The Skull and the Nightingale (39 page)

Lovelace’s philosophy is open to question at several points. He takes pride in his powers of contrivance, even seeming to construe them as an aspect of his virility:

What a matchless plotter thy friend! Stand by and let me swell!—I am already as big as an elephant: and ten times wiser! Mightier too by far! Have I not reason to snuff the moon with my proboscis?

Yet for all this hyperbolical manliness his ingenuity is exercised upon a victim whom he has imprisoned, and whom he is eventually obliged to rape. His vaunted cunning has been exhausted by persuading Clarissa to run away. The rest is rant.

What is more remarkable is that he values this plotting more than its object:

More truly delightful to me the seduction process than the crowning act—for that’s a vapour, a bubble.

Later he puts the point yet more strongly:

What is the enjoyment of the finest woman in the world to the contrivance, the bustle, the surprises, and at last the happy conclusion of a well-laid plot. For all the rest, what is it? What but to find an angel in imagination dwindled down to a woman in fact?

If the “angel in imagination” did not prove to be “a woman in fact,” no “happy conclusion” would be possible. But there is a further contradiction. Not merely does he, in Shakespeare’s words, make the service greater than the god: he extols the service while denying the existence of the god. The close of each amorous campaign, a mere “vapor” or “bubble,” will confirm, yet again, the senselessness of the endeavor.

Yet I can after all see some perverse sense in his claims. The consummation which he so belittles serves to color all the enabling circumstances that precede it, if only in terms of metaphor. He soliloquizes when writing to his friend, Belford:

Lie still, villain, till the time comes—my heart, Jack, my heart!—It is always thumping away on the remotest prospects of this nature.

Here, as often in Lovelace’s letters, the heart is clearly a proxy for an external organ. More surprising is another metaphor in this kind:

Thou hadst the two letters in thy hand. Had they been in mine, the seal would have yielded to the touch of my warm fingers, and folds, as other plications have done, opened of themselves to oblige my curiosity.

We two have remarked on the way in which one may elevate animal consummation by adducing images from nature, from art, from the moon. Lovelace shows us that process in reverse. Anticipation of the physical act can touch with eroticism every step taken toward it.

I admit that a further fallacy remains. If pursuit and conquest are validated reciprocally, then the experience itself is mysteriously annihilated.

After all, however, Lovelace’s inconsistencies are surely every man’s inconsistencies. In the heat of desire logical contradictions seem immaterial. If the whole multifarious business must eventually be compacted into a few moments of animal sensation, a culmination absurdly incommensurate with the emotions and activities that have brought it about, then it may indeed be that the Thing Itself is to be glimpsed only indirectly, as by means of a series of mirrors, mutually reflective.

Whether that is indeed the case may perhaps be confirmed or refuted by the outcome of our present campaign, concerning which you will shortly hear more from

Yours, &c.

By the time I was spinning out these latter paragraphs I scarcely knew where I was heading or what I was talking about. What mattered was that I should provide Mr. Gilbert, as he read my words in his distant country house, sufficient material to exercise his mind and his imagination. My immediate ambition was simply to secure myself a respite. I dispatched the letter with relief.

T
he following morning I myself received both a package and a letter. In the former there was no message of any kind—only the bangle that I had bought for Kitty. I knew now, with a sudden sad rush of warm recollections, that my liaison with her was indeed at an end. The letter was a brief one in anonymous capital letters:

IF MR. FENWICK WALKS ALONG MARGARET STREET ON TUESDAY NIGHT AT TEN O’CLOCK HE MAY LEARN SOMETHING OF INTEREST TO HIM.

Chapter 21

T
hat anonymous invitation I could not refuse. Whatever the outcome, here would be a tale of some sort for Mr. Gilbert. In any case mere curiosity would have driven me to seek an answer to the puzzle. The most probable explanation was a joke of some kind. If that were so, I would need to be wary of making a fool of myself. But what could be achieved by luring me to Margaret Street? A graver possibility had occurred to me: perhaps Ogden, guessing at my interest in his wife, had hired a couple of Bravos to break my bones. But I had confidence in my own prowess. Margaret Street was a peaceable thoroughfare. I would arrive early, to spy out the territory, and I would wear steel.

Meanwhile I could use the intervening Monday to disentangle my affairs a little further. There was to be a carousal at the Black Lion: if I attended, I was likely to meet Nick Horn, and could learn how matters stood with regard to Kitty Brindley.

In the short time since the masquerade I had more than once felt hot rage against Nick. Had he not sneakingly spirited Kitty away, behind my back, knowing her to be my property? But it was a mood I could not sustain. If I was indeed Kitty’s protector, I had failed her. Nick had even done me a favor of sorts by coming to her aid. What might have passed between them since I scarcely wished to know, but felt it necessary to find out.

When I arrived at the tavern the entertainment was already well advanced, as evidenced by the loudness of the laughter. A grinning booby of a fellow was being roundly abused for having relieved himself from the window overlooking the street. It was Horn who came to his defense, scrambling onto a table to be better heard:

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Be reasonable. George Edgar has done no more than we have all done in time of need. If a man has to piss, then piss he must. The king pisses. Our Savior Himself pissed many a time.”

The claim produced uproar. John Herbert mounted another table to bawl a rebuke:

“Horn, you are worse than Edgar! You have shamed us! We are disgusted.”

There was more cheering and jeering, but Nick, always in his element when attempting provocation, shouted down the shouters:

“Those who object profane our religion. They reject the Incarnation. God took residence in a human body: of course He pissed like the rest of us.”

“Animal!” roared Herbert. “Such physical matters are not to be contemplated.”

“Not to be contemplated?” cried Nick. “The Scriptures demand that we contemplate blood and wounds and physical resurrection.”

A random voice shouted: “But could He have changed his water into wine?”

Here the exchanges subsided into blasphemy, one sot suggesting that Christ could have wrought an internal miracle and filled the apostles’ cups direct from his pintle, while another claimed to be capable of performing this very miracle on his own account, and offered to provide a demonstration. Amid the tumult Horn caught sight of me, jumped from the table, and pushed his way across the room.

“You may be looking for me,” he said, more sober than I would have guessed.

“I was.”

We went halfway down a flight of stairs, away from the din. Nick looked wary, as though he feared I might seize him by the throat.

“We have business to discuss, Mr. Horn.”

“Not business, Dick—not business. Let me tell you what passed. I chanced upon Puck, weeping, and spoke to her from a kindly impulse. She said that you had promised to take her away long before, at midnight, but that she had seen you since, warmly engaged with another lady. So I stripped off my beard and escorted her chastely to her lodging.”

“Then you took no mean advantage of the situation?”

Nick looked at me with some hostility.

“You are hardly entitled to ask—but I did not. I have a high regard for Miss Brindley and would do nothing to cause her unhappiness. But if you ask whether I hope to improve upon this encounter, the answer is yes. I infer that your own artillery is directed elsewhere.”

I had no ready reply, and could hardly stand upon my dignity since there was none to stand on. At last I said, stiffly and unwillingly:

“I behaved badly that night. Please convey my apologies to Miss Brindley. She had every right to feel wounded. I still think fondly of her, but I cannot claim the right to trouble her again.”

Horn stared at me as he took in my words.

“Are you suggesting . . . ?”

“I am suggesting that you make the most of your chance. But be kind.”

“You need have no fear, Dick. I worship the lady.”

He shook my hand with an earnestness most unusual in him. Lacking words, I nodded a response before slipping away in no very cheerful frame of mind.

I
approached Margaret Street by way of a dark alley, my hat brim pulled down to my eyes. Though I moved like a thief, my blood was up: it was a relief to be taking a physical risk after the many weeks of fabrication and pretense. I had not felt so fiery since leaving Rome the previous year.

Although no moon was visible, it was one of those nights in which a certain luminosity seems to be suspended in the atmosphere. Turning the corner, I could make out nearly the whole length of Margaret Street. Between small leakages of light from some of the houses there were patches of deeper shadow, but as I watched and waited I saw no sign of movement anywhere. Only when a distant clock struck the hour did I venture forward. I walked along the street at a steady pace, staying close to the center to avoid ambush—but I heard no footsteps save my own. I reached the far end, near Mrs. Kinsey’s house, without seeing a soul.

Pausing there, I heard a whisper: “Mr. Fenwick!”

I turned, with my hand on my sword hilt, to see a cloaked figure emerge from the shadows. As it drew near me the hood was thrown back to reveal the face of Sarah.

Bewildered, I spoke in a low voice:

“Have you run away?”

“Of course not. I am staying with my aunt and have crept out.”

“You run a great risk—” I began, but was interrupted.

“We cannot talk here. Follow me.”

At the corner of the street was what seemed to be a rear entrance to Mrs. Kinsey’s property. Following Sarah through a gate, which she locked behind us, I realized that we were in a high-walled courtyard. She led me toward a shape I dimly discerned to be a landau, with the covers down. In a moment we had climbed inside and were sitting together in complete darkness. I pushed my hat and sword to one side of me: Sarah was on the other.

“I needed to talk to you,” she whispered. “Here we will not be disturbed.”

“Is this your aunt’s carriage?”

“No, no—my husband’s. He leaves it here because it is rarely used.”

It smelled powerfully of musty leather. Seated beside Sarah, I could have reached out and touched her, but made no move for fear of making a false one. The initiative was entirely hers. She spoke again, very low:

“This carriage is like a confessional. I can talk more freely when I cannot be seen.”

“I am listening.”

“My last words to you—at the masquerade—were foolish. Insincere. I find it hard to regulate my conduct. If I behave naturally, I go too far in one direction; if I behave as I think I ought, I go too far in another.”

After a pause she resumed, whispering close to my ear:

“The masquerade was a wonder to me. It haunts my mind. You have traveled and attended great receptions. I have known only life with my aunt. That and my strange marriage. The masquerade was a new world. I could see a hundred lives.”

She broke off, panting slightly. I sat motionless, conscious of sounds alone.

“My life has been so cautious—one day like another. Some people—even some women—dare to take risks. Why should not I be one of them?

“Dressed as Diana, I was a different person. In darkness I was a different person—I
am
a different person. When you kissed me I was a different person. Why should not these other selves be allowed to live? What stifles them? Nothing but habit and fear and propriety. Is not propriety a kind of murder?”

She was panting once more, from sheer force of feeling. By now I could apprehend her as a dark shape in a slightly thinner darkness. Her cloak had fallen against my thigh.

I whispered a question:

“You say your marriage is strange?”

“How can I be sure? It is the only marriage I have known. But I think it is strange.”

“Can you say why? Or will propriety prevent you?”

“Why should I not tell you? You can judge for yourself.”

She paused, creating a total silence:

“Mr. Ogden is generous. He will buy me anything. But to him I am not a person: I am a possession. He married me—he told me as much—for my beauty. I do not boast: I speak only of his opinion. My person infatuates him.

“He has no conversation. He could never have found a wife if he had not met me by chance.”

She drew a long, tremulous breath.

“I shall shock myself by saying what I mean to say—and saying it to a man. But this is my life—my only life: why should I not talk about it?

“By day, in a drawing room, I could not do it. Shut up in this box, in darkness, I shall say what I choose. I shall tell you about my wedding night.”

Another silence, then the whisper again, seemingly within my own head.

“I was timid, not knowing how things should be done. Walter and I had conversed but little during our courtship. When we were alone in the bedroom, he was struck dumb.

“He sat me on a chair and stood staring at me. He shifted his position and stared again. He lifted the candle to alter the light. All this time, in great confusion, I sat motionless. I could see that he was greatly agitated. He began to make adjustments to my hair or to my clothes, each time stepping back to view the alteration. It was as though he were making preparations to paint my portrait. At last he unfastened my dress, with shaking hands, and then pulled me upright to strip away all my clothes. He gazed at me as I stood naked and turned me about, grunting to himself. Suddenly he lifted me and flung me onto the bed. I cried out, but he forced himself upon me with a kind of snarl.