by Parry, Owen
“If I looked through every register in this city, would I find a mention of her marriage under any name at all?”
“The search,” Mr. Disraeli assured me, “would require a great deal of time. Allow me to spare you the toil. The young woman in question remains unwed.” He glanced at Pomeroy again, as at a beggar. “Modern youth is prone to an excess of enthusiasm, which sometimes manifests itself in insupportable exaggerations. Claims are made impulsively . . . that may not be warranted by the facts. Let us say—with the utmost sincerity—that the young woman under discussion enjoys the Pomeroy family’s protection.”
“I saw his father leaving her this afternoon.”
“I do not doubt it.”
“I have reason to suspect they are intimates.”
“I defer to your greater knowledge.”
“What do you want from him?”
“From whom?”
“From Mr. Pomeroy. That lad’s father.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Disraeli said, with his face swaying back and forth above his collar to match the rhythm of the carriage, “you should ask what the fellow wants of me.”
“What does he want from you?”
“Nothing unusual.”
“You never answered my question,” I said.
“But which one? You ask so very many.”
“Is she even a Jewess?”
Mr. Disraeli looked down at his walking stick for a moment. Sleek with lacquer, it rested against his trousers. When his eyes come up again, he said, “I suspect that was another of young Pomeroy’s needless elaborations.”
Twas odd to carry on such a conversation, with Reginald Pomeroy seated in our company. I would not say he looked like a mouse, but rather that he wished he might become so unobtrusive a creature. He stank of fear and regret.
“Why say she was Jewish?” I asked. “Why make such a wicked claim?”
Mr. Disraeli waved the question off, but answered it all the same. “Oh, I suppose he thought it might lend her a certain exoticism.” He spoke blithely. “Tasteless of him, I will admit. But hardly without precedent. I believe the Jewess exerts a certain fascination over the Anglo-Saxon mind, a hint of . . . of dark riches, shall we say? Of private mysteries and all sorts of forbidden treats. From Shakespeare himself, down to the frivolities of Scott, the raven-tressed daughter of Judah is so often present—and ever compliant at the prospect of a Christian lad’s attentions. She longs to be rescued from her own identity, if we are to credit the authorized version of the tale. And, of course, there is always an odious parent to be rid of, a creature positively thrilling with menace.” He smiled. “The Jew may be deplored, but he compels.”
He sat back, perhaps to see me better in the lamplit interior, with its hint of smoke and its smell of oil and horsehair. I wondered how a man must feel who has abandoned the religion of his forefathers. Certainly, we must rejoice when anyone robes himself in Christ’s forgiveness. Still, a body wonders at the man who leaves the faith that runs in the family blood.
Mr. Disraeli might have read my thoughts, for he added, “Perhaps you know of my own peculiar relation to Judaism? One may weigh a certain pride against an inevitable distaste, you see. But I must send you one of my novels, Major Jones. Tancred would do, I should think.”
I did not mention that I read no novels. For though I could not like him, one man’s work wants no insult from another.
“So she is Betty Green from Camden Town, and not a Jewess from Budapest?”
“Really,” Mr. Disraeli said, “I’m not completely certain who she is, at this point. She may not be certain herself. But why don’t you ask her?”
“I did.”
“And what did she say?”
“Nothing.”
He smiled. “Perhaps . . . that is your answer?”
I shook my head. “It is not a sufficient one.”
“For whom? For Mr. Adams?”
Twas then I made my error.
“I’ve read the letters,” I told him. A man should never lie.
He laughed delightedly, ending with that twitter I remembered and touching the end of his little goaty beard. “No, you haven’t. Dear me! If you had read them, you wouldn’t be sitting here, I assure you. Oh, dear me. I have to wonder if you even have the letters at all? Whatever have you done with them, Jones? Lost them in some gutter?”
“You’ll find out,” I said lamely.
He smiled triumphantly. “I expect I shall.”
In a humor much improved, he tapped the carriage’s panel with his stick again, doubtless a signal to spirit me back to my lodgings.
“Really, Major Jones! I simply don’t know what to make of you. So artful one moment, so . . . so charmingly plain the next.”
Twas then young Pomeroy stirred himself to speak, although it clearly cost him a terrible effort.
“Tell him,” he said to Mr. Disraeli, in a tortured croak of a voice. “Tell him what else you were supposed to say.”
Mr. Disraeli gave young Pomeroy a look of such ferocious hatred that I wonder the boy didn’t crumble into dust. It lasted but an instant, though, and the man who one day would become Britain’s Prime Minister—and Lord Beaconsfield, to boot—composed himself.
“Of course! Thank you for reminding me, Mr. Pomeroy.” He turned back to me as if truly grateful that his memory had been sparked. “In the event the letters should come into the possession of the United States Government, Major Jones, please convey to Mr. Adams that our gratitude for their return would prove unprecedented. Indeed, I would personally guarantee my own and my party’s resolute determination to protect Washington’s interests throughout the course of your present, unfortunate conflict.” He looked at me with those impossibly steady eyes. “There is nothing he might ask which I would not grant, so long as it lay in my power. Nothing, Major Jones.”
And I had nothing else to say, for I did not want to embarrass myself again. I had a muchness to ponder as it was. For Mr. Adams had told me that very afternoon how Lord Russell and Lord Lyons, both of whom stood high in the faction in power, had pledged their support of America’s cause in return for some unspecified display of good will. And here sat Mr. Disraeli, the great engine of the Tory opposition, promising the same for a handful of letters.
I had not read them. Not only because I had lacked the time, but because a gentleman must not do such a thing. But England, I had begun to suspect, was hardly the place in which to behave as a gentleman.
If ever those letters fell into my hands again, I meant to read them through, although my Mary Myfanwy would not have approved. This world is hard and makes unkind demands on striving Christians. I would believe that virtue gives us strength, but fear I am so weak I could not prove it.
Well, we must have faith and go through.
I stepped down from the carriage just as the rain opened a skirmish.
“Remember,” Mr. Disraeli said, before his carriage pulled away, “my party’s unswerving loyalty for those letters. Pray tell Mr. Adams.”
I nodded as he dropped the sash, then turned to the gassy brightness of my hotel. Half-concerned, but equally astonished at the ways of the world, I wondered what might be waiting in my bedroom, which had begun to seem the most public place in London.
I was not disappointed, for a gift lay on the bed. It was a handsome cane cut out of ebony, looking a bit thicker than was common. Fine and fancy the instrument was, though with the queerest top. The handle was straight and leathered, so that a man might grip it with his fist.
Glancing about to be sure I was not in the presence of Thug assassins or men in red masks, I took up the stick.
It had a weight to it.
And then I saw the latch below the handle. I released it and the ebony sheath fell away to reveal a rapier.
Once free, the sword had a lovely balance, and light as a bamboo stick it was in my hand. The blade shone and sang as I tried it on the air. Now, I had been a master of the bayonet and knew how to use an army cutlass, too. But that
rapier was a thoroughbred compared to the plodding mules of my experience, and I feared I lacked the skills to use it well.
There was a note, too. It had been wound up tight around the blade. It flew off as I duelled with the air and dropped onto the floor. I took it up and unrolled it:
I like to give a man a sporting chance. It keeps things jolly.
ELEVEN
ALL CITIES LOOK UNFORTUNATE FROM THE RAILWAY. The traveler sees their dirty linens only, and none of their finery. We left King’s Cross in a blow of rain, and each bleak house and courtyard looked forlorn as we rushed past. Twas a gray world, painted a loveless tone, all grime and youthful dreams come up to nothing. The rain jeweled on the windows separating us from the rubbish heap of the world, and when a spark flew back from the locomotive it seemed the only light in all the land.
The companion with whom I shared the compartment looked morbid as the weather. Pop-eyed, with spectacles and prosperous whiskers, I judged him a government inspector on his travels, or perhaps the headmaster of a middling school. He was scribbling away and offered no greeting when the porter put me into the carriage from the platform—an English railway car is cut into separate boxes, see, little worlds that shun too much democracy—and my fellow traveller glared when the door clapped shut and caged us together. But soon enough he went back to his pencil and paper, snorting in satisfaction as he wrote.
I let him be, for I am not a chatterbox. Although a Welshman likes a pleasant talk, that I will give you. Instead, I watched the world go by, the falling away of the city, then the cringe of the groves and fields beneath the rain. A blowing willow caught my eye, sweeping its branches across a swollen brook. Then it was gone. Willows make me think of Mr. Shakespeare and that poor girl with her hair loose in the water. I have never liked Prince Hamlet, for he thought only of himself and not of others. He fussed about everything, and had no grip, and the sad lass died confused by all his nonsense. “To be or not to be” is a silly question. We are, and that is that, and we must make the best of it. I feel far more for poor Mark Antony, despite his doubtful morals, for well I understand the power of love. And we both were soldiers. Ophelia deserved a better fate. For she loved deeply, though she had her failings and went about too heedless of her deportment. But I cannot forgive that cold, young prince, who wanted a taste of honest work and a thrashing.
Let all that bide. Twas only the range of my musings as we throbbed across the lowlands, for I did not want to think of masks and murders, or of letters full of secrets. We cannot run on like a locomotive, but must pause.
Morning faded into afternoon, and the light was gray to break a fellow’s heart.
The traveller with his scribbling showed no interest in aught else, so I watched the villages go by, and the dutiful shepherds wet under broad-brimmed hats, and the scooting of sheep when our passage made them nervous. I felt at once the miracle of speed and the loneliness that comes to us with distance. I did not relish the labors that held me captive in this war, and wished me home among my lovely ledgers. I hoped the boys in Mr. Evans’s counting house were keeping up their standards. A colliery cannot run on ill-kept books.
The rain grew stronger. Across a sodden field, a pair of men stood over the smoky ruin of a fire. I knew not what they were about. Peat-burners, perhaps. But they struck me as they watched us go, we creatures of privilege. Likely they felt jealousy at those who could afford a safe, dry life and all the many conveniences of progress. Or were we queer as creatures in a storybook? What did they see? I cannot say I wished to stand beside them in the wet. Yet, there was something to them that I envied.
At times, I fear our age is one of loss. When I was young, we walked and learned the world. Those with laden pockets might take coaches, or ride a horse they hired from a stable. But now the world is sealed from nature’s blasts, protected ever more by grand inventions. I wonder if the day will come when no one but the soldier or the shepherd knows about the many weights of rain, or how the winter cuts and summer scorches. Perhaps it is that I am growing old, and that a man of thirty-four is uneasy with newfangled means of living. But, somehow, an ancient loveliness seems wanting.
At last, my companion snapped shut his notebook, put his jottings and his pencil into his travelling bag, and glared in my direction.
“You, sir,” he began, “are impertinent! I don’t know you from Adam, yet you’ve been staring at me this hour and more.”
It was not true. My eyes, and certainly my heart, had been elsewhere.
“You are abominably ill-mannered,” he continued, “and rude. But I suppose that’s the way we live now.” He snorted. “A fellow can’t even have his peace on the railway!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, though I was innocent, for Christian meekness sometimes makes its way, “I did not intend—”
“Intentions have nothing to do with it! I will not have discourtesy. It’s intolerable!” He reached back into his bag and drew out a book with a slip of paper sticking out as a place-mark. “Now, sir,” he concluded, “if you are finished annoying me, I beg to be left in peace!”
I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. I watched the world again, for on such days, when the Heavens droop and the brooding weather pierces us as brightness will not do, we feel our slightness, and wonder how often we will see such sights again, and when we may be taken from this vale of rending loveliness.
I had read my Testament first thing in the morning, and got through The Times while waiting at King’s Cross—more of the “cotton famine” and complaints of Northern “Hessians” pillaging and plundering the South, which was all tosh. The paper said French arms were in retreat in Mexico, a form of military adventure the Frenchman doubtless has perfected, and there was more fussing in Servia, with fighting at Belgrade. The Irish were up to murdering English landlords, which seemed to have become a Hibernian sport. I had digested all the news and even the advertisements. Thus, I had no pleasurable reading left, yet felt a growing guilt at sitting idle. So I put up my deadly new cane and took down the German grammar through which I had been laboring for a time. But I could not study it, despite my strong belief in self-improvement. My mind would not settle on sein and werden and geworden.
I sat entranced and lulled by our forward motion, with the country rising and the sky lowering, as if we were slipping down a funnel. The train clacked along, tooting like a proud and living thing, and the luggage shifted now and again on the roof of the car, as if the rain made it uncomfortable. The combination of rain, steam, and speed fair overwhelmed me. I would have been contented in my reveries, and might even have drowsed, had the fellow on the opposite bench not punctuated the afternoon’s sobriety with declarations spoken aloud as he read.
“Oh, that’s dreadful!” he declared happily. “Impossible to credit! No one could believe such nonsense for a moment.” And then, five minutes later: “He’s certainly losing his talent, if not his mind. It’s absolutely pitiable!” Happier and happier he sounded, although his outbursts seemed to tell of misfortune. “Rubbish!” he cried in delight. “He’s finished! Such drivel won’t last the season. His talent’s run out on him, the fellow’s done.” He shifted and settled and read and exclaimed, “Ridiculous! As if rats and mice would have left a single crumb of cake after all those years! It’s too absurd! And the child’s insufferable! I shall get the tooth-ache from all the sweetness.” He grunted, which I believe betokened a laugh.
I might have been a wraith, swirling in the smoke and wet beyond the window, for all the reality I seemed to hold for my coachmate. Although I am not unfriendly by my nature, I was a bit relieved when he got down at a station, bag in hand and topper on his head.
Only after the train pulled away, did I notice that his book still lay on the cushion. I picked it up, in search of an address, so that it might be returned to him, but found only the possessive inscription A. TROLLOPE, which seemed to me an unbecoming name.
The book was Great Expectations, by Mr. Dickens.
IT
IS THE STRANGEST THING how the mind surprises us. I was exchanging looks with a field of cows as we sped past, when I realized Mr. Adams and I had talked ourselves into a false conclusion. Foolishly wrong we were, twas damnably clear. The affair of the letters and that of the murders were unquestionably related, if not identical. They were not trains on separate tracks, but two compartments in the selfsame carriage. They fit together, back to back, they did. For the man in the red silk mask was a link to both, whether he was Lieutenant Culpeper resurrected or the Prince of Wales come out for a turn in the park.
How ever could I have missed it? The masked fellow had lured me out of the penny gaff before I had an inkling of the letters, and the slum-child had seen him earlier, going into the establishment of the murdered pawn-mother, where Mr. Campbell’s watch was found. But when he come to me in the hotel, in the wake of Miss Perkins’s unsettling escapade, he had wanted the letters of me. And now I had a sword-cane as his gift, if my suspicions were true. Why had I failed to see the clear connection? If not all of those involved with the letters had ties to ships of war, one at least was tied to both watch and correspondence.
A child would have seen it.
I am not cut out for matters of this nature. That is the sorry truth. I am a clerk, and a good one, not a detective. Why on earth did men place trust in me? I did not want it. I only longed to live a peaceful life, and perhaps to become an elder in our chapel, when I was ripe enough. To make my darling proud, and to raise our son, without shame or debts—that is what I wanted. And here I was hurtling to Scotland, without a proper plan or even a notion.
I saw another thing, too, thanks to Mr. Disraeli. He talked too much, enamored of his cleverness and voice. Declaring he knew I had not read the letters—mocking me—he had told me I would not be sitting there, in his carriage, if I had read them. So proud of himself he was, of his wit and his knowledge. He had not meant to tell me quite so much, I did not think. Not this time. No, he had revealed that the letters were not just a matter of amorous blackmail between a wastrel son and a wanton father.