Mrs Saville

Letter 1.2 / Etham

Let me take a few steps backward, my dear. It was nearly the hour of noon when I heard Robin upon the stair and I went to him straight away. Mrs O and I had been listening for him, or for another episode, all morning, and she was prepared to execute his breakfast as soon as he had roused. Robin sat upon the fourth stair as if he could go no farther without risk of faltering altogether. He had managed himself into his threadbare pants in addition to his nightshirt, but his feet were bare, and I had to resist the repulsion I felt at the sight of them: ashen grey, with dirt I suppose, and missing toes, his three smallest toes, one from his left foot, two from his right. 'You must be famished,' I managed. 'Let me help you to your room, and Mrs O'Hair will bring you some tea and food momentarily.' Mrs O carried him up a pot of tea and toasted bread with her currant jam. I can tell she is a trifle wary of him, though she hasn't said as much. If she knew him as I do, if she'd known him in childhood and his exuberant youth—then she could have no trepidation whatsoever. For Robin was the most assiduous, studious and kindhearted boy, though solitary I must acknowledge, especially in his youth, spending hour upon hour in Uncle's library, reading and forming (apparently) his design to explore the Arctic region. To place his name alongside Magellan, Columbus, de Soto. He would've liked to go to school, would've liked to in the worst way, but of course that wasn't possible—I know, my darling, I need not remind you; you married a dowerless girl.

To return to events, after a time, Mrs O retrieved the teapot and such from Robin's room—he had drunk every drop of tea but barely nibbled at the toast and jam. It was then that Mrs O suggested that 'Master Robert may like a bath, mum,' and I realized she was quite right to suggest it. She began heating water while I went upstairs to broach the topic with Robin, who was at first reluctant but on account, I came to discover, of his having no decent clothes to dress into afterward. So I resolved that the only answer was for Robin to borrow some of your things, my dear—again, I hope you shall not object. I selected the items which I believe you consider your least favored, which is why you left them when you went on your business affair. Robin emerged from his room having to keep hold of the pants, they were so large upon his shrunken frame, and the shirt hung like a sail on the mast of a becalmed ship. I had no true idea of his thinness until I saw him in your clothes, you who has always been so lean, my love, due to your great love of walking. Robin has become as gaunt and as wiry as one of those dogs who live in the streets, hunting for scraps—and also as chary, I should say, for my brother gives the impression of always being on alert, of constantly glancing over his shoulder, or rather, of constantly wanting to. The ill-fitting clothes were sufficient for him to reach the washroom, where Mrs O had drawn him a hot bath. While he soaked, Mrs O made the clothing more serviceable, fashioning loops and a drawstring to cinch the waist of the pants, and gathering the shirt into pleats in back with some well-placed stitches—all quite clever really, and done with unexpected speed, though her eyesight has faltered over the years, she tells me, and she had to squint at the close work of sewing.

Meanwhile, I recalled that Mr Smythe had some knowledge of barbering, in his younger days, thus I went across the alley and spoke with him; luckily his gout was not so insufferable, and it afforded him an opportunity to exercise a skill that had long lay dormant. He required a moment to ready himself but presently he was at our door, shears and comb in hand. The irony struck me then: here he had come to tidy my brother's appearance, while Mr S had allowed his own to lapse in his widowhood and infirmity. His hoary hair has grown wild, and his white muttonchops quite cover his ears, while his brows are like unfolded snowy wings of owlets above his eyes. To facilitate the barbering, we set a kitchen chair outside the alley door, and Mr S went to work. Felix and Agatha sat on the stoop fascinated by the transformation of their uncle as Mr Smythe deposited long gobbets of hair into the gutter. I checked his progress now and again, and I found the metamorphosis startling too . . . or perhaps increasingly unsettling would be a more apt characterization. For on the one hand, Mr Smythe's barbering definitely rendered Robin more presentable—he had looked the part of the ruffian and wharf-dweller—but that mask had been obscuring Robin's gaunt and haunted physiognomy. His hair and beard were trimmed and shaped for parlor society, yet he appeared a man whose parlor stories would be grim tales of tragedies barely survived. I believe even Mr S was taken aback at the face that emerged from the marble, as he chipped away with his sculpting shears. As he finished I told the children it was time to return to their studies, and they were decidedly pale. I was hoping, I suppose, that grooming my brother would assure them that we are hosting a quite civilized creature under our roof—for they barely knew their uncle prior to his expedition—however, I can't imagine what they think of him now. They always heard stories of their Uncle Robin, his Herculean feats of autodidacticism, sequestered in our uncle's library at Lytham House, teaching himself calculus, astronomy, geography, anatomy, and heaven only knows. I would often imagine him there, alone in the book-lined room, the meekest of fires to fend off the chill, solitary in the rambling house except for Uncle's ancient man, William, who tended to Robin's needs until he eventually signed onto the whaler, the Molly O'Toole, as a common sailor to learn seamanship firsthand, figuring that for some kinds of knowledge only the thing itself will do. That is to say, he couldn't learn to captain his own expeditionary ship by books alone.

I'm so sorry, my darling—I know you are well-acquainted with your brother-in-law's biography, but it does me good to recount things, to reaffirm them in my memory. I feel at times that the past is slipping from me, that I am perhaps thinking of someone else's history—or not even a real person's, rather a character's that I have read in some author's book, and it has taken hold of me so that I cannot separate it from my own life's narrative (you know how easily I can become lost in a book, quite to my shame, I must acknowledge—I know you think it a personal flaw, and I've been trying to exorcise it during your absence, one of several qualities of the newly improved me that I believe you will approve upon your return, but I shall merely tease you with that flirtatious hint, to entice you to conclude your affairs as expeditiously as possible).

In spite of being taken aback by Robin's wasted appearance, Mr Smythe, no doubt due to his own loneliness and generally kind nature, invited him to smoke a bowl of tobacco with him after he'd had a chance to sup—'a fine Indian cut,' Mr S described it. I knew that Robin would decline, if for no other reason than he had never been attracted to tobacco—but he surprised me by accepting our neighbor's invitation. I realized that my brother has no doubt taken up many new occupations during his years at sea, occupations to fill the countless empty hours among the desolate waves and phantasmagoric bergs of ice.