by Peg Kingman
Constantia applied herself to the carte de menu before her. Mr or Mrs Chambers had ordered the dinner in advance, so there were no decisions to be made, but only the pleasures of anticipation and enjoyment. Soup appeared: potage à la reine. Mr Chambers was saying to Hugh, “It would be impossible, Mr Stevenson, for you to sate my appetite or satisfy my curiosity as to the details of your discovery and your excavations. I crave to hear even the most minute particulars; and do now beg the pardon, in advance, of anyone present who may not share my enthusiasm. Tell me, sir: when, and where, and how did you first come across it?”
Hugh plunged deeply into this riveting subject, while Mr Chambers penciled notes into the dog-eared notebook drawn from his waistcoat pocket. Miss Grant and Miss Buckley and Mrs Chambers were all equally fascinated, not only during the soup but also throughout the turbot in hollandaise sauce which in good time succeeded it. Constantia’s thoughts strayed eventually to Livia: How did she and old Mme Mouchy like each other?
“Well, yes; I have been contemplating writing it up—while redacting, of course, the precise location,” Mr Chambers was saying, as tiny lamb cutlets in a chestnut purée presently replaced the turbot. “To send to the journals for publication; perhaps to the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal or, better still, to one of the London quarterlies. I cannot claim any particular qualification, of course; mine is merely the ardent interest of the amateur; but what a coup! Oh no, sir; this is not at all the sort of thing my brother and I ought to publish; there are better places for such a subject than Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal. Not to say, pearls before swine, exactly; but thistles before Scotsmen, perhaps. As for illustration, your very fine lithographs, Miss Grant and Miss Buckley, could scarcely be bettered; and I should be most obliged to you for permission to republish them.”
“You shall have the very stones themselves, to carry off to Scotland,” promised Miss Grant. “Their additional weight will be nothing, among Mr Stevenson’s stones.”
“I should like to stipulate, however, that the line ‘J. Grant et H. Buckley, grav.’ ought to appear with them,” said Miss Buckley.
“We are not bashful as to fame, you must understand,” said Miss Grant. “As some ladies are.”
“And some gentlemen, too,” said Mr Chambers.
Lobster in mayonnaise now appeared before them, and for a long moment these exquisite morsels so gratified their palates that silence fell. Too well-bred, however, to comment on food, they soon succeeded in bringing forth words once more. “What an unnecessary deal of trouble it has turned out,” said Hugh, “all this hauling, of all this stone! Over leagues of ocean! Up miles of river! If only it had been possible to forsee that my ancient beasts were destined to return to Edinburgh—so near their place of origin—I might have saved myself, and you, sir, a quantity of trouble and expense.”
“It was far from destined, however,” said Miss Grant. “Matters might have turned out very differently. How disappointed he was, the envoy from—”
“Ahem!” interrupted Miss Buckley, in a fit of discretion.
“—to learn that he had not been quick enough! that, while awaiting instructions, he had lost his opportunity! Yes, I saw him,” continued Miss Grant; “something very like tears welling up in his eyes; I nearly pitied him. At this very moment, Mr Stevenson, your creatures might very well have been on their way to—”
“Ahem!”
“Prague!” cried Miss Grant triumphantly.
“Prague; so they might,” said Hugh. “Well, I am glad they are not; glad that my creatures are to return to their native shore after all. Not all of us can do that,” he added softly.
“Not yet. The time will come, however,” said Mrs Chambers, “and before long, I trust. When the Six Points have been gained at last, and the franchise extended to all—as it inevitably must—then you champions of the newly-enfranchised, returning at last from honourable exile, then you will be welcomed and fêted and—and revered!—as the heroes you are, and always were!”
“Hear, hear! To the inevitable day! To our champions! Our heroes!” said Miss Buckley, for her glass was newly refilled, now with Chambertin.
“To the Six Points, Mr Stevenson,” said Mrs Chambers, raising her glass to Hugh.
“Oh well! To the Six Points,” he said, and drank with her, flushed but pleased. “You are an optimist, then, Mrs Chambers; a believer in progress.”
“In development, rather,” said Mrs Chambers. “Which is not quite the same thing, is it?” The wreck of the lobsters was taken away, to be replaced by cardoons almondine.
The party of English people at the table behind Constantia was getting noisier. “You had some colossal luck there, Mackenzie,” declared one of them, too loudly.
The retort, behind Constantia, was forceful, devoid of any Scottish accent: “Luck be damned; nothing at all to do with luck. Hard work—experience—foresight—diligence!”
“Oh aye, all that, I grant you . . . and confounded lucky besides. If anyone had been killed—”
“Never any likelihood of that.”
“Nonsense. Matters might have turned out very differently. I say it was luck.”
“Oh, do get down from your high horses, you two,” said an Englishwoman’s voice. “This is not the moment for it. Anyone would suppose that you had been born and bred in America,” she berated them, before her voice dropped to a murmur.
When Constantia glanced again at Hugh, she saw that he had changed. Whereas he had been happy, proud, and expansive—now, suddenly, he was not. His gaze seemed to be fixed upon Mrs Chambers, but she saw a muscle working in his jaw, just in front of his ear. “I cannot say what celebrated tombs a good tourist might visit when in Paris,” Mrs Chambers was now saying, “but I, for my part, should very much like to contemplate the final resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte . . .”
Presently Hugh ventured a glance in Constantia’s direction, but it was to look past her. In that moment Constantia guessed—no, knew to a certainty—that at the next table, behind her back, was the very man Hugh had been aching and dreading to meet once more: Mr William Mackenzie, the great railway contractor. This was the man who would not be told; the man whose obduracy and wilful arrogance and greedy haste had brought down the Barentin viaduct. Constantia willed the English party to rise, to leave: Go! Now! Or, at the very least—if you must talk loudly—talk of something else!
“ . . . at Les Invalides?” asked Mrs Chambers—and into the moment’s pause following her question, Mackenzie’s loud voice rang out: “ . . . a warrant for his arrest in Edinburgh, as it turns out, for criminal conspiracy! And, as quarryman, incompetent from first to last. Insolent, and insubordinate.”
Instantly, Hugh had risen from his chair and placed both palms flat on the damasked table behind Constantia. He leaned down into Mackenzie’s astonished red face and said in a hoarse furious voice, “Insolent, was it, to contradict the great Mackenzie regarding the sufficiency of that indurated chalk? Insubordinate, to refuse to quarry any more of it for use as footings? How dare you, Mackenzie! How dare you!”
“You!” exclaimed Mr Mackenzie—when at length he found his tongue. “And here, of all places! You had better get out. This is no place for blackguards!”
Hugh seized the under-edge of their table and braced his shoulders as though to overturn it—but then, though he trembled with rage, stayed his hand; only retorting hoarsely through clenched teeth, “I quite agree; no place for blackguards. Hadn’t you better go away, then, instantly? Before you are removed—by some better man than yourself?”
Several waiters loomed up nearby; the maître d’hôtel approached smoothly, followed by a large footman. Silence had fallen over every table in the salon; all faces turned their way, all faces astonished, or delighted: pale oval French faces, open mouths, round eyes. How badly they behaved, these English! What barbarians they remained, each one! They were sometimes amusing to watch, however; like curs fighting in the street, n’est-ce pas? No, like bulls. Comme les John Bulls.
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br /> “Who in the world might this be?” said the other man at Mackenzie’s table.
“This,” said Mr Mackenzie, “is the quarryman I was just telling you of. The man I sacked.”
“That you never did,” retorted Hugh. “That is a lie. It was I who quit your employ, when you refused to credit my warnings. When you refused to hear the sober truth—when you presumed to threaten and insult me. Stand up, Mackenzie!”
“Give me the lie, will you? Insolent rascal! Do you dare?” cried the contractor, and rose, unsteadily.
It ended quickly, in an avalanche of broken porcelain, shattered glass, overturned chairs and tables, and a surprising quantity of blood, all from Mr Mackenzie’s nose. The Parisians found it vastly entertaining.
(The parcel containing On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which Constantia had set on the floor under her chair, was left in the wreckage beneath an overturned table. Constantia never thought of it again. Mrs Chambers and Mr Chambers never knew of its existence. Upon finding the book, the cleaners at Les Trois Frères would dispose of it to a second-hand bookseller on the Left Bank—on whose premises it would remain, foxing and mouldering, unwanted, unopened, unread, until destroyed by fire during the riots of 1871. Such would be the end of that particular copy—one of the two hundred copies printed, in 1831—of Mr Patrick Matthew’s prodigious, motley, and peculiar book. It fell upon stony ground.)
“The truth is, they cannot help themselves, the callants, the darlings,” said Mrs Chambers to Constantia the next morning. “You and I may deplore the necessity, but necessity it remains—to them. I confess that my husband approved, heartily! ‘What else was to be done under the circumstances?’ is what he said.”
“Quite the Culloden, after all,” said Constantia.
“Ah! but on this anniversary of that bloody disaster, righteousness and virtue prevailed, at last.”
“Will you be admitted ever again to Les Trois Frères?”
“Never mind that; the Café de Paris will have us.”
Sunshine streamed; it was the first fine day in weeks. Constantia, with Livia on her hip, had met Mrs Chambers and Tuckie at the entrance to the House for Fierce Animals at the Jardin des Plantes—for Tuckie longed to see the tigers.
“Such an odd notion, though, this ‘honour,’” said Constantia, as they went inside.
“Homo inflatus,” agreed Mrs Chambers. “The puffed-up earthling.”
“And yet . . .” said Constantia, who felt somewhat ashamed of feeling a little pleased by Hugh’s righteous anger, and by his virile prowess upon the occasion. “On the whole . . . well. It is confusing.”
“Oh aye, it is,” agreed Mrs Chambers comfortably.
There were two tigers in a large cage, both flat on their sides; only the tips of their tails moved: up; down; up; down; as regular as the pendulum of a clock. Constantia still felt her breath come short at the sight of these creatures, these wicked, cruel, devious, dangerous creatures, not nearly as somnolent as they pretended—for their furious flicking tails gave them away. Unwittingly she fingered the flat-backed pearl at the hollow of her collarbone. “Have you been to the Labyrinthe yet?” she asked, when she could bear no more. “No? Let us go there. Tuckie, you shall find the way up through the maze; you shall lead us all the way to the top of the mount. It is worth the climb, I promise you: my favourite place in all the garden.”
After so much rain, the yew maze which coiled upward around the mount in the southwest corner of the Jardin des Plantes was at its best and cleanest, its tall dense needly walls a deep-shadowed vigorous black-green, shining. For once, no one else was there. The ascent was steep, and they promptly lost Tuckie, who ran ahead. Mrs Chambers had to stop very soon, to catch her breath. At Constantia’s frown of concern, she winked, and confessed: “Another baby: I am only seven weeks gone, but already breathless, as you see; and must confess myself drained of any ambition.”
“Let us go slowly and comfortably then,” said Constantia. “That is marvelously good news!” Certainly the Chamberses had always been wonderfully punctual at producing babies. “I congratulate you. But I daresay that even a new baby will scarcely slow you down. I don’t know how you manage to accomplish so much important and valuable work—in every sphere of life, too.”
“Oh, but I accomplish so very little, it seems to me, and that only in the narrowest domestic sphere,” panted Mrs Chambers. “And for even that little, I rely upon the good hearts and diligent hands of so many others. If not for Mam’selle and Hopey, we should be lost. Nina, too, has been increasingly valuable to me of late; she has quite taken over the household accounts. I tell her it is very good practise for anything her future may hold. My correspondence, I am glad to say, is less burdensome than it was at Spring Gardens, now that we have returned to Edinburgh. How should I ever have managed there, if not for you? You, who came so selflessly to our rescue, when I did not know where else to turn.”
The resolutely self-effacing modesty of this reply struck Constantia as excessive, disingenuous and unnecessarily deceptive. Offended, she set off again, leading the way up between the spiraling green walls in silence. Presently, though, having mustered her resolve, she halted and turned to say, “With me at least, Mrs Chambers, you need not turn away all praise; you need not deflect all credit. You need not fear that I will ever disclose your secret to anyone, unless with your consent. But I do think that, between us—after all we have been to one another, and done for one another—you might drop your guard, just for a moment, in private, and hear me, at least, in a spirit of frankness. You need not reply.”
“Whatever do you mean?” gasped Mrs Chambers, breathless again already. “I do not understand you! Ought I to beg your pardon?” she asked, looking as sincerely perplexed as anyone could.
“What I mean, of course, is that ‘burdensome correspondence’—as you so modestly refer to it. ‘Correspondence’ indeed! No, Mrs Chambers, I know very well that it is not mere long letters that have engaged—nay, engrossed—your energies! But rather, your two remarkable books! Your extraordinary books!”
“Books! What books?”
“Oh, do stop it! Yes, books! Of course, books: Vestiges, and Explanations! Books which have limned the shape of all Creation, for so many readers! You need not look like that, dear Mrs Chambers! Of course I have said nothing to anyone—not even to my husband—but I guessed the identity of their author some time ago. When one inhabits the same house—when one borrows the same books—enjoys the companionship and the conversation, early and late—well, I should have been very dull indeed, Mrs Chambers, if I had failed to understand at last, that you are that anonymous author! You are that Great Unknown! Never fear; your secret is entirely safe with me. If you do not want it known, I will not let it be known; nothing could induce me to say a word to anyone. But the evidence, to one who has dwelt on the most intimate terms within your household for weeks and months, is unmistakable; irrefutable.”
“Unmistakable! Yet you are quite mistaken!” Mrs Chambers let herself slump against the wall of yew, and laughed as though thoroughly enjoying a joke. But then she said, “Oh, my dear—do forgive me! But what evidence could you possibly have?”
Constantia summarized: the handwritten notes in that furiously annotated copy of the Edinburgh Review; those notes subsequently polished and published as Explanations; the distinctive expressions and phrases found in both Vestiges and Explanations, so characteristic of the Chambers family; Mrs Chamber’s long ink-stained mornings spent sequestered in the library attending to her “heavy burden of correspondence”; and all the rest.
“Well; well!” said Mrs Chambers at last. “I do see how, and why, you have arrived at this conclusion. And yet I assure you, dear Mrs Stevenson, you are quite, quite, entirely mistaken.”
Tuckie reappeared, running headlong. “Wrong way!” she cried—and disappeared again, up another path.
“Of course I have no right to ask you; to charge you with any Fitz-books,” said Constantia, setting off again up
the slope. “Indeed, I do not ask you. I only tell you that I do know. My conviction is unshaken, though you may feel yourself bound to deny it.”
Panting, they attained at last the peak of the mount, the center of the spiral maze like the trailing arms of a galaxy—the graduated chambers of a nautilus—a whirlpool in the Esk at Musselburgh—an attentive listening pink ear.
The small high knoll was crowned by a gazebo, a wrought-iron confection set at top dead center: a wrought-iron nipple. Here they threw themselves gratefully onto the seat under the gazebo’s open dome. From this lordly height there were fine views over much of the Jardin, northward toward the Seine. Tuckie, exulting, was swinging like an orangutan from one of the arches of the gazebo; and Livia, inspired, stood bobbing and bouncing ambitiously on her own two feet at Constantia’s knees.
When Mrs Chambers had regained her breath, she said, “I solemnly declare to you, dear friend, that I am not the author of those books—deeply flattered though I am by your suspicion. I am not the mind behind them; I am only the hand, the amanuensis, the scribe. I think I may tell you so much as that.”
“Do you mean that you took down the texts as heard by you?”
“That I heard a voice from on high? And transcribed it, Moses-like? No; I mean only that I copied out the entire manuscript so that the author’s own handwriting might not be recognized and identified—by publishers, or typesetters, and so forth. And my same weary hand copied out all the correspondence relating to those books too, for the same reason: the corrections, the notes, the changes, the typesetting, the proofreading, the directions as to binding and distribution. It has indeed been a very heavy burden of correspondence, dear Mrs Stevenson; I make no evasion as to that.”
To Constantia, this had the ring of truth. She said, “Must I relinquish, then, my fixed conviction?”
Mrs Chambers replied with a familiar phrase: “‘The human faculties lead unavoidably to occasional error.’”