The Skull and the Nightingale (33 page)

Yet in each case, also, he had maintained some kind of contact or control. I had witnessed his glee at contriving the conquest of Mrs. Hurlock. Now it appeared that he had supplied a partner also for Mrs. Quentin. It seemed that having been intimidated at the animal level he had tried to restore his self-esteem by an exercise of power at second hand. Perhaps, having failed to win my mother, he had assisted me in the same spirit.

It was also disturbing that the morbidly discreet Mr. Ward had stepped out of character to bring Mrs. Quentin to see me. Perhaps, like Thorpe, he feared that my godfather was behaving erratically. If they were concerned by his treatment of the Quentins, what would they have made of his complicity in the assault on Mrs. Hurlock? Perhaps he was breaking free of all restraint.

There was reassurance in the fact that I was after all his chosen partner, his proxy pintle. Having bred me for the task over many years, and at great expense, he could not easily replace me. Yet where would my duties lead? Would I have to entertain him into his dotage, rogering the nurse who tended his deathbed? Or might he repent at the last and discard me as a reprobate?

How far was he aware of his own inconsistencies? Plainly his interest in my doings had been far from detached and philosophical. It would be absurd for him to affect contempt for desire which he found exciting even at one remove. Yet obvious as that seemed to me, I would have no way of enforcing the argument if my godfather refused to accept it. The power was all in his hands.

It seemed that all I could do was pursue my existing course, while remaining vigilant. Perhaps also I should try to lure this prudent intriguer into further indiscretion. If I induced more flagrant confessions, I could threaten him with his own correspondence as with a loaded pistol. Here an immediate possibility occurred to me. It seemed the young Gilbert had been intimidated by his male rivals. By dramatizing my distaste—real enough—for Ogden, I might draw him out on a topic potentially humiliating to him.

I rose early next day and devoted the morning to the composition of letters. My strange course of life, comfortable though it was, could sometimes keep me as busily occupied as a bricklayer or drayman. Newly cautious, I made several false starts.

Dear Mr. Thorpe,

My thanks to you for your recent letter. I am flattered that you had sufficient confidence in me to send it. You may rest assured that this confidence will be respected. If I did not reply at once it was because I needed time to digest what you had said and implied. As it happens, that delay has provided me with further clarification, in that I have been visited by Mrs. Quentin herself and have had a very frank conversation with her.

She was naturally distressed: her husband’s death, however interpreted, was a tragic happening. It casts a further shadow over her life in creating the possibility that she might have to leave her cottage in Fork Hill. She spoke emphatically of her unwillingness to move to London.

This is a delicate business. I have written a carefully worded letter to my godfather strongly implying the desirability of her being allowed to remain, as his pensioner, in the village where she has spent most of her life. I use the word implying advisedly. My godfather has shown that he can be a generous man, but he has earned the right to feel confident in his own judgment. He will take heed of suggestions, but is likely to resist importunity. I am optimistic in this particular case. If it becomes clear to him that Mrs. Quentin wishes to stay where she is, and that the parish at large would approve such an outcome, I am confident that he will enable it.

I infer from your letter that you have been troubled not only by this sad affair but by the possibility that certain other local problems may emerge in the near future. I shall be glad to discuss such matters with you when occasion permits, and will in the meantime welcome any further hints of this kind. We both stand to gain by such mutual confidence.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting your aunt again. Both she and the colonel said how much they had appreciated your hospitality during their visit to Fork Hill.

I remain, &c.

* * *

My dear Godfather,

I was shocked to hear of the death of Mr. Quentin. He seemed to me, for all his taciturnity, a man of force and intelligence. His poor widow must be sadly distressed. In these circumstances it is a relief to me—as it must be to Mrs. Quentin herself and to her friends in the village—that she has your benevolence to depend upon.

As chance would have it, I heard the story mentioned at the house of Lord Vincent a few days ago. I was once again in conversation with Mrs. Jennings and her husband, who had learned something of the matter from Mr. Thorpe on their recent visit to Fork Hill. They had much to say concerning their meeting with you, which I understand was the first for many years. Both were impressed by what they described as your youthful vigor, and seemed envious of it. It is difficult to credit that Colonel Jennings can hardly be more than a few years older than yourself.

Lately I have found myself insensibly adopting some of your own habits of thought. In particular I revert to the essential question: what the devil is one to make of the ceaseless reciprocal traffic between the intellectual and the animal self, between what a man tries to think and what stirs into life, unbidden, in his breeches? Your mention of Dr. Swift reminded me of a third factor, that of perception. When Gulliver visits the land of giants, and becomes a plaything of the ladies at court, he is sickened by their smell, and repelled by the sight of a monstrous breast. But these ladies are twelve times his size. Surely it is self-evident that if our bodies were twelve times as large as they are, their imperfections and their odors would be disagreeably magnified? By definition, we are not so situated. I understand Dr. Swift to be saying rather that if a man happened to view his fellow beings with a hyperbolic eye, he would be seriously disabled—and also to be insinuating that he himself has suffered from such an exaggerated sensibility.

I would diffidently infer, from my own limited experience, that we are all, at times, discommoded in this way. King Lear denounces women in his frenzy:

But to the girdle do the gods inherit,

Beneath is all the fiends’; there’s hell, there’s darkness,

There’s the sulphurous pit . . .

Yet Shakespeare the sonneteer can celebrate his lover in very different images:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

I admit, my dear godfather, that I myself am capable of perceptions of either kind. I make this confession the more readily in that antithetical reactions, if of a different order, are vividly in play in my pursuit of Sarah Ogden. I am so drawn to that lady as to be ready to eulogize her in the most rarefied terms, spiritual or pastoral; for her husband, however, I have conceived an animal antipathy so strong as scarcely to be rational. I am dismayed by the strength of my hostility.

I find him physically offensive. He is sluggish and impenetrable, without a spark of wit. So far from contributing to conversation, he seems to suck all energy from it. He is heavy and pasty-faced, with a waist as wide as his hips. Several inches shorter than myself, he would surely outweigh me. It would be a keen pleasure to make this weighty gentleman cut a caper with a touch of a rapier to his rump.

Yet the graceless clod nightly shares the bed of my Sarah. How can she endure it? How can she bear the thought of his seed inside herself? Or does he sheathe his unsavory member in pig’s gut to postpone conception?

I must cure her of him. I must exorcise him. I can introduce her to sensations she has never known in the fat arms of her husband. For all these reasons my desire for her has a double edge: as I pleasure the graceful Sarah I shall be treading this lumpish creature under foot. Having written these gross words, I know that I should apologize for them and mock their absurdity. Nevertheless I cannot but feel—and I suspect that you may agree—that at one time or another any man’s amorous desires may be drawn toward feelings as ugly and foolish as these.

I am encouraged by my belief that Sarah is disposed to physical pleasure. On one occasion before I left for France, there was a moment of intimacy, created and then cut short largely by chance, which seemed to imply a warm temperament. The challenge to me is not to start a fire but to fan an existing flame.

This letter may be too coarse in its candor. Your own directness has encouraged me to emulation. I have been lured further into the open by the news that Ogden is indeed to visit Newbridge and that he is assisting Crocker in designing his masquerade. Mrs. Ogden will surely be present at what promises to be an intriguing entertainment.

I remain, &c.

Chapter 18

S
ince the expedition to Richmond, I had seen Kitty but once, and that briefly. Although we conversed warmly enough, I detected some hint of reproach at what she must rightly have seen as a retreat on my side. She had heard, as had I, that our intrigue was now a subject for gossip. I could have declared myself as her protector, but had not done so. Neither had I suggested that our dalliance should come to an end. She was in a false position, and would have been entitled to complain outright. In the few months that I had known her, she had shown herself loyal and sweet-natured, even while making remarkable progress as a performer. If I had been an independent young gentleman, I would have been preening myself on this association with an actress so celebrated.

However, I was far from independent. Self-interest compelled me to concentrate my attention on Sarah, and certain predispositions and vanities confirmed me in that course. The transition was eased by my habit of forgetting those not of immediate concern to me: Sarah alone had survived this propensity. Fond of Kitty as I still was, I sensed her dwindling in my mind like a person waving good-bye from the harbor as your ship heads out to sea.

But it was awkwardly the case that Kitty was an intimate of Jane Page, now so close to Crocker. If I seemed to behave badly toward her I would surely lose a valued friend. A particular problem would be posed by the coming masquerade. She would naturally expect me to seek her out, yet my overriding concern at that entertainment would be to advance my cause with Sarah. It promised to be a difficult evening.

A visit from Nick Horn chanced to touch on the matter. He urged me to join him that night at the theater, to see
Love at a Distance
. When I told him that I had attended it already, he brushed my words aside.

“What is that to the purpose?” he cried. “I have seen it myself. You are damned ungallant, for of course we go for the sake of the divine Miss Brindley, with whom your name, at the very least, has been linked. I look for an introduction.”

About to renew my excuses, I suddenly saw how to turn the situation to account, and allowed myself to be persuaded. Horn and I would meet at the theater half an hour before the performance. In the intervening time I visited a jeweler in Holborn and purchased a silver bangle of distinctive design. I packaged it in a small leather purse, enclosing a note which read:
R.F. hopes his country lass will wear this at the masquerade.

Kitty performed charmingly and to great applause, but given my new preoccupations I found that I could watch her with something close to detachment. Afterward I made shift to speak to her and to introduce Nick as a devoted admirer. As I had anticipated, our conversation was but brief, since many were vying for her attention. I had time, nonetheless, to slip my gift into her hand and to murmur, with what I hoped would pass for suppressed ardor, that I would be looking for her at Mr. Crocker’s masquerade. She seemed pleased.

Later, over wine, Nick declared himself ravished by this encounter, and bitterly envious of a conquest which he claimed to find inexplicable. I could smile at his gibes, since I was pleased by what had passed. My short conversation with Kitty seemed to have restored my credit with her. If she wore the bangle at the masquerade I could hope to identify her the more speedily, with a view to staying well away from her when making my approach to Sarah. I allowed myself the afterthought that I might return to the wearer of the bangle toward the end of the entertainment if so prompted by physical need.

G
iven my diverse aims, I found it hard to choose a costume for the masquerade. I wanted to pass unrecognized, but hoped my person would be seen to good advantage. Much would depend on the character of the occasion: an indoor masquerade would surely differ markedly from Vauxhall al fresco. To learn more I paid a visit to Wyvern Street.

Crocker proved ready not merely to talk about his entertainment but to hold forth.

“My friend,” he cried, “it is to signal a great change. I like to overhaul my life from time to time. I came to London to indulge in a little city swaggering, but I have had enough of it. This house will enable me to preside. I look to become a notable London host.”

“Then are your tavern days at an end?” I asked, somewhat shocked.

“I plan to make but one further appearance on that stage, by way of farewell. You must be there to sing with me.”

“Will your comrades from the Seven Stars be attending the masquerade?”

“Some of them. But they will be intermingling with upright older citizens.”

“This all sounds strangely respectable, Mr. Crocker.”