This Other Eden (52 page)

"Is
it William?" Marianne asked again. "Is he—"

Still
smiling, Jane began to shake her head back and forth in a negative reply.

Bewildered,
Marianne started up the steps. "Then who?"

Jane
stopped her with a broad gesture. She commenced to preen on the landing as
though it were a small stage. "I was in the kitchen," she began, "fetching
your water, as you requested. And suddenly I heard the front bell ring."
Here she melodramatically cupped her hand about her ear as though again hearing
the bell.

Marianne
laughed, thinking that perhaps Jane's natural habitat was the stage of the
Drury Lane. "Go on," she urged, placing a restraining hand on Sarah's
arm. Sarah's nature and imagination did not include the stage at Drury Lane.

"Well,
of course I went to the door and there, standing before me"—she paused for
dramatic emphasis—"there was a handsome liveried coachman, all done up in
scarlet and gold, and beyond him at the curb, just about the finest coach I've
ever seen. The man bowed low like I was Lady Northumberland herself and handed
me"—she studied the large white envelope— "this!"

Sarah
exhaled a noisy breath and impatiently hurled the spade to the ground. "My
God," she muttered. "The woman's daft. I thought it was
something."

Sweetly
Jane corrected her. "It
is
something, Sarah. Just the answer to all
our prayers." With mock grandeur she bowed low and extended the white
envelope to Marianne. "It's for you," she said primly.

Marianne
stared at the white square being offered her. Jane saw her hesitancy and rushed
on. "I took the liberty of opening it," she said with a smile.
"With your permission, may I read?"

Sarah
muttered, "Some nerve, I'd say."

"Please
do," Marianne said, mourning the loss of the brief moment of joy.

Quickly
Jane withdrew what was obviously a large, ornate, gilt-trimmed calling card.
She lifted the card and her voice as though reciting to the trees:

"Lord
Thomas Eden of Eden Point, North Devon, requests the honor and privilege of
calling on Miss Marianne Locke of Number Sixteen, Great Russell Street. A hasty
and affirmative reply satisfying this most urgent need in my soul wall be
gratefully appreciated.

Your
Humble Servant, Thomas Eden"

From
the top of the hill beyond Southampton Row, in the little  parish church of St
Dunston's, came the sound of church bells. Noon matins. Marianne heard them in
a strange way, now so close, now so far away.

Although
she had not moved, she felt isolated. She was aware of the other two watching
her, Jane still grinning, and old Sarah wearing a less simple expression, her
face a safe blank as though withholding her opinion until the first cry of
alarm.

Slowly
Marianne bowed her head, feeling a fatigue that had nothing to do with her
exertion of the morning. She wondered how she should break the news to both
women, that none of their problems had been solved. If anything they had
increased. As the world was full of predators, now the King of Predators had
arrived among them, a man schooled from birth in the art of selfishness and
brutality.

As
the heat of noon and the moment pressed upon her, she listened again to the
bells. Then, because she had nothing to say, she turned and started back toward
the freshly turned earth and fallen spade.

Jane
called after her. "Wait! You can't just walk away."

Over
her shoulder Marianne replied, "I have work to do."

"What
of this?" Jane demanded, holding up the letter.

"Save
it for winter and we'll use it to start the fire," Marianne said, bending
over and retrieving the spade.

She
just had enough time to arrange the spade for the first penetration when Jane
reached her side. "I don't understand," she demanded. "Do you
know how humiliating this must have been for him?" To send a formal card
to—" She hesitated. Marianne looked up, interested in the coming
description.

Jane's
voice and manner softened. 'It's simply a request to see you again," she
pleaded. "My God, he's paying you formal court. Doesn't that mean
anything?"

Marianne
pushed the spade forward. "Should it?" Beyond Jane's inquiring face,
she saw Sarah. Surely she would be an ally.

Jane
stared angrily. "You have no right, you know. Lord Eden could be of great
assistance to us."

Shocked,
Marianne looked up. "In return for what?" she asked pointedly. "Lord
Eden is not known for his charitable acts. A bargain would have to be struck.
In return for what?" she repeated.

Jane
did not hesitate. "In return for hospitality, for a place of ease and
relaxation, for—" She faltered.

Marianne
urged gently, "Go on."

Forced
into a corner, Jane retaliated. Quickly she walked behind Marianne as though to
relieve herself of the weight of those eyes. "Well, sweet Lord," she
exclaimed. "What is it that you've got that is so precious? Did God create
a new and better mold when He made you? I sometimes think that He did from the
way you behave." She reemerged in Marianne's view after completing the
little half-circle. Although Marianne felt her face burning, she met her
sister's gaze straight on, listened as Jane leaned close. "If a dog comes
to your door and he's hungry, what does a Christian woman do? She feeds him. If
a man, suffering from a much greater hunger, comes to your door, would you do
less for the man than you would for the dog?"

Marianne
listened incredulously to the nonsense. "Then obviously I'm not a
Christian," she murmured, and again positioned the spade against the
earth.

Jane
announced patly, "You really have no right, you know."

"No
right to what?" Marianne asked. "To chart my own destiny?"

Jane
spoke on, her voice level. She still held the large white card in her hand.
"It's not just your destiny involved here. Mine and Sarah's as well are at
stake." She moved closer to Marianne. "Have you so soon forgotten? Have
you so successfully blotted that cold rainy night from your mind?"

Alarmed,
Marianne looked up. She hadn't expected this. Still, Jane went on as though
delivering a rehearsed speech. Behind her, she saw Sarah move to a closer
position, obviously the better to hear.

"It
is not possible," Jane was saying, "that you've already forgotten the
manner in which Sarah and I took you into this house, against Mr. Pitch's
wishes, forgotten how we nursed and fed you when you had no place else to go,
forgotten how you came to us an outcast, a source of embarrassment both to your
family and friends—"

While
the words were falling heavily enough on Marianne's ears, Jane seemed to be the
one more acutely suffering. Her face appeared pale, the eyes sunken, battered,
deep lines etched on either side of her mouth.

She
rushed on, as though eager to rid herself of the destructive forces within her.
"So we took you in," she concluded, "and gave you shelter
because we understood, as you must now understand. You literally hold our
futures in your hand, as we held yours in ours that night"

She
stepped closer, her eyes beseeching. "How would it do lasting harm to your
soul to courteously receive Lord Eden? Clearly he has formed an attachment for
you in spite of—" She broke off, apparently unable to find the proper words
to describe the past "How would it harm you," she went on, "to
delicately inform him of our plight? In the past I've exchanged words with him
and found him to be a most admirable and decent man, even a generous one. To
receive him and enlist his aid is no great crime. We cannot go on like
this."

Her
voice broke. She turned partially away, betraying tears close to the surface.
"Look at us," she begged. "No better than field women, trying
with no help from God to keep body and soul together." The voice broke
again. The tears came. "What are we to do but throw ourselves on his
mercy? What alternatives are left?" She shook her head and made a futile
attempt to brush the tears away. "You know as well as I that we'll receive
no word from William. He's gone and left us to tend to our own survival. What
wall become of us? What's ahead for us? Where's the hope?"

Grief
and fear overtook her. She stood sobbing openly. Sarah turned away as though
embarrassed by the outburst She retrieved the rake and commenced going over
ground that had already been smoothed, leaving Marianne to deal with this
unexpected turn, the sight of her sister sobbing, the white card fallen to the
groimd between them like an insurmountable obstacle.

Marianne
gazed at the fallen card, then dismissed the notion that she could explain
herself to the two waiting women. As she lifted a foot to the rim of the spade,
she said, "I'm sorry. I cannot."

At
those brief and softly spoken words, Jane ran sobbing into the house, the
skirts of her patched dress flying out behind her, her hands covering her face
as though in abject despair.

With
a vigor she did not feel, Marianne plunged the spade into the earth, feeling
the blade cutting through the tendrils of grass, lifting the earth in dark
moist clumps and depositing it heavily to one side, her memories, her sense of
debt and responsibility, pressing against her like an intolerable burden.

She
was aware of Sarah working diligently behind her. The two women worked in
backbreaking silence until midafternoon. In the course of their labors, the
white, engraved, gilt-edged calling card was buried in earth, swallowed up for
compost for the growing season.

Shortly
after three the two women stood back to assess the small, irregularly shaped
garden plot. Marianne had seen better. Oh, Lord, had she seen better! She
recalled her father's geometrically shaped plot of earth behind their cottage
in Mortemouth, a marvel of even rows where the vegetables had grown like
jewels, in the days before—

"It
isn't much," she commented weakly, to halt the thought before it gained
momentum.

Sarah
made a wry face. She started toward the back door, muttering, "We will be
destitute long before the seeds rise."

Marianne
held her position, her eyes focused on the newly turned earth. So! Sarah's safe
neutral expression was neither safe nor neutral. As though the realization were
intolerable, Marianne fell lightly onto her knees in the dirt. There was not a
muscle, bone, nerve in her body that did not ache. She made an attempt to
stand, but at that moment she felt a prickly sensation in the hairs on her
arms. She felt helpless against the forces around her.

She
shook her head twice as though to drive away the frightening sensation, then
looked up at the blazing sun.

Paris

August,
1794

Beyond
his mounting excitement at meeting Thomas Paine, William Pitch remembered
everything. In one of those crystalline moments of pure recall of which poets
speak so lyrically, he remembered, literally, everything.

Now,
lying on the pavement before the Assembly, in a hot splash of August sun, he
knew that the warm liquid drenching his body was his own blood, knew further
that the dismembered limb lying to one side was his own right arm. He knew all
this and looked up with glazed eyes at the crowd which pushed around him, and
saw nothing save an image of himself, earlier that morning, sitting excitedly
in his room at White's Hotel, having coffee, his portmanteau packed, passage
booked on the next day's packet crossing the channel. His excitement doubled as
he thought of his secret meeting with Citizen Paine, now in ill-health from
fever and temporarily released from Luxembourg Prison on behalf of the generous
intervention of the American minister, James Monroe.

Then,
following the completion of his business with Paine, he planned a hasty exit
out of the bloodbath that was Paris, heading toward the channel and the packet
that would take him back to England, to the red brick house on Great Russell
Street, and the woman who had occupied his thoughts since his departure over a
year ago, with a fever amounting almost to an obsession. Of late, he saw her
image everywhere—the fair hair, the lovely innocent face. It would serve no
purpose to postpone his declaration of love any longer. He could better serve
the Revolution in England and at the same time serve himself.

In
this state of excitement he consumed his morning coffee, settled his accounts
with the concierge, and started off on foot for the Assembly, the appointed
place of his meeting with Paine. The whole affair had been arranged by Monsieur
Lanthenas, Paine's translator and the only man who'd been in contact with the
"Infamous Incendiary" during his wretched seven months' imprisonment.
The purpose of the meeting was for Pitch to receive portions of Paine's great
manuscript and spirit them out of France where the revolutionary fires were
burning higher and more out of control every day.

On
his excited walk that morning. Pitch purposefully avoided the Place de la
Revolution. He was weary of the sounds of the tumbrils rattling through the
streets, the shouts of the mob. Worst of all, only last month, had been
Robespierre, that complex leader shot in the mouth, then dragged speechless,
with shattered jaw and bloodstained cravat, like a broken wax doll splashed
with red paint, to the guillotine.

Lying
on the pavement before the Assembly, William pulled himself out of his memories
long enough to face the reality of the shattered stump which now served as his
right arm. Working over him were two Frenchmen, surgeons, he assumed, trying to
staunch the flow of blood. Weakly, as he turned his head, he saw a cordon of
gendarmes, trying to hold back the crowd. Then, kneeling close beside him, his
eyes brought into watery focus the image of a man. He was dressed in simple
black.

This
man leaned close and whispered, "Remain silent. Monsieur. Don't
speak!"

In
spite of the burning agony which had invaded the right side of his body,
William understood. As an Englishman, he was an alien and therefore subject to
prison. Thomas Paine, obviously fearful that William's physical agony would
interfere with his normally flawless French, had counseled silence.

William
obeyed and closed his eyes and in an attempt to endure the ever-increasing agony,
gave his mind over again to memory, to an almost clinical reconstruction of the
events which had brought him to this fearful point.

He
had enjoyed his walk that morning, Paris lovely in August ripeness. He
remembered recalling Mary Wollstonecraft's account of Parisian life only a few
months after the King's execution: "The whole mode of life here tends to
render the people frivolous. They play before me like motes in a sunbeam,
enjoying the passing ray."

So
they played before William that morning, the lovely ladies, buoyed up as though
by animal spirits, strolling the avenues, unconcerned with the various
tragedies being played out such a short distance away at the Place de la
Revolution, the death carts never silent.

No,
he decided that morning that he'd had enough. England loomed large in his
thoughts as a haven of sanity, and he was hungry for both the haven and the
condition thereof.

Then,
at noon as he approached the broad pavement leading to the Assembly, he spied a
large crowd, mostly curiosity-seekers come to see Citizen Thomas Paine after
he'd presented his petition of release to the Convention. William mingled with
the crowd for several moments, making his way to the front, so that he might
join Paine's entourage as he emerged from the Assembly.

There,
according to Monsieur Lanthenas' plan, William was to blend with Paine's
associates and take his place in an appointed carriage, and go with them,
unnoticed, to Number 63, Rue de Faubourg St. Denis, Paine's country home, a
safe rural retreat.

All
went well at first. At precisely twelve noon, William looked up and caught his
first glimpse of the man himself, emerging from the Assembly, the pestilence of
Luxembourg having clearly taken its toll, though at fifty-three, the face was
still thoughtful, alert, full of maturity and character.

Standing
at the front of the crowd, William took careful note of the high forehead and
bold nose, the unpowdered hair still dark in spite of his long imprisonment,
soft with a reddish tinge. But it was the man's eyes which held him enthralled.
They had in them the muse of fire. The reason for this careful recording was
that William knew of England's interest in her infamous son, that along the
Strand and in the Temple, Thomas Paine's friends and enemies were legion and aU
would read with interest a physical accounting of the man himself.

William
filled his eye before moving ahead to join the entourage. Then, at the exact
moment of stepping forward, he heard strange movement behind him, someone
pushing forward with great speed, a confusion of footsteps, then a telltale
odor, the harsh, acrid smell of a firing cap.

He
averted his eyes from Thomas Paine, who stood exposed at the top of the broad
steps, and glanced over his shoulder. He saw a man behind him, a gleaming light
in his eyes, like a fanatic. Then he saw the pistol, a small and rather elegant
dueling pistol, raised and pointed directly at Thomas Paine. His mind produced
a single word. Assassin! Then his eye determined the angle of the pistol aimed
straight at Paine, and William's relationship to that unfired ball. And his
last lucid thought? That if he moved now, at the exact moment the finger was
tightening against the trigger, he might block the ball with his right arm, block
it, as though his arm were made of something other than flesh and bone, a
harder substance off which the ball would ricochet and fall, useless, to the
pavement.

This
he did. At the precise moment of the explosion, he felt the impact of the
closely fired shot spin him about, like a child's top, his right arm exploding
along with the gun, his mad spiral spewing blood, the crowd screaming, until at
last he fell where he now lay, that macabre object still lying only a few feet
away, his arm, the burned remains of the sleeve of a dark gray jacket which he
had so excitedly donned that morning.

"
Mon
Dieu
," he groaned.

Paine
was beside him, bending low, his face creased with concern and gratitude. In
French he again commanded him to lie still and remain silent.

The
burning agony was spreading over his entire body. He heard Paine speak to the
surgeons, telling them enough, that they could finish their work at his house
in St. Denis. With forceful command, William heard him summon four men and
order them to lift and transport him to a waiting carriage.

A
gendarme stepped forward, apparently convinced that he and his men were to take
custody of William.

Again
Paine interceded. Still clutching his temporary release from the Assembly, he
held it upward and warned sternly in French, "This represents safe passage
for me and my associates. I would not advise—" William heard the voice
soften, as though wiser tactics had entered his mind. "The man is
wounded," Paine whispered. "Perhaps mortally. Fate may wish to
question him first."

Confronted
with such simplicity of manner, the gendarmes backed away and permitted the men
to lift William and carry him to the curb, through the curious crowd to the
waiting carriage.

William
felt himself being placed on cushions in a half-sitting position, the stump of
his arm bound rigidly to his side, still showing blood. Paine and the surgeons
crawled in after him.

For
the first time Paine spoke to him in English, though his voice was low. "Tate
will have no questions for you," he said with a smile. "Only
reward." Those eyes, which earlier had burned with the muse of fire,
looked glazed. "I owe you my life," he said, "and as payment I
shall personally see to it that death does not claim you. Rest now."

William
lifted his head as the carriage pulled away from the curb. The last thing he
saw was the crowd. They had become like children again, frivolous and gay. Men,
and women, too, were tossing something up into the air, laughing as it came
down, then hurling it up again, a summer game of leisure played with an air of
exhilaration.

He
tried to clear his vision, the better to see. Then he saw too clearly. "Oh,
God," he moaned again and felt himself disfigured by pain and horror. As
the object of the summer game flew up once again into the air, he recognized
the hand, the gray sleeve, the fingers still arched and stiff as if it were suffering
from some elaborate denial.

Apparently
Thomas Paine saw the grisly scene. He leaned quickly out of the window and
shouted at the driver, "Hurry! Get us out of this place!"

With
a curious fragrance of lilacs filling the carriage, canceling the odor of
seared flesh, with Thomas Paine's steady hand resting lightly on his forehead,
William, in his dream, slipped back across the channel, yielding to images of
her, her face, her sweetness.

"Marianne,"
he murmured.