Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (22 page)

I knocked, smilingly told Aunt Gardiner that I thought Susanna was ready for her morning nap—which was at least true—handed the baby over to my aunt to nurse, and left as quickly as I could. I felt horribly guilty for the lie.  But I
had
to go.  And it had to be alone; my uncle was of course at his place of business, and there was no time to send for him.

Outside in Gracechurch Street, I flagged down the first cab I saw—having snatched up all the pocket money I had on hand before leaving the house.  I gave the driver Mark’s address.  And then sat bolt upright on the seat, my hands clenched together to keep them from shaking as I cursed the heavy London traffic that forced us to move at a seeming snail’s crawl.

Finally when we reached the corner of Mark’s street, I told the driver that I would walk from there and jumped down, thrusting a handful of coins at him for payment without waiting for change.  The street—it was just off of Dorset Street, near Spitalfield’s Market—was certainly less than savoury.  Actually, that is a gross understatement.  It was like no part of London that I had ever seen.  The buildings were black with soot and crumbling, the air reeked with the smell of rotting garbage and waste.  There were no crossing sweepers to clear the road.  And I realised before I had gone more than half a dozen paces that it was best
not
to look down and see precisely what I was stepping in.

And the people— 

Despite the chill air, ragged-looking children without shoes and with scarcely even any clothes were playing and fighting in the street.  Gaunt looking men—and at least one woman—huddled in doorways, asleep or drunk.  And then a tall, loose-jointed man in dock-worker’s clothes came lurching out at me from the mouth of an alley, took hold of my arm, and begged me to ‘come and have a drink with him.’  First reasonably politely, and then, when I refused, with increasing bluntness as to what he really wanted.

I ought to have been frightened.  I suppose a part of me was.  But far more than that, I was anxious to get to Sergeant Maddox and Mark.  And this man was causing me to delay.  I set my hands against his shoulders, shoved as hard as I could—and he fell backwards, landing in a seated position, with a thud that must have rattled all the way up his spine.

His face darkened with anger.  But then a shadow fell across him, and a voice behind me said, “I think that’s enough, John.  Why don’t you get along home now?”

Instantly the man’s face changed.  “Sorry, Reverend.  Meant no disrespect.”  He tipped his cap and shuffled off.  And I turned to face Lancelot Dalton.

This time I
was
surprised to see him.  Thoroughly so.  I stared at him.  Trying to ignore the lurch my heart had given at the sight of his face.

To cover my confusion, I said, “Mr. Dalton!  What are you doing here?”

“I live here.”  Mr. Dalton was frowning.  “Or at least near here.  I was on my way home, when—”  He stopped and shook his head—and I noticed for the first time that he was unshaven, and looked tired, as well, his eyes shadowed and rimmed with red.  “The more important question is what are
you
doing here, Miss Bennet?”  His frown deepened.  “I suppose it would do absolutely no good whatever to point out that you should not be out walking on this particular street on your own?”

“You may not believe me, but I had already come to that same conclusion myself,” I said.  I was too frightened about Mark to enter with any real spirit into the argument, though.  “But as it happened, I had no choice.”

In a few words, I told him about Sergeant Maddox’s message regarding Mark.

Mr. Dalton’s face grew even grimmer as I spoke.  But all he said when I had finished was, “Come, then,” and set off  down the street in the direction of Mark’s lodging house.

I opened my mouth to argue, to tell him that there was no reason for him to be dragged into the affair.  But the look he cast at me informed me quite plainly that I should get nowhere with such an argument.  And besides—

Since I am determined not to try to deceive even myself, I will admit that I did not especially wish to argue.  The sight of him had started a cracked, sore place inside my chest aching.  And yet somehow I did not want to give the pain up or wish it away.

I used to wonder what it would feel like to fall truly, uncontrollably in love.  The answer seems to be: thoroughly uncomfortable.

Mr. Dalton knew Mark’s address, of course, since he had escorted him home once.  But I had never been there before today.  The rooms proved to be on the ground floor of a building that smelled of damp wood and boiled cabbage.  I could hear a baby crying and a pair of raised voices—a man’s and a woman’s—shouting at each other on an upper floor.

Our knock was answered at once by Sergeant Maddox, who looked as frightened as I had ever seen him.  He seized my hand and almost dragged me in over the threshold.  “Miss Bennet.  Thank Heaven you’ve come.  I’m sorry to trouble a young lady like you.  But I didn’t know what else to do.”  He nodded towards the doorway to the inner room—Mark’s lodgings consisted of just the two rooms, an inner bedroom that was Mark’s, and an outer sitting room, where I suppose Sergeant Maddox must sleep on the threadbare couch that stood against the wall.

“He’s in there,” Sergeant Maddox went on.  “I can hear him moving about and muttering to himself.  But he won’t come out.  And he won’t answer when I knock or call.”

“And he has a loaded weapon in there with him, you say?”  Mr. Dalton asked.  His jaw was still set.

Sergeant Maddox looked at him, appearing to fully take in the fact of his presence for the first time.  Then he nodded.  “Yes, sir.  His old army pistol.  He said—”  Maddox swallowed audibly as he lowered his voice.  “The one time he did answer was when I said I was going to break the door in.  It’s an old door, you can see for yourself, and the lock’s not much to speak of.   But Captain Chamberlayne shouted back that he’d put a lead ball through his skull if I so much as tried to get the door open.”

Mr. Dalton’s gaze went swiftly round the room, and he said, “Is there any other way into the room besides this door?”

Sergeant Maddox nodded.  “Yes, sir.  There’s the window—faces onto the street outside.  I’d have tried going in that way myself, but I’m too big to fit, for one.  And for another, I reckoned the Captain would’ve heard me, same as if I’d tried getting through the door.”

Mr. Dalton looked up at me, opening his mouth to speak.  But I cut him off, anticipating already what he was going to say.  “Yes, yes, go.  I will try to speak with Mark and distract him long enough for you to get in.”

Mr. Dalton stared at me a moment—as though he was surprised that I had so easily guessed what he planned.  But then nodded and went out without another word.  And I approached the locked bedroom door.

“Mark?”  My heart was hammering painfully hard against my ribcage, but I tried to keep my voice soothing and low as I spoke through the wooden panel.  “Mark, it’s Kitty Bennet.”

There was a rustle and a creak of wood—I could picture Mark sitting on the edge of the bed inside, shifting at the sound of my voice.  But he made no reply.  I swallowed against the dryness in my throat and tried again.  “Mark?  Won’t you please open the door?”

Still no reply.  Beside me, Sergeant Maddox looked despairing.  And I felt more or less the same.  Unless I could manage to engage Mark—at the very least enough to get him to speak with me—there was absolutely no chance of Mr. Dalton’s managing to get in through the window without Mark shooting either himself or Lance.

After the battle at Waterloo—after we had done what we could for the soldiers lying out in the streets—Georgiana and Harriet Forster and I also brought as many of the wounded as we could into the house we were renting, and cared for them there.  Many of them were as despondent or ill-tempered as Mark.  And it was then I discovered that the trick for dealing with them seemed to be to get them to say ‘yes’ to something—to ask them a question with which they would be more or less forced to agree, even if it were only with a nod.  That always brought me one step nearer to getting them to talk to me.

A trickle of sweat slid down my ribs as I forced myself to take a breath and begin again.  “Mark, do you remember the assembly in Meryton when you and my sister Lydia had the idea of putting tadpoles into the punch?”

A smothered sound that was half-laugh and half-sob came through the door at that.  I heard Mark shift again and then he said, “Miss Bennet, please.”  His voice was ragged.  “I know you mean well, but please, just go away.  Go away and leave me in peace.”

  At least I had succeeded in making him speak to me.  “I cannot do that, Mark.  I am not going anywhere at all until I am certain that you are in no danger of doing yourself harm.”

“Why should you care?”  There was another sound of movement inside the bedroom; I imagined Mark dragging himself up off the bed and beginning to pace the room—as well as he could on his wooden leg.  “Why should you bother yourself about whether I live or die?  I’m nothing but a nuisance to you.  A drunken wreck who periodically crawls to your door and begs for money.”

The horrible thing was that there was an element of truth to his words.  Still, I said, “You are my
friend
, Mark.  Of course I care whether you live or die.  And I want to help you, if I can.  That is what friends do.”

“You cannot help me!  No one can.  You do not know—you do not understand—”  Mark’s voice grew louder and more breathless as I heard him limp towards the door.

“What do I not understand?”  I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the wooden panel between us.  “What do I not know?  Mark, I was there, remember?  I was there in Brussels last summer.  I
do
understand why you wish to forget.”

“No.”  Mark’s voice did not sound angry.  Only dull and lifeless.  I heard the sound of his unsteady footsteps turning away again, away from the door.  “No, you do not know.”

I was losing him—losing his attention. I could imagine him with his good arm wrapped about himself, withdrawing too deeply into his own misery for me to reach.

Though the only small advantage in that situation was that I heard a faint creak and a scrape—which surely had to be Mr. Dalton opening the window—and Mark apparently remained too sunk in his own thoughts to notice. At least, there was no sound of a struggle or gunshot.

But Mr. Dalton had not yet managed to climb
in
through the window—and if I could not find a way of distracting Mark, one or both of them might die.

“You cannot imagine,” Mark was mumbling, more to himself than to me, now.

I felt something inside me snap—sharp as a twig breaking.  “I cannot
imagine
?  I do not
have
to imagine!  I saw it with my own eyes.  Maybe I did not fight on the fields of Waterloo as you did.  But I spent those days and nights in Brussels not knowing from one moment to the next whether I would live or die or be made a prisoner of the French army.  And I saw the aftermath of the fighting.  I saw the men and boys with their arms and legs shattered or gone or their bellies torn open by enemy swords.  I held their hands while they died, begging me to save them.  I saw the field of battle after the fighting had done—the mounds of the dead.  Those not yet dead lying where they had fallen and crying and begging for aid.  I remember it all—every horrible, bloody moment of it!”  Hot tears were stinging my eyes, and I seemed to have entirely abandoned my efforts to be sympathetic.  But I was too angry to care.  “And if I have to carry the memories around inside my head every day, then you do, too!  You are not
allowed
to take the easy way out!”

I have no idea whether my words would have been effective or no. But at that moment, I heard a rattle and a thump that had to be Mr. Dalton scrambling over the window ledge and dropping into the room. Mark gave a startled cry, and there was the sound of a scuffle—thumps and grunts, and the sound of Mr. Dalton saying something that was too low for me to catch.

And then—loud as a thunderclap—there came the report of a gun.

My heart stopped beating.  It seemed a brief eternity before there came the rattle of the key in the lock.  And then the door swung open to reveal Lancelot Dalton, standing in the doorway.  Behind him, Mark sat on the edge of the bed.  His head was bowed, and his shoulders were heaving with sobs.  But he was alive, and so far as I could see, unharmed.

“I think you had better take charge of this.”  Lance crossed to Sergeant Maddox and handed him Mark’s pistol.

I saw a glimmer of tears in Sergeant Maddox’s eyes.  But he bobbed his head and accepted the weapon.  “I will, sir.  And”—he swallowed—“thank you, sir.”

My knees still felt weak.  But I went through into the bedroom and crouched down beside Mark, touching his hand.  “Mark.”  I made my voice soft again.  “I know how hard things are for you.  Truly I do.  But there are people who care about you.  I care.  And Sergeant Maddox—can you imagine how he would feel if you did yourself harm?  What it would do to him if he were forced to go to your parents and tell them that you were dead?  You are not a coward, Mark.  And you are not cruel.  I know you are not.  Don’t make Maddox live with that.”

 I could not tell whether Mark heard me or absorbed any of what I said.  He was still sobbing, and he did not look up.  I rested my hand on his shoulder another moment.  And then I stood, to find Mr. Dalton beside me.  “We ought to go now, I think,” I said.  “Sergeant Maddox will be with him.  But I think he will do best without outside company for a little while.”

Lance—Mr. Dalton nodded.  He ran a hand through his hair—and I was surprised to see that his hands were shaking.  Surprised, because in the moment of crisis, he had been so absolutely, grimly calm.

We told Sergeant Maddox good-bye, and I made him promise that he would send for me at once if he thought there was the slightest need.  And then we left.

When we were back outside on the street, I said, “Thank you, Mr. Dalton.  I should have said it before, but—thank you.  I do not know what I should have done if you had not been there.  What would have become of Mark if you had not intervened.”