I, Libertine

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “And in I went, to the Green chamber, comfy as ever with a bright fire cheerful on the hearth, and all my old loves ranged about the room. I tell you, boy, it was the jolliest reunion of the jolliest people on earth.

  “We sat about in that cosy place for an hour or so playing ‘Remember when’ and confessing to each other little secrets we’d kept all these years; at our age such things lose their harshness and mellow like madeira. That was when I asked them to send for Winchester and the Bishop, and when they came in it was jolly all over again.

  “And at last we came down to brass tacks. ‘This stupid business of this stupid Meadows’ is the way Bath referred to it.” She mimicked well. “ ‘The fool has us to rights. Those deuced documents, y’know. We must do something about you, Lib darling, you’re a ruddy menace.’ ”

  She tapped Lance’s knee with the hard tip of a forefinger. “You can push Parliament to do a thing, you see, but you can’t stop them from doing it their way.

  “I shall make it brief. Under no circumstances were they going to make a House performance of this matter, partly on my behalf, bless them all, and partly because they really like Augie. They were not going to force him to get up before the world and confess to his difficulties with me and his poor bumbling perjuries in the jactitation action. He wasn’t even there, and for good reason. But I’ll come to that later.

  “They asked me if I intended to stay in England and I said I did not. That was splendid; I shall go abroad, and stay abroad, and it shall be called agreed exile. As to the title, since it expires with my death in any case, there is no objection to my using it until then; I deprive no one.

  Again the hard finger. “As to the estates, it may be technically true that bigamy makes my second marriage a nullity. However, so airtight and ironbound is that magnificent will that you, dear boy, helped draw up, that the estates are mine because I’m me, and not merely because I am the Duchess of Kingston. This adds weight to my keeping the title; for I have the estates.

  “The only thing which remains to be settled is the matter of my properties here in England, which, in my tragic exile, will be useless to me. I am therefore giving them all to my dear Lily Axelrood, who has, after all, been a devoted helper and assistant to me and deserves a change and a reward. Incomes sufficient for their upkeep, and a bit over, go with them; the rest of the money will, of course, come to me.

  “You wouldn’t believe how quickly these things were settled there in the Green chamber. Ah well, Bath had them all drawn up, knowing everything and knowing me to boot; all I had to do was nod my head and laugh with him.

  “And at the last he told me, as a sort of afterthought, ‘By the way, old girl,’ says he, ‘we shall have to punish you for this bigamy thing. Says so right here in the law. Brand your pretty hand.’ And with that he takes a horrid spitting mull-iron out of the fire and brandishes it about, dropping sparks on the carpet. He glares at me with those devil’s eyes alight, and plunges the iron straight down into a mug of ale he has ready.

  ‘Lib,’ says he, ‘it’s neither the season nor the time of day for mulled ale, but do you take a swig o’ this while it’s hot, and drink our health, and let us certify you branded.’ So I did, and I kissed them all, and promised them to clear out of England as soon as I’d had my affairs taken care of, and they all wept a bit, and that was that.

  “I’m satisfied.”

  “Are you, boy?”

  The coach rumbled on over the cobbles, while Lance sat passive, her words resting on his mind like snow on a cold kiln, waiting to melt down. At length some of his preoccupation left him and vision returned and he found himself looking at his hands a-jiggle on one knee, and he realized that he had been staring at them for a long time. He raised his eyes to his fellow-passenger’s face, the first half of that quick flash of inspection one flicks at a stranger, hoping it will be unobserved, knowing that if one meets the stranger’s eyes, one will look away and fumble something.

  He met her eyes, and there his glance was arrested. In that moment he met one of the most compelling qualities of this woman. In his way Barrowbridge had described it, and so had Piggott. He found that he could look straight at her, for as long as he liked, taking whatever he could. She did not hypnotically capture his attention, snakelike. She did not present that detachedness which sometimes makes it possible to inspect a new face and not be touched by it. She gazed back with neither warning nor welcome, but with perfect frankness: here I am, all of me; here is fire, here freeze; walk where you choose and take the consequences.

  She smiled a little and said, “Would you care to leave me now?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She nodded. “That is the first word in converse you have ever spoken to me, and one to remember. I shall expect you to use it again.” She made a disenchanting change in the smile and vanished it, and said, “You may not leave me now; I have one other matter to discuss.

  “I have been in England for three days, but even before I arrived I knew you for what you are and I knew what you had done. Do not be mystified. You might have reasoned it for yourself. A charge of bigamy smacks of proof, and proof could only be the Lainston parish record, and that smacks of Barrowbridge, and lo! I meet you again. I had your half-mask of an unknown lawyer Briggs located and bribed even before I set foot ashore, and thereafter it was not difficult to divine the balance of your plan. The bastard who was not a bastard by birth, who became a bastard by his own machination, could only want to legitimize himself, and there was only one way to do that, and that was to legitimize his parents’ marriage. I do not hold against you the fact that of several ways to do this, you chose the most vindictive; in your position I should have done the same or worse. In my position, however, I could not tolerate it; anyone who has ever caused me discomfort must pay threefold, except for you, my boy, who caused me discomfort by the very act of being born, and who continues to cause me discomfort by drawing breath. So you pay tenfold.

  “Recognizing that your only aim in this matter could be the Bristol heritage, I took the trouble to go to Ickworth in East Anglia and visit my … let us say, your father; that relationship is somewhat less diffuse. Augie has become a very distinguished gentleman, and like many weak men, has a streak of angry stubbornness when properly aroused. Seeing him was not easy; he would not admit me and so I had to go round the house and march in through the terrace windows and confront him, and then it was some minutes before he understood that while he was saying I should not be there and that he wanted no intercourse of any kind with me, my relatives or my retinue, I was warmly agreeing with him.

  “When I could, then, I informed him briefly but completely about you, who you are, who you claim you are; your vital part in the suit for jactitation of marriage by which, in freeing himself of me, he so jeopardized his good name, and your present action. I also predicted in detail your only reasonable move after this was over—to appear before him as a long-lost son, with his face and my scheming persuasiveness, and so manipulate him that he would pay for his humiliations by awarding you his estate and title.”

  She laughed gently. “It was intriguing to see just how furious Augie Hervey, the third Earl of Bristol, could become. I was sure for a moment he would fling himself down upon the carpet and scream. When I left him he was hard at work on a letter to his barristers, arranging for a categorical disinheritance of putative and potential heirs de corpore suo known, unknown, or to be known in future, together with a complete alienation of his title from his property, so that in the unlikely event that you should so convincingly prove your identity that you succeed to the title, it will carry with it not one penny. Only a petty man can be quite that meticulous; only an angry man could carry the thing quite that far. Your father is a petty, angry man.

  “Disappointed, dear?”

  He turned his head slowly and stared unseeing out of the window. Her words still mounted on his mind, which was shocked beyond absorption; they would stay there until it was too weary to keep them out,
and they would come plunging in. Deep down he knew this and it terrified him.

  Abruptly the carriage stopped. He turned to her again, startled, and found her gazing interestedly at him, her magnetic head a bit on one side, her eyes excessively bright.

  “I think you are wise to be so silent. You’ve given me no words I can ever use against you. I feel I could have you talking like a jackdaw if I put my mind to it, but I choose not. I do not like you and cannot. I confess however that I admire your shrewdness and your ingenuity, and I’m all agog—really—to find out what you will do now. I hope it shall surprise me. Whatever it is, you may be quite sure that I shall know immediately what you’ve done. Think of me with you always, like a bright-eyed bird on your shoulder, knowing all the details of all you do.” She made a quick gesture so fraught with command that he obeyed thoughtlessly and opened the door.

  “Even,” she continued, “to the location of the particular public stables where you have left your horse.”

  He swung his head dully and looked and saw that she was right. He put one foot upon the step, and felt her tug his sleeve. “Do get yourself baptized,” she said warmly. “It will save your soul, if you have one, and it will give me a name to call you by; you haven’t one now, you know, for all your legitimacy.” He surged up, but she caught him again. “I think you shall not see me again,” she said very gently.

  Now say good-by. Good-by Mother, perhaps, or, you filthy sow. But say good-by. It will make a difference. But he could not know what difference it would make, exactly, nor if it would be a difference he would want.

  He leapt out and crossed the walk and went briskly into the stable. He heard the coach rumble away while he was asking for his horse. He doled out his syllables, being careful to miss none for all his divided attention. He waited with his back to the doorway until his animal was brought, then mounted and wheeled and rode out toward Westminster Bridge.

  If he had any thoughts between London and the Downs, he could never thereafter recall them.

  13.

  HE RODE INTO THE stable yard at Featherfront and slid off his horse. For a moment he leaned against it, his forehead against the damp warm withers, wondering. It seemed to come to him only then just where he was, what had happened. His knees buckled under the weight and shock of it.

  He shook himself like a spaniel and set his jaw, pressed himself away from the horse and ran into the house by the back, through the kitchen. Faithful old Johnson, grizzled now and broader than ever, ran to him full of mute’s signals and semaphores, her heavy face urgent and anxious, but he thrust her aside and bounded up the covered stair. If he’s sleeping by God I’ll twitch him out onto the floor.

  But the old man’s eyes were open and pensive, one eyebrow cocked in that comforting what’s-this-I-can-handle-it expression, and Lance almost cried out with relief.

  “She’s back, sir, the Duchess, and it’s all smashed. She’s been to Ickworth to see Bristol and she’s got away with the Kingston title and property, and none of it worked—none of it, not even Meadows’ God-damned inheritance!” He stopped and stood gasping and demanding.

  Barrowbridge lay silent, not looking at Lance, but still at the door, with that quizzical eyebrow and the bright, bright eyes.

  “Damn it, there’s nothing left! We—we are …

  “Mr. Barrowbridge?” he asked softly.

  “Sir?” he whispered, bending close.

  Mr. Barrowbridge did not move. Mr. Barrowbridge did not speak. Mr. Barrowbridge was dead.

  Lance slammed his fists unmercifully against his own eyes and loosed a great agonized cry, and amidst the dots and splashes of painful speckled light from the blows, he backed away to the door, turned and plunged down the stairs.

  In a boiling jumble of anguish he thought as he ran, It’s all gone and I never had a mother to run to Piggott was my mother Barrowbridge was my mother and a bed’s a great mother’s breast to cry on and feed me.

  Across the great hall and a shin-hungry chair, rung-wringing to clatter and break and spin him grunting to the window, to fall there a-grasping and gripping and ripping the drape; cough in the dusty folds of it, fight them away and knee up and stumble and knee up again and go banging to bed to hide.

  “Captain Courtenay how nice!” in clear sweet syllables each a true half-tone lower than the one before; and there in the bed he so needed for now sat Lilith Axelrood with her back to the bolster at the headboard and a white silk scarf arranged round her shoulders and her heavy hair arranged on the white silk.

  Lance rocked in the doorway until he was able to raise one arm and point at her. His lungs filled and emptied with pain at the extremes, and when he tried to speak his lips disobeyed him and pursed, so that he half-whistled, half-wheezed, a Barrowbridge kind of noise. He stood insane in the doorway, pointing like that, wheezing like that, and then began to come across the room toward her, the one hand still pointing, the other forgotten, the legs striding wide apart like a sailor’s in a hurricane.

  “Lance!” she coquetted, holding out her arms to him, and “Lance!” she cried in alarm; and the next time she cried out it was not a word at all. He struck her like a charge of grapeshot, everywhere, he snapped, he struck, he flopped like a banked trout. Warding him off was impossible, so she threw slim steel arms about him and held him tight and tighter and tighter until she held him almost still. He was far stronger, but she could do it because he was utterly out of control. And his fighting became a shuddering and the shudder something else. Still he punished her, he flogged the wide world and all life and effort, but he was met in this, he flashed upward like a gusted gull, he stood over the world like a mountain, spread over it like a cloud; and the shudder again, now a shiver, now still, now still …

  She still held him tightly, but not altogether to protect herself. She pulled her head a little distance away, to see him better, and said tremulously, “Lance, you … hurt me! Lance…?”

  The sound of her voice struck the flames in him like a flung bowl of brandy, and they exploded. It was as violent as before, but as he punished the world and her, he punished himself and his stupidity, and his dreams for being stupid, and his acts for being stupid; he cut and slashed at the stupid thing of being alive until abruptly he was spent. He could not draw breath then for a painful time, and when he did, he expelled it in a woeful wail, and dropped his face into the hollow of her neck and shoulder and cried; he baaaed like a sheep, baaaoh, baaaoh, while she held him tight again, frightened; and then he escaped, he was asleep.

  In his sleep he called, from far away: “Elaine?”

  Asleep, he sat up in panic, his eyes wide, and shouted, “Elaine?”

  Soft arms put him down, a soft hand covered his eyes until they closed. Softly, “Shhh. Shhh.”

  He sniffled and twice there was an infantile, past-misery catch in his breath. He burrowed close, snug, snug and close, and slept quietly.

  He awoke in the black dark, and far away there was a point of light which, if he came close enough, might be an opening through which he could look. He blinked hard to make it come clear, and suddenly it did, and was a candle across the room. He watched it for a time, pleased with it.

  Under his cheek was something more firm, more smooth than a pillow, and down from his chin to the edge of the bed, a column lay. He raised his head to see, and under his cheek was a hand, and the column was an arm, and up from the edge of the bed came the hair and face of Lilith Axelrood. She knelt on the floor by the bed, and perhaps she had been sleeping there, but she had kept her hand under his face so that she would know when he awoke.

  He looked at her in silent amazement. She straightened up and bent over him, so that her hair fell over both their faces like a magic tent. And she said in a tone he had never heard before, that he would have believed impossible to a human throat, so soft and full and intense it was: “Oh-h-h … I—love—you—so …” and when he opened his mouth to answer she dropped her lips to it, with an illimitable tenderness he surely would have miss
ed had he not been too weak to move.

  She slipped away from him and was back in three heartbeats with the thick earthen bowl of broth which had stood covered on the tabouret. She set it on the floor and removed the cover, and took broken bread and dipped it and put it to his lips. He took it slowly, watching her face the whole time. When it was about half-finished he shook his head slightly, and she put it by, staying where she was just to watch him live.

  “Lilith Axelrood,” he said.

  “Lance …” She stroked his face. He fell asleep. When she was sure, she rose carefully and crossed the room on tiptoe and blew out the candle.

  Lance went out and walked to the footbridge and stood looking down at the water quarreling about the pebbles below. He could not believe the morning and he did not remember the night, and he knew he must and would.

  What was this madness about marriage? Who had spoken of it first?

  On impulse he crossed the bridge and stepped down the bank and knelt to dash the clear bubbly water into his face. Talk, talk, talk with Lilith, and it was a haze until now, but now it came, not in order, but clearly enough:

  “I have all the Kingston properties in England; they’re mine,” she had said, and “I didn’t know, I didn’t know I’d love you. I didn’t know love.” Oh yes, and: “I came here for her, because she wanted to know just what you were going to do next, and I was to dazzle you and find out. But oh Lance, I didn’t know this would happen!” That’s right, that’s right, and she had said, too, that she had the Duchess’s permission to leave her service, but that if she did the Duchess would punish her, “I don’t know how. I wouldn’t know, until it happened. She says I may go, but she doesn’t want me to, not really.”

  And what was that about the last time: “I couldn’t forget you. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t like this, it was just a glow that wouldn’t go away … remember, Lance, what I said about wanting only to find out how high is high? This is high enough, my darling my dear; I want no more, ever again, than this.”