Georgy shook her head in dignified frustration as they did their work. “I suppose it is impossible to try to pretend things haven't changed forever. How empty the world feels now!”
“Where will you go once you sell Gadshill, Aunt Georgy?” Rebecca asked.
“Mamie and I must look for a small house in London, though my mind frets at the long, bitter winters in the city.”
“I believe you and Mr. Dickens will always be part of this land, no matter what,” Osgood said. “No matter where you go.”
Georgy looked hard at Osgood. “I must confess that my role as executrix is new for me-not in managing the children's careers, for that has been my life's devotion. But in reading documents and contracts.”
“I can imagine the strain,” Osgood replied.
“I've learned too quickly it is rare to meet a man of business who can wear an honest face. Forgive me, but I wonder if I might trouble you while you stay in Rochester. Would you consider looking over Mr. Dickens's will if I left a copy with the Falstaff?”
“It would be my honor and pleasure,” Osgood said, standing up and bowing, “to repay your kindness.”
“Thank you. It will put me at ease to have an hour of time to ask someone questions-someone other than Mr. Forster, to be perfectly candid. I feel, for one thing, such an infant around him! As if I had no power of free will of my own when he is near.”
They became quiet when a heavy tread ascended the stairs. Then came the burly form of Forster, who yelled after the departing auction men to remember the value of what they had in their unworthy hands.
“Superfluous creatures,” Forster concluded, turning to the desk, where his eyes landed on the stack of blue sheets. He rubbed his hands together. “Ah, there it is! All of the manuscripts of Mr. Dickens's books, you see, Mr. Osgood, were left by order of his will to be given into my care.”
Forster, with two careful, trembling hands, grasped both sides of the manuscript of Drood and picked it up. His reverence was touching, if excessive.
“This is the last of them in the house, I think?” Forster asked Aunt Georgy.
“It is the last of his manuscripts here,” Georgy said, sighing. “The last anywhere.”
With the manuscript safely lodged in his case, Forster's eye now darted across the desk to a particular quill pen. It was a long goose's feather, white and wavy, the nib stained in dried blue ink.
“That's it, isn't it?” he asked.
Georgy nodded.
Rebecca asked what it was.
“That is the pen with which he wrote The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Miss Sand,” answered Georgy. “Charles liked to use a single pen for a single book-there was a purity about it that way. He did not want the pen's spirit mixed up in trifling bills and sundry checks. With this, he finished the novel's sixth installment, just before coming into the house.”
Osgood asked if he could see the pen. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, then gripped it as if on its own it might finish the final six parts of Drood.
“Shall I,” Forster began, licking his plump cracked lips, “keep it at my office?”
Georgy cleared her throat pointedly.
“Just for now,” Forster clarified, clearing his own throat as an answer to her gesture. “Until you decide what you shall do with it, Miss Hogarth. Then you may-well, you may throw the thing into the Thames if you wish!”
“Keep it for now,” Georgy agreed, at which point Forster eagerly plucked the Drood pen from Osgood's hand, deposited it into his case, and fled down the stairs without bidding any farewells.
Chapter 15
IN THE MORNING, OSGOOD AND REBECCA HAD PLANNED TO SEP-arate, Osgood to try again at Chapman & Hall in London and Rebecca to continue the labors at Gadshill. At the last moment, Osgood called Rebecca back to the Falstaff's wagon. He looked at her with a curious air. “I think you ought to come to London with me this morning, Miss Sand. If Mr. Chapman does concede to see me, I should like you to take down notes.”
Rebecca hesitated. “This shall be my first time in London!” she exclaimed, then held in her excitement with her typically neutral air. “I shall get my pencil case.”
“Good thing,” Osgood said. “Your eyes could use a respite from reading over Mr. Dickens's papers, I'm certain.”
After arriving at the Charing Cross station in the Strand, Osgood and Rebecca, in the shadows of theaters and shops, walked through the astounding number of street performers and merchant booths on every corner, which made Boston seem quiet by comparison. Rebecca's eyes danced at all the sights. The shouting peddlers held up repaired shoes, tools, fruit, puppies, birds-anything that could be offered for a few shillings. The variety of accents and dialects made every English peddler's vocal promotions seem yet another different language to the American ear.
“Do you notice something strange about the peddlers?” Osgood asked Rebecca.
“The sheer noise they create,” she replied. “It is quite an astonishing thing.”
As they spoke, they passed a Punch and Judy show. The wooden marionettes pranced across the small stage, Judy hitting Punch over the head with a cudgel. “I'll pay yer for a throwin’ the child out the winder!” shouted puppet Judy at her puppet spouse.
“Look again,” Osgood said. “There is something stranger than the noise, Miss Sand, and that is that London businessmen do not seem to notice the roar of the streets at all! To live in London, one must possess an iron concentration. That is how it remains the richest city in the world. Here we are,” Osgood said, pointing to a handsome brick building ahead displaying the CHAPMAN & HALL sign in the window.
This time when Chapman marched through the anteroom, he paused and took a few small steps backward upon seeing the guests on the sofa. The ruddy-skinned English publisher, with his strapping deportment and sleek dark hair combed into a flashy split across his wide head, looked the part of a sportsman and man of leisure, far more than that of a bookman.
“Say, visitors I see,” said Chapman, though his eyes were fixed not on both visitors, but on Rebecca's slender form. Finally, he resigned himself to also noticing the gentleman.
“Frederic Chapman,” Chapman announced himself, extending a hand.
“James Osgood. We met yesterday,” Osgood reminded him.
Chapman squinted at the visitor. “I remember your face vividly. The American publisher. Now, this little woman is…”
“My bookkeeper, Miss Sand,” Osgood presented her.
He took her hand gingerly in his. “You are most welcome into our humble firm, my dear. Say, you will come in with us to my office for my interview with Mr. Osgood, won't you?”
Osgood and Rebecca followed a clerk who followed Chapman in the procession into his private office. The room displayed some expensive books but a greater number of dead, stuffed animals: a rabbit, a fox, a deer. The frightful artifacts emitted a stale, bleak odor and each one seemed to stare in dumb loyalty only at Mr. Chapman wherever he moved. The office had a large bay window; however, instead of looking out onto London, it overlooked the offices and rooms of Chapman & Hall. Periodically, Chapman would turn his head to make sure his employees were hard at work. One of his harried clerks delivered a bottle of port to the meeting with a bow that was more like a spontaneous wobbling of the knees.
“Ah, excellent. I presume you and Mr. Fields have a wine cellar back in Boston,” Chapman commented as two glasses were filled.
“Subscription lists and packing supplies fill our cellar.”
“We have an extensive one. A game larder, too. Thinking of adding a billiard room-next time we'll play It is always a pleasure to see a colleague from the other side of the water.”