Forrest Leo - The Gentleman

‘Damn!’ cries Lancaster. ‘I haven’t told Mummy I’m back! Savage, hide me!’

He tries to take cover behind me, but the disparity in our sizes makes it quite hopeless. My slight frame only calls attention to his distinctive height and breadth.

An excited ripple runs through the crowd. Dewhurst looks abruptly nervous. ‘It is!’ says someone else. ‘It’s Lancaster!’

‘Ashley Lancaster’s back in Britain!’ cries a third.

The flash-lamps begin exploding all over again.

It is morning. I am woken by birdsong, which is a drawback to living too near a park. I stare at the canopy of my bed, feeling claustrophobic. I have not slept well. I am perturbed. I am also excited. I am still I think thrilled by yesterday’s commotion and the further prospect of imminent adventure. Which is peculiar. I had thought a night of sleep and reflection would cure me of this strange inclining. I am after all not an adventurer of the body: I am a wayfarer of the imagination. But still I find myself roused to the chase.

The remainder of yesterday was spent in a morass of bureaucracy and explanations. As soon as Lancaster and I were identified by Pendergast and the press (who have a keener eye than the police), all charges against us were dropped and profuse apologies were made. There still remained, however, many hours of explanation before Will Kensington’s name was cleared. We had to explain the matter to several commissions, and it was made complicated by the fact that we of necessity had to gloss over a few significant details — for instance, the involvement of the Devil and Vivien’s abduction. There are certain things one simply does not tell the government.*

By the time we made it back to Pocklington Place we were exhausted and discouraged. We had none of us slept in two days, and seemed no closer to launching our rescue expedition. We should have been famished but no one had much of an appetite, which offended Mrs Davis mightily. After a half-hearted attempt at conversation we collapsed into our respective beds.

Every time I began to feel the approach of sleep, however, Vivien’s face drifted unbidden into my restless mind and I was plunged into a fresh whirl of remorse and concern. When at last I drifted off my dreams were troubled. As I stare at my canopy this morning, though, I do not feel tired. I wonder if today I will become a mariner of the air.

I rise and dress and make my way downstairs. As I descend I note that I have not shaved in days. I must do that, when there is time. It would be a shame to rescue my wife looking like a caveman. I think of Will Kensington. I have thought of him often since his ascension. I hope that he had no trouble either with bullets or engineering, and that he was able to put down safely somewhere. I wonder when we will see him again, and hope that it is soon. Yesterday’s delay was unfortunate, and I am eager to be once more upon the trail.

There are muffled voices coming from my study. I open the door and collide with Lancaster, who is exiting hastily. He looks harried.

‘Sorry, old boy,’ I say, ‘I was just—’ Then I see Lizzie and break off.

She is standing in the middle of my study beside a full-length mirror, facing a canvas, holding a brush and that damned wooden board which holds paint, and wearing not a stitch of clothing.*

‘LIZZIE!’ I cry.

‘Good morning, Nellie!’ she says cheerfully, not looking up. ‘Do you like my painting?’

She seems to be making a portrait of herself, by means of the mirror. She glances over her shoulder to observe her reflection, then turns and daubs a few strokes on the canvas.

‘Put. On. Your. Clothes.’

‘Alas, they are covered in paint. Besides, I’m not quite finished.’

From the look of it, she has barely begun. The canvas bears rough lines here and there, and the outline of an hourglass which I am quite certain she made not from her own reflection but from the real thing resting on my desk. On the upper part of the outline are two circles I take to be crude breasts.

‘Then for God’s sake,’ I cry, ‘put on something . A rug, a lampshade, I don’t care. Here.’ I find a blanket on the arm of the sofa and throw it at her head. It tents over her neatly. She burrows out from under it and wraps it around herself, looking at me with deep reproach.

‘Better?’ she says scornfully. ‘I find it astonishing that you call yourself modern men.’

Lancaster is hiding in a corner, facing the wall, hands over his eyes. The backs of his neck and ears are bright red, and he mutters something conciliatory to me which I do not catch and do not care to.

‘Lizzie, you’re a calamity,’ I tell her. ‘You’re indecent.’

‘You won’t let me paint Simmons, you won’t let me paint Ashley, God knows you’d never sit for me, so what am I supposed to do?’ she fires back. ‘I want to learn about painting. I want to learn why for two thousand years and more great artists have painted and sculpted the human body. What is it that they find so fascinating or beautiful or whatever it is they find it? I’m not indecent, Lionel, I’m curious. There’s so much to know, and I want to know it all! Doesn’t it bother you that we know nothing about art? But last night while you were feeling sorry for yourself and despairing over yesterday’s setback, I was reading Tompkins’s books of art history, and do you know what I discovered? I discovered that there was a painter — there have been many painters! — who don’t just explain, but who actually show you how to get to Hell!’

‘I believe I’ve mentioned as much,’ says Lancaster, still facing the wall.

‘Shut up!’ I say to him. I cannot forgive him for seeing Lizzie in a state of undress.

‘But it’s true!’ she says. ‘You silly men don’t understand the half of it! I believe that if we fly into the mouth of a volcano we’ll be directly incinerated — but if we instead—’

‘I’ve decided to kill myself,’ I say abruptly, cutting her off. I am not interested in art. I am interested in the retrieval of my wife. I have been contemplating the matter all night.

‘Lionel!’ reprimands Lizzie — apparently angry not that I might die but that I have interrupted her.

‘All things considered, it seems rather a poor time for it,’ says Lancaster, taking the notion of my suicide in stride. ‘Despair’s fine and all that, but we’ve work to do.’

Neither of them seems to understand me. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I mean, to find Viv. I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems the surest and most expedient manner.’

‘Ah,’ says Lancaster. ‘Well now, that may be. But Lizzie said that she had ideas—’

‘Lizzie stands naked with a paintbrush! I reject her ideas. Give me a bullet.’

Lizzie makes a face at me and flops down on the sofa. Wrapped in the blanket, she looks like a harem girl.

‘You’re serious,’ Lancaster says with surprise and I think a little admiration. I have taken up one of the pistols from our duel and begin to hunt for a spare charge. ‘You want to kill yourself in order to go to Hell to rescue my sister. Savage, that’s a terrible plan!’

‘It truly is,’ says Lizzie.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I snap. ‘Orpheus did it and it worked.’

‘It didn’t, actually,’ she points out.

‘It would have! I won’t look back or do whatever else it is that I’m not supposed to do.’