Under the Wide and Starry Sky

  With his eyes healed, Louis was spending time with Henley, working on the magazine. In the late afternoons, the two men would show up, brimming with excitement and ideas for London. That was when Sidney Colvin would look up from his book with a spark in his eyes and plunge into some literary debate with them.

  “Do you think the Purist Movement has lost its momentum in Britain?” Henley had said over tea yesterday, in a tone that the others apparently took as provocative. Colvin’s color seemed to heighten, and he pursed the rim of his cup in his lips for a good long moment before he replied flatly, “No, not at all.” Fanny didn’t dare ask what the movement was, for fear of appearing ignorant, but it dawned on her as the conversation proceeded that she was sitting among the vanguard of the Purists.

  Now the music allowed them all a brief respite from polite conversation. What an odd relationship her two hosts had. They seemed to share pleasure in being “literary discoverers.” They acted like an old married couple, yet they were careful to a fault not to show overt affection. Fanny doubted that any real intimacy existed. Just the promise of intimacy, probably, if only the Reverend Sitwell would kick the bucket. To be perceived as having a lover, given Mrs. Sitwell’s marital state, was out of the question. Much better to be viewed as the nourishing goddess in her salon, with her friend ever at her side. Colvin, for his part, appeared content as a favorite cat with the arrangement.

  Fanny wondered if her feeling was simply raw envy. Louis had said she and Mrs. Sitwell would find they had much in common: both of them separated from wretched husbands; both grieving the recent death of a child. But Fanny suspected they shared very little. Mrs. Sitwell was from a different world entirely—a world of soirees peopled by the literary lights of London. Judging from the adoration of the men around her, she was the pinnacle of British womanhood: a person of delicate sensibilities whom they trusted to be discreet, a woman whose presence was calming. She appeared to have no artistic ambitions of her own. Instead, she was the Great Appreciator, stoking the egoism of each one. If she must work now, as Louis said she did—secretary to the College for Working Women—there was no sense that the wolf had ever been at her door, as it had been for Fanny.

  She didn’t long for Fanny Sitwell’s life; she just wanted a little more comfort and security in her own. She had been making do for so long, scraping together what she could. An unpretentious life but genteel in its way, literary and artful—how nice that would be. She was tired of troubles. She had a pretty little falling-down house in Oakland and a sweet garden, but nothing like this place. Imagine what I could do with a touch of money. She let herself sink back into the cushions and picture what life as the wife of a successful writer might be. Louis would work in his study during the day. She could run the household and do her own writing. She would be his confidante, his editor, his counsel. She was nothing like Fanny Sitwell, but she knew well enough her own attractions. Louis loved her because she wasn’t overtamed.

  When Mrs. Sitwell stopped playing, Fanny applauded. Colvin had been sitting with his eyes closed, once in a while letting his toe fly up in time to the music. “Soul-stirring,” he murmured.

  The doorbell rang, and a servant ushered in Louis and Henley. They paused at the door as Henley, wearing a high-crowned hat with a floppy brim, leaned his crutch against the wall, placed his hat on it, and used his cane to get to a chair. Louis, to Fanny’s astonishment, was wearing new clothes. “You’ve been shopping,” she said.

  “Am I no a bonny writer chap?” he asked in an exaggerated brogue. He stood back, pointed a dandyish toe, and modeled for everyone the double-breasted dark blue suit and stiff bowler.

  “Lou, you look handsome in that hat,” Fanny Sitwell said. Her voice turned kittenish. “Do you remember the hat you were wearing when I first met you?”

  “A straw hat, as I recall,” Louis said, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed.

  “A wide-awake hat, it was. You were coming up the lane to your cousin’s house with a knapsack on your back and reading a book, oblivious to the world.”

  Louis smoothed the jacket. “Well, I can’t be going around London to see editors in ma auld tatters,” he said. “And I’m celebrating a bit.” He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and waved it. “This is a contract with none other than Leslie Stephen at Cornhill. He’s going to publish my essay “‘On Falling in Love.’”

  Fanny’s eyes welled with tears. I miss you, she mouthed to him across the room. He shot her a tender smile, and put his hand to his chest.

  “Fabulous,” Colvin was saying. “An editor of Stephen’s standing can make a career for a young writer.”

  “Now, come,” Mrs. Sitwell said, “sit down and tell us everything.”

  They pulled chairs around the sofa where Fanny lay, and Louis recounted the details of his meeting and the taciturn Stephen’s remark that he was a fine stylist.

  “That must have cost him quite a bit, to let loose with a compliment,” Colvin remarked. “Quite a stellar day for you, my friend.”

  “And Henley here is going to publish “‘The Suicide Club,’” Louis said. “It’s possible we could see a few pounds from it all.”

  Henley’s big face puckered with delight. “It’s not out of the question. If all goes well, I intend to have the best of the new crop of writers. Louis, of course. And Henry James, and some of the others. I shall give Leslie Stephen a run for his money!”

  “I don’t know if James will last,” Louis said. “His Roderick Hudson was a fair start—”

  “Fair start? I thought the characters were brilliantly drawn,” Fanny protested.

  Mrs. Sitwell turned to her, her face barely masking her astonishment that Fanny had uttered a literary opinion. Colvin and Henley ignored the remark.

  While everyone chatted, Fanny settled into the pillows at her back. She was so happy to see Louis excited and well. She saw relief on his friends’ faces, too. Clearly, Louis’s charm loosened them from their stiffness. He was their Great Exhilarator. And Lord above, they needed one.

  “Lou,” Mrs. Sitwell said warmly, squeezing Louis’s hand, “your time is coming. I always knew it would.”

  Fanny put her hand into her skirt pocket, found a cigarette, pulled matches from her waist pouch, and in the spread of thirty seconds, was savoring a mouthful of smoke. Louis stopped midsentence and stared at her, his face gone slack. Fanny Sitwell appeared to bite her inner cheek, then said, “I didn’t know you smoke, Fanny.”

  “I seem to have quite forgotten myself.”

  “Why, it’s all right. You can smoke here.” She fetched a chine sauceer and placed it in the tea table for ashes.

  “This will be the only one.” Fanny laughed. “I’m out of tobacco.”

  “You make your own?”

  Fanny drew on her cigarette. “I do.”

  “Sidney,” Fanny Sitwell said, “might I prevail upon you to go out and get some papers and tobacco?”

  “Of course.”

  “I should like to learn how to roll a cigarette,” Mrs. Sitwell said. “And if you can put your hands on some champagne, I do think this crowd would appreciate it.” If she was only being polite, Mrs. Sitwell, nevertheless, was managing, to rescue the moment, judging from the look of relief on Louis’ face.

  With Colvin gone, the hostess drew her chair closer to Louis’s and they fell into conversation about “art for art’s sake.” Fanny bristled when she saw how easily they talked. She felt a petulant urge to burst out in her mother tongue, “It’s too blamed hot in here,” but she held herself in check. William Henley was left to hoist his great trunk up out of the little gilded chair on which he was perched and to push it nearer to Fanny. You’re quite agile for a one-legged man, she thought, and in the next instant, Thank God I didn’t say that out loud.

  “I understand you might be willing to give us a spot of help with the magazine,” he said to her. “Louis says you’ve done some writing?”

  “Oh yes, I have written for any number of publicati
ons. I’m an editor, too. Of course, I could find other writers for you. Margaret Wright comes to mind. She’s an American journalist who writes a column called ‘Paris Letters’ for some newspapers. She lives in my building. There are several of us writers at that address, actually. Our building is something of a haven for artists.”

  Henley seemed to lose track of the thread of conversation. He grabbed hold of either side of his chair to lift his body with his mighty arms, once again trying to get comfortable on it. He wore a barely suppressed grimace much of the time, she realized. And she was struck by how big he was. No wonder Louis called him Burly. The man filled the eye.

  “Are you in pain?” she asked him.

  He looked at her sadly, not responding to her question. Instead, he said, “I know you lost your son. I didn’t say anything to you in Grez because I knew you were trying to get back on your feet. But you have my sympathy, Fanny.”

  Fanny stared soberly at him. “How I wish I might have found a doctor as astute as yours.”

  “I had lost one leg already, and my doctor wanted to take the other. When I heard Lister was having success with scrofulous tuberculosis, I went to his Edinburgh infirmary to get treatment. That’s where I met Louis, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. He told me that Leslie Stephen introduced you.”

  “Except for Leslie Stephen, who had seen a couple of my verses, I was friendless in Edinburgh. I’ll tell you no lie. I was poor as they come and desolate with loneliness. My only companions were a couple of little boys laid up in that place alongside me. Then one day Louis appeared, unannounced. He told me he was Leslie’s friend. He was the jolliest fellow, smart and full of mischief. It was as if Puck had just walked into my room.

  “I wasn’t supposed to leave the hospital, but before I knew it, he had me out of that bed. We had to get down a long stair with me like this.” Henley waved a hand at his stump. “But he did it. He had a carriage waiting, and it was spring outside.” His eyes watered. “I had been in hospital for eighteen months. He drove me around to look at the cherry trees blossoming and the blue sky. I shall never forget his kindness as long as I live. Look at me, then look at him, and you will understand the act of will it took to cart me out of that place. And not just once did he take me out. Oh, no. He came back and back.”

  Henley produced a handkerchief and blew his nose furiously. “Don’t ever take the man for granted,” he said to her. “Understand what you have, Fanny Osbourne. There’s not another one comes near him.”

  Later, after she had taught everyone to roll cigarettes, after they had merrily smoked and finished off three bottles of champagne, Fanny regaled them with stories of her ancestor Daniel Boone and tales of life in a Nevada mining camp. She’d told how she served barley coffee to the Paiutes who came to the window of her cabin every morning; how she’d battled bothersome varmints; how she’d befriended the minister called Smilin’ Jesus. The whole group burst into fits of laughter as she talked, especially when she used words like “varmint.” She wondered briefly if they knew she was speaking tongue in cheek.

  “I didn’t know you were related to Daniel Boone and Captain Cook,” Louis whispered when he bent over her to say good night.

  “Loosely,” she said. “Daniel is on Sam’s side, and the captain on my mother’s. But it makes a better story.”

  “Fanny, Fanny,” he murmured indulgently.

  She smiled up at him. “I was simply obliging the audience, darlin’.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, kissing the top of her head. He began to leave, then turned back. “First impression?” he asked.

  On the train to London, she had told him that her first impression of a person was practically infallible. Louis so wanted her to embrace his world. She had wanted to be embraced by it. How to tell him now that she felt out of place among his friends—that they were strange, overly mannered, and a little frightening?

  She reached out her hand and rubbed the curtain fabric between her fingers. “Lovely,” she said.

  CHAPTER 23

  The day after Fanny returned to Paris, she discovered an opened letter from Sam among other mail sitting on the entryway table. “When did this letter from your father come?” she asked.

  “A week ago.” Belle and Sammy sat at a table near the window, playing with a traveling chess set Fanny had bought them in London. “He’s coming over in the spring.”

  “When in the spring?” Fanny’s heart began to thrash about in her chest.

  “Probably May. He said he would write soon with more details.”

  Sammy’s eyes lit up. “He said he bought a pony for me for when I get home.”

  “A pony,” Fanny muttered. How predictable.

  “You’ll have to be gone when he comes,” she told Louis when he came to visit that afternoon. They were sitting in the parlor of the apartment, speaking in low tones so as not to be heard by Belle or Sammy. “It must be done exactly the right way, or I shall be left with nothing.”

  “I understand.” Louis shifted in one of the battered chairs. “I had my own letter today. From my father.”

  “Yes? Is he coming to see you?” While they were in London, she had encouraged Louis to make amends with Thomas Stevenson. When his eyesight improved, Louis had written to his father, explaining that there were new complications in his life now and inviting him to visit Paris.

  “He’ll be here in March.” Louis took her hand. “Have I mentioned how brave you were to take me in like that when my eyes went bad?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  They had not talked about Louis living with her. He had stayed the night before when they got in. But it was clear, after their enforced separation in London, and after a night of passion and tender declarations, that neither wanted to be apart again.

  “My father can be a reasonable man, and I believe he’ll help us if I ask. But I can’t present you to him just yet. He would love you, Fanny, he will love you when he meets you. But this arrangement”—Louis swept his gaze around the tawdry parlor—”he wouldn’t understand. It would work against us.”

  Fanny winced at the remark. She straightened in her chair. “I don’t play the fallen woman very well. I have known the real type, and I don’t admire it.”

  “It isn’t what I want, but I am asking you to trust me. Look at what you are asking of me—to disappear while your husband visits. Can you possibly think I am not offended by that prospect?” Louis’s frustration smouldered in his words. He struggled to calm himself. “Look, I won’t have to depend on my father much longer, Fanny. I’m going to support you and your children. I’m going to marry you someday. For now, if my father gives me a decent allowance, I can cover your rent and have enough to tide us over until you can get a divorce.”

  At that moment, Sammy came into the room. The boy looked at both of them and turned to leave.

  “Come along, my friend,” Louis said, making his voice gay. “I am going to take you and your mother to dinner.”

  “I have heard they serve good food that’s not too dear,” Louis said of the café he’d chosen. When they entered, Fanny noticed the maître d’ was curt, as if he disapproved of something—Louis’s coat, no doubt, which was showing wear. The waiter was equally haughty. Almost in reaction, she suspected, Louis ordered a bottle of Clos Vougeot. It was an extravagant choice; they would be living on soup for a week as a consequence.

  “It’s superb,” he promised Fanny, who knew little about wine.

  Now the bottle was on the table. Louis sniffed the poured wine, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms. “It is corked.” His voice was matter-of-fact.

  The waiter stiffened. He smelled the wine and insisted it was not.

  “Indeed, it is.” Louis said, his tone growing more indignant.

  The waiter turned on his heel, and marched off.

  “How infuriating,” Louis fumed, “to be treated like a gullible … “

  “… hayseed,” Fanny said.

&n
bsp; “It makes my blood boil.”

  When the waiter returned, he placed a bottle in front of Louis and walked away. Louis tasted the wine, and his face turned crimson. “It’s the same goddamned bilious stuff he served before. He simply put it in a different bottle.”

  Louis stood up from his seat. He called out, “Monsieur!” and “Monsieur!” again when the waiter did not respond. In a hot fit, Louis leaped from his seat, grabbed the bottle by its neck and smashed it against the wall next to the table. Fanny and Sammy ducked as glass chunks flew. All around them, diners ran from their chairs. Louis was shaking, staring at the bottle neck in his fist and the red streaks dripping down the yellow wall.

  Fanny pulled Sammy up and put on her gloves. “I need to leave now.” She took her boy’s hand, swallowed hard, and walked past the staring diners and maître d’, out the door of the café.

  “It was outrageous—” Louis began when he caught up with them outside.

  Fanny shook her head emphatically. There would be no discussion on the way back to her flat. Louis hailed a cab, and they rode in silence. At the apartment, she sent Sammy scurrying up the steps. “I will be there in a minute,” she told him.

  “What in God’s name happened in there?” She stood facing Louis, her hands curled into fists on her hips.

  “I won’t stand by and let someone be taken advantage of,” Louis said, “including myself.”

  “But that rage—it wasn’t moral indignation. It was an unholy tantrum. Completely out of proportion, and in front of my son.”

  Louis’s shoulders sagged.

  “You are feeling pressure. Well, so am I. That is life, my dear. You say you want to marry me, and then you behave like that?” She shook her head. “You are a good man, when you behave like a man, but I do not need another child. Decide which you are.”