Girl in a Blue Dress Page 3

  “It’s ridiculous. Augustus says he could have bought up half London.”

  “Your husband knows nothing and understands less,” I say sharply. “He doesn’t have a notion of what your father suffered in his early days, how for years he would wake up night after night, convinced that we were all reduced to bare boards with the furniture gone. The wonder was, Kitty, that he could turn all those anxieties into such marvelous prose.”

  She jumps up again. “Oh, prose is all very well. You can control prose. And his prose-children did what he wanted them to do. But he was never so passionate about his real children—or his wife, for that matter.” She paces about the room, colliding with the furniture. “He treated you so badly, Mama! How can you forgive him?”

  “Many a woman has been treated far worse.”

  “What kind of reasoning is that? He did what he had to, what the law of England demanded, what common decency dictated, and to placate his precious Public. Not an inch more!” She looks around pointedly. “And how could you have let him condemn you to such a chicken coop without a fight?”

  Poor Kitty, she can only see how she would have felt in my place. She would have fought harder than I did, no doubt. And been even more miserable as a result. “This place may be small, Kitty, but Papa is always here with me. As soon as I open his books, I can hear the cadences of his voice as clearly as when he used to read aloud to me in front of the fire—the villain Botterby, or the Amazing Madame Delgardo. I can hear and see his characters as he used to hear and see them. I can see him gesture, and grimace, and alter his voice. And I sit in the chair with tears of happiness running down my cheeks, although there is no one to wipe them with his big bright Genleman’s Kerchief as what belonged to the Custard of Peru.”

  Kitty shakes her head. She thinks I am a case beyond redemption. And yet she was the most romantic of our children, the one who slipped her silken arms around his neck and willed her enchanted childhood to go on forever. But today, everything about her is sharp, hard, black, and glittery. She gets up and ties on her bonnet. “I’m going, Mama. It’s late.” She flashes her dark eyes at me. They are so like his.

  If only she’d listen. She’d understand the meaning of love then. But I fear Augustus has spoiled her heart forever. “Come, Kitty,” I say soothingly. “Come and sit down with me. Let us reminisce as we used, mother and daughter together.”

  She hesitates, unties her bonnet, then chooses the old chair in the corner, one she used to sit in as a child. “Very well,” she says. “Start with that first evening. Remind me how my dear Mama fell in love with the One and Only.”

  2

  “THAT FIRST NIGHT,” I TELL HER, “YOUR FATHER MADE me laugh so much, I felt quite lifted out of myself; as if I were floating somewhere near the ceiling. And he looked at me so intently that I thought he must care for me a little. After supper, he sang ‘O Mistress Mine’ while I played the piano, and then he danced a hornpipe—such clever steps—while Alice played. At the end, he caught me by the arm and held me close to his scarlet waistcoat, his arm tight around my waist as he jigged round the room. I felt the beating of his heart as we danced, and was sure he could feel mine. His shirt smelt of lavender, his hand was dry and warm. He whirled me to a standstill, while the room turned and turned around us—and I thought that if I died there and then, I would have no regrets. He kissed my hand when he left and said he would always remember that night. ‘You’re a capital dancer,’ he said. ‘A man could dance with you forever, Miss Millar. A man could be under your spell and dance and dance to the Very Death!’”

  Kitty says nothing.

  “I didn’t know what to make of him, of course. The young men who usually came to dine didn’t lie on the grass or prance around the furniture. They didn’t clasp me to their bosom or make declarations of love with their eyes. I went to bed that night in a fever. I even kissed the hand he had kissed, and imagined how it would be to be married to such a man. The next day a short note came to thank my mother for a ‘splendid evening’ and for the company of her ‘three lovely daughters.’ Sissy and Alice were delighted to be mentioned, but there was no special word for me. I was in torment, Kitty. Everything about my life seemed to have changed. I couldn’t believe that folding linen, sewing, and pressing flowers could be all there was to do. I couldn’t imagine that Alfred Gibson would spend his time sitting at home, quiet and content. I knew he’d be out lighting up rooms all over London, his arm around the waists of eligible young women who danced with divine skill and sang like divas: clever women, pretty women, women who knew the ways of the world and how to fascinate young men with dazzling waistcoats and dark eyes. I have to confess that I contrived a terrible hatred of them all. Up until then I’d believed my mama when she said that a sensible disposition was worth its weight in gold, but now I wished I were possessed of more fascinating arts. I longed for wit; I longed for a greater knowledge of the world; I longed to know what I should do to make Alfred Gibson love me.”

  I look at Kitty. She still does not speak. But she does not interrupt either, so I go on.

  “You can imagine my feelings when the time approached for our trip to Stepney: soaring hope on the one hand, enormous dread on the other. To tell the truth, I was so at odds with myself that I found fault with everyone, particularly with my papa, who took to teasing me about the very thing I wanted to know. When I asked him if Mr. Gibson was a good writer, he merely laughed and said, ‘Oh, he’s very comical. Light stuff, of course—well, you’ve seen him—but a way with words, yes, a way with words.’ I asked what he knew about his circumstances, but he was exasperatingly vague: ‘The same as any other young clerk, I suppose. That is to say, on the poor side of adequacy. Although he appears to have a good tailor and an endless supply of fine waistcoats. But a legal clerk doesn’t earn enough to hire a hall and bear all the expenses of a public performance, so I am his benefactor in this instance. However, I hope to recoup my outlay. I understand the house is sold out.’

  “I must confess that my heart sank. A clerk! Like Timothy Smallwood who worked for my father and had frayed cuffs and darned mittens and no prospects. ‘But you think he will get on?’ I asked. ‘That he could do great things in the future?’

  “Papa looked at me and said, ‘Dorothea dear, I hope this young man has not turned your head. It would be most unwise to encourage him. Most unwise. His circumstances are—unstable. He has a headlong nature.’”

  Kitty breaks in: “Yes, yes, we know all about your father’s misgivings. Go to the night of the play.” She is impatient as always, but I indulge her.

  “Well, as you know, your father was a triumph. We all rocked with laughter. But in the midst of our mirth he suddenly stopped dead and made us shiver with horror. Then he made us laugh again. The hall was hot and crowded and bright with the limelight—and some of the young clerks had been drinking—but he held them in the palm of his hand. Such silence—and then such roars! You would not have believed it.”

  “Oh, don’t forget I saw him do it. He’d come home and boast about the number of ladies who had fainted at ‘The Bells.’ And he’d stand there and recite it for me all over again.” She takes up his attitude: “And the bells ring on, sparing no tenderness for little Dick Crawley as he lies upon the gravestone in the churchyard below. They do not know him, and he does not know them. He is insignificant and small; he is lost and alone. Alone, Ladies and Gentlemen! Alone in the greatest metropolis of this great country of ours. And though the bells ring out with all their might, Dick cannot hear them. He is beyond hearing. He is beyond sight. He is beyond pain. He is beyond all the tribulations of this earth. He is dead. And he’d sob, Mama! There in the middle of the drawing room! How he felt for his own writing! How he felt for little Dick Crawley! More than for any of us!”

  She’s wet eyed, though, and I ache to comfort her. “Come here.” I pat the stool beside me. “Come to your mother.” I would go to her, but getting up from the chair is difficult for me now. And Gyp is fast asleep.
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  She turns away abruptly. “No. This is all foolish, Mama. It does us no good. I have wept enough today; I cannot squeeze a single drop more.” She gets up. “Anyway, I am expected at home.”

  “Are you?” I look at her directly.

  She drops her eyes. “People may be calling.”

  “Not at this hour, surely.”

  “So many people spoke to me, Mama. So many strangers …”

  “Yes. I can imagine that. Your father’s life touched everyone, people we didn’t know and won’t ever see. Many will want to pay their respects. But no one would intrude upon your privacy today.”

  “No, I suppose not.” She is irresolute for once.

  “You could stay the night.” I am reluctant to ask her, for she has always refused in the past, but today, wrung out as she is, I feel she may not have it in her to resist. She hesitates, and, knowing once her mind is made up there is no going back, I add quickly: “We can be cozy together, just as in the old days. You can send a note to Augustus. Wilson will see it’s sent.”

  She nods, and for a moment she is my eager little girl again. She heads for the writing desk in the corner. It’s the one he bought for a shilling from a pawnshop in Camden Town, the first piece of furniture we ever had. He stood it next to the window in our parlor at Mrs. Quinn’s, pens ranged neatly along the top, paper set ready. He’d sit at it for hours, by turns writing and looking out of the window. His unruly hair would fall forward, and time after time he’d push it back as he raised himself from his seat to spy out what was happening below. Then finally he’d jump up and throw his pen down and say we’d both needed a breath of air. Come on, Dodo, get your shawl. Let’s have a lark! And he’d find it for me before I could call to mind where I had left it, and he’d be bundling me up in it and pushing me ahead of him down the narrow stairs before I could protest that the dinner would be spoiled. And now Kitty sits at the same desk, her black skirts awkwardly crammed into its slim knee-hole. Her attitude is so like his, head held slightly to one side, fingers holding the pen quite high up so that the ink does not stain her fingers. But Kitty lets her pen rest. “I think Augustus may not be at home. I believe he intended to dine at his club.”

  Poor child. She can see the empty rooms, the unlit fires, the careless servants. I cannot help it: I must speak. “Kitty dear, what can be so important that it takes him away from you now? Today of all days? He should be with you. It is his duty.”

  I regret the word “duty”—and indeed she is on me in a flash: “Mama, it is not his character to be dutiful. I did not marry him for duty. Augustus and I allow each other to follow our own inclinations and don’t impose upon each other, thank the Lord.” She glares at me. “I’ve had enough of being under the thumb.” She puts down the pen, crumples the notepaper in her hand, and throws it into the fire: “I need not write. Augustus will do as he pleases.”

  “That much is evident. And he does nothing to please you.”

  “And you can see that, can you? From the wretched apartment where you meet no one? Where you have hidden from the world for ten years? How dare you make judgments?” She almost overturns the desk as she rises to her feet, her face red.

  “I try not to judge. But I see that you are lonely, Kitty, and it breaks my heart. I always had such hopes for you. And so did he.”

  “Oh, no. He had no hopes. Except for me to stay in thrall to him. That’s why he never wanted me to marry.”

  “You’re wrong, Kitty. He knew you were young and headstrong. He was merely trying to protect you from adventurers.”

  “Well, he should know all about that. After all, what was he when he met you? A nobody! No money, no prospects, no family to speak of. He was an adventurer if ever there was one! And you ignored your father in order to marry him, as I did Augustus!”

  It’s true, of course. I can hardly condemn her behavior when mine was much the same. Once I’d seen Alfred that fateful night, I was determined to have him. I had never before been so determined about anything. So before our foray into Stepney I did everything to make myself desirable. I knew nothing of the world, but I knew that every young gentleman I had ever met had remarked on the beauty of my eyes and complexion. But I’d also noticed that after this initial salutation, they had allowed their eyes to stray to my bosom, which seemed to be a source of great fascination. So I took out my needle and altered my best blue gown so that the bodice dipped a little lower; and when the evening of the outing came, I got Nancy to lace it as tight as she could. When she had finished, it was difficult to breathe, but the effect in the glass was gratifying. Finally, she pinned up my hair with an ostrich feather, and I put on my pearl necklace to offset the whole effect.

  I was, admittedly, too grand for Stepney, and when we went backstage after the play, everyone stared at my finery. Alfred was still in his stage costume, although he had removed his wig and false beard. “Ah, Miss Millar!” he said, as we squeezed through the low door into a small room with a quantity of candles burning on every surface. “Take care you do not set your fine blue gown alight—or I should be obliged to douse you with water and roll you on the ground till you were quite put out!”

  Alice and Sissy giggled. My parents looked rather taken aback. But he did not seem to notice, and continued in his extravagant way: “Well, dear sir and Benefactor, what did you think? A little rough-and-ready for such sophisticated theater-goers as yourselves, I daresay?”

  “Not at all. It was excellent. Excellent. Very droll and so forth.” My father had regained his composure, was smiling around as if the play, the dressing room, the candles, and Mr. Gibson himself, were all his own work.

  “We all laughed so much.” Alice was shy of him now, half-hiding behind Mama’s gown.

  “I was frightened when the young man turned into Captain Murderer.” Sissy, more forward as always, approached the rough table at which he sat, and started to finger the paints and powders that were so enticingly laid out in front of him. Suddenly he caught her hand in his, his face contorted: “Don’t touch the pretty paints, my child—or I’ll eat your heart and lungs alive!”

  Sissy jumped back. Then he laughed, his face unfolding into its usual cheery look. “Like that, you mean?”

  Sissy turned bright scarlet. Tears started from her eyes. I took her by the hand and said sternly, “You have frightened her, Mr. Gibson. She doesn’t understand that you were acting a part. She is only a child.”

  He looked at me in his observant way. I felt suddenly embarrassed by my blue silk, my pearls, my low-cut bodice, as if my intention were all too clear to him. He inclined his head. “Indeed. You are right.” He turned to Sissy. “Miss Cecilia, I apologize. And as a recompense, would you care to see what I have here—” He lifted his hand to his ear and suddenly there appeared a bonbon wrapped in pretty paper. Sissy’s eyes shone with desire, but she wouldn’t take it from him. He laid it on the table. “And what have we here?” A second bonbon appeared from his other ear. He laid it next to the first. “They are yours, little ladies. But you must claim them for yourselves. If we see things we like, we must claim them, mustn’t we, Miss Millar?” His direct look again. I felt my face more aflame than all the candles.

  But he had already turned from me and in an instant was deep in conversation with Papa about receipts and costs and all manner of business things. Alice and Sissy snatched the bonbons as quickly as if they were treasure from a sleeping dragon, and hid themselves behind the swirl of my skirts. Mama, fanning herself with the playbill, said the low-ceilinged room was too hot and airless for her, and she would wait for us in the carriage. “Good evening, Mr. Gibson,” she said. “It has all been very novel. Very novel indeed. But the children are far too excited. They are not used to such outings. I’m afraid if I do not take them away now, they will never sleep.”

  She ushered them back through the door. I did not follow. I was afraid that if I did, my acquaintance with Mr. Gibson might end abruptly here in this cramped room with its roaring candles, cracked looking glass,
and strange greasy smell. Papa could not be relied on to promote our connection; I had to be bold for myself. I let my shawl slip a little lower over my shoulders, and put my head on one side. “Have you written other plays, Mr. Gibson?”

  “I am halfway through another, Miss Millar. It’s steaming along nicely.” He applied a handful of white grease to his face with a flourish, leaving only his dark eyes visible. Then he wiped his face with a cloth, swiftly taking away the black lines that had aged him so convincingly.

  “And is it another comedy?”

  “Tragicomedy, Miss Millar. I like the scope for rhetoric.” He opened his eyes wide, and laughed his loud, cheerful laugh.

  “And will we be able to come and see that, too?”

  “By all means. That is to say, if it is ever put on in public. I rely on your good father, my excellent Benefactor, in that respect.”

  “And will you enable Mr. Gibson to put it on, Papa?”

  He rubbed his hands. “Well, indeed. We’ll see, we’ll see. One step at a time!”

  “Oh, Papa, you must!” I grasped his hand and gave him my most earnest look.

  Papa laughed. “You have an excellent advocate here, Mr. Gibson. I cannot resist her.”

  “Indeed, who could? An angel in blue, with eyes to match. Miss Millar, I am in your power.” And he sank to one knee.

  But the reality was that I was in his. And, sadly, he did not seem serious. But I pressed my advantage. “Then will you call again at our house for supper? This day week, perhaps?” I could sense Papa’s disapproval at my forwardness, but I felt reckless.

  Alfred laughed. “I should be delighted. Although you must promise not to exhaust a poor clerk with your wild dancing—”

  “With my dancing, Mr. Gibson?”

  “Indeed. Do you not remember? The Scottish reels, the polka, the hornpipe? You would not let a man rest!”

  “I remember the wildness seemed to come from you, sir.”