by Joan Aiken
Yr affc. Guardian,
Amanda Musson
“Shallow or fleeting connections!” Scylla gave a kind of wretched laugh.
“But you said that he did make you an offer?” Cal looked at her in perplexity.
“So he did! And I did not believe he meant it! I sent him away!” She hid her face in her hands. “I sent him away—in the curtest—most repulsive—manner, and why in the world should he ever come back?”
“Well, you could write to him,” Cal said reasonably. “To that address he gave you in Baghdad.”
“Write? I could never do such a thing! Are you mad?”
“Women!” said Cal in exasperation. “Why were they ever made? Oh, Lord, here comes Bet back from her harp lesson. I’m off to the stable!”
He snatched up his crutch and limped away, leaving his sister to the depressing company of Bet and her own thoughts.
* * *
Bitter weather during the following week kept the household mostly within doors. Cal chafed miserably at the enforced inactivity. Whether it was the proximity of Fanny or the atmosphere of the Hermitage, he did not know, but neither in the house nor anywhere near it could he manage to write poetry; his muse remained implacably silent. Indoors, he found it particularly hard to concentrate; the winter wind, which blew so constantly, raised an eerie banshee-like wail somewhere in the house, hideously distracting, for he found himself listening tensely, waiting for it to happen; while wherever he was, in house, barn, or stable, he found himself strangely, exasperatingly beset by the notion that, if he looked up from his writing, he would see a small child, little Chet perhaps, squatting in the doorway, or crouching at his feet, or about to scramble toward him across the floor.
Scylla, too, during this period was unusually quiet and gloomy. Several times, indeed, she was so short with Thomas, upon his attempting to engage her in conversation, that she materially contributed to his bad temper.
Thomas was in a particularly sullen and intractable humor, Patty was peevish because the new cousins took little notice of her, finding her a detestable child; and Bet was in a sulk because Thomas had refused to allow her to attend a Twelfth Night party at Petworth House, where she had hoped to wear the gown Scylla had given her.
With tempers in the Hermitage mostly at such an inflammable point, it was to be expected that sooner or later there would be an explosion. This finally occurred one afternoon in mid-January when Cal, driven indoors by cold and frustration, had come into the parlor to find Fanny and Scylla vainly endeavoring to interest little Thomas in the notion of crawling across the hearthrug, by dangling in front of—him a charming coral and bells that Scylla had brought him from London. He would merely gaze at it vaguely, extend a languid fist, then lose interest and, as it seemed, withdraw into himself again.
“I was able to crawl at that age, was I not?” demanded Patty. “Was I not, Stepmama?”
“I did not know you at that age,” said Fanny patiently. “Come, baby!”
“How different he is from little Chet,” Cal murmured involuntarily to his sister, remembering the Indian baby’s lively brown smiling countenance and his alert movements; little Thomas was pale, vacant, and seemed half asleep all the time.
“How different from Fanny,” Scylla murmured in reply. “He is like a changeling.”
“That is it—No, he is like one of those children who have had their spirits stolen away by the trolls. I have it—the child in my poem!” And, his mind on nothing but pursuing his idea to its source, Cal picked up a sheaf of papers which he had been irritably rereading, in the hope of pushing himself to a new point of inspiration, and read aloud:
“For he has dwelt within the enchanted mound
By Urdar spring, where time is naught but dream.
What tidings can he bring? No human sound
Disturbs the silence there, no wandering gleam
Pierces the dark, nor fins divide that stream.
No single element in that domain
Has here its image; that immortal scheme
Contains creations his untutored brain
May neither grasp nor guess, remember nor explain.”
“Hush, Cal! You will distress Fanny.”
“No, but do listen! Does not this exactly describe little Thomas:
“Poor child! The birds will sing for him in vain.
For him, what matter that the rose is red?
He cannot love the sun, nor rue the rain.
Winds, unregarded, lave his heedless head.
Deaf, blind, and speechless, all perceptions fled,
Save one, the sense of loss, he gropes his way,
And will, until his final hours are sped;
An orphaned, witless wanderer, far astray.
His stolen soul estranged, mislaid in yesterday!
“Does not that exactly describe the child? ‘Mislaid in yesterday,’” Cal repeated, with the writer’s sense of satisfaction at his own successful phrase.
And then stopped short, aghast at the sight of Thomas, outraged, stiff with icy dislike, close beside him.
“So! So, sir!” All the suppressed dislike of two months’ enforced propinquity came hissing out like concentrated poison in Thomas’s exclamation. “So that is what you think of my son! Deaf and speechless! You—miserable—conceited—young puppy! How dare you? How dare you come here, you confounded—misbegotten interloper—eat my food—make use of my house—and insult me so?”
“Thomas, Thomas!” implored Fanny. “Remember that Cousin Cal is our guest!”
“I am not likely to forget it!”
“Cousin Juliana’s guest, rather,” said Cal, white about the nostrils. “Also I might remind you that my sister and I make a substantial contribution to the housekeeping! And I might further mention that we are not misbegotten—our parents were, I understand, married by a perfectly legal process known as chadar dalna—”
“Oh, hush, Cal! What does it matter? You are only exasperating him further,” interpolated Scylla. “Do, for heaven’s sake, apologize!”
“He certainly will apologize!” said Thomas, ominously flushed. “Or leave my house directly!”
“Apologize? What for? For pointing out what everybody else has observed long ago—that your wretched child is slow in his wits, if not actually feeble-minded?”
For all reply Thomas snatched up Cal’s crutch, which was leaning against the sofa, and with, it aimed a blow at Cal’s head which must have knocked him senseless if he had not moved sharply aside; as it was, it struck his shoulder and sent him sprawling. He fell, striking his injured leg on the harp, which overbalanced. The twang of the strings mingled with Cal’s shout of pain. He was up the next instant, however, perfectly white, his lips compressed and his eyes blazing.
“You cowardly scoundrel! I’ll require satisfaction for that!”
“Cal, Cal!” his sister besought him. “This is folly! Remember yourself, think where we are. Think of Fanny!”
“Thomas!” begged Fanny likewise. “Stop, stop! This must go no further—you should not have struck your cousin!”
“Oh, why not?” said Cal coldly. “Knocking down an injured man with his own crutch is only such behavior as might be expected from Cousin Thomas.”
Thomas, who did seem almost mad with fury, appeared quite capable of repeating the act, but fortunately, at that moment, a loud peal at the front doorbell brought all the protagonists to a sense of their surroundings; Thomas took himself off with an angry exclamation, bawling for one of the servants to answer the door; Scylla managed to drag her brother away to his chamber, where he paced up and down, fulminating against Thomas, until obliged to lie down through a sudden sickness and weakness brought on by the pain of his fall.
The ring at the door, which had interrupted the cousins’ quarrel so fortunately, was equally fortunate in its purport, for i
t proved to have been an express messenger from Cal’s friend Lieutenant, now Captain, Howard, who, at Portsmouth, having achieved his promotion and been posted into an eighteen-gun sloop, the Asp, was sending to inform Cal of his good fortune and beg his friend to join him as senior lieutenant and second in command without delay.
At any other time Scylla would have cried out against the notion of his putting out to sea in his present state, so very soon after his injured leg had healed; but now even she could see that there was no possibility of Cal remaining at the Hermitage any longer; he and Thomas would be continually at loggerheads. Miserably she helped him pack up his belongings and sent Jem to the White Hart to order a post chaise for six o’clock the following morning.
“That way I shan’t be under the necessity of seeing that skulking fellow again; which is as well, for if I got my hands on him I’d never let go till I wrung his neck. Poor Fanny! I do sincerely pity her! My consolation is that it can’t be too long before he has his deserts. There must be twenty people within five miles who would be glad to murder Thomas Paget.—But what will you do now, love? Shall you stay here? Or”—with a faint smile Cal recalled Miss Musson’s letter—“do you want to go up to London and try your luck at Almack’s?”
“Oh, Cal, how can I tell? I think I must stay here for a while. I do not feel in the mood for London.”
“I am glad to hear it.” Cal’s rage was ebbing fast, with the prospect of interest and action ahead; he said ruefully, “I fear it will be upon Fanny that the brunt of this confounded quarrel will fall. Thomas will be as sore as a bear for days. She will be glad of your company.”
“And I shall be glad of hers. But if”—Scylla did not wish to say, If Thomas’s attentions to me become too marked or too intolerable; she did not want to wake Cal’s ire again—“if I decide to go to London, I shall stay with our cousins the Lambournes, who have a house in Berkeley Square. They came to call when I was in Egremont House, and though I did not greatly care for Caroline Lambourne, she was perfectly civil, and indeed pressing in her invitation to me to make their house my own.”
“Humph!” remarked Cal, stuffing neckcloths into his portmanteau. “Just like our cousin Juliana and our cousin Thomas!”
“Or there is an old great-uncle living in Hampshire,” said Scylla despondently.
“Well, if I write to you, I shall direct my letters here.”
“Oh, pray write, Cal—I shall miss you so unspeakably—indeed I do not know how I will be able to bear it.”
“Now, goose—do not be shedding tears all over my clean linen! You know we should have had to part sometime.”
“I wish we might have a house together and live in it.”
“Well, so we will, when I am an admiral. Come, cheer up; go to Mrs. Strudwick for me and coax out of her a pasty or something, so that I need not see Thomas at the dinner table.”
But Mrs. Strudwick, who had taken a strong fancy to Cal, insisted on putting up for him a whole box of eatables, including a spare Christmas pudding and half a ham. “For,” she said, “I know that on those ships they gets nothing but nasty salt beef and biscuits all a-squirming with weevils.”
Scylla too, avoiding the family dinner table, retired early to her couch and got up in the black, icy dawn to walk down to the White Hart and say good-bye to her brother there, as he did not wish to rouse the rest of the household by having the chaise come to the door. A new fall of snow, from the previous evening, muffled their footsteps, but it was not above half an inch and had already melted from the cobblestones in the street.
Goble obligingly carried Cal’s bag for him, refused a shilling for his pains, and seemed genuinely sorry to say good-bye.
“Watch out, then, Mus Cal! Don’t ’ee goo camsteary on that leg, now. I’m in behopes you’ll be back, when old Boney’s been put to bed with a shovel.”
“Ah, I’ll be back then, Mr. Goble, and we’ll make a grand sossel of it!” Cal said, clapping him on the shoulder affectionately. “And don’t you worry any further about what you told me. Done is done, and telling over won’t help it.”
“Ah, you’re just about right there, sir,” said Goble, and hobbled off.
“What had he been worrying about?” Scylla inquired.
“Never mind! Something he’d done that can’t be mended now. He’s a strange old fellow—we got talking—I couldn’t sleep last night, my mind was whirling about like a windmill. I rose at three and spent the rest of the night outside, wandering about in the snow and listening to the owls.” Scylla could believe that, for Cal was pale and hollow-eyed. “I couldn’t get Fanny out of my mind, Scylla; you’ll keep an eye on her, won’t you? She is so frail—like those windflowers we saw growing on the banks of the Kunar River—do you remember? Say”—for a moment his voice cracked—“say good-bye to her for me, will you? And give her this”—he dropped a light kiss on her mouth. “I can’t give her anything more tangible, or Thomas would infallibly discover it! Anyway—as I was about to say—at four o’clock or thereabouts, what should I see but old Goble standing in the garden like a ghost. I said to him, ‘What in the world are you doing here at this time of night, Goble?’ and he said, ‘I’ve summat on my mind, Mus Cal, what puts me all in a cold clam. I dreamed I saw a shim out here by the wellhead, an’ I got so fidgety I came down from my bed to see if ’twas so.”
“What is a shim?”
“A ghost, I fancy.”
Scylla shivered. “Poor old man! Perhaps he has not enough bedclothes up there in that loft. I’ll mention it to Fanny.”
“By all means do so—but he had more than blankets on his mind. Ah, here is my chaise. Good-bye, love—don’t forget me”—and he gave her a quick hug and swung himself up, awkwardly, with the driver’s help. The horses clattered off on the icy cobbles, and Scylla found herself suddenly alone, her throat full of tears, hungry, hollow in the heart, and freezing cold.
She returned home, wrapped herself in shawls, and climbed into her cold bed. I shall never sleep, she thought, but she, like Cal, had spent the early part of the night in wide-eyed restless wakefulness, looking ahead into what seemed a black and hopeless future; she did in fact fall quite quickly into a heavy slumber and slept long and late.
When she woke next it was full day, and there was a feeling of uneasiness and urgency so strong about the house that, even before she was washed and dressed, Scylla felt certain that something was badly amiss. Indeed, while she was combing out her curls, a tap came at the door.
“Who is it?” she called.
“It’s Tess, miss. Oh, miss! Have you little Master Thomas in there with you?”
“Master Thomas?” Scylla flung open the door. “Good gracious, no! Why should I have him in here? Is he not in his cot or with his mother?”
“No, ma’am, he’s not nowhere! He’ve gone missing, and, oh, I’m afeered the gypsies must have taken him!”
“Oh, what nonsense! I daresay he is in Miss Bet’s room.”
“No, we have looked all over, miss, and now Master is calling the constables,” Tess said tearfully.
Scylla was appalled and hurried to the parlor, where she found Fanny, shivering and pale, but composed.
“Fanny! Can this be true?”
Fanny turned and speechlessly grasped both Scylla’s hands. In the dining room the nursemaid Jemima could be heard sobbing hysterically and being scolded by Mrs. Strudwick. Bet and Patty, aghast and wide-eyed, huddled in a corner, Thomas, somewhere outside the house, was shouting orders.
“Yes, it is true,” Fanny said at last. “Who could have done such a thing I cannot—” She gulped, and fell silent. Outside, the constables had now apparently arrived. Thomas was instructing them to interrogate the turnpike toll keepers on the Midhurst and London roads, as to any strangers who might have passed by during the night. Scylla suddenly realized that the reason she could hear all this so clearly was because one of the win
dows was open six inches, although there was no fire in the hearth and the morning was bitterly cold. She moved to shut the window, but Fanny put out a hand to stop her.
“Thomas says we must leave it so. It was like that when I came down.”
“How very strange! Was it not fastened last night?”
Scylla knew that it was Thomas’s habit to make a circuit of all the downstairs windows and doors before going to bed, checking bars and bolts. But perhaps last night he had forgotten. Perhaps he had been as distracted, as thrown off balance, as Cal—
Cal!
Hoarsely, finding that her voice came out two tones deeper than she expected, Scylla said:
“Fanny, Cal has gone back to sea. He went off by post chaise this morning. He—he thought it best not to say good-bye to you. He asked me to say it for him—”
Fanny stared at her in silence. It seemed to take a moment for the impact of the news to sink in. Then she said, almost inaudibly:
“Cal has gone?”
“Yes; gone to Portsmouth, to join a ship, the Asp…”
Thomas came into the room with two burly men in top hats, the town constables, who gravely inspected the open window.
“Arr,” said one of them. “Anybody could-a clumb in there.”
“’Countable easy, they could,” said the other.
Then they followed Thomas upstairs to inspect the baby’s empty cradle and, finally, to interrogate Jemima, who, heavy-eyed and husky from crying, could only declare she had fallen into a deep sleep on the previous evening—“Dunnamany hours I slept, I never had sich a slumber before, never!”—and had awoken in the morning to find the baby gone.
“Were it not best to send for Lord Egremont?” whispered Scylla to Fanny while this was going on. “Is he not lord lieutenant of the county? I daresay these men are doing their duty as best they can—but they do not seem very sharp-witted.”
Slowly Fanny nodded.
“Yes, that would be best. I wonder Thomas has not already done so.” She spoke slowly and dazedly.
Thomas was rushing about in a kind of wild, frenetic activity—now urging the maids to make yet another search of the attics and cellar; now ordering Goble and Jem to search the garden and outhouses. The well, with memories of the previous incident, was opened and inspected but found to contain nothing; nor did the stables, nor Thomas’s garden room, nor the cellar beneath it.