I stopped. “Accept what, Allan? His compliments?”
“You have not heard, sir?”
“Unless I know what I am supposed to have heard, I cannot tell, can I?”
Something in the logic of this must have appealed to him, for the boy burst out laughing. When his mirth had subsided, he said: “Frant wrote me to say that his mama is inviting me to stay at Mr Carswall’s during the Christmas holiday. And Mr Carswall is to write to my ma and pa, and to Mr Bransby, requesting that you should be allowed to accompany me, though I should be perfectly safe in the care of the coachman, but Charlie says that women always fuss and sometimes it is wise to let them have their head.”
“I have as yet heard nothing of this projected expedition,” I said. “I am not convinced that it will be perfectly convenient.” I watched Allan’s face change, as though a cloud had passed over his good humour. “However, we shall have to see what Mr Bransby has to say about it.”
The boy took this as a form of agreement. He bounded happily away, leaving me to wonder whether his information was accurate, and, if it were, whether Mr Bransby would permit me to go, and whether it would be wise for me to do so or not. Wise or not, I knew what I wanted. Lofty thoughts about the taxonomy of love in general, and about pigs and troughs in particular, were all very well in the abstract but I no longer had any desire to pursue them.
The following afternoon, Mr Bransby relayed Mrs Frant’s invitation.
“There is some uncertainty as to when you will return,” Mr Bransby went on. “Mr Carswall does not feel that young Frant has been minding his book with sufficient attention since he left us. He may desire you to remain longer with them, to coach the boys and perhaps to escort Edgar Allan back to school at the beginning of term – Charles Frant, of course, will not be rejoining us. You are not expected elsewhere, I suppose, on Christmas Day?”
“As a matter of fact, I was, sir. But it is of no importance.”
That evening, I sat down by the fire in the schoolroom to write to Mr Rowsell, regretting that I would not be able to eat my Christmas dinner with them after all. I had hardly begun when Dansey came in.
“Mr Bransby tells me you are taking young Allan down to the country,” he said abruptly. “Is it true you will remain there the entire vacation?”
“It’s possible. Mr Carswall will decide.”
Dansey flung himself into a chair. “Are you sure this is wise, Tom?”
“Why ever not?” I spoke with more heat than I had intended. “A change of scene will be beneficial.”
“And a change of company, no doubt.”
I murmured that I was perfectly happy in my present situation.
“I beg your pardon,” Dansey continued after a moment. “I have no right to advise you. You will go with young Allan, I collect?”
“I wonder that Mr Allan has permitted him to go. It is only a month since Mr Frant’s death.”
“I imagine he did it to oblige Mr Carswall. Wealth is a passport to esteem. Forgive me; I do not mean to pry – but are you altogether easy in your mind about this?”
“Why should I not be?”
Dansey hesitated. “I am a rational man, as you know. But sometimes I have an intuition when all is not well. I daresay I am being fanciful.”
He stood there for a moment, his lopsided mouth working in his Janus face as though he wanted to say something else but could not persuade his lips to mouth the words. He turned on his heel and slipped out of the room. I stared down at the sheet of paper, the few words on it flickering and shifting in the candlelight. It was another freezing evening, and I shivered.
Dansey had an intuition, but it occurred to me that I had more substantial grounds for caution: the manner in which first Mr Frant and now Mr Carswall had entangled me in their affairs; the codicil that had cost Mrs Frant an inheritance; the mutilated cadaver at Wellington-terrace; and the severed finger I had discovered in David Poe’s satchel.
In 1819, Christmas Day was a Saturday. Mr Bransby decreed that term should officially end on the previous Tuesday. On the afternoon of that day, I travelled down to London with Edgar Allan. We put up for the night with his foster parents in Southampton-row. Mrs Allan, an anxious, vapourish woman with a hypochondriacal tendency, alternately caressed and ignored Edgar. In the late afternoon, Mr Allan returned from his place of business. He was a grim-faced man, much preoccupied. In their presence Edgar seemed to glow with vitality and intelligence; he was as different from them as chalk from cheese.
“If you go to Cheltenham,” Mrs Allan said over dinner in her high, wavering voice, “you must stay at the Stiles Hotel. Do you remember, my love?” she said to her husband. “The people there were most attentive.”
“But they’re not going to Cheltenham,” Mr Allan said.
An uneasy silence settled over the dinner table, broken only by the clatter of cutlery and the footsteps of the servant. I had assumed until now that it was Charlie who needed Edgar’s company. Now I recalled Edgar’s enthusiasm for the proposal, and wondered if it might not be the other way round.
After dinner, Mr Allan retired to his private room on the plea of needing to cast up his accounts. Mrs Allan sat in the drawing room and played cards with Edgar. While she played, she talked incessantly of her friends and family, her homesickness for Richmond, Virginia, her fear of seasickness, and the number and nature of her ailments, which were, it seemed, matters of constant surprise and interest to her medical attendants.
After we had drunk tea, I made my excuses and went out. Like a sentimental fool, I walked up to Russell-square and stood for a moment on the pavement outside the house where the Frants had lived. There was a lantern above the door, and lights showed in the cracks between the shutters. A sense of my own folly overwhelmed me. I walked rapidly away, as though the faster I walked, the sooner I would leave my folly behind.
At length I found myself outside a tavern in Lambs Conduit-street. I spent forty minutes in the taproom, smoking and drinking brandy. All the while, I could not rid myself of the single thought that ran round my head like a rat in a trap: tomorrow I shall see her.
I walked back to the Allans’ house, where I fell into a restless sleep. The human mind is a perverse creature. When I awoke, I realised the face I had seen most often in the magic-lantern show of my dreams was that of Flora Carswall.
In the morning, I had time to call at Mr Rowsell’s chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. It seemed churlish to be so close to him and not to pay him a visit; and I wished to say farewell and send my apologies to Mrs Rowsell. He welcomed me with his customary good humour and sent out Atkins, his clerk, for coffee.
His face lengthened, however, when I told him where I was going.
“I cannot pretend I like this plan, Tom,” he said, “though of course it is no concern of mine. But the children will miss you sorely on Saturday. Is Mr Bransby happy to see you go?”
“He is disposed to consider that on the whole the advantages outweigh the drawbacks.”
Rowsell nodded. “There are financial considerations, no doubt, and he would be fully alive to their importance. How long do you stay?”
As I was answering him, there was a knock at the door and Atkins ushered in the boy with the tray. The clerk glanced at me with tiny eyes like specks of mud and averted his round,