“I’m sure it won’t be necessary,” he said. “We should not alarm more people than we need. I’m sure we will find her ourselves, in short order.”
“You’ll all be shot walking the marshes at night,” said Mrs. Turber. “Mark my words.”
Hurrying to the dark wharf, Hugh, Daniel, and Beatrice began to search among the fishing boats and the sailing barges. A night watchman had seen no woman passing, but a cabin boy thought he might have seen a figure slip by on the opposite bank of the river. For a few coins he shimmied up a tall mast to look out across the dark marsh, and he reported a flicker of white that might be a woman’s dress, far downriver along the raised dyke.
“Could be nowt but an old sail dryin’ on a fence,” said the night watchman. “A man sees what he’s paid to see.”
They took no notice and hurried across the bridge to take the grassy path towards the sea. The houses gave way immediately to scrubby trees and then fields of low, salty grass tussocks, fit only for sheep and goats.
“If she has a pistol, why would she need to go to the river?” asked Hugh, ever practical.
“Because she has a pistol, the river is more likely than the train,” said Daniel. “The train—you wouldn’t need a pistol, but it’s messy.”
“You seem pretty sure?” said Hugh.
“Every poet imagines death,” said Daniel. “The river is the romantic choice. I imagine the pistol is just for insurance.”
“To apply a logical explanation to an irrational act is madness itself,” said Beatrice. “Do stop talking and hurry.”
The riverbank passed a small hamlet of fishing cottages, and then the river turned one last time and ran straight to the sea. The land was pebbled scrub now, harder to run across, and the riverbank was higher from the water, edged with thick walls of wooden piles and boards. A single hut, black with tar and roofed in old tin, crouched in the darkness. From the shadow of the hut, a lone figure, a woman, stepped to the edge of the river, and as they watched, she flung a white bundle into the water.
“Celeste!” screamed Beatrice. It was hard to shout, all her breath used for running, and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. As Celeste turned towards them, and the moonlight gleamed on a small pistol in her hand, Beatrice’s foot slipped on a clump of weeds amid the pebbles and she fell heavily. She rammed her knees and then her wrists on the pebbles as she tried to break her fall. She bit her lip and tasted blood.
“I’ve got her,” she heard Hugh say, and then his arms were around her, helping her to her knees. “You go on, Daniel.”
“I have to get to her,” she said, struggling to rise. “Help me up, help me, Hugh.”
“Slowly now, let’s make sure you are not hurt,” said Hugh. “Probably best we don’t all run at her at once.” It was difficult to stand; her knees were on fire and her breath was hard to catch. The taste of blood in her mouth made her gag.
“I can stand,” she said. Her hands and wrists hurt, and she held them against her chest gingerly.
“Let me help you,” said Hugh. “With your permission?” He put an arm around her, and with his help, Beatrice began to walk a few stiff steps towards where Daniel stood talking to Celeste.
“Faster,” she said. “I have to save her.”
“Daniel seems to be doing a good job,” said Hugh. As she looked, Celeste moved away from the very edge of the river to sit down on a low post used for mooring the larger ships that docked in the river mouth. Daniel took a similar perch, at a respectable distance. “Young girls like Daniel.”
“What if he fails?” Beatrice asked. “I must get to her.”
“My aunt is in grave trouble today because she thought only she could manage the world,” said Hugh. “Do you think perhaps you might let others help you sometimes?” His face was kind as he looked down at her. She breathed more deeply and leaned against him, thinking that she would like to drop her head to his shoulder and rest there. They stood together a long time and watched Daniel speaking, and Celeste making shy answers, but they could make out no words.
And then Celeste laughed. The sound carried, and it was as sweet to Beatrice’s ear as the larks flying over summer marshes. People who laughed did not shoot themselves with pistols or tumble into a cold river, she thought. People who laughed were surely saved.
“If she throws herself in the river now, my cousin will have some explaining to do,” said Hugh. “Shall we intervene before he inflicts more of his humor on her?”
—
They sought shelter in the tiny hut. In silence Hugh lit the potbellied stove, which the fisherman owner had left primed with kindling and coal. In minutes Beatrice was warm, and she sat with her arms around Celeste until she too stopped shivering and became rosy in the face from the stove’s heat. A reconnoitering of the tar-smelling hut produced a bottle of rum, sealed with a waxed cork. Daniel wasted no time in breaking the seal and urging Celeste to drink a tot, against the chill. They each drank, and with the heat from the stove and the heat from the rum burning its way into her belly, Beatrice felt that she might happily sit in this poor hut for ever. Hugh took a handkerchief doused in rum and gently cleaned her hands of blood and grit. She was sleepy from the late hour and the relief; she leaned against Hugh’s shoulder and her eyelids dropped in pleasant drowse.
“I suppose we should make our way home?” asked Hugh. “Many people are out in the dark searching for—for us.”
“I am ready to go home,” said Celeste. “I have to tell my father I am so sorry.”
“We were so worried,” said Beatrice. “Please tell me you will let us help you, Celeste. I could not bear it if you tried again to end your life.”
Celeste blushed like a penitent child and spoke very quietly. “I am so sorry to cause you pain,” she said. “But I could never take my life. It is a sin.”
“But the river?” said Beatrice. “And the pistol?”
“Our Miss Celeste had planned to be fiendishly clever,” said Daniel.
“I throw my dress in the river so perhaps for a little while I am thought dead,” she said. “And I leave to another town to take a train to London. In the big city, I can be a different refugee perhaps?”
“And the pistol?” asked Beatrice.
Celeste’s blush was one of pain and humiliation. “It is not a sin, Mrs. Turber says, to shoot yourself to protect from men,” she said. “Never again would I endure it.”
“Oh, Celeste, how could you imagine such a plan?” said Beatrice. She enveloped the younger girl in a fierce embrace. “If you must leave, I will leave with you,” she said. “I will not let you down again.”
“No need to be uprooting yourself, Miss Nash,” said Daniel. He took Celeste’s hand and kissed it. “Celeste and I are two friends, similarly besieged by scandal and difficulty. We will have no more of it and are firmly decided to rout our enemies with a single stroke of brilliance that is, I must confess, all of my own devising.”
“Whatever can you mean?” said Hugh. “The position is grave, and this is not the time for levity.”
“Hugh, Beatrice, congratulate us,” said Daniel. “Celeste has agreed to become my wife.”
“Your wife?” asked Hugh. “Are you quite mad?”
“On the contrary. We are both very clearheaded,” said Daniel. “There is nothing like contemplating death and exile, as two completely suitable options, to clear the mind.”
“Will Celeste be saved?” asked Beatrice. She felt only the beginnings of comprehension, but she hoped that Celeste, married to Daniel Bookham, would not be a person to be shunned but a woman to be congratulated.
“She saves me,” said Daniel. “I will walk into my hearing a newly married man with a beautiful young wife. All innuendo and slander will be conquered by the ancient institution of matrimony.”
“But you will be shackled to each other for life,” said Hugh. “And there is a child.”
“God willing, we may have a child next year,” said Daniel. “A little early, we imagine, but welcomed.”
“I thought I was the one against marriage,” said Beatrice. “For goodness’ sake, Hugh Grange, it fixes everything.”