Shakes has worked in Alonso’s service for so many years that some familiarity of manner is only to be expected, but he shook my hand like an acquaintance as he took my portmanteau. I hid my perturbation.
As it is a considerable distance to Rawblood, I settled myself with the hot brick at my feet and resigned myself to the last part of my journey. I was not concerned; on a clear night with a full moon, one may drive as safely across Dartmoor as in daylight.
We drove through a cool evening, scented with grass and the honeyed tang of heather, and my spirits rose somewhat. I do believe that the air in this part of the world carries with it healthful properties. Familiar shapes rose from the dark. There was Hamel Down. And there was Hay Tor. The stones at Scorehill could be seen on the crest of a hill beyond. This is grand country, soft and carved by age. With each mile, my heart lifted. I am not fond of rural places in general, but these hills hold the imprint of affection. I have missed this land. I have missed my friend. His letter was a welcome peace offering indeed.
The carriage lamps picked out the eyes of startled rabbits as we went, and I began to consider my dinner once more. Alonso was in times past particularly fond of a kind of rabbit stew.
We came to a halt. I peered out but could discern no lights nor anything familiar. Shakes appeared at the carriage door with my portmanteau.
“What?” I cried. “Is something amiss? Have we lost a wheel, or has one of the leaders cast a shoe?”
“Naw,” he said in that lackadaisical way he has. “We be ’ere.”
I descended from the carriage and saw that we were, indeed, before the house, which was plunged into darkness, only the starlight reflected in the windows.
“But what is this? Is your master from home?”
“’Appen ’e’s wurkin’ still. Oi’ll take vese up doirect, an’ sh’ye whar ye boide,” said Shakes. (I am having the greatest trouble rendering his speech on the page; it is both more menacing, and more sweet, with that West Country air, than I can suggest. Perhaps it is best that I leave aside any attempt to do so? He suffers also from a lack of teeth, which does not aid communication.)
“But am I not expected?”
“Y’are, but oi wager ’e’s fergat.” (No, I really must abandon any attempt to record Shakes verbatim. It looks like pure nonsense.)
I thought of the welcome I had in this house in the past. Blazing fires, an easy chair, hot Devon cider. And then there was Alonso himself. Bearlike and jovial, he was the warmest and most attentive of hosts. Forgotten? And by Alonso?
I stumbled on the drive. In the light of the carriage lamps, I saw its state: weeds had sprung up here and there, and bare patches had been gouged in the gravel surface. I called my host’s name, but there being no reply, I followed Shakes toward the darkened house.
There was some difficulty with the door, which did not want to give. It is of the old kind: large and heavy, bound with straps and knobs of iron, like buboes. It yielded at last with a screeching that tried my patience.
“You will want to take some mutton grease to that hinge,” I told Shakes. He said some or other local thing.
When we gained entry, the air was bad and cold. I followed Shakes through the darkened halls. The lamp fell on objects of a sudden, giving them a surprised and strange look, as though they had been doing something furtive in the dark and had only resumed their immobility that instant for our benefit. We went on, the fellow setting matches to lamps, fires, and tapers with his wizened hand. I must take up the matter of gas lamps with Alonso. It is surely perverse, in this day and age, to live in this antediluvian, tallow-and-wax fashion. Can gas be had in the countryside?
As we progressed farther into the house, away from the air and the friendly night, I became prey to a strange illusion: Rawblood was behind me when I looked, known and welcoming, but when I looked ahead, there lay a shadowed and alien dwelling, which I did not know.
We came to the door of my chamber. The lamp played upon the lintel and cast a little bright circle before it into the place beyond. Something fled from the edge of the light.
I stopped Shakes. “There is someone within,” I said as quietly as I was able, barely breathing the words. “Oh, where is a stick, man, or any kind of weapon?”
Shakes looked at me in a blank, stupid fashion. He shrugged and seemed not to understand, for he went into the room, and I was forced to follow after. With the quick, sharp scratch of a match, the candelabra was lit. He and I regarded one another in the dubious light. We were alone.
I tutted. “Well,” I said, “it must have been a rat, or some animal…” I was upset, for I cannot abide a rat. It is most unsanitary.
When we had settled my things and made the room bright and good, I turned to Shakes and said, “Take me to him now, please.”
He grunted and led me out; to my surprise, we went along the servants’ passage and stairs to the kitchen. And here, at last, there was warmth and some sign of occupation. Lamps were lit, though turned low, and a pot steamed on the hearth, giving out the soothing perfume of sage and gravy.
But we did not stop. On through the scullery and down the cellar stairs. We were then in the bowels of the building; the house rests, as it were, upon a warren of little corridors. These are of thick stone, which elongates and yet muffles sound in a peculiar way. I shook my head as we went, for I had a buzz in my head, due no doubt to the fatigue of the day, and to hunger.
The lamp shone on the stone walls, which were wet in places. The flags beneath our feet were very worn. I believe that the cellars here are extensive, for there are side chambers here and there, and the passages are hung throughout with iron hooks and struts, such as those that hold barrels and casks. The singing in my head grew stronger, and I motioned for Shakes to stop.
“I cannot,” I said. “I believe that the air is not good. I have a ringing in my ears.”
He grasped my arm then, which I found distressing. He said something that seemed to suggest that Alonso was not far off, but I was out of all patience.
“Leave go, if you please. I will await abovestairs.” Then the man pulled me along. I could not credit it. He seized my arm with a tutting, as if at a recalcitrant donkey, and hauled me to the end of the corridor. I was outraged, but this scarce had room in my head, for the humming had risen to fill it.
As we rounded the corner, I saw light and a chamber ahead. I brushed Shakes from my arm and went to the entrance.
The light was dazzling, white and strange, shocking after the dark passage. It was some time before my eyes would serve me, but what met them was a welcome sight.
I guessed that this had been the largest cellar; it had vaulted ceilings and clean, lime-washed walls. The air was cool and clean. The flags were swept clear, and lamps were set at intervals in niches. The source of the humming was now apparent; a generator squatted blackly in the corner. And the room: well, I was at home of a sudden.
It was laid out according to our old schema: the laboratory. Alonso being right-handed, the shelves were on the right. The compartment that holds each bottle was packed with straw to prevent movement. A soft leather case of metal syringes sat atop a measuring glass.
On the left was my domain. For I am what was once called sinistral; my left hand is dominant. It was a cause for some rallying between Alonso and myself in the old days. His tools and mine lay together, two feet apart, on green baize. The kymograph, for tracing the tiny variations, the language of blood pressure. Alonso reads those delicate lines on the paper as fluently as he does English. The hemacytometer, by which I delve into the microscopic kingdom of blood, to count the cells.
There were the sheaves of gelatin for growing cultures and racks of blank slides with their wooden surrounds. In the center of the room were two scrubbed slabs, securely bolted to packing cases filled with sandbags. From the corner came gentle rustling, and the glint of eyes could be seen in the depths behind scre
ens of wire.
It was a replica of our old workroom, needing only the tall windows and moldering velvet curtains for the illusion to be complete. For there was Alonso, head lowered, his eyes upon a pipette, the contents of which he was transferring to a screen. I waited for this delicate operation to be completed and then called to him. We went eagerly to one another.
The intervening years were nothing. We halloed and shook hands mightily. But when he turned to me in the strange light, I was forced to quick dissimulation, hard put to refrain from crying out. Many thoughts at once jostled for expression, and in this state, I told him the first that broke the surface proper.
“I am all amazement,” I said. “Is it an electric light?”
It was a different world in the warm parlor, with a mug in my hand and a rug on my legs. I first demurred at the rug; he insisted. I again made to refuse, but here we each caught the other’s eye and chuckled at our politeness. We are no longer twenty, and one must preserve one’s health.
I thought to amuse him with my imagined intruder and told the story, I think, well, making great play of Shakes’s indifference and of my own fear. The effect on him was extraordinary. The levity left him at once. He rose some way in his seat and took my forearm in a grip like iron. A shadow crossed his face, like a wave across a ragged shore. I had a conviction that, for a moment, there lay under his features the face of another man entirely…
“Did you see the eyes?” he asked between his teeth.
“Alonso!” I exclaimed, and my hand shook, spilling good drops of cider on the very good Aubusson at my feet. And then it was Alonso, with his habitual, kindly demeanor, who leaned over me.
He sighed and said, “The cellar is no place for a man to work long hours. I must keep it very brightly lit, and I think it shortens my temper. You will forgive me, Charles.”
I agreed. It was foolishness, of course: the combined effect of worry, travel, and warm cider on my constitution, which is unsuited to all three.
Alonso broke in on these reflections quietly. “Of late, I have been prey to the many anxieties of a solitary man. The truth is, I am glad of you, Charles.”
“You sound almost ashamed to own it! Am I the cavalry?”
He laughed and said that he was not, and that I was. And then he thought of dinner, which was laid in the adjoining parlor. I was glad of it and found as we passed through that I could detect the scent of rabbit gravy in the air.
He said, “We must wait upon ourselves. Shakes cannot help us, for he must see to the safe disposal of my equipment for the night. There are no other servants here at present.”
“It is forced upon one’s notice,” I agreed, lifting a dusty hand from the doorframe and applying my handkerchief. “May I ask why?”
He smiled in his ruined face, and we sat. It came to me in an uncomfortable fashion that he perceived exactly my distaste at the sad alteration that had taken place in him.
I gave myself rabbit and, in a fit of distraction, took too much, which then I felt obliged to eat.
“Now,” I said, aiming to recover, “have you dismissed them all in a rage? Or did you consider that the housekeeper looked tired, and you gave them all a year’s leave?”
The two scenarios were equally likely, my friend being of a mercurial temper, loving and detesting in equal measures. His capacity for analysis and for feeling is larger than that of any other man of my acquaintance.
Alonso took his seat. “Neither,” he said. “I found that, after my return from Siena, they no longer cared to stay.”
Over the repast, we talked commonplaces. I regaled him with tales of our old acquaintance—mutual acquaintance no longer, I fear, since he had neatly severed himself from England, and from friends, for twenty years. He said little. I do not think he took much interest in my reflections and little bits of news, but they plugged the silence, and I was pleased enough with them for that.
Under cover of this light talk, I took the opportunity to observe my host. I was prey to no small unease. Why his servants should choose to depart, I could not think, and he would not be drawn on the subject. He nursed a glass of wine but did not drink. His answers regarding his scientific preoccupations were brusque. When I questioned him, he seemed to pause to listen to an inner voice and then diverted me from the subject with a bluntness that bordered on the discourteous. He is not unlike himself, but magnified, as if all the brightness and the darkness in him is refracted through a lens.
He is a large man, as I have intimated, with a great deal of that black hair that is always too long for tidiness standing upon his head at an angle. He does everything at a great pace and prefers to be occupied with two tasks at once. I have seen him scratching an equation with one hand, while with the other, he feeds a kitten with a cloth soaked in milk. He is often impatient with others of his species but tenderhearted with dumb things. When it is required that they must be sacrificed in the course of his work, he does not demur, however; beneath his sentiment, he has the level temperament required by our profession.
I was not surprised at his motley appearance; I think his shirt was torn in two places, his shoes laced with strings of different colors. In that way, he is as he ever was. Although careless of his attire—his collars are always ragged and his hats often dented—he used to be a man precise in his movements, quick and careful, and there is a great change in him in this respect. I noted how he slumped in his chair, consuming his food carelessly and, I might add, with no regard to mess. This unwonted indifference gave me pause, but there is a more disturbing change in his form.
One constant remains: his eyes. They are large, and as he is accustomed to be healthy, the whites are very pale and provide a strong contrast to the iris, whose natural color is black, or a very dark brown. They retain that peculiar illusion of being lit from within. A fine, clear eye, in summary, which incidentally has no need of spectacles.
I will cease to fuss about and bring myself to the kernel of this; I should say he was, not is a large man. Though still impressive in stature, Alonso is miserably diminished. He presents a wasted appearance; his skin in places is almost translucent, the architecture of his wrists and neck so clearly apparent that I suffered a moment of shock whenever he leaned into the candlelight… His face is as of bone. To be seated beside him… Well, it was like eating my dinner with a dead man. I know not how else to express my horror. I looked on him and was both revolted and ashamed at once. For I should offer him my understanding and place my skills at his disposal, not shrink from him as though he were a bogey that little children dream of.
Had I not encountered him in his own house, had I not been led to him and told Here, this is Alonso, I would not have known him.
When the plates were clear, he pushed back his chair and regarded me.
“I must wonder,” I said, “what is the nature of my visit?”
“How long do you make your stay with me, Charles?”
“As long as you would have me, for my part! But I have made arrangements for one week.”
He hissed between his teeth. “It is not much,” he said, “not much time.” He seemed to speak to himself more than to me, and I knew not what to answer. But presently, he came out of his reverie and rose. “We must use it well, then.” He winced as he lifted his emaciated length from the chair.
“Why have you come back, Alonso? Truthfully?” The question burst from me. I had not known I was going to ask it.
He smiled. “Come, we will drink to one another, and to old friendship.”
Cravenly, I followed his lead and did not pursue it. I thought I knew the answer to my question, and I was afraid to hear it from his lips. I have come home to die.
When we were settled once more in the easy chairs and with another cider safely in my hand, I went once more unto the breach, recalling to him an idea we had had, of applying mercury to alleviate Paget’s disease.
“I
made no progress on that matter,” he said. He yawned. “I had quite forgotten some of the peculiar starts we used to indulge.”
I said, “Please choose a topic for discussion, Alonso, since you will not be frank with me! Perhaps you think that I am some official, come with forms and regulations. Or the boot is on the other leg! You do not care to have another at your shoulder, peering at your methods. I can assure you, Alonso, that I am no thief of other men’s thoughts. I will keep away from the cellar during my stay.”
I had a flush in my face from the fire. I attended to my brow with a handkerchief.
He hid his eyes. I thought that perhaps he wept, but when he showed his face to me, it was one of merriment. My temper cooled somewhat. Alonso was not himself.
“Oh, I feel like myself again!” he said. “I was right—to send, as you say, for the cavalry! No, I do not fear your scrutiny, or the machinations of a rival.” He turned toward the fire then, and in its warm light, I saw again how tightly the flesh clung to his bones.
“It is not that I do not wish you with me. I should be glad. I am not ashamed to say that I had hoped… For your talents fit the purpose, like a glove. You must know”—here he placed his index finger lightly on mine; for a moment, it rested like a butterfly on my knuckle—“that the English journals can be had abroad, even in Italy. Even, Charles, the journal of the Royal Microscopical Society, containing your treatise. I find that you are a coming man.”
I had not thought that Alonso would read such poor things as my offerings to those minor papers. Did I blush? I sincerely hope I did not; I cannot deny that I was moved. Such a little thing it was, on the relation of Thames water to the Whitechapel cholera epidemic. Kindly received in some specialist circles, to be sure, but creating no stir…
He went on, “I would not wish you to leap before looking. It is lonely work, as you will recall, and it takes a strong stomach.” He creased his brows. “So, we come to the crux of the matter. I should hesitate to ask this of you. And yet here it is—I do ask. I beg you,” he said. “Do not fence about with me any longer. Do you not know why I have come back? You must know,” he said.
The Girl from Rawblood Page 5
