Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (80 page)

   "Hyacinthe! They are after the geese Grandmama is fattening for Michaelmas! Run at once and chase them away, or Grandmama will murder us all!"

   She smiled at the thought of what her grandmother would say when this came to her ears, if it were not already there. What a racket they were all making! It might be enough to bring her grandmother out of her bed; she had been feeble lately. She saw Hyacinthe run and leap across the lawn, and then he was out of sight. Now, mingled amid barks and honks came the sound of Hyacinthe's crude curses, such as the stableboys used. And then she heard her grandmother:

   "I will kill those dogs! Perryman! Perryman!"

   She laughed out loud. The court would be returning to London soon. There would be about the same amount of barking and honking and jockeying for position around the Frog, supreme until his father returned from Hanover, as there was right now in the courtyard. How glad she was, how thankful to be here, rather than there. Here, one might find one's way in peace. There, one would find only chaos.

Chapter Twenty–Five

England's economic house of cards was falling, falling faster than a comet out of the skies. In February, when the South Sea Company had taken over part of the national debt, the example of John Law and France's amazing financial spurt of inflation and spending was foremost in all minds. For months, the British government and British companies had watched Englishmen take their gold across the channel to invest in Law's new Mississippi Company. Credit was capable of infinite expansion, backed by the state, preached the prophet John Law. The idea of a huge financial monopoly in close association with the state and trading on its credit was working in France; and in England, the South Sea Company, ever growing, rivaling even the Bank of England, was bold enough to try to create the same success. Rising markets were the key, and South Sea assured such a market through issuing new stock without authority, lending on unsound securities and bribery in the correct circles. As it rose to fantastic heights, other British stocks rose with it. And no one realized the cycle had a devastating end, an end France was now experiencing—scarcity of money, high cost of all goods, credit destroyed, public confidence in money systems shattered.

   When speculators began to sell South Sea stock to cover losses in other investments, the stock began to fall. And because its rise had been based on fool's tricks, nothing could stop the fall once it began. Other stocks, even those based on sound securities, fell with it; the comet had hit the ground and was exploding, and no one was safe from its impact. By the first week in September, banks in Paris and Amsterdam, scenting disaster, were ordering London agents to sell South Sea. The market, already unstable, became flooded with panicked people selling as the value kept dropping. By September 16, even the most optimistic of South Sea's directors sensed the abyss ahead and began trying to negotiate with their rival, the Bank of England—a rival that would only welcome their fall—to graft the two stocks together to restore public confidence and stop selling.

   By September 21, ministers in England were breaking their pen points in their haste to write the king in Hanover and tell him his island kingdom which he had left in a mood of speculation and spending was now on the verge of bankruptcy, despair, and possible rebellion. By September 24, the Sword Blade Company, the financial arm of the South Sea Company, handling its cash transactions, closed its door against a rioting press of withdrawers, and suspended business. Panic gripped London and the country at large. Fortunes were melting, and no one understood why. Assets froze overnight. South Sea stock had been 900 on August 17. By the end of September, it was 190. In the space of a month, people stood bewildered and bankrupt amid the ruins of financial chaos in what would be known forever after as the South Sea Bubble.

* * *

   Bah, thought the Duchess, sitting on the terrace overlooking the faded rose garden, Dulcinea in her lap. Her hands, on top of her cane, opened and closed impatiently. She watched a fat green caterpillar inch through the white petals of chrysanthemums in a nearby pot and, lifting her cane, she whirled it and whipped off the head of a flower. Tim, standing just behind her, ducked. The flower landed near, but the caterpillar (and Tim) were unharmed. It lay motionless on the fallen green stem. The Duchess debated as to whether she should risk getting up to step on it. The fact that she had to debate made her more irritable than ever. Bah. Fat slug. Greedy worm. Eating her autumn flowers.

   "Step on that." She pointed with her cane to the caterpillar, now inching away.

   "Go on. Good. Step on him one more time. Excellent." She smiled grimly to herself; and Tim grinned, a grin that disappeared the moment he saw her glaring at him.

   "Where is my granddaughter?"

   "In the kitchen, ma'am, with Thérèse and Cook making jelly. Shall I bring you inside now? Do you want tea—"

   "'Do you want tea?'" mimicked the Duchess. "No. I want to be alone. Quit hovering over me. Go away!"

   She settled back in her chair, less irritable now that she had killed the caterpillar and routed Tim. Impudent young fool, treating her like an invalid. They all did—Annie, Perryman, Barbara. Ever since Harvest Home. Well, she was no invalid. Sweet Jesus, she was merely old. Old. Barbara had given her enough shocks to kill her, but it was a sure sign of her strength that she was alive today, sitting in the sun. It would take more than Barbara's confessions to kill her. More than Abigail's panicked letters about South Sea stock. Bah. She had sold out in May. She did not hold with such goings–on. Law and his infinite credit. Richard had been the gambler in the family. Not her. Fat slug eating her flowers. Invalid. Bah. She raised her face to the sun and closed her eyes. Barbara was making jelly. That was a good sign. She hoped it was plum jelly. She liked fresh plum jelly on a hot scone. She must be sure to tell Richard tonight when she visited chapel that Barbara seemed to be doing so much better….He would want to know…. Ah, the sun was warm…fat…greedy…slug…eating…her…flowers….

   A lone man on horseback trotted up the avenue of limes and into the courtyard of Tamworth Hall. He tied his horse's bridle to a bush and walked around to the side of the house. On the terrace, the Duchess dozed, not waking even at the sound of his clinking spurs. He stood a moment staring down at her; then he reached to tickle Dulcinea on her belly, and she mewed loudly and clutched his hand with sharp claws, and the Duchess started awake.

   "Tony!" she cried. She smiled up at him. Then her smile faded. "What is it?" she said sharply. "Tell me."

   He knelt down in front of her, his face so sorrowful that she pulled his head to her breast and held it, stroking his thick, blond hair, tied back with a ribbon. Like Richard's. When she and Richard had been young, it had been the style for men to wear their hair long, as Tony now did. His hair smelled of sweat and mint and sunshine and man. She raised his face.

   "Tell me. Now."

   In the kitchen, Barbara overturned a jar of flour and it went spilling everywhere, across the broad oak table they were working on, over her apron and gown and shoes, over her hands and the purple plums waiting to be sliced. Cook made a strangled sound. Barbara giggled and pushed back a stray lock of hair, and Thérèse, across the table, pointed to her with a big wooden spoon and said, "Now it is on your face," and the two of them burst out laughing. They had been laughing and giggling and irritating Cook all morning like a pair of unruly schoolgirls. The reasons were varied: outside it was autumn, and the air stung their cheeks as they walked the dogs or went to chapel; the fireplaces were being used once more, and the logs crackled satisfactorily as they sat before them in the evenings eating hazelnuts and listening to Hyacinthe read
Robinson Crusoe
; and each week there came a letter for Barbara—from Roger—an ardent, compelling letter that shook her heart's hardness and made it feel like a girl's again.

   Annie ran into the kitchen. "It is your grandmother! Dear merciful God, hurry!"

   The two of them ran with Annie, Cook lumbering behind, through the great hall and past the winter parlor and past the room that was used as a library to the terrace. Even before they were on the terrace, they could see the Duchess through the open doors. They could hear her. She was struggling, struggling in a tall man's arms, twisting and trying to pull from his arms, fighting him, weeping, saying over and over, "Oh, no, oh, no."

   Barbara stopped where she was at the sight of Tony and her grandmother, but Thérèse and Annie and Cook went on, and then Tim was there, and they had the Duchess somehow—she was fighting them all— and they half carried her, half dragged her past Barbara. She was crying, crying like a child, and her face was so old, so wrinkled and anguished that Barbara felt the blood leave her head.

   She stared at Tony. Roger, she thought. It is Roger. I have waited too long. She would have dropped then to the floor like a stone, but Tony caught her and led her outside to sit on the terrace steps. The day was glorious, clear, cold, the trees showing their autumn colors: cherry trees a rich scarlet; oaks every shade of green and brown; beeches, orange, and horse chestnuts, the color of gold, newly minted.

   "Roger," she said, staring at Tony. He took her hands in his and held them tightly. "Roger," she said again, and her voice rose.

   "Listen to me," he said urgently, abruptly. "Listen. Not Roger. Roger is well. But—I have some bad news. Very bad news. You have to be brave. Do you hear me, Barbara? For everyone's sake. It is Harry. He—Barbara, I do not know how to tell this. He is dead. Three days ago. Wart found him in his lodgings. He—God, Barbara—he slit his throat with a razor—"

   She stared uncomprehendingly at the tears in his eyes. He was crying. Big, blue–gray eyes. Not like the summer sky, as Roger's were, or Charles's. Nor violet like Harry's…Harry! She slumped forward, and Tony caught her in his arms, and he held her and he stroked her hair and he murmured to her and she thought he said he loved her but she really did not know, she did not know anything but pain.

* * *

   Thérèse knelt by her bed, saying the aves, the gloria, the Our Father over and over, but her rosary beads kept slipping from her hands, just as the words, their comfort, kept slipping from her mind to leave only hurt, black and choking, blotting all. She had helped carry the Duchess to her bedchamber. She saw Annie mouth the words "Master Harry" to Perryman and shake her head, and suddenly a nameless, faceless dread seized her, and she had to leave that room. She felt as if her stomach had caved inside itself. She stumbled into a hall. Two maidservants ran to each other and said something, and one of them began to cry, and the other threw her apron up over her head and wailed. No, thought Thérèse. She began to walk. She did not know where she was going. Hyacinthe found her, his face tear–streaked, her rosary clutched in one hand, his faithful companions, the pugs, with him.

   "Thérèse, oh, Thérèse," he said, and he took a sobbing breath. "Sit down."

   He made her sit and take her rosary in hand, and the dogs were there, somewhere, yapping, and he tried to put them in her lap, and she knew. She knew before he said it. What had to be said.

   "Monsieur Harry," he said, his voice trembling, crying, crying like the child he was. "Monsieur Harry is dead. They say—oh, Thérèse, they say he cut his throat."

   Hush now, she told him. Hush, and she opened her arms and took him in them to hold him close while his thin, boy's body shook with sobs. But she could not cry. Not yet. The hurt went too deep. It was now, now as she knelt, that the tears came. As she said the prayers that had always comforted her, but between the comfort now were terrible, blank spaces. Grief welled in them, inexhaustible, like a spring. Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name…Harry…Harry… Harry…you were my heart.

* * *

Tony had handled every detail. He had sent a special messenger to Norfolk to inform Diana; his mother and sisters and brother–in–law were escorting Harry's body down from London, and he had arranged for the coroner in London to rule "not of sound mind" so that Harry could be buried in consecrated ground by a priest. Suicides were buried on public highways with a stake driven through their hearts. No priest could perform funeral rites over them. It was the law. Not of sound mind. The words wore a groove in Barbara's mind as she sat in the winter parlor with Tony and a little man, all smoothness and oil, from Maidstone, who was displaying his funeral palls and the souvenirs for the mourners, gloves, enameled rings, hatbands; the details of the ceremony of burial, the details she and Tony were dealing with, for their grandmother was bedridden. She lay in her bed like a wrinkled, anguished, limp rag doll and cried for Harry. And all Barbara could wonder was, Why? Why had he done it? Tony said things to her about stocks falling, about something called the Sword Blade Company suspending payment, about panic in London, and she could only stare at him. She would have given Harry her last penny, sold her last jewel, visited him in debtors' prison, schemed to release him. He was her brother. In Paris, it was he who had kept her from going mad.

   The little man showed a sample of his flannel; there was another law that bodies must be buried in woolen, but Barbara shook her head and blew her nose. Tamworth flannel would cover Harry. Annie had already purchased some from the most skillful weaver in the village, and she and Thérèse were cutting a shroud. When Harry's body arrived, they would clothe him in it; the cloth touching his body would be soaked with tears of love and grief from family. They would wash him and dress him in his new shroud and fold his hands, and he would go into the family vault with the touches of those who loved him as a final gesture. Hair rings, said the man. The deceased's hair arranged so nicely in a tiny circle under clear glass. Rings with posies inside, "Prepared Be to Follow Me." White gloves. Black gloves. Anything needed. Wax candles. Funeral invitations, skulls and thighbones engraved with great skill in the corners. Coffins. Whatever her ladyship might desire. For a favorite brother. Tamworth would provide, Barbara thought as she rose impatiently and walked to the window. Even now, the village carpenter was making the coffin. The rosemary to strew in it would come from her grandmother's stillroom. The flowers. The love.

   Tony led the man from the room and came back to stand behind Barbara. He put his arms around her, and she leaned her head back against him. It fit perfectly under his chin. She looked out at the autumn landscape, so bright with its autumn leaves. But in a few weeks, a month or more, it would be winter. Cold. Frost. Snow. Death.

   "Why would he do it, Tony? Tell me why."

   Harry was home. The black hearse from London had arrived, black and white feathers attached to the horse bridles, her aunt and Mary and Fanny and her husband, Harold, and her grandfather's ancient sister, her Aunt Shrewsborough, in carriages that had followed behind. Already Harry was in a back room where the women who had served his grandfather and grandmother were washing him, shrouding him, murmuring prayers over his body. And then he would lie in a Tamworth coffin in the great hall for a day, candles burning at his head and feet, a plate of salt over his heart to symbolize immortality and eternity, salt preserving that which it seasoned from corruption and so symbolizing immortality of the soul. She embraced her aunts and Fanny and Mary and for a moment all was fresh tears and black veils and trailing crepe. Then she went to find Harry. They were washing him, and Annie quickly covered his face, but Barbara pulled back the cloth. She would see it. His face was so still, so white, the whitest thing she had ever seen, whiter even than snow. So this was death. This stillness, this whiteness. And under his chin was the killing thin red line, stitched crookedly with black thread, jagged toward the end when his hand must have faltered.