‘What are you doing?’ he had said.
‘Looking for Georgie,’ Maria had replied.
He had brought out a cloak, which he placed around her shoulders. Maria believed that Georgie was in heaven, and she believed too that Georgie had a location, somewhere in the stars, and that it was a place as real as the house on Bankside. If she looked hard enough she would see it. Like everyone else, she looked up into the immensity of the night sky and put whatever she wanted there.
He went back to the table. ‘Your head was full of fancies that night,’ he said to Frank. ‘The wine, the laudanum, the coffee, your dreams while you were asleep – each of these will fill a man’s head with monsters. And how much more likely is it if you take them in combination? You must see how probable it is that your ghost was nothing more than a creature of the imagination rather than some strange aberration from the natural order of things.’
Frank touched his sleeve. ‘You feel that? I felt the stuff of the cloak she wore. Soft to the touch – velvet.’
‘Others wear velvet. Perhaps it was a real person you touched.’
‘No, sir, no – there was a clasp on the cloak – in the form of the letter S. S for Sylvia, in the form of a snake. It was quite unmistakable, it was there under my fingers. Besides, I saw someone on the bridge. I’m sure of it. I saw Sylvia.’
Holdsworth sighed. ‘But if it really were Mrs Whichcote’s ghost, why should she choose to walk at Jerusalem?’
‘She did not come to Jerusalem, sir. She came to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because without me she would still be alive.’
A breeze had blown up, making the leaves rustle more loudly in the trees. All of a sudden, Holdsworth felt very tired. Frank was talking nonsense, but at least he sounded entirely rational. Was that progress?
‘So is that all it is?’ he said. ‘That is your ghost?’
Frank did not reply.
‘If we can find a way to lay the lady to rest, then all will be well?’
‘Things can never be well,’ Frank said. He got up from the table and walked slowly up the path towards the cottage. He muttered as he went, ‘You understand nothing. The ghost is only part of it. What does the ghost matter, for God’s sake?’
31
On Thursday morning, Whichcote had Augustus shave him – the lad was surprisingly deft – and dressed with particular care. Appearances were important when they were all one had. With the footboy, now in his ill-fitting livery, behind him, he strolled across Cambridge, acknowledging the greetings of friends and acquaintances but avoiding conversation. By the time he reached the house in Trumpington Street, the clocks around them were striking eleven.
Dorcas showed him into the parlour.
‘He’s in Whitebeach,’ he said without preamble after the door closed. ‘It’s but four or five miles away from Cambridge.’
Mrs Phear said nothing. She sat down in her chair, an oddly graceful movement despite her small and dumpy figure. She motioned to him to sit and did not speak until he had done so.
‘How do you know?’
‘My footboy traced them. They’re putting up at a watermill the college owns. He’s with Holdsworth, and Mulgrave is in attendance. No sign of anyone else. Mrs Carbury visited them yesterday.’
‘No doubt Lady Anne wishes to know how her son does. And how is he? Was your boy able to form an opinion?’
‘He saw nothing of Mrs Carbury apart from her arrival and her departure. Afterwards he watched the garden, where Holdsworth and Mr Frank spent most of their time. But he was not close enough to hear what they were saying.’
‘So we know nothing except where they are, and who is with them.’ Mrs Phear nodded. ‘Well, that is something.’
‘We know a little more than that, ma’am.’ He hesitated. ‘Not know, exactly. It is merely the impression of a foolish boy. Yet he seems to have sharp eyes, and he is perhaps not entirely foolish. He said that Holdsworth and Mr Frank talked and talked into the evening and, as far as he could tell, the tenor of their conversation was entirely rational. There were no hysterical fits, no sudden movements, no shouting or weeping – in short, nothing to indicate that both parties were not as sane as you or I.’
‘You infer that Mr Frank is cured?’
‘It’s possible. Or, at the very least, on the road to recovery. And if Mrs Carbury reports as much to her ladyship -’
He broke off. They sat in silence for a moment. Whichcote caught the sound of movement somewhere in the house and a laugh, hastily smothered. Augustus and Dorcas were entertaining each other.
‘All this over a ghost,’ Mrs Phear said slowly. ‘Was there ever anything so ridiculous?’
‘It is not the ghost that is our difficulty, ma’am. It is what happened at the club.’
She frowned at him. ‘That is not entirely correct. We contrived something to deal with that, did we not? The difficulty came afterwards, and we know who was responsible for that.’
‘Sylvia,’ Whichcote said. ‘Will she never let me be? Did she not injure me enough when she was alive?’
As the days slipped by, Elinor allowed herself to hope that the worst was over. As soon as she reached Jerusalem after her visit to Whitebeach Mill, she had written to Lady Anne and sent the letter by express on Thursday morning. Lady Anne had written back the next day. She was overjoyed by the progress that Frank had made. She was graciously disposed to be appreciative of the efforts that the Carburys had made on his behalf. She enclosed a draft for fifty pounds on her Cambridge bankers to cover the new expenses that the Carburys had disbursed on her behalf.
Best of all, she had written as a postscript: ‘I am sensible of your labours on my behalf. You will find that I do not forget those who have served me, my dear.’
‘Very civil,’ Dr Carbury commented as he read the letter. ‘And the money is convenient, too.’ He looked at Elinor and smiled. ‘And now you must make yourself easy about the annuity her ladyship has promised you in her will. I do not think there can be any doubt about it now.’
Soresby called twice at the Master’s Lodge, by invitation, setting the seal on his defection from the Richardson party. He drank tea with Elinor, who found him gauche and silent at first. He was not used to the society of ladies and treated her with a respect so profound it was almost embarrassing. She tried to set him at his ease, however, and by the end of the second visit he had become almost sociable, displaying a quick, nervous intelligence which seemed all of a piece with his fluttering movements and cracking finger joints.
‘He will do,’ Carbury said afterwards. ‘His scholarship is not in doubt and he is no more of a scrub than Dirty Dick himself when he was a sizar.’
‘Mr Soresby told me he has been reading with Mr Archdale,’ Elinor said.
Carbury rubbed his hands together. ‘All the better. It will vex Mr Richardson. And Mr Archdale’s uncle will be pleased, while Soresby cultivates an acquaintance he may find useful in later life. If he can contrive to lay Mr Archdale under an obligation, so much the better.’
‘I had not set Mr Archdale down as a reading man, sir.’
‘Nor I – but a taste for learning can take root in most unexpected soil.’
For once they were almost cheerful in the Master’s Lodge, or at least tried to give each other the impression that they were. But Jermyn’s prognosis hung over them both like a shadow.
After breakfast on Monday, 12 June, Holdsworth walked into Cambridge with a satchel over his shoulder. He had decided to leave Frank to his own devices for a few hours. The boy was better, and one sign of this was that he chafed at Holdsworth’s constant presence. The answer was to give Frank a taste of independence – and, in doing so, to show that Holdsworth believed he was better.