Flowers Stained With Moonlight

by Catherine Shaw

  ‘Re-e-e-ally,’ he said, his eyes widening with surprise. ‘So they gave you a real job,’ he added, turning to Arthur with merriment. ‘It was that last paper of yours that did the trick, no doubt – the normal forms one. Well, what we just did in Paris will make that one look like child’s play, old fellow, won’t it? Perhaps even I won’t go on being a Research Fellow forever.’ He stepped onto the pavement and clumped Arthur unceremoniously on the shoulder.

  ‘So you’ll be able to get married now, congratulations, congratulations to the happy couple! We’ll have to organise a grand fiesta for you, shan’t we? And when is the happy event to take place?’

  ‘We don’t know yet – but soon,’ I said, kissing Arthur and quickly climbing up onto the box to sit next to Charles. We drove along the streets of Cambridge – I felt a little pang at leaving my lovely town already, when I have just barely come back to it, but I know that is very silly – and took the country road at a smart trot. Charles appeared to have something on his mind; once I was able to detach my mind from selfish contemplation of my own fascinating affairs, this was slowly borne in upon me.

  ‘Ahem,’ he said after quite a long silence, during which I absorbed the rays of the slowly sinking sun with the intense concentration of a cat.

  ‘Yes? Do tell me,’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘You know … what you told me and all?’ he said, blushing.

  ‘Of course! Well? What about it?’ I said, a bit sharply now, for I was pricked by a little needle of worry.

  ‘Well, it’s done,’ he said in a rush.

  ‘Done, what is done, what do you mean done? What are you trying to tell me, Charles? Express yourself, do!’

  ‘All right. I’ve asked Annabel to marry me. After I talked with you – after you talked with me, I should say – I saw things differently. How stupid it all is, isn’t it? The way life runs, with all these considerations about whether or no and worry about the future and what other people think. When happiness is right there and you just have to stretch out your hand and grasp it. It’s interesting,’ he added after a slight pause. ‘You’re a useful friend to have; I’ve learnt a few things from you. It’s a funny thing how I’ve a tendency to avoid thinking by myself sometimes. It’s so remarkably easy to let people think for you, and they’re so awfully eager to do it most of the time!’

  ‘They are!’ I concurred, feeling myself turn slightly pink, partly as a reaction to his compliment, partly out of an embarrassing suspicion that the last words might also be directed at me. ‘But it usually just annoys me and makes me feel stubborn,’ I added, deciding to pretend that we were in agreement about referring to third parties.

  ‘It must be tiring, sometimes, to be you,’ he answered, laughing. ‘Yet it warms the heart to watch you, the way you move through life, just doing what you want when you want it, turning the world on its head in a small way. You’ve got to know what you want, in order to be that way. But I don’t always really know just what it is I want.’

  ‘Don’t you? Aren’t you just avoiding it, often, so as not to make a stir?’ I said accusingly.

  ‘Perhaps; but then, you could say that not wanting to make a stir is an honest form of wanting, too. Yet everything does seem much clearer to me now. It seems positively amazing to me, that I could spend all those evenings strolling all over Paris in the twilight with Annabel in perfect happiness, and not have it cross my mind one single time that what I really wanted was to go on doing the same thing forever. I think the idea of how my sister would react simply drowned out the rest.’

  ‘Well, that was one of your fears, certainly,’ I smiled, ‘although the fear of engaging oneself to settle down may well have been even stronger. But if that second problem has now solved itself for you, the first still remains, I take it. Have you decided what to do?’

  ‘Better; I’ve done it already,’ he said proudly. ‘I shouldn’t have told you about it if I hadn’t. I told Constance fair and square, and soon realised that in worrying about her reaction, I hadn’t given sufficient credit to the stiffness of her upper lip. I won’t pretend she rejoiced; it obviously came as a shock to her. But if she resented the fact that her governesses appear to make a rule of pairing off with the men of the house (little Edmund will be next to go, at this rate), she didn’t show it. Nor did I hear even a single word about the advantageous marriage she had often expressed the hope that I would make to restore the family fortunes, which, if not disastrous, are a little depressed at the moment. Poor Constance. She’s had to put up with a lot of things she didn’t like over the last several years. This is just another of the series, I guess.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s as bad or as sad as you make it out to be,’ I said. ‘There were difficult moments; I remember how reluctant she was at first to adopt the little boy her husband left behind when he died, and she was reluctant to let Edmund leave boarding school – and for that matter also to allow Emily to attend Girton. But I think that in the end she has drawn pride and joy from each of these events. And the same will probably be true, eventually, of your marriage to Annabel. I hope so! But do tell me what Annabel said when you spoke to her.’

  ‘Oh, bother Annabel,’ he said, laughing heartily. ‘She said all kinds of nonsense. First, that she couldn’t possibly dream of marrying me, ruining my chances in society and all sorts of rubbish, true rubbish perhaps, but rubbish nevertheless. Then she said that she had loved me for years and if she hadn’t married me, she would never have married anyone else. But then she said that I was a happy creature and she was a weeping willow, and started all over again on how bad it would be for me to marry her, and that she couldn’t possibly. I had to threaten to storm out and get a marriage licence then and there to make her stop. She did insist on a longish engagement, though. I’m in a tearing hurry to marry, now that I’ve decided on it, but she says we have to see how the knowledge of it will work on our feelings. On mine, that is. Hers are unchanging forever, she swore, and gave me a little ring which I keep on my bedside table, as it’s much too small for any of my fingers.’ He laughed again with a sound of bells, and I settled comfortably into my seat, in beatific contentment. We spent the next hour discoursing upon churches and gowns and services, guests and bridesmaids.

  We had reached the point of discussing the names of the babies we were soon to have, when the shadows began to lengthen, and the distance to Maidstone Hall to shorten considerably.

  ‘We’re arriving,’ said Charles, as we approached the house. ‘I do hope she got your wire and is expecting you.’

  ‘Someone is home, at any rate,’ I said, seeing that the candles were lit in the front room, even though it was not yet dark out. Our carriage drew up smartly in front of the door, and the horses champed and shifted their hooves on the wide path, as Charles descended and came around to help me alight.

  Before we had time to reach the front door, it flew open of itself, and Mrs Bryce-Fortescue stood framed within it, lit from behind. She looked extremely young and flushed, and raising her two hands to her cheeks, she cried out,

  ‘Oh my goodness, my goodness, how stupid I have been! My dear Miss Duncan, I am so very sorry – I received your wire and meant to wire you back this afternoon, but I absolutely and completely forgot! Oh, I am so stupid!’ She added in some confusion, ‘As a matter of fact, I – I meant to tell you that you should put off your visit. The girls are not here at the moment; they have gone off to Severingham, Camilla’s place, you know. Of course, now that you are here, you must certainly spend the night.’

  She was fluttering and incoherent, which quite surprised me.

  ‘Do come in, do come in,’ she continued, taking me by the hand. ‘Tell Peter to put away the horses, Mr Morrison. You’ll find him over by the stables. I – I have a surprise for you – you will be most surprised, both of you. A friend of yours is here!’

  Charles and I glanced at each other. Who could she mean? He darted quickly over towards the stables, obviously eager to come into the cosy house and
discover the secret which was revealed to me one instant later, as I entered the parlour.

  There, holding a glass of tawny port and deeply and contentedly embedded in a large and becushioned armchair, sat Mr Korneck.

  He stood up as I came in, and came towards me with his warm, friendly smile, stretching out his hand. We spoke simultaneously.

  ‘So you are here, and Charles too!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is a great surprise – I had not thought to meet any acquaintance here, indeed.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I cried, astounded to see him there, when we had left him happily installed in Paris.

  ‘I am here for consolation,’ he replied. ‘Ah, I have had bad luck, very bad luck and a sad, sad thing has happened to me after you left Paris. I was most sorrowful and devastated, I can assure you, and I wished very much to travel to a place of happiness for repairing of my wounded heart. I thought at first I would return to Poznània to visit the horses, but then I had the idea of a visit to this beautiful house and wrote a letter to this dear lady, who answered me so very kindly. I arrived here only this morning.’

  Charles entered the room at this moment, and stopped short, staring with eyes even rounder than mine.

  ‘Well, of all things!’ he exclaimed, shaking Mr Korneck’s hand vigorously. ‘You here – I wouldn’t have guessed it in a thousand years! You do get about, don’t you? We said goodbye to you on the other side of the Channel just a few days ago!’

  ‘Alas, alas, I had nothing more to do on the other side of the Channel, after my great discomfiture,’ said poor Mr Korneck, a wave of dismay flowing over his features.

  ‘What discomfiture? What happened to you? Is it your proof?’ said Charles quickly.

  ‘Alas, you have guessed it. It is the proof.’ Stooping, Mr Korneck opened the leather case in which he carried his documents and mathematical papers, and extracted something which he handed gloomily and a little reluctantly to Charles.

  ‘I had no thought, when I sent in my manuscript, that it would be discussed at the very next meeting,’ he said lugubriously. ‘I thought it must wait until the following one at least, for time would be needed to read through the many pages. Alas, it seems that Monsieur Henri Poincaré does not need any time to read through such a manuscript. He put his finger immediately upon an error, a grievous error, contained deep in the heart of the method. I have thought long and hard about it, but what can I say? He is right, and I was wrong. I cannot see how to make it work.’

  Poor Mr Korneck, his face was so very long. He lifted the glass of port to his lips and took a sip. Mrs Bryce-Fortescue quickly replenished it, and while Charles and I bent over the fascicle, she drew him into another part of the room and began, in a trusting tone, to ask him a great many questions upon what sounded like business matters.

  We opened the paper he had handed us. It was the formal report of the last weekly meeting of the Academy of Sciences, which had taken place some days before. On the first page, where the order of the day was inscribed, we perceived the notice:

  MÉMOIRES PRESENTES

  M. G. Korneck, de Kempen (Posnanie), adresse un Mémoire contenant une démonstration du théorème de Fermat.

  (Commissaires: MM. Picard, Poincaré).

  Charles turned over the pages to find where the subject of Mr Korneck’s unfortunate paper was discussed in the course of the meeting, and located it easily enough a few pages later on. Even I could see that it was, indeed, a disappointment.

  RAPPORTS

  ANALYSE MATHÉMATIQUE – Rapport verbal concernant une démonstration du théorème de Fermat sur l’impossibilité de l’équation xn + yn =zn adressée par M. G. Korneck.

  (Commissaires: MM. Picard, Poincaré, rapporteur.)

  La démonstration proposée par M. Korneck ne peut être acceptée. Elle s’appuie, en effet, sur le lemme suivant:

  Soient les deux nombres n et k dont n est supposé impair, premiers entre eux et non divisibles par un carré; si l’on a en nombres entiers

  nx2 + ky2 = zn,

  x sera divisible par n.

  Ce lemme est inexact, car on peut faire par exemple:

  n=3, k=1, x=y=z=4,

  n=5, k=3, x=1, y=3, z=2,

  n=7, k=65, x=3, y=1, z=2.

  ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake,’ murmured Charles into my ear. ‘Do you see that, Vanessa? Look – they say old Korneck’s proof is impossible because he went and put this silly lemma into the middle of it—’ He stopped and glanced around quickly, but Mrs Bryce-Fortescue was still talking to Mr Korneck. ‘Why on earth didn’t he show us his proof? We’d never have let a thing like this get past us; you don’t have to be Poincaré to see that this can’t work! Why, he went and said that if you’ve got numbers that make this formula nx2 + ky2 = zn work, then n has to divide x – and they came up with all these examples where the formula works but n doesn’t divide x at all! Oh, my goodness gracious. Why didn’t he show us his proof?’

  ‘Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so easy to find the mistake,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t it a very long proof?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Korneck, overhearing my words, and coming over to where we stood. ‘It was nearly one hundred pages. A needle in a haystack, this little lemma lost inside it. And yet he is right, Poincaré. It was the heart of the proof, the absolute necessary little pin holding everything else together, without which nothing of the rest can work. And it was on page sixty-nine. Ah, he is a genius. Perhaps I wasted the time of a genius, but still, I have the honour of saying that I was read by him. Until page sixty-nine, at least.’

  He took back the report and locked it up in his leather case.

  ‘Sophie Germain must be turning over in her grave,’ he said sadly. ‘I do not like to think about it. Ah, the great Sophie, she had to overcome so many obstacles, just to persuade anyone to read her wonderful discoveries, while I, who have had every advantage and have the honour to be read by the greatest genius of the day by simple virtue of submitting a manuscript, I make a fool of myself. I shall cease to pursue Fermat’s theorem this very day, and devote myself to things I can do better: to questions of business and investment. Yes, I have taken this resolution. I no longer believe that Fermat had a proof of his own theorem – there is no use in searching for it!’

  He smiled suddenly, and raised his glass in a toast.

  ‘To the future!’ he cried with so admirable an effort at good humour that all three of us echoed him with the greatest goodwill you can imagine!

  We had supper, and no further mention was made of the sad tale of Mr Korneck’s proof. Instead, we talked about the successes of his horse farm in Prussia (without ostentation, without boasting and without apparent effort, he caused us to become aware that the farm was a highly profitable venture) and how happy it would make him to keep up two beautiful establishments, one in Prussia and one in England, one for horses and one for the pleasures of domesticity.

  ‘For the English understand the pleasures of domestic life better than any nation on Earth,’ he exclaimed, poking his fork into the excellent roast of lamb provided by Mrs Firmin, as if to prove his point. ‘Perhaps the cooking is not the most sophisticated in Europe, but it is so healthy, so ample – and then, only in England does one have teatime, and they put cream on the scones instead of butter!’

  We dined so long and so late that Charles had to rush for his horses afterwards, and make a hasty departure; not, however, before taking me briefly aside and putting on a scolding expression.

  ‘What have you been doing to the groom, Vanessa,’ he whispered. ‘He watched us drive up together, and his face looked pretty stormy – and he asked me if I was your fiancé! Of course I said no, your fiancé had remained in Cambridge, and he said “Is that so?” and I said “Yes, but what business is it of yours, my man?” and he looked annoyed, I mean to say extremely annoyed, and mumbled something to the effect that women were all the same everywhere and who could be surprised?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I moaned, feeling most embarrassed.

  ‘
So you have been up to something,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Well, get out of it. You’d better clear things up pretty sharply and pretty soon, that’s what I say.’

  He left, frowning, and Mrs Bryce-Fortescue accompanied me up to my room. I followed her quietly. I mean to rise early and make my way to Severingham as quickly as I can tomorrow morning, arriving if possible without warning, but thought it better not to mention these plans, nor, for the moment, Pat’s telegram. I have decided to take no step, no step at all, until I have talked to Sylvia.

  In the meantime, I am writing this letter before going to bed. As late as it is, I can still make out the murmur of voices downstairs. I do hope that everything will turn out all right after all, so that poor Mr Korneck can find a little happiness, without the very thing he has turned to for consolation collapsing immediately!

  Oh, if only Sylvia were here. If only I could make out, once and for all, the exact degree of her involvement! I came here to talk to her, to question her, to confront the problem as directly as possible, and I am unable to do it; I feel extremely frustrated. I am compelled to inactivity, at least for the moment. I can do nothing but think.

  Dora, I know so many facts – I hold so many clues to this mystery! Surely I no longer need to rush about trying to find out more. If I could just understand all that I have learnt, resolve the seeming contradictions, and see how everything fits together into a whole, then, I believe, the answer would stand out clear and obvious.

  Oh, well. I shall sleep on it, and tomorrow concentrate on nothing else.

  Goodnight, my dearest twin

  Vanessa

  Maidstone Hall, Friday, July 22nd, 1892 (although really, it is the 23rd already)