by Edward Cline
Behind Jack was John Proudlocks, also mounted. The man dropped from his saddle, took a few steps closer to the conduit, and stooped to brush areverent hand over the bamboo. He glanced once at Hugh, then up at his employer. He said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “I once called this kind of thing magic. Just as you have, Jack, Mr. Kenrick here has proven that it is not. It is there,” he said, slapping the top of the conduit once with his palm, then pointing to his forehead. “But first, it must be here.”
Hugh laughed, not at Proudlocks, but from joy in discovering another man who understood such a thing. “It can begin nowhere else, Mr. Proudlocks.”
“Nowhere else,” echoed Proudlocks.
Jack sat up in his saddle. He knew what his neighbor had been working on all winter and spring, but until now had doubted the practicality of the conduit. He said, without breaking the moment, “We heard about it. We came to see for ourselves.” He did not need to say more. He nodded to Hugh in apology and concession, a simple, happy action that ennobled him and raised him in the estimation of his friend and neighbor.
Chapter 16: The Riddle
Once she had a single, irreplaceable hero, and a certain future with him. Now there were two heroes, and the future was a clouded uncertainty. It was an unparalleled circumstance for a young girl to find herself in, ominous and dangerous. Yet, it thrilled her, and caused her to hold her head up with pride. She thought she was equal to the danger, and worthy of the rivalry that was sure to ensue.
Ian McRae left the education of Etáin to his wife. It was simple logic to him: he loved Madeline, was proud of her, and reasoned that she was best qualified to produce an admirable daughter. He gladly paid for Etáin’s books, music lessons, and occasional tutor. Although he did not always approve of what Etáin learned from her mother, he also reasoned that if such knowledge did his wife no harm, it could hardly tarnish Etáin’s reputation or moral character, nor diminish the prospects of an agreeable marriage of his daughter to a respectable gentleman. The occasional, fleeting comparison of her with the daughters of the planters engendered a disapproval that lasted the length of a breakfast. Besides, it was an understanding between the couple that Etáin was being prepared and educated to become the wife of Jack Frake. This assumption was also subscribed to by Etáin, who needed little persuasion concerning the desirability, suitability, and success of such a match.
Ian McRae was placidly oblivious to the danger. Madeline McRae was too aware of it. She spoke briefly with her daughter about the matter, once she was certain that Etáin’s head was being turned by Hugh Kenrick. “But, Maman, they are both perfect. There are no faults in either of them to balance against their virtues. They are somehow identical, but each possesses his own élan.”
A colonial girl, whatever her rank, station, or status, was raised to be one of two things: an ornament of her future husband; or his working partner, if her intended spouse was a farmer, merchant, artisan, or in one of the “professions,” such as law or medicine, preferably a deferring, nearly invisible partner whose partnership was limited to assuming the management of the household she married into. She was educated up to a certain point, enough to enable her to be witty and conversant in a superficial manner on unimportant matters; philosophy, politics, and most other serious subjects were considered beyond her ken or proper interest. The rules that governed her range of knowledge and action were as painfully restrictive as the hidden stays that bound the bodice of her gown. This was the norm which few women had the skill or courage to flout without inviting the dire consequences of social ostracism and spousal rebuke. Obliged to disguise or suppress their minds, many colonial women, consigned to the great houses of their planter husbands, found outlets of expression in poetry, diaries, or in anonymous or pen-named letters in newspapers.
Madeline McRae frowned on such a fate. Her daughter, she decided, was not going to become an animated doll. She wished Etáin to be grounded as thoroughly as possible in the ways of the world. She introduced Etáin to reading matter not normally allowed in the hands of other “educated” girls: histories of Rome and Greece; Cato’s letters in the London and British Journals; volumes of The Spectator; English and French poetry, plays, and essays; and newspapers and magazines not intended for delicate, impressionable eyes. Under her direction, Etáin McRae began to assume the perspective of a woman of the world, without losing her innocence. Moreover, with the arrival of Hugh Kenrick, Etáin began to assume the persona of a Greek mortal who attracted the combative attentions of two gods. It was a development Madeline McRae could not have foreseen.
It caused her brief consternation, until she better understood that Hugh was more like Jack than unlike. Her fears were allayed, and her suspicions confirmed, on the occasion of a visit which she, her husband, and Etáin made to Meum Hall one fall afternoon, the first of many visits. Among all the titles of the books in Hugh’s library, she espied a copy of Hyperborea. Madeline McRae had read it, as had Millicent Morley. She gave Etáin the late governess’s copy when her daughter was seven. “It is quite pagan in its sentiments,” she told the girl then, “more pagan than Plutarch. Irecommend it. Study the character of Circe, the heroine, and how she views men. Be her some day, that is, learn to want an Apollo.”
Etáin read Hyperborea, and was hopelessly drawn into its universe. No other work of literature could coax her out of it; no other work would she admit into it. And as she grew older, the novel became a litmus test for many men and events in the real world. And she reached a point of maturity when the test of the literal against the real transfigured into simply a test of the spirit of Drury Trantham’s world against that of the real world.
Once, only Jack Frake passed that test, in terms of the man to be worshipped and to be gladly owned by. Then, without warning, came the glorious interloper, Hugh Kenrick. Madeline McRae was more aware of the difference his presence would make than was Etáin. She was dismayed, and happy for Etáin, at the same time. She envied her daughter the dilemma she would face in the future.
Etáin McRae was not popular with the other girls of Caxton. Nor did their parents approve of their associating with the daughter of a Scottish factor. Still, the other girls were drawn to her by a fascination with the fact that she had won Jack Frake without even trying. The future match was a paradox they wished to understand. They were raised to be seen, not often heard, and then only with cultivated coyness, affected modesty, and muted intelligence, and trained to be distant and aloof where men and especially suitors were concerned. Once, at a ball, Etáin had listened to other girls gossip or boast about the men who sought their company with discreet, unspoken intentions of eventual engagement and marriage. She asked, with some incredulousness in her words, “Does not one of you hope to marry a hero?”
Selina Granby, some years older than Etáin, laughed and said, “A hero? Of course, Etáin — provided he owns ten thousand acres, a handsome annuity from the consols, and has a friend on the Board of Trade!”
“But not a man who could be a man without having or needing those things?”
“You poor dear!” exclaimed Eleanor Cullis. “Such a man is a fiction! A fable! The true measure of a man’s worthiness is his fortune and respectability. Also, he must be of good character and good family. How secure is he in the world? That is the question every girl must answer before considering any other.”
“Can he dance, and show a good calf?” chimed in Annyce Vishonn. “Are his manners above reproach? Are his vices moderate and discreet? These are only a few of the many questions a girl must ponder before she may tolerate a man’s attentions.”
“And intentions,” giggled Eleanor Cullis.
Etáin felt sorry for these girls. Also, she felt a twinge of contempt for them. She did not believe that their indifference to heroes had much to do with their not having read Hyperborea.
She had little trouble conforming to the crucial criterion of maidenhood of being distant and aloof. No young man ever called on her at home, but not a few managed to steal a
moment alone with her at balls and other social gatherings. They, for their part, were tutored to regard an eligible young lady as something of a saint, and to come to her humbly and with profuse bows, uttering flourishing blandishments and verbose protestations of affection. She would discourage timid men who mumbled their words with statements such as, “Speak up, good sir! Or are you so dumb with wisdom that you do not know where to begin?” She would offend flattering, presumptuous young dandies with replies such as, “But, sir, your arguments are Sisyphean. Some day they may roll back down and crush you!” Such young men would conclude that Etáin, as a wife, would be either a nagging shrew, or a troublesome threat, and with relief they would forget whatever designs they had had on her. To Etáin, these men were as forgettable as one of Reverend Acland’s Sunday sermons, and would flit from her memory soon after taking their leave.
For a long time, there was only Jack Frake. They had never kissed, never touched hands, not even when they were alone, except briefly during a country-dance. A bond existed between Etáin and Jack. He wanted a completed, mature woman, and wanted her to progress to that point without his influence and constant presence. He was willing to wait for her to accomplish that. Etáin understood this, and knew that she was not yet his equal, neither in spirit nor in knowledge, nor in some intangible form whose identity eluded her. When they met, in public or in private, they spoke to each other as though they had been married for years. Their bond was the foundation of an intimacy and familiarity that was real and alive in all possible expressions but one.
There was a time when the bond did not exist. Etáin was too young to do anything but note Jack’s marriage to Jane Massie, too young to appreciate his loss when she and the infant boy died. Jack never spoke of them. Now that she was a near-woman, she respected his reticence. One thing that she admired about him was his capacity for overcoming the most crushing events in his life — imprisonment, indenture, the death of people close to him, and war — yet he would emerge from them unscathed, indestructible, unchanged, and somehow stronger. His initial stoicism would surrender to an irresistible charm.
Hugh Kenrick had that same capacity. Once, when she and her parents had supper at Meum Hall, she had seen the sketched head of a comely young woman on the wall of his library. She did not ask him about it, but he noticed her studying it. “That was her,” he said, as though she had inquired. “Reverdy.”
“Why do you keep it?” she had asked.
“Because I cannot forget what I thought she was, but was not.” He paused. “It is a fair likeness of her.”
Etáin noted the absence of bitterness in his words. He could have been speaking now of a distant relative, or of a mere acquaintance.
The histories of both men were common knowledge in Caxton, discussed in secretive, oblique terms when the subject of Jack Frake or Hugh Kenrick arose in company, and when the subjects were not present. Their characters instilled whispered caution among those critical of their pasts. Many young men harbored a repressed envy of Jack and Hugh, but, wishing to appear respectable and upright, publicly frowned on their histories. And many young women, even married ones, developed unacknowledged fantasies of being wooed and conquered by either of the two men, attracted by a vitality lacking in their beaux or husbands. Their own disapproval of Jack and Hugh was caused by an equally repressed knowledge that, to those two men, they were fundamentally invisible. They were women scorned by courteous indifference.
Madeline McRae was one of Jack’s and Hugh’s few defenders. “An absence of scandal in a man’s life,” she remarked once at a supper party at Granby Hall, “is evidence that he is incapable of passion.” She was replying to a cryptic exchange by other guests at the table about Jack and Hugh and their disreputable pasts. “Here are two men for whom scandal is a ribbon of honor. You will concede there is a difference between scandal and disgrace. But it is exhilarating to see them bring passion to everything they do. You ought to thank fortune that two such scandalous men choose to live among you.”
The table was quiet for a moment as the host, hostess, and guests absorbed this tactful reproach. Then Damaris Granby ventured, “As food for conversation, Mrs. McRae?”
“No, my dear,” said Madeline McRae. “Either man would serve as a beau-idéal of Virginia manhood, worthy of emulation by this colony’s sons, and of admiration by its daughters.”
“I see little distinction between scandal and disgrace,” said Ira Granby, coming to his wife’s defense. “Disgrace is bred by scandalous behavior. A scandal, after all, is but a failed passion — say, for outlawry, or for insulting aking’s son and associating with probable regicides — failed because it is frustrated and checked by lawful moral decency.” He scoffed. “It is no wonder to me that they are here, and not in the mother country.”
Madeline McRae shrugged her shoulders. “More to the shame and loss of the mother country, sir,” she retorted, “that they belong here, and not there.”
Ian McRae, seeing that the conversation was becoming heated, spoke up. Not addressing his wife, but the rest of the table, he said, “Do not contradict wisdom, good people. You will only embarrass yourselves, and what a scandal that would be!”
Etáin, too, knew the histories of Jack and Hugh. For her, their scandals were acts of heroism, as thrilling as the adventures of Drury Trantham in Hyperborea. She shared with them some special approach to life. She was certain of this; it was felt by her as an emotion, yet she knew that its root was a knowledge whose words eluded her. There was Jack, who had risen and grown and triumphed in spite of a society that had repeatedly knocked him down. He was a living, incurious contradiction of that society. There was Hugh, who had rebelled against that same society, yet who seemed to be a purified symbol of it.
“He is like so much of our music,” she told her mother one day. “Aspiring to an elevated, blameless, logical glory amidst so much pettiness, artifice, and silly distraction.”
“And Jack, your intended?” asked her mother.
“He, too, is like that music. He would be a barbarian, or a Turk, but for his dedication to reason.”
“One might say that about Mr. Kenrick,” reminded the mother.
“Perhaps,” Etáin said. Her brow creased in thought. “But for Hugh, reason and all its children are pedestalled gods to whom he has pledged undying love and allegiance. For Jack, the love and allegiance come from somewhere inside him.”
Etáin had seen Jack and Hugh together many times. She thought that they should have been antagonists. Yet, they acted like brothers. Moreover — and this observation perplexed her more than anything else about them — she saw no rivalry between them for her. It was as though they were waiting for her to make a decision. But she could not yet decide on her own role in the riddle. On one hand, she was Circe, the temporal seductress of mortal men; on the other, she was Athena, who had the power to dispense a final justice on them.
One of them was the needle, and one of them the north.
* * *
And one of them was right, and the other wrong — about England. Both men were certain of it. This was the nature of their rivalry. Yet, for the moment, even this did not much concern them. Nothing else divided them but England. Not even Etáin McRae.
Jack Frake had grown in love with her over a period of years. This did not mean, however, that he had not noticed other women. But all other women had disappointed him. Some telling things in their words or behavior smothered any interest he may have shown in them. Moreover, in atime when courtship demanded that a man be humble and self-deprecating to a woman whose special esteem he labored to win, Jack could not force himself to observe the ritual; he could not be what he was not. It required a dishonesty and charade that revolted every fiber of his being; he did not tolerate it in anyone, least of all in himself. Although he was neither boastful nor vain, he could see no reason why he should wear the domino of humility. In a society whose leitmotif was largely a masquerade of manners, he was artless by choice.
This w
as one reason why he loved Etáin; the capacity for falsehood, intrigue, and mannered modesty did not seem to exist in her, just as it did not exist in himself. She loved him, he was certain, though she had never said so. He fully expected her to say so, when she was ready, when her pride and perspective matched his own. When she was certain.
Hugh Kenrick, unaware of the depth of the problem he posed for Etáin, was only preparing to fall in love with her. Like Jack, he saw a girl-woman who was steadily progressing toward full womanhood. He, too, was willing to wait until she revealed her permanent, self-molded character. He watched her grow, in the years after his arrival in Caxton, with the same fascination with which he had noted the progress of his mother’s portrait long ago through the careful, selective strokes of Emery Westcott.
Unlike Jack, he had been wounded in the most painful way a woman could contrive to hurt a man: by rejecting him for his virtues. A woman scorned might seek vengeance to salve her injured pride. A man so scorned may also seek an impossible justice. Or, he may simply shut himself off from feminine company until his pride regains its senses and stature. There was now no other woman Hugh cared to contemplate, except from a wistful distance. He saw crude traces of Reverdy Brune in all but Etáin. He did not doubt that a woman such as Selina Granby, regarded as the most beautiful in Caxton, would in time become a mature, responsible woman, once the realties of adulthood imposed themselves on her. But, to him, an adulthood without passion was as deadening as a childhood without vision or hope. He could imagine such a life, but it was never quite real to him. He could observe it in others, but it did not concern him.
As with Jack, the discriminating milieu of loneliness moved Hugh to raise the stakes of solitude, not from a wish to spare himself the sapping drudgery of a conventional, passionless marriage, but rather to gamble on the existence of a just goddess. Like Jack’s, his core being was attuned solely to the enrapturing company of a scintillating paragon, to a woman who was indivisibly and alluringly noble.