The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (8 page)

Young and old, men and women filled the rooms at the Sedgewicks: bankers, lawyers, clerks, ’prentices, chandlers, naval officers, excise-men;—in the words of the song, “travellers, tapsters, merchants, and upstart gentlemen.” Gaiety prevailed. Banished by common if unspoken consent were all thoughts of the recent riots about the Corn Laws, the furor over Catholic Emancipation and the Irish Question, corsairs along the coasts of Barbary and Tremissa, or the volcanic eruptions in the Water Indies that had played such havoc with shipping between China and India. No one spoke of politics or war, of want or weather (so unseasonably cold and wet). Instead all and everyone talked of fashion and romance, of the new lotteries (especially the big one just established by the Confraternity for Saints Vanne & Hydulphe), of the Crown Prince’s latest indiscretions and his wronged wife the Queen-in-Waiting Caroline, of the latest adventures of Dr. Syntax on his doughty horse, the most recent plays at Covent Garden, the likelihood of ripe strawberries from Kent before St. Macrina’s Day, and a thousand other frivolities.

When they tired of talk, they sang songs of fair maidens and coxcombs, of drunken livery-men and pert chambermaids, of Tibbert the Cat, of children shantled off by the fairies, of saucy wives and their husbands who stayed too long in the tavern, of Robin Goodfellow and the jealous moon, the King’s arms and Britannia, of the fall of Napoleon and the exploits of Sharpe in Spain and Lucky Jack Aubrey on the Main. When they tired of singing, they danced the “Orange-Blossom Water” and the “Ranelagh Trifle” and so many others that Barnabas quite lost count.

“Tum tum de dum!” half-sang Barnabas, as he enjoyed the Cahors. “I like that one: ‘Bate me an ace, Morrison old jack, bate me an ace!’”

His already mountainous love for all mankind now elevated to Olympian heights by the meat and the many desserts and, above all, by the punch and the Cahors, Barnabas sought among the convivial fellowship for his family.

“Where has Sanford gotten himself off to?” he said. “Ah, there he is, solemn as ever, talking with Sedgewick in a corner. Looks suspiciously like business. I must upbraid them both. Later.”

Spying an unusual figure in the throng, carrying dishes back to the kitchen, Barnabas thought, “That must be the new servant the Sedgewicks have employed, the young black woman. Not much the normal thing anymore, having a black servant, I wonder that they do so, though Mrs. Sedgewick has never been one for the proprieties. Sedgewick himself, now, what is it he said about this young woman? Something strange about her, I think.”

Before he could remember what Sedgewick had said about the girl, Barnabas heard—or sensed, rather—a commotion from the entrance-hall, like the dull roar of a wave striking shore.

“Merry as grigs are we, dum de dum de dum,” he said. “But where might Sally be? And her Reglum?”

He made his way to the entrance-hall, greeting along the way a naval bureaucrat he vaguely knew (“one of the Tarletons who married into Mrs. Sedgewick’s side,” he thought) and also a Turkey-merchant he recognized from the coffee-houses.

Pushing his way into the entrance-hall, Barnabas said, “Figs and . . . oh!”

James Kidlington stood in front of the door.

Sally was leaning against Reglum, her mouth working but producing no words, her eyes two lakes of despair streaked with hope. Reglum had one arm around her shoulders. He shifted his gaze from Sally to Kidlington and back again.

Mrs. Sedgewick stood between and a little to the side of the two and the one.

“I, I, this is . . . ,” she said. “This is the surprise, Sally, the one I told you I would . . . oh my, oh dear, a surprise it surely is, but not of the kind I wanted!”

“Allow me,” said Kidlington, “to rescue this unforeseen moment, if I may. Sally, we must thank our mutual benefactress, Mrs. Sedgewick, for her hospitality. She invited, I accepted, and here I am.”

He stepped forward and took one of Sally’s nerveless hands, raised it to his lips and left the faintest of kisses before releasing it.

“At your service,” he said.

Still Sally said no word. A wave coursed through her entire body, starting with the impression of Kidlington’s lips on her hand.

Reglum felt that tremor. Tightening his grip on her shoulders, he half-stepped forward, extended his free hand to Kidlington and said,

“I am Reglum Bammary.”

Kidlington took Bammary’s hand, shook it once, twice, and then released.

“James Kidlington, your humble servant, sir,” said Kidlington, raising one eyebrow. “Mrs. Sedgewick has spoken of you. A member of our Anglo-Indian elite I gather, a scion of the John Company.”

Reglum neither nodded nor spoke.

“Buttons and beeswax!” broke in Barnabas. “James! James Kidlington, here in London, free and knotless. Well, boy, out with it, tell us your story! Wait, ho, Sanford . . . someone get Sanford, he must hear this as well!”

Kidlington told them a version of events, abridging it severely. He did not mention the angular gentlemen at the Admiralty at all.

Sally heard none of it.

“James,” she thought. “I hate you. Hate. Leave. Leave now. Why? Oh James. Not you, James. A wind. Wind in my heart, a storm. Oh Goddess, I love this man. Please, make him leave. Now. Make him. . . . Oh James, what did they do to you? In that place. Australia! As bad as the. . . . Jambres would understand. He has been in such chambers as you. No, no. Reglum! (—) Help me. Reglum (—), dear sweet Reglum. By my side. Always steady. We read Akenside together, we do. ‘Inspire attentive fancy,’ you like that line, my Reglum. ‘the lark cheers warbling,’ oh, ‘whose daring thoughts range the full orb of being, . . . the radiant visions,’ . . . I cannot remember more . . . ’the radiant visions where they rise’ . . . something, ‘through the gates of morn, to lead the train of Phoebus’ . . . But no more. . . . James (—) is back from the dead . . . a revenant. Flee him, flee him. . . Mother, mother, Saints Macrina, Adelsina . . . help me: I need James . . . but he will devour me. . . . Saint Morgaine . . . And there’s Reglum . . . who fought with us in Yount. . . . He loves Tom and Afsana. . . . He. . . . Oh, the Fraulein: . . . Reglum tried to help. . . . And with Dorentius too. . . . I. . . . Tom! You know me best of all. . . . What do I do? . . . Are you alive or dead, yourself? What of Afsana? . . . Death, death, death. . . . Dear Uncle . . . and best of Sanfords. . . . You know . . . you know me from my acornage. . . . Save me. . . . Now I am ruined, my love all unfenced. . . . Fly, fly, all of us, from . . .”

“. . . doom,” finished Kidlington. “An escape from doom, but perhaps God and the Devil conspired to bring me to this pass . . . A colossal jest, I just wonder who gets to laugh in the end?”

The circle of listeners had grown, including now many who had no deep connection to the McDoons. Kidlington’s tale being as dashing and improbable as any of the adventures they had sung earlier in the evening, and his manner of telling it so bold yet self-deprecating, the audience was moved to clap and cheer at the story’s conclusion.

“Why, Sally, you cry,” said Mrs. Sedgewick. “I hope you are moved by something other than melancholy? Oh dear, oh dear, I thought . . . from how you spoke in your letters from the Cape . . . about . . . Please, I did not mean to startle you with Mr. Kidlington, only to, oh foolish me, appeal to your finer sentiments. . . .”

Mrs. Sedgewick petered out. Her husband’s smile was thin (“dearest dove, look what your cogibundity has resulted in now,” he thought). Sanford studied Kidlington carefully.

“Uncle,” said Sally. “I fear it is late. . . Please take me home. Reglum, Mr. Sanford. “

Kidlington, without even the shadow of a smile on his face, addressed himself to Sally.

“Miss Sarah,” he said, his voice low and, if one were standing very close to hear, chafed as if with a surge of emotion barely restrained. “I—and you must know this, Sally—I truly did not mean to alarm you. My way back here has been strenuous, unanticipated, wholly in the hands of a capricious deity. . . . My pardon, Mr. Bammary, I do not mean to intrude. . . . Clearly my presence is not pleasant to you, so I will withdraw and not trouble you further. Good evening, and also to you Mr. McDoon, Mr. Sanford . . . and to you, Mr. Bammary.”

The party continued its vivacious course, all the more so for the many who believed the episode with Mr. Kidlington to be just another of the eccentric entertainments planned by Mrs. Sedgewick, but a tumultuous pall had settled upon the McDoons, who made to leave just minutes after James’s departure.

“Sally, sweet friend, I miscalculated and I am heartily sorry for that,” whispered Mrs. Sedgewick.

“You could not know,” said Sally. “At least, not in full.”

The McDoons left. No one—not the McDoon party, not the Sedgewicks—noticed that, silent on the periphery of the audience in the entrance hall, Maggie had stood listening to every word of the exchange with Kidlington. Late into the night, as she washed dishes in the kitchen long after all the guests had left and the Sedgewicks retired to bed, Maggie mulled the tale told by Kidlington. Mostly she considered what she felt was missing in what she had heard.

“
Chi di
,” she murmured to herself, all alone except for the battery of pans and utensils. “Kidlington is a puzzle—there’s a much larger story just below the surface of his fine words. I sense the mark of the Owl on him, and also something else. The McDoon woman, she too is full of mystery—I know her, I think. She is the white one who sings.”

The lone gas-light sputtered. Maggie looked at her face, distorted and blurred, in the depths of a copper pot.

“Tonight were many meetings, not all of them acknowledged by those who met,
selah
,” she yawned. “Bammary is no Indian, that I would wager. Mrs. Sedgewick all out of words—a rare thing, never saw that before. Her husband, the little . . .”

Maggie jabbed at the bottom of the pot.

“. . . the
fat
little
weasel
, oh yes, he sees much more than he says, or says much but never about the things he wants to hide.”

Dawn was not far off when Maggie finished. The four hours of sleep she would be allowed were all the more precious for being so few.

“Sally is the girl, the one with the cat, the golden cat in the window,” she said just before sleep came. “One of the six I need, the engine needs—with me, that’s seven. ‘For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.’ Oh Mama, the Book speaks truth exactly. And we women, we must be as strong as elephants.”

“Buttons and beeswax,” said Barnabas. “That was a right ra-tat-too last night, meeting Kidlington like that! I don’t think I could take two such blows in a lifetime.”

Barnabas sat with Sanford in the partners’ room in the house on Mincing Lane, taking tea on the afternoon after the party at the Sedgewicks. Everyone had slept late. No one had seen Sally yet, though the Cook had been up to the attic room and left a tray of tea and buttered buns.

“Is Sally going to be alright, do you think?” said Barnabas.

“She will withstand the initial shock,” said Sanford. “More lasting effects, of that we cannot yet say.”

“Hmmm, I fear you are correct, old friend,” said Barnabas, helping himself to another cone of sugar for his tea.

The two sat for a while in the wonted silence of partners, punctuated by the clinks of spoons on teacups and the impartial ticking of the clock on the mantlepiece. Barnabas savoured the smell of the sandalwood box, and let his sight roam over the prints of Rodney defeating the French and of Diana pursuing Actaeon. Sanford looked at the prints of the East Indiamen submerging, reassuring himself that no such shipwreck was imminent for McDoon & Co. Yikes—ageless hound, who seemingly had not moved in all the days and months of their absence—slept by the fireplace, snoring slightly. (Chock the parrot had died while the McDoons had been in Yount). All was as it should be in the house with the blue door and dolphin-knocker on Mincing Lane.

The clock chimed four, echoed at various distances by church bells around the City.