I, Libertine

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “Da began to hear about it at teatime, and oh, dozens of times after that. People just flocked around us. Some of them knew you. Da was kind while they were doing it. He told them they must have me mixed up with someone else. Or he joked, he said, “Yes, and I’m to marry the Princess of Wales.” He never, he never once said I was a little liar. And thief too.”

  “Thief?”

  “The ring. Oh—da said I must tell you specially about the ring and show it to you.” Deftly, she unbuttoned a small tight pocket in her waistband and extracted a cushion of silk and handed it to him. Being as careful as she had been not to remove the contact of their hands, he worked it open and found himself staring thunderstruck at a curiously wrought ring, the only one carrying both silver and gold that he had ever instinctively liked. And it bore a diamond cut like a teardrop, an immense thing weighing seven karats or better. “It was Mother’s ring,” she explained. “I took it the night before we left, and then wherever we went, whenever I could be out of sight for a second, I told people.”

  “—that we were engaged, you and I, and with this?”

  She nodded briefly, and tumbled along with her narrative, and a good thing too; Lance didn’t know whether to laugh or drop his jaw or what to say; he sat listening, and watching the hard beams of the jewel as the swing shifted about amongst the leaf-shadows and the freckled sun between. Oh God, how they must be talking in London! And Barrowbridge had been looking for scandal, had he? “Da was kind when the people were talking to us but all the way back in the carriage—all the way back—he told me how wicked it was for me to do that. To be a liar and a thief was only the first small part of it, he said. He said I might have done you some terrible damage. He said it wasn’t fair to a young man to tell the world he had such a stone. He said you’d have every right to be angry. What’s a jactitation?”

  “A what?”

  “You frightened me! … Didn’t I say it right?”

  “Who told you about jactitation?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody. Everybody. They’re all talking about it in London. Somebody got one,” she said, uncaring. “They said you could get one against me, about four different people said that to me, to tease. What is it?”

  “A tease,” he said, and smiled it away. So somebody got one, he exulted. The exultation was sufficient to handle this and any other situation which might present itself this wonderful day. “Is that all you were to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I angry?”

  “You … you don’t look angry,” she said hopefully.

  “Come along to your father and we’ll see how angry I am.”

  She said, as if she were still in the throes of her narrative, as if she had not claimed to have finished it, “And he said the worst thing I might have done would be to spoil it for you if you were engaged to someone else.”

  At that he laughed. “I’m not, however. Would you be sorry if you’d done that one thing, though?”

  “I keep giving you things to hate me for …” she said, appalled, and, “No I wouldn’t; I’d be glad, but don’t tell Da I said that.”

  He laughed again, slipped off the swing, held out both his hands. She took them and skipped down and for a perilous moment held tight and stood close; he thought he was going to kiss her and he thought that she was going to cry. “Don’t cry,” he whispered to her. “If you cry, you’re a child.”

  “I’m almost fifteen,” she said coolly, and then she did cry, two hot little tears on each side. She scrubbed angrily at them with her handkerchief. “I’m just being sentimental,” she pouted, for reasons of her mysterious own.

  He took her hand and because he knew she wanted to be stately and chastened, he perversely ran with her up to the carriage, so that she arrived high-colored and laughing and begging him to stop. He saw the delight in the baronet’s face and the swift overlay of the disciplinarian. “Your daughter, sir,” he said in courtly fashion, handing her up.

  “Have you told Captain Courtenay everything?”

  “Yes, Da.”

  “I accept responsibility, Captain. If I may make amends. Letters to anyone. Restitution. What?”

  “You may grant a great favor, sir.”

  “Granted. Quite. What is it?”

  “But it would be granted to Miss Elaine, sir, and not to me.”

  “Ask.”

  “Punish her no more. She now understands, and I am quite unharmed.”

  Down climbed the baronet, and brought his again unreadable little face close to Lance’s. “That favor’s granted neither of you, but to me. Well you know it.” And Lance knew he had played this right, like a Barrowbridge.

  He said, “So much the better, sir; it will make us all three happy.”

  “Very deft tongue. Future for you. Assist any way. Call on me.”

  “You are most kind, Sir Gregory.”

  “Nonsense,” said the baronet, climbed into his carriage and was off. Lance saw the girl’s head as it was put shyly out of the carriage and snatched swiftly back.

  He returned to the house, shaking his head and smiling to himself.

  “Meadows! I say—Meadows!”

  No answer. He went to the door of the laboratory wing. “Meadows?”

  Something moved in a far corner. Lance went in, laughing. “You can come out now, old chap. It’s—oh dear.”

  He found himself face to face with Hepzibah Callow.

  10.

  “MISS CALLOW!”

  “I’ve come back,” she said, and showed her teeth. Her eyes were narrowed and they glittered. She was garbed in a voluminous drapery of an oriental cast and a material heavy and ornate enough to be totally unsuitable to the time of year. On second inspection, it was, in its toga-like folds, totally unsuitable to be a garment at all. “It’s a tapestry,” she informed him, aware of his inspection, “from the north room at Minden. The upstairs maid put it out to sun behind the stables yesterday and must have forgotten it. Thank heaven.”

  “We … we burned your clothes,” he said, as the only thing he could think of to say. Which reminded him of the reason for their cremation, which brought back the veritable diapason of that earth-shaking, petal-shriveling, light-bending miasma, which in turn made it clear to him that he recognized the odor not exclusively in memory. Miss Callow still smelt like the midden of an almshouse.

  “Ah, clothes,” she said disdainfully, and before he could shriek, Stop! she shrugged her shoulders and let the heavy folds fall to her waist. “Look,” she said breathlessly, “Look at me.”

  He had averted his face. “Miss Callow, please …”

  “Look, look,” she said insistently. “In art modesty has no place, nor in nature, nor in science …” She drew a deep breath. “Nor in science, I say. Look, look, look what you’ve done to me.”

  So he looked and absorbed first the fact that she was neither bird nor reptile; but this was a generality. His second observation was that the skin affliction on her face was indeed repeated on her body, as Meadows had reported, though it was slight and looked harmless. It was also un-cured. “It’s wonderful,” she said, closing her eyes ecstatically, “isn’t it? Wonderful …”

  “I suppose it is,” he said inanely, “What is wonderful?”

  “Why the, you know. Hair,” she said hardily; art, science, or natural philosophy to the contrary, “hair” was to her an improper word when describing anything below the earlobes.

  “I don’t see any hair,” he said bluntly.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  He understood. “Meadows!” he bellowed. “Mead—dows!”

  “Ek?” said the window timidly. He looked and saw the top of Meadows’ head, down to the eyebrows, protruding above the sill.

  “Come here, Meadows, hurry!”

  The head rose slowly and steadily as if floated in a filling bowl until the eyes were discovered. “My word!” it said faintly, and disappeared.

  “Half a mo’,” Lance said to the governess, flung out of
the laboratory and collared Meadows, who was scuttling pellmell for the footbridge. “Come back, hang it all!”

  “She’ll put out my eyes!” wailed Meadows.

  “I will if you don’t come. Cheer up, old chap; it’s all right.” He walked the reluctant alchemist back into the laboratory where, faced with the vision which stood in the center of the room like some mad variation of the new classicism, Meadows put his eyes in his fists and his fists on Lance’s shoulderblades and they approached her like a quadruped.

  “Ah, Mr. Meadows. Look—do look,” coaxed Miss Callow, making it even more unavoidable. Meadows, peeked, ducked, rose, peered, then at last set aside his human screen and frankly examined the specimen. “Oh, I say, Courtenay, this is extrawdnry. No hair, what?”

  “A miracle,” said Miss Callow. “Magic. Look here.” She turned her head and put back her side locks. She had a bald spot as broad as a hand on the back of her head. “Even here. Not that I mind. My fault, really; I wasn’t helping. You, and you, dear Lance, are the two most tactful gentlemen I have ever met.”

  Lance had thought himself beyond shock, but this proved him wrong. “We’re what?”

  “Ah, that’s like you, modest, too,” she beamed. “You knew all along that you couldn’t mention such a thing as my—as all that, well, hair. You knew so much better than I what would help, and how to go about it. Is it … off for good, do you imagine?”

  Lance and Meadows met one another’s eyes; Meadows shrugged. “Perhaps not,” Lance translated. “But Meadows can make up more for you if you ever—I say, Meadows, you can make up more?”

  “I certainly jolly well positively—I really don’t know,” said Meadows. “I say, she—that is, it does smell a bit.”

  “Come along with me, Miss Callow. I’ll have Johnson sluice you down. She did wonders with the bedroom walls this morning.” Miss Callow started to follow him, almost stumbled on the dragging ends of her drapery, and brought them up over her shoulders with, Lance thought, some reluctance. He squired her into the kitchen and gave explicit instructions to Johnson, whose eyes and nostrils vied with one another for the most expansion while he talked. He left them and returned to the laboratory, where Meadows was already at work mixing.

  “Jolly good job. Meadows. What’s in the filth—the stuff, anyway?”

  “A lot of things,” said Meadows abstractedly, clearing off a bit of bench-space with a sweep of his forearm. “I’ve a bit left in the bottom of this bowl.” He raised the lid of the bowl and Lance sprang and pressed it down with both hands.

  “Well, d’ye suppose you could work up some more and keep track and write out a receipt, so much of this, so much of that?”

  “If you’d like.”

  “I’d like,” said Lance. “Meadows, m’boy, you have discovered how to turn rancid goose-grease into gold. If you can get that receipt we’ll hire somebody to put it up for us in little round boxes and sell it in the apothecary shops for two shillings an ounce.”

  “I say, what a lark!”

  “Well then, call it a lark if you will. But do it. I’ll take care of all the trading part, and share with you, say twenty percentum to eighty?”

  “I wouldn’t think of taking such a share,” said Meadows. “Not from you, my dear chap.”

  “You deserve it. After all, you invented it.”

  “I couldn’t have, without you.”

  “I can’t argue money with you, old man,” Lance said warmly, wondering if he could hold the fool at seventy-five.

  “Well, just make mine ten percentum,” said Meadows. “I say, I must open this flask of ox-musk now, and I rather think you won’t care for it.”

  Lance retreated, exultant.

  So was launched one of the happiest periods of Lance Courtenay’s life—five quietly eventful years, which began with the receipt of a letter from Beasley, enclosed in a heavy packet of half banknotes, the government-approved method of sending currency to foil the highwayman:

  Mr. Lance Captain Courtenay, dear Sir:

  Herewith my warmest Compliments and the inclosed, id est £400 in banknotes duly halved, the rest despatched by post rider to Messrs. Worthington of Westerham, the which I understand is within an hour’s ride from your holding. Mr. Gerald Worthington is apprised of your coming, and in possession of a description of you, a tracing of your Signature-in-Hand, and a receipt on which I trust you will make your Mark and return to me.

  By which you will have deduced, my Dear Sir, the successful conclusion of our Enterprise. Having submitted her Complaint against Mr. Augustus John Hervey to the Ecclesiastical Court, Milady Chudleigh did thereupon swear unto her Spinsterhood. Mr. Hervey, who was there present, did accept the Censure of said Court in good part, and give his Word that he would henceforth and forever Cease and Desist from repetition of the Offense, to wit, boastfully and groundlessly Publishing as a Fact a Relationship now held, in view of said oath, to be a Nullity.

  Milady and the good Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, entered into Matrimony on the 17th instant and on the 18th did embark for Calais, accompanied by Miss Axelrood, who at our last Meeting sent you her Affectionate Regards.

  Please remember my Suggestion concerning a chair for you in my Offices, should such Activity appeal to you at any future time. It has been Edifying and Pleasant to be, and is to remain,

  Yr. Obt. Svt, Sir,

  Buggley Beasley.

  It was Lance’s Midas phase. Everything he touched throve and showered him with success. Evelyn Meadows departed to institute production facilities for what was nearly called My Darling Courtenay Hair and Stubble Ointment for Gentlemen and Ladies—a christening suggestion by Miss Callow and approved by Meadows—but which at length reached the market as Milady Hepzibah’s Salve, a Hound to the Hairs, when Miss Callow was at length convinced that Lance, as young country gentleman, could not afford to be connected publicly with a proprietary toiletry. Miss Callow left her post and followed Meadows to London, partly because of her idolatry, and partly to be near a source of supply, for she grew hair at an amazing rate. She became so anxious for the success of the enterprise that she took it upon herself to represent it in the back rooms of apothecaries all over the County of London, where in the interest of science she exhibited her calculated pattern of pilation and depilation to startled shopkeepers.

  She was, indeed, one of the happiest happenstances of those fine years. For example, when Evelyn Meadows fled to America, she took over the Miss Hepzibah business and trebled it in a month, for all her pique at Lance, who had arranged (through Sir Gregory) the position of Collection Officer in the Tax Office in Boston so that Meadows could be kept out of trouble while his Cousin Charles cooled down. Cousin Charles had come bursting out of Milan looking for Evelyn’s ears to box, for having been idling in the Downs while their inheritance was snapped out from under them by the infamous Miss Chudleigh. He even came to Featherfront looking for Evelyn, without success. He was a precise little man who affected linen without a pleat, a ruffle, or a single seam more than it took to hold it together. He left a message for Evelyn to the effect that if their uncle predeceased the new Countess and left her with all that money to spend, he, Charles, would flay him, Evelyn, with a shoehorn even if it took a week. He then returned to Milan.

  Wonderful years … there was what came to be known as the Hobby. Perhaps it was Beasley who caused it, through the letter he got from Lance acknowledging the £400, in which he thanked the barrister and declined his offer: … I am interested in the Law only as it piques my Curiosity, and should be considered as a Collector thereof. Or perhaps Barrowbridge, in drafting the letter for him, secretly hoped for such a result. However it came about, Lance gained a small, highly select, and quiet reputation for being able to come up with the most surprising solutions for knotty problems at law—or in avoidance thereof. “Astonishin’ chap,” the young bloods at the Fish and Staff would tell one another. “Get into a tacky patch, tip off old Lance, let him buzz off to the hills and ruminate
a bit, and next thing y’know, he’s come up with the kind of answer nobody expects—’specially if you didn’t expect any answer at all. And know what? by Jove, you can’t give him a penny for it.”

  You couldn’t give him a penny for it. But you might find out he needed another horse. He might sportingly be intrigued in an investment in a spice ship, any profits to be taken in his name, any losses to be borne by grateful old you. You might be able to divine the name of his tailor, and somehow think of dropping around and paying the fellow, to give old Lance a pleasant surprise when next he was in the City. Perhaps you’d visit him in his little diggings in the Downs and find him wistful about the scratchy condition of his grounds, and send over the gardener and some helpers from your manse for a week or two. Such a decent chap, you wondered how he ever made the connections he did. Want some neat and necessary surgery with a knitting needle? He knew a woman in Bermondsey who—Want to sell off a bit of the silver plate until the guv’nor comes through with the next quarterly? Lance could steer you to a chap in Cheapside who’d give you a decent price without a word, and you’d know the stuff would never be seen in England again.

  But where he shone was in the dustiest reaches of law. “Mr. Barrowbridge,” he said one evening after his return from London, “met a chap at Drury Lane who’s in a bit of a stew. Seems he’s married.”

  “Can’t help him,” said Barrowbridge sleepily. As time went on, he slept even more, though the sleep was lighter; he was approaching a condition of perpetual light trance, a constant drowse through which his mind flickered and flashed like summer lightning.