Dawn would soon be breaking in the square outside, but Celia was still sitting in the deep-buttoned library chair, flicking through the pages of the pamphlets she had begun reading the night before: the literature from the anti-vice organisation of which her father was so publicly a member.
On her pretty, porcelain-doll-like face, there was an unusually determined expression. She had made her decision: seeing those terrible pictures had forced her to decide that she must act at last; she had to do something about the world which allowed such hypocrisy, cynicism and cruelty to exist. And if, to help change things, it meant reading the material which had so perturbed and confused her, then that is what she would do. She could think of no other guide available to her. And what if it did disturb her – it was not for her benefit, it was for others. She had a purpose, though she wasn’t yet sure exactly how to go about her campaign. But she knew that she had to learn all she could to arm herself with the tools she needed. She was determined to begin her fight against evil and corruption. And no one, not even her father, would stop her. She took another pamphlet from the pile and began to read, but she was disappointed: all it contained was yet another call to close down the brothels and the invitation to join a midnight protest march. Celia tossed the pamphlet on to the pile of others she had read with a weary sigh. What good would closing down those places achieve? The pamphlets themselves admitted that as soon as the women were moved from one establishment they simply moved to another, and the men rapidly followed. She was looking for guidance to help her find a way in which she could actually do something, make some contribution to the women’s lives that would make them think differently and so avoid taking the path to corruption in the first place. All she had read so far were the usual well-meaning, but hardly earth-shattering, pleas and suggestions. What she was looking for was the merest hint, just a glimmer would do, of how she could make things change. Really change. And that would certainly involve more than taking part in midnight protest marches.
She rubbed her tired eyes and turned to the next pamphlet. This one was illustrated with yet more details of the women’s lives and the sensational publications they were reviling. Her cheeks reddened, and she skipped over the more distressing sections.
Then, against all that she had expected, she found what she wanted. It was a closely printed leaflet of just six pages, but it made everything clear in the way she had sought. The author’s view was that it was no good condemning and protesting. Action was called for of the most vigorous type to give the young women of the slums an example and inspiration for the life that they could be leading. She looked at the cover for the author’s name. There it was, in thick black lettering: the Reverend Roland Stedgely. She remembered hearing the name before – yes, that was it. She had heard it from Sophia, the daughter of one of her father’s colleagues at the hospital, one of the few friends he had allowed Celia to keep since her mother’s death. It wouldn’t do to cause talk amongst one’s colleagues, he had agreed grudgingly, and so had tolerated their continued friendship.
Celia re-read the little booklet and its stirring depictions of Stedgely’s missionary work amongst the young women of the slums, taking in its vivid portrayal of the crowded courts where the girls lived. Instead of the young women being written off as evil agents of corruption as the other authors had done, the Reverend Roland Stedgely wrote of them as unfortunates who, with the right help, could help themselves from falling into the depths of despair into which their mothers and older sisters had already plunged.
But, as she closed the cover of the little leaflet, as inspiring as it had been, Celia’s resolve began to weaken. What could she really achieve when her own life was so imperfect? Tears began to fill her eyes as the thought of her father slumped in the drawing room armchair in his drug-induced stupor made her feel suddenly weak and so very tired. If she were truthful, what hope did she really have of ever finding the strength she would need to carry out such work? On many occasions lately she had wondered if she had enough strength even to complete another day’s existence…
Celia picked up the leaflets from the library table. She would return them to the shelves and then perhaps she would turn instead to Miss Austen’s Emma. It was a book she had read many times in the past, and one she knew had no hidden secrets slipped between its precious leaves. She almost smiled to herself. She would do well to learn the lessons of Emma – another meddling girl. And, who knows, she thought, perhaps her own story would have a similarly comforting ending. But she did not convince herself for even a moment that it might really be so.
As she reached up to replace the pamphlets, she noticed her father’s spiky writing in the margins of a well-thumbed booklet which was tucked next to a pile of the more lurid leaflets which she hadn’t bothered to take down from the shelf. Curiosity got the better of her and she began to read. First she examined the printed text.
The deformed wizened body of the new-born is a sure sign that the infant is a victim of this despicable condition – an undoubted indication that the infant has suffered for the sins of its parents – that the child is a victim of the so-called Syphilis of the Innocents. The disease as contracted by these guiltless souls is all the more heart-rending and despicable as it is the disease in its disastrous secondary stage when the nervous system is attacked. It is fortunate, therefore, that these tiny hostages to fortune can expect the shortest, though most painful, of existences.
Celia frowned at the abominable words. They held for her a horrid fascination. She was drawn to that word. It was printed there quite openly: ‘syphilis’. Her father had said the word in her presence only once, when he had shouted it aloud in his anger. It had happened when the body delivered to him that night for dissection had been diseased with that dread thing yet again. He was angry about the condition of the corpse, complaining that the men had taken good money from him for inferior goods.
And then there was the awful description of the poor afflicted mite.
She turned the slim booklet round, tilting it on one side and holding it closer to the lamp, more easily to read the words which filled the margin, words written in her father’s own hand. She bowed her head and a single teardrop plopped on to the paper, spreading out in a creeping, irregular, damp stain.
Her father’s description of his son’s, her baby brother’s, death: the words linking his tiny, malformed body to the pitiable description of the printed words. She gulped hard, taking down great sobbing breaths as she thought of her mother dying so soon after the birth, even though she had been so well. Well, that is, until the baby had died. And then those whispers from the servants about poison, prussic acid. No. She would not believe it. She could not. Her mother with that vile disease, losing her tiny son to its ravages and then being driven to commit the dread sin of self-destruction. And leaving Celia alone with her father.
She felt hot, disordered, sickened. She covered her face with her hands, hiding herself from the appalling words in front of her. But she couldn’t hide from the words in her head: her mother had passed syphilis on to the unborn child she was carrying. A disease that she could only have contracted in one way.
Never before had Celia hated her father more, and yet there was something else about the discovery, something that disturbed her in a different way. The terrible madness that came with the disease could, she realised, be the explanation for her father’s vile behaviour towards her. She remembered a time when he had been a good and gentle man, caring for her and her mother; the times he would sit in his big armchair by the fire, holding her on his knee and singing to her in his deep, comforting voice while her mother accompanied him on the piano. Her tears ran down her cheeks as she wept for the loss of the father she had almost forgotten.
But she cried too for herself, for she knew that she also might one day show the symptoms of the unspeakable disease that caused its victims to degenerate into madness. She resolved that she would work fast, find the strength no matter how weak she felt, to do some good in the world, lest its dreaded onset prevented her. The strength would come from her love for her dear, dead mother, for the brother she had never known, and for the precious father she now remembered.
At the sound of the library door opening she jumped as though she had been scalded.
She turned to see the butler standing there in his nightshirt, his hair dishevelled from sleep.
‘Oh. Oh, it’s you, Smithson,’ she said, swiftly concealing the pamphlet in the folds of her skirts and keeping her chin down to hide her tears.
‘It’s your father,’ said the butler, not even bothering to conceal the leer which curled around his thin, bloodless lips. ‘He’s woken from his rest and wants to…’ he hesitated, tilting his ugly head to one side, considering the next word. ‘He wants to see you,’ he eventually said.
‘Have you no idea of the time, Smithson? It is nearly daybreak. Tell him I cannot,’ she said recklessly. ‘Say I am in bed. Asleep.’
‘Don’t be silly, Miss Celia,’ he said, and opened the door wider for her.
A moment later, Celia was standing nervously by her father’s side as Bartholomew Tressing sipped at his glass of brandy. She usually knew better than to speak before she was spoken to, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘Father,’ she said, her pale lips quivering. ‘How exactly did Mother die?’
His hand was slim and manicured but it stung her cheek as harshly as any labourer’s calloused flesh could have done.
When he eventually allowed his daughter to go to her room, the sun was shining brightly in the clear spring sky over the square below. Celia washed her tears from her face at the washstand, then sat at the pretty inlaid writing table which had stood at her window since her eighth birthday – it had been her last gift from her mother.
She took out pen and paper and began to compose a letter. It took several attempts before she succeeded in hiding the new horrors which haunted her from showing themselves in her words.
Dear Sophia,
I trust you are well. Yes, I know I have promised to write more often, though I have been remiss. There, I confess. You have a lazy, but loving friend. Not really lazy perhaps but, more honestly, rather preoccupied of late.
I think that my request, however, will make you happier with me, and inclined to forgive my laxity in letter-writing.
I should like to come with you to one of the Reverend Roland Stedgely’s League meetings to which you are always inviting me, as I have become very interested of late in the work done by the League. I trust that you are pleased that your request is, at last, granted.
Celia lifted her pen and tapped the end to her lips. How to not make Sophia, so impulsive a girl, ask all sorts of difficult questions? She loaded her nib with ink and continued.
I will come with you, Sophia, but I want you to be clear that my attendance at the meeting is only because I am inquisitive to discover more about them. I do not intend to join the League, as I know that if I do so you will soon become bored, as you have with all your other enthusiasms, and then I shall be left to attend the meetings on my own.
I await your reply with great anticipation. Remember, please, not to make any reference to the meeting in your letter. Father would not approve of my going to places where gentlemen might be present. Instead, suggest we meet for afternoon tea with your governess or something. I know how resourceful you can be, my artful friend.
With fondest regards, from your dear friend, Celia.