I, Libertine

by Theodore Sturgeon

  The main part of the house formed a shell around what was almost a single room, a great hall with a fireplace at each end and a row of rooms along the north wall so designed that their ceilings formed a balcony for the hall. One end of this balcony was closed to form yet another room, with its separate staircase leading by a covered way to the kitchens at the rear. After swearing Meadows to fealty and silence, Lance confessed to him that there dwelt in that upstairs room a part of his past too shameful to describe and too painful to discuss; Meadows took the revelation as a weighty compliment and respected the confidence devoutly, his sole reference to it a worshipful expression when Lance would sigh and, grim-faced, mount the covered stairs and closet himself with the mystery. “Brave chap, that Courtenay,” he would mutter over his fuming sulphurs.

  The shameful, painful secret was, of course, Barrowbridge, at long last separated from his noisome Bermondsey and ensconced here like a spectre in a castle. He was served and cared for by a mute, an ox-shouldered young woman acquired with the property. She could hear well enough and understand tolerably; Barrowbridge was on splendid terms with her because she was obedient and because she listened to him.

  The days fell into a shambling order. If Lance missed skimming like a bat at eventide into the margins of high society, he did not show it. Meadows was in seventh heaven. He produced elixirs and effluvia, precipitates, ash, conglomerates and stinks—and theories. He hummed and droned with theories: phlogiston and the soul of mercury, the Aristotelian quadrate and its dissimilarities to the tetranomy of Vincent of Beauvais, and on, and on, and on. It was pleasant, after a time; in the long evenings when he did not feel like chatting with Barrowbridge, nor walking on the Downs, he could nod by the fire and listen to the excited drone of Meadows’ voice, repeating a name or a Latin phrase every twelve or so minutes—just enough to keep Meadows primed and pumping.

  Meadows was happy. Meadows was more than happy. Lance had never seen a man more capable of creating a world for himself as he wanted it, and living in it wholly. Any evidence to the contrary could be forgotten as soon as seen. He was no longer a student; he was an alchemist. He did not pretend to be a master, but he felt he would be, as soon as he made his great discovery. Great discoveries care not who makes them; Meadows was in tune with this, being a great discoverer who cared not what discoveries he made. He mixed messes and heated them, made infusions and rubbed them on a cat. With long forceps he lifted smoking lumps from his fires and held them hopefully against silver, then against lead, and tested the lead with his heart beating wildly; always was he disappointed, never dashed.

  With all this happiness, it was obvious—painfully so—that his greatest happiness lay in Lance; Lance’s ear, Lance’s presence, Lance’s opinions. Lance required little, but short of leaving one of his experiments at the explosion point, Meadows did his utmost to anticipate anything Lance might want Lance would return from a stroll on the Downs, to find the fire laid in the living room, his pipe filled and waiting, and more often than not some tome on transmutation or the noble airs awaited him beside it; this would surely be the subject of today’s efforts. At the first sound of his step at the door, Meadows, bearing a flaming coal from one of his cauldrons, would come bounding like a meteor across the great hall to start Lance’s fire, trailing sparks and smoke and observations: “Who cares about phlogiston? I’ve found a heavy air that won’t burn; if phlogiston is life then this is death.” Or, “It burns, it burns!” which would mean that Lance had to sprint into the laboratory to help him save the building from the flames, or run to the goods-chest for salve for his blisters, or rush to the pantry for milk for him to drink and quench the interior fire; for Meadows was scientist enough to insist upon trying out his elixirs in the most direct way.

  Lance quickly became aware that he was not another happiness for Meadows; he was the happiness. Meadows neither hugged him nor fell at his feet; he had no need to. When a man has a preoccupation as profound as Meadows and his alchemy, and yet will permit any interruption, any change of subject from someone, he obviously values the someone above the preoccupation. Meadows shared his alchemy not so much because of Lance’s stated conviction that he too was interested, but because Lance was key to it, part of the pattern of his absorption.

  Lance spoke of it to Barrowbridge. “Not that I mind terribly; I pictured myself wracking my brains for ways and means to keep the idiot content. I thought I might even have to drug him, or lock him in. I never dreamed I’d simply have to loose him like a ruddy falcon, and have him eating out of my hand.”

  “You might have known,” Barrowbridge chuckled. Within a week he had settled in at Featherfront—Lance’s second great surprise, for at the outset he had fumed and wept and cursed most bitterly. Getting him down by coach and up those stairs had been a mountainous undertaking, and for two days after he had glowered out the window and complained that a body couldn’t get a wink of sleep without so much as a mussel-monger crying outside the window; the fresh air made him cough, the fresh food sat ill on his jaded stomach, and there wasn’t anything to do. These, it appeared, were protests which he felt duty-bound to release, and once catharsized, he was done with them. His flesh seemed firmer, and part of his voice had returned. He slept a sinful amount—ten to twelve hours out of the twenty-four—and spent the rest of the time jollying Johnson, the heavy-shouldered mute girl, and reading. His room was three times as large as the one in Bermondsey; he had all his books and more besides, Lance having been fully aware that some new ones would help him lick into the new place, as one puts butter on the paws of a cat in a new environment, that it may lie and contemplate while removing it. He had insisted upon paying his own way and a bit over, and with a minimum of grumbling, though as ever he hoarded the secret of his total resources, whatever they might be. And so he acclimated and throve. He had his bed and his great chair, his stick and his thoughts and enough conversation to suit him; and as a bonus, a gimlet-hole in the wall which faced the great hall, whereby he could keep track of events below; this delighted him more than a window might have done. He was thoroughly conversant with the worshipful capers of Evelyn Meadows, and, “You should have known,” he told Lance.

  “Known what? How?”

  “Did you not spend the better part of three days haunting his haunts and gossiping with his gossips?”

  “Ay, but it was his alchemical pursuits I was interested in, once I found out about them, and I found them first.”

  “You learned nothing else?”

  “Only what I already knew.”

  Barrowbridge wagged his big old head. “Ah, lad, lad, I taught ye when reading for law and the use of a law, never to stop with the law which concerns you then, but to read all around it, before and behind it, everything like it and all that echoes to it. And I think, in law, you learned that. But you’ve forgotten to apply it elsewhere.”

  “What did I miss, then?”

  “Why, that young specimen was sent down from Christ’s Hospital.”

  “I didn’t know he went to school there … Why?”

  “Eh. He got a passion for a house master, that’s why, and couldn’t conceal it. ’Course, what he was sent down for was not concealing it; but that’s the way the world wags.”

  “Mr. Barrowbridge! I never dreamed he was one of those. I mean, I’ve seen dozens of them mincing about, of course, but—Meadows? He doesn’t look the least—”

  “Ye’ve seen pimps and panders, lechers, wife-beaters and catamites, time without number. If you haven’t recognized some of ’em as such, it’s because you’re purblind and wishful. As a lawyer you should know better; as a gentleman, you should be aware of what to avoid publicly.” Again he committed that harrowing laugh. “Don’t look so stricken, Lanky! He’s a nice enough lad, our Meadows. Balmy, of course, but only because his hobbies are unfashionable. The one would have made him valuable at the time of Roger Bacon, the other, popular at the time of Plato.”

  “What on earth am I going to do?” Lance demanded,
in a voice approaching a bleat of panic.

  “Na, na then,” soothed the barrister. “Don’t let it trouble you, not a bit. He’ll make no excursions on you and your little white body, I’ll wager. Can’t you see that what he’s doing is searching for his special Grail instead? He doesn’t want his great discovery just for himself. He wants to honor you with it. There’s an old saying I’d appreciate your committing to memory, Lanky. (’Tisn’t Gracian this time, it’s Chinese): and that is, ‘A cat that’s once stepped on a hot stove will never step on a cold one.’ Meadows never has lived down the public humiliation his openness and honesty got for him at Christ’s College; he’ll never make the same mistake again.”

  “Damn it,” said Lance irritably, “all this while you haven’t understood a thing about how I feel. I’m not afraid of anything he might do, for heaven’s sake! I’m thinking about what they’ll be saying in town.”

  “Eh?”

  “You haven’t heard those young bloods chat after dinner; I have. They gossip worse than seamstresses. If one of the chaps is larking about with a woman, it’s—it’s like a ruddy game. One point for each level of society higher than you; an extra point if she’s pure or married; if she’s beneath you, you forfeit points accordingly. If you’re caught you lose all your accumulated reputation and forfeit about ten; you’d have to seduce a countess or better to make up for it.”

  “Points? Good heavens, not really!”

  “No, of course not; I’m just trying to explain to you what it’s like. Now a thing like this Meadows business … why, it can cling to a man all his life! I’ve seen it happen. And the worst is, once a thing like that gets about, the poor victim never hears about it himself. I’ve seen chaps lose appointments, fail in betrothal arrangements, lose elections because of a buzz-buzz like that, and all behind a man’s back. Mr. Barrowbridge, I can’t afford anything like that!” He struck his forehead suddenly. “My God,—Lilith Axelrood’s laughing already—laughed right in my face about it!”

  “Eh. Now you see before you a penalty of understanding, which breeds tolerance, which overlooks danger. You’re right, lad. You’re quite right. Has Meadows told anyone where he is? … eh! No matter, he will, poor tilted innocent, he will, never thinking he might harm his benefactor.”

  The benefactor got up and took a turn around the room. “I can’t go back to town yet, nor send him. If I went somewhere else … no, I don’t think Mr. Beasley would care for that very much; it would be pointless unless I were seen, talked to people, and I don’t want to disturb matters just now … dash it all, sir, what can I do?”

  Not for the first, nor the hundredth time, Barrowbridge said, “There’s a way out, lad, a way out. All we have to do is think of it.”

  So they thought, and they thought. And suddenly Barrowbridge brought his hand down on his meaty thigh: “Got it!”

  “What, sir, what?”

  “You’ve got to get involved in a scandal.”

  “A scandal?”

  “We must most judiciously choose this scandal,” said Barrowbridge pensively. “Now lad: Identify, delineate.”

  “I don’t see how a scan—”

  “Don’t you, though? Some escapade, designed to get back to London before any silly story about Meadows’ being here? Some adventure vivid enough to be talked about, natural enough to underline your acceptable appetites, yet harmless enough to do you no discredit in future.”

  “But that second black won’t make a white, sir.”

  “Ah, it will here. You’ll find that one of the outstanding characteristics of vice is its specialization. Your sot who drinks himself into the ground does it generally with a single liquor, the winehead eschewing brandy and the brandy-bucko scorning wine. Let you be known as a party to some scandal involving a woman, and your gossips will have a choice of narratives about you—but a choice, Lanky; one, not both.”

  “But how can we know which they’ll tell?” Lance virtually wailed.

  Barrowbridge pulled his nether lip. “It is that element which calls for the judiciousness of our choice. We must present you as rake, not defiler; libertine rather than lecher.”

  “Libertine—I?”

  “Men have made greater sacrifices for king, country and career,” said the old man dryly.

  “And how on earth am I to find just the proper scandal?”

  “Manufacture it, lad. I do think that with the careful application of the reductio we might deduce an ideal, and then devise a path to it between the high walls of our limitations.”

  “You treat it like a—an exercise upon the chessboard!”

  “Ay, and therein lies our greatest chance of success. When the sage of Tarragona said, Every onset of passion is a digression from rational conduct, he was speaking of anger; but taking passion at its word, we find ourselves with a prime coloration for our problem: let it be, throughout, a course of rational—that is, reasoned—conduct. It will be, to the public eye, an act of passion; in passion, as in wine, there is truth. In his cups and on his couch a man reveals himself more than in the confessional, which is by no means as conducive to revelation. Whatever you reveal in this act, then, will be publicly regarded as the truth about you; see to it that reason does not desert you during the performance. For the time being treat your animal aptitudes, not as allies, but as enemies, remembering that a wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.”

  Lance bowed his head and opened his very pores to the old man’s counsel. Many times before he had seen Barrowbridge at work on a problem in just this fashion—discursive, preparatory, dripping aphorisms and homiletics, and, while circling his problem, even while passing and re-passing openings to it which, later, he might use, spiraling relentlessly nearer. The arrival at the heart of the problem, while delayed, was inevitable; the problem by then would be far more familiar than formidable.

  “I knew an old sinner in Somerset who had a single genius; he carved little bears out of wood. I asked him how he did it,” said Barrowbridge, “and he said ‘Ah lewk an’ lewk at woo-ood until Ah zee Bruin. Then Ah oon-coover awa’ t’chips off’n.’ This should be our approach. Let us uncover away all that is superfluous, and we shall be left with what we can use.

  “Let us then eliminate all that might discredit you—the degrading, the disgusting, the perverse and the ludicrous. I amend that. An element of the ludicrous might be a desideratum, provided that it is not yourself who suffers from it. We want, after all, a story worth telling, and a touch of the ridiculous is like woodruff in sweet wine.

  “Let us also eliminate that which might offend the majority, and any powerful minority. The partner in your venture must be unconnected with royalty, the Church or the higher nobility. She must not be excessively tender in her years because that’s felonious, nor excessively aged, for that would discredit you. She must not be beneath you, for the narrative would then be of no moment. Should she be your peer, there is nothing to be gained from that circumstance alone, and the other factors in the interchange must supply the unusual. It would seem, then, that she must be someone of good but not powerful family, of high but not exalted station, of an age in no way unsuited to such activities, and above all, in no position to prolong matters one moment longer than it takes to create the scandal.”

  “Incredible,” murmured Lance devoutly.

  “Don’t interrupt, boy,” said Barrowbridge, who was never happier than at such moments as this. “So much for the heroine. Now, the occasion. It should not be too forceful, lest you find yourself vying for honors with a mere blooded bull. It should not be too abrupt, lest in the telling you race with the rabbit. It must seem that she, not you, created the opportunity, and that you, not she, commanded its consummation. It is the function of a man to yield to his desires, and the duty of a gentleman to yield to his lady’s; the art of seduction, then, lies in turning these currents into the same channel and making them confluent and synonymous. From this we derive that on this occasion you must clearly perform both fu
nction and duty, this being the entire purpose of our enterprise, the very coda of the legend we are creating.

  “Now we can see the goal and the limitations, and that the latter are, as I have said, walls flanking the course and not obstacles across it. Your route should be all the more direct for that; which brings up the last requisite and completes the picture:

  “Speed.

  “Quod erat demonstrandum, Lanky, and I’d suggest you proceed with dispatch and without procrastination.”

  “What would I do without you?” Lance cried.

  “Do without, I imagine. I’m glad you can do with, though; I’ll confess it. Who was it termed the human brain a ‘wrinkled jelly’? Skeffington? Richardson? No matter; but it’s a splendid description of what your friend Barrowbridge has become. Let me lie here shivering totally with all subtle movements, shielded by the carapace of your house and nourished by the sanguinary fluxions of our good mute Johnson up and down the artery of my covered stair; let me he here, I say, white matter and grey, supplying the total organization pulselessly with mysteries, conjectures, solutions and escapes. … Let me know what happens, Lanky.”