The Luminist
Page 25
“ We have nothing.”
A landscape of wonderment lay before her. The thought had only just found her. I stand atop nothing at all.
“ I am aware of that,” Wynfield said.
A terrible quiet took the room. She and Wynfield glared at each other while Charles’ breath rasped. “There are places for you in London,” Wynfield finally said. “ You could become a portraitist. I will be your patron. I shall sit for you at the first opportunity.”
“ I ’m not my husband. I do not wish to be in your debt.”
“And yet you are.”
Wynfield took a poker from its mount on the wall and stirred the fire until sparks danced against the bricks. “ It seems that Julia is to marry George, and so our families shall be bound to each other. You and I. And I assure you, she will have every privilege, and does that not fulfill your every hope for your daughter? Yours is a successful motherhood. Do not end it in ashes. Come to London. I will help you place-hunt. A nanny, perhaps.”
“ Bastard.” It was Julia who spoke.
Wynfield stared at her, his smile harsh and fixed. He went to her and cupped her face in his bearish hand. “ You will be welcomed into my family,” he said, “but I fear this habit of speaking beyond your place must stop now.”
Eligius tried to catch Julia’s eye. She didn’t look up, even after Wynfield left.
Catherine ushered all of them out of the bedroom. She drew the curtains together and shrouded the room from light. She told her eldest to get some rest, that things would be clear with rest. Then she carried her son to his bed in her arms, like a baby.
Eligius had never seen her do that, in all the time he’d been at Dimbola.
He heard the memsa’ab whisper to Sir John in the hall outside Ewen’s bedroom, to begin packing his maps and compasses, his telescope and the chemical casks.
Leaving them, Eligius went to Charles’ bedroom and poked the fire back to life. Charles’ eyes were open. He stared at Eligius with impossible composure. His lips parted, but no sound came. His fingers plucked at the air.
Eligius went to his side and listened. Then he left, to fetch what the old lion had asked for. He found the key in Charles’ study, unlocked the cabinet and brought every last paper. At Charles’ whispered request, he took the old map of Ceylon out of its frame and turned it over. There was a second map hidden behind the first.
“He has come to see you as I do.”
Catherine stood in the doorway. “ Read it, Eligius. All of it. But first, give me your word. Tell me you won’t remember him this way.”
The Madness of Farewells
WYNFIELD’S SERVANT OPENED HIS MAS TER’S DOOR. Eligius peered into the Wynfields’ home. Their interior was a grand expanse of marble and walls washed with a color like goat’s milk. George’s paintings covered almost every available square of space. They portrayed men of importance sitting in lushly quilted chairs, surrounded by birds of paradise arranged in deep crystal vases.
Wynfield descended his curved staircase, binding his black robe. In his broken repose he looked curiously small. “Is it Charles?”
“ Yes.”
“ Has he passed?”
Eligius thought of how Charles looked now. His limbs swimming atop the covers. His eyes rolling like balls in water.
“Soon,” he told the governor. “ But not before he sees you one last time.”
THEY JOURNEYED SEPARATELY. Wynfield’s servant followed Eligius’ carriage back to Dimbola. When the air began to burn, Eligius saw terror on the servant’s face.
He dismounted at Dimbola’s gate and surprised the servant by opening Wynfield’s carriage door before the servant could climb down. “ Your name,” he said to the servant in their shared language. “ You never told me.”
“ Rajadi.”
Eligius smiled at the ridiculous lineage of his name. “ Your village?”
“ Kilkerry.”
“ It’s gone, like mine.”
“I know.”
“ Did you know what was happening?”
“ I don’t allow my servants to speak in that tongue around me,” Wynfield said. “ It’s treacherous to do so, boy.”
They entered the house. It was quiet but for the mumblings of the missionary. In the dining room, Sudarma waited against the wall to be called.
He led Wynfield down the hall to the bedroom, where Catherine sat at the foot of Charles’ bed, surrounded by her family. Wynfield entered and bowed his head. “A terrible time. My deepest condolences. Lady Wynfield succumbed to her fear of the roads, but she is here in spirit.”
Catherine went to the window. “Charles has something to say, but no voice to say it. He wishes it to be read in your presence. He wants to hear from you on it.”
Wynfield folded his arms. “ Very well.”
She spread Charles’ documents. From the stack she selected one sheet and handed it to Eligius. A slight smile tugged at Wynfield’s lips as he began to read.
Andrew,
I have requests of you, and reasons.
My requests: Relieve my family of my debts to you. Take them out of Ceylon, but leave Dimbola in my name and lineage so that it may pass to Catherine and our children, should they ever return. See to their happiness. Provide them a home and means in London. Then join them there. Do not return to Ceylon. Step out of the way of those who will reconstitute the Court when Ceylon ceases her bleeding. It is my sincere hope that they will divide all seized lands equitably between the Crown and the natives, as we should have done.
My reasons:
I have in my possession every piece of paper ever drafted for your aims. They demonstrate beyond doubt your complic - ity and profiteering, your manipulation of the governorship and the Company Charter to bring about the seizure of villages throughout the southern provinces. I have evidence of the accounts you maintain in England, filled with the revenues you have sent back. I have the map you drew of the territories to be identified and targeted for our taking, and the colonial patrons these seized properties would be granted to. I have these documents because I wrote them for you. I advocated your desires tirelessly until any hint of opposition was removed. Did I ever really believe that what we did, we did for the good of Ceylon? Did I think ours were the best hands to hold this country until its children were grown and ready? In truth, I don’t know what I believed anymore. Only that my gift of gab, as you oftentimes promised me, would see my way back from poverty, loss of station and the purgatory of place-hunting I so dreaded. I have chased that spectre since my arrival in Ceylon. I believed these things mattered above my honor, to my shame. I believed you.
Do as I ask, Andrew, for the sake of my family. Nothing need be known of the terrible wrongs we have done. Only when you see my family, when your eyes meet theirs, will anything of this be shared. My family will keep their end of this silence in exchange for freedom from my bankrupt influences. I have watched over you all, and I know your ability to live with unspoken regret. My life, I fear, has been spent teaching this very thing to the ones I love most.
I am so sorry, my wife. My children. I could not face you as a man of no means. In the name of money and standing, I agreed to do these things. I see now, when I am fading from the memor y of all but a pitiable few, that I will forever be a part of the destruction of Ceylon. I am lost. Whether I can hear you now or not as this is read, I am further away than I have ever been from the man who arrived in Ceylon to make for himself a notable life.
Yours,
Charles Hague Colebrook.
Eligius gave the paper back to Catherine. She set it atop her husband’s documents. Her son came to her and she put her arm around his waist and held him close. She beckoned Julia and took her in as well; there was room.
The old man’s breathing came infrequently. His face grimaced in pain and concentration, as if by indomitable will he could make whatever world he floated through better than the one he left.
“ It seems we are all in debt now,” Wynfield said.
“ What I did,” Wynfield began, his voice thin and lacking its sonorous authority, “ what Charles and I did, I would do again. Perhaps I would augment the garrisons against the lack of civility in these people, but that is all. We took a country that at its best could scarcely sustain villages built from mud, and made them estates that offered the Indian man a living wage. Where is the wrong? That we accelerated the inevitable failing of a backward people? That we sought to reclaim some good from that failure? Were I to tell it to the queen herself, I would be rewarded. Perhaps I will tell her myself.
“ But I will honor my friend’s wishes. Do you hear, Charles? I will do this for you. Your family will be seen to with the earnings from all our endeavors to improve Ceylon’s lands. What do you say about that, Catherine? Do you object? Are your morals inflamed? Or in the name of your well-being and that of your loved ones, do you say to yourself, there is a greater good met. None of us are different. Indeed, we belong together. And Charles, should I decide to come back and serve Ceylon, I will do so with no one’s permission. Speak of my work to your heart’s desire. Find someone who will care.”
“Then why leave?”
All my life, Eligius thought, I shall remember his expression, that a kutha could ask such a thing.
There was plain hate in Wynfield’s eyes, shorn of class or race. Hate between men. “ Because I do not want to die here,” Wynfield said, “ with the likes of you.”
He stayed only long enough to issue orders to Catherine. There was a steamer, the Royal Captain, that had veered into Colombo to avoid Calcutta’s sand banks lest it run aground in the Hooghly River. The steamer was due to leave soon, and there was little room left on it. Servants who were English were welcome.
“And Eligius,” Julia said.
“ I cannot speak to that.” Wynfield took his jacket and threw it at Eligius. Turning, he waited to be robed.
Eligius held the jacket open for the governor. “Be sure of your choices, kutha. If by some chance you leave here, there will be no returning for you, no matter the circumstance. Your own will not take you back.”
“ I shall earn my own passage to England, and back again if I choose.”
“ London will teach you a hard lesson. Think on it.” He stormed out without so much as a token touch of Charles’ hem.
Catherine held her husband’s hand. Her expression was unknowable. Eligius had never before seen a woman gaze upon her mate in such a way. Even his mother, pulling a thin blanket over a drunken Chandrak when he fell into an indifferent sleep, even she tended a small ember of affection. This was something else the memsa’ab sent to Charles as he drifted further away.
“ I don’t know what sort of life you’ll have, Eligius,” Sir John said. “ You’re a good fellow. You certainly will make a good husband and father, and even help your country get back on its feet. These are not options for you in England, I ’m afraid.”
Catherine tried to coax Ewen back into her lap, but her son would have none of his mother ’s attention. “ I don’t care if he comes or not,” he said angrily while staring at his father.
A man emerges, she thought.
Footsteps, dry and scuttling, trailed away from the bedroom and down the corridor. “ I must speak with my mother,” Eligius said.
“ Be under no illusions,” she told him. “There is no way to make right what has been done. Do not spend your life in search of such a thing.”
Charles’ stirrings had slowed to nothing. His mouth opened and remained.
“ I am aware,” Eligius said.
HE FOUND SUDARMA in his room. She held the feather print as tears filled her eyes, but he was already trying to forget the sight of her crying; the flush of silence it brought to the world. He wanted his blood to turn cold and indifferent. Then he could begin to forget Dimbola. This place he belonged to.
“ How do you even consider going with them?” she asked. “ Is it her? The daughter?”
He tried to walk away from her. She grabbed his shoulder and spun him roughly. “ Do you think I ’m stupid? I see a man’s coveting in your eyes, but don’t be so foolish to think that the likes of you will ever have the likes of her. You’ll do nothing but move your servitude from one place to another.”
“The servitude you wished for me.”
“ Yes. I was wrong. Is that what you need to hear from me? Very well. I was wrong and selfish, thinking only of my belly. How much more punishment do I deserve? And what about Gita? Should she be abandoned by her only brother?”
“ What does it matter, to leave or stay? I ’ ve seen how their people and now my own people look at me. I am hated equally. There is no life left for me.”
“ With them you’ll have nothing! Here, at least you have your family.”
“ We have no family left. Only what we remember.”
He sat on the floor and let his head rest against the cool wall. It trembled with the storming of feet in the halls. Julia’s wailing rose. “ I have to go. There is one thing to do yet, for the sa’ab. Come. I want you to watch.”
“I’ve seen all I want to see of them.”
“ Perhaps, amma. But you’ ve seen nothing of me.”
THEY FOUND EACH other in the hush of Dimbola, in the quiet corridors and darkened rooms, and that was how they told each other. One at a time, gentlest with Ewen, who grew still more sullen with the word that his father had died.
Everyone gathered in the bedroom. Charles lay in his finest suit. His hands were clasped across his chest. One eyelid remained stubbornly ajar, enough to see the lightless mote behind.
Catherine placed flowers in an unbound garland around his head. She stepped back to study the scene as tears rolled freely down her face. Eligius whispered in her ear and she sobbed, nodding. He left and returned with Charles’ map and documents. She stood motionless, so he took the liberty of arranging them for her. The documents under one of Charles’ stiffening hands. The map above his head, with the artist’s warm stencil lines facing out.
“ Mother, my tunic.”
Sudarma brought the tunic without a word. Eligius put it on and knelt to the side of Charles’ bed. To let the memsa’ab see.
“ Yes,” she said, weeping.
She arranged candles in a ring around the bed. Eligius removed the glass from Charles’ map. Using the small pane, he caught a sufficient amount of the candles’ flickering glow to direct a golden cloud across the old man’s face, filling it with a false radiance. Then he took up his position at the side of the bed.
She stepped beneath the camera cloak. Never could I have done what I have done if you were not with me, guiding me straight and letting me wander. You never prayed and you never believed enough that I loved you, and you will remain with me.
She opened the shutter. “Oh, my husband,” she wept from beneath. “You have torn my heart from me.”
Julia knelt on the other side of the deathbed. She laced her fingers together and muttered silent words over her father.
So did Eligius. He closed his eyes and found something to pray for that was his alone.
What you did, you are damned for. But it is not how I see you now. Should I ever view this photograph again and follow it back to this moment, I will not find the man who would save Ceylon. I will not find a worthy man. I will find a father who brought into the world a girl with pools of light in her eyes. A husband who stood back and let his woman find what had not been found. It is not a bad way to be remembered.
Catherine emerged from under the cloak. Her face was salted with tears and sweat. She washed the glass. Leaves of silver and shadow rode the water to the floor.
Eligius took the plate from her and left it to the light. Charles came soon, with the two-hearted map of Ceylon above him. On either side, Eligius and Jul
ia knelt reverentially, their heads bowed.
Sudarma approached the plate. The candles behind the glass formed clouds on the image. She clutched her sari and knelt before it.
“ What shall it be called?” Sir John asked. He watched Sudarma’s quiet reverie before the glass.
“Ceylon remembers him,” Eligius said.
Catherine cradled her husband’s head. Next to her, the image of her husband bled and froze on the glass. “So it does,” she said.
BY SIR JOHN’S calculations, they could take five crates’ worth of possessions on the ship before running the risk of leaving their clothes and collectibles behind, to face the ignominy of being picked through by Ceylon’s unfortunates. Their furniture and books, all save Charles’ most prized legal tomes and treatises, had to stay.
They set about packing what remained. Julia’s writings and implements, her favorite dresses. Ewen’s calliope, into which a candle could be set to spin the shadows of exotic animals onto the walls. Sir John’s maps. For Catherine, her camera and all the plates from the portraits she’d made.
Sir John guessed the ship’s captain would forbid her chemicals. “ We’ll find new ones in London,” he told her. “Or we’ll create our own. Think of the resources we’ll have there.”
Eligius told his mother to bind the Colebrooks’ possessions with sheets to protect them. In the morning, he would ride to the Galle Face to give the vicar word of Charles’ passing. “ I want him to be buried here,” Catherine said. “ Behind the Galle Face. I will grant him his love for this country, but he will rest in the shadow of a Christian God’s house. As for whatever else remains here, to hell with all of it.”
Eligius offered his help to Ewen but the boy refused. There was a hint of recrimination in Ewen’s dismissive wave. It disturbed Eligius to see the boy behave in such a way, but he gave Ewen wide berth.
Sudarma was in Catherine’s bedroom, wrapping Charles’ photograph. A sheet lay over Charles’ face. Eligius could make out the contours of Charles’ beard and nose.