Wide is the Water

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Price brought him his dinner early. ‘The master’s gone out, sir. Dines at his club, and Mr. Dick’s never come home. The mistress has one of her heads and Miss Julia dines out too. I’m to see you out by our entrance after you’ve dined. You won’t mind it, sir?’

  ‘Mind? Good God, no!’ Hart had seen the folded note on his tray and was impatient to be alone. It was short:

  Hart. Vauxhall’s too dangerous, with the mob still in the streets. Meet me at Cornelys’s Rooms at nine. Wear the domino and mask Price will give you, and ask the man at the door for Mr. Fraser’s party. I long to talk to you. J.

  He put the note in his pocket and sipped thoughtfully at the wine Price had poured for him. Cornelys’s Rooms. He had gone there with Julia the first time they had gone out together and had not much liked the place. For all its elegance, there had been something faintly raffish about both the rooms and the company. But Mrs. Cornelys’s establishment did have the advantage of being in Soho Square, an easy walk from Charles Street. And Price had told him that apart from Parliament and one visit to Lord George Gordon’s house in Welbeck Street, the mob seemed to be keeping away from the fashionable West End of town.

  He absentmindedly poured more wine and ate a little of the dry cold beef that had been sent up for him, thinking wryly that the kitchen must be fully aware that he was in disgrace. But Price, arriving half an hour later with domino and mask, was friendly enough. ‘You’ve eaten nothing.’ He looked at the tray. ‘I’m afraid we are all to pieces belowstairs with the mistress so poorly.’ He refilled Hart’s glass. ‘Would you wish me to call you a chair, sir?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’ll walk. What’s the word of the mob tonight?’ Extraordinary that he had actually forgotten about the rioters for a while.

  ‘Bad, sir. I reckon you’d be safer walking. Not that you’re likely to meet them at this end of town, but it’s been a strange day, and no mistake. With Parliament not sitting because of the Birthday celebrations there’s been no line taken, no statement made; it seems as if the mob is to have everything its way. I don’t like it.’ He leant closer to Hart. ‘It’s almost as if it was planned.’

  ‘Planned?’

  ‘For a time when Parliament wasn’t sitting. The long Birthday weekend with nothing done and the mob getting more and more out of hand. There’s a lot of talk in the streets.’

  ‘What kind of talk?’

  ‘About people spiriting up the mob, giving it orders. Oh, not Lord George Gordon; everyone knows about him, only six in the shilling there. But other people, secret people …’

  ‘Americans?’

  Price looked uncomfortable and filled up Hart’s glass. ‘Well, sir, it would be a lie to say I hadn’t heard that. But I don’t believe it, nor do any of the rest of us belowstairs. Nor yet I don’t think it’s the frogs, neither. Frankly I don’t think neither the one nor t’other of you has the power to stir up so much trouble, not here in London. But our local bad’uns, that’s something else again. Just out for loot, as you might say, and anything else that might chance to come their way.’

  ‘Just for loot? But that’s horrible!’

  ‘So’s the way most of London lives. Gin, and mud, and rags. And more gin, to make you forget the mud. Do you know how I came to be Mr. Dick’s man, sir?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I was a slum child, but happy. Our mother loved us; she worked like a dog, laundering to keep us all. When I was a boy, maybe ten, something like that – we didn’t have birthdays, not in our family – I swept a crossing here in the West End. One day an old gentleman dropped his pocket handkerchief as he crossed the road. I picked it up and gave it back to him. ‘Keep it,’ said he. ‘It stinks of mud.’ Well, that was riches for me. I couldn’t wait to tell my mum. Only – I never did. A little later there was a great crowd on the crossing, and a cry of “Stop thief.” Someone stopped me – well, a crossing sweeper, of course. They found the handkerchief. Nothing I could say. Nothing my mum could do. When they gave me the choice of the navy or transportation for life, I took the navy. And a good day for me. I met Mr. Dick. He made me his servant; made a man of me. And – got me out of the navy, God bless him.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘When I got back, after seven years, she was gone – just gone. That’s what happens to the poor. That’s why you can’t expect us to behave like other people.’

  ‘I wish you would drink a glass of wine with me,’ said Hart.

  ‘Oh, no, sir, I couldn’t. But thank you just the same for asking. Will you be wearing the domino?’

  ‘No, I think I’ll carry it.’

  ‘That’s just what I was going to suggest. Nothing to make you look out of the way, just in case you should meet the mob, which I pray God you don’t.’

  The conversation had made Hart a little later in starting than he had meant to be, though he knew Julia well enough, by now, to know that when she said nine, what she meant was nine-thirty or even ten. But that did not excuse him from punctuality, and he was angry with himself when he looked at his watch, by the flickering light of a tallow dip in the sinister basement hallway used by the servants, and saw that it was already just on nine o’clock. The mask was in his pocket; the domino over his arm. ‘No time to waste,’ he said to Price. ‘I’m late.’

  ‘Never you mind, sir.’ Price pushed back the heavy bolt on the area door. ‘Miss Julia will be later. Lord, look at that.’ He had opened the door on the flash of steel and the gleam of lanterns. ‘Soldiers, at last.’

  ‘But why? Why here?’

  ‘Mr. Burke’s house,’ he explained. ‘Down the street. I did hear talk. Mr. Hart, if you are going …’ He was eager to close the door.

  ‘Yes, of course. So long as it’s not here.’

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ said Price. ‘There’s nothing for the mob here.’

  Emerging into the Haymarket, Hart found it full of an idle, drifting crowd. Not the usual fashionable loungers, though here and there a sedan chair or a carriage was making a rather cautious way among the loose knots of shabbily dressed people. ‘Ten o’clock,’ said a voice at his elbow, and he turned round sharply, but saw that the speaker had his back to him. ‘Burke’s house.’ The man had not noticed Hart. ‘Crowbars.’ He spoke like a gentleman. ‘Time we put a scare into this end of town. Pass it on.’

  Hart moved away, thinking furiously. He ought to report what he had heard, which seemed clear evidence of planning behind the riots. But to whom could he report it, and more important still, what chance had he of being believed? Besides, he was late already for his meeting with Julia. She would know what to do. He hurried up the Haymarket, consoling himself with the knowledge that the soldiers had already been alerted and were waiting for the mob at Mr. Burke’s house. He and Julia would have to stay longer than he quite liked at Mrs. Cornelys’s Rooms. It would be madness to return to Charles Street until well after the inevitable confrontation between the mob and the soldiers.

  He reached Soho Square, rather breathless, as a church clock struck the quarter, and paused under a tree to put on his domino and mask. It was quiet here, he was glad to see, except for a carriage drawn up to let a couple of young men go swaggering into the rooms. Quiet here, but listening, he could hear a low roar from the direction of Seven Dials. The mob congregating in the Haymarket was not the only one out tonight. Were there quiet men, quiet gentlemen, all over the city, directing operations? It was a thought to make the blood run cold.

  ‘Mr. Fraser’s party?’ said the doorman. ‘Yes, sir. Bill’ – he snapped a finger at a plush-clad page boy – ‘take the gentleman to number five.’

  The rooms were crowded tonight, the tone even more strident than Hart remembered it, and he was relieved when the boy led him upstairs, past the entrance to the main saloon, and through a curtained doorway that led to a further flight of stairs. Perhaps things were conducted more decorously in the upper rooms.

  It was certainly quieter up there. The stairway gave onto a long corridor, discreetly ligh
ted, with numbered doors to left and right. Pausing as the boy knocked on the door marked ‘Five,’ Hart heard a scuffle and a giggle from across the hall. This was no place to be meeting Julia. He was appalled that she even knew of its existence.

  ‘Not here yet.’ The boy flung open the door and lit the candles in a chandelier beside it to reveal a luxurious little room. Heavy red velvet curtains; a supper table laid for two, with a three-branched candlestick. ‘Shall we serve when the lady comes?’ He poured a glass of claret from a ready opened bottle.

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’ Horribly sure of the kind of assignation for which this room must normally be used, Hart was relieved that the only furnishings were the table, two chairs facing each other across it, and two others set back beside the curtained window. He was jumping to absurd conclusions again. He knew so little about England, about English customs. ‘Thank you,’ he said again, and nervously overtipped the boy.

  Left alone, he sat down, sipped claret, and argued with himself. With her reputation already at risk, Julia would never have arranged to meet him here if there had been anything dubious about the place. He must quite simply be imagining things. Disgusting to do so. What kind of mind had he? Now he remembered, hot with shame, how he had jumped to conclusions about the club Mercy had run in his house in Savannah. If only I had had a father, he thought, or an elder brother. Instead, there had been Francis, always so worldy-wise, mocking, hinting, suggesting … Francis, whom he had killed. He shook his head as if to clear it, then got up, took off his domino and mask and laid them on a chair. Strange to be thinking of Francis now.

  The claret was good. He poured more and looked hungrily at the table. He had known Julia would be late but found himself increasingly impatient for her arrival. Where had she been dining? he wondered. Suppose she should encounter the mob. He must tell her about that sinister man in the Haymarket. Maddening that all English gentlemen’s voices sounded much the same to him. Otherwise, he would really have thought he had heard that one somewhere before. Absurd, of course. His mind was running away with him tonight, out of control. What am I going to do, he asked himself; what in God’s name am I going to do?

  It was almost a quarter to ten. Would the mob be assembled now in Charles Street? Ten o’clock, the man had said. Suppose Julia had decided to go back home before she came here? But why should she have? If he had known where she was dining, he could have called for her. How little I know about her, he thought; how little I know about any of them.

  A knock on the door. ‘Come in.’ The same boy, ushering in Julia, almost unrecognisable in domino and mask.

  ‘We’ll ring when we want you.’ She dismissed the boy and turned to Hart. ‘I’m late, dear Hart, forgive me.’ She dropped mask and domino, revealing a low-cut gown of a material that changed under the light from darkest green to flickering blue. Her dark hair was unpowdered, and he remembered telling her how much he preferred it that way. ‘I am setting a new style.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘More than I can say.’ As he seated her, her hand brushed against his and a flame shot through him. ‘But, Julia …’ It was difficult not to look at what the dress revealed.

  ‘I know.’ She smiled up at him and pushed luxurious dark ringlets from her face. ‘We are met here on serious business, and will come to it directly, but first, pour me a glass of wine, Cousin, and tell me that whatever my family try to do to you, you and I will remain friends.’

  ‘Dear Julia!’ Drinking to her, he wished it was his first glass of the evening. Could his head really be swimming a little? Absurd.

  ‘Dear Hart.’ She put her elbows on the table and leant her chin in her hands. ‘You are not to be looking at me like that, or you will distract me from the sober things I must say to you. You must not let yourself be entangled in my family’s disaster.’

  ‘Disaster?’

  ‘I begin to fear so. As if George’s debts were not bad enough, now there is this terrible business about Dick. I suppose my father has told you?’

  ‘I cannot believe it.’

  ‘I am afraid you must. But do not, I beg of you, be blaming yourself. Dick’s always been a fool – oh’ she amended it – ‘the kindest, best creature in the world, but no more sense … My friends had warned me often enough that no good would come of those wild ideas of his. Lord George Gordon was the same. He wanted to reform the navy. Look what’s happened to him! If it had not been you, Hart, it would have been something else with poor Dick. The Lords of the Admiralty know it all; they know he’s never had enough casualties. He should have gone into the church.’

  ‘You mean—’ Her father had said very much the same thing. ‘A man’s success in your navy is based on the number of his own men he gets killed?’

  ‘Well.’ She smiled her ravishing smile. ‘If no one gets killed, there must be something odd, must there not? But that’s not what we are here to talk of. It’s your position I care about. I think you should ask to have the terms of your parole changed.’

  ‘Changed?’

  ‘Away from Dick. To Piers Blanding maybe. I asked him tonight. He said he would do it – for me.’

  ‘No!’ He refilled their glasses. ‘That’s not what we are here to talk about. What happens to me does not matter; it is you we are concerned with. Or – are you telling me?’ He paused for a moment, digesting an extraordinary mixture of flaming jealousy and fierce relief. ‘Are you and Blanding—?’

  ‘To be married! Oh, Hart, what a child you are, what a dear child. One can’t help loving you for it. No one is going to marry me now; I’m to lead apes in hell. Don’t look like that.’ She put out a finger to stroke away his frown. ‘We are met to face facts, you and I, and the fact of my position is that my dowry’s gone with George’s gambling, and my good name with Dick’s disgrace. George’s being caught with the Mohawks was bad enough – and now this! If I found a Croesus who would marry me without a penny, he would still balk at the connection. Bad enough to be a Whig, but to be a discredited one! Had you not noticed that I have not been able to take you to Devonshire House? That Mr. Walpole never did send that invitation to see his Strawberry Hill? I’m sure you have, but been too courteous to speak of it. English society’s a small, tight circle, Hart, and heaven help the outcasts.’

  ‘An outcast? You?’ But it made horrible sense.

  ‘You’re seeing it now, aren’t you? The Bonds … Having to meet you here … My mother’s ill; really ill this time; it’s all been too much for her. When she is better, she and I are going down to the country. Once there, I shall put away my finery.’ A loving hand stroked the shimmering silk. ‘I shall learn backgammon and cribbage, take soup to the village sick, and, if I am very lucky, go into a decline and die young, of mere boredom.’

  ‘Julia! I won’t believe it. It can’t be true. You, so beautiful, so full of life. With all your admirers. There must be something—’

  ‘Open another bottle, Hart. It’s sad work, this. There must be something, you say. Well – I could beg you to buy me a passage to India. I’d be bound to snap up one of John Company’s clerks there before I died of the heat. Or – do you see me as a governess, Cousin?’ She smiled at his expression. ‘No need to try. If Dick’s court-martialled, no respectable family would have me.’

  ‘I think I hate England. Julia, you must come back to America with me.’ The words filled him with terror as he spoke them.

  ‘Dear Hart, as what?’

  ‘As my cousin and dear friend. Our society’s not mean-minded like yours—’

  ‘You’d find me a husband?’ Her eyes were huge with tears. She brushed them away impatiently. ‘We’re here to talk sense, Hart, not build dream castles. You’re a prisoner, in danger of the Tower. It’s you we should be thinking about. As for me, I’m past praying for. I’m a proud woman, Hart; there’s only one way I’d come to America with you.’

  ‘Julia!’ How could he help taking her hand? ‘If only—’ He was ashamed as he said it.

  ‘Oh, ifs!�
�� She rose gracefully from the table and moved over to tug at the bellpull by the door. ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we part.’

  ‘Tomorrow! You’re really going?’

  ‘I know now that I must. I’ve tried so hard to be strong for us both. I don’t think I can keep it up much longer.’ She turned at a knock on the door. ‘At once, if you please,’ she told the page boy. Then, back to Hart: ‘So now, Cousin, let us make merry together on my last evening of London. I’m glad I am to spend it with you.’

  ‘Dearest Julia.’ He had thought he was hungry, but now the food choked him, and he was grateful for the champagne the boy had opened. ‘A strange thing happened to me on my way here.’ At all costs, he felt, he must get the conversation back to a more normal level.

  ‘Yes?’ She helped herself to lobster patties, her tone as neutral as his, and he blessed her for her understanding.

  ‘I passed through the makings of a mob in the Haymarket.’ He paused to tell her about the soldiers and Mr. Burke’s house, then went on. ‘I heard a voice in the crowd – a gentleman’s voice. I almost thought I knew it. He was telling someone that they would attack Mr. Burke’s house at ten o’clock. “Crowbars,” he said. I’m sure I know the voice.’ For a moment he had almost had it. ‘But what shall I do, Julia? I must tell someone, but circumstanced as I am, who would believe me?’

  ‘No one,’ she told him. ‘Dear Hart, even I, who love you, find it difficult. Are you quite sure you did not imagine it or, not so much imagine as misconstrue? A chance scrap of conversation, heard in a crowd? Whatever you do, I beg you will tell no one else. It could do us all infinite harm.’

  ‘Harm? I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Don’t you see? No, of course you do not. You are so open yourself, so unsuspecting, that you do not see how it might look to other people. That story Dick told, about the firing of his ship, was not entirely true, was it? No, no’ – she put a restraining hand on his – ‘no need to protest. I understand it all and love you both for it. But look now, here is Dick, threatened with disgrace, and you with him. Suppose you come forward with another story, also uncorroborated. Do you not see how it might be interpreted?’