Lament for a lost lover

I did not meet her eye. “I told them no lies,” I defended myself. “And I said how fond the children are of you and that they are attending to what you teach them and how we did our little play.”

She laughed suddenly and threw her arms about me. ’Dear Arabella!” she cried.

I extricated myself with some embarrassment. I felt I was grow little like her. I was no longer the innocent girl I had been always so natural with my parents.

“Let’s go down,” I said. “What a gloomy old place this is. Imagine a man sitting up here all day watching to see who was coming, and giving the alarm if it was an enemy.”

“They must have had a lot of enemies to make watching a fulltime occupation.”

“Oh, he watched for friends as well. And he composed songs while he watched. Watchers were always minstrels so I heard.”

“How interesting!” She slipped her arm through mine as we went to the top of the spiral staircase. “Nice of you to give a good account of me,” she went on. “You would have aroused their fears had you told them I was an actress who contrived to remain here. Good. Now we shall not have to put a watcher at the tower to look for anxious parents. Sometimes it is helpful to tell a little of the truth when the whole could be disturbing.”

We went downstairs.

I was a little uneasy. Yet I knew that I should be very unhappy if my parents had wanted to send her away.

That night she came to my room for another of our talks. I think the letter I had written to my mother made her more sure of me than she had been. She took her seat near the mirror; her hair hung loose about her shoulders. I thought her very lovely. I could see myself reflected in the mirror. My thick, straight brown hair was also loose, for I had been about to brush it when she knocked at my door. I was very like my mother and I knew she was an attractive woman. I had inherited her vitality, her finely marked brows and deeply set, rather heavy-lidded eyes, but I felt my brown hair and eyes were insipid beside Harriet’s vivid colouring, but then, I consoled my most people would seem colourless in comparison.

She smiled at me, seeming to read my thoughts. That was disconcerting in Harriet. I often felt she knew what was in my mind.

“Your hair suits you loose like that’ she said.

“I was just about to give it a brushing.”

“When I disturbed you.”

“You know I enjoy talking to you.”

“I came to say thank you for your letter to your mother.”

“I can’t think why you should do that.”

“You know very well why I do. I don’t want to leave here ... yet, Arabella.”

“You mean you may sometime ... soon?”

She shook her head. “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t want to stay here forever.”

“We have always believed that someday we should all go back to England. There was a time when we daily expected the summons to come. Then we stopped looking for it, but I suppose it has always been there in our minds.”

“You wouldn’t want to stay here for the rest of your life.”

“What a notion. Of course, I shouldn’t.”

“If you were in England they would now be looking for a husband for you.”

I thought of my mother’s letter. Wasn’t that just what she had implied?

“I suppose so.”

“Lucky little Arabella to be so well cared for.”

“You forget I’m caring for myself.”

“And you’ll be very good at it ... when you’ve learned a little more about life.

It’s been so different for me.”

“You told me quite a lot about what had happened to you. Then you stopped. What did you do when you fell in with those strolling players and your mother liked one of them?”

“She liked him so much-I suppose he reminded her of my father-that she married him.

I shall never forget the day of her wedding. I have never seen her so happy. Of course she was well content with the Squire and it was a dignified life she had there. Lady of the Manor almost. But she had been brought up very and she had never felt really respectable. Now she did. had a strolling player lover who had given her a child; she had a strolling player husband and that seemed to make eht in her eyes. She always referred to him as Your Father. And I really believe the two merged together in her mind.”

“Did she join the company?”

“It wasn’t much of a company. By this time theatres were pronounced sinful in England and strolling players, if discovered, would have been thrown into prison. So they planned to go to France. It wouldn’t be easy. They were going to do puppet and miming shows ... because of the language, you see. But they reckoned they could learn that in time. It wasn’t a very bright prospect, but what else could they do when there wasn’t a hope of playing in England at all? We set out and a few miles off the French coast a terrible storm blew up. Our ship was wrecked; my mother and her new husband were drowned.”

“How terrible!”

“At least she had had that supreme happiness. I wonder whether it would have lasted. She had endowed him with all the virtues she had moulded onto my father. It was strange, really. My father disappeared and her husband died before she had time to realize they did not possess them.”