LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

doorways, and porticoes, some of them fierce, angry, scornful creatures with their bosoms laid out, the caterers to special tastes, others so young – mere slips – that it was a wonder they should find customers, even in so huge a city. One assured him she would give him a good breakfast, with sausages, if he came with her; and although he civilly declined her offer on the grounds that he was going to see his sweetheart, the idea of food so spurred his mind that he walked into one of the alleys haunted by footmen behind St James’s Street and bought a mutton-pie off an old lady with a glowing brazier, to eat in his hand as he walked. He moved on, carrying it, until he reached Almack’s, where they were giving a ball: here he paused in the little crowd that was watching the carriages arrive. He took a bite or two, but his appetite, a purely theoretical appetite, was gone. He offered the pie to a tall black dog that belonged to a neighbouring club and that was watching by his side: the dog sniffed it, looked up into his face with an embarrassed air, licked its lips, and turned away. A dwarfish boy said, ‘I’ll eat it for you, governor, if you like.’

      ‘May it profit you,’ said Stephen, walking off. Through to the Green Park, an expanse lit faintly by the horned moon in which couples could vaguely be seen, and single, waiting figures among the nearer trees. Stephen was not ordinarily a timid man, but the park had seen many murders recently, and tonight he had a greater value for his life than usual: in fact his heart, though admonished and kept down by experience on the one side and prudence (or superstition) on the other, was beating like a boy’s. He cut up to Piccadilly and walked down the hill to Clarges Street.

      Number seven was a large house let out in apartments, with a porter common to them all; so when he knocked at the door it opened. ‘Is Mrs Villiers at home?’ he asked in a harsh, formal tone that betrayed the most eager expectation.

      ‘Mrs Villiers? No, sir. She don’t live here any more,’ said the porter in an absolute, decided, rejecting voice; and he made as though to close the door.

      ‘In that case,’ said Stephen, walking quickly in, ‘I wish to see the lady of the house.’

      The lady of the house was very willing to see him – she had indeed been hovering behind a curtained glass door in the hall, peering through – but she was by no means so inclined to give him any information. She knew nothing about it: such a thing had never happened in her house before: no such person as a Bow Street officer had ever crossed its threshold. She had always taken the greatest pains to ensure that all the inmates of the house were above suspicion, and she had never countenanced the least irregularity. The whole neighbourhood, the whole congregation of St James’s, all the tradesmen, could testify that Mrs Moon had never allowed the least irregularity. In the following discourse, which dealt with the difficulties of maintaining the highest reputation, it seemed that there was some question of unpaid bills: Stephen said that any inadvertence in this respect would be remedied directly, and that he would take it upon himself to look into any unsettled account. He was Mrs Villiers’ medical adviser – naming himself – and the medical adviser to several members of her family: he was perfectly authorized to do so.

      ‘Dr Maturin!’ cried Mrs Moon. ‘There is a letter for a gentlemen of that name. I will fetch it.’ She brought a single sheet, folded, sealed, and addressed in that well-known hand, together with a number of bills from her desk, tied in a roll with a piece of ribbon. Stephen put the letter into his pocket and looked at the accounts: he had never suspected Diana of moderation, had never supposed that she would live within her income nor within any other income, but even so some of the items startled him.

      ‘Ass’s milk,’ he said. ‘Mrs Villiers is not in a consumption, ma’am; and even if she were, which God forbid, here is more ass’s milk than a regiment could drink in a month.’

      ‘It is not for drinking, sir,’ said Mrs Moon. ‘Some ladies like it to bathe in, for their complexions: not that I ever saw a lady less in need of ass’s milk than Mrs Villiers.’

      ‘Well, now, ma’am,’ said Stephen after a while, writing down the sums and drawing a line under them, ‘perhaps you will be so good as to give me a brief account of how Mrs Villiers came to leave so abruptly; for the apartments, I know, were taken until Michaelmas.’

      Mrs Moon’s account was neither brief nor particularly coherent, but it appeared that a gentleman, accompanied by several strong-looking attendants, had asked for Mrs Villiers; on being told that she could not receive a gentleman unknown to her, he had walked upstairs, ordering the porter to stay where he was in the name of the law – the attendants produced truncheons with little crowns on them, and no one dared move. She would never have known they were Bow Street runners, but for some of them guarding the back door and coming into the kitchen: they had told the servants what they were, and they said the gentleman was a messenger from the Secretary of State’s office, or something like that – something in the government line. High words were heard upstairs, and presently the gentleman and two of the runners led Mrs Villiers and her French waiting-woman down and into a coach; they were very polite, but firm, and they desired Mrs Villiers not to speak to Mrs Moon or anyone else; and they locked her door behind them. Then the gentleman came back with two clerks, and they took away a quantity of papers.

      Nobody could tell what to make of it, and then on the Thursday Madam Gratipus, the waiting-woman, suddenly came back and packed up their things. She spoke no English, but Mrs Moon thought she could make out something about America. Most unfortunately Mrs Moon was not at home later that afternoon, when Mrs Villiers came in with a gentleman she called Mr Johnson, an American gentleman, by his old-fashioned, twangling way of speaking through his nose, though very well dressed. It seemed that she was uncommonly cheerful, laughed a great deal, gave a turn about her apartments to see that everything was packed, took a dish of tea, tipped the servants handsomely, left this note for Dr Maturin, and so stepped into a coach and four, never to be seen again. Had said nothing of her destination, and the servants did not like to ask, she being such a high lady and apt to fly out at the least impertinence or liberty, though otherwise esteemed by all – a most open-handed lady.

      Stephen thanked her and gave her a draft for the total sum, observing that he never carried so considerable an amount in gold.

      ‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs Moon. ‘That would be the height of imprudence. Not three days since, and in this very street, a gentleman was robbed of fourteen pounds and his watch, not long after sunset. Shall William call a chair for you, sir, or a coach? It is as black as pitch outside.’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Stephen, whose mind was far away.

      ‘Should you not like a coach, sir? It is as black as pitch outside.’

      It was also as black as pitch inside: he knew that the letter in his pocket contained farewells, his dismission, and the ruin of his hopes. ‘I believe not,’ he said, ‘I have only a few steps to go.’

      These steps took him to a coffee-house on the corner of Bolton Street; a very few steps, as he had said. Yet what a quantity of thoughts formed in his mind before he pushed the door, sat down, and called for coffee: thoughts, ideas, recollections forming infinitely faster than the words that could, however inadequately, have expressed them and tracing the history of his long connection with Diana Villiers, a relationship made up of a wide variety of miseries interspersed with rare intervals of shining happiness, but one that he had hoped, until tonight, to bring to a successful end. Yet just as his mind had been too cautious to admit full confidence in his success, so now it was unwilling to see the proof of total failure. He placed the letter on the table and stared at it a while: until it was opened, the letter might still contain a rendezvous; it might still be a letter that fulfilled his hopes.

      Eventually he broke the seal. ‘Maturin – I am using you abominably once again, although this time it is not altogether my fault. A most unfortunate thing has happened that I am not at leisure to explain; but it appears that a friend of mine has behaved most indiscreetly. So much so, that I have been molested by a gang of wretches, of thief-takers, who searched all my few belongings and my papers, and questioned me for hours on end. What crime I am supposed to have committed, I cannot tell; but now that I am at liberty, I am determined to return to America at once. Mr Johnson is here, and he has seen to the arrangements. I was too hasty in my resentment, I see; I should

Скачать книгу