Conan Doyle sat in stunned silence, heart skipping, brain bubbling over with thoughts he could no longer suppress. He had great affection for his wife. He could never abandon Touie, no matter what. But for years they had lived more like brother and sister. He was a physical man and longed for passion and the sensual pleasures of romance. He could, as many gentlemen did, visit one of the high-class “introduction” houses scattered about London. Touie had as much as given her permission, albeit obliquely. However, as a physician, Conan Doyle worried too much about the ravages of syphilis to risk it. But now, Wilde’s confession seemed to give him tacit approval to seek a paramour. What if he pursued happiness with Jean Leckie — discreetly? Would society condemn him for it? Could he ever be like Oscar? Could he not care what the world thought of him?
Wilde used the opportunity to light up an opium-tipped cigarette. He lowered the window to toss the match out, allowing a chill tendril of fog to snake in through the open window and coil above their heads like a question mark. With his next breath, he blew it to atoms by exhaling a stream of his own narcotic fog.
Conan Doyle’s brooding suddenly erupted in an outburst of honesty, things he had not allowed himself up until now to say aloud, to even think. “I, too, have something to share. I confess I find myself embroiled in the moral crisis of a lifetime.”
Wilde sniffed at the comment. “Moral crisis? I suffer those daily. But please, do go on, it sounds so much more interesting than what I was about to say.”
“I’m sure you can guess what I hint at.”
“The pulchritudinous Miss Leckie?”
Conan Doyle nodded grimly.
“But I do not see the cause of your dilemma.”
“Although I have only known Jean scarcely two days, she has given me certain signs of encouragement — I think you know what I mean — and I believe that something could well come of it.”
“I am listening.”
“You know that Touie has had the consumption for years. By now the disease is far advanced. Every morning I am relieved to awaken and find that she still draws breath…” He trailed off as his throat began to constrict. He swallowed his sorrow and continued. “I know the inevitable will happen. Perhaps soon. Perhaps not so soon. But what am I to do? I made a vow on our wedding day and I must remain true to that vow. And yet I have feelings for Miss Leckie. Powerful feelings. She is possessed of great beauty and a keen intellect. Jean is the type of woman one is lucky to encounter once in a lifetime. But I am morally forbidden from pressing my suit. What am I to do, Oscar? I feel as though my soul is torn apart.”
His friend remained sequestered behind the flaring orange coal of his opium cigarette for a moment and then spoke in a low and serious voice: “You must follow the Wildean Maxim.”
“And what is that?”
“I don’t know. I just made it up. There is no Wildean Maxim. But if there were, it would be this: ‘Do whatsoever makes you happy.’”
“That’s hardly profound.”
“True, but it has worked for me thus far.”
Abruptly, the carriage rumbled to a standstill and swayed violently as the driver clambered down. He appeared at the window and Wilde drew down the glass. Gibson tugged loose the muffler that had been masking his nose and mouth and coughed up a plug of fog before he could speak.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, master, but the fog’s thick as treacle and I can’t see no further than the horses’ snouts. All this while I been looking for Albemarle Street, only I can’t seem to find it. I’m sorry, sir, but I reckon we’re lost.”
Wilde shook his head calmly. “You misunderstand, Gibson, we are not lost. Oscar Wilde is never lost. We have merely misplaced London.”
“Well, that’s as may be, sir, but if you wish to proceed, I must ask that you and the doctor step down and walk ahead of the carriage.”
Wilde answered the request with a groan.
If the Irishman had reason to complain about the fog while he rode inside the carriage, now as the pair of them trudged the gleaming cobbles ahead of the carriage, a glowing lantern swinging in each man’s grip, he had real reason to complain. The fog was at once chillingly cold while simultaneously suspended with hot particles of ash and scorching embers. Even with their noses and mouths muffled beneath scarves, they wheezed and choked on the stifling air. The fog pumiced their faces raw. Soot sifted down from the skies above, speckling their white shirt collars and cuffs with greasy black smudges — a rain of filth commonly referred to as “the blacks.”
“London is transmuted into Hades and the Thames its Lethe,” Wilde moaned. “If we meet a large red fellow coming in the opposite direction, do not hail him. It will likely be Mephistopheles making the rounds of his kingdom.”
“Do we even know what street we’re on?” Conan Doyle called up to the driver.
“Piccadilly, sir,” Gibson called back. “Or, at least… I hope we are.”
Wilde peered skeptically at the torn-paper silhouettes of trees looming at the edges of the streetlamp’s glow. “Unless the Ritz has been demolished to make way for a forest, I would say yonder lies Green Park. Which suggests that we have overshot Albemarle Street by a considerable—”
“Shush!” Conan Doyle urged, and grabbed one of the horses’ bridles and jerked so that the carriage rumbled to a halt. “Listen. What’s that noise?”
From the roiling fog ahead they heard a faint sound, growing more audible by the moment: wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…
Two glowing orbs appeared in the fog ahead. At first Conan Doyle thought they were gas lamps, but as their perspective changed, it became clear the lights were floating toward them, accompanied by that noise: wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…
Conan Doyle glanced at his friend, who was staring into the fog with a gaze of dread fixity. “That sound…” Wilde breathed. “The very sound I heard that night.”
Both men froze, listening.
Wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…
The sound grew louder. Nearer.
A dim shape appeared. Fog swirled and something with the shape of a carriage tore loose, the two lights its powerful headlamps.
“It’s a steam car!” Conan Doyle said.
Wheezing and hissing, the vehicle trundled toward them and drew up in a squeal of brakes. The driver, whose features could not be dredged from the shadows beneath his tall top hat, leaned around the flat glass windscreen and bellowed in a thick Yorkshire accent: “Why the bloody hell are you sitting in the middle of the road? Shift, you daft buggers!”
Without thinking to object, the two friends took hold of the horses’ harness and led the carriage to the side of the road.
The way clear, the driver leaned back behind the enormous spoked steering wheel and began snatching at levers protruding through the running boards. The gearbox emitted a teeth-curling succession of graunching noises until the driver happened upon a gear more to his liking. The steam engine picked up revs and the vehicle rumbled past, curling wisps of steam from the boiler mixing with the fog, giving the illusion of a man riding past on a small cloud.
Both men stood watching, openmouthed, as the steam car merged with the fog and vanished, and the wisssshthump… wisssssshthump dwindled from hearing.
“How disturbing,” Wilde said.
“What? Meeting a motor vehicle on such a night?”
Wilde shook his head. “No, the driver was wearing a stovepipe hat.” He threw a doubting look at his companion. “Who wears a stovepipe these days?”