The Last Dickens

Chapter 23

Boston, December 24, 1867

BACK AT THE PARKER HOUSE, IN THE PARLOR OF GEORGE DOLBY'S hotel room, Tom Branagan sat in a state of dejection. Dolby had put him in a worn oak chair that faced the fireplace, which was overrun with Christmas stockings and mistletoe; it was a hard punishment to be forced to watch the ashes fall one by one into the grate when there was too much to do. Tom's mind was on the woman who had caused all this. His insides burned hot, not with anger so much as with desire for the truth. Suddenly every detail he could remember about her took on significance. Suddenly the coming new year became portentous.

Dolby was walking up and down the room, and James Osgood, there to dutifully represent the outrage of the Boston publishing firm sponsoring the tour, was sitting diagonally across from Tom. Christmas gifts left at the hotel for Dickens-which could not all fit in the novelist's own rooms-were in careless piles under the furniture.

Tom's attention snapped back to the present. Dolby was shouting, “I know not what to say. Did I not-remind me now, perhaps my own memory fails me-did I not instruct you specifically to forget about playing hide-and-seek with that hotel intruder after it happened? I cannot but conclude I erred in trusting you, boy, was swayed by my duty to your father. Is this your Celtic excitability displaying itself?”

“Mr. Dolby, please understand…” Tom tried to interrupt.

“You are fortunate Mr. Fields has as much political influence as he does, and that he chose to use it in your favor, Mr. Branagan,” Osgood chimed in.

Dolby went on listing his grievances. “You accost a lady-a blue-blood lady of society-at the theater, cause a commotion, and draw attention away from the grand success of Mr. Dickens. And, if it were not bad enough, all on Christmas Eve! The Chief has enough of a burden right now with his influenza and being away from his family during the holiday season. And what will the press make of it if they get ahold of it!”

“Your thoughtless actions have risked tainting the entire reading tour to the public eye, Mr. Branagan,” Osgood said. “The future reputation of our publishing house is at stake.”

Tom shook his head. “That woman is a danger. I know it in my heart and my bones. She should not have been released, and we must urge the police to locate her!”

“A woman,” Dolby cried. “You want Charles Dickens to look like he is afraid of a woman! That woman, by the by, is named Louisa Parr Barton-her husband is a renowned diplomat and great scholar of European history. She comes from an American branch of the Lock-ley family of Bath.”

“Does that prove she is sane or well-meaning?” Tom asked.

“You're right,” Osgood replied. “Understand, Mr. Branagan-Mrs. Barton is known for her eccentricities and is unwelcome in many homes of society in Boston and New York owing to her strange behavior. Mr. Barton, it is said by some, married her chiefly for the connection to her family name, and she never could master housekeeping or be a proper mistress to her servants. Others say Barton was passionately in love with her. Whatever the truth, he spends most of the time traveling. It is rumored he would have received the appointment as our ambassador in London if not for her behavior. Ever since she slapped the Prince of Wales in the face upon being introduced to him, she is forbidden from joining Mr. Barton's trips.”

“That is why she is able to do as she pleases here,” Tom said.

Osgood nodded. “With her husband away, she is alone and free with her strange habits and money. She is harmless.”

“She struck an old woman at the Westminster Hotel!” Tom said.

“We cannot prove that. Don't you see what thin ground you stand on, Branagan?” Dolby replied. “What compelled you?”

“Perhaps I speak above my position, but I've acted on my instinct,” Tom replied.

Dolby shook his head again. “You speak and you acted above your position, Branagan. The Boston police hadn't any choice but to let her go.”

“What about the fact that she broke into Mr. Dickens's room, Mr. Dolby?”

“Well, what if it was her, Branagan? We may box her ears, have the police court fine her but not jail her, as she never threatened the Chief nor took any of his belongings. Save a hotel pillow, for which the most severe magistrate would order this Boston Brahmin to pay a dollar!”

“I think she might have been the one to take the Chief's pocket diary,” Tom said.

“And your evidence?” Dolby asked, pausing for an answer that didn't come. “Thought not. What would she want with an old diary, anyway?”

“To learn private details,” Tom persisted. “Mr. Dolby, I am only trying to see to the protection of the Chief.”

“Who asked you to do so?” Dolby asked.

“You instructed me to serve him,” Tom answered.

“Well, you've taken it too far,” Dolby said. “And you won't do it any longer.”

Osgood, taking a long drink of punch, shook his head sadly and added a comment with a thoughtful air. “You say you act upon instinct. Men like Mr. Dolby and myself act upon what is right and proper, what is within the rules. What is safe for people who put their trust in us. If we could, Mr. Branagan, we would be tempted to send you back to England. But that would bring attention in the newspapers.”

“Instead,” Dolby broke in with the voice of a disciplining father, “you are from this point on to act strictly a porter, as you were hired. You are to stay in the hotel, unless instructed otherwise, and carry out chores when asked. When we've returned to Ross, I shall decide on your future-if I hadn't paid three guineas for your livery, I'd give you walking papers now.”

Tom, deflating, gazed at the marble fireplace. “And the Chief? Does he agree with this?”

“Pray worry about your own condition! The Chief will be just fine under our care, thank you, Mr. Branagan,” Dolby said haughtily.

“Indeed,” Osgood added. “We'll make sure Mr. Dickens is busy enough while we finish dealing with the authorities, so there is no more attention paid to your fears. In fact, I have already recruited Oliver Wendell Holmes to show him the sights of Boston. If anyone can numb a man into distraction, it is Dr. Holmes.”

AFTER DOLBY WALKED Osgood out, he was stopped back in front of his door by a waiter.

“Mr. Dolby? There is a gentleman downstairs to see you-urgent business.”

“It's ten o'clock at night on Christmas Eve,” Dolby remarked, taking his watch from his coat. “Ten and a half, actually, and I have been running about the city tending to business since six this morning. Did the caller send up a card?”

“No, sir. He said the words very urgent, though. I should say from the way he looked that he was indeed urgent.”

Urgency indeed. It was probably another stranger who needed tickets to sold out readings for his blind, deaf, and mute sisters and aunts and wives. “Very important American writers,” whose names Dolby and Osgood had never heard before, wrote pleading for a single free pass, front row, to properly honor Dickens's visit to their city, plus five more for their friends, if you please.

Downstairs at the bar, Dolby searched the faces for his mystery caller. One man stood out. His arms stiffly folded across his chest. A fat, boyish face, but grizzled with scars and gray columns in his beard. He was short but had a robust, qualifying as stocky, build with an imposing presence. The man waved to Dolby.

“I'm afraid, my friend,” Dolby began an amiable but aloof speech, “our tickets for the next readings have been sold already. You may try again for the next series which we have added to accommodate more hearers.”

The man passed him a pile of documents and a badge.

“I'm not looking for tickets, Mr. Dolby. Or… not unless I must confiscate them along with every piece of property in your possession.” He smiled humorlessly.

Dolby examined the documents. Income-tax papers. The badge gave the name of Simon Pennock, tax collector.

“I understand you have been seen with paper bags piled with greenbacks from your ticket sales, Mr. Dolby,” Pennock said in the same tone he might have chosen if the bags had been human bones. The tax collector's chair was in front of a anthracite coal fire, which outlined the man in a disturbing haze of dark blue that served to distress Dolby further.

“Mr. Pennock, it is my understanding of your country's law that ‘occasional lectures’-that is the language in the act of Congress-by foreigners on your soil are exempt from taxation.”

“You've misunderstood the law. Not that it's my duty to explain it. You should begin payments to me from your proceeds now, Dolby, five percent precisely, to avoid more unpleasant business than you've had.”

“I assure you we haven't had any unpleasant business, sir.”

Pennock stared hard. “You are having it right now, Mr. Dolby.”

Dolby looked around the barroom as though he would find help. Instead, he saw a man who was in a sealskin cap and peacoat, the unbuttoned coat revealing the corner of another Treasury Department badge. Dolby did not like the idea that he had been watched by these men taking in his money from the ticket offices, and most of all he hated that he was outnumbered. He wished Tom were there with him, at least. Not that Dolby thought that government agents would attack him, yet with Tom, younger and sturdier, he thought he would have mustered more self-confidence.

“Even if you are correct in your assessment of this claim, Mr. Pennock,” Dolby began to reply.

“I am,” Pennock, interrupting, said flatly. “You will pay ten thousand, in gold or greenbacks, or you, each one of you-your beloved Boz included-will be locked away as a hostage before your steamer leaves the shore.”

“Even if I were to agree to five percent as a just claim,” Dolby said, trying hard not to appear irate. “Even so, I have sent in the receipts from our sales to England already. The money is banked. I couldn't pay you if I had to.”

“There are alternative solutions.” Pennock waved to the man in the sealskin cap, who moved toward the door. “Mr. Dolby, you are not the only theatrical manager with whom I have business. I understand Mr. Dickens is a man who likes things in good order. I suggest you de-liver your payments before the final readings in New York, or you shall bring Mr. Dickens into some hot water that he won't soon be out of, and shall make him regret stepping foot on American soil. Good night.”

THE NEXT MORNING, while Dickens had enjoyed his usual breakfast at the Fieldses of a rasher of bacon and an egg with tea, Osgood had asked whether there was anything else the novelist had wanted to see in Boston that had been overlooked. When Osgood pressed the question rather insistently, Dickens had said he was curious about the site of the extraordinary murder of George Parkman at the Medical College. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who'd joined them for breakfast, and who had up until then been boring Dickens with his incessant talk, happened to be a professor there and immediately offered an expedition.

“Careful now, careful, Mr. Dickens…” Dr. Holmes cautioned. They'd arrived at the site and were descending to an underground chamber beneath the Medical College. “Another two steps down.”

The two men raised their lanterns. Around them in the grim chamber, shelves and medical jars glimmered with anatomical broth. Dickens picked up one to study by the light. “Pieces of sour mortality,” he commented. “Like the forty robbers in Ali Baba after being scalded to death!”

“It is all terribly morbid!” Holmes said as Dickens returned the jar to the shelf with the others. “Our Mr. Fields would insist this is no subject for after breakfast. Quite terrible!”

“Was it not my idea for you to take me here, Dr. Holmes? I could not leave Boston without seeing this.”

“Perhaps it was your idea, Mr. Dickens,” admitted Holmes. “But you mustn't blame yourself. There's never use in that. My Wendy-Wendell Junior-he would sneer at me for spending time on ‘trivialities’ like this when every hour could be in hot pursuit of dollars.”

Dickens laughed. “Count yourself lucky, my dear Dr. Holmes. Until Babbage's calculating machine shall be completed, the bills my boys acquire every day could never be added up! I think they have the curse of limpness upon them. I cannot get my hat on some days, I tell you, with how my hair stands up. You are blessed not to know what it is to look around the table and see reflected from every seat of it some expression of inadaptability, horribly remembered from your own father. Now, is this the spot-is this it?”

Holmes nodded.

“To be in such a grim place gives that sensation of cold and boiling water alternating down your back.”

“Right here, unseen by any outside eyes, the unthinkable…” said Holmes.

Dr. Holmes, poet and medical school professor, savored the chance to be the storyteller. It was in this underground laboratory, Holmes said, that the crime had been committed one chilly November day. That afternoon in 1849, George Parkman, a tall and gangling man, entered the grounds of the Medical College to visit John Webster, professor of chemistry and Holmes's colleague. That was the last time Parkman had been seen alive.

The Medical College's janitor, Littlefield, had been present when Parkman came into the building. Littlefield had heard Parkman whisper sternly to Webster, “Something must be done,” as if there had been some argument between the two men. Littlefield climbed upstairs to Dr. Holmes's lab to help clean up after a lecture and did not give Parkman any further thought that afternoon.

“After days without any word of him, Parkman's family was in a state, as you can imagine, my dear Dickens. When it became known that he was last seen here, the janitor Littlefield, a stranger to most men of our society, found himself the object of suspicious eyes, including my own!”

It was a quiet Wednesday the week of Thanksgiving, when Little-field noticed Webster was in his lab, doors bolted. The janitor, determined to defend his good name, had his own suspicions and watched through the keyhole as the professor hurried around in urgent activity. When Littlefield brushed his hand on the brick wall, he almost cried out. It was scalding hot.

The janitor waited for Webster to go out for the evening. He then bored a hole from the basement up into the same vault where Holmes and Dickens now stood. When Littlefield pulled himself through to the vault, he saw it. A human body, or part of one, on a hook. Hours later, the police would search more of the lab and find the charred bones of a chopped-up body in the furnace.

“Nobody in the Medical School has ever used this laboratory again, even though we are sorely out of space and it has been fifteen years and more since the body smoked and burned. You see, superstitions run deep even in men of science-nay, especially in men of science.”

Dickens listened to the doctor's story intently. “Yet if there is a single place in Boston that has innocent reason to be awash in bones, this Medical College is it,” he commented.

“The defense attorney argued that! There are bones and bodies everywhere you step here. But it was the false teeth,” Holmes said. “That's what did in poor Webster. The dentist who had made them up for Parkman said he could recognize them anywhere. The broken jaw with the false teeth found by this furnace was the most unimpeachable witness ever seen in court.”

“The most clever criminals are constantly detected through some small defect in their calculations,” noted Dickens.

“Poor Webster. To see a man just before he is hanged is really to see a ghost!”

“Surely, surely,” Dickens mused. “I have often thought how restricted one's conversation must become with a man to be hanged in half an hour. You could not say, if it rains, ‘We shall have fine weather tomorrow!’ for what would that be to him? For my part, I think I should confine my remarks to the times of Julius Caesar and King Alfred!”

Dickens fell into a fit of coughing while the two men laughed and wrapped himself tighter in his mangy coat. After months of assault from the American worshippers acquiring souvenirs snatching at the fur covering, he looked like a poor shedding animal.

“Well enough now, Mr. Dickens?” Dr. Holmes said gently. Word had spread of Dickens's illnesses since the author landed in America and that weakness for Dickens was a private matter. Dickens had obviously become more exhausted every reading he performed, and his foot grew lamer every day.

“Yes, no doubt of it!” exclaimed Holmes. “Fields will become warm at me if I don't return you to the comfort of his hearth to rest for your next reading.”

“You can almost smell it,” muttered Dickens.

“My dear Dickens?”

“The burned flesh in the air. Let us stay just a few moments longer.”

Chapter 24

AS THE TOUR'S ORBIT PUSHED FARTHER FROM NEW YORK AND Boston, reaching Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Hartford, and Providence, George Dolby and his harried ticket agents frequently traveled ahead of the rest of the party to arrange sales and lay the way.

Tom, in the meantime, never protested Dolby's restrictions on his duties. He was more preoccupied with the fact that Louisa Parr Barton had been allowed to walk free without questioning or a proper search of her carpetbag. At least Dickens's traveling to small, outlying towns would make it hard for the phantom incubus to follow, for she seemed a creature of the city. During Tom's duties, carrying baggage between train stations and hotels, he would keep his eyes open, which was more than anyone else was doing. He had been taught by his father in Ross that it was not the duties one was given but how one performed them that mattered.

At Syracuse, the inn was a grim place that looked like it had been built the day before, as did the whole town, and they were served what seemed like an old pig for breakfast. Henry Scott sat down in the public room and wept while George attempted to recruit an emergency militia to clean the hallway on their floor.

Between Rochester and Albany, the whole country seemed to be underwater from a furious storm that had displaced the ice and snow overnight. They had to stay all night in a desolate region that went by the name Utica. Even the telegraph poles had been knocked over and were floating like the masts from shipwrecks, so no communication was possible with the next reading hall.

Once they were near enough to Albany, they took paddleboats through the flooded expanse to get to their next hotel. Broken bridges and fences drifted across their paths alongside blocks of floating ice.

Tom was worried about Dickens as the boat struggled through. As they had crossed the United States, Tom had seen on many occasions a repetition of Dickens's sudden fits of dread while in a railway car or a ferry, or anything that the novelist had no power to stop in case of emergency. In their familiarity the fits were no longer startling but still created a distressing picture of internal terror. It was not unusual for Dickens to call out “Slower, please” to a coach driver several times until they were proceeding at the pace of a walk.

As they floated along the seemingly endless expanse of water, Dickens took out his chronometer watch to see whether they would be able to keep to their schedule. It was possible that the audience of ticket holders would not be able to reach the theater, but to Dickens that was not what was important: punctuality to him was a matter of principle and self-mastery. He shook his watch.

“It is remarkable, men,” he said. “My watch always kept perfect time and could be entirely depended upon, but since the moment of my railway calamity three years ago it has not gone quite correctly. The Staplehurst experience tells more and more, instead of less and less. There is a vague sense of dread that I have no power to check that comes and passes, but I cannot prevent its coming. Hold, what is that?” Dickens asked their guide, a superintendent of works. There was an entire train floating in the water ahead of them.

“Freight train, caught in the flood. Cattle and sheep. Men got out of it, but the livestock will have to perish, s'pose. Start eating each other in a couple of days, s'pose.”

Dickens turned to him with a hard glare.

“That's what dumb animals do, Mr. Dickens, when starved,” the superintendent continued nervously.

Dickens stared over at the abandoned train bobbing up and down in the filthy rainwater. As they passed, they could hear cries and moans from inside; it sounded like human misery. “They won't perish,” he said quietly, then moved to the head of the tiny boat. “Not a single one of them. Paddle back. That way.”

“But, sir, my instructions are strictly to get you to Albany in time for…” the guide started to protest.

“You didn't say something, did you?” Dickens asked with fire in his eyes.

“S'pose I didn't, sir,” he replied after taking a hint from the expressions of the staff in their boat.

“The Albanians can wait for us,” Dickens said. “Everyone paddle to that freight train, and no half measures! We're going to emulate Noah today!” After the work of several hours, they released the sheep and cows to swim across to land, and pulled the weaker ones up the shore high enough for them to rest until they brought food. All along, though it began to snow and hail, Dickens cheered and spurred on the men and animals with such enthusiasm that even the guide added a bounce to his step in the rescue of an emaciated calf.

Their misadventures brought them to Albany. Dickens sat before the fire at the hotel holding his hat out at the heat. It was almost a solid cake of ice, as was his beard. He tried to loosen his necktie but it was frozen into his collar.

As the new year began, most of their staff fell terribly ill. Tom was one of the few who had remained in good health, with Dickens increasingly dependent on him as the writer's own health continued to waver between hearty and weak. At one reading, ticket holders there to hear Nickleby and Mr. Bob Sawyer's Party were given notices: Mr. Charles Dickens begs indulgence for a severe cold but hopes its effects may not be perceptible after a few minutes’ reading. The first clause was composed by Dolby and a doctor; the second was the Chief's. Besides his small breakfasts, Dickens had begun limiting himself to an egg beaten up in sherry before a reading and another at intermission, which Henry would have mixed and ready in the dressing rooms.

By this time, Osgood had finished implementing his shop boy Daniel's idea of “special” condensed versions of the readings, thin volumes that Fields, Osgood & Co. sold for twenty-five cents at the front of the theaters.

“We need not worry about chasing away the Bookaneers from our readings, Mr. Branagan,” Osgood had told him when he and Fields came to see the group off at the railway station. “Mr. Sand's idea has worked exactly as we planned.”

“That lad will be on his way to clerk in no time!” Fields had said, congratulating Osgood on the innovation. “He's like another shop boy I can recall.”

On the way to Philadelphia, Tom was obliged to play cards with the Chief while Henry Scott dozed, keeping his legs locked together so that his boot would not be out at the moment some rude American spit his tobacco. Dickens, as usual when on a train, had his flask open beside him. Every few minutes, Henry's head would drop to one side and he would straighten up with great propriety as though he had been wide awake.

“No one ever likes to sleep in public like that,” Dickens said to Tom. “As a practice, I never do it myself. A contest of cribbage is good to keep you active and awake. It brings out the mettle.”

Dickens, perhaps finding Tom too quiet, seemed content to speak for both of them as they played. “How much has changed in this country it is impossible to say. The last trip I had to Philadelphia, twenty-five years ago, I remember nearly the whole city showed up at my hotel for interviews. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Edgar-Edgar Poe, that is. Never was a king or emperor on earth so followed by crowds as I was in Philadelphia.”

“Edgar Poe, you say, Chief?” Henry asked, his dropped head having suddenly jolted him into consciousness. The dresser was sufficiently impressed whenever he heard any person's name that he recognized as famous, especially one who had died. “Poe wrote morbid and weird tales,” Henry said as a didactic aside to Tom. “Then he died.”

“He was also a poet,” said Dickens, “as he reminded me many times. I spoke with him some about my poor raven Grip, who died eating part of our wooden stairs. We also talked about the tragic copyright situation for authors who did not reap a farthing while scoundrel publishers grew rich with spurious editions. Poe was writing tales of ‘ratiocination’ then-of mystery-as was I. Then I spoke to Poe of-yes, I can recall exactly, as if it were yesterday-of William Godwin's Caleb Williams, a work we both admired.”

“That novel I read in a single day,” Henry said happily.

Dickens continued. “I told Poe what I knew about its strange construction-that Godwin had written the hunting down of Caleb first. Only later did he decide how to account for it, and he wrote the first half of the book afterward. Poe said that he himself wrote his stories of ratiocination backward. He wanted more than anything for me to see him as a common spirit so that I might find him an English publisher, which I later tried but failed to do with Fred Chapman. Nobody knew much of Poe then and to print American writers was a risky venture. He was certain Europeans could appreciate him better than the Americans. Poor Poe took fire at me after that, a miserable creature.” Dickens seemed immediately sorry to have said that. “He was a disappointed man, you know, in great poverty. It may be my mood, or my anxiety, or I know not what else that makes me think of him now.”

Two readings in Philadelphia were followed by four in Washington and then two in Baltimore. At the first Washington stop, congressmen and the ambassadors of almost every country attended, as did a stray dog that passed by the police guards and began howling during the reading. President Johnson attended all of the Washington readings and invited Dickens and Dolby to the White House on the novelist's birthday, although Dickens's illnesses had grown worse. Dickens was certain, after the visit, that Andrew Johnson would manage well despite talk of his undoing for trying to push reconciliation with the Southern states through an unfriendly Congress. “That is a man who must be killed to be got out of the way,” Dickens commented to Dolby afterward.

Dolby soon left Washington for Providence to arrange ticket sales there while the others went on to Baltimore before returning to Philadelphia. On one of the longer train rides, the whole group exhausted, Dickens stirred from a deep, uncomfortable sleep.

“What are you smiling at, my lad?” he asked Tom, who was sitting across from him.

“You've been asleep,” Tom said, his pleasant smile remaining in place.

Dickens thought about it. “I have, sir! And I suppose you're going to tell me that you haven't closed an eye.”

At Baltimore, seemingly spurred by his own harsh words on the train to Philadelphia, Dickens located Maria Clemm, Edgar Poe's mother-in-law who was living by the charity of the state.

“This was the very same building where he died,” the old woman said when she was brought to the courtyard of the Church Home where he sat waiting with Tom. “It was a hospital then. Were you a friend of Eddie's? Do you know what happened?” she asked absently. The attendant had already explained who he was, but she had forgotten.

“I am a brother writer. Every author, my dear Mrs. Clemm, every poet and every editor, has known his despair,” said Dickens gingerly. He entreated her to accept $150 for her care.

Dolby reunited with the party again in Philadelphia on the night of the farewell reading there. The manager had stopped directing calculated glances of anger at Tom over the Christmas Eve debacle; instead, he just ignored him. Dolby had enough to agitate him now. The advertisement circular for the Hartford engagement had been printed to say that the reading would last two minutes and that the audience members should arrive at least ten hours early to claim their seats.

Dickens only laughed but was surprised to see Dolby so angry about the circular.

“My dear Dolby,” Dickens said, gesturing toward a chair. “You seem to be at your wits’ end today. Don't be too serious about the papers. Why, depending on what American paper you read, my eyes are blue, red, and gray, and the next day I'm proven a Freemason. You know, I used to suffer intensely from reading reviews of my books before I made a solemn compact with myself that I simply would not read them, and I have never broken this rule. I am unquestionably the happier for it-and certainly lose no wisdom.”

The manager shook his head somberly and sat down. “The papers can use me up all they like, Chief. Let them, the pudding-head business and all the rest! I did not wish to worry you, but I received a visit from an agent from the Treasury Department, claiming we owe five percent on all proceeds in America.”

“Five percent!” Dickens exclaimed. “Is the fellow correct?”

“No! But he threatens to confiscate our tickets and any property we have and to take us prisoners if we try to leave the country. I have written some letters to lawyers in New York, but they have been slow in replying.”

“Fancy that!” Dickens tried to keep his tone light. “Well, we made friends in Washington, didn't we?”

“We had nearly every member of the political class at your readings!”

“I'd wager they would happily use their influence to swat away this pest, don't you think? Take a trip back there.”

Dolby went back to Washington for a day as instructed. He dined with the chief commissioner of Internal Revenue of the federal government, who confirmed that Dickens's readings were considered occasional and, as such, exempt.

“We will always have rogue collectors, a rowdy element here and there in this bureau,” the commissioner said to Dolby apologetically when writing out a letter at the table. “Why, Congress had to even investigate the tendency of some of our men to make, well, ungentlemanly demands of some of the new women bookeepers in Treasury. Keep my letter with you, Mr. Dolby. It should stop the mischief. Many of the collectors in the eastern states, you see, are Irish, and suffer greatly from Anglophobia. We hope to enlighten them yet with visits like yours from our English cousins.”

Returning immediately to Boston, to a Saturday dinner planned for Dickens and Dolby at the Fieldses’, felt like being home again when compared with their recent itinerant lives.

They took a long walk around Boston before the meal. The amiable Mr. Osgood pointed out places of interest. So much was being built. The Sears Building, at the moment formless piles of stone and dust and scaffold, was said to be on its way to be a grand palace of offices and shops of seven stories. “There,” Osgood said, pointing to it, “shall be Boston's first steam elevator when this building is finished. You see, they say that is where it will go.” A space had been left in the middle of the construction on each floor, at the very bottom of which was an engine room with a steam pump connected to a series of pipes extending to the top of the building. There was an elaborately decorated elevator car, like a small parlor room, resting on its side by the building.

“Before long, they say,” Osgood commented, “nobody will use stairs at all and we shall save the lives of fifty persons a year who die by falling down stairwells. I only wonder whether things in Boston have begun to change too rapidly to comprehend them. We will all move up and down by steam power.”

“Any politician with that platform has my vote,” said Dolby, who was openly spiteful of walking as much as was required by Boston and Dickens.

Joining the dinner at the Fieldses that evening was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had come from Concord. Unlike most of the Cam-bridge literary delegates-Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes-Emerson seemed only half interested in Dickens as a man and even less in Dickens as a writer. Yet the Concord Sage could not help laughing at Dickens's singing an old Irish ballad (“Chrush ke lan ne chouskin!”) over punch that Dickens made for the group; Emerson's laughing, in spite of his best philosophies, looked as if it must hurt.

There were several other grim faces at dinner that, like some imperceptible force, spread a dark cloud over the levity. The faces belonged to high-level Massachusetts politicians who insisted that after President Johnson's rash dismissal of the secretary of war, impeachment had become all but certain. The leaders of Congress were in secret meetings through the night. Chaos was in the air.

Chapter 25

THE NATIONAL POLITICAL CRISIS PREDICTED AT THE DINNER came to pass that Monday-articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson were issued for high crimes and misdemeanors for his defiance of Congress during reconstruction of the Union-and the public fell into a fervor. The lines at the ticket office that day were thinly populated-even most of the speculators were gone! Observing the public distraction and considering Dickens's health, Dolby canceled the next Boston reading series.

The staff did all they could to entertain Dickens during the quiet period. Dolby and Osgood raced each other in a walking match dreamed up by Dickens, which also gave Dickens an excuse to call for a grand dinner party. “That Osgood!” Dolby commented to Henry, who helped him prepare for the contest by fitting him with seamless socks. “Hardly ten stone and a half, my luck, I daresay he can move faster than me in any weather, much less in snow and ice. With his rheumatic smile all along. Mark my words, he is faster and stronger than he appears-in racing and otherwise. Confound that Johnson for being impeached.” Soon Dolby and Osgood were both leaving town to address the changes to the schedule. Tom and Henry Scott were left at the Parker House with Dickens. Compared with the rest of their time in America, these days at Parker's without any readings were absurdly slow. The weather and Dickens's health confined the novelist to his rooms for the most part. He was weakened by his sneezing and coughing and most of all by missing Gadshill.

When he was not at his desk writing, Dickens would talk with anyone who was nearby, waiter, staff or hotel guest. Tom was asked to bring the latest telegraphed reports to Dickens's rooms whenever they arrived from Dolby and Osgood. Another time, Dickens had received a letter from home that sent him into a melancholy mood. When Tom came to take mail for the last post of the day, Dickens was still staring at the letter.

“Surely not John Thompson!” Dickens exclaimed.

“Chief?”

“Thompson is one of my men at Gadshill. The police discovered he was stealing money from my office cash box. After all these years! Why, I trusted him with my babies-I mean my manuscripts, delivering them here and there. What I am to do with, or for, the miserable man, God knows!”

“I'm very sorry, Chief.”

“Tell me,” the Chief said, “my good Branagan, do you read my books?”

Tom paused with surprise. Usually Dickens talked near but not really to him. He also remembered Dolby's words about their mission to keep Dickens content.

Dickens laughed at his hesitation. “Oh, you may tell the truth, Mr. Branagan! One more blasted ‘Dickensite’ and I may tip over from the weight. Nothing terrifies a writer like meeting his reader for the first time.”

“I do not often read novels, sir.”

“Sir? I want only strangers calling me ‘sir,’ and in truth I'd prefer strangers not to call me anything at all. Do you know why I am called Chief?”

“No.”

“Dolby never felt comfortable calling me Charles or Dickens. Well, I had at least been able to convince him to call me Boz.” Dickens continued his story, saying that one afternoon during a reading tour of Chester, Dolby had come to find Dickens in front of a fire with a Turkish fez and a bright muffler around his neck because cold air was coming into the room at the Queen's Hotel.

How do you feel? Dolby had asked, concerned.

Dickens had grumbled to this: Like something good to eat being kept cool in a larder. How do I look?

Like an old chief, Dolby had answered, but without the pipe.

“That is where it comes from. I respect Dolby more than I can say, for he overcame the same defect of speech that my India boy-that is my third son, Frank, now in Bengal with the police-had suffered with as a child from his severe want of application. Now, no novels at all, you say?”

Tom had forgotten the earlier subject. “Novels and romances pretend,” he commented.

“They lie, you mean to say?”

“Yes,” Tom replied. “They pretend to be what they are not.”

“The books do pretend, Mr. Branagan. Surely. But that is not all. Novels are filled with lies, but squeezed in between is even more that is true-without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see? The writer of books always puts himself in, his real self, but you must be careful of not taking him for his next -door neighbor.”

“It is still only imagination. Isn't it?”

“Let me show you something. Suppose this wineglass on the table were a character.” Tom nodded at the demonstration. “Good. Now, fancy it a man, imbue it with certain qualities, and soon fine filmy webs of thoughts spin and weave around it until it assumes form and beauty and becomes instinct with life. From there, the writing comes of itself until those two words, sorrowfully penned at last, stare at me, in capitals: THE END. But if I don't strike while the iron is hot-by iron I mean myself-I drift off again.”

Tom was not certain he fully understood, but he said he saw what Dickens meant.

“Do you?” asked Dickens. “That was a quick change of heart, Branagan. You're a slap-up man of good sense, I think. I'd rather you be honest with me next time, I'd always much rather that, whatever dear Dolby tells you.”

Taking Dickens's instruction to be honest to heart, Tom's thoughts turned to what was really on his mind since the cancellation of the readings. If Mrs. Barton had been attending all of Dickens's readings in Boston, as Tom suspected, she would have been disappointed, bitterly, by their cancellation. She would have felt personally insulted. If every other person in the country was too distracted by the impeachment to notice, she would not be-she might not even know there was an impeachment.

That night, Tom woke to the usual fire engines clanging outside. He had been dreaming when the noises pulled him out of his sleep.

He shook out his head as he sat in bed with his old flannels hanging on him. How strange the dream had been. The scene was a terrible railway accident like the one at Staplehurst where Dickens had nearly perished. Only Tom was in the novelist's place in this vision, and lowered himself down rocky ledge by rocky ledge to the bloodstained ravine where people screamed. Sheep and cattle, too, glided by his face as he tried to pull the victims to the shore of the river, only they were all dead, human and animal. Above, the first compartment of the train dangled over the broken bridge, raining loose pages of all Dickens's books into the river below.

Tom thought about this terrifying dream as he splashed his face with water from the wash basin and rubbed his eyes. His fingertips felt raw and cold against his skin. It was then he had an urgent premonition. Since tomorrow they would be leaving Boston, if Louisa Barton were going to act, it would be tonight. If she was not already at the Parker House, she would be. Tom knew it to be so.

Perhaps he was emboldened by the fact that Dolby and Osgood were not there to reprimand him. Tom dressed hastily and went down the hall to Dickens's door, where a hotel waiter sat guarding the entrance.

“What is it now?” asked the waiter, stirring spasmodically from a half sleep. He brushed Tom's hand off of his arm. “I'm dead beat tonight, fellow.”

“I need to speak with Mr. Dickens.”

“I doubt he desires an audience with anyone at this hour! Especially some Paddy porter! Come back in the morning.”

“You've had too much at the bar.” Tom waited, his eyes remaining fixed on the waiter.

“Very well,” the waiter huffed. He knocked on the door to the room and said there was a caller. Would Dickens allow him to enter?

“I'll be damned if I will!” came the novelist's reply from behind the door.

The waiter grinned triumphantly. Tom stood for a few more moments then, relenting, began to walk away. Just before opening the door to his own room, he heard sounds of a struggle-someone being strangled, a woman screaming out-all coming from inside Dickens's room. The waiter at the door looked paralyzed with fear. Tom ran back and dashed through Dickens's door.

There was Dickens in his velvet dressing gown, alone, standing before the massive mirror, his face wildly contorted and his hands squeezing a blanket as though it were his enemy's throat.

“Branagan! Come in,” he said cheerfully.

“Chief, I thought I heard…” Tom began, doubting his own senses.

“Ah, yes,” Dickens replied, laughing and then coughing. “I was just practicing a new short reading I've made-very different from the others. I have adapted and cut about the text with great care. Close the door there, if you would, and you'll hear some of it.”

The reading from Oliver Twist, one of the earliest novels of his career, told of Bill Sikes, the criminal, beating and killing his lover, Nancy, for betraying him by helping orphan Oliver's cause. Dickens acted this out step by step with vigor and violence that all brought out the inevitability of death. Tom felt a chill through his body as he seemed to watch the honest prostitute die before his eyes.

When it was done, Dickens fell back into an armchair and rolled his head in a circle to the left and right. “Nobody has seen it yet,” he said excitedly when he had his breath back. “I told Dolby, Fields, and Osgood about it at dinner. I have been trying it secretly, but I get something so horrible out of it I am afraid to do it in public.”

“It was petrifying, Chief. If any one woman in the audience screams, there could be an outbreak of hysteria.”

“I know it.”

“I suppose you can't sleep well with that on your mind,” Tom wondered.

“I can't sleep anyway! I have been coughing badly for three hours now and have not closed my eyes. Laudanum is the only thing that has done me good, but even soporifics fail me tonight. I have tried allopathy, homeopathy, cold things, warm things, sweet things, bitter things, stimulants, narcotics.”

Dickens pulled out the opiate mixture made from the various vials in his traveling medicine case and took another bitter spoonful. His previous energy had drained from him in the way it did when an actor went behind the back curtain after a scene. There was a sense that a combination of exhaustion and narcotics had taken a full hold of him.

“I hope to get sword in hand again soon,” said Dickens wearily. “I am as restless, Branagan, as if I were behind bars in the zoological gardens. If I had any to spare, I would wear a part of my mane away by rubbing it against the windows of my cage.”

“Chief, you asked me before to be honest,” said Tom.

“Did I?” Dickens asked, sucking at his tongue. “What do you say? Perform the new scene or not? I thought it was one of my finest. Though perhaps I should not commit the murder in America, it may be too much for this country's sensibilities.”

Tom had to raise his voice to be heard over the other man's regular bouts of coughing. “Mr. Dickens, not that. I am concerned about Louisa Barton, the woman who came into your room once before, and has attended your readings regularly, following us to New York and assaulting that widow, possibly stealing your diary: I believe that lady could be looking for you here tonight.”

“Even with the Argus-eyed guardian at my door?” Dickens asked sarcastically. “You have a reason to think so tonight in particular, Mr. Branagan, I take it.”

“The last series of Boston readings have been canceled-I'll be bound she would have attended, and I know not what the result on her mental state would be after being denied this. This is the last night-she will try something to find you and get what she has wanted from you.”

“Which is what?”

Tom's confidence waned. “I don't know.”

“Have you finished?” Dickens asked angrily.

“I have said what I feel.”

“Your infernal caution will be your ruin one of these days!” said Dickens, releasing a loud sigh, and he sat at his desk. Tom knew his words had not been persuasive enough, even to his own ears, but was surprised at Dickens's furor. He readied himself to leave the room.

“Wait. Very well, Branagan.”

“Chief?” Tom asked. He turned around and saw Dickens wiping a tear from his eye.

“Forgive me. I know you are right. Before I left England, you see, I received various letters warning me of danger by my coming to America. Anti-Dickens feeling, Anti-English feeling, New York rowdyism, and I don't know what else. As I had already decided to come here, upon my soul I resolved to say no word about it to anyone, not even Dolby, especially not that old beadle, Forster, who thought my soul would evaporate the moment he was Godspeeding me!”

“Then you thought the measures I have urged on Mr. Dolby were needed?”

“That was why I agreed that you watch my door that night. Imagine being a man who needs a bodyguard as though from phantom goblins and ghouls! I wonder was Milton visited by angels or by devils when he wrote-and who is it that appears to me?

“I know you have taken pains to understand it, my good Branagan,” Dickens continued. “You have seen for yourself how I am beset, waylaid, mashed, bruised, and pounded by the crowds. Never have I known less of myself in all my life than in these United States of America. My boy, if I greeted you in poor spirits when you knocked at the door, I assure you I repent it. A character not under my own control takes over when I practice a reading. Now, what do you suggest we do? If I am to begin something, I begin it at once.”

Tom had not yet concocted a plan. He thought quickly. “Chief, I would just as soon to catch this lady red-handed so she can never again bother you.”

“Please God! What do you say we do, then?” the novelist asked impatiently. “Much better to die doing, Branagan, than to wait. I have always felt of myself that I must die in harness one day.”

Tom's improvised proposition was this: Tom must take Dickens's place in his bed. Dickens would quietly slip into the adjoining suite of rooms usually occupied by George Dolby. If the intruder made her way inside as she had their first week in Boston, expecting the novelist, she would find Tom waiting instead. And if Mrs. Barton did not show up, they could toast the Chief's safety on their way out of the city.

Dickens contemplated this plan and quickly assented. He first gathered up some personal belongings from the bureau and the desk drawers and placed them in a calf-leather case.

“Do you believe in the wisdom of dreams, Branagan?” the writer asked as he did.

Tom thought of his strange Staplehurst dream. “Do you mean whether I believe they tell us what is to come?”

“Surely, surely. Or what has come to pass already. I dreamed once of my dear friend Jerrold, the dramatist. In the dream, he handed me something he wrote, though it was not in his own hand, and he was anxious that I should read it for my own safety. I looked but could not make out a word of it! I woke in great perplexity, with its strange character quite fresh in my sight. The next day, to my astonishment, I learned Jerrold had died.”

Tom searched for a response. Dickens bowed his head slightly as though he had just finished another dramatic reading. Tom worried what Dickens's fascination with the dream meant for his own health and well-being.

“I have come to be fond of you, Tom. Do not abandon saying your private prayers, as you likely do-I never have myself, and I know the comfort of it. If I should live to publish more, I'd want you to read my books, whether or not you can make out that they have anything to do with your own life. Will you do it?”

“Yes,” Tom said.

“Good, you will be a reader I am proud of.”

When he was finished gathering his belongings, Dickens entered Dolby's rooms and closed the door behind him. Tom waited with a racing heart. At every creak or shuffle or murmur in the hotel walls, Tom imagined the intruder bursting inside and the ensuing capture. He could not help but also imagine the fury that Dolby would exhibit were the manager by some chance to return early to Boston. He imagined Dolby telling the overly proper Mr. Osgood about it, and predictable Osgood telling his partner, Mr. Fields, and furious Fields sending for the police to come back in force and this time to lock Tom up.

As the night passed on uneventfully, Tom began to think he'd been wrong and that Louisa Barton was not to make an appearance. He had scared the tired novelist enough for one night. He knocked lightly on the door adjoining to Dolby's rooms where Dickens was sleeping.

“Chief,” Tom whispered. He opened the door slightly. “Chief, I think we have given this a sufficient trial. Do you wish to reclaim your bed?”

There was nobody inside. The bed had been slept in, but the bedclothes were only slightly disturbed. It was not unlikely he had gone out for another breather. Unless Louisa Barton had shown up as Tom had expected.

Tom went into the hallway to question the waiter who had been guarding Dickens's door, but the waiter was nowhere to be seen either. Descending the stairs, he found a night clerk and sent for the fugitive waiter, who came from the barroom with a glass of brandy in his hand.

“What are you doing in the bar?” Tom said to him.

The waiter studied Tom with offense. “You a temperance man now?”

“It's three in the morning. Why aren't you on guard at Mr. Dickens's room upstairs?”

“There's nothing to guard, is why. Mr. Dickens left.”

“When?” Tom asked.

“Not a half hour ago. Said he wanted to get out for a little exercise. Went out the back stairs.”

Tom knew at once how foolish he had been. He had never persuaded Dickens about the danger of the intruder at all! Dolby's enraged voice now shouted in Tom's mind and had one thing to say: You lost the Chief, you lost Charles Dickens!

Outside, Tom found a hotel janitor who had seen Dickens leave through the back entrance, signal for a hackney cab and drive away. The janitor said that the coach drove north with Dickens inside. Tom began to walk toward the river looking for any signs of the novelist or his hired cab. The streets were nearly empty this early. A rickety wagon drove by hauling bread. Tom pulled himself onto the baker's open wagon, where he crouched so the stacks of rolls blocked him from the driver's view. After jumping back to the street and surveying his surroundings, Tom gave up his search as fruitless.

Then he heard an unexpected sound in the morning stillness- a groan. The noises came a few paces down from the riverbank. Tom followed the sounds and found a red-haired man facedown in the rocky, icy bank. Likely a local drunkard who had lost his step. Tom pulled the man onto higher land and could see that he had been battered, his clothes shredded in spots in some kind of assault. His head was uncovered and there was no hat nearby.

“What happened?” Tom asked, loosening the man's clothing around his chest.

The man moaned more, trying to say a word. “Coach!”

“I'll call for help.”

Before Tom could move, the man grabbed his collar determined to make himself understood. Through his labored breathing and dizzy spells, the man was able to communicate that he had been driving his coach when he saw a woman gesturing for help. She was holding her ankle as though in great pain. When the man stepped down from the box and started for her, she ran past him, took his hat, and leaped onto the driver's box, grabbing the reins. He scrambled back toward the carriage, but she whipped the horses into a frenzy, trampling him. She then stepped down and pushed the staggering man tumbling over the embankment.

Tom could see through the ice and black mud that the man was wearing the outfit of a hackney cabdriver. “Did you have a passenger in the carriage?” he asked.

The driver nodded.

“Who? Was it Charles Dickens?”

Coughing overcame the driver, and he sprayed out blood.

“Can you stand?” The attempt failing, Tom put one arm under the half-frozen man's neck and one under his legs and lifted him with a great heave. He carried him to the street.

Just then, a brougham carriage came roaring back in the direction of the hotel. Tom tried to signal for help, but it careened wildly past at a breakneck speed, far faster than the legal limit of a slow trot. It passed too rapidly for Tom to see anything but the driver's hat and to observe that there were no passengers to be seen. But the cabman that Tom was holding stretched his hand out at the sight of the vehicle.

“Stay calm, fellow,” Tom said.

Bracing his legs to carry his load farther up the road, Tom found the driver of a truck watering his two blanketed horses at a hitching post.

“This man needs help immediately. Take him to the hospital,” instructed Tom, laying his burden down gently. Then Tom began untying one of the truckman's horses, saying, “I need to borrow her.”

The confused truckman was too startled to object, and Tom climbed up onto the horse without a saddle and kicked her into a launching gallop.

Tom was soon in the immediate wake of the speeding carriage that had passed them. When he was even with the rear of the carriage, Tom breathed in deeply and leaped off the horse, grabbing the back of the chaise. With one hand hanging from the top of the chaise, Tom swung around, unlatched the door, and threw himself inside. The chaise was not empty. There was Dickens on the floor.

The Chief was sprawled out, out of view of the window. His head rested on a pillow-the stolen hotel pillow from Parker's!

This moment had been dreamed up all along.

There was Louisa Barton's carpetbag full of bundles of ragged manuscript pages. Tom took up the title page. A New Book of Job by Charles John Huffam Dickens was scrawled out in a cramped hand. Also in the bag were slippers, curlers, a mirror, pomatum, and rope.

“Chief, it's Tom Branagan. Are you hurt?” Tom whispered and shook him.

“Slow, slow please,” Dickens mumbled in reply.

Tom realized that Dickens was not bound or constrained physically. But Dickens's extreme torpor was the same that had come over him when in any fast conveyance.

Just then, the horses came to an abrupt halt, the carriage lifting in the air.

Dickens began to try to speak, but Tom signaled for quiet. The novelist was insensible and confused-plus Tom was not armed but knew Louisa Barton could be. If the kidnapper saw him there, she could become desperate.

The brougham carriage had two rows of seats facing each other and space beneath each of the rows for luggage. Hearing the driver step down from her seat, Tom slid to the floor and rolled beneath one of the seats into the luggage space. He grabbed Dickens's walking stick and pulled it against his body where it couldn't be seen.

“Here we are,” said Louisa theatrically, as she opened the door. Her abundant hair was half stuffed under the stolen driver's cap, which she now removed and threw aside. “Chief, you'll need to wake yourself now. You'll want to be spirited, spirited and energetic as always you are, to show what you're all about. This will beat the other readings for those groundlings hollow, hollow, hollow!”

With considerable strength, the woman dragged Dickens under her arms and out of the side door. Tom, meanwhile, rolled over to the other side of the carriage and popped that door open so he could observe them. They were in the massive shadow of Tremont Temple.

The assailant was walking Dickens gently toward the theater with one hand, carrying her pearl-handled switchblade in the other. She had on a pink sash and dazzling flame red gown, with dead geraniums dropping down from tousled hair.

Tom waited until they had entered the theater and then he went up the stairs to the main hall. He knew the building inside and out from the readings and knew that inside he'd have the best chance of separating Dickens from her long enough to get him free. He considered going for a policeman, but they'd surely be resistant to his story: particularly the part about the attacker being a woman from the upper classes of the city named Louisa Parr Barton.

Tom went through the side entrance where he had previously guarded against people trying to sneak into the readings. Now it was Tom doing the sneaking. He silently climbed the stairs to the balcony, peering over the railings to survey the scene. Louisa had placed Dickens, who had revived but was still in a state of confusion, on the platform in front of the podium. She sat at his feet on the platform with her wide gown flowing around her, like the ghostly image of a schoolgirl. The blade dangled in her hand.

Her intention was clear as it was bizarre: Dickens was to do a reading of her manuscript. Poor Chief. The lines on his face looked like they had deepened since he had arrived in America; without George's lighting and Henry's choice of a fashionable hat, straggly hair hung from his bald head down over his cheeks. He was a shadow of himself.

Dickens fumbled through her manuscript pages, and began to read. “They slain the servants with the edge of their swords-I only have escaped to tell the vulgar people that God is upon our city.” Louisa appeared to be enraptured with her words coming from her idol's mouth.

Tom raised himself just above the iron railings. He caught Dickens's eye and Dickens, without betraying Tom's presence, nodded. Dickens raised his voice and began to read her strange and discordant text louder, allowing Tom to descend the stairs and make his way along the side of the auditorium unheard.

But he reached a point where he could go no farther without risking detection. Dickens, recognizing Tom's dilemma, thrust aside the woman's pages and began to speak in an earthy growl. “Let it be! There's enough light for wot I've got to do…”

It was Bill Sikes and the murder scene from Oliver Twist! Dickens's teeth were clenched with fury, completely transforming into the savage killer-he looked right at Louisa Barton. He held his hand down to her as though he would seize her by the wrist.

She trembled with a thrill of fear. Her face flushed a fiery red.

“You were watched to-night, you she-devil. Every word you said was heard!”

The dramatic performance mesmerized Louisa, and Tom successfully crept to the side of the platform unseen. He could see her hand clenched the knife so tightly her knuckles were turning white. Tom could take her by surprise by coming through the dressing room onto the platform, but if he had to struggle, he feared Dickens's proximity to her weapon.

As he debated his best chance, Louisa seemed to sense something wrong. Her head whipped around.

“Why, you!” she screamed violently, as though infused with Bill Sikes's venom. She caught him with her hypnotic glare and cut the air with her blade. “You can't be here!”

Before Tom could move, she jumped up and put her knife to the soft flesh of Dickens's throat. “Keep reading!” she commanded him.

“Every word you said was heard…” Dickens tremulously repeated Sikes's warning.

“Yes, that's it-keep going,” she said to Dickens, and then to Tom, said, “Now you leave!”

Tom, eyes locked on the switchblade, backed away through the middle aisle. “I'm going, Mrs. Barton,” Tom said. “You see, I'm going.”

Then a different idea came over him, and he dropped into a seat with a loud thump. Tom dug himself into the cushion and reclined.

She looked back from Dickens to Tom but then, as though deciding she never wanted to leave the writer's side again, she said, “You're spiteful because we were never friends. Fine, stay! You wouldn't understand what you're about to see!”

Tom put his boots up onto the chair in front of him. “I think I do.”

Then understanding dawned and her mouth opened wide. “That's why, you're sitting-that seat's mine!”

Tom was sinking deep into the seat from which she had watched the Christmas Eve reading, where she had carved a string of words about Dickens. Unloosed with rage, she ran through the aisle toward him, her knife held out.

“Run, Chief! Quickly!” Tom called out to Dickens.

“I won't!” Dickens cried.

“Chief, run!” Tom repeated, but to his astonishment Dickens did not move. “Fetch the police!”

To this urgency, Dickens thankfully seemed to assent. First, he threw up the pages of Louisa's manuscript in the air and then darted out of the theater.

“No!” she cried, watching her book's pages flutter in all directions. Tom used her distraction to swing the hook of Dickens's walking stick at her hand, the jutting-out screw landing right on her knuckles and creating a deep gash. Her switchblade went flying into the air. Tom staggered backward when she pulled up a pistol from her pocket, then pounced forward and knocked her down. They both rushed to where it landed and struggled over it. Tom drew his fist back but knew even in the rush of the moment that he could not strike a woman. She wrestled her hand free and threw her fist into his jaw again and again with surprising strength.

“There is an actress,” Tom said to her, fending off her blow with his arm. Even as he spoke, he could not help feeling as though he were betraying the Chief. He unconsciously switched to a whisper. “There is a young actress back in England whom the Chief loves. That is why he and his wife separated, not because of you.”

“No, you've invented it all!” Louisa wailed.

“The Chief told me, he told me himself. He's come here to earn enough money to buy her anything she wants-to buy her the crown jewels and the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace if that's what she desires!”

“No, he came for me!”

But the poisonous words had worked. Her face contorted into confusion, she began to sob and her grasp loosened. Tom wrapped her in his arms. Within minutes, Dickens returned with several policemen and citizens who had heard his call.

When she saw Dickens again, it was as though life returned to Louisa. She began softly singing to herself like a child. In a sudden movement, she pulled away from Tom's grip and drew a razor from inside the lining of her shoe.

“No!” Tom cried. “Chief, watch out!” He jumped in front of Dickens.

She stabbed the razor into her own neck and began to slice her flesh from right to left, dropping into a puddle of her own blood.

One of the policemen ran for a doctor and another kneeled beside the woman and tried to staunch the terrible gash in her neck with her sash. Dickens, watching in shock, fell to her side and dislodged the razor from her hand. She was trying to speak again but gurgled blood instead. Her arms flailed wildly until her hand sat on top of Dickens's, at once growing calm and still.

“Chief… our next book… what…?” she said, spitting shiny geysers of blood onto her chin, unable to go on.

Dickens leaned in to the woman's ear and whispered something. Tom could not hear what was said, but a strange and shrewd grin rose upon Louisa Barton's face, and as her life was slipping, she began to giggle hoarsely. Dickens, dismayed, backed away and allowed the police and a newly arrived doctor to attend her.

Tom said to the dazed Dickens, “Chief, what is it you said to her?”

Dickens nearly fell headlong into his protector's arms from exhaustion and relief, leaning on him bodily. “Never mind that. One of our devils is at peace, Branagan.”

Chapter 26

THE NEW YORK PRESS HAD ARRANGED TO GIVE A CELEBRATORY dinner to the novelist before his departure, to be held at the famed Delmonico's restaurant. He was suffering again from severe swelling in his right foot-erysipelas, according to a local doctor-and only upon application of special lotions from the best drugstore and painful bandaging, hidden by a borrowed gout stocking sewed over in black silk by Henry Scott, did the writer go out. Dickens said, as he ground his teeth, that he did not want the pressmen to telegraph England about the extent of his maladies.

“Points of difference there have been, points of difference there probably always will be, between the two great peoples,” Dickens said after the many toasts to his health at the long table. “But if I know anything of Englishmen-and they give me credit for knowing some-thing-if I know anything of my countrymen, gentlemen, the English heart is stirred by the flutter of your stars and stripes as it is stirred by no other flag that flies except its own. I beg to bid you farewell, and I shall often remember you as I see you now, equally by my winter fireside at Gadshill, and in the green English summer. In the words of Peggotty from Copperfield, ‘My future life lies over the sea.’ God bless you, and God bless the land in which I leave you”-Dickens paused there, a tear in his eye-“forevermore.”

All two hundred pressmen, having finished with their special literary menus of timbales à la Dickens, agneau farci à la Walter Scott, and côtelettes à la Fenimore Cooper, stood to cheer. The restaurant band played “God Save the Queen.”

“I feel like erecting a statue to your stamina, my dear Dickens,” Fields said into his author's ear as he shook his hand and helped him away.

“No,” the Chief said somberly, “don't. Take down one of the old ones instead.”

AFTER HEARING ABOUT his heroics in Boston, Dolby had given many hearty congratulations to Tom, very nearly apologizing to him for having doubted. He insisted Tom search for Louisa's accomplices.

“There were none,” Tom said.

“Impossible! That little lady…” Dolby replied, still flabbergasted by it all.

“Obsession of a strong-hearted woman, Mr. Dolby, can be more dangerous than ten men.”

On their final night in America, Dolby confided to Tom about a remaining worry: the threats of the tax collector who had accosted him at the hotel. Dolby asked Tom to help watch out for any trouble.

The warning of the tax agent, whether bluster or not, had stuck in the manager's mind. You will pay, or you, each one of you, Agent Pen-nock had said to him, your beloved Boz included, will be locked away as a hostage before your steamer leaves the shore. Would the novelist, in his weakening health, survive imprisonment if it came to that? A squalid place like the debtor's prison he had seen his father endure in Marshalsea in his youth?

“I shall have the letter from the Treasury chief on my person at all times, in case,” Dolby said.

“Then there shouldn't be any trouble, I'd think,” Tom responded.

“I hope not,” said Dolby. “But it seems many Americans prefer not to respect authority.”

It was only when they boarded the Russia the next morning without incident that Dolby finally smiled for the first time in what seemed weeks. The porters pulled up not only their luggage but the many gifts of portraits, bouquets, books, cigars, and wine.

While the ship was still anchored in the harbor boarding passengers, they sat down to a lunch of some hot soup in the saloon of the ship. Yet before a bit had been taken, there was a commotion on deck. Dolby found several passengers pointing out a police vessel coming in their direction.

As Dolby made his way down the stairs to investigate, the manager faced two men in dark suits and sealskin caps on board, though the police vessel had not yet reached them. They both unbuttoned their coats and revealed shiny brass Treasury Department badges. Dolby, sucking in his breath, removed the letter of protection from the commissioner of Internal Revenue.

The agent who had visited him before, Simon Pennock, emerged to take the letter and read it. He slowly looked up from it and met Dolby's eye. Then he tore the letter and ground the pieces into the floor with his boot toe. “That is what I think of that.”

“Sir!” Dolby said. “That is the official word of the chief of your department. Your superior! He assures me that neither Mr. Dickens nor myself is liable for any tax in this country.”

Pennock sneered an ugly sneer. “Let me make this case clear to your frozen British brain. We don't care a miserable damn for the opinion of the chief of my department, as you call him. With the president under impeachment, there is no government, no department. Only justice and injustice, and we stand before you now as judges.”

“Mr. Dickens would be the last man in the world to evade a claim upon him if it were just!” Dolby thought to try his last tactic. “Is it Irish blood that makes you hate Mr. Dickens, Agent Pennock?”

“I haven't a drop of it in this body, sir,” the collector said.

“Then why harass us so? Are you driven so mad by base greed?”

“You look for greed?” Pennock asked. “Look no further than your boss, sir. Who comes here for money and deification and wishes to give nothing, not even friendship, in return. Perhaps Mr. Dickens should have taken better care to be courteous to the citizens of this country!”

“Courteous? That man has exhausted himself, has made himself sick b-b-b…”-Dolby struggled with his words-“bringing joy to Americans. What do you m-m-mean?”

“Hold your tongue if it's too oily to talk, Dolby! My dear brother is a fine gentleman of Boston, one of the graybeards among the city aldermen. He has read every book by Mr. Dickens for twenty years. Yet, when he left his card at the Parker House with a letter of introduction upon Mr. Dickens's arrival, the response was a note declining-not even in Dickens's own hand, nay, he could not take the time for that- because your sultan was busy resting. I do not call that courtesy! I call it an insult! I say let the great Boz drink from the dregs of the cup he serves to others!” With that he summoned more of his men up the stairs.

“Halt,” Tom, entering from above, said to two of the men. “State your business.”

“None of yours, likely, Paddy!” said the rougher looking of the pair.

“They mean to arrest Mr. Dickens and myself,” Dolby said shakily to Tom.

Tom, without hesitation, stepped in front of Dolby and addressed the tax men. “Take me instead and let them go. I will stay behind until this is sorted out.”

The rougher sealskin pushed Tom hard in the chest, sending him tumbling down. He stopped himself from cracking his skull open at the last moment by catching the railing.

Pennock removed a pistol from his pocket. “We'll deal with Dolby-and then with Mr. Dickens.”

There had been no chance at escape-the rogue agents meant business. Suddenly, the sounds of heavy boots came from behind Dolby. Four detectives from the police boat, which had just arrived, appeared, their coats also unbuttoned on their badges. They surrounded Dolby and demanded to know the sealskin caps’ business.

“Halloa! We're the Treasury Department,” answered one of the tax agents.

“Treasury Department? Too late. New York police here and we've got him and Boz for what they owe the city of New York.” Two of the detectives took Dolby's arms. Another grabbed Tom Branagan. As a cacophonous shouting match erupted over which arrest took priority, the bell sounded from above alerting those going ashore to return to the ferry.

“We have our police boat alongside,” one of the detectives said. “But since it appears you boarded at the dock, I'd disembark with the others before you lose your passage, unless you fellows plan to see much of Liverpool.”

Pennock and his unhappy agents yielded, rushing back to deck and jumping onto the last ferry taking away the passengers’ visitors and servants. When they were gone, the detectives said to one another, “Shall we put them in shackles now or on our boat?”

“Let's round up Dickens first, so there's no escape.”

“Get your stick ready, then.”

“Imagine! What the pressmen would have done with seeing the Inimitable Dickens in irons!”

Suddenly, the four men laughed. Dolby, amazed at this change in demeanor, stared at them.

A detective removed his hat and smiled. “Very sorry, sir. Our chief of police is quite an admirer of your Mr. Dickens. When he heard something about the tax collector's plan, he sent us to scare them off. Now we should be returning to our own boat presently and let you be on your way. But perhaps old Boz can spare an autograph or two for our boss?”

Dolby and Tom looked at each other in amazement.

Before they made their way back to the police boat, the policemen were carrying with them armfuls of autographs. Cannons from nearby tugs fired to say good-bye. After endless cheering and many farewells from the ferry and from the shore, Dickens, standing on the rail, put his hat onto the top of his cane and waved it high at the crowd.

Tom stood close behind him on deck, just in case his boot slipped. From his vantage point, he could see Dickens's eyes tearing up.

“Perhaps you will come back to America again, Chief,” Tom suggested.

“Surely,” Dickens agreed. “Maybe, though, I've left just enough of myself here already.”