Under the Wide and Starry Sky (15 page)

“I need money, Burly,” Louis said.

“We all need money,” Henley replied.

The tavern was almost empty. They had been coming to the pub in Shepherd's Bush every afternoon since Louis returned to London from the Cévennes and settled in at the Savile Club. It was afternoon, and the bright gray October light outside made no inroad into the tavern's interior. In the dim, smoky room, the pub owner was polishing his bar to a high shine; across the room, the only other customer, an elderly chap, was talking to himself.

“It will take three hundred fifty pounds if I am to breathe freely,” Louis said.

“Have you asked your father?”

“Nae. I'm as like to get a fart of a dead man as money from my father for a trip to California.”

“Then Deacon Brodie it is!” Henley boomed. “How many times must I say it to you, my lad?” he asked, pounding the establishment's much abused table. “Your best idea is sitting at the bottom of a drawer. You could be rich right now.”

Louis looked across at Henley's great pale face, bent and cackling into the pint as the man imagined the brilliant reviews they would garner. Though the two of them were burning the midnight oil to put out the magazine, it was the play Henley talked most of every day.

“You're going back to your parents' for the holiday,” Henley said. “Pull the damned thing out and look at it. Or don't look at it. Just start over with me. I tell you, the idea is meant to be a play, and we are meant to collaborate on it. It will be a roaring success, and you shall have your three hundred fifty pounds. And much, much more.”

“Ah, but the buggers have to talk to each other,” Louis lamented. “A play is all dialogue and I'm not good at it yet. Not in my stories, anyway.”

“Go to some of your old haunts in the Old Town and take your pencil. You'll get your thug talk there. Or have you lost your stomach for slumming?”

Louis recoiled. Henley knew how to plant little blasting caps. He was overly fond of reminding Louis of his affluent upbringing.

“You think it's that simple, do you?”

“You write the first draft, and I will make it sing,” Henley said. “If you want, I'll make it rhyme.”

Louis stroked his mustache absently. It was rich territory, Deacon Brodie's double life. Ever since he was a boy, Louis had heard the legend of the cabinetmaker who was the deacon of his Edinburgh trade union by day and a burglar after dark. Brodie loomed large in Louis's childish imagination. He'd thought of him nearly every night, in fact; Thomas Stevenson, an avid antique collector, had bought an old wardrobe handmade by the scoundrel and placed it in Louis' bedroom.

At fifteen, Louis had looked into Brodie's life and learned he had a gambling problem; the stealing began as a way to pay off debts. His nightlife, in time, included more than robbery. The deacon had two mistresses who knew nothing of each other, as well as many offspring, in addition to his legal family.

“It's a hell of an ending,” Henley mused. “Foxy old Brodie hanging in gallows that he himself carpentered—now, that's a poetic touch.”

“When he didn't get caught, the burglar in him grew bolder,” Louis said. “He felt more alive when he was stealing, don't you think? I want him to be an everyman who slowly slides over to the other side.”

“Don't wait until the holiday,” Henley said excitedly. “You're here. Start it now.” To toast the idea, he ordered another round, which Louis paid for.

He didn't know if Henley was right about plays being lucrative, and he doubted the poet would make a great playwright. But he knew his friend needed money as badly as he did. Visiting Henley and his new wife in their tiny flat, Louis could see how meager their circumstances were. They had put what little he had into
London
, and it was faltering. Yet he was happier than Louis had ever seen him, with his adoring bride in his life.

“All right. I can devote my mornings to it over at the club.”

Henley beamed. “Wait until I tell Anna.”

“Do you know what I think, Burly?” Louis said. “I think a special tax should be levied on all you grooms who grin so gloatingly in front of less fortunate lads. Baxter is just as bad.”

Henley let out one of his shaking laughs. “You've changed your tune. What was it you used to call marriage? A friendship recognized by the police?”

“Ah, hell. I envy you.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Yes and no. Fanny writes and says nothing. I can't fathom what is happening over there.” Louis slumped in his chair. He remembered how he had raced with his heart in his throat to Alais to collect his mail after selling Modestine. It had been a surprisingly bittersweet parting; he had grown fond of the little donkey. Only one letter was waiting, in which Fanny talked about the weather in Oakland and seeing her old friends. It might have been written by a new acquaintance.

“This woman is different from you,” Henley said.

“Fanny?”

Henley pursed his lips. “She is from a different world. America is an entirely different beast. Far more … primitive than Scotland.”

“I love her! And I can't bear all this waiting. I want to talk to her in person. If I could get to California, we would resolve it. If I were there, she'd have the strength to move the divorce along. I'm a lawyer, for God's sake, I could advise her. “ He rubbed his temples with both hands. “I want, I want, I want … But there's no encouragement from her. Some days I think I shall go mad from it.”

By December 20, Louis had handed over his third draft of the play to Henley and headed for Edinburgh, where he found Thomas in a rather expansive mood. He was obviously pleased by his trip to Paris in the fall, pleased to have been taken into Louis's confidence about the new love complication in his life. And it had all worked out as he'd had hoped: The father had been able to support the son in a moment of personal crisis, and the troublesome woman had eventually gone away. Two wins for the father. A victory for the mother, too, who was ecstatic to have Louis home after a six-month absence. She set about making the Christmas holiday festive, arranging gatherings at which a number of dull young women—unmarried daughters of friends—appeared serially in the parlor.

On Christmas Eve, the patriarch's spirits lifted higher, and Louis was touched to see how glad his father was to be on decent terms with him again. After he'd downed a pint, the old man's face turned serious as he spoke about love and loss.

“I've never faulted a woman for divorce. Never held a bad opinion of a divorced woman. Men who abandon the home, on the other hand, should be shot.” Thomas Stevenson stood with one elbow propped on the fireplace mantel of his study, entirely in his element. “But a woman doesn't divorce lightly. No, no. I would not hold that against your lady friend.” He walked over to where Louis sat and patted his back. “It's for the best, son, the way things have worked out, I think you will see that. Someone will come along who will light up your heart, and you will know, the way I did with your mother.”

Next to his bedroom, in a little study his parents had created for him, Louis holed up to work on a new story. He found himself, instead, looking back on what he had already written.

New Year's Day, 1879,
he wrote in his journal.
At least I have worked. I have no shame about that. What else I have to show for the past year is questionable.

Louis laid out periodicals on his desk, everything he had published so far, as if he were counting money. His mother had kept a copy of every journal, and he pulled out the issues of
Cornhill
and
McMillan's
. He saw progress in his work. He saw some sentences he liked in the essays he'd written about Victor Hugo's romances and about Edinburgh, among others. He liked very much his first fictional story about François Villon.

And then there was the book,
Inland Voyage
, in all its imperfect glory. But it was a book, by God, a true book. He took a copy of it from his bookshelf and placed it in the middle of the desk. He couldn't help running his hand over its cover with childish pleasure. Soon he could add
Travels with a Donkey
to the pile. There were a few good parts in it that he felt he would be willing to claim twenty years from now.

He leaned back and studied the stacks of magazines. What did they really amount to? An honorable start. It wasn't money, though. The money he'd earned for the whole pile amounted to almost nothing. His heart sank when he recalled how he'd promised Fanny that he would support her. Had she seen how impossible that task would be and simply given up?

He had been wanting to write a full-length novel, but the idea seemed laughable. How would he support even himself through such a long process?
I'm twenty-eight. Men build bridges by that age. Find cures for diseases. Build lighthouses.
Suddenly, the pile of periodicals and the lone book looked small indeed.

1879

In May, Louis arranged to meet Bob in London, knowing it was his cousin's understanding he wanted most. When Bob met him at King's Cross Station. Bob was ebullient, full of talk about the Paris and London art crowds. In a pub adjacent to the train station, he announced his real news: One of his paintings had been accepted for exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Louis raised his glass. “To the overdue recognition of your genius.”

Bob toasted happily and continued gabbing about the art world. After a while, he took in a satisfied breath. “And you?”

“I want to go to California.”

Bob looked up at the ceiling.

“I'm convinced if I could get over there, I could—”

“It's an insane idea.”

“So you're in their camp.”

“Whose camp?” Bob asked.

“You know who I'm talking about. Henley and Colvin. They think Fanny is giving me the dodge. Henley actually called her ‘that woman' the other day.”

Bob spoke carefully while recalling her past kindnesses. “She nursed me when the black dog was on my back.” He fingered a button on his vest, remembering that deep well of depression before changing the subject. “Do you have any word of Belle?”

“I've had three letters from Fanny. They might as well have been from a government office. “

“I was in love with Belle,” Bob said.

“I know.”

“She was mad for O'Meara, though. He's probably been on a bender since she left.”

They ordered another round. Bob lit a cigarette, leaned back, and blew smoke toward the ceiling in the worldly way that women found so fetching.

“Henley said you have a girl in Paris. A model?”

Bob nodded soberly. “Most sensual creature I've ever known.”

Louis pictured Bob romping in bed with his luscious nymph. He looked away from his cousin at the dark room that filled and emptied quickly as people dashed for trains. At the next table was a man in no hurry, a fellow intent on charming his lady companion, who was rather ordinary compared to him. The man sported dashing facial hair: a wiry brown beard that he had divided down the middle of his chin and trained into two upward-swooping points, and a mustache, equally optimistic. Louis watched the fellow maneuver the woman's pale hand through the whiskery shoals toward his lips. He felt his repulsion turn to pity for the poor fellow.
Lord God,
he thought,
what fools we men are made by our cocks.

“Why can't a man have both?” Bob was saying heatedly. “With marriageable ones, you sign away your life before you know what you've got. Could be cold as a mackerel.” He sighed. “Belle could have been both.”

“Man, I am sick, sick, sick of this past year,” Louis said through gritted teeth. “I'm sick from waiting. I look at Gosse and Baxter and Henley, and I am saturated with envy. I'm jealous that they have wives and houses and happy little domestic lives. I even envy their damn pets.”

“Ah, Lou, what happened to my ribald cousin?”

“He became a saphead. A weepist.”

Louis stared thoughtfully at Bob. There was a time in their lives when Bob would have backed him no matter how preposterous the plan. Now he seemed unsympathetic, almost uninterested in Louis's dilemma.

“I read
Deacon Brodie,
” Bob said.

“Yes?”

“I can't lie to you. It needs work.”

“How polite you've become. Colvin says it's pure rubbish.”

That night Louis went out to walk and smoke. In the Haymarket area, he saw a rag-and-bone man sorting through a pile of garbage. Louis thought of a French phrase he loved—
pêcheur de lune.
Moonlight fisherman. This old man would sell on the street tomorrow what discards he found in garbage heaps tonight. When he walked away from the pile, Louis pulled out what the
pêcheur
had left behind: filthy trousers; a jacket with sleeves that hung by threads; two large cracked-leather shoes, half torn from their soles. He gathered up the smelly things, and the next night, he went out into London wearing the rags and the oversize shoes. He lurked in doorways, shuffled up and down the street, snarled at passersby, and generally attempted to look suspicious. When he passed near a police officer, he felt his pulse quicken. Surely he would be arrested as a vagrant! But the officer merely called out, “Good evening, sir.” Louis flip-flopped in the absurd shoes back to the Savile Club, where he was staying. “What on earth now, Stevenson?” a dandy at the club remarked, looking him up and down with a withering glance. The comment was the only satisfaction Louis felt all night.

He turned over the events of the evening as he fell asleep. Did Deacon Brodie get away with his crimes for so long because he occupied a higher social rung than the average thief? Most likely, Louis's little experiment simply proved what he suspected: that a man was marked from birth—by appearance or mannerism or accent or vocabulary—in such a way that he was trapped in that state like an insect in amber. There were plenty of exceptions. But human beings had an uncanny knack for labeling their fellow specimens. And yet emigrants were pouring out of London and Edinburgh and Dublin, out of the depressed farmlands onto steamers bound for America, bent upon defying their classifications and finding new lives.

Judging from her letter, Fanny had gone back and gotten lost in her
old
life. She vacillated from letter to letter. He had seen the effect of indecision on her; it nearly drove her mad. He guessed that she was seeing her whole life in front of her, dangling on the thread of this decision. She had made a bad choice in Sam Osbourne. Might she make a mistake again? Meanwhile, he was the decision at the end of the string, and he was feeling badly swung about.

Then a telegram came from California.
Louis. I'm lost and sick. Need you.

Louis stared at the stark words. They were a cry from her heart. They were a mandate.

“I can't wait anymore,” he said to Baxter the next day.

“Have you told your parents you plan to go?”

“Lord, no,” Louis said. “My parents are planning a holiday at a spa in Cumberland. Low in your ear, man, but when they leave, I'm going over.”

He looked for affirmation in Baxter's sober, beefy face. It was impossible to tell from his expression what his old ally was thinking. Charles Baxter had always hidden his essential self behind a serious countenance, yet he had the most wonderful sense of humor when he let it out. In their law student days, he was an infidel and adventurer, the sort of fellow who would have dressed in rags and happily passed as a pauper right along with Louis for the sheer fun of it. It was at Edinburgh University that Louis recognized in him a fit successor to his cousin Bob—a partner in insolence and play. Looking at him now, Louis was transported back to the days when they would walk out of lecture halls in a show of contempt for the dusty old professors who stood at the front. Sprung from class, they'd entertained themselves with practical jokes. Baxter was “Thomson” in those days, and Louis was “Johnstone”—two old Scottish coots they invented as new identities for themselves. Conversing in preposterous dialect, they went out on the streets, bought salves and health devices from quacks, wrapped them up, then mailed them to prominent citizens in Edinburgh. A package might contain a bottle of anti-fat syrup or a remedy for impotence, flatulence, or baldness, depending upon the public figure in question; perhaps a set of old artificial teeth, a cheap Indian necklace guaranteed to ward off thunderbolts, or any number of oddities found in the junk shops of the Old Town. Afternoons were spent at Rutherford's pub, where Baxter's phlegmatic mask would crack into lines of hilarity over the day's hijinks. When he became a solicitor and joined his father's law firm, Baxter seemed almost apologetic about it, as if he were a failed bon vivant, as if he were letting down his best friend. To anyone who hadn't known him then, Baxter appeared these days to be the most ordinary of ordinary fellows.

“Thomson,” Louis said now, putting a slip of paper into his friend's big paw, “here is the one contact in America. This is the address of someone who knows Fanny. Don't tell even the queen if she asks.”

Baxter looked uneasy. “Everyone is worried about you, Lou. Henley thinks … “

“What does Henley think?”

Baxter sputtered.

“Tell me what Henley thinks, Charles.”

“Henley fears … “

“Say it out. What does he fear?”

“That you are going to face a life of alarms and intrigues and perhaps untruths, and it's no good for your health.” Having unburdened himself, Baxter let out a sigh. “To Henley, the very notion of California is blasphemous.”

“And so, by association, Fanny is blasphemous.”

“He is a pigheaded man who is wed to his prejudices. And he loves you as I do, Lou.”

Louis shrugged. “I'm going. And I will know soon enough: Either Fanny wants

to spend her life with me, or it is over. It's as simple as that.”

He would make the trip in steerage. It would be the least expensive way to go, but beyond that, he could write about what he saw and earn some money. He was enticed by the prospect of a book about the
idea
of America, where emigrants could meld with others in the great classless pot called the United States. Did it work, really? More to the point, could he pass as a workingman in steerage? He would see soon enough.

Without Fanny, a piece of himself was missing. He could wait no longer. Once, in a

bar, full of drink and bravado, he had told someone—maybe it was Colvin—that no man was of any use until he had dared everything. Now, he was about to do just that. Louis closed his eyes and thought a prayer.
God, if You exist, keep me brave and single-minded.