I’m strong and healthy. I’m not old. I’ve seen the doctor, and he says he reckons I’ll be perfectly well after a couple of months … able to dance again.
Oh, Ennis, I just can’t wait. I know everything is going to be wonderful.
Love to you,
DM.
The next letter had obviously been written some time later.
Dear Ennis,
She is here. She came on Christmas Day, so I am calling her Noelle. She is adorable … everything is in perfect order, and I love her more than anything on earth. I shall never leave her. Dolly fusses and says his hands are tied. He wants me in his next production, but do I think he can wait forever while I go on playing Mother. I told him Mother was the best part I ever played, and I’m going on playing it, to which he replied that I am a sentimental idiot and will I wait until I have had some experience of looking after a squalling brat? Then I was angry. I said: “Don’t dare call my little girl a brat!” To which he replied sarcastically: “Oh, she will be different from all the other brats, of course. She’ll be singing Traviata before she’s a year old. ” Dear Dolly. He is not so bad. And I think he likes her. I do not know who could not love her. She knows me already, of course. Martha pretends she’s a nuisance, but I have seen her at the cradle when she thinks I’m not looking. I heard her say the other day: “Didums wants its mummy, then.” Didums! Martha! Just imagine! But you don’t know Martha. She’s the last person you’d think would ever even look at a baby. What use are babies in the theatre? But my Noelle can charm even her. As for the servants, they are overcome with joy and are vying with each other to look after her. Life is bliss.
Love, D.M.
And the last letter:
Dearest Ennis,
All is well. She grows more adorable every day. The best Christmas present I ever had. I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it thousands more.
Ennis, you must forgive me for this. I am letting Charlie believe she is his. Don’t feel too hurt. It is for the best. We have to think of her. She must have everything. I could not be happy if I thought it should ever come that I died and left her. I won’t have my child knowing poverty as I did. I won’t have her put out … as I was … into unloving hands. I know you would love her … but you couldn’t give her what she must have … and Charlie could … and would. In fact, he has sworn he will. He loves her … particularly as he believes she is his. Believe me, Ennis, it is the best. He would look after her if I asked him, but it is better to have the closer bond. Perhaps I’m wrong … but right and wrong have always been a bit hazy to me. I want what is best for my child, whether or not some would consider it wrong. It’s right for me … and for her, which is all that matters to me.
Trust you to think about registering the birth and all that. There may be this new law about putting it in at Somerset House. I’m not doing it, Ennis. I am not putting in writing that she was born out of wedlock. There are some who might sneer at her over that. I’m not having my child sneered at. I know a bit about that from my own experience.
I am going to make sure that she has the best of everything. What could I say? I could not say the truth. That you are her father. But you couldn’t look after her, Ennis, not in the way I want her looked after. Charlie’s the one to do that … if ever it were necessary. She’d have servants … nannies … everything. So I say there will be no form filling … no records. This is my child and I will do it my way.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think it’s better to do what you can for people, to love them, and there’s no one I want the best for more than my baby. I think love is more important than a lot of moral laws. I am not going to try to make some plaster saint out of her. I want her to laugh her way through life … to enjoy it … above all, I want her to know that she is loved. I know the world would say I’m a right old sinner, but I think that love is the best thing in life … love for one another … and love of life, too. The preachers would say that is wrong. To be good you have to be miserable, but something tells me that if you are loving and kind that’ll be good enough for God when the Day of Judgement comes, and He’ll turn a blind eye to the rest of it.
My child is first with me, and I am going to see that above everything she is happy, and I don’t care what I have to do to make her so.
It was like hearing her voice. It brought her back so clearly to me. She had cared so much for me. It was an ironic twist of fate that, out of her love for me, she had ruined my life.
I felt the tears on my cheeks. These letters had brought her back so vividly that my loss seemed as fresh as it ever had. This they had done—and something else. They had told me without doubt what I had come here to find out.
Marie-Christine had returned. She found me sitting there with the letters in my hand.
She sat down quietly, watching me intently.
“Noelle,” she said at length. “They’ve upset you.”
“The letters …” I replied. “It was just like hearing her talk. It’s all here. There is no doubt that Ennis Masterman is my father.”
“So Roderick is not your brother.”
I shook my head.
She came to me and put her arms round me.
“It’s wonderful. It’s what we wanted to hear.”
I looked at her blankly. “Marie-Christine,” I said slowly. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late.”
The next day I called on Ennis Masterman.
I had said to Marie-Christine, “I shall go over to him alone. He is my father, you see. You have been so good. You will understand.”
“Yes,” she said. “I understand.”
He was waiting for me. We stood and looked at each other as though with embarrassment.
Then he said: “You can imagine what this means to me.”
“Yes, and to me.”
“Ever since you were born, I have been hoping to see you.”
“It is strange to be suddenly confronted with a father.”
“At least I knew of your existence.”
“And then I think I might never have known you. It is just by chance …”
“Come in,” he said. “I want to talk about her. I want to hear about your life together.”
So we talked and doing so, surprisingly, I felt some relief from the wounds which had been reopened when I had read her letters. I told him how she had helped Lisa Fennell, of her sudden death and the wretchedness which followed. I told him about the plays, her enthusiasms, her successes.
“She was right,” he said. “She had to do what she did … and I should have been no good for her. She was bent on success and she achieved it.”
At length I talked about myself. I told him of my visit to Leverson Manor, of my love for Roderick and what had come of it.
He was deeply shocked.
“My dear child, what a tragedy!” he said. “And it need never have been. You could have been happily married. And all because of what she had done. Her heart would be broken. What she wanted most of all was for you to be happy … to have everything she missed.”
“It is all too late now. He has married someone else … the Lisa Fennell I told you about.”
“Life is full of ironies. Why did I not follow her to London? Why did I not at least try to make something of myself? I might have been with her in London. I should have been happy there. But I could not do it. Somehow I couldn’t leave this place. I didn’t believe in myself. I always doubted. I was weak and she was strong. I was unsure and she was so certain. We loved each other but, as she said, we did not fit. I was daunted by all the difficulties while she confidently danced her way over them.”