“Only once,” said the sincere old woman. “And from a distance. He was leaving one afternoon last week while I came down the path across the meadow.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Oh… I certainly could not say, Master Wilkie. I just glimpsed a tall, thin man walking away from me down the lane. He dressed very formally but rather—I should be one to speak! — rather in an old-fashioned manner, as the young people would say. He wore a black cut-away and had a top hat on of the older sort, if you understand what I mean.”
“I am not certain I follow your meaning, Mrs Wells,” I said in what I hoped was a steady voice. “How was the top hat old-fashioned?”
“Oh, you know what I mean, Master Wilkie. The sort with a slightly wider brim, a lower crown—more of the kind of riding hat one saw on gentlemen when I was a girl. And quite obviously made of beaver, not silk.”
“Thank you, Mrs Wells,” said Charley.
“Oh… and his veil, of course,” added Mrs Wells. “Even from a distance, I could see the veil. Your mother mentioned it later.”
“Actually, she did not mention it to me,” said Charles. “Why was Dr Ramseys wearing a veil?”
“Because of the burns, of course. Terrible burns, said Harriet… that is, Mrs Collins. Your dear mother. Dr Ramseys did not want to frighten people on the street.”
I turned my head and closed my eyes for a minute. When I opened them, I could see only Mother’s straining face and the gaping, moistureless mouth in which her dry tongue lolled like a misplaced bit of rope. Her bulging white eyes looked like two eggs pressed beneath human eyelids by some terrible exertion of force.
“Mrs Wells,” Charley said softly, “would you be so kind as to go fetch the neighbour boy who sometimes runs errands for Mother? We need to send a telegram to Dr Frank Beard in London. Wilkie shall write it out here and the boy will carrry it.”
“This late, Master Charles? The telegraph office will close in less than an hour.”
“Then we need to hurry, don’t we, Mrs Wells? Thank you for your help. Mother would thank you if she could.”
CAROLINE AND I had parted with harsh words.
Inexplicably, unbelievably, she had asked questions, demanded answers, and created obstacles to my going out the door even after I had shown her the telegram from my brother.
“Where were you last night?” she persisted. “Where did you get those terrible clothes that Agnes burned? What was that awful smell on them? When will you be back from Tunbridge Wells? What shall we do about the dinner party this evening? The theatre tickets? Everyone was counting on…”
“First, take down and throw away these damned garlands,” I snarled. “And have your dinner party. Go to the theatre with all my male friends. It certainly won’t be the first time you’ve entertained and been entertained at my expense when I could not be a part of it.”
“What does that mean, Wilkie? Do you not want me to honour our dinner obligations with your friends? Do you not want me to use those tickets to your play, after you have promised a dozen people that they would see it tonight from the author’s box? What would you have me do?”
“I would have you,” I growled, “go to the Devil.”
Caroline froze in place.
“My mother is dying,” I said flatly and harshly and finally. “And as far as the question of with whom you choose to dine and go to the theatre, you can go with the Devil as far as I am concerned.” I turned the full rage of my countenance on her. “Or with your plumber.”
Still frozen, Caroline G— blushed from her hairline to her bodice. “What… do you mean, Wilkie?”
I threw open the door to the fog and cold and laughed in her face. “You know d— ned well what I mean, my dearest. I mean Mr Joseph Charles Clow, son of the distiller on Avenue Road, one plumber by trade, seducer—or seducee—by avocation. The same Mr Clow whom you secretly fed at my table and with whom you’ve clandestinely met five times since Christmas Day.”
And I went out and slammed the door in her flushed and terrified face.
TUNBRIDGE WELLS HAD BEEN EERILY SILENT and snow covered and filled with disturbingly white, thick fog when Charley arrived in a sleigh to pick me up at the station that afternoon, and it was even more oppressively silent and foggy at ten o’clock that night when a heavily bundled Frank Beard materialised out of the freezing mist from the same sleigh, handled yet again by the always-ill but seemingly indefatigable Charley. I had stayed with Mother and the sleeping Mrs Wells as my brother went to pick up our friend and physician. Dr Eichenbach had long since gone home.
Frank Beard clasped my hand a moment in silent commiseration and proceeded to examine Mother while Charley and I waited in the other room. The fireplace had burned low and we decided not to light other candles or lamps. Mrs Wells slept on the divan in the far corner. Charley and I spoke in whispers.
“She wasn’t like this last week when you saw her last?” I asked.
Charley shook his head. “She complained of aches and pains and her breathing problems.… You know how she goes on, Wilkie… went on… but no, there was no hint of this terrible… whatever it is.”
Beard came out after a while and we woke Mrs Wells for what he had to say.
“Harriet appears to have had a very serious brain haemorrhage,” he said softly. “As you can see, she has lost her ability to speak, her control of voluntary muscles, and—quite possibly—her reason. Her heart also sounds compromised. Physically, she otherwise seems…”
Frank Beard paused and turned towards Mrs Wells. “Has Mrs Collins fallen recently? Injured herself with scissors or a kitchen knife or perhaps even a knitting needle?”
“Absolutely not!” cried the old woman. “Mrs Collins was not so active that any of those things could have happened, Doctor. Nor would I have allowed them to happen. And she would have told me if… No, no, no such injury could have occurred.”
Beard nodded.
“Why do you ask, Frank?” said Charley.
“Your mother has a recent cut here.…” said Beard, touching his diaphragm just beneath the sternum. “It is about two inches wide. Not serious and it is healing, but unusual for a person who has not been…” He shook his head. “But it does not matter. I am certain it has nothing to do with the brain haemorrhage and internal neuralgia that must have afflicted her sometime last night.”
I had been standing, but now my legs went so weak that I had to sit.
“The… prognosis?” asked Charley.
“There is no hope,” Beard said flatly. “The internal neuralgia and obstruction to the brain are too severe. She may regain consciousness—she may even become more clear in her mind before the end—but I am certain that there is no hope. It is just a matter of days or weeks now.”
Mrs Wells made as if to faint, and Charley and Frank helped her back to the divan.
I sat and stared at the fire. It was early afternoon in America. Somewhere comfortable and bright and clean, Charles Dickens was being treated like a king and was preparing for another evening of public adoration. In a recent note that Wills had shared with me, Dickens had written—“People will turn back, turn again and face me, and have a look at me… or will say to one another, ‘Look here! Dickens is coming!’ ” and talked about being recognised every time he rode in a carriage—“… in the railway cars, if I see anybody who clearly wants to speak to me, I usually anticipate the wish by speaking myself.”