by Edward Cline
He said, “Hugh will be better able to maintain his family’s fortunes, Mother, for all that. He will be a man of substance, much as his father is, and will always win the trust and confidence of men like Mr. Worley. That will be a nicer asset to him than his eventual title.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” sighed Mrs. Brune. She changed the subject. “What do you think of Alex McDougal?” The Brunes had accepted an invitation to sup with the McDougal family at the merchant’s home near Covent Garden. Alex McDougal was the son of Duncan McDougal, James McLeod’s partner. He was a year older than Hugh, and worked closely with his father. The McDougals were an almost completely Anglicized family, and Scottish only for their refined brogue. And, she had learned, the McDougals were almost half as wealthy as the Kenricks, and owned land throughout the North of England. Alex was a handsome lad, conventional in all other respects, except on the subject of trade, and had graduated from Edinburgh University. He could play the harpsichord and violin, recite poetry, and often quoted from the Bible. At the supper he had paid Reverdy special gentlemanly attention, and this had not gone unnoticed by Mrs. Brune. Reverdy, she knew, had not placed any importance on it. Alex McDougal was a model of decorum and manners, and while Hugh was also this, he defied Mrs. Brune’s best efforts to otherwise categorize him. When he was in her presence, she felt a power emanating from him that seemed to contradict his decorum and manners. Secretly, she disliked and feared Hugh Kenrick.
“Alex?” replied her son. “He’s a good fellow, and a true gentleman. We shall get along most wonderfully. Why, we’ve even made a pact: He’s to teach me this game of golf, and I’m to teach him the game of cricket!” James Brune paused, and was struck with an idea. “I wonder if we could get Hugh to join us. He wasn’t much of a cricket player in Danvers. Practically had to be hog-tied and taken to a game. But he was a terrific bowler, when he got into the spirit of things. Smashed the wicket every time. No one ever scored off of him, not even Squire Tallmadge, who is no mean batsman.”
Mrs. Brune hummed in doubt. “I shouldn’t count on that, Jimmie. I have a notion that he thinks he’s above common diversions.” She paused. “I was just thinking, though. Now that I’ve met young Mr. McDougal, I’ve been wishing you had another sister to turn his head. They’d make a nice match, don’t you think?”
James Brune laughed. “Now, Mother! Count your blessings, and leave well enough alone,” he chided her. “If Father ever heard you say that, he’d lock you in your room until after Hugh and Reverdy were married! I know what you’re thinking! Banish the thought!” He laughed again, bent to kiss her on the cheek, and left her room.
* * *
Over the next two weeks Hugh escorted the Brunes to the best London had to offer in the summer: concerts, balls, art galleries, and Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens. Reverdy was dazzled by the abundance of music, art, and social life. “I shan’t want to return to Danvers, if this is merely the slow season,” she confined to Hugh after the first week. “I am quite at home here.”
“As am I,” replied Hugh.
They went to the Opera House and saw a sumptuous production of one of Handel’s works. They danced minuets and gavottes at Vauxhall. They visited art galleries, and Hugh bought a painting by the anonymous Dutch “Candlelight Master” of Athena gazing critically up at a statue of herself in a darkened Parthenon. They attended the theater, and saw David Garrick in one of his own plays, Don Juan, with an overture liberally adapted from Gluck’s ballet of the same name. Hugh did not think much of the production, but Reverdy had never before seen a full stage production of a play, and he was pleased with her delight.
A merchant friend of Mr. Worley’s invited Hugh and the Brunes to an evening concert on the terrace of his house that overlooked the Thames far down river from Windridge Court. They listened to a selection of Italian and French music played by a small ensemble of musicians. When the evening was over and the guests began leaving, but before the musicians could collect their instruments and charges, Hugh persuaded the ensemble to play Vivaldi’s “Echo” Concerto, and paid them a crown each for the request.
One of the violins played the “echo” portion from a second-story balcony of the house, the other remained with the ensemble. The musicians performed the piece flawlessly. Hugh, Reverdy, and the remaining guests applauded the group.
Reverdy said, “That was enchanting, Hugh. What is it called?”
“The ‘Echo.’ It is two souls speaking to each other over a great distance—between, say, London and Danvers.”
“Or…from across a room,” suggested the girl.
“Or…over no distance at all.”
“Yes.” Reverdy fluttered her fan in thought. She asked, after a moment, “But, Hugh: Which of us is the echo?”
“Does it matter?” replied Hugh with a smile that revealed that he had not understood the import of her question.
It was then, and only just then, that Reverdy fully grasped the nature of their relationship; at least, what it was from Hugh’s perspective. She could not say whether it elated her, or frightened her. “No,” she answered in a near-whisper, “I don’t suppose it matters.”
Hugh smiled again, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.
The Brunes had planned to hire a boatman to row them upriver to see the Battersea Enamel Works and the villages of Wandsworth and Hammersmith on a day when Hugh left to work at Mr. Worley’s, but a steady rain fell on London on the appointed day, and they canceled the outing.
Reverdy, bored and restless, went to Hugh’s room in search of something to read. She had been in his room many occasions before, with either her mother or brother, for tea and conversation. Now, as she stole into his room and closed the door behind her, she felt a thrill of forbidden adventure; she was alone in his room. The first thing she saw was the intriguing painting of Athena fixed to the wall over Hugh’s desk. Dutifully, she went to the bookcase and examined the titles. Most of the titles she saw were too serious or daunting. She selected a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, translated by a scholar named McChesney, then roamed about the room guiltily, unable to resist her illicit curiosity.
On another table she saw sheets of drawings and went to look at them. In the center of scattered piles of them she saw a completed sketch of a round Doric temple, such as graced the gardens and parks of many country estates. Behind the pillars and beneath the dome of this structure she saw what seemed to be a rough rendering of a statue of a goddess. At least, it struck her as a goddess. The figure was not drawn in a classical attitude or pose. It was a tall, straight figure, frozen in mid-stride, one arm at its side, the other holding up a lamp. Its shoulders and head were thrown back in pride and determination. A wind-blown chiton caressed the lines of her body.
Reverdy lifted the sketch and discovered others beneath it. These were studies of the statue from the front, back, and sides. Then her eyes widened in shock when she recognized her own face and body. Under one of the studies Hugh had written: “A study of Reverdy as Psyche, about to light the face of her lover. Temple to be commissioned and built on the family grounds at some future date, and secluded by a gate and hedgerow.”
She knew the ancient legend of Psyche from Apuleius, the daughter of a Greek king, loved and possessed by Eros, but forbidden by him to see his face. On one of his nocturnal visits, she lit a lamp while he was sleeping and glimpsed his face. A drop of wax struck his face. He awoke, and angrily rejected her for having broken her promise. Eventually he relented and took her back, and obtained permission from Zeus to marry her.
Reverdy put down the book and picked up a drawing. There were two renderings of her on the sheet, in uncorrected pencil: one of her nude, and one of her in the same pose, but with the translucent chiton stressing the lines of her body. As she absorbed the renderings, her hand wandered to trace the lines of her own face, breasts, waist, and hips. How could he know her so well, she asked herself, unless he had studied her and imagined her in a way that was so…intimate? She felt violated
and ecstatic at the same time. No man ever saw a woman this way, except in a bedroom…
The door to the room opened, and Reverdy, the sheet still in her hand, turned with a start. Hugh came in. He paused, then smiled at her and removed his wet greatcoat and hat. “You see there,” he said, as though he had been with her all the while, “that I have revised the legend and not imposed such an unreasonable condition upon our union.” He shook his head. “You will neither be punished abandonment, nor cursed by Aphrodite.” He spoke without resentment for the intrusion, without even surprise at finding her here.
“Hugh, I…” began Reverdy, but she stopped. She did not know what to say.
Hugh shook his head. “I had not planned to tell you about the temple until it had been completed. But now that you know…now you know.”
Trembling, Reverdy put the sheet back on the table, picked up the book, and turned to face him again. She felt naked before him now, and helpless. She wanted to escape, to flee with her new knowledge of him, and of herself, but knew that every movement she made would be observed by him, and that this would feel as intimate as his hands on her body. She felt self-conscious and transparent in a way she had never experienced before.
Hugh was studying her now. “When you are older,” he said, “you will not wear that blush and look of astonishment. You will be a woman who knows that she belongs in that temple.”
Reverdy pressed the book with both hands close to her breast, and braved an answer. “I’m not sorry I am here…Hugh. I’m glad that you know me…so well…” She thought that this was something the woman in the drawings would say. She thought she could feel what that woman felt, and be what he expected her to be: a mortal, who, by marrying him, would become a goddess.
Hugh shut his eyes for a moment, then turned and opened the door. He stood aside with his hand on the latch, waiting. “You must leave now, Reverdy…before we jeopardize our future, as we would surely do, if you stayed…”
Reverdy raised her head higher and swept past him without looking at him. But then she was turned violently and his lips were on hers. His arms encircled her and she felt her arms and hands pressed by the book that was between her breast and his chest. She heard him groan in hunger as he tasted her, and she answered in kind. His lips moved down her offered neck. When she stopped resisting and submitted to the fact that she would be consumed by him and crushed out of existence, he opened suddenly his arms and with the same violence held her away from him. “We have tasted our future together…Go…”
She nodded and stepped away from him, backing out of the room into the hallway, the book still pressed to her breast. When at last she tore her sight away from him, she turned and walked as though in a trance down the hall to her room. She heard his door close softly behind her.
* * *
It was the Brunes’ last evening in London before they departed in the morning in the Kenricks’ coach for Canterbury on the first leg of their journey back to Danvers. James Brune, with Hugh’s leave, also invited Alex McDougal to the supper at Windridge Court. The latter brought with him another man, Bamber Faure, Vicar of St. Thraille’s, in Surrey, where the McDougals maintained a residence. Faure was in the city to see the Bishop of London on church business and had naturally paid a visit on the McDougals, for Duncan McDougal was a vestryman in the Surrey parish. Hugh would not have otherwise invited a clergyman to the house, but civility obliged him to admit the man when the pair appeared and were announced by a servant. The vicar was quiet, contributing a few mundane remarks in the course of the evening’s conversation. The talk turned from business, to speculation on the outcome of Admiral Byng’s scheduled trial, to the foot riots in Cornwall and Manchester, and to the likelihood of more riots sparked by opposition to the new Militia Act.
At one point in the conversation, Vicar Faure abruptly claimed with icy conviction that, instead of reading the Riot Act to any mob that might assemble in Surrey, he would read it the five axioms of Alfred the Great. “And they would either disperse out of deference to a power mightier than Parliament, or they would defy God. In which case, the rogues would deserve to be cut down by the dragoons and reduced by as many volleys as soldiers could put into them.”
In addition to formulating and promulgating these axioms, checking the Danish Viking invasion of England and thus saving the isle for Christianity, and translating Bede and Boethius, Alfred the Great, the ninth-century Saxon king, could also be credited with many other things, among them: making London the capital of Saxon England; founding Oxford University to produce semiliterate nobleman and court placemen; patronizing foreign scholars and welcoming learning at court; inventing the notched candle to mark the passage of time; and redesigning lanterns so that their light would not be extinguished by wind or draft.
The contradictions rife in his axioms, however, were not so obvious to this warrior king who seemed to be everything but a logician. Nor were they apparent to most of the guests seated at the supper table at Windridge Court, to whom the axioms represented the apex of their moral instruction, beyond what they absorbed in church and from the Bible.
Mrs. Brune, seated next to Reverdy, said, “My memory needs refreshment, Vicar. Please, forgive me, but what are those axioms?”
Alex McDougal, eager to display his learning, turned to the clergyman. “May I, reverend sir?” The vicar nodded with a smile.
Alex McDougal spoke. “The five axioms of Alfred the Great were that a wise God governed; that all suffering may be accounted a blessing; that God is the greatest good; that only the good are happy; and that a foreknowledge of God does not conflict with man’s free will.”
Hugh Kenrick laughed. The table was startled. He assured his guests that he was not mocking Mr. McDougal, but the axioms. And because he had laughed, he felt honor-bound to explain his reaction. “In the spirit of dispassionate argument,” he began, “let us examine these axioms.” He smiled at his guests. It was a daring smile, a smile of warning. “If a man can be governed by an all-knowing, all-powerful being—wise or not—then he cannot have a free will, or, at least, none that mattered. Such a will would be useless, a fiction, for whatever he thought or did would be approved or opposed by this being, not to mention foreseen by it before the fellow was born. And if he has free will, then he cannot be governed by such a being, who would be peripheral to that man’s existence. In which case, how could that being be a good? And—good for what?”
Mrs. Brune gasped. Vicar Faure began to reply, but changed his mind. James Brune and Alex McDougal stared at Hugh with incomprehension.
The table was quiet. Hugh waited for a reply. No one, however, not even the vicar, gave the least sign of agreement or protest. Reverdy Brune stared at Hugh with a subtle smile, and looked pleased that the force of his words had overwhelmed the others. Hugh was not certain whether he had offended the others, or lost them. He suspected the latter.
Vicar Faure at length cleared his throat and spoke, addressing the table at large, but actually Hugh, whom he had studied throughout the evening. “Logic is not to be the sole test of men’s understanding, milord. God and man work hand-in-hand, and thus determine man’s destiny. You impose strict reason on a subject which does not admit its unadulterated role.” He paused to smile. “Why, even Mr. Locke acknowledged this point,” he concluded with smugness.
Hugh shrugged. “I disagree with Mr. Locke on many points, reverend sir, and that is one of them.” His grin invited the vicar to pursue the matter.
Vicar Faure’s appraisal of Hugh’s knowledge and powers of argumentation was more acute than that of anyone else present. He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head in careless concession, and chose not to answer.
James Brune glanced around the silent table, and changed the subject. “Have any of you read that new book of Mr. Horlick’s, Twenty Moral Fables? I purchased a copy yesterday, and found it not only amusing, but quite instructive, as well.” The vicar, Alex McDougal, and Mrs. Brune all admitted to having read the book, and the conversation revi
ved on that subject.
Later, when they had a private moment together, Hugh remarked to Reverdy, “Well, that was the shortest exchange on a serious subject I have ever provoked.”
Reverdy stood looking up at him with undisguised adoration. “That is because Vicar Faure could not answer you so easily,” she said. She clasped her hands together. “Oh, Hugh! Someday, when you chance to speak in Lords, I shall be there to see you cause the other lords to squirm, just as you caused the vicar to fidget! I’m so proud of you!”
“I was not entirely dispassionate, Reverdy, and that was no mere exercise in algebra. I meant what I said.”
“How could you not mean it? So vigorous a mind as yours would not waste time on drolleries.”
“Drolleries, indeed,” said Hugh. “I questioned God, Reverdy, and to question Him is to question our ethic. To question that is to question the church, and to question the church is to question the state, doubt the king, and to flout everything associated with them. Vicar Faure knew that, which is why he did not pursue the matter. He is a slyly civil man, and an uninvited guest.”
“He is a coward.”
“He can afford to be one. The Crown stands behind him.”
Reverdy glanced to either side of her, then lightly placed her palms on Hugh’s chest. “Hugh,” she whispered, “you are going to be a great man, and I shall be proud to stand in your temple…or lie in your bed.”