The Last Crossing (55 page)

CHARLES
It has been four months now since I received Jerry Potts’s obituary and Custis Straw’s summons to North America. Memory is a restless spirit and Straw’s message has roused it. In solitary moments, I harken back to that arduous journey across the plains undertaken more than two decades ago, an ordeal the consequences of which I could not have foreseen. That journey blew my life off-course and made of Simon, Addington, Father, and Lucy ever present shades of regret.

How clearly I recall coming down the gangplank of that New Orleans cotton boat on a December day to be greeted by the same grimy Liverpudlian smoke and clamour that had waved me off nine months before. I had not warned Father of my coming. I found myself a room in a commercial travellers’ hotel, sent Father a telegram that contained no other information than that he should expect me the following day on the seven-fifteen evening train. Exhausted from my journey, dreading to face the morrow, I collapsed fully clothed on my bed and slept the sleep of the dead.

The next day, as the railway coach rolled through the mist-swathed English countryside, I was brought to the brink of tears by the familiar sights – stark winter hedgerows, cottages, flocks of black-faced sheep; dark, low-slung clouds suddenly rent by coruscated shafts of winter sunlight. When we were children, Simon swore to me that
angels rode upon such glittering beams down from heaven to earth, and back from earth to heaven.

Our last meeting filled my thoughts. My final appeal to Simon had reached an impasse; he would not relent. Seeing my distress, he had done as he had so often done before, clasped a hand to the back of my neck, drew me near, laid his forehead on mine as if he could penetrate my thoughts with his, make our minds one. When our brows touched, I began to weep. If Addington could not survive this savage land, what chance had gentle, guileless Simon? Already the frontier had reduced him to a hobbling cripple. Disease, starvation, or a band of Blackfoot raiders would sooner or later snuff out his life.

“It is not too late to change your mind,” I implored him. “Come home with me. I swear that neither Father nor anyone else shall ever hear a word of this. Our secret and our secret alone. Kept just as when we were boys.”

“We are not boys any longer, Charles. We are men. Each of us has our path to travel. To turn from it invites nothing but misery.” And with that, he took me in his arms one last time, released me, and limped back to the Lodge of the Sun, released me to carry my bitter news back home.

By the time my train drew into our local station, winter dark had obliterated from sight all comforting English scenes. I was surprised to find there was no vehicle on hand to collect me. I might have hired a dogcart in the village to transport myself and my bags to Sythe Grange, but decided the two-mile walk would give me time to organize my thoughts. All day I had pushed out of mind the harrowing prospect of delivering my news to Father. Now I felt like a solicitor entering court on an important case bereft of a brief, or even hastily scribbled notes.

I left my bags in the care of the station master, buttoned my overcoat, turned up my collar, and set out. Remembering how Addington had described Father’s mental state to me in Fort Benton, I uneasily wondered if what my brother had said were true. Was that the explanation for no one meeting my train?

A mile on, it began to rain. Large drops plinked on my hat, then slowly gathered into a deluge. Slogging along the muddy lane, I grew more and more dispirited and anxious. When I finally reached the wrought-iron gates of Sythe Grange, I found them hanging open on their hinges. Beyond the gates rose the formidable silhouette of the house, lower floors unaccountably black at such an early hour. The only lights showing were those of the servants’ quarters just below the roof.

I had never seen my father’s house in such a queer condition. An eel of panic slithered in my gut, propelling me quickly up the gravel path, heart lurching in my chest, boots spraying pebbles. Suddenly, against the sky, I spotted the broken branch of a tree dangling from a shred of bark like a hanged man. I halted, wiped a mingling of rain and sweat from my brow. Father was a martinet when it came to the upkeep of the grounds. Why had the damaged limb not been pruned? Uneasily, I cast my eyes about me and discovered other signs of neglect. At my very feet, weeds blackened by frost stood in the carriage path. They were dead now, but had evidently flourished there in season. Looking up, I spied a jostling mass, milling near the French doors which gave out on to the garden. To escape the rain, Father’s deer had huddled close to the walls and were trampling his precious shrubs.

I ran the last hundred yards to the house, threw myself at the door, wielded the knocker like a hammer. No one answered. I called out, banged away insistently. At last, I caught the glimmer of a lamp in a window and, moments later, heard the lock turn. Moorman flung open the door.

Startled, the butler retreated several steps. Clearly my arrival was a shock to him. Giving him not a second to recover his composure, I demanded, “Why do I find the house locked and dark, Moorman? The grounds in such a deplorable state?”

Moorman was shielding his breath with a trembling hand, but I had already caught a whiff of it, ripe with Father’s port and cheroots.

“Ah, sir,” the old rogue replied, playing for time, “welcome home! But you’re soaked clean through! Allow me to remove your coat before you take a chill. Let me light you a good fire, sir!” This was
confirmation Moorman was three sheets to the wind. Under no other circumstances would he have volunteered to lay a fire, to perform a housemaid’s task, to have so forgotten the dignity of his station.

As levelly as I could, I said, “Answers first. Then a fire.”

That sobered him. He drew himself up like a guardsman on parade.

“I sent a telegram. Did you not receive it?”

“Perhaps, sir,” he answered shiftily.

“Was it not read?”

“It is not my place to read messages addressed to my master, sir.”

“So Father decided no conveyance was to be sent to collect me.”

“Mr. Gaunt has been indisposed since September. You will find him not quite himself.”

“Father is ill?”

“Mr. Gaunt has descended into an unhappy mental state. The cause of it a cerebral haemorrhage. He no longer has any interest in the mail, in newspapers, in the outside world. He will not permit visitors to be admitted to the house, and he has even gone so far as to ban Dr. Greene from the Grange.”

I cut Moorman short. “Where is my father?”

“In the library, sir. It is the spot he finds most congenial these days.”

I ordered Moorman to light the way. As we climbed the stairs, my legs trembled so that I had to cling to the banister. Moorman was doing his best to exonerate himself for the state of affairs in which I found Sythe Grange. “It has been a most difficult time, sir. The servants did not receive their six months’ pay. This occasioned discontent and some desertions. Two of the maids left for employment in the mills – you can be sure I gave them no characters – and Meadows the footman has left us. The gardeners have downed tools and refuse to work until their wages are paid. Walker was lured away a month ago by Lord Tryan’s estate manager. I have come near the end of my wits. The butcher and the grocer extended credit – but Mr. Gaunt has been deaf to all my appeals to settle accounts. The shopkeepers continually threaten not to deliver any more goods. We have
been doing our best, sir, living hand to mouth as it were, awaiting the return of yourself and your brother–”

“Addington has not returned. He fell victim to a terrible accident in America. I regret to inform you he is dead.” When I spoke these words, I heard them as if I were outside myself, as if they were merely an involuntary rehearsal for what I was to say to Father in a few moments.

Moorman halted at the top of the stairs. “Mr. Addington dead?”

“Yes.” There was a catch in my throat. “And nothing learned of Simon.” I paused. Moorman peered at me, bewildered by my bluntness. “I think that is enough said for the moment.”

“As you wish, sir.”

We moved down the corridor and came to the library. Moorman hesitated. “I warn you, sir, you will find your father very changed,” he whispered, swung open the door, and ushered me in. The library had always been my favourite room in the house, but now, swathed in shadow, heavy with an awful silence, it came close to completely unnerving me. At the farthest end of the library, before the tall windows overlooking an unkempt lawn, I could discern my father huddled in a chair. With the exception of the lamp which Moorman carried, there was no source of illumination in the room. Father had been seated in utter darkness.

As we approached the old gentleman, Moorman’s lamp threw a twitchy shimmer over thousands of volumes which had once been Simon’s and my delight. That night, however, those towering shelves induced claustrophobia, made me feel I was venturing into a chasm from which there was no escape, which was relentlessly funnelling me towards judgment.

Our light danced nearer and nearer to the hunched figure, but Father did not react to it; he simply remained inexplicably still in what I presently made out to be a Bath chair. At first I thought him asleep, but then I saw that his whole being was concentrated on the window and the nebulous vision of infinite night it framed. I came round the chair to face him, partially blocking his view, but this did not distract his mesmerized stare, or bring him to acknowledge me.

“Father,” I said, “it is Charles.” His tongue passed over his lips, but this was his only response. I motioned to Moorman to place the lamp on the desk and quietly requested him to leave us, which he no doubt did gratefully. There was only myself and the ruin in the Bath chair. The damage inflicted by the stroke appeared to have been restricted to the left side of his body. That corner of my father’s mouth sagged in a disturbing leer, as if he had been smitten in the midst of a senile, lecherous reverie. The left eyelid dangled helpless as a broken shutter. Crumbs littered the rug which lay over his knees, stains spotted his linen, his hair and whiskers needed trimming. He stank of urine. Moorman would have plenty to answer for tomorrow.

I followed my father’s gaze, but all I could see was a window awash in rain, wavering shapes carved by ripples on the pane.

The fingers of his sound hand were scratching at the arm of the chair in great agitation. I laid my hand on his, trying to make him stop, but the icy fingers continued to flex themselves under my palm. “Father,” I said, “do you know me?”

I thought I saw him nod, but could not be certain.

“Can you speak, Father? If you can speak, please do.”

With a spark of his old irritability, Father snatched his hand from under mine, lifted a finger, and imperiously stabbed it at the rainy, blowing blackness. “Them,” he moaned. Then loudly, insistently he cried, “Them! Them!”

I moved closer to the window. Abruptly and inexplicably the rain ceased and the streams coursing down the glass faltered, allowing me to pick out a file of deer trooping back to the copses.

“Do you wish to see your deer?” I asked, stepping behind his chair and preparing to push it nearer the window. As I did, Father recoiled, violently writhing in the chair like a man thrust into the flames of a bonfire.

I bent over his shoulder, down into the sour smell which rose from his unwashed body. “No? You do not wish to be closer to the window?”

“No! No! They watch me!” he cried. The pronoun pierced me like a sword thrust. Suddenly it came to me what Father had been seeking
in the ill-defined shapes drawn by the rain. A glimpse of the unseen presences Addington had mentioned to me in Fort Benton. Faceless enemies who circle weakness, lurk in doorways, mutter threats in the night. As real to Father as age, decay, and confinement in a Bath chair.

I backed him away from the window.

There was much for me to do, debts to be paid, servants to hire to fill the places left vacant by those who had left our employ, discipline to be restored among those who had stayed. The next morning, I had Moorman up on the carpet. I roared at him in the best Gaunt style, but did what my father would never have done under the circumstances. I let him keep his job.

Christmas came and went, a dismal holiday. Father was my chief preoccupation. I engaged a nurse and consulted frequently with Dr. Greene about his care. It was evident Father was beyond comprehending anything I could tell him of Simon or Addington. Never once did he remark on the absence of his children; it seemed he recollected nothing of the events which had taken us all to America. He seldom spoke and when he did his utterances were disconnected and nonsensical. Dr. Greene’s opinion was that he would never recover his faculties and that more apoplectic attacks would inevitably follow. It was only a matter of time before they would culminate in his demise.

While I was spared informing Father of the fates of his two sons, the inquiries of neighbours about my brothers had to be dealt with. I could speak frankly of Addington’s death, but Simon was a different matter. I said nothing beyond that he had not been found. I still nurtured the hope that the discomfort of Simon’s existence, the filth, the company of the savage and barbarous Crow might bring him to his senses. It was impossible to believe he could play renegade forever, and I was determined that when he returned to Sythe Grange, to me, there should be no scandal, no blot upon his name.