Dinner was soon understood to be a remarkably elastic term: it stretched to include a shopping expedition and the inspection of Miss Carswall’s property in Oxbody-lane. But none of these activities required my presence. After breakfast, Mr Carswall went to sleep and I was left without employment.
I gave myself a holiday and passed an hour or two in exploring the city. After visiting the cathedral close and the cathedral itself, I retraced our route to the Tolsey the previous evening, to the doorway of the bank where Mrs Johnson had lain; and, on the other side of the road, to the alley which had swallowed up the running man. I allowed myself to drift with the crowds, who washed me down to the forbidding walls of the County Gaol, to the workhouse, and then to the quayside, where the spars and rigging formed a tangle of black scratches on the louring winter sky.
Growing weary, in mind as well as body, I returned to Fendall House. I longed for certainty. At times it seemed to me that I could rely on nothing and no one, except perhaps on the affection of Rowsell and Dansey; and even their goodwill might evaporate if I examined it too closely or relied overmuch upon their benevolence.
I went upstairs to my room. Though there was no fire, I preferred its solitude to the warmth of the parlour and the probability of company. I had still to finish my letter to Rowsell. The windowsill had a broad ledge which I used as my desk. I had been writing for no more than five minutes when I heard a tap at the door.
“Come in,” I called.
I turned in my chair as the door opened. Mrs Frant stood hesitating on the threshold. I leapt up, upsetting the ink in my agitation and sending a spatter of black drops across the page. We looked at each other in silence. At last, and at the same moment, we burst into speech.
“I beg your pardon, Mr Shield, I –”
“Pray sit down. I’m afraid –”
We stopped. Usually in such situations, one smiles at the other person, for the simultaneous speech removes the embarrassment by giving one something to share with the other. But neither of us smiled.
It was such an unbearably squalid little room, an unworthy setting for a lady. I was aware of the unmade bed, and the stuffy atmosphere, the faint hint of cigar smoke remaining from the previous evening. Yet because of the setting, Mrs Frant’s beauty blazed all the more. She was like the sun on the snow: so brilliant she seemed to illuminate herself from within; so beautiful that my eyes could hardly believe what they saw.
In a whirlwind of activity, I pushed my writing materials aside and covered them with a handkerchief. I turned the single chair and begged Mrs Frant to sit down. I remained standing. The room was so tiny, like a cabin on a ship, that I could have stretched out my arm and touched her. She looked down at her hands and then out of the window. From her chair she must have seen the window of her own room, the setting of her cousin’s private performance the previous night. At the memory, I felt simultaneously ashamed and excited.
Mrs Frant turned back to me and said, “Miss Carswall asked me to accompany them to Oxbody-lane, and so did Sir George and Captain Ruispidge.” She spoke as though answering a question, as though we had been in the middle of conversation. “But I felt it wiser to decline.”
“I see.”
“I noticed your expression when she proposed the expedition at breakfast. Miss Carswall does not mean to be vexing, you know. She is like a child when in high spirits. She cannot see beyond her own excitement.”
“Surely it would pain you to see the inheritance Mr Wavenhoe left her, that should have been yours?”
She inclined her head. “I am ashamed to admit it. It is merely that – oh, what is the use of complaining?”
“I should never have witnessed that codicil,” I said. “I regret it extremely.”
“Truly, it does not signify. If it had not been you, Mr Carswall would have found someone else.”
“He is a monster!” I burst out. “And Miss Carswall is –”
“Believe me, Miss Carswall has hardships of her own,” Mrs Frant said. “She has suffered. I cannot condemn her.”
The silence returned. For the moment I brushed aside this new mystery concerning Miss Carswall in favour of an infinitely more urgent matter. Mrs Frant’s presence in this room was quite improper, so much so that I could hardly believe the evidence of my senses. If we were discovered, the scandal would ruin us both. I should advise her to leave immediately. Yet I did not. I knew, in that part of me that was still capable of rational thought, that the very fact that she was here must mean that she needed me for a reason so overwhelming that in comparison nothing else truly mattered.
She stood up. “I beg your pardon,” she said again, in a rush. “I have no right –” She broke off and stared at the windowsill, at the spots of ink and the grubby handkerchief. “I – I have caused such confusion.”
“You should not beg my pardon,” I said. “I am glad you are come.”
She looked directly at me then. I had no words left to say. Still with her eyes on mine, she held out her hand, palm downwards, the fingers slightly curled, for all the world as though she were a great lady receiving me, and extending her hand for me to kiss.
Into my mind flooded the realisation that I had arrived at last at my Rubicon: like Caesar at his river, I could go back or I could go forwards. If I retreated, then nothing need change. If I went forward, I would move into the unknown, and all I would know for certain was that nothing would ever be the same again.
Slowly I stretched out my own hand and wrapped my fingers around hers. It was a cold day, and a cold room, but by some miracle her skin was warm. I looked at her slender fingers, not her face. I encircled her hand in both of mine. She whispered something I did not catch. I took a step forward and bowed my head.
54
It is of no concern to the reader why, since that day, I have kept and shall always keep the 13th of January as a private anniversary. No lips shall breathe the secret of what happened that afternoon in the cramped, whitewashed garret of the house in Westgate-street. Even the cracks in the windowpanes, the splashes of ink and the swirling brown damp stains on the ceiling shared in its perfection. It resolved nothing: it was merely perfect, merely itself.
Later that day, the rest of the party dined with the Ruispidge brothers in a private room at the Bell. They returned late, by which time I had retired, and the following morning Mr Carswall pronounced the roads safe enough for travel.
We left Gloucester under convoy of the Ruispidges in their chaise; the brothers had obligingly delayed their departure until we were ready to leave. We drove together along the toll road as far as the turning to Monkshill-park, a circumstance that greatly contributed to Mr Carswall’s peace of mind.
The Ruispidges left us a mile or two from Monkshill. Mr Carswall’s coach crawled up the long, curving lane running along the northern boundary of the park to Flaxern Parva. As we passed Grange Cottage, I noticed that the shutters were open, and that smoke was emerging from two of the chimneys.
“Mrs Johnson must be coming home soon,” Miss Carswall said. “She may be back already.”
Sophie glanced at me. “She has made a swift recovery.”
“Yes – Lady Ruispidge will be so relieved, I’m sure. And Sir George, of course.”
At last the coach entered the drive of Monkshill-park. Carswall drew out his watch and studied the dial, whistling tunelessly and noiselessly as he did so. He announced with grim satisfaction that our speed from Gloucester had been, on average, four and three-quarter miles per hour, a commendable achievement given the inclement weather.
We drew up outside the house. The boys ran to greet us. I saw with a pang of jealousy how Sophie – as I now allowed myself to think of her – seized upon Charlie as if she were starving and he a loaf of newly baked bread. Mrs Kerridge and Harmwell came out, and Sophie at once inquired after Mr Noak.
“He is much improved, ma’am, thank you,” Salutation Harmwell said in his sonorous voice.
“What are these boys doing?” cried Carswall. �
�Have they run mad in our absence?”
“Oh, Papa,” said Miss Carswall. “It is only that they are pleased to see us. Look, the dogs are acting in just the same way.”
“I cannot abide children under my feet. Besides, it is clear they want instruction in manners as well as their schoolbook. Take them away, Shield, and make them learn something. And if they will not apply themselves, use the strap.”
I said nothing. I was still in my greatcoat, and I was hungry and thirsty and cold.
“Get along, man,” roared Carswall. “I do not pay you to stand there gawping at your boots.”
For a moment there was the sort of silence that precedes a scream, as if everyone in the hall were holding his breath. Carswall had never before spoken so rudely to me: and this was in public, in front of the boys, the servants and the ladies. In Gloucester he had spent most of his waking hours on his best behaviour, and now at last, I suppose, he could be comfortable after his own fashion: he was like a man who, when the company has gone, spits in the fireplace and breaks wind in the drawing room.
I would like to say that I made some grand romantic gesture: that I dashed my glove across the old tyrant’s face and demanded satisfaction, or at the very least stormed out of his house, vowing I would never darken his doors again. Instead, mindful of Sophie, mindful of my precarious place in Mr Carswall’s scheme of things and at Mr Bransby’s school, I kept silent. I walked up the stairs. I heard the boys pounding after me.
“Come, come,” Carswall said below me. “Why are we standing here? Pratt! Is there a fire in the library?”
I do not know whether the boys sensed my shame or my anger, but they were remarkably obliging for the rest of the afternoon. They did not whisper to each other; they construed and translated as though their lives depended on it. While they were working, I could not help thinking of Sophie, and at times I looked at Charlie and tried to trace her dear features in his face.
A little before five o’clock, I tired of this unnatural diligence, not least because I disliked the knowledge that I was the object of the boys’ fear or their pity, or possibly both. I asked them what they had been doing while we had been away and the flow of their conversation soon swept away the barriers of reserve between us.
“It was like a holiday, sir,” Edgar said. “Mr Noak kept to his bed the whole time, and there were only the servants.”
“So you ran wild?”
“Oh, no, sir,” cried Charlie. “Well, not very often. Kerridge would not let us.”
“So she kept an eye on you?”
“She and Mr Harmwell. Did you know, he has an immense fund of stories. Ghost stories that chill the blood.”
The boys looked anything but chilled. They needed little encouragement to launch into one of Mr Harmwell’s stories, a garbled tale about a pirate’s treasure situated on an island off South Carolina and involving a one-legged ghost armed to the teeth with cutlass and pistols. When a ship foundered nearby, and a poor boy was cast away on the island, this amiable ghost encouraged him to find instructions written in cipher to the treasure’s location. Clearly an enterprising youth, the intrepid hero deciphered the code and found the treasure, which necessitated excavating a pile of skulls and digging until he discovered first the headless skeletons of a number of pirates and then the iron-bound chest containing the treasure itself.
“Guineas, doubloons, louis d’ors,” said Charlie.
“Chalices and crucifixes and watches,” said Edgar.
“And what did the boy do with all this?” I inquired.
“Why, sir,” Charlie said, “Harmwell told us that he bought a great estate and married a wife and had many children and lived happily ever after.”
“He only said it to please Mrs Kerridge,” Edgar explained.
“So she was there too?”
“She was nearly always there when Mr Harmwell was.” Charlie paused before adding in a matter-of-fact voice, as though it was so obvious it hardly needed saying, “I believe they are courting.”
Edgar said, “You can always tell when people are spoony upon each other.”
“Yes,” Charlie agreed. “You can.”
I glanced at the boys and wondered if there was more to this remark than there seemed.
“Oh,” Charlie went on. “How I wish I was rich like the boy in the story.”
I wished I were rich, too. As the evening continued, I wished it more and more. I went down to dinner and found that Mr Noak was still not well enough to leave his room, which was perhaps the reason I had been summoned to dine with the family. The meal was a quiet, sad affair, with the five of us occupied with our thoughts. Afterwards, in the drawing room, I tried very hard to get Sophie to talk to me. But she slipped away from me and a moment later announced to everyone that she had a headache and would retire early.
Perhaps the sight of Charlie had reminded her what was important, and what was not. In any event, I thought I read in her silent, unsmiling face the blunt and unwanted truth that she now regretted what had occurred, and disliked me for the part I had played.
55
The following day, Saturday the 15th January, was very cold, but there was no more snow. After lessons, I took the boys for a long walk in the park. They wished to visit the ruins again, for Harmwell’s story had given them the notion that they might find the monastic treasure if they succeeded in enlisting the assistance of a benevolent ghost.
“If a monk was burnt at the stake,” Edgar said with the callousness of youth, “he would naturally linger upon the earth, chained to the scene of his torment.”
“But why should he tell you where the treasure is?” I asked. “If there is any treasure.”
“Because we shall treat him with benevolence,” Edgar explained. “Even though he is a Papist. After all, it was not his fault, not in those days.”
“He will be so gratified by our kindness, after hundreds of years of solitude and persecution, that he will wish to do anything in his power to help us,” Charlie said. “And he will not mind us having the treasure. Why should he? What use is it to him now?”
That at least was unanswerable. While the boys searched the ruins yet again, I walked to and fro, staring down at the roofs of Grange Cottage. A man on a skinny skewbald mare was picking his way up the lane from the turnpike road.
“If he didn’t put the treasure here,” Edgar said, “he must have put it where the ice-house is. That was probably the site of the crypt or hermitage or –”
“You must not search in there,” I said. “The ice-house is dangerous and unhealthy.”
“Besides,” Charlie pointed out in the smug voice of reason, “we can’t. It’s locked.”
When at last we returned to the house, we discovered that Sir George Ruispidge had called. He was closeted with Mr Carswall. The boys and I joined the three ladies in the small sitting room. Miss Carswall was unusually quiet. She applied herself to her account book, in which she was entering her purchases at Gloucester.
“Sir George has brought a letter from Mrs Johnson,” Mrs Lee said to no one in particular. “He and his brother are so attentive to their unfortunate cousin. He called on her earlier today – did you know she is back at Grange Cottage? – and I’m sure she wished to write in order to express her gratitude for the way Mrs Frant and Miss Carswall nursed her so devotedly during her illness.”
Sophie got up and left the room.
Mrs Lee continued speaking in a loud whisper, directing her conversation to Miss Carswall: “Poor Mrs Johnson! She was never quite the same after a certain gentleman went away. She used to be so high-spirited. Wilful, almost. I remember Lady Ruispidge telling me that Mrs Johnson was more headstrong than her sons.”
“I cannot think Sir George was ever headstrong, ma’am,” Miss Carswall said. “Was not he too good?”
“What? Sir George is good? Oh, indeed. Even as a boy, his thoughts were often on higher things. I’m sure he was beaten less than his brother.”
Pratt came into the room, and
Miss Carswall jerked like a fish on the end of a line. Mr Carswall asked if it would be convenient for her to join them in the library. She leapt up, and flew to the mirror where she peered anxiously into her eyes and patted her curls. She glanced round the room, at me, Mrs Lee, the boys, though I doubt if she saw any of us. Then she was gone.
A moment later, Mr Carswall himself came in. He glared impartially at us, as if to ask us what we did there, and began to pace up and down, humming discordantly. No one dared to speak to him. I murmured to the boys that we should return upstairs to our books, and they followed me with remarkable willingness. I do not think Mr Carswall noticed our departure.
Upstairs, Charlie burst out: “So what is afoot?”
“I know what I think,” Edgar said slowly.
The boys exchanged smiles.
“That is enough,” I said. “We will return to Euclid, and you may keep your thoughts to yourselves.”
And return we did, though without much profit to any of us. After a while we heard a horse on the drive. I strolled over to the window and looked out. There was Sir George riding away.
Soon afterwards, when we gathered in the drawing room before going into dinner, Miss Carswall’s face made all as plain as day. It was as if she had lit a candle inside her. Carswall himself was, in his own way, equally elated.
The news would not keep. “You must give me joy, Cousin,” Miss Carswall burst out, rushing up to Sophie. “I am to be married.”
“Sir George has offered?”
“Yes, my love, and everything has been done as it should. He talked to Papa first, and asked if he might pay his addresses. And then Papa called me in, and he left us alone.”
It is at this point in novels that young ladies blush. Miss Carswall did not blush. She looked like the cat who has licked the cream.
Sophie embraced her. “Oh, my dear, I do indeed give you joy. I hope you will be very happy.”
“He would not dine with us,” Mr Carswall put in. “He would have liked to, of course, but he felt obliged to ride back to Clearland and inform Lady Ruispidge of what had passed. Very proper, I’m sure; I should expect no less of him.”
The American Boy Page 29
