“Yes,” Darrow answered. “We’re from Virginia. Richmond.”
“Ah. I’ve always wished to visit the United States. Some friends and I planned to, at one time.”
The banquet room, on the far side of the building, was dark and very cold. “Never mind sweeping,” said Darrow, energetically flipping chairs off the long table and setting them upright on the floor. “Get some light in here, and a fire, and a lot of wine and brandy, and we’ll be fine.”
“At once, Mr. Darrow,” said Lawrence, and rushed out of the room.
Coleridge had another sip of the brandy and got to his feet. He looked around at the company, which now numbered twenty-one, for three men who’d been dining in one of the other rooms had heard what was going on and decided to join the group. One had flipped open a notebook and held a pencil expectantly.
“As you all know doubtless at least as well as I,” the poet began, “the entire tone of English literature was altered, dropped into a minor and somber key, at the accession of Cromwell’s Parliament party, when the popularly styled Roundheads succeeded, despite the ‘divine right of kings,’ in beheading Charles the First. The Athenian splendors of Elizabeth’s reign, or rather her age, for her years embraced a combined glory of all disciplines that our nation has not at any other time seen, gave way to the austerity of the Puritans, who eschewed alike the extravagances and the bright insights of their historical predecessors. Now John Milton was already thirty-four years old when Cromwell came into power, and thus, although he supported the Parliament party and welcomed the new emphasis on stern discipline and self-control, his modes of thought had been formed during the twilight of the previous period… “
As Coleridge went on, losing his apologetic tone and beginning to speak more authoritatively as he warmed to his subject, Doyle found himself glancing around at the company. The stranger with the notebook was busily scribbling away in some sort of shorthand, and Doyle realized that he must be the schoolteacher Darrow mentioned last night. He stared enviously at the notebook; if luck’s with me, he thought, I may be able to get my hands on that, a hundred and seventy years from now. The man looked up and caught Doyle’s eye, and smiled. Doyle nodded and quickly looked away. Don’t be looking around, he thought furiously—keep writing.
The Thibodeaus were both staring at Coleridge through half-closed eyes, and for a moment Doyle feared the old couple was dozing off; then he recognized their blank expression as intense concentration, and he knew they were recording the lecture, in their own minds, as completely as any videotape machine could.
Darrow was watching the poet with a quiet, pleased smile, and Doyle guessed that he wasn’t even listening to the lecture, but was simply glad that the audience seemed satisfied with the show.
Benner was staring down at his hands, as though this was just an interlude, a rest period before some great effort to come. Could he be worrying, Doyle wondered, about the return trip through that slum area? He didn’t seem very concerned on the ride down.
“Thus Milton refines the question down to a matter of faith,” said Coleridge, bringing the lecture to a close, “and a kind of faith more independent, autonomous—more truly strong, as a matter of fact—than the Puritans really sought. Faith, he tells us, is not an exotic bloom to be laboriously maintained by the exclusion of most aspects of the day to day world, nor a useful delusion to be supported by sophistries and half-truths like a child’s belief in Father Christmas—not, in short, a prudently unregarded adherence to a constructed creed; but rather must be, if anything, a clear-eyed recognition of the patterns and tendencies, to be found in every piece of the world’s fabric, which are the lineaments of God. This is why religion can only be advice and clarification, and cannot carry any spurs of enforcement—for only belief and behavior that is independently arrived at, and then chosen, can be praised or blamed. This being the case, it can be seen as a criminal abridgment of a person’s rights willfully to keep him in ignorance of any facts or opinions—no piece can be judged inadmissible, for the more stones, both bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God.”
He paused and looked over his audience; then, “Thank you,” he said, and sat down. “Are there any questions or amplifications or disagreements?” Doyle noticed that as the fire of oratory left him he became again the plump, modest old fellow they had met in the entry hall—during the lecture he’d been a more impressive figure.
Percy Thibodeau genially accused Coleridge of having read his own convictions into Milton’s essay, quoting in support some of his own essays, and the obviously flattered poet replied at some length, pointing out the many points on which he differed with Milton; “But when dealing with a man of Milton’s stature,” he said with a smile, “vanity prompts me to dwell upon the opinions I share with him.”
Darrow fished a watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced at it and got to his feet. “I’m afraid our party will have to be on our way now,” he said. “Time and tide wait for no man, and we’ve got a long voyage ahead of us.”
Chairs rutched noisily back from the table and people got to their feet and began fumbling arms through coat-sleeves. Nearly everyone, including Doyle, made a point of shaking hands with Coleridge, and Percy Thibodeau kissed him on the cheek. “Your Sara could hardly object to a kiss from a woman my age,” she said.
The woman Doyle suspected to be a celebrity spiritualist had, sure enough, begun to go into some kind of trance, and Benner hurried over and, smiling, whispered something to her.
She came out of it instantly, and allowed herself to be led by the elbow out of the room.
“Benner,” said Darrow. “Oh, sorry, carry on. Mr. Doyle—would you please go tell Clitheroe to bring the coaches around front?”
“Certainly.” Doyle paused in the doorway to take a last look at Coleridge—he was afraid he hadn’t paid enough attention, hadn’t got as much out of the evening as, say, the Thibodeaus—and then he sighed and turned away.
The hall was dark, and the floor uneven, and Benner and the unhappy medium were not in sight. Doyle groped his way around a corner, but instead of the entry hall found himself at the foot of a staircase, the bottom few steps of which were lit by a candle in a wall cresset. It must be the other way, he thought, and turned around.
He started violently, for a very tall man was standing directly behind him; his face was craggy and unpleasantly lined, as if from a long lifetime of disagreeable expressions, and his head was as bald as a vulture’s.
“God, you startled me,” Doyle exclaimed. “Excuse me, I seem to have—”
With surprising strength the man seized Doyle’s hand and, whirling him about, wrenched it up between his shoulder blades, and just as Doyle gasped at the sudden pain a wet cloth was pressed over his face so that instead of air he inhaled the sharply aromatic fumes of ether. He was off balance anyway, so he kicked backward with the strength of total panic, and he felt the heel of his boot collide hard with bone, but the powerful arms that held him didn’t even flinch. His struggles made him gulp in more of the fumes in spite of his efforts to hold his breath. He could feel a warm bulk of unconsciousness swelling in the back of his head, and he wondered frantically why someone, Darrow, Benner, Coleridge even, didn’t round the corner and shout an alarm.
With his last flicker of bewildered consciousness it occurred to him that this must be the “cadaverous old bald-headed guy” that Benner had startled in his tent in Islington in 1805, five years or a few hours ago.