The Sealed Letter Part 11

Such a curious mixture of the soft and the diamond-hard about Bessie Parkes, Fido thinks. She finds herself gripping the bevelled edge of the table with her fingertips. A headache's started up behind her right eye. "I never saw her in bloomers," she bursts out, "only s.h.i.+rts and jackets of a tailored cut."

"Any eccentricity, even in dress, gives succour to our enemies," says Bessie Parkes.

"Besides," cries Fido, "it's so unfair that the Journal Journal still has a reputation for laxity, when its content is of the tamest kind." still has a reputation for laxity, when its content is of the tamest kind."

"You've put your finger on it," says Emily Davies, very crisp. "I believe this issue of reputation is a red herring; our readers have simply had enough of carrying a lame dog."

Isa Craig is looking distressed. "Now Miss Davies, you mustn't take things personally. Our readers.h.i.+p was in decline from its peak of one thousand long before you took over the editors.h.i.+p."

"Oh I'm quite aware of that, and I believe I do a competent job with the resources available to me," says Emily Davies. "But the fact is that the English Woman's Journal English Woman's Journal has never been known for intellectual or literary excellence." has never been known for intellectual or literary excellence."

The women of the Reform Firm aren't meeting each other's eyes.

"Our friends buy it out of duty, and for the most part, I suspect, shelve it unread."

"Not so!"

"Surely-"

"Yes, yes, yes," says Fido, nodding at Emily Davies. "The problem is timidity. If we're too nervous to include any topic which could be considered remotely controversial, we're left with pedestrian exhortations to our readers to use their talents while making sure to fulfill their womanly duties!"

"May I ask," breathes Sarah Lewin, "what sort of topic-"

Jessie Boucherett interrupts her. "I rather agree with Fido. For instance, why have we never pointed out the many injustices to women that linger in the Matrimonial Causes Act?"

Bessie Parkes purses her lips. "Divorce is a dangerous subject. We could seem to be a.s.sociating ourselves with women of doubtful reputation."

"But what about a blameless wife," asks Isa Craig, "whose husband takes half a dozen mistresses? As the law stands, she can only free herself of him if she proves him guilty of a compounding offence, such as desertion, cruelty-"

"Rape," contributes Fido, "incest-"

"b.e.s.t.i.a.lity or b.u.g.g.e.ry," finishes Emily Davies.

Bessie Parkes's lovely face is pale. "Words which will never be printed in the English Woman's Journal English Woman's Journal as long as I have any say in the matter." as long as I have any say in the matter."

"Oh come," Fido objects, "we're veteran journalists, we can raise these questions without verbal impropriety; there's always a way to say something without naming it."

"The divorce law is flawed and unequal, but I for one would not support liberalizing it further," Emily Davies puts in. "In my experience, divorce leaves women not merely ruined but penniless, and bereft of their children."

"Well, that's true. Without some legal barrier," jokes Jessie Boucherett, "I believe most men would roam like apes from female to female!"

"Divorce is only one example of the kind of subject we've been skirting for six years," says Fido. "Which reminds me of the chief who parted from his second wife at the recommendation of a missionary. When asked how he'd provided for the cast-off, he replied-" she waits till she has everyone's full attention "-'Me eat her.'"

Laughter eases the atmosphere in the room.

"What about married women's property, instead?" suggests Jessie Boucherett. "I agree with Miss Davies, that as marriage is the lot of the majority of women, our priority should be to ameliorate its conditions."

"Mm. On the property issue, it struck me the other night," says Fido, "that the possessions of the woman who commits murder, and those of the woman who commits matrimony, are both dealt with alike: by confiscation."

"You're in form today, Fido," says Isa Craig, grinning. "Oh, what about an article on the suffrage?"

"Come now, Miss Craig, you know Britain's not ready," Bessie Parkes scolds her gently. "I for one would rather dismantle that wall gradually, brick by brick, than smash our hearts-and my beloved Bar's money, may I add!-against it."

Emily Davies is nodding. "We need to get access to higher education first, to prove we're intelligent enough to vote. Let's fight one fight at a time, so that the tainting a.s.sociations of one don't rub off on the others."

"But getting back to the Journal Journal-" says Fido.

"I know it's very dear to all of us here," says Bessie Parkes. "It's the beating heart at the centre of all our endeavours to uplift our s.e.x, the moral engine that powers the whole Cause."

Emily Davies plays a silent piano on the table. "But given the state of accounts, it seems unlikely to limp on till Christmas."

"Defeatist thinking," says Bessie Parkes in awful tones, "and from the editor too!"

"I don't think I'm known for giving up easily," says Emily Davies with a mildness that snaps like a whip. "But I have grave doubts about carrying on editing a small-scale publication that speaks only-and not eloquently-to the converted. In six years, what laws has it changed?"

"You know," says Fido, "perhaps what's needed is an altogether different kind of magazine." She's surprised herself; these are only half-formed notions.

Bessie Parkes looks at her hard. "A radical diatribe that won't be let into respectable houses even as kindling?"

Fido takes a long breath, to keep her temper. "In fact, I was thinking of a well-funded periodical of general interest, written by the most talented male and female authors, which discusses the Cause among a broad range of other topics. One that looks outward, not inward. A magazine that readers actually want to read!"

Emily Davies has her head on one side, like a curious squirrel.

"My own view," snaps Bessie Parkes, "is that if a change must come, the Journal Journal should become more practical, less theoretical. Cheaper, for instance, to appeal to the ma.s.ses of working women." should become more practical, less theoretical. Cheaper, for instance, to appeal to the ma.s.ses of working women."

This raises a few eyebrows.

"But at any rate, none of you need fear its demise by Christmas. What I should perhaps have announced before this interesting discussion ran away with itself is that the immediate pecuniary crisis has been averted by our guardian angel: Bar has sent a cheque for the rent from Algiers."

Little cries of relief and grat.i.tude go round the circle. Fido, teeth set, tries to look pleased.

"As she's the major shareholder of the Journal, Journal, you understand that I'd prefer not to make any dramatic changes until I've had a chance to consult her." you understand that I'd prefer not to make any dramatic changes until I've had a chance to consult her."

No one can do anything but agree with Bessie Parkes.

First among equals, thinks Fido bitterly, on her way down the stairs. thinks Fido bitterly, on her way down the stairs. We are divided. We are divided. The machine rolls on but squeals, the little screws are starting to loosen and pop out. The machine rolls on but squeals, the little screws are starting to loosen and pop out.

The blue wax seal is unfamiliar to Fido, when she cracks it at her desk at Taviton Street, but she's guessed from the Scottish postmark that the letter's from Colonel David Anderson. She's bristling already. Let him make his own a.s.signations: she won't play gullible hostess and go-between any more. Two lines into the note, she starts to wheeze.

Dear Miss F., You can imagine, I believe, with what difficulty I write today to inform you that I am engaged to be married.

She gasps for breath. Oh Helen. Oh Helen. The scoundrel, the blackguard, the brute! Not content with destroying one woman's peace of mind, he takes a whim, a mere fortnight later, to marry another. The scoundrel, the blackguard, the brute! Not content with destroying one woman's peace of mind, he takes a whim, a mere fortnight later, to marry another.

Let me begin by a.s.suring you that at your house on the sixteenth, where youwere kind enough to allow me to meet our friend for a private discussion, this was not yet the case. As your correspondents rightly informed you, a cousin of mine, who cares for me with a devotion that I cannot claim to deserve, has had reason to believe that I would make her an offer, but I did not in fact commit myself until I reached Scotland on the eighteenth, when I was lucky enough to be accepted by that young lady.

I am aware that my recent behaviour towards our mutual friend has been in certain respects unbecoming to a gentleman as well as to an officer of Her Majesty's armed forces. All I can say to mitigate if not excuse my offence is that the situation has become intolerable and seems to offer no prospect of ease on either side. As I know you disapprove in the sternest terms of the connection, and rightly so, I hope it will be with some measure of relief admixed with concern for the lady that you will hear now that it is at an end.

It's true: behind her outrage, Fido's aware of a surge of gladness. This will be a blade to hack through the coils in which Helen's tangled, as perhaps nothing else could. But how dare Anderson offer that as an excuse! For him not to give the woman who's compromised herself for him as much as a moment's warning of this cataclysm- Despite the short period of our acquaintance, Miss F., my respect for your intellectual as well as sympathetic capacities has grown to the point that in my current state of discomfort I can see no better-less cruel, rather-way to break the news to our friend than by asking you to do it as my proxy. At such times man is but a blunt instrument, and I feel sure that you will be better able than I to offer comfort and counsel to a lady of whose unhappiness I confess I took advantage, and whose future life can only be improved by the voluntary though sorrowful departure from it of D. A.

(I will count it as the last of your many kindnesses to me if you'll destroy this letter and any other record of an episode that should never have been begun.) Fido folds it up with shaking fingers. The blue wax is breaking into fragments: cheap stuff.

The next day, as soon as she can get away from the press (and a tiresome mix-up about the reprinting of a miscellany celebrating last year's marriage of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra), Fido hails a cab to Eccleston Square. But instead of going in, she sends the driver to ask if Mrs. Codrington would be so good as to come down for a few minutes. It's occurred to her that this news should be broken where none of the family or servants could possibly overhear a word of it.

"Fido! What's all this hugger-mugger?" Helen, leaning in the cab window, is looking very stylish in flamingo silk.

"Climb in, won't you? I've something very particular to say."

She waits till her friend is sitting down beside her, and then she tells her. Helen's eyes shut and her head sags back against the greasy upholstery. Fido takes her by the shoulders and pushes her face down onto her skirt. Helen, doubled up, lets out a moan. Fido uncorks a small bottle of salts and holds it close to the sharp little nose; the pungency makes Helen rear up. "Oh you poor creature," cries Fido, "if I could have thought of any kinder means-"

Helen blinks at her like some small, stunned animal.

Fido hesitates. "But his letter does contain one truth, and in time I hope you'll come to see it: this awful blow is for the best."

Helen pulls back so hard, she bangs her shoulder against the window frame. "How dare you!"

Fido presses on. "Anderson's been a brute, yes, but perhaps ... a rational one. Whatever could you have hoped for, what future could there have been, in your connection with this man?"

She speaks through closed teeth. "It's been keeping me alive."

"But tainting your relation to your husband, your children, your own heart," says Fido pleadingly. "This way it's over with one sharp cut, and you're saved."

"Saved?" Helen's eyes narrow.

Fido starts to stammer. "It's my, I wouldn't speak this way if I didn't feel it to be my duty-"

"d.a.m.n your duty," says Helen in a voice that comes out as deep as a man's. "Are you my vicar or my friend? I can't bear preaching, today of all days."

"My dearest, I'm only fearful for your welfare. For your-"

"My what? My soul, or my reputation?" asks Helen, sardonic.

"All of you!"

They lapse into a fraught silence. Fido, desperate to turn Helen's anger back towards its rightful object, says, "It's the cowardice of it I can't forgive. To think, Anderson fled like a rat to Scotland, and proposed to this cousin, just two days after your last rendezvous!"

"Two days." Helen speaks so hoa.r.s.ely Fido can hardly hear her. "After two years."

Fido stares at her. "I beg your pardon?" she says after a few seconds.

Helen's watching her own hand scrunch her pink skirt into a thousand creases. "Am I so easy to forget?"

"What was it you said about two years?"

Helen finally meets her eyes with a look of irritation. "What?"

"You said two years. You don't mean to tell me-" Fido pulls in a long breath of stale, hot air, and speaks with as much control as she can muster. "It was my understanding that you and Anderson-that it was only a fortnight ago that matters came to-that consummation-" She silently curses her tied tongue: why is it so difficult, after a genteel education, to put plain words on things? "Two weeks since he took you on my sofa!" That comes out far too loud.

Helen's looking into her upturned hands, as if to read the lines.

What's she going to tell me, Fido wonders? That she misspoke, that what she meant was that Anderson's been yearning for her from afar for the past two years, like some medieval troubadour? That until he followed her to England, he never dared speak a word of it, or ask the least favour? But I don't believe that. But I don't believe that.

"Two weeks, I meant. Of course I meant two weeks," Helen repeats. "Right now I don't know one word from another."

"Oh, I think you meant two years," says Fido, her tongue like a stone in her mouth. So that afternoon, in her drawing-room, those terrible sounds behind the door: they weren't the beginning. How stupid Fido can be about the dim world of the relations between men and women. She's the fool who's stumbled late and oblivious into this play, the b.u.t.t of the joke.

"Two weeks, two years," mutters Helen, "what's the difference?"

"Get out," says Fido, leaning across her to grab the handle and thrust open the door.

Surveillance (watch or guard kept over a suspected person or prisoner) So far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved or hostile society is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over and lighted fire in.

John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (1865) (1865) At thirty-five a Captain and the "hero of Trafalgar," now at fifty-seven, and a Rear-Admiral, Sir Edward Codrington was raised to the august position of Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag on the Asia. Asia.

In his study, Harry straightens in his chair, mulls over the grammar of his sentence, then bends to his pen again. Jane, working interminably on the memoirs of their late father, keeps asking her brother for an account of the naval side of things, and now, at last-to keep his mind from gnawing on itself like a rat-he's writing it. Harry will be fifty-seven himself next year, and a vice-admiral is one rung above a rear, so to an outsider his career may seem to be advancing faster than his father's, but the fact is that Sir Edward Codrington is remembered by a grateful nation, and his younger son is the hero of nothing in particular.

The front door. That'll be Nan, going to the museum with Mrs. Lawless. Her hair's held back with a sky-blue ribbon today. Nell is still frail and confined to bed; when Harry went up to see her half an hour ago, she was half-asleep over The Thousand and One Nights, The Thousand and One Nights, her toast-and-water barely touched on its tray. She jolted when her father put his head around the door. He knows his smile has a ghastly, painted quality these days. her toast-and-water barely touched on its tray. She jolted when her father put his head around the door. He knows his smile has a ghastly, painted quality these days.

The spy is out there on Eccleston Square. Not that Harry's seen him; the fellow wouldn't be much of a spy if he were visible, after all. (Enquiry agent (Enquiry agent is the term the Watsons prefer.) He's been posted there for four days now, according to Mrs. Watson. is the term the Watsons prefer.) He's been posted there for four days now, according to Mrs. Watson. These things take time, Admiral. These things take time, Admiral.

Harry bites the edge of his thumb, then stops himself: it's a filthy, schoolboy habit. He consults his notes, and stabs his pen into the inkwell.