In the back of the second gallery of seats. The incubus he sought! She was rummaging inside her carpetbag. Was she looking at Tom? Had she seen him looking at her from high above?
Tom's heart raced.
“Go on! Finish!” Dolby called up in a throaty whisper of despair. “Hurry, Branagan! Hurry!”
Tom wanted to be done more than Dolby could have known. Tom had nearly finished his work above when he realized: Dickens was at the end of his Christmas Carol reading. That meant intermission. The doors would open: and the incubus, who possibly had already seen him spot her, would be free to escape.
“And to Tiny Tim, who did not die…” (a roll of cheers like thunder) “And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one!”
A large object flew onto the platform and tumbled toward the speaker. Tom flinched. A bouquet of roses in every color.
His repair complete, Tom moved to go back down and found that his arm was lodged between two pipes. It would not budge. Below, Dickens closed his book and the audience broke into rapturous applause. Dickens bowed and left the stage.
Grimacing, Tom yanked his arm hard, cutting it on both sides on the old pipes as it pulled out. Righting himself, he hurried to the narrow stairs and descended as quickly as he could. The men and women rose from the seats as one-some to applaud, others to start toward the doors to get air, smoke, or exercise their legs before the second hour of reading. There was a blur of color as a woman vaulted herself onto the platform-no, not one, but four or five women, reaching their hands out to grab the geranium petals that had drifted down from Dickens's buttonhole during the reading.
Dolby came over to the side of the platform with a congratulatory smile directed toward Tom and a warmly extended hand, but Tom would not stop. As soon as he reached the hall, he broke into a blinding run up the steep floor of the theater, past the first gallery, to the second, and nearly leaping over two rows of seats he grabbed the woman's shoulders in a near embrace.
“You were the one who came into Mr. Dickens's room at Parker's?” Tom demanded.
She met Tom's accusatory gaze with her powerful stare. Then she smiled, and in a loud, irreverent voice, said, “You do think me odd!”
Tom could see the woman's carpetbag was stuffed with papers. He removed a few sheets. They were identical in size and type to the note he had found at Dickens's bed.
“It was you.”
She surrendered a slim smile. “You can see what nobody else does. Not my husband. You understand it. He needs me, the Chief, the Chief needs me. These others aren't fit for the likes of him at all.”
Tom was startled most of all by that one casual word: Chief. Boz, the Great Enchanter, the Inimitable, all were Dickens's nicknames with the worshipful public. But no one outside their circle called Dickens the Chief. How close had she been?
Suddenly her eyes turned dark and she sneered at him as though he had just spat on her. “You are the meanest and most unkind man.” Now she actually did spit at his face, with a look of disgust. “I have so many lots of friends, they are all more than kind to me and nobody who meets me forgets me. The Prince of Wales is a great, great friend and protector! The Chief shall be beloved again.” This last phrase she chanted to herself in eerily perfect imitation of Tom's light Irish brogue.
Tom now noticed that on the wooden back of the seat in front of hers, there were carvings. They were deep and had to be done with a knife. Words and phrases, quotes from Dickens's novels, ran into one another in mostly illegible patterns. The word Tom could make out by moving his fingers over the chair was “beloved.”
A crowd of spectators had begun to surround them by this point. Tom was digging through her carpetbag for the pearl-handled blade he had seen her holding in Brooklyn but stopped when he found a small pistol instead.
“It's not easy to love a man with the fire of genius,” she said confidentially, nodding toward the pistol. “His voice stays in my ears even when I don't want to hear it. ‘You have no idea what it is to have anybody wonderful fond of you,’ says he, ‘unless you have been got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings.’
“Branagan?” Dolby cried, swimming upstream through the crowd. “Branagan, what is the meaning of this? People are pointing. Who is this woman? What are you doing, put that away! You'll cause a riot!”
The policeman who had stood guard with Tom earlier at the door also fought through the crowd with two officers behind him. Suddenly, they pushed Tom away.
“Stand aside!” one of them said.
“Officer,” Tom replied, “this woman entered Mr. Dickens's hotel room at the Parker House, I'd be bound she's the one who assaulted a widow in New York. She means him harm-there is a gun in there!”
The pistol was pulled from her bag by one of the policemen.
She nodded. “That is mine, Officer. Protection. In case anyone had in mind to steal my tickets for the reading. Now this is a spiteful-looking bald man, isn't it?” she said looking at Dolby. “Who are you?”
“You must take this woman away from Dickens immediately, officers,” Tom said.
“Thunder!” the policeman said with an astounded gasp at the situation, for a moment not knowing how to react. “Very sorry, Mrs. Barton,” he finally said, taking off his hat. He turned back to Tom. “You are a saucy Dubliner after all. Just like the newspapers said about your actions in Brooklyn. Haven't you any notion who this lady is?” he said, placing his emphasis on the word as a correction to a mere woman. “I hope for your sake she does not allege an assault.”
“See here!” Tom said, charging back toward her. “What does her name matter?”
“Mind our orders, Paddy boy, or I'll have to write to your mother to take you back home to look after the pigs.” The officer stepped in front of her to block Tom. “Stay away from her or we shall have to lock you up!”
“No need for that, Officer, no need at all,” said Dolby, taking Tom by the hand and lowering his voice to a whisper to hide the scene from any reporters. “A mere mistake on the good man's part. He'll re-turn to the hotel for the remainder of the reading.”
“Mr. Dolby!” Tom began to protest.
“Branagan!” Dolby growled. “Be silent now!”
“Oh, dear, all of that fuss over me. My property, sir?” Mrs. Barton said calmly. The police officer gave her the pistol. She took it, smiling eerily, and stored it in her strange carpetbag. “That Thomas is a sweet, sweet boy. He reminds me of a poem by… well, I can't remember by who. One of the tragic ones. There are too many poets these days.”
Dolby dragged Tom Branagan away through the aisles and tried to pull the porter's gaze away from the woman.
“Au revoir, Thomas,” she said with a wave. “As Mr. Weller says, ‘I came to look after you, my darlin’!’
“Keep Dickens away from her!” Tom called back helplessly to the policemen. “Keep Dickens away!”
Third Installment
***
Chapter 14
Kent, England, June 30, 1870
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND HIS BOOKKEEPER REBECCA SAND FOUND no welcoming party or waving of handkerchiefs for them when the steamer reached the port in Liverpool. Osgood had expected that John Forster, Dickens's executor, or Frederic Chapman, Dickens's English publisher, might send a coach to meet them at the docks after receiving word from Fields of the visit. Instead, Mr. Wakefield, their business-minded companion from aboard the ship, seeing they were stranded and on their own, gallantly arranged their transportation to Higham station in the Kent countryside. He warned Osgood to receive a rate from their driver before hiring it or they'd face extortion. Before they boarded the carriage, Wakefield also recommended they find lodging at an inn called the Falstaff, “a fine little establishment- also the only one!”
In the ancient country town of Rochester, within the quaint and narrow streets Dickens seemed to be everywhere. On passing the church cemetery, the first tombstone one saw read DORRIT-there, Osgood surmised, Dickens might have first thought out Little Dorri
t ‘s story of greed and imprisonment. A shingle above a store on High Street spelled out BARNABY-and somewhere to match perhaps, there was “Rudge.”
Osgood thought about Dickens's popularity. People had gone to church to pray for Little Nell, they had cried for Paul Dombey as though for their own son, they cheered-how they cheered at Tremont Temple-when Tiny Tim was saved. His books became real for everyone who read them, whether the humble laborer in the Strand or the patrician in Mayfair. That is why even those who never in their life read any novels, would read his.
Their carriage slowly mounted a steep green hill to the summit where there stood an inviting white building bathed in rustic summer charm. The faded sign of the house was painted with Shakespeare's obese character of jolly Falstaff with Prince Hal, and a scene of Falstaff stuck inside a laundry basket while the Merry Wives laughed. The inn was located on rolling meadows directly opposite from the wooden entrance gates to the grand Dickens estate, known by the name Gadshill Place.
They were greeted on the steps by the landlord of the inn, whose appearance made them stop in their tracks. Solidly built, though not quite fat, he was dressed in large, brightly colored Elizabethan garments padded for good measure. His puffed-up velvet cap carried a small bird's worth of wilted feathers. He said to call him either Falstaff or “Sir John” and held a goblet of beer ready to toast any trifle in his sights.
“You may eat us out of house and home and still be welcome,” he said. “That is the motto of the Falstaff Inn!”
“I wonder if all English landlords wear such costumes,” Rebecca whispered to Osgood as the landlord and a lad transported their trunks.
“Come, Sir Falstaff will show you to your rooms!” exclaimed the merry landlord.
The next morning, John Forster, having received word of their arrival, met them in the coffee room while they recovered from their Atlantic voyage over eggs, broiled ham, and coffee. Though wearing an expensively tailored suit of the London style, Forster was himself a more genuine Falstaffian figure, with a globular body, slow movements, and the face of a spoiled child. Unlike the innkeeper there was no gaiety about this Falstaff.
“And this would be Mrs. Osgood?” Forster asked, extending his hand.
Osgood rushed to correct him, explaining her position as bookkeeper.
“Ah, I see,” Forster replied gravely, removing his hand from hers hastily and then sitting at the table. “Then you are in mourning for a husband,” he declared oracularly of her dark outfit.
“For my brother, actually, sir. My brother Daniel.”
Forster knit his brow in consternation, not at the potential of embarrassing the young lady but at his being wrong twice. “Hail to America, I suppose, to have blushing young girls trail along at your side as bookkeepers! A fine thing, that.”
At this point, one of the waiters came over and whispered into Forster's ear, “That's against the rules in the coffee room, sir.”
Forster took the cigar he was half smoking and half chewing out of his mouth and looked at it as if he had never seen it before. Then he rose to his feet and shouted, “Leave the room, rascal! How dare you, sir, interfere with me! Clear out, and bring this gentleman and lady some cakes with their breakfasts!” With the waiter taking flight, the visitor resumed his place.
“No cakes for me, though, Mr. Osgood, as I have already breakfasted, thank you,” Forster said, without having been offered any. “I wake at five every morning before even my footboy for taking your morning meal at once aids the labors of digestion and staves off sickness. Now, on to the little matter of your business, shall we?”
After Osgood explained their wish to examine Dickens's private belongings, Forster curtly said he would return to Gadshill and discuss the matter with its residents. He returned across the road to the Dickens estate shortly thereafter. An hour later, Osgood and Rebecca received a note on black-bordered mourning paper that they were welcome to Gadshill at their convenience.
“Perhaps I should stay here at the inn,” Rebecca suggested as she finished writing a note back accepting the offer. “Mr. Forster seemed rather, well, ungenial toward me.”
Osgood did not want to make her self-conscious, though she was correct. “He is ungenial in general. Remember, he was one of Mr. Dickens's closest friends. His spirits cannot be whole, after such a loss,” he said. “Come, Miss Sand. With a bit of luck we may secure our information and have some leisure time to do something very English around London, too, before we leave.”
On the outside, the redbrick Dickens family home was austere but still welcoming-stone steps leading up to a spacious portico where the large clan would once have gathered. Towering oaks formed the boundaries around the property where boys used to run and play, which gave way to wilderness beyond the gardens and now-empty cricket fields that the master of the house had made available to the townspeople for matches.
Walking through the fields felt like a walk through the legends of the novelist's life. Charles Dickens had written about first seeing the house when he was a very young child but still old enough to be aware of how poor his own family was. Before his troubles with debt that brought him to prison, John Dickens would take his queer small boy to look at Gadshill from the street. If you were to be persevering and work hard, and mind the study of your books, you might some day come to live in it, he'd say to the boy, though the father himself was not persevering and never worked hard.
Two big Newfoundland dogs, a mastiff, and a St. Bernard raced around from the side of the house. A tinge of disappointment seemed to pass through each animal's body upon seeing Osgood and Rebecca. One canine in particular, the largest among them, tilted his handsome head slowly with a devastated air that was heartbreaking. The head gardener called out and the dogs bounded as a pack back to the stable yard, then listlessly tiptoed into a cool tunnel, which led to the other side of the road.
Considerably less life awaited them inside Gadshill. The house, in fact, was being drained of it before their eyes. Some workmen were removing paintings and sculptures from the walls and tables; other somber-faced intruders in silk vests and linen suits were examining the furniture and prodding each object and fixture. The atmosphere was completed by a melancholy rendition of Chopin on piano floating on the air.
A workman lifted an oval portrait of a little girl as Forster led Osgood and Rebecca through the entrance hall to the threshold of the drawing room.
“You cannot visit Gadshill,” he suddenly announced with a gouty frown that was even less friendly than his demeanor at breakfast.
“What do you mean, Mr. Forster?” Osgood asked.
“Do you not see it with your own eyes, Mr. Osgood? Gadshill is no more-not how it was. A blasted auction of his possessions takes place next week and they are dismantling everything in sight,” Forster said, angrily waving his arms. Then he turned and cast a hard gaze at the better dressed invaders. “These other men, who are arranging the remains of the place with artificial homeyness, are the representatives of a different auction firm that will sell the very house you stand in to the high bidder. In tol-er-able, every bit!” Whenever the executor spoke, it was as if he had memorized the words beforehand, and now were reciting them to an investigating commission set to put an old enemy out of public office.
“Must every single thing in the house be sold, Mr. Forster?” Rebecca asked with genuine sadness.
“Don't tell me, young lady! Absolutely everything to the last doornail, don't I know it!” Forster cried out accusingly, as if Rebecca herself had just decreed the destiny of the place. “The Dickens family is very large,” his voice dampened into a loud whisper, “and his many sons, like him in no aspect but his name, lead expensive, wasteful lives. Of his two daughters, one is married to an invalid painter who is Wilkie Collins's brother-which is worst, I don't know, to paint, or to be crippled, or have Wilkie Collins as a relative? The other girl, though passing comely, has never married. No, without the income of future books, Gadshill cannot stay as it was.” He looked ou
t over the meadows outside and waited for Osgood and Rebecca to do the same before continuing. “The land out there shall be remembered for three things. First, for Sir Falstaff robbing travelers with Prince Harry and the local vagabonds. Second, for Chaucer's pilgrims who passed along the way to Canterbury. And, third, for the most popular novelist that ever lived. Of the first item, your buffoon of an inn keeper has made a mockery already for the sake of profit. I shall always say ‘William,’ the man's rightful Christian name, if only to gall him. Pray there not come a day where some cheap landlord dress like one of Mr. Dickens's characters, or I should as soon have my eyes torn out by the old raven Mr. Dickens used to keep as his pet.”
Osgood thought it an opportune time to interject with a question, but Forster put an imperial hand on his shoulder and steered him.
“There: that watercolor the workman is bringing through now from the dining room. That, Mr. Osgood and Miss Sand-is that the name, little dear?-that is a painting of the steame r Britannia that Mr. Dickens sailed on in his first trip to America, the fourth of January, 1842. That will be discussed in chapter nineteen of my Life of Dickens. Hold that up higher, you, men, don't let that frame's corner damage the wall!”
Osgood felt a sharpness, a recrimination in the word America.
“I hope you'd agree that Mr. Dickens's second tour of America,” Osgood said, “was a verifiable success.”
The Last Dickens Page 14
