The Syme Papers (74 page)

What is? I thought. But he had gone to the door and slipped
inside with a finger on his lips. We tiptoed to the second floor and
undressed in silence. ‘Kitty‚’ he called me, joking, as we lay side by
side in bed. ‘Tomorrow Kitty will lie there.’ He soon fell asleep,
more easily than I.

The wedding day dawned in a brisk hurry of clouds. We ran into
the church with our heads bent under a quick shower of rain. The
church filled with people and noise and the smell of wet clothes.
(Pactaw had gone to great lengths to prove its finery. I observed
with a secret smile the red necks of unfamiliar collars; the pinched
bosoms of outgrown frocks; not to mention sly snifflings snuffed in
the damask folds of best shawls.) Tom’s father, a vicar himself,
presided with efficient cheerfulness.

‘As this is not my church, I don’t mind SHOUTING to keep
order. Jeb, keep young Tommy tight on your LAP, even if he is dirty
and bites. I won’t have him throwing hats at the choir. The good
Reverend Docket has been kind enough to let me borrow his church
for an afternoon, for he only lets it from the Lord, and he may, I
hope, sub-lease it as he wishes. We are ail cousins in the eyes of God 
(no nearer, praise Him). As most of you know, I have come to seal
my son and Kitty Thomas in eternal happiness. If the rest of you
would be quiet for a moment, the choir might have their sing, and
we can translate the pair into holy bliss as soon as possible.’

The makeshift scenery of marriage was set in place, the props and
actors of the stage. The citizens gathered below, the heroine stood in
splendid array, and the music played. There was much gold and fine
cloth and a great sweat. The two lovers entered stage left and marched
to the head of the platform. They gave their lines beautifully, too clear
and loud for life, and even Kitty’s whispers echoed in the silent hall.
There was a shout and tears and the play was aver and the crowd fled
in great spirits and noise and the scenery was taken down and the
actors left wondering which life to turn to. But then the party began
and they were led triumphant from the theatre, in a carriage with
white horses down the street through a river of men. Someone had
brought a trumpet on the way and tooted hymns above the cantering
hoofs. Even the fathers sang. All the way to the house of Pa Thomas,
the prosperous baker, who had put a tent in his garden and more cake
and food than the Pied Piper’s crew could eat at once.

By the afternoon a great wind had swept the clouds from the sky.
We were shouting like sailors across the tables. Pa Thomas sent
forth his servants and hushed us with bottles of champagne. At last
we each sparkled with a glass and looked up, waiting. Sam rose to a
speech, with a voice to carry across the busy winds.

‘I feel indeed as if I have given – my own bride away to marriage,’ he called. ‘Tom has been my dearest friend – my most faithful comrade for many years. He has worked tirelessly for our cause. And if at times I have been mean in thanks – it is only because I had not the heart to bear our disappointments – and I knew he could. I cannot imagine a truer friend. I know that some among you – all good and sensible people – have wondered at his dedication. He wastes himself – you thought – on a blind faith. I know the gossip. I may be mad – but I am not deaf.’ A few people laughed, and I knew then I could never hide from him.

‘Blind faith. What a strange phrase that is. Tom is blind and deaf to doubt – for he does not trust his eyes or head – but he will grapple 
you to his heart with hoops of steel. Which is the wiser, I ask: an intimate hand or a spectacled curiosity? Tom does not look to either side of him. So he neither swerves from his purpose – nor turns from his love. A skill, I think, that will serve a wife as well as a scientist. Kitty, I could not wish you a truer husband. The gossip may cease now, I believe. Tom has joined the race of respectable men.’ The laughter was now general. ‘If I were a young lady, Kitty … I should have fought you tooth and nail for his hand. But I yield to a fairer rival – and wish you both the joy that is Tom’s peculiar gift.’ Kitty went to him and kissed him on the cheek, and everyone else began to eat.

There was a great crowd, of penguins and peacocks, the men in
black and white and the women bright as feathers in their summer
dresses. Nobody looked at ease. The peacocks talked among them
selves, with a penguin between them. Mothers and grandmothers
stood with children flapping unobserved around their knees. The
wind puffed to burst its cheeks. It blew the dresses right round,
wrapping the ladies like fish in newspaper. ‘Come under the
marquee‚’ cried Pa Thomas, ‘come under the marquee!’ So we huddled like birds on a sandbank, and there were great cries of ‘Pardon
me, madam’ and ‘Is that your foot?’ I wondered if the gulls had sim
ilar calls. But the tent served little purpose, except to bring us to the
tables of cake and champagne.

Then there was a crack and a flap and a thud and the canvas sky
came falling about our ears. The ladies screamed as if lightning had
struck. Two old men were rolled like a sausage in the fallen pavilion.
A pole knocked me on the head and a table tipped over in the scurry.
We all cheered, drunk and laughing, but did not venture beneath it
when the tent was propped up. Squashed cake lay like leftover snow
in the grass. ‘Heaven has fallen,’ said Jeb gallantly to a pretty girl,
‘and risen again.’

I have not told the real issue of Tom’s wedding, nor described its
most important guest. Joy, like sorrow, comes in brotherhood. And
the day that sealed the course of Tom’s life ushered a new season in
Sam’s, a season that brought with it such fruition as we had all 
desired until perhaps it came. Sam was dressed in his finest sorrow
for the marriage, and spoke with such kind love as I had never
known in him. He had the air of a summer day whose heavy atmo
sphere has been lightened by a swift storm, and all is still and the
breath sweet though cold for an hour or two perhaps, until the old
heaviness comes dawn again.

The bells rang out six o’clock and our spirits began to flag,
happily, like the light-filled sails that bring a boat to shore with the
land-breeze at sunset. We grew quiet and watchful. The wind blew a
flap of the tent against a table and its bottle of champagne, but ever
failed to knock it down. The children sat in a heap on Tom’s mother.
Even Kitty failed to keep her sharp tongue, grew silent with her arm
around Tom and did not attend to the slight talk around her, nor to
her husband indeed. Her eyes twitched when she saw a stranger at
the garden gate, blown open by the wind and clanging to and fro
against its post. My eyes followed hers, for I had made her my study
of the afternoon. A gentleman pushed the gate open and closed it
carefully behind him, though the latch refused to stick and he aban
doned it at last. He waved at all of us, though we did not know him,
and came towards us.

He was a tall, pink man with moist hands, as I found from his
soft handshake. But he had not a nervous temperament, and stood
surprisingly at ease in our small company, for an intruder. He could
not have been much older than thirty.

‘I am sorry to disturb you on such an occasion, but I have come lately from Baltimore where your father directed me, Dr Syme – a most hospitable man. I seem to have arrived at the feast.’ He smiled. He gave the impression of having a great deal of time, though he understood that others around him were less blessed than he in that particular. ‘Perhaps you don’t remember me, Tom. My name’s Ezekiel. Harcourt.’

Tom was instantly attentive, as always, to someone who could do
Sam a bit of good. ‘Of course, sir, I recall: that foul day at Perkins
and the miserable Mr Cooling. What business could have brought
you there I can’t imagine, but it was kind of you to attend, though
Sam was sickening a little that day …’ Tom protested too much. 
His offices were over, and I watched for a sharp look from Kitty, but
none came.

‘Indeed it was my pleasure, Tom, a welcome respite from the business that brought me there. Sir‚’ he turned to Sam, ‘I was interest ed, a great word with me. Rarely do I have the occasion to apply it. That other business came to no purpose, as it happens, so I would be glad if something good could be saved from a bad day … How much money, Sam, would you require for a magazine?’

‘I would not have this – come upon your wedding for the world,
Tom
‚’
Sam answered. ‘It is no longer your affair.’

‘Kitty can spare me a minute? My sweet love, you do not mind?’

‘A minute or two I can spare, Tom. I leave you gentlemen to your
… business.’ She walked through the happy wreckage of the wedding-party, towards a wilful boy, hanging and banging on the gate.

‘I
am sorry, gentlemen. I did not guess I had dug up a bone of
contention.’

‘There is no contention, sir. Only Tom has just accepted a post at
the
Southern Courier,
and my German friend is called home. Alas,
I am not their only duty. But they were my props and I
wonder whether I can walk without them.’ There was a silence,
broken only by the flaps and freaks of the marquee, loud as whips.

‘I might stay‚’ I said at last.

‘Think, Phidy‚’ Tom said. ‘You must be certain.’

‘I have often acted as secretary to my father. They called me the little minister in the court. I think’, I said, looking straight at Tom, ‘I know what your duties were.’

“That is settled then‚’ said Mr Harcourt. ‘I will not intrude my business on the marriage feast. Indeed, I am sorry now to have come at all.’ He paused, and added with an odious air, ‘Though I hope you are not.’

‘No, indeed, Mr Harcourt‚’ I said quickly, taking him by the arm. ‘I will show you to the gate. We hope to hear from you shortly. A note at the Dewdrop Inn will find me for the time. I’m afraid you will think us a band of gypsies, but the truth is, another week would have found me under sail. I am glad of the chance to stay, however. Even in Pactaw of Pactaw County. That is the blessing of this country.
 
There is no one like Sam in all the courts of Europe, and here we
find him in a corner by himself’

‘That is what I hope to change, Phidy. May I call you that?’ he
inquired smilingly and took his leave.

‘There,’ I said proudly, rejoining my friends. ‘Tom could not have
done better.’

‘What do you think of old Easy Harcourt?’ Tom said.

‘Is that what we call him? “Easy” is good. He had me by the “Phidy” before we reached the gate. A foul man, though wealthy,
you say? All honey till he sticks to your hands, though I should not
think he is sweet, when crossed.’

‘Phidy‚’ Sam broke in, ‘are you sure of this?’

‘Of what?’

‘Have you the heart to stay?’

‘I did not think twice before I answered “yes”. But if asked twice, I will answer “yes” again.’

‘Do not answer me tonight, Phidy‚’ Sam said. ‘Your own father
needs you. Easy has offered us no postponement. This is the sticking-point. If you say “yes”, who knows when you will turn home again
or what you will find there?’

‘I will think on it, if you wish, Sam.’ Yet in my heart, did I not
know it was a postponement, a season prolonged? ‘But you know
my love for you, and that has only one answer.’

‘Sam‚’ Tom said. ‘May I speak with Phidy alone for a moment?’

‘I will find Kitty‚’ he said, ‘and quiet her fears.’

‘Phidy.’ He turned to me with an air I could not read, a kind of
remorse. ‘You do not owe him this. I may follow his fortune if I
abided his defeats.’

‘You cannot, Tom; look about you. Sam himself said it. You have
joined the race of respectable men. The paper awaits you. Your new
father stares at us. Kitty weeps in Sam’s arms, but he cannot comfort
her. These are games for young men, and you have other duties now.’
I could not help adding, ‘I have won
–
you said as much yourself.’

‘Oh, I would love to stay for his triumph, just that long. To see
all those little mocking men scrambling in his shadows.’

‘You must leave him
some
time. That much is clear for all of us. 
It is only a question of the occasion. I hope mine will be as happy.’

‘Perhaps you’re right, Phidy. Well, I must see to my new wife.’

As I watched him cross the garden to Kitty, I could not help but
mutter, ‘Tom, oh Tom, I do not have your faith.’

Then Sam took me by the elbow and said, ‘A magazine, Phidy.
Our very own, after all. Just the thing to give old Ben Silliman and
his kind
–
a kick in the breeches.’

Tom and Kitty left that night for their honeymoon, by river-boat
towards Norfolk along the Potomac. ‘I have a fancy to see New York
again
‚’
Tom said, ‘before we settle in Richmond by the
Courier.’

‘I thank you most of all, Phidy‚’ Kitty said. ‘Tom would not trust
that great baby to anyone else’s care.’

‘I will have my eye on you, Hen Mooler, never forget it‚’ Tom
said, and I waited for a smile but none came. ‘Perhaps I will ride to
Pactaw some time to see how you get along.’