‘Lawks, I took you for forty!’ said Mrs Heath. ‘And you, Mrs Mandibles? D’you ’ave any little ’uns to bless your ’earth?’
Mrs Maidstone dabbed her mouth fastidiously with her napkin and revealed that she had five, the eldest being fourteen and the youngest seven.
‘A fine family,’ said Mrs Heath. ‘Me and Arthur wanted a fine family, but — ’
Fearing a description of Mrs Heath’s troubles, my sister cut in with, ‘Do you play, Miss Heath?’
‘A little,’ said Miss Heath.
‘A little! Lawks! The best player in the country is my Sally,’ said Mrs Heath. ‘All the masters said so. “Ain’t my Sally the best little thing you’ve ever ’eard?” I used to ask them, and they all agreed, every one!’
‘Mama,’ said Miss Heath, shaking her head.
‘You must perform for us after dinner,’ said my aunt.
‘There you are, Sally. Singing for a Lady!’ said Mrs Heath, much pleased.
The ladies soon withdrew, and the gentlemen lingered over the port.
We talked of the political situation, but at last we could delay no longer and we joined the ladies. Miss Heath was sitting at the pianoforte when we entered the drawing room, and she was soon persuaded to play. She had a fine voice and it was a pleasure to listen to her as she entertained us.
‘What d’you think of that?’ asked Mrs Heath triumphantly, as Miss Heath came to the end of her song.
‘A fine performance,’ said my sister. ‘Do you not agree, James?’
‘Very fine,’ I said with a smile at Miss Heath.
‘There you are, Mrs Mandrake,’ said Mrs Heath. ‘Pay for the best masters, and one day your little ’uns could be playing like that.’
Mrs Maidstone did not deign to reply.
The party then broke into groups, some playing cards, some gossiping, and some turning over the pages of a fashion journal. The evening passed agreeably enough, but I was glad when it was over, all the same, for I would swap a dozen such evenings if I could spend one moment with Eliza.
Saturday 18 July
At last! I heard from Leyton today. He would have replied sooner, but he was away from home when my letter arrived. He promised to speak to his father and he assured me that he would search for some suitable lodgings.
My father will soon be going to London and I must have everything ready, for then I can rescue Eliza and take her to her new life. I am looking forward to it. It will be difficult, at first, for we will not have a proper establishment when we are married, but we are young and strong, and as long as we are together, then nothing else matters.
I hope that Leyton will be able to find some lodgings with a garden, for I do not want Eliza to be separated from her precious roses. But, good fellow that he is, I am sure he will find something that will suit.
Monday 27 July
My aunt summoned me to her sitting room this morning. She was dressed in her usual style, in heavy brocade and with an elaborate wig that extended her height by eight inches. When I entered the room, she was seated at her desk, and she held a letter in her hand.
‘You wanted to see me, Aunt?’
She raised her lorgnette and looked at me through it for a full minute before speaking. Then she lowered it and said, ‘Your father has written to me and desires me to tell you that you may return home whenever you wish.’
I was astonished, and then I thought, Of course! He has seen that he will never have his way, and he has relented.
I could not hide my joy, for now there was no need for me to approach the house in stealth. I could go home and marry Eliza in church, for if my father had seen that she would never marry anyone else, then he must surely give his permission for her to marry me.
I did not deceive myself. I knew that her fortune was the temptation for him, and that, seeing she would not marry my brother, he had decided she had better marry me, for in that way her fortune would enrich the Brandons. But I did not care about the reason, just so long as Eliza could be mine.
I wondered when he would allow us to marry. Would he make us wait until I was of age? Or would he be so eager to secure her fortune that he would let us marry at once? The latter, I hoped, for once Eliza was mine, he could not change his mind.
‘You are pleased?’ asked my aunt.
‘I am. I thought he meant to stick to his word and forbid me the house until Eliza had married Harry. But now, everything will be different.’
‘Your father has many faults, but going back on his word is not one of them,’ said my aunt. ‘He has stuck to his word, as you put it. Eliza was married yesterday.’
I could not take it in. I was bemused.
‘I do not understand you,’ I managed to say at last.
‘It is simple enough. Eliza and Harry are now married, and as they have embarked on their wedding tour, your father feels it is safe for you to return to the house.’
‘But this is impossible,’ I said, wondering what game my father was playing.
‘I cannot see why you are so surprised,’ she remarked, looking at me as though I were a half-wit. ‘You knew they were to marry.’
‘But Eliza would not marry my brother. She does not love him. She does not like him. She has given me her word that she will not consent to the match.’
‘A word like that means nothing. No young woman can give her word to a young man without her guardian’s approval. Come, come, now, you must have known how it would be; that, with time, her own conscience and common sense would show her that she was in the wrong. It would have been nonsensical for her to refuse a good marriage on nothing more than a whim.’
‘A whim, you call it? Love is a vast deal more than a whim,’ I said, still not knowing whether to believe it or not.
‘Whatever the case, she is now married; and you, I might remind you, are as good as engaged to Miss Heath.’
I gave an exclamation of disgust.
‘I mean nothing to Miss Heath and she means nothing to me.’
My aunt raised her thin eyebrows and looked at me again through her lorgnette.
‘You cannot mean to say you have been making love to her all this time without any serious intentions? Such conduct is unbecoming for a gentleman.’
‘She knows my intentions, and I know hers,’ I remarked.
‘And you know hers?’ demanded my aunt sharply. ‘Pray, what do you mean by that?’
I regretted my hasty words, for I was not willing to give her away.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
But my aunt was not so easily satisfied.
‘I will not be trifled with. You have declared that you know Miss Heath’s intentions, and you will be so good as to tell me what you mean.’
‘I mean nothing, Aunt.’
‘You have been a considerable disappointment to your family all your life, James. I suggest you make amends for it by being frank with me now.’
‘I have nothing further to say to you. Since my father has given me leave to return home, that is what I intend to do. I will leave at once.’
‘You will leave when I say you may go.’
‘No, Aunt, I will leave now,’ I said.
And without waiting for further argument, I left the room.
I packed my things myself, not wishing to involve any of my aunt’s servants in case they incurred my aunt’s wrath, and ran down the stairs.
‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’ asked my sister, coming out of the drawing room.
‘Home.’
‘But you have been forbidden — ’
‘My father has changed his mind.’
‘But what am I to say to Miss Heath?’
‘Pray tell her that I wish her happy,’ I said.
She attempted to argue further, but I ran on through the hall and out the front door, arriving in the stables where I had a horse saddled and, accompanied by a groom, rode to the stage. There I dismounted, and telling the groom to lead my mount back to the stables, I waited for the coach.
How different were my feelings from the last time I had taken a stagecoach. Then, I had been full of happiness, for I had been going to see Eliza. Now, I was full of apprehension, for I did not know what I would find at home.
Tuesday 28 July
I travelled overnight and arrived at Delaford before dawn, when the birds were just beginning to wake and the air was full of promise. But what did it promise for me? Good or ill?
Good, surely. Eliza could not have married Harry. She would never have agreed to it, and my father could not have forced her to the altar if she had refused. He did not have so much influence in the neighbourhood that he could compel Mr Liddle to perform the ceremony when the bride was unwilling, and Eliza did not lack the courage to tell him that she was being coerced.
Then, too, there were the neighbours. My father did not court their company, but he had too much family pride to turn them against him by committing such a monstrous act.
But why, then, did my aunt say that Eliza had married? To persuade me that the case was hopeless, and so encourage me to offer for Miss Heath? Perhaps. But why, then, was I allowed to go home, where I would discover the truth for myself?
Unless my father had sent her to London and had lured me home so that, when I found her missing, I would believe the evidence of my own eyes, as I would not necessarily believe his assertions, and believe that all was lost.
It seemed only too likely.
With a lighter heart I shouldered my bag and completed the last part of my journey on foot.
The early morning mist was covering the lake, like a quilt covering a sleeper who had not yet awoken. There was a hush in the air, a sense of expectancy, and I lingered there, unwilling to go on, for I knew that the morning would either bring me the fulfilment of my dreams or else dash my hopes for ever.
The birds began to sing more lustily and the mist began to rise from the lake. Morning was coming in earnest and I could delay no longer.
I went in to the house through a side door and I went upstairs, calling for Eliza, softly at first and then more rousingly, until I had reached the door of her room. Throwing decorum aside, I went in and found it empty. Her hair brush was not on the dressing table. There was an air of abandonment everywhere.
This only tells me that she has left the house, I reminded myself.
I went downstairs, and then, deciding there was only one way to know for sure, I began to walk, then run, to the village and to the church. The venerable building, with its Norman spire, was serene in the early morning light. The low sun was casting long shadows from the tombstones in the graveyard, and from the body of the church itself.
I approached from the east, with the sun on my back, and went in. I felt the cold as soon as I stepped through the door, and I shivered.
I looked around me for the register and saw it on the lectern. I went over to it and opened it with trembling hands. And there was recorded the marriage of Eliza Williams and Henry Brandon, concluded three days before.
I reeled. It could not be.
But it was.
I went outside and sank down amongst the gravestones, feeling I belonged there, amongst the dead.
How had it happened? How had she been induced to marry?
I let out a wail, and my cry was heard.
Mrs Upland, an elderly widow, came to my side and looked at me pityingly. She put a hand on my shoulder.
‘You are the Brandon boy? ’ she asked me.
I turned my face to hers.
‘Ah,’ she said, recognizing me, for she had often seen me out walking or riding with Eliza.
I sat up, ashamed of my tears.
‘You are mourning Miss Williams?’
‘You know what happened?’ I asked, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. Then I remembered that she had a granddaughter who had just started as a maid at the house. ‘How did they persuade her to marry my brother? There must have been some trickery involved.’
‘There was no trickery, but there was great unkindness,’ she said.
I began to grow angry. What had my father done to her?
I listened as she told me that Eliza had been confined to her room. She had not been allowed any society, and her virtual imprisonment had been the talk of the neighbourhood.
I was angry with myself. Why had I not returned sooner? Why had I not guessed what they would do? With no one to turn to, she had been ground down, until at last, in a moment of weakness, she had given her consent to the union, and had then been married by special licence before she could take it back.
I thanked Mrs Upland for her kind words and left her to lay her flowers on her husband’s grave, for though he had died ten years earlier, she still placed fresh flowers there every day.
Without any idea of what I was going to do, I started walking towards the house. I grew more and more angry as I went on. I entered through the French windows and went straight into my father’s study. He was there, sitting at his desk, his quill in his hand as he examined a pile of papers.
He looked up when I entered the room, and then continued with his work.
‘So, you are home.’
‘Yes, sir, I am home, and I demand an answer from you. What did you mean by it, blighting the happiness of a young woman, your own ward, for ever? When I think of the inducements, nay the cruelties, you used to get her to consent to the match — ’
‘How very dramatic you are,’ he said drily, without favouring me with so much as a look. ‘You speak as though I locked her in a dungeon and fed her on bread and water.’
‘You locked her in her room — ’
‘Which is a comfortable apartment, decorated to her own taste, complete with a sitting room, filled with needlework, paints and other amusements to help her to pass the time.’
‘You deprived her of society — ’
‘She had her companion.’
‘ — and frightened her into the match.’
‘Not a bit of it. She saw the folly of clinging to you when she knew I would never consent to the match, and she grew to like your brother. He presented himself to her in a sober condition and sat with her on many occasions in her sitting room, taking her gifts, and telling her of the happy future that awaited her as his wife.’
‘She would never have married him if she had not been ground down. You cannot deny it, for if she had changed her mind freely, then there would have been no need for a hurried wedding, nor any need to forbid me the house until she was married.’
‘Whatever the case, she is married now, and in London, which means that there is no purpose to your rantings. Accept it. It is done.’
‘Never.’
‘Now that she has gone, you may stay here for as long as you wish,’ he said, as though I had not spoken.
‘Remain here, where every corner reminds me of her?’ I asked in disbelief. ‘Where I have to see you every day, and be reminded of the heinous thing you have done?’
‘Then return to Oxford, and go on with your studies,’ he said, whilst giving nine tenths of his attention to his papers, and only one tenth to me. ‘Let me know when you achieve your ambitions. Perhaps I will employ you as my clerk.’
To say more was useless. I left the study, passing my hand over my eyes as I reached the hall, and then, turning my back on Delaford, I walked to the stage post and at last boarded the stage for Oxford.
As it travelled away from the neighbourhood, I felt myself travelling away from all my happiness in life, into a future that was cold and dark.
Wednesday 29 July
My thoughts were in turmoil this morning, for I knew I could not resume my studies without the backing of my father, and I was determined never to touch his money, or anything of his. Besides, the idea of becoming a lawyer was suddenly abhorrent to me, for its purpose had been to support Eliza and without that purpose there was no point to it.
I was in the midst of this turmoil when the stagecoach stopped at the Black Swan. Feeling tired, for I had not eaten since yesterday, I left the stage and wen
t inside. I ordered a plate of mutton and sat in a corner, not wanting company, but as luck would have it, company found me anyway, and company of a sort to do me good.
‘Brandon? Brandon, is that you? It is!’
I looked up to see Geoffrey Parker and his uncle.
‘You look as though you need some company,’ he said.
My mood began to lift at the sight of his friendly face, for we had been friends at Oxford, and when he asked me how my family was, and how Eliza was, saying, ‘Is she as pretty as ever? No, don’t tell me, she is prettier!’ I broke down and told him everything.
‘And now I must find something to do with myself, or go mad,’ I finished.
‘You should join the army,’ said his uncle.
It turned out he had some influence and he promised to help me if I had a mind to enlist.
‘I have a little money from my mother,’ I said. ‘How much would it cost me to buy a commission?’
He gave me all the particulars and I saw that it could be done.
‘You will have activity, employment and company,’ he said, ‘all good things for a man in your condition.’
I began to see a future for myself; not the future I had wanted, but one in which I could at least be respectable and respected.
It was little enough, but it was better than the alternative, to spend my days sunk in despair, lost in the past, a past to which I could never return.
And so I thanked him, and asked him to use his influence, and now, who knows what the future holds?
Tuesday 6 October
‘It was a bad business, a very bad business,’ said Leyton, shaking his head, as we met again for the first time in months, in Oxford, an Oxford changed for me for ever, for it was no longer the scene of youthful hopes, but the scene of a fool’s paradise.
I told him what had happened to me.
‘I wondered why you had changed your mind about the lodgings,’ he said, ‘but when your letter arrived two months ago, I was too busy to wonder very much, and I am only sorry the reason was such a sad one. I can understand why you did not feel you could continue at Oxford, but whatever induced you to buy a commission?’