The Skull and the Nightingale (38 page)

She had caught me off balance.

“By no means, Mrs. Deacon,” I blustered. “I meant only that I was free of the restraints that normally—” Finding myself about to add “keep my hands from you,” I abandoned the sentence and hastily played the second card, twisting my wig awry.

“I can but hope that this wound, which you quite properly inflicted, will seem to you an adequate punishment for my wrongdoing.” I attempted a smile. “I would never dare to reoffend.”

“I had no thought of punishment—only of self-defense. But it looks to be quite an ugly cut.”

“It was no more than I deserved.”

“And no less.”

I tried to appear suitably chastened, but no doubt simply looked a fool. I had run out of words.

“You are young, Mr. Fenwick, and you do not alarm me. But I will not be bullied in my own house. I am a peaceable person: it offends me when I am forced to act out of character. The matter is closed. But if there is another such episode, we must part company.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Deacon. I shall not offend again.”

This interview left me both humiliated and relieved. I had not felt such embarrassment since I was twelve years old. But at least I had managed to dispose of one of my self-inflicted problems. What should my next task be? Soon—very soon—I would have to write to my godfather describing the masquerade, but as yet I had no idea what I should say. Plainly I could not mention my assault on Mrs. Deacon without shriveling from bold seducer to seedy bully. As for Sarah and Kitty, it seemed that both the bird in the hand and the bird in the bush had flown away, never to return. What had I to communicate that he would possibly want to know? I sent for more tea, and sat brooding as I sipped. It occurred to me that in Crocker’s house a bevy of servants would now be employed in taking down screens and curtains, sweeping floors, and clearing away empty glasses and burned-out candles. The house would be its usual self by the end of the day. I should try to cleanse my own mind correspondingly.

I remembered the events of the previous evening as one remembers a dream. If I was to write a convincing letter to Mr. Gilbert, it was necessary that I should record what impressions I had before they faded to nothing. Already I felt in myself a powerful instinct to forget everything that had passed, and I could not permit myself that indulgence. Accordingly, “with honest anguish and an aching head,” I set down the account already recorded. Some few memories were revived as I wrote, but I was alarmed to realize how much of the evening, especially of its latter stages, now eluded me altogether.

By the time I had written out all that I could retrieve, it was the middle of the afternoon. The relief I felt at having completed the task was outweighed by the renewal of some of my miseries. I winced to think of my jaunty little Puck waiting in vain by the clock, and mourned at the memory of my three minutes of passion with Sarah before Crocker’s detestable monkey intervened. Was that to be the last and only time that I would kiss her?

Partly in order to escape from these disagreeable thoughts I summoned the energy to take a walk. It seemed to me that no more than half my brain was awake, and that exercise might begin to rouse the other half.

Needing quiet, I headed north, past the Foundling Hospital, through Lamb’s Conduit Fields, and on toward open country. I walked listlessly, but by degrees the exercise and the cleaner air refreshed me a little. It came to me now that my impressions of the previous evening had been influenced by the demeanor of Crocker himself. He had seemed to recoil from the very entertainment he had been at pains to provide. It was as though a glutton had sickened himself by procuring too lavish a banquet. But his response had been just: there had been something more gross in the conduct of the evening than might have been anticipated. It was not merely that many of the guests had strayed beyond the normal boundaries of propriety—so much was implicit in the very nature of the occasion. What was less to have been expected was their failure to improvise any new boundaries of their own. In particular my thoughts reverted to Latimer. If this promising young politician had not crowned his evening by plowing a sixty-year-old woman disguised as a nun, it could only have been through physical incapacity. Such thoughts made me the more concerned about the parts of the evening I could not recollect. Might I myself have been seen in a compromising situation—perhaps by Jane Page, perhaps even by Ogden?

Whether I had or not, Kitty was now surely lost beyond recall. Even supposing her to be persuadable following this latest humiliation, I did not think I had it in me to work up a fresh set of prevarications and promises; nor would it be fair to do so. Sarah was a different case: quite apart from my feelings toward her, it was essential to my interests to maintain my pursuit of her if I could contrive an appropriate means. But that possibility now seemed remote.

I had found my way well out of town on a rising slope of pastureland. Beginning to be hungry, I stopped at a roadside inn for a chop and a pint of ale. I sat outside alone, in country silence, looking at the smoke-wreathed towers of London a mile or two ahead. My mind seemed the clearer for the surrounding space. I drank some ale, and for the first time that day enjoyed a glimpse of hope concerning Sarah. My original thought, still a persuasive one, had been that now she was fully aware of my likely intentions, she would cut off all communication with me and remain quite out of reach: even if our paths crossed in the park, I could expect to elicit no more than distant courtesies. Now it came to me that I could perhaps turn that conclusion on its head. If a time should come when I
could
once more converse with Sarah alone, then the fact that we had gone so far meant that she would know we were linked by mutual temptation: any concession she then made must therefore be a prelude to the
last
concession. How likely it was that I would ever be in that situation, or how soon it might come about, were less encouraging considerations.

Meanwhile I had a letter to write to Mr. Gilbert. I put it to myself that I might tell him, in a humorously rueful spirit, more or less what had passed between Sarah and myself. Since he wished to taste, vicariously, the pleasure of a young rake, might he not find an interest in his tribulations? The possibility did not survive more than two minutes’ consideration. However I told the story, its outcome could not but appear what it was: a defeat—quite probably a final defeat. Should I lie? Should I invent?

As I pondered these questions I was shaken by a sudden surge of fury. It was my godfather who had plunged me into these miseries, yet the old schemer could sit back serenely and wait for me to translate my discomfiture into entertainment.

I chewed at my chop without tasting it, my mind as empty as the fields around me. As I did so, my attention was caught by a movement nearby. Two butterflies fluttered toward me in haphazard flight. Perhaps intrigued by the odor of the chop, they hovered nearby, circling each other as though in a dance. Mr. Yardley would have known their species and their gender: I could see only that they were brownish in color. It struck me that they must be dancing their way toward whatever miniature form of copulation butterflies might be supposed to enjoy. Although I watched them with no great interest, the brief distraction must have done my brain a service, for as they departed I realized what sort of letter I should attempt to write to Mr. Gilbert. I finished the ale and fell into a doze, sprawled across the table.

It was a full half hour before I woke, with my headache renewed, and set out sleepily for London. Before reaching Cathcart Street, I stopped at a bookshop to purchase
Clarissa
—all eight volumes of it, together with a bag to carry them in. The proprietor was a quiet-spoken old fellow with faded eyes. A touch of drollery in his expression led me to talk to him as he took my money.

“Have you read the work yourself ?”

“I have, sir.”

“And did you find it morally improving?”

“I need no such improvement, sir. Temptation rarely comes my way. I am safe among my books, like a tortoise in his shell.”

“Do you never pine for the world outside it?”

“Oh, no, sir—I hear that it can be dangerous. But you might know that better than I.”

“I will read Mr. Richardson,” said I, “and strive to be good.”

Bearing a million words of morality, I walked on to my lodgings. Once in my parlor I rolled up the damp and disgusting garment I had worn the previous evening and gave it to the maid, with its accoutrements, to be thrown away. I unpacked
Clarissa
but had no appetite for reading. Putting the volumes aside, I went to bed.

T
he following morning I was likewise devoid of inspiration or energy—but not of will. I settled myself to my labors as staunchly as any carpenter or bricklayer—those labors in my case consisting of the preparation and composition of a letter to my godfather. It occurred to me that my plight was not unlike poor Quentin’s: we had equally, if to different ends, been made slaves to the quill. As a preliminary I grazed here and there in the endless pastures of my newly purchased
Clarissa
.

It came as a relief to me to be interrupted by a visit from Cullen.

“I allowed you a full day in which to recover,” said he, dropping into a chair and splaying his long legs. “Tell me the story of the masquerade. Whom did you see? Whom did you swive? And how came you by that scar I see peeping from beneath your wig?”

I gave him a loose and partial account of the evening, pleading my increasing tipsiness and uncertainty.

Matt expressed surprise: “You are a man of few virtues, Dick, but one of them has always been a hard head for liquor. You must surely have been drinking like a camel.”

“I enjoyed my share, as may be imagined, but as for quantity nothing remarkable. The
quality
was perhaps unusual. Crocker hinted that the punch was brewed stronger as the evening wore on.”

“Then he might have had a bacchanal on his premises by the end of the night?”

“And so perhaps he did. To say the truth I’ve given little thought to what may have taken place after I left. But I fancy that the antics of the monkey sobered many.”

“Including Mrs. Ogden, by your own account. Good God, Dick, you fell from the masthead. Do you live to fight another day?”

“Indeed I do.”

“It seems that you injured your head in the fall.”

“No: that wound came from a later skirmish.”

Reluctantly I told him of my ill-advised attempt on Mrs. Deacon. Matt laughed so hard that he all but toppled from his chair. I had to make him stifle his guffaws lest my landlady should hear them from below and guess what was passing.

“You may well laugh,” I said when he was sober again. “But the whole venereal enterprise is an absurdity. How do you make shift yourself ?”

Matt’s face contracted into a rare frown and then relaxed again into a grin.

“If the truth must be told—which God forbid—my present remedy for the itch is a humble one: an informal contract with a maidservant. I would have nothing to report to an inquisitive godfather but ‘Thursday evening: we did it again.’ ”

“Then you should sympathize with me, who must have a story to tell and a commentary to write, whether I have spilled or no.”

“You’re well paid for your pains, Dick: you’ll get no pity from me. But what do you plan to tell the old Spectator at this point?”

“Nothing about Mrs. Deacon—you may be sure of that. As for the rest, I have a double strategy. Sarah’s parting words will be rendered milder, so that it will still seem possible that I can advance my cause. And you will have seen that I have a great column of
Clarissa
here. I plan to divert the old weasel into the intricacies of deception and pursuit, and away from the crude pleasures of insertion.”

“But is not insertion his favorite theme?”

“I hope the case is not so simple. He is eager to put an eye to the bedroom keyhole, but he affects to despise what he sees. I must muse with him over the contradiction. And in the time thus gained I will try to resume the siege of Mrs. Ogden.”

W
hen Matt had gone I set about composing my letter. The attempt to describe my intentions had served to clarify them: soon I was writing quite briskly. I made my account of the masquerade fitful and dreamlike, with the emphasis almost wholly upon my pursuit of Sarah and Kitty Brindley. Generally speaking I was faithful to the facts up to, and including, the entry of Trinculo. It seemed necessary, however, to alter the terms of Sarah’s eventual rebuff. After consideration I decided that she had said: “Mr. Fenwick—you threw me into confusion. I have gone too far—I have gone too far.”

Having finished the narrative, I attempted a modulation into a breezier vein:

In short, at half-past eleven your godson was very hopefully situated, with Miss Brindley reserved for his immediate pleasure and Mrs. Ogden having heartily compromised herself. Then that confounded monkey was somehow set loose, and these gains were thrown away. But I must blame myself. If I had been less frantically concerned to find Mrs. Ogden once more, I would have offered her no opportunity for second thoughts and would have enjoyed a night of pleasure with Kitty.

Kitty, I fear, is now lost to me—but perhaps her attractions were beginning to grow thin. Concerning Sarah, I remain hopeful. Having thrown her into confusion once, I may hope to do so again; and if on this occasion she went “too far,” there must be a chance that she can be persuaded to go further. It may even be the case that I can resume my attempts during her husband’s forthcoming absence.

Taking a hint from your observations, I have been looking again at the letters of Mr. Lovelace. I suspect there is a limitation in his general strategy. He sees his campaign solely as a series of advances or “encroachments”—a term used repeatedly by both the lady and himself. In short, he is the active party, while Clarissa is passive, a fortress under siege. My own hypothesis is that in such cases the woman feels herself to be equally an active agent. If her resistance can be represented to her as aggression, she may, in contrition, instinctively falter. I hope Mrs. Ogden is now regretting her cruel change of mind and may therefore be unwittingly ready to take the half-step back that will allow me to advance once again.