Yearn by Tobsha Learner Page A

then led him back into the room. “In which case we will pick up the glove with relish. You must take up his challenge; you must attend the debate and defeat him with great wit! It will be a triumph of publicity. Why, Dingle, draw up the leaflet immediately! We shall emphasize youthful innovation over old prejudice. . . . Of course, naturally you will be required to produce the secret journal and verify your sources.”
    â€œNaturally,” the young biographer replied, and if there was any doubt behind his veneer of brazen confidence he did not let it show.
    The next morning, D’Arcy was woken by Henries clutching the morning papers—the headlines all screamed CHOLERA! . The newspapers warned local residents to stay clear of Golden Square and the infected borough of Soho. “Sir, I strongly suggest that you adjourn to your father’s estate or at least stay indoors for the duration of this pestilence. I am convinced this would be your father’s wish, young D’Arcy,” the butler counseled.
    â€œI cannot. I am to attend a public debate tomorrow, Henries, and my reputation will be in ruins if I should miss it,” D’Arcy replied. In fact despite the cholera outbreak, he was determined to visit Golden Square himself in order to see Harry, the chimney sweep, to ask him if he would consider giving a verbal confirmation of his discovery of the secret journal at the very same debate. Fortunately for Henries, D’Arcy kept this decision to himself, and it was only after both the old butler and his wife had retired to their own quarters that the biographer ventured out onto the streets of the West End.
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    D’Arcy stood at the curb of Regent Street, now the great divide between the diseased and the unaffected, and looked down Beak Street. Behind him stretched the affluent, disease-free borough of Mayfair, where fashionably clad shoppers and pedestrians still thronged the pavement, whereas before him there was a distinct lack of humanity. He lifted a handkerchief that he had drenched in an herbal concoction he’d purchased that was meant to ward off the toxic miasma blamed for spreading the noxious disease. After a silent prayer to Thoth, Zeus, and any other deity he thought would be sympathetic, he hesitantly crossed Regent Street.
    D’Arcy plunged into the narrow and dingy Beak Street. Normally a hive of colorful commerce and frenetic activity, this evening it was strangely desolate. Most of the businesses and shops were boarded up as many, fearing contamination, had fled to other parts of London or relatives in the countryside. The only business still open appeared to be the Lion’s brewery on Broad Street. An old woman scuttled past, her gaze held steadily downward, as if to look at him would be to invite the contagion. It was a disturbing and eerie sensation. Increasingly anxious, he made his way down to Golden Square.
    A good half of the tall houses had their blinds pulled down, while many had black cloth displayed in their windows, an indication that there had been a death or deaths in that particular building. Fearing the worst, D’Arcy walked down to number ten, Harry the sweep’s lodgings.
    He stood outside staring up, not daring to enter. Black cloth hung in the windows of the first two floors, but he couldn’t see the top window of Harry’s family’s lodgings. The small girl he’d encountered before on those very same steps months earlier, when he was a very different man, was still sitting there, seemingly impervious to the grim atmosphere, engrossed in a game of marbles. She looked up at him. “Who are you after?”
    â€œHarry the sweep.”
    She held out her hand, the nails broken and filthy. Pushing down a wave of nausea that swept through him, D’Arcy, careful not to touch her, dropped a penny into her palm.
    â€œHarry the sweep, top floor?” she asked in a voice flat