Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

She broke off at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. There was a tap on the door, and Mrs Kerridge and Charlie entered.

"I saw him," Charlie said. "I thought he was dead at first, he lay so still, but then I heard his breathing."

"Did he wake?"

"No, madam," Mrs Kerridge said. "The apothecary gave Mr Wavenhoe his draught, and he's sleeping soundly."

Mrs Frant stood up and ran her fingers through the boy's hair. "Then you shall have a holiday for the rest of the afternoon."

"I shall go and see the coaches, Mama."

"Very well. But do not stay too long – it is possible your uncle may wake and call for you."

Soon I was alone again in the long, narrow room. I drank tea and read for upwards of an hour. Then I became restless, and decided to go out to buy tobacco.

I took the front stairs. As I came down the last flight into the marble-floored hall, a door opened and an old man emerged, wheezing with effort, from the room beyond. He was not tall, but he was broad and had once been powerfully built. He had thick black hair streaked with silver and a fleshy face dominated by a great curving nose. He wore a dark blue coat and a showy but dishevelled cravat.

"Ha!" he said as he saw me. "Who are you?"

"My name's Shield, sir."

"And who the devil is Shield?"

"I brought Master Charles from his school. I am an usher there."

"Charlie's bear leader, eh?" He had a rich voice, which he seemed to wrench from deep within his chest. "Thought you were the damned parson for a moment, in that black coat of yours."

I smiled and bowed, taking this for a pleasantry.

The elegant figure of Henry Frant appeared in the doorway behind him.

"Mr Shield," he said. "Good afternoon."

I bowed again. "Your servant, sir."

"Don't know why you and Sophie thought the boy ought to have a tutor," the old man said. "I'll wager he gets enough book-learning at school. They get too much of that already. We're breeding a race of damned milksops."

"Your views on the rearing of the young, sir," Frant observed, "always merit the most profound consideration."

Mr Carswall rested one hand on the newel post, looked back at the rest of us and broke wind. It was curious that this old, infirm man had the power to make one feel a little less substantial than one usually was. Even Henry Frant was diminished by his presence. The old man grunted and, swaying like a tree in a gale, mounted the stairs. Frant nodded at me and strolled across the hall and into another room. I buttoned up my coat, took my hat and gloves and went out into the raw November air.

Albemarle-street was a quiet, sombre place, lying under the shadow of death. The acrid smell of sea coal filled my nostrils. I crossed the road and glanced back at the house. For an instant, I glimpsed the white blur of a face at one of the drawing-room windows on the first floor. Someone had been standing there – staring idly into the street? or watching me? – and had retreated into the room.

I walked rapidly down towards the lights and the bustle. Charlie had said he wanted to watch the coaches, and I knew where he would have gone. During my long convalescence, when I was staying with my aunt, I would sometimes walk to Piccadilly and watch the fast coaches leaving and arriving from the White Horse Cellar. Half the small boys in London, of all conditions, of all ages, laboured under the same compulsion.

I stepped briskly into Piccadilly, dodged across the road, and made my way along the crowded pavement towards a tobacconist's. The shop was full of customers, and it was a quarter of an hour before I emerged with a paper of cigars in my pocket.

A few paces ahead of me walked a couple, arm in arm and muffled against the cold. The man raised his stick and hailed a passing hackney. He helped the lady in, and I think his hand must have brushed against her bosom, though whether on purpose or by accident I could not tell. She turned, half in, half out of the hackney, and tapped him playfully on the cheek in mock reproof. The woman was Mrs Kerridge, and the cheek she tapped had a familiar dusky hue.

"Brewer-street," said Salutation Harmwell, and followed Mrs Kerridge into the coach.

There was nothing suspicious about that, of course, or not then. It was not unusual to see a white-skinned woman arm in arm with a well-set-up blackamoor. Dusky gentlemen were rumoured to have certain advantages when it came to pleasing ladies, advantages denied to the men of other races. But I own I was shocked and a little surprised. Mrs Kerridge had seemed so sober, so prim, so old. Why, I thought to myself, she must be forty if she's a day. Yet when she looked down at Harmwell, her face had been as bright as a girl's at her first ball.

I stared after the hackney, wondering what the pair of them were going to do in Brewer-street and feeling an unaccountable stab of envy. At that moment a hand touched my sleeve. I turned, expecting to see Charlie at my elbow.

"I always said Mrs Kerridge was a deep one," said Flora Carswall. "I believe my cousin sent her on an errand to Russell-square."

I raised my hat and bowed. An abigail in a black cloak hovered a few paces away, her eyes discreetly averted.

"And where are you off to, Mr Shield, on this dreary afternoon?" Miss Carswall asked.

"The White Horse Cellar." It did not seem quite genteel to confess that I had been looking for a tobacconist's. "I believe Charlie may be there."

"You are looking for him?"

"Not really. I am at leisure for an hour or so."

"It is vastly agreeable to see the coaches depart, is it not? All that bustle and excitement, and the thought that one might purchase a ticket, climb aboard and go anywhere, anywhere in the world."

"I was thinking something very similar."

"Most people do, probably. How I hate this place."

I stared at her for an instant. Why should a girl like Flora Carswall dislike a city that could gratify her every whim? I said, "Then for your sake I hope your stay here will be brief."

"That depends on poor Mr Wavenhoe. But it is not being in Town that I dislike – quite the reverse, in fact – but the gloom of Albemarle-street and some of the people one is obliged to meet there." She smiled at me, her outburst apparently forgotten. "I wonder – if you are at leisure, might I request the favour of your company? Then I could send my maid home – the poor girl has a mountain of sewing. I have one or two errands to run; they will not take long."

I could hardly have refused even if I had wanted to. Miss Carswall took my arm and we threaded our way through the crowds down St James's-street. In Pall Mall, she scanned the latest novels in Payne and Foss's for a few minutes and spent rather more time with Messrs Harding, Howell, & Co. The people there made much of her. She bought a pair of gloves, examined some lace newly arrived from Belgium, and inquired after the progress of a hat she was having made for her. She even asked my opinion about whether a certain colour matched her eyes and prettily deferred to my verdict. She was excessively animated; and the longer we were together the more I liked her, and the more I wondered whether our meeting had been coincidental.

On the way back to Piccadilly, neither of us talked much. Once she slipped in the mud, and would have fallen if I had not been there. For a moment her grip tightened on my arm and I saw her looking up at my face. When at last we returned to Albemarle-street, she removed her hand from my arm and we walked side by side but unattached. As we drew near to Mr Wavenhoe's house, she walked more slowly, despite the cold and despite the rain which had begun to fall.

"You have met my father?"

"Yes – as I was leaving the house just now."

"I daresay you thought him a little brusque," she said. "Pray do not answer. Most people do. But I hope you will not allow his manner to offend you. He is naturally choleric, and the gout makes it worse."