Then, without warning the heavyset, heavy-jowled barkeep was moving toward them through the closely arranged tables, his soiled apron tied tightly over his protruding stomach, his long black hair
catching glints of light as he passed beneath the oil lamps. He was headed their way, and in the last moment of privacy, Willmot whispered, "If we've caused offense, let me do the talking."
While he was still a few feet away, the barkeep ducked his head and commenced wiping his hands on his apron. In an attempt to blunt the man's approach, Willmot swiveled to meet him. "What's the cause of all this?" he called out in good humor. "My friend and I are just passing a quiet hour. If we've caused offense . . "
The barkeep halted in his approach, his massive head wagging back and forth. "Oh, it's not offense you caused, sir, jus' the opposite." Now he gave John a close inspection.
" Tis him," he gasped, "or ... his ghost."
Behind him hovered the little serving maid, clearly the one who had sounded the alarm. "See, I told you so, didn't I now? I said look over there if you want to see a face from the grave."
At that several chairs scraped as others tried to get a closer look. Across from him, Willmot saw the boy, his eyes down, as though the weight of embarrassment was too much to be borne.
Still mystified, Willmot was on the verge of questioning the bar-keep further when behind him at a table not too far removed he heard a gruff voice shout, "Couldn't be him, though^ not the Prince of Eden. We seen him off last spring."
Then Willmot knew. Why hadn't it occurred to him? He had made the same mistake himself a few hours earlier. Coming upon that strong fair face so unexpectedly would test the nerves of a stone. And these folks here in the Seven Men were bound to suffer a painful recognition as they had suffered a painful loss. The passing of the Prince of Eden surely had been like a light extinguished in their lives. Before his death, they had been able to count upon at least one refuge of warmth, one man who had treated them with human dignity.
With a sense of reverence Willmot looked out over the gaping faces, proud to have known such a man. As several more pushed closer, he thought how pleased John must be, receiving this silent tribute to his father. Because words of some sort seemed called for and because clearly John would not be capable of delivering them, Willmot stood and cleared his throat.
"You've made one small mistake, my friends, but an understandable one. This is not Edward Eden, though pray God that he was here. This . . . duplicate as you called him is just that, his son,
John Murrey Eden, a lad as fine and as upright as his father, and I think I can speak for him when I say—"
Suddenly from the young man there came a strong protest. "Not" Willmot only had enough time to look down before the young man rose with such force that the bench clattered backward.
"John . . . ?" But as Willmot's hand moved forward, the boy shot past him, knocking noisily against the partitions, and with his head still bowed, he ran through the crowded room, his hands outreaching as though to clear all obstacles.
For a moment Willmot continued to stand, only vaguely aware of the whispering going on around him. Then he too was moving, running the same obstacle course that John had run, trying to dodge the clutter of tables and the press of people who clearly had a tribute to make and no one to whom to make it.
Once out on the pavement, he noticed that night had fallen, the shadows obscuring the street in all directions. "John?" he called, foolishly thinking the boy might be waiting nearby and would answer.
Then a grim thought occurred to him. Of course, where else would he go but home, to the house three blocks away, to that obscenely luxurious front parlor where Elizabeth was at this moment entertaining her most distinguished client.
No, he thought, and broke into a run. Not until he'd turned the corner did he spy him, about fifty yards ahead and still running. "John, wait. . ." Willmot shouted, knowing he could hear now, but knowing as well that he would not stop or turn back until it was too late.
While he was still a distance away, Willmot saw the elegant carriage still waiting before the house. Was there no warning he could give? To anyone? "John, please wait. . ." he called a final time, and saw the boy take the front steps and push wildly at the door.
Breathing heavily from his sprint, Willmot started to take the three small steps in one, then suddenly changed his mind. Though the door was open, he heard not a sound coming from the room. While he felt a responsibility, perhaps it was not his place to intrude. As he retreated back to the pavement, he wondered if he was acting with prudence or cowardice.
His anxiety increasing, he continued to strain his ears, trying to hear something. To his left he spied a spill of light coming through the incompletely drawn drapes. Disliking what he was about to do, yet doing it anyway, he stepped to one side and with instantaneous
regret saw clearly through the crack a most bizarre tableau, like mannequins in a store window, the man Gladstone seated upon the sofa, the specifics of his features as frozen as the entire room, Elizabeth lying lengthwise, her head in his lap, the obscene white lace dressing gown down about her waist, his hand cupped about one breast.
But worst of all was John, literally a statue, as though upon his rapid entrance he'd collided painfully with an invisible barrier beyond which he could not move.
Still Willmot watched, thinking that someone, anyone, must move and speak soon. It could not persist, the shocked embarrassment coming from the two on the sofa, and the nightmare on the face of the young man. Clearly he'd had no notion of what was going on. None at all.
Then she moved first, though such a slow movement it was, her head lifting from the lap, one hand reaching downward for her garment.
In need of respite from the scene, Willmot closed his eyes. It might have been worse, though he doubted it. If the boy had discovered them in the middle of the act itself, it couldn't have been more obscene.
He noticed that Elizabeth was on her feet, the dressing gown partially restored, her face desolate. "J onn • • • ?" she begged softly, and was not given the opportunity to finish.
Drawing on some mysterious source of strength, the statue moved. Apparently he'd spied his abandoned satchel on the floor near the sideboard. Still moving as though in a trance, he retrieved the satchel and cast a final look at the woman drawing nearer. Some new expression cut through the masklike features, first hurt, then anger, then the plainest of all, accusation. Judgment passed, he stepped backward, and from where Willmot stood, he thought he saw the young man's lips move, a single word, but he couldn't hear, and could only faintly see Elizabeth's reaction. No longer advancing, she stood still, the extended hand slowly withdrawing, her head lifting as though she were having difficulty breathing.
Willmot had seen enough. Should he simply slip away and pretend it had never happened? Or should he remain and attempt to gather all the fragments of Edward Eden's son together and take them to some safe place?
While he was still in the process of making his decision, the young man appeared on the darkened stoop. Willmot looked up. "J onn > I
tried . . ." But as Willmot attempted to explain, John started walking slowly down the street, satchel in hand.
Torn between the disintegration on the pavement and what surely must be matching disintegration taking place inside the house, Will-mot foundered. He looked up at the closed door, half-expecting to see Elizabeth. Why hadn't she called the boy back? Why hadn't she at least made an effort to explain?
"John, wait," he called out, thinking perhaps that they would walk for a while, with Willmot doing the talking, trying to assist him in understanding. Then, in Willmot's opinion, it would be best if the boy returned to Eden. It was where he belonged. Certainly he did not belong here.
Having thus plotted the direction of the immediate future, he drew up alongside John, who had yet to look back and acknowledge his presence in any way. No matter. Willmot did not require acknowledgment, merely a listening ear.
"John, let me-"
; But again that one hand lifted in a sharp gesture, as though he needed no help, or if he did, he would ask for it later.
Seeing the gesture and the blond bowed head, Willmot held his tongue and contented himself with merely walking alongside the boy. Perhaps later words would be negotiable.
But they weren't. For the better part of the night, Willmot followed behind him as he walked the streets of London, his head still down.
About midnight Willmot found that they were approaching Oxford Street. The traffic had thinned with the late hour, though an occasional carriage rattled past and several costermongers working late tried to hawk the tail-end of the day's wares.
But nothing, no encounter, no voice, no sound was enough to cause that head to lift in either interest or curiosity. And though an occasional bobby strolling in the late-night hours eyed them with mild suspicion, no one seemed inclined to halt or question them.
So they were free to roam the streets, with John setting both the pace and the direction, a topsy-turvy route as far as Willmot could determine. The only time that John halted his step altogether was at a point midway down Oxford Street, when in a crush of commercial shops and linen establishments he stopped and looked about, as though lost, and finally fastened his attention on one shop front,
clearly new—constructed within the last five years was Willmot's guess.
Standing behind the young man, Willmot followed the direction of his gaze, baffled why this particular shop held such interest for him. He was on the verge of breaking the silence and making inquiry when John volunteered the information himself.
"This was my father's house," he said, his voice so low that Will-mot moved a step closer.
"This?" Willmot puzzled. "It looks . . . newly built."
"The house was destroyed to make way for the shop."
It wasn't condemnation in his voice, merely bewilderment, as though he'd hoped to return and find the house exactly as he'd remembered it.
At some point in the early-morning hours, a faint rain began to fall. Willmot turned up his collar and buttoned his jacket to the top and watched to see if John would do likewise. He didn't. If he was aware at all of the falling rain, he gave no indication of it.
Looking up into the fine mist, Willmot got his bearings and realized that they weren't too far from his own flat behind St. Paul's in Warwick Lane. It seemed the sensible thing to do, to suggest that they make for those rooms, and if John chose to pass what was left of the night staring into emptiness, then at least he could do so in dry comfort.
With this suggestion in mind, Willmot drew closer and stood over him for a moment, still finding his silence incredibly difficult to penetrate. He'd not thought it possible for the human body to endure such a siege of silence.
Then without warning the young man spoke. "How much did you say Mr. Brassey is worth?" he asked, as though nothing had transpired since their earlier conversation at the Seven Men.
So surprised was he by the sound of the voice and the curious question that it took Willmot a moment to adjust to both. "According ... to rumor," he stammered, "approaching five million."
"And how much did you say he arrived with in London?" the young man asked further.
Again Willmot struggled to answer. "According to his own accounts, less than . . . three shillings—"
He was aware of movement next to him, the young man fishing through his pockets for something and apparently finding it, holding it out before him, palm open.
Willmot looked closer at something shiny in that open palm. A coin of some sort. He leaned closer. A halfpenny.
The young man stepped forward as though on a burst of energy, swinging his satchel. He looked at Willmot and smiled. "I thank you for your company," he said. "And now, if you could direct me to a near boardinghouse, I'd be most appreciative."
"A boardinghouse?"
"I need a place to stay, Mr. Willmot. Obviously I cannot return to the house in Bermondsey, nor can I go back to Eden."
Willmot looked at the boy. "I know of ... no boardinghouse," he faltered. "There's no need anyway. My flat is not far, and there's plenty of room."
The boy looked at him. "I am grateful, and I assure you it will only be temporary." He stepped closer. "You offered once, Mr. Willmot, to introduce me to Brassey. Does that offer still hold?"
"Of . . . course," Willmot stammered again, "as soon as he returns from—"
"Good! Well, then, come. You lead the way for a while and I'll follow." In spite of his words, he strode to the intersection, leading the way, his shoulders back as though drinking in the perfume of an early-summer morning.
Again Willmot shook his head and hurried to catch up. As they started across Southampton Row, the young man drew farther ahead, his stride long and purposeful now. Willmot had never seen such a rapid transformation.
"To the left," Willmot called out as John veered to the right. No longer was he interested in keeping up with him. His own weariness after the long night was beginning to take a toll. Then, too, of greater interest to him was that miraculous resemblance, the way he carried his shoulders, the angle of the stride, the swing of the arms, the daylight on his hair.
But there was a difference, deeper and more profound than mere physical resemblance. And it was his awareness of that difference and his inability to identify it that disturbed Willmot and caused him then to hurry to catch up, as though the young man were an incomprehensible force that must be watched.
Eden Castle, North Devon, January 1853
Though eleven, going on twelve, and considered by all to be still a child, nonetheless Richard was capable of overhearing the whispered conversations of those around him, and assessing the dimensions of that bleak existence which now passed for life at Eden Castle. The trouble was that he understood all aspects of the tragedy. Except one.
On this cold January morning, bent over his desk in the small library, near the warmth of a flickering fire, he leaned over the fine print of Homer's Odyssey and pretended to be reading. But all the while his mind never traveled further than the third-floor corridor above him, that grim place where daily there could be heard voices calling out to his mother. A macabre ritual had been established. The awesome door opened only briefly, late at night, and for one person, Peggy, who was granted quick access for the purpose of serving a simple tray. Then she was banished, and tearfully she had informed all that if anyone tried to enter when she did, her ladyship had vowed to bolt the door forever.
Still everyone tried to talk to her through the closed door. Such a variety of entreaties: Peggy's soft concerned one, Mrs. Swan's pragmatic one, Aggie Fletcher's harsh angry one. And once, some months ago, they'd even enlisted him.
"Talk to her, Richard," Clara Jenkins had instructed. "Tell her that you need her, that Mary needs her, that everyone . . ."
He had obeyed in all respects, had stood outside the ominous door, her daily tray of food and the fresh chamber pot resting near
his feet, aware of the others hovering in the shadows a distance away. He had commenced talking, at first of superficial things: Mary's stomachache, his progress in Latin and French, the new colt. And all the time he'd talked, he'd kept his eye on the door, a continuous prayer running through his mind, "Please, God, let her open it."
But she hadn't.
Suddenly Richard shivered. The small fire was dying, the storm outside the window increasing. His thoughts labored painfully to lift everything that had happened to the light of an ultimate meaning, and while he understood a great deal, there still was one missing link in the chain of understanding.
John.
Why had he left them when they needed him most? Why had he been there one day and gone the next?
John. How he missed him.
"Very well. Enough!" The voice was Herr Snyder's, sharp and drained of patience. "Clearly you have succumbed to self-indulgence, as has everyone else. Oh, I've been watching you. A page hasn't been turned in the last fifteen minutes."
Richard did not
look up. Neither did he offer any sort of denial. How could he? Herr Snyder had spoken the truth.
Apparently having received no denial or apology or explanation, Herr Snyder washed his hands of the entire matter. "Then I'll leave you to your own devices," he pronounced, marching toward the door.
From where he sat at his desk near the fire, Richard followed his progress until he disappeared up the stairs, clearly on his way to his second-floor apartment to write more letters of inquiry, searching for new employment.
Upon the instant of his departure, Richard felt a curious splintering of emotions, partly relief to be out from under the weight of those sharp eyes, and partly regret, an awareness that perhaps he needed the anchor of Herr Snyder's iron discipline to keep him from drifting like the other lost vessels in the castle.
Alone in the small library, his sense of relief won out. He would miss Herr Snyder, but he could manage without him. Of late he'd felt a strange impulse to cease exploring other men's minds, and for a while at least, explore his own. Now he would have freedom in which he could pursue to his heart's content the massive old fifteenth-century Bible which was chained to the pulpit in the chapel.
He loved the Parables best, the Prodigal Son, the Coat of Many Colors, Daniel and the Lions. All these tales transfigured the world and expanded his temporal boundaries.
Thinking on his place of refuge, he closed the volume of Homer. In a surge of excitement he stood. Then he was moving across the Great Hall to the steps.
He increased his pace and was well on his way to the safety and warmth of the chapel when at the top of the third-floor landing he heard a voice, a familiar one, though the words were unfamiliar.
In spite of the instinct which warned him not to stop, he stopped and pulled his jacket up about his neck. Suffering from that unfortunate faculty of comprehending everything and feeling its nature in an instant, he turned toward the distant voice. It was Peggy. Forbidden to speak a word to his mother at night she was holding her conversation with the door early today. Drawn forward by grim curiosity, Richard glanced down the corridor and saw her seated upright upon the floor, a piece of newsprint in her hands, laboriously reading.
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