by Paul Butler
“Indeed,” said Captain Wentworth. He straightened his jacket and offered Anne his hand as she rose from her seat.
***
As Anne and Captain Wentworth took their leave, I offered as many benign platitudes as I could muster about the joys of reuniting with old friends after long absences and of the myriad benefits of weddings that drew so many old and new friends together in the same place. It was my hope to remind Captain Wentworth that these were the kinds of sentiments he, too, was expected to convey in his manner and action ― rather than the general expressions of panic and preoccupation I had seen today. But he didn’t seem to be taking it in and even the most unobservant of acquaintances could not possibly have failed to notice the aura of unease around him during this meeting, and wonder if this could be natural in a man about to be married to the woman he loved.
While Anne gave me her hand and leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, Captain Wentworth stood at the door and intermittently threw me pleading looks. Even so, in all the bustle of their parting, I felt the air between them was still heavy with love and affection. She took Captain Wentworth’s arm as they opened the door — my “infirmity,” of course, stranded me in the seat where I was — and the expression I caught on Anne’s face suggested she had noticed some endearing eccentricity about his behaviour today and wished to give the gentlest of warnings that he was not as awake to the world as he should be. It was such a pity, I thought, that both of them would likely end up suffering from the actions of Captain Mason. But that gentleman was turning out to be a knot in my plans too, so we all had more in common than I could have foreseen.
When the door finally closed and I heard their footsteps upon the stairs, I slipped the letter from beneath my skirts. What an invaluable document this would have been under the right circumstances! But the man himself had come. I gazed at the writing which looped and scrawled over the page in my hand, and imagined the frenzy of feeling which had punctured the paper in two places — the “f” in “how could forget so easily” and the second “h” in “truth and honour…” What a terrifying prospect this Captain Mason must have seemed to poor Captain Wentworth! I could hardly blame him for the hopeless torture he was going through. In this letter he had talked of arriving the next day but had then journeyed all night and arrived in such a state that the Harvilles had referred to his fatigue as though it were a more serious indisposition. Was he perhaps drunk and was this a politely euphemistic way of excusing his withdrawal? My mind raced with the possibilities all of which seemed ominous indeed for Captain Wentworth.
But after a few moments the sun brightened through the window, washing my room with the strange golden light that often comes in Bath. A thought had just occurred to me, one that might give hope to all. Perhaps Oliver Mason had journeyed all night with the express purpose of overtaking the letter. Perhaps he actually regretted its writing and this was the cause of the agitation described by Captain Wentworth’s friends. Certainly, Captain Mason was a man of extreme passions and extreme passions are often known to change course rapidly and without warning. Anything was possible, after all, and no one was made up entirely of destructive impulses. If Captain Mason did mean to take it all back and congratulate his friend without reserve, this was the very best of all worlds. Captain Wentworth would be saved the extraordinary anxiety which presently plagued him. Anne and he would be unfettered as they began their lives in mutual love. And I could bask in the knowledge that I might happily pick my moment after all this uncertainty and unpleasantness was quite blown over to remind Captain Wentworth of the letter’s existence and the very damning nature of its contents.
I rose from my chair and stretched. Bending my shoulders back, I waited until my spine cracked and popped between my shoulders. Playing the invalid could, on occasion, be quite as hard as being one; as it happened, restriction of movement did not agree with me at all.
I recognized Nurse Rooke’s uneven clump on the stairs. Soon, assuming she had given Henry clear instructions and assuming Henry understood, Plato would be gone, and with him one source of worry removed. But every day brings fresh challenges, I knew that, and while the stakes in terms of personal gains and losses were great enough for me, there was part of my spirit generous enough to concern myself with the problems of another. You could say I was too compassionate for my own good, but part of me hoped and feared with an ardour quite beyond my own ambitions for the future happiness of poor Captain Wentworth and my dear friend Anne.
15. PLATO
AS I APPROACHED THE GRAVE of Harville’s sister, the winter seemed to lift. Sunlight dappled the cemetery lawn and a warm breeze sprang into life skittering last year’s seeds over the grass and stones. It had been an idle enough threat at the time — at knifepoint if necessary — but now I had forced myself into a position where I had no other choice. Mrs. Smith’s patronage was no longer mine. Only Harville could help me and here was the place to which he always returned.
But this was not his hour, and I was aware of the fact. Why then had my feet directed me here when there was little chance of finding him? I let my hand hover close to Fanny Harville’s headstone, my fingers tracing the first signs of moss on the limestone surface. It seemed a strange kind of intimacy and I thought of the white-faced woman with the cracks weaving through her mask. My imagination now twinned the experiences — the brush of fingers upon this monument and the anticipated touch of a human hand upon the paste and powder of the lady’s face. Perhaps this was why I was here. The candlelit room, the maids, excited and fluttering behind me, had been a premonition of death. I had some inexplicable need to relive it now in the open.
It had been a day of endings. Mrs. Smith was lost to me for sure. Mr. Dawkins might well follow. It was difficult to imagine that he would remain blind to my failings this time. The white-faced woman, her housekeeper and maids, were as worldly as most of the Assembly Rooms clients were discreet. And then there was myself. A man may commit a fraud unknowingly, but once he is made aware of the illusion, he will surely give himself away. The reputation I had not even known about — the African who loved with the fiery lust of a barbarian — would soon be a thing of the past. The Plato of dark and sensual desires would become Plato the fool. I could hear the bells jingling already.
My gaze shifted from the moss under my fingers, to the circles of lichen descending, to the tufts of grass at the base of the stone. I could imagine only too well pale fingertips nudging up through that turf like crocus shoots, reaching into the late winter sun. I could see them rising as white hands, opening as the breezes circled around them. What would Fanny Harville look like if she disinterred herself? I had never seen her and I tried to sculpt a feminine counterpart of her brother. But each time I saw her clambering to the surface, shaking off the soil, the woman I had conjured was much older than I knew Fanny Harville to be. The picture I’d constructed was, in fact, very much like the white-faced woman of this morning. I imagined her stumbling on the turf, trying to open her soil-crammed eyes, reaching out to me suddenly as though to claw me towards her.
“Plato!”
The voice was neither very close nor very loud but it carried the surprise of a pistol shot. I couldn’t have been Harville, I knew that already. He would hardly have used my name. Just the same, I snatched my hands from the stone before turning. The crooked figure in the long coat and hood-covered head could not have been more desperately out of place standing, as he was, in a pool of sunshine.
“Henry.” I shuffled from the grave as though ashamed of being caught there. He looked hard at the gravestone, taking it in.
“Fanny Harville,” he said. He balanced his lone tooth upon his bottom lip. “What do you want with her?”
The sentence seemed to end a word too early. What did I want with her grave was surely the question. But, then again, Henry’s world was different from mine. He was, after all, intimate with the dead.
“Nothing.”
I m
oved closer to keep our voices from carrying. I could see only gravestones, trees, and bushes and, above the upward limit of twigs, the Abbey spire rising in the distance to the northwest. In such a place, however, where people tend to stand in silence and reflect, it was entirely possible that a mourner might be about and unseen. “I want nothing from her,” I said quietly, “but I need information from her brother.”
Henry nodded and gazed southwards to the bend in the river and his own secret mooring. A puff of breath disappeared as it rose. “What information?”
“The maid.”
“Ha, young Elsie,” he said. “Yes, I knew her.”
It would be superfluous for me to note that Henry’s manner was furtive as it was never anything else. “I thought you might,” I said. “And I wonder then if it’s possible you may know the answer to my question.”
He paused, raised his hand, and scratched the rim of a nostril with his knuckle. “I might,” he said. The odd musical note in his voice set the tone of a negotiation. “You want to know what happened to her, I suppose. You are thinking of that child you carry around.”
“Exactly, Henry, I do and I am.”
“Well then.” He brought his hands together like a monk in prayer. “I suggest you come to my barge at midnight.”
He made to leave but I gripped his sleeve. “You do know, then?”
Although it’s difficult to credit such an attribute to a grave robber, haughty is the best word to describe the look he gave me. He raised his tethered arm as though to emphasize the indignity to his person. I had no choice but to let go.
“You are well used to having your way with the women, Plato,” he said, “but things are not so simple in the world of the upright. I have had another offer this day which forbids me from helping you.”
I waited while he gave me the same narrow-eyed look I had seen a thousand times before. How had I failed to notice it? “Black dandy,” ”filthy sewer rat.” I’d always been puzzled rather than offended at the insults. And now it made sense. It wasn’t hatred I’d been hearing. It was envy — the envy of the unloved.
“Thirty-five sovereigns to be precise,” he said at last, straightening with pride. “But if you come with your purse and more cash than your rivals, my loyalty will be yours.”
He turned before I could reply and tramped off through the leaves and the sunshine. I watched him lurch through the distant line of trees below which lay the river. A crow darkened the sun for a moment, then flapped its wings and settled on a branch over Fanny Harville’s grave. I turned and made my way back to the Assembly Rooms.
16. CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
WHEN A MAN WALKS WITH THE WOMAN he sincerely loves and remains unaware of her presence, it follows he must be plagued by a peculiar kind of despair. So it was with Anne and me after we left Westgate Buildings. As I accompanied her home to Camden Place, the cool stones of Bath screamed silently of urgent horrors that would ultimately await me when I returned to my own lodgings afterwards.
Since his letter, Oliver Mason had transformed himself in my imagination into a rather lurid character: I had a vision of him now holding onto the stair bannisters of our lodging, a glass of something potent and mysterious balanced in his hand. Dark hair fell across his eyes and his clothes were in disarray. The daydream expanded, giving me a view of the foot of the stairway where Harville, his wife, and Sophia gazed up at him in shock and bewilderment. I saw myself entering from the front door, helpless as Mason’s features contorted into an expression of fury and revenge. “You grip my heart with a fist of iron!” this dream demon yelled.
Our footsteps as we walked — Anne’s and mine — echoed the words. Anne’s small shoes claimed the lightest syllables — “grip” and “fist” — mine the rounder, more resonant “heart” and “iron.” The sun, to further mock me, decided this was the time it should shine.
Anne sighed happily as a group of ladies passed and my face felt the rays of the oncoming spring.
I made myself respond; my features twitched upwards into a smile and I pulled her arm closer.
But our grotesque duet persisted. Mason repeated the accusation and this time his finger pointed at me and he spilled his liquid opiate over the stairs. How would I keep this uncontrollable animal away from Anne? But then a vision darker still skipped through my mind: We were outside and alone. I had Oliver Mason upon the ground, his head pressed hard against the turf, his eyes closed in a drug-induced slumber. It was dark, quiet. Nothing stirred around us, though a night owl hooted some way off. Slowly, I raised my hand, aware now that my fingers gripped the ridges of a large stone. I was about to bring this down hard upon him when Anne tugged my arm.
“So, Frederick,” she said. “This is where we must part.”
I looked around as though waking from a dream. We were, indeed, in Camden Place. She looked at me and smiled; there was a touch of worry in her dark eyes now. For the first time since my proposal, the first time since Mrs. Smith’s revelation that there were rumours about me, it seemed she was greeting my absence of mind with something other than playful amusement. She held my gaze and in such a serious manner that I could have no reasonable excuse for breaking away.
“I am afraid I have been much preoccupied, Anne. I am sorry.”
I have no way of telling what she saw in my expression, but it soon became clear it must have been something to deepen her concern. “You would tell me, Frederick, if something was weighing on your mind?”
The thought passed through me like a comet: I could tell her. I could give her at least a portion of the truth. I could tell her about the rumours, about my reasons for inviting Oliver Mason. I could even give some hints about the worrisome contents of the reply and my fears concerning my friend’s behaviour. I could almost say it all but for the fact that I didn’t have the words. The strength of a rumour is surely that a man cannot refute it without giving precise names and images to vague insinuations. He becomes the one naming the crime and in so doing makes himself the very picture of guilt. And of course I was at a further disadvantage; I would have to insist that those crimes were quite without foundation, and I was not a good liar.
I turned my palms to the sky like a magician proving he is keeping nothing hidden. Then I smiled at her. “Dear Anne,” I said, “I have heard it said that when a man comes close to fulfilling all his life’s ambitions, he becomes very restless and distrustful of his fate. It is possible this is the case with me. In a matter of days, I promise you, my focus and attention will return.”
The keenness and penetration of her eyes was not dispelled, though I saw the movement of emotion in her, a sense of warmth trying to find its way to me. “I, too, Frederick, am very close to achieving more than I could have hoped for.” She turned for a moment as a gentleman passed and tipped his hat. “And yet,” she searched me once more with a kind intensity, “we should always practice sharing our thoughts, especially our burdens. The life we have hoped for, remember, has already started.”
“Indeed.” I looked down at her, smiling again, feeling the inadequacy of this reply. But I was entirely unable to think of ways to improve it. A dove landed on the ground between us and pecked at something between the cobbles. Its luminous neck feathers caught the light as it moved. Anne watched me closely for a moment more, likely wondering if I had something to add.
“Of course,” she said more brightly, as though something had just occurred to her, “you must be very eager to see Captain Mason.”
“No,” I snapped suddenly, “I mean, yes. Yes, I should see how he is after his journey.”
Anne broke into a smile. Perhaps I saw some relief as well as curiosity dancing in her eyes. “Frederick, you don’t need to hide your impatience to see your friend. Our happiness is to share, not to keep to ourselves. I so look forward to meeting him tonight and I very much hope you will bring Captain Mason and every other dear friend or acquaintance of yours to our own
home as often as you like.”
She held out her hand and, when I took it, squeezed warmly. With one last backwards smile, she mounted the steps to the Camden Place residence, her movements almost skipping with joy. Reluctantly, I turned and made my way downhill to Gay Street.
***
I entered with the latchkey and found the downstairs hallway empty and silent. The bannister to which I had imagined Oliver Mason clinging was quite bare. Its rounded oak shone in the light that skimmed through the frosted rear window. I heard the clink of a tea cup from the Harvilles’ drawing room and realized I had been holding my breath.
“Frederick,” called my sister. “Is that you?”
The sunlight through the back window dimmed; the bannister now showed against the glass like the beams of a scaffold. But I did not hesitate. Experience had long since taught me to throw myself into danger when avoidance was no longer possible. I smoothed down my waistcoat, turned and made my way into the drawing room — Sophia and Lydia Harville sat opposite each other, Sophia on the couch, Harville’s wife in an armchair. Two male figures, obscured by the daylight behind them, were at the window looking out. A small bird — a robin from its rusty breast — hopped upon a twig near the glass.
I gave the ladies a smile then looked towards the men. The broader of them turned first and I could just make out the Admiral’s customary jovial smile. I gave him a quick bow but then my breath caught. The slimmer, younger figure also shifted to face me. I readied myself to bestow upon Oliver Mason the warmest of greetings, to leap across the room, to give him a manly slap upon the back, and to follow up on this by giving satisfied glances to the Admiral, my sister, and Lydia Harville. I meant to ensure they would be drawn into, not pushed away from, these demonstrations of friendship. They were all witnesses, after all.
But then I noticed a familiar stiffness in the movement of this Oliver Mason’s legs, a kind of lameness so like Harville’s that it was uncanny. And I realized this younger man was Harville, and I knew that the grin fixed upon my features and my half extended arms might well look absurd to my companions. I dropped my arms quickly and slapped them against my thighs like a man warming himself after being in the chill outdoors. It had been less than a moment. They may not have noticed. I allowed my broad grin to take in the room and create, I hoped, the impression of a general happiness and contentment.