Page 39 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
Chapter Sixteen
In contrast to the bustle of the Bell and even the warmth of his own kitchen, Hartley’s library had the stale quiet of a sickroom. More than once, he found himself wandering down the back stairs under the shamefully flimsy pretense of requiring Alf or requesting a dish from Sadie. Only that morning he had insisted on taking a heavy dish out of the oven to spare Sadie the trouble. This was highly ungenteel but he didn’t quite know whether he cared. When Will showed up two weeks after their encounter at Friars’ Gate, Hartley was too bored and lonely to even feign chilliness.
“Look,” Will said, his hands shoved in the pockets of a coarse fustian coat that ought to go directly to the rag man, “either we patch it up now or we’re going to be awkward together for the rest of our lives. You’re my brother and my best friend. I don’t see that a dead man needs to ruin that, in addition to everything else he ruined.” Something in his tone suggested that Will’s list of things Sir Humphrey Easterbrook ruined went beyond Hartley’s personal life, but he didn’t want to ask, lest they start quarrelling about Martin again.
“Quite,” Hartley said. Really, he didn’t deserve a brother as understanding as Will. Hartley knew he was prickly and difficult; he couldn’t meet Will’s generosity even close to halfway.
“So come with me tonight to see the new play in Covent Garden. I’m meant to write a review for theObserver.”
It was supposed to be perfectly terrible, and Hartley, who liked picking apart bad plays almost as much as he enjoyed watching good plays, would have gone in a heartbeat if he didn’t have misgivings about being on display in front of hundreds of people.
“Come on,” Will said encouragingly. “It’s going to be ghastly.” He said this in the manner of one promising a special treat, and Hartley couldn’t help but smile.
“Very well then,” Hartley said. “If it turns out to be any good I’ll be very cross.”
“Afterward,” Will continued, “the cast is having a bit of a do.”
“No,” Hartley said too quickly.
“It’s nothing grand.”
Hartley refrained from pointing out that Will was hardly likely to be associated with any grandeur whatsoever, and also that his boots looked like they had been dragged behind a cart for some distance before he put them on. He needed to get out of the house before he started offering to help Sadie peel vegetables simply to avoid his own company. If he could associate with anyone without fear of being ostracized, it was actors. It might be pleasant to simply be among other people who didn’t whisper about his proclivities and scandals. Hell, most people thought actors were all sodomites and actresses all whores, so he’d be among fellow travelers, as it were. “Fine,” he said, and rang for Alf.
“The black coat and the violet waistcoat,” Alf declared when Hartley said he was going to the theater.
“I was thinking of the dark blue coat with the gray waistcoat.”
Alf’s lip curled. “If you’re only going to leave the house once a week, might as well look your best when you do.”
“The gray waistcoat suits me.”
“Makes me want to die from boredom. What’s the point of having purple waistcoats if you don’t wear them?”
Will watched this exchange like a spectator at a tennis match. Indeed, he had never seen any of Hartley’s servants say more than two words to him, usually along the lines of “yes, sir,” or “presently, sir.” But things were different now and Hartley found that he didn’t mind Alf mouthing off. Maybe it was because he had nobody else to talk to. Maybe it was because Alf knew the worst and tolerated him anyway. Or maybe it was because Will’s presence reminded Hartley that he hadn’t always been a fine gentleman. Will’s appalling coat wasn’t so different from what Hartley had worn a few years ago.
Hartley hadn’t known that coats such as Will’s were anything other than perfectly serviceable until his godfather had taught him so. Closing his eyes, he had the sense that when he opened them, the library would be as it was eight years ago: lewd paintings on the walls, expensive baubles still unsold, the room filled with wealthy sybarites. It was in this room, and at the house parties at Friars’ Gate, that Hartley had learned what gentlemen were, what they wore, the unspoken codes of behavior that they followed. He had soaked up that knowledge with the callow certainty that being a gentleman would protect him from the vagaries of fortune. At his father’s house, everything had been maddeningly unsettled—days without food, years without school, no plans at all for the children’s future. Without trades or professions, the Sedgwick children would have had a lifetime of missed meals and empty hearths.
Easterbrook had been perfectly aware of the young Sedgwicks’ predicament and his own ability to give them aid. But instead of freely offering help, he had taken advantage of Hartley’s desperation. At the time, Hartley had thought only of the promise of future security for his brothers; he considered himself the author of his own fate. Now he looked back and saw his own actions as the tactics of a desperate child with nowhere else to turn.
He tried to remember what it was like to care so much about anyone else, and all he could think of was his growing pile of unanswered letters. When he opened his eyes, he saw Will staring at him with concern. Good God, ifWillwas worried about him, he must really be badly off.
He cleared his throat and tried to summon up a pedagogical manner. “In the best households,” he told Alf, “a servant doesn’t argue with his employer about waistcoats.”
“Is that so?” Alf was speaking with what was doubtless intended to be a comic mockery of Hartley’s own accent.
“Indeed it is,” Hartley said, drawing on a dwindling reserve of patience.
“If I ever give a sod what they do in fine households, I’ll be sure to remember that.”
A strangled sound came from Will’s direction and Hartley did not dare turn his head lest he see his brother laughing and find it contagious. “Fine,” he conceded. “The violet waistcoat, then.”
The play was every bit as bad as Hartley had hoped, and he enjoyed Will’s scathing commentary more than the actual production. Afterward, they went to somebody’s lodgings, where gin and cheap wine flowed freely and a few actors still wore their stage makeup. Hartley couldn’t help but feel that he ought to be enjoying it more, and that it was his own fault for finding himself at the edges of the rooms, failing to take conversational bait, and in general being a bad guest.
“You’re Will’s brother?” said a man in a sloppily tied cravat and an inexpertly shaved jaw. “You look nothing alike.”
“He’s one of the legitimate ones,” Will said, appearing at Hartley’s elbow. “This is Edgar Graham, the actor.”
Will wandered off, claiming to need another drink, but plainly leaving Hartley and Mr. Graham alone. “The play was very entertaining,” Hartley lied.
