Julia’s dinners were always a success, mainly because she took infinite pains to accommodate, and anticipate, the most difficult of tastes. Watts she provided with simple fare and a carafe of water (he never drank alcohol); Mr Fowler received a special vegetarian dish, requiring a lot of argument with a puzzled cook; and for Alfred she ordered a plain apple pie (a replacement, as it were, for the one she spoiled), plus two bottles of port and a good lamp nearby so that he could launch into a hooting moose-call recital of Enoch Arden whenever the whim overtook him. It would almost certainly be an Enoch Arden night tonight, she fancied. She loved it when Alfred read aloud. His presence filled the room, and even though he paused after each line to comment on its beauties and effects, the greatness of the sentiments invariably reduced her still to tears.
Of course he recited for adulation, but then Julia prided herself on giving the best adulation in England. This ensured that even at the risk of returning to Emily laden with unwanted decorating materials, Alfred would always remain her loyal friend. Julia had a particular way of telling people they were the greatest poet in the language which could really set up a chap, especially when he had tendencies of a mopish sort. And her paeans were not forced, either. Flattery was Mrs Cameron’s second nature. It had been an essential part of her infant curriculum in Calcutta, along with French, Hindustani and the Appreciation of the Sublime.
So this evening Julia joyfully buttered Lorenzo, while not neglecting her duty to Alfred and Charles and Dodgson and Watts, all of whom relied on her to make them feel big, tall and important. The procedure was a bit like spinning plates. With an initial effort, she would get all her guests spinning individually, and then – when they started to wobble or flag – they required just a practised touch at the right moment. Alfred needed the word ‘Review!’ thrown in his direction, for example; ‘Genius’ sufficed for a weakening Watts, ‘Clever’ for Dodgson; ‘Wise’ for Charles. The trickiest moment for this exemplary hostess had been introducing Alfred to Dodgson, because Alfred squinted at him and boomed confidently, ‘Hello, we’ve never met, Mr Carroll! I hope you have recovered your senses. Can’t stand madmen, make me nervous.’
But the awkward moment had passed, and now, save for the presence of the mad and dangerous Lorenzo, Dodgson was in paradise. Whenever Julia caught his eye, or called him clever, he raised a glass. Never before had he socialized with Tennyson, and tonight he was doubly privileged, because the laureate was in a mood that was certainly overbearing, but might otherwise be described as good. With Tennyson, overbearing was not optional. All Dodgson’s hopes for his little dedication were revived, like the flowers in the garden outside, emboldened by the sudden rain. ‘Tonight’s the night!’ thought Dodgson happily, and almost drank some wine by mistake.
Beside him sat a subdued but brave Mrs Watts, whom Mrs Cameron noticeably omitted from her flatterings. Poor Mrs Watts was a very highly wrought young woman, he decided. His waistcoat was still unpleasantly damp from the lady’s tears. Such emotion perplexed him, and he wished to be no part of it. Yet she was a lovely girl, and so talented, and she looked so very disconsolate. So he regaled her with stories of his visits to Drury Lane, and complimented her on many performances given, in fact, by her sister. Luckily for him, she was much too confused to notice.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, kindly. Ellen was feeling deeply hurt, yet somehow that damned enormous Hope of hers was egging her on. She had worn her wedding dress to dinner, and the pretty pearls; and she blushed continually, aware of Lorenzo Fowler’s eyes upon her; aware of Watts paying her no attention whatsoever.
Yet ‘I will make him love me,’ she muttered to herself. In salt on the table, she had written the words LOW IDEAS, and was sadly pushing the grains with a fork. Dodgson saw what she had done, and made a quick calculation in his head. ‘Wild Easo,’ he whispered, pointing to the letters. ‘No, no, We Sold AI’. She smiled wanly. Good grief, the man was doing anagrams. He pushed his fingers together, thought a bit, and then thumped the table with his fork. ‘Solid Awe,’ he said, triumphant.
‘What’s that?’ said Julia, turning with a smile from her conversation with Watts. Solid awe was something she knew all about.
‘Mr Dodgson was just seeing how many words you could make from “low ideas”. Apparently another way of putting it is “Solid Awe”,’ said Ellen, fixing a look of entreaty at her husband.
Mrs Cameron noticed Dodgson was looking thoughtful, and immediately agreed aloud with her husband that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was quite the cleverest book they had ever read. Dodgson perked up immediately, shot an anxious look at Tennyson to see whether he heard (he didn’t; he was busy lighting his pipe), and replied with some spirit that Mrs Cameron’s photographs were the marvel of the age. And so it went on, quite merrily, all plates spinning, and Mrs Cameron asked Lorenzo Fowler whether he could enlighten the company on the subject of Phreno-Magnetism.
‘Nothing to it!’ blurted the always tactful Alfred. ‘I mesmerized dear Emily of the headache.’ Lorenzo bowed his head.
‘With the greatest respect,’ he smiled, ‘I once mesmerized a patient during the removal of a tumour. I have cured people of delusions and addictions. The vile weed tobacco, for example.’
Julia and her husband exchanged glances, but Alfred merely continued to puff energetically on his pipe, until he had encased himself in a sepia shroud.
‘What I was wondering,’ said Cameron, ‘is this. Can you magnetize people to hold a certain expression for five minutes while they have their photograph taken? A person who might otherwise laugh?’
Cameron shot a mischievous glance at Watts, who made an impatient flapping commotion with his napkin. ‘Low ideas,’ he mumbled, but only to himself.
‘I believe it may be possible,’ replied Lorenzo. ‘Mrs Cameron, I think we should make the experiment. Perhaps your lovely assistant—?’ He indicated Mary Ann Hillier, who didn’t notice, being engrossed at that moment at the sideboard, disentangling her hair from a calves-foot jelly. Since she fell in love with young Herbert, her streak of stupidity had noticeably broadened.
More laughter, more clinking of crystal, more lamps. Mrs Cameron surveyed her table with pleasure. The odd tweak of selfishness assailed her when she considered how Alfred must never acknowledge her as the source of his happiness, but it was bearable, certainly bearable. The calves-foot jelly was found most acceptable, though not of course by Lorenzo, but he resisted the natural urge to tell the company their brains were clouded by animal fat. Instead, he drank a pint of water, talked to Mrs Cameron about photography, and cast a rather bold look at Mrs Watts, who surprisingly cast a bold look right back again.
‘And Viola, Mrs Watts! What a mag-g—nificent Viola,’ exclaimed Dodgson.
‘Thank you,’ said Ellen, turning back to her neighbour. ‘I seem to have a special affinity with Viola, I don’t know why.’
‘She is very lovely!’
‘I have been reading a book of flowers, and it appears that violets are for modesty, you know, while big red camellias are unpretending excellence.’
Dodgson wondered where the camellias had suddenly sprung from, but he knew about the language of flowers. Daisies, for example, were for innocence, which was funny enough in itself.
Ellen raised her voice a little so that Watts could hear. The modulation of vocal projection was, of course, rather her forte. ‘Oh, I mention camellias because my husband has been attempting an allegorical painting in which I choose between the two – between violet and camellia, modesty and excellence, you see – which rather suggests, don’t it, that you can’t have both.’
She surveyed this table of notable Victorian big-heads, and pursed her lips. ‘Do you think excellence precludes modesty, Mr Dodgson? Perhaps it does, you know. But you must see my husband’s picture, it is diverting. If you can spot the violets, I will give you half a crown.’
‘Shall I read from our Alice, later?’
‘I do hope so, Mr Dodgson. Give us the courtroom scene, in which little Alice realizes that the people she has been frightened of – who have terrorized her, and made her feel an inch tall – are nothing but a pack of cards.’
As she said the last phrase, she thumped the table with her knife, drawing an impatient ‘Shh’ from Watts, who was currently informing old Mr Cameron of the interesting verity that friends tie their purse with a cobweb thread.
‘Talking of Alice,’ said Dodgson, with his voice lowered and his eye on Tennyson, ‘A thought has j-j—just come to me!’
He pretended to laugh light-heartedly.
‘What is it, Mr Dodgson?’
‘Do you think Mr T-T-T—’
‘Tennyson?’
Dodgson nodded. ‘Would allow us to d-dedi-c—cate the book to his s-s—’
‘Sister?’
He shook his head, and indicated with a flat hand the height of a young Tennyson. ‘Schooldays?’
He took a slurp of water. Ellen had another inspiration. ‘Serpent’s tooth?’
He took a big breath.
‘Sons,’ he said.
Ellen frowned.
‘Do you want me to ask him?’
‘You seem to have influ-infl—’
‘Influenza? La grippe?’
‘Influence.’
Ellen didn’t know what he was talking about. But on the other hand, she had no need to throw caution to the wind. Her Caution was so naturally small it had been lost in a light gust at birth.
Outside, the elements battled, and the rain still fell, and little Daisy Bradley curled up beside the briar hedge. She couldn’t help noticing she was getting rather muddy, but on the other hand things in an adventure were supposed to be out of the ordinary; they were supposed to vex you a little bit. Had she picked the right evening to elope? Should she go home and think about eloping tomorrow? But then she remembered she had slammed the door behind her, and she didn’t have a key.
The wind was sharp with rain. In order to stop feeling frightened, she sang quietly to herself the song she had learned from Mr Dodgson, ‘Will you walk a little faster, said the whiting to the snail’, but then faltered and stopped. His words were strangely uncheering for a little girl, actually. The odd thing about Mr Dodgson’s story, she realized, was that the people in it were all so horrible to each other, on account of being mad and selfish; and in particular they kept threatening Alice, and calling her stupid, and trapping her with rules of etiquette that she couldn’t possibly know.
For the first time since she met him, she asked herself whether Mr Dodgson was really the sunny personality she had at first imagined. Did she honestly want to spend the rest of her life with him, setting up home in a bathing machine, and living on what she could catch in a shrimp net? She pulled a face, stood up, brushed her frock. She was only eight, she told herself. As Jessie Fowler had pointed out this afternoon, a girl of eight needn’t say yes to the first man who says he loves his love with a D. ‘Panic about spinster-hood when you are ten and a half,’ said the worldly Jessie. ‘But really, not before.’
Meanwhile Jessie sat bored in the kitchen of Dimbola while the Cameron boys talked about lessons and Latin and ball games, and dull, dull things without any interest to a girl of avid brain power or searching imagination. Much more interesting to the little girl were the hissed discussions between the maids as they scurried about collecting platters of obscene roasted flesh. The one with the impenetrable Isle of Wight accent kept neglecting her duties, and mooning about by the window, and the Irish one was getting cross.
‘Is it your blessed hair again?’ demanded Mary Ryan, producing some nail scissors (she had started to carry them around on purpose).
Mary Ann sniffed, and looked sad.
‘Will you take the roast tongue, Mary Ann! We’ve not all night.’
But Mary Ann broke down.
‘It’s not Herbert you’re thinking on, is it?’ asked the Irish one. ‘Haven’t I told you he’ll be back in London by now?’
Herbert? Jessie’s grip of her chair arm tightened, but otherwise she hardly moved a muscle. Herbert was the young man from the lecture that Lorenzo liked so much. Had the servant girl fallen in love with him? Here was some interest at last. Here was something to tell Pa.
Mary Ann snivelled. ‘I be in a terbul pucker about it,’ she managed at last.
‘Look.’ And reaching into her apron pocket, she produced Herbert’s hat.
‘That’s Mr Herbert’s hat,’ said Mary Ryan.
Mary Ann sniffed some more.
‘Did you take it from him?’ asked Mary Ryan, confused. ‘Where did you find it?’
Mary Ann broke down. ‘In Mz Watts’s room!’
She sobbed unpleasantly on to the plate of roast tongue.
‘Dooan’t jaw me, Mary Ryan! I be all uptipped! But I shan’t goo without I knows!’
And Mary Ann boo-hooed and sniffed in a highly unbeautiful manner.
Mary Ryan felt somewhat uptipped too. Poor fool, she thought, to be in love with Herbert, who beneath his jerkin clearly had big breasts and womanly hips. More foolish still to be jealous in this confusing, ludicrous way.
‘Now Mary,’ she hissed, gripping the girl by the arm. Jessie strained to listen through the clash of pans. This was excellent.
‘I want you to pull yourself together, and not to think such thoughts about Mrs Watts. Aren’t I telling you there is nothing between Mrs Watts and Herbert?’
Mary Ann wailed, and Mary Ryan made a decision.
‘Never mention this to a living soul, but –’
‘What?’
Mary Ryan lowered her voice further still. ‘Mrs Watts is involved already with Mr Fowler,’ she whispered. ‘And is possibly beloved of Mr Tennyson as well.’
Mary Ann fell back in shock and nearly dropped the plate.
Mary Ryan shooshed her.
‘And don’t say Swap me bob.’
On that bombshell, they cantered back to the dining room, and the Cameron boys turned round to include Jessie in a joke about donkeys, only to find her staring like the dog in ‘The Tinder Box’ – the one with the eyes as big as windmills.
‘Jessie?’ said Henry Cameron.
‘Jessie, what’s wrong?’
But Jessie was lost in shock. She felt weightless and betrayed. Her head reverberated as if she had been boxed on both ears at once. ‘Mrs Watts already involved with Mr Fowler’? Pa? Pa? For a couple of minutes, she scarcely remembered to breathe.
But how? They had been in Freshwater less than a week!
What did ‘involved’ mean? Did it have anything to do with those mutual ropings in Uncle Orson’s pamphlet? Had Pa known this woman before this holiday? Had he brought his little innocent darling eight-year-old daughter to this dreary back end of nowhere filled with nincompoops just so that he could do lashings with Mrs Bloody Watts?
‘There’s something wrong with Jessie, Mother,’ the boys told Mrs Cameron, who had popped behind the scenes to check on the hold-up with the food.
‘Oh my dear, my dear! What can I give you? I am at my wits’ end! Your father quite refuses tongue!’
Jessie’s face was unreadable. Luckily Americans are often deaf to innuendo.
‘My dear girl, I would give anything.’
‘Are we still doing the tableaux later on?’ Jessie asked at last, with her mouth set.
‘Yes, I believe so.’
‘Well then there is one thing I’d like, Mrs Cameron. I’ve brought a bread knife, but it’s not right for what we are planning to do. Could I have a sharper one please? A really sharp one?’
Mrs Cameron hugged her, and Jessie wriggled.
‘What a curious little girl you are!’ she said.
Julia had been absent from the room three minutes. When she returned, however, she knew her lovely dinner had collapsed before she even opened the door. The hub-bub had dissipated to an awkward silence, and the maids were hurriedly removing themselves, Mary Ann with an ornate silver gravy boat attached and dangling against her chest. Julia stood at the door aghast. Turn your back on spinning plates for the merest instant, and they wobble, clatter and crash. Food lay uneaten, a glass was overturned, and Watts was staring at the ceiling with a martyred expression, indicative of one of his heads. Some fracas seemed to have broken out, but what on earth could it be?
‘Do you see this impudence, Julia?’ Tennyson barked, waving his arms.
Julia rushed to his side. ‘What impudence, my dear Alfred? Show me and I will dispel it. This is a great day for you, Alfred, and I will not have it spoiled.’
‘The young man here –’ he pointed at Dodgson, whom he could only vaguely make out – ‘Gets your friend’s little wife to ask me –’ He spluttered. He couldn’t go on.
‘I merely asked him on behalf of Mr Dodgson,’ spoke up Ellen, ‘whether Alice might be dedicated to Hallam and Lionel, who are Mr Dodgson’s special friends.’
Julia now understood why her dinner party was in ruins. How could anyone be so stupid?
‘Did you say your name was Dodgson?’ boomed the laureate, peering. ‘You’re not the damn photographer fellow too?’
Dodgson gripped the back of his chair. ‘I have n—never given cause for s—such treatment,’ he objected, hotly.
‘And I have never given cause for this hounding and baiting and confounded cockney cheek!’ shouted the bard, bashing the table as he stood up. ‘I am surprised you would allow such disgraceful fellows into your intimate circle, Julia. I am surprised, and I am disappointed.’
Julia started to cry. The lovely review! What about the lovely review?
‘Now I am going home,’ he continued. ‘I had hoped this would be a pleasant evening among friends at which I could make an announcement. When I came here tonight I wanted you all to share my well-earned happiness, since none of you will ever earn happiness half as good for yourselves. In fact I was willing to read for four hours if necessary. But I find that circumstances have changed all that. So let me just say this. The review I received today confirmed what I and my real friends already knew, that Enoch Arden is the work which will make my fortune. I have therefore decided to thank you all for your kindness – especially Julia – and tell you that I intend to leave Farringford when my lease expires in two months. There is nothing to keep me here. I shall never set foot on this island again. Good night.’
He swept from the room, and all eyes turned to Dodgson, who stood up.
‘I must say,’ he began, but was interrupted by the sound of Julia weeping on her husband’s chest.
‘Mr Dodgson, don’t you have some eloping to do, or something?’ asked Lorenzo, pointedly. Dodgson, affronted now beyond endurance, left the room.
Julia glared at Ellen.
‘I don’t see what I’ve done,’ said Ellen. ‘Shall I follow Mr Tennyson? He seems quite fond of me usually.’
‘No!’ shouted Julia, so vehemently that her guests jumped. ‘No, I will,’ she added in a more normal voice. ‘May I, Charles?’
‘If it makes you happy,’ said her lord, as always.
‘You do your tableaux without me,’ she said, gathering her skirts. And she ran off to plead with the man she loved best in the world.
Ellen and Lorenzo looked at one another, and were just unfortunately swapping loaded glances when Jessie entered, to find out whether the show was ready.
‘What the blazes happened here?’ she asked, flatly. Even when mourning for her tragic young life, she couldn’t help noticing that half her audience had split before curtain-up. The ones who remained were an unlikely crowd, too.
‘You don’t want to know,’ said Lorenzo. ‘But come and meet everybody.’ Jessie curtsied to them all in turn, and gave each a steady look, especially the shaky Mrs Watts. ‘You look as bad as I feel,’ she said generally, which was impudent but accurate.
‘Shouldn’t we do this another night?’ said Watts. The strain of the evening ought to be over now, surely. He had the distinctive look of a man who, though he has never had a stiff drink, yet suddenly feels the need of a stiff drink and tragically doesn’t know that a stiff drink is the thing he needs.
But Ellen was not to be denied her chance. Perhaps she did have low ideas, but surely he would forgive her – if not absolutely adore her – for using them in the cause of love. So she took all the lamps and candles and arranged them at the foot of the curtain, and then made a short speech.
‘In this first tableau, I represent Inspiration. I think my husband will guess who the other figure is.’
Cameron nudged Watts; Watts shrugged back. He wished his wife would be sensible. He wished they could just go to bed. But then Lorenzo drew back the curtain, and what was behind it? It was – oh horrible! – the head of Haydon. ‘No, no!’ whispered Watts. ‘Isn’t this good, George?’ said Ellen. Haydon’s head was set on a clothed dummy, made of rags, with its right arm cunningly raised to hold a paintbrush. The clothes were the ones usually worn by Herbert. Ellen had dressed the plaster head in a wig, and coloured its features with theatrical make-up. It was Haydon to the life! An apparition! Watts nearly choked. In the distance he heard a knocking and clamouring at the front door, but he was transfixed by the horror of this vision. ‘Haydon!’ he gasped.
Cameron (the only other person left at the table) watched Watts’s face. Little Ellen had certainly captured her husband’s attention, he thought. What a clever girl. And then he drifted off into a pleasant doze.
Ellen stood just behind the curtain, holding a handkerchief as though waving farewell. The curtain closed, and she stepped forward.
‘That was, of course, Inspiration Deserts Benjamin Robert Haydon,’ she explained. ‘You see, George, it was nothing to do with you at all. He just dried up.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Watts croaked.
Ellen, whose jangling emotions were now heightened by the thrill of the stage, made a solemn answer.
‘Because I love you,’ she said. ‘And now –’
Watts called out to her from the darkness, ‘Ellen, I forbid you –’
But then the curtain opened again on Haydon, and this time his companion was not Inspiration, but the precocious American child wrapped in a union flag, holding a flashing blade to Haydon’s throat, and snarling.
The curtain closed again. ‘That was General Tom Thumb, Famous American Midget, Kills Benjamin Robert Haydon.’
‘Ellen, please! This is most unseemly! The man is dead!’
But the curtain swung open for the last time, and Jessie, smiling grimly, held the detached head in her hands, from which bright red blood appeared to be trickling.
Ellen applauded, but she was the only one. Watts had his hand before his eyes.
‘Westminster!’ he whimpered.
‘That’s the end,’ Ellen explained to Watts. She turned to the child. ‘Jessie, you clever girl, how ever did you manage the blood? It’s so lifelike.’
But Jessie was wobbling a bit. Which was not surprising when she had just cut herself rather deeply on purpose.
She pushed Ellen away.
‘Pa,’ yelled Jessie. ‘Get this woman away from me or I’ll cut her too.’
Ellen fell back in alarm. ‘Mr Fowler, come quickly. She’s done something with this knife!’ ‘Jessie!’ he yelled.
‘I hate you, Pa. I love you. How could you do it?’ Jessie’s voice sounded a bit funny. She dropped the knife and it clattered at her feet.
Outside, in the garden, Julia caught up with Alfred Tennyson, as the wind lashed the trees above their heads, and the rain fell on their faces like – well, you know, God’s angry tears or something. For a man who hotly resisted accusations of the pathetic fallacy, these stormy conditions were just too bad.
‘Alfred!’ yelled Julia above the wind.
‘It’s no good, Julia. My mind is made up.’
‘Alfred!’
They could have gone on like this, but fortunately Julia thought of sheltering in the glass house, where at least they could hear each other speak. And so they entered Julia’s hallowed place, where Alfred had never stepped before, and the conflicting emotions Julia had demanded from Mr Watts as Ulysses were as nothing to the feelings now fighting in her own breast like cross winds tearing at a sail.
‘I can’t believe you would leave me, Alfred,’ she wailed. ‘Just because I have never spoken to you of my feelings, you must surely know what they are.’
‘Julia, I think we should discuss this tomorrow. Or perhaps, even better, we should never discuss it at all. It pains me to see you like this.’
‘It pains you!’
‘It’s a figure of speech, Julia. It means I don’t want to talk about it. And that such passion in a plain dumpy woman is ugly and absurd.’
Julia gaped. Alfred on the defensive was clearly a very dangerous man. He was still very angry.
‘Correct me, Julia, but you seem to believe that I owe you something. I don’t, and nor does Emily. We did not ask you to move here. We did not ask you for the wallpaper or the ponchos. We don’t even know what a poncho is. We do not need your permission to settle our own affairs and enjoy the success that my talent has earned me, away from constant outrageous requests for photographs and dedications!’
Julia looked around. There was something about the setting. She never thought she would see Alfred in her glass house. She had wanted it so much that it had nearly broken her heart.
‘Sit for me, Alfred,’ she said quietly.
‘You do not listen, madam!’
‘But I do, Alfred. I do. And each word you speak pains me a great deal more than it pains you. But tell me, will your friends see the review in the Westminster? Will they be pleased and impressed?’
Alfred tugged his cloak. ‘Yes, they will.’
‘And will your enemies choke on their breakfast?’
‘I sincerely hope so.’
‘I really didn’t want you to know this, Alfred, and I would never have told you for my own sake, but you simply need to know. I wrote that review. Sara used her influence with the editor to print it.’
Tennyson stood up impatiently. Why was he listening to such silly invention?
‘And why would you do that?’ he snapped.
‘Because I love you,’ she said. ‘And because I wanted you to have a present from me that did not demand thanks. That way your usual brutal disregard for my feelings could not hurt me.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Oh Alfred. Your blindness is such a curse. Why do you think the review disputes with George Gilfillan and John Ruskin? Who else but your closest friends would know your tiresome preoccupation with their trifling passing comments?’
‘They were a lot more than passing comments. They were wounds, Julia, wounds.’
‘All right then. Look at it another way. How do you think the review got into the apple pie?’
He heard what she was saying. He sat thinking for a while, and the more he thought, the angrier he got.
‘So do you expect thanks now? Is that why you do these stupid extravagant things, for the thanks? Well, you won’t get any. Do you know what you have done, you silly woman?’
‘Yes thank you,’ said Julia. ‘I thought I was doing you a favour, when in fact I have done one for myself.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
She drew a deep breath. ‘I could tell the world the review was mine, Alfred. Your reputation would never recover.’ ‘You wouldn’t.’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘Julia. Julia, you are a nice person. In all the turmoil this evening, you seem to have forgotten.’ ‘Sit for me, Alfred. I love you.’
They sat in the dark, and the rain lashed the windows. ‘I love you,’ she repeated. ‘Remember the Westminster. Sit for me.’
Dodgson rushed in to the dining room.
‘It’s Daisy Bradley!’ he shouted. ‘They say she’s gone m-m—missing!’
Jessie dropped Haydon’s head, and it smashed on the edge of the podium. Blood trickled from her fingers’ ends.
‘I love you, Pa,’ she said, and Lorenzo screamed as he ran to catch her in his arms.
It was quite a scene. In fact Mr Cameron woke up at that moment, took a look round the darkened room and – not surprisingly – applauded vigorously. It was quite the best tableau he’d ever seen – Watts with his hand across his eyes, Ellen aghast, Lorenzo with the bleeding child, and Dodgson frozen in the doorway.
‘Very fine!’ he called. ‘Mark my words. Put that on in Drury Lane and people would pay good money to see it, I assure you!’