Gaslight

by William Drummond

  “Don’t they look silly!” Bella laughed, too. But neither Jack’s laugh nor her own, she thought, was quite natural.

  He held her arm until the swans were back proudly breasting the water. “They have their element; and we have ours”

  Climbing the hill some minutes later, Bella said. “You dared to say something true I wouldn’t have dared to say.”

  He just raised his eyebrows.

  “I’ve never felt so close to anyone in all my life, except my father.”

  “So now we’ll go to tea,” he said, “in Holly Place.”

  “Yes,” she cried, “yes! There’ll be such a hissing you can’t believe! And I don’t mind! I’ll be glad! If only you’ll protect me.”

  Bella was mistaken.

  Great-aunt Annie accepted the appearance of Mr. Manningham for tea as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. She merely called for another cup and she added, “I think we might have the seed cake!” The old lady appeared rejuvenated by the presence of Mr. Manningham, exhibiting graces which had been hidden for many decades. Bella realized that some time in the 1840’s she must have been an attractive young woman and she was amused and delighted to find in her great-aunt qualities of femininity which she had never suspected. She clasped her hands together. “Dear God,” she prayed, “may it be with her blessing!”

  But as tea proceeded, Bella saw what was happening. The old lady was stimulated; like the governor of some castle whose walls had suddenly after years of peace been attacked, she was mustering all forces for the defense. “I knew some Manninghams in Venice,” the old lady said, “many years ago. From Buxton. Most knowledgeable about Mantegna. Do you like Mantegna, Mr. Manningham?”

  “I’ve never been there, ma’am,” said Mr. Manningham.

  Great-aunt Annie smiled like thin ice cracking. “It would have been difficult, Mr. Manningham, since he was a fifteenth century painter of the Paduan School; which you couldn’t have helped but know if you were one of the Buxton Manninghams.” Great-aunt Annie threw a triumphant glance at Bella, who looked away at Jack. She felt that she was the fulcrum on which were balanced the scales of family and lover.

  “Did I say, ma’am, that I was connected with your Manninghams of Buxton?” Jack’s voice was quiet.

  “That is the only branch that anybody has heard of,” Great-aunt Annie said in a voice which rose to a defensive croak.

  “I don’t pretend to have been educated except in the University of Life,” Jack said. “But by anybody, do you mean anybody? Or you, ma’am?” He leaned forward as if he were genuinely interested in what the old lady would say. But Great-aunt Annie would not be drawn.

  “So if you don’t come from Buxton, Mr. Manningham, where do you come from?”

  Jack smiled. “If you’re a Manningham,” he said, “and have traveled as I have, you meet them all over the world. There are Manninghams in Bombay and Madras. There are Manninghams in Singapore, Sydney, Buenos Aires and New Orleans.”

  Great-aunt Annie proffered the stale seed-cake, which was refused. “I wasn’t asking about Manninghams in general,” she said.

  Jack Manningham continued to smile, perhaps even more broadly, but there was a bunching of the veins on his temples, which Bella came to know later as a sign of his anger. “Of the only two Hickoks I’ve known, ma’am,” he said, “one is the straightest shot in Kansas; Wild Bill, as they call him, has killed more bad men than any marshal in the West. The other was a killer, too. Jim Hickok. They sent him to Botany Bay. Jim jumped the Ballarat Gold Rush and struck it rich. He’s a big man in Sydney today. Over half a million, he’s worth.”

  Great-aunt Annie looked at Mr. Manningham with apprehension, trying to formulate the answer to the question whether they were related to her. But Mr. Manningham took a piece of seedcake and examined it dreamily. “It only goes to show,” he philosophized, “that it takes all sorts—of Hickoks—to make a world.” Till that moment, he had almost ignored Bella, but now he slid her a sideway glance which converted her from a cold observer to his fevered partisan.

  Great-aunt Annie declared a truce until the tea was cleared away. “You have traveled in many continents, Mr. Manningham?”

  He inclined his head.

  “My husband always used to say that the great travelers were either men of large fortune or none. Would you agree, Mr. Manningham?”

  “I would hazard the guess, ma’am, that your husband was a stay-at-home.”

  “By temperament he was of an adventurous disposition; no man more!” Great-aunt Annie, thrown from her attack, launched into a panegyric of her late husband, who had passed on with galloping consumption after eighteen months of matrimony. As he pretended to listen, Jack Manningham advanced his foot and sought the toe of Bella’s shoe, protruding from beneath her skirt.

  “Your late husband sounds a man after my own heart, ma’am,” Jack said, “judging by his desires.”

  “Desires?” Great-aunt Annie bridled. Her late lamented had passed on so long ago that she considered it almost an effrontery to consider that he had had such things—especially as they always so far outdistanced his achievements.

  Jack Manningham stood up and walked across to the fireplace. He appeared to Bella to be under the influence of strong emotion and he looked down at her image in the looking glass with a most penetrating glance, which would have alarmed her but for a just perceptible wink, which warned her that she was about to observe a performance. Then he turned, quite suddenly, and faced the old lady. “You have touched me deeply, ma’am, by what you have said of your husband’s adventurous disposition, as much as you have wounded me by the unworthy idea that travel is the monopoly of the merchant. What of Bruce exploring the source of the Nile or Dr. Livingstone converting the heathen? Here we are in the late 19th century, for the first time in the history of the human race about to think of this earth as a ball, every part of which we are at last able to chart, to penetrate with steam railways and to exploit! This is not the age of merchant princes and vagabonds, madam. It is the age of empire, the age of Pax Britannica, the age of heroes, nineteenth century heroes, who may make fortunes, like Jim Hickok of Ballarat or just impose law and order like Wild Bill. But it is not, ma’am, this house, or Hampstead Village, or the City of London. The whole earth is at our feet. In the new countries being opened up, there are gold and diamonds beyond the dreams of man; and in the seas we are starting to penetrate fortunes of whale-oil and sealskin. The world is like a coconut. We have only to slash the top off with a machete to drink the milk and scoop out the goodness.”

  As the old lady listened with her head bent, Bella looked at the senile splashes on her hands and even cheeks, like tea stains. Jack was Life and the old lady was Death. But she wouldn’t lie down. “Of all these wonderful possibilities, Mr. Manningham,” she asked, “which have you already developed?”

  Jack Manningham smiled again. “In Mexico,” he said, “when one rides across a mountain range five thousand feet up and down again, six hours in the saddle maybe from one village to another but only two miles away as the crow flies, one lands in a different culture. The Indian language is different, the arts and crafts, the dances and fiestas, most of them charming, all convinced that theirs is the only civilized community on earth. Little Mexican Hampsteads, they have enriched me, and I am grateful. It may to you, ma’am, seem ridiculous to be so easily rewarded, but perhaps Miss Bella can understand.” He bowed, and then with the rapidity of a master magician, he gathered his hat, his stick and gloves and made his exit, combining with his polite adieux an expression of his outrage.

  And what a to-do followed his exit! “So this is the reason for all those moods and tenses!” sniffed Great-aunt Annie. “And where did you find this adventurer, if I may ask?”

  “You may not, Great-aunt.”

  “And I suppose next you’ll be saying that you want to marry this bearded flibbertigibbet?” She clenched her fists on her walking stick. “Never trust bearded men. They have receding chins
!”

  “But you married one, yourself.”

  “I know. I speak from experience. They had to shave your great-uncle at the end, my dear. I was appalled!”

  “Just because your husband had no chin,” said Bella, “is no reason to attack Mr. Manningham. Would you like me to feel where the hair ends?” She gathered up her reticule and went up to her room, where she wrote immediately to Jack: “Dear Mr. Manningham, I feel that I owe you an apology for this disastrous afternoon, even though it was your suggestion that we should visit Holly Place. My great-aunt is an old lady, whose experience of married life was as brief as it was unrewarding. This, and perhaps a wish that she will not acknowledge to herself that I should nurse her declining years, can be the only excuse for a reception of you that would otherwise be unpardonable. But if you are but half the gentleman which I esteem you to be, my explanations will be supererogatory.” Bella paused at this last word, fearing that it might be unknown to a man who had graduated only in the “University of Life.” But she let it stand, arguing that for a woman to write down to her lover would be downright insulting. She subscribed herself, “I am, believe me, dear Mr. Manningham, as ever yours, Bella Hickok.” It was for him to divine how totally she was forever his.

  No word had been spoken to Great-aunt Annie of marriage but when Bella came down to dinner of boiled leg of mutton with sage and onion sauce, she found Cousin Alfred invited and already assuming that marriage was proposed. “The question is, my dear Cousin,” he said, “not who your good gentleman is, but what. A man of no property clearly! But in these modern days, one cannot demand that. Nor does he seem to have a profession, such as a lady in your position in life might anticipate.”

  “Blow my position in life!” Bella said. “What am I, but an unpaid lady’s companion?”

  Great-aunt Annie rumbled. “I beg your pardon.” Her jet bracelets jangled.

  “I yours,” said Bella, muttering, “for being provoked to speak the truth.”

  Her mutter was drowned by Cousin Alfred clearing his throat. He shot his cuffs and leaned forward. “To be in trade may not be yet considered comme il faut” he said, “but as a man of liberal views I welcome many merchants among my clients; men of substance if not of property. But Mr. Manningham does not appear, from what Aunt Annie says, to have any means of subsistence other than his wits. Or am I wrong, Cousin?”

  Bella was sufficiently indoctrinated by her family to see this argument as irrefutable. Marriage to Jack Manningham was probably an appalling misalliance, contrary to social custom, good sense and financial discretion. Yet her soul, possessed by Kypris, the goddess of Love, protested that the world would be well lost for Jack. He had stirred her heart as no man had ever done since she had come to Hampstead. He was the deliverer, St. George, Perseus, the long-awaited hero. “If he had nothing,” she said, thinking of her inheritance, “would it matter?”

  Cousin Alfred removed a piece of gristle from his mouth and laid it on the side of his plate as if it was a tooth which happened to have fallen out during mastication. He contemplated it wistfully. “Indeed it would. Mr. Manningham may have come into your life, Cousin, recently. But he is, I gather in his early forties.” He looked up at Bella with the inquisitive glance he had practiced in the magistrate’s court. “What has he been living on all these years?”

  “You mean, who’s he been living on?” Great-aunt Annie said.

  “Precisely,” Alfred agreed and added, more precisely, “Upon whom?”

  “Not to mince matters,” said Great-aunt Annie, “your Mr. Manningham is an adventurer and you are a silly romantic girl, who at your age ought to know far better.”

  A week later Jack Manningham married Bella Hickok by special license and took her to Paris for her honeymoon. She had never realized the extent to which she had been exploited by Great-aunt Annie and Cousin Alfred, the money they had extracted from her estate; so that far from being an unpaid lady’s companion, Bella was paying her great-aunt for the privilege of looking after her hand and foot. And that stick-in-the-mud Cousin Alfred, far from using her legacy to the best advantage, had lent money of hers to other clients of his so that they could buy houses at what Jack could assure her was a ridiculously low rate of interest. And if they failed to keep up the interest payments, had forborne to foreclose.

  So, far from Jack Manningham being a dreamy adventurer, he had proved himself a very shrewd man of affairs. “It astonishes me, my dear girl, the way you allowed that precious family of yours to hoodwink you. But I’ve taught them a lesson they won’t forget.”

  Cousin Alfred appeared at the Registrar’s office like “a skeleton at a feast,” Jack put it. Afterwards he kissed Bella chastely on both cheeks, wiping the tip of his nose before and afterwards. Drawing her to one side, he whispered, “I really do wish you every happiness, Cousin. Despite all the unpleasantness, please remember, if you are ever in trouble . . .”

  There was no time to say more. Jack Manningham loomed over him like an escarpment. “I’ll come and see you, after the honeymoon, Mr. Hickok,” he said. “I must have everything cleared up before we sail for Central America.”

  Later, when they were on the boat train, Bella said, “What did you mean about Central America?”

  “That’s where we’re headed for after Gay Paree, child,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “You most certainly didn’t, Mr. Manningham,” Bella said happily. “And I won’t object, mind you. But I would have liked to be told, and why?”

  “Why?” Jack winked. “That is indeed asking. Let us say that there are aspects of the upper and lower intestines of the American continent that could be further explored.”

  “Such as?”

  “Opals in Guadalajara!” he suggested. “Silver in Taxco! To say nothing of the guano islands off the coast of Peru! Filthy lucre, maybe, but lucre all the same.”

  Jack had reserved a first-class carriage on the Dover boat train. Bella sat by the window with her back to the engine and he facing her. As soon as the train drew out, he told her to close her eyes and open both her hands, into the palms of each of which he laid an object wrapped in tissue paper. “Now, Bellissima,” he said, “you may open your eyes.”

  She looked down at the two little packets, each of which was tied with pink silk ribbon in a delicate bow. Beneath the ribbon was a card cut exactly to shape, delicately ornamented with a design in India ink, around an inscription written in minuscule handwriting. On one was written “That for her love such quarrels may be broached.” Shakspeare. On the other, “This is to give Bella the time of her life.”

  Tears of gratitude came into her eyes. She had not expected an engagement ring with a marriage so hasty, and the wedding ring, the narrow band of gold, had struck her as rather insignificant to symbolize a union to her so meaningful; but these two gifts more than compensated by their surprise and thoughtful presentation. “The quarrels are over,” she said, “so I will open that one first.” She was careful in unwrapping it to preserve everything, the card, ribbon and tissue paper, trifles made sentimentally precious by their employment.

  Inside was a cameo brooch, a 19th century imitation in paste of some classical original; a huge thing, its oval some two and a half inches by one and a half, with a gold mounting at its back. It was not the most suitable piece of costume jewelery for a woman of Bella’s delicacy. To set it off, it needed the capacious bosom of a Roman matron. The figure on the cameo caught Bella’s eye, a naked goddess clutching between her breasts a cornucopia. “Oh, Jack!” She looked across at him, starry-eyed. “You knew!” It was Persephone, returned from the underworld to the sweet light of day.

  Jack nodded, pleased with her pleasure.

  “But how did you know?”

  “I knew it was your sort of thing.” (He had no idea that it was Persephone, it turned out later, nor who Persephone was anyway. But in a way, this made the perception even more wonderful, because just something he felt deep down in himself.)

  “But wh
ere did you find it?”

  “I picked it up, years ago,” he said. “It belonged to an old lady I knew.” He pointed to the other packet, waiting to be opened.

  Bella packed the brooch away first. “In Paris, I will buy something special to set it off,” she said.

  The second present was more everyday, a beautiful little French fob watch of gold and enamel, which struck the hour on the depression of a little knob. It was of a workmanship characteristic of the 1830’s. “Did you pick this up from the old lady, too?” she asked.

  He fixed it to her lapel. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “She must have been very fond of you!”

  “Fond of me?” The question seemed not so much to startle as to amuse him. “Perhaps she was. She certainly trusted me.”

  Jack was a wonderful companion during those weeks in Paris. He knew his way around. In a restaurant, he would describe the “specialités de la maison,” while studying the menu. It might be something which under no circumstances would Bella have eaten in England, such as Blood Sausage or Mussels, but as Boudin and Moules Marinières they were invested with exotic glamour.

  Bella’s French came only from the schoolroom and from reading in the language, Racine principally. But she had an ear and recognized that her husband’s pronunciation was as execrable as his grammar. Once only she made the mistake of speaking in French and the waiter turned to her in relief from listening to the massacre of his language. How gross a mistake this was she saw from Jack’s black look. “My child,” he said, “it is customary for the husband to converse with the ‘garsong.’ ”

  There was a silly quarrel. The roles had been reversed. How could she be the unsophisticated girl being shown Paris if she spoke French better than he did? It destroyed his male dominance. She tried to argue that both of them were strangers in a foreign land and it was fun for them both to wrestle with the language, but he could not accept the idea of companionship. He could scarcely acccpt her even as his wife. He soon abandoned “Bella” and “Bellissima” for “my girl” or “my child.” As if the difference in their ages—never very precise, ten, twelve or fifteen years—made him, incestuously, not her husband but her father. Intellectually, she considered their roles just the opposite. Jack was a child and, by her standards, not very well educated. He said things like “between you and I” or even “among we people.” She did not dare to correct these errors. To accept them without protest in a way endeared him to her.