Page 45 of The Widower Without a Will
She deserved a much better final chapter to her life than as mistress to a hypocritical old man.
He did his best not to think about his children, either.Neither Ellen, who did not recognize him, nor Sophia, who did not accept his love, wrote to him after leaving Northfield Hall; he heard instead from their husbands that they had arrived safely home.Caroline, citing exhaustion in her final months of expecting, remained in Thatcham instead of coming for Sunday dinners.Nor were there letters from Benjamin in Ireland, and Nate wrote from Portsmouth to say his wife was too ill to travel to Berkshire for Christmas after all.
In other words, Martin had been rejected wholesale by all five of his children.He had tasted this before, when they had rallied behind Caroline in her quest to marry Eddie.The difference now was that he did not have the heart to fight his way back into their good graces.Perhaps he was the hypocrite they accused him of being.Martin could admit to himself that they might very well be right.They must be, to decide he was so unworthy of their love that they could not forgive him.
This time, he would waste no energy trying to convince them he was not a monster.For after all, he was!He was a lecher who took advantage of a poor widow.He was a tartar who ignored his daughters in crisis.He was a narcissist who only helped the needy in order to convince the world he was a good person.He did not actually know each person living at Northfield—not even their names, when Maulvi could have told him at least two sentences about every soul!—nor did he have the appetite to take meals in the dining hall to meet them all.And after all those years that he had abandoned his family for the parliamentary season in London to work on abolition bills, British plantations still owned slaves in the West Indies.Had Martin ever truly been willing to do what it would take to bring about abolition, or did he only give voice to the idea without forcing the change through his government?
If his children considered him a monster, Martin decided, then it was time to finalize his will once and for all.He summoned his solicitor from London to finish it before Christmas.The estate, entailed by law to Benjamin, would remain in the family.The money would be put into a trust, to be used only for improvements to Northfield Hall.His children, who wanted nothing from him, would be permitted to select any furniture or clothing about which they were sentimental.
It was, all in all, a simple will.His solicitor presented the final draft for him to sign in the late afternoon; Martin called in Mr.Chow as his witness; and the whole chore was completed by sunset.Martin wondered why he had wasted so much time deliberating, why he had forced Martha to listen to his whining about how difficult it was to decide.
Alone in his study, he unlocked the cabinet in which he hid his father’s rum.He had stopped drinking it thirty years ago, when he and Lolly had turned Northfield Hall into an estate which lived off its own produce, but he was a known monster now, and so he might as well revel in his hypocrisy.The first sip burned his throat—he was accustomed to home-brewed wines and ales—but the second one cleansed him, and by the third, he felt almost cheerful at the idea of ridding himself of pretenses.
Why should he contort himself into a good person he clearly was not?
From Martha’s desk—his secretary’s desk, that was—he removed all the notes she had made for him about previous drafts.Selecting the one on which she had writtenLegacy to family,Martin sauntered over to the hearth and fed the paper to the fire.The flames, which had been smoldering on their coals, leapt at the kindling, curling the paper into hot orange licks within seconds.
Removing the metal fire screen for better access, he picked up the next piece of paper—part of an early draft containing instructions to his children on how to use the money he designated for them—and touched it to the flames.In an instant, it, too, was ashes.
Strange, how satisfying it was to watch his ideas destroyed.Martin took a burning sip of rum and threw in another note.Its flame was desultory and quick.Martin wanted something more dramatic.He took a sheaf of six papers and lit them in the fire.They lasted longer, twitching this way and that as the heat ripped them in two.Martin liked that; he added the whole remaining stack of drafts next and watched his words disappear.
Almost dancing with glee, Martin swigged rum as he pulled out more papers from the desk Martha had used: copies of correspondence he had sent that he would never need to reference, letters he had received from complete strangers whom he had no intention of helping, solicitations from merchants with whom he had no interest in doing business.With each paper added to the fire, he treated himself to a sip of rum.There went his misplaced promises; here disappeared any notion that he was a man whom others should admire.When he finished with these papers and when he finished with the rum, he would emerge the truest version of himself: a Martin who was concerned only with what broughthimsatisfaction.
He ran out of papers from the secretary’s desk, and so he turned to his own.He could not throw away records of the estate, nor correspondence regarding Parliament, but here—here was a note he had written to Martha, before Maulvi had died!Not so much a note as a poem, and not so much a poem as drivel; even sober Martin had known better than to show it to her.He carried it to the fire.For good measure, he poured rum on the flames to make them leap.
What a fool he was.What a self-important idiot.What a useless piece of fluff.After all this time, had he abolished slavery?Had he reformed Parliament to truly represent the people of Britain?Even his successes this past session were too little too late, written in the blood of people already hung, already transported, or—like Martha’s poor son—already buried at a crossroads.
He turned his back to the fire to find more kindling.He would have to find something other than paper soon, for there wasn’t much else he could afford to lose.His hand landed on Martha’s glove in his pocket—but no,thathe wouldn’t burn.
He seized the letter Max had sent to tell Martin that Ellen was safely home.Hurling it into the hearth, Martin threw more rum after it, yearning for the beautiful blue that came from flames so hot and intense that they broke free from the color of fire.
They broke free.From color—and from the hearth.They roared forward, catching the fringe of the carpet that protected the hardwood floor.Martin rushed to stamp them out; now the fire leapt to the low-hanging tail of his jacket.A heat he had never before known breathed against his skin.Panicking, he twisted out of the coat, letting it fall to the ground, to escape the blaze.But as it fell, it spread its flame to the upholstered chair, and the embers in the carpet grew courageous and began to spread.
Martin reached for the bucket of sand kept by the hearth to bank the fire.But the air was fast filling with smoke, and the sand did nothing as he threw it on the paper-and-rum-fueled coal.He had no choice to scream “Water!”and “Fire!”and then he had no choice but to race from the room.
“Fire!”he screamed again.He couldn’t remember what time of day it was, whether the servants would be sleeping in the attics.He seized the grandfather clock in the foyer and shook it until its bells rang in an eerie clamor.Running to the back corridor, he shouted, “Fire!”
He didn’t see anyone.If he was going to stop the fire, he needed to find someone.If he was going to escape the fire, he needed to leave.
Martin ran to the garden drawing room, instead.He seized the portrait of Lolly from above the mantel; with it under his arm, he picked up the pens Ellen had made for his fortieth birthday, the book of poems Benjamin had presented him, Sophia’s watercolor of the pond, Nate’s letters from the navy, and Caroline’s printed essays.He raced into the back garden and deposited his treasures beyond the hedge.He shouted again, “Fire!”
This time, when he ran back into Northfield Hall, he found the footmen racing towards the study.“Who is upstairs?”he asked.“Is anyone upstairs?”
They didn’t know.And so Martin ran up the stairs—ignoring the way his lungs wheezed and his heart seized—to the top story.“Fire!Get out!”He pounded on the walls loud enough to wake the dead.He opened all the doors to make sure there was no one there—and found one maid for his trouble.“Get out now!”
He could think of a hundred things he wanted to save from his and his children’s bedrooms.But there was no time.He tripped down the staircase on his way back to the ground floor, catching himself on the banister.Three footmen were working in a chain to fight the fire now.It had spread through the door of the study into the back corridor.Coughing, Martin tried to help the men, but he couldn’t bear the weight of the water buckets.
“Get to safety, sir!”shouted Jacques.
He wanted to protest—wanted to stay—it was his calamity and therefore his to fix.But strong arms seized him from behind and pulled him into the cold December night.
Mr.Chow.“Let us see to the fire, and you stay here.”
“I can’t let you in there,” Martin argued.Chow was at least the same age, and besides, had a family that loved him.“It’s my fire, not yours.”
Chow glared at him.They had met at nighttime, like this, when all Martin could see was the shadows of the other man’s face.Then, Chow had been begging for help.Now, Martin was the desperate one—but so much more undeserving than Chow had ever been.
“Keep my wife safe,” Chow said.
