A Rich Full Death

the young maid-servant spend their time together?

Beatrice gazed at me imploringly. In her eyes I read a desperate plea for comprehension, coupled with a very lively apprehension as to whether it would be forthcoming. But her reply, when it came, just served to make matters worse-for it was confused and evasive, all shrugs and mumbles and unfinished phrases.

I was merciless. I wanted to know-had to! Then I could walk out of there, search Browning out, and fling his filthy secret in his face. And so I pressed her. Had she not engaged to tell me the truth? Well, now I was calling in that note.

‘It’s no use-you won’t believe me,’ the girl repeated bitterly.

Now this intrigued me mightily. Improper or unedifying her revelations might no doubt be-but unbelievable? Surely, on the contrary, they promised to be all too drearily predictable! And yet Beatrice apparently remained convinced that I would not believe her. Why, in heaven’s name? What hideous tale had she to unfold?

Prurient fantasies ran riot in my brain. What barely-mentionable secret lay coiled at the heart of this young woman’s relations with Mr Robert Browning? What was so grotesque and unnatural about them? In a word, what exactly used they to do?

At length, with an effort that was obvious, she looked me full in the face for the first time.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

Her eyes magnificently flashed.

‘You see? I said you would not believe me! Oh, it is too shameful!’

Well, the dam had burst now, and in a flood of words and gestures and tears I had the whole story. My salacious conjectures had been very wide of the mark, it seemed.

According to Beatrice, Browning spent all his time sitting demurely on the sofa, just as I was at that moment (I almost jumped up, as though the cushion had turned red-hot!). She sat beside him, or on the chair opposite, or walked to and fro. She always wore the smock I had seen on the previous evening, and made herself look as young and unsophisticated as possible-to facilitate this Browning would send a note to inform her of his visits in advance. Not of course-save the mark! — that he had stooped to instructing her explicitly how best to gratify his whims; she had learned her lesson as women do, by noting what he praised and criticised.

There they were then, sitting side by side on the sofa. Browning would ask her what had happened to her that day, and she would tell him about any little incident that had occurred-sometimes inventing, for want of matter. Or he would recount a walk he had been on, describing the plants and flowers and birds and animals and insects he had seen, in a grotesque and colourful way that had amused her at first. Sometimes she would sing to him, folksongs which her mother had taught her.

And then, invariably, after about half an hour, he would ask her to comb out her hair for him. Depending on the hints he gave her, she would either stand, or sit, or kneel before him, and set to work-teasing out the individual strands to form a clear untangled stream of hair over her face and bosom, then shaking the shining mass over her shoulders, cascading down her back, or twist it all up into a coil which she then let unwind and fall:

like a gorgeous snake

The Roman girls were wont, of old,

When Rome there was, for coolness’ sake

To let lie curling o’er their bosoms.

I take the liberty of quoting from one of Mr Browning’s productions, since he is so much more eloquent upon the topic than I.

And then, after an hour or so, the poet would rise politely and remark that he had to be going. On each visit he would leave a little gift-a scarf, or painted box, or lace handkerchief with her initial embroidered in the corner- which proved to contain, hidden within its folds or recesses, a silver coin.

And that, if Beatrice was to be believed, is all that happened.

‘But does he then never so much as touch you?’ I enquired incredulously.

‘He kisses my brow each time when he leaves. It is like a priest’s kiss.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing, I swear it! Except that sometimes he touches my hair-hardly touches it, even, but since I have sworn … He just brushes it, with his fingertips. I cannot even feel it. But he does! It sounds crazy, but it is as if my poor hair is somehow hot, and he had burnt himself.

‘I am always afraid then. He struggles for breath like one whose heart troubles him. I do not like to watch him, for my mother died so. But after a while he becomes quite normal again, and goes on talking as if nothing has happened. And that is really all-I swear it by our Holy Mother and all the saints. But you will not believe me.’

Well, Prescott, what say you? What is your impartial verdict? ‘Nay but you, who do not love her, did she speak the truth, my mistress?’ (Again I take a liberty with Mr Browning’s mistress-forgive me, with his verse!)

Well, I believed her. A few days earlier I should not have. But incredible as her story might sound, it was virtually identical to the account Browning had given Talenti of his relations with Isabel.

In other words, if Beatrice was lying then she had very remarkably happened to choose a lie which corresponded exactly to Browning’s own description of his relations with another young woman. Such a coincidence was surely infinitely less probable than the one which I was being asked to accept-especially as the more I turned the whole fantastic business over in my mind, the more it seemed to tally with the shadowy outlines of another, barely-perceived, Browning-one whose figure I had dimly caught sight of stalking through the stanzas of his nastier poems.

So I believed her, and told her so, and a little rim of shining tenderness appeared in her eyes. I had the feeling of having passed a test, and with an air almost proprietary, got up and strode idly about the room, enquiring more generally about Beatrice’s circumstances. What of her family? And how had she come to meet Mr Browning?

She replied in the Tuscan manner, frankly and openly. Her mother had died when she was eight, leaving her and her five brothers and sisters to be brought up by an aunt, whose main virtue had been that while she lived she had protected the children from the worst excesses of their father. But with her death the situation of the children became desperate-particularly that of the girls, who were continually subjected to amorous advances on the part of their surviving parent, who had to be kept at bay by the elder brothers.

Beatrice had meanwhile found work in service to an English family, and the contrast between the squalor of her home life and the gracious atmosphere of culture and polite manners which she breathed in the foreign household where she lived, returning home once weekly, made a deep and lasting impression on her. Then her employers suddenly departed, their daughter having lost her struggle with the octopus in her lungs, and poor Beatrice suddenly found herself plunged back once again into the inferno of her own family.

She was desperate to find a new position, and contacted a number of friends of her old employers, including the Brownings, in the hope that one of them might wish to employ her. The Brownings had no need of further staff themselves, but had heard through Mr Powers that a newly-arrived American couple were looking for a pleasant reliable girl who spoke some English. And thus it was that Beatrice came to work for the Eakins.

Deeply grateful, she looked in at Casa Guidi one evening after work to thank her benefactors. When she left, Mr Browning insisted on her taking a cab, for which he paid, and even very gallantly escorted her to it. He asked if everything was satisfactory with her new job, and Beatrice replied that it was, except the post was not live-in’-for this was before the Eakins moved to the villa-so that she had still to spend her evenings at home, with all the horrors this entailed.

Mr Browning murmured that something might be done. Could she meet him at a cafe in a few days’ time to discuss the matter further?

‘And what exactly did you think Mr Browning meant when he said that something might be done?’ I enquired ironically.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t care.’