Coronach, page 31
He took me into his house as if I belonged there. His housekeeper appeared briefly with wine and biscuits: she knew me, and she would see that word of where I was reached Evesham before me, but Evesham’s master would not be at home and no one else would judge me. We stood in his crowded sitting room and he offered me a towel, and I wandered round looking at his library as I dried my hair. A Syllabus of Anatomy in Thirty-Five Lessons, an old pamphlet, A Dialogue Concerning the Practise of Physic, several volumes by La Framboisière, many more bound in calfskin and printed in Latin. A full skeleton, its yellowed bones wired together, hung upon a frame in the corner. I looked away, and he laughed.
“Don’t you relish the prospect?”
“Not particularly. Do you?”
“I expect death to unravel the last great mystery. I shall be disappointed if it does not.”
I stared at the grinning, eyeless face.
“Have you no respect for his soul?”
“I doubt if he had one. He was very much one of the baser species— a convicted criminal. He was, however, quite difficult to obtain, so I respect his bones accordingly.”
I sat with the towel around my shoulders, and we drank our wine.
“You have no fear of death?”
“I take a professional interest in it, as the logical progression. I suspect that birth and death are a similar process, an emerging from one state of consciousness, one dimension of being, into another. So I cannot say I fear it. I am merely curious.”
“Why do you fight death, when you consider it a natural process?”
“I comfort myself with my philosophy, otherwise I could not endure the inequality of the contest.” The housekeeper had left candles burning, their light stronger now against the dusk. “Everywhere I see ugliness, despair, disease, and degradation. If man is made in the image of God, then God’s more of a monster than we thought.” He drank the last of his wine. “No one should ask you to share that. No one should even think it.”
The last birds were singing; the sun had set. I took the towel from my shoulders.
“Let me,” he said.
He combed my hair, rather roughly. It was thick and undisciplined and I had not cut it since London. When he had finished my scalp was tingling.
“I should like a lock of your hair.”
“For scientific purposes?”
“No,” he said. “For love.”
It had begun to rain again. Somewhere a clock struck, muffled by distance. He said coldly, “What, nothing to say? Or is it ‘much as you expected’?”
I turned and said, “Don’t play with me.”
“I don’t. But you play with my life, and this is the result.”
“What am I to do?”
“Nothing. I’ve played this miserable game before, the burning lover with all his hopeless passion. I can’t do it again, not for some one I can’t have. And I can’t have you.”
By the time I reached Evesham it was fully dark and the sound of rain was deafening. The stable boy who came to help me was clearly discomfited by something: there was a momentary lull in the rain, and more lightning, and I saw Mordaunt.
“Where have you been?”
“On the moor with Kit Thackeray.”
“Oh, so it’s ‘Kit’ now, is it?”
I began to rub her down. The boy had vanished, unwilling to witness this confrontation.
“His horse went lame. It was late when we came back— he asked me into his house.” I was conscious of his eyes, although I could not see them. “He has a housekeeper.”
“And she has a tongue. I would be obliged if you would look me in the face when you speak to me.”
I stood up and stared at him over the mare’s back and said, “Did you not teach me to see to the comfort of my horse before my own? Was that not my first lesson?”
He came around and took the cloth from me and dropped it into the straw. “I have been looking for you. I have been on the moor, and I have been on this estate. I have asked for you at every door. I thought you had been injured. Now I see that you were taking your ease with Kit, and enjoying yourself at my expense.”
“You never tell me of your comings and goings― you show me no consideration. And as for my absence, you’re so seldom in this house I hardly thought you’d notice.”
He said, inexplicably, “Don’t play with fire, Meg.”
I turned my back on him.
“Perhaps a month or two in London will cool your interest in him.”
I should not have said it, but I was driven to it.
“Don’t threaten me with London. When I recall your wife’s behaviour there I wonder that you dare to question mine.”
“You will not see him again.”
“I’ll see who I damned well please.”
I found myself in the rain, the lightning on our faces. He had me by the shoulders, the rain pouring down on us: the strength of his grip was appalling.
He said, “I have never struck you, but if you ever say anything like that to me again, alone or in the presence of my servants, by Christ, I will.”
He released me. There was more passion in that violence than in Thackeray’s profession of love for me.
How thin the line between love and hatred: perhaps, for him, it had already begun to blur.
III
The summons came for Thackeray at the beginning of October, and on the evening of the fifth, before the appointed time, he rode up to Evesham.
It seemed very quiet. At the door the major-domo greeted him, with a pouched and inscrutable face, and a footman drifted away with his cloak and hat. There were flowers on the console where he had laid his crop the night he had laboured to save Catherine’s life and that of the premature child she had borne: that loss had always haunted him, although death at birth was common enough. He thought of the frail, the unwanted and the illegitimate he had brought into the world, and wondered why he had failed, why this so desired son and heir should not have been allowed to survive. Although it could not save this sterile marriage, it seemed so little compensation to ask.
He touched the flowers: they were asters, in shades of blue and rose and purple, and he knew whose hand had arranged them here. The daughter of the house... as he had always considered her. Even that was false.
The major-domo was waiting.
They approached the drawing room. The doors were open, and from within came music, unexpected and scintillating. He did not recognize the composer or the composition, but he had a sensitive ear and the execution was flawless: it seemed touched by genius.
The major-domo said, with what seemed a criminal disinterest, “The master plays, sir.”
He opened the doors fully and for a moment the scene was held before him like a tapestry: a long, candlelit room filled with the patina of wood, the sheen of brocade and satin and the glint of crystal, the luminous portrait of a young Catherine, vividly beautiful, and the harpsichord where the light fell, still and radiant, over the face of the man who had summoned him. An oddly intimate glimpse, like a secret revealed, then the major-domo cleared his throat tactfully and the music stopped. The last note seemed to shiver into the silence.
“Doctor Thackeray, sir.”
The eyes rested on his face, at this distance very much greyer than blue. The strong, bony features were neither welcoming nor displeased: he did not rise from behind the harpsichord.
“You are early.”
“I thought you would find lateness unacceptable.”
“It is a pity you cannot teach that lesson to my daughter, who is utterly oblivious to time.”
The major-domo withdrew, closing the doors. Thackeray said, “I apologize for having disturbed you in your leisure. I had heard that you were gifted. I did not expect that I would ever hear you play.”
He did rise then, and came around the harpsichord. He did not offer his hand.
“So you’ve heard of my effeminate accomplishment.”
“You demean it, wrongly.”
“I do not demean it, I assure you. But others have.”
At close quarters he dominated the room, and the eyes were clear and daunting.
“Are you fond of music, Doctor?”
“Yes. But I seldom have the opportunity to hear any.... Margaret plays, does she not?”
His bold mention of her name had no noticeable effect, although he knew she was the reason he had been brought here.
“Yes. I teach her.”
“She must be very―”
“She has no patience, and, I regret to say, very little natural talent. Will you take a glass of sherry?”
Thackeray regarded him with interest, still cherishing the intimate vignette. He must have played this way a thousand times, to these unhearing walls, to that portrait of a woman as indifferent as in life, to a house full of shadows, and memories, and secrets, for no one but his servants and himself. And for that time he had been at peace, absorbed in some joy of creation which must satisfy him, however briefly. But the peace, the absorption, had gone now: it was the face of a man both wary and controlled, and as always the impenetrable quality of his nature challenged and stimulated.
“Do you write music, sir— do you compose?”
“No.” And then, perhaps because even he was aware of the monosyllabic harshness, “I have no ability.”
They drank the sherry standing, as though it were an unpleasant but necessary ritual. Thackeray sensed some pain of body or limb, and wondered why he had never on any occasion sought treatment for himself.
Mordaunt said, after a silence, “It was my ambition to become a musician. My father thought otherwise.”
“Hence the army?”
“I was a better soldier.”
“You had no notion of defying him?”
“If you knew my father you would not say that. He was a lieutenant general and he ruled his family accordingly. And I was his second son, and not his favourite.” He drained the glass. “Will you walk in, Doctor? I hope you find my table to your liking.”
Only two covers had been laid.
“Will Margaret not be joining us?”
“Margaret has gone out. She is spending the evening with friends.”
He doubted it. She was as reclusive as Mordaunt, and if she had been sent away he would have selected her company as stringently as he ruled every other aspect of her life.
They began with game soup and more sherry and progressed through crimped skate in onion sauce and salmon genevese in herbs and madeira, accompanied by white burgundy. They discussed the war, guardedly: the reason for this interview was never mentioned, and the subject of their mutual concern remained oppressively unbroached. The wine was changed and a heavy claret poured; roast partridge with apricots and rice was served, followed by a compote of peaches, a plum tart, and custard in glasses, accompanied by a sweet canary wine. Thackeray drank only moderately, aware that the moment would come when he would need all his clarity of thought, but the wines were potent, and he observed with concern that although his host drank heavily, their effect upon him was negligible.
The meal and the strained conversation ended. Walnuts in a silver dish were brought.
“A glass of madeira, Doctor? I prefer it to a rather mucky port.”
“You must forgive me if I decline. Really, I exceed my capacity.”
The major-domo, who had been overseeing the service, and the footmen withdrew. Thackeray sat in the flickering candlelight marshalling his thoughts. The long, roughened fingers across the table cracked a walnut without effort.
“I do not approve of your relationship with my daughter, and I do not intend to allow it to continue.”
Thackeray said, “When Margaret is eighteen I am going to ask her to become my wife.”
“When Margaret is eighteen she is going to the Continent with me. I do not believe this war will last much longer.”
“When she returns, then.”
“And do you think she will find you acceptable?”
“I hope that she will look favourably upon me.”
“Have you spoken of this to her?”
“Not of marriage, and without your consent I will not.”
“You trained in London. Why did you leave?”
“A love affair. My rival had money. There was really nothing left to be said.”
There was now no subterfuge: the animosity was undisguised.
“You are much older than Margaret.”
“I am thirty-two.”
“Do you love her?”
“I have known a woman’s love, in the fullest sense. Margaret cannot give me that yet.” Then, gauging the effect, “Love is not summoned on demand. Her youth delights me.”
The response confirmed his suspicions.
“And your desires are not carnal?”
“As I said, she cannot give me a woman’s love. I respect her innocence above all things.”
The fingers, which he watched with fascination, turned a fragment of shell.
“What sort of life do you propose to offer her after what she has known? Some hovel full of scurvy brats, while you bring all manner of disease through the door?”
He refused to be baited. His mind was active now, analysing, speculating, probing, the surgeon supplanting the man.
“I should go with Margaret to Bath or Cheltenham and practise there, or if she would prefer it, to London.”
“To mingle with men and women of fashion? If I wanted her to have that life I would take her there myself, that she might do it at her own level.”
“What is your desire for Margaret, sir?”
“Happiness.”
“Cannot you allow her to find it in her own way?”
There was silence, overlaid by a virulent current of dislike. He waited, controlling himself, for the next attack: he had never met so formidable an opponent.
“You have asked for my permission to pay your addresses to Margaret. I forbid it. If I could forbid your seeing her I would do that also, but unfortunately that is beyond me.”
Thackeray determined his manoeuvre: his only fear was that it was obvious.
He said bluntly, “I have lived alone, and I have had no companionship. I had hoped that you of all men would understand.”
He was speaking of the governess and the nerve he touched was raw; he felt a surge of pity.
“I see that not only is Margaret free in discussing her own affairs, but she discusses mine as well.”
“She is discretion’s very self where you are concerned. I made my own deductions.”
“And they led you where?”
“I thought you had found happiness. And I believe it is something of which you have known little, although I do not seek to know the reason.”
“A man may love where he will. A woman may not.” Yes, formidable, Thackeray thought: formidable and implacable. His admiration deepened, and his compassion. “You seem to prefer plain speaking. I will be blunt with you. Margaret is my heiress. You have no money. It is as simple as that.”
“You cut deep, Major.”
“No blade cuts deeper than a gossip’s tongue. When you begin looking above yourself you’d best grow accustomed to it.”
Another silence. It seemed that the interview was at an end.
Thackeray said, “May I speak to you as a man, putting aside our disagreement?” His compassion was overwhelming, but it was still necessary, compulsive even, to dissect, to probe even further. “I find your hostility toward me inexplicable. It is not, I believe, contempt for my profession. Although you have never required my services I have attended Margaret and your wife, I think to your satisfaction.” Mordaunt said nothing: he continued gently, “I tried with all my power to save your son five years ago.”
“It is not my son who signifies in this case.”
“Thank God. I have always thought you could not forgive me, when I could only do what was humanly possible.”
The moment had come: he had nothing left to lose. “I know why my suit is not acceptable to you. It is not because I have no family of consequence and Margaret is your heiress.” He paused, hoping that what he was about to say would be enough: he had no desire to force into words what he now knew to be the truth. “I know that Margaret is not your daughter. I only wonder that no one has spoken of it openly.”
The fingers selected a walnut shell, turned it over, and were still.
“Who told you?”
“Your wife’s medical history is sufficient to assure me that she has never carried a child to term, and there is a malformation of the uterus that ensures she never will. The rest was speculation. The girl believes herself illegitimate.”
“She is legitimate.”
“Who is she?”
“I do not find myself obliged to discuss this with you, Thackeray. She is legitimate, and she is my child, as much as if I had sired her. That is enough.”
“But not in your eyes.”
“I will say good-night to you, sir.”
Thackeray said, “You regard me as a rival, and your attitude is that of a lover. I think that concealment will not afford you much quietude, mental or physical.”
There was nothing, not even a change of expression, and for a dreadful moment he thought he was mistaken.
Then Mordaunt said, “Does she know?”
“She is sensible of a change in your manner. I would be the last to tell her.”
There was another silence, and he heard the rain. The strong, introspective face across the table remained as enigmatic as the day he had first seen it, and he watched it with pity and fascination, knowing he had been drawn into the labyrinth of its obsession as inexorably as she.
Mordaunt became aware of his gaze.
“Do you regard me as a specimen, Doctor? Do you think me mad? Perverted?”
“I think you are troubled, beyond my ability to help.”
