The Frants’ house was on the south side of Russell-square. I rang the bell and waited. The brass plate sparkled. The paint was new. If a surface could be polished, it had been polished. If it could be scrubbed, it had been scrubbed.
A manservant answered the door, a tall fellow with a fleshy, hook-nosed face. I told him my name and business, and he left me to kick my heels in a big dining room overlooking the square. I walked over to the window and stared down at the square garden. The curtains were striped silk, cream and green, and the green seemed to have been chosen to match exactly the grass outside.
The door opened, and I turned to see Mr Henry Frant. As I did so, I looked for the first time at the wall beside the door, which was opposite the window. A portrait hung there, Mrs Frant to the life, sitting in a park with a tiny boy leaning against her knee and a spaniel stretched on the ground at her feet. In the distance was a prospect of a large stone-built mansion-house.
“You’re Mr Bransby’s usher, I collect?” Frant walked quickly towards me, his left hand in his pocket, bringing with him a scent of lavender water. He was the man I had seen at the carriage window in Ermine-street. “The boy will be down in a moment.”
There was no sign of recognition on his face. I was too insignificant for him to have remembered me, of course, but it was also possible to believe that my own appearance had changed in the last month. Frant made no move to shake hands; nor was there an offer of refreshment or even a chair. There was an air of excitement about him, of absorption in his own affairs.
“The boy has milksop tendencies, fostered by his mother,” he announced. “I particularly desire that these traits be eradicated.”
I bowed. In the portrait, Mrs Frant’s small white hand toyed with a brown ringlet that had escaped the confines of her bonnet.
“He is not to be indulged, do you hear? He has had enough of that already. But now he is grown too old for the softness of women. It is time for him to learn to be a man. Behaving like a blushing maiden will be no good to him when he goes to Westminster. That is one reason why I have determined to send him to Mr Bransby’s.”
“So he has never been to school before, sir?”
“He has had tutors at home.” Frant waved his right hand as though pushing them away, and the great signet ring on his forefinger gleamed as it caught the light from the window. “He does well enough at his books. Now it is time for him to learn something equally useful: how to deal with his fellows. But I will not detain you any longer. Pray give my compliments to Mr Bransby.”
Before I could manage even another bow, Frant was out of the room, the door snapping shut behind him. I envied him: here was a man who had everything the gods could bestow including an air of breeding and consequence that sat naturally upon him, as though he were its rightful possessor. Even now, God help me, part of me envies him as he was then.
I waited another moment, studying the portrait. My interest, I told myself, was both pure and objective. I admired the painting as I might a beautiful statue or a line of poetry that spoke with both elegance and force to the heart. The brushwork was particularly fine, and the skin was exquisitely lifelike. Such beauty was refreshing, too, like a drink to a thirsty traveller. There was, therefore, no reason why I should not study it as much as I wished.
Ah, you will say, you were falling in love with Sophia Frant. But that is romantic nonsense. If you want plain speaking, I will give it you as I gave it to myself on that fateful day: leaving artistic considerations aside, I disliked her because she had so much I lacked in the way of wealth and the world’s esteem; and I also disliked her because I desired her, as I did almost any pretty woman I saw, and knew she could never be mine.
I heard footsteps outside the door and a high voice speaking indistinctly but loudly. I moved away and feigned an intense interest in the ormolu clock upon the mantel-shelf. The door opened and a boy rushed into the room, followed by a small, plain woman, dressed in black and with a wart on the side of her chin. What struck me immediately was that there was a remarkable resemblance between young Frant and Edgar Allan, the American boy. With their lofty brows, their bright eyes and their delicate features, they might almost have been brothers. Then I noticed the boy’s attire.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said. “I am Charles Augustus Frant.”
I shook the offered hand. “And I am Mr Shield.”
“And this is Mrs Kerridge, my – one of the servants,” the boy rushed on. “There was no need for her to come down with me, but she insisted.”
I nodded to her and she inclined her head. “I wished to ask if Master Charles’s box had arrived at the school yet, sir.”
“I’m afraid I do not know. But I’m sure its absence would have been marked.”
“And my mistress desired me to say that Master Charles feels the cold. When the weather begins to turn, perhaps a flannel undershirt next to the skin might be advisable.”
The boy snorted. I nodded gravely. My mind was on the lad’s clothes, though not in a way that Mrs Kerridge or indeed Mrs Frant would have liked. Whether at his own request or at his mother’s whim, Master Charles was wearing a beautifully cut olive greatcoat with black frogs. He carried under his arm a hat from which depended a long and handsome tassel; he clutched a cane in his left hand.
“They’re bringing the carriage round, sir,” Mrs Kerridge said, “and Master Charles’s valise is in the hall. Would you like anything before you go?”
The boy hopped from one leg to another.
“Thank you, no,” I said.
“There’s the carriage.” He ran over to the window. “Yes, it is ours.”
Mrs Kerridge looked up at me, squeezing her face to a frown. “Poor lamb,” she murmured in a tone too low for him to hear. “Never been away from home before.”
I nodded, and smiled in a way I hoped the woman would find reassuring. When we opened the door, a footman was waiting by the front door and a black pageboy, not much older than Charles himself, hovered over the valise. Charles Frant, smiling graciously at his father’s servants, marched down the steps with a dignity befitting the Horse Guards, a dignity only slightly marred by the way he skipped up into the carriage. Mrs Kerridge and I followed more slowly, walking behind like a pair of acolytes.
“He is very young for his age, sir,” Mrs Kerridge muttered.
I smiled down at her. “He’s a handsome boy.”
“Takes after his mother.”
“Is she not here to say goodbye to him?”
“She’s away nursing her uncle.” Mrs Kerridge grimaced. “The poor gentleman’s dying, and he ain’t going easy. Otherwise Madam would be here. Will he be all right, sir? Boys can be cruel little varmints. He don’t realise. He don’t know many boys.”
“It may not be easy at first. But most boys find there is much to enjoy at school as well. Once they are used to it.”
“His mama frets about him.”
“It often happens that an event is more distressing in anticipation than it is in actuality. You must endeavour to –”
I broke off, realising that Mrs Kerridge was no longer looking at me. She had been distracted by the sight of a carriage whirling into the square from Montague-street. It was an elegant light chariot, painted green and gold, and drawn by a pair of chestnuts. The coachman slipped between two carts and brought the equipage to a standstill behind our own, the wheels neatly aligned within a couple of inches of the kerb. He sat back on the box with the air of a man well pleased with himself.
“Oh Lord,” muttered Mrs Kerridge, but she was smiling.