The Skull and the Nightingale Read online

  It was characteristic of Mr. Gilbert to have dropped no hint as to his future intentions. For all I knew, he might be planning to buy me a commission in the army or send me to the colonies. I felt no enthusiasm for either prospect. If I was to stay at home, the possibilities seemed limited. I could not enter the church: neither my vagrant habits of thought nor my animal spirits would allow it. The law was hardly more inviting.

  My favorite hope soared higher: perhaps too high. As far as I knew, my godfather had no living relatives. At his age he was unlikely to attempt marriage, and should he do so, his thin loins would be hard put to it to originate an offspring. Surely it was time for him to proclaim me his heir and prepare me for the life of a prosperous landowner? In the country I could walk, ride, and perhaps hunt. The more reflective side of my nature would find sustenance in Mr. Gilbert’s well-stocked library. When I needed younger company and livelier entertainment, I would spend a few raucous weeks in London. Satiety achieved, I could again retreat to Worcestershire to read books and view the world philosophically.

  This was my preferred narrative: a life I could freely adjust to my personal convenience. Perversely, however, I found even this possibility uninviting as implying a premature acceptance of settled middle age. By a curious paradox my dependent condition had fostered an independence of spirit: I had become accustomed to mingling affability with reserve. It seemed to me that, unlike my Oxford companions, I would be able, if put to it, to live by my wits. I was eager for a challenge which would show me what sort of man I was.

  There had been little in my childhood that I cared to remember. Even my recollections of my mother, now dead for more than ten years, were uncertain. I had turned away from the past, as by instinct, to concentrate my attentions on the present and the future. It suited my disposition to be active: if left too long to brood, I tended to lose my good humor and lapse into melancholy. To avert this possibility at the present time I needed a friend in whom I could confide. It was natural, therefore, that my thoughts turned to Sarah Kinsey, the only individual who knew just how I was circumstanced. It was two years since I had last seen her, and not much less than that since she had last written to me. She had faded in my recollection as I found fresh diversion abroad; negligently I had left her letters unanswered. Since my return she was suddenly present again before my mind’s eye, shyly pretty, quick to smile. For all the seeming diffidence she had been independent: her tastes and opinions were all her own. We had talked with great freedom.

  One night, in sentimental mood, I strolled to Pitman Street, where Sarah had been living two years previously. I found the house in darkness, and stood to stare at it. Even as I watched, a light appeared in the window of the upstairs room where I had several times engaged in three-cornered conversation with Sarah and her aunt. Perhaps the two of them were chatting there at that very moment. I lingered for several minutes, indulging the imagined proximity and half tempted to knock at the door.

  The matter was resolved when an old man emerged from a neighboring house.

  “Pardon me, friend,” I asked. “Does Mrs. Catherine Kinsey live here?”

  “She used to,” he said. “A widow lady. But she left a year ago.”

  I thanked him and turned away. Disappointed as I was, I knew that my quest had been an idle one. Even if I could have seen Sarah alone, she would surely have reproached me for the breach in our correspondence. And with my future unknown, what had I now to offer? I was downcast as I trudged away: perhaps I would spend my life mourning Sarah as a lost love. Aware that a melancholy so hastily improvised could be of little substance, I savored it nonetheless.

  A week after my arrival in London I received a letter from my godfather:

  My dear Richard,

  I was pleased to receive word of your safe arrival. As you imply, there is much for us to discuss and consider. I would like to see you at Fork Hill House early next week, and hope that you will be able to stay for some few days. However, you may leave the bulk of your effects in the safe hands of Mrs. Deacon.

  Your affectionate godfather,

  James Gilbert

  It was a characteristically tightfisted message. I could discern but a single clue concerning my future: it seemed that I was expected to return to London after my visit to Worcestershire. Whether the hint presaged an extended stay in the city or another journey, it was impossible to guess.

  Chapter 2

  I woke from a dream in which I was fumbling a plump whore in a dark street in Rouen. The impression stayed with me as I lay half insensible: I could smell the horse dung on the cobbles and feel the girl’s damp warmth. Only gradually did I come to myself and recollect that I was in bed in my godfather’s house. Even then the idea was so strong upon me that had a maidservant chanced to enter the room, I might have sleepily seized on her, and perhaps derived a flesh-and-blood child from my fantasy. But the illusion thinned and my intellects began to confront the day. I arose, groped my way to the window, and threw back the heavy curtain. On the instant I was myself again, looking out upon green lawns shining with dew below a bright morning sun. It was a sight to fill me with hope and energy. The day might hold revelations, but I felt ready to face them.

  Having arrived too late on the preceding evening to see my godfather, I had now to impress the man on whom my hopes depended. What manner would be best calculated to win his favor? I concluded that a respectful but easy bearing, quickened with a hint of mischief, should do the business. As I washed and dressed I tried to think myself into this demeanor. Even a hint of importunity concerning my future would be unbecoming. Pleasure at the reunion, gratitude for past kindnesses: these were the emotions to display.

  Downstairs I learned that Mr. Gilbert had already breakfasted. I was directed to meet him later that morning in the drawing room at the rear of the house. Arriving before he did, I had time to survey, through broad windows, the slopes of Flint Hill fringed, in the distance, by black-branched woodland. On the near side of those trees everything I could see belonged to my godfather and might one day, conceivably, belong to me. Behind me several family portraits gazed down. I turned to stare back at my adoptive ancestors. In life they might have been formidable: in death they were so many planes of pigment. It could not be many years before my godfather would be similarly reduced. Perhaps he had aged in my absence. Perhaps he would totter in to say, “Let me be plain with you: I have but one month to live. This estate and all my wealth are to be yours. I wish you joy of them.”

  When he did enter, however, it was with no such cadaverous air. He looked as I remembered him, lean, but by no means frail, his face shrewd and thin-lipped. As ever, he was neatly groomed: the taut little wig could have been his own hair.

  If he was overjoyed to see me, he contrived not to show it. I adapted my manner to his, and our first exchanges were courteous rather than familiar. I had brought gifts from abroad, which I formally delivered to my benefactor rather as a visiting English ambassador might present diplomatic offerings to a Chinese potentate. He received them with corresponding decorum. Thoughtful questions were asked concerning people and places, and suitable answers given. The little minuet of civilities was creditably performed by both parties.

  Later, in response to his promptings, I told him various tales of my travels, speaking, I thought, gaily and well. He listened with attention, seeming by degrees to relax his customary reserve: I could even fancy that he looked at me with approval. On occasion our dialogue all but quickened into raillery.

  “I inferred from your letters,” he said with lizardlike dryness, “that throughout your travels you conducted yourself in an exemplary way.”

  “It seemed appropriate, sir, to represent myself in a sober light.”

  My godfather allowed himself a ghost of a smile: “I hope this sense of propriety did not circumscribe your pleasures.”

  “I was at pains to resist that possibility,” said I, with a reciprocal hint of s
elf-mockery.

  He looked me directly in the eye, still faintly smiling.

  “I notice a scar on the back of your hand.”

  “You embarrass me, sir. It goes back to a small encounter in Florence.”

  “A matter of honor?”

  “Of intoxication, rather. It was a foolish incident, but no great harm was done.”

  He nodded to close the subject, and then turned a sudden conversational corner.

  “It is two years since last you were here. Have you perceived any differences?”

  “Only that the great oak tree has gone that once stood beside the house.”

  “It had become too old and brittle. It reminded me too much of myself.”

  Taken by surprise, I could fashion no suitably consoling response, but my godfather did not seem to notice. He sat staring at nothing before speaking again:

  “I hope you will stay for some few days, and gain a sense of my life here.”

  Two evenings later some guests from the neighborhood came to dinner. I was curious to meet these people, since I might one day have to live on terms with them, and curious, too, to see how my reticent godfather would comport himself in company. But equally it would be my task to rise to whatever the occasion was intended to be. I should think of myself as in some sense on display.

  How much the visitors would know of my situation and prospects I could not guess. I would probably be the youngest person present and the one of least social consequence. On the other hand, I was educated, gentlemanly, and had recently traveled. It would not do to be ingratiating nor yet forward. I resolved to stay out of general conversation, as far as possible, but to show myself attentive to individuals.

  The loudest of the company proved to be Mr. Hurlock, a florid squire with a buxom wife. He was a rattling, rallying fellow, aggressive in his manner, with a laugh like the bray of an animal. I saw in him an aging country bully, coarse and discontented. Mr. Quentin, a dark man with a brooding gaze, conveyed more intelligence with greater sobriety of manner. Of a different cast altogether was Mr. Yardley, as lean as my godfather, with the stooped shoulders and sallow cheeks of one who devoted many hours to reading. I remembered to have heard him mentioned as a naturalist and collector. There was also Mr. Thorpe, a young parson, new to the village. He wore a propitiating smile under an alert eye.

  Hurlock greeted me boisterously: “So you come here from France, young gentleman. Here in Worcestershire we turned against that country in ’45, when the Jacobites reached Derby and we felt French breath on the back of our necks.”

  I soon diverted him to the subject of hunting, on which he had much to say. Eventually relieved of his company by my godfather, I escaped to Thorpe, who proved to be a former Oxford student and quizzed me amiably about university matters.

  At dinner I had Mrs. Hurlock on my right hand, and found my eye taken more than once by her prominent bosom—a former attraction declined, it seemed, to a feeding apparatus, since she confided that she had borne several children. I could see that twenty years before she must have been a covetable young lady, but time and a coarse husband had diminished her assurance. “I believe you are a scholar,” she told me, “and already a man of the world. Alas, I am merely a mother.” To keep her conversing about her surviving offspring was as simple as whipping a top.

  On my left sat Mrs. Quentin, another dilapidated beauty. I first saw her from behind, and fancied from her slim figure that she was hardly more than thirty. She had merely to turn round to age twenty years, her face being faded and unhappy. When I tried to converse with her over dinner, I noticed a reticence and an odd cast of expression apparently attributable to the same cause, namely her desire to keep concealed a set of blackened teeth. I talked to her in a free and lively vein to create the illusion of an exchange, but avoided provoking laughter lest she should feel obliged to join in.

  The wider discussion lurched between local and national concerns. Such political comment as I heard was so fanciful that it could have concerned the government of Japan: but after all, these folk were a hundred country miles from London—two full days of travel. Hurlock blustered, Thorpe was emollient, Quentin brusque. Yardley spoke but little. My godfather was the best informed of the company and showed considerable social address. With no attempt to dominate, he yet led the conversation, his manner dry and sometimes satirical. He took in all that passed, and had a word for everybody at the table.

  Certain fragments of talk stayed in my memory. At one time my attention was caught by a sudden intensity in my godfather’s voice.

  “We are told,” he said, “that the Almighty requires praise. I cannot understand why. Is it not as though I should want my dogs to praise me for feeding them?”

  “Perhaps, sir,” ventured Thorpe, “you are interpreting the instruction too literally. Might it not be a figure—a mode of enjoining us to an active appreciation of our existence in a miraculous universe?”

  “You men of the cloth are all alike,” cried Hurlock through a mouthful of food. “If we question any mystery of religion, you tell us that it is no more than a damned figure. What do you leave us of substance to believe in?”

  His truculence momentarily silenced the table.

  “There are the commandments,” said Thorpe mildly. “Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

  Hurlock made to expostulate further, but Mr. Gilbert spoke up before him.

  “Yes,” said he, with an emphasis that concluded the exchange, “those would seem to offer us something to steer by—and something to fear.”

  When the ladies retired the conversation took a different turn. My godfather, who had drunk frugally, seeming to enjoy his sips more than Hurlock his mouthfuls, proceeded to draw out Mr. Yardley, who had hitherto been almost silent. With a little prompting he was induced to address the company on the subject of poisons. He spoke in a high, wavering voice, chuckling from time to time at the curiosities he mentioned:

  “We have little understanding of susceptibility. A substance that will gratify one organism may prove fatal to another. You gentlemen drink brandy with pleasure, but it is known that a small amount of that beverage will kill a cat. Heh, heh! Sheep thrive on grass, but clover may prove fatal to them. We know that a snakebite may kill, but what shall we say when a man dies from the sting of a bee, as has happened in this very parish? Heh, heh! This is the mystery of reaction: the element introduced combines fatally with something in the constitution of the victim.”

  My godfather had been listening intently: “Might not such an external element equally prove advantageous? If brandy can kill a cat, what say you to the possibility that a saucer of burgundy might transform its intelligence?”

  Yardley sniggered. “The example is grotesque, but in principle your hypothesis is just. The world is young: there are a million possibilities still unexplored.”

  “What possibilities?” cried Hurlock, crimson with drink. “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “For example,” said my godfather, evenly, “the possibility that when A is randomly made subject to B—A being a human being, and B a substance, a situation, or even an idea—some unpredictable outcome may result.”

  This proposition being beyond Hurlock in his fuddled state, he flew into a passion.

  “Then let us fly to the moon, gentlemen,” he shouted, banging his fist on the table. “Let us fly to the moon and have done!”

  Nothing exceptionable had taken place during the course of the evening, yet I could not rid myself of a sense of oppression. The guests had seemed constrained by Mr. Gilbert’s presence, as though a little cowed by him. Even Hurlock’s outbursts had had a quality of nervous defiance. Might my gentlemanly godfather be intimidating?

  The following day he asked my opinion of his guests. Seeking to be diplomatic without insipidity, I ventured that Hurlock had seemed not unlike a stage representation of a coarse
hunting squire, that Yardley had said a number of interesting things, and that Quentin had something enigmatic about him.

  “Your comments are just, as far as they go,” said my godfather. “Hurlock is a fool. Yardley is haphazardly learned.”

  “And Mr. Quentin?”

  My godfather reflected before replying: “I can understand why you found him enigmatic. To me he is not, because I know the answer to the riddle.” His voice lightened. “You were properly attentive to the ladies—gallantly so in the case of Mrs. Quentin, whose bad teeth, as you must have noticed, foul her breath. Time has been unkind to her: she was comely as a young woman. Mrs. Hurlock was the local beauty, eagerly courted, but she made the mistake of marrying Hurlock, who reduced her to a breeding animal. She has now ceased to breed. Perhaps neither woman has a life worth leading.”

  Startled by this bluntness, I inclined my head and tried to look sagacious.

  “You have now made the acquaintance of my nearest neighbors, such as they are. I contrive to remain on good terms with all of them.”

  “I am sure you do, sir,” I hazarded.

  Mr. Gilbert pursed his thin lips and then spoke reflectively.