Splendors and Glooms

by Laura Amy Schlitz

  “’Ow much?” demanded Parsefall coolly.

  “Half a crown,” answered the sergeant.

  Parsefall, to whom half a crown was riches, shrugged. His fingers were still clammy. Lizzie Rose marveled that he could be so frightened and yet so disagreeable. She rubbed her fingers against the back of his hand, trying to tell him that everything was all right.

  The constable came out from Grisini’s bedroom. “There’s no place anyone can hide in there,” he told the sergeant. “I’ve looked in the wardrobe and under the bed. We can search the rest of the house, but my guess is we won’t find her. She’s out in the streets, lost in the fog.”

  Lizzie Rose turned her eye toward the window. The fog was congealing; the buildings on the other side of the street had vanished into thick air.

  After the policemen left Grisini’s lodgings, they separated. Constable Hawkins set off to search the attics and question Mr. Vogelsang, the trumpeter on the top floor. Sergeant Croft went downstairs to continue his interview with Grisini and Mrs. Pinchbeck. From time to time, Lizzie Rose heard a stifled shriek. Evidently Mrs. Pinchbeck had resumed her Spasm.

  The children waited, straining to hear what was happening below. Parsefall built up the fire and crouched down beside it. Lizzie Rose replaited her hair and made a halfhearted attempt to subdue the clutter in the parlor. When the front door banged shut, they flew to the window.

  The two policemen emerged from the house, followed by Grisini. He bowed to them, turned on his heel, and headed down the street. The policemen set off in the opposite direction, their heads close together.

  “They don’t like Grisini,” Parsefall concluded. “They think he’s flimflammin’ ’em.”

  Lizzie Rose’s thoughts were elsewhere. “I hope they find Clara,” she said. “It seems heartless to just go on with the day.”

  “It don’t seem ’eartless to me,” answered Parsefall. “I’m ’ungry.”

  Lizzie Rose wrinkled her nose at him, but she was hungry, too. She reached into her pocket. “Here’s thruppence,” she said. “You could get us each a penny loaf and some milk. And take the dogs.”

  “Why do I ’ave to take ’em?” protested Parsefall, as he did every morning.

  “Because if they don’t go out and they make a mess, you’ll have to clean it up. I cleaned up yesterday,” Lizzie Rose pointed out. “And I’m the one Mrs. Pinchbeck will want to talk to after her Spasm.”

  Parsefall was out-argued, and he knew it. He was not skillful with Mrs. Pinchbeck’s complaints, and Lizzie Rose was. He went to get his jacket. Ruby began to frisk around his feet.

  “And carry Ruby on the stairs,” Lizzie Rose commanded. “Her toenails slip out from under her and it frightens her, poor darling.”

  Parsefall made a wordless grumbling noise but scooped up the dog. Lizzie Rose returned to her makeshift bedroom. She made her bed and put on the rest of her petticoats. Then she went downstairs to tend to Mrs. Pinchbeck.

  The staircase of the lodging house was dark and steep. The late Mr. Pinchbeck had provided a handrail in the form of a rope screwed into the wall. Since Mr. Pinchbeck had been dead nine years and the plaster was crumbling, Lizzie Rose had little faith in this contrivance. She descended cautiously, bringing her feet together on every tread. At last she knocked on the door of Mrs. Pinchbeck’s parlor.

  “Come in, dearie!”

  Mrs. Pinchbeck lay on the sofa, scanning a newspaper. She wore a poppy-colored wrapper and a soiled cap adorned with green ribbons. She had evidently found the gin bottle and was looking more cheerful than Lizzie Rose had expected. Lizzie Rose eyed her warily. Mrs. Pinchbeck with a little gin inside her was rakish and lively, but Mrs. Pinchbeck with too much gin was inclined to dwell on the day when Titus Pinchbeck, the only man she had truly loved, had been struck down by an omnibus.

  Mrs. Pinchbeck tossed aside the newspaper and clutched her heart. “Oh, child!”

  That was all Mrs. Pinchbeck said, but it was enough for Lizzie Rose, who had spent her life in the theatre. From the deep, foghorn-y sound of Mrs. Pinchbeck’s voice, it was clear that a play was under way, a play in which Mrs. Pinchbeck was the heroine. With light, dainty steps, Lizzie Rose crossed the threadbare carpet and flung herself onto her knees beside the sofa.

  Mrs. Pinchbeck stretched out her hand to Lizzie Rose. Lizzie Rose caught it and held it against her cheek. Both females turned their bodies away from the back of the sofa, offering three-quarter profiles to the far end of the room.

  “Dear Mrs. Pinchbeck,” Lizzie Rose said breathlessly, “are you quite well?”

  “Alas, poor child,” Mrs. Pinchbeck replied, “I wonder if I shall e’er be well again. Coppers — first thing in the morning!” She dropped her voice half an octave. “And oh, child, the way they spoke to me!”

  Lizzie Rose clasped her hands. “How dare they, ma’am?” she cried, her voice throbbing with indignation.

  “I don’t know how they dared,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said darkly, “but it was something ’orrible — as if I was common.” She collapsed back on the sofa. Then a thought struck her, and she raised herself on one elbow. “Dearest child! Did those fiends lay their wicked hands on you?”

  “No, not at all,” Lizzie Rose answered. She almost said that the policemen had been very kind to her, but remembered just in time that this was not that sort of play.

  “All over the ’ouse, they went,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said. “I couldn’t stop ’em. That sergeant wanted to see everything — kitchen and larder and coal cellar and all!” She lowered her voice. “By the by, dearie, something’s gone bad in the larder. I don’t know what it is, but the smell is very high.” She waved her handkerchief under her nose. “P’raps you could help Luce sort it out.”

  Lizzie Rose’s heart sank. Mrs. Pinchbeck’s larder was a torture chamber for anyone with a sensitive nose, and her maid-of-all-work, Luce, was the most dismal woman in London. Lizzie Rose made up her mind that cleaning the larder would be Parsefall’s job.

  Mrs. Pinchbeck returned to the drama she was enacting. “I couldn’t bear those strange men lookin’ at my boudoir,” she said with a shudder of feminine disgust. “I’ve always been very delicate and modest in my ways. ‘You keep out of there!’ I said, and I stood in the doorway. ‘Move aside!’ the copper says to me! And I said to him, ‘You may cast me aside, you may dash me to the ground as a frail, weak woman, but never’”— Mrs. Pinchbeck’s voice sank impressively —“‘never shall you cause me to tremble before you!’”

  It was a superb moment. Mrs. Pinchbeck thrust out her bosom and flung back her head. Lizzie Rose knelt upright. Together they struck attitudes to create what was called (in the theatre) a Picture.

  They held the Picture for a few seconds, so that the imaginary audience at the far end of the room could applaud.

  “Dear Mrs. Pinchbeck,” breathed Lizzie Rose, “how brave you were! How pure!”

  “He felt it,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said with simple pride. “I could tell ’e felt it. But that didn’t stop ’im.” Her face darkened. “’E was too set on ransacking the house.”

  Lizzie Rose’s brow puckered. She forgot the scene they were enacting. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If Miss Wintermute ran away from home, she’d come to see Parsefall and me. She wouldn’t hide in your boudoir or creep down to the larder.”

  “They think she was kidnapped,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said sagely. “They think Grisini kidnapped her and ’id her in the ’ouse.” She took the gin bottle from under the sofa and poured a tablespoon into her glass. “It don’t matter,” she concluded, and drank. “They won’t find anything, any more than they did the last time.”

  “The last time?” Lizzie Rose echoed.

  Mrs. Pinchbeck eyed the level of gin in the bottle, sighed, and pushed it under the sofa again. “Must have been eleven, twelve years ago. It was just before I met Mr. Pinchbeck and settled down. I was in Brighton, at the Theatre Royal — I was Angela in The Castle Spectre — and Grisini was playing at the Dome. We
was staying in the same boarding’ouse. And this little boy went missing. He’d come to the Dome to see the fantoccini, and afterward his nurse brought ’im backstage, because he wanted to see up close. And then — the next day it was — he went missing. Everyone thought Grisini ’ad something to do with it, because ’e was a foreigner. So the coppers come to the boarding’ouse. They was all over, poking and prying and asking their questions. But they couldn’t prove anything, because Grisini never done it.”

  The front door slammed shut. Lizzie Rose heard the sound of barking. Parsefall had returned with breakfast. The parrot, excited by the cries of the dogs, shouted, “Ruination!” The canary burst into song, beginning with a series of earsplitting chirps and ending with a trill.

  Lizzie Rose leaned toward Mrs. Pinchbeck, not wanting to lose the thread of the story. “But did they ever find him?” she said imploringly. “Did they ever find the little boy?”

  “He came back ’ome,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said, “but ’e was never the same after that. Next to an idiot, ’e was. That’s what I ’eard. But it had nothing to do with Grisini, and soon afterward, I met Mr. Pinchbeck.” Her voice warmed as she began the familiar story. “I ’ad on a white muslin gown with pink flowers, and a parasol to match, and my ’air was in natural ringlets, as took two hours to put up in papers —”

  The door opened. Parsefall came in, oppressed by dogs. Pomeroy, the bulldog, had attached himself to the boy’s trousers and hung there, drooling. Punch, the rat terrier, leaped up and down like a hammer on a nail. Puck, the beagle, snarled at Parson, the pug dog, and Ruby was at the rear. The spaniel had caught the leash between her hind legs and was circling with one paw lifted, hopelessly tangled.

  “Oh, poor Ruby!” cried Lizzie Rose, and went to rescue her favorite.

  “I’ve got breakfast,” Parsefall said joyfully. “I asked for stale bread, but the old lady at the bakery said there was only fresh. She said she’d give it to me ’ot an’ cheap, if I’d just get the bloody dogs out of the shop.”

  “How clever of you, Parsefall,” cried Lizzie Rose, “and shame on you, using such horrid language in front of a refined lady like Mrs. Pinchbeck!”

  Parsefall blinked at her. Mrs. Pinchbeck was charmed, as Lizzie Rose had intended, and assumed an air of mincing gentility. “There’s fresh dripping in the larder,” the landlady hinted, and Lizzie Rose clapped her hands. She had an unappeasable craving for meat in any disguise.

  “Bread and dripping for breakfast!” announced Lizzie Rose. “I’ll run downstairs and put the kettle on, and we’ll have a feast.” She reached under the sofa, nabbed the gin bottle, hauled the bulldog off Parsefall’s leg, and went bravely downstairs to face Mrs. Pinchbeck’s larder.

  Clara slept. Never in her life had she known so dense a sleep: a sleep without dreaming, without the slightest twitch of finger or eyelid. She was as lifeless as a pressed flower. If she had been awake, she could not have said whether her eyes were open or shut. Her mind was empty, freed from guilt and terror and grief. Only the night before, she had spoken of her fear of cold and darkness; now darkness and cold claimed her, and she was not afraid.

  That night Parsefall had a nightmare. It was Ruby who sounded the alarm, sniffing at her mistress’s face and whining softly. Lizzie Rose heard Parsefall’s labored breathing and climbed out of bed. She drew a blanket around her shoulders, tiptoed out of her room, and knelt down beside the sleeping boy. She wanted to rouse him before he screamed; Grisini did not like being awakened.

  “Parse,” she whispered urgently. She took his hand and squeezed it. “Parse!”

  His eyelids lifted, fluttering. He flailed his arms and sat up, straining to see through the darkness. Ruby whimpered and tried to lick his face.

  “It’s just me,” Lizzie Rose whispered. She put her arms around him and drew him close. He was trembling so hard that her own heart beat faster. She steadied herself, taking deep breaths. If feelings could cross from one body to another, he must catch hers, not the other way around. “I’m right beside you, Parse.”

  Parsefall burrowed into her. She felt the heat of his breath against her shoulder and a few damp spots, tears he would never admit to shedding. Once, after one of his nightmares, he had bitten a hole in her nightdress. Lizzie Rose rocked him back and forth, stroking his hair. It felt greasy and smelled horrid. She tried not to inhale. “You had a bad dream,” she murmured, “but the bad isn’t real. I’m here, and you’re safe.”

  For perhaps a minute and a half, they clung to each other. Then he pushed her away. “Get off me,” he growled.

  It occurred to Lizzie Rose that it would be easy to hit him. It would serve him right, and he was certainly within range. She pushed the tempting idea aside and reached for the poker. “I’m going to stir up the fire,” she whispered. “You’re cold as ice.”

  Parsefall wrapped his arms around his knees. He was still quivering, but he didn’t argue. He watched as Lizzie Rose put coal on the fire and stirred the embers. As the firelight grew stronger, his narrow little face took on a different cast. By full light, he was a weedy, homely little boy, but now he was weirdly pretty. His hollow cheeks held the shadows, and his pale eyes gleamed silver.

  “Now,” Lizzie Rose said briskly, “what was your dream?”

  She knew he wouldn’t tell her. He never did. She wondered if he even remembered.

  “Nuffink,” said Parsefall tonelessly.

  “Do you want to go back to sleep? I’ll sit by you.”

  Parsefall didn’t answer.

  “Do you want me to tell you a story?”

  She had him there. Caresses he spurned and sympathy he could resist, but Parsefall loved stories. No one had told him stories in the workhouse. As a figure worker, he had learned the plots of Grisini’s puppet plays, but he knew no others. He could not read and he resisted all Lizzie Rose’s attempts to teach him his letters. But stories he loved. He said hungrily, “Cinderella?”

  Lizzie Rose smiled to herself. It was his favorite, and her masterpiece. She had told it many times over and perfected each detail; if she was in the mood to describe every gemstone on the enchanted coach, or every ribbon on Cinderella’s gown, she didn’t spare him. “Wrap yourself up,” she whispered, “and I’ll tell.” She reached for his quilt so that she could wind a cocoon around him.

  Something fell from the folds of the cloth, striking the floor with a sharp plonk. “What’s that?” hissed Lizzie Rose.

  Parsefall’s hand moved rapidly, but for once Lizzie Rose was quicker. She snatched the object from him and held it close to the firelight. It was a photograph in a silver frame. “Parse, where did you —?” Then she knew. “You stole this!”

  “Did not,” Parsefall said automatically.

  “You did. You stole it from the Wintermute house. Oh!” Lizzie Rose recalled the frantic haste with which Parsefall had tidied away the blankets that morning. “That’s why you were so afraid of the coppers!”

  Parsefall said, “Woz not,” but without much force.

  “You’re a thief !” Lizzie Rose cuffed him. “Oh, Parsefall, for shame!”

  Parsefall switched tactics. “They’re rich enough,” he said defensively.

  “Rich enough!” Lizzie Rose hissed scornfully. “All their children dead, and you say they’re rich enough! Have you no pity?”

  “One of ’em’s living’,” Parsefall said weakly.

  Lizzie Rose cuffed him again. “Yes — poor Clara!” she said again. “If she isn’t kidnapped and she comes back home. Oh, Parsefall, how could you? Don’t you know right from wrong?”

  Parsefall opened his mouth and shut it again, as if realizing that this was a dangerous question.

  “What are we to do?” Lizzie Rose turned the photograph in her hands, reading the writing on the back. “Charles Augustus Wintermute — he was Clara’s twin.” She brought the photograph closer to her eyes. “Oh, Parsefall!” she wailed. “He’s in his coffin!”

  “No, is ’e?” Parsefall took the photograph an
d peered at it narrowly. “I didn’t look that close. I thought ’e was sleepin’. He’s a real little swell, ain’t he?”

  Lizzie Rose frowned at him. “You shouldn’t call him a swell now he’s dead.”

  “It ain’t my fault ’e’s dead,” Parsefall said, stung. “They’re all dead in that family.”

  Lizzie Rose cuffed him a third time. Parsefall slapped back. He did not hit hard, but the blow served to discourage Lizzie Rose. She hugged her knees to her chest and let her head fall forward. “Oh, Parse! What are we going to do?”

  Parsefall shrugged. Then a look of naked fear crossed his face. “Are you going to tell the coppers?”

  Lizzie Rose shook her head. “No. I don’t know if they’d hang you, but they might. Or they’d put you in prison; I don’t know which. I suppose”— she considered —“we might send the photograph through the post. That way poor Mrs. Wintermute —” She stopped. “Oh, no, how horrid!”

  “What’s ’orrid?”

  “Don’t you see? If you were Mrs. Wintermute — and Clara’s still missing! — imagine how dreadful to open a parcel and find a picture of your son in his coffin!”

  Parsefall said tentatively, “There’s the pawnshop.”

  “There isn’t,” Lizzie Rose snapped back. “If you think I’m letting you get a single farthing from this photograph, you’re mistaken. You’ve been wicked — not just naughty, but wicked — and you ought to be punished. You ought to be whipped.”

  “You can’t whip me,” Parsefall said coolly. It was true. Lizzie Rose was taller than he was, but she wasn’t strong enough to immobilize him and strike him at the same time.

  “No, I can’t,” Lizzie Rose admitted mournfully. “Oh, Parsefall! What’s to become of you? You can’t read and you don’t go to church, and you steal things, and you smell so bad. How are you to grow up to be respectable?”

  “You ain’t going to tell Grisini, are you?”