The Luminaries

altogether, and pass through it, into that most private and solitary of rooms … but he had declined these opportunities with quite the same discomfort and stiff propriety with which he fielded Gascoigne’s rhetorical teases now.
    When he was one-and-twenty a late night of carousing in London had led him, by the usual methods and channels, to a lamp lit courtyard not far from Smithfield Market. This courtyard, by the authority of Moody’s college chums, was frequented by the most fashionable of whores—so identifiable for their red Garibaldi jackets, brass-buttoned, that were the height of Parisian fashion at the time, and alarming to English ladies for that reason. Although the military style of their jackets gave the women a deliberate and brazen look, they pretended at shyness, turning away so they might look at the men over the rounded curve of their shoulders, and feint, and titter, and point their toes. Moody, watching them, felt suddenly sad. He could not help but think of his father—for how many times, over the years of Moody’s youth, had he come across the man in some dark corner of the house, to perceive, upon his father’s lap, a perfect stranger? She would be gasping unnaturally, or squealing like a pig, or speaking in a high-pitched voice that was not her own, and she would leave behind her, always, that same greasy musk: the smell of the theatre. Moody’s college chums were pooling their sovereigns and cutting straws to draw for the first pick; silently, he withdrew from the courtyard, hailed a hansom, and retired to bed. It was a point of pride for him, thereafter, that he would not do as his father had done; that he would not fall prey to his father’s vices; that he would be the better man. And yet how easy it might have been—to contribute his sovereign, and select his straw, and choose one of the red-shirted ladies to follow into the cobbled alcove on the dark side of the church! His college chums supposed him to have set his sights upon a clerical vocation. They were surprised, some years later, when Moody enrolled at Inner Temple, and began to study for the Bar.
    It was therefore with a very well-concealed ignorance that Moody played interlocutor to Gascoigne, and Clinch, and Mannering, and Pritchard, and all the others, when they spoke of Anna Wetherell,and the esteem in which they held her, as a whore. Moody’s well-timed murmurs of ‘naturally’ and ‘of course’ and ‘exactly so’, combined with a general rigidity of posture whenever Anna’s name was mentioned, implied to these men merely that Moody was made uncomfortable by the more candid truths of human nature, and that he preferred, like most men of exalted social rank, to keep his earthly business to himself. We observe that one of the great attributes of discretion is that it can mask ignorance of all the most common and lowly varieties, and Walter Moody was nothing if not excessively discreet. The truth was that he had never spoken two words together to a woman of Anna Wetherell’s profession or experience , and would hardly know how to address her—or upon what subject—should the chance arise.
    ‘And of course,’ he said now, ‘we ought to be cheered by the fact that Miss Wetherell’s trunk did not follow her to the Wayfarer’s Fortune.’
    ‘Did it not?’ said Gascoigne, in surprise.
    ‘No. The lead-lined dresses remain at the Gridiron, along with her pipe, and her opium lamp, and other miscellaneous items; she never sent for them.’
    ‘And Mr. Clinch has not raised the issue?’
    ‘No,’ said Moody. ‘It is cheering, I think: whatever role Miss Wetherell played in Mr. Staines’s disappearance, and whatever role she is to play in the ridiculous
séance
this evening, we can at least be fairly certain that she has not confided in Mrs. Wells absolutely. I take heart in that.’
    He looked about for the waiter, for Gascoigne had finished eating, and he wished to settle his account as soon as possible, so that he might return to the Crown, and unpack his trunk at long last.
    ‘You are anxious to depart,’ Gascoigne observed, wiping his mouth with his table napkin.
    ‘Forgive my rudeness,’ Moody said. ‘I am not tired of your company —but I
am
rather anxious to be reunited with my possessions. I have not changed my jacket in some weeks, and I do not yet know the degree to which my trunk survived the storm. It is possible that all my clothes and documents were ruined.’
    ‘What are we waiting