The Map of Chaos

  And so, in brief, Wells had prevented Emma from discovering her fiancé’s secret. Then why the devil had he just advised Murray to tell her, when he could have done the exact opposite? In order to discover the answer to that, Wells would have to delve too deeply into his soul, and so he preferred to let it slide.

  And yet Wells was struck by the parallels between that scene and the afternoon when Murray went to his house to ask his opinion about his shoddy little novel. Then, also, Wells could have chosen between two options. He had held the dreams of that complete stranger in his hands while Murray awaited his verdict pathetically ensconced in the armchair in his living room. And this afternoon someone had arranged the pieces in exactly the same way beside the hibiscus bush, so that Wells had the same feeling as five years ago of being able to set Murray’s life on the course he chose, no matter that he was now Wells’s best friend.

  With a shudder, Wells wondered what Murray might find at the end of the path he had chosen for him this time.

  15

  DESPITE FINDING HERSELF ON HER aunt’s front step, sheltered from an overcast sky, Emma Harlow gave a sigh, opened her parasol, and began twirling it above her head. It was the day of the trip to Dartmoor, and Monty was already half an hour late. He had promised her the day before that he would be on time. On the dot! he had said solemnly, as though reciting a family motto. He had even asked her to start waiting on the front step a few minutes early, because he had a surprise he wanted to show her, something to do with the way they would travel to Dartmoor, which was worth beholding in all its splendor. And Emma had deigned to accept, concealing a delighted smile, for secretly there was nothing she liked more than the theatricality with which her fiancé celebrated every occasion, which made her feel like a little girl who had stumbled into a great magician’s secret lair. But after standing there for half an hour, bored and cold, she was beginning to regret having indulged him. Narrowing her eyes, Emma surveyed the driveway that crossed the gardens of her aunt’s town house, then looked up at the leaden sky, unable to rule out the possibility that Monty might emerge from the clouds sitting on some preposterous flying machine.

  “Goodness me! Are you still here?”

  Emma wheeled round angrily, preparing to take out her frustration on her aunt, but seeing the old lady planted in the doorway, bundled up in various shawls, some of her irritation vanished.

  “Yes, Aunt Dorothy,” she sighed. “As you have so cleverly perceived, I am still here.”

  “I told you so,” the old lady muttered, ignoring her niece’s irony. “There was no need to go out so early to wait for him. I don’t know why you still haven’t realized that punctuality is not your fiancé’s strong point. Although, heaven forgive me for offering my unsolicited opinion, I would be hard-pressed to say what his other strong points might be.”

  “Please, Auntie . . . not now.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t come outside in this infernal weather to talk about your beloved Gilmore. I have little or nothing more to say about him. Quite frankly, for the past two years the subject bores me. I only came out to implore you to step inside, my girl. It is freezing out here! The servants will inform you when he arrives.”

  “No, Auntie. Monty specifically asked me to wait on the front step. Apparently, he has a surprise for me, and—”

  “He can give it to you when he gets here!” her aunt interrupted. “It’s far too damp out here. You’ll catch your death! I can’t imagine what would happen if you fell ill weeks before your wedding. It would be a complete disaster! What would I say to your wretched parents, who will arrive any day now? After their shock at your unusual engagement and your subsequent refusal to have the wedding in New York, not to mention the recriminations I have had to endure because of it all . . .”

  “Come, now, Auntie, nobody who knows me—and I assure you my parents know me very well—could possibly hold you responsible for my actions.”

  “Well, they do! And your mother, my beloved sister-in-law, has made it her business to tell me as much in all her delightful letters, in that subtle, insinuating way of hers. I’m sure they think I didn’t protect you enough when, two years ago, they placed you in my care so that you could enjoy a nice, safe holiday on the old continent. But how could I have suspected such contempt for the rules of etiquette in a young lady of your upbringing? Anyway, for better or for worse,” she went on with the resigned tone of a martyr, “you will be Mrs. Gilmore in a few weeks’ time and will no longer be my responsibility. But there is one last thing I will say, dear niece: notwithstanding my horror at the idea of a distinguished Harlow marrying an adventurer of uncertain origin, who made his fortune as a common merchant, I confess that after living with you for two years I can’t imagine any other man who would put up with you.”

  “And I, dear Auntie, couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, before I met Monty, I had decided not to get married at all, for I doubted any man was capable of making me happy.”

  The old lady sighed.

  “Happiness is utterly overrated, my dear girl, and obviously it isn’t something that should be entrusted to incompetent men. A woman has to find her own happiness and as far as possible avoid involving her husband in the search.”

  “Is that why you never married, Auntie?” Emma asked softly. “So that no man would ever spoil your happiness?”

  “I didn’t marry because I didn’t want to! But if I had, I wouldn’t have chosen an amiable buffoon for a husband. Breeding and money are the two most important things in a man, for they frame a woman’s beauty and intelligence. A frame can embellish a painting, but if the frame is vulgar, then the painting is better without one. Anyway, at least it reassures me that with your future husband’s fortune and your dowry you won’t be short of money. But tell me, are you planning on spoiling everything by catching pneumonia? Would you like me to meet your parents off the boat bearing the tragic news that they have crossed the ocean to bid you farewell on your deathbed?”

  Emma rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Auntie. I assure you a bit of cold air isn’t going to leave me on any deathbed, and besides,” Emma said, smiling inwardly, “I have sufficient reason to suspect that my future life with Monty will be anything but conventional. We share such an intense fear of boredom that I am sure neither of us will die in a mere bed. I daresay we shall meet our end in the jaws of a plesiosaurus at the center of the Earth, or fighting off a Martian invasion . . .”

  “Young lady!” the old woman exclaimed. “Don’t make fun of Death. Everyone knows Death has no sense of humor.”

  “Let me remind you that you started it.” Emma grinned, softening her tone as she noticed the old lady’s pallor. “But don’t worry, Auntie. I’ve never felt better. Besides, I’m all wrapped up. And I’m sure Monty will arrive any moment . . . ,” she added, scanning the driveway without much conviction.

  After sensing her niece’s doubts with the eagerness of a bloodhound, Lady Harlow returned to the subject of what she considered to be Montgomery Gilmore’s faults—starting, of course, with his apparent fondness for being late. Emma knew the old lady’s refrain by heart, after hearing it endlessly repeated for two years, and I have to confess, dear reader, that she agreed with every word: her fiancé possessed each of those exasperating, unfortunate, wearisome faults, and several others that her aunt had overlooked. But taken together they created a whole that was so stimulating and dynamic that anyone who came into contact with it had no choice but to be crushed or to reinvent herself. Two years ago, Montgomery Gilmore had entered her life like a train passing through a glass station, leaving her little choice but to climb aboard or spend the rest of her life on a platform smashed to smithereens. And Emma had jumped aboard without a second thought. Just as she had jumped aboard the hot-air balloon, where, to Monty’s horror, she had laughed so much she had almost made the basket capsize. She would even climb on the back of an orange-plumed heron and fly to the stars if he asked her.

  With
a sense of joy, Emma realized that the more she listened to her aunt’s diatribe, the less annoyed she felt about her fiancé’s lateness. After all, he was bound to appear sooner or later. She had no doubt about that. She knew she could count on him the way she had never been able to count on anyone. And nothing else mattered to her. Monty would arrive inventing the most hilarious excuse, tying himself up in such knots with his apologies that instead of justifying himself, he would condemn himself hopelessly, and she would have no choice but to burst out laughing. Emma gave her aunt a sidelong, almost affectionate glance. She surprised herself thinking she would miss her, a little, and the old lady would doubtless miss her, too, when she left her all alone again, when she went to settle in her new house after the wedding. She promised herself that, amid all her happiness, she wouldn’t forget her aunt and resolved to visit her as often as her duties as a newlywed would allow. A newlywed . . . the idea gave her butterflies in her stomach, a feeling that spread through the rest of her body.

  “I hope that foolish smile doesn’t mean you are laughing at me, Emma. And will you stop twirling that umbrella! You’re making me dizzy.”

  The girl blinked a couple of times before realizing that her aunt had, for the moment anyway, stopped her ruthless dissection of her fiancé and was addressing her.

  “Forgive me, Auntie. I was . . . remembering something funny that happened to me the other day.”

  “Something funny? I can’t think what that might be. Perhaps the sight of Gilmore trying to eat properly with a knife and fork.”

  And then, to her own amazement, Emma lost her temper.

  “That’s enough, Auntie! That’s enough! Can’t you see I love him!” Emma paused, confronted with her aunt’s wounded expression as she gaped at her openmouthed, and she fumbled around for a less clichéd way of telling her aunt how she felt. If only there were some magic formula to describe exactly what someone would see pulsating inside her if right then she were stretched out on a table and sliced open. But there wasn’t. “I love him . . .” She gave in and simply repeated the same three words again very slowly: “I love him . . . I don’t care how he holds a knife and fork. I don’t care if he made his money by selling shoelaces or cleaning sewers. I don’t care if he always arrives late, if he talks too loudly or always treads on my toes when we dance. Before I met him, I didn’t know how to laugh . . . I never knew how, not even when I was small. I had the most absurd, pathetic childhood in the world: an unhappy little girl who didn’t know how to laugh!”

  “I always thought you were a most interesting child,” the old lady protested. “I could never understand how my weak-willed sister-in-law managed to give birth to such a precocious little devil. I was convinced you would grow up free from all the frivolities of love and sentimentality, and I felt proud. At last, a Harlow woman with grit! I confess you even reminded me a little of myself when I was young. And now here you are, prattling on to me about true love! If you wanted to laugh, you could have gone to a zoo. Monkeys are very funny. They always made me laugh, but I never eloped with one.”

  Emma sighed and bit her lip impatiently: How could she make her aunt see why she loved Gilmore? How could she explain to her why she couldn’t help loving him? How could she sum it up in one sentence, a few words? Suddenly, she knew.

  “Monty is genuine.”

  “ ‘Genuine’?” her aunt repeated.

  “Yes, genuine,” Emma insisted. “He is genuine. Look around you. All of us go through life wearing a mask. But not Monty. He doesn’t hide beneath a mask. He is real, not two-faced. You can take him or leave him. But if you take him . . .” Emma smiled, her eyes moist with tears. “Oh, if you take him, then you can be sure he won’t deceive you, that what he offers is all there is. I don’t know whether Monty is the most marvelous man in the world, but I do know that he’s the only man who would never lie to me to pretend that he is. And that is exactly what makes him so mar—”

  “Stop right there, my dear,” the old lady interrupted brusquely. “I can’t abide romantic drivel. In my opinion, novelists who write that sort of twaddle should be shot at dawn. Of course, next you’ll tell me you don’t want to live in a world without him in it, or some such nonsense . . .”

  Emma took a deep breath. She had nothing more to say, she knew she had found the right words, and all of a sudden she realized she no longer cared whether she had managed to convince her aunt or not.

  “A world without him in it . . . ,” she murmured with a faint smile. “Auntie dear, the whole world is nothing more than the precise length of each moment that separates us.”

  Just then, a distant rumble, which had been audible for a couple of minutes, but to which Emma and her aunt had not paid much attention, began to grow louder, suggesting that whatever was causing it was approaching the house at speed. Vaguely alarmed, the two women glanced at the wall separating the garden from the road, beyond which the din resounded as it approached the front gates. All of a sudden, there was a wail like a ship’s siren, and an instant later a strange-looking horseless carriage burst into the driveway amid a cacophony of clatters and bangs, leaving a trail of thick smoke behind it. At a speed that could only be described as breakneck, the vehicle rolled up outside the front steps, where the two astonished women watched it come to a halt, gasping like a dying animal. Emma had never seen an automobile like that before. She had glimpsed a few illustrations of those early carriages that had substituted engine power for horsepower, but they hadn’t looked very different from the ordinary horse-drawn ones. In addition, according to what she had read, the new automobiles barely reached speeds of twelve miles an hour, which any cyclist with strong legs could easily equal. Yet the impressive machine wheezing before her had sped through the front gates like greased lightning, covered the fifty yards between them, and pulled up outside the front steps in the time it took to draw breath. Moreover, the shape of it was unlike anything she had ever seen: the bodywork, which was cream colored and trimmed in gold, was long and sleek, and it was so low that the space between the ground and running boards was easily surmounted; the front was shaped like a big metal box with a grille, to either side of which two ostentatious lamps were attached, like a pair of elaborate horns; the back wheels were slightly bigger than the front ones, and above them was a roof, which at present was folded like an accordion; underneath the automobile, a mass of cranks and cogs was visible, seemingly operated by a tall lever to the right of the seat, which looked like a double throne; in front of the seat was the short shaft supporting the enormous steering wheel, which was adorned with a horn that was curled like a pig’s tail. And plumb in the middle of that extraordinary carriage, sitting bolt upright and clutching the wheel as if he were afraid that at any moment the machine might start moving of its own accord, was Montgomery Gilmore. He was wearing a pair of huge goggles that covered half his face and a leather cap with flaps down over his ears, giving him the look of a giant insect. In spite of this, Gilmore managed to smile radiantly at Emma.

  “Goodness gracious me . . . ,” murmured Lady Harlow. “I’m afraid, dear girl, that your fiancé has decided to abandon his admirable habit of going through life without wearing a mask.”

  Ignoring her aunt, Emma descended the front steps, coming to a halt at what felt like a safe distance from the machine. Gilmore gazed at her, spellbound. She looked so enchanting with that astonished expression in her dark eyes that he could only give thanks once more to whoever had made possible the miracle of a woman such as she being in love with him.

  “Emma, my darling! What do you think?” he shouted eagerly as he struggled to open the door so he could run over and fling his arms around her before the magic of the moment faded. But the handle was stuck fast. “I told you I had a surprise for you! It’s a Mercedes, the first modern automobile! It’s only a prototype, so it isn’t even on sale yet. I had to wait while they made a few last minor adjustments in the workshop, that’s why I’m so late. But it was worth it, don’t you think? Just imagine! It can
go up to fifty miles an hour almost without shaking! You’ll see how comfortable it is, my love: like drifting on a silent cloud!” Gilmore tried desperately to force the handle, than stood on his seat to clamber over the door. But when he lifted one of his long legs, his shoe became stuck in the steering wheel, and there he stood, as though caught in a trap, his heel pressing on the horn, its deafening blast making Emma recoil. Gilmore fell back onto the seat in an ungainly posture, and the racket continued as he wriggled about trying to free his shoe from the unfortunate snare. Only when he had succeeded did the pitiful wail cease so that Gilmore could leap out of the vehicle. He stood gazing at his fiancé, tongue-tied, his face bright pink, his jacket crumpled, and his goggles askew. Emma raised an eyebrow.