Chapter Ten

Rawdon Bailey was a man much like myself, only a good deal more religious. He was the vicar of our parish in Cambridge, and his faith brought great pain to our existence. As a young lad, I wondered, looking into his large, black eyes without depth to look into, what he might be thinking. But I was too frightened to reach into these dark waters, and draw any manner of substance or idea from them, for fear of drowning. His hair and whiskers were blacker than ever, and whenever he called ‘the children’ to his study for a Bible reading, he would seem to us a tall, black column, donning a white wig now and again.

He made everything a pain. Dreadful to me was calling Frances 'mother' in his overpowering presence, and when Frances showed any form of tender, motherly affection towards her little tots, he would say in warning, “Augusta...” and she would draw back immediately.

I believe my mother loved him, but did not like him much. He provoked her, with his conservative notions, but to her he also seemed mysterious and intriguing; a storyteller’s muse. Her undeniable love for him – I saw her too many times tormented by her hatred for him, and by the irrefutable ardour she could not help but sense for this monster – repelled me, particularly on the day I was locked into the pronounced haunted garret of the typically cheerful house for playing on a Sunday afternoon with the lads. No jail was ever more secure.

From then on - I was ten about - it was a boyhood of restraint; the nightmares, insomnia, shall never escape me. Every voice and sound seemed dismal to me (the cheery sounds only made mockery of me). Boys playing in the churchyard... My days ended with remorse and my nights began with fear.

At long last, I and Amy ran from home - our goal was to leave our beloved Cambridge behind, be it a part of the past, and lead a secretive life under assumed names in the city we typically knew under the name of ‘The Smoke’. We traveled by stage coach, and slept and ate thanks to our menus plaisirs, which was more than a farmer earned in a week, to be sure.

The Smoke; where ought I to begin? It was a wet winter night when we arrived, and there was a choking smell of gas. Side streets were gas-lit, and there were faint pools of light around each lamppost. There was a deadly mix of fog and smoke. We rented a room in one of the blackened buildings, though it might have been worse, and a week past, we had not more money in our purses to pay for our lease, and were forced to go a-begging in the streets. This was in April, and the rain was black sometimes. Four days were successively spent on the streets ere the Angels salvaged our souls, and brought us to their underground heavens.

The Angels were abandoned, orphaned, and runaway beggars who had established a home for others of their kind in the cellar of a forgotten edifice – equally black as the others. It far exceeded our expectations besides.

We had fancied to be received in a mucky hole, dug up by this defenseless clan, but were pleasantly surprised by the surroundings, which might have possibly been as clean and homely as the servant's hall in our past home.

The children had all of them one thing in common; a general spite for one or both of their parents or guardians. The clan leader, Daniel, was in charge of keeping the children – their age ranging from six to sixteen – in order, and establishing the rules, and the second eldest, a one Seth, was charged with keeping these miniature adults warm and satiated.

I was a year Seth’s junior, and quickly won Daniel’s approval. He was six and ten. I thought I never was happier. But this sort of liberty did not last very long. Each of us feared discovery more than anything else, for we were living the lives of fugitives from the law. Some of our parents or guardians were still hunting for us, and on a one autumn evening, when I and Amy – we worked the same shifts in a bakery owned by a very fat, red man – were finishing our late shift, the door bell jingled, informing us that our last customer needed to be served.

“Good evening, sir,” says I, walking up to the counter, as of habit. But I fathomed the identity of the customer a moment too late to retrace my steps.

“Boy,” my father lunged at me, ensnaring my neck in his bloodcurdling white hands, seeming very much like the German specter; the vampire. His generous nose scratched unpleasantly against mine. “Whereabouts is your sister?”

I kept a straight face, refusing to speak, despite my absolute trepidation of his person, and what he might do to reprimand me for my being mum on my sister’s whereabouts. He shook me with his hands still gripped round my neck, and tossed me to the ground, his vulgarity shocking me to the point of tears, even if he was, in truth, a strongly built male.

“I ask to be permitted to speak with the proprietor of this boutique,” says he using his coolest, and most dreadful chords. I jumped to my feet, suddenly electrified, running into the changing-room; I grappled Amy’s little fairy-like hand, and ran through the back doors, out into the open streets of London; our dismal new home. Our father, Lucifer’s own son, followed suit, seeing us escaping from the glass window in the foyer of the bakery.

I was a fast runner – much like him, only I lacked his heavy build – but sadly Amy was not, and she fell back on numerous occasions. The sixth time, when I looked back to see how far she’d run, my eyes found her not in the faintly lit street. “Amy?” I cried hopelessly, a violent spasm crossing my mouth. Ere anyone could answer my sobbing query, a massive brown mitt swathed over my face with a handkerchief, and all after that was a blank.

I woke with an uncomfortable throbbing in my head. This was my first migraine ever recorded. I couldn’t lift my head from the sofa cushion – I had, in my feverish state, fancied that my father had tied me to the sofa as miserably and ignorantly as Gulliver was tied to the ground by the tiny Lilliputians. As my eyes drifted open, I saw two black shapes crouched over a small, white form and whispering to one another like serpents.

…

One of the black shapes was now crouched over me, and tasted something from an ale mug. I well knew the smell. It was a drink made by dissolving treacle or sugar in water and flavouring the liquor with spruce leaves. I felt my mouth water, and the ghoulish creature brought the mug to my lips, pouring the spruce-beer over my whole head. I groaned, pushing his large white paws away hectically.

…

“The young woman is fast asleep, and not quite as restless as the boy,” said a gruff, unfamiliar voice, slapping a hot, wet towel over my perspiring brow. “When do you think the drug will set about?”

…

I found myself slumbering in a monumental four-post bed underneath a few thick layers of quilts, and with a few candles burning on shelves and stools hard by. After regaining moderate consciousness, I tip-toed to the casement, and noticed that someone who clearly had not trust in me had sealed it with nails.

I scampered confusedly round the room – I shall not call it mine own – banging the locked doors, and stomping uproariously on the wooden floor, crying wildly and damaging everything my feeble little hands could lift or break. After a long while of this brainsick display of affectivity, someone barged into the room, and embraced me elatedly, her tears soaking the collar of my white cotton sleeping-gown, her fingers tangling affectionately within my black boyish mane.

“My own,” she sobbed frenetically. Ere I could look into her lovely blue eyes, a vicious hand grabbed her by the waist, thrust her out of the room, and seized my collar cholerically. “Measly moppet,” he rocked me with the direct opposite of Frances’s tenderness.

“Oh, if you please!” I entreated him not to beat me, but a fate much worse awaited me.

“By Hell, I will not beat you,” he scowled impishly, flinging me unto the bed like a doll. “I know that the worst chastisement for you is never to be able to see or touch your mother again!”

“Goodness!” I cried importunately.

“Ay, you will be sent to a boarding-school hard by London,” he nodded contemplatively. I was sobbing warmly, but this did not affect him in any way. There was another wild sobbing fit heard from behind the closed doors. “My own,” she persisted. “Frances!” I tumbled to the door, blowing a kiss into the key-hole. She did likewise. My father hauled me to my feet, but I fell to the floor immediately.

He struck me across the cheek, and slid out the room indifferently, seizing Frances by the arm, and striking her too across the cheek. She shrieked deafeningly, and sprinted down the stairs in hysterics, escaping this damned house by the front doors, reentering it I know not when.

The next morning, my boyhood valet Jim packed my trunks with a devilish woebegone look in his twinkling brown eye, responding not to my vain inquiries and supplications. After having done packing said trunks, he seized my hand gently – in comparison to my father’s brutality – and helped me descend the high and narrow flight of stairs, passing me on to my father’s brown friend, Mr. Cole, who led me silently and embarrassedly to the stage coach, transmitting a note into my quaking white paws, slightly ruffling my hair and then returning briskly into the house. I read it on the way. It was from my father, and it bore these few lines; “My son. This is your final step towards reform. Do not object against your father’s will. Good-luck. –R. Bailey.”

In one hour, I was being introduced to the headmaster, a one Master Victor Mordecai, as ‘The Liar.’ My father’s compliments.

Madame Bovie’s grand goal that late August afternoon was to pursue my nerves with importunity. First, she waltzed into the parlour in her bathrobe and slippers, then, she ‘accidentally’ stepped upon my feet, and last but not least, she asked me whether I would like to share my ‘secret passions’ with her.

“Of course not,” I scoffed in a huff.

“Monsieur,” she adapted a very firm, grave, serious look, and sat in her green arm-chair opposite me, throwing her silk slippers to the deuce and warming her naked feet by the fire. “I am not een ignorance of your latest eroticism.”

“My what!” I jumped in mad offense.

“Yees, yees,” she nodded unsmilingly. “You are in love of late.”

“In love did you say?” I scoffed with an indignant giggle. “You surprise me.”

“A man een love ees an evident theeng,” she raised her brow, stroking her temples ponderously. “You are quite like a child, monsieur. You might identify your feelings, but lack the ability to analyze them.” I sat silent in my seat, my palms sweating, and my lips quivering as she observed me narrowly.

“Love ees not a seen,” she rose to her feet, standing over me momentarily. “And Lucie is a fine young woman.” I looked on her amazedly, my eyes watering. As her steps precipitated towards the door, I asked; “How long have you known?”

“I never knew, Monsieur S.,” she smiled sagely. “But love is quite visible from a distance. All one ought to do ees assume based on their instinct. That is what love is; instinct.”

The Children’s ball was that evening, and thoughts of confessing my love to Lucy were harassing me in the human form of Madame Bovie.

“I tell you I will not perform the task you are beseeching me to execute,” I commented presently as the servants ran about the hall excitedly, and the pupils, in a harmless frenzy, prepared for the night’s merrymaking.

“Monsieur will see that eet will be fewer secrets to screen,” she insisted demandingly, following me out of doors. I lit my cigar, and suggested she left this outdoor vicinity that her feeble female lungs did not have to endure my harsh male habit. A part of me was itching to confess my fondness for Lucy, but the frightened and wounded part of me warned me against any such personal attachments.

I spent the hours leading to the peasant gathering in my sitting-room until the bell of St. Paul’s stroked ten times, and the festivities commenced riotously. The atmosphere eventually grew too insufferable and drunk and I was determined to take a midnight stroll in the private garden, where no souls dared venture that were present in the house. But one soul was as solitary and nature-needy as I. Lucy sat on the low brick wall, as if fusing into the environment.

“Good evening,” I advanced a few steps closer.

“Oh,” she turned round. “Hullo.”

“Might I join you?”

“By all means,” she nodded, turning her eyes skywards. It was the longest and most difficult moment of silence I ever was coerced to undergo with this woman. “Fanny has made the decision to divulge to Mr. Deeney her true identity,” she sighed unconcernedly.

“That so?” I replied as equally undisturbed.

“Yes. I am afraid of how he might counter to her bold decision.”

“Indeed, this shall be the moment which his supposed partiality for her person will be tried. Here his veritable disposition shall be exposed.” She snorted, suddenly, paying me a look of wan commiseration.

“You sound as though you were alluding to a death.” A slinky black cat leapt unto her lap, purred and rubbed itself against her breast, and then looked strangely – as if recognizing me with its narrow, green eyes – into mine eyes.

“I had better retreat to my room,” I looked down grimly, parting with her confusedly. As I walked in the direction of my rooms, I saw, standing at ease in the parlour, Fanny and Mr. Deeney, planting kisses all over each other’s faces amorously, this exploit of elatedness and respite moving me to the point of remorse.

“They’re decent,” she said with the most mordant manner. In fact, she had that natural jealousy which is one of the main principles of every honest woman. To be despised by her own sex is a compliment to a woman. Just so, Miss Juliet, Miss Polly, and Miss Savannah admired me from afar, I asking Lucy for her honest opinion on these fine specimens of women.

“I think you are being too harsh on them, my dear Lucy,” I made answer.

“I think I am not,” she asserted bitterly. “They are much too pretty to be at all sympathized with.”

“They were, a very long time ago, her bosom friends,” Mr. Rowatt inserted good-humoredly.

“You may teaze me, sir, but you mayn’t insult me,” she shrugged hotly, her cheeks quite red. It was in the whole a very humorous moment.

“Here, Lucy,” Mr. Rowatt pressed her slender, curved back to his slightly exposed chest, and locked her in an amicable embrace. “Some men are too plain to attract the admiration of those women,” he whispered into her ear, glaring at me meaningfully. “And those are the ones who will love you unconditionally.”

“Gabriel,” she untangled herself from his muscular arms. “Gabriel, come with me,” she looked pleadingly on me, taking him out of the room with the purpose of teaching him a lesson, I should hope. The servants’ blatant behaviours were much too distasteful to submit to, so I withdrew to my sitting-room, and dwelled on my laughable person until it was very late in the night, and I feeling oppressed and sad and solitary, dragged my limbs into the foyer to contemplate the death of the party.

XXX

“Good gracious me!” Fanny sighed deliriously.

“You are perfectly enamored, dear,” Lucy shook her off groggily as she and her father and Madame Bovie and Mr. Rowatt exhorted the party-goers to retrieve to their apartments and to quiet down, for it was past three o’clock in the morning.

“Lucy,” I touched her shoulder.

“Frank, thank goodness!” she sighed. “You must help me put this dear besotted creature to bed. Gabriel,” she looked on him with a bit more colour and enthusiasm than she had on me, as if he’d awakened her entirely.

“Yes, Lucy?” he came forth absorbedly.

She smiled, and he and Lucy took each of Fanny’s arms, helping her ascend the stairs to her room. I felt powerless and discarded, like an unwanted pet.

Often, of an evening, when I sat by my window, my desk and papers spread before me, I would cease reading or writing, rest my chin upon my hand, and engage in strange courses of thought. I think it refreshes my memory, to name the date of an occurrence which once occurred. August 21st, 1804, I quit my solitary space with the object of finding pleasurable conversation in Madame Bovie’s parlour.

As I measured my strides to her room, a man and a woman conversing in the vestibule caught my notice. Reader, though it might be a fault, and though you might now think I have too many to add up, let alone forgive me for, I was compelled to submit to its growing temptation. I knew the woman was Lucy, by her tone of voice and manner of speaking – I kept a considerable distance – and that the man, without a shadow of a doubt, was Mr. Rowatt, and none other.

“Yes, I think you are quite real on that point,” says Lucy. “We must absolutely capture Mother Nature at her most excellent instant. A male artist’s muse may be a woman, but the woman’s is Mother Nature, to be sure.”

“A woman, too,” says he. “Who might not adore women, even women themselves?” The exchange sounded so classified, so avid and mindful that I fancied they were quite close to each other physically.

“Gabe,” says she, sounding shy and uncertain. “I have loved, I do love, and I suffered all that a warm temper was likely to endure under the disappointment of a dear though irrational hope. I am a solitary sufferer, you see.” That was rather a turn from their original topic.

“You love me, as it happens,” says Rowatt.

“Stop a bit. Gabriel,” a pause – a mental struggle. “I now love another. I cannot be so fickle as to accept you after loving him.”

“Ay, but he who you do love now does not seem to return your affections. You shall only grow more wretched.”

“Wretched,” she said in a strained whisper. “I have been wretched since you had a shameless affair with Spain! It is essentially thanks to him that my thirst has been quenched.”

“My stars! Do I hear healthy?” he laughed out loud. “Lucy, might you even hear yourself? This man is a blooming sheik, what would he have to do with you?”

“What are you implying?” He laughed the more.

“That men like Frank Smollett see nothing in women like you. I find it laughably absurd, you are so delusional!” A pause. A shrill sob. My own name had taken the wind out of me, cut through my bosom and dug excruciatingly into my heart. She loved me. It was impossible.

“Then, you do not hope,” she sobbed. “Not for me?” I was filled with an inclination to swagger into the vestibule, grasp her hands, and kiss them as would a father trying to make well his daughter’s sores, but something other than Society hindered this hot urge. Rowatt, in my eyes, was as stupid and sightless a fellow as ever lived.

“You may depend on it,” says he. “I shall never hope you to unite in love or Holy matrimony with this man.” He sounded very scornful, and ere he barged through the doors hotly I stole into the parlour, which was comfortably in use by Madame Bovie.

“Seet,” she commanded sharply, her green eyes screened by her grey eyelids. She was knitting a pair of white cotton stockings for her child. “I have something to say.” I sat, according to her wishes.

“Lucie, no doubt you ‘ave heard, ees very torn at the present moment,” she said in a raw whisper. “I ‘ave a sore throat. You will excuse your old employee’s ailments.” I had anticipated a little more to be said from her at that moment, but she waited until she had done the stocking ere she took up again our topic of mutual wonder and hope.

“Lucie has a very upsetting past,” she inhaled deeply, coughing a bit. “And you, as the man who steadily loves ‘er, ‘ave no choice but to listen to what I have to say regarding my pretty’s complaints. She has lost a mother, and two sisters. I forbid myself to reveal more, lest she should encourage me to, but I have not received thees consent from her as of yet. After their departure from ‘er world, from Northfield’s world – I mean they are not dead – she exhibited a good deal of discomfort and… general misery.

“She spent her days cradling her childhood dolls and reading her childhood story-books, of which I only remember Arabian Nights, and Gulliver’s Travels. Everything depressed her, brought her down, and she blamed herself for each trivial theeng that passed unnoteeced een thees house. She had entirely lost faith een the human race, and she abhorred herself for being such scum. Eef one said; “Now, Lucie, don’t cry,” it would be same as saying, to the fire; “Don’t burn.”

“She found fault een each of her faculties, comparing herself to those shallow girls Juliet, Polly, and Savannah, who were the housemaids – lower than she, whose papa was once a groom, and she knows how to ride a horse and they do not – and mostly kept to herself. If anybody wanted to know what mood she was in – she had always bewildering mood sweengs – all they would need to do ees skulk into her garret, and behold the night’s masterpiece – she habitually painted an oeuvre d’art each night, for the hours were spent awake.

“After an entire year spent een thees respect, no one firmly accepted as true that she might one day change for the better. Who knew a man as dismal and dull as you would light her fire, set the hopeful spark into a series of brilliant fireworks? Why, her beauty may be other than Miss Juliet’s, the dark stallion, her features not so small and handsome, but she ees unique een thees way. I deem her more beautiful than those small-minded, vainglorious fillettes. Proud, narcissistic créatures. They are futile, inflated, negligent, and of no value whatever! Infâmes Anglaises, elles nous font tous chier…”

“I am done,” she sighed at length, folding the stockings into a seamless four-sided figure. “Monsieur S.,” she looked on me. “You weell bring thees upstairs to my fille?”

“Your what?” Methought, for a fleeting moment, that she might be as uproarious about an animal as Countess Gray.

“Never mind, I think I ought to keep fit, and go myself,” she rose to her feet, feebly, and walked across the room to the door with as much grace as her poorly health permitted her to.

XXX

I thought I should go watch the sun set, and be as little constricted indoors as human boundaries allowed me to. Mother Nature could not, after all, deny me that pleasure. As I reached the kitchen doors, those which led to the most open area of grass about the hall, my eyes fell on Lucy shooting arrows in the aforementioned yard. As I drew near with small steps, she smiled hesitantly, and then shot another arrow at the target. “Pleasant day,” I cleared me throat, stationing myself so that she might still have room to point her arrow.

“It is,” she gasped after another sloppy attempt.

“Your technique is nothing bad,” I nodded sternly. “I see you use the instinctive shooting method. Very good.” She smiled faintly, and holding in the hand opposite to her dominant eye the arrow in her bow arm, she aimed, and she shot. The arrow flew over the circular target. I raised my eyebrows at her.

“Oh, stop a bit,” she huffed in despair, scratching the skin underneath her gloved arm in an unsettled sort of manner. “I am not as competent at gentry’s sports as you.”

“Well, you can ride,” I observed light-heartedly.

“Riding happens to be a simpleton’s sport,” she growled bashfully.

“Lucy, ought we to talk?” I inquired severely, as would a master angry with his pupil for decrease of work habits.

“Why the dickens would you call to mind such a curiosity?” she said in a high key.

“Because…” I hesitated. “Never mind.” I turned to leave, but then remembered something. “Lucy, would you… would you care to enlighten me as to why there happened to be a trail of blood leading from your present chambers to Madame Bovie’s in the late afternoon?”

“How ought I to know, the blood is not mine,” she shrugged with sudden sternness. “Fanny lives there too, you know. Why not ask her?”

“I will,” I nodded, retracing my steps indoors. I had unfortunately caught nothing of the sunset.

After making some inquiries – Fanny was not currently present in the hall – in her respect, I deduced such; that someone, most likely Fanny or Lucy or perhaps a maid who had slipped into their chambers at some stage in the Children’s ball, had broken their cherry, and was in all probability with child without knowing it as of yet.