Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (16 page)

“Yes, yes!” cried the gentleman suddenly breaking into English. “You elected to summon
me
because my genius for magic exceeds that of all the rest of my race. Because I have been the servant and confidential friend of Thomas Godbless, Ralph Stokesey, Martin Pale
and
of the Raven King. Because I am valorous, chivalrous, generous and as handsome as the day is long! That is all quite understood! It would have been madness to summon anyone else! We both know who
I
am. The question is: who in the world are
you
?”

“I?” said Mr Norrell, startled. “I am the greatest magician of the Age!”

The gentleman raised one perfect eyebrow as if to say he was surprized to hear it. He walked around Mr Norrell slowly, considering him from every angle. Then, most disconcerting of all, he plucked Mr Norrell's wig from his head and looked underneath, as if Mr Norrell were a cooking pot on the fire and he wished to know what was for dinner.

“I . . . I am the man who is destined to restore magic to England!” stammered Mr Norrell, grabbing back his wig and replacing it, slightly askew, upon his head.

“Well, obviously you are
that
!” said the gentleman. “Or I should not be here! You do not imagine that I would waste my time upon a three-penny hedge-sorcerer, do you? But
who
are you? That is what I wish to know. What magic have you done? Who was your master? What magical lands have you visited? What enemies have you defeated? Who are your allies?”

Mr Norrell was extremely surprized to be asked so many questions and he was not at all prepared to answer them. He wavered and hesitated before finally fixing upon the only one to which he had a sensible answer. “I had no master. I taught myself.”

“How?”

“From books.”

“Books!” (This in a tone of the utmost contempt.)

“Yes, indeed. There is a great deal of magic in books nowadays. Of course, most of it is nonsense. No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books. But there is a great deal of useful information too and it is surprizing how, after one has learnt a little, one begins to see . . .”

Mr Norrell was beginning to warm to his subject, but the gentleman with the thistle-down hair had no patience to listen to other people talk and so he interrupted him.

“Am I the first of my race that you have seen?”

“Oh, yes!”

This answer seemed to please the gentleman with the thistle-down hair and he smiled. “So! Should I agree to restore this young woman to life, what would be my reward?”

Mr Norrell cleared his throat. “What sort of thing . . . ?” he said, a little hoarsely.

“Oh! That is easily agreed!” cried the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. “My wishes are the most moderate things in the world. Fortunately I am utterly free from greed and sordid ambition. Indeed, you will find that my proposal is much more to your advantage than mine — such is my unselfish nature! I simply wish to be allowed to aid you in all your endeavours, to advise you upon all matters and to guide you in your studies. Oh! and you must take care to let all the world know that your greatest achievements are due in larger part to me!”

Mr Norrell looked a little ill. He coughed and muttered something about the gentleman's generosity. “Were I the sort of magician who is eager to entrust all his business to another person, then your offer would be most welcome. But unfortunately . . . I fear . . . In short I have no notion of employing you — or indeed any other member of your race — ever again.”

A long silence.

“Well, this is ungrateful indeed!” declared the gentleman, coldly. “I have put myself to the trouble of paying you this visit. I have listened with the greatest good nature to your dreary conversation. I have borne patiently with your ignorance of the proper forms and etiquette of magic. And now you scorn my offer of assistance. Other magicians, I may say, have endured all sorts of torments to gain my help. Perhaps I would do better to speak to the other one. Perhaps he understands better than you how to address persons of high rank and estate?” The gentleman glanced about the room. “I do not see him. Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

“The other one.”

“The other what?”

“Magician!”

“Magici . . .” Mr Norrell began to form the word but it died upon his lips. “No, no! There is no other magician! I am the only one. I assure you I am the only one. Why should you think that . . . ?”

“
Of course
there is another magician!” declared the gentleman, as if it were perfectly ridiculous to deny anything quite so obvious. “He is your dearest friend in all the world!”

“I have no friends,” said Mr Norrell.

He was utterly perplexed. Whom might the fairy mean? Childermass? Lascelles?
Drawlight?

“He has red hair and a long nose. And he is very conceited — as are all Englishmen!” declared the gentleman with the thistle-down hair.

This was no help. Childermass, Lascelles and Drawlight were all very conceited in their ways, Childermass and Lascelles both had long noses, but none of them had red hair. Mr Norrell could make nothing of it and so he returned, with a heavy sigh, to the matter in hand. “You will not help me?” he said. “You will not bring the young woman back from the dead?”

“I did not say so!” said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, in a tone which suggested that he wondered why Mr Norrell should think
that
. “I must confess,” he continued, “that in recent centuries I have grown somewhat bored of the society of my family and servants. My sisters and cousins have many virtues to recommend them, but they are not without faults. They are, I am sorry to say, somewhat boastful, conceited and proud. This young woman,” he indicated Miss Wintertowne, “she had, I dare say, all the usual accomplishments and virtues? She was graceful? Witty? Vivacious? Capricious? Danced like sunlight? Rode like the wind? Sang like an angel? Embroidered like Penelope? Spoke French, Italian, German, Breton, Welsh and many other languages?”

Mr Norrell said he supposed so. He believed that those were the sorts of things young ladies did nowadays.

“Then she will be a charming companion for me!” declared the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, clapping his hands together.

Mr Norrell licked his lips nervously. “What exactly are you proposing?”

“Grant me half the lady's life and the deal is done.”

“Half her life?” echoed Mr Norrell.

“Half,” said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair.

“But what would her friends say if they learnt I had bargained away half her life?” asked Mr Norrell.

“Oh! They will never know any thing of it. You may rely upon me for that,” said the gentleman. “Besides, she has no life now. Half a life is better than none.”

Half a life did indeed seem a great deal better than none. With half a life Miss Wintertowne might marry Sir Walter and save him from bankruptcy. Then Sir Walter might continue in office and lend his support to all Mr Norrell's plans for reviving English magic. But Mr Norrell had read a great many books in which were described the dealings of other English magicians with persons of this race and he knew very well how deceitful they could be. He thought he saw how the gentleman intended to trick him.

“How long is a life?” he asked.

The gentleman with the thistle-down hair spread his hands in a gesture of the utmost candour. “How long would you like?”

Mr Norrell considered. “Let us suppose she had lived until she was ninety-four. Ninety-four would have been a good age. She is nineteen now. That would be another seventy-five years. If you were to bestow upon her another seventy-five years, then I see no reason why you should not have half of it.”

“Seventy-five years then,” agreed the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, “exactly half of which belongs to me.”

Mr Norrell regarded him nervously. “Is there any thing more we must do?” he asked. “Shall we sign something?”

“No, but I should take something of the lady's to signify my claim upon her.”

“Take one of these rings,” suggested Mr Norrell, “or this necklace about her neck. I am sure I can explain away a missing ring or necklace.”

“No,” said the gentleman with the thistle-down hair. “It ought to be something . . . Ah! I know!”

Drawlightand Lascelles were seated in the drawing-room where Mr Norrell and Sir Walter Pole had first met. It was a gloomy enough spot. The fire burnt low in the grate and the candles were almost out. The curtains were undrawn and no one had put up the shutters. The rattle of the rain upon the windows was very melancholy.

“It is certainly a night for raising the dead,” remarked Mr Lascelles. “Rain and trees lash the window-panes and the wind moans in the chimney — all the appropriate stage effects, in fact. I am frequently struck with the play-writing fit and I do not know that tonight's proceedings might not inspire me to try again — a tragi-comedy, telling of an impoverished minister's desperate attempts to gain money by any means, beginning with a mercenary marriage and ending with sorcery. I should think it might be eceived very well. I believe I shall call it,
'Tis Pity She's a Corpse
.”

Lascelles paused for Drawlight to laugh at this witticism, but Drawlight had been put out of humour by the magician's refusal to allow him to stay and witness the magic, and all he said was: “Where do you suppose they have all gone?”

“I do not know.”

“Well, considering all that you and I have done for them, I think we have deserved better than this! It is scarcely half an hour since they were so full of their gratitude to us. To have forgotten us so soon is very bad! And we have not been offered so much as a bit of cake since we arrived. I dare say it is rather too late for dinner — though I for one am famished to death!” He was silent a moment. “The fire is going out too,” he remarked.

“Then put some more coals on,” suggested Lascelles.

“What! And make myself all dirty?”

One by one all the candles went out and the light from the fire grew less and less until the Venetian paintings upon the walls became nothing but great squares of deepest black hung upon walls of a black that was slightly less profound. For a long time they sat in silence.

“That was the clock striking half-past one o'clock!” said Drawlight suddenly. “How lonely it sounds! Ugh! All the horrid things one reads of in novels always happen just as the church bell tolls or the clock strikes some hour or other in a dark house!”

“I cannot recall an instance of any thing very dreadful happening at half-past one,” said Lascelles.

At that moment they heard footsteps on the stairs — which quickly became footsteps in the passageway. The drawing-room door was pushed open and someone stood there, candle in hand.

Drawlight grasped for the poker.

But it was Mr Norrell.

“Do not be alarmed, Mr Drawlight. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

Yet Mr Norrell's face, as he raised up his candlestick, seemed to tell a different story; he was very pale and his eyes were wide and not yet emptied, it seemed, of the dregs of fear. “Where is Sir Walter?” he asked. “Where are the others? Miss Wintertowne is asking for her mama.”

Mr Norrell was obliged to repeat the last sentence twice before the other two gentlemen could be made to understand him.

Lascelles blinked two or three times and opened his mouth as if in surprize, but then, recovering himself, he shut his mouth again and assumed a supercilious expression; this he wore for the remainder of the night, as if he regularly attended houses where young ladies were raised from the dead and considered this particular example to have been, upon the whole, a rather dull affair. Drawlight, in the meantime, had a thousand things to say and I dare say he said all of them, but unfortunately no one had attention to spare just then to discover what they were.

Drawlight and Lascelles were sent to find Sir Walter. Then Sir Walter fetched Mrs Wintertowne, and Mr Norrell led that lady, tearful and trembling, to her daughter's room. Meanwhile the news of Miss Wintertowne's return to life began to penetrate other parts of the house; the servants learnt of it and were overjoyed and full of gratitude to Mr Norrell, Mr Drawlight and Mr Lascelles. A butler and two manservants approached Mr Drawlight and Mr Lascelles and begged to be allowed to say that if ever Mr Drawlight or Mr Lascelles could benefit from any small service that the butler or the manservants might be able to render them, they had only to speak.

Mr Lascelles whispered to Mr Drawlight that he had not realized before that doing kind actions would lead to his being addressed in such familiar terms by so many low people — it was most unpleasant — he would take care to do no more. Fortunately the low people were in such glad spirits that they never knew they had offended him.

It was soon learnt that Miss Wintertowne had left her bed and, leaning upon Mr Norrell's arm, had gone to her own sitting-room where she was now established in a chair by her fire and that she had asked for a cup of tea.

Drawlight and Lascelles were summoned upstairs to a pretty little sitting-room where they found Miss Wintertowne, her mother, Sir Walter, Mr Norrell and some of the servants.