Here Comes a Candle

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “No, thanks, Josiah. I think I’ll wait a little.” The last thing he wanted was to seem unduly interested in Manningham. “Tell me instead what’s new in town?”

  “Nothing good, I can tell you. How could there be? What’s the use of old Granny Madison taking off his embargo, now the English are blockading us? Mark my words, Jon, there will be bankruptcies by the score if we don’t see the end of this war soon. It’s all very well for you with your contracts for uniform cloth, but what about the rest of us? I tell you, it breaks my heart to go down State Street and see the ships rotting in the harbor. You’d not think, to see her now, that our poor Constitution had ever sunk the Guerriere. Or shown the blasted British a clean pair of heels this winter. But look at her now! And where’s the end of it? Answer me that. What are they doing, down there in Washington, but talk? A separate peace, that’s what we need, and the sooner the better.”

  “And destroy the Union? Have you thought what that would mean? The blockade’s hurting us, it’s true, but why? Because it interrupts our trade with the southern states. Well, then, break up the Union, and where are you? Where’s your trade then?”

  “Good God, Jon! Don’t tell me you’ve turned Republican? Why—your old dad would turn in his grave if could hear you talk like that.”

  “You forget that my father sacrificed everything he had for the cause of freedom and union.”

  “Everything your old grandfather hadn’t sacrificed for the other side, eh?” But to Jonathan’s relief he was losing interest in the subject. As soon fetch water in a sieve as argue politics with a drunken man. Jonathan refilled his champagne glass and left him.

  Manningham was at the far end of the long buffet table now, helping himself liberally to smoked oysters. Jonathan debated for a moment whether to go up and speak to him, but decided against it. The sight of him, exquisitely dressed, evidently satisfied with himself, and making the most of a free meal, brought too forcibly to mind what he had nearly done to Sarah that morning. And—one did not make scenes in one’s own house. He left the room quietly and went upstairs to find Arabella.

  The floor had been cleared for dancing, and the master of ceremonies was summoning the gentlemen to lead the ladies out for a cotillion. To Jonathan’s rather savage amusement, the first strains of music brought Manningham hurrying upstairs to claim the hand of a signally plain Miss Betterton whose father owned several successful privateers. Arabella, on the other hand, did not seem to be dancing, and Jonathan crossed the floor to join her. “You do not dance?”

  “The floor’s quite full enough as it is. Besides, I’ve had an exhausting day. I want to talk to you, Jonathan.”

  “Curiously enough, I want to talk to you too. But perhaps we had better delay the pleasure until your guests are gone.”

  “Our guests, surely?”

  “I don’t recollect inviting them. I can tell you one, at least, who would not be here if I had had the issuing of the invitations. I don’t like to see you connive at fortune-hunting, Arabella.”

  “What do you mean?” And then, following his glance to where Manningham was leading his plain partner down the set, “Nonsense. Nothing of the kind.” She was oddly emphatic about it, “He does it, if you must know, as a favor to me. Since you are never here to help me with my parties, I just have to do the best I can.”

  “And a very elegant best it seems to be.”

  If she noticed the irony in his voice, she chose to ignore it “Thank you, Jonathan. But you have brought up the very thing I wished to discuss with you.” She looked around. The dance was set to go on for some time longer and they were, for the moment, as good as alone in the room. “I’d rather get it over with now, if it’s all the same to you. It’s—painful, Jon. I should warn you.”

  “If you mean to break it to me that your English friend over there nearly killed our daughter this morning, I know it already.”

  “Of course. Mrs. Croston would have had to tell you that. I just wonder what else she chose to tell you.”

  “What else?” He would not get angry. “If you really want to know, Arabella, she told me she thought it very encouraging that Sarah took the whole scene so well.”

  “Mighty handsome of her, I’m sure.” And then, on a totally different note, “Jonathan, don’t let us quarrel. I’ve something I feel it my duty to tell you, and frankly, I don’t like doing it. Please help me.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, Bella, I don’t want to quarrel either.” Just for a moment, then, pleading with him, she had been the girl he had married, eager to please, unsure of herself, the young girl who had disappeared somehow into the accomplished woman of the world.

  “Thank you.” She stopped to look around again, but the dancing was still going full tilt, while men’s faces grew red and girls’ hair began to tangle becomingly or otherwise on their shoulders. “It’s about Mrs. Croston,” she said. “Did she tell you that she knew Manningham in England?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Poor girl; she’d know she had to.” It sounded like genuine sympathy. “But I guess that was all she told you.”

  “No. She said she thought he had ruined her father.”

  Now Arabella laughed. “Clever.” She said it almost with approval. “Not a bad try. You can’t help being sorry for her. To come all this way; to think she had lived it down; and then ... Almost, Jonathan, I wonder if we should pretend we had never discovered.”

  “Discovered what?”

  “Why—the truth about Mrs. Croston. Had you never wondered—I know I have, many times—how she—a minister’s daughter, gently bred, came to be wandering around Canada as the wife of a noncommissioned officer?”

  Of course he had. “I look on that as entirely her own affair,” he said.

  “Very quixotic, I’m sure. And so you gave her the charge of our child—a woman whose misconduct broke her father’s heart. I’m sorry, Jon, but you’ve got to know. To leave her in charge of Sarah ... it’s impossible. She was notorious. Everyone loved her father, Manningham says. They did their best to keep it from him. Why—she made the most shameless advances even to him—to Manningham: that’s how, in the end, it happened. Her father was asleep—he was an old man and drank a little more than was good for him. Manningham had gone on visiting him because he could think of no explanation for leaving off. She—no, I can’t tell you what she was doing, Jon, when her father woke up. The sight killed him. And do you know what she did? Packed up everything she could lay her hands on and left the house that night; left poor Charles to make the funeral arrangements. How she came to take up with Sergeant Croston, God knows, but I suppose she thought herself lucky to achieve any marriage, however sordid. Of course, she may have had her reasons. So—there’s the paragon of virtue you engaged to look after your daughter.”

  He would not let her see how she had shaken him. “It’s merely his word against hers.”

  “His word, if you like—but backed up by a pretty shady set of circumstances. Of course I may be doing Mrs. Croston an injustice—and you too, for the matter of that. Perhaps, before you took her on to look after Sarah, she did explain to you just how she came to be ragamuffining it about Canada with a parcel of dirty soldiers? Perhaps you did see those papers of hers. Anyway, why should Charles Manningham lie about her? He was most reluctant to say anything at all, but I could see that the sight of her had shaken him. I forced him to speak: after all, I have a responsibility for Sarah, though by the way you treat me you’d never think so. A fine kind of guardian she seems, anyway, letting the child run into all kinds of dangers—the river one day—alone on the beach another. I don t like to have to tell you this, Jon, but she wasn’t even in sight when we drove on to the beach. What more likely than that she was keeping some sordid assignation? A woman like her will find men anywhere. Her poor father had to stop keeping a manservant toward the end.”

  It was horrible, but he was almost convinced. As she said, why should Charles Manningham lie? And, against his will, he remembered s
omething Kate had said about helping her father look after his horse, because they had no groom. But—“I don’t believe it.” He said it with more certainty than he felt.

  Arabella shrugged. “It’s your affair. You’ve taken the charge of Sarah out of my hands. You must make your own decisions about it. But—she’s at an age when a child is easily influenced—and she seems to dote on Mrs. Croston. Who knows what sights she is seeing when you are away at the factory? What ideas she is getting? Mrs. Peters is as stupid as she can hold together: she thinks of nothing but preserves and beeswax. Anything could be happening in that house all day, and you none the wiser. What is happening tonight, do you think? Old Job is black, of course, but judging by what Manningham told me, that might merely be an added attraction.”

  “Stop it!” He could stand no more. Besides: “It’s impossible. In Canada ... on the journey here ... I would have seen some sign...”

  “You, Jon?” Now she was laughing at him. “You! What do you know of women? What would you see, armored in your New England morality? You don’t think she would have been so foolish as to set her cap at you, surely? Why—an expert like her would know your kind at sight. I expect that’s why she has felt so safe with you. But think a little—were there not occasions on the journey when she pleaded fatigue and went to bed early?”

  He felt as if the ground was shaking under his feet. But, hedging: “And what, pray, do you mean by ‘my kind’?”

  She smiled at him and turned away, throwing it back at him over her shoulder. “The cold kind, Jonathan. The frozen New England kind. And now, if you will excuse me, it is time I was looking after my guests.”

  The cotillion was over. Charles Manningham was approaching from the other side of the room. He ought to stay, to meet him, and decide for himself what his word was worth. But—he could not trust himself to do so. Horrible pictures were flashing through his mind. Kate, always so cool, so elegant—Kate making obscene advances to that English fop? “I can’t tell you what she was doing.” No need for Arabella to tell him, when his imagination did so in unspeakable detail.

  It was all false as hell. Arabella had lied to him often enough before. Why should he believe her now, or her fortune-hunting Englishman? The answer came horribly pat. He had known, this morning, that Kate was not telling him everything. He knew her so well, knew every inflection of her voice ... of course he had been aware that there was more to it than she chose to tell. Or—did he know her at all? Would he ever understand about women? Arabella had touched a sore point here. He had been a fool before. How convince himself that he was not again?

  The ride out to Penrose seemed to take hours, and yet, in a way, he did not want to get there. And yet again, anything would be better than these nightmare imaginings. Job and the black boy who helped him with the horses had their quarters over the stables. It was perfectly true that, by using the servants’ stairs, Kate could visit either of them without any chance of discovery. It was impossible. He would not believe it. He would not even think about it. He could not stop. The pictures would flash into his mind, and, with them, horribly apropos, memory of the time when, as a very young ship’s officer, he had agreed to make a night of it with a group of friends. They had gone ashore at Marseilles and his friends had taken him to a street in the Arab quarter ... a street full of women.

  Now he surprised his horse with a savage kick—he would not remember the sordid humiliation of that night. Nor would he think of Arabella: so exquisite—a heart’s desire before marriage—iceberg disillusion after. He would not think all women were like this, mere masks, hiding hell’s fire or, worse, its ice beneath.

  He had reached his own carriage road. Now he must decide what to do. Apparently, he had already decided. Dismounting, he led his horse up the grass beside the drive, making as little noise as possible. The house loomed up, silent and dark. That meant nothing. No sign of life in the stable yard either. Why should there be?

  It reminded him of his boyhood, to stable his horse thus silently in the darkness. Nothing had changed here since he had ridden home late from a long evening’s talk with friends and made not a sound as he hung up saddle and bridle on familiar hooks and bedded his horse down for the night among the well-known shapes and smells of the stable. But in him, what a change! Then, he had made a talkative night of it, perhaps, at Willard’s Tavern. Now...

  Was he really going up the steep stair that was almost a ladder to rouse Job and the boy—and whom else? The very idea of doing so was disgusting. Well then, had he ridden home for nothing? Must he go on enduring this anguish of uncertainty? He stood there, in the dark, arguing with himself. If he roused them, and found nothing, what had he proved? Why—nothing.

  Of course it was all nightmare. He was overtired; imagining things. Worse still, he was letting Arabella put ideas into his head. What reason had he to trust her? And, besides—how could he not have thought of this sooner—what a strange light this all cast on her relationship with Manningham. How had he contrived to tell her things that were, apparently, too bad for her to tell her own husband? He should have stayed. He should probably have thrown Manningham into Boston Harbor. Never mind, he could do that tomorrow.

  With the chill sensation of sweat on his forehead, he moved very quietly out of the stable into the yard. He had been a little mad since Arabella spoke to him. Now, thank God, he was sane again. He closed the stable door behind him and stood for a moment, enjoying the cool night air and the comfort of recovered reason.

  Then, as he stood there, he became aware of a flickering light high up in the bulk of the house that faced him: high up, but coming steadily downward, showing now here, now there, as a candle was carried down the service stair past first one window then another.

  He had never been so cold in his life. It was all true. Arabella was right. Manningham was right. The candle was on the first floor now. She must be moving down the long hall that led to the servants’ stairway. He must not meet her here in the yard. He had things to say to her that, even in this moment of near madness, he knew must be said in private. Three huge strides across the yard and his key was in the lock of the back door. As he closed it behind him and stood, breathing hard, in the darkness, he heard her step soft on the back stair. A crack of light grew under the door at the bottom. Then it swung open and she was there, candle in hand, her hair falling in random curls around her face, her white nightgown visible under the robe that was merely clutched around her with her other hand. She had not even taken time to fasten it before hurrying to her black assignation.

  “Harlot!” His exclamation, coming at her out of the darkness, startled her so that she dropped the candle. But he was already moving forward to where he knew she stood. His hand, stretched out in the darkness, touched something yielding—her breast, clearly defined under the soft stuff of the nightgown. It was the end of reason. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her furiously against him. “Wanton! Jezebel!” She was speechless with shock. “If you must do it, why not with me?” Somewhere outside it all, he could not believe this was happening. “At least, I’ll have my share!” And one savage hand turned her face up to his while his lips found hers, crushing, searching, imploring.

  Just for a moment, surely, the softness of her, against him, was soft for him, her lips were giving some kind of an unintelligible answer, then, she had pulled clear and her hand found his cheek in a blow that brought tears to his eyes. Then she was across the room from him, breathing hard in the darkness. They stayed like that for a moment, the silence electric.

  Then, “You’re either drunk or mad,” she said, “or both. But there’s no time for it. Sarah’s ill. Job must ride at once for the doctor. I’d ask you to go if I thought you capable.” She was moving now, feeling her way to where candles always stood ready on the dresser. She lit one with a hand that was almost steady, then turned her back on him to get a lantern down from its hook and light it. “You may apologize in the morning,” she went on. “For the moment, I must fetch Job.”
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br />   “Oh God, what am I to think?” As he moved forward a little, he saw her instinctive recoil. “Don’t worry, I won’t touch you. I ... I don’t understand anything. But—Sarah’s ill? What’s the matter?”

  “She had one of her screaming fits earlier on. A bad one. I got her quiet at last and thought it was all over, but just now I heard her call out. She’s in a kind of waking nightmare: I can’t do anything with her. She needs a sedative I’m sure—anything to quiet her; it cannot but do her harm to be so violent. Mrs. Peters is with her now, but I tell you there’s no time...”

  “Of course not. I’ll ride at once for the doctor. Do get back to her.” And then, impatiently, seeing her hesitate: “I’m not drunk, though I may be mad. I’ll get him all right, and faster than you’ll wake Job. But first...” What could he say?

  “Don’t!” Impatiently. “There’s no time, I tell you.” And she turned, the heavy robe swirling around her, and left him there to his thoughts.

  ELEVEN

  The doctor’s verdict, when he arrived an hour or so later, was as welcome as it was surprising. “Well, of course,” he looked up from the bed where Sarah lay fiery hot, tossing and turning on the pillow, “the child has the measles. They’re all over the village.”

  “What!” Kate could hardly believe her ears. And then, remembering: “Of course, I let Prue take her out the other afternoon ... I suppose they met some of her brothers and sisters in the woods.”

  “No doubt.” He pulled down the crumpled nightgown to show the rash. “She’s probably been sickening for it for days, but after all, she don’t talk; how would you have known? A day at the shore will just have put the lid on things. You’re going to have trouble with her, I’m afraid, but you’ll manage, Mrs. Croston, I know that. No need to look so anxious, Jon. With careful nursing—which I know she’ll get—there’s no need for there to be any permanent damage.” And he proceeded to give Kate detailed instructions for the handling of the case. “Rest’s most important of all,” he concluded. “You’ll need your wits about you, Mrs. Croston, to see she gets that. For tonight, I think some laudanum drops, but we don’t want to depend on them too much. I’ll come again in the morning and see how she is, but you’d best make up your mind to a hard time of it. Mrs. Croston will need all the help you can give her, Jon. Perhaps Mrs. Penrose... ?”