The Skull and the Nightingale (51 page)

The disappearance and apparent murder of Ogden was the extreme instance of a story taking an unexpected turn. As I told you, I was intrigued by the fact that, far away in Fork Hill, I perhaps knew more of what had happened, and what might have happened, in that case than any of those on the spot. I knew of your hostility to Mr. Ogden and your intended tryst with his wife, knew that you had previously pursued her at a masquerade which her husband also attended. I knew that you visited the coach station on the morning of his departure; I knew of his altered note to Lord Downs, and (through Cullen) of his strange demeanor as observed by Mr. Gow. I even knew of the seemingly coincidental injury to your tongue. Now I learn, from Cullen’s last letter, that by a strange chance your informant, Francis Pike, unexpectedly left the service of Mr. Crocker at this very time . . .

I think you would share my view that it would be a pity if more should come to be written on this subject.

You cannot have regretted the opportunities that I put in your way: to go to Oxford, to travel and study abroad, to enjoy a life of leisure in London. How would you have preferred to spend those years? You are offended because I employed Cullen to report on your doings. Is that not a little squeamish? It would neither surprise nor disturb me to learn that you had compared your impressions of my character with those of Thorpe or Mrs. Jennings. Cullen provided an additional perspective on my experiment. In the main he usefully corroborated your own account. He reported certain slights and jests at my expense, but I was never such a simpleton as to think that you would always speak of me with grateful reverence. Through him I was reassured that you were faithfully keeping your side of the bargain. In respect of episodes and characters, his accounts and yours were at one.

Since that last unfortunate meeting between us, some little time has now elapsed—sufficient, I hope, for your original indignation to have subsided. In a cooler spirit think back once more over your experiences of the past half year, and reflect also what you have learned about me in that time. You may find reassurance in noting that I have shown loyalty to those I have chosen to patronize. Mrs. Deacon, whom you apparently admire, continues to live at ease. Quentin was not discarded when his muse failed—indeed his widow remains in the house I provided for them. Even Hurlock has been allowed to retain much of his estate.

You have lived comfortably enough, I think, since returning to London. Do you really wish to relinquish this way of life—to exchange the constraints of experiment for the constraints of poverty? Why end an arrangement that we have found mutually beneficial? Your anger with regard to Cullen confirms that you are what I already knew you to be: a young man of spirit—and I have enabled you to exercise that spirit.

We have need of one another, you and I. It would be an embarrassment to me if it appeared that my godson had been disowned, but an embarrassment I could sustain. More significant is the fact that, to some extent, we are in one another’s power. I have revealed more of myself, and of my secret self, to you than to anyone else. Let me go further: I have come to depend upon you as an external projection of my Passions. You are a necessary prop to me, and one that is irreplaceable. On the other side of the question, this letter may have suggested to you that I have acquired a comparably close insight into your own character and certain of your doings. Mere prudence suggests that we should remain allies.

I urge you to stay with me, to experiment again, to continue to take risks and to deal in compromise and ambiguity. What will your ultimate reward be? I am averse to making promises. But you are a young man who enjoys a wager. Will you not take your chance?

Yours, &c.

* * *

Dear Mr. Fenwick,

In my last letter I said that I would soon write again, whether to confirm or to retract the forthright offer I made in it. Am I still of the same mind? Yes, yes, and again yes. I endorse, in this cooler frame of mind, everything that I so precipitately set down. I wholeheartedly renew my offer and long for you to accept it.

I am compelled to admit, however, that in the intervening time a circumstance has arisen which you may see as an obstacle, although I hope you will not. I will say more on that subject below.

I am now both calmer and happier. The people here know something of my story from the newspapers or from gossip, and of course they see that I am in mourning. On the whole they have been kind and tactful. Their good feeling perhaps comes easier because London seems so far away. What is said to have happened there can seem as insubstantial here as a fairy tale. I am real to those I encounter, but my recent past in London is not.

During these further weeks in York I have become habituated once more to the life within which I was brought up. I have walked familiar streets and met former friends and acquaintances. I have talked with shopkeepers who have worked on through the past three years—years which have so radically altered you and me—exactly as they had done through the previous ten or twenty. To come from London to York is to step back half a century and enter a different world. It is one that seems to suit me: I am happy here.

Miss Martin professes to consider me greatly changed, and even says that she finds me intimidating—a claim I do not believe. I find her just as she was, still warm, lively, and entertaining. Yet against my will I feel myself somehow wiser and more mature. Is this because I have seen a little of London, merely? Or, still worse, because I am richer? No—rather, I think, because I have lived more fully, have known stronger emotions and temptations, and the sharp taste of guilt.

You are still remembered here: there have been several inquiries about you. I say that I have met you since your return from your foreign travels and that you are now a fine gentleman. Some speak of you as you were when you were fifteen years old, and if they saw you now could hardly credit what you have become. But I think that if you visited York you could find refreshment here, as I do.

With regard to the possible “obstacle” mentioned above, I will speak out plainly, since I more and more detest equivocation in all its forms. The truth is that I find I am with child. I would no doubt have perceived the indications a little sooner if my last weeks in London had been less taxing.

I cannot think that this news will be anything but unwelcome to you. What can I say to make it more acceptable? Let me continue in my candid vein. It so happens that I can calculate exactly when the child was conceived. It was in the early hours of the morning that followed the masquerade. I told you, I think, that my husband returned home with me apparently half frantic with angry lust. I did not add, although I could have done, that he found me physically more receptive than was customary because my embrace with you had fired me with desire. This poor orphan, when it is born, will truly be a child, not of Mr. Ogden merely, but of the masquerade.

I can think of several other perceptions of this circumstance which might render it more tolerable to you. After all you were willing, you were eager, to be my lover although I was married to Mr. Ogden. The birth of this baby could be seen as no more than a restatement of that acknowledged fact. By the time it is socially acceptable for us to marry, I shall have recovered, I hope, all my looks, and the baby will be a small child. Both still young, we can start afresh. For myself I feel a special tenderness toward an infant entering the world in such inauspicious circumstances. To be fair to my late husband I cannot think that a child of his will lack character or intelligence. This oddly compounded little being should make an interesting companion for the children that you and I will have.

I could moralize, and suggest that as it was the arrangement between us that led Mr. Ogden to return to London and so to meet his death, we owe it to him to take responsibility for his child. But I do not think I need to do so. I know you to have a kind disposition. As a boy you were always good-natured. I cannot believe that you will be found lacking in charity where an obligation seems to be owed, and where our own love is in the case.

That last consideration is to me the greatest. I have always loved you. It was possible for me to marry another only because you had disappeared from my life. If I now rejoice to be wealthy, it is solely because at last I have something to give to you—a person who, to my eyes, has been so animated, so sparkling.

It pleases me to think that you and I, as a pair, may be out of the common run, capable not only of strong passion but of large views and generous imaginings. If you can find it in your heart to accept this unlooked-for situation, it will be one more guarantee that our future together will be happy.

I await your answer with trepidation—but with confidence.

I remain, &c.

* * *

My dear Godfather,

I mentally rehearsed what I wished to say to you, but could not bring myself to write this difficult letter until I was under the influence of wine. In consequence I feel distanced from my task, and now find it indistinct, even unreal. I watch my hand as it moves the quill. It is directed by my mind. The mind is swayed by animal tides within. These in turn may be influenced by the wine I have drunk or the weather beyond my window. (It is raining.) We do well to communicate at all.

I have lost my thread already. Perhaps if I set down some paragraphs as they come to me, you will discern the sequence that I have forgotten.

I had not expected to write to you again, and do so only because you have written to me. I was offended that you had spied upon me and that our comradeship was proved false. But there is more to the matter. I am no longer swayed by your arguments: I reject the cynicism that I have affected to share. Of course we are inescapably physical beings. Repeatedly I have acknowledged the fact. But the argument cannot end there. If we are mere animals, what is it within us that deplores the fact? And why does it do so?

Man must endlessly struggle to reconcile those three irreconcilables, body, mind, and spirit, as they vie for control. Mr. Swift needed no great penetration to mock our inability to achieve the impossible. His position is a shallow one—and literally a barren one: he has left no descendants.

Can we not laugh without bitterness at our equivocations? They need not be ascribed to hypocrisy or self-deception: there is an instinctive wisdom in our willingness to compromise, to recoil from certain apparently logical conclusions. It enables us to live in affection and companionship. Gulliver’s claimed wisdom leaves him banished to a stable.

I am glad to learn that you are recovered. We have seen much physical misadventure this past six months: Yardley’s injury, the loss of Quentin, your own indisposition, Hurlock attacked by a dog, the accidental death of Mr. Ogden—for a kind of accident it surely was.

Perhaps such loss or damage should be set against the potential advance to be glimpsed in hopeful alliances. My friend Nick Horn marries Kitty Brindley, Crocker sets up house with Jane Page, and Mr. Thorpe, I hear, plans to take a wife. Through some disinclination you have never made such a move and nor, as yet, have I. Perhaps we have both been more interested in using people than in relating to them. Neither of us belongs to a family—ours has been an alliance of the solitary.

As you all but admit, we are invalids of a sort, affecting detached curiosity to hide fear of engagement. It is safer to be a historian of war than a soldier. In your letters to me you have more than once implied the contradiction in your philosophy: it is as though an ant should withdraw from the marching line, forgoing his identity in order to reflect upon it.

In performing on your behalf over the past six months, I have, like you, learned a great deal about myself. It has been dismaying to me to see how readily I have made excuses for behaving badly. When I at last learned how my friend Matt Cullen had deceived me, I perversely felt some slight relief at finding a foothold: here at last was an action I could never have been guilty of. I could not betray a true friend. Perhaps from this recognition I may begin to improvise a morality of some sort.

I cannot but be grateful for the opportunities you have given me. I have lived very comfortably, and it is too late now for me to find work as a shepherd, a bricklayer, or a coachman. You seem to propose a continuance of that previous arrangement. Your letter arrives, however, at the very time when I have an opportunity of a different kind—one that would sever my links with you and set me free. In short it is suddenly open to me to marry an amiable, beautiful, and wealthy lady.

There is no uncertainty in this fresh prospect—no coercion or obliquity. There is but one small stumbling block, which demands from me no more than a certain generosity of imagination and conduct, of a kind that should be readily afforded and which the lady in question effortlessly displays. But—

. . . But I have had to confess to myself that I am no longer sure that I can muster that generosity, even if I could once have done so. Perhaps I am not made for domestic dependability: my energies are fed by the excitements of the town. Perhaps I always was, or have now become, irredeemably self-concerned, incapable of selfless love. Perhaps, after all, you and I are two of a kind.

Such admissions take me as far as I can go as a moralist. I will never attain dignity, but I can try to be honest. The excellent lady concerned will be grieved by my decision, but she deserves far more than I can give, and will not lack for suitors.

I will accept your offer and take my chance.