“Louis!” she called. “Sammy!” She wiped her sleeve across her brow. “Is anybody here?”
Stevenson had told her before she went out into the garden that he and Sam might wander down to the center of town for a bit, should the spirit move them. He had spent the morning hard at work on Otto and, although he continued to profess little taste for the project, he also confessed to feeling mildly inspired by Symonds’s recent visit. He and his erstwhile fellow patient had enjoyed close to an hour reminiscing over their winters in Davos with the infamous Dr. Ruedi when Symonds had pulled a small volume from his bag and handed it to Stevenson. A just-published collection of medieval students’ songs translated by Symonds and entitled Wine, Women, and Song, it was dedicated to “Dear Louis” in memory of their many alpine evenings of witty conversation. When Stevenson read the dedication aloud, Fanny had darted a quick but assertive look in his direction. Symonds was so effusive, though, about her husband’s talents—deeming his New Arabian Nights to be among the most engaging pieces he had read in years—that when she thanked him at the door for visiting, she had been unqualifiedly sincere. True, she had afterwards teased Stevenson yet again about the precise nature of Symonds’s affection for her man—but seeing Stevenson so patently energized by Symonds’s praise had powerfully warmed her heart. That Symonds had also brought Sammy a lavish supply of Swiss chocolate had sealed the bargain.
Stepping away from the table, Fanny heard a rustle and a cough from Stevenson’s study. Venturing in, she found her husband slumped in his chair. One arm drooped towards the floor and the other covered several sheets of stationery that lay on his chest. There was a half-empty bottle of wine on the desk. No glass. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke. As she parted her lips to remark on his indulgence, something in his aspect took her past admonition to concern.
“What’s the matter, Louis? You’re not feeling ill, are you?”
“Mmmm? What’s that?” He turned his head in her direction, not quite meeting her eye.
“You don’t look very chipper. Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” He turned back towards the wall in front of him.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Stevenson grasped the papers in both hands and, folding them over in a wad, held them up over his shoulder, his gaze still averted.
“Bad news?” asked Fanny, walking closer.
Stevenson heaved a loud sigh and nodded.
“What is it, then? Who’s it from?” Fanny pushed a nest of other papers aside and half-sat on the desk.
“From mother. Margaret.”
“And?”
“The family business, to start with. It’s evidently in a bad way.”
“Your father’s? He’s retired.” She slid herself closer to him. “You told me he’d stepped down.”
“He has. But he maintains a substantial stake. And Uncle David is apparently running it all into the ground.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
He eyed her challengingly. “No?”
“What have you heard?”
“I’ve heard that, last month, meeting with a very important client, my dear uncle evidently had a strange visitation.”
“A visitation?”
“He claimed to see Grandfather Stevenson standing there in the office, right beside him.”
“Oh my!” sighed Fanny. “Your long-dead grandfather?”
“The very one. And standing there, it was claimed, with a switch in his hand. And angry.”
“Oh my goodness!”
“Uncle David swore, later on, that grandfather’s ghost had ordered him to drop his breeches. On the spot. For a flogging. Mother doesn’t say, but I wager he told the old bugger to stick the switch up his arse.”
“Louis!”
“They always had their differences. And better defiance, I suppose, than to have dutifully bared his bum while the client watched.”
Fanny suppressed a titter. “Well, yes.”
“It would be comical, you know. It would. But evidently it cost the firm a five-thousand-pound contract. Of which father’s share would have been considerable.”
“Oh my!”
“I don’t know if that puts our thousand a year from Father in jeopardy. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. I suppose I shall have to pander to the masses in deadly earnest now if we’re to keep our myriad creditors at bay.”
Fanny leaned towards him to stroke his cheek. “I’m sure we’ll be fine. I can always take in washing.” She smiled in reassurance.
“And Sam can black boots at the railway station?”
“Precisely. There’s honor in manual labor.”
“So say manual laborers.” He smiled grimly. She could see there was more.
“There’s something else?”
Stevenson pinched his lips and nodded. His eyes looked large and liquid as a cornered hare’s.
“What is it, Louis?”
He lifted the letter off his chest and unfolded it. He looked at the topmost sheet, then shuffled to the one behind it, holding it out and pointing with his finger at the middle of the page.
Fanny quickly scanned the sheet. “She’s heard from Ferrier’s mother!”
Stevenson nodded again. “Walter’s near the end. Read it aloud. Read what that woman wrote.”
“Oh my!” exclaimed Fanny. “My son now exists among the number of those degraded ones—degraded ones, she says!—whose society on earth is shunned by the moral and virtuous among mankind. My God, Louis. And she blames you. She blames it all on you?”
“Enough of it, she does. So it seems.” The writer coughed again and reached for the bottle. He took a long swallow and held it up to Fanny. She waved it angrily away.
“That old bitch! That perfect old bitch! I’ve a mind to go up to Edinburgh on the next express and strangle her.”
“Her son is dying,” sighed Stevenson, his voice as sympathetic as it was anguished. Then very softly, “You of all people know how that is.”
Fanny’s look bordered on fury. “It’s not the same, Louis. It’s inhuman. I never blamed anyone for taking him. I never…” Springing from the desk, she stormed over to the window.
Stevenson rose wearily and followed after her, pressing up behind her and laying his hands on her shoulders. She was very warm from her work outside and, now, from her mounting ire. A strong and not unpleasant animal scent rose from her scalp, and he found himself nuzzling her head distractedly. “No one was to blame for Hervey. It was God’s will. Ferrier? That might be a different matter.”
Fanny turned to face him, fire in her eyes. “Don’t you go feeling responsible, Louis! Don’t! You’re not. We’ve been through all this.
That’s her lunacy, and it’s vile.”
“Fanny—”
“It’s vile!” She stood there with her hands on her hips, her jaw thrust out like a pugilist’s.
For a moment he weathered her fiery gaze. Then he turned quietly and walked back to his chair. He sank slowly down, leaning forward with his head in his hands. As his long fingers snaked back through his hair, Fanny could hear him breathe in deeply, expelling each breath through his nose as he tried to settle himself. He coughed once or twice, tentatively, and then she realized he was weeping. She was reluctant to soften her stance, but within the minute, she crossed to him and rested her hand gently on his shoulder.
“Louis, I love you so terribly much. And I know you so well. These other people don’t. You mustn’t heed what others think or say about you.”
“No?” he asked almost inaudibly.
She was relieved to think she might be prevailing. “No.”
“Then our only worry, Pig, is what I think of myself.”
Dear Belle, wrote Sam to his sister in California. How frightened I was last night. I woke up after midnight to hear Mama calling out for Valentine. “Valentine go and fetch the doctor! Go and fetch the doctor!” I didn’t like at all the way she sounded and I thought it must be Lulu again. I got
up and ran into Mama’s room and Lulu was sitting in the bed coughing most awfully. He was holding his pillow up to his mouth as he coughed and it was all covered with blood. I think he saw me standing there but his eyes were so frightened looking and he was so pale in the candlelight especially compared to that awful pillow. He just couldn’t stop coughing. I thought he would choke to death on the blood that just poured out of him. Oh Belle. I have never been so scared in my life. Mama told me to go back to my room but I just couldn’t. She sat next to Lulu on the bed hugging him and so she got all covered with his blood too. Finally the doctor came with Valentine and gave Lulu some medicine from a little bottle. He told Lulu to sit very very still and not to move at all. He listened to his chest and when Lulu started to be sleepy from the medicine the doctor tied his right arm close to his chest and told Mama he must stay just that way for a good long while. It wouldn’t be good for him to move at all. He also said that there could be no smoking and no drinking wine either. I know Lulu won’t like that especially the no wine part but the doctor says it is very important. Oh, he is also not supposed to talk. At all. You know how he’ll feel about that. I will write again soon I hope with news that he is better. The doctor says he should get better if he listens. By the way I am doing well at my lessons Mama tells me. I am even learning French. Please say hello to Joe. I may send you a poem soon. I miss you. Sam.
Stevenson sat in bed in the darkened room, trussed up like a Christmas goose. More than anything, he simply wanted to free his arm from the mummifying bandages and swing it wildly in the air…or throw some-thing…or just stretch it out straight and flex his fingers. He felt like a genie in a bottle, and he did not like the feeling at all. By his left hand lay a notebook and a pencil. Forbidden as he was to speak, it was his sole means of communication, and it bore witness to the anguish and frustration of recent days. The block letters were like a child’s, ill formed and uneven, necessarily written with his left hand. Lift me straighter…
Don’t be frightened. If this is death, it is an easy one. … What I want is for you to do what you want and to go about your own affairs, and you won’t understand me. … Why did you come? I can now never ring again. … Will you read to me? … What is the fat one up to? … You are tired.
On the bedside table, under a carved jade paperweight, lay a single sheet that had been torn out and carefully set aside. Fanny had found it when she awoke there on the third morning, and she read the lines aloud as he watched her, tears swelling in his eyes.
When I am grown to man’s estate
I shall be very proud and great,
And tell the other girls and boys
Not to meddle with my toys.
And just below:
A child should always say what’s true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table;
At least as far as he is able.
When she had done reading, he picked up his pencil and wrote: Must we always be dutiful?
Fanny spent almost every waking hour with him, and most nights she sat in the chair at his bedside. At every hint of a cough, she shot from her seat and leaned over him, searching his features manically as though his fate were written there in runes that only she could read. He longed to embrace her then, to comfort her, but all he could do was reach over with his left hand and touch her lightly on the cheek. At times, the closeness of death gave him a shocking sense of calm, and he tried to share that feeling with her, struggling to fill his eyes with it and pour it straight into her soul.
When Fanny tired to the point of illness, Valentine took her place, sometimes watching through the long hours of the night until she dozed in her chair. One morning, she awoke to find him smiling at her. As she stretched to shake off the slumber, he handed her the notebook. Written on the open page was this:
Come up here, O dusty feet!
Here is fairy bread to eat.
Here in my retiring room,
Children, you may dine
On the golden smell of broom
And the shade of pine;
And when you have eaten well,
Fairy stories hear and tell.
And below it, We must, after all, eat if we are to tell our tales. Merci V. She bent impulsively to kiss his forehead, and when his eyes widened in feigned shock and a smile cracked his wan features, she knew he was on the mend.
“I am so glad to see you are better,” cried Sam, bouncing with excitement. For the first time in weeks, the window of the sick room was thrown open wide and the sun poured through with the morning zephyr, driving out the musty closeness that had bound it for a fortnight.
“Be careful of the bed,” warned Fanny. “You mustn’t jostle it. Lulu’s not out of the woods yet.”
“Sorry,” said the boy, struggling to contain himself. “I really am glad, though. I was awfully worried, you know.”
Stevenson nodded sadly. “I am sorry to have put you through that. It’s not being a very good father, is it?”
“It’s nothing you can help. Being sick. It’s not as though you’re trying.”
“No,” the writer answered. “It’s not as though I’m trying.”
“Will you be up and about soon?” asked the boy. “I think it would be loads of fun to go sailing. That wouldn’t be too much of a strain for you, would it?”
“I’m afraid the doctor says it will be a good deal more bed rest,” observed his mother. “But look. At least Lulu has two arms now.”
Stevenson lifted his right forearm off the bed, rotating his hand to inspect both sides. “Hallelujah!” he said with a grin.
“I have an idea!” cried Sam. “Let’s reopen the Davos Press. You can write some more poems, like you’ve been doing. And maybe I’ll write a few, too. And then we can sell them in town!”
“We’ll need to find another letterpress,” laughed Stevenson. “Remember, we gave our old one to the Symondses when we left Switzerland. To Katherine.”
“Oh, damn! I forgot.”
Stevenson looked quickly at Fanny, fully expecting her to admonish Sam for cursing. She merely smiled at them both. “That’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “Perfect.”
“Perfect,” echoed the writer. “We shall produce a new Lyrical Ballads. You shall be Wordsworth and I shall be Coleridge. Most of what I try to write ends up like ‘Kubla Khan’ anyway.”
“What’s ‘Kubla Khan?’” asked the boy.
“Oh, what was the start of a very great poem, but it never got finished.”
“Why not?”
“The author, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, you know, had a dream and he woke up with the whole poem forming in his head. But as he sat down to write it, a man came and knocked on the door and—poof!—the poem was gone. Except for what he had already gotten down.”
Sam gazed at him quizzically, then shook his head. “Well, we’ll lock the bedroom door, then. And tell Valentine there will be no visitors. And you won’t get to eat unless you write one hundred lines a day.” He eyed his stepfather sternly.
Stevenson laughed hard enough that Fanny leapt to her feet and rushed over to him. Raising his hand, he coughed experimentally, then cleared his throat. The look of concentration left his eyes, and once again he smiled. “You sound as though you’ve been talking to your dear mother.” He cocked an eyebrow at Fanny. “You both want this poor goose to lay more quickly than she can.”
“This is serious business,” said Sam. “We depend on you.”
The following afternoon, Stevenson timorously offered for Sam’s approval a little poem about “The Land of Counterpane,” in which the narrator fancied himself “a great giant and still, that sits upon the pillow hill,” who “sometimes for an hour or so watched his leaden soldiers go, with different uniforms and drills, among the bed-clothes, through the hills.” Sam instantly and generously deemed it a work of genius, so vividly did it evoke their pastimes on the sitting room floor.
“I’m so glad you liked the soldiers,” said Stevens
on, once he had finished. Reading aloud had tired his voice more than he expected, but it was a great pleasure to look up from the page and see Sam beaming at him dreamily, hanging on every word—and, in turn, to see Fanny watching her son with a look of perfect contentment.
“A very good effort, Lulu. But you’ve got more, don’t you?” He grinned at his mother like Puck.
“What a taskmaster!” complained Stevenson. “What a cruel, unmerciful audience I slave for. Would you crush art? Would you insist on the letter of your law when…when the muse is such a delicate soul? When she skitters away, frightened, from any commanding voice?” He winked at Fanny, who shook her head.
Sam giggled and bobbed his head emphatically. “Of course I would. You must do as we say. Now recite your next one, or you go to bed hungry.”
“Goodness. I’ve only this.” Stevenson opened with exaggerated weariness to another page. “And I am positively drained. Could I prevail upon you to read this one yourself?”
“Well,” said Sam, pinching his chin dramatically.
“There’s another soldier in it!”
“I suppose,” said the boy, continuing to stroke his imaginary goatee. “Just this once.” He cleared his throat and read in a high, dramatic voice, exaggerating every stress and rhyme.
When the grass was closely mown,
Walking on the lawn alone,
In the turf a hole I found,
And hid a soldier underground.
Under grass alone he lies,
Looking up with leaden eyes,
Scarlet coat and pointed gun,
To the stars and to the sun.
When the grass is ripe like grain,
When the scythe is stoned again,
When the lawn is shaven clear,
Then my hole shall reappear.
“Wait a minute,” said Sam, lowering the page. “‘When the lawn is shaven clear’? Do lawns get shaven, Lulu? Like with a razor?”
Seeking Hyde Page 13
