The Widow's Fire

by Paul Butler

  THE WIDOW’S FIRE

  THE WIDOW’S FIRE

  a novel by

  PAUL BUTLER

  INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.

  TORONTO, CANADA

  Copyright © 2017 Paul Butler

  Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).

  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Front cover artwork: John Singer Sargent, “Lady Agnew of Locknaw,” 1892, oil on canvas, 127 cm x 101 cm. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. Purchased with the aid of the Cowan Smith Bequest Fund, 1925.

  Cover design: Val Fullard

  eBook: tikaebooks.com

  The Widow’s Fire is a work of fiction. All the characters portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Butler, Paul, 1964-, author

  The widow’s fire / a novel by Paul Butler.

  (Inanna poetry & fiction series)

  Based on: Persuasion / Jane Austen.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77133-405-1 (softcover).-- ISBN 978-1-77133-406-8 (epub).--

  ISBN 978-1-77133-407-5 (Kindle).-- ISBN 978-1-77133-408-2 (pdf)

  I. Title. II. Series: Inanna poetry and fiction series

  PS8553.U735W54 2017 C813’.6 C2017-900305-4

  C2017-900306-2

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

  210 Founders College, York University

  4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

  Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765

  Email: inanna.publications@inanna.ca Website: www.inanna.ca

  To literary women from three generations:

  Anne Frances Butler

  Maura Catherine Hanrahan

  Jemma Rachel Violet Butler

  ALSO BY PAUL BUTLER

  The Good Doctor

  Titanic Ashes

  Cupids

  Hero

  1982

  St. John’s: City of Fire

  NaGeira

  Easton’s Gold

  Easton

  Stoker’s Shadow

  The Surrogate Spirit

  “[Mrs. Smith] was a widow and poor. Her husband had been extravagant; and at his death, about three years before, had left his affairs dreadfully involved. She had had difficulties of every sort to contend with, and in addition to these distresses had been afflicted with a severe rheumatic fever. She had come to Bath on that account, and was now in lodgings near the hot baths…. Everybody of any consequence or notoriety in Bath was well known by name to Mrs. Smith….”

  —from Persuasion, by Jane Austen

  PROLOGUE BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK WENTWORTH

  If you think you know about Anne Elliot and me, you are deceived. The facts in the now-celebrated novel may, in some bare essentials, resemble events which took place in Somerset during the autumn, winter, and spring of 1814 to 1815, but the teller was far removed from her subjects. The author’s intelligence had been gathered from private letters sent to her by Anne Elliot, who was Miss Austen’s friend. Miss Austen was not alone; upon Anne’s astute but generous discernment, many people justly relied. In this one instance, however, Anne was more in the dark than anyone could have guessed. It pains me now to acknowledge the degree to which I am to blame for her ignorance.

  At the time of her reports, Anne had every right to feel confidence in me as a sterling character, representative of all that was noble and self-sacrificing about His Majesty’s Royal Navy. How it smarts to think about it now! From the happy distance of literature, a version of our story was woven for the public and its theme was simple: undying romantic love and its final triumph over circumstances. In some respects, this is fitting enough; love was intimately involved with all of us in one way or another. But love has so many faces, and for those whose vocation demands voyage to faraway corners of the globe, there is a special paradox: once love has been glimpsed, once we have been pushed from the pinnacle of happiness, we search for that most elusive of sensations, that ghost-essence of heaven, not in a single human form, but in all things.

  In the year 1807, Anne, then nineteen years old and under the influence of her older and formidable friend, Lady Russell, broke off our engagement. Despondent and angry, I threw myself into my naval career, only half aware that I would find myself searching for her face in the statues of Isis, yearning to hear her voice behind the tumultuous roar of the Indian Ocean. Hints of her were everywhere, in the unexpected grace of a Lisbon washerwoman as she balanced her basket on her hip, in the dark eyes of a Ceylonese peasant girl scratching the ground with her stick. But while bound for Canton aboard the Laconia, with the opium fumes wafting around my shoulders, I came closer than ever to her replica in human form; he was a young midshipman called Oliver Mason.

  The memory of my first trespass into a forbidden world remains as indelibly real as my own heartbeat: on the table between us the opium pipe rolling then rolling back again in the swell, the heat of Oliver Mason’s skin under my palm, confusion and yearning in his dark eyes. But fear not, dear reader. Though we will journey into capital crimes and sins of the deepest disgrace known to humankind, love, in all its variations, will remain in our sights. The neatly patterned shell of romance might overturn to reveal the dark underbelly of blackmail and desire, but still love remains. Without love we are no longer living and our story is at an end.

  None of the dark and desperate deeds to which I allude were ever conveyed to the original author because at the time of her letters to Miss Austen, Anne herself was oblivious. Indeed, if I alone had been the deceiver, Anne might have remained protected forever from knowledge of those things with the power to destroy her world and mine.

  But as you will discover, I was not the only one in Somerset to know about Oliver Mason. This other person was as innocuous-seeming as any who lived. An old school friend of Anne’s, a widow, a known invalid in straightened circumstances, she had access to the innermost chambers of Anne Elliot’s trust. And she had access to so much more. Her name was Mrs. Adeline Smith and this is as much her story as it is anyone’s.

  PART I

  1. MRS. SMITH

  SO IT COMES TO ME, dear reader, to commence this story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. So be it. But, first, let me crave your indulgence as I mean to reveal something of myself and, more pertinently for you, some measure of that rare and delicate bond of partiality that had united Anne and me long before that winter in Bath.

  Imagine, if you will, a girls’ school in a remote Somerset location in December of 1801. This is not a charitable institution with freezing dormitories for sleeping and ice-rimmed water for washing, but rather a large, comfortable home with elegant wall coverings and freshly upholstered chairs. Here the daughters of squires, clergy, and minor nobility sleep three to each well-appointed bedroom and learn fine needlework, music, and Latin. A white portico entrance and a façade of geometrically-patterned red brick reveal a combination of styles much in favour at the time. While t
his establishment is too exclusive to boast a school motto, the phrase “fashion, not austerity” might best epitomize both the aspect of the house as viewed from the outside and the mode of education practised within.

  Still, few moderately grand buildings in England can be said to show at their best at this time of year. Once-lush shrubberies are reduced to clusters of bare twigs that twist desperately into the opaque sky. The season’s first delicate snowflakes spiral down upon a ground already hard with frost. Most of the migrating birds of autumn are gone, so the diverting wheels of flight that enliven the months of autumn have now given way to a deadened landscape under a pale, empty sky.

  But hark! Hear the rumble of carriage wheels upon the frost-hardened path. The mood within the school today is relaxed enough for the promise of a new pupil to draw many young faces to the windows. From the top floor landing you catch sight of the approaching conveyance, its doors so black and polished they manage to reflect daubs of light even from a reticent winter sun. You fancy you glimpse a crest, but you cannot see the detail.

  The carriage crunches to a halt by the white pillars and the headmaster bolts into the chilled air with rare alacrity to greet the occupants. Emerging first is a stately woman of bearing and grace. But this is not the one for whom you are waiting. A little more time. A few obsequious bows and gestures from the headmaster to the lady — inquiries about the journey perhaps, requests to join him for tea — and then out she comes, a delicate, dark-eyed girl of fourteen. Her mother having passed just a few months ago, she is in the black of mourning. Her cloak and the unnatural paleness of her hands and face give you the fleeting sense of a young magpie fallen from its nest.

  One for sorrow.

  This, dear reader, is Anne Elliot, daughter of the baronet Sir Walter. She who is watching from the upstairs landing is myself, Adeline Hamilton, still a pupil at seventeen but soon to be put in charge of the younger girls. The financial ruin of my parents and a rich but distant uncle has dictated my course. I have no income and will receive no dowry so must either learn how to make myself useful to some unambitious husband or else starve.

  As soon as I heard she was coming, I picked out Anne Elliot as a future companion. I knew the hunger of grief, how it longed to be filled, and how the deepest of cravings rarely questioned the methods of their alleviation. I would offer kindness and friendship to the new girl and she would take it without hesitation. The self-interest of my attentions would not occur to her. Even at this young age, I knew that the higher one is in rank, the blinder one remains to the motivations of one’s companions. One sees the world clearly only from the gutter. To this shy, delicate, wounded bird, her future standing in society, and how it affected the behaviour of those around her, would be quite invisible.

  Two for joy.

  And so it proved. I felt a grateful yield in the school lobby as I touched her shoulder; I had eagerly volunteered to show Miss Anne to her room. Her fawn-like tread followed mine up the winding stairs. My natural empathy — an innate quality which I had continued to nurture in myself — allowed me to experience this strange new world as my new companion must be presently inhaling it, its scents of heavy wax polish and vinegar. How alien it must all have seemed to poor Anne.

  Once in the bedchamber, we moved together to the window and viewed the frost-rimmed grounds to the rear of the house. I allowed her to fall silent in private longing. Only when the quiet had lasted long enough for her sadness to be undeniable, did I speak. My words were soft and encouraging: “It will be beautiful in the spring, Anne.”

  Kindness brings tears that cruelty would leave unshed. She allowed herself one soft gasp, the ghost of a sob, then, pulling a kerchief from her sleeve, wiped her cheeks as she turned to me, her dark eyes a vision of innocence and trust.

  We will not dwell in this time and place as our story is set in another year and in a different location. In the short term, it turned out, Anne’s friendship was of little material benefit to me. After less than a year she was called away by her father to minister to the needs of an elder sister who, in the absence of a mother, had begun her career as mistress of Kellynch Hall. But it was those dark eyes — that same vision of innocence and trust — that I encountered once again in the late winter of 1815. As you will soon see, a kind gesture to the vulnerable had, after all, yielded an unforeseen return. Even at my most optimistic, I had underestimated the degree to which Anne’s affection and gratitude could have survived the intervening years.

  In the muted glow from my firelight, I could see how time had added fine lines of wisdom to the natural compassion of her expression. How Leonardo would have loved to paint that face! And there was something else. While she tried hard to conceal it, she was distressed at the situation in which she found her old friend.

  “But, my dear Adeline,” she said after a struggle, “it is such a climb here. Can you not with your infirmity secure rooms on the ground floor?”

  Before we go further, dear reader, I should apprise you of the many vicissitudes which had caused this obvious discomfort in Anne Elliot: I had for the last three years been established in the city of Bath, and was generally known to be suffering ill health and financial stress due to the profligacy of my late husband, Charles Smith. Through a former teacher, I had recently got word that Anne Elliot was in town, knew of my presence, and was eager to renew our acquaintanceship. I could see from the solicitous note heralding her visit and from the troubled kindness of her expression that she wished she had found me better situated. The Elliots were staying in Camden Place, one of the most fashionable districts of the city. To further increase the disparity between us, there were rumours Anne herself was about to make a match of great advantage to her family.

  But let me admit of one possibility. Some of the story up to this point has, as you know, been told through the words of another. Should I then consider whether we are already acquainted through the medium of paper and ink? If such is the case I will, no doubt, have been described to you in the most praiseworthy terms. To Anne Elliot, my friend and yours, I personify resilience in the face of adversity, cheerfulness in the teeth of misfortune. I have — if I remember correctly — an “elasticity of mind,” a power of “turning readily from evil to good.” How ingenious we all are when it comes to perceiving virtue in poverty!

  But you were perhaps thinking only of Anne. Sweet indeed it must have seemed to you, symmetrical and satisfying in the extreme, to close the book forever while Anne was in the process of achieving all for which she had ever hoped!

  How many stories end in marriage? How many final pages are beribboned with the promise of a wedding? It may have occurred to you, as it has to me, that this sense of completion, charming and satisfying though it may be, is very different from the world as we know it. Love is a trial as well as a joy. It brings disappointments and betrayals as well as affection and trust. A declaration of love marks not the ending of a life’s journey but its commencement. So, in time, would this prove with Anne.

  If you did indeed haunt this scene through Miss Austen’s pen, I must apologize. You were perhaps blindfolded to the appearance of my humble rooms and were given but a hazy notion of the odours, the street noises, and the lack of comfort in the chairs. You will have understood merely that my surroundings had neither grace nor beauty to recommend them; that I lived in two rooms: one, a noisy parlour where I received those few guests who might ever seek me out; another, a bedroom beyond.

  I would like you to experience everything for yourself, to feel each moment as it passes and inhale every scent, pleasant or otherwise. Let us jump then beyond such aloof descriptions and plunge into the dangerous whirlpool of the senses. Let me start with metaphor: My two rooms on the top floor of Westgate Buildings seem like the inner warren of some nocturnal creature. My chimney shaft moans like a tribe of spirits trapped in purgatory; the corners and recesses of my room are quite lost to the sun, even when it is daylight. On the occasion in
question, Anne sat upon a chair on one side of my narrow hearth; I rested upon the other side. The fire gave occasional gasps as the wind found its way down the chimney and a breeze hissed through the shutters. Four sparsely-spaced candles, a sickly litter spawned from the flames behind the grate, guttered, one ducking almost to the point of extinguishment then bouncing unexpectedly to life. A crack, not easily visible in the semi darkness, ran like a crooked river along my sitting room wall. Beyond your seeing, I will tell you what you already suspect, that no bright colours or fine silks inhabited the wardrobe in my bedchamber beyond this parlour. From the street below came the sounds of hooves and carriage wheels, an occasional yell from an urchin, and closer, from within the building, the thin walls reverberated with the boom of two or perhaps three men arguing.

  So let us talk now of Anne: Through various contacts, chief of which was my own companion, Nurse Rooke, I knew something of her recent history. Anne had become the drudge of the Elliot family, called upon to nurse the sick and to mother the children of her younger sister, Mary. Having learned to compensate for the laxness of others, she had routinely visited the neglected tenants of her father, bestowing small kindnesses of her own devising. If the management of her father’s estate had been more susceptible to her influence, the Elliots might have escaped their present fate. As it was, the extravagance of her father, Sir Walter, and elder sister, Elizabeth, had necessitated the letting of Kellynch Hall to a certain Admiral Croft — hence Anne’s presence now in Bath where she attended her exiled father and sister who lived with as much pomp and expense as a provincial city would allow. Unlike myself, Anne had never married, although she had received offers. Lady Russell, the stately woman who I had glimpsed all those years ago from the window, was rumoured to be the influence behind more than one refusal.