by Jon Clinch
So ends his crisis of conscience. So begins the labor that will warp his spirit and consume his future. He crosses the threshold and closes the door and sets about his great work.
Twenty-Two
Ebenezer is to have come along on a scouting trip to the chapel at Greenwich Hospital, but at the last moment he declares himself overburdened. He hardly looks at Belle when he says it, although he does glance up from his desk and let his gaze veer over her shoulder and out the grimy window. “Needs washing,” he says, before he looks back down.
“What?”
“The window,” he mutters. “It needs washing.” The entire office is much in need of a cleaning that it will never receive, should history be any indication. “So much has escaped me,” he sighs, as if that explains everything.
From the doorway, Harry sees Belle’s disappointment. “I’ll find a boy to clean your windows,” he says. “By God, I’ll do it myself if it’ll free your schedule. You’re needed on an important mission, my friend.”
Belle, unmoored in the center of the room, smiles a fragile smile.
Balfour takes Fan’s elbow. “This sister of yours will get married only once, after all—or so I should hope. Ha-ha!”
But Scrooge is having none of his good cheer. “Fear not,” he says, dipping his pen. “The wedding is on my calendar. It is only these preliminaries of yours that I shall have to miss.”
“Preliminaries?” says Balfour. “Why, what a perverse idea. Is all of life but one preliminary after another?”
“You could say that. All of it leading unto death, I suppose.”
“He doesn’t mean it, Harry,” says Fan. “But when he’s decided to be stubborn, there’s no changing his mind. We should leave him alone.”
“Alone indeed,” says Belle.
But Balfour makes one last attempt. “You have to eat,” he says. “We’ll be having a nice luncheon afterward.”
“I most certainly lack the time for that.”
“In the officers’ dining room.” He dangles the notion like bait. “On my account.”
“And that pleasure too I must forfeit,” says Scrooge, looking up at last. “Now, if you will forgive me, I am falling further and further behind.”
* * *
To Harry Balfour’s delight, his bride-to-be gasps as the sexton swings wide the chapel doors. She believes the odd little man to be a sexton, anyhow, although he could easily possess some other title, a military one whose precise meaning would no doubt evade her. But never mind that, and never mind her friend Belle who can’t see inside from where she stands, and never mind her husband-to-be as he waits beaming behind her, smiling a toothy smile that she glimpses only for an instant before gathering herself and daring to step with mingled hesitation and joy into the magnificent chapel of Greenwich Hospital.
Light enters from high arched windows on either side, suffusing the great chamber with a gleaming warmth that seems stolen from Heaven itself. Her vision rises upward with it, drawn to the elaborately decorated ceiling. There is no rampant popish mob scene painted up there to unsettle the eye and confuse the soul, not by a mile. The broad arched vault is divided and subdivided according to geometric principles worthy of the staid old Church of England, cut up into rows and columns of squares and octagons and circles carved out of plaster and painted in gold, cream, umber, and heavenly delft blue.
Her eye cannot settle there, though, for the geometry of the place draws her gaze back downward toward the altarpiece, an enormous painting of what at first seems merely the aftermath of a cautionary shipwreck, but—according to the sexton or whoever he is, and he seems quite intimate with the details—proves to illustrate the story of how St. Paul, imprisoned by the Romans and wrecked upon the isle of Malta, miraculously survived the bite of a poisonous snake. The image comes alive for her once she knows its meaning, and she believes that by studying it she could worship here for a month without having to hear a word of scripture or a scrap of a sermon.
High up at the other end of the chapel, cased in mahogany and supported by six marble columns that seem barely up to the task, is the prodigious pipe organ. In its patient silence she senses a promise akin to that of the resurrection. “Will we hear it on our wedding day?” she asks Harry.
“Oh, of course. We could hear it now, if you like.”
The sexton swallows.
“My rank does carry privileges. I’m certain that an organist could be located, along with a man to provide the wind.”
“A calcant, Captain Balfour.”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Well. Do you suppose you could find one?”
“Skilled men are quite rare, I’m afraid.”
“I should think that treading upon the handle of a bellows wouldn’t call for as much skill as all that…”
“The music relies upon it, sir. Perhaps in a lesser sanctuary, with a lesser instrument, for a listener of less importance…” He lets the thought trail off, indicating Fan with a delicate wave of his hand.
“Please don’t go to any trouble,” she says, as much to Balfour as to him. “Besides, I would rather wait and hear it first on the occasion.”
“Very wise,” says her Harry. “And very romantic.”
They take a moment to admire the altar and the elevated pulpit, and as they drift back down the aisle they come upon Belle, her face cast downward, deep in contemplation of an image set into the black-and-white tiles of the marble floor. It is a rope and anchor done up in gold, representative of both the Son of God and the Royal Navy.
“Beautifully executed,” says Balfour.
“But it’s fouled,” says Belle. “The anchor, I mean. The rope is tangled all around it. Wouldn’t that make things difficult?”
Harry laughs. “How insightful! As many times as I’ve looked at it, I’ve never noticed. Perhaps the navy should consider recruiting you, Miss Fairchild.”
Belle laughs, and the others laugh too, but there remains in her heart a dark foreboding as to what particular entanglements—and disentanglements—may lie in Fan’s future and her own.
* * *
The spring comes into full blossom, and preparations for Fan’s wedding proceed—although Belle cannot say the same for hers. Ebenezer seems to grow more remote, more preoccupied, with the passing of each week. He has no interest in the wedding, and, in fact, he seems to shy from the subject if she raises it. He seems to care little for Belle or her companionship. She begins to fear that his affections have been compromised.
One solitary evening, when she can endure no more uncertainty, she goes to his office. He remains there these days until midnight or later, toiling in the glow of a single candle until exhaustion sends him home. When she finds him in his usual withdrawn state she takes immediate steps. She relocates the candle to a shelf in a corner of the room, pulls up a chair next to his, and takes the pen from his hand with the caution a man would use to pull the tooth of an African lion. He gives it up, and she puts it away and takes his freed hand in both of hers. His gaze is bereft, and his hand is cold.
“Ebenezer,” she says.
He starts, like a man waking from a terrible dream.
“Ebenezer—how long has it been since we’ve talked?”
He looks to consult his daybook, but between the darkness and the teetering piles of unfinished work upon his desk he cannot find it. The frustration warps his expression, drawing down the corners of his mouth and pushing out his lower lip and furrowing his brow. He looks old, she thinks, a good deal older than the man to whom she pledged her future three years ago.
“I believe it was yesterday,” he says, “but I cannot prove it.”
“We saw each other yesterday, but we didn’t talk. Not really.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.” His hands rove reassuringly, even tenderly, over the papers on his desk. She reaches and takes firm hold of one so as to focus his attention again.
“We haven’t talked, really talked—about something important, I mean—in months.”
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br /> He blinks, purses his lips.
“Now, I don’t have a record of it in my diary,” she says with a smile, although there is a barb in it, “but I’d say you’ve been difficult to reach since sometime in the winter.”
“Difficult to reach? Why, I am right here. My hand is in yours.”
She looks him in the eye by the dim light of that one remote candle. “What has happened, Ebenezer?”
“I’ve—I’ve been working.”
“I know.”
“I’ve been keeping the promise I made you and your father.”
“But that was done with long ago.”
“There were… setbacks. Unexpected complications.”
“I appreciate that. But it’s consuming you, Ebenezer. Can’t you see that?”
“I’ve been struggling to restore my financial position.”
“Never mind your financial position.”
“You see, the freer I get of that evil business, the more impoverished I become.”
“I don’t care.”
“With each passing day I grow more desperate. We grow more desperate.”
That one crucial word would seem to mark the restoration of her old Ebenezer—the beloved friend whom she has lost to worry and work—and on hearing it she grasps his hand all the more tightly. “Do you need more time?” She hates to propose it, but if delaying the wedding will ease his mind and restore him to himself then she will make the sacrifice. “Another six months? Another year, if you require it?”
He is dumbstruck, his mind no doubt racing ahead to the quantity of good work he could accomplish in that interval. The mask of woe upon his face has begun to slip away, and she knows what his answer will be.
“A year, then,” she says.
“It would be a kindness.”
“Oh, Ebenezer,” she says, “I would do anything to make you happy.”
“I do not deserve you, Belle.” Tears in his eyes give back the candlelight.
“You deserve an opportunity to set things right,” she says. With that she reaches out and closes the ledgers open upon his desk—he makes no protest—and they seal their fresh promise with an embrace.
Twenty-Three
Marley would seem to be the only citizen of London not present at the wedding of Miss Fan Scrooge and Captain Harry Balfour. His absence goes unnoted.
The wedding takes place on the hottest day of the year, and only the lingering chill provided by the chapel’s massive stone walls keeps the temperature inside from rising toward the intolerable—particularly given the number of people present. Between family and friends of both the bride and the groom and Balfour’s extensive military connections, every pew is full. The balconies would groan if they weren’t built to withstand the assault of the ages.
Not a breath stirs—until somewhere in the depths of the building a pair of men begin working the great leather bellows, and the concealed wind box takes on its burden of pressurized air, and the mighty organ roars to life. A full symphony orchestra, a military band on parade, and an airborne chorus of trumpeting angels could not match the glorious din. It might be Bach or it might be Mozart or it might be Scarlatti for all anyone knows, but it has unmitigated power.
The groom enters after a moment, clad in his full naval regalia, and once he has taken his place at the altar the organist begins the strains of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Upon this cue the bride makes her appearance in a gown of the finest watered silk, a gift from the Huguenot Antoine Bernière. Only the deafening clamor of the organ covers up the delighted gasps of the ladies as, accompanied by her brother, she glides up the aisle.
The chaplain attends to the preliminaries (prayer, scripture, homily) with just the right blend of solemnity and speed, and then, in the presence of God and Man and in the shadow of shipwrecked St. Paul (to say nothing of that cast-out viper), the deed is accomplished.
Mother Scrooge teeters and nearly swoons during the recessional, overcome with joy and relief and the separate recurring fear that she shall not live to see her son so well matched now that he and Belle have put things off, but Ebenezer notes her distress and rushes to her side. Together they go down the aisle and out into the heat of the summer day, where they are the first to embrace Fan and Harry.
“I suppose you’ll be next, old chap,” says Balfour.
A nod from Scrooge.
“That is,” he goes on, having spied Belle exiting the chapel, “unless your bride-to-be wearies of seeing you escort other women down the aisle.”
“Oh my,” says Scrooge as she approaches, and “Can you forgive me?” as she draws close. For he was indeed to have accompanied her out of the church—until his mother’s spell, anyhow.
Belle is far from put out. “Never mind,” she says. “I found one of the ushers—a fine, upright, and terribly handsome navy man—to escort me.”
Crisis averted, they turn to Mother Scrooge, whose health seems nicely restored by the fresh air and sunny weather. The crowd is streaming from the chapel doors now, and the good humor and merriment is so contagious that they can barely remove her for the family reception at home. Yet remove her they do, to a carriage provided by the navy for the occasion, and off they go.
1811
Twenty-Four
Every pound that Scrooge withdraws from the slaving business is doomed by the laws of economics and morality to lose value the moment he invests it in a more cleanly enterprise, and thus keeping one of his promises must in the end prevent him from keeping the other. He will never restore both his honor and his fortune, and he falls further behind with each passing day. He knows this, certainly—he sees that his goal is an illusion and his methods are a trap—but he has given Belle his word and he soldiers on. The ability to focus on detail to the exclusion of consequence is both his gift and his curse. And so he loses himself, almost literally, in beautiful minutiae.
He rarely leaves his cramped little chamber, emerging only for nourishment and sleep. Marley’s general absence from the premises simplifies certain elements of his work, particularly the handling of correspondence. Rather than let letters collect unopened on his partner’s desk, he unseals them and acts upon their contents as necessary and then either burns them or seals them again for Marley to read later. Many times he intercepts communications from men in the slaving business—inked expressions of shock and dismay at the termination of some agreement by that meddling Mr. Scrooge—which, if seen by Marley, would bring his hopes to ruin.
Occasionally, when he is sure that Marley is elsewhere, he makes a stealthy visit to his partner’s house with the aim of collecting portions of the riches hidden there. The secret chamber under the roof is his favorite for its remoteness and capacity. Only once is he nearly caught in his work. He has loaded up a valise with as many Spanish dollars as he can lift and is about to let himself out when he hears the man’s footsteps below. He steadies his breathing and listens as his partner mutters and curses in the room at the bottom of the stairs, busy at his worktable with some project. The hour grows late. Scrooge hears him exit the workshop, whistling an airy tune. The whistling keeps up, almost inaudible now, and soon the smells of cooking rise to Scrooge’s nose. His stomach growls. He lowers the valise carefully, fearful of making some noise—the clank of coins, the groan of a plank—that might betray his presence. Marley is decidedly in for the night and so Scrooge has no choice but to remain, the pair of them haunting each other until dawn. Only when his partner slips out after breakfast does Scrooge dare to make his escape.
As often as he visits, and as crammed with riches as the house is, he never takes a full inventory. He does, however, begin to understand that even with as much wealth as his partner has cached away here, the available stores are not limitless. One day he will slip up, or withdraw too much, and Marley will take note. There will be the Devil to pay.
* * *
Fan and Harry have taken spacious rooms in Greenwich, on the top floor of an imposing house with splendid views of the river. “Were
you to go to sea,” she says to him one morning over breakfast, “I should sit in that chair by the window and pine away until you returned.”
“How romantic,” says Harry. “And how boring. Also, thank God, how unnecessary.”
“I should like to have a spyglass before you go, so that I could spot you at the very earliest moment.”
“I could requisition a spyglass now, if you like.”
“You’d just use it to keep an eye on the docks.”
“I might.”
“And I don’t want you distracted.”
“You,” he says, pushing back his chair, “are the only distraction I permit myself.”
“Oh, Harry.”
“Besides, if I were to vanish tomorrow, you would move straight back in with your mother.”
“Or she could come here, and keep me company while I pine.”
“I’m certain she’d enjoy that.”
“Knowing Mother, she just might.” She does worry about Mother Scrooge, however. The poor thing is alone now, without a child to comfort her in her widowhood. Ebenezer doesn’t even attend their usual Friday night suppers anymore. “When I meet Belle for lunch,” Fan says, “I’ll ask her to see if Ebenezer could look after Mother a little more closely.”
“Ask him yourself, as long as you’re traveling into the city.”
“He never has time for me. I suspect that Belle would have better luck.”
* * *
Thanks to intelligence gained through the seafaring grapevine, the loss of various undocumented cargoes, and paperwork obtained through assumed names at false addresses, Marley has already discovered where the money is going. And he has no intention of taking the matter up with Scrooge.
May the scoundrel bleed himself dry, he thinks. If Scrooge is determined to send himself to the workhouse, then he shall secretly divorce his financial interests from those of his partner and let the bastard sink of his own weight.
