around, though. “Hell, that’s just…” Suddenly he looked thoughtful. “I believe it’s a gypsy wagon.”
“Gypsies again,” said Doyle. “They didn’t use to—I mean they don’t usually come into big cities much, do they?”
“I don’t know,” Benner said slowly. “I’m not even sure it is a gypsy wagon, but I’ll mention it to Darrow.”
The street narrowed and darkened as they rattled down St. Martin’s Lane and passed the tall old church, and the groups of men that watched their passage from low, dimly lit doorways made Doyle glad of Benner’s weapons; then it broadened out into light and festivity again when they came to the wide boulevard that was the Strand. Benner worked his complicated gun back into its sack.
“The Crown and Anchor’s just around the corner,” he said. “And I haven’t seen your gypsy wagon for the last several blocks.”
Between two buildings Doyle got a quick view of the river Thames, glittering in the moonlight. It seemed to him that a bridge wasn’t there that he’d seen there on his 1979 visit, but before he had time really to orient himself they’d turned into a little street and squeaked to a halt in front of a two-storied half-timbered building with a sign swinging over the open doorway. The Crown and Anchor, Doyle read.
Drops of rain began pattering down as the guests stepped out of the coaches. Darrow moved to the front, his hands buried in a furry muff. “You,” he said, nodding at the man who’d driven the forward coach, “park the cars. The rest of us’ll be inside. Come on, all.” He led the party of seventeen into the warmth of the tavern.
“Good God, sir,” exclaimed the boy who hurried up to them, “all of you for dinner? Should have let us know in advance, they’d have opened the back banquet room. But see if there’s enough chairs to settle on in the taproom, and—”
“We haven’t come for dinner,” said Darrow impatiently. “We’ve come to hear Mr. Coleridge speak.”
“Have ye?” The boy turned and shouted down a hall, “Mr. Lawrence! Here’s a whole lot more people that thought it was this Saturday that the poet fellow was to speak here!”
Every bit of color left Darrow’s face, and suddenly he was a very old man dressed up in ludicrous clothes. The muff fell off his hands and thumped on the hardwood floor. No one spoke, though Doyle, beneath his shock and disappointment, could feel a fit of hysterical laughter building up to critical mass inside himself.
A harried-looking man, followed by a pudgy old fellow with long gray hair, hurried up to them. “I’m Lawrence, the manager,” he said. “Mr. Montagu set up the lecture for next Saturday, the eighth of October, and I can’t help it that you’ve all come tonight. Mr. Montagu isn’t here, and he’d be upset if—”
Doyle had glanced, and was now staring, at the chubby, ill-seeming man beside Lawrence, who blinked at them all apologetically while the manager was speaking. In his mounting excitement Doyle raised a hand so quickly that the manager halted in mid-sentence, and he leaned forward and said to the man beside Lawrence, “Mr. Coleridge, I believe?”
“Yes,” the man said, “and I do apologize to you all for—”
“Excuse me.” Doyle turned to Lawrence. “The boy indicated that there is a banquet room not in use.”
“Well, yes, that’s true, but it hasn’t been swept and there’s no fire… and besides, Mr. Montagu—”
“Montagu won’t mind.” He turned to Darrow, who was recovering his color. “I’m sure you must have brought suitable cash to cover emergencies, Mr. Darrow,” he said. “And I imagine that if you give this fellow enough of it he’ll have a fire built and provisions brought to us in this banquet room. After all, Mr. Coleridge clearly thought it was to be this evening, and so did we, so why should we listen to him out on the street when there are taverns about with unused rooms? I’m sure,” he said to Lawrence, “even Mr. Montagu can’t fault the logic of that.”
“Well,” said the manager reluctantly, “it will mean taking several of our people away from their proper duties… we will all have to take extra pains… “
“A hundred gold sovereigns!” cried Darrow wildly.
“Done,” choked Lawrence. “But keep your voice down, please.”
Coleridge looked horrified. “Sir, I couldn’t permit—”
“I’m a disgustingly wealthy man,” Darrow said, his poise regained. “Money is nothing to me. Benner, fetch it from the coach while Mr. Lawrence here shows us to the banquet room.” He clapped one arm around Coleridge’s shoulders and the other around Doyle’s and followed the bustling, eager figure of the manager.
“By your accents I surmise you are American?” said Coleridge, a little bewildered. Doyle noted that the man pronounced his r’s; it must be the Devonshire accent, he thought, still present after all these years. Somehow that added to the impression of vulnerability Coleridge projected.
“Yes,” Darrow answered. “We’re from Virginia. Richmond.”
“Ah. I’ve always wished to visit the United States. Some friends and I planned to, at one time.”
The banquet room, on the far side of the building, was dark and very cold. “Never mind sweeping,” said Darrow, energetically flipping chairs off the long table and setting them upright on the floor. “Get some light in here, and a fire, and a lot of wine and brandy, and we’ll be fine.”
“At once, Mr. Darrow,” said Lawrence, and rushed out of the room.
Coleridge had another sip of the brandy and got to his feet. He looked around at the company, which now numbered twenty-one, for three men who’d been dining in one of the other rooms had heard what was going on and decided to join the group. One had flipped open a notebook and held a pencil expectantly.
“As you all know doubtless at least as well as I,” the poet began, “the entire tone of English literature was altered, dropped into a minor and somber key, at the accession of Cromwell’s Parliament party, when the popularly styled Roundheads succeeded, despite the ‘divine right of kings,’ in beheading Charles the First. The Athenian splendors of Elizabeth’s reign, or rather her age, for her years embraced a combined glory of all disciplines that our nation has not at any other time seen, gave way to the austerity of the Puritans, who eschewed alike the extravagances and the bright insights of their historical predecessors. Now John Milton was already thirty-four years old when Cromwell came into power, and thus, although he supported the Parliament party and welcomed the new emphasis on stern discipline and self-control, his modes of thought had been formed during the twilight of the previous period… “
As Coleridge went on, losing his apologetic tone and beginning to speak more authoritatively as he warmed to his subject, Doyle found himself glancing around at the company. The stranger with the notebook was busily scribbling away in some sort of shorthand, and Doyle realized that he must be the schoolteacher Darrow mentioned last night. He stared enviously at the notebook; if luck’s with me, he thought, I may be able to get my hands on that, a hundred and seventy years from now. The man looked up and caught Doyle’s eye, and smiled. Doyle nodded and quickly looked away. Don’t be looking around, he thought furiously—keep writing.
The Thibodeaus were both staring at Coleridge through half-closed eyes, and for a moment Doyle feared the old couple was dozing off; then he recognized their blank expression as intense concentration, and he knew they were recording the lecture, in their own minds, as completely as any videotape machine could.
Darrow was watching the poet with a quiet, pleased smile, and Doyle guessed that he wasn’t even listening to the lecture, but was simply glad that the audience seemed satisfied with the show.
Benner was staring down at his hands, as though this was just an interlude, a rest period before some great effort to come. Could he be worrying, Doyle wondered, about the return trip through that slum area? He didn’t seem very concerned on the ride down.
“Thus Milton refines the question down to a matter of faith,” said Coleridge, bringing the lecture to a close, “and a kind of faith more independent, autonomous—more truly strong, as a matter of fact—than the Puritans really sought. Faith, he tells us, is not an exotic bloom to be laboriously maintained by the exclusion of most aspects of the day to day world, nor a useful delusion to be supported by sophistries and half-truths like a child’s belief in Father Christmas—not, in short, a prudently unregarded adherence to a constructed creed; but rather must be, if anything, a clear-eyed recognition of the patterns and tendencies, to be found in every piece of the world’s fabric, which are the lineaments of God. This is why religion can only be advice and clarification, and cannot carry any spurs of enforcement—for only belief and behavior that is independently arrived at, and then chosen, can be praised or blamed. This being the case, it can be seen as a criminal abridgment of a person’s rights willfully to keep him in ignorance of any facts or opinions—no piece can be judged inadmissible, for the more stones, both bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God.”
He paused and looked over his audience; then, “Thank you,” he said, and sat down. “Are there any questions or amplifications or disagreements?” Doyle noticed that as the fire of oratory left him he became again the plump, modest old fellow they had met in the entry hall—during the lecture he’d been a more impressive figure.
