Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 28

1879

In May, Louis arranged to meet Bob in London, knowing it was his cousin’s understanding he wanted most. When Bob met him at King’s Cross Station. Bob was ebullient, full of talk about  the  Paris  and  London  art  crowds.  In  a  pub  adjacent  to  the  train  station,  he announced his real news: One of his paintings had been accepted for exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Louis raised his glass. “To the overdue recognition of your genius.”

Bob toasted happily and continued gabbing about the art world. After a while, he took in a satisfied breath. “And you?”

“I want to go to California.” Bob looked up at the ceiling.

“I’m convinced if I could get over there, I could—” “It’s an insane idea.”

“So you’re in their camp.” “Whose camp?” Bob asked.

“You know who I’m talking about. Henley and Colvin. They think Fanny is giving me the dodge. Henley actually called her ‘that woman’ the other day.”

Bob spoke carefully while recalling her past kindnesses. “She nursed me when the black dog was on my back.” He ?ngered a button on his vest, remembering that deep well of depression before changing the subject. “Do you have any word of Belle?”
“I’ve had three letters from Fanny. They might as well have been from a government office. “

“I was in love with Belle,” Bob said. “I know.”

“She was mad for O’Meara, though. He’s probably been on a bender since she left.” They ordered another round. Bob lit a cigarette, leaned back, and blew smoke toward the
ceiling in the worldly way that women found so fetching.

“Henley said you have a girl in Paris. A model?” Bob nodded soberly. “Most sensual creature I’ve ever known.”

Louis pictured Bob romping in bed with his luscious nymph. He looked away from his

cousin at the dark room that ?lled and emptied quickly as people dashed for trains. At the next table was a man in no hurry, a fellow intent on charming his lady companion, who was rather ordinary compared to him. The man sported dashing facial hair: a wiry brown beard that  he  had divided down  the  middle  of  his  chin  and trained into  two  upwardswooping points, and a mustache, equally optimistic. Louis watched the fellow maneuver the woman’s pale hand through the whiskery shoals toward his lips. He felt his repulsion turn to pity for the poor fellow. Lord God, he thought, what fools we men are made by our cocks.

“Why can’t a man have both?” Bob was saying heatedly. “With marriageable ones, you sign away your life before you know what you’ve got. Could be cold as a mackerel.” He sighed. “Belle could have been both.”

“Man, I am sick, sick, sick of this past year,” Louis said through gritted teeth. “I’m sick from waiting. I look at Gosse and Baxter and Henley, and I am saturated with envy. I’m jealous that they have wives and houses and happy little domestic lives. I even envy their damn pets.”

“Ah, Lou, what happened to my ribald cousin?” “He became a saphead. A weepist.”

Louis stared thoughtfully at Bob. There was a time in their lives when Bob would have backed him no matter how preposterous the plan. Now he seemed unsympathetic, almost uninterested in Louis’s dilemma.

“I read Deacon Brodie,” Bob said. “Yes?”

“I can’t lie to you. It needs work.”

“How polite you’ve become. Colvin says it’s pure rubbish.”

That night Louis went out to walk and smoke. In the Haymarket area, he saw a rag-andbone man sorting through a pile of garbage. Louis thought of a French phrase he loved —pêcheur de lune. Moonlight ?sherman. This old man would sell on the street tomorrow what discards he found in garbage heaps tonight. When he walked away from the pile, Louis pulled out what the pêcheur had left behind: ?lthy trousers; a jacket with sleeves that hung by threads; two large cracked-leather shoes, half torn from their soles. He gathered up the smelly things, and the next night, he went out into London wearing the rags and the

oversize  shoes.  He  lurked  in  doorways,  shu?ed  up  and  down  the  street,  snarled  at passersby,  and  generally  attempted  to  look  suspicious.  When  he  passed  near  a  police o?cer, he felt his pulse quicken. Surely he would be arrested as a vagrant! But the o?cer merely called out,  “Good evening, sir.” Louis ?ip-?opped in the absurd shoes back to the Savile Club, where he was staying. “What on earth now, Stevenson?” a dandy at the club remarked, looking him up and down with a withering glance. The comment was the only satisfaction Louis felt all night.

He turned over the events of the evening as he fell asleep. Did Deacon Brodie get away with his crimes for so long because he occupied a higher social rung than the average thief? Most likely, Louis’s little experiment simply proved what he suspected: that a  man was marked from birth—by appearance or mannerism or accent or vocabulary—in such a way that he was trapped in that state like an insect in amber. There were plenty of exceptions. But  human  beings had an  uncanny  knack  for  labeling  their  fellow  specimens.  And yet emigrants were pouring out of London and Edinburgh and Dublin, out of the depressed farmlands onto steamers bound for America, bent upon defying their classi?cations and finding new lives.

Judging  from  her  letter,  Fanny  had  gone  back  and  gotten  lost  in  her old  life.  She vacillated from letter to letter. He had seen the e?ect of indecision on her; it nearly drove her mad. He guessed that she was seeing her whole life in front of her, dangling on the thread of this decision. She had made a bad choice in Sam Osbourne. Might she make a mistake again? Meanwhile, he was the decision at the end of the string, and he was feeling badly swung about.

Then a telegram came from California. Louis. I’m lost and sick. Need you.
Louis stared at the stark words. They were a cry from her heart. They were a mandate. “I can’t wait anymore,” he said to Baxter the next day.

“Have you told your parents you plan to go?”

“Lord, no,” Louis said. “My parents are planning a holiday at a spa in Cumberland. Low in your ear, man, but when they leave, I’m going over.”

He looked for a?rmation in Baxter’s sober, beefy face. It was impossible to tell from his expression what his old ally was thinking. Charles Baxter had always hidden his essential self behind a serious countenance, yet he had the most wonderful sense of humor when he

let it out. In their law student days, he was an in?del and adventurer, the sort of fellow who would have dressed in rags and happily passed as a pauper right along with Louis for the  sheer  fun  of  it.  It  was  at  Edinburgh  University  that  Louis  recognized in  him  a  ?t successor to his cousin Bob—a partner in insolence and play. Looking at him now, Louis was transported back to the days when they would walk out of lecture halls in a show of contempt for the dusty old professors who stood at the front. Sprung from class, they’d entertained themselves with practical jokes. Baxter was “Thomson” in those days, and Louis was  “Johnstone”—two old Scottish coots they invented as new identities for themselves. Conversing in preposterous dialect, they went out on the streets, bought salves and health devices  from  quacks,  wrapped  them  up,  then  mailed  them  to  prominent  citizens  in Edinburgh. A package might contain a bottle of anti-fat syrup or a remedy for impotence, ?atulence, or baldness, depending upon the public ?gure in question; perhaps a set of old arti?cial  teeth,  a  cheap  Indian  necklace  guaranteed  to  ward  o?  thunderbolts,  or  any number of oddities found in the junk shops of the Old Town. Afternoons were spent at Rutherford’s pub, where Baxter’s phlegmatic mask would crack into lines of hilarity over the  day’s  hijinks.  When  he  became  a  solicitor  and joined his  father’s  law  ?rm,  Baxter seemed almost apologetic about it, as if he were a failed bon vivant, as if he were letting down his best friend. To anyone who hadn’t known him then, Baxter appeared these days to be the most ordinary of ordinary fellows.

“Thomson,” Louis said now, putting a slip of paper into his friend’s big paw, “here is the one contact in America. This is the address of someone who knows Fanny. Don’t tell even the queen if she asks.”

Baxter looked uneasy. “Everyone is worried about you, Lou. Henley thinks … “ “What does Henley think?”

Baxter sputtered.

“Tell me what Henley thinks, Charles.” “Henley fears … “

“Say it out. What does he fear?”

“That you are going to face a life of alarms and intrigues and perhaps untruths, and it’s no good for your health.” Having unburdened himself, Baxter let out a sigh.  “To Henley, the very notion of California is blasphemous.”

“And so, by association, Fanny is blasphemous.”

“He is a pigheaded man who is wed to his prejudices. And he loves you as I do, Lou.” Louis shrugged. “I’m going. And I will know soon enough: Either Fanny wants to spend her life with me, or it is over. It’s as simple as that.”

He would make the trip  in  steerage.  It would be the least expensive way  to go,  but beyond that, he could write about what he saw and earn some money. He was enticed by the prospect of a book about the idea of America, where emigrants could meld with others in the great classless pot called the United States. Did it work, really? More to the point, could he pass as a workingman in steerage? He would see soon enough.
Without Fanny, a piece of himself was missing. He could wait no longer. Once, in a bar, full of drink and bravado, he had told someone—maybe it was Colvin—that no man
was of any use until he had dared everything. Now, he was about to do just that. Louis closed his eyes and thought a prayer. God, if You exist, keep me brave and single-minded.