The Crimson Bed (42 page)

    More important than anything else was dear Miss Ellie whom she had known since a baby. She was too young and beautiful to die! She mustn't go the way of her mother whose early death had been such a shock to them all. Mulhall dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief but then straightened herself up, composed her face and went to her room to have a brief rest.

Fred sat down on a chair by Ellie's bedside and stared at her. Her beautiful dark hair had been cut short to lessen the heat to her head and reduce the fever. He felt its loss. It would grow again but never in the same luxurious abundance. She was like a female Sampson, he thought sadly, her hair shorn, her strength all gone. Ellie lay there, her face flushed, cheeks pinched, her eyes open and oddly vacant as if they looked inwards upon some other world.

    'You can't leave me, Ellie, you can't leave me now!'

    The words broke out of him in his despair. Ellie lay and stared at the ceiling as if his words meant nothing.

    Fred still spoke to her, holding her hot hand in his and mopping her face with cold water from a basin. She seemed so far away and he wanted with all his heart and soul to bring her back again, close to him, closer than they had ever been before. He knew she couldn't hear him but he wanted to tell her his sins, confess and explain while he was able. Who knew, perhaps she might die and all his guilt follow her to her grave. If only she might live and he could make amends to her! He didn't want to be haunted as Henry was by sadness and regrets.

    He sat and in a soft, monotonous voice explained all his youthful misdemeanours with Bessie, the baby she had borne and sent to the workhouse and how they had both died of cholera, alone and in poverty. He said how sorry he was to have caused such misery to anyone. He spoke of his meeting with Jessaline and then Sue Witherspoon and how Sue had tried to blackmail him. He told the silent Ellie how he had felt as if possessed by some strange darkness in his own being but also how strangely, he now felt this had been expiated and lifted, leaving him in peace.

    'It will never happen again, Ellie, the fear, the desire, the need is no longer there. Life's all about betrayals, Ellie, and you've been betrayed by your parents and even by me. What have you done to deserve it? Nothing. You have been an angel all this time, an angel in the house. I don't deserve you and I don't want to lose you.'

    Ellie lay still, her eyes now shut and her breathing shallow.

    'Are you angry with me, Ellie? Don't hate me,' Fred whispered, bending close to her ear, 'please forgive me for doubting you. I was a jealous fool.'

    If he could will her to stay alive, then he would.

    But did Ellie have the will to live? Had he, as well as Dillinger, destroyed her faith in life?

    'I don't know why I went with that whore, Sue,' he went on in a soft whisper, 'I had no love for her, no feeling. I think I wanted to punish myself because of Bessie and the baby. I wanted to hate myself. And I did. But sinking low like that destroys something fine and gentle in one and I turned against you. Forgive me, Ellie. Please forgive me! I wanted to blame you when all the time it was my own evil I was fleeing from.'

    He buried his face in his hands and felt the deepest remorse.

    Ellie stirred a little and murmured something inaudible.

    Fred dropped his hands from his face and for a moment stared in disbelief. He seized her hand once more in his. Bending towards her he said, 'Ellie, Ellie, what did you say? Oh, darling, what did you say?'

    He put his ear to her lips and she murmured the word, 'Alfie,'

    Fred sat back and let her listless hand drop back to the coverlet.

Not the forgiving words he had hoped to hear.

    What on earth did she mean? Who the devil was Alfie? And why was she mentioning his name in her delirium?

    'Who is Alfie?' he asked.

    She murmured the name again and said 'Died... died... all of them... gone. Alfie, Dillie, Papa, Mama... '

    Quite suddenly huge tears rolled slowly down her cheeks and the vivid flush slowly abated. Thank God, the fever had broken at last. In his joy, Fred rose and flung open his arms as if in thanks to an unseen deity.

It was later, after the doctor had called and pronounced that the worst was now over, that Fred remembered about Alfie. It must be Alfred Dillinger she referred to, Dillinger's eldest son who had died at Balaclava. He had only met him the once at Dillinger's London home, just before the Crimean War broke out. Poor Ellie, she had loved him like a brother, she had often told him that they had been childhood companions and very fond of one another. And he really had been a brother – that was the irony of it. Fred felt enormous compassion for her. What a terrible cross to bear, finding that her beloved father was not her real father after all. And losing her beloved brother.

    Then he remembered the little
billet doux
he'd found in the Bible which he had mistakenly attributed to his lordship and wondered about it again. The Bible lay on the dressing table now, no longer beneath Ellie's pillow. Mulhall had been reading passages from it to Ellie as she lay in her stupor. He picked it up but, of course, there was nothing there. The little note had gone, long ago destroyed by Mulhall who made no judgements and kept her mouth tight shut.

    However, Fred still recalled the gist of it and he pondered it in his mind. It had been written after their marriage. How had he been so stupid as to suppose that it could have been written by Dillinger, of all people? He was exasperated with himself for his utter blind stupidity. It wouldn't be just Dillinger who used the Dillinger seal. It could also be
Alfred
Dillinger. Had
he
been in love with Ellie and written the note after their meeting at his father's house? After all, he'd been unaware that Ellie was his half-sister. They had been brought up together, playmates since their childhood. It was almost inevitable that they might fall in love. The passionate, youthful tone, the wording... yes, it all made sense now!

    What then might have happened if Alfred Dillinger had not died? If he had returned from the war, a living hero, if he had pursued his love, would Ellie have run off with him not knowing that he was her half-brother? His death, then, had proved a blessing in disguise.

    Ellie had made her confession too.

    Fred went back to look at Ellie who remained still and quiet, tears still coursing down her cheeks from under closed lids. He laid his hand on her forehead and was deeply thankful that it felt so much cooler now. Bending down, he whispered in her ear once more.

    'Did Alfie love you, Ellie? Did you love him?'

    She opened her eyes at this and looked up at him.

    Suddenly she smiled a weak little smile.

    'I love
you
, Fred,' she said, 'I love you.'

    He bent and kissed her lips.

    'And I love you, Ellie. It's all in the past. We'll start again, my darling.'

Chapter 38

Ellie lay in her bed amidst the snowy sheets and the crimson coverlet. She opened her eyes and looked up at the dark canopy of wood above her head and for a moment felt herself a small child again, nestling up beside her mother on a cold winter's morning. Her mind was still and at peace and she allowed herself to drift in a sweet haze of dreamy languor. Her eyes focused now on Fred's head on the pillow beside her. His fair hair tumbled over the pillow and partly over his face and she smoothed it back with a tender hand. He stirred and opening his eyes, smiled and moved towards her. Lips met lovingly and tenderly, bodies began to fuse together in amorous sweetness.

    After they had made love, Fred propped himself up on his elbow and looked down on Ellie as she lay back on the sheets and marvelled at her and at himself. Why, he asked himself as he always did these days, why had he wanted any other woman but Ellie?

    It was as if something had now dissolved between the two of them, some constraint; a sense of past ghosts haunting them both. They came together now as if they were newly-weds who had just discovered one another. And the discovering was bliss for them both.

'I hear that friend of yours has got another mistress back in his house,' Beatrice commented to Fred one afternoon. 'He didn't lose much sleep then over his wife's death.'

    'Tippy died in childbirth, Mother, and Henry was heartbroken. But he's a man who needs a companion. He hates to live alone.'

    Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. 'What man can? They can't abide an empty bed, that's for sure.'

    How his mother managed to find these things out was always a mystery to Fred. He didn't think that the matrons she knew would discuss matters like this. Yet nothing ever missed her and nothing that came her way remained with her but was passed on, embroidered in detail, confused in its accuracy. It was like her intimations that she had known something was going on with Lord Dillinger and Ellie and didn't his death prove the matter? Both Fred and his father had been very angry with her. Fred was bound to secrecy about the fact that Percy Dillinger was Ellie's father and could do nothing to clear his wife's name. He told his mother that she was a wicked woman to say such things about Ellie. Nothing ever stopped the malice of Beatrice's nature. Like a child, she was never aware of the evil of gossip and that she might be hurting others.

    Rumours are like plants. They begin somewhere as a little seed and finding fertile ground grow into astonishing and luxuriant creations. Their roots spread out, reaching into every drawing room and parlour, out into the streets, along roads from town to town, carried in letters, intoned in murmurs at clubs and inns, half spoken whispers from one lady to another in the milliner's shop, arch looks, eyebrows raised. Ugly plants, rumours, and often strangely insubstantial for they can just as suddenly dry up and wither away with lack of attention, refutation, or merely by being ignored by those who refuse to allow them to live and flourish.

    Who began the story of Eleanor Mary Thorpe's love affair with Lord Percy Dillinger? Fred felt certain that it had been his mother but she denied it strenuously. Yet, he remembered now with shame how Beatrice had once sown her mischievous seeds in the loamy ground of his imaginings. These had grown to the point of such unreason on his part that he had driven Ellie away in despair.

    Ellie was so beautiful; she was his prize, his beloved. No other woman meant anything to him and he had always marvelled that she had married him at all. Their life was peaceful and contented until his jealousies had driven them apart. Now they were together again and, if anything, closer and more loving than ever before. They had borne two beautiful children, Charlie and Mary. Surely, that showed the gossipmongers that they were still united, still in love?

    But rumours are never content with simple explanations like this. They are made by cynics for other cynics. So now the gossip was that maybe all the children were Lord Percy Dillinger's or why would he have left them such a substantial legacy when he died?

'Would you like to move to Chelsea, Ellie?' Fred asked one day. 'It's beautiful and clean down by the river now the new sewers have been laid along the embankment. We could go boating, to the pleasure gardens or up to Hampton Court for picnics. Our lease here runs out soon and I wonder if you would like to renew it yet again or perhaps begin a new life elsewhere? Why not be near our old friend, Henry Winstone? Even Rossetti has moved to Cheyne Walk since his wife died and Amos Johnson, my new partner, is considering a property there while the Madox Browns have also moved further back into London. It will be good to be near so many of our friends. What say you?'

    Ellie looked about her and suddenly felt the need of change. She had loved this house but now it seemed to hold too many unhappy memories.

    'It will be good to be near dear Henry, I agree. He worries me a good deal and I feel he needs his friends close to keep an eye on him. He has changed so much since Tippy's death.'

    'He's taken to drinking too much whisky, if that's what you mean.'

    'He has – and sadly his new paramour seems to join him in his bad habits rather than discouraging him – which isn't surprising as she was once a barmaid, I'm told. Where does he find these dreadful women? This one is just like that Rosie Gamm – slovenly, vain, out for what she can get from him. Why is Henry so blind to rapacious women of this sort?'

    'I have no idea. Something in him is attracted to them and he perhaps hopes to change them and mould them. Sadly though, I feel that they mould him and drag him down. Since he lost Tippy, he doesn't seem to care at all what he does. He troubles me, Ellie.'

    'He troubles me too,' she sighed, 'I wish we could help him.'

    'We've virtually adopted his daughter, what more can we do? He wants nothing to do with the poor little mite. Won't see her even. She's beginning to look too much like Tippy; maybe that's the problem.'

    'He says she murdered her mother. Isn't that the wickedest thing to say, Fred? To lay the mother's death at the poor child's door? It makes me angry but he isn't reasonable yet. Perhaps with time, all his pain will heal and he will accept his little Eleanor. His mother intends to take her off our hands soon. The children will be sad to part with her when that day comes. They are very fond of the wee mite.'

    'Perhaps he will be interested once the child grows older and can speak and communicate with him. She may do him good, help to pull him together. But till then she will be our little girl. I'll be sorry to part with her.'

    'Shall we consider adopting her?'

    Fred hesitated. 'I should like to do so but I feel she'd be better with her own relations. The sooner she goes to them the better. We can always take an interest in her welfare and help her along – we're supposed to be her godparents though so far there doesn't seem much sign of a baptism ever taking place. However, I think her grandmother will see that happens. She seems a decent, pious sort of lady. I think little Eleanor will be well brought up in her care.'