The Skull and the Nightingale (7 page)

She had always been an affable lady. Our exchanges were warm but brief, speedily resolving into the very situation for which I had scarcely dared to hope. Mrs. Kinsey informed me that she was unexpectedly called away, but was sure that I would be pleased to meet her niece once more. After bows and courtesies the lady departed, and Sarah came in.

I felt an instant sense of shock. Here was the Sarah I had known, but changed in every way for the better. She was more expensively and elegantly dressed, she moved more gracefully. What seemed to be a slight thinning of the cheeks and an enhanced brightness of the eyes elevated her face from its former prettiness into positive beauty. Above all there was a confidence in her manner that lent her a striking animation. In the past she had been subject to an instinctive diffidence, although capable of sudden directness and rebellious wit. Now these underlying traits were in the ascendancy. As we exchanged greetings and sat down she looked me in the eye and seemed to be suppressing a smile.

I had some airy opening remarks prepared: “ . . . regretted loss of contact . . . my own fault . . . warm memories . . . would hope to renew . . .”

Her reply was concise: “I am pleased to see you again, Mr. Fenwick. I was here yesterday when you called, but the circumstances were a little awkward. So I arranged to visit again this morning when I knew you would be here.”

“To visit?”

“Why, yes. This is my aunt’s house.”

“Then you—?”

“I live in Margaret Street. I am married, Mr. Fenwick.”

“Married?” I was trapped in the interrogative mode.

“I was married last September to Mr. Walter Ogden.”

She was easy and terse, in full command. It was necessary to rally a little:

“I have known you well enough to forgo formalities. How did this come about?”

“I met Mr. Ogden last July, through the merest chance.”

I tried, with indifferent success, to sound quizzical rather than sour: “A swift courtship. Mr. Ogden must be a man of considerable charm.”

“Determination was the decisive quality. Mr. Ogden is a man of strong will.”

“Would I like him?”

“I hardly think so. Two men could hardly be more different.”

“In what respect?”

“In most respects. He is a particularly serious man.”

“A solemn one?” I ventured.

She considered the suggestion serenely, and then smiled.

“Perhaps a little.”

“Are you laughing at him?”

“I do laugh at him sometimes—but only behind his back. I do not care to vex him.”

“You make him sound formidable.”

“And so he is.” She paused, before adding lightly: “He deals in diamonds. For that reason he was untroubled by my own lack of means.”

“Indeed.” I sought a new direction: “Did you ever mention me to him?”

“I mentioned that I had been visited at one time by a genteel young man of uncertain prospects.”

“Did that disclosure disturb him?”

“Not the least in the world.”

Disappointed and obscurely resentful in several ways at once, I could find nothing further to say. It was left to Sarah to resume the conversation:

“Since we are being so unfashionably plain with each other, may I ask about your own situation. I take it that your grand tour is at an end?”

“It is. I returned last month. Thanks to the generosity of my godfather, I am now a licensed man about town—at least for a year or two.”

“Then it would seem that we are both provided for.”

Was there a hint of bitterness in her voice—the faintest of hints?

It was my turn to look her in the eyes. “This has become a particularly candid conversation.”

She held my gaze. “Each of us now knows how the other is placed.”

“You have been able to marry into prosperity. Perhaps it was as well that our correspondence had lapsed.”

“It must be in some such way that most friendships fade.”

I stood up. “I must congratulate you on your good fortune—and leave you.”

She rose in her turn, with a slight flush, and spoke in an altered voice: “I should not like us to part in this vein.”

“In what vein, Mrs. Ogden?”

“Cold, bright, false. I would not wish to seem unfeeling. We have been close, you and I . . .” Her voice quickened: “But we were both left ill provided for, and so have had to make our way in the world as best we can.”

On the way home, and indeed for several days following, I found myself discomposed. Who could have foreseen that Sarah would already have a husband, and a rich one, and that marriage would have given her such assurance. My feelings were oddly diverse. It had been disconcerting to be thrown onto the defense by a woman I had once patronized. I was stung by the instant dissolution of what had become a gratifying fantasy compounding tender feeling and ruthless seduction. And I felt that I had undervalued this handsome, cool young lady. Mr. Ogden had shown himself a shrewd judge, and captured a wife who would do him credit, even if, as I was determined must be the case, she had married him merely to secure her future. Common sense told me that Sarah must be happier as the wife of a wealthy man than as the lover of an adventurer with uncertain prospects, but I was unwilling to be persuaded. The best bargain I could make with myself was to see this lost chance as a source of half-pleasing melancholy. I made shift with this notion since I had much else to occupy me, but it was clouded with resentment and unease: I had lost a point of moral anchorage.

S
ince April showers were frequent, I was often indoors, where I did a good deal of writing. In addition to my laborious drafting of letters, I was keeping a new journal as a quarry of possible epistolary material. Sometimes I would sing, and sometimes write facetious verses—a diversion I had enjoyed during my travels. I remained on friendly but formal terms with my landlady. Only gradually had I learned that her husband had been Mr. Gilbert’s tailor, and had died of a fever when she was expecting their first child, her daughter, Charlotte. Through the agency of Mr. Ward, my godfather had intervened on her behalf, securing the house in which she lived on condition that he could make use of it from time to time.

I had regular conversations with her, and found her agreeable company. If I asked a blunt question she would give a direct reply. When I inquired, perhaps impertinently: “What are your pleasures, Mrs. Deacon—what do you live for?” she thought for a moment before saying: “Charlotte, reading, thinking, friends, coffee, and conversation.” She had a quietly assured manner and would sometimes quiz me in her turn: “If circumstances had been different, Mr. Fenwick, what profession would have suited you?” “Are you of my opinion, that men can be as vain as women?” “Could you make shift on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe?”

I had scarcely noticed Charlotte during my previous stay in the house; she was now some twelve years of age, a shy girl with dark hair. I cannot recall how it came about, but one wet afternoon I played chess with her. Knowing myself to be a moderately skillful performer, and thinking to be indulgent, I was so negligent that she defeated me with ease. By way of compliment to her prowess I was more serious in a return match, only to be a second time defeated. We had yet one more game. By now on my mettle, I tried my hardest, but was beaten yet a third time. Charlotte showed no exultation at these triumphs, but thanked me for playing with her, and retired. Despite the humiliation I was glad to have stumbled upon this unexpected show of talent: it had always pleased me to find people unpredictable. Mrs. Deacon later told me that, although an indifferent player herself, she had taught Charlotte the game and had been astonished by her aptitude for it.

It occurred to me that I could simply spend more time in Cathcart Street, inventing stories for my godfather—spinning a false life from my own brain—rather than walking the streets to grub out scraps of entertainment for him. But physical restlessness denied me that possibility. Although my rooms were well enough, the ceilings were low, causing me to feel large and caged. It was a relief to go out.

My nether limbs were well exercised by these prowlings. When indoors, I would at intervals strengthen my arms by lifting my desk or pulling myself up to a beam. The room must so often have been shaken by these exertions that I wondered whether Mrs. Deacon might not feel some apprehension—perhaps even pleasurable apprehension—at being reminded of the presence of a vigorous male beast in her respectable house. She was still a handsome woman, and had manifestly lain with at least one man.

O
ne evening, on impulse, I again went to dine at Keeble’s steak house. The talking fraternity being absent on this occasion, I was glad to sit at an empty table and think in peace. It was with slight irritation, therefore, that I became aware of another solitary fellow taking a seat opposite my own. To postpone conversation I kept my eyes on my plate. When I at last looked up, it was to find myself confronted by the grinning face of Matt Cullen.

My immediate reaction was to burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, in which Matt joined me. Our fellow diners looked round, puzzled and smiling, at the spectacle of two young gentlemen unaccountably helpless with mirth. I was delighted to encounter Matt once more, and to find him just as I remembered: long-limbed, an awkward mover, with an expression of sleepy good nature, always on the brink of a smile.

“I am the more surprised to see you,” said I, “because Latimer told me that you had retreated to the country to undergo marriage.”

“There was that possibility.” He drew a slow sigh. “Both families favored the union. But there was a fatal flaw in the scheme.”

“That being?”

“That being the absence of any spark of animal inclination in either of the parties principally concerned. Each could see the lack of desire so heartily reciprocated that we retreated by mutual consent, leaving our families incensed.”

“Then what fresh hope has brought you back to town?”

“A forlorn one. You see in Cullen a farcical parody of our old companion Ralph Latimer. I seek the patronage of the Duke of Dorset.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that I am a distant cousin and that I have played cricket with his son.”

The absurdity of it set us laughing again.

“But what of your own case?” asked Matt as we resumed eating. “What have you been doing?”

“I wrote to you from abroad.”

“Two letters only, concerned with the exertions of a single bodily member. And here you are in London, apparently embarking on a new life.”

“So my godfather has decreed.”

“You may recollect that I know the gentleman’s name, having been brought up within forty miles of his estate. Mr. Gilbert, is it not?”

“It is.”

Suddenly feeling easy and reckless, I cast aside my scruples.

“You shall hear my story,” said I, “and you will be only the second person to do so.”

I broached it along with a second bottle of wine. Matt leaned forward to listen, his face as nearly serious as I had ever seen it. I traversed the whole ground, from my first meeting with Mr. Gilbert, following the death of my mother, through the years when I had divided my time between boarding school and my aunt’s house in York; thence to Oxford, my grand tour, and the arrangement now agreed. When I had finished Matt shook his head.

“A singular history,” he said. “Mr. Gilbert has been generous, yet you seem to describe a benefactor devoid of warmth.”

“That is how he strikes me. He is studiously guarded in all he does. He sips at life.”

“Has he no vices to make him human?”

“None that I have observed. His daily life is as smooth as an egg. It affords the Evil One no handhold.”

“Has he always been so cool? Did he never think of marriage?”

“Not that I have heard. But I know little of his past.”

“He must care for you to have done as much as he has.”

“I would like to think so. But his kindness may derive solely from his friendship with my parents. I cannot tell. This is my problem, Matt: I must divert a man whose disposition I do not understand. I am locked into a strange game.”

Cullen washed down these observations with a gulp of wine, and pondered them for a moment or two, his features pursed up around his half smile.

“Might not this be a game with no loser? Mr. Gilbert is pleased to give money to a promising young gentleman, and the young gentleman is pleased to receive it.”

“I hope it may prove so simple. My godfather fancied that we might be led into ‘dark territory.’ That was his phrase. Should I feel concerned?”

Matt smirked.

“How gladly, Dick, I would take the same risks for the same money.”

My dear Richard,

I have read with interest the experiences you have described and your observations thereon. You have plainly been to no small trouble to record a variety of activities that might entertain me. I was surprised, however, to notice that you have apparently encountered no members of the opposite sex since your return to London.

Your general strategy I am happy to endorse. Indeed I will go further. I suspect that your account of polite society is likely to hold few surprises for me. To speak in general, I would rather hear more of Mr. Crocker, who would appear to be something of an original, than of Lord Vincent and his coterie. It has become a matter of regret to me that, through some pressure of chance or temperament, my own youthful years in the capital were passed largely at that more respectable, and less entertaining, social level. For that reason I will tend to have a greater interest in the excesses, the follies, and even the shady underside of the town. Without leaving my comfortable country estate, I look forward to being escorted to regions of experience that I could never have visited on my own. I hope that I will soon be hearing from you again.

I remain, &c.

I studied this letter with minute attention. Surely it was not merely confirming, but modifying, what amounted to my contract of employment? My respectable godfather wanted spicier tales than I had so far offered him. And was there not a hint that my role should be that of participant rather than mere observer?