Chapter 3 #2
Admittedly Daniel knew very little of Sweden. The hair’s-breadth hesitation before Mr Hull’s answer nonetheless gave him room to doubt his origins. However, if the sentiment were sincere—if indeed he truly saw nothing objectionable in Daniel’s situation—then…
“Again,” said Mr Hull, his words breaking through the rapid whirling of Daniel’s thoughts. “With your permission, I would endeavour to explain matters to Mr Grigsby, in a manner that might give him less of a shock than he has endured thus far with our arriving unannounced.”
Pride demanded Daniel refuse. It was his own responsibility to explain himself to the man who’d known him all his life, not to leave the task up to his newfound clerk.
And yet, if he were to speak to Mr Grigsby now, Daniel didn’t know how he could possibly summon a single syllable, much less a full explanation that would satisfy Mr Grigsby’s entirely-justified disbelief and bafflement.
It was this latter point, and perhaps the intoxication of meeting one who seemed to innately understand his peculiar situation, that induced Daniel to acquiesce with a bare and brisk nod.
“I must apologize for the shock to you, as well,” Mr Hull continued, to Daniel’s bewilderment. “When I suggested to Mr Grigsby that we pay a visit to his ward I had thought it would be a pleasant surprise for you both.”
“It ought to have been,” Daniel felt forced to admit.
It would have been, if he were the ward that Mr Grigsby had thought he’d had.
But Daniel was not Miss Flora Fairfield.
He’d never felt sorry for it until now. Throughout his predicament and his escape he’d clung to the truth of his soul and made it a blazing beacon to burn fierce and bright against the darkness that threatened all ‘round him. He was glad Lofthouse thought no less of him for it, but in truth, if Lofthouse had objected to his truth, then the clerk would’ve become just another obstacle for Daniel to surmount, and he would have held no qualms about doing so by whatever means proved necessary.
Luckily for them both, Lofthouse had proved himself a stalwart ally.
When it came to Mr Grigsby, however…
All the ills Mr Grigsby had committed against Daniel’s happiness had been in ignorance.
Daniel had never dared to contemplate what might have occurred had he proved brave enough to take his guardian into his confidence.
Would Mr Grigsby in his genial benevolence have assisted in his escape?
Or would Daniel merely have found himself thrown into Bedlam for his own good?
“Mr Lofthouse said he had visited,” Mr Hull continued. “Did he not explain…?”
What Lofthouse was supposed to have explained would remain a mystery, for at that moment Sukie poked her head into the front hall.
“Mr Grigsby believes he is up to the challenge of conversation now,” she said, with a tone and a glance that would’ve told even those unfamiliar with the elder gentleman’s pattern of speech that she had quoted him direct.
Mr Hull murmured a polite reassurance and bid Daniel wait a moment whilst he saw to his employer. In another moment he’d vanished into the kitchen. Sukie, meanwhile, paused halfway across the threshold to the parlour and shot an expectant glance at her husband.
Prudence, etiquette, and plain old common sense all decreed that Daniel ought to give his guests privacy and retreat to the parlour with his wife.
Terror, curiosity, and a faint frantic fluttering of agonized hope bid him flatten himself against the foyer wall and listen intently to glean what his guardian thought of the man he’d become and how the Devil his clerk intended to explain it.
Sukie smiled, took him by the arm, and drew him into the parlour.
She brought him to the arm-chair he’d abandoned just a scant few minutes earlier.
Already it seemed a lifetime ago. He sat down.
She resumed her post in her own chair. He answered her enquiring glance with a mute shake of his head.
She looked doubtful but respected it, nonetheless, taking up her mending again in companionable silence rather than forcing him into conversation.
His book remained precisely where he’d left it. After a few moments of stupefaction he picked it up. It fell open in his lap to where he’d left off. The words on the page were incomprehensible to his eyes. The ticking of the mantle-piece clock echoed like thunder-claps in his ears.
The only thing louder was the arrival of footsteps down the corridor.
Daniel jerked his head up to find Mr Hull arm-in-arm with Mr Grigsby, leading the elder gentleman over the threshold with all the delicacy of a bridegroom attending his bride.
He stood. His book thudded to the floor.
He scrambled to retrieve it and set it aside, only for it to nearly topple again, before he could put it firmly to rights at last and face his guardian.
Sukie arose as well, directing Mr Hull to show Mr Grigsby to the settee. A glance between husband and wife—him contrite, she knowing—sufficed to send her off to the kitchen for tea with the clerk.
Leaving Daniel and Mr Grigsby alone.
Whatever Mr Hull had said to him, Daniel expected to find Mr Grigsby appearing harrowed by it at the very least. But while his brow was certainly more furrowed than when he’d first arrived, Mr Grigsby appeared otherwise none the worse for wear.
Belatedly, Daniel sat.
Mr Grigsby looked at him steadily.
It was by far not the first time his guardian had looked at him, but it was perhaps the first time Daniel felt truly seen by him.
Never before had those watery blue eyes appeared so perceptive.
The effect proved equal parts unnerving and, queerly, exhilarating.
Beneath their gaze Daniel knew not how to begin.
Fortunately, Mr Grigsby broke the silence.
“Mr Hull has enlightened me on certain matters,” he said with a faint yet courageous smile. “Matters which I did not realise until today lay within his purview—but then again he comes from a land rather different from our own.”
Daniel knew he must reply. Still he couldn’t make himself speak.
Mr Grigsby smiled on regardless. “Daniel is a fine name.”
Daniel wished he could trade the lump in his throat for a true Adam’s apple.
“A very fine name for a gentleman like yourself,” Mr Grigsby continued, which served to stoke the flames in Daniel’s eyes and throat and heart.
His words and tone were kind but there was a grief in his gaze still.
His expression sobered as he spoke on. “I’ll not ask why you never told me of it before.
I understand it is my own failing to prove myself trustworthy enough to confide in. ”
It wrenched Daniel’s heart to hear it, though he knew it to be true.
He knew not how to tell Mr Grigsby that, ever since the deaths of his parents, Mr Grigsby was the sole person who seemed to care for him as a parent ought.
Mrs Bailiwick saw him as a number in a ledger—a favourite number, certainly, but only for the funds it represented and the distinction the number’s presence brought to her academy: the sole child of the dearly departed Mr and Mrs Durst (who were as decent as they were wealthy) had been entrusted to her care.
The less said of what Tolhurst—who ought to have been his uncle—thought of him, the better.
But from the moment of his parents’ passing, Mr Grigsby was the only person who asked after how he felt and seemed to actually hear his replies.
Who, when he realised his ward liked to read, switched from gifts of finery at birthdays and Christmas to gifts of books, and moreover asked what Daniel thought of the books and tailored subsequent presents accordingly.
On any other day Mr Grigsby’s gaze would’ve fallen by now to the cover of The Monastery and he would’ve enquired what Daniel thought of it and listened in eagerness to the answer.
Instead his guardian’s eyes remain fixed upon him, with a gravity that Daniel had never known from him until now.
Then they teared up.
“Forgive me, my boy—” Mr Grigsby began.
My boy. Words Daniel had never dared to dream of hearing from his guardian’s lips. To hear them now threatened to overthrow all his equilibrium. He shoved the lump in his throat down into the howling void in his chest.
“It is I who must beg your forgiveness,” Daniel protested. “For bringing you to such grief.”
Mr Grigsby blinked in bewilderment, then shook his head. “My dear boy—”
Not just his boy, but his dear boy. Words that would’ve been mere noise, forgotten the moment they were spoken, to the likes of Lofthouse or any other man. Words more precious than all the pearls in the sea to Daniel. And almost too much to bear.
Mr Grigsby continued with a solemn sincerity the likes of which Daniel had never heard from before this day. “You have never brought me to grief.”
Daniel sincerely doubted that. So much so that he couldn’t prevent himself from replying, “Not even when I ran away?”
Mr Grigsby baulked. A faint smile flickered across his careworn countenance.
“Well, yes—I was a touch alarmed on the day—but Lofthouse cleared the matter up soon enough, and ever since—well. I think we may both agree, to see you now, that it was the best thing for you. Really the only thing you might’ve done under your own power. ”
Daniel had never dared to dream he might ever hear his guardian say he’d done right.
His eyes burned. He sternly reminded himself that gentlemen did not cry.
Though all the warriors of Homer did. And he could think of no one more a gentleman than his own guardian, who even now gazed upon him with glistening eyes.
Mr Grigsby held up admirably as he spoke on. “No, all my grief is for my own acts. Or rather, the lack thereof. I’m only sorry that I didn’t realise your plight sooner. I might’ve done more to aid you instead of making matters worse.”
Daniel was likewise sorry for this. But he knew it wouldn’t help anything to say so now. So instead he replied, “You did aid me. Do you recall the clothes you gave away to indigent sailors?”
Mr Grigsby blinked. Then looked him up and down. His eyes alighted on the familiar coat and trousers, their hems and seams taken in by Sukie’s skilful hands. A laugh burst from him. “By Jove!”
A single tear escaped down Daniel’s cheek as he smiled in return. He hastily scrubbed it away and gave thanks it had emerged in a moment he could excuse as mirth.
“It does me a world of good to see what a wonderful young man you’ve grown up to be,” Mr Grigsby continued, as though Daniel’s heart weren’t already threatening to burst in his chest. “Mrs Durst speaks very highly of you—as well she might! You’ve built a wonderful life together here,” he added, with an admiring glance over the parlour.
Then, returning earnestly to Daniel, “She tells me you’ve attained a clerkship in town? ”
The throat-lump silenced Daniel once again. He nodded, blinking hard against the scalding tears that threatened to spill.
Mr Grigsby smiled on. His eyes alighted upon the abandoned novel at last. “And still fond of Scott, I see! Did you ask Lofthouse about it when he visited? He’s something of a connoisseur of the chivalric himself.
He didn’t like to speak on it when he was in my employ, but he’s bloomed now that he’s cast off my shadow.
Rather like yourself, I’d wager!” he added with a chuckle. “I daresay you’re both better off.”
Daniel wanted to say that he hadn’t wished to cast off Mr Grigsby’s shadow.
That he’d only abandoned his guardian under duress and would fain have returned to him if he’d only known how his truth might be received.
He wanted to say that he loved the old man and that he could hardly voice the joy he felt to see him again, to speak truthfully to him at long last. That now that they both knew all, he wanted only to bring him closer by any possible means.
Instead he heard himself reply, “Ferns and mosses bloom very well in shadow.”
Mr Grigsby stared at him. Well he might, given the stupidity his ward had just spouted. But rather than admonish him, a quivering smile appeared on his lips, and his eyes brimmed over afresh.
And without a word—without any warning whatsoever—he reached out to clasp Daniel’s hand.
The moment he’d done it, uncertainty crept into his features. He hesitated. Doubtless he felt he’d overstepped—Daniel had never in his life seen his guardian move so swiftly, so decisively; some unaccountable emotion must have overcome him—and now made as if to draw back.
Which Daniel could not bear.
And, equally unable to summon the words to tell his guardian so, instead Daniel leapt forward and threw his arms around Mr Grigsby’s shoulders—as he used to do when he was very small—too small to contain his howling grief and with no words to speak of it.
Even as he did so, he feared his grown embrace would crush the frail bones beneath his grasp.
But though Mr Grigsby baulked at first, it softened into a sigh, and he crushed Daniel right back. His hand arose to pat Daniel’s shoulder. “My dear boy.”
Daniel summoned all his temerity and released him.
Mr Grigsby kept hold of his hands and beamed at him through his tears. “I have so much to tell you.”