The Court Was Sitting

The whole house smelled of Twelfth cake, and Hester had eleven pages of the speech copied for Mr. Brome by ten o’clock.

She was alone in the library. The new coal had let everybody out of it. The Marsdens were shouting comfortably at each other in the breakfast room. Mr. Brome was writing letters to three peers she had named for him at dinner. Her godmother was upstairs directing Pruett in the folding of shawls. Adrian had gone down to the park gate with Shaw at nine, to see whether the ice would bear a coach tomorrow.

She did not want it to bear. She thought so quite plainly, with her pen moving. She wanted one more fall of snow and the Winnats filled to the top.

It was a foolish wish. In eleven days she must stand up in print before all London. Before that she must tell her mother, and her godmother, and Mr. Garrow. But Cecily had called her by her name on the stairs last night. There was a tall slow man somewhere out in the thaw who meant to get a licence on the day he reached town. She had lain awake over both, and had found nothing owing anywhere. She could not remember when she had last been able to say so.

She sanded the eleventh page and reached for the twelfth.

It was not there. The fair copy lay on the common ground, and it went from eleven to thirteen. She counted it through twice. Then she looked across the inkstand.

A sheet in her own large hand lay on his blotter. She could see parishes at the head of it. He had been practising the word, then. A small green book had been set down on top of the page to keep it flat.

“I am crossing the frontier, Cicero,” she said to the shelf. “It is my own page. I call you to witness that I read nothing else.”

She leaned over and lifted the book with her left hand, to slide the sheet out with her right. It was a limp little thing, soft with carrying. It had a ribbon in it. As she raised it the covers fell apart at the ribbon, and it lay open across her palm.

She did not mean to read it. It was three short lines in his square careful writing, and she had taken them in before she knew she was looking.

27 Dec. It is Miss Ludlow. I shall not say so. I want her to tell me.

For a moment it meant nothing at all. She thought that it was something about the speech, or about the Eyre child.

Then she understood it, and the room went very quiet.

She set the book down on the blotter, open, and put on her spectacles. She read the lines again. There was a note above them about seven hundredweight of coal, dated the twenty-sixth. The ink was the same brown. It had not been written lately and dated back. He had written it on the twenty-seventh of December, under Saturday’s coal.

The twenty-seventh had been the Sunday. She did her accounts, because her mind would do nothing else.

On the Sunday he had stood at the reading desk and read out a verse about lying lips, and looked up, and smiled at her. She had thought that smile the kindest thing that had ever happened to her. He had known. He had smiled at Mrs. Nettle, and watched to see what she would do.

On the Tuesday he had taken her up the Edge. Is there anything that you would like to say to me? He had asked it twice, in almost the same words. She had thought that he was speaking of a quill. I do not think that I should take it as hardly as you fear. She had got two words out, and her courage had gone, and she had given him something smaller. You have not all of it yet, she had said, and he had answered, No. I know that I have not. She had wondered what he meant. Then he had kissed her. That was two days after this page was written.

On the Wednesday he had laid a Lantern down between them and wondered aloud what had kept the lady from her place. He had stopped her on the stairs. He had told her across a chessboard that the queen would not be taken if she came out.

On the Thursday she had stood behind that chair, at half past eleven at night, with a pin in her fingers. She had told him her mother’s income. She had asked leave to be out of the house by eight. She had said, You take it very quietly.

He had said, I am a slow man.

Four days. He had known for four days, and he had sat on the right of the inkstand and let her shake.

She thought of Sunday night, and that was the worst of it. She had sat on his hearthrug and told him about a woman with a yard measure. He had put her hand inside his dressing gown and said, I see you. She had taken her father’s key from her neck for the first time since Hill Street and laid it on his table. This book had been lying on that table. She remembered it now, between his watch and her key.

She did not turn the page. She had broken the treaty enough. She took off her spectacles and folded them and put them in their case. Her hands were perfectly steady, which surprised her.

She drew page twelve out from under the book and laid it in its place between eleven and thirteen. She squared the nineteen sheets. Then she stood behind her chair and waited.

He came in a quarter of an hour later, with the cold on him and his hair damp.

“It will bear,” he said. “Shaw has had ashes put down as far as the gate, and the Castleton men say—” He stopped. He had seen her face. Then he saw the book lying open on his blotter, and he stood where he was.

“I was looking for page twelve,” Hester said. “You had put this on it. It opened at the ribbon. I did not go looking, and I have not read another line. I should like that understood before anything else.”

“I believe it.”

“Is it true? Was it written on the day it says?”

She watched him. He could have said that it was a guess he had not trusted. He could have said a dozen things. His left hand closed at his side, and he waited for the word, and it was the plain one.

“Yes. At half past two that morning. I had your pages and the cuttings side by side. It was the semicolon.”

“So you knew in the chapel.”

“Yes.”

“And on the Edge. Both times you asked me.”

“Yes.”

“And on Thursday night, when I told you the rent of my mother’s house, and how many of us there were to feed, and asked to be gone by eight.”

“I knew. All of it.”

She had thought that hearing it would be easier than reading it. It was not.

“Why?”

He drew a breath. He did not come nearer. She gave him credit for that, somewhere a long way off.

“I shall tell you what I told myself, and then what was true. I told myself that if I spoke first, you would have no choice but to answer. You would be under my roof, with the pass shut. Nothing you said afterward could be freely said. I wanted you to have the chance to come to it yourself. I thought that it would be worth more to you. And to my sister.”

“And what was true?”

“I wanted to be sure of you.” He said it slowly, and looked at her while he said it. “I had hated a name for a year and a half. I found that it belonged to a woman I could not stop thinking about. I did not trust my own judgement. I thought that if I waited, and watched, I should learn what you were. Whether you would tell me. I waited to be certain.” He stopped. The pause was a long one. “I have done that once before in this house, and I knew it at the time. I told myself that nobody was dying in the wall.”

“I was not going to say that to you,” Hester said. “I thought of it, and I was not going to say it. I am glad that I did not have to.”

“I meant to tell you. I had the book open last night to bring it up to you. I heard you laughing with Cecily on the stairs, and I put it off till morning. I do not offer that as a defence. You are entitled to know what happened.”

“You put the ribbon in for me.”

“Yes.”

“Then I have only read my own letter a few hours early.” She heard her voice. It was light and dry, and it was Mrs. Nettle’s. She let it be. She had nothing else to stand on. “Let me tell you what you did, my lord, since you like a thing put in order. You held a trial. You were the judge and the jury and the only witness, and you sat for four days. You never told the prisoner that the court was sitting.”

He took it without moving.

“I thought that you were being kind on that hill. I thought that you had seen I was unhappy, and were making a place for me to speak. I have never been so grateful to anybody. Every question you asked me there was a test. You had the answer written in your pocket. You asked to see whether I would give it. I failed, did I not? I gave you a tenth part. And you looked at me, and marked it, and then you kissed me.”

“The kiss was no test. I could not keep from it.”

“I daresay. I do not know how I am to tell which was which. That is what you have done. You stopped me on the stairs. You talked to me about a queen. You asked me if you could be of use, when I had Mr. Garrow’s letter in my hand and could not feel my feet. I must go back over every kind thing you said to me between Sunday and Thursday and ask whether you meant it or were setting it down.”

“I meant all of it.”

“And you were watching to see what I did with it. Both things are true. You have just told me so.” She put her hands on the back of the chair, because they had begun to shake after all. “You said on New Year’s morning that we began the year honest. I had emptied my pockets on this desk. You stood there with this in yours, and said that.”

“I know what I said. I lay awake over it.”

“I hope that you did.” She breathed in. “There is one thing more, and then I have done. I have lived for two years by watching people who did not know that they were watched. I sat at a table and handed tea, and they talked across my head, and I went home and wrote down what they had shewn me. I know that trade from the inside. I know precisely what it is worth. One learns a great deal by it. One gets a column. And the person who has been watched can never afterward sit easy in a room with you, because she does not know what else you saw. I did that to four hundred people, and I am about to pay for it in print. I did not expect to have it done to me by the one man I had told everything.”

“Hester.”

“On Sunday night I told you about the vicar’s wife and her yard measure. You said that you saw me. You had been measuring me for eight days by then. You might have mentioned it before I took the key off.”

She saw that go home. His face was grey. He put his hand on the corner of the desk and did not speak.

She waited, as she had learned to wait for him. A part of her that she despised was still hoping that he would find some sentence to make it another thing than it was. He was an honest man, and he did not find one.

“I was wrong,” he said at last. “I was not mistaken in a detail. I was wrong from the first hour. I ought to have come to you at nine o’clock on that Sunday and said it, and let you answer or not as you chose. I decided for you what would be best for you, and called it fairness, and it served me. I have done that to my sister. I did it to you with a hundred guineas before I knew your face. I thought that I had learned better on Friday. I had learned it for everything except the one thing that was already done.”

“Yes. I think that is exact.”

“I shall not ask you to forgive it.”

“No. Do not.” She let go of the chair. “I cannot marry you, my lord. I release you from Saturday. I told you in the gallery that I would not hold you to it if things fell out badly. I did not think that I should be the one to want the release.”

“I do not want it.”

“I know. I am not asking what you want. I listened to five terms and agreed to one, and I thought that I had made a very fine bargain. I had better have asked for a sixth. I should have asked whether there was anything about me that you knew and had not said.” Her throat closed, and she forced it open. “I could bear being found out. I have been expecting that since Crane Court. I cannot bear to have been found out and then looked at for four days through a glass, by you. I should feel it every time you waited before you answered me. And you always wait.”

He shut his eyes for a moment.

“What will you do?” he asked. He did not tell her what she should do. Even now she noticed it.

“What I said on Friday. That was never yours to give or take away. I go to London tomorrow with my godmother, as it was always arranged. I shall see Mr. Garrow. I shall fill Lady Cecily’s inch as she has told me to, with every name in full, and she shall read it first. I shall say what Lord Halewood wrote. You need not stand anywhere. I find that I do want the hundred and sixty-five miles.”

“And Cecily?”

“I shall tell her myself that it is ended. I shall not tell her why. That is yours to tell, and I think that you had better.” She looked at the nineteen pages. “The speech is finished. It was written for the boys, and it is no worse today than it was yesterday. You will speak it. Breathe at the strokes. Look at Lord Penmoor when you come to the age.”

“I shall speak it as you wrote it. Every stroke.”

“Mr. Brome has eleven pages of his copy. You must find him somebody else for the other eight.”

She went round the end of the desk, on her own side, to the left of the inkstand. The brass plate lay beside her blotting-book, where it had lain since New Year’s Day. She picked it up. It was cold, and it warmed quickly, as it always did. She ran her thumb once along the worn rim and over the letters.

He saw what she was going to do. “It was a gift. It had no condition on it.”

“I know that it had not. It is Tom’s, and he belongs here. I cannot carry him to Islington in a box with two of Lord Halewood’s notes.” She laid the plate down on his side of the frontier, by the corner of his blotter where it had always been. Then she lifted the nineteen pages and set them beside it, square, with My Lords uppermost. “There. You had those two things on this desk before I came, a piece of brass and a speech. The speech is better than it was.”

“Everything on this desk is better than it was.”

It was said very low. She could not answer it. If she tried, she would cry, and she had cried in this room once already for his benefit.

She took up her blotting-book and her spectacle case. She curtseyed to him as she had on the gravel on the first day, with her eyes at the level of his waistcoat.

“Good morning, my lord.”

He bowed. He did not follow her, and he did not say her name again. She was grateful, and it very nearly broke her.

The door stood open, as it did every day. She went through it and across the staircase hall, past the oak table where the post-bag lay. On the third stair the board creaked under her. In the upper passage Pruett went by with an armful of shawls and said that her ladyship was asking how many boxes, and Hester said, “In a quarter of an hour,” in a voice that passed.

Her room was at the far end. The fire was laid and not yet lit. Her own box stood at the foot of the bed with its cord beside it.

She went in and shut the door.
***