Paying Guests (19 page)

Dora’s face crumpled as though she were going to weep again, but Tilly looked at her so sternly she thought better of it, and wiping her nose on the back of her hand, she went up to Eliza at the kitchen table.

‘I beg your pardon, Eliza,’ she muttered. ‘Like Madam says, I’m sorry I gossiped about you.’

‘Hmph,’ said Eliza, not looking up as she slapped a round of pastry over a pie dish and with expert fingers trimmed the excess away to leave it neat and ready to be filled with the meat mixture which Lucy and Rosie had now finished. ‘That’s as may be. Now, get on with your work. There’s the dinin’ room waiting to be set and the drawin’ room to be checked and hot water jugs for the evenin’ to be prepared. Be quick about it, now.’

Gratefully the three maids escaped and Tilly stood waiting till they had all vanished past the green baize door and then looked at Eliza.

She finished the pie, having filled it and poured in the gravy and seasoning, and then set the last trimmings in place on the top before sliding it into the oven behind her and straightening her back to stand without turning, staring down at the range.

‘Dear Eliza,’ Tilly said gently. ‘Why did you not tell me you had a follower? I am so happy for you – I wouldn’t have you think for
the world that you need keep such a matter a secret from me. I rejoice for you, indeed I do!’

‘Oh, Mum,’ Eliza said. ‘Oh, Mum,’ and turned and looked at Tilly and then did something that amazed and alarmed Tilly in equal measure.

She burst into tears.

TO SAY THAT Tilly was aghast was to put it at its very lowest. She had never seen Eliza so distressed. There had been times in her very early days in the household, as a child of little more than thirteen years or so, when, in a state of almost overwhelming heroine-worship for Tilly, the young Eliza had been exceedingly emotional. But never like this, Tilly was sure.

She sat in the chair beside the kitchen range, rocking herself almost frantically and weeping copiously into her hands, which she held over her face, in the main silently, though the occasional tearing sobs escaped her. Tilly could only crouch at her feet and stroke her knee and murmur at her and wait for the storm to pass, while at the same time attempting to control the great wash of anxiety that overcame her.

Eliza was her prop and stay, the centre of the house and therefore in many ways the centre of Tilly’s life. Duff was her best beloved, Jem was her good friend, and she was dealing as best as she could with her current fascination for Silas Geddes, but Eliza – Eliza was Eliza, as much a part of Tilly as her hands or her head. To see her in such a state of unbridled misery could only be an occasion of great agitation in Tilly herself.

Not that she showed it. She just remained there beside Eliza until the storm at last washed itself out and the tears dwindled and Eliza let herself be gently persuaded to lie against the back of the chair, exhausted and drained, her eyes closed, the puffy lids red and painful to look at above the streaked round cheeks.

‘Please to tell me what it is, Eliza!’ Tilly said at length. ‘I can’t help you if I don’t know.’

At last Eliza opened her eyes painfully and looked bleakly at Tilly. She looked so desolate that Tilly felt her own eyes sting with tears of sympathy.

‘It’s a sorry story, Mum,’ Eliza said at last. She was very hoarse from all her weeping. ‘I’d thought to have different news to tell you – difficult in one way, perhaps, but – well, not this, Mum. I never expected this.’

‘Expected what, Eliza?’ Tilly was as gentle as she knew how to be. ‘Please to start at the beginning.’

‘The beginning –’ Eliza said and then, extraordinarily, managed to twist her face into a sort of smile. ‘You could say it was the parson learning me to read at home in the village what begun it all, Mum. If I’d never learned to read I’d ha’ been better off.’

‘Eliza?’ Tilly said, puzzled and fearful now. Was the poor girl losing her mind in some way?

Eliza shook her head. ‘Oh, it’s just a stupid fancy of mine, Mum. It’s the reading circle, do you see.’

‘Not entirely,’ Tilly said candidly. ‘I can’t imagine what could happen there that would make you so very – so unhappy. It is but a church meeting, after all, as I understood it, well supervised and run by the vicar.’

Again Eliza’s lips twisted in a sort of ghastly smile. ‘Well, so it is, Mum, as far as what happens there in Cottage Place goes. But it’s where you meet people, ‘n’t it? You thought it was all for females, Mum. But it wasn’t. Like I said, we had gentlemen visitors from time to time –’ She swallowed hard. ‘Some of ‘em every time.’

Tilly began to understand. ‘What’s his name, Eliza?’ she said gently.

‘Reagan, Mum. Octavius Reagan. Irish o’ course, but I didn’t – I mean, I was never one to hold things against people. A person can’t help bein’ what they are and he was born into popery, I said to myself, so it’s no blame to him – especially as he was coming to our church now. I mean, I thought he’d left all that. So I didn’t fret over it. And like I said, he seemed good enough for them at St Paul’s to
have him there and he went to services and all. The vicar seemed to like him – oh, so good looking, Mum! So very good looking!’

Clearly Eliza was not speaking of the vicar of St Paul’s and Tilly sighed a little at the yearning note in her voice.

‘You were beguiled, I think, Eliza.’

‘Well, Mum, he was such a gentleman and read so lovely and wasn’t a bit insolent when he was about me, the way some men are. I got used to the silly ones, what makes eyes at you and calls it making love when it’s nothing of the sort. It’s only trying to be clever. He never tried to be clever, do you see, always the perfect gentleman, quick to take off his hat and bow, and ever so carefully spoken. A lovely voice, and very good at talking real long words. I thought I’d found my special one, like it says in the stories in my magazine, Mum, I really did.’

‘Has he been unkind to you, Eliza?’ Tilly thought she could probe a little now, for Eliza was beginning to recover. Some of the swelling about her eyes had gone down and her face was less woebegone. She was sitting up more erectly, too.

‘Unkind? I s’pose you could call it that.’

There was a long silence then, as Eliza sat staring over Tilly’s shoulder at the window with glazed eyes. Tilly gave her a few moments and then said a little more briskly, ‘Well, Eliza?’

‘He – he said as we’d get wed. I told him, very direct, I told him, as I was a good woman, and wouldn’t have no nonsense from no one as wasn’t man enough to do the proper thing. So he said we’d be wed, but then I said as I could never leave you, no matter what and he said that would be no trouble, we could still be wed and live close by and I could come and work here with you in the days, as long as he had the nights, and I thought, well, it seemed all right, Mum. I knew he had only a little money got from his dad or so he said, and was looking about him for employment as a farrier which was his trade he said, in Ireland, though I have to say he looked more of a gentleman than that, but he loved horses and knew about them well enough, so I thought, well, we can get him a nice berth hereabouts and I can go on lookin’ after you and Quentin’s and it’d all be lovely.’

Her eyes filled with tears once more but they weren’t the desperate ones of a while ago, and Tilly said nothing, knowing it would be better for Eliza to shed them. After a while Eliza blew her nose and wiped her eyes on the corner of her apron and started again.

‘I should ha’ guessed, I s’pose. A man what’s got no occupation and always dressed so smart and has time to read so many books – he’s read more’n me and you know how I reads night after night, Mum – I should ha’ known he did more sitting about than anything else, but there it is. I suppose I wanted to think well of the man I was to wed.’

‘But you are not to be wed, now, Eliza?’ Tilly was trying not to let her heart sink at the thought of losing Eliza to marriage, for she knew perfectly well that whatever scheme Eliza devised for working at Quentin’s by day, it would never really serve. Tilly would lose her for good and the thought was a painful one. But she wanted to be fair to Eliza, and if her feelings were engaged and she wanted to wed this man, however unsuitable she, Tilly, might think him, then wed him she would and with Tilly’s aid and blessing. She would do all she could to see that this man married Eliza, if that was what Eliza wanted.

The tears spilled over again and tracked down Eliza’s cheeks. ‘No, Mum,’ she said huskily. ‘Here you are – it was – I found it this morning under my pillow when I made my bed.’

She pushed a piece of paper at Tilly, who took it and sank back to sit on her heels on the hearthrug. It was a sheet of writing paper, thin of quality but dressed with fancy scroll decoration that bled through to the other side. It was the sort of cheap showy stuff sold by door-to-door pedlars to cooks and housemaids and offered in fairgrounds as prizes on the shot-gun ranges. Tilly glanced up at Eliza.

‘You’d best read it,’ Eliza said drearily. ‘It’s all there.’ Obediently Tilly bent her head and began to read, though it was not easy, since the handwriting was rather like the scrolls on the notepaper, over elaborate and very showy.

‘My dear Eliza, it is with regret that I pen this missive, my dear
heart, as I did not wish to hurt you, not at all. When I started our friendship, I do not deny I thought it all a great gas, you are very merry and funny. But I did not intend it to be more than a gas. You see, dear Eliza, not to beat about the bush, I have a wife in Belfast. It was agreed with her I should go and set us up in England or in America if I could not find the right opportunities in London, and I have not found those opportunities, as I will not be any longer a poor farrier, to that I have sworn. I have better things in me than that. So I shall be sailing off to Canada on the next ship out of Liverpool for a ticket to Montreal is a better buy than a ticket for New York or Boston, and I can always work my way south and anyway I do not wish my wife to know where I have gone for she is no great shakes to me and I know you would not tell her even if you knew her which you do not. By the time you read this letter, I shall be well away on the train so do not seek to find me, not that you would I think, for all you said you loved me, as did I love you, as far as I was able, but you should not have spoke of weddings, my dear Eliza, for it alarms a man powerfully, does such talk. Especially when he is as I am, with three small ones already on his quiver at home in Belfast who even if I do not see them again are of my blood and quite enough too. I trust that you will remember always that I thought you a fine bonny girl and a fair armful of joy. I hope you had joy of me as I of you. I bid you good luck and say you need not worry more about leaving your good mistress, on account of you do not have to. I hope you will wish me well in my journey to Canada which they tell me is a wild country but good in opportunity. Yrs. v. obediently. Octavius Aloysius Reagan, Esq.’

There was a long silence as Tilly gave the letter back to Eliza, who sat and stared at it for a long while. Then Tilly said with real care, ‘Oh dear, Eliza. I am so sorry.’

‘Not as sorry as I am,’ Eliza said harshly. ‘That I should have been so beguiled! It makes me sick, it does. It makes me fair sick.’

She looked down at the paper in her hand and then with a vicious twist of her wrist hurled it into the firebox of the range. It lay there in the embers for a moment and then flared into life, making a sudden vivid picture of Eliza’s face before it curled and
died in a heap of ash that could not be seen against the coals. They both watched it and then at last Tilly moved and got to her feet, wincing a little at the way her limbs had become numbed by her prolonged crouch beside Eliza.

Eliza became aware of that and at once jumped to her feet and made Tilly sit in the rocker. ‘Oh, Mum, I should be ashamed to worry you so! I would never have said a word if it hadn’t been for – well, if Dora hadn’t – I thought no one knew, do you see, and it never entered my head that nasty creature was spying on me. I’d take it kindly, Mum, if you let her go. She’s not that good at her work and I could do with someone with more sense, I truly could. You can give her a good enough character to get a new situation and then we can see her away. I’d not be able to keep up my head, you see, with her watching me and knowing.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ Tilly said. ‘I shall help her find a new place and seek another girl to help Lucy and Rosie – but Eliza –’ She looked at Eliza for a moment and then let her glance slide away. ‘All I can say is I am sorry. It hurts dreadfully to be so used by a man – to be lied to and – I do wish you to know that I have every sympathy for you.’

Eliza went out to the scullery and came back with a jug of milk from the larder. She set it on the table and then with her usual methodical movements, took cups and saucers and a teapot and the caddy from the dresser, and set to making a pot of tea with the kettle which was, as always, sitting on the range and just at boiling point. Then she gave Tilly her tea and took her own and sat with it on the little coal box that stood at the side of the fender. They sipped in silence for a while and then Eliza took a deep breath and lifted her chin to look at Tilly.