The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(97)
The Imitation of Christ, the book Touie read over and over again, lay propped open on the floor, like a miniature sloping roof. Doyle placed it on the table next to the armchair and contemplated his wife as she slept. With her curls falling over the pillow and her slow breathing, Touie resembled a trusting child in repose. She knew her husband was watching over her, that there was no other place in the world where she would be as safe as at the center of that comfortable life he had built around her. And once more Doyle lamented his inability to love his wife. For if only he had been able, everything would have been so much easier for all concerned in that immutable situation in which he found himself. But that emotion had only blossomed in his heart when he met Jean. Doyle had only ever felt a cordial affection toward Touie, which had never developed into love, as he had assumed it would, given time. When he learned of her terminal illness, his inadequate affection changed into a sense of infinite pity. But above all, what Doyle felt each time he contemplated his wife was his terrible impotence at not having been able to protect her. Standing over his sick wife, he recalled the stories his mother would tell him of knights rescuing kidnapped princesses, replete with challenges, duels, and tournaments, where the noise of swords clashing on armor rang out like pealing bells and honor was always saved. It was thanks to those tales that the most appealing ideals of chivalry (a knight errant must always protect the weak, defy the strong, and be gallant with ladies) had imprinted themselves on Doyle’s young heart, and although in his own era chivalry had been reduced to mere sportsmanship, throughout his life Doyle had tried to put those ideals into practice whenever he could: firstly with his own mother, then at school, where he always protected the weaker boys, and finally with Touie, who one fine day had appeared, only to become his damsel—every knight’s most prized possession. And as he pronounced the words “I will’ in that Yorkshire church, so that everyone there knew he loved her, privately he was making a far more sacred pledge: to protect her from villainous black knights who would try to abduct her, or from their modern equivalent, whatever they might be: drunken scoundrels, crooks, fortune hunters . . . And for many years Doyle had with remarkable success dutifully fulfilled his pledge, until the appearance of that invisible foe whose steps were silent, who had no flesh for his sword to smite, who had come gliding through the air, evil and intangible, only to make his nest in his damsel’s lungs, destroying her from the inside.
Doyle gave a rueful sigh and walked over to the window, gazing with satisfaction over the narrow valley where the woods converged, like a monarch appreciating the peace that enveloped his domain. Then he heard Touie stretch behind him.
“I love the view from this window, Arthur,” she said, as if in his zeal to surround her with comfort and beauty her husband had also been responsible for ordering Nature (which had unquestioningly obeyed his booming voice) to rearrange her valleys and mountains to create that idyllic landscape. “And nothing makes me happier than the thought that I will continue enjoying it in the Hereafter, for as you once told me, there everything will be exactly as it is here.”
“That’s right, my dear,” Doyle assured her. “Everything will be exactly the same.”
He said this without turning, so that she couldn’t see the corners of his mouth turn down in despair as he realized that the word “everything” comprised much more than that landscape. If after death everything stayed the same, then Touie, Jean, and he would remain trapped in an eternal triangle. There was no doubt that one day Touie would die in this world, after which Jean and he would be free to love each other openly, but that love would be no more than a leafy glade in the forest of life, a brief respite whose duration would be determined by how valiant their hearts were, for as soon as they entered the Hereafter the broken triangle would be reestablished. And then, perhaps, Doyle would be accountable to Touie, who through some peephole in that other world might have caught sight of him loving another woman the way he had never been able to love her.
Doyle made a supreme effort to replace that look of despair with the cheerfully optimistic one he always wore in the face of Touie’s illness, so that she would forget the sword of Damocles hanging over her, and he turned toward his wife.
“Keep resting,” he told her. “You need to get your strength back. I’ll go down and do some work before lunch.”
She nodded, smiling meekly, and Doyle was able to flee downstairs, pondering the Hereafter whose existence he never tired of predicting but that might be his damnation, unless Touie forgave him in death for what he dared not confess to her in life.
Seated at the desk in the comfortable study he had installed on the ground floor, Doyle lit his pipe and tried to relax. As he puffed away distractedly, he glanced around at the furniture and the shelves where his favorite books jostled for space with his numerous sporting trophies. Instead of the persistent sound of cannon and rifle fire accompanied by the rumble of mortars that he was used to hearing in South Africa, the laughter of his children, Kingsley and Mary Louise, filtered in through the window, together with the clatter of the miniature railway he had built shortly after the house was finished, so that his children could enjoy an exhilarating ride around the piece of land their father had managed to wrest from the world. Any other man would have let himself rock contentedly amid that benign calm, but Doyle was a man of action, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he became more exhausted by all that peacefulness than by the chaos of the war. Although there were many things he could do—on the homeward journey he had considered standing for the Edinburgh elections, starting a gun club in order to make better marksmen of the English, and even writing an essay about the war he had just survived—he was sure he would soon be longing for some adventure that would provide him with another opportunity to prove his manliness. He had no doubt that war was mankind’s most foolish mistake, and yet he believed that for any decent man it could also be an exciting journey capable of stirring his noblest virtues, which might otherwise have gone with him to the grave. Doyle had sent all his friends telegrams announcing his return, so that they knew they could once more depend on him, although he very much doubted any of them (for the most part other authors, agents, and publishers) would write back proposing he join them on some death-defying adventure. But at that stage, after less than a week of idleness, his demands were not quite so high: a simple luncheon invitation would suffice.