Bruce Alexander - Death of a Colonial

In any case, it would not come to me that day in Bath. The curtains were drawn; my eyes were closed; yet no matter how attentively and expectantly I waited, that which was most desired never happened. I was about to climb out of bed and search for the book I had brought in my bag, when upon the door came a tap-tap-tapping.

I jumped to my clothes and pulled on a shirt as I went to the door. I listened and waited. Again came the light tapping.

“Who is there?” I whispered cautiously.

“It is I, Clarissa.”

“What do you want?”

“Open the door, and I will tell.”

Reluctantly, I drew back the bolt and eased the door open. I noted she was dressed for the street — a cap upon her head and a light cape over her shoulders.

“I cannot sleep,” said she, “as I see you cannot neither. So why do we not go out and take our first look at Bath, just the two of us?”

“But what if they should wake while we are gone? They would doubtless fret, not knowing where we had gone, what we were doing.”

She gave that a moments serious consideration, then brightened quite sudden as a thought occurred to her. “I know! I shall write a note for them explaining our absence and promising our swift return. Then I shall slip it under the door.”

“That should do nicely,” said I. “Go write it, and I shall dress myself. “

Thus a few minutes later, Clarissa and I stepped out the door of the hostelry, sought directions from the porter to the center of town, and set off on our bold exploration of Bath. Though I had made no grand show of it as she had, I was near as curious about the place as Mistress Clarissa Roundtree was, Sir John had made two previous journeys to Bath in 1768, the first year of my association with him. He had attended the funeral of his sister, Sarah, in the spring, in this place; and then, in early fall, returned with Lady Fielding on their wedding trip. On those occasions I had, as a thirteen-year-old, imagined Bath to be a great and shining city, near as large as London yet somehow grander and more beautiful — and, above all, cleaner. (How could it not be with such a name?)

As I walked through it with Clarissa, I discovered that I was both wrong and right in my earlier vision of the place. Certainly, I saw that it was no city but more or less what the porter had called it: a town. Nevertheless, it was by any standard a beautiful town, one in a most inspiring natural setting — green fields, rolling hills, et cetera — to which had been added structures of the most graceful design. London, which could be called beautiful only in parts, had with those parts clearly inspired the whole of construction in Bath. There were squares composed of handsome facades; a crescent of vast planning, not yet fully built; and a grand circus of inspiring size and beauty. And so much of it was clean in the way that only that which has been newly built can be clean.

There was no great difficulty in following the directions we had been given. We proceeded along the broad streets and across the wide squares, inspecting and observing as we went. I believe it was Clarissa who pointed out how greatly the sedan chairs outnumbered coaches and hackney coaches.

“I wonder why that should be,” said I. “You do not see so many of them in London.”

“Which counts greatly in London’s favor,” she declared. “I hold them to be quite the most disgusting means of travel available to man or woman.”

“Sedan chairs? Disgusting? Why indeed would you think that?’’

“Why I think it because that is what they are. They make beasts of burden out of human beings. Is that not disgusting?”

“Well, those who haul them about,” said I, “seem to do so willingly enough.”

“Simply because a slave accepts his slavery does not make him any less a slave.”

At that I laughed in spite of myself. “Clarissa,” said I to her, “where do you get such ideas?”

“Well,” she said with a proud smile — and there she left her response suspended for a moment as she leapt from a pair of snarling, ill-tempered sedan-chair bearers who cursed her for straying in their path. Quite automatically, she stuck her tongue out at them. “Where was I?” said she once they had passed. “Oh, yes! As to where I get such ideas, I got that one from my mother. I only wish she were here with me that she might agree with me now, as you clearly do not. I’m sure she would feel exactly as I do about sedan chairs.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?” (Perhaps I was carrying on a bit pompously.)

“As sure as I can be about anything. She was an intelligent woman, and intelligent people tend to agree with me.”

Though Clarissa Roundtree had put on a few needed pounds since joining Sir John’s household, and had proved herself helpful in many ways, this recalcitrant, overconfident female had in no wise acquired any of the social virtues which I then thought so essential to womanly maturity; particularly, it seemed to me, she was lacking in intellectual modesty. Or perhaps it was willfulness plain and simple that made her behave as she did. Whatever her essential fault, I found her most annoying in argument, though (I was forced to admit) occasionally rather stimulating, as well. All would be well between us, I thought, if she simply did not take on such airs.

Perhaps equally disconcerting was her habit of suddenly descending into childishness when she apparently most wished to be taken in earnest — as indeed she did when sticking out her tongue at the two surly sedan-chair bearers. And just see her now, thought I. Having made what she thinks a telling point against me with her last remark, she skips on ahead like some five-year-old at play, chuckling to herself. I watched her move thus down the broad walkway, a promenade upon which only strollers and ramblers were allowed. Fearing that she might collide with one of these grand gentlemen or elegant ladies, I was about to call after her in caution, when of a sudden she stopped; her attention had been completely captured by the contents of a shop window. It was not till I had come close that I saw that it was a bookshop of some grand size.

I took a place beside Clarissa and stared silently at the crowded display. Though I was an habitué of the Grub Street shops and well known in the few along the Strand, I had never seen quite such profusion in a window before — the stacks of books, the handsome bindings, the buckram and leather, the gilt. Who could tell what treasures were inside?

“Isn’t it all beautiful? Did you ever see the like?” asked Clarissa in a voice quite hushed with awe.

“No, I never did,” said I.

We continued to stand before the big window and stare. From time to time we would call out the title or the author of a book and point out its location. It had become a kind of game we played between us — and indeed I knew of no one else with whom I could have played it. Trying as Clarissa could be, exasperating as she was in argument, self-conceited as she often seemed — nevertheless she was the only one I had ever known who shared my passionate but unspoken wish to read every book ever written. My few years’ seniority and her two years in the poorhouse had given me something of an advantage over her in this regard, yet at the rate she was devouring libraries whole, she would catch me up in no time at all.

‘”Would you like to go inside?” I asked. But, receiving no answer, I turned to her, prepared to pose the question again. What I then saw quite surprised me: There was a tear coursing its way slowly down her cheek; another which had just escaped her eye was about to follow the first.

Aware of my gaze, she glanced in my direction and dabbed at her tears with her sleeve. Then, after snuffling once or twice and clearing her throat, she said: “”I do truly wish my mother were here. She talked so often of this place — of Beau Nash and the Pump Room and …” There was more to be said, I was sure, but there she ended her brief reminiscence and turned back to the window.