble character needn't be embroiled in sordid details," she tells Harry.

"Professional?" he repeats dully.

"Why don't you let us play Good Samaritans—leave that in our hands?" says Mrs. Watson, giving him a light, careful pat on the sleeve.

Engagement

(an agreement to enter into marriage;
the act of giving someone a job;
a hostile meeting of opposing forces)

The fast young lady and the strong-minded woman are
twins, born on the same day, and nourished with the same
food, but one chose scarlet and the other hodden gray; one
took to woman's right to be dissipated and vulgar, the other
to her right to be unwomanly and emancipated.

Eliza Lynn Linton,
"Modern English Women No. 11,"
London Review
(December 15, 1860)

Is it possible to silence that bird?" asks Fido, at Eccleston Square that same afternoon.

"Certainly," says Helen, rushing to throw a Bengal shawl over the large silver-plated cage. The parrot's squawkings are reduced to a mutter.

Fido turns her gaze to the bowl of fish; to the clock with its mother-of-pearl inlay; to the emerald and scarlet carpet. She looks everywhere but at Helen. Why does Fido feel so awkward, considering it's not she who's been caught out? She rouses herself to anger instead. "When the telegram arrived, yesterday evening, more than an hour after you'd left my house ... I didn't know what to do."

Helen nods, eyes down.

"Since it was addressed to you, my first notion was to send it straight on here. But then I thought, who could know that you'd been at Taviton Street in the afternoon? Only—Anderson," she says, her voice dropping to a whisper as she names him. "So I could hardly take the risk of forwarding some urgent message from him, when it might be your husband who'd open it! I felt the best thing to do was to open it myself."

"Of course," murmurs Helen.

"I assumed at first that you and the telegram had crossed paths," says Fido, her voice hardening, "that Harry had sent it just before you'd got home for dinner, and its delivery had been delayed somehow. But in my experience the London telegraph office is entirely reliable." Not like the Maltese post, she thinks irrelevantly. "So I could only deduce that you hadn't gone home at all. Now your daughter was ill, but I had no way of telling you, having no idea where you were—though a pretty good idea
with whom."

"Oh,
carina,"
Helen groans, "it seems hardly necessary to heap coals on my head. There's no punishment worse than the terror of losing a child." Fido frowns at her. "But didn't the doctor say—"

"Doctors!" Helen says the word with scorn. "Can you imagine how long a night lasts, when a mother spends it by the bedside of her unconscious daughter, hanging on every strained breath? All the time cursing myself, and knowing that if she didn't live till morning, it would be my doing?"

"Oh, come now—"

"Yes, I went for a little drive with him, with the man whose heart I'm in the process of breaking," sobs Helen. "I was weak in the way of women. I took pity on him, and on myself. And for the sake of that single hour's drive on a warm evening, a vengeful providence has smited my child."

Fido lets out an exasperated breath.
Smited,
indeed! "Compose yourself," she says. "The fever will break soon, hasn't the doctor assured you of that? Nell should be perfectly well in a few days."

Helen, face buried in her handkerchief, shakes her head.

"I'm not accusing you of imperilling your daughter's life. I just don't like being put in such an uncomfortable position. Being misled. Told what's not true," Fido says bluntly.

No answer.

"You say you rely on me, Helen, you say I'm the only one you can trust—but then you go to these ridiculous lengths to obfuscate!" She drops her voice to a whisper. "Do you take me for a fool, I wonder? You tell me you're going home to dinner, but instead you sneak off to meet your—" She leaves the word unsaid. "You keep insisting you'll break off with him, but your actions suggest otherwise—that you're planning to keep it up to the sordid end."

"Planning?
" repeats Helen, staring at her with wet eyes. A small, bitter laugh. "My dear, I'm not managing to
plan
anything: I'm running and leaping and tripping like some hunted rabbit!"

Fido sighs.

"How I wish you could inoculate me with even a fraction of your force, your coolness, your imperviousness..."

That pricks.
I sound like some statue.

"If ever I give you ... misleading impressions, it's because I don't know what I'm doing from one minute to the next, or I'm ashamed to admit even to myself how far I've slipped. When I love, I can't hold back. I can't help myself," says Helen in a choking voice. "You know that about me, don't you? You've always known."

Fido looks away, at the china-crammed shelves, the patterned walls of the drawing-room that seem to be closing in. She couldn't bear to live this life. Helen's had no job or cause to absorb her, to bear her up; passion has been her sole preoccupation, and look what damage it's done. If Fido can't find it in her heart to make allowances for Helen's frailties, and forgive the untruths Helen convinces herself it's necessary to tell—then how can she call herself by the holy name of
friend?

"Pity me!"

"I do," says Fido, finally meeting Helen's eyes, "I do. I don't condemn you for this affair. But I believe it's poisoning you by degrees." She gets to her feet, takes a long breath. "I won't aid and abet it any longer; I don't even want to hear about it."

"Oh, but—"

"Sh," she says, finger to her lips, looking at Helen with eyes that brim with scalding love.

***

The Reform Firm's been summoned to Langham Place by a mysterious message from Bessie Parkes, "to discuss matters of grave importance to the future of the
Journal."

Rereading the note, Fido thinks, how strange: a month ago, she'd have been hard pressed to name anything of more importance to her than the future of the
English Woman's Journal.
Now she finds all her thoughts are of Helen Codrington. At moments, she catches herself wishing she hadn't run into her on Farringdon Street; that she'd been anywhere else in London on the last day of August, walking along, sufficient unto herself.

"This is a sorry mess," comments Emily Davies, taking her seat at the committee table.

Their secretary's all aquiver. "It has emerged—it seems that the
Journal
's finances are in much worse shape than they seemed."

"Tell them what the subscribers said," says Bessie Parkes with a tragic empress's nod.

"I spoke in confidence to a dozen or so who've supported us for the past six years but don't mean to renew," says Sarah Lewin in her whispery voice. "In several cases, I was informed that the
Journal,
in their view, has never quite been able to shake off certain unsavoury associations."

"God knows we've tried," says Jessie Boucherett.

"Indeed," says Isa Craig sorrowfully. "Forcing poor Max to resign the editorship..."

Fido grimaces. She still feels obscurely guilty about the role she played in the purge of Matilda "Max" Hays, their fieriest campaigner, who was publishing demands for women's emancipation when the rest of them were still in short skirts.

"We didn't force her," Bessie Parkes protests.

"Obliged her, then," says Fido. "Induced."

"We had no choice: shadows clung about Max's name," says Bessie Parkes, looking into the distance. "Her reputation for Bloomerism, wild outbursts, that household of women in Rome..."

"But you were friends with her and Miss Cushman, you stayed there yourself," Jessie Boucherett points out.

"Yes, and Max will always be very dear to me," says Bessie Parkes in a shaking voice, "but reputation is such an insidiously lingering phenomenon. Desperate measures were called for."

Such a curious mixture of the soft and the diamond-hard about Bessie Parkes, Fido thinks. She finds herself gripping the bevelled edge of the table with her fingertips. A headache's started up behind her right eye. "I never saw her in bloomers," she bursts out, "only shirts and jackets of a tailored cut."

"Any eccentricity, even in dress, gives succour to our enemies," says Bessie Parkes.

"Besides," cries Fido, "it's so unfair that the
Journal
still has a reputation for laxity, when its content is of the tamest kind."

"You've put your finger on it," says Emily Davies, very crisp. "I believe this issue of reputation is a red herring; our readers have simply had enough of carrying a lame dog."

Isa Craig is looking distressed. "Now Miss Davies, you mustn't take things personally. Our readership was in decline from its peak of one thousand long before you took over the editorship."

"Oh I'm quite aware of that, and I believe I do a competent job with the resources available to me," says Emily Davies. "But the fact is that the
English Woman's Journal
has never been known for intellectual or literary excellence."

The women of the Reform Firm aren't meeting each other's eyes.

"Our friends buy it out of duty, and for the most part, I suspect, shelve it unread."

"Not so!"

"Surely—"

"Yes, yes, yes," says Fido, nodding at Emily Davies. "The problem is timidity. If we're too nervous to include any topic which could be considered remotely controversial, we're left with pedestrian exhortations to our readers to use their talents while making sure to fulfill their womanly duties!"

"May I ask," breathes Sarah Lewin, "what sort of topic—"

Jessie Boucherett interrupts her. "I rather agree with Fido. For instance, why have we never pointed out the many injustices to women that linger in the Matrimonial Causes Act?"

Bessie Parkes purses her lips. "Divorce is a dangerous subject. We could seem to be associating ourselves with women of doubtful reputation."

"But what about a blameless wife," asks Isa Craig, "whose husband takes half a dozen mistresses? As the law stands, she can only free herself of him if she proves him guilty of a compounding offence, such as desertion, cruelty—"

"Rape," contributes Fido, "incest—"

"Bestiality or buggery," finishes Emily Davies.

Bessie Parkes's lovely face is pale. "Words which will never be printed in the
English Woman's Journal
as long as I have any say in the matter."

"Oh come," Fido objects, "we're veteran journalists, we can raise these questions without verbal impropriety; there's always a way to say something without naming it."

"The divorce law is flawed and unequal, but I for one would not support liberalizing it further," Emily Davies puts in. "In my experience, divorce leaves women not merely ruined but penniless, and bereft of their children."

"Well, that's true. Without some legal barrier," jokes Jessie Boucherett, "I believe most men would roam like apes from female to female!"

"Divorce is only one example of the kind of subject we've been skirting for six years," says Fido. "Which reminds me of the chief who parted from his second wife at the recommendation of a missionary. When asked how he'd provided for the cast-off, he replied—" she waits till she has everyone's full attention "—'Me eat her.'"

Laughter eases the atmosphere in the room.

"What about married women's property, instead?" suggests Jessie Boucherett. "I agree with Miss Davies, that as marriage is the lot of the majority of women, our priority should be to ameliorate its conditions."

"Mm. On the property issue, it struck me the other night," says Fido, "that the possessions of the woman who commits murder, and those of the woman who commits matrimony, are both dealt with alike: by confiscation."

"You're in form today, Fido," says Isa Craig, grinning. "Oh, what about an article on the suffrage?"

"Come now, Miss Craig, you know Britain's not ready," Bessie Parkes scolds her gently. "I for one would rather dismantle that wall gradually, brick by brick, than smash our hearts—and my beloved Bar's money, may I add!—against it."

Emily Davies is nodding. "We need to get access to higher education first, to prove we're intelligent enough to vote. Let's fight one fight at a time, so that the tainting associations of one don't rub off on the others."

"But getting back to the
Journal
—" says Fido.

"I know it's very dear to all of us here," says Bessie Parkes. "It's the beating heart at the centre of all our endeavours to uplift our sex, the moral engine that powers the whole Cause."

Emily Davies plays a silent piano on the table. "But given the state of accounts, it seems unlikely to limp on till Christmas."

"Defeatist thinking," says Bessie Parkes in awful tones, "and from the editor too!"

"I don't think I'm known for giving up easily," says Emily Davies with a mildness that snaps like a whip. "But I have grave doubts about carrying on editing a small-scale publication that speaks only—and not eloquently—to the converted. In six years, what laws has it changed?"

"You know," says Fido, "perhaps what's needed is an altogether different kind of magazine." She's surprised herself; these are only half-formed notions.

Bessie Parkes looks at her hard. "A radical diatribe that won't be let into respectable houses even as kindling?"

Fido takes a long breath, to keep her temper. "In fact, I was thinking of a well-funded periodical of general interest, written by the most talented male and female authors, which discusses the Cause among a broad range of other topics. One that looks outward, not inward. A magazine that readers actually want to read!"

Emily Davies has her head on one side, like a curious squirrel.

"My own view," snaps Bessie Parkes, "is that if a change must come, the
Journal
should become more practical, less theoretical. Cheaper, for instance, to appeal to the masses of working women."

This raises a few eyebrows.

"But at any rate, none of you need fear its demise by Christmas. What I should perhaps have announced before this interesting discussion ran away with itself is that the immediate pecuniary crisis has been averted by our guardian angel: Bar has sent a cheque for the rent from Algiers."