Dan Simmons - Drood

Kate waved her hand in a rather crudely dismissive manner. “Not at all, Wilkie. I happen to know that Father had reserved that honour for his dear friend Mr Fields, and that he—Father—was shocked when you came down to the library with him. But he could hardly tell you that it was a closed reading, as it was meant to be.”

Now I was hurt. I tried to make allowances for the fact that Kate was clearly inebriated. Still trying to sound pleasant, even slightly amused, I said, “Well, why then did he invite me for that weekend, Katey?”

“Because Charles—your brother, my husband—has been deeply upset in the estrangement between you and Father,” she said briskly. “Father believed that a weekend at Gad’s Hill would quell some of the rumours of that estrangement and cheer Charles up a bit. Alas, it did neither.”

“There has been no estrangement, Katey.”

“Oh, posh!” she said, waving her fingers again. “Do you think I do not see the truth, Wilkie? Your friendship with Father has all but ended, and no one, in or out of the family, is quite sure why.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I sipped my brandy and said nothing. The minute hand on the loudly ticking clock on the mantel crept far too slowly towards midnight.

I almost jumped when Katey suddenly said, “You have heard the rumours, I am sure, that I have taken lovers?”

“I certainly have not! ” I said. But, of course, I had—in my club and elsewhere.

“The rumours are true,” said Katey. “I have tried to take lovers… even Percy Fitzgerald before he married that simpering little charmer of his, all dimples and bosoms and no brains.”

I stood and set down my glass. “Mrs Collins,” I said formally, wondering at how strange it was that another woman now took my mother’s name and title, “we have both, perhaps, celebrated with this wonderful wine and brandy a bit too much. As Charles’s brother—and I love him very much—there are things I should not hear.”

She laughed and waved her fingers again. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Wilkie, sit down. Sit down! That’s a good boy. You look so silly when you play at being outraged. Charles knows that I have taken lovers and he knows why . Do you? ”

I considered leaving without a word but instead sat down miserably. She had tried once before at Gad’s Hill, you might remember, to bring up this rumour that my brother had never consummated their marriage. I had changed the subject then. Now all I could do was look away from her.

She patted my hands as they sat folded on my lap. “Poor dear,” she said. I thought she was speaking of me, but she was not. “It is not Charley’s fault. Not really. Charles is weak in many ways. My father… well, you know Father. Even while dying—and he is dying, Wilkie, of some affliction none of us can understand, not even Dr Beard—but even while dying, he remains strong. For himself. For everyone. It is why he cannot abide the sight of your brother at his breakfast or dining table. Father has always abhorred weakness. This is why I did not allow you to finish that pitiful proposal of marriage, to become effective only after Charles is dead, of course, which you made on the night of… that woman in your life’s… marriage.”

I stood again. “I really must go, Kate. And you should go up and look in on your husband before midnight. He may need your help. I wish both of you the best of new years.”

She stood but did not move from the parlour as I went into the foyer and put on my coat and hat and muffler and found my stick. Their only servant had left after making dinner.

I went to the parlour doorway, touched the brim of my hat, and said, “Goodnight, Mrs Collins. I thank you for a lovely dinner and the excellent brandy.”

Katey’s eyes were closed and her long fingers were touching the arm of the sofa to keep her steady as she said, “You’ll be back, Wilkie Collins. I know you. When Charley’s in his grave, you’ll be back before his corpse is cold. You’ll be back like a hound—like Father’s old Irish bloodhound, Sultan—baying after me as if I were a bitch in heat.”

I touched my hat brim again and stumbled in my rush to escape out into the night.

It was very cold but there were no clouds. The stars were terribly bright. My polished boots sounded very loud as they crunched on the remainder of the week’s snow on pavement and cobblestones. I decided to walk all the way home.

The bells at midnight surprised me. All over London, the church bells and city bells were ringing in the New Year. I heard a few distant voices crying out in drunken celebration and somewhere, far away towards the river, something that sounded like a musket being fired.

My face suddenly felt cold despite the muffler and when I raised my gloved hands to my cheek, I was astonished to find that I had been weeping.

DICKENS’S FIRST READING in his new and final series of London readings was at St James’s Hall on the evening of 11 January. The plan for the rest of that month was for him to read twice a week—on Tuesdays and Fridays—and then once a week after that until the series was to be completed on 15 March.

Frank Beard and his other physicians were totally opposed to these readings, of course, and even more opposed to Dickens’s making the frequent voyages into town by rail. To appease them, Dickens rented the Miller Gibson house at 5 Hyde Park Place (just opposite the Marble Arch) from January to the first of June, although he again told everyone he had done this so that his daughter Mary would have a local place to stay, as she became busier in society that winter and spring.

With Dickens in London most of the time, one would think that he and I would have crossed paths frequently as in the old days, but when he was not reading he was working on his book, and I continued working on mine.

Frank Beard had asked me if I might join Charley Dickens and him on nightly attendance at the Inimitable’s readings, but I declined for reasons of both work and my own health. Beard was there every night in case of emergency and he admitted to me that he was actively worried that Dickens might die on stage. That night of the first performance, Frank had said to Charley, “I have had some steps put up at the side of the platform. You must be there every night, and if you see your father falter in the least, you must run and catch him and bring him off to me, or, by Heaven, he’ll die before them all.”

Dickens did not die that first night.

He read from David Copperfield and the ever-popular Trial from Pickwick, and the evening, according to his own later accounts, “went with the greatest brilliancy.” But afterwards, with the Inimitable collapsed on his sofa in his dressing room, Beard found that Dickens’s pulse had gone from its normal 72 to 95.

And it continued to rise during and after each subsequent performance.

Dickens had scheduled two of his performances for afternoons and even one in the morning after a request for that hour from actors and actresses who wished to see him read but who could not come later in the day or evening. It was at this unusual morning reading on 21 January, with the seats filled with tittering and chattering young actresses, that Dickens first did the Murder reading again. Several of the periwinkles fainted, more had to be helped out, and even some of the actors in the audience cried out in alarm.

Dickens was too exhausted afterwards to show his usual delight at such a response. Beard later told me that the author’s pulse that morning, in mere anticipation of Nancy’s Murder, had risen to 90 and after the performance, with Dickens prostrated on the sofa and unable to get his breath back—“He was panting like a dying man” were Beard’s precise words to me—the Inimitable’s pulse was at 112 and even fifteen minutes later had dropped only to 100.