by Paul Butler
“I’m sure Plato could have reminded you, had you asked him.” She paused as if recollecting. “Rome fell, Nurse Rooke, because it ceased to grow. It’s growth, you see, its conquests, were what brought in the revenue that paid for its administration and its armies. Without those conquests, without that growth, the empire simply crumbled.”
She must have seen the confusion on my face because she sighed deeply. “Nurse Rooke, we have been expanding. Every victory, every payment that increases our coffers involves risk, great risk and…” she glanced at the fire, “sometimes the risk seems almost too great, it’s true.”
“Like Captain Mason,” I prompted.
“Exactly,” she nodded, “like Captain Mason. And we still don’t know where that may lead. But the moment we stop taking risks, Nurse Rooke, will be the moment we seem weak to our enemies. They watch us, Nurse Rooke, believe me. The reason Lord Asham still fears me is because he sees me abroad in the world. He sees me with fresh clients, new allies, willing or otherwise, and he knows my sphere of influence is increasing still. So,” she continued, “the question is simple; do I still have your undivided loyalty?”
The fire seemed to cavort in her eyes now, and my heart was so full I had to restrain myself again. My little Adeline, my Mrs. Smith was once again indomitable. “Of course, Mrs. Smith,” I said. “Now and always.”
“Then, dear Nurse Rooke, this is your task. You must take Plato’s gold when he is not at his home. Night will be coming soon enough, and we know he tends to wander.”
“Yes, Mrs. Smith, I will do it.”
Quite suddenly, she reached out to me, her hand outstretched as though to receive, her face smiling in sentimental joy. You must know what it means, dear reader, to be fully devoted to another. And, if not, I pity you and pray that you might. I was not natural mother to this dear girl, and yet I was more than a mother. I was her mother, her child, her sister, and her wife. She had done nothing less than take the world that I knew and shatter it into a thousand pieces. Fragment by fragment, she had rebuilt Creation into something sparkling and new. The floor that I walked on was hers. The air that I breathed was borrowed from her. Here, in her rooms, with her arms reaching out to me, I knew, as I had always known, there was nothing I would not do for her, just as I knew that one day it would all come to an end. But I didn’t care. Responding first with timid steps and then in a rush, I collapsed into her, and cradled her head onto my shoulder just as I had imagined myself doing earlier. Soon I felt the happy splash of tears upon my cheeks while, beside us, the fire crackled and danced. For a few blessed minutes we were once more governess and charge, nurse and infant. When, in unison, we looked up towards the window, the glass showing between the curtains had darkened steeply into evening.
18. CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
I HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN THE NUMBNESS that comes with a battle, that curious sensation one is looking at the world from behind a protective layer. The last time I had felt anything of the kind, gunpowder had been rising over a churning ocean; my ears had been deafened by the roar and shake of cannon fire.
Tonight the details were quite different. The events to be most feared would not arise from flying shot or falling masts but from something of no immediate physical impact. As I watched the faces of my various dining companions, their smiles, their rising spoons, the steadily flickering candles in the centre of the table, and as I listened to the gentle murmur of conversation, my half-dazed mind remained alert for warning signs — a word raised or misplaced within the conversation’s flow, a sudden silence, or a look of surprise. The wild and opium-crazed Oliver of my imagination had realigned himself into a presentable, smiling young man of perfect manners and apparent sobriety. But his very smoothness seemed oddly menacing to me. Infinite thought and subtlety lay beneath his speech and movements, and no one would be able to dismiss his actions as those of an oaf.
The table had been alive with talk of war and its effects upon the import of tea. This had taken in everyone for a while. Mason, I noted with some relief, refrained from expressing a view that had become a motif for him during my stay with him in London — namely that advantage in trade was an inferior, ignoble reason for war. Instead, he had held the audience captive with the most colourful descriptions of the port of Canton and its hectic, bustling life.
Since then, conversations broke into their own separate corners. Admiral Croft told Lydia Harville how he and Sophia had spotted a family of fox cubs with their mother in a briar of hawthorn in the Kellynch grounds. Sophia related to Harville — once again the very model of gentlemanly pleasantness — about a storm she and the Admiral had experienced in Dover soon after weighing anchor. And directly opposite me Anne was smiling in that direct yet modest manner which I had grown to love. The object of her present interest was my former friend, Oliver Mason, and she was listening to him with a genuine sense of being diverted and charmed. Frequent glances my direction — playful and teasing from them both — would have made it quite clear, even if I did not catch snatches of their conversation, that the subject of their talk was myself.
“It is my contention, Miss Elliot,” I heard Mason say, “that our dear Frederick, like most men of action and valour, knows himself very little.”
The candlelight nestled in Anne’s dark eyes and there was a touch of mischief about her mouth as she glanced at me across the table. In other circumstances I would have languished in the sight of her beauty and grace but, as it was, I was balanced above the earth like a tightrope walker at the Southwark Fair; there was no enjoyment in anything; there was merely the need to get through it.
“But you yourself are also a man of action and valour, Captain Mason — the speed of your advancement in the Royal Navy attests to this so please don’t try to deny it — so the very same caveat must apply to you.”
Oliver, who had indeed tried to interrupt the compliment, now bowed his head and smiled. “Yet, Miss Elliot, I am but a student of many things, a jack-of-all-trades you might call me, while Frederick — and I am as his friend proud to say it — is a specialist. He is every inch a naval captain.”
Sophia, on my left, noticed the comment, passed me a pleasant smile, and then looked at Oliver Mason with something else — an emotion somewhere between intrigue and admiration. This, I realized, was the effect that Oliver had achieved upon all the company, including Anne.
When I had walked into the drawing room half an hour before dinner, I could not have been more deeply oppressed. My dear Anne, Sophia, Harville, and all the others, especially Lydia, were bound to be curious as to how I would greet this old friend of whom they had no prior knowledge, but who had raced through the meadows and forests of Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Somerset to wait on me. How could I ever hope to control the mingled influences of terror caused by his first letter and relief caused by his second? How could I avoid giving myself away? So worried had I been about the moment I would first appear in his company, the most commonplace of acts had seemed an unnatural challenge. Coming down the stairs, my steps had been too deliberate, almost like a man who had never walked before. I had attempted to correct this by adding a carefree movement to my gait, but the feigned relaxation caused me to bump my knee hard upon the bottom bannister. My mouth also had become so unaccountably dry I wondered whether my attempt to speak would fail to produce any words.
I had entered the room because I had been given no choice. Another part of me, a ghost of myself, had continued to the front door where he breathed the air of freedom and resolved never to return. He would cut off every prior acquaintance and disappear entirely with no explanation. But my corporeal body turned the door handle and moved into the evening’s company. I needn’t have worried about being the centre of attention. My appearance was of such secondary interest that no one, not even Lydia Harville, looked at me for more than a moment. Mason had quite taken over the room. It was he who walked over to me — not the other way around. Dark eyes watering with emo
tion, he clasped my hands and then hugged me hard and for long enough for me to recall the contours of his body — he was some way shorter than me and rather small boned, but in his own way he was strong and compact. He smelled of the dust from the road but he had brought with him also the freshness and vibrancy of swift travel.
Letting go, he kept hold of my arm as he addressed everyone present, his gaze falling, in turn, upon the Admiral, Sophia, Anne, Lydia Harville, and her husband, giving them all a swift overview of our friendship. In elucidating wildly but, judging by the approving looks he received, convincingly on my influence upon his career and character, he even supplied an excuse for my nervous state.
“I know,” he said, “that our Captain Wentworth hates to be flattered. See how his manner stiffens and his face blushes at hearing his own praises. This, my new friends, causes me also much vexation. His discomfort at flattery is so intense that at times it can even cause him to avoid my presence!” So easy and seductive was his charm that everyone laughed heartily. I caught also a soft twinkle in Anne’s eye; she, too, had warmed to the newcomer who had given bold and unequivocal voice to her own tender feelings. This was to set the tone for the evening.
And now, as the cutlery clinked and the candles wavered, Sophia, whose interest was still upon the conversation between Oliver Mason and Anne, seemed to consider something. “You must tell us, Captain Mason,” she said, “what your specialty is. Every man has some quality or interest which he prizes above all others.”
“Ah, Mrs. Croft, you mean to unearth me like one of your husband’s foxes!”
There was a general stir around the table, and I had the sense once more that the particular flavour of Oliver’s gentle impertinence was irresistible, and that it put him quite beyond censure.
The Admiral, in any case, was entirely charmed. “I would help her if I could, sir,” he said. “We have you marked down already as a man of mystery.”
“Well, then,” said Mason, with a broad smile. “I must confess that since my days of schooling, long before naval college, I had a strong belief that I possessed the heart of a poet.”
Whether it was the hint of irony in his words or manner, or a determination to meet Mason’s playfulness with their own, this declaration, which would have caused silence or suspicion coming from a less polished tongue, created a general buzz of anticipation. The Admiral gave a short laugh and Harville groaned but in such an exaggerated fashion as to urge the speaker on. “The heart of a poet, indeed?” said Sophia. “Will you tell us who among our English bards you most emulate?”
“My tastes these days are distinctly modern. Frederick knows already of my great admiration of Coleridge and Blake. I have also found more recently a great interest in the works of Lord Byron.”
Harville’s smile dropped and he looked to his plate. His wife seemed to notice this, and I knew that the subject of modern poetry had led them to think of Captain Benwick. Thoughts of Benwick had with equal inevitability led them to think about Harville’s dear sister, Fanny, alone and abandoned in the cemetery by the river.
“You see, in rhymes like The Corsair and Lara,” said Mason, needing no prompting, “Byron sees no distinction between the proud actions of the swashbuckling gentleman and the softer qualities of loyalty and devotion. To him, and I believe, to many other of the new generation of poets, valour and love are inextricably part of the same whole.”
“This is indeed a change from our generation,” said the Admiral. “When I was young, men divided themselves into two — the man of duty and the man at home.” He gazed across at his wife, a touch of sadness, perhaps, at separations long past, coming into his face. “One always needs someone to come home to.”
“You are quite correct, I am sure, Admiral Croft,” said Mason, fingering the stem of his glass. “And yet the poet must draw every experience, every thought and feeling into a single verse. And this is why we are inspired by them.”
“But, Captain Mason,” said Lydia recovering, “it must be no easy thing to think of verses while the cannonballs fly around you?”
“Indeed, Mrs. Harville, but which comes first? That is the question. In fact, the new dawning of poetry not only makes poets out of men of action, but men of action out of poets. Lord Byron’s success comes on the heels of many wild adventures; man, he seems to tell us, lives the poetry he writes. He cannot do that without taking risks.”
“In which case, Captain Mason,” said Harville, also revived and managing a smile, “we have not one potential poet in our midst, but four!”
“You must not laugh, ladies,” said Mason giving swift retort to the general mirth. “Your battered sea captain husbands, or husbands-to-be,” he added with a nod uniting Anne and myself, “do in all likelihood possess hearts of most delicate and refined feeling.”
“Do not leave out Admirals from this,” said Sophia.
Her husband gave a short, scoffing laugh.
“But in all seriousness,” Mason said quietly — and immediately everyone fell in with the sudden change in mood and became reflective. “There is indeed a connection between our own avocation and that of the modern poet.” Admiral Croft, hearing the clink of a fork against his plate, stilled it. Jenny, the Harville’s maid, filled Mason’s cup with a reverence servants usually reserve for waiting on a bishop or a Lord. “The common ground, I truly believe, is in the fierceness and steadfastness of his loyalties.” He allowed his gaze to drop to his side, where it briefly took in Anne, and then he raised his eyes to me. “And when it comes to these qualities, I cannot think of a better example than my dear friend, Frederick Wentworth. Never can there be the slightest doubt that once a vow had been made or a strong feeling expressed, Frederick will stand by it until his final breath.” Glass in his hand, he stood rose to his feet. “If I may be so bold: to love in all its constancy!”
The phrase resounded around the table like a small orchestra tuning up before a performance — the low tones of the Admiral like a double bass, the ladies a trio of gentle flutes. I dared not touch my glass as I felt my hand would tremble. I caught the moist eyes first of Sophia and then of Anne. Avoiding them both, I found myself looking straight across the table at Oliver who had now resumed his seat. The look he gave me was quite static and had none of the warm camaraderie of his words. His eyes remained upon me in this style for just long enough for me to identify his expression as hostile.
He had not forgiven me. Though none but me could have suspected it, the toast was quite as double-edged as I had first feared it to be. For him, I had not been constant, and now I must endure days in close proximity with him while he charmed everyone he met — Anne’s family and friends, my family, the neighbours at Kellynch — and affected to have a friendship with me that knew no resentment or reserve. Was this alone to be my penalty for “betraying” him? It seemed more than enough for me. But there was something so covert in him this evening, and something so uncompromising in all his talk of valour and risk, I could not believe that mere embarrassment was all he had in store. I thought of Mrs. Smith and longed to talk with her now, to sit in her high garret and allow the anxieties of the situation to tumble from me in plain words rather than in the vague, shadowy fears that plagued me now. I suspected there was nothing she might do, but the urge to unburden myself was almost overpowering.
I was brought to myself by an awareness that Anne was gazing across at me, with a look of mingled sorrow and affection. She had once allowed herself to be persuaded out of love. And from our first meeting since that time, I had seen how she suffered from the unworthiness of such vacillation. I smiled at her now, a weak smile, I feared, but one intended in some small way to reveal that she was in no way inferior to me in this regard, that I had so much more — a mountain to a grain of sand — to be ashamed of than she did. Anne had retreated eight years ago under pressure from her elders and she had suffered the slow and agonizing realization of the irreversibility of that decision.
Anne had dealt with disappointment by bending her shoulder to the wheel of spinsterly duty — bestowing friendship and charity upon the poor of the parish, visiting friends who were forgotten by others. I, meanwhile, had drugged myself with the most reckless and self-destructive of pleasures. I had committed a capital crime.
Oliver and Anne began conferring together in the same playfully confidential manner as before; from her posture and expression it seemed Mason had secured her trust and regard even more firmly now. If the scene could be painted and hung upon a gallery wall, it might be titled “Brother and Sister,” so similar were they in build, colour, and neatness of feature. This, of course, must have been what had drawn me to him.
The Harvilles’ maid who had come again to fill the glasses seemed once more to take particular care with Oliver’s setting. I should have taken more note of it, perhaps, but at the time, I put it down to the general aura of confidence and familiarity Mason exuded. Only numbly did I register how his gaze left Anne and, for a moment, met Jenny who gave the faintest of nods. How many deer have fallen through the centuries, I would later have cause to wonder, because they ignored those minor warnings upon which they should have acted? The stir in the bushes. The footfall in the undergrowth. But the weary brain rations the events it chooses to process, and rues the omission only after the bow snaps and the arrow sinks into its target. My defense was that I was pacing myself for a trial of several days. I did not know that my downfall had been planned for this very night.
19. CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
IT STARTED WITH A LETTER, A THIRD from Oliver Mason. It must have been slipped under my bedchamber door while I had been seeing Anne and her sister to their carriage. When I mounted the stairs to retire there was no sound about the place. Everyone — the Crofts, the Harvilles, and, apparently, Oliver — had retreated to their own rooms. Closing my chamber door and leaning against it, I confronted a small, folded paper with Oliver’s seal on the oak flooring.
