The Three-Body Problem (8 page)

‘Emily!’ said her mother, perhaps more sharply than she intended. ‘We must return home now, and begin to prepare ourselves. Goodnight, Miss Duncan. Please accept my apologies for the sad conclusion of our evening together.’

‘Please do not even think of apologising,’ I cried. ‘If I can be of help to you in any possible manner, do not hesitate to ask me! It would be a great honour.’

‘Thank you,’ she said a little more gently. I descended, and the hansom drove off. By this time it was storming. Mr Weatherburn stood still patiently waiting for me, seeming almost not to notice the rain which poured down upon him and dripped before his eyes from the brim of his hat.

We entered the hall, and I opened my own door, and turned to bid him goodbye. Instead of which, I was surprised to hear myself say –

‘You do look wet and miserable! I should so like to give you a cup of tea!’

‘I sh-should love it!’ he replied, in a tone of timid audacity which exactly matched my own feelings. Suspecting that Mrs Fitzwilliam would strongly disapprove, we slipped inside quite silently and took off our wet things, and I built up the fire and put the kettle on, and lit the candles. The tea was soon ready, and we sat on either side of the hearth, avoiding by common consent any talk of the distressing events we had just witnessed. Oddly illumined by the flickering firelight, my cosy sitting room seemed enveloped in secret magic.

We sipped our tea for a moment, looking into the fire, and I searched for words to thank him for the evening, and tell him how beautiful I had found it, in spite of everything.

‘It was a marvellous thing for me to see even half a play,’ I finally said. ‘My very first visit to the theatre.’

‘I should like to take you to see the other half,’ he said a little wistfully. ‘The very scene following the interval was that in which Bassanio chooses the right casket to win his beloved. Do you remember …’ Slowly turning his intense gaze upon me, he recited, softly and ardently,

I was deeply confused. Hastily, I turned away, reached down my volume of Shakespeare’s plays, and turned to the casket scene. In a moment I had found the speech he was quoting. It was Portia’s speech to Bassanio. My eyes followed the lines, and as he paused, I continued it, although it cost me a strange effort.

The words were infinitely more powerful than any of our own could ever be. It seemed impossible to add to them. We remained silent, gazing into the fire for a long time, which was yet too short. Suddenly, without warning, he sprang to his feet.

‘Of course!’ he said. ‘I have it! How could I not have thought of it before?’

‘What, what is it?’ I asked anxiously.

‘The proof! Yes – it all works!’ And he made a sudden dash for the door.

‘Wait – your overcoat, your hat!’ I called out quickly.

He stopped in his tracks.

‘Oh, I am s-s-sorry,’ he said. ‘How rude of me to be so absent-minded. I had entirely forgotten where I was – I became lost in mathematical ideas. It is strange – all of a sudden, I saw how to accomplish something which has been eluding me for weeks!’ He returned towards me, holding out his hand, and thanked me warmly for the tea.

‘I am glad you had a moment to dry before returning to your mathematics, and to your nocturnal pacing,’ I told him, smiling.

‘Pacing? Oh yes. Do you hear me? I am very sorry! I never thought of it. But never fear, I shall not pace tonight. I do it only when my reflections are not proving fruitful. Tonight they are, thanks to you, thanks to Shakespeare.’ And he slipped out, his head aswirl, I imagine, with theorems and propositions, lemmas and corollaries.

The very next day, Mrs Burke-Jones departed for France with Mr Morrison and Emily in tow; they are to return only today. I have thought of them a great deal in these last three days. I shall write to you again, just as soon as something interesting transpires.

Yours ever,

Vanessa

My dearest little sister,

I have just returned home from tea with Emily; in spite of all that has happened this last week, Mrs Burke-Jones allowed
her to continue our new habit of tea on Monday, as she so strongly wished it. Emily was bursting with the need to pour out her woes; I do not believe anybody really listens to them at home, and she cannot talk to me intimately during lessons.

‘Oh, Miss Duncan, Miss Duncan, what do you think? You cannot believe all that has happened,’ she began almost as soon as I settled down in front of the teapot. ‘Edmund has been sent home from school; he arrived yesterday, and he is dreadfully ill! But I believe it is not just illness, for the letter said that the school was found to be unsuitable for him, and that he is not to come back ever. Mother is furious, but she does not know what to be furious about really, for no one has told us what he has been expelled for. The letter did not say, and Edmund will not say anything to Mother either, no matter how much she presses him. Oh, Miss Duncan, I cannot help rejoicing really, now that Edmund is home again. I do hope he will stay forever. I believe he will tell me what really happened, sooner or later.’

‘You must take very good care of him,’ I told her, thinking of the frail little blonde child I had briefly laid eyes on at the dinner party. ‘It will be a great joy to you, once he gets well again.’

‘But then, the most dreadful thing happened in France,’ she went on, unable to contain her emotions. ‘Oh, Miss Duncan, we actually saw the little boy, Father’s son, who lived in France with him! He looks just like Edmund used to … they look the way I remember my father, too – he was slim and blonde. I don’t look like him at all; I resemble Mother. The little boy is not even six years old yet. His
name is Robert, and he speaks English so sweetly, because Father always spoke English with him. Even though I never saw him before and did not even really know about him, not even his name, I felt that he was my very own brother, just like Edmund. I do so want another little brother! I was so excited, because I thought we were to bring him home! Mother saw lawyers and people for hours and hours. You know, Mademoiselle Martin was my governess until I was seven. She had no family at all, she had grown up in an orphanage and been educated in a convent, and she had come to England all by herself to seek for work, and she used always to say that we were the only family she had ever had. She fell in love with Daddy, you know. I am not supposed to know it, but I do know it, and I think it is very bad, but it could not have been her fault. I would have fallen in love with Daddy myself. I don’t know why he had to leave us all and go away with her for all those years, though. He never wrote to me at all after he left. But Mother says that he left me a letter which I will be allowed to open when I am eighteen. It’s a very long time from now, and I do so want to know what he says! He left a letter for Mother, too. That’s all that he left, for he and Mademoiselle Martin had almost nothing at all to live on; our house belongs to Mother, you know. Papa had not left a testament as people sometimes do, leaving their things to people, because he had nothing, but he had left these letters, in case anything ever happened to him. Mother told me that in the letter he wrote her, he told her how sorry he was about how unhappy he had made her by leaving, and how much he still loved Edmund and me.’

I began to feel almost uncomfortable at the intimate nature of the confidences I was receiving, but Emily desperately needed to talk, and the spate of information continued uninterrupted.

‘But the most important thing is that he wrote there was no one at all to take care of his little boy, and please could Mother make sure nothing ill happened to him, because she was the only person in the whole wide world that he knew and would trust with his life! Oh, Miss Duncan, I thought we would adopt little Robert straight away, but Mother would not! We went to see him, and he is living in dreadful rooms, all dirty and smelling of onions, right in the middle of a dirty street in Calais, with washing hanging up everywhere and peeling walls, with a horrible lady who said straight out that she was keeping him only to earn some money, and that the sooner she got rid of him the better. He was the saddest little boy I ever saw – he’d been an orphan for just two days! I tried to play with him, but he asked where Papa and Maman were and cried in my arms. I begged and begged Mother to take him with us; I even tried to order her, sometimes she listens to me and says I am her wise girl. But she
would not listen,
and said to me that she could not bear to see the child, and that she must return home, and think calmly about what to do about him. She gave some money to the lady and said that someone would come to collect the child, and that until then she would send more money. It was like selling him – oh, I cannot bear to think about it. I wanted to talk to her about it again, but she has forbidden me to mention it. Oh, Miss Duncan – what shall I do? What can I do?’

I was compelled to say the truth, that there was really not much the child could do, and that insisting too much might well even harm her case. I advised her gently to leave her mother alone for some time, and then bring up the subject gently and without passion, and listen very carefully to her mother’s views. There was really not much else I could say.

‘And devote yourself to your lessons, dear, and to taking care of your bro—of Edmund,’ I added. ‘I shall give you another of Mr Lewis Carroll’s Knots to solve today – mind you reason logically!’

I saw that I had not helped her as much as she had led herself to hope that I would.

‘Miss Duncan, please promise you will help me, if I ever really need help,’ she whispered. ‘I will do the same for you. Please, let it be a pact between us.’

She grasped my hand like a gentleman, and shook it firmly, and I kissed her. I will always help her to the best of my ability, of course, but that is so very limited. I cannot imagine what more she can expect. But I am deeply moved by her determination and her beautiful innate sense of justice.

I leave you now, to prepare my modest evening meal,

Vanessa

My very dearest sister,

Today was really a lovely, joyful, sunny day. The legendary English spring has finally made its appearance in full force. The gardens are bursting with flowers, the old
walls drowning in wisteria. I had quite a new experience: for the first time, I attended a public lecture!

It was Mr Weatherburn’s idea. He told me that the very important Professor of Mathematics Arthur Cayley – the very one whom I met at Mrs Burke-Jones’s dinner party in early March – was going to hold a public lecture on the teaching of mathematics in a great hall, and that ever so many people were expected to attend, all those who enjoy mathematics or who are engaged in the teaching of it. He added that there would be refreshments afterwards, and if the weather was fine, they would be held in the gardens of Trinity College, where Professor Cayley is a Fellow. I felt extraordinarily honoured; it was my very first entrance within the walls which I can never avoid thinking of as hallowed. And Trinity College, seen from within, is not disappointing. The vine-draped Master’s Lodge in the Great Court is the noblest mansion anyone could ever hope to reside in; as for the famous Chapel, a mere human feels almost unworthy of such splendour. They say it rings and echoes with the singing of the choir. I murmured wistfully that I should love to hear it some day, and was almost taken aback when told, in the most pragmatic of tones, that it was open to the public every Monday evening.

I felt shy to attend the lecture alone, and convinced my advanced class of Emily and Rose to join me; Miss Forsyth very kindly replaced me for the afternoon with the little girls. Emily and Rose were enchanted, not by the mathematical lecture, to be sure, but by the change in their usual habits, and the opportunity to spend the loveliest part of the afternoon taking refreshments in splendid gardens, instead of working
sums in a schoolroom. There were a great many ladies in the audience; the hall seemed filled with their summery hats, next to which my own appeared sadly modest. Perhaps they are governesses or teachers, or perhaps they are married to mathematicians and wish to have some glimpse of the mysterious activity that occupies their husbands so intensely.

My two pupils were very well-behaved during the lecture; they sat directly behind me, and I tried hard not to wonder whether or not they were paying attention to the illustrious professor, and to ignore the stifled giggles which occasionally reached my ears. I myself listened closely to what Professor Cayley was saying. He sat facing the audience, reading from a prepared text, and looking up rarely; his voice was monotonous, his expression vinegary, and his speech rapid, and it would have been easy to lose the thread, had he not been so powerful in expressing his convictions. I had not realised that the question of Euclid could raise such passions in the breasts of his adepts and his enemies!

Professor Cayley held that the only door to mathematics was through Euclid, that his works attained the highest conceivable perfection of mathematical thinking, and that one could not begin to study them too early. He recommended them strongly to schoolchildren, and said that their study should never be abandoned until all the extant volumes had been completely mastered.