The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Author:Guy Vanderhaeghe [Vanderhaeghe, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-55199-571-7
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2003-09-22T18:30:00+00:00

This undercurrent of turbulent, tongue-in-cheek anarchy rife among the lower orders was something I had never suspected. All about me, I felt the audience slyly gauging my reaction to the scandalous tune, endeavouring to provoke me by tugging their forelocks, by winking at the toff in the silk top hat. One fellow had the impudence to stagger up and pant stale beer into my face. “Does a costermonger’s opera tickle the gentleman’s fancy?”

As a matter of fact, it did. Enormously.

My overweening affection for these girls was not nostalgie de la boue but a recognition they were cleaner clay than myself. Charles Gaunt was truly the kept creature, incapable of asserting himself, incapable of bending the golden bars of his father’s cage and making his escape.

Iris sometimes seemed offended that I made no advances, asked nothing in return for the little treats I gave her, scent, flowers, champagne dinners. But her good humour always returned once we embarked on an outing. She would mockingly refer to me as “Champagne Charlie” and tickle me in public. Sexual intercourse with Iris would never be a chilly transaction. It was the reason I was saving her for another.

As does Lucy Stoveall, Iris had passion, passion coupled with an attractive strength and self-reliance entirely foreign to respectable drawing rooms where ladies engineer marital prospects like Metternich balancing the power of great states at the Congress of Vienna.

So how to account for the circumstances I found Lucy in the other night? The perplexing scene she enacted with the stick, her behaviour verging on hysterical frenzy. Even when she recognized who I was, the fashion in which she gave herself to me created disquiet in my mind, as excessive emotion always has.

When I questioned her later, tried to draw her out about what had led to the inner storm which shattered her strong exterior, I recognized the look which stole over her face. There was something in it of Simon’s expression the night I came upon him and the Reverend Witherspoon in the drawing room. Something guarded and hostile, as if I were being refused admission to a reality I had not earned.

Of course, in Simon’s case I deserved his distrust after the unfortunate incident with Iris. I had truly thought I was doing him a favour when I gave the servants a half-day off, slipped Iris into his room to await his arrival, and took myself off. An antidote to Dr. Milton, one might say.

But when I returned later that afternoon, Iris was gone and Simon in a terrible state, white with fury, unwilling to accept any excuse or apology from me.

“I have sat here waiting for you to return, Charles,” he said, “thinking how I can impress on you the heartless, dreadful thing you did to that girl.”

“I’ll thank you to use my friend’s name,” I shot back. “It is Iris. She is a kind, affectionate girl with a warm heart and she would have done you a lot of good if you had let her.

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