by James Morrow
Beyond the unease Chloe felt at being branded an antichrist (a discomfort leavened somewhat by the satisfaction she took in the epithet), the most troublesome consequence of Popplewell’s piece was Fanny Mendrick’s discovery that her rooming-companion harbored atheist sympathies. So bitter was the subsequent altercation between Chloe and Fanny that the wreckage of their friendship was surely but one more such quarrel away.
“I don’t know which fact gives me greater pain,” said Fanny. “That you would murder your Creator or that, having done so, you would collect ten thousand pounds in blood money.”
“It’s my Christian duty to help my father pay his debts,” said Chloe.
“And is it your Christian duty to spit on Christianity?”
“Oh, Fanny, how it grieves me to cause you unhappiness.”
“Then burn your ticket to Galápagos.”
A particularly exasperating aspect of his “freethinking female naturalist” article was Popplewell’s penchant for making a philosophical debate sound like a penny dreadful. In his estimation the interconnected voyages of the Paragon and the Equinox constituted a “cosmic regatta” between irreconcilable worldviews.
On the one hand, allied with the Church of England and the dictates of tradition, we have Captain Deardon and his company of Anglicans, coursing towards Ararat. On the other, braving the wrath of the faithful and the ire of the angels, we have Captain Runciter’s band of unbelievers, heading for Galápagos. Make no mistake, O my readers—the real prize in this race is not £10,000. Whichever company brings back the better evidence will be giving us to know whether we descend from the loving hands of Providence or the hairy loins of primates. Is it any wonder Miss Chloe Bathurst is amongst our nation’s most talked-about figures, her praises sung in every hellfire club from Lowestoft to Liverpool, even as her damnation is recommended from thousands of pulpits throughout Great Britain?
On Monday morning Popplewell tracked Chloe to a Bond Street milliner’s shop, hovering in the shadows as she opened her purse (newly fattened with Shelley Society funds) to procure an extravagant white Panama hat, perfect for keeping the equatorial sun from ravaging her skin. Upon completing the transaction, she informed the journalist that if he did not absent himself she would seek out a constable and complain that she’d been “subjected to the advances of the lecherous scribbler Popplewell.” Her nemesis departed straightaway.
The following afternoon she sat down with Mr. Abernathy of Maritime Enterprises, the corporation charged with equipping the voyage, receiving his assurances that the Equinox would put to sea with an abundance of animal pens and birdcages. Returning to the street, she again encountered Popplewell. Before he could speak, she told him that unless he disappeared instantly she would visit the nearest magistrate and “swear out a complaint against the unscrupulous penny-a-liner Popplewell.” Again the scoundrel fled.
Wednesday morning found Chloe and Algernon at the British Museum, where they spent three damp and frigid hours poring over hand-colored maps of the Encantadas, an experience redeemed for her by the delight she took in seeing the positions and shapes of the islands whence came Mr. Darwin’s reptiles and birds. (Charles Isle resembled a walnut shell, Indefatigable a fried egg, Narborough a mushroom cap, Albemarle a gouty foot.) Exiting the map room, she and her brother were importuned by Popplewell. This time around, she deferred to Algernon, who brandished his furled umbrella and waved it about whilst feigning derangement. The journalist vanished.
Chloe would admit that the “freethinking female naturalist” article had brought one blessing into her life. Thanks to Popplewell’s pen, the management of the Adelphi Theatre now perceived her not as a nuisance with anarchist sensibilities but as a resourceful bluestocking capable of wheedling £300 from the Shelley Society, which meant that her dealings with the playhouse need no longer take the form of theft. Instead she could walk through the front door of a Wednesday afternoon, seek out Mr. Kean, and propose to buy, for two pounds sterling, the female pirate regalia that had figured so prominently in The Beauteous Buccaneer. Like most aspiring transmutationists, Chloe was not superstitious, and yet she could not but impute certain arcane powers to these costumes: by outfitting herself as Pirate Anne or Pirate Mary she would become Pirate Anne or Pirate Mary—women who, owing to their many years of sinking ships and accumulating doubloons, were far better suited to the imminent voyage than was Chloe Bathurst, who’d never even seen the Atlantic Ocean, much less sailed upon it.
Mr. Kean cheerily accepted her offer, dispatching his wife to the wardrobe racks. Ellen Tree returned promptly, costumes in hand. Chloe left the manager’s office in good spirits, clutching a muslin sack stuffed with the talismanic garments.
No sooner had she stepped into the foyer, now overrun with playgoers leaving the matinee performance of Via Dolorosa, than a tall figure with a walking-stick planted himself in her path.
“Good afternoon, Miss Bathurst.”
She could scarcely credit her senses, which disclosed not only the haggard features of Mr. Darwin’s face but also the rasp of his cough and the acrid aroma of his tobacco. “Hello, sir,” she replied, her throat constricting as if she’d fallen prey to one of her father’s talkative nooses.
“How felicitous to find you here.” Mr. Darwin puffed on his cigarette, exhaling a pungent zephyr. “I’ve been searching for my erstwhile zookeeper all day.” Elaborating, he revealed that after arriving on the morning train he’d made inquiries at the Adelphi. Eventually Fanny Mendrick had stepped forward to explain that she and Miss Bathurst were “friends and fellow lodgers whose affection has been compromised by the Shelley Prize.” On apprehending that she was speaking with Chloe’s former employer, Miss Mendrick had offered him directions to their rooms, noting that Miss Bathurst was usually “out and about until sundown, making preparations for her awful sea voyage,” and so he’d resolved to spend the afternoon on the premises, watching Miss Mendrick portray the saintly Veronica.
“Have you been well, Miss Bathurst?” asked Mr. Darwin, flourishing the “freethinking female naturalist” edition of the Evening Standard.
“I must confess to considerable fatigue. Pondering the arguments I overheard in our vivarium”—it would be best, she decided, not to mention her stolen copy of the essay—“is a wearying vocation. May I assume you are furious with me?”
“I have my usual complaints,” said Mr. Darwin, vaulting past her question whilst massaging his temples. “Headaches. Nausea. Insomnia. Each month I go to Malvern for Dr. Gully’s cold-water treatments. They seem to help. Yes, Miss Bathurst, I am furious with you, though my feelings are tempered by a certain begrudging wonder that you have come so far so fast.”
Sensing that he needed to get off his feet, she guided Mr. Darwin into an alcove decorated with posters for Adelphi productions gone by: The Beauteous Buccaneer, Wicked Ichor, The Raft of the Medusa, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. He eased himself onto a velvet-upholstered bench, so that a lithographic hodgepodge of pirates, vampires, castaways, wraiths, and orang-utangs swirled above his head like the dramatis personae of a nightmare.
“If you’re planning to expose me as a fraud, I can hardly blame you,” she said.
“Tomorrow, Miss Bathurst, yes, tomorrow I might inform the Standard that you’ve contrived to pass my species theory off as your own.” He secured his walking-stick upright between his knees in a tableau suggesting a Hindoo cobra emerging from a basket. “But today I wish only to praise my zookeeper. One might even say I’ve come to offer her a benediction.”
“A benediction?” she said, astonished.
“Don’t overestimate my sympathy. Had I two thousand surplus pounds, I would cover your father’s debts, then arrange for you to tell the world you no longer believe in transmutationism. That said, I must allow as how a part of me wants you to claim the prize, for it happens that my relationship with God—”
“Assuming He exists.”
“Assuming He exists, our relatio
nship is in such disarray that I should be glad to see Him thrown down.”
“‘For ’tis not mere blood we seek but the thrill of mocking the cosmos.’”
“How’s that?”
“A line from this confection by Mr. Jerrold,” said Chloe, pointing to the Wicked Ichor poster. “If you want me to win the contest, why not give me that scrivener’s copy of the full treatise? Whilst you’re about it, why not lend me your menagerie, thus sparing me a journey to the New World?”
“Why not, Miss Bathurst?” said Mr. Darwin indignantly. “Why not? Because a greater part of me is horrified that my idea has been dragooned into so tawdry an enterprise.”
“In your shoes, I would feel the same way.”
“Furthermore, though personally prepared to forsake theism, I question whether anyone has the right to deprive his fellow humans of its comforts.”
“Were I to give the issue more thought, I would surely agree with you,” she said. “Tell me of your difficulties with the Almighty.”
Mr. Darwin rose and strode up to the Raft of the Medusa poster, an image that, though intended to evoke the famous painting, took as many liberties with Géricault’s masterpiece as had Bulwer-Lytton’s play with the historical facts. “Before finding my true calling, I intended to become a physician. Oft-times my training required me to visit private homes, attending to patients whose illnesses were so contagious that no hospital would admit them. I saw many an innocent child suffer and die.”
“And you wondered why a loving God would permit such a state of affairs?”
“No, back then I never doubted His goodness.”
Mr. Darwin fell silent. A tear coursed down his cheek, followed by another. At last he spoke two syllables.
“Annie.”
“Annie?”
“The signs are unmistakable. Night and day she lies a-bed, clutching that doll you gave her, vomiting, spitting blood, burning with fever, her little heart racing. She has consumption—I know it.” Mr. Darwin jabbed the floor with his walking-stick, as if to wound the world that had sickened his child. “Consumption. There—you see? I found the courage to speak the word. My dear sweet Annie has pulmonary consumption.”
Now Chloe, too, began to weep, soon sobbing with all the ferocious hopelessness of Cleopatra cradling her dying Antony. “That child is a gift from the angels.”
“There are no angels, Miss Bathurst. As His earthly avatars God appoints only vengeful demons.”
From her reticule Chloe withdrew a handkerchief, using it to daub first Mr. Darwin’s tears and then her own. “Vengeful demons,” she echoed, blowing her nose. “C’est vrai.”
In an apparent bid to change an intolerable subject, Mr. Darwin gestured towards the central figure in the Raft of the Medusa poster, Françoise Gauvin, standing in the prow of the improvised vessel and frantically signaling the Argus—though ultimately the frigate had sailed into the sunset, heedless of the surviving Medusa passengers (fifteen out of an original hundred and fifty, the others having succumbed to thirst, duels, murder plots, and suicide). “Is that supposed to be you?”
“I portrayed a fictitious female survivor,” Chloe replied, absorbing the last of her tears. “Throughout the play she struggles to forestall her shipmates’ descent into cannibalism. Her best speech finds her scrambling atop a pile of corpses and screaming, ‘He who would eat his fellow man must answer to his God!’ One night, just to be clever, I added, ‘And he who would eat his God must answer to his fellow man!’”
“Should I assume the piece is allegorical? Is the raft a metaphor for the world?”
“The playwright, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton, has proven himself a stranger to symbolism and other literary felicities. I believe he was drawn primarily to the luridness of the tale. When next you see Miss Annie, give her a kiss from me.”
Mr. Darwin pivoted on his heel and fixed Chloe with a marine iguana’s implacable stare. “Get thee to South America, Miss Bathurst. Find your inverse Eden. Who am I to judge your overweening ambition? We’re a damned and desperate species, the lot of us, adrift on a wretched raft, scanning the horizon with bloodshot eyes and hollow expectations. Go to the Encantadas. Go with my blessing.”
Having made his parting remark, Mr. Darwin firmed his grip on his walking-stick and, wreathed in cigarette smoke, shambled into the Strand, doubtless seeking to distract himself with the sights, sounds, and fragrances of London, a desire that the indifferent city would surely fulfill straightaway, with myriad sensations to spare—and yet it seemed he was also looking for a ship, the frigate of his most fervent desire, the Argus that would never come.
5
Chloe Explores St. Paul’s Rocks, Home to Brown Boobies, Black Noddies, Belligerent Crabs, and Her Greatest Admirer
By a regrettable turn of the cards and a woeful rotation of Dame Fortune’s wheel, the date on which Chloe and Algernon undertook the final leg of their journey from London to the moored Equinox coincided with the moment that the leaders of the Chartist movement had elected to stage political demonstrations throughout England. The 20th of October, 1849, began innocuously enough, Chloe awakening in a Haslemere inn, slipping into her Pirate Anne costume (indubitably the proper ensemble for the first day of her grand adventure), and collecting her luggage, including the sandalwood box in which she now stored the transmutation essay. She proceeded to the courtyard, joining her waistcoated, beaver-hatted brother and their fellow travelers: a solicitor on holiday with his wife and their two daughters. Everyone scrambled into the Great Southern Transit Company coach, which promptly set off for the seacoast, and by ten o’clock the passengers were breaking their fast in Brighton.
The trouble began in Portsmouth, its public square so clogged with Chartist protestors that the coachman had to maneuver through a treacherous labyrinth of back streets, a strategy likewise required by conditions in Bournemouth and Weymouth. Although Chloe imagined that these delays might necessitate a full day’s postponement of the voyage (a dreadful possibility, the ark hunters having left two weeks earlier), that was certainly preferable to being waylaid by the protestors, who brandished not only placards but also pitchforks, cudgels, and, in a few alarming cases, firearms.
Overlooking the dissidents’ uncouth appearances, she decided their desires were not unreasonable. VOTES FOR ALL MALE CITIZENS ran the most common sentiment. Other signs insisted SECRET BALLOTS ARE A SACRED RIGHT, whilst others promoted A COTTAGE FOR EVERY HONEST WORKER. But Algernon (as prescient in political matters as he was inept at faro) declared the movement moribund. The Chartists’ demands, he told Chloe, would not be seriously addressed until a generation of plebeians presently in embryo got themselves born, came of age, took note of their lamentable condition, and laid their case before a newly minted Parliament.
“Once we’ve collected the prize,” said Chloe, “we must donate a portion to the cause of economic justice.”
“Sweetest sister, don’t count your chickens ere they’ve transmuted,” said Algernon.
Surveying the angry placards, Chloe speculated that human beings might do well to petition God in this fashion, as opposed to the more modest medium of prayer. She wondered what demands she might herself post on Heaven’s gates. NO PULMONARY CONSUMPTION IN PERSONS UNDER FORTY. Yes, that had the proper ring. LAZARUS GOT A SECOND CHANCE, HOW ABOUT ANNIE DARWIN? A fair question, she decided.
Despite her fears, the coach reached Plymouth by early afternoon, well before the turning of the tide. Upon shedding the solicitor and his family in the town center, the driver proceeded to the harbor, with its soaring groves of masts and bristling hedges of bowsprits. The docks swarmed with protestors, including not only the expected Chartists but also a faction of religionists enraged by Chloe’s project, plus a deputation of freethinkers. This third group, predictably, was in the minority, their placards correspondingly tepid: HAIL AND FAREWELL, TRANSMUTATIONISTS … A FAVORING WIND FOR THE GREAT QUEST … CHLOE BATHURST, AVATAR OF REASON. God’s defenders, by contrast, brought bravado to their epigrams:
NO SUCCOR FOR THE BRIDE OF BEELZEBUB … DOWN WITH THE SLUT OF SCIENCE … AS JESUS CURSED THE FIG TREE, SO HE REVILETH THE BATHURST TREE.
“Their vehemence frightens me,” she told her brother. “On the other hand, I rarely stirred such passions at the Adelphi.”
“Enjoy this moment in full,” Algernon advised her, “for all infamy is fleeting.”
The coachman halted alongside the gangway, then hopped free of his box and opened the door as a party of four Equinox crewmen scurried into view and began unstrapping the trunks, duffels, portmanteaus, and valises from the roof.
“In my capacity as leader of this expedition,” Chloe told her brother, “I shall now issue my first order.”
“As opposed to the ten thousand you’ve given me in your capacity as my elder sister,” said Algernon.
“Get thee to the hold and ascertain that our animal pens and birdcages have been competently secured.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“No, little brother. My command is your command.”
As Algernon instructed the crewmen to stow the luggage in the cabins reserved to himself and his sister, the religionists shifted tactics, from verbal abuse to vegetable aggression. Putrid onions flew at Chloe from all directions, glancing off her shoulders and skidding along her back. Moldering potatoes followed, and then came decaying cabbages, arcing through the air like so many guillotined heads being tossed about the Place de la Révolution at the height of the Terror. Although the onslaught greatly distressed her, she took solace in having worn a buccaneer costume instead of her burgundy-velvet Françoise Gauvin gown.
