Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (28 page)

“All the world knows that I keep many treasures at my house,” continued the gentleman, “and yet she continues to open the window in spite of my entreaties! And now, of course, she sits weeping for the loss of this treasure which has been in my family for hundreds of years. For my mother takes great pride in our family and all its possessions. This sceptre, for example, is proof that we are descended from the ancient kings of Wessex, for it belonged to Edgar or Alfred or someone of that sort.”

“Then you must take it back, sir,” urged Stephen. “Your mother, I dare say, will be much relieved to see it safe and sound.”

The gentleman reached out to take the sceptre, but suddenly drew back his hand. “No!” he cried. “I will not! I vow I will not. If I were to return this treasure to my mother’s keeping, then she would never learn the evil consequences of her negligence! She would never learn to keep the window shut! And who knows what I might lose next? Why, I might come home tomorrow to an empty house! No, sir, you must keep the sceptre! It is a reward for the service you did me in trying to catch hold of the thief.”

The gentleman’s servants all nodded as if they saw the sense of this, and then a coach drew up and gentleman and servants all got into it and drove away.

Stephen stood in the rain with a diadem in one hand and a sceptre in the other. Ahead of him were the shops of Bond-street, the most fashionable shops in all the kingdom. In their windows were displayed silks and velvets, headdresses of pearl and peacock feathers, diamonds, rubies, jewels and every sort of gold and silver trinkets.

“Well,” thought Stephen, “doubtless he will be able to make all sorts of eerie treasures for me out of the contents of those shops. But I shall be cleverer than him. I shall go home by another way.”

He turned into a narrow alleyway between two buildings, crossed a little yard, passed through a gate, down another alley-way and emerged in a little street of modest houses. It was quite deserted here and strangely quiet. The only sound was the rain striking the cobblestones. Rain had darkened all the fronts of the houses until they appeared to be almost black. The occupants of the houses seemed a very frugal lot, for not one of them had lit a lamp or a candle despite the gloominess of the day. Yet the heavy cloud did not cover the sky completely and a watery white light shewed at the horizon, so that between the dark sky and the dark earth the rain fell in bright silver shafts.

A shining something rolled suddenly out of a dark alleyway and skittered unevenly over the wet cobblestones, coming to a stop directly in front of Stephen.

He looked at it and heaved a great sigh when he saw that it was, as he expected, a little silver ball. It was very battered and old-looking. At the top where there ought to have been a cross to signify that all the world belonged to God, there was a tiny open hand. One of the fingers was broken off. This symbol — the open hand — was one that Stephen knew well. It was one of those employed by the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. Only last night Stephen had taken part in a procession and carried a banner bearing this very emblem through dark, windswept courtyards and along avenues of immense oak-trees in whose unseen branches the wind soughed.

There was the sound of a window sash being raised. A woman poked her head out of a window at the top of the house. Her hair was all in curl papers. “Well, pick it up!” she cried, glaring furiously at Stephen.

“But it is not mine!” he called up to her.

“It is not his, he says!” This made her angrier still. “And I suppose I did not just see it fall out of your pocket and roll away! And I suppose my name is not Mariah Tompkins! And I suppose I do not labour night and day to keep Pepper-street clean and tidy, but you must come here a-purpose to throw away your rubbish!”

With a heavy sigh, Stephen picked up the orb. He found that, whatever Mariah Tompkins said or believed, if he put it in his pocket there was a very real danger of it tearing the cloth, it was so heavy. So he was obliged to walk through the rain, sceptre in one hand, orb in the other. The diadem he put on his head, as the most convenient place for it, and attired in this fashion he walked home.

On arriving at the house in Harley-street, he went down to the area and opened the kitchen door. He found himself, not in the kitchen as he had expected, but in a room he had never seen before. He sneezed three times.

A moment was enough to reassure him that he was not at Lost-hope. It was a quite commonplace sort of room — the sort of room, in fact, that one might find in any well-to-do house in London. It was, however, remarkably untidy. The inhabitants, who were presumably new to the house, appeared to be in the middle of unpacking. All the articles usually belonging to a sitting-room and study were present: card-tables, work-tables, reading-tables, fire-irons, chairs of varying degrees of comfortableness and usefulness, mirrors, tea-cups, sealing-wax, candle-sticks, pictures, books (a great number of these), sanders, ink-stands, pens, papers, clocks, balls of string, footstools, fire-screens and writing-desks. But they were all jumbled together and standing upon one another in new and surprizing combinations. Packing-cases and boxes and bundles were scattered about, some unpacked, some half-unpacked and some scarcely begun. The straw from the packing-cases had been pulled out and now lay scattered about the room and over the furniture, which had the effect of making everything dusty and causing Stephen to sneeze twice more. Some of the straw had even got into the fireplace so that there was a very real danger of the whole room going up in a conflagration at any moment.

The room contained two people: a man whom Stephen had never seen before and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. The man he had never seen before was seated at a little table in front of the window. Presumably he ought to have been unpacking his things and setting his room in order, but he had abandoned this task and was presently engaged in reading a book. He broke off every now and then to look things up in two or three other volumes that lay on the table; to mutter excitedly to himself; and to dash down a note or two in an ink-splashed little book.

Meanwhile the gentleman with the thistle-down hair sat in an arm-chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, directing at the other man a look of such extreme malevolence and irritation as made Stephen fear for the man’s life. Yet the moment the gentleman with the thistle-down hair beheld Stephen, he became all delight, all affability. “Ah, there you are!” he cried. “How noble you look in your kingly accoutrements!”

There happened to be a large mirror standing opposite the door. For the first time Stephen saw himself with the crown, sceptre and orb. He looked every inch a king. He turned to look at the man at the table to discover how he bore with the sudden appearance of a black man in a crown.

“Oh! Do not concern yourself about
him
!” said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. “He can neither see nor hear us. He has no more talent than the other one. Look!” He screwed up a piece of paper and threw it energetically at the man’s head. The man did not flinch or look up or appear to know any thing about it.

“The other one, sir?” said Stephen. “What do you mean?”

“That is the younger magician. The one lately arrived in London.”

“Is it indeed? I have heard of him, of course. Sir Walter thinks highly of him. But I confess I have forgotten his name.”

“Oh! Who cares what his name is! What matters is that he is just as stupid as the other one and very near as ugly.”

“What?” said the magician, suddenly. He turned away from his book and looked around the room with a slightly suspicious air. “Jeremy!” he called out very loudly.

A servant put his head around the door, but did not trouble himself so far as to come into the room. “Sir?” he said.

Stephen’s eyes opened very wide at this lazy behaviour — it was a thing he would never have allowed in Harley-street. He made a point of staring very coldly at the man to shew him what he thought of him before he remembered that the man could not see him.

“These London houses are shockingly built,” said the magician. “I can hear the people in the next house.”

This was interesting enough to tempt the servant called Jeremy all the way into the room. He stood and listened.

“Are all the walls so thin?” continued the magician. “Do you suppose there can be something wrong with them?”

Jeremy knocked on the wall which divided the house from its neighbour. It responded with as dull and quiet a sound as any stout, well-built wall in the kingdom. Making nothing of this, he said, “I do not hear any thing, sir. What were they saying?”

“I believe I heard one of them call the other stupid and ugly.”

“Are you sure, sir? It is two old ladies that live upon that side.”

“Ha! That proves nothing. Age is no guarantee of any thing these days.”

With this remark the magician appeared suddenly to grow tired of this conversation. He turned back to his book and started reading.

Jeremy waited a moment and then, since his master appeared to have forgotten all about him, he went away again.

“I have not thanked you yet, sir,” said Stephen to the gentleman, “for these wonderful gifts.”

“Ah, Stephen! I am glad I have pleased you. The diadem, I confess, is your own hat transformed by magic. I would have greatly preferred to give you a real crown, but I was entirely unable to lay my hand upon one at such short notice. You are disappointed, I dare say. Although now I come to think of it, the King of England has several crowns, and rarely makes use of any of them.”

He raised his hands in the air and pointed upwards with two immensely long white fingers.

“Oh!” cried Stephen, suddenly realizing what the gentleman was about. “If you think of casting spells to bring the King of England here with one of his crowns — which I imagine you do, since you are all kindness — then I beg that you will spare yourself the trouble! I have no need of one at the moment, as you know, and the King of England is such an old gentleman — would it not perhaps be kinder to let him stay at home?”

“Oh, very well!” said the gentleman, lowering his hands.

For lack of any other occupation, he reassumed his abuse of the new magician. Nothing about the man pleased him. He ridiculed the book he was reading, found fault with the make of his boots, and was entirely unable to approve of his height (despite the fact that he was exactly the same height as the gentleman with the thistle-down hair — as was proved when they both happened to stand up at the same time.)

Stephen was anxious to return to his duties in Harley-street, but he feared that if he left them alone together then the gentleman might start throwing something more substantial than paper at the magician. “Shall you and I walk to Harley-street together, sir?” he asked. “Then you may tell me how your noble actions have moulded London and made it glorious. That is always so very entertaining. I never grow tired of hearing about it.”

“Gladly, Stephen! Gladly!”

“Is it far, sir?”

“Is what far, Stephen?”

“Harley-street, sir. I do not know where we are.”

“We are in Soho-square and no, it is not far at all!”

When they reached the house in Harley-street the gentleman took a most affectionate farewell of Stephen, urging him not to feel sad at this parting and reminding him that they would meet again that very night at Lost-hope. “… when a most charming ceremony will be held in the belfry of the Easternmost Tower. It commemorates an occasion which happened — oh! five hundred years ago or so — when I cleverly contrived to capture the little children of my enemy and we pushed them out of the belfry to their deaths. Tonight we will re-enact this great triumph! We will dress straw dolls in the children’s blood-stained clothes and fling them down on to the paving stones and then we will sing and dance and rejoice over their destruction!”

“And do you perform this ceremony every year, sir? I feel sure I would have remembered it if I had seen it before. It is so very … striking.”

“I am glad you think so. I perform it whenever I think of it. Of course it was a great deal more striking when we used real children.”

27
The magician’s wife

December 1809—January 1810

There were now two magicians in London to be ad-mired and made much of and I doubt if it will come as much surprize to any one to learn that, of the two, London preferred Mr Strange. Strange was everyone’s idea of what a magician ought to be. He was tall; he was charming; he had a most ironical smile; and, unlike Mr Norrell, he talked a great deal about magic and had no objection to answering any body’s questions on the subject. Mr and Mrs Strange attended a great many evening- and dinner-parties, and at some point in the proceedings Strange would generally oblige the company with a shew of one of the minor sorts of magic. The most popular magic he did was to cause visions to appear upon the surface of water.
¹
Unlike Norrell, he did not use a silver basin which was the traditional vessel for seeing visions in. Strange said that really one could see so little in a basin that it was scarcely worth the trouble of casting the spells. He preferred instead to wait until the servants had cleared the dishes off the table and removed the cloth, then he would tip a glass of water or wine over the table and conjure visions into the pool. Fortunately his hosts were generally so delighted with the magic that they hardly ever complained of their stained, spoilt tables and carpets.

For their part Mr and Mrs Strange were settled in London much to their satisfaction. They had taken a house in Soho-square and Arabella was deep in all the pleasant cares connected with a new home: commissioning elegant new furniture from the cabinet-makers, entreating her friends to help her to some steady servants and going every day to the shops.

One morning in mid-December she received a message from one of the shopmen at Haig and Chippendale’s Upholstery (a most attentive person) to say that a bronze silk with alternate satin and watered stripes had just arrived in the shop and he believed it might be the very thing for Mrs Strange’s drawing-room curtains. This necessitated a little re-organization of Arabella’s day.

“It appears from Mr Sumner’s description to be very elegant,” she told Strange at breakfast, “and I expect to like it very much. But if I chuse bronze-coloured silk for the curtains, then I believe I must give up any notion of having a wine-coloured velvet for the chaise-longue. I do not think bronze-colour and wine-colour will look well together. So I shall to go to Flint and Clark’s to look at the wine-coloured velvet again, and see if I can bear to give it up. Then I will go to Haig and Chippendale’s. But that means I will have no time to visit your aunt — which I really ought to do as she is leaving for Edinburgh this morning. I want to thank her for finding Mary for us.”

“Mmm?” said Strange, who was eating hot rolls and preserves, and reading
Curiose Observations upon the Anatomie of Faeries
by Holgarth and Pickle.
²

“Mary. The new maid. You saw her last night.”

“Ah,” said Strange, turning a page.

“She seems a nice, pleasant girl with quiet ways. I am sure we will be very happy with her. So, as I was saying, I would be very grateful, Jonathan, if you would call upon your aunt this morning. You can walk down to Henrietta-street after breakfast and thank her for Mary. Then you can come to Haig and Chippendale’s and wait for me there. Oh! And could you look in at Wedgwood and Byerley’s and ask the people when the new dinner-service will be ready? It will be scarcely any trouble. It is very nearly on your way.” She looked at him doubtfully. “Jonathan, are you listening to me?”

“Mmm?” said Strange, looking up. “Oh, entirely!”

So Arabella, attended by one of the footmen, walked to Wig-more-street where Flint and Clark had their establishment. But on this second viewing of the wine-coloured velvet she concluded that, though very handsome, it was altogether too sombre. So then she walked on, all anticipation, to St Martin’s-lane to behold the bronze-coloured silk. When she arrived at Haig and Chippendale’s she found the shopman waiting for her, but not her husband. The shopman was most apologetic but Mr Strange had not been there all morning.

She went out into the street again.

“George, do you see your master anywhere?” she asked the footman.

“No, madam.”

A grey rain was beginning to fall. A sort of premonition inspired her to look in at the window of a bookseller’s. There she discovered Strange, talking energetically to Sir Walter Pole. So she went into the shop, bid Sir Walter good morning and sweetly inquired of her husband if he had visited his aunt or looked in at Wedgwood and Byerley’s.

Strange seemed somewhat perplexed by the question. He looked down and discovered that he had a large book in his hand. He frowned at it as if he could not imagine how it had got there. “I
would
have done so, my love, of course,” he said, “only Sir Walter has been talking to me all this while which has quite prevented me from beginning.”

“It has been entirely my fault,” Sir Walter hastily assured Arabella. “We have a problem with our blockade. It is the usual sort of thing and I have been telling Mr Strange about it in the hope he and Mr Norrell will be able to help us.”

“And can you help?” asked Arabella.

“Oh, I should think so,” said Strange.

Sir Walter explained that the British Government had received intelligence that some French ships — possibly as many as ten — had slipped through the British blockade. No one knew where they had gone or what they intended to do when they got there. Nor did the Government know where to find Admiral Armingcroft who was supposed to prevent this sort of thing happening. The Admiral and his fleet of ten frigates and two ships of the line had quite disappeared — presumably he had gone in pursuit of the French. There was a promising young captain, presently stationed at Madeira, and if the Admiralty had only been able to discover what was happening and
where
it was happening, they would have gladly put Captain Lightwood in charge of four or five more ships and sent him there. Lord Mulgrave had asked Admiral Greenwax what he thought they ought to do and Admiral Greenwax had asked the Ministers and the Ministers said that the Admiralty ought to consult Mr Strange and Mr Norrell immediately.

“I would not have you think that the Admiralty is entirely helpless without Mr Strange,” smiled Sir Walter. “They have done what they can. They sent one of the clerks, a Mr Petrofax, to Greenwich to seek out a childhood friend of Admiral Arming-croft’s to ask him, with his superior knowledge of the Admiral’s character, what he thought the Admiral would do under such circumstances. But when Mr Petrofax got to Greenwich the Admiral’s childhood friend was drunk in bed, and Mr Petrofax was not sure that he understood the question.”

“I dare say Norrell and I will be able to suggest something,” said Strange, thoughtfully, “but I think I should like to see the problem on a map.”

“I have all the necessary maps and papers at my house. One of our servants will bring them to Hanover-square later today and then perhaps you will be so kind as to talk to Norrell …”

“Oh! But we can do that now!” said Strange. “Arabella does not mind waiting a few moments! You do not mind, do you?” he said to his wife. “I am meeting Mr Norrell at two o’clock and I believe that if I can explain the problem to him straightaway then we may be able to return an answer to the Admiralty before dinner.”

Arabella, like a sweet, compliant woman and good wife, put all thoughts of her new curtains aside for the moment and assured both gentlemen that in such a cause it was no trouble to her to wait. It was settled that Mr and Mrs Strange would accompany Sir Walter to his house in Harley-street.

Strange took out his watch and looked at it. “Twenty minutes to Harley-street. Three-quarters of an hour to examine the problem. Then another fifteen minutes to Soho-square. Yes, there is plenty of time.”

Arabella laughed. “He is not always so scrupulous, I assure you,” she said to Sir Walter, “but he was late on Tuesday for an appointment with Lord Liverpool and Mr Norrell was not best pleased.”

“That was not my fault,” said Strange. “I was ready to leave the house in good time but I could not find my gloves.” Arabella’s teasing accusation of lateness continued to vex him and on the way to Harley-street he examined his watch as though in hopes of discovering something about the operation of Time which had hitherto gone unnoticed and which would vindicate him. When they reached Harley-street he thought he had it. “Ha!” he cried suddenly. “I know what it is. My watch is wrong!”

“I do not think so,” said Sir Walter, taking out his own watch and shewing it to Strange. “It is precisely noon. Mine says the same.”

“Then why do I hear no bells?” said Strange. “Do you hear bells?” he said to Arabella.

“No, I hear nothing.”

Sir Walter reddened and muttered something about the bells in this parish and the neighbouring ones being no longer rung.

“Really?” asked Strange. “Why in the world not?”

Sir Walter looked as if he would have thanked Strange to keep his curiosity to himself, but all he said was, “Lady Pole’s illness has left her nerves in a sad condition. The tolling of a bell is peculiarly distressing to her and I have asked the vestries of St Mary-le-bone and St Peter if they would, out of consideration for Lady Pole’s nerves, forbear from ringing the church bells, and they have been so obliging as to agree.”

This was rather extraordinary, but then it was generally agreed that Lady Pole’s illness was a rather extraordinary thing with symptoms quite unlike any other. Neither Mr nor Mrs Strange had ever seen Lady Pole. No one had seen her for two years.

When they arrived at no. 9 Harley-street Strange was anxious to begin looking at Sir Walter’s documents straightaway but he was obliged to curb his impatience while Sir Walter satisfied himself that Arabella would not lack for amusement in their absence. Sir Walter was a well-bred man and greatly disliked leaving any guest alone in his house. To abandon a lady was particularly bad. Strange on the other hand was anxious to be on time for his appointment with Mr Norrell, so as fast as Sir Walter could suggest diversions, Strange was endeavouring to prove that Arabella needed none of them.

Sir Walter shewed Arabella the novels in the bookcase, and recommended Mrs Edgeworth’s
Belinda
in particular as being likely to amuse her. “Oh,” said Strange, interrupting, “I read
Belinda
to Arabella two or three years ago. Besides, you know, I do not think we will be so long that she will have time to finish a
three-volume
novel.”

“Then perhaps some tea and seed-cake … ?” Sir Walter said to Arabella.

“But Arabella does not care for seed-cake,” interrupted Strange, absent-mindedly picking up
Belinda
himself and beginning to read the first volume, “It is a thing she particularly dislikes.”

“A glass of madeira, then,” said Sir Walter. “You will take some madeira, I am sure. Stephen! … Stephen, fetch Mrs Strange a glass of madeira.”

In the eerie, silent fashion peculiar to high-trained London servants, a tall black servant appeared at Sir Walter’s elbow. Mr Strange seemed quite startled by his sudden arrival and stared hard at him for several moments, before he said to his wife, “You do not want madeira, do you? You do not want any thing.”

“No, Jonathan. I do not want any thing,” agreed his wife, laughing at their odd argument. “Thank you, Sir Walter, but I am perfectly content to sit here quietly and read.”

The black servant bowed and departed as silently as he had come, and Strange and Sir Walter went off to talk of the French fleet and the missing English ships.

But when she was left alone, Arabella found that she was not after all in a mood for reading. On looking round the room in search of amusement her eye was caught by a large painting. It was a landscape comprising woods and a ruined castle perched on top of a cliff. The trees were dark and the ruins and cliff were touched with gold by the light of a setting sun; the sky by contrast was full of light and glowed with pearly colour. A large portion of the foreground was occupied by a silvery pool in which a young woman appeared to be drowning; a second figure bent over her — whether man, woman, satyr or faun, it was impossible to determine and, though Arabella studied their postures carefully, she could not decide whether it was the intention of the second figure to save the young woman or murder her. When she had tired of looking at this painting Arabella wandered out into the passage to look at the pictures there but, as these were for the most part watercolour views of Brighton and Chelmsford, she found them very dull.

Sir Walter and Strange could be heard talking in another room. “… extraordinary thing! Yet he is an excellent fellow in his way,” said Sir Walter’s voice.

“Oh! I know who you mean! He has a brother who is the organist at Bath Cathedral,” said Strange. “He has a black-and-white cat that walks about the Bath streets just ahead of him. Once, when I was in Milsom-street …”

A door stood open, through which Arabella could see a very elegant drawing-room with a great number of paintings that appeared to be more splendid and richly coloured than any she had yet seen. She went in.

The room seemed to be full of light, although the day was every bit as grey and forbidding as it had been before. “So where does all this light come from?” wondered Arabella. “It is almost as if it shines out of the paintings, but that is impossible.” The paintings were all of Venice
³
and certainly the great quantities of sky and sea which they contained made the room seem somehow insubstantial.

When she had done examining the paintings upon one wall, she turned to cross to the opposite wall and immediately discovered — much to her mortification — that she was not alone. A young woman was sitting before the fire on a blue sopha, regarding her with some curiosity. The sopha had a rather high back, which was the reason Arabella had not observed her before.

“Oh! I do beg your pardon!”

The young woman said nothing.

She was a remarkably elegant woman with a pale, perfect skin and dark hair most gracefully arranged. She wore a gown of white muslin and an Indian shawl of ivory, silver and black. She seemed altogether too well dressed to be a governess and too much at home to be a lady’s companion. Yet if she were a guest in the house, why had Sir Walter not introduced her?