Sat, May 19 2012
"Come on, Fogg. Get up. You're too heavy for me to lift, for heaven's sake." Phileas Fogg only just resisted the temptation to curl up into the fetal position to escape from that noise. Any noise would have had the same effect, but something in Jules Verne's voice was so forcibly cheerful that Fogg's stomach reeled even further than usual in response.
"No," Fogg replied, as quietly as he could manage, hoping that Verne might take the hint. There were absolutely no words that could describe how very badly he wanted to Verne to say "never mind," close the doors again, and leave. Quietly leave, so that he could continue the process of dying, which Verne had apparently interrupted. He felt as though he'd been in a fight with an entire army, after which he'd dined on a celebratory meal of cotton wool. Libations were also of enormous importance to the festivities, judging from the large quantity of empty bottles.
"There's no time for playing, Fogg, Rebecca means to go home to Shillingworth Magna and she means to leave today, with or without you she says, but I don't believe her. Not at Christmas time." Verne did something unspeakably cruel – he opened the drapes. The pain in Fogg's head increased triple- fold in an intense flash, then ebbed slowly to a merely hideous pounding. What time was it? For that matter, what day was it?
"Christmas?" Fogg croaked. He had no idea that Christmas was coming. Although Christmas did traditionally arrive towards the end of December, and the month had been December when last he'd looked at a calendar. His brain scrambled to calculate the passing days of Advent – approximately a week remained.
"Yes, Fogg, Christmas. You remember? December 25? And if you've forgotten Rebecca's present you might as well stay right here." Verne was perfectly correct on that count and Fogg wondered how he was going to find something on such alarmingly short notice, and why he hadn't thought of this earlier, and for heaven's sake, why on earth was there broken glass all over the floor?
And then he remembered. He remembered Guilaine, stripped of frivolity and frippery, an utterly ordinary beautiful woman who had accepted his heart and then torn it into a thousand pieces because she didn't dare to surrender her own. He remembered how she had disappeared, as if she had never existed in his life. Fogg's stomach executed a sort of crashing to the bottom of his vitals that he didn't know was physically possible.
"How did you know, Verne?" Fogg asked, in a tone that allowed no alternative but to answer. Verne paused in the middle of reaching for another curtain, then turned and sank into a club chair near the fireplace.
"Guilaine didn't come to the theater yesterday," Jules replied. He looked up nervously. "She sent a note this morning, and asked me to pay her a visit. She wanted to apologize."
"For this?" said Fogg. He blinked in the light, still struggling to accustom his eyes to the obnoxious brilliance of the sun. Guilaine hadn't gone to the theater yesterday, which would have been the day she left him, but Jules hadn't seen her until this morning, which meant that he had been drinking since the day before...drinking every time the agony of Guilaine's abandonment seized him again; tearing through claret and sherry and even table wine - his head sensed that he was about to even think of the word "brandy" and throbbed accordingly.
"For leaving the revue. Guilaine was packing trunks, Fogg. She told me...she told me that she had completed her business with you." Jules shrugged. "So I came straight here. I knew you wouldn't be much for visitors but I've been worried about you, Fogg."
"Well, that was brave of you," said Fogg, pulling himself up into a sitting position and scratching at his unshaven cheek, which itched unpleasantly with a two day-start on a beard. "I've been nothing but a jealous, fawning fool." Not to mention a lush, Fogg grumbled to himself. His head swam miserably as the room took a 270- degree turn around him.
"True enough. But you're my friend, Fogg," said Jules with a smile so genuine that Fogg wanted to weep, but feeling a rush of stern Anglicism he nodded instead – and immediately regretted it. He found himself doubled over by a wave of nausea that would have knocked a bull elephant to the ground. Jules raised his eyebrows in disapproval. "You'd better not be like this when you get back to Rebecca, or she'll probably thrash both of us. You for being an idiot, and me for not keeping you from being an idiot."
"I am perfectly capable of being well- behaved around my cousin," Fogg winced yet again. If Rebecca took to speaking loudly, he was doomed. "And is my cousin feeling inclined towards peace, Verne? She was less than pleased with me the other night."
Verne smiled lopsidedly at him. "Surely Christmas will put her in a forgiving mood? Or at least a conveniently forgetful mood?" Verne seemed unusually hopeful about that, to Fogg's mind. "I hope it puts you in such a mood as well."
"I have nothing to forgive," said Fogg. "And you certainly have no reason to ask."
"I was unkind." Verne offered his hand. "And you were in love, for better or for worse."
"I'm not so certain," Fogg replied. He accepted Verne's hand with relief and gratitude.
"Don't disregard her because she hurt you, Fogg. You felt something real…you saw something in her that no one else saw. To be fair, Fogg, I'm not sure what that was, but you saw it, and perhaps that should have been enough for me." Verne's hand moved towards whatever was weighing down his jacket pocket, quite unconsciously. "I doubt that it'll ever be enough for Rebecca, of course, so you might want to keep that in mind in the future."
Fogg found himself grunting in agreement and abruptly becoming aware of other needs that typically affected a man in the morning. After asking Verne to find out about a cup of tea, if the servants could possibly forgive him (he assumed there were still servants and that they hadn't all fled in terror), Fogg staggered painfully off to the water closet, completely dreading the prospect of moving back to the Aurora with everything he owned and a hangover that made death look surprisingly attractive besides.
* * * *
When Fogg arrived at the Aurora and crept into the main cabin of the gondola, trying to avoid causing the slightest creak in the floors, he found Rebecca lying in wait, busying herself with a report that didn't appear to interest her in the slightest. "Phileas," she said, her voice steely and cool.
There was a box of something on the table – chocolate truffles. His stomach turned at the very thought, but Fogg struggled on with the conversation. "Rebecca. How are you this morning?"
"Oh, quite well. Looking forward to getting home, of course." Rebecca almost smiled.
"Indeed. There will be so many preparations to make at Shillingworth." Fogg wondered if he could possibly ban alcohol from the premises for the next ten years, but he supposed that Rebecca might be a bit put out by that prospect.
"There are...but if there is anything you need to do, before we leave Paris, we can wait, for a day or two."
"No, Rebecca, I can't think of anything that needs doing now." Fogg heard the resignation in his own voice, and saw his cousin's reaction in her eyes: relief, mixed with an almost-sadness, for as much as she would not have had Guilaine as an in- law she didn't wish him any pain.
"We'll be off, then, after tea," she said quietly, and Fogg had no bon mot on his lips in reply. He might banter with his cousin later, but not now.
"If you'll excuse me, dear cousin, I think I need a bit of a lie-down before we depart." Rebecca nodded, and Fogg made his way up the staircase. He met his valet, who artfully backed up the stairs to let him pass. Passepartout eyed him suspiciously, as if he was attempting to size up Fogg's hangover.
"We will be going then, Master?" said Passepartout softly, once Phileas was safely upstairs.
"Yes, Passepartout, whenever you have everything ready, although before you do anything else, if you would be so kind as to supply me with some of your famous hangover cure, I would be eternally grateful."
"Of course, Master," said Passepartout, "Jules was thinking you might be needing it, so I did the mixing up this morning." Passepartout bustled off, and Phileas opened the door to his blessedly dim cabin for the first time in months.
He affectionately ran his hand along the wall's paneling as he entered the room. "And has my cousin been taking care of you, my dear?" Fogg asked, in a voice barely above a whisper. He seated himself on the edge of the bed just as Passepartout appeared in the doorway, bearing a tray with a tumbler containing the mysterious and alarmingly noxious-looking potion on which Phileas based his hopes for survival.
"Here you are. To restore your head, if not your heart," said Passepartout. "I am sorry, Master. People fall in love, people fall out of love. Women, especially, are falling out of love, when we are not expecting it."
"Indeed," Fogg replied. He sniffed the tumbler, which fortunately smelled better than it appeared, then sipped gingerly from Passepartout's concoction, hoping his stomach would not revolt against him. He closed his eyes and pictured Guilaine, laughing, smiling, and burrowing comfortably into her pillows. Passepartout might cure his headache, but there was no remedy for his memories.
"Phileas!" Rebecca's angry voice pierced directly into the space behind Fogg's eyes. Something came flying, quite heavily, onto his bed, with Rebecca blowing in behind like a fury, looking so enraged that Fogg handed Passepartout the tumbler in advance of having to defend himself. Fogg picked up the unidentified object, squinting at the item in question to bring it into focus. In his hand, he held a necklace, a collier of emeralds and diamonds. In her own hand, Rebecca clutched a crumpled note, and Fogg needed to see only one word to recognize the handwriting instantly.
This was a gift from Guilaine, to the only woman in Phileas' life who could challenge her ascendancy in Phileas' heart – or comfort him in her absence from it. Each facet of the necklace's jewels gleamed brilliantly at Fogg, mocking his grief.
"To the victor go the spoils," Rebecca read. She plucked the necklace from his hand and shook her head in disbelief at the piece's absurd splendor. "What could you be thinking, giving a gift like this to a courtesan? That's outrageous, even for you."
"Wait – you mean it isn't paste?" said Jules, who had followed Rebecca up the stairs.
"No, Jules, this is most definitely the genuine article," Rebecca replied, while she put the piece down gently on the nightstand.
"But I didn't..." said Fogg. He hadn't bought anything so fine for Guilaine. The necklace would have cost at least twice over the most expensive of his presents. He didn't even think she had pulled the jewels from pieces he had given her. Then he thought about what he had given her, and some of the values, and his mind started doing some addition.
Phileas couldn't be certain, could never add it all up, but he believed that Guilaine had returned every sou he had spent, in the form of one maddeningly fantastic necklace.
Perhaps Guilaine wanted no reminders of him, save a minor trinket or two, but rather than return those reminders to him, she had given him something glorious, outrageous, and expensive, rather like herself – something that he couldn't forget existed, even when he never saw it.
"I shall have to return it, this simply won't do," said Rebecca, but then Jules emerged from his gem-induced daze and laid a hand on Rebecca's arm.
"You mustn't do that, Rebecca. Why should you?" Verne picked up the necklace, worth more than everything the young playwright had in the world a dozen times over, and turning Rebecca to face the mirror over the bureau, stepped behind her to drape it over her throat and fasten it. Rebecca winced at the cold metal laying against her skin, and touched the necklace gingerly, as if it were a scar instead of a work of art. "You see, Rebecca? Very becoming. It's meant to be yours."
Verne's diagnosis was quite correct. Even in the setting of Fogg's sleeping cabin – unusually crowded just at the moment - the necklace was an electrifying highlighter of Rebecca's finest features – her hair stood out in fiery relief against the green emeralds, the diamonds threw light on her ivory skin, and her neck seemed particularly swan-like in the wide set of the necklace. Phileas watched as Rebecca's natural and well-deserved vanity battled fiercely with her determination not to accept Guilaine's offering.
"I suppose...it is a generous gesture, although I'm not fond of her message," Rebecca said resignedly. She added, turning to Jules, "I can't believe you carried this around in your pocket all day, you could have been robbed or worse."
"I thought it was glass," Jules said, "I did, I would never have let her trust me with something like that."
"Who else could be so honest, Verne?" said Fogg with a weak smile, but instead of smiling in return, Jules' cheeks flushed scarlet, and an almost guilty look flitted across his face.
"Come along, Jules," said Rebecca, taking his arm. "I shall have to send her a note, and you'll help me write it. I'm sure we have just enough time to finish before we need to leave. Am I right, Passepartout?"
"Quite right, Miss Rebecca. You will be using the Italian paper? I think it is down-the-stairs…"
"Oh, yes, the Italian paper, I just bought scads of it, I can't imagine how I could possibly use it all. Wait until you feel it Jules, it's like satin, just gorgeous." Passepartout herded the excess people out of the room while Rebecca regaled Jules with tales of the earthly delights of an Italian paperia, and Fogg felt a swell of gratitude for his valet's impeccable timing. Fogg found Rebecca's need to buy scads of Italian paper rather odd, since Rebecca scarcely seemed to notice whether she was writing on vellum or burlap. Not that he was going to question anything that left him with some peace and quiet. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of the Aurora, the perfume of wood and brass polish and distant intrigue. How he had missed her.
Passepartout closed the door and placed the tumbler back into Fogg's hand. He drained it quickly and handed it back to his valet with a shudder. "Someday, Passepartout, I will realize that this ship is the only woman I should possess. The rest are swiftly becoming too much to endure," Phileas said with a sigh. He gazed up at the ceiling while Passepartout unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it away, casting a suspicious eye on the shirt's less-than- perfect placket and collar.
"All women are not so much trouble, Master, only the wrong women. You will be falling in love again. You must be believing this." Passepartout dropped a fresh, clean nightshirt over Fogg's head. "If I were you, I would be waiting until Miss Rebecca was married with many children, but that might be some time...Master, what on earth has been happening to your shirts? Missed buttonings, wrinkliness. This is unacceptabubble. I should be giving those servants a piece of my pie..." Passepartout muttered as he took Fogg's clothes, closed the door, and left him to sleep.
Fogg watched Passepartout go, surprised to realize that his headache had dissolved, and tried to smile. He couldn't quite manage it, but slowly, he began to remember what the experience was like.
****
Christmas had come and gone by now, and Easter and May Day as well. Fogg was at the opera, his beloved Duchess by his side. Julietta had graciously taken him back without a mention of his autumnal indiscretions, claiming to have spent much of the fall in the country with friends and thus missed out on the more salacious rumors that had been circulating (he hoped). Her Grace had invited them all to the opera that evening, and Fogg had agreed without a second thought.
Guilaine was still stunning, of course, and even across a crowded opera house there was something about her character that sparkled just a little differently from the other women in the room. If she had any regrets, Fogg would never, ever know. He thought she smiled, just a little, but she was too far away for him to truly say.
And then, a sign. She lifted her glasses back to her eyes, and Fogg did the same. Guilaine brought her hand to her lips and blew him a kiss. A shiver crept over Fogg's spine at the recollection of her real kiss, but then he recoiled, remembering her edict – no one was permitted to love Guilaine, not as he had endeavored to love her. He could no longer be her client, and he would rather be damned than be her fool.
Real life, Fogg decided, was so much more satisfying than the falsehoods of the theater. He slipped his hand into Julietta's, feeling how very well they fit together. She turned to him and smiled, oblivious to his inner turmoil and concealing it beautifully if she realized that anything was amiss. He heard Rebecca settle back into place behind him, and heard Jules' chair make a slight squeak as well. Fogg returned Julietta's generous, playful smile, and forced himself to turn his attention from his past to the unfolding adventure of his life.
Fin
Chapter 16 | Chapter 17