When I returned to the house on Staniford Street, I entered by the back door and made my way up to the bedchamber; but was waylaid by Mrs. Platt, who lingered in the hall before Dr. Trefusis’s door.
“I gave him some candles against the evening,” she said. “A farthing apiece.”
I bowed and said, “We are sensible, ma’am, of the kindness of your attentions towards us, and honored that you would with such assiduity regard even the most minute of our —”
“Is he an atheist?” she asked anxiously.
He was, and had been hounded from many of the gilded courts of Europe for his blasphemies; but I avowed he was the firmest Christian I had ever known; which was not, in its way, untrue.
Uneasily, she nodded, and continued along the thin corridor.
She having departed, I entered in and found the most beloved of tutors lying almost in a swoon, so distempered was he by fevers. I took his hands and asked him how he fared.
“The woman is watching me,” he whispered. “I believe there is a little maggot in her brain whispers I don’t have two farthings to clink.”
I informed him of my employment at Fanueil Hall, and that it should result in a small sum sufficient to carry our rent, with, however, no excess. Still wary of censure, I further related to him my entry into Mr. Jonathan Gitney’s house and my theft of clothing. He did, however, but praise me.
“Excellent!” he cried, laughing. “Excellent. Good boy. Nothing breeds fortune like a hat and jabot.”
That night, Dr. Trefusis suffered greatly from his chill. He could not cease shaking, though he was heaped with blankets and it was high summer. The chamber was infernal in its heat and rank in its scent. I now held the pot for him when he urinated — he who, in my childhood, had been called upon to capture and weigh my water and fæces. Now distempered as he was, he yielded no solids.
He felt a discomfort in his very bones, as if they contracted so that they might struggle out of the mercenary peel of flesh and walk abroad. The ache in his marrow lashed him all the night, and he turned from side to side, seeking oblivion’s solace. I slept on a straw mattress upon the floor, and I was often awakened by his pained tumblings.
I lay beside the bed, fearful for his health; determined he should recover; and conscious of a foreign satisfaction, perhaps even pleasure, that awaited a ripe moment to grow from bud to bloom.
I was, though still bound in law, free in practice; I would soon be receiving a small sum to play my music, I would pay for my own lodgings, and the kindest philosopher that ever the world saw was my mentor and remained at my side. And though we lay in a city starving; though we were surrounded by an implacable enemy; though we slept amidst the encampments of soldiers from afar, Scotsman and Mancunian, convict and younger son, all overwhelmed as we by the intimations of the coming strife when Boston should rouse itself and march; though the dark of the night was marked with the thousand cook-fires of rebels who would, if not checked, soon rise to overrun us; though I little knew what would come and little understood what had already transpired; still, I felt the motions of happiness perhaps for the first time since the Transit of Venus had passed over our heads and left behind it clouds and shadow.
In the midst of this chaos, I had found contentment.