The Skull and the Nightingale (30 page)

Should Ogden accept Lord Downs’s commission and therefore be away for a time, I will have an ideal space in which to move forward. Achieving a resolution of whatever kind will take weeks—even months; but I shall scrupulously record every sign of progress.

In the meantime I remain,

Yours, &c.

On rereading my letter, I found it pallid and strained. I had thought it necessary, however, to slow the story down. The conquests of Kitty and Mrs. Hurlock had been so summarily achieved as to encourage false expectations. If I continued to achieve amatory success at that rate, my doings would seem tediously predictable, and I might rut myself into prostration. By adopting my godfather’s language of experiment, I could perhaps satisfy him, for some weeks ahead, as Cullen had suggested, with morsels of insinuation as opposed to full platters of venereal description.

If, for all his show of intellectual detachment, my godfather was after all chiefly interested in the activities of the bedchamber, he would surely find this thinner diet unsatisfying. I awaited his response with some little apprehension. As it happened, however, the next message I received from Worcestershire came from a different source.

Dear Mr. Fenwick,

You will no doubt be surprised to receive this letter from me, the more so when I say that I cannot communicate as directly as I would wish. I will leave you to interpret my words as you see fit, confident that you will do so with discretion and good sense, and will suspect no dishonorable motive.

The essential information you will no doubt already have heard from Mr. Gilbert. About a fortnight ago Mr. Quentin set out for what he told his wife would be a long walk. They had for some time been confined to their cottage by heavy rain. She became alarmed when he failed to return by nightfall. Search parties were sent out next day, but saw no sign of him. It was more than a week before his body was found, a mile or so from his home. He had drowned in the River Moule, which had burst its banks and spread over the surrounding fields. The assumption was that he had fallen from a broken footbridge into deep water. Mrs. Quentin confirmed that he could not swim.

The mere fact of his death is disturbing enough, as I am sure you would agree; but two or three other considerations have caused me disquiet. One—which I have mentioned to no one else—is the possibility that the poor man may have taken his own life. It fell to me to break the news to Mrs. Quentin. She was greatly distressed, as was only to be expected, but I was struck by the fact that her first words after I had stated the bare facts were: “I knew it; I knew it.” Perhaps mistakenly I understood her to be saying not merely that she had guessed that her husband was dead but that she knew he had intended to die. She may have suspected, as I did myself, that he saw the flood as creating a situation in which accidental death by drowning would seem more plausible. In later conversations Mrs. Quentin has said enough to confirm what I had myself seemed to observe: that during what proved to be the last weeks of his life her husband had been lost in dark meditation.

Since it appears that no one other than myself has mentioned the possibility of suicide, you might think that it would have been more humane on my part to keep my suspicions to myself—and indeed I have done so prior to the writing of this letter. I mention them to you, in strict confidence, for delicate reasons which I must leave to inference.

It was my task also to tell Mr. Gilbert what had happened. Having asked one or two questions, he was silent for some little time before observing, in a level voice: “It was a predictable conclusion.” After a further pause he added, as though in response to my own silence: “He was a man with no remaining interest in life.”

Our quiet parish has seen a strange summer, most obviously in respect of the weather—a parching drought followed by dramatic floods which caused no little damage to crops and cottages. There was also Yardley’s unfortunate injury—from which he has by now largely recovered, although he limps still. More recently I have heard rumors that Mr. Hurlock has been—I must choose my words—somewhat erratic in his behavior. It would appear that he is concerned about his financial situation, a bequest he had hoped for having failed to materialize. I understand that he is heavily in debt—to Mr. Gilbert among others.

The dead man was, of course, one of Mr. Gilbert’s pensioners. I hope that your godfather will offer to make some sort of provision for Mrs. Quentin, who is in great distress and apparently has few relatives to whom she could apply. Should he not do so, the unfortunate widow must look upon her future with foreboding.

As I feared, this letter has become unsatisfactorily oblique. No immediate reply is expected: I would not for one moment wish to put you in a compromising position. I do hope, however, that at some future date it may prove possible to discuss with you the serious issues I have obscurely touched upon.

I remain your obedient servant,

Henry Thorpe

The letter alarmed me. I was sorry that Quentin had declined so far into misery as—perhaps—to have deliberately ended his life, but I could not pretend to any great grief. To me the man had been no more than a dull enigma. But I recalled his seemingly purposeless visit to Cathcart Street, and wondered whether it had had any bearing on his subsequent fate.

Of more immediate concern was Thorpe’s motive for writing to me. He might have assumed that I had influence with my godfather and could intervene on Mrs. Quentin’s behalf; but in that case would he have written so warily? In expressing confidence that I would not give him away he seemed to be hoping to enlist me as a potential ally
against
my godfather. There was a hint that Mr. Gilbert’s growing contempt for Quentin might have contributed indirectly to his despair. Perhaps it was also suggested that he was in some sense persecuting Hurlock. If there was a general inference to be drawn, it seemed to be that my godfather had been behaving oddly and aggressively. As another of his pensioners Thorpe would have reason to feel anxious at any such manifestation.

I myself had reason, of course, to think that his fears might be justified. In his dealings with me my godfather had been broken free of a shell of caution apparently maintained throughout his previous life. A rich old man turned rogue could wreak a great deal of damage. Given the ways in which Mr. Gilbert was manipulating my own life, the immediate application of Thorpe’s warning was to myself.

My dear Godfather,

Tonight Horn, Latimer, and I were drinking in the Red Anchor, near Covent Garden. It was a rare privilege to have Latimer with us, since his closeness to Lord Ashton has raised him in society’s estimation and in his own. Horn was soon taunting him on this very theme.

“Have you perceived,” he cried, “how our former companion has changed? He dresses more expensively; he favors a new style of wig. Even his physiognomy has altered: his face has plumped up and become solemn. By the end of the year Mr. Latimer will be a portly politician, unrecognizable as the young rake we knew at Oxford.”

Latimer listened to this half-serious tirade with the placidity of a man among boys. To keep the game alive I took up the topic myself, remarking—truthfully—that he now even moves more sleekly, gliding where once he strode. To my surprise, Latimer assented to this description, taking it as a compliment:

“I move differently because I have studied to do so, and have heeded the words of my dancing master. I shall soon be mingling with statesmen and diplomats. In such company the novice must be graceful and unobtrusive. Diplomacy is itself a kind of dance: there is no place for hobbledehoys.”

Horn’s jeering response was interrupted by the arrival of two more of our old acquaintances, Nicholson and Moore. The conversation widened inconsequentially. As more wine was drunk, however, it narrowed again. Horn, a bottle ahead of the company, was both facetious and emphatic:

“Consider copulation,” he declaimed. “This activity, essential to the future of the human race, is a madman’s gamble. Pleasure walks hand in hand with disease. The fond insertion may bring a child into the world or take a man out of it. Chance rolls the dice. I tell you again: Chance rolls the dice!”

This declaration prompted loud agreement. By now it was growing dark, candles had been lit, and the air was thick with tobacco smoke. Drink had reddened our faces and confused our voices. Our end of the tavern resounded with crude phrases: “a great sow of a Cheapside whore,” “went to work like dog and bitch,” “their tails peppered with the pox,” “off to the quack with a poisoned pintle,” “pissing molten glass.” Amid the babble one corner of my mind was sober enough to conclude that here was the polar opposite of the pastoral mode. A few bottles of wine had set us playing with grossness as children play with mud.

Horn led us in a new direction. Half weeping from wine and self-pity, he stood on his chair to shout: “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Why do we do what disgusts us and endangers our lives? Why are we drawn to the fatal notch?”

“From need!” cried Nicholson, as a man making a great discovery. “That is the tragedy: we are born with the need!”

There was vociferous agreement. Someone proposed a toast to The Need, which we drank with great solemnity.

Now that Death had entered our discussion along with Chance, we were unable to get rid of either topic. Latimer, who had shed his dignity and become loquacious, commanded the table with the dismal tale of his cousin who had gone for a stroll one evening, simply on a whim, had happened to meet a former acquaintance, had taken disproportionate offense at an incidental remark, and absurdly challenged him to a duel which had cost him his life.

“Even in the duel,” insisted Latimer, “Chance was at work. Had the wound been an inch to left or right, it would not have proved fatal. As matters stood, he might have lived had the flow of blood been stanched, but his second turned coward and ran away. It took a dozen mischances to condemn Cousin Andrew to death: he went from one to another like a man descending a flight of stairs.”

Latimer’s story reminded Moore of another, yet more grotesque. He knew of a man challenged to a duel concerning an affair in which he was manifestly in the right. On the morning of the encounter he was weak and feverish—so much so that friends advised him to seek a postponement. As a man of strict principle, however, he insisted on proceeding—and died from a thrust to the heart. Only after his death did physicians see the marks on his body that showed him to have been suffering from smallpox. His victorious opponent contracted the disease from him, and within a few days fell victim to the invisible weapon.

This grim anecdote led us back to the issue of fornication, Nicholson suggesting the parallel possibility of a rapist poxed by his victim. Moore took the hypothesis a stage further, positing an unfortunate offspring of the union, born with the moral failings of his father and the sickness of his mother. Latimer, stumbling over his words, put the case that there was a flaw in the very scheme of things. The moral confusion we were contemplating could have been averted had the Almighty but decreed that illness should be solely a consequence of sinful actions or intentions.

“Why should we blame ourselves,” he cried, “for the failings of God?”

Our foolish conversation gradually subsided into incoherence. I have recorded this much of it because, in a confused way, it bears upon our own experiments. We are exploring the “The Need” and what prompts it. Are Strephon and Chloe merely dog and bitch in fancy dress? And what are we to conclude if they will not couple without the fancy dress?

If Sarah and I could encounter in the animal state, with no rationality to complicate the matter, I am sure we would conjoin most readily. In the human world, however, there are constraints of circumstance, habit, morality, loyalty, timidity, propriety to be circumvented or overcome. The intellectual challenge whets my animal appetite.

I remain, still a little tipsily, &c.

In fact I wrote this (pretty accurate) account of our conversation two days after it took place, and in a state of total sobriety. I held the quill a little loosely, however, to give my handwriting an unsteady cast. It was a relief to me to communicate in general terms and have the excuse of being not quite myself.

T
o pursue such advantage as I had gained from my visit to Sarah I hoped to procure one further conversation with her before her husband waddled home. For obvious reasons it was desirable that any such meeting should seem to come about by accident. My best hope was to catch her once again in St. James’s Park, where, I had reason to believe, she often took exercise. The weather was favorable to my plan, being fine but not oppressively warm. Nevertheless I went to the park on successive days without success. My third attempt was more fortunate: I caught sight of Sarah walking with her aunt and went to accost them. As before, Mrs. Kinsey’s garrulity made conversation easy:

“Why are you loitering here, Mr. Fenwick?” she cried. “We women have nothing better to do than to idle away our time: a young fellow of consequence should be consulting his lawyer or quizzing a statesman.”

“I am of no such consequence,” said I. “In any case I find myself more agreeably employed in talking with Mrs. Kinsey and Mrs. Ogden. But I admit, in my own defense, that I am on my way to see Lord Vincent.”

I was pleased with the falsehood, plucked from nowhere. It was easy and plausible, and offered Sarah an immediate opportunity for raillery:

“Then we are depriving the great man of your company and your advice. Is the business of state to be brought to a standstill by our chatter?”