The man showed very little sign of improvement, but at least he was no longer crying out frantically for a stranger who would never come to him. Thomas poured himself a cup of tea, which had gone slightly cold by the time he came to it, but he drank it gratefully enough. He also devoured the food Mrs. Clark had brought him and sorted through the stack of books before settling on one.
“I’m afraid I do not know what you would find pleasing,” he told the unconscious man, shyly. “But perhaps ... perhaps this will do.” He turned to the opening chapter. “‘Chapter one,’” he read, “‘The One Thing Needful.’” He paused, faintly smiling. “You will have to forgive me. My oratory—such as it is—is better fitted to the pulpit than the theatre.”
Perhaps it was the safety of knowing he was unheard, but some of Thomas’s anxiety eased, and he found himself speaking with a freedom he would never have otherwise permitted himself. “My eldest brother, Edward that is, used to read to George and me when we couldn’t sleep, which, I will confess, was often. I was a little afraid of the dark, you see. But he used to do the voices quite wonderfully. His Lordship—the marquess—found out, of course, and it stopped after that. It was coddling, you know.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I apologise. I promised you reading, not idlerecollections. But I thought it important to warn you against expecting too much from me. I, ah, I should commence, shouldn’t I?”
He smoothed his fingers over the page, with a touch of his former self-consciousness, and, at last, began to read. “‘Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.’”
He read through the grey dawn and through the morning’s watery gold, his words threading between his patient’s uneven breathing and the frequent bouts of coughing and delirium. He stopped often to tend and soothe the man, but he read until his voice was hoarse. He read until, at last, exhaustion claimed him, and he fell fitfully asleep, his head resting half on the book and half on the bed, his fingers tangled with a stranger’s.
5th September, 1864
The man’s fever broke and then returned, perhaps worse than before. He seems to get no better and I am at a loss. I sent again for the doctor, but he merely repeated what he told me on the previous occasion—influenza, general poor health—and rebuked me for wasting his time. Of course, since I was paying for his time, I could have made the argument that it was mine to waste. Unfortunately, I was too polite. Oh, who am I pretending for? I was too cowardly. And I should not sit here, impotently resenting a professional, for simply wishing to perform his job efficiently. But what else am I to do, when I am so powerless in the face of whatever ails my patient? He suffers convulsions, sweats copiously, brings up bile and blood and whatever sustenance I can induce him to take, and seems racked by terrible pains.
I think often of my conversation with Mrs. Clark. I wonder if I am abruptly, some might say hypocritically, grown so concerned with the problem of human suffering because I am, in truth, consumed by the suffering of a single man. It is foolish, irrational, perverse even, to lump the entirety of human pain into a vast, unimaginable sea and then childishly question the benevolence of the Lord the moment the matterbecomes non-abstract. Whenever my parishioners lament in this fashion, I tell them God never afflicts us with more than we can endure. It seems to bring them comfort but I know the words are hollow. What, after all, of Edward. What was the affliction he could not endure? Or do I ask the wrong questions? Perhaps the affliction is mine. This knowledge, this ignorance, this helplessness.
I must remember: Strait is the gate and narrow is the way. For men such as I, born to the security of rank and fortune, it is only fitting that we must enter the Kingdom of Heaven on our hands and knees, crawling in the dust of the world. We are God’s creation. In His power and wisdom, He made us. And in His power and wisdom, He may break us also, to better be worthy of His Kingdom. More hollow words. I sometimes think I am composed of them. Nothing but them. Did He make me this way? Why? Why?
And what of this stranger? What am I to do for him? I should know that salvation lies solely with the grace of God. That it is not for me to take upon myself the ills of the world as I perceive them. Nor to question the burdens and the losses placed upon me or upon others. But I wish—I hardly dare write it—in my pride and foolishness, I wish to save this man. I could not begin to understand why. In truth, I feel some danger in it. As though it is rooted not in kindness or charity but in some selfishness I cannot articulate. That I think not for him, but for myself. That I think him ... beautiful. A most peculiar preoccupation of mind, for the man lies ill and helpless, and I have never been troubled by such notions before. I had convinced myself that my distance from earthly passions was a further indication that the path laid out for me was the correct one, though now such an idea seems hubris of the wildest, most sinful kind. Why would I, of all people, be blessed with a nature resilient to the temptations that challenged other men? At last, I see my restraint for what it truly was: a veil of self-love, now torn away. And I must be ashamed. Though even that feels like a kind of indulgence when I have more practical concerns to, well, concern me.
My occupation of the townhouse, for example, has already attracted attention. The other day, I was importuned for some time by two unsavoury gentlemen who claimed that George owed them considerable sums of money.He has his army pension and I know my father makes him a generous allowance so I was not inclined to believe them, despite their insistence. They even attempted to extort funds from me, but I cannot imagine what they thought I would be able to give them, since I surrendered all claim to my family’s wealth on first entering the Church.
Nevertheless, I am worried for my brother. Since Edward passed away, I have heard rumours of behaviour—
“Still here, old boy? What are you writing? Sermons?”
Thomas jerked awkwardly, smearing ink across the page of his journal as he slammed it closed. “Oh, ah, yes.” As George leaned over him, he caught the sourness of alcohol upon his breath. “Have you been drinking?” he asked. “It’s not yet noon.”
“Of course I have. Just got back from Devon. What else is a fellow to do?”
Thomas shuffled his papers around, lest George prove curious about the journal. “How is the marquess?”
“Dying, still dying. I wish he would bloody well get on with it. He didn’t ask after you, by the way.”
“Well, no. Why should he?”
George glared. “How can you always be so damned calm?”
“Why are you never?”
George flung himself into a chair. He was still in travelling clothes and his boots were muddy. Although it was a simple matter to trace a familial resemblance between the brothers, there was no denying George was the bearer of Nature’s felicity. There was a luminous vivacity to him and a pronounced sensuality in the generosity of his mouth and the brightness of his eyes. At present, however, he looked tired, and lines of dissipation were beginning to mar his fine-cut features.
“He’s on at me to get married,” he said finally.
“I thought you might rather like to be married.”
“I would but not at his instigation.”
“That’s just churlishness. You would not deny your own happiness simply to thwart His Lordship’s.”
“Damn right, I would.” George dug around in the pockets of his overcoat for his cigarette case, plucked a cigarette from amongst its fellows, and lit it with clumsy fingers. “It’s the only choice he’s ever given me.”
“That’s simply untrue. And what of your duty—”
“Fuck duty. My duty was to die nobly in a pit in Balaklava.”
Thomas gave him a horrified look.
“What? It’s true. I sometimes wish I was back there, to be honest. And what a bloody terrible thought that is. The best years of my life were spent in a hole in the ground, watching all the men around me fall to disease, neglect, and gunfire.” For a moment, something softer than bitterness touched George’s features. Sadness perhaps. Or regret. But then his expression shifted, and the moment was gone. “It’s a bloody joke.”
