The Skull and the Nightingale

by Michael Irwin

  In the coach I took her hand and she pressed against me, whispering in my ear, still in her droll vein: “Pray take no liberties, sir. I am no such simpleton as to open the premises to an intruder. I could have tasted carnal pleasures long ago if Will Bumpkin had had his way, but I valued my virtue above such rustic fingerings.”

  Later, in our bedroom, I gave her the necklace I had purchased in Knott’s Market. It seemed that she was moved, because she gazed at it for some little time saying nothing. When she did speak, it was again in character: “Sure, sir, you would not take advantage of a poor country girl? A full purse, a frilled shirt, and a lusty member are all very fine, but what if the man has no heart? I scarce know what to think. But I must like you, sir, for you do buy me a beautiful necklace, and make me laugh and squeak.”

  She embraced me and hid her face in my shoulder. When I made to kiss her I found that there were tears on her cheeks.

  “Why should you weep?” I asked her.

  “I cannot say. I will not say.”

  She stepped away from me, smiling now, and began to remove her clothes, all the time looking me in the eyes. When she was completely undressed she put on the necklace for the first time. I raised a candle to look at her, and the red jewels blinked warmly above the pure white skin of her breast.

  “I have not seen you more beautiful,” I said.

  “We have passed a beautiful day. I will never know a better.”

  For want of a reply I took her into my arms, suddenly moved by the thought that she was right: she could look for no more than this. Mr. Gilbert would no doubt have seen such tears and blushes as incidental expressions of the breeding impulse, but I could not yet think as he did. I kissed my actress-lover with something more than animal lust, startled to find a minor player in my private drama presuming to take a major part.

  Chapter 16

  The following day I retreated to Cathcart Street and sat brooding with a clouded mind. Having found the previous twenty-four hours sweetly pleasurable, I struggled to convince myself, as I had to, that they amounted to an interlude only, a distraction from my serious pursuits. I felt a new tenderness for Kitty—she had formed an attachment to me while knowing that there was no future for it: if I had had promises to make, I would have made them by now. For my part I recognized that, given her growing fame, what I was able to offer her was sure to be outbid: I would have to endure the blow to my pride and pleasure of seeing her pass into the protection of another. I could not foresee this loss without a pang.

  That disturbing thought prompted another. Although my love for Sarah had seemed to me to be of a different order from my affectionate lust for Kitty, would it not bring me to an identical conclusion? Beyond the physical seduction what could ensue? Would Sarah consent to be my occasional mistress? Might she puzzle her husband by producing a brown-eyed son? The possibilities were too squalid to be pursued. If I was blunt with myself, it seemed that all I could offer was fornication followed by misery.

  I concluded that I could not afford to be blunt with myself. My future was at stake. Whatever my misgivings, I was obliged to maintain my pursuit of Sarah and feed the story to my godfather. He would already be looking to receive a further chapter.

  A day later I settled to the task of composing one. I wrote a humdrum account of my visit to Margaret Street before proceeding to an attempted justification:

  You may feel that there is little here to suggest that progress has been made. But as a young lady fresh to London and its ways, and not yet comfortably established in her new station in life, Mrs. Ogden will hardly yield to an abrupt avowal or assault—least of all in her own house. Your letter from Lord Downs opened the door for me, but it afforded a single opportunity that I could not afford to put at risk. Accordingly I seasoned our conversation with only the faintest trace of warmer recollections and intimations.

  As I have told you, I first knew the lady in York, when we were children. By referring to shared memories from those days, I engaged her interest, made her smile, and, I hope, began to reinstate myself as a friend and confidant.

  But I was also able to imply, through glancing allusions, that I had since traveled widely and made the acquaintance of certain distinguished individuals. Thanks to your generosity, this is indeed the case. Given that her present way of life would seem to provide wealth without diversion and comfort without society, I hope she will come to associate me with possibilities of greater excitement.

  Such encroachments may seem a long way from carnal temptation, but I am persuaded that they may offer the most promising route to opportunities of that kind. That hope gains strength from two considerations. The Sarah I knew was of warm disposition: impulsive and emotional, ready of apprehension, and quick to laugh or blush. I have seen her show strong feelings on occasion, whether of enthusiasm, joy, or justified indignation. I suspect that she is, or could become, a creature of Passion.

  My second consideration is that her husband seems hardly a man to evoke or respond to ardent feeling. I suspect that he has done no more than awaken his wife to the possibility of pleasures that he himself cannot provide—if not from physical incapacity, then from a deficiency of grace. What woman of delicacy could endure to have this porky nullity pawing at her body? I hope to turn to account an accumulating, but as yet, perhaps, unacknowledged disgust.

  My allusions to seeds, hints, or glimpses will not appear strange to you. They derive from your own claim that we are undertaking an experiment. Indeed we are—an experiment of an elusive kind, involving matters physical, emotional, and intellectual, and the interplay between them. We will understand what happens, perhaps, only in retrospect.

  Should Ogden accept Lord Downs’s commission and therefore be away for a time, I will have an ideal space in which to move forward. Achieving a resolution of whatever kind will take weeks—even months; but I shall scrupulously record every sign of progress.

  In the meantime I remain,

  Yours, &c.

  On rereading my letter, I found it pallid and strained. I had thought it necessary, however, to slow the story down. The conquests of Kitty and Mrs. Hurlock had been so summarily achieved as to encourage false expectations. If I continued to achieve amatory success at that rate, my doings would seem tediously predictable, and I might rut myself into prostration. By adopting my godfather’s language of experiment, I could perhaps satisfy him, for some weeks ahead, as Cullen had suggested, with morsels of insinuation as opposed to full platters of venereal description.

  If, for all his show of intellectual detachment, my godfather was after all chiefly interested in the activities of the bedchamber, he would surely find this thinner diet unsatisfying. I awaited his response with some little apprehension. As it happened, however, the next message I received from Worcestershire came from a different source.

  Dear Mr. Fenwick,

  You will no doubt be surprised to receive this letter from me, the more so when I say that I cannot communicate as directly as I would wish. I will leave you to interpret my words as you see fit, confident that you will do so with discretion and good sense, and will suspect no dishonorable motive.

  The essential information you will no doubt already have heard from Mr. Gilbert. About a fortnight ago Mr. Quentin set out for what he told his wife would be a long walk. They had for some time been confined to their cottage by heavy rain. She became alarmed when he failed to return by nightfall. Search parties were sent out next day, but saw no sign of him. It was more than a week before his body was found, a mile or so from his home. He had drowned in the River Moule, which had burst its banks and spread over the surrounding fields. The assumption was that he had fallen from a broken footbridge into deep water. Mrs. Quentin confirmed that he could not swim.

  The mere fact of his death is disturbing enough, as I am sure you would agree; but two or three other considerations have caused me disquiet. One—which I have mentioned to no one el
se—is the possibility that the poor man may have taken his own life. It fell to me to break the news to Mrs. Quentin. She was greatly distressed, as was only to be expected, but I was struck by the fact that her first words after I had stated the bare facts were: “I knew it; I knew it.” Perhaps mistakenly I understood her to be saying not merely that she had guessed that her husband was dead but that she knew he had intended to die. She may have suspected, as I did myself, that he saw the flood as creating a situation in which accidental death by drowning would seem more plausible. In later conversations Mrs. Quentin has said enough to confirm what I had myself seemed to observe: that during what proved to be the last weeks of his life her husband had been lost in dark meditation.

  Since it appears that no one other than myself has mentioned the possibility of suicide, you might think that it would have been more humane on my part to keep my suspicions to myself—and indeed I have done so prior to the writing of this letter. I mention them to you, in strict confidence, for delicate reasons which I must leave to inference.

  It was my task also to tell Mr. Gilbert what had happened. Having asked one or two questions, he was silent for some little time before observing, in a level voice: “It was a predictable conclusion.” After a further pause he added, as though in response to my own silence: “He was a man with no remaining interest in life.”

  Our quiet parish has seen a strange summer, most obviously in respect of the weather—a parching drought followed by dramatic floods which caused no little damage to crops and cottages. There was also Yardley’s unfortunate injury—from which he has by now largely recovered, although he limps still. More recently I have heard rumors that Mr. Hurlock has been—I must choose my words—somewhat erratic in his behavior. It would appear that he is concerned about his financial situation, a bequest he had hoped for having failed to materialize. I understand that he is heavily in debt—to Mr. Gilbert among others.

  The dead man was, of course, one of Mr. Gilbert’s pensioners. I hope that your godfather will offer to make some sort of provision for Mrs. Quentin, who is in great distress and apparently has few relatives to whom she could apply. Should he not do so, the unfortunate widow must look upon her future with foreboding.

  As I feared, this letter has become unsatisfactorily oblique. No immediate reply is expected: I would not for one moment wish to put you in a compromising position. I do hope, however, that at some future date it may prove possible to discuss with you the serious issues I have obscurely touched upon.

  I remain your obedient servant,

  Henry Thorpe

  The letter alarmed me. I was sorry that Quentin had declined so far into misery as—perhaps—to have deliberately ended his life, but I could not pretend to any great grief. To me the man had been no more than a dull enigma. But I recalled his seemingly purposeless visit to Cathcart Street, and wondered whether it had had any bearing on his subsequent fate.

  Of more immediate concern was Thorpe’s motive for writing to me. He might have assumed that I had influence with my godfather and could intervene on Mrs. Quentin’s behalf; but in that case would he have written so warily? In expressing confidence that I would not give him away he seemed to be hoping to enlist me as a potential ally against my godfather. There was a hint that Mr. Gilbert’s growing contempt for Quentin might have contributed indirectly to his despair. Perhaps it was also suggested that he was in some sense persecuting Hurlock. If there was a general inference to be drawn, it seemed to be that my godfather had been behaving oddly and aggressively. As another of his pensioners Thorpe would have reason to feel anxious at any such manifestation.

  I myself had reason, of course, to think that his fears might be justified. In his dealings with me my godfather had been broken free of a shell of caution apparently maintained throughout his previous life. A rich old man turned rogue could wreak a great deal of damage. Given the ways in which Mr. Gilbert was manipulating my own life, the immediate application of Thorpe’s warning was to myself.

  My dear Godfather,

  Tonight Horn, Latimer, and I were drinking in the Red Anchor, near Covent Garden. It was a rare privilege to have Latimer with us, since his closeness to Lord Ashton has raised him in society’s estimation and in his own. Horn was soon taunting him on this very theme.

  “Have you perceived,” he cried, “how our former companion has changed? He dresses more expensively; he favors a new style of wig. Even his physiognomy has altered: his face has plumped up and become solemn. By the end of the year Mr. Latimer will be a portly politician, unrecognizable as the young rake we knew at Oxford.”

  Latimer listened to this half-serious tirade with the placidity of a man among boys. To keep the game alive I took up the topic myself, remarking—truthfully—that he now even moves more sleekly, gliding where once he strode. To my surprise, Latimer assented to this description, taking it as a compliment:

  “I move differently because I have studied to do so, and have heeded the words of my dancing master. I shall soon be mingling with statesmen and diplomats. In such company the novice must be graceful and unobtrusive. Diplomacy is itself a kind of dance: there is no place for hobbledehoys.”

  Horn’s jeering response was interrupted by the arrival of two more of our old acquaintances, Nicholson and Moore. The conversation widened inconsequentially. As more wine was drunk, however, it narrowed again. Horn, a bottle ahead of the company, was both facetious and emphatic:

  “Consider copulation,” he declaimed. “This activity, essential to the future of the human race, is a madman’s gamble. Pleasure walks hand in hand with disease. The fond insertion may bring a child into the world or take a man out of it. Chance rolls the dice. I tell you again: Chance rolls the dice!”

  This declaration prompted loud agreement. By now it was growing dark, candles had been lit, and the air was thick with tobacco smoke. Drink had reddened our faces and confused our voices. Our end of the tavern resounded with crude phrases: “a great sow of a Cheapside whore,” “went to work like dog and bitch,” “their tails peppered with the pox,” “off to the quack with a poisoned pintle,” “pissing molten glass.” Amid the babble one corner of my mind was sober enough to conclude that here was the polar opposite of the pastoral mode. A few bottles of wine had set us playing with grossness as children play with mud.

  Horn led us in a new direction. Half weeping from wine and self-pity, he stood on his chair to shout: “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Why do we do what disgusts us and endangers our lives? Why are we drawn to the fatal notch?”

  “From need!” cried Nicholson, as a man making a great discovery. “That is the tragedy: we are born with the need!”

  There was vociferous agreement. Someone proposed a toast to The Need, which we drank with great solemnity.

  Now that Death had entered our discussion along with Chance, we were unable to get rid of either topic. Latimer, who had shed his dignity and become loquacious, commanded the table with the dismal tale of his cousin who had gone for a stroll one evening, simply on a whim, had happened to meet a former acquaintance, had taken disproportionate offense at an incidental remark, and absurdly challenged him to a duel which had cost him his life.

  “Even in the duel,” insisted Latimer, “Chance was at work. Had the wound been an inch to left or right, it would not have proved fatal. As matters stood, he might have lived had the flow of blood been stanched, but his second turned coward and ran away. It took a dozen mischances to condemn Cousin Andrew to death: he went from one to another like a man descending a flight of stairs.”

  Latimer’s story reminded Moore of another, yet more grotesque. He knew of a man challenged to a duel concerning an affair in which he was manifestly in the right. On the morning of the encounter he was weak and feverish—so much so that friends advised him to seek a postponement. As a man of strict principle, however, he insisted on proceeding—and died from a thrust to the heart. Only after his death did physici
ans see the marks on his body that showed him to have been suffering from smallpox. His victorious opponent contracted the disease from him, and within a few days fell victim to the invisible weapon.

  This grim anecdote led us back to the issue of fornication, Nicholson suggesting the parallel possibility of a rapist poxed by his victim. Moore took the hypothesis a stage further, positing an unfortunate offspring of the union, born with the moral failings of his father and the sickness of his mother. Latimer, stumbling over his words, put the case that there was a flaw in the very scheme of things. The moral confusion we were contemplating could have been averted had the Almighty but decreed that illness should be solely a consequence of sinful actions or intentions.

  “Why should we blame ourselves,” he cried, “for the failings of God?”

  Our foolish conversation gradually subsided into incoherence. I have recorded this much of it because, in a confused way, it bears upon our own experiments. We are exploring the “The Need” and what prompts it. Are Strephon and Chloe merely dog and bitch in fancy dress? And what are we to conclude if they will not couple without the fancy dress?

  If Sarah and I could encounter in the animal state, with no rationality to complicate the matter, I am sure we would conjoin most readily. In the human world, however, there are constraints of circumstance, habit, morality, loyalty, timidity, propriety to be circumvented or overcome. The intellectual challenge whets my animal appetite.

  I remain, still a little tipsily, &c.

  In fact I wrote this (pretty accurate) account of our conversation two days after it took place, and in a state of total sobriety. I held the quill a little loosely, however, to give my handwriting an unsteady cast. It was a relief to me to communicate in general terms and have the excuse of being not quite myself.