"Why?" Nora was interested now, despite herself. "What ought you to be doing?"
Arabella smiled, the same slightly pitying smile Charity had used on John. "It took me so long to understand, I cannot blame you for not seeing it at once. But do you not grasp the implications of what I've been saying? That girls go into the 'trade' rather than starve. That it is no pleasure to them, and for the most part they remain undebauched and often remarkably pious. That most of them leave as soon as they have acquired a small capital or a husband. That by far the largest traffic is with respectable men of some wealth and some position in society. That, by my rough estimate, between four and five thousand pounds is paid each night for this trade in Bristol alone! Is not the answer plain to you now?"
Nora shook her head. "Things have always been so, I suppose."
Arabella nodded, pulling a sarcastic smile. "Who says these girls are unemployable? Who says they may work only in the most menial occupations and for wages that force them into at least part-time prostitution? Is it not the very same people who then avail themselves of these girls?"
Nora drew in her breath sharply. But to her surprise all the energy suddenly drained out of Arabella. She slumped on the guard rail, as dejected as Nora had ever seen her. "You are shocked," she said glumly. "And you are right. What do I now do? If I go on rescuing two dozen a year, I do as much good as trying to empty the city cesspit with a thimble. If I do as my conscience dictates, and carry the battle into the enemy's camp…" She sighed. "I keep thinking—five thousand pounds a night. It's something like ten million pounds a year over the whole of England."
"You'd be mad," Nora said at once. "That is industry on the scale of the railways."
"I would be mad," Arabella echoed. Nora just caught the hint of an impish gleam in her eyes, quickly effaced. "I cannot imagine why I am so strongly impelled in that direction. To channel away the money now reserved by men for their vicious pleasure and to apply it directly to improving the lot of womankind in general. To raise a new standard of chastity among men and a new sense of dignity among women. How do I do that!"
"Through the church?" Nora suggested.
Arabella did not answer.
"Or have you tried that already?"
"The church, I fear, is prepared to offer every assistance short of actual help," she replied. Then, after a further pause, she added, "In any case, I have the strongest possible reasons for not approaching the Reverend Wicks."
"Oh. I see."
"Yes, I fear so. You see how wide and deep this corruption is."
"What will you do?"
"Nothing—for the moment. Except to think and to pray. It is not something to be ventured lightly, is it?" She smiled at last, and the smile turned hard as if she already sensed some gain. "But I know beyond any possibility of doubt that the regulation and abolition of this traffic is not to be gained by the regulation of its female parties. They are its victims, not its causes."
"It is certainly not something to be ventured lightly—nor alone."
"Oh, but I am not alone. Sarah will always be there, managing the Refuge—and in time we may start several. And there is Charity too."
"Really?"
"I know she is now Sarah's maid, but it is only so she may have an honest calling should the need arise. But that girl has a brain, I tell you. It was she who, by her quiet insistence on the truth—and by her refusal to bow to my prejudices— unclouded my eyes. I would not contemplate such a struggle without her." She smiled timidly at Nora. "She has such determination, do you know whom she sometimes reminds me of?"
"That person you glimpse in your mirror?" Nora smiled.
"No. Oh, no! She reminds me of Mr. Stevenson. Though with all those differences of modesty and respectfulness that her sex and station demand, nevertheless there is that same unblinking, unshakeable determination at the heart of her."
"She must be remarkable."
"She is. She is."
Nora glanced around to see John striding toward them from the nave. "Come on. Come on," he said fussily. "Even the Rodets have done here."
They looked about themselves and found the Rodets had indeed left. "It's going to be hopeless trying all to keep together," Nora said. "I want to show Arabella and Mr. Thornton something—and you too. Something Roxby and I found."
Then she had to explain to Arabella who Roxby was. And then they found Walter, taking down the address of the Dr. Gray who was exhibiting a hollow walking stick that would, when tipped up, disgorge medicines, bandages, and an enema. "Could be very useful in out-of-the way places, that," he said.
"Oh, come on," Nora said. "I want to show you a sculptured chimney piece carved by Dighton for Preston Hall. I won't give you my opinion until I've heard yours."
"Preston Hall?" John said. "Betts's new place?"
"Yes." Nora explained to Arabella that this was the E.L. Betts who often partnered Henry Morton Peto, the great rival to Stevenson's. He was building a rather dull but substantial and costly mansion in the Elizabethan style down at Aylesford in Kent; and this was a chimney piece for it. Roxby had liked it for its honesty.
"Yes," John said dubiously when he saw it. "The word 'honesty' in Roxby's mouth is what most of us common inartistic folk call plain and clumsy."
The others agreed. Nora felt no inclination to defend Roxby's opinion. Rodie was especially scornful.
"Barbare!"
she said. The chimney piece featured two of Chaucer's heroines, Dorigene and Griselda (as the carver spelled them). The poet himself stared out through those sightless, featureless eyes so beloved of sculptors. The motto carved behind each lady explained her principal characteristic. "Dorigene is virtuous," declared the left half. "Griselda is patient," answered the right.
"It must cost quite a bit," Walter said. "Handcarving the entire thing like that."
"Aye!" John spoke in oafish imitation of a rural bumpkin, up for the Exhibition. "When I clap me een on yon, I think theer must be money in t'railroads, see thee. More nor what there be in kine, do'st reckon?"
Even the Rodets laughed. "He has
fantasie
, Monsieur Jean!" Rodie said.
"Nora," Sarah asked her as they left, "do you remember who Dorigen and Grisilda were?"
Nora smiled. Ten or so years ago, when they had first met at the Tabard, Sarah had been the maid in charge of the Pilgrims' Hall, where John and Nora had slept. Sarah had beguiled away that evening for Nora by retelling some of the Canterbury Tales. "Dorigen was the virtuous wife in the Franklin's Tale," Nora said. "And Grisilda was the patient charcoal burner's daughter who married Lord Walter in the Clerk's Tale."
Sarah was impressed. "Incredible!" she said.
"Not really." Nora laughed. "I was rereading it last month, after I first saw this chimney piece."
John and Walter were last to leave. "They're a bit like Mrs. Cornelius and Mrs. Thornton, aren't they," John said solemnly, taking a final look at the carvings.
Walter made a noncommittal noise, like a man being magnanimous about not disagreeing.
On their way out of that section, they passed a glass case displaying the anatomical carvings in ivory by James Gordon of Park Street, Bristol. Charity gave a little cry of recognition and called John over.
"When you and Mr. Thornton were in that place seeing that man, sir, while I was waiting in that cab outside, I got out for a stroll. And this very model was in one of the windows. And now here it is here!"
"What do you remember of it?" he asked.
She gave a shy little laugh and looked down. "I remember thinking, looking at him"—she nodded at the model—"thinking, 'I know how you feel, mister!'"
"And now? Do you feel that now?"
She looked up then, straight at him, with her warm turquoise eyes. "Not a bit of it, sir."
"I am glad." He gripped her arm lightly to reinforce his words and steered her back toward the others.
The effect she had on him was most disturbing. He was either going to have to stay away entirely from her and Sarah, until this ridiculous feeling died of starvation, or grasp the nettle and see her whenever possible, until familiarity killed it. To be now, in middle age and the prime of his life, such a prisoner of his youthful reflexes was absurd.
At lunchtime, a lady walked through the central area wearing bloomers. It caused almost as much sensation as the mysterious collapse of the curtain around the
Greek Slave.
Rodie once again used the word
barbare.
"Surely," Walter said, "one of the least elegant female costumes in all of history."
Everyone agreed they were disgraceful, though Arabella privately applauded the fact that bloomers (being a sort of feminine version of a gentleman's inexpressibles) put a barrier between the world and the—the fleshy part of the thigh; they were from that point of view a more moral garment.
After lunch, the ladies and the gentlemen made their separate ways around the Exhibition, which Nora had by now come to look on almost as a second home. Arabella and Sarah, helped from time to time by suggestions from Charity, made notes of the exhibits that would be most uplifting for the penitent girls to view.
Rodet, guided by John and Walter, spent the afternoon looking at what he had really come to see—the iron- and steel-working machinery: machines for grinding, milling, planing, boring, routing, forming, pressing, tempering, moulding, forging, extruding, edging, chasing, turning, riveting, welding, sweating, cutting, blooming, drawing, rolling, figuring, lapping, sleeving, bending…it was all there, the skill and ingenuity of the world. And Rodet went through it exhaustively, putting one or two or (his equivalent of the grand medal of honour) three asterisks against the catalogue listings of the machines he considered the best. John, without referring to notes or catalogue, told him the characteristics of each machine they passed.
They all stayed until the Exhibition closed for the day, at half past seven, and then went back for supper at Maran Hill. As they drove off to the station in their small fleet of cabs, Rodet looked back at the Crystal Palace and nodded judiciously. "It's good," he said. "It's the best."
John looked out of the window too, knowing he would not go back until the presentations and the closing dinners. Of all the judgements he had heard and read, he thought Rodet's would be hard to excel for its truth and brevity.
In the cab behind, Nora was telling Rodie and Nanette that the Exhibition would make a surplus of a quarter of a million pounds.
In the cab behind that, while Arabella and Sarah compared notes and came to their final conclusions, Walter sat happily back, his eyes closed, recalling a dimly lit but ever-to-be-treasured glimpse of an ample, inviting, supple, youthful, female, marble, bottom.
The Great Exhibition had fulfilled all its promise: something for everyone.
Chapter 59
When Nora awoke at Thorpe Old Manor, that first morning of their visit, she knew, even before she opened her eyes, that John had left their bed. She got up and went over to the window, pulling on her dressing gown as she went; a glance through his dressing-room door showed that he had already dressed, for his nightshirt lay discarded on the floor. She felt on top of the world. Last night they had made the most miraculous love and she always felt a hundred and ninety-nine per cent next day; but it was unusual for John to rise so early after that. She was puzzled.
She saw him at once, standing among the already fading roses, lost in thought. He was hatless. She knew, despite his apparent concentration, that he was not looking at the flowers—not even at the one he was shredding, petal by petal… she loves me…she loves me not…she loves me…
The sun was stealing up over the old defensive wall, shortening its shadow on the grass, gilding him from the shoulders up. He had developed a bald patch! How seldom she saw the top of his head.
He plucked the last petal and let it drop. He looked blankly at the remnant in his hand.
She flung wide the casement, making him look up. "Well? Does she or doesn't she?" she called softly.
He grinned. "Come down and tell me," he said.
"Is it warm?"
"I'll make sure of it."
She left the window open and, slipping on her canvas shoes, tripped lightly down the stair, surprising one of the maids at her dusting. When she reached the garden he was nowhere to be seen.
But there was only one possible hiding place—the old watchtower—unless he had run around to the stables. With all the time in the world, she stooped to collect the petals he had scattered. When she straightened again she saw him on the very top of the tower, his back to her, looking out over Painslack Dikes and the southern wold.
A thin skein of peach-coloured cirrhus spanned the heavens in a long, broken streak from north to south; there was no other cloud and the sky was already deep azure. She ran up the steps to join him. For a while they stood, side by side, not touching, not looking at each other. It was warm up there in the sun.
The trees and the golden corn, motionless and heavy in the quiet air, said it was summer still. But that very fullness of the woods and fields, their silence, and the nighttime chill that clung about the stones, spoke of a season on the turn; it looked ahead to the autumn and the days drawing in. A sense of loss was there.
"What will we do when there's no Exhibition?" she joked.
He laughed silently, the air whistling in his nostrils. "You always get the questions right," he said.