Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

  “There is indeed a bell!” she told him, “It is high up in one of the towers.”

  She was smiling and regarding him with such frank admiration that Stephen thought it only polite to say something.

  “This is certainly a most elegant assembly, madam. I do not know when I last saw so many handsome faces and graceful figures gathered together in one place. And every one of them in the utmost bloom of youth. I confess that I am surprized to see no older people in the room. Have these ladies and gentlemen no mothers and fathers? No aunts or uncles?”

  “What an odd remark!” she replied, laughing. “Why should the Master of Lost-hope House invite aged and unsightly persons to his ball? Who would want to look at them? Besides we are not so young as you suppose. England was nothing but dreary wood and barren moor when last we saw our sires and dams. But wait! See! There is Lady Pole!”

  Between the dancers Stephen caught a glimpse of her ladyship. She was wearing a blue velvet gown and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair was leading her to the top of the dance.

  Then the lady in the gown the colour of storms, shadows and rain inquired if he would like to dance with her.

  “Gladly,” he said.

  When the other ladies saw how well Stephen danced, he found he could have any partner he wished for. After the lady in the gown the colour of storms, shadows and rain he danced with a young woman who had no hair, but who wore a wig of shining beetles that swarmed and seethed upon her head. His third partner complained bitterly whenever Stephen’s hand happened to brush against her gown; she said it put her gown off its singing; and, when Stephen looked down, he saw that her gown was indeed covered with tiny mouths which opened and sang a little tune in a series of high, eerie notes.

  Although in general the dancers followed the usual custom and changed partners at the end of two dances, Stephen observed that the gentleman with the thistle-down hair danced with Lady Pole the whole night long and that he scarcely spoke to any other person in the room. But he had not forgotten Stephen. Whenever Stephen chanced to catch his eye, the gentleman with the thistle-down hair smiled and bowed his head and gave every sign of wishing to convey that, of all the delightful circumstances of the ball, what pleased him most was to see Stephen Black there.

  17

  The unaccountable appearance of twenty-five guineas

  January 1808

  The best grocer’s in Town is Brandy’s in St James’s-street. I am not alone in that opinion; Sir Walter Pole’s grandfather, Sir William Pole, declined to purchase coffee, chocolate or tea from any other establishment, declaring that in comparison with Mr Brandy’s Superfine High Roasted Turkey Coffee, all other coffees had a mealy flavour. It must be said, however, that Sir William Pole’s patronage was a somewhat mixed blessing. Though liberal in his praise and always courteous and condescending to the shop-people, he was scarcely ever known to pay a bill and when he died, the amount of money owing to Brandy’s was considerable. Mr Brandy, a short-tempered, pinched-faced, cross little old man, was beside himself with rage about it. He died shortly afterwards, and was presumed by many people to have done so on purpose and to have gone in pursuit of his noble debtor.

  At Mr Brandy’s death, the business came into the possession of his widow. Mr Brandy had married rather late in life and my readers will not be much surprized, I dare say, to learn that Mrs Brandy had not been entirely happy in her marriage. She had quickly discovered that Mr Brandy loved to look at guineas and shillings more than he had ever loved to look at her – though I say it must have been a strange sort of man that did not love to look at her, for she was everything that was delightful and amiable, all soft brown curls, light blue eyes and a sweet expression. It would seem to me that an old man, such as Mr Brandy, with nothing to recommend him but his money, ought to have treasured a young, pretty wife, and studied hard to please her in everything he could; but he did not. He had even denied her a house of her own to live in – which was something he could have afforded very easily. So loath had he been to part with a sixpence that he declared they should live in the little room above the shop in St. James’s Street, and for the twelve years of her marriage this apartment served Mrs Brandy as parlour, bedroom, dining-parlour and kitchen. But Mr Brandy had not been dead three weeks when she bought a house in Islington, near the Angel, and acquired three maids, whose names were Sukey, Dafney and Delphina.

  She also employed two men to attend the customers in the shop. John Upchurch was a steady soul, hard-working and capable. Toby Smith was a red-haired, nervous man whose behaviour often puzzled Mrs Brandy. Sometimes he would be silent and unhappy and at other times he would be suddenly cheerful and full of unexpected confidences. From certain discrepancies in the accounts (such as may occur in any business) and from the circumstances of Toby looking miserable and ill at ease whenever she questioned him about it, Mrs Brandy had begun to fear that he might be pocketing the difference. One January evening her dilemma took a strange turn. She was sitting in her little parlour above the shop when there was a knock upon the door and Toby Smith came shuffling in, quite unable to meet her eye.

  “What’s the matter, Toby?”

  “If you please, ma’am,” said Toby looking this way and that, “the money won’t come right. John and me have counted it out again and again, ma’am, and cast up the sums a dozen times or more, but we cannot make head or tail of it.”

  Mrs Brandy tutted and sighed and asked by how much they were out.

  “Twenty-five guineas, ma’am.”

  “Twenty-five guineas!” cried Mrs Brandy in horror. “Twenty-five guineas! How could we possibly have lost so much? Oh! I hope you are mistaken, Toby. Twenty-five guineas! I would not have supposed there to be so much money in the shop! Oh, Toby!” she cried, as another thought struck her. “We must have been robbed!”

  “No, ma’am,” said Toby. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, but you mistake. I did not mean to say we are twenty-five guineas short. We are over, ma’am. By that amount.”

  Mrs Brandy stared at him.

  “Which you may see for yourself, ma’am,” said Toby, “if you will just come down to the shop,” and he held the door open for her with an anxious, pleading expression upon his face. So Mrs Brandy ran downstairs into the shop and Toby followed after her.

  It was about nine o’clock on a moonless night. The shutters were all put up and John and Toby had extinguished the lamps. The shop ought to have been as dark as the inside of a tea-caddy, but instead it was filled with a soft, golden light which appeared to emanate from something golden which lay upon the counter-top.

  A heap of shining guineas was lying there. Mrs Brandy picked up one of the coins and examined it. It was as if she held a ball of soft yellow light with a coin at the bottom of it. The light was odd. It made Mrs Brandy, John and Toby look quite unlike themselves: Mrs Brandy appeared proud and haughty, John looked sly and deceitful and Toby wore an expression of great ferocity. Needless to say, all of these were qualities quite foreign to their characters. But stranger still was the transformation that the light worked upon the dozens of small mahogany drawers that formed one wall of the shop. Upon other evenings the gilt lettering upon the drawers proclaimed the contents to be such things as: Mace (Blades), Mustard (Unhusked), Nutmegs, Ground Fennel, Bay Leaves, Pepper of Jamaica, Essence of Ginger, Caraway, Peppercorns and Vinegar and all the other stock of a fashionable and prosperous grocery business. But now the words appeared to read: Mercy (Deserved), Mercy (Undeserved), Nightmares, Good Fortune, Bad Fortune, Persecution by Families, Ingratitude of Children, Confusion, Perspicacity and Veracity. It was as well that none of them noticed this odd change. Mrs Brandy would have been most distressed by it had she known. She would not have had the least notion what to charge for these new commodities.

  “Well,” said Mrs Brandy, “they must have come from somewhere. Has any one sent today to pay their bill?”

  John shook his head. So did Toby. “And, besides,” added Toby, “no one owes so much, exceptin
g, of course, the Duchess of Worksop and frankly, ma’am, in that case …”

  “Yes, yes, Toby, that will do,” interrupted Mrs Brandy. She thought for a moment. “Perhaps,” she said, “some gentleman, wishing to wipe the rain from his face, pulled out his handkerchief, and so caused the money to tumble out of his pocket on to the floor.”

  “But we did not find it upon the floor,” said John, “it was here in the cash-box with all the rest.”

  “Well,” said Mrs Brandy, “I do not know what to say. Did anyone pay with a guinea today?”

  No, said Toby and John, no one had paid today with a guinea, let alone twenty-five such guineas or twenty-five such persons.

  “And such yellow guineas, ma’am,” remarked John, “each one the very twin of all the others, without a spot of tarnish upon any of them.”

  “Should I run and fetch Mr Black, ma’am?” asked Toby.

  “Oh, yes!” said Mrs Brandy, eagerly. “But then again, perhaps no. We ought not to trouble Mr Black unless there is any thing very wrong. And nothing is wrong, is it, Toby? Or perhaps it is. I cannot tell.”

  The sudden and unaccountable arrival of large sums of money is such a very rare thing in our Modern Age that neither Toby nor John was able to help their mistress decide whether it were a wrong thing or a right.

  “But, then,” continued Mrs Brandy, “Mr Black is so clever. I dare say he will understand this puzzle in an instant. Go to Harley-street, Toby. Present my compliments to Mr Black and say that if he is at liberty I should be glad of a few moments’ conversation with him. No, wait! Do not say that, it sounds so presumptuous. You must apologize for disturbing him and say that whenever he should happen to be at liberty I should be grateful – no, honoured – no, grateful – I should be grateful for a few moments’ conversation with him.”

  Mrs Brandy’s acquaintance with Stephen Black had begun when Sir Walter had inherited his grandfather’s debts and Mrs Brandy had inherited her husband’s business. Every week or so Stephen had come with a guinea or two to help pay off the debt. Yet, curiously, Mrs Brandy was often reluctant to accept the money. “Oh! Mr Black!” she would say, “Pray put the money away again! I am certain that Sir Walter has greater need of it than I. We did such excellent business last week! We have got some carracca chocolate in the shop just at present, which people have been kind enough to say is the best to be had any where in London – infinitely superior to other chocolate in both flavour and texture! – and they have been sending for it from all over Town. Will not you take a cup, Mr Black?”

  Then Mrs Brandy would bring the chocolate in a pretty blue-and-white china chocolate-pot, and pour Stephen a cup, and anxiously inquire how he liked it; for it seemed that, even though people had been sending for it from all over Town, Mrs Brandy could not feel quite convinced of its virtues until she knew Stephen’s opinion. Nor did her care of him end with making him chocolate. She was solicitous for his health. If it happened to be a cold day, she would be concerned that he was not warm enough; if it were raining she would worry that he might catch a cold; if it were a hot, dry day she would insist that he sit by a window overlooking a little green garden to refresh himself.

  When it was time for him to go, she would revive the question of the guinea. “But as to next week, Mr Black, I cannot say. Next week I may need a guinea very badly – people do not always pay their bills – and so I will be so bold as to ask you to bring it again on Wednesday. Wednesday at about three o’clock. I shall be quite disengaged at three o’clock and I shall be sure to have a pot of chocolate ready, as you are so kind as to say you like it very much.”

  The gentlemen among my readers will smile to themselves and say that women never did understand business, but the ladies may agree with me that Mrs Brandy understood her business very well, for the chief business of Mrs Brandy’s life was to make Stephen Black as much in love with her as she was with him.

  In due course Toby returned, not with a message from Stephen Black, but with Stephen himself and Mrs Brandy’s anxiety about the coins was swept away by a new and altogether more pleasant agitation. “Oh, Mr Black! We did not expect to see you so soon! I did not imagine you would be at liberty!”

  Stephen stood in the darkness outside the radiance cast by the strange coins. “It does not matter where I am tonight,” he said in a dull tone quite unlike his usual voice. “The house is all at sixes and sevens. Her ladyship is not well.”

  Mrs Brandy, John and Toby were shocked to hear this. Like every other citizen of London they took a close interest in everything that concerned her ladyship. They prided themselves upon their connexion with all sorts of aristocratic persons, but it was the patronage of Lady Pole which gave them the greatest satisfaction. Nothing pleased them so much as being able to assure people that when Lady Pole sat down to breakfast, her ladyship’s roll was spread with Mrs Brandy’s preserves and her coffee cup was filled with coffee made with Mrs Brandy’s beans.

  Mrs Brandy was suddenly struck with a most unpleasant idea. “I hope her ladyship did not eat something which disagreed with her?” she asked.

  “No,” said Stephen with a sigh, “it is nothing of that sort. She complains of aches in all her limbs, odd dreams and feeling cold. But mostly she is silent and out of spirits. Her skin is icy to the touch.”

  Stephen stepped into the queer light.

  The strange alterations which it had made to the appearance of Toby, John and Mrs Brandy were nothing to the changes it worked upon Stephen: his native handsomeness increased five-, seven-, tenfold; he acquired an expression of almost supernatural nobility; and, most extraordinary of all, the light somehow seemed to concentrate in a band around his brow so that he appeared to have been crowned with a diadem. Yet, just as before, none of those present noticed anything out of the common.

  He turned the coins over in his thin black fingers. “Where were they, John?”

  “Here in the cash-box with all the rest of the money. Where in the world can they have come from, Mr Black?”

  “I am as puzzled as you are. I have no explanation to offer.” Stephen turned to Mrs Brandy. “My chief concern, ma’am, is that you should protect yourself from any suspicion that you have come by the money dishonestly. I think you must give the money to a lawyer. Instruct him to advertise in The Times and The Morning Chronicle to discover if any one lost twenty-five guineas in Mrs Brandy’s shop.”

  “A lawyer, Mr Black!” cried Mrs Brandy, horrified. “Oh, but that will cost a world of money!”

  “Lawyers always do, ma’am.”

  At that moment a gentleman in St. James’s-street passed Mrs Brandy’s shop and, discerning a golden radiance shining out of the chinks in the shutters, realized that someone was within. He happened to be in need of tea and sugar and so he knocked upon the door.

  “Customer, Toby!” cried Mrs Brandy.

  Toby hurried to open the door and John put the money away. The instant that he closed the lid of the cash-box, the room became dark and for the first time they realized that they had been seeing each other by the light of the eerie coins. So John ran around, relighting the lamps and making the place look cheerful and Toby weighed out the things which the customer wanted.

  Stephen Black sank into a chair and passed his hand across his forehead. He looked grey-faced and tired to death.

  Mrs Brandy sat down in the chair next to his and touched his hand very gently. “You are not well, my dear Mr Black.”

  “It is just that I ache all over – as a man does who has been dancing all night.” He sighed again and rested his head upon his hand.

  Mrs Brandy withdrew her hand. “I did not know there was a ball last night,” she said. There was a tinge of jealousy to her words. “I hope you had a most delightful time. Who were your partners?”

  “No, no. There was no ball. I seem to have all the pains of dancing, without having had any of the pleasure.” He raised his head suddenly. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  “What, Mr Black?”

 
; “That bell. Tolling for the dead.”

  She listened a moment. “No, I do not hear any thing. I hope you will stay to supper, my dear Mr Black? It would do us so much honour. I fear it will not be a very elegant meal. There is very little. Hardly anything at all. Just some steamed oysters and a pigeon-pie and a harrico of mutton. But an old friend like you will make allowances, I am sure. Toby can fetch some …”

  “Are you certain you do not hear it?”

  “No.”

  “I cannot stay.” He looked as if he meant to say something more – indeed he opened his mouth to say it, but the bell seemed to intrude itself upon his attention again and he was silent. “Good evening to you!” He rose and, with a rapid half-bow, he walked out.

  In St James’s-street the bell continued to toll. He walked like a man in a fog. He had just reached Piccadilly when an aproned porter carrying a basket full of fish came very suddenly out of a little alleyway. In trying to get out of the porter’s way, Stephen collided with a stout gentleman in a blue coat and a Bedford hat who was standing on the corner of Albemarle-street.

  The stout gentleman turned and saw Stephen. Instantly he was all alarm; he saw a black face close to his own face and black hands near his pockets and valuables. He paid no attention to Stephen’s expensive clothes and respectable air but, immediately concluding that he was about to be robbed or knocked down, he raised his umbrella to strike a blow in his own defence.

  It was the moment that Stephen had dreaded all his life. He supposed that constables would be called and he would be dragged before the magistrates and it was probable that even the patronage and friendship of Sir Walter Pole would not save him. Would an English jury be able to conceive of a black man who did not steal and lie? A black man who was a respectable person? It did not seem very likely. Yet now that his fate had come upon him, Stephen found he did not care very much about it and he watched events unfold as though he were watching a play through thick glass or a scene at the bottom of a pond.