“I just might,” she retorted, and she wasn’t teasing at all.
XIV
1 January 1855
Christy left another poem for me in our hiding place at the crossroads. If anything, this one is worse than the first.
God, though our lives are only smoke,
Although that truth we try to shirk,
Although we travail, sick, heartbroke,
Let me have Anne, your finest work.
And so it goes, for several more mortifying verses. It’s an awful poem, by any standards a reasonable person could apply. But every time I read it, I cry like an infant. I am a perfect idiot. How does he do this to me?
I retaliate by leaving him tracts by agnostic philosophers. (Unaccountably, there are several in the library; we found them when we cleaned it, tucked out of sight, as heresy ought to be, on a high shelf.) I doubt that they make Christy weep, though, so the exchange isn’t equal.
I’ve decided it’s just my luck that my first full-fledged love affair (no, half-fledged; but hope springs eternal) is unfolding in the dead of winter. Were it a full-fledged affair, I daresay we would both be dead of pneumonia by now, because of Christy’s insistence that we carry it on almost exclusively out-of-doors. He won’t go near the old caretaker’s cottage, where we could be private and warm. I don’t blame him; my intentions aren’t honorable. So this is the only benefit of the half-fledged state of things: that we’re both necessarily clothed at all times.
Yesterday I waited for him at the old Plym canal, a dismal, deserted, unbearably melancholy place—except that he came, and then all the dreariness was gone, just forgotten. Except for the cold! But even that had an advantage—Christy had to fold me up in his greatcoat so my teeth would stop chattering. And of course, then he had to kiss me. And so forth.
I’ve been thinking ever since about the and so forth.
God, I’m in such a state. Is this normal? Who can I ask? No one. Anyway, my feelings are too private. I doubt I could confide them in a sister if I had one. And part of me doesn’t care if this is normal or not. For once I’m alive, and it’s enough.
But sometimes—it’s almost as if I’m ill. I can’t sleep for thinking about him, I don’t care anything about food, I forget things, mislay objects, lose track of time, don’t hear other people speaking to me, lose my own train of thought in the middle of a sentence. I’m like a mildly retarded adult, bumbling about, useless, but so far doing no actual harm.
And I’m burning up inside. I know what I want; Geoffrey gave me that, at least—the knowledge of passion, even the experience of it. So I’m no blushing virgin. I’m a woman with, for all I know, nearly as much worldly experience as Christy.
No; unlikely. Geoffrey initiated him too, I remember now. At a brothel when they were scarcely more than boys. I don’t know what to do with that information, where to put it, how to feel about it. I won’t think about it.
Christy will be my lover. He must be. We’ve “sinned” already, both of us, simply from wanting it so much. If I died tonight and God existed, he’d send me to Dante’s Second Circle, and quite rightly, where I’d whirl round and round with Paola and Francesca for eternity, howling out my frustrated passion.
That being the case, I’d rather hang for a wolf than a sheep, thank you very much.
12 January
The feast of Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx. I know all of them now.
Christy left a present for me at our crossroads hiding place. His poems he rolls up in cylinders and ties with a ribbon, and if they get wet he doesn’t care. (I care; I love his dreadful poems with all my constant heart.) But this present was wrapped in a bit of sealskin, and so I opened it with some care, some trepidation. It was a portrait of me. A watercolor, done from a sketch he’d made last week when we went to Abbeycombe, the old Roman ruins. I’d brought some bread and cheese, and after we ate he did a quick charcoal drawing of me, head only, in his notebook. I thought nothing of it, or only that he was fast, and that he might fill it in a bit, later, on his own.
Well. I don’t have to wonder anymore what he’d have become if he hadn’t chosen the ministry. And I must also confess that I’m jealous. (Here I confess it; I’m not up yet to confessing it to him.) All my life I wanted to be an artist. I was either blessed or cursed with the objectivity to see that my father’s talent, such as it was, did not pass on to his daughter, and so, after a mercifully brief disillusionment, I abandoned all hope. (Dante again.) But Christy—whoever his European teachers were, whoever discouraged him from pursuing painting for his life’s work ought to be flogged, hanged, shot, quartered, tortured—words fail me.
But then, perhaps I’m biased. It’s possible. And his picture is of me, after all. And I’ve not seen any of his other work. Maybe I inspire him! That makes me laugh—but self-consciously. Hopefully. Oh, I’m like a child! He makes me so giddy, so silly!
Anyway. His watercolor is so very lovely. Can this truly be how he sees me? My cheeks are hot, just thinking of it. No museum would show it, it’s too flagrant, too honest. I can’t describe the expression he’s captured. My lips are open, just slightly; my eyes . . . hot. Purposeful, I suppose. It’s half-profile, and he’s stopped the movement as if with a camera. The blurriness of the outline—ah, God, I can only describe it as passionate. I can’t stop looking at this picture. It’s not only me, Anne Verlaine, it’s the woman I can feel myself turning into. But I don’t know her yet, and so how could Christy know her so well?
I shall die if I don’t have him soon.
14 January
How dare he call me “a near occasion of sin”? It’s the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me, and I told him so. That and a lot more—I called him “an occasion of boring pietism.” Ha! Take that, Reverend High and Mighty Christian Morrell.
15 January
He apologized. In a poem. Execrable, as usual.
All is forgiven.
16 January
I can’t say the words to him. He says them to me each time we meet. “I love you, Anne.” But I withhold the gift and don’t reciprocate, even though I know I’m hurting him. That’s the punishment for my cowardice, and it’s an acute, tormenting one. I’d rather hurt myself than Christy.
I love him.
There, I’ve written it. Now the page is wet and blurry, because looking at those three words makes me cry. Why is it so sad? I don’t know, but my heart is breaking. I feel as if my life is ending—some—fracture is occurring—
No, I don’t know what I mean. But I know that if I gave him this gift, I would lose control. He would win. I can’t let him win.
I tell him my reasons for not marrying him, and all he does is make fun of them.
***
WHY I CAN’T MARRY CHRISTY
1. The dream I’ve had for five years has finally come true: I’m free and financially independent. I can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone I want. I’m rich! Why would I stay in Wyckerley and be a minister’s wife??
2. I’d make a terrible minister’s wife. I’m a private, not a public person; I can’t go around visiting the sick and clothing the naked. Corporal works of mercy would be the death of me. Imagine me entertaining the bishop!
3. People don’t like or trust me. The ones who do like me are intimidated by me, I have no idea why. I don’t fit in.
4. I hate the weather. Italy’s the place for me, where the winters are kind and mild.
5. A minister’s wife ought to believe in God. Minimum requirement.
“Anne, my dearest love, you’re a coward,” Christy writes in his last letter. “You’ve never had a home in Italy or anywhere else. Furthermore, not all men are like Geoffrey or your father, so that reservation doesn’t hold water either. It’s not Wyckerley that’s constricting and imprisoning, it’s your own fear. But you could set yourself free by choosing to stay and make a life with me.
You could be happy.”
And so on. I tell him he’s the dreamer, not me, but he shunts my best, most logical arguments aside as if they were the natterings of a worried old maid. I think he’s gone blind. The answer is so clear—why can’t he see it? We are not suited for marriage; we are suited for love. If he doesn’t give in soon, I’ll go insane.
17 January
Now he’s sending me the marriage vows. Think about the words, he says. He wants to say them to me in church, he says, in front of all our friends. “I, Christy, take you, Anne, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
All right, Christy, this is war. I’m going back to sending the agnostic tracts.
19 January
Touch and go today. So close, so close. I’m blushing, just thinking of it. We were at the canal, huddling under his umbrella, laughing at the curse words I shouted out at the rain. He started it, kissing me and so forth. We . . . It’s hard to write it. But I want to. He . . . Ah, well. He caressed me. It was the first time—without clothes. Not altogether without clothes—God, I’d have frozen! But—partly. The way he touched me, the closeness, the stark, unbearable intimacy of it—I’m shaking now, remembering. And I find I can’t write it. He could have done anything. Anything.
Oh, I want, I want, I want.
***
THE CARETAKER’S COTTAGE, abandoned since William Holyoake had moved out of it two years ago to new quarters in the Hall’s basement, was looking better and better to Christy. Especially through a haze of wet, sticky snowflakes. But he tramped past it stolidly, heading for the appointed rendezvous—the D’Aubrey family cemetery. A bleaker spot on this dreariest of days could hardly be imagined, and he was in complete sympathy now with every incredulous, insulting thing Anne had said when he’d suggested and then insisted on it as the location for their next tryst. But it was a sure bet that no one would come upon them here, and at the time that had seemed the paramount consideration. At the time. Warmth seemed the paramount consideration now, but it was too late to change the rendezvous.
His pocket watch chimed four just as he eased open the wicket in the low stone wall. A glance around told him he’d beaten her this time—a minor satisfaction; the vagaries of his schedule frequently made him late, and she liked to tease him that it was always women who bore the stigma of chronic unpunctuality. The silting snow blurred every surface; there was no place dry to sit. No shelter, either, now that winter had denuded the ancient oak trees. To keep the wind from blowing wet snowflakes in his face, he went to the lee side of the tallest monument, a granite obelisk marking the grave of William Verlaine, the fourth D’Aubrey viscount. With his back to the cold gray stone, Christy ducked his head, jammed his hands in his greatcoat pockets, and recommenced brooding.
Compared to the problems occupying his mind now, the great issues of his past—does God exist? why do men suffer? how can I console?—seemed trifling. He thought of the mental line dividing his preoccupations as B.A. and A.A.—before and after Anne.
After Anne, he was consumed with thoughts of sexual morality, sins of the flesh, concupiscence, lust, adultery, Mary Magdalene, Saint Paul—all the sidelines of the seventh commandment that heretofore had struck him as the interesting sins, the ones which caught the eye but which, fortunately, didn’t relate to him personally. He’d been chaste since his ordination, and sincerely repented his few transgressions before that. Once in a while (before Anne), he would catch himself coveting the flesh of a comely, pink-cheeked parishioner, acknowledge it, and have faith in God’s forgiveness of it. Almost as important, he would forgive himself for it, quite easily, with a masculine shrug and a smug, underlying assumption that he would soon be marrying one of the young parish ladies who made themselves so agreeable and available to him on a daily basis. In his thoughtless arrogance, he’d always assumed he’d choose the best of the bunch—whom, of course, he would love—and then reward himself for his years of restraint by exercising his husbandly rights with great vigor and enthusiasm.
Now there was Anne. God had sent her to test him, he sometimes believed. Was she the instrument of his soul’s damnation? If so, why did she feel like salvation? It was enough to drive a man to drink.
He stamped his feet to keep them from freezing. It would be dark soon. Where was she? If she couldn’t come and he had to tramp back home without seeing her—it didn’t bear thinking about. With the ease of practice, his mind slipped into the well-worn memory of their last meeting. They’d played with fire that day; how they’d avoided total immolation could only be explained by divine intervention, in the form of a rising wind blowing ice-cold rain against her bare skin—and bringing them both to their senses in the proverbial nick of time.
They couldn’t go on like this much longer. He couldn’t, anyway. His body felt like a cocked gun with a hair trigger. Either Anne or the devil was blurring the line between right and wrong that had stood him in fairly good stead until now. He argued with her by rote, not because he could really see anything sinful anymore about their joining. God help him, he agreed with her. On the few occasions when church members had confided in him that they’d broken or were thinking of breaking the seventh commandment by committing the sin of fornication, he had never been particularly shocked or morally outraged. With adulterers he had no patience, or not much; but right or wrong, unmarried men and women who engaged in consensual sexual acts with other unmarried men and women did not put his moral back up, and he habitually dealt with them gently. So. At least he wasn’t guilty of hypocrisy. A paltry comfort.
Where was she? He’d arranged this meeting because he had a plan, a scheme, and he couldn’t put it in motion until she agreed to it—unwittingly. And she would agree to it, he had no doubt; in fact, she’d see it as a golden opportunity to seduce him. But he had other plans.
His watch chimed half past four. The puny, grudging sunset turned the snow cover a shade of lavender-blue that depressed him and made him shiver. Anything could’ve happened, a dozen domestic responsibilities could’ve kept her away, and he was a fool to imagine that anything was wrong.
He would leave her a note. Today was Tuesday; she had three whole days to make the arrangements for what he had in mind. That should be enough. All she had to do was think up one really good lie. That was nothing compared to the elaborate fiction he had to come up with by Friday.
So, Reverend Morrell, it’s come to this, he sneered at himself. He was going to tell lies. But—always that defensive, self-serving but—if the plan worked, he’d avert a whole catalog of much worse sins. So the end justified the means? Yes. In this case, yes. It did.
He fumbled his notebook and pencil out of his inside coat pocket. With frozen fingers, he wrote his beloved a note.
She found it, wrapped in his handkerchief, between the latch and the gate handle, covered with soggy snow and almost illegible. She read it by the light of the dying sun in the west and the rising moon in the east.
Anne, my darling,
I can’t wait any longer; vestry meeting at 5:30, Ludd’s early dinner waiting, etc., etc.—the usual. Send the footman with a note, I don’t care what we’ve said, I must know tonight that you are all right.
Now, you must also do this. Say anything, but get away on Friday evening next, at least until midnight. Come to the rectory (after dark, like a thief in the night) and have dinner with me. Yes! Both Ludds in Bath, visiting son and daughter-in-law, bless them. I will take care of sending housemaid packing for the night. Come, Anne. Think of it: WARMTH. Hours of talk, alone, in complete physical comfort. You can’t say no.
I love you to distraction. Literally.
Christy
XV
EXCEPT FOR THE SMELL of woodsmoke from an invisible chimney, the rectory seemed deserted. All the curtains were drawn; if there was light behind any of the windows, it couldn’t b
e seen from the square, or the cobbled street, or the clean-swept path to the front door. Clean-swept recently, Anne noted, so a nighttime visitor couldn’t leave footprints in the latest snow dusting. She set her feet down lightly, and still the noise seemed too loud in the evening hush. Ignoring the brass knocker, she used her knuckles on the wooden door panel, rapping softly. Too softly; no one came. She tried again, a little louder, and heard a stirring beyond the door. A second later it opened, a hand shot out, seized hers, and pulled her inside.
She’d have flung herself into Christy’s arms, but he held her away to look at her, his face barely visible in the pitch-dark foyer. “You’re here,” he announced gladly.
“I’m here. I feel like a spy. Why are we whispering?”
He laughed, kissing her cold hands. “No reason—nobody’s here but me. And now you.” He moved closer—to embrace her, she thought, but instead he helped her take off her coat and hung it on a hook by the door. “Come into the parlor, Anne. There’s a fire, and we can have—”
“Christy.”
“Yes?”
“Are we or are we not alone in your house?”
“We are.”
“Then for God’s sake, stand still and give me a proper kiss.”
He sighed. Before she could decide whether it was a resigned, relieved, or anticipatory sigh, he’d drawn her inside the strong circle of his arms. Their mouths met eagerly, his warm lips softening her chilled ones in no time. Afterward, she laid her cheek on his collarbone and murmured against his throat, “Mmm, I do love the way they kiss in the provinces.”
Chuckling, he gave her a hard squeeze, took her hand, and led her down the hall to the drawing room.
This was special: they usually sat in his study after the Friday night readings—canceled this month and next because of the expense of heating the parish room in wintertime. Anne took a seat on the worn brocade sofa, leaving plenty of room for Christy to sit beside her. He did, after handing her a glass of wine, and his smile told her he knew exactly what game she was playing. They clinked glasses. “What did you say to get away?” he asked her.
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