The Maze at Windermere

by Gregory Blake Smith

  He felt such a sudden stinging anger run him through that he grabbed hold of the girl, pulled her into him so that she had to go up onto her toes.

  “Hey!”

  “I’m not fooling around! Where is she? What’s happened? What’re you people doing?”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “What’s happened? Where is she?”

  “She isn’t anywhere! She’s fucking crazy! Let go of me!”

  He gave her a shake, almost pushed her down, then let go and took a step back. His chest was burning and his knees had gone weak.

  Could they be seen? he wondered suddenly, and he shot his eyes along the crest of the hedge. The tops of their heads anyway? From the second floor of the house? From the third?

  “What do you think?” the girl was saying. She was rubbing her wrists where he had held her, petulant and yet with an air of triumph. She had stopped acting. “What’s a guy like you doing with someone like her? Except for the money. What do you think!”

  He tried to calm himself, fixed her with his eyes. One of his knees wouldn’t quit shaking. “I’m not a guy like me,” he heard himself say.

  July 1

  Fog last night. A most unnerving sight, like a Bank of porous Stone looming just off the shore. Like a gray Fate or a slow-moving Premonition.

  The pump was primed, the arrow nocked, the hammer cocked—oh, Franklin was swimming in poetry! He would have to see to it that the occasion, the setting, the sough of the breeze and the birdsong accorded and supplied their effect. Moonlight? The sound of the sea? A pity the breakwater was so distant.

  He was returning down Bellevue to his hotel room, having attended a garden party at the Dovecote, where he had seen Ellen for the first time since his return. He had spoken with her, entertained with stories of his time in New York, managed to send her a look or two that decried the existence of these others! The whole time there had been between them the weighty presence of his having gone to see his family, of having spoken to his father, and now how much there was to say! That it could not be said here, in public, had only served to heighten the lovely, heady intoxication. At the same time he could see that the moment had come. It would not do to further temporize. When next they met, he must appear to be incapable of withholding himself, so overcome with admiration and impatience and—well, not passion, but sentiment, sympathy, hope. He would lay before her his heart and she would claim it as her own.

  He was no sooner back in his room at the Massasoit (ah: next season, there would be no Massasoit; there would be rather Mr. Drexel of the wide halls and leaded glass and seven chimneys of Windermere—delightful name!), no sooner back in his room than there was a knock at the door. He had a flashing thought that it was Ellen, Ellen flush with the irrepressible passion of a dime novel, but when he opened the door he found a boy from one of the other hotels, the Ocean by the look of his uniform. He had an envelope in his hand. Franklin, who had been undoing his tie at the knock, continued for a moment to undress, unbuttoned his shirt on the off chance that there might be some reaction, some quickened look?

  The note was from Ryckman. He felt a little stab of panic at the sight of the signature. Did the man intend to challenge him to a duel? He was evidently back in Newport, but staying at the Ocean, not at his daughter’s. He requested a meeting with Franklin, wished to discuss a matter of mutual importance, wrote that unless he heard otherwise—he would tell the hall boy to await a reply—he would expect Franklin at two the following afternoon in the dining hall of the Ocean House. He had then evidently bethought himself to add a postscript: Please do not inform Mrs. Newcombe of my presence in Newport, though you may do so after we meet.

  What the devil?

  He lifted his eyes to the waiting boy, then dropped them back to the note. He read it again, and this time it dawned on him what it was about. The man had come to buy him off! Whatever persuasion or pressure he had worked on his daughter—he was evidently not as disinterested as his departure two weeks ago had made Franklin think—whatever arguments he had marshaled had proved inadequate. She was intent on her purposes. She would have her Franklin! And so now Ryckman was reduced to this last stratagem. He would offer Franklin a sum of money—and no small sum, one had to presume!—and in a single stroke hoped to both rid himself of Franklin and prove to his daughter that her lover was a blackguard after all.

  What was that novel? The story of the homely Washington Square heiress whose rich father knows her suitor is only after her money and goes about proving it to her by unmasking the fortune-hunter. Only the poor girl knew all along, was willing to be used if only for the semblance of being loved.

  Ah! but Franklin would not be so easily set aside. Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand? Whatever Ryckman intended to offer would not equal the house on Sixty-Second Street, would not equal Windermere. Not to mention the permanent rescue from his circumstances. Not to mention (at last!) a manservant. Not to mention how Mrs. Belmont would close her house to him forever—and all the houses of the Four Hundred—were he to withdraw now. The fellow was operating with an insufficient understanding of the battle lines.

  Well, he thought, sitting down to write a response, he would look forward to a tête-à-tête. It would prove most amusing. He would protest at each escalation of price. Declare his love. Did not Mr. Ryckman understand the deeper recesses of the human heart? Ah: so! Well, they would never speak of this unfortunate interview again. Time would prove to his future father-in-law, etc. He rose, smiled at the hall boy, gave him a quarter-dollar along with his reply.

  Did he not hold all the cards?

  2nd Day

  Jane Beecher has accosted me and tried to explain herself to me. At first I would not listen. But she begg’d me and I relented and listen’d without speaking a word myself. She says it is but a Fit that came over her. That she is destitute of Heart with her Husband lost. That she is used to a loving touch and deeply feels the want of it. That my being in her Husband’s place did send her Wits out of her. That she lov’d me and honor’d me and would not have me despise her.

  I told her that I understood, that I saw how lost and sore of Heart she was, and that we would speak no more of it.

  All the world, it seems to me, is lost and sore of Heart. And there is no balm.

  ~Mr. Russell has returned and he has brought our Wilky on a stretcher. He is feverish and we are not sure he knows where he is. We did not dare carry him upstairs and so he lies in the downstairs hall beside our beautiful staircase. A canister ball a full inch and a half has been removed from his ankle.

  So overtaken by emotion was I that I had to leave the hall. As I went I took up the blanket Wilky had come wrapped in. I meant to throw it out that I might be of some use, but on the back stoop I instead sat in the dark with the commotion all behind me. I put the blanket to my face and at the smell of tobacco I remembered that day at Readville when I visited Wilky and the regiment and was welcomed by their youthful forms, stripped to the waist they were and smoking their pipes. How young and joyous and beautiful and of the summery world they were! And how many of them—I know not their names!—are now mutilated, dead, buried (as we read they were) in that ditch along with their colored brethren!

  How I wish I might speak of this—and of so much else!—to Miss Taylor. But I feel myself marooned on the island of my self. And how horribly I see that that is just what she wished to save me from!

  He looked up “necromantic,” then he looked up “immured.” Then he Googled she with her necromantic glances and strange intuitions and, sure enough, there it was: Henry James, from something called “The Author of Beltraffio.” His heart gave a little leap. Was this, then, more play? Deeper, sicker, more hurtful, but still a game of communication, connection, a gesture toward him?

  He found the story and read it, pencil in hand, marking sentences that might be pressed into duty. If she was hitting him a serve, he would try to ret
urn it. But the whole time it felt off, wrong, not the dance of Daisy Miller but some darker game. Were they not past this? When he went back through the story trying to pick the best of his selections—the most inferential, the most susceptible to double meanings—he was struck by a sentence he had heavily underlined: She was a singular, self-conscious, artificial creature, and I never more than half penetrated her motives and mysteries.

  But he sent off a quote anyway, and when there was no response, with the palpable sense that he was trying to prolong a game beyond when others had quit playing, sent another, and when again there was nothing, a third. But no balls came back across the net. Whatever she had meant by staging that last theatrical communion she seemed now to be gazing at him—sending a necromantic glance at him—from some place beyond the world. The strangeness called to mind this recurring dream he used to have, a dream where in the middle of a match the tennis court—the rectilinear sanity of baseline, service line, doubles alleys—began to unfold irrational spaces, as if the court were turning itself inside out, extending a finger into some other dimension, all of which he had to cover against some malignant, unseen opponent.

  The image he couldn’t rid himself of—where had it come from? from immured? from lost to the world?—was of Alice standing in the embrasure of one of the third-floor windows, looking out at him, down at him in the maze, her breath barely stirring the gauze of the curtain that enshrouded her.

  July 3

  This morning the most alarming news. I am to be brought before a Board of Interrogation, the notice delivered by an adjutant of Genl Waring. He could not answer my Queries, he said. Was only come to ask if I would submit myself tomorrow morning to some Questions of the General’s Staff regarding the late incident on Doubling Point. There were some Matters of Confusion that wanted clearing up. I smiled and said I would.

  Something is gone awry. Someone has been speaking in someone’s ear. Or my wharf Rat has been mouthing about the taverns. Damn me, I should have dispatched the man instead of letting him stand grinning over his Deed!

  What can they know? Did Smithson himself speak beforehand to the men? Let his intentions be known as regards my Conduct? Confide whatever misgivings he had? Yet there have been no looks of Suspicion or Insinuation from those around me, none at the Burial service, none now. Would it not be just like Smithson to not tell anyone he was about the blunting of a fellow Officer? The damned honourable Fool! No, whatever intelligence has come it does not come from the Regiment. From Da Silva then? If so, I will have to brazen it out, act the insulted Aristocrat: are they going to take the word of a damned Jew? And if they have my man, then I will deny, put out a Screening fog. How do we know this is not the very Rebel who came ashore and, happening upon Smithson, did the deed? And now, caught out, tries to enlarge his Perfidy by claiming yet another of the King’s men? I know how to handle myself.

  But still, this change in the Wind is not good. I must prepare an avenue of Retreat. If it comes to that.

  ~Mr. Russell tells us that one of the stretcher-bearers who helped rescue Wilky was shot dead while doing so, and is now himself immured in the alien soil of the South. The grotesque symmetry of this has put me in mind of Mr. Emerson’s poem in which (do I remember this aright?) a soldier kills another soldier and in doing so mystically kills himself. Father too sees such transcendental affinities. We are all, he says, sourced from the same great tap-root. But are we not, his son wants to demur, in that sameness, most unfathomably different? As in the famous Panopticon in Geneva, the mirror maze where one is oneself and at the same time variants of oneself: inversions, deviants, distortions recessing unto the Horizon, regressing into the Infinite!

  Alice has taken to repeating my Chateaubriand. It matters not what anyone says to her, the response is always: “One inhabits, with a full heart, an empty world.”

  2nd Day

  This morning I saw John Pettibone on Thames Street. He was in the company of Henry Whitlow and some of the others, and so we could not stop to speak, but he did send to me when the other boys could not notice the most lovely smile and it has warmed me like the Sun. Indeed it made me disregard the Errand I was upon, and so light was my step become that I kept walking as in a Dream until I had passed out of town and into the rough land out toward Doubling Point. And there I wasted the afternoon amongst the Warblers which are returned from the South and the Titmice and the soft green moss like a Prodigal spendthrift!

  And oh! how this spendthrift’s Thoughts ran wild, and how many times did she give Ashes her freedom, and Charles Spearmint his love, whilst she kissed John Pettibone over and over!

  July 4

  I am just returned from my Interrogation. As I thought, it is Da Silva himself who has informed on me. My Interrogators did not say this, yet such were their Questions, such the Doubt & Mistrust expressed, that I believe it can only be he who, having learned of Smithson’s death, and of my being in Smithson’s company at the time, has come forward with his Suspicions and his Story-telling.

  Genl Waring, and Colonels Peech and DeVere were those present, and some damned Recorder with his quill and ink cup. Was this a Tribunal? I laughingly asked when I entered the room. It was a hot day and the windows were open and we could hear the faint booming of Cannon from up the Bay where the Rebels were celebrating the Anniversary of what they are pleased to call their Independence. Genl Waring was Solicitous toward me, apologizing, thanking me for coming, saying that to question a fellow Officer under such Circumstances was most odious, yet some Irregularities had come to their attention that they thought I might explain. Very well, I told them, I was at their service, and then at a new Discharge of cannon, and wishing to appear at my Ease, remarked how we would cause these damn Rebels to regret the waste of their Powder, would we not?

  They began by asking how I would characterize my relationship with Lieut Smithson, to which I wondered aloud what could they mean. The Lieutenant was my friend, I told them. They went about the bush a bit more, and then finally asked was there not some recent Ill-feeling between the Lieutenant and myself. How so? I inquired, affecting some Perplexity. It had come to their attention, they said, that Lieut Smithson had taken Issue with some activities of mine, and that there might have been ill blood between us. Ill blood? I repeated. Why on earth would we have gone off shooting together if there were ill blood? Nonetheless, they persisted, they had a report of some Disagreement between us. I asked them then, what was this Disagreement, and that they need not be so Dainty as to what they wished to ask.

  Colo Peech then enquired about what he called the Cambridge incident of six months past. Had not Lieut Smithson expressed his Disapproval of my—and here he smiled and said he would not be dainty—of my bedding Mr. Winter’s Wife and the Consternation this caused. If he did, I laughed, it was because he wished to bed her himself! At which Peech did not smile, asked instead had Smithson not considered my behaviour a Black mark upon the Regiment? I answered I had never heard him say so, but they might enquire of the Regt if they liked, perhaps he had expressed such an Opinion to the others. They said they would enquire in due time. They asked then could I tell them of the Incident on the night of the Assembly for Genl Burgoyne, which had subsequently caused Genl Pigot to issue an order against Duels and such Challenges, had not that Altercation been over my Attentions to a young Lady? Indeed it had not! I answered with some Fervour. It was over a damned Engineer speaking rudely within my hearing of a young Lady of my acquaintance. Yes, they allowed, but was not the young Lady one upon whom I had showered my Attentions? I did not know that I would say that I had showered my Attentions on her, but yes, she was a young Lady I held in great Esteem. I considered myself as having acted as any Gentleman ought to act. And that far from being a Black mark upon the Regt, I believed my Courage, and the Engineer’s subsequent Apology, was regarded as a feather in the Regiment’s cap. Indeed, was I not celebrated in the Regt for my action, Genl Pigot’s subsequent order notwithst
anding? Damn my eyes! but how would they have had me respond? Oh, they hastened to say, they had no doubt I had acted as a Gentleman.

  Through it all, of course, I saw Da Silva’s hand, that the Jew had come to them with the news of Smithson’s Perfidy (becostumed as Honour, I doubt not!). Yet I saw as well that they had no Certainty in the matter, that they had not the wharf Rat as Witness and proof. But yet under this guise of casual Enquiry were they determined to try me, to see whether they might rouse me to an Admission, to a Blundering. But I had my Pieces well-arrayed. Had not Smithson been my Companion in every step of this damned War? I asked. Had we not quartered together in Cambridge, yea, shared a bed? Were we not to be seen always in one another’s Company? Indeed was he not my Second in this very Contretemps the night of Burgoyne’s Assembly to which they had alluded? I did account it yet a further Injury that I had not only to weather the foul Murder of my friend, but now an Imputation from this Board. And more of the like.

  And all the while I felt warmed by the Flame of what I had done. Even while I was yet endangered, even so! That I had been crossed, affronted, and that I had responded with a force that the Common might say was not of a Proportion to my Grievance, but which action I view with Pride and a warmth at its Execution. I almost wished to tell them, my insolent Interrogators, and with them the Regt and withal the fools I play with! That they might take the Measure of who I am.

  And yet still I wonder how far Da Silva’s fingers reach. Into the Taverns & Whorehouses along the wharves surely! And if so, might he not yet learn something? Might he not goad himself to Pursue and not to merely Receive? Even returned to Quarters as I am, can I presume myself safe from further Suspicion? I must be sure to keep these pages close to my Bosom that they may not grow Legs and find their way to Colo Peech’s breakfast table.

  Next time, do away with the damned wharf Rat!