“GEOFFREY!”
A naked man burst from the nearby bushes.
“Hello, Algy,” Thraxton shouted, chortling gleefully as he ran past.
“Geoffrey, what the deuce—” Algernon began to say, when a second later Mister Greenley, a gray-haired man in his late fifties, burst from the same bushes in hot pursuit, wielding a gardening rake with an obvious intent to do Thraxton some serious mischief.
“I’ll get ya, you swine!” Greenley yelled after the fleeing Thraxton.
Algernon and Parkinson joined the pursuit and now the four of them crashed pell-mell through the dense vegetation. Even as he ran, Algernon could see his position as head botanist evaporating before his eyes. His best friend was engaging in a demonstration of public lewdness that could very well land them both in the law courts if not at least the newspapers. Meanwhile his head gardener was trying his damndest to emasculate a peer of the realm with a gardening implement. If word of this got out, Kew’s head botanist would be lucky to find a position as a gardener in a municipal vegetable allotment.
A respectable middle-class family—a husband and wife, and their fifteen-year-old daughter—were strolling along one of the paths when Thraxton leapt from the undergrowth directly in front of them. All three stood in open-mouthed astonishment at the unwarranted appearance of a naked virile man. Then the wife screamed and swooned into her husband’s arms. The schoolgirl’s eyes widened in delight at her first glimpse of male genitalia. She held a pigtail to her mouth and giggled.
A moment later Mister Greenley burst from the bushes. He swung the rake at Thraxton’s head, narrowly missing. Thraxton ducked under the whizzing rake and took off running again just as Algernon and Parkinson reached the pathway.
“Geoffrey!” Algernon cried helplessly. “For God’s sake, man, put your clothes back on!”
Mister Greenley trembled with rage as he stopped to catch his breath. “Filthy swine. Wait till I lay my hands on him.”
Greenley made as if to run after Thraxton again, but Algernon grabbed his arm to restrain him.
“No! Please, Mister Greenley, Parkinson, leave this to me. I will endeavor to make him see reason.”
But Mister Greenley’s blood was up. He had no intention of allowing such a lecher to escape without a good hiding. “I don’t care if he is a lord,” he spat. “Prancing around naked in front of God and the world. The man ought to be horsewhipped.”
“Yes, thank you, Mister Greenley,” Algernon repeated, attempting to assert his authority. “That will be all. I shall deal with this matter myself.”
“Horsewhipped, I say!”
“Please.”
Mister Greenley cast a furious scowl in the direction he had seen Thraxton disappear. With great reluctance he shouldered his rake and walked slowly toward the door. Algernon gave Parkinson a nod to indicate that he should follow Greenley’s lead. When both men had gone, he stepped off the path and pushed his way into the lush vegetation.
“Geoffrey,” he called. “Put your clothes back on. You’ll cause a scandal. You’ll get me the sack!”
Thraxton’s disembodied voice came from somewhere in front of him. “They won’t sack you, Algy. Not while I give so generously to the Royal Botanical Society.”
Thraxton stepped from behind a spectacular breadfruit tree, his naked torso glistening. “Come on,” Thraxton urged. “Get your clothes off, Algy. You have recreated Eden. This is our natural world. Let us be natural, too.” He struck a dramatic pose, one armed raised. “I am the new Adam, and I have found my Eve.”
With that Thraxton turned and ran off into the undergrowth, chortling inanely.
“Geoffrey!” Algernon watched his friend’s bare bottom vanish and hurried to follow. After several minutes’ searching he came upon Thraxton again. He was standing on tiptoe, straining to reach up and touch the huge orange and purple bloom of an exotic tropical flower.
“Geoffrey, no!” Algernon cried in alarm. “Do not touch it!”
“Why ever not?” Thraxton asked. “It is exquisite!”
“It is a bloom that cannot abide the touch of man. If you lay hands upon it, the flower will die. Please… please… let it be.”
Thraxton relaxed his stretching fingers. He drew back and turned to look at Algernon.
“A mere touch will kill it?”
Algernon nodded in affirmation.
Thraxton was quite struck by the thought.
“Why is it those things of the greatest beauty are always just beyond our grasp?”
* * *
“I believe I have found my Eve,” Thraxton said.
He was fully clothed once again, to the great relief of Algernon, and the two were strolling around the pond that lay immediately in front of the Palm House. Compared to the dripping humidity of the greenhouses, the day was dry and bracing.
“Who is this demi-goddess?” Algernon asked. “Another actress? Surely not the wife of that fellow you told me about—Sir whatshisname?”
“Algy, you disappoint me. You know me better than that. Do I wax eloquent about every single one of my conquests?”
“Yes, Geoffrey, now that you mention it, you do tend to rattle on about them—every single one.”
“Mmmn, quite,” Thraxton said, looking hurt. “This is different. I have truly met my inamorata.”
Algernon was unable to conceal a look of deep skepticism. Thraxton noticed and cleared his throat, but continued. “Actually she is the woman you pointed out to me that day at the British Museum—Constance Pennethorne.”
Algernon’s face dropped at the news, but Thraxton was oblivious.
“We met the other day in Highgate Cemetery. We had some time to talk and, I may dare say, to open our very souls to one another. I found out that not only is she a woman of great beauty, she is also a creature of rare intelligence and spirit.”
Algernon looked away so that Thraxton could not read what was written on his face. In the center of the pond stood a Laocoön-like statue of a naked athlete struggling with a serpent. Algernon suddenly felt a deep empathy for the fellow—he could practically feel the serpent’s coils tightening around his own neck.
“And she feels the same about you?” Algernon probed.
“I have little doubt of it. She’s invited me to a very exciting evening this Saturday. A séance of all things. I’m looking forward to it profoundly.”
Algernon turned back to look at Thraxton. He had forgotten to recompose his face and Thraxton noticed his dour expression.
“Oh, there’s no need to look so glum, old stick,” Thraxton said good-naturedly. “Of course, you’re invited, too. She went out of her way to mention it, in fact.”
Thraxton punched his old friend in the shoulder. “Should be quite an adventure, eh? Conversing with spirits of the departed!”
12
SÉANCE IN THE DARK
Five figures sat around a circular table covered in a white tablecloth embroidered with floral patterns. At the center of the table, a softly hissing lantern, turned down low, provided the only source of light apart from the ruddy glow of coals in the fireplace. From their gilded frames, the portraits of the Wakefield family—a grandfather with white hair and a long white beard, a matronly woman wrapped in a fox stole, a young girl of three in pigtails—looked down upon the séance with luminous eyes that seemed to move in the flickering light.
Thraxton was seated between Mister Wakefield, a thin, ascetic man with white hair; to his left, and Constance Pennethorne to his right. Algernon sat to the right of Constance, while to his right sat Mrs. Wakefield, whose emaciation did not bode well for her cooking abilities. As is often the case with couples married so long, the two more closely resembled brother and sister than husband and wife.
“Now, if the sitters would kindly take hold of each other’s hands,” said Mister Wakefield in his broad Yorkshire accent. Grateful of the excuse for the intimacy of touch, Thraxton reached for Constance’s hand. She flashed him a polite smile, but then turned her attent
ion to Algernon. As she took his hand in hers she gave it a slight squeeze that immediately brought Algernon’s surprised eyes up to meet hers. Thraxton noticed the brief exchange and felt a twinge of jealousy. Mister Wakefield took hold of Thraxton’s left hand.
“My good lady wife’s hands must remain free,” Mister Wakefield announced, “so she may write upon the pad.”
“We are to hear no rappings, then?” Thraxton asked. “Witness no ghostly manifestations?”
Mister Wakefield shifted a little in his chair and cleared his throat, clearly agitated by the question. “No, Lord Thraxton. My wife and I leave such theatrics to the frauds and music hall conjurers. We of the Spiritualist Church are interested only in sober communication with the spirits of the departed. What we practice is called automatic writing. My wife, who acts as medium, enters a trance, whereupon we may put any questions we like—so long as they are serious—to the spiritual presences hovering around us. They will guide my wife’s hand as it moves across the paper.”
“Ah, quite,” Thraxton said, frowning. He, of course, had been hoping for knocks and table rapping, for disembodied voices and levitating trumpets, even to see milky white ectoplasm streaming from the mouth, nostrils and sundry other orifices of Mrs. Wakefield. In short, all the sensational manifestations of the séances he had read about in the London Standard. Instead he would have to be content with an old woman scrawling on a notepad with a pencil. And if he wasn’t very much mistaken, the affections of Constance Pennethorne seemed to be taking a turn toward Algernon instead of himself. The evening was proving to be a crashing disappointment.
Mister Wakefield begged for silence while his wife steeled her mind for contact with the Other Side. All attention remained fixed upon Mrs. Wakefield as she sat with her eyes closed, lids trembling, then suddenly slumped in the chair, head lolling forward so that her chin rested upon her chest. For a while the only sound in the room was her slow, steady breathing.
Wonderful, Thraxton thought to himself. The old crone’s fallen asleep.
Everyone jumped as Mrs. Wakefield gasped and stiffened. A sudden chill descended upon the room. Thraxton sensed it and the hair at the back of his neck bristled. Algernon, ever the skeptical scientist, wrote it off as nothing more than a draft from the fireplace.
In a trembling voice, Mrs. Wakefield asked the spirit presences hovering near if they bore a message for one of her sitters. Her right hand began to shake with uncontrollable tremors, and then suddenly shot across the paper, scribbling down words at an unbelievable rate. Interspersed with the words, written in a free-flowing cursive script of excellent penmanship, were strange icons and hieratic symbols, the meaning of which Thraxton could not even guess at. The scribbling went on for seven or eight lines and then stopped. Mrs. Wakefield’s hand flew back to the corner of the pad and sat there quivering, as if waiting for another message to come through.
Mister Wakefield leant over from his seat and read aloud what was written on the pad. “My dearest Constance—”
Constance drew in a shuddering breath at the mention of her name, her eyes filling with tears. Mister Wakefield continued reading.
“How I miss you, my darling. How I miss our quiet evenings together, the sound of your voice, and your sweet singing. But despair not, for time on this side passes quickly. Soon we will be reunited in eternal bliss.”
“But what if Constance were to remarry?” Algernon blurted the question aloud before he could check himself. All eyes, save Mrs. Wakefield’s, immediately turned upon him. He cleared his throat and squirmed in his chair. But to his surprise, Constance squeezed his hand in reassurance and turned to Mrs. Wakefield. “Yes,” she said. “I should like to ask my husband that very question. What if I were to remarry?”
Mrs. Wakefield drew in a deep breath. Her hand quivered, then shot across the page. Words flowed for several lines and then stopped. Like an automaton, her arm flew back to its resting place.
“We are all one in the spirit world,” Mister Wakefield read aloud. “There is no jealousy here. Only love. Endless compassion. If you wish to remarry, do so. With my blessing.”
Constance breathed an audible sigh of relief. She turned at once to Algernon and smiled broadly.
Watching how much attention Constance was paying to Algernon, Thraxton sulked.
“Lord Thraxton?” Mister Wakefield addressed him. “Do you have a question to put to the spirits? A loved one you wish to speak with?”
Thraxton thought immediately of his mother. But what would he say? What could he ask? And after all these years? For some reason the idea terrified him. There was too much to say. Too much to be answered in a few scribbled lines. “No,” he fought for the right words. “I mean yes, there is a loved one I wish to speak with, but… but not now. I should need to prepare myself first.”
“I understand,” Mister Wakefield said. “It is no trivial thing to open one’s heart to a love long thought to have been lost.” He turned his eyes to Algernon. “What about you, Mister Hyde-Davies? Do you have a question for the spirits? A deceased loved one you wish to converse with?”
During the exchange with Constance, Algernon had toyed with exposing the fraud by asking to speak with his father, who was still very much alive. But having just witnessed how much comfort Constance took from these exchanges, he decided against causing her any pain. He shook his head.
“Wait,” Thraxton interjected. “Did you say I might ask any question of the spirits?”
“Yes, Lord Thraxton. The spirits see everything in our world, past, present, and future.”
“Very well, then. I wonder if the spirits could tell me the name of my inamorata, the woman I might marry.”
All eyes returned to Mrs. Wakefield. She sat slumped in her chair, trance-bound, her mind presumably floating somewhere above the séance table as it communed with the ghostly presences hovering there. As they watched, a tremor rippled across the features of her face that was quite disturbing to see. Her right hand resumed its quaking, then shot across the page, this time not writing but sketching geometrical shapes: a triangle mounted atop a rectangle, and then a curving shape coming out of the triangle, and several ovate circles attached to it. Her hand flew back to the center of the rectangle and wrote something, a single word in large block letters. Having finished, Mrs. Wakefield’s hand jerked back to its resting point.
“I, I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said Mister Wakefield upon examining the pad of paper. “In all our séances, I’ve never…” He trailed off, stymied. “I, I’m afraid I simply don’t know what to make of this.”
He turned the pad around and pushed it across the table toward Thraxton. On the pad was a simple, almost child-like drawing of a rectangular building topped by a triangular pitched roof. At the front of the building were two double doors. Above the doors written in Roman script, as if chiseled there, was the word ELYSIUM. Strangest of all, growing out of a hole in the roof was a huge flower with a slender stem and curving, orchid-like petals.
When Thraxton looked at the drawing, an involuntary shudder passed through the core of his being.
“Elysium,” Constance said, reading the word aloud. “What does that mean?”
Thraxton was familiar with the term. “In Greek mythology, Elysium is the abode assigned to the blessed after death,” he explained. “It is the place where the dead live in a state of ideal happiness.”
“But what is this building supposed to be?” Constance asked.
Thraxton lifted the pad and turned it so that both Constance and Algernon could see the rough sketch of a small rectangular building topped by a pitched roof.
“Is it not obvious?” he asked. “It is a tomb.”
13
AN ENCOUNTER AT THE NECROPOLIS
The whole of the next day Thraxton was in a peevish and irritable mood. The previous evening’s séance had been filled with revelations, all of which left him baffled and perplexed. Constance Pennethorne’s invitation to the event had seemed to be a
n open encouragement to his affection. But, once there, her rather familiar behavior with Algernon had sent a very contrary message.
So, too, the message delivered by the medium had both intrigued and unnerved him. The possible proof of life after death stirred a host of vague hopes and longings in the depths of Thraxton’s being. But then there was the ominous image of the tomb. What was he to make of that? Over breakfast and then lunch, his mind spawned one interpretation after another, each darker than the one before it.
By mid-afternoon the tumult of thoughts racing through his brain had given him a headache. To relieve the pain he took a little laudanum, and then a little more. But as always, laudanum brought out in Thraxton the intense melancholia that always lurked just beneath the surface. During these attacks, Thraxton knew of only one way to abate them, which was to surrender and immerse himself in the feeling. To this end he instructed Harold to ready his brougham. An hour later Thraxton found himself once more in Highgate Cemetery sitting in his favorite spot, atop the ever stoic and uncomplaining Emily Fitzsimmons.
He wracked his throbbing brain for a way of turning Constance Pennethorne’s affections back in his direction. Obviously, his reputation was a black mark against him. Even his wealth and title seemed to leave her unimpressed. What quality did he possess that Algernon lacked? He sat tapping his pen against the blank notepad until the answer sprang into his mind. He was a poet. All women found poets irresistible. He would write a poem about Constance. Ergo, she would melt. He would conquer.
Thraxton quickly scribbled a title at the top of the page: “Sweet Constancy.” Now he had his theme, he had but to conjure inspiration. He stared into lengthening afternoon shadows while words and phrases tumbled in his mind. Suddenly he became aware of sobbing. He turned his head slightly, listening. Yes, it was sobbing, and a man’s sobbing at that.
Thraxton left his notepad in the care of Mrs. Fitzsimmons and followed the elegiac sound to its source. Up ahead, a small funeral party had gathered around an open grave into which a coffin was being lowered. The sexton lingered in the shade of an ancient oak, observing from a discreet distance as he puffed at a long-stemmed clay pipe. Partly to share the moment with someone, and partly to share the aroma of tobacco smoke, Thraxton walked over to join him and the two watched the service in silence.
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