Swiftly: A Novel (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  Eleanor breathed out, and the passion to squeeze the life from Burton’s flesh relaxed within her, her hatred diminishing and diminishing. And by whatever mysterious process that governs these subterranean and irrational emotional forces, after a few moments Eleanor felt calm again, calm enough to turn to the man and smile at him. His beard twitched. Perhaps he was returning the smile.

  The Dutch clock ticked on.

  Ten minutes grew into twenty, and then thirty. From time to time Burton essayed a clumsy conversational gambit: the weather; the latest British success in the Continental war; the last lecture of the Fitzroy Society (John Percy FRS had talked on the metallurgy of lead, with added remarks on desilverisation and cupellation, ‘a most interesting talk’, Burton said), at which neither Mrs nor Miss Davis had been able to be present. A shame. Such an interesting talk. But each conversational exchange died quickly, and the parched silences between them grew longer and longer. Eleanor, her head still buzzing faintly with the aftershocks of her violent inner flux, settled only slowly back into boredom. But the boredom claimed her eventually.

  Eventually it was clear that time had elapsed to sustain the polite fiction that Burton had enjoyed Mrs Davis’s company. He shuffled in his seat, coughed, and said: ‘I wonder whether Miss Davis would enjoy a stroll around the square?’

  Eleanor almost sighed with relief; not because she relished the prospect of walking with Burton, but because it marked an end to the parlour-torture of merely sitting there. She rose abruptly, and hurried through to her own room to dress herself for outside. She called Sally in with her to give the impression that she was being dressed by the maid, but in actuality she dressed herself, because Sally was inept at the task. Away from her future husband she gasped with a release of pressure. Maddeningly there were tears somewhere behind her eyes. She had to focus, to lock them away there.

  Burton and she stepped out together into the grey afternoon. Eleanor felt a little light-headed, with a touch of nausea in her abdomen, but that could doubtless be ascribed to the fact that she had eaten no luncheon. They strolled to Soho Square, Burton’s cane tapping the pavement as he walked.

  ‘I am so glad to find you well, Miss Davis,’ he said.

  This might have been the occasion for her to say Call me Eleanor, please do; but she found herself disinclined to encourage such further intimacy between them. She was to marry the man, after all. That was surely enough.

  ‘And I,’ she replied, looking briefly in his direction, ‘you.’

  For several minutes they walked in silence around the central green of Soho Square. Then Burton spoke, more forcefully than before.

  ‘I confess myself anxious, Miss Davis, that my gift to you was ill-chosen. ’

  She smiled, but the anger was hard as a conker in her belly. She had already thanked him for the present. Was he fishing for more gratitude? Did he expect her to reassure him for ever? ‘It is quite alright, Mr Burton,’ she said. ‘My mamma has perhaps misled you a little. It is only her teasing manner, she means no harm. But, truly, I shall enjoy the poems very much.’

  ‘I remember our first meeting was at the Fitzroy Society,’ said Burton. ‘And I see now that your interest in science is genuine. Perhaps I would have pleased you better by bringing you a copy of Mrs Somerville’s Molecular and Microscopic Science, or something along those lines.’

  This struck home. Eleanor had seen that very book advertised in the endpapers of the latest Quarterly, which she had read at one of Lady Fonblaque’s soirées - and upon seeing the advertisement she had surrendered herself immediately to a hopeless covetousness. The book had been advertised as two volumes, post octavo, 21s. A fortune. It might just as well, for Eleanor, have been twenty-one pounds. And two volumes would mean two shillings for a week’s perusal out of the library; even that petty sum could not have been expended without hardship in some other quarter. And yet she wanted to read the book very much indeed. Could such work be hers, truly, as a gift?

  She tried to keep the eagerness from her voice. ‘Do you have that work, Mr Burton?’

  Burton looked away as if embarrassed. ‘I do, Miss Davis. The,’ he added, with a little spurt of anxious expression, ‘the publisher sent me a copy.’

  ‘The publisher?’

  ‘Mr Murray. I know him through a mutual acquaintance. I, in turn, provided some of the microscopic equipment used to make the illustrations. My workers, my Blefuscans, are extremely skilled in fine optics work. If it would give you pleasure, I will lend you . . . pardon me, give you . . . the book.’

  Eleanor’s bibliophilic avarice flared in her breast. She wanted the book intensely. ‘That,’ she said, with a tightly controlled inclination of her head, ‘would be very kind of you, Mr Burton.’ Two volumes! With illustrations! Glee moved inside her, she couldn’t quell it. But immediately behind the delight came a sense of humiliation - that she was dependent on such a man as Burton for gifts of books. And with the humiliation came the anger again. That she could not buy the book herself! - twenty-one paltry shillings. That Burton could dangle the thing in front of her, as a treat for a faithful lapdog. That she was now beholden to him. Her hate crystallised inside her again; not so vehemently as it had done before, but with a sharp edge to it.

  Burton stopped suddenly, and stepped in front of her. ‘Miss Davis,’ he said, earnestness making his big face look ridiculous. ‘May I call you Eleanor ?’

  There was no avoiding it. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Eleanor ... I know it is conventional when a man makes a proposal of marriage, and when that proposal is accepted . . . conventional for the man to declare himself the happiest creature on the planet. But believe me, in my case the phrase is no mere form of words. You indeed make me, you have made me, happier than any man in the world.’

  His eyes, moist with unshed tears, glinted slimily in the sunlight.

  ‘Mr Burton . . .’ Eleanor said.

  ‘It is hard for me to express, because I am no orator. I am not eloquent. But I never thought to find a woman . . . to find a wife . . . who would share in any way my own interests. My own passions.’

  ‘Interests?’ queried Eleanor, choosing the less indecent word.

  The bare skin above Burton’s beard warmed orange-red again. The man blushes, Eleanor thought with annoyance, at the drop of a handkerchief . ‘My interest in the mechanical sciences, I mean to say,’ he gabbled. ‘I only meant . . . but I am putting it poorly. I know I am an old man, my dear Eleanor. I know that I am but a poor catch for a beautiful young woman such as yourself.’

  He paused. Eleanor knew that she ought to frame some conventional contradiction at this point, to murmur No no, or Not at all, but the words stuck in her throat. Burton’s observations were nothing but the truth, after all.

  ‘I know,’ he went on, stammering a little now, ‘that I am come from no fine family, that I bring no great dignity with me - except money, I suppose, and trash such as money can have no appeal to a woman of your breeding.’ He ground to a halt, coughed, cleared his throat, and started again. ‘But I bring a true heart, Eleanor,’ he said. His eyes were glistening. ‘I hope you will believe me, for it is the simple truth.’

  ‘Mr Burton,’ Eleanor murmured.

  ‘Jonathan!’ he cried, almost shouting. His blushing cheeks deepened their shade. ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered, ‘Please call me Jonathan.’

  His emotional distress was so intense that Eleanor began to feel almost alarmed at it. It was painful to watch a full-grown man reduced to such a state.

  ‘Jonathan,’ she said.

  ‘Allow me,’ he said, straightening his spine and endeavouring to speak with a more level voice. ‘Allow me to finish what I was saying, Eleanor. Perhaps it is foolish, but I feel I must say it, for my own peace of mind if for no other reason. I know that people gossip about our match. A man, although wealthy, of no family marries a woman from a better class than his own. They gossip that I have consented to the match only to raise my social standing. But it isn�
��t true! It isn’t true! I must tell you why I have fallen so in love with you . . .’

  ‘Jonathan,’ she said again, vaguely rebuking.

  ‘I feel a commonality of spirit between us, Eleanor. It is not that you are young and beautiful, although you are both those things. It is not that I have come to a period in my life when I have the money and the inclination to start a family, although that is also true. It is that I sense, I sense, that you share my own passion for the sciences. For the mechanical sciences. For mathematics - your mother said so. Women so rarely see the beauty of science. Women are so often vain and foolish, so caught up in nonsense and vacancy. But not you, my darling.’

  He stepped towards her, as if he would embrace her, or even kiss her - right there, in the street: that would be just his sort of vulgarity, Eleanor thought, despising him with a panicky intensity. She could not stop herself stepping backward, and Burton pulled rapidly back as well, as if dancing cumbrously.

  There was a pause. Some of the urgency seemed to drain out of the man.

  ‘All I am trying to say,’ he said in a lower tone, ‘is that I hope you will continue your interest in sciences. I hope you will allow me to assist you in cultivating it - any books you require, any lectures or societies. Any journals.’

  Eleanor looked around her. The vista was of low trees and greensward in the little park, and hard by that the towering façade of housing. Windows slightly bowed like pouches of glass. Stucco as textured as skin. The wind was making trickling sounds in the trees as it shuffled itself through the leaves. A clergyman walked quickly past them and hurried down Greek Street.

  ‘Thank you,’ Eleanor said slowly, not meeting Burton’s eye.

  ‘It’s all,’ said Burton, turning away, ‘that I wished to say.’

  He resumed his walking, and Eleanor fell into step beside him. They exchanged no more words. On the far side of the square they paused. The iron railings outside one of the tall houses caught Eleanor’s attention. The metal was callused with rust at every intersection, and had been imperfectly painted with tar-paint. Little spots of red-brown, like the scabs on grazed skin, clustered. Like sores, almost, though dry and crusted with little nubbins of metal dust. A poor public frontage for a grand house.

  They started the stroll back to Poland Street. Turning off the square onto Carlisle Street Burton resumed his confessions, although in a much more subdued voice. ‘I meant to add also,’ he said, ‘that I do not expect you to leave the apartment you share with your mother. After our wedding, I mean. In the immediate aftermath, I mean. In time, of course, your mother will come and live with us; but of course my bachelor apartments are wholly unsuitable, and until the purchase of the house is completed, I know you will remain in Poland Street. I do not wish to . . . intrude,’ he added, sheepishly.

  ‘That is very kind of you,’ said Eleanor, distantly.

  ‘The purchase is set for next month,’ Burton added. ‘You must allow me to show it to you, before that time. To show you round, I mean. And your mother, of course.’

  ‘We would be delighted.’

  They were walking up Poland Street now. ‘Splendid,’ Burton mumbled. ‘Splendid. It is on Gower Street you know,’ he added, with animation. ‘Not far from the new university. I have attended several public lectures at the university, of considerable interest.’ He stopped again. ‘May I suggest Friday? I will call for you both at eleven. I’ll come,’ he added, hurriedly, as if it needed saying, ‘in a carriage, of course.’

  ‘Friday,’ said Eleanor, firmly.

  There was another ponderous pause. Then Burton bowed his whole bear-like body at the waist, said goodbye, and walked quickly away. Eleanor watched him for a moment. She could detect in his gait a physical relief, as if a burden had been lifted from his wide shoulders. That he could be so pleased to depart piqued her once again. She had disliked his presence and looked forward to his going, but she hated him more for feeling such relief to be out of her presence. How vulgar he was.

  [3]

  It did not occur to Eleanor that there was anything unreasonable about her dislike of Burton. The more he tried to ingratiate himself with her, the more she despised him. In this she felt no compunction whatsoever because - after all - he was the one with the money. His wealth provided Eleanor with the right to hate him, or so she told herself. Because he had the wealth and she had none, he possessed the power. Because he was the powerful party and she the weak, she was justified in kicking against the pricks, in asserting herself by whatever means she could. The fact that he cloaked his power in a shambling display of social awkwardness and foolishness only justified the hatred more. She might marry him - there was no helping that, of course. She might be well-bred enough to ensure her hatred never slipped past the mask of her face. She might act the part of the good wife, good mother, good hostess; might act any part required of her. But her hate would always be there inside her, a miniature version of herself sitting inside her head and looking through the portholes in her skull with eyes of fire.

  The volume of poetry was placed on the little shelf of books in the apartment, its pages still uncut.

  She read Smith’s Natural History of the Human Species, but the book was a disappointment. The author rehearsed the old Lamarckian theories that forms of life altered and evolved, but rehearsed them only to dismiss them peremptorily. The proof of the argument was in the Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian races, he said; the proof of God’s intervention in the natural world.

  It has been known since the days of Galileo Galilei, and his great study on the strength of materials, that a square-cube law applies to the magnification of materials. Volume, and therefore weight, increases as the cube of linear dimensions, but strength increases only as the square. Were a horse to be enlarged to the size of an elephant its legs would be insufficiently strong to support its new weight, and would snap underneath it. Anatomical study of the elephant reveals that providence has given it legs markedly shorter and thicker, in proportion, than other animals. And yet this square-cube law appears contradicted by the Brobdingnagians. We might conceive that giant men would bear the same relation to ordinary men as an elephant does to a dog, namely that their legs would be short and broad, their bodies compressed in proportion, their metabolisms slow and sluggish. But this is not what we discover.

  Were Lamarck’s evolution the true case, he said, the giant-men might have ‘evolved’ from men of the proper size over time. But in this case they would be made of the same stuff as ordinary men - and they were not. Their bones were knit differently, of a stronger material than human bone, or they would break under the weight of their oversized bodies. The only explanation for the giants was that God had created them just as they were, created them with the organs they needed to survive perfectly arranged with one another.

  Eleanor found the reasoning weak. She had read, and been very persuaded by, Buffon’s treatise on the ‘generation and degeneration’ of alteration in the form of species. She believed, with Buffon, that life created increasingly complex organisms over time. The Pacificans clearly presented a special case, and any scientist would need to accommodate their physical peculiarities into his science: Eleanor had hoped that Smith would do this. But Smith’s arguments consisted of nothing but flat contradiction of the established science, contradiction without further evidence being adduced, save only chapter-and-verse quotation from the Bible. As if the Bible were science!

  She and Mamma visited the house in Gower Street that Burton hoped to purchase; a four-storey family home, with large rooms, with a basement, with a grass-and-flower; garden. ‘How beautiful it is,’ ejaculated Mamma. Eleanor nodded and smiled.

  After the tour the three of them paused in the hallway whilst Burton stood before her stammering and stepping from foot to foot. In the carriage outside, riding home, Mamma giggled and said to her: ‘I hear that he is a terrible tartar with his underlings in the factory.’

  ‘The little people?’ said Eleanor, her interest piqued.


  ‘No, the real people, I mean, they who work under him. They say he is a tartar, nothing less. And yet!’ Mamma interrupted herself with another chortle. ‘And yet to see how nervous he is before you, my dear! Love, it is, love. He is reduced to a stammering schoolboy because he loves you.’ The comedy of this point struck her again, and she laughed. ‘He is become a schoolboy and you the Dame, only because he loves you.’

  Two days afterwards Eleanor took another night-time walk through the streets, observing the nightlife with a dispassionate, a scientist’s, eye - or, at least, attempting to be as disengaged as that ideal, though the excitement of the night scene ruffled her objectivity, pumping the blood faster through her veins. She hid in a shop doorway somewhere in Farringdon whilst two men fought in the street illuminated by the light from a window. Two drunken men staggering at one another and stumbling apart, aiming great wide sweeps of their punching arms and connecting with one blow in three. It was absurd, and even amusing, but it was also thrillingly exciting. One man boxed the other in the face, and there was a distinct noise of impact, like a single clap, and a fuzz of airborne blood-droplets visible momentarily in the lamplight. The violence was real. Eleanor almost felt the impact in her own body. The fight ended when one of the men pushed the other hard against a small unshuttered casement, breaking the glass. The sound, thought dainty and tinkling, was enough to scare the aggressor off. The second man sat in the road for a while touching and touching the back of his head, bringing his hand away (Eleanor thought) wet. Then he too got up and staggered away.