Dan Simmons - Drood

And, as I spoke, I realised that there was another reason—beyond my need to unburden myself at long last—why I was telling Kate Dickens these things.

Reluctantly, secretly, painfully, I had come to agree with her insensitive father’s prediction that my brother would not be so long for this world. It was true that Charley’s affliction, while sometimes lessening, continued to grow worse in the overall scheme of things. It now felt probable, even to me (his loyal and loving brother), that Charles might be dead in a year or two, and this ageing (she was twenty-eight) but still-attractive woman would be a widow.

Katey showed her own indiscretion by saying, “You would be surprised what Father has had to say about Mrs G—’s marriage.”

“Tell me,” I said and leaned closer.

She poured us each another brandy but shook her head. “It might hurt your feelings.”

“Nonsense. Nothing your father could say would hurt my feelings. He and I have been friends and confidants for far too long. Pray tell me. What did he say about today’s ceremony?”

“Well, he did not say anything to me, of course. But I happened to overhear him say to Aunt Georgina… ‘Wilkie’s affairs defy all prediction. For anything one knows, the whole matrimonial pretence may be a lie of that woman’s, intended to make him marry her, and—contrary to her expectations—breaking down at last.’ ”

I sat stunned. I was hurt. And amazed. Could it be true? Could even the wedding have been another of Caroline’s ploys to trap me into marriage? Was she hoping that I would feel such loss that I would come after her even into Joseph Clow’s household, defying and denying all marriage bonds, and beg her to come back to me… to marry me? My skin rippled with something like revulsion.

Stricken, all I could choke out to Kate Dickens was “Your father is a very wise man.”

Surprisingly—thrillingly—she reached out and squeezed my hand.

Over a third brandy, I heard myself whining to Katey some words that, much later and in a much different context, I would share almost verbatim with Charley himself.

“Kate… do not be too harsh on me. Between my illness and the death of my mother and my loneliness, it has been a terrible year. Seeing Caroline married today, while being strangely satisfying in one respect, was also oddly disturbing. She has, after all, been part of my life for more than fourteen years and part of my household for more than ten. I think, my dear Katey, that a man in my situation is to be pitied. I am not… I have not been for a long time… I am not accustomed to living alone. I’ve been accustomed to having a kind woman there to talk with me, as you are now, Kate… and to take care of me and perhaps to spoil me a bit from time to time. All men enjoy that, but perhaps I more than most. It is difficult for a woman, a wife, such as yourself, to know what it is like for a man to be used always to seeing a pretty creature in his home… someone always nicely dressed, someone always about the room or hovering nearby, bringing a form of light and warmth to an old bachelor’s life… and then, suddenly, for no reason of one’s own, to be left alone as I am now, to be left… out in the cold and the dark.”

Katey was staring at me very intensely. She seemed to have leaned closer to me as I was explaining all this. Her knee under her long green silken dress was only inches from my own. I had the sudden urge to kneel on the floor, throw my head into her lap, and to weep like a child. I was certain at that instant that she would have put her arms around me, would have patted me on my back and head, perhaps even raised my tear-streaked face to her breast.

Instead, I sat there but leaned even closer. “Charley is very ill,” I whispered.

“Yes.” The single syllable seemed to hold no special sadness, only agreement.

“I have also been ill, but my recuperation is assured. My illness is a transient thing. Even now it does not interfere with my faculties or my… needs.”

She looked at me with what I thought was something like a thrilled expectancy.

I then said, softly but urgently, “Kate, I suppose you could not marry a man who had…”

“No, I could not, ” Kate said decisively. She stood.

Reeling in confusion, I stood as well.

Kate called for her maid-servant to bring my coat and stick and hat. I was out on the cold stoop before I could think of anything to say. Even then I could not speak. The door closed with a slam.

I was half a block away, leaning into the cold wind, rain blowing into my face, when I saw Charley on the sidewalk opposite. He hailed me, but I pretended that I had not seen or heard him and ran on quickly, my hand holding the brim of my hat and my forearm hiding my face.

Two blocks farther I hailed a hansom cab and had it take me to Bolsover Street.

Martha R—, with no servants there at that time, opened the door herself. Her unguarded expression showed her true pleasure at seeing me.

That night I impregnated her with our first child.

In November, Dickens previewed his murder in front of an intimate audience of a hundred of his closest friends.

For more than a year now, the Inimitable had been negotiating with Chappell and Company for yet another reading tour—what he called his “farewell series of readings.” Chappell had suggested seventy-five readings, but Dickens—whose illness, weakness, and list of other ailments were increasing almost daily—insisted on a hundred readings for a round sum of £8,000.

His oldest friend, Forster, who had always opposed reading tours for the very real reason that they kept Dickens from writing novels and always left him exhausted, weak, and ill, told the Inimitable flatly that if the author attempted one hundred readings now, in his current condition, it would kill him. Frank Beard and the other doctors whom Dickens had seen more frequently in the past year, fully agreed with Forster. Even Dolby, whose continued presence in Dickens’s life depended totally upon these tours, felt it was a bad idea to enter into one now and a terrible idea to attempt one hundred separate readings.

And no one in Dickens’s circle of family, old friends, physicians, and trusted advisors thought that he should include the Nancy Murder as part of his farewell tour. Some, like Wills and Dolby, simply thought it was far too sensationalist for such an honoured and revered author. Most others, like Beard, Percy Fitzgerald, Forster—and me—were all but certain it would kill him.

Dickens perversely saw the coming exhaustion of travel and performance, not to mention the mental anguish of travelling on railways every day, as (he told Dolby) “a relief to my mind.”

No one understood Dickens’s attitude in this except me. I knew that Charles Dickens was a sort of male succubus —he not only brought hundreds and thousands of people under his personal mesmeric, magnetic control at these readings, but he sucked the energy out of them as he did so. Without this need and ability, I was sure, Dickens would have died of his ailments years ago. He was a vampire and needed public occasions and audiences from which to drain the energy he needed to stagger on another day.

So he and Chappell agreed on his terms of one hundred readings in exchange for £8,000. The Inimitable’s American Tour—which, he had confessed to me, had brought him to the verge of total prostration—had been scheduled for eighty readings but, in the end, reduced to seventy-six because of a few cancellations. It was Katey who had told me (long before our 29 October meeting) that Dickens’s labours in America had brought in total receipts of $228,000 against expenses in that country—mostly travelling, rental of halls, hotels, and a 5 percent commission to the American agents of Ticknor and Fields—of not quite $39,000. Dickens’s preliminary expenses in England had been £614, and, of course, there had been Dolby’s commission of £3,000.