“And you continue to do well, do you?”
“Indeed! Mr. Burnham is most encouragin’. He even presented me with a book to mark my graduatin’ from the Pub Lie Advertiser to The Governess, which seemed quite fittin’.”
“Oh? How do you mean that, Annie? “
“Well, the way Mr. Burnham put it, the only proper reward to give a scholar for reading one book was another book. For after all, said he, his wish is to get us to love books, and when you do, you go from one to the next without so much as takin’ a breath.”
Clarissa laid knife and fork down upon her plate and applauded Annie. “Well said!” she declared.
“It was Mr. Burnham said it,” Annie corrected her gently.
“Then, well repeated!”
“What was the book?” asked Lady Fielding.
“Poems upon Several Occasions,” she said, pronouncing the words with great care. “Mr. Burnham said he found it in a bin before one of the shops in Grub Street, and he thought it right for me, for it was poems by a woman.”
“By a woman, you say?”
“But he said he would in no wise have given it to me if her poems were inferior.”
Clarissa: “Indeed not! And no reason why they should be.”
Lady Fielding: “What is the name of this poetess, Annie?”
“Her name is Mary Leapor. Would you like to hear one of her poems:
Lady Fielding drew back slightly. “Well. . perhaps when we’ve finished dinner, you might bring the book to the table, and — “
“Oh, there’s no need,” said Annie. “I’m putting them to memory. I can say one for you if you like.”
Then, before Lady Fielding could say no, Sir John spoke up for the first time and with considerable authority: “I for one would like very much to hear the poem, Annie.” And that, of course, was all that she needed in the way of encouragement.
She swallowed the bit of food she had in her mouth, cleared her throat, and began her recitation in a voice and manner somewhat elevated yet not altogether false. What followed was said in a tone of deepest respect — to the words of the text, to the sentiment they expressed, and, lastly, to the poet herself:
“‘Autumn’” said she, “by Mary Leapor.” She cleared her throat once again.
’Twas when the Fields had shed their golden Grain,
And burning Suns had sear’d the russet Plain;
No more the Rose nor Hyacinth were seen,
Nor yellow Cowslip on the tufted Green:
But the rude Thistle rear’d its hoary Crown,
And the ripe Nettle shew’d an irksome Brown.
In mournful Plight the tarnish’d Groves appear,
And Nature weeps for the declining Year.
The Sun too quickly reached the western Sky
And rising Vapours hid his ev’ning Eye;
Autumnal Threads around the Branches flew,
While the dry Stubble drank the falling Dew …”
Through the last words of the last line her voice trailed slightly, and at the end she came to a complete halt. Her jaw set and her lips pursed as she sought vainly to remember the next line. We waited.
“Is there more?” asked Lady Fielding. “It does seem to end rather suddenly”
“Yes, m’lady there is. It’s just that I haven’t yet got it by heart.”
“Nevertheless,” said Clarissa, “what we heard should be enough to prove to us that she is a true poet, don’t you think? Annie, what do you know of this Mary Leapor?”
“All that I know is sad to tell.”
“Oh, do tell us, please!” said Clarissa. Her eyes seemed of a sudden to shine. Tragedy and pathos seemed ever to inspire her deepest feelings.
“Well, she was dead by the time her book came out.”
“Ah, posthumous publication — that is truly sad indeed.”
“And she no more than twenty-four years of age.”
“Did she die of a broken heart?”
“No, it was measles. Could you believe it? She was a simple cook-maid, as I once was, and her father a gardener at some grand house in Northamptonshire. All this I got from a note at the books beginning. How sad to die so young!” Annie turned to the head of the house. “And what is your thought on that, Sir John?”
“My thought? I presume you refer to the subject of longevity,” said he. “In truth I have not given it much consideration, for I am not yet of an age to do so.” He paused a moment and considered. “Yet, having said that, I realize what folly I have spoken, for I am sure your Mary Leapor herself had given little or no consideration to the matter of longevity. If asked, she would, no doubt, have said that at twenty-four she was far too young to think upon such matters. And so I must revise the answer I would have given and say to you that we have no way of knowing our allotted span of years. There are too many ways that death may find us. So I can then only echo what Mr. Bilbo has said so oft to me: ‘Life itself is but a gamble.’”
“Oh, goodness!” said Annie. “Mr. Bilbo!”
“What is it, girl?” asked Sir John.
She had delved her hand in her apron pocket, and now she pulled from it a letter, folded, wrinkled, and somewhat the worse for wear. “I had quite forgot,” said she to him. “I was given this letter from him to you when I left, following my lesson this noontide. It was with others brought to the house.”
“You have it there with you?”
“In my hand, Sir John.”
“Then read it to me, by all means.”
Annie hesitated. She had never been called upon to perform in such a way. It was apparent that she feared the task might be beyond her limited ability. Still, she broke the seal and unfolded the letter, taking a moment to study it before she began.
“Uh … he has a rather queer hand,” said she.
“I’m not surprised to hear it,” said Sir John. “He has his own way of doing most things. There are those, you know, who claim that much about a man can be read in his manner of writing. And so,” he said, “let us allow him that. You may read on now, if you will. “
That was what she did. There was, it’s true, a bit of hemming and hawing over certain words, yet I myself had seen samples of Mr. Bilbo’s hand and would no doubt also have had some difficulty with it. In any case, she read it aloud right to the end, and this, reader, is what the letter said:
“Sir John” — it began bluntly — “Since you and me was both interested in the sudden appearance of that cod with the beard, I thought you might be interested to know that him and his partner have disappeared from Bath just as sudden. I asked the porter here at the Bear, who seems to know most of what goes on here, just where those two went off to, and he didn’t have any proper idea. They didn’t take the London coach, nor any other, but rode off on their own horses which was stabled at the Bear. Tell Jeremy to keep his eyes peeled, and you keep your ears open, for they may be coming your way soon.” Then, below the text, there was naught but a signature of sorts: “Black Jack.”
At last, after dinner and following my washing-up duties, I was free to do whatsoever I pleased. Annie and Clarissa had retired to the room they shared to whisper their secrets and giggle until the candle burned low and they fell asleep, Sir John sat behind the desk in the small space he called his study. Lady Fielding lay in bed, reading, awaiting her husband. And I? I went up the stairs, saying my good- nights along the way, climbing all the way to my eyrie, where I, too, would light a candle and read.
The night before, I had little chance to do more than look inside the “Journal of Exploration and Discovery” before falling asleep. Yet on this night I found strength within me to remain alert and attentive long enough to read the first fifty pages of this fascinating document. There were well over fifty more to be read and a hundred or so blank pages that followed them; it was, to be sure, a book of some size. Perhaps its most intriguing feature was its binding: Though plain enough in rough leather, it bore a rich gold-brown spine of leather upon which “Essays, Francis Bacon” had been imprinted. I had not seen this when I took it from the bookshelf. Perhaps when the Journal came into the possession of Mrs. Paltrow, she had it immediately bound in order to preserve it. Whether intended or not, however, the lettering on the false spine disguised what was inside.