Girl in a Blue Dress Read online

  “Has she another suitor?” I overheard him asking my father as they sat together in the garden about a week after his arrival.

  “No, my dear sir. Why do you ask?”

  “Only I sense, Uncle, that she is—elsewhere. She treats me with a sort of pity, as if I have no chance at all. I have much to offer a young girl—so when I meet such indifference, I wonder if there is a previous attachment. I would not press my case in such circumstances.”

  Papa lowered his voice. “There was a young man, I admit. Dorothea rather lost her head over him. He was unsuitable in the extreme. Very headlong. And with no means. We discouraged her and I’m glad to say she has given him up.”

  “I’m not sure she has given him up. She’s grieving for him, I think. And I’ve no wish to persuade her against her will. I have not asked her to marry me, and I shall not do so. I shall go home tomorrow. And I advise you to speak to Dorothea about the real state of her heart.” And when he went, he pressed my hand so kindly I really wished I could have loved him after all.

  Papa did not attempt to speak to me about the “state of my heart,” although he looked at me curiously from time to time, as if trying to discern my thoughts. I tried to pretend I was the same daughter who was always ready to sit on the arm of his chair, to stroke his hair as I read to him, or to laugh at his jokes. It was hard to disguise my feelings, though. My spirits were leaden. If he made a joke, I could not stop thinking of Someone Else and what jokes he could tell—and how I’d probably never hear one from him again. If I tried to smile, my lips trembled. Food made me feel sick. I could hardly bestir myself to comb my hair in the mornings, and I wore the same frock day after day. The once-pleasant routines of household life were now suffocating. I longed for any chance to leave the house, even if it were only to sit around a cake stand and sip tea with neighbors, or to make a trip to the haberdasher’s for silk thread or ribbons.

  What I lived for was our outings to town. Papa adored the theater, and liked to escort Mama and myself at regular intervals, one on each arm like a dancing major. I had no great belief that I would see Alfred on these outings, but I wore my blue gown in hope every time, and once in our box, I would nervously turn my opera glasses towards the back rows of the gallery, my throat dry with apprehension. Would I see him there with Nellie or Maria, paying them the attentions he should be paying me? In the intervals I’d scan the turbulent crowds at the refreshment tables, my heart leaping at the sight of each young man with a fancy waistcoat or long wavy hair. There were plenty of them, busy taking glasses of champagne to eligible beauties, or handing them into carriages at the end of the evening. But the one young man I was looking for was nowhere to be seen. I concluded Alfred was indeed too busy with some new object of interest. He had abandoned me, and I must bear it.

  After a while, I tried to persuade myself that I should marry George after all. He was kind and had shown a delicacy of feeling, and I might well come to love him in time. It was simply a matter of putting Alfred’s bright eyes and passionate words completely out of my mind, of forgetting him as he had clearly forgotten me. But even as I tried to persuade myself, I knew I could not do it. Alfred already inhabited every real part of me. He had spoiled me for anyone else. I lay in my bed in the room under the eaves where I had first heard his voice, and imagined I would die a spinster.

  I still looked in the postbox, although its emptiness mocked me day after day. “You never know,” said Alice, who would never believe anything bad about Alfred, and who kept her faith in him when I had lost mine. She would look at me so hopefully when I put in my hand, and then so despairingly when I shook my head: Nothing.

  It was a particularly gray November day when I stepped out through the gate for yet another purposeless walk. The loose brick had its usual look, with a curl of ivy hanging mockingly over it. But this time my fingers encountered an obstacle. I could not believe it: crisp new paper. I snatched it out. There it was—his dashing writing with the long loops and flying t’s! I opened it there and then, careless of who might be watching.

  He had been ill, very ill. He had not been able to write, let alone make the journey to Chiswick. He had been delirious. He had suffered agonies in a rheumatic fever—but was in a worse agony of anxiety that I had misinterpreted his silence.

  What must you have been thinking of me? It has been such an agony for me not to be able to read your sweet messages of love, to repeat each word and phrase a hundred times—but a worse agony to think you have imagined me, even for a second, to have grown cold in my love. That love burns as brightly as ever. That love lights up my life. That love will never die. Say, my dear Dodo, that you are still mine and that you will be mine from now on, for ever and ever. You are my Centre, my true Being. Without you my life is without meaning.

  I feel a tear roll down my cheek as I read. This is what they don’t know. This is what they don’t understand.

  WILSON IS STANDING in the doorway. “That’s right, madam. For all he wasn’t as he should have been, it’s still a great loss.”

  I turn on her: “Not as he should have been? Why does everyone want to speak ill of him? Make him less than he was—now he isn’t here to defend himself?”

  “Beg pardon, madam. I didn’t mean to speak out of turn. But Mr. O’Rourke is here. Shall I say you are indisposed?”

  “No.” I wipe my eyes. Wilson’s an ignorant woman, for all her common sense. “Tell him I’ll be along directly.”

  Michael O’Rourke has been my most faithful friend. Such a shy young man he was when Alfred first brought him to our rooms in Wellard Street: “Look who I’ve encountered on the stair! Michael Flaherty O’Rourke, Esquire—a fellow toiler in the vineyard of literature. He has the third floor back and is in want of a chop for his dinner. Dorothea, can you rise to the occasion?”

  Alfred was always bringing people home with him. He loved the house to be full of talk and laughter, although he must have realized that it is difficult to turn two chops into three, or make a slice of cheese miraculously bigger. I always had to pretend I wasn’t hungry.

  O’Rourke is standing on the hearthrug now, with Gyp fussing around his feet. He is all in black save for an amber pin in his cravat. He has crepe around his hat. “Dorothea, my dear!” He holds out his hands.

  I take them. They are cold, a little blue. His heart is not strong. “It is kind of you to call again, Michael. I am so grateful for all you do for me.”

  “No, it’s not kind—don’t say that. Our friendship is more than kindness, surely? And I wanted to make sure you’re—well, you know, still bearing up.” He looks at me so gently that my eyes begin to fill again. I allow myself to lay my head on his chest. He smells of camphor.

  “Oh, Michael. You understand that the fact that he and I had our differences doesn’t mean—” I can’t go on.

  “I know.” He kisses me on the forehead. We stand together on the hearthrug for a long time. I can hear his breath coming in labored bursts, but he says nothing more. His silence speaks to me, though. In all that has happened, O’Rourke has been my only true advocate and supporter.

  Gradually I find my voice. “It’s strange, Michael. For ten years I’ve dreaded this moment—”

  He nods. “So have I, my dear.”

  “I’ve always thought I wouldn’t be able to bear it, that I would be felled completely or go mad. But now it has come, and I find that I am still here, walking and talking and being alive. And I realize what I would never have thought: that our separation has, in its own way, been kind to me. Part of me has got used to his absence. Otherwise I’d be worse than Kitty, flinging myself about the room and wailing like a banshee.”

  “Yes,” he says, with a sad smile. “Time drips its comfort bit by bit. You and I both have reason to know that, but Kitty, poor child, feels the loss in a single stroke. She was in a dreadful state at the funeral; I never saw anyone so white.”

  “She said you were kind to her, though.”

  “Well, Augustus was useless. Ins
isting on some sort of precedence. Getting on his high horse. Absolutely reeking of whisky.” He shakes his head again.

  “She came back here, you know. She stayed the night.”

  “By Jove, did she?” He brightens. “That’s good—for you both.” He releases my hands. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  We both sit, as we always do, one each side of the fire. I notice how thin he has become. He was always lean, but he is hunched now, his shoulders almost against his ears. However, he has still the same shy smile.

  “Augustus was here too,” I say. “This morning. Straight from Lord knows where. They’ve both gone to the house. The will: I understand Kitty may benefit.”

  “And what about you?”

  “You know what about me, Michael.”

  “I thought he might change his mind.”

  “Did you? When did he ever change his mind? Anyway, I don’t need anything. It’s different for Kitty. I hope he has left her enough to keep Augustus satisfied.”

  He tickles Gyp with his fingertips. He thinks for a while, then asks, “Has she said she’s unhappy?”

  “Oh, she’ll never say so.”

  “Stubborn like him, then?”

  I nod, and we both smile. “Oh, I nearly forgot.” O’Rourke starts to ferret in his coat and brings out an untidy bundle of letters. He hands them to me. “Nobody at Park House had taken the trouble to send them on.”

  I thank him. I’m surprised at the number. Dozens, I think, all with the black borders Alfred hated so much. I put them on the table next to me. “I’ll read them by and by.”

  “There’ll be a lot more. Hundreds, I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re still his widow, you know.”

  “Even if I don’t look the part?”

  He eyes my bright dress. “You still won’t wear black?”

  “No.”

  “Tongues will wag.”

  “No one sees me.”

  Wilson comes in with the tea tray. “I’ll have to be getting some more tea from the grocer if we keep on having Dozens of People calling.”

  “Heavens, Wilson,” I say. “It’s only been Kitty, and Mr. Norris, and now Mr. O’Rourke.”

  “Well, Mr. Norris spilt some, and we was running low before that, so, if you don’t mind, I’ll slip out to Mr. Collins for a shilling’s worth while Mr. O’Rourke is here to keep an eye on you.”

  “Do, Wilson. I can pour.”

  “Like the old days.” O’Rourke smiles across the hearthrug. “I think I must have drunk you out of house and home when we lived in Willard Street.”

  “You were always most welcome. Alfred said he wrote best when there was company present.”

  “Good grief, yes. He used to astound me—the way he’d sit at that desk scribbling away, then suddenly looking up and throwing some remark into our conversation that showed he’d been following it all along. And then turning and putting his head down and carrying on from the exact place his pen had stopped—without the slightest need for reflection.”

  “Oh, that was when he was writing Miggs. With the other books it wasn’t so easy. Many a time he was up half the night in the most desperate of tempers.”

  “To be sure.” O’Rourke takes his tea—weak, with no milk. He refuses the aged bun Wilson has brought in which is making its third appearance in the parlor; Kitty has eaten all the decent cake. “He used to tell me how you helped him; how you’d keep him company night after night. Dodo in her nightgown, tending the flame of literature. How I envied Alfred then for having such a lovely and devoted wife!”

  “Not lovely anymore,” I say with a laugh. “Old, wrinkled, and expanding in every direction.”

  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” He looks at me rather too long.

  I look down. “Don’t be gallant, Michael. I cannot bear it.”

  “I’m sorry.” He clears his throat and takes a sip of tea. “But I want you to know that if there is anything you need, anything at all … I am at your service, as always.”

  “Thank you, Michael. I know that.”

  Gyp starts to bark, showing interest in the stale bun. I break off a piece, feed it to him. O’Rourke laughs wheezily. “That dog is spoiled.”

  “Well, I’ve had no one else to love these ten years.”

  “No one to love? What about—well, what about Kitty?”

  “Kitty won’t let me love her. And the others show no interest, not even Alfie or Lou. Whereas I doubt I’d recognize Eddie or Georgie if I saw them in the street. As for Fanny—well, it’s hard to love truly someone you’ve never known.” I look sideways at him: “I don’t suppose any of them asked after me?”

  He shifts his gaze; I know what that means. He knows I know, and shrugs slightly. “I’m sure it’ll be different soon. Things will take time, though. Don’t give up hope.”

  “No. I never give up hope.”

  IT WAS HOPE that kept me alive through the whole time that Alfred and I conducted our secret engagement. He was always optimistic that things would turn out well, and I, in turn, was so infected with his optimism that we convinced each other in a kind of folie à deux that we would be together within the year. I took courage from the fact that he was now selling stories for a guinea a time and that the publisher had asked him for a series of comical pieces that could, if satisfactory, be serialized for three months. IF satisfactory! he had written. My dear Dodo, they do not know the full capacity of Yours Truly, the Great Original, the Lightning Lampooner, the One and Only. But they WILL!!

  If he was determined as a writer, he was determined as a lover, too. Six weeks after his illness, he frightened me by resolving to make a declaration to my parents. I cannot go on in this way. I have to be with you, Dodo. I need to see you, hear you, feel you, smell you, taste you. In fact, I want to gobble you up in your entirety, like the Big Bad Wolf, no matter what entreaties you make, however much you flail your little white arms in the air. So I shall be bold. Faint heart never won fair lady, and faint heart won’t win her parents either. I shall write to them. I shall come and see them. Be strong. If the One and Only can’t convince ’em, no one can.

  I thought he was mad, but I could not restrain him. And I too wanted that taste, that smell, that touch. I trembled merely to think of him; and the idea that I might never see him again, never have him hold me close, was awful to contemplate. Supposing he should become ill again? Supposing he should die?

  “Young Mr. Gibson has written to me,” my father announced at breakfast shortly after Alfred had made his impetuous decision. “He wishes to be heard ‘on the subject of my eldest daughter.’ Well, Dodo, what do you think of that? It’s a bit of a bolt from the blue, but I shall dispatch him swiftly. I shall interview him in the office tomorrow.”

  “And where will you interview me?”

  Papa looked taken aback. I went on, “Don’t my feelings matter? Didn’t Cousin George urge you to speak to me? Why didn’t you do so? Did you fear so much what I would say?” I could hear my voice, normally so calm and quiet, sounding shrill. Alice and Sissy exchanged looks. Mama raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “I thought your interest in him had faded, Dodo. I wished to do nothing to revive it. You must realize any—liaison—is impossible.” Papa folded the letter and put it in his pocket with a decided air.

  “I love him, Papa.”

  “Love him! You hardly know the fellow.”

  I longed to tell him about the letters, how I felt I knew Alfred Gibson’s very soul—but I knew that to mention it now would mean disaster. So I retorted: “I know him almost as well as I know Cousin George. And you would have married me to him.”

  “George is family. Thoroughly respectable. What’s this young man got to offer my daughter? A life on the stage? Cheap lodgings? Debt? And what kind of family does he come from? Really, Dorothea, it’s quite absurd.”

  “Perhaps he wants to explain all that, Oliver,” Mama broke in unexpectedly. “You’ve hardly given the poor young man a chance. From the moment Dodo s
aid she liked him, you’ve been set against him. You may be right about him, in fact you probably are, but give him a chance to state his case.”

  My mother rarely disagreed with my father, let alone so vehemently, so Papa stared at her, nonplussed. Then he rubbed his hands together in an awkward way, and said, “Very well. The ladies of the household get their way, as usual. I shall invite him here for Saturday at six o’clock. Never let it be said that I am not fair and so forth.”

  When Saturday came, I couldn’t turn my mind to anything for more than a few minutes at a time. Nancy laughed and called me a “green girl.” “You think you love this young fellow then, do you?” she said as she combed my hair. “Well, there’s nothing as good as a long engagement to put an end to flighty feelings, that’s what Cook and me says.” She began looping my hair back, sticking pins in rather more forcefully than was required.

  “Long engagement?” I stared at her in the glass. “Who has mentioned that?”