To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER TWENTY

The trip home closely resembled Napoleon’s retreat from Waterloo: a great deal of panic, hurry, and confusion, followed by inaction and despair. Jane nearly got left behind in the scramble for the station, Mrs. Mering threatened to faint again, and there was another cloudburst just as we rolled up. Terence nearly poked Tossie in the eye trying to get the umbrellas up.

Baine was holding the train by brute force. “Hurry,” I said to Mrs. Mering, helping her out of the hansom cab, “the train’s pulling out.”

“No, no, it mustn’t leave without us,” she said, sounding genuinely urgent. “My premonition—”

“Then we must hurry,” Verity said, taking her other arm, and we propelled her across the platform to first-class.

The station guard, still arguing with Baine, gave up at the sight of Tossie struggling with her skirts and her ruffled parasol and helped her board, tipping his hat gallantly. “I know,” I muttered. “Get his name.”

There was no time to find a porter. Terence and I, ignoring the conventions of class, grabbed the hampers, satchel, parcels, rugs, and Jane out of the hansom cab and flung them willy-nilly into the second-class carriage.

I ran back to pay the driver, who tore off as soon as the money was in his hands as if Blücher's Prussians were after him, and ran back onto the platform. The train had started to move, its heavy wheels turning in a slow but mounting acceleration. The station guard stepped back from the edge of the platform, his hands clasped behind his back. “What’s your name?” I gasped, running up.

Whatever he answered, the train’s whistle drowned it out completely. The train began to pick up speed.

“What?” I shouted. The whistle blew again.

“What?” he shouted.

“Your name,” I said.

“Ned!” Terence shouted from the first-class platform. “Come on then!”

“I’m coming. What’s your name?” I shouted to the guard and jumped for it.

I missed. My right hand caught the brass railing and I hung there for an instant. Terence grabbed my left arm and hauled me up onto the step. I grasped the railing and turned around. The station guard was trotting toward the station, his head ducked into his pulled-up collar.

“Your name!” I shouted into the rain, but he had already disappeared into the station.

“What was that all about?” Terence said. “You very nearly ended up like Anna Karenina.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Which is our compartment?”

“Third back,” he said and started down the corridor to where Verity stood, looking back at the platform, which was now rapidly receding from us. Rain poured down on its empty boards.

“ ‘Thy fate is the common fate of all,’ ” Terence quoted. “ ‘Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary,’ ” and opened the compartment door. Mrs. Mering sat slumped against the cushions in a state of semicollapse, holding a lace-edged handkerchief to her nose.

“Are you certain Tossie’s mother wasn’t the one who had the life-changing experience?” I whispered to Verity.

“Mr. Henry, Verity, do come in and sit down,” Mrs. Mering said, waving the handkerchief. I caught a blast of Parma violets. “And shut the door. You’re causing a draft.”

We came in. I shut the door. We sat down.

“ ‘And homeward bound we wend our merry way,’ ” Terence quoted, smiling at everyone.

No one smiled back. Mrs. Mering sniffed at her handkerchief, Verity looked worried, and Tossie, huddled in the corner, positively glared at him.

If she had had a life-altering experience, she certainly didn’t look it. She looked tired and sulky and damp. Her ruffled organdy was limp and non-fluttering, and her golden curls had begun to frizz.

“We might at least have stayed for tea, Mama,” she said fretfully. “The curate intended to ask us, I’m sure of it. It isn’t as if this were the only train. If we’d taken the 5:36, we’d have had plenty of time for tea.”

“When one has a dreadful premonition,” Mrs. Mering said, obviously feeling better, “one does not stop for tea.” She waved the handkerchief, and I got another staggering whiff of violets. “I tried to tell Mesiel he should come with us.”

“Did your premonition specify it was Colonel Mering who was in danger?” Verity asked.

“No,” Mrs. Mering said, and got that odd, probing-a-tooth look again. “It… there was… water—” She gave a tiny scream. “What if he’s fallen in the fishpond and drowned? His new goldfish was to arrive today.” She sank back against the cushions, breathing into the handkerchief.

“Papa knows how to swim,” Tossie said.

“He might have hit his head on the stone edging,” Mrs. Mering said stubbornly. “Something dreadful’s happened. I can feel it!”

She wasn’t the only one. I glanced sideways at Verity. She was looking calmly desperate. We needed to talk.

“Can I fetch you anything, Mrs. Mering?” I said. I wasn’t sure how to get Verity out of the compartment. Perhaps I could get the railway guard to give her a message. I’d cross that railway bridge when I came to it. “It’s rather chilly in here. Can I fetch you a travelling rug?”

“It is cold,” she said. “Verity, go and tell Jane I want my Scottish shawl. Tossie, do you want yours?”

“What?” Tossie said uninterestedly, looking out the window.

“Your shawl,” Mrs. Mering said. “Do you want it?”

“No!” Tossie said violently.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Mering said. “It’s cold in here,” and to Verity, “Bring Tossie’s shawl.”

“Yes, Aunt Malvinia,” Verity said and went out.

“It is cold in here,” I said. “Shall I ask the guard to bring in a stove? Or a heated brick for your feet?”

“No. Why on earth don’t you want your shawl, Tossie?”

“I want my tea,” Tossie said to the window. “Do you think I’m aesthetically uneducated?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Mering said. “You speak French. Where are you going, Mr. Henry?”

I took my hand off the compartment door. “I just thought I’d step out onto the observation platform for a moment,” I said, taking out a pipe as proof.

“Nonsense. It’s pouring rain out there.”

I sat down, defeated. Verity would be back in a moment, and we’d have missed our chance. The way we had missed our chance in Coventry.

“Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said, “go and tell Baine to bring us some tea.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, and was out of the compartment before she could stop me. Verity would already be on her way back with the shawl. If I could stop her before she got to the end of the second-class carriage, we could—

A hand reached out of the second-to-last compartment, grabbed my sleeve, and yanked me inside. “Where have you been?” Verity said.

“It isn’t easy to get away from Mrs. Mering,” I said, taking a look down the corridor to make sure there was no one coming before I shut the compartment door.

Verity pulled down the shades. “The real question is, what do we do now?” She sat down. “I was sure getting her to Coventry would do the trick. She’d see the bishop’s bird stump, she’d meet Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is-Beginning-With-a-C, her life would be changed, and the incongruity would be fixed.”

“We don’t know that it wasn’t. She may have had her life changed, and we just don’t know it yet. There were those men on the platform in Reading, and the conductor, and the curate. And the one who looked like Crippen. And Cyril. We mustn’t forget his name begins with a ‘C.’ ”

She didn’t even smile. “Tossie didn’t let him come to Coventry, remember?”

I sat down opposite her. “Personally, my money’s on the curate,” I said. “A bit too pop-eyed and pompous for my taste, but then Tossie’s already demonstrated how wretched her taste is, and you saw how he was ogling her. My bet is that he shows up at Muchings End tomorrow on some pretext or other — he’s decided to become a spiritist, or he wants advice on the coconut shy, or something — they fall in love, she drops Terence like a hot potato, and the next thing you know, they’re posting the banns for Miss Tossie Mering and the Reverend Mr.—”

“Dolt,” Verity said.

“It’s a perfectly legitimate theory,” I said. “You heard the two of them cooing about the Albert Mem—”

“Doult. D-O-U-L-T,” she said. “The Reverend Mr. Doult.”

“Are you certain?”

She nodded grimly. “Mrs. Mering told me his name when we were getting into the carriage. ‘A well-intended young man, the Reverend Mr. Doult,’ she said, ‘but lacking in intelligence. He refuses to see the logic of the afterlife?’ ”

“You’re sure it was Doult, and not—”

“Colt?” she said. “I’m positive.” She shook her head. “The curate wasn’t Mr. C.”

“Well, then, it must have been one of the men on the platform at Reading. Or Muchings End’s curate.”

“His name is Arbitage.”

“So he says. what if he’s operating under an alias?”

“An alias? He’s a clergyman.”

“I know, and the Church would be particularly unforgiving of youthful misbehavior and misdemeanors, which would be why he had to take an assumed name. And his constantly being at Muchings End shows he’s interested in her. And, speaking of which, what is this peculiar fascination she has for curates?”

“They all need wives to help them with the Sunday school and the church fêtes.”

“Jumble sales,” I muttered. “I knew it. The Reverend Mr. Arbitage is interested in spiritism,” I said to Verity. “He’s interested in vandalizing old churches. He’s—”

“He’s not Mr. C,” Verity said. “I looked him up. He married Eglantine Chattisbourne.”

“Eglantine Chattisbourne?” I said.

She nodded. “In 1897. He became the vicar of St. Albans in Norwich.”

“What about the station guard?” I said. “I didn’t catch his name. He—”

“Tossie didn’t even glance at him. She hasn’t shown the slightest interest in anybody all day.” She leaned tiredly back against the seat. “We have to face it, Ned. The life-changing experience didn’t happen?”

She looked so discouraged I felt I had to try and cheer her up. “The diary didn’t say she had the life-changing experience in Coventry,” I said. “All it said was, ‘I shall never forget that day we went to Coventry.’ It might have happened on the way home. Mrs. Mering had a premonition something terrible was going to happen,” I said, and smiled at her. “Perhaps there’ll be a train wreck, and Mr. C will pull Tossie out of the wreckage.”

“A train wreck,” she said longingly. She stood and picked up the shawl. “We’d better be getting back before Mrs. Mering sends someone to look for us,” she said resignedly.

I opened the door. “Something will happen, you’ll see. There’s still the diary. And Finch’s related project, whatever that is. And we’ve still got a half-dozen stations and a change of trains before Muchings End. Perhaps Tossie will collide with Mr. C on the platform in Reading. Or perhaps she already has. When you didn’t come back, her mother sent her to look for you, and as the train swayed going round a curve, she fell into his arms. Dashing, titled, as insufferable as she is, and he happens to be the sculptor of the bishop’s bird stump, and she’s in his compartment right now, discussing Victorian art.”

But she wasn’t. She was still in her corner, looking moodily out at the rain, when we entered our compartment.

“There you are,” Mrs. Mering said. “Where have you been? I’m nearly frozen.”

Verity hastened to drape the shawl around Mrs. Mering’s shoulders.

“Did you tell Baine we wanted our tea?” Mrs. Mering said.

“I am just on my way to do so now,” I said, my hand on the door handle. “I met Miss Brown on my way there and accompanied her back,” and ducked out.

I expected to find Baine deep in Toynbee’s The Industrial Revolution or Darwin’s Descent of Man, but his book lay open on the seat beside him, and he was staring out at the rain. And apparently thinking about his aesthetic outburst and what the consequences of it might be, because he said gloomily, “Mr. Henry, might I ask a question about the States? You have been there. Is it true America is the Land of Opportunity?”

I really should have studied Nineteenth Century. All I could remember was a civil war, and several gold rushes. “It is definitely a country where everyone is free to voice his opinion,” I said, “and does so. Particularly in the western states. Mrs. Mering would like tea,” I told him and then went out on the rear platform and stood there with my pipe, pretending to smoke and looking at the rain myself. It had subsided into a misty drizzle. Heavy clouds hung grayly over the muddy roads we rattled by. Retreating to Paris.

Verity was right. We had to face it. Mr. C wasn’t going to show up at Reading or anywhere else. We had attempted to mend the tear in the continuum by tying the broken threads together again, getting Tossie to the appointed place on the appointed day.

But in a chaotic system, there was no such thing as a simple tear. Every event was connected to every other. When Verity waded into the Thames, when I walked down the tracks to the railway station, dozens, thousands of events had been affected. Including the whereabouts of Mr. C on 15 June, 1888. We had broken all the threads at once, and the fabric in the space-time loom had come apart.

“ ‘Out flew the web and floated wide,’ ” I said aloud. “ ‘ “The curse is come upon me,” cried the Lady of Shalott.’ ”

“Eh, what’s that?” a man’s voice said, opening the door and coming out on the platform. He was stout, with an enormous set of Dundreary whiskers and a meerschaum pipe which he tamped down violently. “Curse, did you say?” he said, lighting his pipe.

“Tennyson,” I said.

“Poetry,” he growled. “Lot of rot, if you ask me. Art, sculpture, music, what use are they in the real world?”

“Exactly,” I said, extending my hand. “Ned Henry. How do you do?”

“Arthur T. Mitford,” he said, crushing my hand in his grip.

Well, it was worth a try.

“Don’t believe in curses,” he said, sucking fiercely on his pipe. “Or Fate, or destiny. Lot of rot. A man makes his own destiny.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

“Of course I’m right. Look at Wellington.”

I knocked the tobacco out of my pipe onto the rails below, and started back to the compartment. Look at Wellington. And Joan of Arc at Orléans. And John Paul Jones. They had all succeeded when everything looked lost.

And the continuum was tougher than it looked. It had slippage and backups and redundancy. “Missing you one place, we meet another.” And if so, what I’d told Verity might be true, and Mr. C might be on the platform at Reading. Or in our compartment at this very moment, punching our tickets or hawking sweetmeats.

He wasn’t. Baine was, handing round china cups and dispensing tea, which was having an unfortunate revivifying effect on Mrs. Mering. She sat up straight, arranged her plaid shawl around her, and set about making everyone miserable.

“Tossie,” she said. “Sit up properly and drink your tea. You were the one who wanted tea. Baine, didn’t you bring lemon?”

“I will see if there are any for sale in the station, madam,” he said and departed.

“Why is this such a long stop?” Mrs. Mering said. “We should have taken an express. Verity, this shawl gives no warmth at all. You should have told Jane to bring the cashmere.”

The train started up, and after several minutes, Baine reappeared, looking like he had had to run for it. “I’m afraid they hadn’t any lemon, madam,” he said, producing a bottle of milk from his pocket. “Would you care for milk?”

“From who knows what sort of cow? Hardly. This tea is lukewarm.”

Baine produced a spirit lamp, and proceeded to heat more water while Mrs. Mering looked around at us for another victim. “Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said to Terence, who had retreated behind his book of poems, “it’s far too dark to read in here. You will ruin your eyes.”

Terence closed the book and put it in his pocket, looking like a man who was just beginning to realize what he had let himself in for. Baine lit the lamps and poured more tea.

“What a dull group you all are,” Mrs. Mering said. “Mr. Henry, tell us about the States. Mrs. Chattisbourne says you told her you were out West fighting Red Indians.”

“Briefly,” I said, wondering if she were going to ask about scalping next, but she was on a different course.

“Did you have the opportunity while you were in the West of attending one of Baroness Eusapia’s séances in San Francisco?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“Pity,” she said, and it was clear she thought I had missed all the best tourist attractions. “Eusapia is famous for her apports.”

“Apports?” Terence asked.

“Objects transported through the air from distant locations,” she said.

That’s it, I thought. That’s what happened to the bishop’s bird stump. It was apported to a séance in San Francisco.

“…flowers and photographs,” Mrs. Mering was saying, “and once she apported a sparrow’s nest all the way from China. With the sparrow in it!”

“How do you know it was a Chinese sparrow?” Terence said dubiously. “It didn’t chirp in Chinese, did it? How do you know it wasn’t a California sparrow?”

“Is it true that servants in America don’t know their proper place,” Tossie said, looking at Baine, “and that their mistresses actually allow them to express opinions on education and art as if they were equals?”

It looked like the universe was going to collapse right here in this compartment. “I… uh…” I said.

“Did you see a spirit, Mrs. Mering,” Verity said, trying to change the subject, “when you had your premonition?”

“No, it…” she said, and got that odd, inward look again. “Baine, how many more stops does this horrid train make?”

“Eight, madam,” he said.

“We shall be frozen before we reach home. Go and tell the conductor to bring us a stove. And fetch a rug for my knees.”

And so on. Baine fetched the rug, and a warmed brick for Mrs. Mering’s feet, and a powder for the headache which Mrs. Mering had given all of us, but which she took herself.

“I certainly hope you do not intend to keep dogs after you are married,” she told Terence, and made him turn down the lamps because they hurt her eyes. At the next station, she sent Baine to purchase a newspaper. “My premonition said that something dreadful was going to happen. Perhaps there has been a robbery. Or a fire.”

“I thought you said your premonition had something to do with water,” Tossie said.

“Fires are put out with water,” she said with dignity.

Baine came in, looking like he had nearly missed the train again. “Your newspaper, madam.”

“Not the Oxford Chronicle,” Mrs. Mering said, pushing it aside. “The Times.”

“The newspaperboy did not have the Times,” Baine said. “I will attempt to see if there is a copy in the smoking car.”

Mrs. Mering sank back against the seat. Terence picked up the discarded Oxford Chronicle and began to read it. Tossie went back to looking uninterestedly out the window.

“It’s stifling in here,” Mrs. Mering said. “Verity, go fetch my fan.”

“Yes, Aunt Malvinia,” she said gratefully, and made her escape.

“Why do they insist on overheating these railway cars?” Mrs. Mering said, fanning herself with her handkerchief. “It really is a disgrace that we must travel in such uncivilized conditions.” She glanced across at Terence’s newspaper. “I simply do not see—”

She stopped, staring blindly at Terence.

Tossie looked up. “What is it, Mama?”

Mrs. Mering stood up and took a staggering step backward in the direction of the door. “That night at the séance,” she said, and fainted dead away.

“Mama!” Tossie said, starting up. Terence peered round his paper and then dropped it in a rattling heap.

Mrs. Mering had fallen slantwise across the door, with her head fortunately on the plush seat and her arms flung out to either side.

Terence and I scooped her up and deposited her more or less on the seat, with Tossie fluttering around us.

“O, Mama!” she said, leaning over Mrs. Mering’s inert form. “Wake up!”

She took off her mother’s hat, which didn’t seem particularly to the point, and began patting her cheek. “O, do wake up, Mama!”

There was no response.

“Speak to me, Mama!” Tossie said, gently patting her cheek. Terence picked up the newspaper he’d dropped and began fanning her with it.

Still no response.

“You’d better go and get Baine,” I said to Terence.

“Yes. Baine,” Tossie said. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Right,” Terence said, handed Tossie the newspaper, and hurried off down the corridor.

“Mama!” Tossie said, picking up fanning where Terence had left off. “Speak to me!”

Mrs. Mering’s eyes fluttered open. “Where am I?” she said faintly.

“Between Upper Elmscott and Oldham Junction,” Tossie said.

“On the train from Coventry,” I translated. “Are you all right?”

“O, Mama, you gave us such a fright!” Tossie said. “What happened?”

“Happened?” Mrs. Mering repeated, pushing herself to sitting. She felt at her hair. “Where’s my hat?”

“It’s here, Mama,” Tossie said, handing me the newspaper and picking up the hat. “You fainted. Did you have another premonition?”

“Premonition?” Mrs. Mering said vaguely, trying to pin her hat back on. “I don't…”

“You were looking at Terence, and you stopped speaking, as though you’d seen a spirit, and then you fell to the floor in a faint. Was it Lady Godiva?”

“Lady Godiva?” Mrs. Mering said, sounding more like her old self. “Why on earth would Lady—” She stopped.

“Mama?” Tossie said anxiously.

“I remember,” Mrs. Mering said. “We asked the spirits for news of Princess Arjumand, and the doors opened…” she said, her voice rising, “…it must have been just at that moment… I asked if she had been drowned…”

And went out like a light again. Her head fell sideways onto the plush armrest, and her hat flopped forward over her nose.

“Mama!” Tossie shrieked.

“Do you have any smelling salts?” I asked, propping Mrs. Mering up.

“Jane has,” she said. “I’ll go and fetch them.” She scampered off down the corridor.

“Mrs. Mering,” I said, fanning her with one hand and holding her erect with the other. She had a tendency to flop over to one side. “Mrs. Mering!” I wondered if I should loosen her stays, or at the least her collar, but decided I’d better wait for Tossie. Or Verity. And where were they?

The door banged open and Terence galloped in, panting. “I couldn’t find Baine anywhere. ‘He has vanished from the sight of mortal men.’ Perhaps he’s been apported.” He peered interestedly at Mrs. Mering. “She’s still out?”

“Again,” I said, fanning. “Any idea what brought this on?”

“Not a clue,” he said, sitting down on the seat opposite. “I was reading the newspaper, and she suddenly looked at me as though I were Banquo’s ghost. ‘Is that a dagger that I see before me, its handle towards my hand?’ only in this case it was the Oxford Chronicle, and went out like a light. Was it my choice of reading material, do you think?”

I shook my head. “She said something about Princess Arjumand, and about the spirits.”

Verity came in, carrying the fan. “What—” she said blankly.

“She’s fainted,” I said. “Tossie’s gone for the smelling salts.”

Tossie hurried in, followed by Baine.

“Where’s Jane?” I said, glancing briefly at her. “Did you bring the smelling salts?”

“I brought Baine,” she said, her cheeks very pink from her haste.

Baine immediately took charge, kneeling in front of Mrs. Mering and taking off her hat. He unbuttoned her collar. “Mr. St. Trewes, open the window. Mr. Henry, if you could give me some room, please.”

“Careful,” I said, letting go of Mrs. Mering’s arm. “She has a tendency to list to starboard,” but he already had hold of both her shoulders. I stepped back next to Verity, still holding the folded newspaper.

“Now then,” he said, and pushed her head down between her knees.

“Baine!” Tossie said.

“Oh,” Mrs. Mering said, and tried to sit up.

“Take deep breaths,” Baine said, keeping his hand firmly on the back of her neck. “That’s it. Deep breaths. Good,” he said, and let her sit up.

“What—” she said, bewilderedly.

Baine produced a flask of brandy from his coat pocket and a china teacup. “Drink this,” he commanded, placing her gloved hands around it. “That’s it. Good.”

“Are you feeling better, Mama?” Tossie said. “What made you faint?”

Mrs. Mering took another sip of the brandy. “I don’t remember—” she said. “Whatever it was, I feel much better now.” She handed the teacup to Baine. “How much farther to Muchings End?”

Verity, standing next to me, whispered, “What happened?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea. Terence was reading the newspaper,” I said, holding it up for illustration, “and she suddenly—” I stopped, staring, just like Macbeth.

It was the second story down, just under an article about boating congestion on the Thames.

“BALLIOL PROFESSOR DROWNED,” it read, and under it, in smaller caps, but still quite readable (this being the Oxford Chronicle and not the Times):

“HISTORY PROFESSOR MATTHEW PEDDICK KILLED IN RIVER ACCIDENT”