Lenox remained in Sussex another thirty-six hours, half of that Saturday and the full of the subsequent Sunday, not leaving until the last train from Markethouse to London, the 9:39. He was hesitant to leave, but wanted to have a week in the city—Scotland Yard at work, Mayne in the offices—in order to move forward with the case.
A month was a short time; he repeated this to himself morning, noon, night. June 2.
On the second afternoon, he and his father rode out again. They rode farther than they ever had together, though not farther than Sir Edward and Edmund, who had rambled all across the county over the years.
Beneath the downs under the village of Somerton was a small creek, and after a hard hour’s riding, they stopped there and let their thirsty horses drink and recover.
His father was stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and soaked his arms and neck in the stream, too. There was a contented look on his face. He dried himself with a broad piece of cloth tied to his saddlebags, then took out some figs, cheese, and bread, which he divided between them. Charles accepted the victuals gratefully, famished. At the house his mother would be having a hearty tea, but he wouldn’t have traded spots.
After they had caught their breath, Lenox’s father said, quite unexpectedly, “I wonder whom you think of marrying.”
“I? I don’t have anyone in particular in mind, sir.”
His father nodded. “You’re very young. I only wondered.”
“Not twenty-two anymore,” Charles replied, smiling.
“No indeed.”
There had been a young lady at Oxford, the daughter of a don, named Cynthia, and he wondered if this was what his father meant. He had introduced his parents to her; at one time, when he was in her father’s grand bookish musty Norham Gardens house every afternoon, he had thought he would certainly marry her.
In the end, she had married rather beneath herself, to a fellow named Allerton. He was one of the handsomest chaps who had ever drawn breath—utterly decent, too, but extremely stupid. She hadn’t cared; nothing could have been clearer. She treasured him. Beauty, Lenox had learned: there was a force in the world. This fellow’s beauty had mattered more than Lenox’s openhearted affection.
He could give himself a pang very easily thinking of Cynthia. (The wedding was only eight months in the past; the silver tea set he had given them hadn’t had time to tarnish.) She was modern, with a slim, beautiful figure. But if he looked just beyond the middle distance of his emotion, to whatever far-off place he was journeying toward, he knew that it hadn’t been she who got away.
Because his thoughts had turned to Cynthia, it surprised him when, a moment later, his father said, “And is Lady Elizabeth well? She likes London life?”
“She has been to see the hippopotamus.”
“Half the cabinet has, too,” said his father. “Appalling waste of time.”
“So I told her.”
There was a fractional pause, and for a passing second Lenox thought his father might mention his son’s career—or his ambitions to travel, which he seemed to dislike just as strongly, another dilettante’s choice.
But all he said was, “Shall we ride back?”
“If you think the horses are ready.”
“Oh yes. Clarence had another few miles in him when we stopped, and he’s the older of the pair.”
They set off in loud, happy silence.
That question was the closest his father had come to mentioning his condition, Lenox reflected as they rode. Then there was a fence to jump and the thought was chased from his mind. He was conscious, however, to remember each of these moments; and it was a queer feeling to know that he was doing so.
McConnell had been a more delicate, interested, and thoughtful party than Sir Riley Callum, who was perhaps overburdened by his own greatness and had seemed irritated at the disadvantage in which it placed him (a knight of the realm!) that mere money had drawn him four hours across the country.
But the result was the same. A slight shake of Lenox’s mother head after the two-hour visit, and he felt as if he had been leveled by a gust of wind.
Charles had returned with McConnell to the station, Graham on the box. He liked the Scot, who seemed, now, sober and respectful, but not overplaying the role. “He will have a very fair quality of life,” the doctor had said.
“Right until the end?”
McConnell had pulled out a pad of paper. “I could prescribe a medicine, but look—you live in London. Have you seen Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup?”
“Yes.”
It was advertised widely—a colicky baby’s best remedy. McConnell was writing the name down. “It is essentially pure poppy. There is nobody on earth whose pain it wouldn’t relieve.”
“Poppy.”
“The most jaded denizen of the filthiest opium den would find relief from it,” McConnell said lightheartedly—attempting to be lighthearted.
“Thank you,” said Lenox.
“On the bottle they dose by weight. You can extrapolate.”
“Amazing that this is the best modern medicine can do,” Lenox said.
McConnell shook his head angrily, in a way that implied he agreed. “Yes,” he said.
But Lenox had only, with this idle comment, been delaying the question he dreaded asking. “When will he need it?”
They were halfway through Markethouse, every bump in its road familiar to Charles. “In five months,” said McConnell.
“And is there some other expert, some physician who perhaps could—?”
“There is not,” said McConnell sympathetically but firmly. “The growth is too large, and the symptoms all indicate that the disease is present in other regions of his body.”
Lenox nodded. “Very well. Thank you.”
“I will be in touch every two weeks. If there is some surgical option that could provide relief at the end, I will be happy to return—more than happy. You needn’t bother about the doubled fee. That’s my secretary. He’s on a salary, but he gets a gleam of gold in his eye.”
The carriage had stopped. Lenox looked at his watch. “It is still thirty minutes until the next train. I shall wait with you.”
McConnell shook his head. “Please, go back. Thirty minutes will be enough to find my way around the town. I like a small town. I grew up in one.”
They shook hands and the rangy doctor strode off, bag at his side. His immense good health and handsome face seemed somehow not like a rebuke to his patients, but a form of love for them, faith in them.
Lenox watched him go down Cowman’s Lane—he didn’t turn back, a final gracefulness—and then tapped the door of the carriage to indicate that they could return home.
How silly it had seemed, the handsome carriage; the vanity of it; the vanity of the world. Those were his rather muddled thoughts after dropping the second doctor at the station.
He had been so sure he could fix it. Arrogance.
Still, it was good to have the following days with his parents. Edmund was arriving soon, and Lenox had been setting his mind to the next five months. He wished to be here as often as possible. After June 2, he would, one way or the other, spend most of his time at Lenox House.
After midnight on that Sunday evening—so at the outset of Monday, really—Lenox and Graham arrived at Charing Cross. It was a rainy night in London, heavy fog.
To his surprise, his brother was waiting for them there. He lifted a hand and smiled. “There you are,” he said. “To the minute.”
“Goodness, Edmund,” said Charles. “What on earth brings you to meet us?”
“Oh?” Edmund took one of the small bags that Graham and Charles had divided between them, having declined a porter. “Just a thought that I would.”
They took a cab back to Lenox’s flat, which was slumbering—he had offered no advance notice of the timing of his return—and together made up a bickering fire, then settled comfortably with two drinks. Graham had retreated to the back part of the flat to unpack.
“How do they seem?” Edmund said.
Charles reflected for a moment. “Father seems himself. Mother a wreck.”
“And the doctors are in agreement?”
“Yes.”
“Five months.”
Charles nodded. “Or six. Thereabouts.”
“October,” said Edmund.
The strangest look came over his face. It was one of those moments when a hundred roads forward fall away. From now on, like their father, he would be concerned with the health of trees on their land, the happiness of their tenants, the expense of fixing a wall four centuries old.
But it was also infused by a purer grief than perhaps Charles had experienced, he saw. He realized that even this week he had still been looking for his father’s—approval, perhaps, or respect. For Edmund, his father was closer to an equal. He needed nothing from Sir Edward before his death; what a keen edge that added to his sorrow, and what a keener one it took away.
Charles was quiet. At last, he said, “Molly will go with you?”
“Oh? Yes, and the boy.”
That was their son, James. “I say, get Molly to draw.”
This was rather elliptical, but Edmund nodded straightaway. His wife—a person of the country—had rather fewer attainments, in French or pianoforte or whatever you liked, than most of the women they knew. But she had an innate gift for likeness in drawing. Her small line drawings, often made in half distraction at a party and left behind, were unerringly alive, and whenever Charles was next in whatever home they had been in, he would find that Molly’s scrap of paper had been framed and placed in some honored place.
It had to do with her deep well of kindheartedness. She drew the best person everyone was, somehow, without ever flattering them in the least.
The two brothers sat and discussed the country (the cricket, the horses, the shooting, the season), and their talk gave way here and there to memory. At last, near two o’clock, Edmund stood up and said he supposed he had better go. He asked if there was anything he could do for his brother before he left town.
“You don’t have any Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup, do you? I could use some.”
Edmund gave him a strange look but smiled. “You’re an odd duck, Charles. Ha—look at that, Duck! My mind must have been working behind my back.”
“The only way it ever does.”
“Very funny.” Edmund paused. “If Father—goes, as it were, Mother will remain exactly where she is. None of this dowager—well, you know.”
Charles laughed. “Yes. We have talked about it a hundred times or so.”
Nevertheless, he was glad to hear it once more. They shook hands, and Charles walked Edmund down to a hansom cab in the streets, which were lost in a swirling, relentless fog; he returned upstairs drained, very grateful that he had a brother.