The Great Unknown

by Peg Kingman

Miss Wilson said, “Now then, that’s better, isn’t it? Heaven be praised! Our Almighty, All-Merciful Father leads our every step! Forsees and prepares! Provides! Smooths our path before us! If only we will submit our will to His! Wonderful are His ways! Wonderful His wisdom and goodness! His mercy! And to think that our mother remembered about that coral, all these years! I do recall my puzzlement when it came; Mr Astley fancied Polly still here with us, no doubt, not married and away—but why a present for a bairn? . . . now, I understand. I do think I might have been told sooner. And to think that you, ma’am, should have been led unto us, here, now—and your bairn wanting a coral!”

  “Well, and what led you here, to us?” asked Mrs Russell. “After all these years?”

  “Chance only,” said Constantia, “for I am on my way northward to rejoin my husband; and it was upon the merest impulse, the whim of a moment, that I interrupted my journey here.”

  “Chance! Whim! Never indeed! Not at all!” cried Miss Wilson. “It is the Divine Will! His design! His Almighty hand directs us all, in every step along our path, in this, our pilgrim’s progress, our earthly journey.”

  “Yet this journey of mine, so happily interrupted here,” said Constantia, “must certainly be resumed as soon as possible—by the next mail coach, if I can get a place—for my husband will have been anxiously expecting my arrival these past two days.”

  “Oh, you can get a place on tonight’s coach, I have no doubt,” said Mrs Russell warmly. Constantia read relief written plainly upon her face; relief, perhaps, that a husband existed; relief that she and her baby, near kin though they were, did not hope to stay. Probably Mrs Russell was loathe to share what little they had, that little being only just sufficient for the three of them and no more.

  Miss Wilson was saying, “I never thought to hear word of our Polly again. Poor Polly! Will it be one of those tropical fevers that’s carried her off?”

  “No,” said Constantia; and then—because they were glad she would not stay, and had not the courtesy to pretend otherwise—she heard herself speaking the excruciating truth: “No; it was a tiger. A tiger carried her off.” Her voice sounded remarkably steady. She felt for the gold chain at her neck; felt for the flat-backed pearl suspended from it. By this, her mother’s remains had been identified when at last they were found, more than a year after her disappearance during the night of the tremendous earthquake.

  (Her mother often went out at night, but she always came back before daybreak—and then slept until a late hour in the morning. People had things to say about that.

  Everyone knew it was dangerous to roam abroad at night, when tigers hunted; and only the most daring, or the most desperate, or the most amorous, did so.

  Constantia’s mother had been more daring than most; and sometimes desperate; but above all, she was amorous. She was made that way. God had seen fit to make her that way. It was her nature.)

  “A tiger! A tiger! Oh! May the good Lord have mercy! poor Polly! Did you hear that, Mother? It was a tiger that ate poor Polly, out in India! I never dreamed . . . oh, Polly! May the Lord have mercy upon her soul, poor weak sinner as she was!”

  (Eventually, when the immediate emergency of the earthquake had abated, inquiries were made as to the minor mystery of Mrs Babcock’s disappearance. The soldier from a nearby garrison town who had been her lover at the time fell under suspicion, naturally enough; but he claimed that she had not come to him that night; had failed to arrive at their usual trysting place, a hut above a waterfall. Supposing that something or someone had delayed her, he had waited for some time, dozing, until, shaken suddenly awake by the prodigious earthquake, he had run back to his barracks, a league off. Not everyone believed him, but nothing could be proven. And in the aftermath of that stupendous earthquake, there were a great many more pressing problems than the disappearance of Constantia’s mother.

  Could she have been trapped in a fallen building? This seemed possible, at first. One by one, collapsed houses were dismantled, avalanches of bricks cleared, shattered roof beams dragged free; grateful survivors and unlucky corpses were pulled from the wreckage. This went on for weeks. But Constantia’s mother was not found in any of these buildings.

  Could she have lost her way? This seemed all but impossible. And even if she had, she should have found it again by now.

  Constantia had been horror-struck, and terror-struck, and filled with shame at having been so unlovable as to drive her mother away; as to make her mother stay away, all this time. And no one had much time for Constantia just then—except for the Rani Anibaddh, who had brought her to live and study with her own children.

  A boy out hunting had finally found her, a year later. A glimmer of scarlet and gold under a tangle of brush had caught his eye; he had investigated; had found what remained of her. The scarlet and gold was the trim of her shawl. She was identified by the shawl, a gift from Anibaddh; and by the gold chain with its pendant pearl, still oddly intact around the crushed vertebrae of her neck. Here the tiger had dragged its kill, and roughly covered it, in case it chose to return later; but it never had. The tiger had eaten only a little of the meat of her haunch; nor had the vultures been at her.

  At the base of her skull, amid strands of still-golden hair, were large triangular punctures, where the tiger had seized the back of her neck in its jaws, and crushed her spine. Those punctures to the skull and the crushed spine were conclusive: a tiger did this. Not a leopard; not a sloth-bear. Not a man. The soldier from the nearby garrison was cleared of all suspicion.

  How did Constantia know this? No one had been indiscreet enough to tell a child of ten years so much as this. But she did know. She had pieced this much together, from overheard remarks, and other tales of tiger-kills and tiger-hunts, and comments between adults who imagined that so young a child could not understand their cryptic remarks. She was always—always!—listening for anything she could learn; and she understood a great deal more than the adults talking over her head supposed. She pretended not to hear; not to understand; not to be paying attention—for they talked more freely in her presence if they thought her oblivious. She pretended she was playing; she pretended to hum little tunes to herself. But all the time she was listening; and when she lay alone at night—alone! alone! and stroking her own hair, pretending it was her mother’s—she fitted together her gleanings: the things she had learned by listening, thinking, and remembering.

  That’s how she knew so much.

  Later, when she was older, she also knew what had driven her mother to go out, those nights. And why she smelled of not-herself when she came back; why she slept so late in the mornings. The most beautiful of all the mothers.)

  “She’s paid dearly for her sins; dearly,” said Miss Wilson. “Our pretty Polly, poor dear.”

  “Nay, my pie!” cried Mrs Russell. “It’ll be burnt to cinders—” and out she dashed.

  It was near midnight when the mail coach came. Constantia was waiting at the postmaster’s fireside, sleepy Livia on her lap, and was very glad this time to get a seat inside the coach. Inside, no one spoke. Through the rest of the night, she dozed with Livia in her arms; and was jostled cruelly awake again and again—again—again! alas!—by the lurching of the coach.

  The silver-mounted coral was now tied to Livia’s wrist by the yellow ribbon which had come with it. If the coral was a comfort to Livia, the note that had been tied around it was of far greater solace to Constantia. As Livia wrought her sore gums upon the coral, so Constantia considered, again and again, those verses penned by her father. They changed everything. Each time she was awakened, she fell to wondering, marveling, remembering, supposing:

  No doubt my mother and my father made me by accident, without any thought of me. Indeed, the thought of me, when the thought—nay, the fact—of me did eventually dawn upon them, must have appalled them both. I meant ruin; I meant disaster; I meant shame, distress, and dismay. They made me only because they could not help it. They could not help it.

  Neverthe
less, the man who was my father had (by the time I was born) welcomed me (or, at least, the idea of me) tenderly, affectionately, open-heartedly. The man who was my father: Jack Astley. John Fenwick Astley.

  And though Constantia had no proof at all—not a shred of evidence—still she felt certain, entirely certain that the officer who had, in Lucknow, when she was six and a half years old, once held her two hands in his, and gazed into her face as though he would like to drink her up—he had been her father. Father. She felt this to be true. She was certain it was true.

  (And this, she knew, was just how the devout believed in their God—in their Heavenly Father. With as scant proof; and with as certain conviction.)

  I have met my maker.

  An hour later she awakened to the verses her mother used to sing to her:

  A swain once scorned she’s recall’d the next day,

  Now she’s yielded, she’s let him take her away—

  Across the border to fair Scotland.

  Comes their firstborn child, a gift from heav’n,

  No nine-months’ baby—nor scarcely seven!—

  Now she’s the fair flower of Northumberland!

  My mother did tell me, whenever she sang me that song.

  At a later waking, she considered this: By chance the snow came early, blocking the roads from Edinburgh, so I came by the Newcastle steam packet instead. By chance, I could not get a seat inside the northbound coach from Newcastle, and had to sit outside. By chance, a scurrilous old woman and a garrulous old man sat up there too. By chance, the road passes near Seaton Delaval, and by chance, these chance fellow-passengers were moved to speak of the ghosts of the Delavals. And because of what I heard, I decided, upon a moment’s unpremeditated impulse, to get down there, of all places. I had not intended to do so. It was all chance; all luck. Not design.

  Chance! Never, indeed! God’s Will! God’s design, Miss Wilson had declared, with utter certainty. Her certainty was like Lady Janet’s. Constantia here fell into one of her imaginary arguments with Lady Janet:

  C, PASSIONATELY CONTRADICTING: Your ladyship may claim it is design, if you please; but I see no evidence of it. A person who will believe that will believe anything.

  LADY J: Surely you do not imagine that mere chance could ever have produced such a result! A person who will believe that might manage to believe in God; need not boggle at God! To swallow so enormous a chain of coincidence as that—but strain at a gnat?

  C: But chance could indeed produce this result, I say; and here is my proof: it did so. Quod erat demonstrandum.

  LADY J: Having the last word does not prove you right, not even in Latin.

  C: I agree; the last word proves nothing. Go on, then; have it for yourself.

  LADY J: I shall pray for you.

  C: I shall make no attempt to stop you.

  LADY J: You’ve still had the last word for yourself, though, haven’t you!

  C, TO PROVE HER WRONG, HOLDS HER IMAGINARY RETORT.

  Later still: Never mind who made it. Here is the Thing Itself; study it. The thing itself is worth apprehending. Then, if still we must know who made it—(But why must we? To judge its worthiness? To determine whether it ought to command our reverence? Or our scorn?)—then know this: Within the Thing Itself (be it poem—painting—concerto—or all Creation—All This, this fabric of Nature) lies the answer we seek; the knowledge we crave. Within the Thing Itself lie the clues which tell Who made it. How. Why. The Author always signs his work. The Author cannot help but impress the shape of his hands upon his handiwork—the mold of his mind upon his casting—his signature upon his design. The sprues of the Made all point toward the Maker, the origin. The Made is the Maker, manifest. Seldom obvious; often obscure; but always manifest. We may learn to read the swirl of those cosmic fingerprints; to read the cipher of mountain, valley, river, dust, air, ocean. Exercise patience; exercise it over fleeting centuries—over brief millennia—over epochs and ages. We must release all our preconceived notions about Time; about how long things ought to require; about the interval of time that has already passed, and the interval that remains yet to pass. Time is immeasurably more immense than we have any hope of imagining, even if we were to spend every instant of our whole brief lives doubling and redoubling our conception of it. Which, of course, we won’t.

  Later again: Why did I long to know? Why had it seemed to matter so?

  But all this does matter a great deal. I cannot explain why, but it does. Where have we come from—all of us earthlings? Where are we going, all of us? And why? What is our proper name, the name of our kind?

  What are people for? What is the chief end of man?

  Even if it were true that every species, in its pride, considers itself the crowning glory of all creation—may not one of them truly be so?

  Yet another grievous awakening: The coach rumbled over cobblestones, to a halt. The new-risen sun blazed mercilessly into Constantia’s eyes from across the water.

  Amble, at last.

  14

  THE TOWN OF AMBLE, at the mouth of the River Coquet, looks out to a low white island three-quarters of a mile offshore: Coquet Isle. Constantia could make out the squat square tower of its lighthouse. So near! But offshore is offshore; a boat must be had. A quantity of suitable small boats bumped and bobbed against their mooring lines in the little harbour. At this hour, their owners were doubtless inside the several nearby public houses taking nourishment—solid and liquid—to encourage and sustain them against the day’s rigours. Constantia, however, skirted all these establishments and, with Livia on one arm and the carpetbag on the other, made her way instead up the broad street which led out of the town, up toward the ruins of Warkworth Castle, which presided above the lowest and last bend of the river, before it widened and became harbour—and then, sea.

  Some distance below the castle ruin there stood within private walled grounds a substantial farmhouse of moderate size. The gables of the house were pocked with pigeonholes, each underlined by a guano-frosted stone perch; the perches were frequented by grey, white, and blue pigeons, coming and going upon their early-morning pigeon-business. The sign at the open gate read COBB.

  It was not, however, old Mrs Cobb who opened the door to Constantia’s knock, but a broad-shouldered, sun-burnt, wind-burnt man in his late thirties. “Oh! Mr Darling—” cried Constantia.

  “Why, Mrs Stevenson!” he exclaimed, at the same moment.

  “The very person—above all others—whom I wished to see!”

  “Not the very person above all others,” he said. “I might name another whom you will be a great deal happier to see. And as pleased as I am to see you, his happiness is sure to outrun mine by far!”

  “I intended to beg a pigeon of Mrs Cobb to fly to you, asking that you would be so good as to come ashore to fetch me off. But here you are, as though summoned by my mere wish. I hope you have not been awaiting me here since Wednesday?”

  “No, indeed! Why should I? We had no idea of your returning so soon—not until the New Year, wasn’t it?”

  “Did not my pigeon arrive, then? I flew my last bird on Monday, to say that I should arrive Wednesday—but once having done so, I was then sorely delayed—detained by one hindrance after another—and have only just descended from this morning’s northbound mail coach. Today is . . .?”

  “Saturday; but we have had no bird from you. Well, it is rather fortunate than otherwise; how distraught a certain person would have been, these three days, at your failing to turn up! Can you bear to wait yet another hour? And take some breakfast with Mrs Cobb and me, to beguile the time? By then, the tide will have fairly turned, and I shall undertake to ferry you out to our rock just as smartly as may be. Come in, do; and show Mrs Cobb your pretty bairn!”

  Mr William Darling, keeper of the Coquet Isle light, was of the renowned lightkeeping dynasty. He was a brother of the late lamented heroine of the age, Grace Darling; son of the elder William Darling, renowned keeper of the Longstone light; and brother also
of (confusingly named) William Brooks Darling, assistant keeper of the Longstone light. All his other brothers and sisters were settled along this Northumberland coast, too, none of them further than a half-mile from the sea. His wife was Ann Cobb Darling, whose mother lived in this farmhouse.

  Mr Darling was furthermore staunchly Chartist in his principles; and a brave, loyal, and discreet friend to Constantia’s Chartist husband, for whose detention a warrant on charges of sedition, conspiracy, and treason was still, after four years, in effect.

  Within the hour, Mrs Stevenson, Livia in her arms, was seated in the stern of Mr Darling’s coble, and Mr Darling was rowing briskly out of the harbour. To row three-quarters of a mile over open sea was nothing to a Darling—though on his own account he might, but for Mrs Stevenson’s eagerness, have awaited a sailing breeze. The coble was laden with coals, nails, bacon, turpentine, yeast, tallow, a sheet of glass, and a carefully crated and tarpaulined object: Mrs Darling’s Christmas present. Half a mile out, they came to ruffled water and a lively breeze; and here Mr Darling, having boated his oars, hoisted a sail and took sheet and tiller in hand for the remainder of the crossing.

  At the Coquet Isle landing-place, the breeze was a wind which tore at Constantia’s bonnet. As soon as Mr Darling had tied off the coble to a cleat, he handed Constantia ashore. “Now, ma’am, you must run right up,” he said, “don’t you wait for me. Run up and get a cloak at the house—and then off you go! You know where he’ll be.” Then she was in the lee of the wall (white and fine-grained as bread, this Coquet Isle limestone)—and the stout timber door of the house was opened to her knock—by Mrs Darling, surprised (for visitors were so rare as to be all but unknown)—yet astonished, delighted! and unembarrassed even at being caught with her eider-downs ranged across chairs in front of the fire—because Mrs Stevenson, having lived here for some time during the summer, knew very well that Mrs Darling always aired her eider-downs thus every morning. Mrs Stevenson and her darling baby!