The Skull and the Nightingale (11 page)

“Were you not saying as much to me on my last visit?”

“I was, but I wish to go further.
There
lies the point—I wish to go further.”

He took a full mouthful of port. By now he was agitated, his breathing quicker.

“I invited you to describe the life of London. But as I read your letters I came to recognize that I seek something more particular—the recklessness of personal doings. Do you follow me?”

“I think so, sir.”

“I wonder if you do . . .” His tone changed. “Let me say that I like the sound of your friend Mr. Crocker. I have a taste for situations where normal conduct breaks down—where there is excess and abnormality. Perhaps you inferred as much.”

“I did.”

“Where Yardley is interested in plants and animals, my study is human conduct, the Passions: Vanity, Greed, Avarice, Rage, Lust . . .”

Mr. Gilbert enumerated these qualities with emphasis, speaking so fervidly as seeming to reveal a passion of his own. He leaned toward me across the table.

“I propose an experiment. Life has slipped past me half unnoticed. I am tormented by a restlessness that I cannot subdue. I would wish my final years to be more vivid, more diversified, more—pungent. In short”—he rapped the table—“my project is in some sense to live again. I would hope to live differently and
dangerously
—through you and
through your exploits
. I am not so old that reports of mischief and gallantry will fail to warm my blood.”

He checked himself and resumed in more measured tones: “I may no longer be robust but I am far from frail. The connoisseur who cannot paint may yet enjoy a picture. I aspire to be a connoisseur of experience—but the experiences will be yours.”

He sat back and looked at me. “I await your response.”

“I must consider, sir.”

I spoke mechanically, but was incapable of considering anything, being lost in the situation. The moon shone down on us still. There were servants asleep in the dark house, birds and animals at rest all around us in their lairs. And here in the sweet-scented night air we were meditating the most eccentric of transactions. Was there, at that moment, any man in England engaged in a stranger conversation?

“Why do you smile?” asked Mr. Gilbert.

I found myself laughing aloud with real gaiety, as I might have laughed with Matt Cullen—something I had never previously done in the presence of my godfather.

“I beg your pardon, sir: I was not aware that I was smiling. The reaction was involuntary. It means that I welcome your proposition.”

“I am glad to hear it. But you will no doubt wish to ask me questions.”

Indeed I did; but the most obvious inquiry—“How am I to be rewarded?”—seemed below the dignity of these intimate exchanges. I tried to think.

“How far will I be expected to go?”

“As far as you see fit.”

“Then I may, for example, go further in my pursuit of Miss Brindley?”

“Much further.” Mr. Gilbert leaned forward again. “Your first account of this lady, in her pastoral guise, spoke directly to me. As a young man I found myself
plagued
—the word is not too strong—by the pastoral. Art, poetry, drama insisted that love should be idyllic, Arcadian. The reality fell far short. The physical encounter could not match the rhetoric.”

He glanced at me wryly: “If you ever feel such qualms, I fancy that your physical appetites can usually override them.”

“I have found that to be the case.”

The port had had its effect. We were smiling now, positively conspiratorial.

“At the other extreme from pastoral fancy,” said my godfather, “it seemed to me that after your duet Mrs. Hurlock was looking at you with a kindly eye.”

“I had a fleeting impression to that effect myself.”

“Tell me, as a matter of hypothesis only: would your animal spirits render you capable of congress with that faded beauty?”

I realized, with astonishment, that his question was seriously meant. I sought for an answer that would gratify him.

“I am sure they would—given darkness and wine.” The port prompted a blunter phrase. “I fancy I could make her squeal.”

I feared I had gone too far, but the words elicited an unexpected grin of appreciation. Here was a new frankness: the boundaries of our relationship had been widened by a chance phrase.

“I am impressed to hear it. Perhaps such an opportunity may one day arise.”

I laughed with him, but was disconcerted. For years Mr. Gilbert had comported himself with authority and even severity; yet he must all the while have carried these secret appetites in his mind, like maggots within an apple. I began to wonder whether he might be a rather wicked old man.

Moonlight and port stirred me to further recklessness: “Then if I set about seducing a married woman?”

“I would hope to receive a full account of the campaign—and the conquest.”

We sat silent for a moment. The big dog shook himself and walked away into the shadows. After he had vanished Mr. Gilbert resumed in an altered voice:

“I have spoken frivolously. I must not allow myself to be misunderstood. Yes, I would be intrigued to enter a bedroom with you; but I do not look
merely
for carnal details. Your scruples and disappointments would be of equal moment to me.”

He was very serious now. “I cannot easily explain myself. All my life I have mused on such matters, have debated them in my mind. But the debate was false, because one-sided. I could marshal the arguments from reason and morality: these were available in books. But the arguments from the other side, the arguments from passion, went unheard, because I never indulged my passions, never took moral risks. I was like a man who denounces wine having never tasted it. I look for a fairer disputation between passion and conscience, and I look to you to provide me the evidence I failed to gather for myself.”

And again he asked: “Do you follow me?”

“I do,” I replied, and meant what I said.

Mr. Gilbert emptied his glass.

“This is likely to prove a strange adventure for us—perhaps as much so as a voyage to the Indies.”

“Where will our project end, sir?”

“I cannot say. That uncertainty is part of the experiment.”

He stood up, holding the table a moment to steady himself. I rose with him.

“We have had an intriguing conversation. But it is late, and I must go to my bed. I think we now understand one another better. Give me your hand, Richard.”

I did so, again looking him in the eyes, and our compact was sealed.

The night was cooler now, but I went up to my bedroom still warmed by the port I had drunk, and by my crowding thoughts. More of substance had passed between Mr. Gilbert and me in that hour on the terrace than in all our previous conversations combined. There was excitement and uncertainty ahead. Drawing back the curtain, I stared out of my window at the moon, wondering what fantasies might be seething in my godfather’s head as he pulled on his nightshirt. What did he now think of me? Would he be able to sleep?

There were doubts to tease me. My godfather was encouraging me to run risks on his behalf, moral and physical: yet what had he offered in return? Nothing: the compact had been entirely one-sided. But were we not now collaborators? Surely the moral scruples he had mentioned would ensure that his partner in sin would receive an adequate reward? I would have to be content with these insubstantial reassurances.

B
y the time I had risen the following morning, my godfather was already occupied. I was glad of the opportunity to regain my equanimity, being fairly certain that he would expect us to behave as though nothing significant had passed between us. Presumably he was eager for me to return to London to commence upon my new duties. On the other hand, it could seem indecorous of me to scuttle away forthwith to embark on debauchery

I wandered out into the sweet-scented, brightly flowering gardens. I neither knew nor cared to know the names of the plants that were pleasuring my eyes and nose. Here was sensuality of a kind nicely adjusted to my godfather’s elderly capacities. It struck me now that his proposal might prove as challenging to himself as to me. He had mentioned the danger to his posthumous prospects—a danger likely to loom larger in his eyes as time went on. Might there not also be a physical risk in tasting red meat after years of living on pulse? Perhaps his heart might be overstrained. Perhaps the old gentleman would expire in a spasm of vicarious excitement as he read of a defloration. Might not that be a happy outcome for both of us? I asked myself. Provided, of course, that he had made an appropriate will.

Strolling to the rear of the house, I came upon two or three peacocks which were flourishing their mighty tail feathers in glittering patterns of blue and green. I was delighted to see these strutting avian beaux—kindred spirits, celebrating the carnal impulses of spring. Yet on closer inspection they offered food for philosophy. Supporting each great arc of splendor was a corsetry of struts, a mechanical apparatus rooted around the privy parts, the inglorious bum. The proximity of luminous beauty and crude function was the pastoral paradox reduced to visual aphorism. Fortunately for these preening, small-brained birds, they could display and breed, display and breed, untroubled by reflection.

I encountered Mr. Gilbert late that afternoon. He was a little freer and more affable than I had usually seen him, but he made no allusion to our nocturnal conversation. It appeared that he had been sitting for his portrait, a project on which the painter, a Worcester man, had been engaged for some time. When I expressed interest my godfather took me to see the incomplete picture. It showed him on the terrace, leaning upon the balustrade and looking out across the green fields of his estate. I offered compliments appropriate to the intermediate state of the portrait, which promised to be a sufficiently accomplished piece of work. It preserved some aspects of my godfather’s personality very accurately—but others had vanished through the strainer of the artist’s observation. Posterity would gain from it no glimpse of the man I had spoken with the night before.

“You have visited much of the house, I believe,” said Mr. Gilbert, “but I would like to show you a corner you will not have seen.”

He led me up a narrow, winding staircase that took us past all three stories and eventually to a door opening onto a flat portion of the roof. We emerged into airy vacancy, with clouds blowing across the blue sky overhead and a wide green landscape spread out all round us. For the first time I could see my godfather’s estate—perhaps to be my future inheritance—as a whole. It seemed to me a vast expanse, but he pointed out its limits.

“There where the woodland begins,” he said, “lies Mr. Hurlock’s property. If it were combined with my own, I might be the greatest landowner in the county.”

At dinner that evening he made no explicit reference to our nocturnal conversation, although one or two remarks showed it was very much alive in his mind. Only at one point did he say something unexpected:

“By the by, you have made mention of your friend Matt Cullen. I have heard a little about that young man from an acquaintance in Malvern who knows the family. You might do well to avoid confiding too far in him. I will say no more than that.”

Since he had closed the matter I did not expostulate, but I was both puzzled and amused by the warning.

Two days later I was again in the coach to London, rattling along wet roads amid falling white petals that mingled with the spring showers.

Chapter 7

O
nce again optimism was modified by second thoughts. To be sure, I should easily find matter enough to please my godfather in the new mode now proposed. My dealings with Kitty could hardly fail to supply salacious or comic entertainment. With Horn and Latimer I could continue to sample the heartier pleasures of the town, perhaps even an occasional brawl or debauch. Through Crocker, I had hopes of less commonplace diversions. My explorations of London at large could continue as before.

Yet I was wary of possible pitfalls. It seemed to me that Mr. Gilbert, perhaps under the influence of moonlight and port, had been inconsistent. He wanted a taste of the sensual pleasures he had missed, but he might not welcome the inference that his caution had been timorous. I should never seem to hint: “Such are the joys your faintheartedness has denied you.” Perhaps I should even imply that there had been wisdom in his doubts: my amorous joys could be seasoned with disappointment.

But there were deeper issues. It had seemed no great matter to offer Gilbert an account of my lighter pleasures. Now he seemed to be demanding an intimacy between us that might prove positively contaminating. Had I not promised myself that my attempt upon Sarah would be a private narrative of which he would hear nothing? Yet had I not all but broached the topic to him? Unless I exerted myself, I might be corrupted before I knew it.

I looked forward to discussing these issues with Matt Cullen. The warning from my godfather I would of course disregard: given the delicacy—or indelicacy—of our compact, I could see why he would not wish me to have a confidant with connections in the county. I had no such concern and was in urgent need of a sympathetic ear.

Such solace, however, was to be denied me. Waiting in Cathcart Street was a letter:

Dear Dick,

We may be about to pass one another on a country road in our respective stagecoaches. I have been summoned to Malvern by my father, who has been laid low by the gout. Knowing that condition to be a painful one, I am not unsympathetic, but I suspect that my presence will afford him little relief.

I hope that my visit to the country will prove a brief one, and that I will be conversing with you again in the near future. Meanwhile pray offer such succor as you can to my kinsman the duke, who will be all but inconsolable at my absence.

Yours, &c.

P.S. I recently fell in with a quiet fellow named Gow who proved to work for the diamond merchant of whom we have spoken. It seems Mr. Ogden conducts his business from premises in Duke Street, near the coffeehouse. You may wish to stroll there to appraise your rival.