“I will testify you spoke of your vigilance,” said Celeste. “But, Papa, why were you not vigilant that day? When we smelled the smoke, when the library was burning, you told me to stay and then you left me.”
“It was to save the books,” said her father. “The officer gave me men to help carry them to safety.” He paused and added, “We had a Gutenberg and a book of hours reputed to belong to Eleanor of Aquitaine. We had many priceless rare manuscripts that I saved that day. We carried them to the chapel and stored them in a dry crypt.”
“He gave you men to save your books, but when I rose to go with you, he asked me for more tea and you told me to stay with the officer and entertain him,” she said. “He put his lips on my ear, Father, and he whispered things so vile I could not breathe.”
Her voice grew dreamy now, as if she were moving away from what she saw in her mind. “Il m’a enfoncée sur le canapé, et il a arraché à mes jupons et à mon corset. Il m’a fait si mal…” She looked at her father and seemed to collect herself, speaking again in English. “I cried out for you, but you didn’t come for me, Father. I watched the hands on the china clock creep so slowly around the dial; and maman, she watched me from her painted frame, and her face was so sad. And still you did not come.”
“I did not know,” said her father. “I could never have imagined…”
“What is the point of sheltering a daughter if you cannot imagine the monsters from which you should protect her?” asked Beatrice.
“I think he knew,” said Mr. Tillingham. “From a purely literary point of view that is the way I would write about it.”
“It is the greater tragedy,” agreed Daniel. “The larger betrayal: treasure over honor, the value of a daughter weighed and found wanting.”
“What are you talking about?” said the Professor. “This is not some topic for your interminable literary dinner conversations.”
“Oh, but it is, my dear Professor,” said Mr. Tillingham. “With your daughter safely cloistered away, we shall be free to explore this theme in our work without risking her further embarrassment.”
“Of course one would change the names,” said Beatrice. “I would change the names.”
“But that veil of mystery may only serve to inflame speculation,” said Mr. Tillingham. “One can’t control the public’s fever for salacious information.”
“You would not dare to write such slander,” said the Professor. He shuffled to a chair and slumped down, defeated. “No decent man would seek to bring such shame on another man’s name, on the name of a great university.”
“I would never trespass on the good name of my wife’s father,” said Daniel. “I would protect their reputation, and the reputation of my heirs, at all cost.” Daniel was looking at Mr. Tillingham as he spoke, and Mr. Tillingham frowned; no doubt, thought Beatrice, he was reluctant to forswear such a story.
“Oh, very well,” said Tillingham. “But it always hurts to come across a rich vein and not be allowed to mine it. I shall grow dyspeptic.”
“Perhaps you need some champagne,” said Hugh.
“Will you give me your daughter, Professor?” said Daniel. “I vow she shall never be hurt by my hand. I will acknowledge the child as my own, and our doors will always be open to you.”
“Very well,” said the Professor. He made an effort and raised his eyes to look his daughter in the face. “I will withdraw my objection to the marriage, and if she wishes, for the sake of decorum, I will walk her down the aisle.” He continued to look severe, but his beard trembled as he spoke.
“I would be very happy,” said Celeste. She stretched a hand towards her father but then seemed to think better of it and covered her mouth as she turned away to look out the window.
“Time for champagne,” said Mr. Tillingham, masking the awkward pause by taking a bottle from his housekeeper and discreetly shooing her away with a second. “I think one bottle should be ample.”
As he passed around glasses of champagne, he took Beatrice’s arm and drew her aside to a corner of the room.
“Thank you, Mr. Tillingham,” she said. “You have tipped the balance here today and changed lives for the better.”
“Oh, none of my doing, I assure you,” he replied. “I am much too selfish to spend my time on other people. You should be warned, my dear, that selfishness is a hazard of living alone.”
“I shall be sure to watch for such an affliction,” she said.
“It is only an affliction if one becomes cruel,” he added. He peered at the Professor as he spoke, and Beatrice saw in his eyes some flash of the piercing judgment that suffused his writings. “Bettina Fothergill saw fit to approach me regarding your position on our committee and, in complete confidence, your position at the school.”
Perhaps it was exhaustion from a sleepless night, or an accumulation of the recent days of anxiety, but Beatrice felt all the fight leave her. She sank slowly onto a hard chair and set her glass on the neighboring side table.
“I believe I will be asked to leave at the end of the term,” she said. She could not look at him, and so she looked at a white marble bust on the table and noted, with some residual flicker of humor, that it was of Mr. Tillingham himself.
“No, no, your leaving is out of the question,” he said. “I see now I must visit dear Bettina today and impress upon her how much it would inconvenience me were you to leave the town just as you and I are in the absolute thick of things with our book on your father.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“It’s quite simple, my dear,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I have decided I am much too lazy to begin the project again all by myself. It is much more efficient to use your excellent introduction as a basis for one of my own. You will provide a small afterword—purely personal reflections from a loving daughter; nothing of the academic—and we will put our heads together and discuss one or two changes to the letters we include?”
“You don’t mean it, Mr. Tillingham?” she said, and she peered at him to see if perhaps he was feeling unwell, or overcome by his own champagne. His stern face revealed nothing, but he was slightly red with the effort of appearing so nonchalant.
“On the contrary,” he said. “It will give me a not insignificant moment of joy to see that woman’s smug face crumple like a ball of paper in a freshly lit fireplace. It will quite outweigh the pain of having to compromise one’s time or, say, a fifth of one’s fee?”
Beatrice smiled and refrained from a strong desire to seize his hand and kiss it. “People should know that you conceal a soul of deep generosity.”
“I am sure it is merely a temporary spasm,” said Mr. Tillingham, looking horrified. “Pray do not mention that which would only incite further demands on my time and purse.”
“Then perhaps we can agree that twenty-five percent of the fee would suitably secure my full cooperation and my silence?” she said, laughing.
—