“I know your opinions on the subject. What do you think of it being the Alexander Pope translation?”
“That’s an odd one, too, isn’t it, Charles? That’s an odd one. Long out of fashion by that point. Mostly. But it had a small following. Tutors used it. Private tutors.”
Charles’s eyes had not left the volume on the desk in front of him. “A wealthy child around 1830, studying Homer with a private tutor. A name springs to mind…”
Jacob cackled. “Don’t get your hopes up, Charles! But that would be a catch if it were.”
“There is an unreadable signature. I’m going to compare it to a few specimens. And I might run it up to the Library of Congress, to see what they think. It will just be so disappointing when they tell me I’m wrong.”
“Have them call me, and I’ll tell you. I’d look forward to it.”
“I’m always glad to give you something to live for. Except I’m going to run out sooner or later.”
“It’s touch and go, Charles, but this will keep me going for a week or so. And say, what happened to that matchmaker you were after?”
“I met him, Jacob. A very interesting person. The story isn’t over yet, but if you can stay alive for a couple more weeks, I might be able to tell it to you.”
“You’ve been down here a long time,” Dorothy said.
“I’m on the hunt,” Charles said.
She sat beside him, worried. “I hope you haven’t found more secret papers.”
“No!” He had to laugh. “No, dear, not that at all. This is far more interesting.”
“That’s your Odyssey?”
“Literally, and literally literally. And literately. This Odyssey is my odyssey. Come, look at this signature. The first letter. What is it?”
“My first thought was an A, but it isn’t. Maybe a V.”
“Yes! That’s what I think. An expensive leather set, 1830s, that includes Homer in a classic translation that was already out of date. And the letter V. Any guess?”
“No…”
“Possibly a private printing for a child, a student, per Jacob Leather-man. On vellum. Now compare that signature to this.” Regally, he set a paper on the table next to the book, a printed image of a signature. “Do they look the same?”
“I-Charles-it couldn’t be.”
“Do they look the same?” he said again.
“Yes.”
“Exactly the same.” He sighed deeply. “Victoria.”
“I don’t believe it!” Dorothy said. “What are you going to do?”
“Going to do?” Charles laughed. “Just enjoy it as much as I can before I find out I’m wrong.”
“Will you try to get it authenticated?”
“I might. I can call the Library of Congress and ask if they would inspect it.”
“Would the title page have had her name?”
“That would be worth breaking out, don’t you think? Jacob says it would have been done in the 1920s, which would have been about when our seller’s grandfather would have received this as a gift.”
“Would he have done it?”
“I think not. I think it was sold after it was broken. At that point, it was just another book. Now-I wonder whatever became of Victoria’s library?”
“It must still be in England. In a castle or palace.”
“This sounds like a job for Morgan.”
He was up and moving, two steps at a time, with Dorothy far behind.
“Morgan?”
“Yes, Mr. Beale?”
“I am sending you on an odyssey.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Start with Queen Victoria.”
“Not Troy?”
“Start with young Vicky in her schoolroom reading about Troy, her stern classics tutor lecturing her on Homer and the legends of the Greeks.”
Morgan rubbed his hands and grinned. “Yes, sir.”
“And on her desk, a schoolbook fit for a queen, a private printing in deluxe leather and vellum.”
“I can see it,” Morgan said.
“And right beside it are matching volumes.”
“How many?”
Charles squinted. “It’s hard to tell. At least an Iliad. Probably an Aeneid. Possibly others.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But the question is about the Odyssey. Where is that book today?”
“I’ll find it. I’ll start in that schoolroom, and I’ll trace it as far as I can. I’ll find it, sir.”
“Good. I hope, Morgan, that you’ll find it in our basement. And find the others, too, if you can. I think they all want to be back together.”
EVENING
The evening was warm and the windows were open. The breeze, dark and handsome, waltzed with the curtain, showing off its white lace to the whole room. In their chairs, Charles and Dorothy read, the turning pages keeping slow time in a dance of their own.
Until, finally, Dorothy set her book on the table beside her.
“Why are you reading A Separate Peace?” Charles asked.
“I want to decide if Gene meant to do it.”
“If he rocked the branch on purpose?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” she said. “Why did you pick this book for our outing last Friday?”
“It’s about a young man who dies.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” she said again. “Gene resents Finny because he’s athletic and popular, but they’re still friends. At that one moment, though, on the tree branch, somehow Finny falls and breaks his leg, and it isn’t set right, and he doesn’t recover. Then Gene is forced to admit that he might have made Finny fall on purpose. Finny is so upset he runs off and breaks his leg again falling down the staircase. Then he dies during the operation to set it again.”
“Gene didn’t mean for Finny to die. He didn’t know that he would.”
“But Gene never really knows whether he meant for Finny to fall. Charles… what did we mean with William?”
“We didn’t mean for him to die.”
“We resented him.”
“How could we not have?” Charles said, wryly. “We did love him, Dorothy, but you know how difficult he became.”
“Were we glad when he died?”
“You know we weren’t. But where would we be if he hadn’t? Would we be sitting here now? Would we have the shop? We might not. We might have used all our money on legal costs, or we might have had to move somewhere remote to get him away from the city. Of course, I don’t mean that I wouldn’t trade anything to have him back.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Well, then yes, I knew that if I picked that book, an English major would realize what I was saying. So let me know whether Gene did it on purpose or even what that means, and we’ll understand ourselves better for it. That’s what books are supposed to do.”
“Sometimes they explain us too well,” Dorothy said.
“Derek Bastien said once that it was all chemistry, that behavior is just from the way a person’s brain is wired.”
“So why was William’s wired that way?”
“That’s what we don’t know.”
“What did you say to Derek?”
“I told him chemistry couldn’t explain anything as complex as a human soul. Or as sublime.”
“Ah, de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. Wonderful, Charles.”
“You are expanding your range, Derek.”
“Quite. What the Enlightenment sowed, the nineteenth century will now reap.”
“But they will still bake their own unique loaf from it.”
“You don’t let anyone off the hook, do you, Charles?”
“We’re all responsible for our own actions, Derek. De Tocqueville had America and France to compare. They both grew out of the Enlightenment, but very differently.”
“And he was hardly the first-or the last-to compare them. Here is a challenge, Charles. Think of an original comparison.”
“Between France and America?”
“In this period, yes. One that will surprise me.”
“You never let me off the hook, do you, Derek? All right, I believe one springs to mind. John Adams and Lamoignon-Malesherbes.”
“Malesherbes-he defended Louis the Sixteenth at his trial in the National Assembly, didn’t he?”
“To no avail, of course. Compare him to Adams, who defended the British soldiers at the Boston Massacre, and got them acquitted.”