The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [179]
He rested his head on the back of the chair and cleared his mind, using his Sufi training to focus inward, searching for any awareness of a newly incurred karmic debt.
He found none, and was jolted from his meditation by a tapping at the window. Fidget barked. It was a parakeet.
"Message from scum-hugger Henry Arundell. Please meet me at the stinking Venetia at noon tomorrow. Message ends."
"Reply," said Burton. "Message begins. I'll be there. Message ends."
"Underwear-nabber!"
The next morning he donned his Sikh costume and delivered a bag of books to the Beetle, then returned home, washed and changed, and made his way through the fog to the Venetia Hotel. He arrived a little early and, after one of the doormen had brushed the ash from his hat and shoulders, proceeded to the lounge and sat contemplating the silver panther head of his cane until Isabel's father arrived.
He stood and shook the older man's hand. They had a difficult relationship, these two; a grudging respect.
Isabel's mother had always disapproved of Burton. To start with, she clung to the dwindling Catholic faith, whereas Burton was rumoured to be a Muslim, though he actually held no religious allegiances at all. Then, of course, there was his reputation-the dark rumours and general consensus that he was "not one of us."
Henry Arundell had none of his wife's prejudices. He did, however, love his daughter, and wanted only the best for her. He'd never been convinced that Burton was the best.
They sat.
"She's gone," Arundell said, without any preliminaries.
"What?" exclaimed Burton.
"Isabel packed her things and left the family home some few days agoon the twenty-first. We suspected that the two of you had fallen out over some matter and she was taking a holiday to think things over. Yesterday we received this."
He handed Burton a letter.
Trieste, 25th September; 1861
My Dearest Mama and Papa,
Richard has broken off our engagement and I feel my life as it was, and as I expected it to be, has ended. I had considered that I was fated to be with him from the veay first instant I laid eyes on him in Boulogne ten years ago. It had been my intention that we should travel to the East together and settle there. I find it almost inconceivable that it should be him who denies me this destiny.
How can it be that a future which had seemed to me set in stone can be so altered by another? Is Life so fickle a thing that we are helplessly cast about by whims that are not even our own?
I cannot bear it.
Mama, Papa, I will be mistress of my own fate! I will be answerable for my own mistakes and I will claim credit for my own triumphs! Though the world may change around me, it will be I who chooses how to meet its challenges and disappointments, and nobody else.
The world! I now understand that we inhabit two worlds. There is the wider one that we live upon yet see but a faction of and there is the one which consists of the immediate influences f -om which we take our form. The first expands us; the latter contracts us. Richard was of the second world; from him I gained a sense of my own being, its limits and its character. Now he is gone and I find that I am uncontained.
What do I do? Do I retreat f this breach and hide f the infringing outer world? Or do I flow out into it to discover new possibilities and perhaps to take on a new shape for myself?
You know your daughter. dear parents! I will not flinch!
Richard has made nay long-held vision of the future impossible. Should I therefore abandon it all? NO, I say! NO!
I am in Trieste en route to Damascus. I know not what awaits me there. I hardly care. Whatever; I will at least be creating an Isabel Arundell who is defined by her own choices.
I do not know when 1 will be back.
I will write.
You are more dear to me than anything.
With deepest love
Your Isabel
"By heaven, but she's