by Otto Penzler
“And are none of the houses for sale?” Michael asked.
“Not that I know of, sir,” he answered. “Except of course, sir, the cursed house.”
“The cursed house! Which one is that?”
“Well, sir, it’s half way between Mr. Grinling’s house and the corner of Piccadilly. I don’t know the story, sir, but some says that unhappiness comes to whoever lives there. It’s been empty for a long time. There’s a For Sale board upon the railings … you might notice it, sir, if ever you chanced to look in the daytime. But I suppose these stories spread because nobody’s ever lived there in all the years I have been with Mr. Grinling, and that’s eight years coming Whitsuntide, sir.”
Michael and the servant had come to the corner of Jermyn Street. The dark form of St. James’s Palace loomed up against the low sky line. From the corner opposite, the sound of voices and hammering came to them. “Goings on at Brooks’s, sir, being Christmas. They are unscrewing the knocker from their neighbour’s house. It’s a custom, sir, with the gentry.”
Jermyn Street was narrow and dark. They came to Michael’s chambers where he was given two rooms on the second floor. The servant had already unpacked his carpet bag and his nightshirt was warming upon the fire guard. A brass can of hot water, shrouded in a towel, stood upon the washing stand. Michael prepared for bed, undressing, washing, pushing his head through the neck of his white flannel nightshirt, half conscious of his own movements. For a moment or two it seemed that the scene of the spring flowers and the murderous man belonged to a story he had read. Or to a picture upon the wall. He stood warming his toes before the fire, his hands upon the mantelpiece. The clock before him caught the light of the fire. One hand covered the other: they pointed to twelve o’clock. The twelve muted bells sounded from within the black marble body and announced the end of his first day in London.
Michael went over to the bed and took up the lighted candle from the table near by. He walked about the room, lifting the flame to each picture. One was a coloured print, named The Buck’s Toilet. Five servants attended a figure sitting upon a chair. A man in striped trousers read from a book, before the fire. Then there was a print called A Quadrille at Almack’s, showing twenty or more people dancing within an ornate room. Beside the bed was another picture called A Forced Entry by Broker’s Men, showing still another self-indulgent Buck sitting upon a chair. But in this picture, four miscreants had invaded the fellow’s room and his lady was in a swoon beside the fire. Michael tried to believe that these prints were windows to his new life. He tried to peer past the lattice casement of the house in Reading and to see something more than the two yew peacocks upon the lawn. He wondered if ever he too would become a dandy and, sitting upon a chair, have his stockings brought by one servant and his shoes by another while a scented, crimped barber dressed his hair. Michael went to bed. He snuffed the candle and when his eyes were accustomed to the dark, he watched the big, blue-grey square of the window light. For an hour he lay awake, building up the picture in the house in Half Moon Street. At moments the scene was not more than phantasy. Then it became so real that the scent of the spring flowers was sweet in his nostrils, here in his London room. Through all the pictures tumbling in his brain, the face of the girl persisted, still and white. Contemplating it, he at last turned upon his pillow and went to sleep.
IV
In the weeks which followed Christmas, Michael came to know his uncle as his friend. The older man withheld the moral lectures and advice which he had promised his nephew. They walked together on Sundays and they ate together one night each week. Michael once cajoled his uncle into dining early so that they could go to the Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane. Among the wonders of the entertainment was the appearance of Mr. Wilson, who rode a cycle along a tight rope, stretched between the edge of the stage and the dress circle. Another novelty was the representation of Niagara Falls, in a grand panorama, with lighting and mechanical effects “so devised as to give a realistic impression of the noble spectacle.” Benjamin Grinling had seen Niagara Falls during his visit to America in 1806, and when the old man and his nephew returned to Half Moon Street at the end of the entertainment, Benjamin surprised his servant by pressing Michael to stay for yet another hour, to drink a bottle of wine and to see the album of fine prints which he had collected when abroad upon his American journey. In this way their friendship ripened. After luncheon at Half Moon Street on Sundays, uncle and nephew would walk towards the fresh air and open grassland of Edgeware Road, or towards the river. One Sunday, Benjamin Grinling waited upon Carlton House Terrace for almost an hour while his more agile nephew climbed the staircase within the pillar which had been erected in memory of the Duke of York. The old man had bent his head back, watching the bronze figure with its spiked lightning conductors, apparently swaying against the blue sky; he was anxious lest Michael should come to harm in his foolhardiness. There were journeys to Hampton Court, to see the long lines of trees which King William had planted, and excursions to Roehampton and Kew. In all these adventures, Michael joined eagerly in his uncle’s wish for reminiscence and talk. But, behind the pictures which passed through his brain, pictures of the past and of the present, there remained with him the face of the fair victim in the house in Half Moon Street. Whether ghost or illusion, the face was as clear to Michael as the reflection of his own features in the looking glass. Haunted thus by his experience, Michael at last decided to share his secret with his uncle. He chose the moment with care, for Benjamin Grinling was a man of sense, prone to neither visions nor dreams. He pooh-poohed Michael’s tale and when the boy had gone, he charged his servant to be more tardy in pouring wine into the boy’s glass during dinner.
V
In his thirtieth year, Michael had lost all the gaucherie of his simple life in Reading: indeed, he was something of a beau by this time, frequenting a merchant’s club, to which he had been elected through his uncle’s encouragement. In the beginning, he had been without friends, looking wistfully through the windows of London at the lights and signs of happiness within. He would sit alone of an evening, ill at ease in his new, fashionable clothes, or he would repair to his room. Here, before the fire, he would take his letter case upon his knee and write to his sister; sometimes a record of his work in his uncle’s counting house; sometimes a sad story of his loneliness. Once he wrote to his sister:
In London anything may be had for money; and one thing may be had there in perfection without it. That one thing is solitude. Take up your abode in the deepest glen or on the wildest heath, in the remotest province of the kingdom, where the din of commerce is not heard and where the wheels of pleasure make no trace, even there humanity will find you, and sympathy, under some of its varied aspects, will creep beneath the humble roof. Travellers’ curiosity will be excited to gaze upon the recluse, or the village pastor will come to offer his religious consolation to the heart-chilled solitary, or some kind spinster who is good to the poor, will proffer her kindly aid in medicine for sickness, or in some shape of relief for poverty. But in the mighty metropolis, where myriads of human hearts are throbbing—where all that is busy in commerce, all that is elegant in manners, all that is mighty in power, all that is dazzling in splendour, all that is brilliant in genius, all that is benevolent in feeling, is congregated together—there the solitary may feel the depth of solitude. From morn to night he may pensively pace the streets, the world may be busy and cheerful and noisy around him, but no sympathy shall reach him.
Michael’s first months in London were spent in lounging in the coffee rooms for his amusement. He was bewildered by the throbbing life of the great city, carriages, the tumult of the streets and the big houses. His loneliness passed in time, for he met the rich merchants in his uncle’s counting house. He was bidden to dine in the new houses which were covering the once open fields and swards.
Michael had eaten his luncheon with his uncle on the day of Queen Victoria’s Coronation. The old man was now so feeble that he observed Michael and his
life with dim, lethargic eyes. For an hour or two each day, he was brought down to the sitting-room, his gnarled, shaking hands grasping two ivory-topped sticks, his mumbling voice recalling scenes of his life in such confusion that his servant no longer comprehended what he said. For the most part, he lay in his bed, muttering a story about an autumn when the crocuses bloomed in the snow. He was helpless now as a child.
On the morning of the Coronation, a fine June morning, when there was neither rain nor heat to mar London’s happiness, Michael walked from his rooms through the decorated streets, to call upon his uncle. On the way up St. James’s Street, where he always paused to see the hats and the tobacco jars, the pictures and the silver trophies in the windows of the shops, he came upon an especially grand display in a print-seller’s window. The shop was decorated with flags and in the centre was a new print of Queen Victoria, elegantly displayed in a gold frame upon an easel. She was splendid in her Coronation robes. Her pale, girlish face seemed to be weighed down by the gorgeous crown which she wore; her hand too frail to hold the sceptre. Michael gasped as he beheld the picture. It was the same as that which he had seen in the house in Half Moon Street, seven years before. Michael did not attempt to explain the mystery to himself, nor did he seek help from his uncle when he sat with him at luncheon. Some fantastic twist in time had shown him the picture of the Queen, even before it was certain that she would rule the land. Day after day, during the week of festivity and change which followed the Coronation, Michael went to the shop to see the print. Sometimes there would be a group of loiterers, looking into the window. He would wait until he was alone. Then he would stare at the date underneath, wondering more and more. In the end, Michael bought the picture and ordered it to be framed in gilt, for his room in Jermyn Street. There it hung for some months, above the black marble clock. With a candle raised level with his eyes, he would look at it, night after night, until he came to know every detail of the picture, the looped curtains behind the throne, the number of steps leading up to the tiny feet of the Queen, the folds of her robes and the intricacy of the design of the crown and the sceptre.
One night when Michael returned to his room from the Club, befuddled with too much wine and entranced because he was to proceed to the country for a holiday on the morrow, he found the picture upon the floor. Its cord was snapped: the glass was broken into a hundred pieces and scattered in the fender and upon the hearth rug. The ill omen of a fallen picture had not left him. He remembered a day when a picture fell in the sitting room of The Hollies, before the day of his father’s death. Recalling the incident, he picked up the frame and the print and, placing them behind the tallboy, he never looked at them again.
Now that he was a man of authority in his uncle’s office, Michael met the prosperous merchants, among them a gentleman named John Merryweather, who had been his uncle’s friend and companion in many business adventures. John Merryweather was younger than Benjamin Grinling, and therefore able to help Michael with advice and patronage, long after the older man had retired to the dim shadows of his house. Merryweather was a jovial man, loving good food, frivolous puns, and verses. The friendship between himself and Michael was nurtured over games of whist and hazard, played at the club. The friendship was sealed when Merryweather asked his young companion to accompany him to his country place at Penn. Here, within sight of Windsor’s high towers and near to the cool shade of Burnham Beeches, John Merryweather had built himself a fine house, in the fashion of the time. The new age was already abandoning the simple straight lines of the Regency. Early Victorian houses had sprung up in London and in the countryside. Old red brick houses of Queen Anne’s day were embellished with new decoration and hidden behind stucco: old furniture was carried up to the dim attics and chairs and sofas, sideboards and tables were designed to satisfy the new spirit. Shawls were spread over the straight-backed sofas: the new chairs were covered with Genoa velvet and they were edged with deep fringes. Mantelpieces were shrouded in draperies, worked in wool and silk: curtains were looped and looped again over the windows. Tables were laden with daguerreotypes in velvet frames, work-boxes decorated with mother-of-pearl, and wax flowers, stiff and gay, beneath glass shades.
John Merryweather had made such a house for his wife and daughter, among the oaks and beeches of a field in Penn. Alice Merryweather, a buxom mother in a rustling black silk dress, and her daughter Felicity moved through the rooms of the new house, stirring the potpourri in the china bowls, spreading the crocheted antimacassars upon the fine new chairs, with almost as much delight as if they had been walking through Paradise.
Erratic hummocks of mist lay in the fields of the Thames valley. John Merryweather had chosen this way to Penn, because Michael wished to awaken again the pictures of the first journey he had made from Reading, in the coach, nine years before. In some places, the mist was so thick that it hid the distance and shut the carriage in, so that it seemed to be swimming in a tide. The fences were ghostly vague, the houses visible only because of the dim topaz light of the lamps in their window, placed there to guide the farmers home from their early morning husbandry. Sometimes there were gaps in the mist, showing the high, green pinnacles of pine trees, the lines of cabbages and cauliflowers, leading up to trim cottages. One of these was guarded by shaped yew trees which reminded Michael of the house in which he had lived when he was a boy. He saw the house in Reading dimly now, as if his childhood and his sister’s anxiety over him were but a story he had read in a book; or a picture, seen dimly, when he was young.
In the afternoon, after a mighty lunch of beef, fruit tart, and beer, in a roadside inn, Merryweather and his guest came to Penn and within a few minutes they had passed the new Gothic lodge and the gates which it guarded. They were at Springfields at last and Mrs. Merryweather was greeting them before the drawing-room fire. Here indeed was happiness for Michael. He enjoyed the big new rooms, with their fashionable furniture, the fat glass of sherry wine, the crisp biscuits and the warm comfort, after the cold air and the endless road.
Over the mantelpiece was a portrait of Mrs. Merryweather, painted before her body had succumbed to the pleasant round lines of motherhood and domesticity. She smiled down from a gilt frame: a tall, slim figure, in a milky dress. Her right elbow rested upon a pedestal, her left hand hung down, trailing a sprig of lilac against her skirt. At her feet, a plump spaniel gambolled, his feet raised in the air as if he were waiting patiently for the painter to allow him to rest them upon the ground again. Below the tall, painted figure of Mrs. Merryweather was the mantelpiece, hung in maroon plush with a fringe of maroon and gold; Venetian glass vases with their diamond pendants, Dresden figures, a white marble and ormolu clock, and two big china cats fought for room upon the mantelpiece; in the centre was a bunch of wax convolvulus, crowned by a gay butterfly. These lived safely within a glass dome. Michael turned his back upon the fire and saw the rich expanses of the room, the great painting above the piano of Greek maidens carrying pitchers and baskets of fruit across an alabaster floor. Painted peacocks swept their tails between the porphyry pillars: beyond the painted window was a bay, leading up to a ruined castle upon a hill.
Michael discussed the beauties of travel with Mrs. Merryweather and then, passing his eyes over a gold harp, draped with a Spanish shawl, he saw the innumerable small tables, the bunches of feather flowers beneath glass, and the bowl of real flowers, picked that morning.
“My daughter Felicity arranged the flowers, Mr. Stranger,” said Mrs. Merryweather. Michael turned to commend their beauty to his hostess: she interrupted him and said: “Oh, but here she is. Come, Felicity, and meet Mr. Stranger.”
Michael looked up to the door and there he saw the face of Felicity Merryweather, delicate and shy. His wine glass shook in his hand. He stepped back, almost as if he would fall into the fire. Felicity moved, her pink dress rippling as she came nearer to him. He held out his hand with dim knowledge of what he was doing and he muttered an answer to her welcome. But he was too sick and faint to
hear the voice of his host bidding him sit down. He only looked into Felicity’s turquoise eyes, knowing, with alarm, that it was her face which he had seen upon the floor of the house in Half Moon Street, and that it was her golden hair he had seen spun into a halo about her dead face, as the murderer scattered the daffodils and hyacinths over her body, nine years before.
From the moment in which he first saw Felicity Merryweather walk into the room, Michael’s heart and mind were in a tempest of anxiety and discontent. In the afternoon, he walked with her in the orchard, telling her of his sister’s fruit trees in Reading. They looked up among the branches, to the new, young apples which were no more than small jade knobs among the leaves. This was the first time that he had walked thus among fruit trees, since the days in Reading, before he went to London. A hundred little memories were awakened by the sight of a wheelbarrow leaning against a garden wall, a ladder disappearing among the branches of an apple tree, and by the smell of earth and wet grass. For most of the time, Michael did not speak. He was afraid to allow his tumbled ideas to shape themselves into words. Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Merryweather suggested that Felicity should take Michael to the stables; so they set off, with hands full of sugar lumps and four wizened apples. Michael watched the horses nuzzling their dark noses in Felicity’s little hand. But more often he found himself unable to resist the wish to stare at her face. The lines of her chin and nose were so well known to him now. She would turn as he stared and then look away again, conscious of his eyes.
John Merryweather and Michael talked of many things over their Madeira after dinner. When Mr. and Mrs. Merryweather were alone in their bedroom that night, Mrs. Merryweather moving across the green carpet in a vast nightdress of pink flannelette, tightly tied about her neck, her husband said to her, “Well, my dear, what do you think of him?”
