The Dark Clue

by James Wilson

  It cannot be helped – we must go, and he must make a good impression; or Lady Eastlake will lose confidence in him, and the whole undertaking will be jeopardized at precisely the moment we begin to make headway.

  As soon as she had gone, I settled down and wrote to him, saying he must come back.

  A small but disquieting epilogue. Davidson had taken the letter to the post, and I was heeding Dr. Hampson’s advice by taking a rest after my exertions, when I heard the doorbell ring. It seemed late for someone to be calling, but I got up and readied myself to receive a visitor. After a minute or two Mrs. Davidson came in, and began making up the fire.

  ‘Who was that at the door just now?’ I said.

  ‘A woman, miss.’

  I waited for her to go on, but she merely busied herself making a good deal of unnecessary racket with the poker. At length I said:

  ‘What kind of woman?’

  She hesitated, and swallowed noisily. ‘Not what you’d call respectable, miss. And nervous.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She wanted to see Mr. Hartright,’ she said, so quietly I could scarcely hear her.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She would not say, miss.’ She turned, and her eyes briefly met mine, as if she hoped I would see the disapproval in them, and so spare her the necessity of putting it into words. ‘Except to Mr. Hartright.’

  ‘Is she still there?’ I said, moving towards the door. ‘Let me see her.’

  ‘I sent her away, miss. I did not think you should be disturbed.’

  But I am disturbed. I cannot help it. Six months ago I should have assumed she was simply some poor wretch Walter had helped, and thought no more about it. But now …

  But it is no use dwelling on it. We must get this book finished, and out of the way – and pray that we can do so without causing lasting damage to our own lives.

  Book Three

  XLIV

  Memorandum of a letter from Walter Hartright to

  Mr. Elijah Nisbet, 1st December, 185-

  1. May remember we met when locomotive broke down near Leeds.

  2. Very kindly suggested might call to see your Turners.

  3. Shall be passing through Birmingham en route to London next week. May I accept invitation then?

  XLV

  Letter from Walter Hartright to Marian Halcombe,

  1st December, 185-

  Limmeridge,

  Friday

  My dear Marian,

  You are a marvel! To have made such astonishing progress, in less than two months!

  Unfortunately, I shall not be able to return in time for the proposed dinner on Monday. I realize this may place you in a difficult situation, and I am sorry for it; but since I had not heard from you for so long (please do not take this as a criticism – I can quite see that it would have been impossible to write, when you have been so occupied), I naturally had no idea of what, if anything, you had discovered, and no inkling that you might have made plans involving me. I have, in consequence, been pursuing my own independent research, which I fear obliges me to stop in Birmingham on my way back to town. Would it be possible, do you think, to postpone our engagement with the Eastlakes for a few days?

  With love from your devoted brother,

  Walter

  XLVI

  Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,

  4th December, 185–

  Heaven knows where,

  Monday

  My dearest love,

  See! I am being as good as my word! – though with some difficulty, I must confess – the train lurches from side to side like a ship at sea – can only put pen to paper in half-second when it is equidistant between the two. But now or never – for when we arrive at Willenhall (shortly) must go directly to the inn, and thence to Mr. Nisbet’s. So please forgive brief note. More tomorrow, I promise.

  Meanwhile – don’t be anxious about me. I am well. I have forgotten nothing. I love you.

  Walter

  XLVII

  From the journal of Walter Hartright, 4th December, 185-

  The rest can wait for my letter, but this, I know, would upset her.

  When he came in from seeing the poor fellow, Nisbet was clearly shocked – his face pale beneath the smudges of soot, his left hand grasping his right wrist, as if for support. He looked out of the window at the vision of hell beyond; and then steadied himself, and shrugged, and turned back towards me.

  ‘The price of Progress,’ he said. ‘Everything has its price.’ He nodded, as if this catechism had restored his faith. ‘Turner knew that. Now, will you take a glass of wine, Mr. Hartright?’

  XLVIII

  Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,

  5th December, 185–

  A little past Rugby,

  Tuesday

  My dearest love,

  The North-Western Railway, thank God, is kinder to correspondents than the Birmingham and Derby. My writing-box stays on my knee (most of the time) of its own volition; the pen makes only occasional unauthorized forays across the paper; and my elbow even has the luxury of unimpeded movement, thanks to the seat next to mine being empty. All in all, in fact, aside from the cold, I’m almost as comfortable as I should be in my study at home. So here, at last, is a proper letter.

  I had always supposed that the name ‘Black Country’ was a kind of poetical exaggeration, but it turns out to be as bald and literal a description as ‘Canal Street’ or ‘Station Road’. The ground is black with coal and cinders – the air with smoke – the very trees and blades of grass are black with soot, with just a flash of green here and there to remind you of their former state, like an old bright handkerchief glimpsed unexpectedly amidst the drabness of a workhouse. Mr. Nisbet, it transpires, is an iron-master; and while his house – a nightmare confection of gothic spires and Tudor windows, standing not half a mile from his works – is barely ten years old, it is already so caked with dust that you can only tell by the close-mesh pattern of the mortar that it is built of brick rather than stone.

  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman, who led me into a large octagonal hall. The walls were bare, save only for a few sombre portraits, and a picture of Nisbet and his family on the monumental chimney-breast. In the centre of the room was a huge table that might have been intended for King Arthur and his knights, but otherwise it was sparingly furnished, with a few seats set against the sides, and three wing-chairs arranged in a semi-circle in front of the fire blazing in the great stone hearth. A smoky light filtered down from a ring of small windows in the tower above, giving the place a kind of airy solemnity, like the interior of a church.

  ‘I’ll tell the master you’re here,’ said the woman.

  But she had not gone three paces before Nisbet himself entered, talking animatedly to another man who – from his heavy boots, and coal-stained brown suit – I took to be his agent. Nisbet was red-faced, and repeatedly shook a sheaf of papers in his hand for emphasis; while his companion listened gravely, head bowed, occasionally nodding, and all the time casting his eyes about the room, like an animal searching for some means of escape. In due course, they fell on me, and settled there; whereupon Nisbet paused, and glanced towards me to see what he was looking at.

  ‘Ah, Mr. Hartright,’ he said. ‘I shall be with you directly,’ He turned back to the man in the brown suit. Tell him to think of his wife, Harkness,’ he said. Tell him to ask her opinion. He must understand – they must all understand – I will not have it.’

  Harkness flushed, and stared at his feet. I thought for a moment he was going to protest; but at length he nodded abruptly, and started towards the front door at such a pace that the woman had to scuttle behind him to keep up.

  ‘Now then,’ said Nisbet, giving my hand a perfunctory shake. ‘How are you?’ He did not meet my gaze, but merely looked about the hall, as if making an inventory of its contents. After a few seconds he sat down before the fire, indicating with a casual wave that I should do th
e same. ‘We’ll do well enough in here for the time being, I think,’ he said. ‘My father-in-law’s dozing in the library, and I don’t want to disturb him.’

  His tone was pleasant enough, but there was no hint of apology, and he did not even pretend to consult my wishes, but simply assumed I should fall in with his. I was conscious, too, that he was looking at me in an odd way, staring at my legs and hands and at the back of my chair, with as little embarrassment as a farmer examining a horse he has been offered for sale. At length he sat back, with a faint air of puzzlement, and said:

  ‘So, did you work it up?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The locomotive?’

  ‘The loco-?’ I began. And then I recalled the circumstances of our last meeting, and realized that he must be talking about my drawing of the broken railway engine.

  ‘No,’ I said, without pausing to think. ‘I’ve been engaged in other things.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said impatiently. His eyes started to search the area round my chair again.

  And all at once I knew: he was looking for a portfolio. He had assumed I was a professional artist, and I had not corrected him; and now he supposed that I had come here to try to sell him something. Hence his off-hand manner towards me – a manner which I had last experienced, it suddenly struck me, as a young man, when applying for the post of a drawing-master, and which implied that while I was something more than a tradesman, I was certainly less than a guest.

  How to explain the truth, without embarrassment to us both? Matter-of-factly, making nothing of it? Humorously, with an easy laugh at such a foolish misunderstanding? I was still trying to decide when he went on:

  ‘Anything in the same vein? Engines? Machines?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Have you then nothing to show me?’

  I shook my head. ‘I simply came to see your Turners, since you were kind enough to invite me.’

  I had not meant to sound reproachful, but perhaps I did; for he at once said:

  ‘Oh, of course! of course!’ He nodded and smiled. ‘Forgive me if I mistook your purpose, but men in your line of business seldom lose an opportunity to advertise their wares, I find.’

  Perhaps, even now, I should have told him what my real purpose was, but having just disavowed one ulterior motive I felt I could not very easily admit to another; so I merely laughed, and said:

  ‘Even Turner?’

  ‘I knew him only as an old man,’ he replied. ‘When he had no need to play the salesman. But even then he liked his money.’ He frowned, and thrust out his lower lip, as if making some nice judgement, or recollecting some disagreeable memory. ‘If truth be told, he was something of a miser.’

  ‘Indeed?’ I said – as innocently, I like to think, as if the idea were entirely new to me.

  He nodded. ‘He’d never part with a penny unless he had to, or spend sixpence to save a shilling. The–’ He stopped himself, reluctantly, I thought. ‘But there. You don’t want to hear about the man. You want to see the pictures.’

  ‘No, please,’ I said. ‘He is something of a hero of mine.’

  He went on immediately, like a machine that needs only the smallest nudge to set it in motion again.

  ‘Well, the gallery in Queen Anne Street was a sight to behold. I have workmen keep their houses in better repair.’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘I was passing once when it came on to rain, and I thought I’d take shelter inside; but when I got upstairs it was so wet I had to keep my umbrella up. Water coming through the broken skylights – water in puddles on the floor – water streaming down the pictures. The wall-covering – some kind of red fabric – was coming off in handfuls. There was a painting of some great classical scene – Carthage, I think it was – and when I got close I saw the sky was all cracked like breaking ice, and in some places it was peeling away altogether. Another canvas was being used as a kind of door, covering a hole in the window, through which the cats would come and go.’

  ‘Cats!’

  ‘Oh, yes, they were everywhere. The place stank of them. They belonged to the housekeeper – a hag of a woman, to give you nightmares.’

  ‘What, Mrs. Booth, you mean?’

  ‘No, Danby, her name was. Hannah Danby.’ He mimed wrapping a bandage about his head. ‘Her face was so disfigured she had to keep it covered.’

  It was all I could do not to laugh at such a relentless catalogue of gothic detail; but he seemed deadly serious as he went on:

  ‘The cats, I suppose, were the only creatures who could tolerate her company. And she rewarded them by letting them walk and sleep where they pleased, and sharpen their claws on the picture-frames, and harry visitors. While I was standing there one of them jumped without warning on my neck, making me drop my umbrella in surprise – and suddenly four or five more appeared, attracted by the noise, and began pressing themselves about my legs.’

  He must at last have noticed my efforts to keep a straight face, for he smiled in response, and said: ‘And if it wasn’t the cats it’d be Turner himself, creeping out of his studio and taking you unawares.’

  He chuckled, which I took as a licence finally to laugh myself; and we both guffawed, egging each other on, until we had half-forgotten the original cause of our merriment. After thirty seconds or so, however, he stopped abruptly and said:

  ‘But I shouldn’t make fun of him. I wouldn’t have lived as he did – but then I couldn’t have painted as he did, either. And for all his oddities, he was a pleasure to do business with. Always absolutely straight – you’d agree a price, or a date, and he’d stick to it without fail.’ He paused, and pondered a moment, and then acknowledged some new thought by raising his finger. ‘I’ll tell you something else. He was the only painter I ever met who could talk intelligently about my world. The uses of different kinds of coal for smelting. The design of a new pump-engine. He was always fascinated by those kinds of subjects. He had an unshakeable belief in the industrial progress of our nation. As you’ll see in -’

  He suddenly stopped, and cocked his head. For a moment I could not imagine what had disturbed him. And then I heard it myself: a hubbub of cries and shouts and clanking metal, some way off but impossible to ignore, like the clamour of an approaching army.

  Nisbet drew in his breath sharply, and jumped to his feet. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, barely audibly; and started to leave at a run. But after a few steps he made a visible effort to master himself, and slowed to a walk.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, turning to me with a grim smile. ‘Dad must be awake now anyway.’

  He led me out of the hall and into a square room at the back of the house. It was plainly meant as a library; but it felt more like a small museum or gallery, for half the shelves were taken up not with books but with architectural and mechanical models, and there were pictures covering every scrap of wall. An elderly man in high boots and a plum-coloured riding coat sat before the fire, with the wide-eyed look of someone who has been startled awake.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked Nisbet.

  Nisbet shook his head brusquely, and strode to the window. The curtains had already been drawn, but he threw them open again, and looked out.

  Do you recall the picture of Pandemonium in my father’s copy of Paradise Lost? If not, find it in my study; for it will give you some idea of the scene that now confronted us. My immediate thought was that the earth itself must be on fire; for, beyond a line of bare trees at the end of the garden, I could at first see nothing but flames, and plumes of black smoke, and some heavier, yellowish vapour that curled this way and that across the ground, as if it were too lethargic to rise into the air. As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dusk, however, I could make out huge black mounds, as big as hills; and the silhouettes of tall chimneys, and engines with great wheels for winding up the coal, and clusters of sheds and cottages and stables – all strewn about as if they had been placed there with as little thought for order or beauty as pins stuck in a pin-cushion. />
  At the centre were three or four raging furnaces, surrounded by a tangle of tramways lined with laden trucks – which were probably carrying nothing more fearful than blocks of limestone, but might, from their appearance, have been conveying the souls of the damned to hell (an impression accentuated by the rhythmic thump of the engines, which sounded as solemn and ominous as a death march). As we watched, men seemed to be running towards them from every direction – yelling, dropping tools and buckets and gesticulating as they went – and gathering in an ever-bigger knot about something, or someone, on the ground.

  I heard Nisbet mutter, under his breath, ‘Damn!’

  ‘Is it another accident?’ said the old man. He was still in his chair, twisting his head towards us, as if he was too frightened to see the truth for himself.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Nisbet, flatly.

  ‘Oh, Eli!’ said the old man, shaking his head. He looked very pale. A strand of thin white hair fell into his eyes, but he did not try to remove it.

  Nisbet looked down at his hands, flexing the fingers abstractedly; and then turned to me with a brittle smile and said, with a creditable attempt at normality:

  ‘You’ll see, Mr. Hartright, that I’ve not done a great deal for authors and booksellers.’ He waved towards the half-empty shelves, and then to the paintings crowded between them. ‘But your fraternity has no reason to complain of me.’

  Looking around, I saw that there were perhaps thirty pictures altogether – oils and watercolours, prints and drawings, in almost every conceivable size and shape and manner. The only principle linking them seemed to be their subject matter: every one of them showed a machine, or an industrial process.

  ‘You see my taste,’ said Nisbet, trying to sound humorous. ‘It’s the taste of a man with an interest in two railways and a shipping company.’

  ‘Eli,’ said the old man, before I had time to reply. ‘Should you not go out there?’