The line between foolishness and nobility is sometimes hard to draw. I have never been quite able to decide on which side of this line my great-aunt Eliza stood.
It was my mother who told me the story. She was scolding me about the selfishness and lack of perception of my generation.
“You’ve no idea of older people’s troubles, you think nobody ever suffered but yourselves,” she said.
Needing an example to illustrate her point, she told me great-aunt Eliza’s history.
“You thought of her as old and grey and ugly,” she began.
“And dull,” I said, remembering hours of tedium endured as a child when calling with my mother in her dingy little house behind the railway station, listening to stiff talk about Annotsfield genealogies, while the horsehair sofa pricked my legs.
“Yes! That’s just it! You thought her dull!” cried my mother angrily. “But as a girl she was—well, she was never exactly a pretty girl, her features were too strong for that. But she had lively brown eyes and a bright complexion, and a great deal of thick brown hair—oh, a perfect mane of hair. She was a fine upright warm-hearted girl, kind and honest and as good as gold. She taught the Senior Young Ladies’ Class in the Resmond Street Chapel Sunday School, and they thought the world of her. James Butterfield taught there too—people did teach in Sunday Schools in those days, you know. He was a very nice young man, earnest but not silly about it, fond of long walks over the moors and music and that sort of thing. Fair and good-looking and not at all conceited; spirited of course but then Eliza was spirited. They had a quarrel about some music for the Sunday School or the way it was played, or something; James Butterfield played the harmonium, you know. Some people said it was this quarrel brought them together. As to that I don’t know, but of course a good rousing quarrel can draw young people together sometimes,” said my mother, her eyes sparkling as she remembered, no doubt, her own lively bouts with my father during their courtship, all those years ago.
The sparkle died as she went on seriously: “But other people thought otherwise. They were almost engaged, at any rate, that I do know. Everyone thought it was just a matter of time before the engagement was announced. He was a stranger in the town, but he had a good position with Egmont’s,” said my mother, naming with awe in her tone the great Annotsfield textile firm. “Eliza’s parents were dead and she had a little useful income of her own and she lived with her married brother. So there was nothing really for them to wait for. But probably he was waiting for a rise in salary, we thought. In those days people didn’t rush off and get married and expect other people to keep them,” concluded my mother with severity. “That’s how it was between Eliza and James when it began to happen.”
It began to happen by one of those coincidences which so often set the pattern of human destiny. It just so happened—how many life stories begin with these words—that Eliza, on her way back from visiting at the Superintendent’s request a child from the Sunday School who had recently lost her parents and gone to live on the other side of the town, passed through a certain street at a certain hour and saw a certain person. The visit had gone well and Eliza was feeling happy, for the grandparents had promised to let the child continue her Resmond Street attendance. Smiling to herself therefore, and thinking how kind and good people really were when you really got to know them, she must tell James about it tonight at the Penny Reading, he would be pleased—her warm heart, in a word, open to every generous impulse, Eliza walked briskly along this street dreaming happy dreams, and was woken to reality by the sound of weeping.
One of the row of neat respectable houses had a doctor’s lamp at its gate, and by this gate stood a girl, holding to the railings and sobbing hysterically. Eliza in a rush of pity hurried to her side, put her arm round the girl’s shoulder and drew her to her breast.
“You are in trouble?” she said in a warm loving tone. “Can I help you?”
“My father,” sobbed the girl. “So angry.”
Eliza, naturally enough assuming that the house where they stood was the girl’s home, gave an indignant glance towards the windows and said:
“Walk with me a little way till you feel less agitated.”
The girl acquiesced; they walked on together, presently found themselves at one entrance of Egmont Park, entered—it was a sunny September afternoon—and sat down on a terrace bench together. Esther—that, it appeared, was her name—had now regained some control of her emotions, but still seemed greatly depressed, sitting humped and with head down, occasionally shaken by a sob.
“Would you care to tell me what distresses you?” said Eliza.
Esther turned to her and for the first time Eliza had a full view of that exquisitely pretty face. The rosy cupid’s bow mouth, the starry grey eyes, the small uptilted nose, the lovely milk and rose complexion, the dark curls framing all, struck Eliza to the heart by their sweet innocent beauty and aroused in her a protective maternal feeling as if towards a child.
“I would rather not if you don’t mind,” said Esther.
“Of course not, my dear,” said Eliza hurriedly. She was far too honourable and delicate to press for confidences. “But if you need a friend—”
“A friend! I have no friends,” wept Esther.
“My darling child,” said Esther fondly. “I am your friend.”
The meeting ended in an invitation to Esther to attend the Penny Reading in the Resmond Street Sunday School that evening.
“What were Penny Readings exactly?” I asked.
“They were entertainments, of course,” said my mother in an insulted tone. “Singing, and piano pieces, and recitations, and sometimes duets and duologues. And the ladies provided a cup of tea.”
“Did Eliza sing?”
“No. She arranged the programme and helped with the tea. James Butterfield played the piano. And sometimes he gave a reading—Shakespeare or something of that kind, you know.”
“I should think Esther found it tedious,” said I, with a vivid image of that pretty pink mouth, opening in a wide yawn like a cat’s.
My mother glanced at me shrewdly.
“She didn’t say so,” was her dry comment.
“Indeed.”
“Well! I expect you have guessed what happened next,” continued my mother.
“I think so. She admired James’s playing.”
“Yes.”
“And began to attend the Resmond Street Chapel, morning and evening, and joined the Senior Young Ladies’ Sunday School Class in the afternoon.”
“Yes.”
“And in a few months’ time—”
“Ah! But it wasn’t a few months,” said my mother sadly. “It was only a few weeks.”
“Weeks?”
Only a week or two later, it appeared, when Eliza was just sitting down to dinner with her brother’s family—“in those days Yorkshire people, ordinary people I mean, had their dinner in the middle of the day,” said my mother severely—there was a ring at the front door bell, and their maid came to tell Miss Eliza that a gentleman had called to see her. Eliza was surprised.
“It’s Mr. Butterfield and I’ve put him in the drawing-room,” said the maid, who like most maids of the epoch knew all the family affairs. “He seems all excited like, Miss Eliza.”
Colour flooded Eliza’s cheeks and she hastened to the front room. To call in the middle of the day like this was odd; evening was surely the time for—well, for a proposal. But then, perhaps James had received the rise in salary he hoped for, that very morning, and had come impulsively rushing to her the moment the dinner hour set him free. It was a thought very sweet to her. Smiling, blushing, her heart beating fast with joy, she entered with her usual brisk step, and with her usual honest frankness went straight up to him and offered him her hand. He certainly looked agitated. Quite pale.
“This is perhaps an awkward time for me to call,” he stammered. (Indeed the scent of the midday hotpot filled the house—Eliza was never to forget it.)
“Not at all. You are welcome at any time. Sit down, James. Be at ease,” said Eliza warmly.
“I wanted you to be the first to know.” (Eliza smiled encouragingly. It was her last moment of happiness.) “We have been such friends.”
This struck a slightly ambiguous note. “Have been?” But perhaps he referred to a new relation which should transcend friendship. Eliza waited, her joy slightly dimmed. James seemed unable to speak; he panted, almost writhed.
“Something at the mill, James?” said Eliza at length.
“No, no! Oh, no!” gasped James in astonishment. “It is—in fact, it is Esther.”
Eliza, struck to the heart, was silent, but rallied.
“Be more explicit, James, please. Am I to take it that you and Esther are—”
“Engaged? Yes, yes. Indeed it’s more than that,” cried James in a flurry of rapture. “We’re going to be married as soon as the banns can be read. As Esther is so unhappy at home, you know, her father being so unreasonable—though I’m bound to say he has received me very kindly whenever I’ve been out to Scape Scar.”
“Scape Scar?”
“Yes, yes. They have a farm out there, you know.”
“On the hill above the Ire Valley?”
“Yes—”
“About five miles out of Annotsfield?”
“Yes. The family have had the farm for several generations. But as I say, Esther being unhappy at home, and her father consenting, and I naturally wishing—well, we have nothing to wait for. It was settled only last night. I wanted you to be the first to know, Eliza.”
So Eliza was faced, at a moment’s notice, with the crisis of her life. For she saw at once everything she had been blind to before: why Esther had sobbed outside an Annotsfield doctor’s gate, why she had feared her father’s anger, why she had declined to tell her trouble, why, finally, she was marrying in such unconventional haste. Was Eliza to tell James that she believed Esther to be bearing another man’s child? Destroy Esther, to whom she had promised friendship? Break James’s happiness? If her own happiness had not been concerned, she might have spoken, but the thought of buying happiness at such a price sickened her. And then, what words to use? The blunt ones would be indecent on the lips of a Victorian young lady; words furtive and oblique would, Eliza felt, be degrading and alien to her nature. There was a brief pause.
In a moment it was over. Her choice was made.
Rather pale and grave, but quite composed, Eliza said quietly:
“Every good wish for your future happiness, James.”
“I wanted you to be the first to know, Eliza,” repeated James anxiously.
He babbled on for a few minutes about Esther’s beauty and Esther’s sweetness, then left, soothed and cheered.
Eliza could not allow herself a moment’s respite. Already in the next room the family would be growing curious. She rose and swept back, dignity in her step, to the dinner-table.
“Don’t get up, Tom. It was just James Butterfield, Clara, come to tell us he is engaged to Esther.”
“You’ve let yourself be jilted for that little hussy?” shouted her brother, crimsoning.
“I shall be obliged if you will not make reflections of that kind, Tom,” said Eliza calmly, “Either publicly or in private. They will do nobody any good.”
“Well, upon my word!’”
“Now, Tom,” pleaded his wife.
Tom snorted but was silent.
“Well, they married,” said my mother with a sigh. “They were married at Resmond Street Chapel. I don’t remember what excuse she made for this departure from the convention of marrying in the bride’s church. The reception was held in the Sunday School. Eliza was the only bridesmaid.”
I exclaimed.
“Yes—it was hard on her, I expect,” said my mother thoughtfully. “We all noticed how much older and plainer she suddenly looked. But she was so calm and serene, you know, and so kind to Esther, allowing her to dress in her room and so on, we concluded she hadn’t cared for James after all. And you know he did seem at that time rather less worthy of Eliza than we had previously imagined. He was flustered and agitated and hot in the face. Infatuated with that girl, perhaps.”
“Or perhaps not. She may have pushed him into it. Perhaps he had hoped Eliza would rescue him.”
“Well, we shall never know. He certainly trembled like a leaf as Esther came up the aisle.”
“You were present at the wedding, then?”
“Of course. Esther’s father and mother were good plain farming people, I thought; very fond and proud of Esther, but rather frightened of her, and perplexed. Nobody stood up at the wedding to plead a just cause or impediment, so they were duly married. Yes.”
“And that is why great-aunt Eliza was an old maid,” I said in a concluding tone.
“Oh, my dear! You haven’t heard the half of it yet,” said my mother distressfully.
So James and Esther married, and soon it was obvious that she was with child.
James rented a small house near the Egmont mill. It was a nice little house in a respectable street, said my mother, or rather, it would have been nice if Esther had kept it so, but of course she didn’t. Her pregnancy was uncomfortable, and she made this an excuse for doing nothing, but in fact she was “bone idle,” said my mother warmly. Even at that early stage of their life together, Esther made her husband’s life miserable by her whimsies and tantrums. Her temper was terrible—she even broke china in her rage—and she was extravagant in both the ways which may afflict a woman, for she spent sudden large sums and also frittered small sums daily. James began to look harassed and it was rumoured that, in spite of the salary rise and bonus Egmont’s gave him as a wedding present, he was “feeling the pinch.” The ladies of the Resmond Street congregation, good housewives all, were beginning to be shocked and alienated by Esther’s slovenliness when her confinement won back their sympathies.
For this was a disaster. Occurring prematurely (as the congregation thought) it was terribly protracted. (“Things went wrong,” said my mother mysteriously. For my part I guessed that whatever went wrong was due to earlier attempts at abortion.) The child, though fortunately born without deformity, was extremely delicate at first; as for poor Esther, her health was ruined. She lay in bed, petulant, capricious, demanding, for the next seven years. (Oh, those bed-ridden Victorian invalids, I thought angrily; nowadays they’d have had her up in a fortnight.) Her beauty lasted for a year or two and then went haggard, and at this naturally her temper deteriorated further. The Resmond Street ladies behaved with splendid charity; “poor Mrs. Butterfield” became a regular recipient of calls, prayers, flowers and a portion of anything good that they put in the oven. For a time, that is; presently they grew a little tired. Poor Mrs. Butterfield could be so very disagreeable; it was mortifying.
Bringing up the child—a boy, Philip—offered a difficult problem; James hired a series of women who coped with his ill-health with varying success—their notions and nostrums had indeed little chance of success, for Esther quarrelled with them all without too much delay. Naturally under such a discontinuous and varying régime the child’s digestion suffered; he slept ill, ate little and became as peevish and ill-tempered as his mother. In fact, as my mother said emphatically, James Butterfield hadn’t a moment’s peace for the next seven years.
As for Eliza, at first she visited Esther often, did errands for her and tried to soothe her. But then one afternoon as she stood at Esther’s bedside, trying to make her farewells but delayed by the invalid’s peevish complaints, James came in from the mill. Baby Philip was crawling on the hearthrug. James went to the child, picked him up and talked to him with great tenderness and affection. Whether Esther saw something in Eliza’s quiet look at this point, or whether (more probably) it was just her guilty conscience which drove her, I do not know; but she suddenly broke out into a violent attack on Eliza.
“You wanted my husband and I wish you’d got him! Get out of my house! Get out of here!”
She followed this with a storm of epithets such as Eliza had never in her innocent life heard before. She drew on her gloves and went downstairs without a word. James, the child on his arm, followed.
“She’s not herself, Eliza,” he said pleadingly as they stood at the house door.
“I know, James,” replied Eliza. “I fully understand. All the same—”
All the same she never entered the house again. She also withdrew from the Resmond Street Chapel, and gave her allegiance to another congregation. Thus she never saw James Butterfield.
At first it was expected that Eliza would marry, but she turned down two nice chances. A third would come, no doubt, but while her friends waited for this, time moved inexorably on. Suddenly Eliza was beyond the customary marrying age. She was a kind sister-in-law, a devoted aunt, full of good works, altogether a fine woman; but by the conventions of the period she was unmarriageable; she had become an old maid.
Then one evening Eliza opened the local evening newspaper and turned pale. She sat in silence for so long that it was noticed by her sister-in-law.
“Is anything the matter, Eliza?”
“The death of a girl I used to know well,” replied Eliza quietly.
She turned the leaves of the newspaper, folded it, laid it down casually, and left the room. Immediately her sister-in-law picked up the paper and scanned the appropriate column.
“James Butterfield’s wife has died at last, Tom,” she said in a meaning tone.
“Who’s James Butterfield?” said Tom.
“Have you forgotten him? He used to teach in the Resmond Street Sunday School, don’t you remember? We thought he and Eliza would make a match of it, don’t you remember? We haven’t seen much of him lately, it’s true. But mark my words, Eliza hasn’t forgotten him.”
“Oh, rubbish,” said Tom in an uneasy tone. “Don’t go putting ideas into her head, now.”
“I shan’t say anything either way. She’s old enough to know her own mind.”
She kept to this resolution and made no comment when a few days later Eliza left the house clad in the all-embracing black garb then thought proper for funerals.
The chapel was cold and empty; apart from the minister and the necessary attendants, only the widower and his young son were present.
Eliza from the shadows beneath the gallery had a long clear view of James as he followed his wife’s remains out of the building. Her heart turned over in pity. She remembered James young, tall, fair, strong; she saw a man middle-aged, elderly in appearance, with bowed shoulders, thin greying hair, anxious eyes, wrinkled cheek. He was quietly weeping. The child beside him, hand reluctantly in his, had all Esther’s pert dark beauty—and also her mutinous resentful air.
What tumult of feeling, what agony of decision, went on in Eliza’s mind we cannot know. But she remained in the shadow, unperceived, and James passed by.
“But why didn’t she step forward? Why didn’t she seize on James and marry him?” I cried, exasperated.
“She told me,” said my mother hesitantly, “that she was afraid she might not be able to keep silence, you know, if she married him.”
“Silence? About Esther, you mean?”
My mother nodded.
“And why not? That little viper was dead.”
“Turn James against the child? Let him know he’d wasted his life for a lie?”
“Well! So nothing happened?”
So nothing happened. Nothing, nothing, at all, for days, weeks, months, a couple of years. Then one evening the newspaper announced James Butterfield’s death. Best not enquire in what anguish Eliza spent that night. Next morning she received a letter from an Annotsfield solicitor about the matter of her executorship of James Butterfield’s estate. Astonished, she called on the man, who read James’s Will to her. All was left to “my dearly loved son, Philip,” and the solicitor and herself were joint executors. Finding perhaps something a trifle odd and muted in her response, the lawyer said suddenly:
“Mr. Butterfield had secured your consent to the executorship, I presume?”
Eliza replied truthfully: “No.”
The lawyer raised his eyebrows. “In that case,” he said: “It is my duty to ask you now whether you will undertake it. There is the child, you know, the son. Philip. He is nine. Mr. Butterfield had no relatives to whom he could be entrusted.”
“What about Mrs. Butterfield’s relatives?”
“Unfortunately she had quarrelled with them.”
“So if I do not undertake the executorship?”
“I see nothing for it but an orphanage. Perhaps you will decide on that in any case? There are some reputable establishments.”
It would seem that here again Eliza had a chance to break out in a fury, to reveal Esther’s betrayal, to decline all responsibility for this by-blow Philip, to announce in trenchant tones that Philip was not James’s son. But she was silent.
After a moment she said quietly: “I accept the executorship.”
“Ah, good!” said the lawyer, relieved. “And the boy? An orphanage?”
“I will enquire whether my brother will consent to receive him into his household. There are four children there already—one more can perhaps be squeezed in.”
This was tried, but proved a most uncomfortable failure. At that stage Philip was almost everything a child ought not to be. Not only peevish, selfish, bad-tempered, unmannerly, but a sneak, a would-be tyrant, even possibly a little of a thief. To strangers he was charming, and he lied about his peccadilloes so convincingly that Eliza’s nieces and nephews were always finding themselves in trouble for sins committed by him. After a few weeks they could not stand him any longer, and after he had ridden the eldest boy’s bicycle without permission and smashed the lamp, the whole family blew up into a flaming row. Tom, enlightened by his daughter, declared that he would not have that detestable trouble-maker in the house a moment longer.
“Then I shall have to leave too,” said Eliza firmly.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” raged Tom. “That fellow’s affairs are in a hopeless mess. They’re no concern of yours, and I insist that you renounce the executorship and resume a quiet life with us here.”
But Eliza did not renounce the executorship or the care of Philip. She moved out into the cheap little house behind the railway station which had recently been the only home James could afford, and devoted herself to bringing up Esther’s child. Her brother was furious and washed his hands of her. He was not the kind of man, as he truly said, to resent his sister’s spending her money in her own way instead of leaving it to his children—though it was annoying—provided the way was sensible and made her happy; but this was all for a twopenny ha’penny chap, a poor tool, who’d jilted her into the bargain.
His contemptuous references to James Butterfield were from the monetary point of view correct. There was no National Health Service in those days, and his wife’s long illness had stripped James of all his savings. Then again, the promise of his youth in industry had not been fulfilled. Egmont’s still employed him, but in a very subordinate capacity; his attendances had been too irregular, his mind too preoccupied, to earn promotion. In a word, James’s legacy to the child he believed his son was simply a mountain of debt.
With this Eliza struggled. There were Philip’s school fees, too, and his frequent illnesses, and as he grew older his extravagances. Eliza’s small patrimony slowly melted. In those days women of the middle class were not trained to earn their living, and presently Eliza took to doing fine needlework and mending, for pay, as the only gainful activity of which she was capable. When Tom heard this he was really upset. He came down from his high horse and went to see his sister, and employed the kindest tone he could find to urge her to return to them and give up her efforts for the child. He would speak to someone he knew about getting Philip into a good orphanage, he said.
“Come back to us, Lizzie love. Clara begs you to come back.”
“I can’t, Tom. It was all my fault.”
“What was all your fault?”
“Never mind. I can’t leave the boy.”
“Well, I can’t help you much, Lizzie, and that’s a fact,” said Tom heavily. “Textiles aren’t too good just now.”
For the year now was in the 1890’s, when the sudden American tariffs brought many a West Riding firm to ruin.
“I know, Tom; I understand; don’t worry about me,” said Eliza, kissing her brother’s solid cheek. “We must both do the best we can.”
“Aye! Well, it’s a poor do,” said Tom. “Let me know if you get really hard up, you know.”
“I will. But I expect I shall manage.”
She managed. She saw Philip through chicken-pox and measles and a dose of pneumonia, through cricket and football and homework and prize-givings; she earned for him, washed for him, sewed for him, put up with his tantrums, improved his temper, taught him manners, gave him parties for his friends, kept the silver frame which held his mother’s photograph spotless, started him off in his profession, and never by any chance gave him the slightest hint that he was not James Butterfield’s son. When he grew up, of course he left her.
“Left her?” I exclaimed.
“Well, that was hardly his fault. It was his profession, you see,” said my mother.
“What was his profession?”
“Didn’t you know? He was an actor,” said my mother. “Quite well known. He took a different name, of course; Butterfield was impossible.” She gave the name of a defunct actor, not, certainly, in the very top rank of his profession, but not very far below. “He was quite good, temperamental of course—your father and I saw him once or twice in London. He’d improved a great deal in himself, too—Eliza straightened him out.”
“Was he fond of her?”
“As fond as he could be. She was no relation to him, of course. But he was as fond as he could be—he used to send her a Christmas card every year,” said my mother sardonically.
“And did she really never tell him?”
“Tell him?”
“Who he was? Or at least, who he was not?”
“Never. She thought it would be bad for him,” said my mother simply. “She told nobody until she lay on her deathbed—she lived long after him, you know. Actors lead such rackety lives and he was always delicate. But at the end she seemed as if she couldn’t hold it in any longer, and she told me. I was always her favourite niece.”
I reflected.
“Don’t you think she regretted her silence all her life?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said my mother thoughtfully. “It’s difficult to say. If she had told James she might have regretted it more. She might have despised herself. But whether she was a fool, or whether she was a saint, a heroine, really I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” I said with a sigh.