Golden Hill (18 page)
Authors: Francis Spufford
âI can't tell you how glad I am to be out of the town,' said Smith, after a time.
âI thought you were a city animal, through and through,' said Tabitha.
âTrue, I am,' said Smith. âBut â not meaning any offence by it? â New-York scarce qualifies.'
âAnd London does, I suppose.'
âOh yes. London is a world. â No, a world of worlds. Many spheres all mashed together, to baffle the astronomers. A fresh planet to discover, at every corner. Smelly and dirty and dangerous and prodigious. I wish I could show it you.'
âYou love it.'
âYes â or I love what it has been to me. New-York, compared,
is small and tidy and amazingly much all the one thing, when you get used to it, and you see the same faces over and over.'
âYet here you are instead.'
âYes.'
âBecause you love running away, too. Even more,' said Tabitha with satisfaction, like one who completes a theorem, and now has the whole knowledge of something tidily tabulated.
âHow do you know that?' said Smith, startled.
âIt's obvious.'
âIs it?'
âYes!'
âWell, I hope it's only obvious to you.'
âMy dear man,' said Tabitha â a phrase which in her mouth sounded like part of the borrowed equipment of a little girl playing house, as much as it did an endearment â âthere is a whole school of thought about you, that holds you to be a banker's clerk, or a scrivener's prentice, who has run off with a bill from the master's desk.'
âBut I'm â I'm notâ'
Mr Smith had had so little practice, lately, in explaining himself, that now, when he wanted to, he stumbled.
âIt was in London I did my running away,' he said, trying to collect himself. âIf I was to run away here, I would go
back
.'
âI don't understand,' said Tabitha, who looked as if she did not want to.
âThis is my dutiful self you are seeing,' said Mr Smith. âMy attempt at duty, anyhow.'
âSmith the hero,' said Tabitha scornfully. âSmith the valiant.'
âMust you always interpret me in the most unfriendly way?' he cried. âI do my best to think the best of you!'
Hearing their voices raised, Captain Prettyman was staring Smith's way, with no friendly expression on his face. Tabitha raised a quelling palm in the Captain's direction, and he subsided. Smith felt an abrupt and uncomfortable consciousness that he was with Lovell's daughter, aboard Lovell's ship, among Lovell's men.
âI mean it,' Smith said. âHere I must wake every morning, and stay in the same place all day long, waiting. My feet itch to be moving, and I ignore them. I hate confinement;
hate
it.'
âYou would not be very happy as a girl, then,' said Tabitha, âif you regard a few weeks of idleness and play-acting as an intolerable burden.' But she put her hand on his shoulder, and kept it there. âHush,' she said. He could feel the moment of hovering and hesitation, as it arrived; and the way she pushed through it; and the way it seemed to call on resolution, in her, to do so. Which made it seem the more valuable, to him. Even through his coat and his shirt he could feel what he had noticed when she had caught at his hands, before â that Tabitha's blood ran hot, a little hotter than the ordinary, as if she were all the time in a dry, hectic fever. He imagined what it might be, to feel the furnace burn of the whole red-pale-brown length of her against his skin. â Yet the touch on his shoulder was steadying. The heat of it, coming steadily through his clothes, smoothed him like a flat-iron. âHush,' she repeated.
âAlright,' he said. âI do not wish to give scandal.'
âGood,' she said. âThey say this part of the river is like the Rhine.'
Indeed, they had passed the narrow point, and the river was broadening, and broadening still, to an immensity that astonished him, and all of it visible now, for the mists were fading or withdrawing,
into distant cloud, hanging above far shores of grey and russet and brown forest, and lines of crags. The impetus of the tide was lost in the width of the water, and they drifted onward, only, across a surface as steady as metal, as well as having its colour, while the crew hoisted more sail, to catch the little cats'-paws of breeze that came wrinkling and dabbing the water, scuffing the water as they touched it, from silver into pewter. The reflection of cliff and forest came and went in bands, where the breeze blew or did not. They watched together. It was a sight to make all human scurrying seem miniscule, and still it was a grateful sight, in its contagious peace: a sight, it seemed, to lay the phantoms of mistakes not yet made. Slowly, the lugger got enough way on her to begin a long curve, aimed at a point as yet invisible on the right-hand shore, ahead.
âBigger than the Rhine,' said Smith. âBigger and grander.' He cleared his throat. âHomer compared to a sonnet, I swear. A canto laid up against a couplet.'
âYou've seen the Rhine?'
âYes. â Yes!' he insisted, when she squinted sceptically. âI have done the whole Tour. I have received the education of a gentleman. Why else do you think I needed to run away?'
She clicked her tongue at him.
âIt's not a temptation you feel, then?' he asked. âYou don't ever want to rise up from your chair, and walk down the stairs, and put on your coat, and step out of the door onto Golden Hill, and just
go
?'
âWhere would I go to?' she said.
âAnywhere,' he said. âYou have a whole continent to choose from. Look at it. You could land anywhere on that shore, and just walk away, under the trees.'
âDo you know what is under those trees?'
âWhat?'
âNothing, Smith. More nothing than you can possibly imagine. You come from England: you think there will be villages, and roads, and inns to stay in, and there are not, hardly. Just hundreds of miles of bare branches, and dead leaves, and valleys without names. You would lie down and die in it, if you went in without knowing what you were doing â which you do not. You would freeze, or starve, or be scalped; all alone.'
âI was not suggesting doing it alone.'
âPeople are different,' she said. âThey differ even in their mad ideas, Smith.' She took the hand off him, and he felt the patch of himself where the contact had been cooling, painfully, towards solitude. Tabitha hugged both her arms around herself, and lowered her chin into her scarf. âI find the idea of stepping off the edge of the world ⦠terrifying,' she said. âGoing flailing down into empty space.'
âIt is worst the first time you do it,' he said. âThen you find that you can find your way. You find that there is enough in you, to manage.'
She only shook her head in the scarf.
âBesides,' he said daringly, âI think it might be good for you. What else is there here for you?'
âThe family. The business.'
âApart from that?'
No reply.
âI think,' he said, âthat you may be the kind of dog who bites because she is chained up.'
He expected her to laugh, or to flash out at him, or to do both. She did look up, but with a melancholy kind of trouble in her eyes.
âA lovely analogy: I thank you,' she said. âBut what if I am the kind of dog who bites because it pleases her?'
âI don't believe it,' said Smith.
*
Tarrytown was another wooden pier with a couple of muddy streets behind it, and beyond them a shelf of land a couple of miles wide, given over to fields, before the steep bluffs rose, at the valley's rim. Sacks and crates were waiting, piled on the pier, and loading began at once. Tabitha had some call she must make, as the daughter of the house of Lovell, and he wandered a little way inland while she was busy, along a deserted lane. She was not quite right about there being nobody in the woods, he saw: up on the top of the ridge the faint smudge of smoke from a fire was rising into the grey sky.
When he strolled back, he found her in urgent talk, at the pier's end, with Prettyman and another man â an agent, or factor, perhaps, who was stuffing papers back into a case. She broke off, seeing him, and strode quickly over, bidding the men to stay behind with another of those quick hand-chops of command. Smith was so happy to see her face â found her face so important a luminary, in the dimming grey expanse of the day; so unlike the rest of the lumpish indifferent matter of creation â that he did not pause over the look of stricken resolution upon it. He merely added to his elation an impulse of comfort, and a buoyant surety that, with a little perseverance, he would be able to ease her anxiety, whatever it might be.
âI think you should stay here,' she said.
âWhat? Why? â You've changed your tune,' he said, half-laughing in a suspicion of an imminent joke.
âThere
is
an inn,' she went on, still apparently in earnest. âYou
could stay a few days â try the lie of the land â breathe deep â give the city a rest. You said you wanted to.'
âJust now? Tabitha, I was romancing,' he said, grinning for two. âNot that I did not mean the invitation, most earnestly' â in case he was accidentally banishing a future happiness â âbut ⦠but ⦠it would not answer. I am, truly, bound by duty, till my business is done. Then I am yours for any escape; for anything.'
âShut up!' she said. âI didn't ask for that. â You're sure?'
âYes!'
âVery well, then: come along, we're sailing.' And she turned on her heel with a snap, and led the way back aboard the boat.
Smith had imagined that there would be time again for serious speech between the two of them, on the return leg to New-York; but as well as a hold full of sacks and a deck laden with casks, the lugger had also taken on a moderate clutch of New-York-bound passengers, from Dutch farm-wives carrying baskets of eggs to several more would-be sailors for the Indies voyage, and a talkative attorney, up, he said, from Baltimore to view the northern colonies. Smith and Tabitha were parted by the casks and the crowd, and he spent the journey back into fog and darkness on the ebb tide, obliged to lob back the attorney's conversational sallies; and thinking wonderingly, where he could betwixt the distractions, as young men are likely to do in these circumstances, how very ordinary and general and unremarkable a destiny it must be, how predictable a part of the universal portion of mankind it is, to love and to feel oneself beloved; and yet how astonishing it seems when it happens to you, yourself; what a stroke of glorious, undeserved, unprecedented, unsuspected luck it turns out to be, that you should be permitted, in your own person, to share in the general fate. It was not until the end of the voyage
that she squeezed her way back to his side. They had entered the Manhattan cloudbank again, and were sounding their way in to the dock with halloos, amid a gloom still darker than before.
âSmithâ' she began.
âRichard,' he said. âI think you could call me Richard.'
âIf you insist,' she said. The curiously stricken look had gone, and she was animated again. More than animated; almost frantic, as if she was bursting with some news. âRichard, the
Antelope
docked last nightâ'
âWho are these people?' he interrupted, for Ellison's Dock had swum up out of the murk, and the shadowy group standing at the end of it had the unmistakeable look of officialdom, of worldly powers about their duties.
âThe beadle and constables of the Out Ward,' she said. â
Antelope
came in last night without any copy of your bill. You are a fraud; you are detected. If you had been abroad in Manhattan today, you might have heard the news and slipped away, but I have made sure you did not. We have
got
you, Mr Smith. You are caught. I have caught you!'
On her face there was a writhing mixture of triumph and shame, horrible to see.
New-York, 1st December 1746
Sir:
You have warned me so many Times, of the Dangers of the World, for such as Us, should We but stray one Step beyond the Bounds of our Safety, that You will not be surprised to discover (after so long a Silence) that my present Accommodation is a Gaol. Not, however, one of the common Bridewells of London, where You may expect Me to have tumbled, after the Misadventures You predicted, when I quit the Patronage of Lord ——, and declined to submit Myself tamely to the Connection He had devis’d for Me at Oxford, in the perpetual Role of Hanger-On to his Son. Instead an Ocean lies between: my Confinement is American. I find Myself lodged in the Debtors’ Prison of the City of New-York. Which is, to particularise less grandly, an Attic of the Town-Hall here. The Apparatus of the Courts, as of the Government, is all conducted upon the Floor beneath. At present I am detain’d upon the civil Suit of my Land-lady and some Merchants and Victuallers with Whom I had run up Bills; but a Date is set for my Trial upon a criminal Charge of Fraud, in the Courtroom below, and if all continues to go ill with Me, as Events seem presently determin’d to do, I shall within some Days pass irresistibly downward through the whole Building, for the criminal Prison is in the Cellar. And though my Fate after that would comprise a brief
Excursion to the Common, it would in a manner of speaking be downward still. Fraud, as I have been informed with vengeful Grinning on all Sides, is a Hanging Offence. So if found guilty, my Destination would be swiftly Subterranean.
I confess, Father, that were it not for this Consideration, I should probably preserve the Silence between Us that has lasted since I declin’d Oxford, and the petted and protected Future that would have followed it, by departing His Lordship’s House in Grosvenor Square, through the Scullery Window. It gives me no Satisfaction to confirm the Judgement which You long ago made, of my Recklessness. Yet I would not desire to quit this dangerous World, without ensuring You receive some Account of your Son, and to tell Truth, there is some Comfort in addressing You thus, for I am Nineteen Parts in Twenty wretched, many Things upon which I had counted or hoped, having misfir’d, or proved flat contrary to my Hopes and Understandings of Them. And as my Pen scratches on, between the bare Walls of Lath and Board, and the Noise of the World’s Business floats up on ever colder Air, to the two unglaz’d Dormers with which my Apartment is provided, I discover in Myself too a meagre Satisfaction, in being able to talk to you at whatever Length I chuse, without You interrupting Me – without it being in your Power, to raise your Voice, or clap a Hand to your Temple, or to declare in your Pulpit Manner, the Strictures of God’s Word upon ungrateful Children. I am not in your Study now, but You in Mine. I may say what I like, while Paper and Ink hold out.
For These I am indebted, to my remaining Friend in this Place, Mr Oakeshott. He is much puzzled, having but recently decided upon my Honesty, by this Sign that (perhaps) I am now
after all not to be relied upon. He does not know, whether He was fooling Himself before, or whether He would be a Fool now, to continue even in so generous a State concerning Me, as Doubt. I exasperate Him: which as You see, is the Mode of my Relations with much of the World, and not just with You. But such is Mr Oakeshott’s Make, that He cannot forebear the Attentions of Charity, having once suffered Himself to feel a Connection. You would recognise and approve Him, Father, in some Things at least. He too is a Child of the Parsonage, inculcated with Principles of Benevolence and Magnanimity that work in Him most comically, whether He will or no, despite a sharp Tongue and a mordant Temper. He saved my Life three Weeks ago, in a Fit of Annoyance. I wish I could give Him better Recompense. – All these are Deductions made in His Absence, for He has not visited Me Himself, but sent his Man Achilles, with a Basket containing some Provisions, and the Means to write this Letter.
‘Is he very angry?’ I ask.
‘Oh yes,’ says Achilles, cheerfully. ‘All the People are telling Him, He has made Friends with a Rogue and a Thief. The Governor scolds Him; then in the Coffee-House They laugh and say, look, the Governor’s Side is the Side for Thieves and Rogues.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘He uses stronger Words, Sir.’
‘Will you tell Him how grateful I am, for—’ and I indicate the Basket, which I can see has Bread, and Cheese, and Apples in It, all bought no Doubt on Oakeshott’s Credit, He possessing little else to share. Achilles has not actually passed it through the wooden Bars of the Apartment yet, but holds it teasingly close.
‘Maybe I wait till he is more calm.’
‘Alright. It is very kind of Him,’ I say, endeavouring not to reach out. (I have not eaten for a Night and a Day at this Moment, it being impossible to adopt the usual Expedient of Debtors, and commission the Turnkey to go to the Merchants for my Meals. Having sued Me for the Amount of my existing Debt to Them, They are inclined to feed me no further. And this is the general Judgement. I may go empty-stomach’d to the Gallows, in the Opinion of New-York.)
‘He is a good Man,’ says Achilles, turning upon Me his small neat Visage, and a smiling Gaze with Intent flickering in it, like a Snake’s Tongue. He has said it before, but now there is a protective Warning in it. Achilles too is angry, I understand. Perhaps more furious than His Master, for what am I to Him?
‘I know that.’
‘Yes, Sir. And you, Sir? What about You?’
I am enough your Son, not to answer that Question with an easy Affirmative. I shrug. Achilles shrugs in return, with a Twist of his Mouth, and hands me the Basket.
‘Well,’ he tosses out, departing, ‘here is the next bad Thing for you, coming along quick, like I said.’
So I dine on one Slice of the Bread, and a Corner of the Cheese, and an Apple; and in the Morning, I breakfast on a Heel of the Bread softened in Water, and another Corner, and another Apple, and I resist the Urge to fill my Belly with more, since I do not know how long I must endure on These alone, and thus I keep Body and Soul scraping along Together. I pray, most gravely I assure You; and I write This, and the Practice of It saves Me from incontinent Howling. For the most Part.
There is little to be found otherwise within these Walls, of
Recreation. The Turnkey, a Mr Reynolds, having so few Clients, scarcely looks in upon Us, and I have had Nothing of my sole fellow Captive, in the wooden Cage across the Floorboards, but Groans, issued from a malodorous Heap of Blankets. He is (reputedly) a decay’d Soldier of some Sort. I can tell by my own Ears and Nose that the last Part of
His
Debt to the good Merchants of New-York, He certainly incurr’d in Liquor.
I watch the slow Progress of the Daylight in the Windows, and I wait, trying to extract some Pleasure in the Snail’s Pace of the Hours, from the Reflection, that if (or when) I step up to the Noose a Week hence, I shall at that Time wish very earnestly that I might exchange the Situation for mere Sorrow and Boredom and Hunger, in a comfortable Cell. But I do not wait well, when I must sit still – as You will recall of course, from Our thousand Collisions upon this very Topick, and the thousand Sermons You have given me, and Whippings too, to recommend the Necessity of Patience, whilst I wriggled and writh’d and chaf’d. You would think, Father, if you could see Me here, that I have learn’d the Lesson, for to the exterior Eye I sit good and patient indeed, upon the Floor, with my Back to the Wall and my Knees up as a Writing-Desk, and Mildness adorning my Countenance. But within I rage, and shout, and kick. There is One, of course, from whom I would desire a Visit more than any Other, were her Purpose in coming nothing save to gloat. But I am not such a Fool, as to ignore the third Demonstration of her Ill-Will toward Me. Fool Me once, fool Me twice, and I retain my Smile of foolish Hope. Fool me three Times, and a stupid Suspicion stirs eventually in Me that my Feelings are not returned. I have not the Heart, to render more fully the Mistakes I have made in this Respect. Suffice it to say, that I mistook Malice for Wit,
and a lively Interest for a kindly One. And yet, She seem’d at Tarrytown – no; no. No, that Way lies my Chance to become a four-fold Fool. With some People, I learn, there is no Mending of Injuries, for there is no Wish to be less than scarred. I am sure, that if I explained Myself to You, You would unfailingly observe, how mad in Me it was, to have entertained any Hopes, placed as I am upon this mad Errand: yet believe Me, that it would point a diverting Moral, and make at least a sour Specimen of Comedy, if You could behold how I, who makes such a Boast that I do what I chuse, found out at Expense the common Knowledge of Mankind, that You do not chuse where You bestow your Heart. Your Heart bestows Itself, will-you-nill-you, in the Midst of other Business. – Perhaps You would not laugh, Father, but regard It as the Beginning of Wisdom.
I can hear the cries of the Costers upon Wall Street, below; and the calling of the Hour; and lately, now the Day darkens, a Dialogue between two waiting Chair-Men, upon the Chances of a Horse they favour to run at Flushing, named Royal Roger. Merriment, and bawdy Jests on the Subject of this Name. But I could make Nothing distinct of the Voices coming up directly through the Floor, from the Court and Assembly. They were too muffl’d, and Business down below is now prorogued, to judge by their Dwindling. It is a melancholy Reflection, that only a few Days past, I was dancing across that very Floor, and there receiving the Solicitations (albeit more terrifying than flattering) of the Powerful. I am imprison’d today, in gross Proximity to my swelling State of yesterday. The Judge, who yesterday cajol’d and threaten’d Me in case I should meddle against Him in the highest of Politics, will tomorrow frown on Me, as the Prisoner at the Bar. You would take from This, a Lesson in the World’s
Untrustworthiness – a Model of how slippery our Estates are, within It; how scantly possessed, on how weak a Security – and therefore, how much to be clung to, lest they slip from our Fingers. But I hold the Opposite. I take it as a Maxim, that One must skate on, though the Ice be thin; skate as fast as may be, as if the Footing be secure, even if it proves not so.
Talking of Ice, it is passing from chilly to freezing, in this Room. When they brought me in, the Day before Yesterday, a rheumatic Fog swaddled the City, but it has cleared. A Turn of the Seasons seems come, a crisping and clarifying Advent of Winter. I have the Suit of Clothes I stand up in, including my Coat, I thank God, but no others to put on. The Air has hardened and stilled. I smell the Smoke of Wood-Fires – not Seacoal, for They have none – rising undisturbed in straight Lines from the Chimneys of the City. Not from this Chamber, though, for We have no Fire nor Fireplace. The Sky, clear blue in the Windows this Afternoon, now descends a Ladder of blue Shades, travels a Spectrum as lucid as Water yet blackening toward Ink. There will be Frost on my Blanket in the Morning. My writing Hand is growing Numb. I had better stop, for the Shade of the Window is now a Blue it were a Work of Casuistry to distinguish from Black, and the veritable Ink on my Page floats and glimmers, a dimming Ghost of the Alphabet.
*
The next day
. I had meant, at the Returning of the Light, to begin the Work of explaining Myself to You, so that You might understand, how I find Myself in Trouble here, so far from Home, and might be persuaded, perhaps, that You need not be entirely asham’d of Me, despite the Appearances of the Case. I image to Myself You reading This, as I write It, so clearly that,
although it will be some Months hence that the Pages come into your Hand, wither’d from the Salt Sea and smelling of Onions from the carrier’s Cart that brought it You from Blandford, the Words seem to fly straight from my Mouth to your Ear. “The Dead yet Speaking” – as it says from the Mouth of the Skeleton on the Title Page of Fuller’s Lives of the Divines, which is just behind your left Shoulder as you sit in your common Stance of Reading, with four spread Fingers of your Hand supporting your Forehead, and your Little Finger curl’d. You see how I know You, though We were a Torment to one another. And I suppose I torment You now, for the last Time, with this News. I imagine you rising up, having finished the Letter, and folding It away as neatly as ever, and walking next Door to the Church-Yard, as long and black as ever in your Cassock and Gown, to communicate the Intelligence of It, at my Mother’s Grave. You will think Me very stupid, that I had not consider’d, until the Forming of this Picture upon the Eye of my Mind, how alone my Death will render You. You have always occupied so great a Place in my Mind, that You seem’d to be, in Yourself, a Platoon, a whole Company of Men, as unsolitary as a Crowd. Father, I am truly sorry for this latest Grief I afford you. Believe Me, if I could, if it were in my Power, I would take this Paper on whose other Side You seem to sit now, whatever the Months and Miles between, and tear a Hole in It so cunningly, that I might fold It out into a Door in the Air, through which I could step, and at once be at Home with You. – Even if We quarrel’d but a Second later.
But my Longing – my Apology – my Design of Explanation – are All interrupted now, at Intervals of no more than Thirty Seconds, by my Fellow Prisoner across the Way. The Dormer
on his Side faces due East, and as the Sun of December topp’d the Roofs of Wall Street, brilliant tho’ without Warmth, it sent a golden Finger poking at his dirty Nest. The Blankets writh’d; He kick’d, He rose, a foul’d and filthy Anadyomene. The Night’s Excesses roll off Him in sensible Waves, yet seem to have slough’d from his Mind. At least, They are no longer depressing It to Silence. If He is fuddled, it is vivaciously so. He has a Nose swollen to the Likeness of a Piece of Crimson Fruit, ornament’d by as many black Pores as there are Seeds upon a Strawberry; and a Skin of sunburn’d Leather otherwise, much pock’d and mottl’d; and verminous Hair as long as his Shoulders, depending from a bald Pate; and a Pair of Eyes so crusted and blood-shot They would deserve to be made an Epithet by Homer, yet bright, and lively, and designing. I was puzzl’d, as to why I found Him familiar, and then realiz’d, that He was the first living Sample I had seen in New-York, of that Type of wreck’d Humanity, of floating human Hulk, so commonly to be found in London, in Gin-Cellars, and in Penny Lodgings of the lowest Kind. I must have grown Here more rapidly tender of Stomach than I realised.
