Hannah bowed her head. It was tantamount to agreement.
“Why is there this secrecy?”
They were silent again, and I burst out, “It’s all rather foolish.”
Hannah said sharply: “You’ll know in time. It’s not for us…”
I looked at Mrs. Bucket appealingly. “You know,” I said. “Why shouldn’t I? What happened to this Jessica?”
“She died,” said Mrs. Bucket.
“When she was very young?” I asked.
“It was after they left Oakland,” Hannah told me, “so we wouldn’t know much about it.”
“She was older than Miriam, and Miriam was fifteen when they left,” I prompted.
“About seventeen,” said Hannah, “but it’s not for us…Mrs. Bucket shouldn’t have…”
“I’ll do what I like in my own kitchen,” said Mrs. Bucket.
“This is no kitchen matter,” protested Hannah.
“I’ll thank you not to be impudent to me, Hannah Gooding.”
I could see that they were making a quarrel of this to avoid telling me. But I was going to find out. I was determined on that.
I left the Hall and went to the churchyard and looked at all the graves. There was only one Jessica Clavering among them, and she had died about a hundred years before at the ripe age of seventy years.
Then I went to the Waste Land. There it was—the grave and the plaque engraved with her name and the date Ju…1880.
“So this is where they buried you, Jessica,” I murmured.
A Letter from the Dead
The next day, when I was sitting by the stream, Hannah appeared on the other side of it, carrying a package.
“I wanted to speak to you, Miss Clavering,” she said.
“All right, Hannah. I’ll come over.” As I crossed the bridge I noticed how solemn she was looking.
“I’ve been thinking the time has come for me to give you this,” she said.
“What is it?”
“It’s something that was given to me to be given to you when the time came or on your twenty-first birthday—whichever came first, and I reckon, after all that’s been said, that the time is now.”
I took the packet which she thrust into my hands.
“What is it?” I repeated.
“It’s writing. It was written to you and given to me.”
“When? And who gave it to you?”
“It’s all in there. I hope I’ve done what was right.”
She hesitated for a moment, her brow puckered in consternation, then she turned and hurried across the bridge, leaving me standing there with the large envelope in my hands. I opened it and pulled out several sheets of paper on which someone had written in clear neat writing.
I glanced at the first page.
“My darling child, Opal,” it began.
“It will be many years after I write this that you will read it, and I hope when you do you will not think too badly of me. Always remember that I loved you, and that what I am going to do, I do because it is the best way out for all of us. I want you to know that my last thoughts were of you…”
I could not understand what this meant so I decided to take the papers to the Waste Land where few people ever came and there, close to the grave of Jessica, I started to read.
“I shall start right at the beginning. I want you to know me, because if you do you will understand how everything happened. I think in every family there is one who is different, the one in the litter who doesn’t bear much resemblance to the rest. They called it a winnick, I believe. Well, I was like that. There was Xavier who was so clever and good at lessons and ready to help everybody; and there was Miriam who could get up to mischief but mostly when I led her into it. Miriam was malleable; she could be molded any way and would at times be a model child. I was always a bit of a rebel. I used to pretend I was a ghost and play the spinet in the gallery and then go and hide when people came to look so that the rumor started that the gallery was haunted and the servants wouldn’t go up there alone. I used to flatter Mrs. Bucket into making the special cakes which I liked and she would always bake an extra one for me. I was Papa’s favorite, though not Mama’s. Papa taught me how to play poker. I shall never forget Mama’s face when she came to his study and found us there with the cards in our hands. I think it must have been then that I first realized the uneasy state of affairs in our household. She stood there, so dramatic that I wanted to burst out laughing. She said: ‘Fiddling while Rome’s burning!’ I said: ‘This isn’t fiddling, Mama. It’s poker.’ She cried: ‘I wonder you’re not ashamed.’ And she picked up the cards and threw them into the fire. ‘Now it’s cards that are burning, not Rome,’ I said, for I could never guard my tongue and words always slipped out before I could stop them. Mama lifted her hand and slapped me across the face. I remember the shock it gave me because it showed how distraught she was. Usually she was calm and her reproaches were verbal. Papa was shocked too. He said sternly: ‘Never lift your hand against the children again.’ Then it came out: ‘And who are you to tell me how to behave? You are teaching our daughter to be as dissolute as you are. Cards, gambling…and gambling means debts, which is why we are in the position we are in today. Do you realize that the roof needs immediate repair? There is water seeping into the gallery. There is dry rot under the floor boards in the library. The servants have not been paid for two months. And what is your answer: To teach your daughter to play poker!’
“I was standing there, holding my face where she had slapped it. Papa said pleadingly: ‘Not in front of Jessica, please, Dorothy.’ And she answered: ‘Why not? She will know soon enough. How long before everyone knows that through your gambling your fortune away…and mine…we cannot afford to go on like this.’
“I saw the Queen of Hearts writhe in the flames and then Mama had gone and Papa and I were alone together.
“I don’t know why I should tell you this. It’s irrelevant really. But I do want you to know something of me, Opal, and what our lives were like. I don’t want to be just a name to you. I want you to try to understand why things happened as they did, that’s why I’m writing all this down. Perhaps I shall tear this up when I’ve finished. Perhaps I shall decide there is no need for you to know it. Perhaps it’s just making excuses. However, just at first I will write whatever comes into my head, and that scene in Papa’s study seems to me in a way a beginning because if it hadn’t been for the fact that we had to sell Oakland Hall it would never have happened the way it did.
“It wasn’t long after that that there were scenes quite often. It was always money. Money was wanted to pay for this and that, and it wasn’t there. I knew Papa was wrong. It was some devil’s streak in the family which had come down and was in him. He used to talk to me about it in the long gallery where he would show me pictures of his ancestors and explain what they were noted for. There was Geoffrey, born three hundred years before, who had nearly brought us to ruin. Then there was James, who had gone to sea and was a sort of buccaneer. He had filched treasure from Spanish galleons and we grew rich on them. Then there was Charles, who gambled again. This was at the time of Charles I and then came the war and we were naturally for the King yet managed to live somehow through the Commonwealth until the restoration when we acquired more land and riches because we had been loyal to the monarchy. For a hundred years we lived in comfort and then came Henry Clavering, the greatest gambler of them all—friend of George, Prince of Wales, a dandy and a spendthrift. We never recovered from him, although in the early part of this century we made an effort to. Papa’s father, however, inherited the family failing and then it was passed on to Papa himself. Two generations running of gamblers was more than Oakland could take. That was how it came about that there was one course open to us. We had to sell Oakland.
“I was sixteen at the time. It was so depressing, Papa was so miserable that I feared he woul
d take his life. Mama was bitter. She kept saying it need never happen. We had to sell not only the house but so much that was precious in it. The lovely tapestries, some of the silver and furniture. Then we went to the Dower House. It’s a beautiful house, Xavier kept saying, but Mama wouldn’t hear of it and grumbled continually. Nothing was right, and I used to hate the way she reproached Papa. She would bring it into everything that happened. As if it wasn’t bad enough!
“We all seemed to change. Xavier was much quieter; he didn’t reproach Papa, but he was withdrawn. We kept one farm and he managed that, but it was different from the large estate we had had. Miriam was fifteen and our governess was dismissed, so Mama taught her. I was considered old enough to dispense with lessons, and Mama said we must help in the kitchen, learning to bottle fruit and make preserves; we must try to be useful for the type of man who might be expected to marry us would be very different from those who would have come our way had the fecklessness of our father not driven us from our home. Miriam caught my mother’s bitterness. I never did. I understood the irresistible urge, the compulsion which had beset Papa. I had that myself—not for cards, but for life. I was of a nature to follow my impulses, to act and consider the wisdom of that act afterwards. I hope you will not grow up to be of that nature, dear Opal, because it can bring you trouble.
“A Mr. Ben Henniker, who had made a fortune in Australia, had bought Oakland. He was a friendly sort of man and one day called on us at the Dower House. I shall never forget it. Maddy brought him into the drawing room where we were having tea.
“‘Well, Ma’am,’ he said to Mama, ‘I thought that as we are neighbors we ought to be neighborly and as I’m having a little bit of a gathering next week, it struck me you might like to join us.’ Mama could freeze people with a look—it was a habit she employed with the servants and it worked as well in the Dower House as it had at Oakland. None of the servants was ever allowed to forget that we were Claverings, however depleted our worldly goods.
“‘A gathering, Mr. Henniker?’ she said as though he were suggesting a Roman orgy. ‘I’m afraid that is quite out of the question. My daughters have not yet come out and we shall most certainly be engaged on the date you mention.’
“I said: ‘I could go, Mama.’ Mama’s look froze the words on my lips.
“‘You are not free to go, Jessica,’ she said coldly.
“Mr. Ben Henniker’s face was quite purple with rage. He said: ‘I understand, Ma’am, you are engaged next week and will be any week if I were to have the impertinence to invite you. Have no fear. You are safe…you and your family. You’ll never be asked to Oakland Hall while I’m there.’ Then he walked out.
“I was so angry with Mama for her rudeness because after all he had tried to be friendly and it seemed absurd to me to resent him merely because he had bought Oakland. We had put it up for sale. We had sought a buyer. I slipped out and ran after him, but he was halfway up the Oakland Drive before I caught up with him. ‘I wanted to say how sorry I am,’ I panted. ‘I’m so ashamed that my mother spoke to you like that. I do hope you won’t think badly of us all.’
“He had such fierce blue eyes which were then blazing with fury, but as he looked at me, slowly he began to smile. ‘Well, fancy that,’ he said. ‘And you’re little Miss Clavering, I reckon.’
“‘I’m Jessica,’ I told him.
“‘You don’t take after your mother,’ he said. ‘And that’s the nicest compliment I can pay you.’
“‘She has some good points,’ I defended her, ‘but they are a little hard to recognize.’
“He started to laugh, and there was that about his laughter which made it impossible not to join in. Then he said: ‘I like you for running after me like this. You’re a good girl, Miss Jessica, you are indeed. You must come and see me in your old home. What about that?’ He almost choked with laughter. ‘After all she was only speaking for herself. You come and meet some of my friends. They’re good people, some of them. It’ll be an eye-opener for you, Miss Jessica. I reckon you’ve lived in a cage all your life. How old are you?’ I told him I was seventeen. ‘It’s a beautiful age,’ he said. ‘It’s an age when you ought to be setting out on your adventures. I reckon that’s what you want, eh? You come over and see me sometime…that’s if you think it’s right and proper. Don’t you find life pretty dull, living as you must have done?’
“I told him that I hadn’t found it dull. There was a lot to interest me in the country. I liked to visit people and we had done a good deal of that at Oakland. As the squire’s family we had had to see to the welfare of our tenants; our days had been divided into sections: lessons in the mornings, working on village affairs, sewing, talking, making some of our clothes, planning the dances we would have when we came out. Alas, we hadn’t come out into society—only out of Oakland and our old life. But I had never found it dull, and it was only when Mr. Henniker opened a new vista for me that I discovered how uneventful the old life had been.
“What an escape those visits to Oakland Hall were…”
I paused in my reading and stared at the grave before me, and I was beset by an uncanny notion that my life was repeating an old pattern. What had happened to Jessica was happening to me. I wanted to read on quickly, and yet to savor these events as I went. I felt it was important for me to know this Jessica, to see her life unfold before me; and that was what she wanted and was why she was telling me in such detail.
I went on reading:
“Of course I was deceiving the family, though I did confide a little in Miriam. I used to wish I could take her to Oakland with me. But I knew that if I were discovered there would be terrible trouble and I didn’t want her involved because she was younger than I and I felt responsible for her. Miriam was so easily led. When she was with me she would be ready for a certain amount of mischief; in the old days we had had a governess, a rather forceful lady who was secretly a Buddhist; Miriam was for a while in danger of becoming one too. When she was with Mama she would become snobbish and scornful of Papa for bringing us down in the world. I used to call her the Chameleon, for she took her color from whatever rock she was resting on. Therefore I hesitated about taking Miriam with me. Instead I would satisfy myself by telling her of my adventures as we lay in bed at night. She would listen avidly and applaud what I did, but I knew that if Mama pointed out the wickedness of my actions she would immediately agree with her. She was not in the least devious—just incapable of having a view of her own. Malleable—that was the only way to describe her. When I watched Mrs. Cobb kneading the dough into cottage, wheatsheaf, and farmhouse loaves I would say to myself: That is just like Miriam; she will go into whatever shape she is put. It was different with Xavier, but who would confide in him? He felt very deeply about our change in fortune and saw it as a disgrace to the family. He had loved Oakland and had naturally been brought up to believe it would be his one day; therefore he necessarily felt a sense of outrage since it had been taken from him, though he never abused Papa as Mama did; he was just sad and withdrawn. I used to feel very sad about Xavier, but of course I didn’t know him as I did Miriam.
“I’m digressing because I’m putting off what happened. I do want you to understand. Please don’t blame me and don’t blame Desmond. I met him at one of Mr. Henniker’s gatherings. I was frequently going to the house and it soon seemed to me more like home than the Dower House ever could be. Life was so miserable there mainly because Mama could not stop baiting Papa. Sometimes I wondered whether he might do her an injury. He was so quiet and calm that I could imagine he was plotting against her, for there were times when I caught him looking at her oddly. There was a brooding tension in the house. I said to Miriam one night when we lay in bed: ‘Something’s going to happen. You can feel it in the air. It’s as though Fate’s waiting to strike.’ Miriam used to get frightened and so did I. I little realized from what direction the blow would come.
“I was going more often t
o Oakland and getting really reckless. Mr. Henniker always welcomed me. Once when we were in the gallery I told him how I used to play the spinet and frighten the servants. He was very amused and thereafter asked me to play for him. He loved to sit there listening while I went through most of the Chopin waltzes. I used to think it would go on always, that Mr. Henniker would always be there and interesting people would come to the house. Then I learned that this was not so and Mr. Henniker’s stays at the house were brief. He had what he called ‘a property’ in New South Wales. Oakland Hall was just a fancy, ‘a bit of folly if you like,’ he said. He’d seen it when he was a boy and had vowed to have it, and he was a man who believed in sticking to his vows. I wish I could tell you how he interested me. I had never known anyone like him.”
She didn’t have to try to make me understand that. I knew well enough, having experienced the same thing myself.
“As I was older than Miriam there had been a lot of talk about my coming out before we left Oakland. We had had little Minnie Jobbers making dresses for me and I had some lovely garments made. In particular there were two pretty ball dresses. I remember Mama’s looking at them when we knew we were going to leave Oakland and saying: ‘You’ll never need them now.’ One was more beautiful than the other; it was in cherry-colored silk trimmed with Honiton lace; it fell off the shoulders, and I had a pretty neck and shoulders. It had been cut in that style for the sole purpose of showing them. ‘Poor neck, poor shoulders,’ I used to say, ‘you will never be shown off now.’
“One could talk to Mr. Henniker about anything so I told him about the dress. It was strange that he—a miner really and I suppose a rough one—could understand how I felt about almost anything I mentioned. He said: ‘You shall wear the cherry dress. After all why should the world be deprived of a glimpse of your divine neck and shoulders just because your father was a gambler. We’ll have a ball and you shall bring cherry red to it.’ I said I would never dare and he answered: ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Never be afraid to dare.’ Then he laughed and said he was a wicked man who was leading his neighbor’s daughter from the straight and narrow path. He laughed a good deal over that. ‘Straight and narrow paths are so restricting, Miss Jessica,’ he said. ‘The wide-open spaces are much more stimulating.’