The American Boy (37 page)

Dansey, too, and Rowsell joined the parade, and I wondered idly at the reasons for the kindnesses they showed me. (One of the oddest things about affection is surely that in many cases its object so little deserves it.) I thought of the boys, Charlie and Edgar, so like each other in appearance with their high foreheads, their air of refinement, their vulnerability, but so different in their temperaments. I had met the American boy on my first visit to Stoke Newington, the day I had first seen Sophia Frant, and he seemed, albeit unconsciously, to have acted as the proximate cause of much that had happened. He had brought David Poe into my life, and without David Poe I would not have become entangled with the Carswalls and the Frants.

I was also aware of an underlying layer of anxiety in my mind, which reminded me of something. After another half-inch of the cigar, I had fixed the memory like a butterfly with a pin: I had felt this way in the days before Waterloo: then, as now, there had been a sense of foreboding, of disaster drawing ineluctably closer. The difference was this: then I had known the nature of the impending catastrophe; now I did not.

Ayez peur
, I thought.
Ayez peur
. Perhaps the quack's parrot was wiser than it knew.

All at once, my mind was jolted away from these aimless but gloomy reflections. A long narrow triangle of yellow light appeared in the wall of the house's modern wing beyond the shrubbery, almost opposite my window but several feet lower. The heavy curtains were moving. The triangle of light widened still further and a figure carrying a candle slipped through the gap into the narrow space between curtains and glass. The left hand cupped the flame and concealed its owner's identity. All of a sudden, the window embrasure was neither one thing nor the other, as equivocal as a proscenium. It seemed to me as though I were in a box overlooking the pit of a darkened theatre.

The curtains swung back behind the figure; the hand lifted, and I saw a woman standing there, as unfamiliar and as vividly unreal as an actress on a stage. She wore a dressing gown of patterned silk, and red-gold hair flowed to her shoulders. She set down the candle on the sill and took something made of silver from the pocket of the gown. She stood there, facing the window and staring straight at me, and began to brush her hair. Her movements were languorous as though she were stroking herself. The front of the gown fell open, and I saw the nightdress beneath, with its low-cut neck.

I doubted that Miss Carswall could see me but I knew that the performance was for me, just as I knew that Mrs Frant, waking or sleeping, was in the room on the other side of the curtains. My mind filled with unchaste thoughts. They say that redheads are lubricious. Here, it seemed, was ample confirmation: Miss Carswall was revealing herself to me, and deriving pleasure from the knowledge that I was watching, and perhaps also from the fact that Sophie was a few yards away from her.

The snow continued to drift down into the yard. My mouth was dry, my breathing shallow. I hardly noticed how cold I was becoming, or that my cigar had gone out. At last, Miss Carswall slipped the brush back into the pocket and stood for a moment, gazing out. Slowly she shook her head, and the movement made her hair ripple and sway above her shoulders. Her lips parted. She smoothed her nightdress against her body, against the swell of her bosom.

She dropped me the ghost of a curtsey, picked up the candle and slipped through the gap in the curtains to the room beyond.

The snow had stopped by morning, and the sky was a hard, brilliant blue. Though the main thoroughfares of the city soon turned to chilly brown slush, most of the snow remained a pristine white, so bright it seemed to possess its own inner illumination. For an hour or two the world lost its familiarity.

We ate our breakfast in the private parlour. There was, Mr Carswall announced, no question of returning to Monkshill-park today. John coachman believed the road would be perfectly safe, but John coachman was a fool. Miss Carswall was in complete agreement with her father, not least because she wished to make a number of purchases.

“I daresay Sir George and the Captain will come and see how Mrs Johnson does,” she added with a little laugh. “And perhaps, if there is time, I might see the property Uncle Wavenhoe left me.”

“Aye, why not?” said her father. “There is the inn, of course, and a small brewery adjacent, together with a row of cottages.”

When Miss Carswall talked so blithely of her inheritance, I noticed that Mrs Frant stared at her plate, and her lips were compressed. It was unfeeling in her cousin to talk so: had it not been for that strange scene at Mr Wavenhoe's deathbed, the legacy would have been Mrs Frant's; though perhaps it might have been hers only to vanish in the collapse of Mr Frant's fortunes.

They had hardly cleared the table when there came a tap on the door and Sir George and Captain Ruispidge were announced. They asked after their cousin.

“She is still asleep,” said Miss Carswall. “My maid is watching over her. I looked in a moment ago. She woke in the night and was restless, and we gave her a dose of laudanum shortly before dawn.”

“I shouldn't wonder if she was afflicted with an inflammation of the brain,” Mr Carswall said. “It can strike with great suddenness.”

The Ruispidge brothers said everything that was fitting about Mrs Frant's and Miss Carswall's kindness to their unfortunate cousin. Then they and the Carswalls were free to discuss the ball, and to agree how delightful it had been. Mr Carswall described several games of whist in perhaps excessive detail to an audience that dwindled to Mrs Lee dozing by the fire. Captain Ruispidge sat by Mrs Frant, and talked with her in a low voice. Sir George and Miss Carswall moved away from the group at the fire and sat beside a window. I overheard fragments of their conversation, which suggested that he was outlining to her his plans to endow a village school, to be run on strict religious principles. Miss Carswall listened to him with every appearance of delighted attention; she was not a woman who did things by halves.

A little later, Mr Carswall was shocked to discover that Lady Ruispidge intended to drive back to Clearland-court with Mrs Johnson later in the day. “Quite apart from the inclement weather, my dear sir, what of Mrs Johnson's health?”

“She will be far better off at Clearland,” Sir George said. “Besides, we have trespassed on your kindness long enough.”

Miss Carswall clasped her hands. “Will you and Captain Ruispidge return with her?”

Sir George's long, bony face re-arranged itself into a smile. “I think not. Indeed, my brother and I were hoping we might prevail on you and Mr Carswall – and Mrs Frant, of course, and Mrs Lee – to dine with us.”

“We will be just ourselves, a family party,” the Captain put in, smiling winningly at Mrs Frant. “If you do us the honour of accepting, you need have no scruples about the propriety of it.”

Dinner was soon understood to be a remarkably elastic term: it stretched to include a shopping expedition and the inspection of Miss Carswall's property in Oxbody-lane. But none of these activities required my presence. After breakfast, Mr Carswall went to sleep and I was left without employment.

I gave myself a holiday and passed an hour or two in exploring the city. After visiting the cathedral close and the cathedral itself, I retraced our route to the Tolsey the previous evening, to the doorway of the bank where Mrs Johnson had lain; and, on the other side of the road, to the alley which had swallowed up the running man. I allowed myself to drift with the crowds, who washed me down to the forbidding walls of the County Gaol, to the workhouse, and then to the quayside, where the spars and rigging formed a tangle of black scratches on the louring winter sky.

Growing weary, in mind as well as body, I returned to Fendall House. I longed for certainty. At times it seemed to me that I could rely on nothing and no one, except perhaps on the affection of Rowsell and Dansey; and even their goodwill might evaporate if I examined it too closely or relied overmuch upon their benevolence.

I went upstairs to my room. Though there was no fire, I preferred its solitude to the warmth of the parlour and the probability of company. I had still to finish my letter to Rowsell. The windowsill had a broad ledge which I used as my desk. I had been writing for no more than five minutes when I heard a tap at the door.

“Come in,” I called.

I turned in my chair as the door opened. Mrs Frant stood hesitating on the threshold. I leapt up, upsetting the ink in my agitation and sending a spatter of black drops across the page. We looked at each other in silence. At last, and at the same moment, we burst into speech.

“I beg your pardon, Mr Shield, I –”

“Pray sit down. I'm afraid –”

We stopped. Usually in such situations, one smiles at the other person, for the simultaneous speech removes the embarrassment by giving one something to share with the other. But neither of us smiled.

It was such an unbearably squalid little room, an unworthy setting for a lady. I was aware of the unmade bed, and the stuffy atmosphere, the faint hint of cigar smoke remaining from the previous evening. Yet because of the setting, Mrs Frant's beauty blazed all the more. She was like the sun on the snow: so brilliant she seemed to illuminate herself from within; so beautiful that my eyes could hardly believe what they saw.

In a whirlwind of activity, I pushed my writing materials aside and covered them with a handkerchief. I turned the single chair and begged Mrs Frant to sit down. I remained standing. The room was so tiny, like a cabin on a ship, that I could have stretched out my arm and touched her. She looked down at her hands and then out of the window. From her chair she must have seen the window of her own room, the setting of her cousin's private performance the previous night. At the memory, I felt simultaneously ashamed and excited.

Mrs Frant turned back to me and said, “Miss Carswall asked me to accompany them to Oxbody-lane, and so did Sir George and Captain Ruispidge.” She spoke as though answering a question, as though we had been in the middle of conversation. “But I felt it wiser to decline.”

“I see.”

“I noticed your expression when she proposed the expedition at breakfast. Miss Carswall does not mean to be vexing, you know. She is like a child when in high spirits. She cannot see beyond her own excitement.”

“Surely it would pain you to see the inheritance Mr Wavenhoe left her, that should have been yours?”

She inclined her head. “I am ashamed to admit it. It is merely that – oh, what is the use of complaining?”

“I should never have witnessed that codicil,” I said. “I regret it extremely.”

“Truly, it does not signify. If it had not been you, Mr Carswall would have found someone else.”

“He is a monster!” I burst out. “And Miss Carswall is –”

“Believe me, Miss Carswall has hardships of her own,” Mrs Frant said. “She has suffered. I cannot condemn her.”

The silence returned. For the moment I brushed aside this new mystery concerning Miss Carswall in favour of an infinitely more urgent matter. Mrs Frant's presence in this room was quite improper, so much so that I could hardly believe the evidence of my senses. If we were discovered, the scandal would ruin us both. I should advise her to leave immediately. Yet I did not. I knew, in that part of me that was still capable of rational thought, that the very fact that she was here must mean that she needed me for a reason so overwhelming that in comparison nothing else truly mattered.

She stood up. “I beg your pardon,” she said again, in a rush. “I have no right –” She broke off and stared at the windowsill, at the spots of ink and the grubby handkerchief. “I – I have caused such confusion.”

“You should not beg my pardon,” I said. “I am glad you are come.”

She looked directly at me then. I had no words left to say. Still with her eyes on mine, she held out her hand, palm downwards, the fingers slightly curled, for all the world as though she were a great lady receiving me, and extending her hand for me to kiss.

Into my mind flooded the realisation that I had arrived at last at my Rubicon: like Caesar at his river, I could go back or I could go forwards. If I retreated, then nothing need change. If I went forward, I would move into the unknown, and all I would know for certain was that nothing would ever be the same again.

Slowly I stretched out my own hand and wrapped my fingers around hers. It was a cold day, and a cold room, but by some miracle her skin was warm. I looked at her slender fingers, not her face. I encircled her hand in both of mine. She whispered something I did not catch. I took a step forward and bowed my head.

It is of no concern to the reader why, since that day, I have kept and shall always keep the 13th of January as a private anniversary. No lips shall breathe the secret of what happened that afternoon in the cramped, whitewashed garret of the house in Westgate-street. Even the cracks in the windowpanes, the splashes of ink and the swirling brown damp stains on the ceiling shared in its perfection. It resolved nothing: it was merely perfect, merely itself.

Later that day, the rest of the party dined with the Ruispidge brothers in a private room at the Bell. They returned late, by which time I had retired, and the following morning Mr Carswall pronounced the roads safe enough for travel.

We left Gloucester under convoy of the Ruispidges in their chaise; the brothers had obligingly delayed their departure until we were ready to leave. We drove together along the toll road as far as the turning to Monkshill-park, a circumstance that greatly contributed to Mr Carswall's peace of mind.

The Ruispidges left us a mile or two from Monkshill. Mr Carswall's coach crawled up the long, curving lane running along the northern boundary of the park to Flaxern Parva. As we passed Grange Cottage, I noticed that the shutters were open, and that smoke was emerging from two of the chimneys.