Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference. To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless.
—DR. HENRY JEKYLL
LONDON, MARCH 1886
Stevenson strode into his parents’ rooms at the Grosvenor with a definite bounce in his step.
“Hello, dear Màthair,” he chirped as he whisked across the sitting room, hat in hand, to embrace his mother.
“My,” replied the woman, offering him her cheek, “I can feel the chill coming off of you. It must still be very cold.”
“It is. Very. And I have run up as fast as my spindly legs would carry me to bring some refreshment into this stuffy room.” He peeled off his gloves, tossed them along with his hat onto the nearest chair, and stripped off his heavy overcoat.
“Would you like to hang that up? It looks wet.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stay long. I’ve promised to meet Colvin and Mrs. Sitwell at Claridge’s.”
“I thought we were dining together this evening.”
“I am certain I told you that we weren’t.” Stevenson draped his coat over the back of the chair and took a seat near his mother. “Perhaps we ought to hire a secretary for you and father. To keep track of your engagements.”
The look on Margaret Stevenson’s face spoke volumes.
“I am sorry, Mother. I was simply trying to be cheerful.”
“Perhaps you could find another way.”
“I shall.” He rubbed his hands together, blowing into them. “Is father napping?”
“He napped earlier. At the moment, I believe he is attending to some needs. Now, your afternoon. Was it successful?”
“I don’t know about the afternoon itself, but I did receive some telling news.” Stevenson had been to visit his publisher in Paternoster Row, and Charles Longman himself had taken a half-hour to speak with him. Stevenson let his statement hang pregnantly in the overheated room.
“Well,” said his mother, after a considerable pause. “What was it? Why must you always tease me?”
Stevenson fingered his moustache puckishly. “I don’t wish to bother you with details that would be of no interest.”
“Now why on earth would I not be interested in what your publisher tells you?”
“It only concerns money, Mother. Filthy lucre. Far beneath the notice of the Angel in the House.”
“If you weren’t too old for a thrashing, Louis, I would take you over my knee.”
“That was father’s business, was it not?”
“Unfortunately. And I fear he failed to exercise the prerogative often enough. Behold the result!”
“I take your point, dear Mama,” laughed Stevenson. “And to answer your curiosity, Longman informs me that, ever since the review in the Times, Jekyll has exceeded their wildest expectations.”
“Oh, Louis,” exclaimed his mother with a shiver of delight. “That is wonderful news.” She rose from her chair and, shuffling across to him, took his head in her hands and kissed his forehead. The heavy scent of perfumed talc swept him back to another place and age.
“I wish it were a better tale,” he said, resisting a boyish urge to brush the kiss away. “But I am happy enough with the results.”
“What is all this commotion?” asked a raspy voice from behind the writer. Stevenson looked around to see his father standing in the bedroom door, cane in hand.
“Oh, Thomas,” declared his mother. “Louis is just back from Longman’s. The report is that the book is selling very well.”
“The book? Which book?”
“Jekyll and Hyde,” answered Stevenson.
“That one!” The old man let go of the doorjamb and took a stride into the room, stumbling slightly before he steadied himself with his cane.
“May I help you, Father?” Stevenson half-rose.
“I can manage perfectly,” snapped Thomas. “It’s just that I canna sit for half an hour now without getting up. It is enough to wear any man out. All this bloody you-rination.”
“Thomas!” exclaimed his wife. “My word!”
For all of his teasing, Stevenson couldn’t help but share his mother’s shock that his father would broach this particular topic in a forum even this public. It was as though Baxter stood there in disguise, playing at being a doddering father.
“Forgive me, then. I’m not myself lately,” sighed the older man, smiling gamely. “So what is this about Longman’s?”
“Over three thousand volumes purchased so far,” replied his son. “They are certainly going to reprint, and they expect to be into the tens of thousands by the end of the year.”
“Well, that’s good, I suppose.”
“Of course it’s good,” exclaimed Margaret Stevenson. “In fact, it’s wonderful.”
“Thank you, Mother,” said Stevenson, as he rose to help his father into his chair. The old man dropped down like a sack of potatoes, letting the cane tumble to the carpet.
“Thank you, Smout,” he grunted. “And I am happy for you. Is there any news on that David thing?”
“Only that it will appear in Young Folks very soon.”
“Have you added those thoughts on religion? The passages we discussed?” He eyed his son sternly.
“Not yet, Father. It was already in the magazine’s hands.”
“Surely they could change it.”
“They say not.”
“For the book edition, then.”
“Perhaps.”
Thomas Stevenson fixed him again with his best effort at an imperious gaze.
“It was excellent advice you offered me, Father,” said Stevenson. “I would be foolish not to consider it.”
“You would.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” asked Stevenson, reaching inside his coat for his cigarette case. The craving was sudden and strong.
“Must you?” asked his mother.
“Leave the boy alone!”
“Thank you,” said Stevenson. He extracted a cigarette and lit it. “You know, Longman’s has just heard from Richard Mansfield.”
“Richard Mansfield the actor?” asked his mother.
“The very one.”
“I am surprised you have heard of him, Maggie,” observed her husband, archly. “You are hardly a theatergoer.”
“Nor have I been living under a log, for heaven’s sake. I am sure it was Mansfield we saw in The Mikado.”
“Did we?”
“I’m certain of it.” She turned to her son with a little shake of the head. “What does he want with Longman’s?”
“Want with me, in truth. He says he would like to commission a theatrical version of Jekyll. There’s an American he works with, and they are very keen on doing it. So Longman claims.”
“Would it bring any money?” asked his father. “To you, Smout. Not to Longman’s.”
“To both of us, I would think.”
“Oh, Louis. How very exciting!” Margaret Stevenson looked with great satisfaction at her husband, who sat there nodding. “And Mansfield would play Jekyll? And Hyde?”
“I can’t imagine he would want to play anyone else.”
“No. You must tell Fanny. Cable her. How thrilled she will be.”
“If it comes to pass,” agreed Stevenson. “She will be.”
“Fanny,” pronounced his father, reaching up vacantly to pull at his ear. “Fanny.”
“Yes, dear. Louis’s wife.”
“Of course. Yes. Fanny will be thrilled.”
Nothing in Stevenson’s communications with Edinburgh had suggested anything like his father’s state of decline. It left him feeling that some significant action was called for. Colvin and Fanny Sitwell, over dinner, suggested Smedley’s Hydropathic Establishment in Matlock, declaring it the very best healing spot in all of England—outside of Bath, which the senior Stevenson had written off after an ineffectual visit months back. The old man had initially opposed, tooth and nail, anything other than a direct return to Edinburgh, but he was finally convinced to spend a fortnight in Derbyshire, provided Stevenson himself went along and took the full treatment as well.
“It will either extinguish all the remaining Stevensons,” announced his father, “or they shall come away new men.”
Stevenson’s mother observed that it offered the pair of them an ideal opportunity to spend precious time with each other, and she resolved to wend her way back north on her own. When the old man complained that he would then have no one to share his bed at the spa, Stevenson remarked it was surely not for nothing that his father had been such a longstanding and generous benefactor of Edinburgh’s Magdalen mission: perhaps his wife could arrange for one of the erstwhile wayward ladies to come down from Auld Reekie. Perhaps even a pair of them, he added, if this were truly to be a time of paternal and filial sharing. It was an open question whether Margaret Stevenson was more annoyed by her son or embarrassed by her spouse.
The journey up from London was neither long nor particularly arduous in the first-class carriage of the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock, and Midlands Railway. Margaret had provided them with a basket of delicacies from Fortnum and Mason’s, and they feasted like giddy youths on an assortment of cheeses, pâtés, biscuits, chocolates, and ginger beer. Engineer that he was, Thomas Stevenson was especially taken by what he deemed the miracles of the Willersley and High Tor tunnels between Cromford and Matlock, 800 and 600 yards long respectively. While Stevenson all but held his breath through each of the dark transits, ready at any moment to be crushed by incalculable tonnes of falling limestone, his father seized the chance to remind him that his life would be far better had he never cast aside his compass and rule for a barrister’s wig, let alone for a scribbler’s pen and notebook.
“You could have built these very tunnels,” he declared. “And better.” Stevenson had managed to hold his tongue. If his father were indeed slipping into a second childhood, he himself was determined not to be dragged back along with him.
They arrived in Matlock in the thick of a rare spring blizzard, with huge clots of wet snow driving down off the peaks into the tight Derwent Valley. They stood for a full ten minutes outside the station awaiting their carriage to Smedley’s, stamping their feet in the inch or two of slush that had accumulated on the pavement. Reluctant to drop their bags in the mess, Stevenson held them in his hands, half-relishing the way their weight strained the muscles on the top of his shoulders. His father suggested in vain that he put them down, then nobly offered to relieve his son of the burden. Stevenson declined. He nonetheless found himself wishing he had a hand free to sweep the flakes away from the old man’s blinking eyes as he stood there, enduringly resolute, smiling at his only child.
For days they took the cure, now wrapped from head to toe in wet flannel, now with their feet set soaking in mustard, now with their chests anointed in chili paste while their limbs were rubbed, then rubbed again, with vinegar. Stevenson’s skin balked at being seasoned like a goose for the oven, and he developed a full-body itch the likes of which he had never remotely experienced. His father somehow found this amusing, and he excoriated his wife for importing the inherent weakness of the Balfour constitution into the hardy stock of the Stevenson clan.
For his part, Stevenson took to wearing white cotton gloves day and night so as to be deterred from raking his nails into the dreadful crawly tickle. For three nights running, he lay sleepless on his back, hour upon hour, fancying his whole body a giant, en-crimsoned male member, aching for climax. Surely his brownies had never contrived a more thoroughly dehumanizing notion than that. Fortunately, on the third day, after a strict regimen of oatmeal baths, he rose like Lazarus from his affliction to refocus his energies on his father’s welfare.
On day twelve, at four in the afternoon, the two Stevensons sat at one of the wicker tables in Smedley’s winter garden. The sun had shone brightly through the midday, and the rays passing through the glass of the sizeable conservatory had warmed the air surprisingly. Liberally spaced paraffin heaters maintained a comfortable temperature, at least for the moment, and broad fronds of potted palms arched over the two men’s heads, lending to the air a welcome botanical fragrance and a touch of humidity.
“You do seem better, Father,” observed Stevenson as he poured the older man another cup of tea. “Would you agree?” Frankly, it was difficult to imagine how mere anointings of the flesh could ever find their way to the real seat of Thomas Stevenson’s failing, deep under the steel-gray hair.
His father shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe. I miss Maggie.”
“Well, you shall be seeing her again very soon.”
His father nodded. “When?”
“In two more days.”
“In London?”
“No, Father. Back in Edinburgh.”
“Good. Are you feeling better as well, Smout?”
“Like a new man, Father. As you said.”
“As I said,” nodded the other. “And you’ll be going back to London?”
“Only after we go together to Edinburgh. I need to see you safely home.”
“Thank you for that.” He took his napkin and dabbed lightly under the tip of his nose. “I expect Fanny misses you.”
“I expect she does. Would you like another?” He pushed a small tray of teacakes across the table. His father took one and laid it on his plate. His hand trembled noticeably.
“Now, if you must keep writing,” proclaimed his father, stressing the if, “be mindful always of what I have told you about piety. More than once, as I recall.”
Of a sudden, their penultimate day at the spa was bidding to become a Time for Final Words. Stevenson realized with surprise that he was not in the least prepared for it.
“Of course, Father.”
“Everything we do in life, we must have final regard for the state of our souls.” He looked at Stevenson, who met his gaze but said nothing. A son being launched into life or a son being left behind required, it seemed, exactly the same fatherly tuition.
“Everything you write must have a regard for the same.” The old man reached out and turned the teacake slowly on the plate.
“Fanny and I have often spoken of that. She very much agrees.”
“Good. And you do as well?”
“I agree with everything Fanny says,” laughed Stevenson. “You know that.”
“Fanny is a good woman,” said his father. “Despite her provincial… her provincial origins.” For a moment, his old eyes glinted with merriment. “So, you promised me, did you not, that your young David would take heed of the catechists and finish up as a prime example of a life well and piously lived?”
“I did, Father.”
His father smiled and reached again for the cake. He took a small bite and set it back down. “I shall die a fat man.”
“No time soon, I hope,” said Stevenson, with another twinge.
“I believe I have had a good life,” pronounced Thomas Stevenson.
“You have, Father. Long may it continue.”
“Perhaps.” For a moment the older man sat quietly. “Do you ever wish, Lou, you had done something more with your life?”
“What do you mean?”
“Done something. As opposed to writing something.”
“Something such as?”
“Well,” his father responded with a smile, “you know I’ll say like building a lighthouse.”
“Or a tunnel?”
“Or a lighthouse. Leaving behind a Skerryvore that you did more than give a name to. One that you conceived of and drew up and labored to bring into tangible being. So everyone could say, ‘Look there. That is Lou Stevenson’s light!’”
The son laughed. “The Stevensons have already scattered more than their fair share of Pharoses around Scotland, don’t you think? There are some who say the coast has grown unsightly as a consequence.”
“Perhaps.” Again his father grinned. “Of course you could have done something with the law as well. Argued cases of great moment. Swayed judgments of note.”
“Or spared my special friends a few of the depredations of the tax collector?”
His father chuckled and took another small bite of the teacake. “I confess I can make nothing of this Jekyll book of yours. However, it does seem to have made its mark.”
Stevenson’s thoughts flashed back to Fanny’s wondering what his father might make of the trail of dead old gentlemen strewn in Hyde’s wake. He evidently had no focused grievance with that. Perhaps he had not noticed.
“Indeed it has.”
“The reviews have been commendatory?”
“Generally.”
“And the sales good?”
“Remarkably.”
“I suppose you do warn against the perils of self-indulgence.”
Stevenson laughed and then told his father the story of the old lady in the Bournemouth bookshop.
“Will you be sending a copy to Cummy?” asked the older man, with a crinkly grin.
“I would be mad to. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would. It could cost us both our lives.”
“I don’t believe her displeasure would carry her that far. Do you, father?”
“Ach, laddie. Yui’ve nae seen the wumman wrought!”
Stevenson returned to Bournemouth to find a slew of letters commenting on Jekyll. Most were gratifying, including one from James that remarked, yet again, on the “impertinence” with which Stevenson achieved his most dramatic effects “without the aid of the ladies.” As to theme, James assured the writer that, “there is a genuine feeling for the perpetual moral question, a fresh sense of the difficulty of being good and the brutishness of being bad, but what there is above all is a singular ability in holding the interest.” Thank goodness for that! Reading the missive, scripted in James’s fine hand, Stevenson could all but hear, as though spoken aloud and with extreme slowness and clarity, his friend’s perpetual equivocation on the business of morality.
There was a long—very long—letter from a fellow named Myers, founder of an organization called the Society for Psychical Research. Aside from a general effusion about the extent to which Stevenson’s development of Hyde aligned with Myers’s own evolving theories of “a subliminal self” within every man, he was full of very specific observations about how the novel, were it ever to be reissued, might be greatly improved—thereby “ensuring its position among the masterpieces of literature.” On the matter of Hyde’s handwriting, for example, the man observed that “recent psycho-physical discussions” had resolved that, in actual cases of double personality, handwriting cannot be the same in both personalities. Hyde’s writing might look like Jekyll’s done with the left hand, Myers informed him, or done when partly drunk, or ill. But it would never simply be differently slanted, as the novel had errantly alleged. Stevenson would have loved to loose James on the man in order to expatiate on the virtues of the interesting as opposed to the trivial. He resolved, though, to respond with a humble offering of thanks…but certainly not before he had exhausted every other conceivable option for wasting a quarter of an hour.
Harder to dismiss was a letter from Symonds, postmarked in Davos.
My dear Louis,
At last I have read Dr. Jekyll. It makes me wonder whether a man has the right so to scrutinize “the abysmal deeps of personality.” It is indeed a dreadful book, most dreadful because of a certain moral callousness, a want of sympathy, a shutting out of hope. As a piece of literary work, this seems to me the finest you have done—in all that regards style, invention, psychological analysis, exquisite fitting of parts, and admirable employment of motives to realize the abnormal. But it has left such a deeply painful impression on my heart that I do not know how I am ever to turn to it again.
The fact is that, viewed as allegory, it touches one too closely. Most of us at some epoch of our lives have been upon the verge of developing a Mr. Hyde.
Physical and biological science on a hundred lines is reducing individual freedom to zero, and weakening the sense of responsibility. I doubt whether the artist should lend his genius to this grim argument. Your Dr. Jekyll seems to me capable of loosening the last threads of self-control in one who should read it while wavering between his better and worse self. It is like the Cave of Despair in the “Faery Queen.”
I understand now thoroughly how much a sprite you are. Really there is something not quite human in your genius!
Goodbye. I seem quite to have lost you. But if I come to England I shall try to see you.
Love to your wife.
Ever yours,
J. A. Symonds
Here was tough meat to dig one’s teeth into. How perceptive of Symonds to have seen, in an instant, the extent to which Jekyll bore on its author’s unremitting skepticism over human liberty, not only to choose between good and evil but also, far more taxingly, to move beyond the crippling antinomy of virtue and vice itself—the conceptual “curse of mankind,” as Jekyll himself named it. One might indeed argue that our Edenic forebears had brought sin and damnation into the world by their free and untrammeled choice. But, even without raising the boggling question of whether divine omniscience requires a divine fore-knowledge that is tantamount to divine predetermination, how was it part of a just plan for Creation that, from the very beginning, humanity should be pressed to survive in bodies that were driven by myriad compelling needs—and then be told that many of those needs were, at base, completely reprehensible? Where was one to look for freedom of will and, thus, for any notion of individual responsibility—especially, as Symonds had suggested, in this age of Galton and Spencer and Darwin?
Out of this muddle of theological rumination there emerged, however, a more troubling issue. It was one that Stevenson was not sure he had ever adequately confronted, unless it had been in general conversation with his father about things other than writing. Symonds had said that the story threatened to loosen the last threads of self-control in a man who wavered between his better and worse selves. Setting aside the intriguing question of what Symonds’s own “worse self” might be, what did this say about the final and consequential impact of the tale on others?
Whatever had driven Stevenson to write Jekyll and Hyde, it was never his intention to construct a story that impelled its readers to become worse rather than better men. He had long ago conceded that his original draft was driven far more by James’s desire to “interest” than by Fanny’s injunction to “improve.” Yet even that first version, he firmly supposed, could hardly be read as anything other than a demonstration that evil comes to evildoers—and therefore as an incentive, more or less, to virtue. And now here was Symonds, as acute a reader as he could ever hope to have, saying that Hyde’s inventor might as well be Satan whispering at the ear of Eve.
It all put him predictably in mind of Ferrier and what had at first seemed a curious reaction to his pirate story. Stevenson had come to accept that he might write to one end but accomplish another end altogether. In that realm of unintended consequences, though, it was one thing to consider the matter of interpretation; it was another entirely to consider instigation. He was far from certain that his alterations of the original tale honored Ferrier and his memory in any significant way, either as a sympathetic examination of the human lot or as a fancifully exaggerated version of the warning Walter might be pleased to see his life underscore. The thought that he might have parlayed a covert tribute to a friend into an actively seductive text chilled him to the bone.
He rose from his chair, walked to the side table, and poured himself a tumbler-full of whisky, reassured by the reserve that remained in the decanter.
“They are perfectly lovely, dear!” exclaimed Fanny, walking back from the mirror that hung between the drawing room windows. “What a sweet man you are!”
She bent to kiss him, then evidently decided she needed to sit in his lap. She slung herself awkwardly across his chair, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Of course, they don’t go with this dress at all,” she observed, fingering the string of pearls with delight, “but I’m sure I can find something that will set them off just perfectly.”
“I hope that ‘something’ is already in your possession, dearest. The news from Longman’s isn’t such that we can afford an entirely new wardrobe.”
“When have I ever been a spendthrift?” Fanny pouted with a provocative bounce.
“Oww! Consider my frailty, love. I can’t make our fortune with a crushed pelvis.”
Fanny reached up and pinched his cheek. “You write with your pen, skinny one. Not your pelvis. Besides, the doctor says I have lost pounds and pounds.”
“And yet you have just imperiled my midsection so recklessly. I can hardly be certain everything will still be in working order.”
“You haven’t tried it out lately?”
“Of course not.”
Again, Fanny pulled her head back and scanned his face. “Good. I believe I shall take a bath. You’ll join me soon…in my boudoir?”
“Wild horses, Pig.”
She squealed with excitement and bounded out of his lap. “Look for me to be wearing my lovely new pearls.” She looked back over her shoulder from the doorway. “For everything.”
“Except the bath, I hope.”
“Maybe even the bath.”
Once Fanny had charged up the stairs and rung for Millie, Stevenson rose from his chair and walked slowly into his study. Moving to the front of his desk, he hesitated for a moment, turning his ear to the door, and then opened a drawer on the left side, removing a small package wrapped in blue paper and a white ribbon. He stared down at it, turning it slowly in his hands, then he tucked it into his pocket, turned, and left the room.
He paused in the drawing room and, hearing Fanny conversing with Millie as the bath was being drawn, he walked through the dining room and into the kitchen. Valentine sat next to the large worktable in the center of the room, reading a letter. The envelope lay torn open on the tabletop, and she was leaning forward on her forearms, several sheets of paper clasped between her hands. She looked up as he entered and sat up straight, reaching for her hair. Her cap lay discarded next to the envelope.
“Monsieur,” she said with the hint of a blush. “I am sorry. I didn’t expect to see you again tonight.”
Something slid along the floor of the room above them, followed by a sharp footfall or two.
“Tonight’s meal was excellent,” said Stevenson. “I wanted to thank you especially.”
“Thank you, monsieur.” Valentine reached for her cap.
“No. Please don’t worry.”
She regarded him questioningly, and for a moment they were silent. He gestured towards the table.
“A letter from home?”
Valentine nodded.
“All is well there, I hope.”
She tipped her head from side to side. Comme ci, comme ça.
“Is there anything I can do to help? That we can do?”
“No. Truly. It is just…life. Passing as it does.” Valentine smiled, turning in her chair to face him. “You are kind to ask.”
A thud from above and the sound of voices.
“I have had good news from my publishers,” volunteered Stevenson. He stepped towards the table and laid his hand upon it, drumming softly with his fingers. “One of my recent books is selling especially well. And there are hopes of its becoming a play. For the theater.”
“That is good news!” exclaimed Valentine, with a full and happy smile. Stevenson was unsure he had ever seen her look so unguardedly pleased.
“It is. And I should like to share my good fortune with you, Valentine. In a very small way.”
“With me?” She looked genuinely puzzled.
Stevenson nodded, reaching into his pocket for the package. He extended it towards her, well aware that it would be an awkward moment if Millie were to walk in. Even more awkward if Fanny were to barge in, naked and dripping from her bath, with pearls flashing around her neck. He grinned at the thought, grateful to his brownies for lightening the moment.
Valentine smiled and took the package. She looked at it with interest, and then looked back at him.
“Go ahead! Please.”
She took a deep breath and pulled at the ribbon, freeing it from the package. Folding back the blue wrapping, she exposed some white tissue and, parting that, uncovered an elegant silver comb, heavy and gleaming, its long teeth carved of the finest tortoise shell.
“Oh, monsieur.” This time, it was a full blush. “I don’t—”
“Thank you, Valentine. For all that you have done for us. For so many years.”
“Oh, monsieur. How can I—?”
“It’s nothing, really. De rien. You deserve more.” This was all taxing enough, but he suddenly felt completely out of his depth. He was certain Millie was about to crash through the door, followed by the local constable and whoever that sermonizing vicar was from St. Peter’s. At least Valentine had the good grace not to rise and kiss him. Where that would lead, he had no way of knowing.
“Well,” said Valentine, facing the table once again, “I am grateful. You are too kind. You and Madame Stevenson both.” She wrapped the comb carefully back in its paper and placed it ceremoniously into her apron pocket. “There. All safe!” Her eyes darted towards the ceiling, then fell back on him. She smiled in her enigmatic way. Was there a French Leonardo, Stevenson wondered?
“Valentine,” he said, stepping back from the table and folding his arms. “You should find a man and start a family.” It had burst out of him without his having any inkling that it was coming.
She laughed outright and shook her head. “Why do you say that, monsieur?”
“Because you are a fine woman.” Stevenson sounded to himself exactly like a schoolmaster, giving a year-end prize to a promising young student. In the back of his head, he could detect his brownies agitating for a more honest response to her question. One that might have something to do with certain thoughts and temptations from which he was now, perhaps, hoping to shake himself free. “And you would make a fine mother. And a fine wife,” he added as an afterthought.
“Best to be a wife before a mother.” Her eyes twinkled at him. “It is not, is it, that you wish to be rid of me?”
“Heavens, no!” sputtered Stevenson. “Not at all.”
“Or madame?”
Good God! thought Stevenson, briefly entertaining the possibility that she meant he might wish to be rid of Fanny.
“No. She values you as greatly as I do. It’s simply that you deserve a full life.”
She looked up from her hands, her eyebrows rising, one now more cocked than the other. “And what would a full life be like? For me?”
Stevenson found it within himself to chuckle. “I don’t know, Valentine. I am a storyteller. Not a sage.”
“Thank you,” said Valentine, after a moment or two. “But I am very happy here. With you and Madame Stevenson.”
Perhaps an hour later, lying in her bed under the eaves, Valentine could hear the post-bath carryings-on in the Stevensons’ room just below. In fact, she thought she could also hear Millie and Agnes tittering in their own chamber next door. At first, she had found it bothersome, listening to her employers taking advantage of their first night together after close to a month apart. Quite soon, though, she allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to lie there naked as one of them stood in her doorway, smiling in at her with those gypsy eyes. She found the thought so arousing that she nearly rushed herself but, with a moderate exertion of self-control, she arrested her pace until, hearing clearly enough the climactic groans from below, she brought herself to the fiery place just as she imagined her willful mistress exploding into flame.