Dark Matter

“Why did you tell him that?” I asked when the constable was gone.

“Because it’s what I would have supposed, had I not known of the Green Ribboners’ Plot,” he explained. “I see no reason to let it generally be known that there has been an attempt on my life. We must do or say nothing that will alarm the plotters until Lord Halifax is ready to move against them.”

“Until this is over,” I told him, “you must not be on your own.”

“No, you are right. You must come to Jermyn Street. At least until this is all over.”

And so for a while I lived at Jermyn Street again.

Mostly Miss Barton avoided being alone with me; but one day, while Newton was resting in his room, and it being a most inclement day, we found ourselves alone with each other. I had no idea how to broach the subject of her apparent estrangement from me, but I felt that I must say something, or die.

“Will you play drafts, Miss Barton?”

“No, thank you, sir, I am reading.”

“Come, will you not play? I am much improved since our last encounter. I am learning much from the Doctor’s style of play.”

She turned her page, with eloquent silence.

“Miss Barton,” I said at last, “I rely upon what once passed between us to justify my asking you now if you think it possible that you will ever look upon me as your friend again.”

She said nothing, but kept on reading her book.

“If it seems at all likely that you will ever find it in your heart to forgive me.”

Now she looked at me over the top of her book and beat me with her eyelashes. “It is not I who needs to forgive you, Mister Ellis, as I think I have made plain to you, but almighty God.”

“But this is most unfair. Must we bring God into this?”

“Let me ask you a question, Mister Ellis. Are you still of an atheistic frame of mind?”

“I cannot, in all conscience, say that I am not.”

“You are under my uncle’s roof as a guest, Mister Ellis; as am I. We must try to get along as best we can. But I will tell you this, sir. I am a good Christian woman, Mister Ellis, and your views are repugnant to me. And your views being repugnant, it should be plain that you are also repugnant to me, so long as you shall hold them.”

“Then surely it is your Christian duty to help me back to Christ,” said I.

“It is not for me to show you the error of your thinking. That is not what is lacking in you, sir. Faith cannot be taught, Mister Ellis, like an alphabet. You must do that for yourself. I will not. I cannot.”

That same night, alone in my room at Newton’s house in Jermyn Street, my earlier conversation with Miss Barton, combined with a sense of apprehension that another attempt on Newton’s life might be made, made me restless, and finding it impossible to sleep, I resolved to go out and take the air of Hyde Park.

I had started down the stairs when I thought I heard a man’s voice in the kitchen. Newton was already abed, and Mister Woston had lodgings elsewhere. Returning to my room for a pistol, I went downstairs to investigate, and about halfway down I heard the man’s voice again. It was not a man saying anything that I heard, so much as a man groaning in his sleep.

Outside the parlour door I paused to cock my pistol, certain now that there was an intruder. And turning the handle, I advanced boldly into the room, with my pistol extended before me.

The sight I beheld was more terrible to me than any murderer could ever have been. In the candlelight which revealed her complete nakedness, Miss Barton knelt in front of Lord Halifax, who did serve her from behind like any common bawd. She stifled a scream as she saw me in the doorway. And seeing the pistol in my hand, Lord Halifax withdrew himself from inside her body, held his arms up in front of his head, and whimpered most piteously while Miss Barton tried to cover her naked parts with a tablecloth. And I stood there, saying nothing, but breathing like an angry bull. I almost put the pistol to my own head and pulled the trigger, such was the pain and disappointment that I felt. But after a moment or two I put up my gun and, begging their pardon for having put them in fear of their lives, explained that I thought I had heard an intruder, and then excused myself from their presence. Neither he nor she said a word; and yet by their situation all was suddenly plain to me. Newton had been right: his niece was in love; but not with me. It was Lord Halifax she loved.

I could not remain in that house. And not for the first time I walked from Jermyn Street to the Tower in a state of abject misery, hardly caring if anyone killed me. In truth, I would have welcomed death. For the injustice of it was only too painful to me. How could the she who had lectured me on a good Christian life give herself to another man within only a month or two of giving herself, more or less, to me? Of course the difference was plain; he was Lord Halifax and I was plain, poor Christopher Ellis. Better to be an earl’s mistress than a poor man’s wife.