Lying on her sofa, Miss Barrett read the letters. How easy it would have been to yield – how easy it would have been to say, ‘Your good opinion is worth more to me than a hundred cocker spaniels’. How easy it would have been to sink back on her pillows and sigh, ‘I am a weak woman; I know nothing of law and justice; decide for me’. She had only to refuse to pay the ransom; she had only to defy Taylor and his Society. And if Flush were killed, if the dreadful parcel came and she opened it and out dropped his head and paws, there was Robert Browning by her side to assure her that she had done right and earned his respect. But Miss Barrett was not to be intimidated. Miss Barrett took up her pen and refuted Robert Browning. It was all very well, she said, to quote Donne; to cite the case of Gregory; to invent spirited replies to Mr Taylor – she would have done the same had Taylor struck her; had Gregory defamed her; – would that they had! But what would Mr Browning have done if the banditti had stolen her; had her in their power; threatened to cut off her ears and send them by post to New Cross? Whatever he would have done, her mind was made up. Flush was helpless. Her duty was to him. ‘But Flush, poor Flush, who has loved me so faithfully; have I a right to sacrifice him in his innocence, for the sake of any Mr Taylor’s guilt in the world?’ Whatever Mr Browning might say, she was going to rescue Flush, even if she went down into the jaws of Whitechapel to fetch him, even if Robert Browning despised her for doing so.
On Saturday, therefore, with Mr Browning’s letter lying open on the table before her, she began to dress. She read his ‘one word more – in all this, I labour against the execrable policy of the world’s husbands, fathers, brothers and domineerers in general’. So, if she went to Whitechapel she was siding against Robert Browning, and in favour of fathers, brothers and domineerers in general. Still, she went on dressing. A dog howled in the mews. It was tied up, helpless in the power of cruel men. It seemed to her to cry as it howled: ‘Think of Flush’. She put on her shoes, her cloak, her hat. She glanced at Mr Browning’s letter once more. ‘I am about to marry you’, she read. Still the dog howled. She left her room and went downstairs.
Henry Barrett met her and told her that in his opinion she might well be robbed and murdered if she did what she threatened. She told Wilson to call a cab. All trembling but submissive, Wilson obeyed. The cab came. Miss Barrett told Wilson to get in. Wilson, though convinced that death awaited her, got in. Miss Barrett told the cab-man to drive to Manning Street, Shoreditch. Miss Barrett got in herself and off they drove. Soon they were beyond plate-glass windows, the mahogany doors and the area railings. They were in a world that Miss Barrett had never seen, had never guessed at. They were in a world where cows are herded under bedroom floors, where whole families sleep in rooms with broken windows; in a world where water is turned on only twice a week, in a world where vice and poverty breed vice and poverty. They had come to a region unknown to respectable cab-drivers. The cab stopped; the driver asked his way at a public-house. ‘Out came two or three men. “Oh, you want to find Mr Taylor, I daresay!” ’ In this mysterious world a cab with two ladies could only come upon one errand, and that errand was already known. It was sinister in the extreme. One of the men ran into a house, and came out saying that Mr Taylor ‘ “wasn’t at home! but wouldn’t I get out?” Wilson, in an aside of terror, entreated me not to think of such a thing.’ A gang of men and boys pressed round the cab. ‘Then wouldn’t I see Mrs Taylor?’ the man asked. Miss Barrett had no wish whatever to see Mrs Taylor; but now an immense fat woman came out of the house, ‘fat enough to have had an easy conscience all her life’, and informed Miss Barrett that her husband was out: ‘might be in in a few minutes, or in so many hours – wouldn’t I like to get out and wait?’ Wilson tugged at her gown. Imagine waiting in the house of that woman! It was bad enough to sit in the cab with the gang of men and boys pressing round them. So Miss Barrett parleyed with the ‘immense feminine bandit’ from the cab. Mr Taylor had her dog, she said; Mr Taylor had promised to restore her dog; would Mr Taylor bring back her dog to Wimpole Street for certain that very day? ‘Oh yes, certainly,’ said the fat woman with the most gracious of smiles. She did believe that Taylor had left home precisely on that business. And she ‘poised her head to right and left with the most easy grace’.
So the cab turned round and left Manning Street, Shoreditch. Wilson was of opinion that ‘we had escaped with our lives barely’. Miss Barrett herself had been alarmed. ‘Plain enough it was that the gang was strong there. The Society, the “Fancy” … had their roots in the ground’, she wrote. Her mind teemed with thoughts, her eyes were full of pictures. This, then, was what lay on the other side of Wimpole Street – these faces, these houses. She had seen more while she sat in the cab at the public-house than she had seen during the five years that she had lain in the back bedroom at Wimpole Street. ‘The faces of those men!’ she exclaimed. They were branded on her eyeballs. They stimulated her imagination as ‘the divine marble presences’, the busts on the bookcase, had never stimulated it. Here lived women like herself; while she lay on her sofa, reading, writing, they lived thus. But the cab was now trundling along between four-storeyed houses again. Here was the familiar avenue of doors and windows: the pointed brick, the brass knockers, the regular curtains. Here was Wimpole Street and No. 50. Wilson sprang out – with what relief to find herself in safety can be imagined. But Miss Barrett perhaps hesitated a moment. She still saw ‘the faces of those men’. They were to come before her again years later when she sat writing on a sunny balcony in Italy. They were to inspire the most vivid passages in Aurora Leigh. But now the butler had opened the door, and she went upstairs to her room again.
Saturday was the fifth day of Flush’s imprisonment. Almost exhausted, almost hopeless, he lay panting in his dark corner of the teeming floor. Doors slammed and banged. Rough voices cried. Women screamed. Parrots chattered as they had never chattered to widows in Maida Vale, but now evil old women merely cursed at them. Insects crawled in his fur, but he was too weak, too indifferent to shake his coat. All Flush’s past life and its many scenes – Reading, the greenhouse, Miss Mitford, Mr Kenyon, the bookcases, the busts, the peasants on the blind – had faded like snowflakes dissolved in a cauldron. If he still held to hope, it was to something nameless and formless; the featureless face of someone he still called ‘Miss Barrett’. She still existed; all the rest of the world was gone; but she still existed, though such gulfs lay between them that it was impossible, almost, that she should reach him still. Darkness began to fall again, such darkness as seemed almost able to crush out his last hope – Miss Barrett.
In truth, the forces of Wimpole Street were still, even at this last moment, battling to keep Flush and Miss Barrett apart. On Saturday afternoon she lay and waited for Taylor to come, as the immensely fat woman had promised. At last he came, but he had not brought the dog. He sent up a message – Let Miss Barrett pay him six guineas on the spot, and he would go straight to Whitechapel and fetch the dog ‘on his word of honour’. What ‘the archfiend’ Taylor’s word of honour might be worth, Miss Barrett could not say; but ‘there seemed no other way for it’; Flush’s life was at stake; she counted out the guineas and sent them down to Taylor in the passage. But as ill luck would have it, as Taylor waited in the passage among the umbrellas, the engravings, the pile carpet and other valuable objects, Alfred Barrett came in. The sight of the archfiend actually in the house made him lose his temper. He burst into a rage. He called him ‘a swindler, and a liar and a thief’. Thereupon Mr Taylor cursed him back. What was far worse, he swore that ‘as he hoped to be saved, we should never see our dog again’, and rushed out of the house. Next morning, then, the blood-stained parcel would arrive.
Miss Barrett flung on her clothes again and rushed downstairs. Where was Wilson? Let her call a cab. She was going back to Shoreditch instantly. Her family came running to prevent her. It was getting dark. She was exhausted already. The adventure was risky enough for a man in health. For her it was madness. So they told her. H
er brothers, her sisters, all came round her threatening her, dissuading her, ‘crying out against me for being “quite mad” and obstinate and wilful – I was called as many names as Mr Taylor’. But she stood her ground. At last they realised the extent of her folly. Whatever the risk might be they must give way to her. Septimus promised if Ba would return to her room ‘and be in good humour’ he would go to Taylor’s himself and pay the money and bring back the dog.
So the dusk of the 5th of September faded into the blackness of night in Whitechapel. The door of the room was once more kicked open. A hairy man hauled Flush by the scruff of his neck out of his corner. Looking up into the hideous face of his old enemy, Flush did not know whether he was being taken to be killed or to be freed. Save for one phantom memory, he did not care. The man stooped. What were those great fingers fumbling at his throat for? Was it a knife or a chain? Stumbling, half blinded, on legs that staggered, Flush was led out into the open air.
In Wimpole Street Miss Barrett could not eat her dinner. Was Flush dead, or was Flush alive? She did not know. At eight o’clock there was a rap on the door; it was the usual letter from Mr Browning. But as the door opened to admit the letter, something rushed in also; – Flush. He made straight for his purple jar. It was filled three times over; and still he drank. Miss Barrett watched the dazed, bewildered dirty dog, drinking. ‘He was not so enthusiastic about seeing me as I expected’, she remarked. No, there was only one thing in the world he wanted – clean water.
After all, Miss Barrett had but glanced at the faces of those men and she remembered them all her life. Flush had been at their mercy in their midst for five whole days. Now as he lay on cushions once more, cold water was the only thing that seemed to have any substance, any reality. He drank continually. The old gods of the bedroom – the bookcase, the wardrobe, the busts – seemed to have lost their substance. This room was no longer the whole world; it was only a shelter. It was only a dell arched over by one trembling dock-leaf in a forest where wild beasts prowled and venomous snakes coiled; where behind every tree lurked a murderer ready to pounce. As he lay dazed and exhausted on the sofa at Miss Barrett’s feet the howls of tethered dogs, the screams of birds in terror still sounded in his ears. When the door opened he started, expecting a hairy man with a knife – it was only Mr Kenyon with a book; it was only Mr Browning with his yellow gloves. But he shrank away from Mr Kenyon and Mr Browning now. He trusted them no longer. Behind those smiling, friendly faces was treachery and cruelty and deceit. Their caresses were hollow. He dreaded even walking with Wilson to the pillar-box. He would not stir without his chain. When they said, ‘Poor Flush, did the naughty men take you away?’ he put up his head and moaned and yelled. A whip cracking sent him bolting down the area-steps into safety. Indoors he crept closer to Miss Barrett on the sofa. She alone had not deserted him. He still kept some faith in her. Gradually some substance returned to her. Exhausted, trembling, dirty and very thin, he lay on the sofa at her feet.
As the days passed and the memory of Whitechapel grew fainter, Flush, lying close to Miss Barrett on the sofa, read her feelings more clearly than ever before. They had been parted; now they were together. Indeed they had never been so much akin. Every start she gave, every movement she made, passed through him too. And she seemed now to be perpetually starting and moving. The delivery of a parcel even made her jump. She opened the parcel; with trembling fingers she took out a pair of thick boots. She hid them instantly in the corner of the cupboard. Then she lay down as if nothing had happened; yet something had happened. When they were alone she rose and took a diamond necklace from a drawer. She took out the box that held Mr Browning’s letters. She laid the boots, the necklace and the letters all in a carpet-box together and then – as if she heard a step on the stair – she pushed the box under the bed and lay down hastily, covering herself with her shawl again. Such signs of secrecy and stealth must herald, Flush felt, some approaching crisis. Were they about to fly together? Were they about to escape together from this awful world of dog-stealers and tyrants? Oh that it were possible! He trembled and whined with excitement; but in her low voice Miss Barrett bade him be quiet, and instantly he was quiet. She was very quiet too. She lay perfectly still on the sofa directly any of her brothers or sisters came in; she lay and talked to Mr Barrett as she always lay and talked to Mr Barrett.
But on Saturday, the 12th of September, Miss Barrett did what Flush had never known her do before. She dressed herself as if to go out directly after breakfast. Moreover, as he watched her dress, Flush knew perfectly well from the expression on her face that he was not to go with her. She was bound on secret business of her own. At ten Wilson came into the room. She also was dressed as if for a walk. They went out together; and Flush lay on the sofa and waited for their return. An hour or so later Miss Barrett came back alone. She did not look at him – she seemed to look at nothing. She drew off her gloves and for a moment he saw a gold band shine on one of the fingers of her left hand. Then he saw her slip the ring from her hand and hide it in the darkness of a drawer. Then she laid herself down as usual on the sofa. He lay by her side scarcely daring to breathe, for whatever had happened, it was something that must at all costs be concealed.
At all costs the life of the bedroom must go on as usual. Yet everything was different. The very movement of the blind as it drew in and out seemed to Flush like a signal. And as the lights and shadows passed over the busts they too seemed to be hinting and beckoning. Everything in the room seemed to be aware of change; to be prepared for some event. And yet all was silent; all was concealed. The brothers and sisters came in and out as usual; Mr Barrett came as usual in the evening. He looked as usual to see that the chop was finished, the wine drunk. Miss Barrett talked and laughed and gave no sign when anyone was in the room that she was hiding anything. Yet when they were alone she pulled out the box from under the bed and filled it hastily, stealthily, listening as she did so. And the signs of strain were unmistakable. On Sunday the church bells were ringing. ‘What bells are those?’ somebody asked. ‘Marylebone Church bells’, said Miss Henrietta. Miss Barrett, Flush saw, went deadly white. But nobody else seemed to notice anything.
So Monday passed, and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. Over them all lay a blanket of silence, of eating and talking and lying still on the sofa as usual. Flush, tossing in uneasy sleep, dreamt that they were couched together under ferns and leaves in the darkness, in a vast forest; then the leaves were parted and he woke. It was dark; but he saw Wilson come stealthily into the room, and take the box from beneath the bed and quietly carry it outside. This was on Friday night, the 18th of September. All Saturday morning he lay as one lies who knows that at any moment now a handkerchief may drop, a low whistle may sound and the signal will be given for death or for life. He watched Miss Barrett dress herself. At a quarter to four the door opened and Wilson came in. Then the signal was given – Miss Barrett lifted him in her arms. She rose and walked to the door. For a moment they stood looking round the room. There was the sofa and by it Mr Browning’s armchair. There were the busts and the tables. The sun filtered through the ivy leaves and the blind with peasants walking blew gently out. All was as usual. All seemed to expect a million more such movements to come to them; but to Miss Barrett and Flush this was the last. Very quietly Miss Barrett shut the door.
Very quietly they slipped downstairs, past the drawing-room, the library, the dining-room. All looked as they usually looked; smelt as they usually smelt; all were quiet as if sleeping in the hot September afternoon. On the mat in the hall Catiline lay sleeping too. They gained the front door and very quietly turned the handle. A cab was waiting outside.
‘To Hodgson’s’, said Miss Barrett. She spoke almost in a whisper. Flush sat on her knee very still. Not for anything in the whole world would he have broken that tremendous silence.
CHAPTER 5
Italy
Hours, days, weeks, it seemed of darkness and rattling; of sudden lights; and then long tunnels
of gloom; of being flung this way and that; of being hastily lifted into the light and seeing Miss Barrett’s face close, and thin trees and lines and rails and high light-specked houses – for it was the barbarous custom of railways in those days to make dogs travel in boxes – followed. Yet Flush was not afraid; they were escaping; they were leaving tyrants and dog-stealers behind them. Rattle, grind; grind, rattle as much as you like, he murmured, as the train flung him this way and that; only let us leave Wimpole Street and Whitechapel behind us. At last the light broadened; the rattling stopped. He heard birds singing and the sigh of trees in the wind. Or was it the rush of water? Opening his eyes at last, shaking his coat at last, he saw – the most astonishing sight conceivable. There was Miss Barrett on a rock in the midst of rushing waters. Trees bent over her; the river raced round her. She must be in peril. With one bound Flush splashed through the stream and reached her. ‘… he is baptized in Petrarch’s name’, said Miss Barrett as he clambered up on to the rock by her side. For they were at Vaucluse; she had perched herself upon a stone in the middle of Petrarch’s fountain.