I, Libertine

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “Hang it, I mean. Chaps just don’t think about important things. I mean, y’know, dash it, they don’t,” Meadows said after an hour.

  “There’s no one to teach one, if one’s interested. … Would you teach me?” asked Lance.

  From the depths of his goathood, Meadows looked up at this dawn-drenched cockerel in stupefaction. “I … I couldn’t! I call myself only a dashed student, y’know, neophyte, what? Teach? Teach you?”

  “I am but recently come into the light,” said Lance sonorously. He hitched his coat back a bit from his bewildering brocaded waistcoat. “The hunt for pleasure, the waste,” he said sadly, letting his voice trail away; then, “But you, you must have had a vision, like seeing the Grail; and here you are, searching, searching …” And so the bait, the strike, the hook. “Have you somewhere where we can work, study, experiment?” begged Lance, all awe and excitement. He knew perfectly well the answer to that:

  “Oh, I say, no. No, not now. I had a jolly little lodging in Hampstead, don’t y’know, and I had a bit of an accident. You know Basil Valentine’s three constituents, yes? Yes. Sulphur, mercury and salt as the basis of all metals. I think him wrong, y’know, but I wanted to repeat his experiments, what? Starting batching mixtures, basis twelve, y’know: one part salt, twelve parts quicksilver, twelve sulphur. Next batch, two parts salt, twelve and twelve, d’ye see?”

  “Most systematic. Beautiful. What happened?”

  “Smoke,” said Meadows sadly. “Not the batch. That was melting nicely, though the sulphur smelt a bit, y’know, I mean, smelt. No, the deuced fire. Mixed saltpetre and tallow-fat, make it hotter, you know. Well, it smoked a bit, as I say. Landlord … well, old Stokes is a greedy beggar, you can always put his jolly old lid on with a florin or so, but the others … I mean, eight houses roundabout, you know, all the silly asses running out into the snow at midnight calling fire, everyone frightfully upset. And really, nothing was burning. Just smoke, you know, and I did get a bit muddled and wasn’t using salt in the batch, it was sal ammoniac. It really wasn’t so bad; one could get quite near it by noon the next day. I’d a sort of delegation call on me, y’know. Angry.”

  “Didn’t you tell them it was in the interest of knowledge?”

  “Well, naturally, my dear chap, but it seemed to make them all angrier. I’d rather not talk about it,” said Meadows. He shuddered and drank some ale and shuddered again. “Long and short of it, I can’t study there any longer. I’ve asked here and there about other lodgings, but I do believe the householders must have a guild, what? sort of thing.” He laughed ruefully. “Used to think it would be fine to be known, recognized wherever I went, what? Well I wish I weren’t.”

  Lance suddenly clutched Meadows’ biceps, half-frightening him out of his crouch. “I say! I’ve been casting about for a little place, house in Holborn, one or two possibilities across the river, perhaps a digs away from London. Couldn’t make up my mind. This makes it up for me, though, by heaven! Suppose I took a place miles away from anywhere, no landlords, no neighbors—would you help me with a library and a laboratory, I mean, to arrange it all; I’ll supply it; and get me started? Could you, d’ye suppose?”

  Meadows glowed like a coal. “Well, I … I mean, I oughtn’t … I did promise Charles, you know …”

  “Charles? What Charles?”

  “Oh, my stuffy cousin. He’s all mercantile and family duty sort of thing. Gone to Madrid, something about cork-bark and olive oil. Made me promise to stay and keep an eye on the family scandals. Oh, dash it all, nothing’s happened about that in donkey’s years and I don’t see why anything should. Yes, I’ll come, and willing. What can happen in four weeks, six?”

  “What indeed?” murmured Lance, shook hands warmly and made arrangements to meet again on the morrow.

  “Good evening, Captain.”

  “Evening, Pendleton. Are they in the library?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Beasley and Miss Axelrood.”

  “Miss Chudleigh?”

  “Miss Chudleigh has not returned, sir.”

  Lance raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and went into the library.

  “Here he is now. Good evening, Captain Courtenay.” Lilith Axelrood was in green tonight—very like the bottle-green which old Barrowbridge had once vividly described to him. It suited her blindingly, and he said so.

  “And this is Mr. Beasley. Captain Courtenay.”

  “I am most honoured, sir.”

  Beasley, who had two deep vertical lines above his nose and two more, one on each side of his mouth, looked like a schoolmaster on the very verge of a caning session. He towered nearly to the height of Lance’s collarbone; but he so carried himself that to that height he did tower. His expression at the moment denoted clearly that even if the Captain expressed himself as honoured, he, Beasley, was not. “Huddydew,” he said rapidly, not offering his hand.

  “Will Miss Chudleigh be joining us?”

  “I fear not,” said the girl.

  “I think she’s trying to avoid me,” said Lance jocosely.

  “I think she is,” said Lilith Axelrood soberly. Lance shot her a quick glance; she made a slight shrug which indicated that it was nothing which could be pursued in the presence of Beasley.

  Lance said, “I trust her disappointing absence will not keep us from making our little arrangement.”

  “I hold her power of attorney in the matter,” said Beasley in a chilly voice.

  “Then, to horse!” cried Lance, and from his breast pocket drew a sheaf of papers. He spread them on the table. “Here are a copy of the deed of the place I have in mind; a description of boundaries, properties, structures and accesses, along with all the freeholds, fiefs, torts and whereases that anyone needs to take title. Nice little place, really, modest and modestly priced. Belongs to an odd little baronet who lives nearby—Eustace, Gregory Eustace. Good little chap.”

  Beasley regarded the papers coldly, as if they were made of matter which a decent man would not mention, let alone touch. “I think,” he said in his flat dry little voice, “that the first order of business, ought to be the suit-in-law you have allegedly discovered.”

  “By no means!” said Lance cheerfully. “I should very much dislike going into that, even to the point of convincing you and making it possible for you to proceed, only to discover that you might have some objection to covering this—” He slapped the papers—“for me. Surely it is not unreasonable of me to wish to make sure of my quo for your quid.”

  “Very well, very well, let me see,” snapped the lawyer. “Hm. Hmp. Featherfront, Titsey-in-Down. Strawdnry name.”

  “Where do you come from?” demanded Lance, knowing (from Barrowbridge) the answer.

  Beasley peered over the papers at him. “Much Hadham, Herts,” he barked. “Why, sir?”

  “Just wondered, Mr. Beasley,” grinned Lance. Over the lawyer’s shoulder he saw Miss Axelrood bite her lip and turn away, covering her mouth with a handkerchief. Beasley returned to the papers, moving his lips as he read. “Hmp. Hmp. Barbarous country, Surrey Downs, Kent, all that. Hmp. Twelve … hundred … POUNDS!”

  Lance regarded his fingernails. “Actually, two thousand, sir. One doesn’t simply move in with nothing for maintenance.”

  Beasley exchanged a startled glance with Miss Axelrood. “You expect an outright gift of eight hundred over and above the exorbitant cost of this … this pleasure palace?”

  “It isn’t exorbitant,” said Lance flatly, “all those acres, the brook, the wood, and the buildings. And I wouldn’t think of asking for eight hundred like that, sir; you do me an injustice.”

  “What, then?”

  “Four hundred now; I wouldn’t expect the other four hundred until the case was concluded to your satisfaction.”

  Beasley banged down the papers. “You, sir, are the most—”

  “Mr. Beasley!” Miss Axelrood cautioned. Lance gathered up the papers. “I really didn’t have to bring these at all,” he said in wounded tones. “I thought you m
ight like a documentation of the reasonableness of my requests. I don’t feel you want to conclude this matter, Mr. Beasley.”

  “Of course he does,” said Miss Axelrood quickly. “Please, gentlemen—surely we can discuss this without asperities.”

  “I’m willing,” said Lance sulkily.

  “Mr. Beasley?”

  “I wish to see your outline of that suit,” said Beasley, with matching sullenness. “I will say that at the outset I doubted you had discovered such a thing in English law. My doubts have not diminished. I shall now go so far as to say that I will without objection accede to your monstrous proposal if you can prove that there is such a procedure and convince me that it will succeed. I say this because of a new and, I suspect, unshakable conviction that you are about to be unmasked as a—”

  “Mr. Beasley!”

  The lawyer, now all pink about his frozen gills, subsided and glared at Lance.

  “You agree, Miss Axelrood?” Lance said. “Not the scurrilities; I understand and sympathize with the plight of a usual barrister faced with unusual matters; but the part about his agreement to my proposal, if the matter of the suit satisfies him?”

  “I agree of course,” she said placatingly.

  Lance glanced at the clock on the mantel, smiled, and stepped swiftly to the bookcase which held the law library. “It’s here, sir,” he said, still smiling, and handed the barrister a book.

  “What? What? Procedures in Jurisprudence, Courts Christian. What the dev—I beg your pardon, ma’am—what’s this? The ecclesiastical courts do not cover a case of this kind.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “You see?” said Beasley, turning to Miss Axelrood. “This young … uh … man’s bewildering performance is beginning to show a seam, as I knew it would. The ecclesiastical courts nowadays confine themselves almost exclusively to matters of Church holdings and physical properties, hierarchical successions, tithes and the like.” He tossed the book to the table.

  “Almost,” said Lance equably. He glanced at the clock again.

  “By the way, are you prepared to make out the letter of credit here and now, sir?”

  “Of course, of course,” said Beasley testily, “but I shan’t be doing it.”

  Lance opened the book, selected a page, and handed it back. “Here you are, sir.”

  “What’s this? What’s—good heavens.” He read rapidly. “Good heavens,” he said again, in quite a different tone, and looked up at Lance as if his opponent of a moment ago had quite disappeared and had been replaced by a Lord Chief Justice. “Whoever would have thought of looking here for something which properly belongs to the common law, or at least to peerage action in the House of Lords?”

  “What is it?” asked Miss Axelrood.

  “Why—why …” Beasley referred to the book again. “Jactitation of Marriage. It hasn’t been called twice in four hundred years. Good Heavens!”

  Lance stood by the table, admiring his fingernails again. The girl tugged the rapt lawyer’s elbow. “Please tell me what it is, what it does, Mr. Beasley. After all, I’m not an expert, like you and the Captain.”

  “I’m sorry, m’dear; I’m a bit overwhelmed. This,” he said, waving the book, “is a perfectly acceptable suit at law, hearable in the ecclesiastical court—a very quiet thing, mind you, merely a consistory of three—in which the plaintiff, in this case Miss Chudleigh, asks the court to issue an order against the defendant—Mr. Hervey—to cause him to cease and desist forever from claiming a marriage to the plaintiff. It is designed apparently to keep various ruffians from claiming marriage to people of higher station, thereby gaining public recognition and credit which is undeserved. You are right, sir: I see no reason why this is not applicable and adequate.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Beasley,” said Lance modestly.

  “I’m afraid I’m stupid,” said the girl, “but—”

  “Understandable, quite,” said Beasley expansively. He was acting like a man who, asked to sip vinegar, tastes a rare old wine. “You see, when the court issues the order to Mr. Hervey commanding him to desist from boasting of this marriage, it is ordering him to desist from boasting of a non-existent marriage. By passing the order itself, it is at the same time accepting the nullity of the marriage. Its order is a de facto certificate, not that the marriage is hereby ended, but that it never existed. Am I correct sir?” he asked respectfully.

  “Quite sir,” responded Lance with a mimicry that passed right over the other’s head and struck Miss Axelrood dead center in the risibilities. “May I call your attention to—” He took the book and turned two pages—“this, Mr. Beasley?”

  “Ah yes, yes. Oh dear.” He turned to Miss Axelrood, who had recovered. “Is there anyone cognizant of any—ah—act of Miss Chudleigh’s who might raise objections at the hearing? Say, one who might testify that in the past she has publicly acknowledged this—ah—alleged marriage?”

  “Who might want to do a thing like that?” asked Lance blandly.

  “Mr. Meadows,” said Lilith Axelrood, “would be delighted to do a thing like that.”

  “Oh,” said Beasley, “he might not even know if such a thing has ever occurred.”

  “Yes, Pendleton,” said Miss Axelrood to the doorway.

  “Beg pardon, Miss. A Mr. Meadows here for Captain Courtenay.”

  There was a stunned silence. Lance said quietly to his fingernails, “We could ask him.” He looked pleasantly at the shocked barrister, the amazed girl, and said to the butler, “Tell him I’ll be out directly, Pendleton.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Why in heaven’s name did you ask him here?” hissed Miss Axelrood.

  “I anticipated some delay in concluding matters,” said Lance, “and I thought this might hurry things up.”

  “Mr. Beasley, hurry; make out that paper he wants before that fool Meadows starts chatting with the servants.”

  “Oh dear yes.” Beasley sat down at the table and took a cut quill. “That was twelve—uh—”

  “Sixteen,” said Lance, “and your promissory for the other four on conclusion of this business. Ah, don’t fret so, Miss Axelrood. Meadows doesn’t know Miss Chudleigh is in London, let alone here. I ascertained that.”

  “You do take chances.”

  “I have all along,” he smiled.

  “Your full name?” asked Beasley, scribbling away.

  “Lance Captain Courtenay.”

  “Captain? Why, I thought …”

  “I try and try to explain that to people,” said Lance tiredly, “but they all credit me with an army rank. I do wish I could change that.”

  “No doubt,” said Beasley, biting his thin lips. What is the difference in that face? thought Lance; it hasn’t changed, but now, by God, the old sly-bird approves of me. “Here you are.”

  Lance took the letter and note and glanced through them. “Thank you very much, sir. And you, Miss.”

  “And you, Captain. Lance.” She laughed, then sobered. “What will I do,” she asked, “if you or Mr. Meadows are seen in or near London until the conclusion of this affair?”

  “Why, I’d imagine you’d ask exhumation of my poor dead friend Higger-Piggott,” he said.

  “Just so,” she said lightly. “I clearly recall where he’s buried.”

  “Requiescat in pace,” he said somberly.

  “Go, go!” she cried.

  “Not until I’ve invited you to my place in Surrey. Write me, will you? Have you the address?”

  “F-featherfront, Titsey-in-Down,” she choked. “Go now!”

  “Good night, Mr. Beasley.”

  “Good night, young man. Perhaps we’ll meet again one day. Who knows, there might be a desk in my office for a bright young chap.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I’ve other ambitions.”

  “Will you go out to Mr. Meadows?”

  “My most cordial regards to Miss Chudleigh.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “And to Lady Blanton.”

 
“Oh you—idiot!” and she fairly pushed him from the room.

  Meadows stood near the door, a brown hat squashed between his hands, and blinked at the altitude of the Blanton entry. He seemed to shrink timidly as Lance strode across, laughing, then expanded again as he recognized him. “Jolly people here, what?”

  “Jolly,” said Lance, and laughed again. “Thank you, Pendleton. Come along, Meadows old chap. We’ll have a tot of brandy in defense of Albertus Magnus. I think I’ve found the philosopher’s stone.”

  “Oh, I say!”

  They went out into the welcoming night.

  8.

  FEATHERFRONT WAS A WOOD, a brook, a house, a byre rebuilt into a carriage house, the foundations of a burned barn, a stable with servants’ quarters in a second storey, and a state of mind.

  The state of mind may have been a product of the spring that year, which was remarkable even for England, even for the North Downs. It may have been a magic, such as they say lies over houses built too close to running water and old woods where the Little Folk have not yet been driven away. Or the new population of the house may have been sufficient to account for it; it was mad, mysterious, hilarious, indecent, joyful, and studious.

  In an ell very nearly as tall as the main part of the house, Evelyn Meadows established his laboratory. The peaked roof bore a particularly silly cupola, and this they had stilted up and had knocked out a smoke hole under it, affording an escape for the fumes and vapors without which alchemy seemed such a sham. There were bookracks and lecterns and inkhorns ranged on two sides of the room; on the third, racks and shelves of chemicals, ores, metal specimens, rhinoceros and narwhal horns, toad skins and the other raw materials of the Paraceltic art; the fourth wall was devoted to the tools of the trade: an alembic, rows of flasks, beakers, retorts and graduates, scales and, of all things, an astrolabe. This wall was divided by a monstrous fireplace, not quite high enough to walk in upright, but wide enough to spit an ox. Despite Lance’s offer to put up the equipment and supplies, Meadows’ collection had been almost completely sufficient for the purpose; indeed, his lodging had not sufficed for all of it; he had had a second flat in London from which his hobby had crowded him and which he had been using for some time exclusively as storage. In so haphazard a fashion had this clutter been accumulated that Meadows himself was astonished and delighted at its richness and variety; he had things there he not only had forgotten, but things he would say he had wished for all his life. Owl-droppings he had, cantharides and sword-fish teeth; flakes of rust from one of the Holy Nails, a brace of otherwise empty flagons each containing the dying breath of a hanged man; picklings of a blue rat, a whale’s eye, an Arctic mouse, a child’s hand, an unborn stoat, and an unidentified object with abcesses.