He seemed resolved to speak dispassionately. “There are warmer climates. Italy—perhaps Rome. Augusta—”
“Augusta has, I understand, removed from there and is at Vienna. And she is on her wedding trip, which I could not disturb.” He was still staring out of the window. She did not like it.
“Understand that I cannot undertake to accompany you abroad, should you desire it. I have submitted my novel and am embarking on a series of stories that will keep me hard pressed all winter. It is unlikely I shall emerge from my study at all.”
She found she could not gauge his wishes. Did he indeed want to be rid of her? “I have heard of women at the school who sometimes travel alone,” she said.
He took a step toward her. “Chaperoning one another?”
“Not always, I am informed. Sometimes they are quite alone.”
“That is out of the question. If you were in company it would be another thing, not a very respectable thing, but I am tired of lecturing you about that.”
“I do not consider it practical to think of travel now, when I have so lately been ill.” She tried to sound measured and calm. “And England has become my home. I would like to continue with my studies here.” She was not going to say that even she would be afraid to go abroad unaccompanied.
The expression in his eye was that of someone wounded, but she could not imagine why. “So I shall not be keeping this house on? You are determined to return?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. You shall remain in London then. Although, as I have explained, I can neither recommend the climate nor determine the society.”
“All I ever asked of you was to take me to London,” she broke out.
“And I have done it,” he said bitterly. “On my own head be it.”
She knew better than to deny him this speech, this summation of his disapproval. But they could not embrace after these words, or comfort one another or talk of the future. There was no hope of that now.
“My dear girl, he has distressed you.”
Caroline found Emily in the garden on the stile looking into the field, her face all wet with tears.
“He is not proud of me.”
“Dear, dear girl.” Caroline clasped Emily in her arms. “You are still as thin as a bird!” she laughed, releasing her.
Emily shook her head. “No. I shall be a fat London pigeon by and by.”
“Will you not stay with me at Grosvenor Square when you return to town?”
“No. I could not. You have been kind enough. It is time for us to resume our daily lives. I have my pursuits, you have yours.” She straightened up and smiled.
“But we shall see plenty of your sweet face?”
“I do hope so.”
MISS EMILY HUDSON
———MAYFAIR, SW
CARLTON CLUB
September 25th, 1862
My dear Emily,
I write because I fear our last interview was unsatisfactory to us both.
It would please me greatly if you would understand that my desire for you either to continue your sojourn at the South Coast, or to journey to a warmer climate, springs purely from my disinterested feeling for you. You are an orphan in a country far from that of your birth; I have undertaken a responsibility for you, which I owe it to myself, and to you, to fulfill to the best of my ability. By this I mean consulting the best doctors, and attempting to provide you with the best surroundings for your condition.
Your denial of my attempts to come to your aid when we last met left me not a little exercised. I regret that I spoke to you in anger.
It is important that you should be aware that I am at present extremely taken up with my work and its pressing obligations, and therefore may not be at liberty to call on you as frequently as I might wish now that we are both reestablished in the city. Nor can I undertake that I will always be able to keep to our weekly appointment to dine.
I ask you, therefore, in all earnestness, please to apply to me if you feel your health may be weakening in any particular. I cannot impress on you more strongly how severe the English winter can be; not in the extremes of temperature you may recall from New England, but in the acuteness of the all-pervasive damp.
Dearest Emily, please understand that you yourself are responsible for your position, but that a word from you to myself could change your circumstances immediately, and—in my opinion—for the better.
I am aware that you cannot bear to be serious, to feel bound in any way, or to be crossed in your wishes. But please heed my warning.
With sincere affection as ever,
William
DR. G. A. COOPER
HARLEY STREET
MAYFAIR, SW
September 30th, 1862
Dear Dr. Cooper,
Thank you for your kind letter inquiring after my health.
I find I am not in need of your assistance at present, but I am extremely grateful that you are willing to be of help to me should I so desire it, and also to hear that you will be in London for the winter, should I have need of you again.
Much as I have enjoyed making your acquaintance, I am sure you can understand my reluctance to say that I hope it will shortly be renewed!
Please do, however, allow me to take the opportunity to thank you for the kind visits you paid me. Your faithful attendance played no inconsiderable part in my recovery and my friends and I are deeply grateful. But I must stop, lest I become too emotional for both our sakes.
Yours truly,
Emily Hudson
MISS EMILY HUDSON
———MAYFAIR, SW
GROSVENOR SQUARE, SW
October 1st, 1862
My dearest Emily,
No sooner have I unpacked my trunk than I find I must go away again.
My widowed aunt, who lives in the west of the country, is extremely unwell and without a nurse or close family of any description. I must go to her at once and have left instructions for Thomas not to fall quite into the worst habits while I am away.
I wish you could accompany me—I do not like leaving you—but I know you will not, so I shall not ask it of you.
Write every day—or as often as does not tire you.
Affectionately and in haste,
Caroline
P.S. Please do not work too hard—your health is of far greater importance than your studies.
FIFTEEN
Autumn was coming upon the Park, the air cooling, sky hardening, leaves brightening, and there was mist and dew when she walked across it to school. Solitude made Emily light-headed. Even in class she could spend all morning without speaking, simply bent over her work, listening to her own shallow breath.
She had gone with a group of her fellow students to the National Gallery and Miss Norton herself had instructed them on one painting only. Emily’s fear of the place really should be over and done, she thought, but she was nonetheless uneasy in its environs. They had studied Rubens’ Samson and Delilah: so much tenderness entangled with so much dirt, she felt. Delilah’s swollen breast and contemplation of the conquered Samson—his magnificence—these intimacies, these feelings she would never experience both animated and weakened her. The work of art was more alive to her than the play she had attended. When the class dispersed it was to different engagements and Emily was left alone looking at the painting, except for Miss Norton, who was busy gathering her belongings. She would lunch alone again, she thought wearily. She had found a reputable place where they would give her soup. She had promised Dr. Cooper and she ate there nearly every day.
“Miss Hudson, are you quite well?” Miss Norton’s voice broke in upon her thoughts. “You have been looking pale these past days.”
Emily flushed. “Thank you, but I am perfectly well. A little tired sometimes perhaps.”
“This city is not kind to those without protection,” said Miss Norton. “I should like to satisfy myself further about your health. Is your cousin in town?”
“Not at present,” said Em
ily. “But he will return shortly.” It was the first time she had ever told a lie out loud. The truth was she had seen William but once, for tea, since her return to London. It had been a strained occasion and they had foundered for words; he preoccupied, she unusually afraid.
“Be good enough to advise me upon his return.”
“I shall.”
“My dear young lady, there is no need to look so woebegone.” The lady smiled. Emily wanted to catch at her hand and beg her not to write to her cousin about her concerns, or communicate with him in any fashion, but she feared alerting Miss Norton to her duplicity. All she could do was remain still before the painting, waiting for her teacher to take her leave. At last, chiding herself for her lack of discipline, she quit the room.
Standing at the top of the flight of stairs to the crowded vestibule, not ten feet away—as if their meeting were pre-arranged—was Lord Firle. She saw him immediately. She had forgotten how tall he was. He had a sternness about him she did not remember. She was not surprised, for she thought of him so often, that he should appear, but after the clarity of the first look, it was all confusion. He looked entirely serious—no air of amusement when his eyes were on her, but his look seemed to allow her an importance she held for no one else. She had the presence of mind to allow him merely a brief nod of acknowledgment before continuing down the stairs. He followed her. She could tell this without turning. She knew his step, just as she knew his eye, his lip, his gleaming hair, and had imprinted them on her mind. She was shaking. She could see them both on the staircase as if from above.
“Will you not stop and say good day?” he called lightly. She would, she would, of course she would: it flooded her that there could be no alternative. After all the tedium and solitude of her illness she would not send him away. She turned to look at him with the sudden joyous anticipation of looking at the sea.
“Good day, Lord Firle.”
“Miss Hudson, I am enchanted to see you.” And he embraced her with his eyes.
“You are very kind.” They did not say anything further for a while because she should have been walking away.
“I trust you have passed a pleasant summer.”
The painful blood-soaked interim and the sweetness of the meadow at Marsh House all mingled in her consciousness as she looked at him. He could have no idea. She was a different girl.
“Indeed I have, Sir. And so—I trust—have you.” She should be making her excuses. She should be hurrying away. “What brings you to the Gallery?” she asked.
“You must believe I have rooms here,” he said, and smiled. “But I am giving them a picture, and they are not contented but that we must talk about it constantly. I shall certainly never give them another.”
“It is good of you to bequeath something from your collection to the nation.” Her words were coming out quite independently of her thoughts.
“I suppose,” he said. “I had never thought of it that way. But I am not dead, you know, young lady. It is only because they will look after it far better than I.”
“Is it a portrait you have given them?”
“No, a landscape. I keep the portraits at the Hall.”
“Of course.”
“Taking care of things is such a bore, you see.”
She looked at him firmly, as if making a decision. “I agree. It gets in the way, rather, I find.”
He approached her, standing close by so that they could not be overheard. “May I see you? May I see you this evening?” The eagerness and urgency in his tone was so unlike his accustomed drawl she would have laughed if she had not been trembling. “I could wait for you wherever you wish in a cab—you would not be seen. I would take you somewhere private. It needn’t be as you fear it.”
It was exactly as she had feared it. She could not disguise from herself that she understood everything his invitation implied. She felt alive and filled with an improbable overweening joy.
“I will be on the corner of Gower Street and ——— at seven o’clock,” she said and, turning, walked rapidly away.
All that afternoon she sat at her window, her chin upon her hand, and thought. It would be easy not to keep their appointment; he would not have the indelicacy to call at her address even though he knew where she lived. She kept seeing his face, the change in him she perceived toward her, the urgency. She had remembered him as so dismissive, so superior, so amused. The contemplation of her desires only seemed to sharpen the clarity with which she saw her situation—aware that everything and nothing had changed since their last meeting. Before she had had no awareness that she may die within the year, although she had held a dread of the disease, held it tightly, like a charm. Now it had shown itself to her, had tried to drown her in blood and terror. The thought of Lord Firle and the darkness around him presented itself in many ways as a refuge, a deliverance.
Above all she was tired of fighting and struggling, struggling with her own nature—her own being. He, of all people, longed for her nearness with the same potency as she for his—and no other creature alive held such an interest for her, or charm.
All these thoughts and many others paraded themselves before Emily, sitting as still as a portrait, in the window of a house that was not her own.
He was waiting on the corner as he had described. She could see his face clearly even in the twilight. He pulled down the window and motioned for her to climb in, but she remained outside, looking at him calmly as if unaware of the danger of being seen. She thought he admired that, but could not be sure.
After a while he said, “Did you know that the sight of a young girl—young lady—looking at a picture can be as much a work of art as the masterpiece itself?”
Emily smiled.
“I am in earnest. The expression in your eyes the first time I saw you—I shall never forget it.”
“I try to burn each picture I study into my brain—to remember.” She did not tell him she was doing so at that very moment, with his face.
“Is that why you had ceased to sketch that day and were simply gazing?”
“You ask a great many questions.”
“Have you none to ask of me?”
She could not tell him that her mind was blank, only her eyes were full and her blood thrumming.
“I have not ceased to think of you,” he said.
“Such remarks are unwelcome.” She smiled at the beauty of his face.
“Ah. But I do not believe you.” He continued to look at her. “You were the picture of innocence that day. Always, you are the picture of innocence.”
“Lord Firle, you should not talk to me in this manner.” She said it happily, still smiling.
“Nonsense. These are the words that every female heart longs to hear. It is the purpose of your sex to be worshipped and adored.”
She wondered how many times he had said that and to how many women. She did not care.
“There are many purposes for which all of us are born.”
He laughed. “That is a very sober New England speech. Come closer; I must kiss you.”
“In the street? Through a carriage window?”
“It was on the street last time.”
She hesitated but did not look around her.
“Climb in, just for one second.” He held the door open for her and gave her his hand. She took it and stepped in. He closed the door, pulling down the blind, and they kissed for a long time. It was a promise of a homecoming.
“You are not going to cry, are you?” he said.
“Why should I cry?” His face filled her eyes. “I am happy.”
He removed his gloves and stroked her throat. “You do not regret this?”
“Do you think I am so naive as not to know what I am doing?” And she took his hand and in her turn stroked his throat, putting her own kiss on his lips. “May I ask you a question?”
“Certainly.” But he drew back.
“What can you offer me?”
His eyes narrowed. “I do not understand you.” He
paused. “My heart?”
“That I have no use for.”
“Now you are cruel.” His tone was flirtatious, but wary, worldly.
“I do not think so. Conditions—and temperaments—do not augur well for our alignment.” He took her ringless hand and played with it. “I have a … tenderness for you,” she continued. He made as if to kiss her again, pressing both her captured hands. “But I cannot see you again.”
He smiled. “Methinks the lady—”
She shook her head slowly, looking directly at him. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would be wrong.”
He smiled. “Wrong because I am married?” He pronounced this as if it were a minor objection. “I would still decorate your hair with diamonds,” he said, loosening her bonnet and touching the strands that escaped. “I would still show you off to the world.”
She caught his hand. “Wrong for my soul. And I do not care to be ruined. I am to be an artist. Not some ruined, dying girl.”
He let her hand out of his grasp. “Dying, you say?”
“I am not a wholesome young lady for a—flirtation. This you should know.”
He sat back in the cab away from her and into the corner, averting his face. “Which of us is wholesome?” he said; then presently, “Did America give you this honesty?”
When she did not reply he took her hand again, more gently. She looked at their hands clasped together and thought the image beautiful.
“My dear Sir, I am fond of you in spite of myself. I desire your company against my own judgment. But I have made up my mind. This is to be the last time.”
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