Quickly
Marianne felt herself being passed from hand to hand. As Jane relinquished her
support, Sarah took it up. "Take her to the room at the end of the
hall," Jane hissed. "Stay with her and lock the door."
They
were moving again, Sarah urging her to "Come along. It's all well
now."
A
foolish sentiment, Marianne thought, wishing only that she could still her
body, the spasms increasing, causing her teeth to knock together.
In
front of the specified door, Sarah stopped only long enough to jerk it open,
then fairly pushed Marianne inside. Quickly she bolted it behind them, and in
the darkness guided Marianne to a bed, a bare feather mattress without
covering.
In
spite of all attempts to control herself, Marianne was emitting little choking
sobs, not weeping, for there were no tears, but just the spasms again,
inhibiting her breathing.
"Be
still," Sarah soothed.
How
Marianne wished she might have obliged. She heard a woman's cry, heard the scuffing
of a thousand feet, heard repeated shouts for "Physician!" In close
concert with what reached her ears was the memory, the image of the man lying
bleeding, William still clutching the pistol.
Sarah
left her side only once, long enough to light a lamp, then she dragged a heavy
chair into position in front of the door. The voices from down the hall
persisted, turmoil beyond the human capacity to endure.
Sarah
bent over and pulled the coverlet into place. The spasms were ever increasing,
Marianne's tongue growing thick, her temples throbbing. She was unable to
control any part of her body, and as the palsy increased, Sarah hoisted herself
up on the edge of the bed and pressed her hands against Marianne's shoulders in
an attempt to hold her steady on the bed.
In
her final moments of consciousness, Marianne saw that the woman's eyes were
streaming with tears. But because of the wrinkles, they couldn't flow down.
They spread out, crisscrossed, and formed a smooth gloss on the worn face.
"Try
to breathe deeply," Sarah begged.
It
was a foolish request, for at that moment Marianne discovered that she couldn't
breathe at all. Something was crushing her, and almost blithely she lost
consciousness, seeing the last scene in her mind, the Light clouds over the
North Devon coast, the fresh, life-giving sea air.
Then
she saw nothing.
It
was difficult for William to say precisely when he knew that his house had been
invaded. At the moment that Marianne had been sent up to bed, he had dared to
relax, had joined his fellows in the frivolity of the evening.
Then
he caught sight of Jane standing in the archway of the drawing room, her
attention splintered between the room itself and the staircase. He thought how
kind of her, how attractive this new sisterly concern. A while later the woman
on the lacquered table removed her chemise, and in the moment of admiring
silence he thought he heard a distant outcry.
Something
happened. What? An instinct, although he was not a man given to following his
instincts. Whatever, he felt a compulsion to move, seeing something else in
Jane's face, a pathetic figure, still cowering in the archway, her eyes
frightened as she scanned the staircase and beyond.
Then
he knew that a plan had been constructed and was being carried out.
He
ran, ascending the steps as though they were a mountain to be scaled, feeling
so certain of the tragedy that he stopped off first in his room, his hand
reaching almost disdainfully for the pistol, cocking it even as he overtook the
hall. He burst through the door and took one clear look, his eyes confirming
the worst, the girl, humiliated and terrified on her knees, her head bowed, the
man just stepping toward her, his face peculiarly grim for an amorous encounter.
He
lifted the pistol, saw Eden's furtive glance in his direction, then he saw
nothing else, felt nothing except the pressure of his finger on the trigger,
his eyes almost closed against the thunderous explosion, his fury not even
abated as he saw the man spin about under the impact of the shot, coming down
on the table with all his weight, his eyes wide open, staring where the lamp
fluttered. Then he fell backward onto the floor, motionless, blood spreading
from where the ball had heavily grazed the flesh of his shoulder and shattered
the peer glass beyond. Fired at such close range, the shot had seared through
the flesh and left it smoldering.
He
had not intended to shoot, yet there was the man sprawled on the floor,
bleeding. And there, Marianne, still on her knees, her scarred back clearly
visible, more terrible than he had ever imagined.
As
he started toward her to offer comfort, Jane arrived, white-faced, looking
truly repentant. "Cover her," he ordered, stepping back. "And
get her out of here."
The
girl was scarcely able to stand, but with Jane's support she managed. She took
one horrified look at the man lying unconscious at her feet. No sooner had they
left the room than the company arrived, laughing and chattering at first, then
falling into a shocked silence at the sight of the man bleeding on the floor.
A
physician arrived in good haste and stopped the flow of blood and suggested
that prior to surgery it would be best to move Lord Eden to his own lodgings. A
few of the company obliged. Together with the watchmen, who had come running at
the sound of the shot, they carried him down the stairs and out into the night.
There was talk of a duel, illegal in the absence of seconds. But William put a
stop to that. With admirable control he informed both the watchmen and the
company that the man was a trespasser, that the victim of his illegal advances
lay in the room beyond if they cared to look.
No
one did, although from the mutterings around him he could tell that their
sympathies were with the wounded man. As he was trying to clear his house of
all traffic, he heard, coming from the end of the hall, a woman's cry for help.
Quickly he called down the stairs for the physician, a heavyset man in a black
coat who viewed the goings-on with comforting objectivity. As they rushed to
the small room at the end of the hall, he was aware of the man panting heavily.
Inside the door, he leaned against the wall for breath. Then, seeing the girl
on the bed, her tongue slung sideways, he rushed into action, compressed her
tongue and administered three sharp blows to her face. He lifted her head and
forced a dram down her throat.
"A
seizure," was the physician's diagnosis.
"Annihilation
of a soul," thought William.
"Cold
compresses throughout the night," was the physician's prescription.
"A
place of refuge and peace," was William's.
Jane
and Sarah stayed with her while William saw the physician out, treading
carefully over the stream of blood on the stairs. From the front door he saw
Billy Beckford just climbing into the carriage after Lord Eden, who appeared to
be sitting up now. Other carriages were rapidly departing, the evening over,
the company requiring a few hours' sleep so that on the morning their tongues
could wag.
William
closed his door and locked it, extinguished all lamps and candles, and went
into his study off^ the drawing room to sit through the night, what was left of
it. It was almost dawn. He stared at the blackness ribbed with faint light.
Slowly he lowered his head into his hands as though bodily to contain and
support the agitation of his brain.
It
would be all over London by twelve noon, the coffeehouses and steakhouses
buzzing with the excitement of a major scandal, the story itself undergoing a
thousand changes in the telling, emerging by nightfall more fiction than fact.
He
groaned, dragged back to his involvement, his irrationality which had triggered
the whole melancholy evening. He sat in a fixed stillness, obliterated, as a
drop of water is made anonymous by the pond into which it has fallen. My God,
the scene had been a farce, a theatrical worthy of the Drury Lane, to be
followed by a pantomime. "No oranges on the spikes, please. The actors did
their best."
Unable
to lift his gaze from the spreading light of dawn at his feet, and unable to
turn away from the spreading light in his mind, he reared back, his legs
slanting as though to brace himself from a fall.
Marianne.
Always Marianne. There his thoughts commenced and ended. Then he must leave. It
was as simple as that. He must on the morrow, in spite of wagging tongues, put
his affairs in order, delegate authority at his office so that the Gazetteer
would continue in spite of his absence, see his solicitor for liquidation of
certain assets, leave a household account for the care and protection of Jane
and Marianne. Then, within a fortnight, he would book passage on the packet
from Dover to Calais, and hope to recover from his madness in the madness that
now was France. He would send editorials back by courier. At least he would keep
his hand in.
In
the suffused light of dawn, he stared at his hands. They were like ghosts in
the semidarkness of the room, not belonging to him at all. That finger capable
of pulling a trigger? Never!
Softly
into the silence, coming from upstairs, he heard a faint moan.
He
bowed his head and whispered hoarsely, "Leave me in peace. . . ."
It
seemed inconceivable to Thomas that a single ball wildly fired and grazing the
fleshy part of his right shoulder should cause such agony.
Yet
there was the truth of it. He'd never experienced such pain, his shoulder, his
arm, indeed the right side of his entire body feeling as though it were aflame,
someone holding a torch to him.
Although
he had not lost consciousness before in his entire life, on this night he passed
senseless three times and was always brought back to new pain by Billy Beckford
bending over him, forcing brandy down him while the old surgeon, a thin sharp
zealot of a man with hands as cold as winter, continued to cauterize the wound,
his fingers red with Thomas' blood.
At
dawn, lying on his bed in the upper chamber of his lodgings on Oxford Road, he
awakened for the third time, bleary-eyed, still half-conscious, and tried to
raise his head. His throat felt dry, his ears rang, yet he was aware enough to
see that in his absence from the living someone had stripped him and now he
lay, in full view of the company in the room, Billy and the thin-eyed surgeon
and there in the comer, two old women he'd never seen before, their eyes
glittering with all that there was to see.
"Get
them out of here," he mumbled, his misery rising, sinking back into the
pillows, which were drenched with his sweat. Billy was there again, his face
creased with concern, offering more brandy and whispered advice. "You must
lie still, Thomas. Let the surgeon finish."
"And
when will that be?" Thomas whispered. "I can take little more."
The
surgeon looked up from his work. "Only the dressing remains, Lord
Eden," he said, his voice as thin and hard as his fingers. "But you
must lie still." Again he felt hands upon him, felt his shoulder being
encased in bandage, up and under, an endless wrapping, drawing his arm tighter
and tighter to his body.
With
his eyes closed, Thomas felt compelled to ask, "Is it serious?"
Billy
was there again, good lad, soothing him. "It might have been, Thomas. It
tore the flesh. You've lost a great deal of blood. But the bone is intact and
you should be as good as new."
Still
not looking, Thomas felt two heavy objects being wedged against his shoulder.
He looked down, his vision blurred. "What in hell—"
"Sandbags,"
the surgeon explained crisply, "to hold you rigid."
"Do
I have a choice?" Thomas said sulkily.
"
No
,"
the man replied, his voice without margin, wiping his hands on the already
bloodied sheet
Thomas
looked weakly about. His bed resembled a butcher's floor. "Cleanse
me," he whispered weakly, "It's barbaric to ask a man to lie in his
own blood."