The Loves of Leopold Singer

by L. K. Rigel

  “Do you realize it isn’t one o’clock?” Wills grumbled, but he got himself out of bed and rang for his man. After a quick meal, the brothers set off for 32 Ludgate Hill.

  “She’d light up by these, I think.” Geordie indicated a pair of emerald earrings.

  “Those would do a dowager duchess proud,” Wills said. At Geordie’s enquiring look, he said, “The things are too heavy. They’d give her a headache.”

  “You're right. Good thing I have you with me.”

  “You’ll find something perfect,” Wills said. “Just don’t jump on the first beauty that takes your fancy,” Wills said. “Wait for the best to rise like cream.”

  “I'll decide after I’ve seen everything.”

  Not likely, Wills thought. After three shops nothing suited Wills, though Geordie saw many fine pieces. They stopped for a drink. Late in the afternoon, they came to a Chinese jeweler where Wills thought Geordie would find nothing too disastrous. Geordie charged into the shop to look about, but Wills stopped at a glass case near the door to examine a simple gold ring in the shape of a serpent, winding around a misshapen pearl. He knew immediately that it had been made for her.

  “Say, that is something,” Geordie followed his gaze. He called the shopkeeper over. “Could we have a look at this ring?”

  A Dreadful Error In Judgment

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge was pudgy, aging, and more than a little drunk. “Good prose comes from good words in good order. Poetry…” He paused for effect, and his dinner companions waited eagerly. “…is the best words in the best order!”

  The amiable group laughed and applauded the famous poet and lecturer, even most had heard the line before on more than one occasion. Dr. Gillman motioned for the glasses to be replenished.

  “Good lord,” Wills said.

  “Our Lord is indeed good, Mr. Asher,” said Coleridge, a Christian, even if he tended to the mystical. “But what is the source of your astonishment?”

  “I know what it’s about, now that I’ve heard it from your lips.”

  “The Kubla Khan? Why I hardly know myself. But come, sir. Don’t deny us.”

  Wills put on his most charming face and conspiratorial smile in order to mitigate the risqué nature of what he was about to say. “It is about…” Now he hesitated for effect “…sexual disappointment.”

  “Oh!” The other women giggled and displayed mock outrage, but Sara was silent.

  “Good lord, indeed,” said Gillman.

  Coleridge smiled. “Perhaps it is, at that.”

  “Oh, say it for us again, Coleridge!”

  “Do!”

  The evening was a success, the company all quite smug with themselves. They were drinking wine with Coleridge and discussing sex in mixed company. The poet was on fire, charming, intelligible, his brilliant best. Somehow his white hair had come undone in unruly wisps as if to illustrate his creation. His eyes glittered and his voice was commanding and sonorous.

  “I shall recite—again—my fragment, Kubla Khan. And as I do, my brilliant associate, Mr. William Philo George Asher, will intersperse his gloss, so to speak, and so enlighten us all.”

  Wills nodded, and Coleridge began.

  “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure dome decree.

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  So twice five miles of fertile ground

  With walls & towers were girdled round.”

  “There!” said Wills. “Twice five miles of fertile ground. There you have two human beings, fertile and, as Adam, made from the ground. And the walls and towers girdling round represent the marriage bond.”

  “Very good,” said Gillman.

  “And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

  Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

  And there were forests ancient as the hills,

  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

  “The gardens are man-made, like the marriage bond. But the forests,” Wills’ tone grew ominous, “are made by Nature herself.”

  The poet continued.

  “But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

  Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

  A savage place! as holy and enchanted

  As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

  By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”

  Wills said, “So our Poet warns us. Belying the domestic idyll promised by the marriage bond, there lurks a dark and unhomely danger. Our uncivilized, unbound natures will not be chained.” Wills looked for Sara’s response, but her gaze was fixed upon the half-filled goblet of claret she cradled. As the blush on her cheeks deepened, he felt satisfaction and desire all at once.

  Coleridge continued.

  “And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

  As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,”

  “And the earth represents the bride,” Wills kept his gaze on Sara.

  “With her fast, thick pants!” roared Mr. Abbot, another guest.

  “A mighty fountain momently was forced”

  “Oh, my!” said Mrs. Abbot, scandalized but a little too drunk to say more.

  “Amid whose swift half-intermittent burst

  Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

  Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

  And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

  It flung up momently the sacred river.

  Five miles meandering with a mazy motion”

  “The bridegroom lazily—though urgently—explores the landscape of his bride.” Wills’s smile had just enough delighted wickedness to make the ladies warm to him further. Mrs. Chasen jumped as Mr. Chasen took her hand.

  “Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

  Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

  And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean”

  “Sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean,” Wills repeated, heavy with melancholy. Here, his eyes met those of Coleridge. In one instant, the sage saw his youth, and the young man his future. Each pitied himself.

  “And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

  Ancestral voices prophesying war!

  The shadow of the dome of pleasure

  Floated midway on the waves;

  Where was heard the mingled measure

  From the fountain and the caves.

  It was a miracle of rare device,

  A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”

  “Oh, the irony!” Wills said. “He’s been tricked! He thought she was a sunny pleasure dome, but discovers she is a cave of ice.”

  “How sad.” Mrs. Chasen said.

  Mr. Chasen said, “My dear, I’ve never found an icy crevice in your female depths.”

  Coleridge concluded, soft and wistful,

  “A damsel with a dulcimer

  In a vision once I saw:

  It was an Abyssinian maid,

  And on her dulcimer she played,

  Singing of Mount Abora.

  Could I revive within me

  Her symphony and song

  To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

  That with music loud and long.

  I would build that dome in air,

  That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!

  And all who heard should see them there,

  And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

  His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

  Weave a circle round him thrice,

  And close your eyes with holy dread,

  For he on honey-dew hath fed,

  And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

  For several minutes the only sound was of the crackling fire. Flames danced in Sara’s claret, like topaz mixed with garnet. Forgetting the audience, she said, “I don’t believe it’s a fragment at all, Mr. Coleridge.”

  Coleridge sighed. “
Perhaps not, Miss Sara. What a lovely name. Dear Sara.”

  More poetry, more wine, more talk, more laughter. At one point Coleridge raised his empty glass to throw it against the stones of the fireplace.

  “No! No!” cried Mrs. Gillman with mock severity. “Not again, Coleridge!”

  Good-natured STC set his glass safely down. “For you, my dear. And because we have such a lovely Sara at table this night.”

  -oOo-

  “You were brave tonight, Sara,” Wills said.

  It was over. She’d waited for this evening for so long, and now they were headed home.

  “I congratulate you on speaking up. I know how difficult it must have been for you.”

  He does understand me. “I never dreamed I would meet Coleridge,” she said. “For the rest of my life when I read his poetry, I will hear his marvelous voice.” She was still full of the poet’s presence, proud of his acknowledgment of her comment. “Your brother will be sorry to have missed this night.”

  The stars were magnificent, the crescent moon like a fierce exotic symbol. She thought of Coleridge’s Christabel: A star has set. A star has risen. Perhaps one didn’t need to go through trauma to be reborn, to realize a new version of one’s self. Maybe being in the presence of a mystic was itself transformative. Or maybe mystery was over-rated. Maybe transformation was a mundane thing: the page simply turns and the next chapter begins. Her life had changed in the course of common events. She had been one person, and now she was another.

  Perhaps the nearer truth was that her outer life now better fit her interior nature. She had never been an active person like Eleanor. Sara was perfectly happy with her boring little life at The Branch. She would like to be her great aunt’s companion forever. But the baroness was old and would die. And then what? Would she be tossed back across the Atlantic Ocean?

  Why didn’t her parents write? No one knew anything. Sara suspected the worst.

  “I’m going to tell you a secret,” Wills said. He was still a little drunk, but he wasn’t obnoxious. “My brother is about to give you a gift of jewelry. It will agree with you.”

  She looked out at the stars. What could she say to that?

  He said, “I spent an entire day to find it for you.”

  Mr. Geordie Carleson was going to ask her to marry him. There in the carriage, under that moon, she decided to accept him. She didn’t love him as Eleanor loved her Jonnie or even as her own mother loved her father. That kind of romance was not for her. She didn’t want a handsome devil like Wills Asher, no matter how alive she had felt dancing in his arms. No matter that she trembled when he stood very near, or that his jokes were so much cleverer than the Geordie Carleson’s would ever be.

  She wanted stability, dependability, basic decency. She wanted the rock, not the wave. She wouldn’t make the mistake her mother had made. She wouldn’t commit her life on a whim. She didn’t love Squire Carleson, but she did care for him. She would be a good wife to him.

  Wills could hardly bear to look at Sara. She was so innocent, so lovely. It was exciting to see her shine in Coleridge’s presence. And when the poet recited the Kubla Khan with such fire and innuendo, she stood her ground. She didn’t blush or turn away. She wasn’t coarse, but she did enjoy it. She was no Puritan; she was merely shy. And she was the only heir of Philomela’s only heir. The Asher barony would pass to her son.

  But that wasn’t the point.

  The point was that he loved Sara. Geordie only thought he loved her. Geordie didn’t know her, not as Wills had come to know her. If Geordie had seen the way Sara responded to the poet tonight, his fastidious self would have been repulsed. No, Sara was like himself, alive to the dark as well as the light. She only wanted him to guide her, to care for her, to help her blossom.

  It would be a sin against all that was natural if this sensitive girl married stolid Geordie. It would doom her to become a cave of ice.

  “I’m glad my brother stayed home,” Wills said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Have you really no idea?” He knelt on the floor of the coach and took her hands in his.

  “Oh. Mr. Asher.”

  “Miss Adams—Sara. My Sara.” He kissed her gloved fingers.

  “Mr.—Wills! Oh, no.”

  Her shyness increased his desire, his need to cherish her, to ease her fears. He would have her. He would have her now. He knew of such things. Once a man had a maid, she had no choice but to marry him. It would guarantee his suit. He loved her. And he knew she loved him. That was all the reason they needed. He didn’t hear her say no. He didn’t hear her cry no.

  “I won’t hurt you.” He reassured her. “I could never hurt you. As the moon and stars are our witness, I love you.” He lifted her skirts and made his way into her, into her softness. She was everything he had hoped she would be. He had come home. Out of Sara, he would make the world he dreamed of. He had her; she was his. He shuddered into her, surrounded her with all that he was. She was his, and he was hers.

  He had gotten it all wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. She was broken, and he was the one who had broken her. She could never be his now. He had made a dreadful mistake. “Forgive me.” But he knew she couldn’t.

  At long last they came to The Branch. He leaned forward and put his arm across the door, and she burst into tears. “Have pity,” she said. “Let me go.” Her tears weren’t of rage or anger but of sorrow and despair. When the footman opened the door, Wills made no move to stop her. She was gone, flying up the stairs and away from him forever, away from his continuing whispered forgive me.

  “Laurelwood.” He sat back and tried to block the disaster from his mind. The crescent moon now hung low, like a single eye winking at him along the way. “Damn the moon and the stars, and damn all poets.” Wills didn’t go into the house. Geordie would be waiting to hear about the evening. He went directly to the stables, saddled his horse, and rode for London.

  Sir Carey’s Inheritance

  The house and grounds were a triumph of Enlightenment design. Two figures rode in an open carriage up the long approach to The Branch through the manicured park. The boulevard ended in a circular piazza before the main house, a three-story rectangle with a generous number of evenly spaced windows fronted by a half circle of stone steps anchored at the incongruously small entrance.

  The men surrendered their cloaks at the door. Inside, the half-circle pattern repeated in a curving double staircase and arches cut into the walls of the rectangular foyer. To the left was the bright, capacious ballroom. To the right was the music room and then library. Geordie Carleson and Dr. Devilliers passed through the forward arch and on to the parlor.

  Upstairs, Elizabeth closed Philomela’s bedroom door and paused at the top of the stairs, aware people were gathering below. She felt suddenly oppressed by the symmetry of The Branch’s architecture. Today she didn’t want to be Lady Asher. She wanted neither to inform nor to comfort, nor to bear up with good grace. Today, she was not dignified.

  She wished she were young Lizzie again, eleven years old, running through wild fields and examining insects in the long, lazy summer. She held onto the banister, each step a jolt as she descended.

  I shouldn’t have married Sir Carey. Even as she had the thought, she rejected it; without Sir Carey, there would have been no Wills. The world saw her interact far more with her firstborn and might believe she loved Geordie best, and indeed their temperaments were alike. But she admired the wild spirit in Wills and was oppressed by the cynicism that possessed him these last years.

  She had been happiest after the squire died, leaving her with what she had always wanted: a robust property to manage. Laurelwood was her heart’s home, so different from The Branch. She had loved it from the moment she saw it. Laurelwood rambled, none of the rooms mirrored each other; no patterns trapped her there.

  The grounds were organic and wild. Autumn winds sang Gothic songs in
the trees, and spring brought on a Dionysian riot of color and life. At Laurelwood, she could hold onto some bit of her self. She could ride over the land, consult about the livestock and the crops, visit the rectory, and forget that a husband sometimes appeared in the house.

  At The Branch, it was impossible to wander. Here, the architecture screamed good form and reminded her that she was Lady Asher, not Lizzie. Not even Elizabeth. She couldn’t run down these stairs to fall apart in front of Dr. Devilliers and be gathered together again by him.

  But then that was just a habit of fantasy, no longer a real desire.

  Miss Adams had taken Dr. Devilliers and Geordie into the parlor. She must join them now and tell them that Philomela was dying. She couldn’t do it.

  She sat down on a tread near the bottom of the stairs. Her boys had grown away from her, gone to the privacy of their manhood, and she had adjusted to live with “what remained,” as the poet put it. The squire had gone to death, Sir Carey had gone to promiscuity, and she and Philomela had remained.

  But there would be nothing of Philly that remained. Every spring, the bloom of daffodils would be like God celebrating Elizabeth’s bereavement. Where in the yellows, oranges and whites would Philly’s laughter lie? Where in the green shoots would her wisdom be? When a predator took a favorite lamb, who would understand the loss so well? Everyone in the world admired Elizabeth’s husbandry; only Philly understood it. My friend, my best friend.