The Solitary House (5 page)

“All the same—”

“All the same, I am not proposing that we sit idly by. Trusting to luck is, in general, a notoriously unreliable defence, but it seems in this case it has been singularly favourable. It has come to my knowledge—I
need not trouble you how—that my Lady has a secret of her own. A dire and shameful secret that threatens to bring stain and ignominy on the proudest of lineages. I have suspected it a long time—fully known it only a little while. And now my Lady knows that I know it.”

“And you intend to expose her?”

Tulkinghorn shakes his head. “Not yet. Perhaps not at all. Once disgraced she would have nothing to lose, and time on her hands to ponder those facts which at present are the very last and least of her concerns. No, gentlemen, better by far that she remain where she is, dragging out her present life at my pleasure, from day to day, from hour to hour, wondering when the blow will fall, and when the dark and lonely path she chose so long ago will at last find its end.”

Sir Julius looks at him narrowly; his agitation has somewhat subsided, and with it his slight but perceptible stammer. “I should not like to have you for an enemy, Tulkinghorn. You show neither pity, nor compunction, nor hesitation. I congratulate you.”

Tulkinghorn bows, the faintest possible colour in his grey cheeks. “I am obliged to you, sir. Indeed, the circumstances could hardly be more propitious. I caution, as always, against the slightest complacency on our part, but I am perfectly easy in my own mind. I do not think my Lady will be troubling us again.”

THREE

Hester’s Narrative

I
HAVE A
great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. Even when I was a very little girl I knew that, and I would confess it to my doll when we were alone together, and ask her to be kind and patient with me. And she would sit there in her little chair, with her bright smile and bright cheeks, and I would sit by her and chatter on, telling her all my childish secrets, and knowing she would understand and never blame me. I would run up to my room as soon as I came home from school, and tell her all that I had done, and all that I had said, in that great expanse of hours since I had left her there that morning. Though I rarely had much to tell of what I had said, because I never said very much at all. I was always a very diffident child, very shy, and fearful of putting myself forward, though perhaps I had, in consequence, a rather observant way about me—not a clever way, or a quick way, no indeed!—but a quiet way of noticing things, and events, and people, especially when they are people that I love. Though it is possible that I flatter myself even in that.

The first person I loved so tenderly as this was my mother. My earliest memory is of our tiny up-and-down cottage with a trellis of honeysuckle around the door, and a pretty little garden where cherry trees would blossom in spring, and snowdrops nestle among the snow in the winter of the year. Though when I think of this little house now, it is always summer, the sky blue and the view of the meadows hazy in the heat, and a sweet warm breeze. I would sit in the sunshine on the tiny veranda, playing with my dear old Dolly, while my mother sat in her own chair at the little tea-table, with its white cloth and its delicate china pot, all wreathed with jasmine and roses.

My mother was, I think, the prettiest lady I ever saw, with her beautiful golden curls and the loveliest eyes in her gentle tender face. People have told me since that I resemble her, and sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass and think I see my mother’s face. But even if I am not so pretty as she was, I remember that the gentlemen who visited us in our little house were always quick to praise my looks. When I was still a very little girl, one of these gentlemen—tall and severe to my lowly eye—bent down and touched my shoulder, saying, ‘Do you know how pretty you are, child?’, smiling all the while at my mother, where she sat at her needlework before the fire, and the little bird sang in its cage above her head.

I had a very happy childhood altogether, surrounded by my mother’s love, and the companionship of the girls at the local school. I was the smallest there by a good deal, and they all made such a pet of me, kissing and cosseting me, and calling me their little marmoset. My mother shook her head at these frivolities, saying she was afraid I would be spoilt by so much attention. I think this was why she discouraged me from inviting my friends home; at least I think that must be the explanation, for I cannot remember any parties at the cottage in those days. Or not, at least, for my own friends; aside
from the gentlemen who visited my mother, our lives were very retired and tranquil. As I grew older, my mother was careful to instruct me in my duties and obligations, telling me to be always diligent, submissive, and obedient.

“Do good to those around you, child,” she said one day, as I stood at her bedside, “and you will always win their love. That is all that matters. Nothing else. You must always remember that.” The tears come to my eyes when I think of her shining face as she said this, her skin so pale and her eyes so bright! It is my weakness, I know, but I cannot help it. But there! I have composed myself again now, and can go on with my story.

It seems to me now that I had very little time with my mother, after this. I remember strange women in the house I had never seen before, and the sound of cries that seemed to go on through a whole night and the following day. The women looked at one another when they thought I could not see, and one of them took something away wrapped in a coverlet that I never saw again. It was that day, I think, that one of the women clasped me by the hand and led me upstairs to my bedroom under the eaves, bidding me to be as quiet as a little mouse, and give my mother no further cause for distress. I was terrified to think that anything I had done could have brought about such turmoil and wretchedness, and lay awake the whole night pondering all my petty and unconfessed misdemeanours, which now lay as heavy on my soul as mortal sins.

I do not remember how long this went on—ages and ages it seemed to me then. Days of whispering and bewilderment, and the women casting such stern looks upon me that I knew all this misery was indeed my own fault, and I deserved no better.

“Where is Mother?” I asked at last in my childish way. “Why does she not let me see her?”

“Your mother is in a Better Place,” said one of the women, pronouncing the words in so serious and awful a tone, that I was quite overwhelmed. I could not understand why my mother should have gone on a journey and left me behind, or how anywhere could be better or happier than our own little home that she loved so much. The woman was one of our neighbours and not, I think, unkind, and seeing my eyes fill with tears she drew me on her knee and explained as best she could that my mother had gone before me to heaven, and if I was good, and dutiful, and said my prayers every day, and went to church every Sunday, I might hope to meet her in the Hereafter. I did not know if this was the Better Place she had spoken of; but I did comprehend—albeit dimly—that I was not to see my mother again, not for many and many a year, and that all that waste of empty time must be filled with good deeds, and good works, and self-sacrifice. I wept alone in my little bed that night, and for many a night after that, gripping my Dolly tight in my arms and wondering what was to become of me. It was a long time indeed before I was able to quiet my sobs by recalling what Mrs Millard had said, and telling myself firmly that this was no way to be going on. ‘Hester,’ I would say to myself, ‘this will not do! Duty and diligence are to be your lot, and it is through duty and diligence that you will see your mother again.’

They put me in a black frock and sent me for some days to lodge with our neighbour and her husband, a big close-lipped religious man who looked grimly upon me, and quoted verses from the Bible as if they applied chiefly and particularly to me.
“You shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them,”
he would intone in his booming voice,
“For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generation.”

My mother had read from the Gospels many times, telling me stories about our Saviour, and talking to me always of God’s love for His children, so I hardly knew what to make of the dour and vengeful Jehovah Mr Millard talked of. All I did know was that I was very sinful, and very wicked, and very much in the way.

One dark and rainy afternoon I came home from school with my books and satchel, hoping, if possible, to slip upstairs before Mr Millard saw me, but his wife had clearly been looking out for my return, and came towards me as soon as I closed the door behind me. She took me by the hand and led me into the best parlour—a room I was never allowed to enter without permission, or by myself—and presented me to a gentleman of a very distinguished appearance, dressed in black and drinking tea, whom I had never, to my knowledge, seen before.

“This,” said Mrs Millard in a confidential tone, “is the Child. This is Hester, sir.”

The gentleman sat forward in his chair and beckoned to me. “Come here,” he said. “Let me look at you.”

Then he asked me, if I would be so kind as to take off my bonnet, and when I had done so, he said, “Ah!” and afterwards “I see. Yes. Quite.”

And then he leant back in his chair again, and picked up his teacup, and Mrs Millard said, “That will be all, Hester. Go and play now, there’s a good girl.”

So I made him the curtsy my mother taught me, and left the room.

I think it was a few weeks later, and the winter nearly gone, when the gentleman in black reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs Millard, and found him in the same place in the parlour.

“I have news for you, Hester,” he told me. “Your Guardian has arranged for you to be placed at an excellent establishment, where you may finish your education, and find a secure home that will offer you every appropriate comfort and amenity.”

I knew not what to say. I had never heard I had a Guardian, and only the vaguest idea what the word might mean.

The man was watching me closely, and seemed concerned to give me what reassurance was within his power.

“You need not fear, Hester. Mr Jarvis is a kind man, and you will want for nothing, of that I am sure.”

I could not speak, not then, because my heart was overflowing with gratitude for this unknown Guardian and his kindness to me, and I think the gentleman sensed some of this, because he reached over and patted me gently on the shoulder and said,

“Run along now, child. I have business to talk with good Mrs Millard.”

And so it was that exactly a week later I left the only place that I had ever known, and travelled by stagecoach for London. Mr Millard showed no discernible emotion at my departure aside, perhaps, from relief, but Mrs Millard had a softer heart and wept many sad tears. I do believe she had become quite fond of me, in the short time we had had together. When she gave me one last kiss, and adjured me to tread always in the paths of righteousness, I felt so remorseful and despondent that I threw my arms around her and wept myself, saying it was all my fault, and that Mother would never have left me if I had been good.

“No, Hester!” she returned with a sad smile. “It is just your unhappy lot, my dear. And whatever Mr Millard says on the matter, I believe in my heart that our Heavenly Father does not visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, and will not hold you culpable for the circumstances of your birth, but only for the rectitude of your own conduct.”

I wondered a little at these words, but the coach was already at the gate, so I had no time to ask her what she meant. She turned then and went into the house, and I never saw her again. I had no friend left now in the world, and no protector, except, perhaps for my new and as yet unknown Guardian.

I looked back at the house until I could see it no more, and then wiped my eyes and cast my gaze instead at the landscape unrolling before me. It was a very beautiful day, with the new buds on the trees, and the fields pricked with the first green shoots of the year. After a very long and rattling journey, during most of which I was quite alone, the coach finally came to a halt and a lady opened the coach door and said, “I am Miss Darby. You must be Hester.”