“How very intriguing,” I said. “Now, really I think it is high time that you showed this singular young lady in, Mrs Scott. Don’t you?”
Given the consequences of so long and enforced a solitude, my imagination had, naturally enough, begun by this time to adopt the most fantastic postures. My breathing quickened and a raft of the most vivid and diverting imagery rose up before me. Those moments in which I was left alone in the study as Mrs Scott bustled in the hallways beyond were especially interminable.
Nonetheless (and how I find my hand a-trembling as I consign these thoughts to this secret depository) their sequel was to surpass even the most idealistic of my fancies. For, a minute or so later, the housekeeper returned and in her wake was a young woman of the rarest and most striking aspect, brunette, not more than five and twenty and in possession of a truly wonderful silhouette.
Her gaze met mine without the least sign of nervousness. She was dressed in a demure, even a somewhat antiquated fashion and her voice was gentle yet determined.
“Professor Presbury, I presume?”
I peeled back my lips. “I am most certainly he. To whatever do I owe this pleasure? Are we acquainted?”
That dear lady shook her noble head. There was something sweetly feline in the gesture. “I fear I have not until today had the pleasure of making your acquaintance in person. Although, of course, I feel that I know you through your work, so much of which I have read with the keenest interest.”
I waved away this compliment casually enough, although I admit that at the declaration I felt a distinct spasm of delight.
“Yet I do believe,” she murmured, something quietly imploring now in her big hazel eyes, “that you once knew my late father.”
“I may well have done,” I said. “Now what was that good man’s name?”
“Lowenstein,” she replied and showed me her sharp white teeth.
“Mrs Scott,” I said to that stout creature who had, throughout this conversation, lingered by the door. “Would you be so kind as to fetch Miss Lowenstein a pot of tea? Perhaps the walnut cake also? For this is somewhat in the spirit of a reunion, and we should mark it with all good things.”
The domestic nodded gruffly. Miss Lowenstein seemed delighted. “I do so love walnut cake.”
“Happy,” I said. “I am happy to oblige.”
“And yet?”
“Yes, Miss Lowenstein?”
“Today is not meant merely as a means by which we might revisit the past.”
“No?”
“No indeed, Professor. For I have come here in large part for a single reason – to put to you a most remarkable proposition.”
And so we sat and we took tea together and Miss Scheherazade Lowenstein put to me that proposal at which she had hinted. It is born, I think, at least in part from guilt at the role that her departed father played, however indirect and unwitting, in my fall from grace. It is, she says, loyalty that drives her, loyalty to her parent’s memory as well as a desire to restore honour to a family name, which is at present mired in disrepute. So she has sought me out to set things right. I have, after only the most perfunctory of protests, acceded to her request and I am, in two days time, to go to London where I shall be put up in the Bostonian Hotel in Bloomsbury and from where, Miss Lowenstein assures me, all that has been taken from me shall be once again restored.
More than that – the specifics of what is to pass between us – I shall not write here. To do so would be to subject them to the cold and unforgiving light of reality whereas at present they have still in my mind the qualities of phantasy and delight. Yes, they have about them the sense of some strange and wonderful dream, which has lingered long into the waking hours.
Sent: 4th January 1913
From: Panjandrum
To: Scheherazade
Proposition accepted and subject gladly lulled. Suite in the Bostonian to be prepared for 6th January.
Sent: 4th January 1913
From: Scheherazade
To: Panjandrum
Congratulations. You are indeed a patriot. Report to me again in London.
I have spent today in preparation, not only of the practical kind – baggage to be packed; Mrs Scott to be informed and appraised of my imminent absence; arrangements to be set in motion for the temporary shutting up of the house – but also of an emotional, one might almost say spiritual, sort.
There are parts of my soul that have long been left unvisited and it was to those that I tended this afternoon. Shortly before dusk I took a walk, as I have so often before, into those patches of woodland which abut this little village and there I took a moment to stand alone, to collect my thoughts, to reflect upon the errors of my personal history and – I do not flinch from such an admission – for the first time in far too many years, to pray. For an instant or two, I was lost in the gathering evening to something far greater than myself.
Then I awakened from my reverie, turned and hurried back to my isolated little home. Such higher thoughts I leave here in the fens. In London I shall be all of the body – a corporeal and not a sacred being, devoted no longer to penitence but rather, I fancy, to the furtherance of sin.
I write these words upon the train to the metropolis, the details of my long exile fading already into disagreeable memory. I think now only of what is ahead of me: of the Bostonian Hotel, of the rich and subtle pleasures of the city, of my particular appetites – for too long in abeyance – and of Miss Lowenstein’s white beguiling smile.
Telegram
Sent: 6th January 1913
From: Scheherazade
To: Panjandrum
Subject arrived safely. Eager to commence first stage. Cannot recall an easier corruption. Request, as discussed, immediate release of funds.
Telegram
Sent: 6th January 1913
From: Panjandrum
To: Scheherazade
Request accepted. Funds to be delivered in customary fashion. Thoughts of all the Service are with you.
Telegram
Sent: 7th January 1913
From: Scheherazade
To: Panjandrum
We have him. Ready to begin second stage.
You will forgive my absence from these pages in recent days. I have been engaged in alternative pursuits. I dare not provide complete details of my excursions even here. Let it suffice to report that the pleasure gardens of London are aptly named, that the diversions of Bloomsbury are various and plentiful, and that there is in this mighty capital no hunger that might not be anticipated, that might not be met with expertise and surpassed. To this I must add that Miss Lowenstein has proved to be an excellent and knowledgeable guide. It is difficult to imagine any father having been precisely proud of such a daughter but it is surely to be hoped that he might at least have respected her comfortable acceptance of her nature.
The two days that I have spent here, in this marvellous hotel, have been unusually pleasant ones, unparalleled in the great majority of my adult life. Yet I am no longer a young man. I have not the vigour of my former days. I grow tired and I grow stale and I recollect the words of the Bard when he wrote of that rambunctious trickster that desire should so many years outlive performance. I had accepted the truth of the matter – that this delightful and unexpected sojourn had come to its natural conclusion, that my spirits were truly spent and that I would shortly have to contemplate a return to Cambridgeshire. Certainly, I considered any debt that might have been owed to me by the Family Lowenstein to have been paid in full and with considerable interest.