Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities

"Now observe, gentlemen," her husband said.

Mrs. Graves took out a second sheet of paper, positioned it beside the other, and continued to write. Both hands moved as one across the paper, somewhat more slowly, but still producing the same uniform strokes.

Finally, Mrs. Graves set her right hand at the left margin of its page and her left at its page's right margin and dashed off the following: " 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov'd I not honor more.' "

The lines under her left hand were a mirror image of those under her right.

"Useless, but amusing," Dr. Graves said with quiet pride, sitting back in his wheeled chair. "And a commendable sentiment."

Evidently Miss Austen had been using her long silence to compose a Remark. Now she cleared her throat for attention and began.

"This is a most interesting form of conversation," she said in a high, strained voice. "As with any meeting among relative strangers-I except yourself and me, my dear Eleanor-our talk has consisted mostly of casting agreeable literary flies at one another. If the prey responds with a reference to the same literary source, or with an otherwise appropriate trope, so much the better; the two are now happy to know that they are two members of the same social tribe. If the response is inappropriate, the caster of the fly must release his victim, not only unharmed but even appeased-by compliments, perhaps, which are as unpatronizing as possible.

"A comfortable game, is it not?"

"Yes," said Mr. Morrow flatly.

Hoare found himself hard put to it to relate the evening's conversation to Miss Austen's description of it. A dreadful silence descended on the group. The lady essayed a plaintive smile; she blushed in unattractive patches. Tears appeared at the corners of each eye, crept down each cheek, and dropped simultaneously into her lap.

The silence was blessedly broken by the appearance of the maid Agnes with a message for Mrs. Graves.

"From Sir Thomas, mum," Agnes said.

Breaking the seal, Mrs. Graves read, and the color, already scant, left her face.

"Sir Thomas informs me that one of my assailants has died without regaining consciousness," she said. She dropped the note on the floor before her. "So I have a man's death on these hands."

"In self-defense, ma'am," Hoare said.

Her husband nodded agreement; Mr. Morrow simply raised his eyebrows as if in surprise at her evident dismay.

"Oh, my dear!" Miss Austen cried, forgetting her disastrous disquisition and going to her hostess with arms outstretched.

"Do not pity me, Jane," Mrs. Graves commanded, sitting erect on her tuffet. "I will not be pitied."

Hoare saw it was time to take his leave, and Mr. Morrow offered to join him. Because of the lateness of the hour, the Canadian said, he, too, would be putting up at the Dish of Sprats instead of making his way home, four miles in the dark, up the steep declivity behind the town. They could share a borrowed lantern to light their way.

Once down the ramp leading from Dr. Graves's front door, Hoare turned once again to whisper another word of thanks to the couple silhouetted in the lamp-lit doorway.

"A remarkable couple, are they not?" Morrow said as they walked down the cobbled slope through a light mist.

"There must be more to their story than we heard tonight," Hoare agreed. "For instance, how does one account for the difference in their ages? What of the bullying brother? And what of the twin stepsons she mentioned to me this afternoon?

"Mind the gutter!" he added as loudly as he could, catching Morrow by the arm.

"Thank you, sir; I nearly misstepped," Morrow said. "As it happens, I can enlighten you, for I have known the Graveses since I settled nearby. Dr. Graves has been kind enough to lend me his gifts as the inventor of novel instruments from time to time.

"As to the difference in their ages, I gather you already knew the present Mrs. Graves is the good doctor's third wife. The two stepsons are not twins but both grown and gone, the one a captain on Sir Arthur Wellesley's staff, presently at Aldershot Barracks, the other at Bethlehem Hospital-an aspiring mad-doctor, mind you, not a patient. The twins to which you referred were born of Dr. Graves' second wife; they were stillborn, and their mother followed them into the grave within hours, I am told."

By now, the pair had arrived at the Dish of Sprats.

"Pray continue, Mr. Morrow," Hoare whispered, "while we share a nightcap at my expense."

"As to the difference in the ages of the two," Morrow said across a decanter of the inn's muddy port, "after burying his second wife, Dr. Graves apparently expected to die a bachelor. By the time I arrived in the neighborhood, he had become quite prosperous and was well-known in his profession. In fact, it was rumored a knighthood was in the offing, in recognition of his having cured one of the King's horrible sons of a severe stammer.

"Well, sir, only a month or two after we had met, as he was returning from the bedside of a patient on a night much like this, his chaise overturned and pinned him under it. By morning, he was paralyzed below the waist.

"As his recovery was prolonged as well as incomplete, several ladies of the neighborhood took it upon themselves to nurse him in turn. Miss Eleanor Swan, as she was then, was one of them. Her all-round competence evidently attracted the old gentleman sufficiently for him to ask her for her hand. They were married from St. Ninian's two years ago August.

"And that, sir, is the 'happy issue out of all their afflictions' for which we should all pray of a Sunday," he concluded.

"Can you conceive what Mrs. Graves' attackers might have been about?" Hoare asked.

Mr. Morrow shrugged elaborately, almost like a Frenchman. "I should suppose it was a chance encounter, sir," he said, "and the two saw what they conceived to be an opportunity to rob a woman alone, and perhaps to ravish her. What else?

"Mrs. Graves is a woman of talent, as you saw this evening, but inclined, perhaps, to an unwomanly rashness of behavior.

Dr. Graves should have forbidden her to go onto the beach without so much as a manservant to protect her."

Privately, Hoare doubted Mrs. Graves would have been so pliant as to obey any strictures by another-even her husband-on her freedom of movement. But he did not express his doubts to Mr. Morrow.

"You journeyed to Weymouth in your own vessel," Morrow said. "You are a yachtsman as well as a sailor, then?"

"Hardly a 'yachtsman,' Mr. Morrow. And my 'yacht' is a mere made-over pinnace with no pretensions except whatever name I choose for her from time to time."

Morrow laughed. "Yes. I hear that in that respect she is as much of a chameleon as she is a pinnace. Inevitable, is she not?"

"Not today, sir. Today she is Inconceivable."

Morrow laughed again. "Did you know I happen to be something of a yachtsman myself?" he said.

Hoare expressed silent surprise.

"Yes. I took it up back in the land of my birth, when I found it convenient to have my own transportation ready to hand for travel between Montreal and Quebec, and up and down the tributaries of the Saint Lawrence, in my fur trading. Now I keep a handy schooner, Marie Claire, here in Weymouth and take her out from time to time when so moved. Her crew are all Jerseymen, and exempt from the press, thanks to the protections Sir Thomas has procured for them.

"Perhaps we should match our craft one day soon. A few guineas on the race?"

"One day, with pleasure, sir," Hoare said.

Upon this, the two parted for the night.

Leaving Dr. Graves's borrowed breeches in the care of the landlord at the Dish of Sprats, Hoare set forth down the High Street in the dawn mist to embark for Portsmouth. The town was in great disarray, with heaps of neglected bricks,