Not Quite Dead (31 page)

Given the continued presence of its famous English guest, I had come to expect a throng of the curious in the lobby of my hotel, but what greeted me upon my arrival went far beyond precedent. Not only members of the press and public milled about, but the police as well. The gathering had a different quality than when I had left. A tense politeness predominated, and when they looked at me at all in my disheveled state, it was with the expression of people who had more important things to think about.

Everyone appeared to focus on the hotel staff, from the manager down, with questions I could not hear but whose answer entailed a shaking of the head. Near the reception desk a particularly tight group had convened around a tall, athletic, bespectacled gentleman in
a French cravat, who seemed greatly exercised by something or other. No doubt the outspoken English author had committed yet another error of protocol; according to the press he had by now quite outworn his welcome with the American public for his presumptuous remarks on slavery, not to mention his mercenary, self-serving demand for royalty payments from American publishers of his books.

None of this was of interest to me, for my eye throbbed abominably from the abuse and its aftermath, and I was eager for a dram of morphine. As well, I looked forward to my reunion with Elmira Royster, to whom I planned to lie outrageously to the effect that Poe, as a man of honor, had released her from their absurd engagement.

Freed of him at last, at the cost of an eye, it was my hope that my misfortune would awaken her instinct to nurture and nurse. Given some affection for me and a broad interpretation of Scripture, we might spend our time as I had longed to do since we first met across a white linen tablecloth in the Exchange Hotel.

Fool!

There is a quality to an empty room, even if it is pitch black, that tells you upon opening the door that nobody is home. As a doctor, I had come to recognize the sensation from entering a room shortly after the patient has expired; so much so that the taking of the pulse became a formality. Now the familiar feeling of absence came over me, and as I turned up the lamp my hands trembled with dread of what I might see. For I had no doubt that Lieutenant O’Reilly would slit a woman’s throat as easily as he would take out a man’s eye. He was, after all, an infantryman.

Not until I had turned up every lamp and searched the premises was I satisfied that the sensation I had experienced was not of a corpse in the room, but of an empty room, period.

But if Elmira was not dead—where was she? For it was now dark outside, and unthinkable that even she would be so rash as to venture onto the streets alone at night. Therefore, she must have left
with
someone.

Of course.

The note, placed on an arm of that dreadful couch, written on hotel stationery in a meticulous, steady hand, would have been utterly predictable to anyone but a fool such as I.

Dear Dr. Chivers
,

Forgive me for my sudden departure. I hope that you will not think me rude. Nor, as a gentleman, should you be altogether surprised. We are, after all, engaged. What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder
.

Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Elmira Shelton

From my pocket I retrieved the letter from R. A. Perry and the significance of its last line became clear:
Commend me to Mrs. Le Rennet, with whom I shall speak at an early opportunity
.

Clearly it was a private signal. And what was her response?
I am at a loss as to why he would wish me absent. We are, after all, engaged
.

I think I read the letter again, marveling at its clarity and concision, though the handwriting seemed somewhat blurred. I do not remember what happened after that.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

Oh, Dickens! the Atlantic was thy Rubicon; on its broad
waste thou didst shipwreck much fame and honor.
Wonderful indeed that thou shouldst, in a day, turn two
million admirers, friends, into despisers! Whilst the arms
of millions were stretched to receive thee, and thou
betrayest them, and sold them to a publisher!

—
An American Reader

I
t seemed a high price to pay for a cigarette. Dickens lay under a coarse blanket on the floor of what he knew to be a Conestoga wagon—popularly known as a “prairie schooner,” for it was shaped somewhat like a boat, with angled ends and a floor that sloped to the middle so that barrels wouldn’t roll out when climbing or descending a hill.

He had seen pictures of these wagons, but they appeared more comfortable and commodious than was the case here, for it had no springs at all. However, when his captors permitted him to poke his head out to breathe, it became clear that the vehicle had a certain charm, for the canvas bonnet glowed from the lights outside, making it seem as though he was inside a cloud. Less cloudlike was the continuous jolting, wrenching the spine this way and that. Detracting further from the feeling of airy lightness was the top-hatted young gentleman seated on his chest.

“Young man, I’m afraid I cannot breathe. Would you mind?”

“Cock yez up with it,” said the young man with the voice of a boy soprano. “Or I fib yer idea pot fer yer.”

Though his understanding of the response was incomplete, Dickens said no more. Nonetheless, the young man removed himself from Dickens’s chest to take a seat on the floor beside his head, with his
stick at the ready, its dreadful knob hovering directly over the author’s
idea pot
.

“Where are you taking me?” Dickens asked. As he expected, no answer was forthcoming.

In any case, he had a good suspicion that he was about to take residence at an establishment known as Economy Manor, home of the Women of the Wilderness, of whom Miss Genoux was one.

It was a high price to pay for a cigarette—if cigarettes had comprised the limit of his association with Miss Genoux. In truth, this was not the case. With the Frenchwomen’s free and open encouragement (he had heard such talk of the French but disbelieved it), they had engaged in certain intimacies.

Dear heaven, Catherine must never know.

B
EGINNING WITH HER
fine cigarettes, within a very few days his affinity with Miss Genoux had grown well beyond that of a housekeeper and her employer, orders given and received. At first he enjoyed watching her as she expertly rolled, trimmed, and stacked her smokes like little pyramids from Egypt, or logs from Canada. Only in the company of musicians and jugglers had he so enjoyed an exhibition of physical dexterity, and all for his benefit! Her pianist’s fingers, her serene, uniquely French features, her white skin, aquiline nose, small, girlish breasts—oh, she was a pleasure to look at; but that was nothing compared to her conversation.

Her grandfather knew Robespierre. Her father knew Fourier, the feminist. She had had the benefit of hearing both. Such a radical shift in such a short time, from the Reign of Terror to Fourierism; from monarchism to terrorism to communism. So many
isms
to navigate in three generations!

Her explication for the failure of the revolution was admirably succinct: “In a revolution you never kill the ones you want to kill. Only their symbols.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he had replied, puffing happily on his cigarette, for he enjoyed an argument with a woman. “I can think of a number of Britons who would serve the country better with their heads gone.”

“Yet they are the ones who always get away.” Now it was Miss Genoux who became gloomy.

“Perhaps so.” Again, Dickens felt the sensation of insignificance any author of fiction undergoes in the company of actual experience.

She shrugged, in a way that struck him as essentially French.”
Vraiment
, you English have no stomach for revolution, you are too squeamish. You, how should I say, shrink away from the body fluids.”

That gave him a mighty laugh. Not often in his life had a woman caused him to laugh like that, though Catherine had, once or twice, years ago.

“We English did have one revolution,” he said. “It produced Oliver Cromwell. A dreary prig with warts.”

Miss Genoux threw her head back when she laughed and displayed a set of perfect teeth. Smiling to herself, she took a cigarette delicately in her fingers, held it to her lips, lit it with a Lucifer, and allowed the smoke to waft over her face, like a veil.

“When we were with Fourier we lived in a phalanx in New Jersey.”

“What is a phalanx?”

“It is what you would call a dormitory, but nicer. Where there is no private space necessary.” She laughed inwardly. “My mother was a
fairy
.

“And what is a fairy?”

“Their duty was to cure lovesick young men. There was what some call “free love” in the phalanx, but with restrictions. The personality types must match. With the personality types of
ma mere et mon père
, there was too much difference.”

“And that ended their marriage—because they couldn’t stand each other? My goodness, what a thought!”

“But of course. When the types are wrong that is all there is to say. Mother took a good deal of pleasure in her life after, and so did
mon père”

Never had Dickens spoken of such matters with another man, much less a woman—and an attractive woman at that. He hoped that she would attribute the redness of his complexion to the consumption of claret, thoughtfully provided by the management. “Is it possible that one’s personality type might change over time, and cause things to fall apart?”

“Of course. That is what happens, isn’t it?”

A pause followed, while they smoked, their private thoughts swirling around the room. Dickens gazed at his cigarette and it
occurred to him that his hands were no longer shaking, that he felt relatively calm.

“Your system strikes me as infinitely superior to what we live with today,” he said, and became gloomy again.

“Yes, but not in all ways. The phalanx was too much work for everybody—so much digging, so many rocks and trees. They said that digging clods of earth would make better thoughts, but it seemed to me that our thoughts became cloddish instead.”

Dickens stubbed out his cigarette and in doing so realized that his other hand had been busily writing for heaven knows how long.

H
E HAD RECENTLY
traveled to Paris, and the city had made an immense impression on him—whenever he was alone for long enough to take things in. Being a family man, with him traveled their five children, with Louis the courier for his correspondence, and also Catherine’s sister Georgina, who would fall into a heap and die were she not invited. And of course Catherine’s maid Anne accompanied her as nurse and confidante; and two of the servants were needed to perform the usual duties; and, of course there was Catherine herself. With such a suite of followers, it was not easy to see Paris.

Perhaps that is why he suffered insomnia. A part of him longed for a bit of solitude, in which the only thoughts he must take into account were his own.

Late at night, proclaiming sleeplessness, he would vacate the marriage bed and step onto the streets of Paris, often with his overcoat over his nightshirt. Paris: glittering, shimmering, yet with an unambiguous clarity to everything, providing a glimpse of life other than in dark, ugly, relentlessly domestic London. There was no doubt in his mind that his fascination with Miss Genoux had to do with his visit to Paris, and his subsequent fascination for all things French.

While enjoying Miss Genoux’s company, it was the furthest thing from his mind that she might be part of a plot to kidnap him for ransom. What could be sinister about a Communist settlement— especially in an establishment called
Economy Manor?

When the young blue-eyed Irishman appeared at his door, at first he thought it a mistake, that he had rung the wrong bell. Only when Miss Genoux greeted him by name and stood aside for him to enter
did he suspect something might be amiss. Handsome in a boiled-down sort of a way, the Irishman dressed like one of the gangsters who frequent the pubs along the embankment, and carried a walking stick that was all too familiar to anyone who had frequented the gin palaces of Whitechapel.

Surely the hotel staff would never have admitted such an individual unless a guest specifically requested that they do so—either personally, or through his housekeeper.

“Excusez-moi, Monsieur Dickens”
she said when the young man came for him.
“Je suis désole
. Forgive me.”

Miss Genoux seemed genuinely sorry, and such was his fondness for her that Dickens experienced a perverse urge to comfort her, to say
not to worry
.

Already he supposed he was about to be kidnapped—though the term did not sit well with him, for it implied a child or a small goat. In any case, resistance seemed pointless and self-defeating. His captors were a gang of criminals possibly, but in all probability it was for a good cause. Perhaps Miss Genoux had been coerced into becoming an accomplice—though he somehow doubted that. She did not strike him as a woman who could be coerced into doing anything she did not wish to do.

Idly, Dickens wondered what sort of price he might fetch on the ransom market. Certainly, his views on copyrights and slavery had not enhanced his value with the Americans. On the other hand, it would be bloody embarrassing were a Briton to be butchered in America, with the two countries verging on war.

It was an alarming situation to be certain, but interesting at the same time. And with his recent spouting over slavery, he could scarcely feel sorry for himself; any trepidation he might feel was surely nothing compared to the bleak hopelessness experienced by an African tribesman, no less innocent than himself, kidnapped for a lifetime of slavery or death at sea.