Judith Ivory

by Black Silk

  Henry. Submit’s frown deepened. Why had Henry left his cousin those awful pictures? He could at least have put them in a sealed box, so she wouldn’t have been confronted with them and the embarrassment. “Full knowledge,” Henry had always said. “No expurgated truth, Submit.” But—blast him—those things, even out of sight, out of hand, still churned her up….

  A good thing, she decided, that she was done with Henry’s questionable cousin, that the bequeathed case was in the earl of Netham’s possession at last.

  She got up from her table and went to the small bookshelf behind the counter, where she’d been invited to browse for a book. Instead, she ended up staring at the register, at her own hand, her own name. Submit Channing-Downes, marchioness of Motmarche.

  The marquess and she had had a healthy bedroom relationship. Quiet, normal, reassuring. From the very first, Henry had come to her with a gentle reverence that disarmed even the first thrill of fright. She was married the day she was sixteen, and from that day forward, Henry had come to bed, approximately one night a week, treating her considerately, hesitantly, as if he had little right. No salaciousness, no unwholesome requests. He seemed almost guilty in this, the most ordinary of human acts. Submit had had no qualms. She had accepted the fact that once a week they would indulge in the ritual of attempting to make an heir. Like the cows in her father’s herds, that was what she had been bred to do.

  A child by the name of Submit was not one to misunderstand her position in life. Her father had given her the name so that, from the moment of birth, she would know what was expected of her. He wanted no protests as he shoved and shouldered his only female offspring up the ladder of social success: Submit understood, very early on, that she was her father’s bid into the upper class.

  She was hardly six when she was sent away to the first boarding school. She went through a series of girls’ schools, all expensive, all distant from home, and all terribly middle class—geared to take middle-class girls (and their fathers’ middle-class money) and make them snobbishly self-conscious. She didn’t like these schools at all, nor did she do particularly well in any of them. She knew her father expected her to become an aristocrat—and she knew this was not happening by learning to skate in unison with three other girls or by having the Countess M come watch as a herd of them leaped around in ballet slippers and Grecian dress. Here was something of a misunderstanding on her part, she discovered much later. Her father had been perfectly satisfied with the young lady she was becoming; it was she who did not want to be a fake aristocrat. Submit did not want to be a fake anything.

  Thanks to one particularly astute teacher, Submit managed to communicate her grief over the predicament in which she found herself. The teacher put forth the idea of sending her to Le Couvent du Sacre Coeur, a genuinely upper-class convent school for girls in Geneva, where Submit ultimately spent three years. There she became what she could live with and what would ultimately astound, puzzle, as well as make her father deeply proud. She studied etiquette, deportment, Latin, and French. She learned to paint, play the piano, and crochet delicate, perfectly insubstantial webs of lace, a gossamer complexity at which she became particularly adept. But more important than her formal subjects at the Swiss school were her “classes” after hours. From over the top of her crocheting, she watched the daughters of Europe’s upper class eat their breakfast, wash their faces, and hold their breaths so their corsets could be tightened. She learned from them the basic engineering of whalebone and wire, so as to make either soft silk or heavy damask stand up and out equally well—while she listened and followed these girls’ trains of thought into the basic engineering of the upper-class mind. She learned how to do what she already had some inkling for, how to be both herself and her father’s daughter with polish and aplomb.

  In Switzerland, Submit also learned the one fallacy in the whole operation. It would still be very difficult, nigh impossible, for her to do what her father ultimately wanted of her: to marry well. No matter how polished she became as an individual, the upper-class married family to family, not person to person. She knew herself to be, if not exactly unattractive, neither so striking as to make a noble scion immediately consider a mésalliance. She realized she had neither the pedigree nor the barrier-breaking beauty for the kind of marriage her father sought.

  She found herself living within a paradox. She wanted to be real, she wanted to please her father, and she wanted to be happy—three things she could never do all at once. Meanwhile, her father was busy trying to accomplish the impossible. He searched for the perfect upper-class mate for his daughter. Her fifteenth year was spent in a confusion of “vapors,” a condition doctors liked to bestow on females, especially upper-class females who found themselves falling short of their very limited uses—decoration and marriage. To Submit’s father, her “delicate constitution” seemed only greater proof that he had created the genuine article, a genuine made-to-be-queen young lady.

  It was this year, however, that Submit met Henry Channing-Downes. Nearly overcome by the conundrum she was living—losing weight, losing energy, crying inexplicably to herself a great deal when she was alone, Submit that winter was given what seemed an impossible reprieve. Knowing the “perfect” mate her father was looking for did not exist, knowing that any upper-class husband would necessarily not be able to make a better match, she feared the worst: a stupid man, a man that her father could dupe.

  Henry Channing-Downes was anything but that. Clever, sophisticated, erudite, Henry knew, she realized, from the very first moment what her father was up to. John Wharton connived their introductions. Henry, with cool, brisk charm, evaded the sought-after end for several months. But he turned up periodically nonetheless—much to Wharton’s continual pleasure. And somehow, somewhere, Submit did something that made her feel wonderful, something that couldn’t be taught: She enchanted a man. It was so much easier than she’d thought! With Henry, she talked of what she loved most, books, poetry, science, art. He never minded if she became animated or “unladylike” in her discussions to the point of argument. He encouraged it, in fact, while somehow in the process he became thoroughly and hopelessly enamored. And, best, Henry’s defect—the one that made all the other girls and fathers pass him by—was one that didn’t matter to Submit at all. He was only old. Her marriage to him had been the most healing, salutary event in her life.

  “Submit?”

  She looked up. “Arnold, what are you doing here?”

  Arnold Tate stood by a table in the eating common, his hat in his hand. “I finished late and thought I should bring these to you.” He held two papers out. “They’re bank drafts on two different London banks. One’s for fifteen pounds, payment for Henry’s Kierkegaard biography in Men of the Age this month. The other is for a monograph to appear in Metaphysics Journal next. Henry licensed all his work, it seems, in your name.”

  “Thank you. I know.” She took the drafts. They were part of the “trust” she had mentioned to William, her only current means of support. “He always had the drafts cut to me. My ‘pin money’ he used to call it. It was supposed to make up for all the time he spent at his desk writing the things.” The unsettling fact, of course, was that the payments would end. A dead man did not produce dependable income. “Thank you,” she said again to Arnold. She didn’t know why he lingered, turning the brim of his hat in his fingers. He seemed to be at loose ends.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.” He was disappointed. “I haven’t. Do you suppose the innkeeper would get me something? And that you could sit and talk to me while I ate?” He made an apologetic gesture. “If it isn’t too late, of course.”

  The innkeeper brought more sliced chicken. Arnold had a good appetite. He ate and smiled and smiled some more. He hardly talked at all.

  “How is Eunice?” Submit asked about his wife.

  He shook his head. “Not well. But you know her.” He paused, looking at Submit. “You seem a little
subdued tonight. Are you all right?”

  She gave him a faint smile. “I suppose I’m a little lonely. Missing Henry.”

  He looked at his plate. “Yes.”

  “But not so bad as all that.” She laughed. “Cheer up, Arnold. I’ll be fine.”

  He looked at her, really looked for a moment at her hair and face and shoulders, the black dress. “Are all your dresses black?” The question took her by surprise.

  “No, of course not.”

  “How long do you intend to mourn?”

  She hadn’t thought about it. “I don’t know.”

  “Somehow a year seems so long.” This was the conventional length of time, though the upper class observed such conventions less rigidly than the middle class.

  Convention. It occurred to her that she was steeped in convention for the moment. She didn’t dare step outside of it for fear of horrifying everyone, including herself. Aside from a few days, actually more as Henry was dying than after his death, she wasn’t even sure she was mourning at all. She didn’t feel dark and black inside. She had hardly cried for Henry. She had accepted his going, once the shock was past, with grace.

  “I really don’t know,” she repeated, “but I’m sure I’ll know when I’m done.”

  “Will you?”

  She laughed. “Of course I will. What’s got into you, Arnold?”

  He shrugged and cut off a bite of chicken. He squeezed some lemon over it. “Feeling old, I suppose. Passed by.” He looked up. “You’re young, Submit. You belong in pretty dresses.” Submit was very surprised to hear this. “I worry when I come upon you like this. Alone. Aloof from any of the usual society even a widow might indulge in.” He paused. “Don’t you have any fun?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Arnold hesitated with his fork, as if he might say something more, then he seemed to think better of it.

  Just as he was leaving, he added, “William is trying to paint you as cold and calculating. Never mind the legal implications of that; I can handle the court. But he plays on behavior that disturbs me a little. You have always been quiet, but since Henry’s death you seem almost unnaturally composed. Call it what you like. Reserve. Hauteur. You have a lovely, quiet dignity, Submit. But total control can be a dangerous thing. I would like to see you respond with stronger interest to—to life.”

  Submit looked down. What was he advising? she wondered. That she go on a spree of “fun”? Or that she indulge in fruitless tears? She felt things, sadness, joy; they just weren’t sharp. And, if they were, there’d be no point to giving in….

  That night, as she lay half awake, half asleep, her mind seemed to find strong interest in all the wrong things. Pornographic images. Dark green velvet vests, a deep, rich green, the color of moss from the most sunless parts of a forest: The same color, her semiconscious mind recalled, as that of a collar on a favorite dress. A frivolous dress bought for her by a man who was dead….

  Henry bought her the dress the year she turned twenty. They’d been married four years. It was white wool, folds and folds of it, enough to slide over a huge, domed crinoline wider in diameter than Submit was tall; a white dress with a dark velvet collar, the color of Graham Wessit’s vest. How she had loved that dress. Loved it, then ruined it in one fell swoop. She had only owned it a month.

  The destruction of the white dress happened on the very first day that she and Henry arrived on the North Sea coast. Typical of the whole adventure, the trip began with crossed wires, missed communications. She and her husband had rushed to Yorkshire, having received the message that her father was dying. They missed the next message, that he would recover, by mere hours (and missed his actual death entirely seven years later, since it came, as death so often does, without warning or fanfare; it hit Submit’s father in the form of an omnibus as he was crossing a London street). When the brighter message of recovery arrived at their home in Cambridge, Submit and Henry were already on a train, hurtling toward Yorkshire and what they thought was tragedy, a man cut down in his prime. When they arrived, they were nonplussed to discover that not only was John Wharton very much alive but that they neither one liked him any better for his brush with mortality.

  Submit and Henry were stuck, required to stay at least a few days as a matter of form. John Wharton was gleeful. In the four years they’d been married, he had had little enough opportunity to appreciate in the flesh the splendid, if slightly aged, husband he had found for his daughter. Now, up and on the mend, all he wanted to do was thump his elderly son-in-law on the back and take him hunting and fishing. He wanted to show Henry “his” Yorkshire—and no doubt show the marquess of Motmarche off to his neighbors. A marquess was not something very many of them had seen at close hand. Henry politely declined, using Wharton’s illness as an excuse; such activity would be too exhausting. Instead, Henry suggested that Submit give him a tour of what she liked best about Yorkshire—this would at least get them out of the house.

  A tour for Submit, however, was a little difficult, since she hardly knew Yorkshire. For that matter, she hardly knew her father. He had paid and coached and pressured her into an upper-class frame of reference, in the end succeeding so completely as to make himself and his daughter incomprehensible to each other. Submit did remember one place in Yorkshire, however, one place in her childhood that she knew and wanted to show Henry. She took him to her cove on the North Sea.

  The cove was a peaceful place made up mostly of birds and water, rocks and sand. Nothing was expected of her there. When she was younger, home from school for a month at Christmas and a month in summer, Submit had survived her visits with her family by going, at every opportunity, to this private, sheltered bay.

  It was surrounded by steep drops. As one came across the moor then looked over the cliff’s edge, it seemed impossible to get down to the inlet—until one found the worn old path that fishermen must have used in years gone by. The path wound down to sea level to a beach. Part of the beach was always above water, a rocky marooned dry patch. But the wider expanse was washed by high tide, only open by low. This meant swimming to the path at high tide. Or waiting. When Submit was younger, she had loved the idea of swimming to her secret place. But she was more cautious at twenty. The day she and Henry went, they timed it to low tide, late in the afternoon.

  Submit was wearing the dress. Summer wool. It was so light, the weight and feel of feathers—the feathers from a white swan with peacock green trim. The air was crisp and mild with a bit of wind. The sea was frothy. The day was bright and blue, as if the sun lit the sky from beneath the water, an expansive glow. There was salt in the air. Submit could taste it, if she faced the wind, and feel it on her eyelashes.

  She turned to Henry. “Do you like it?” she asked.

  He said nothing, but she could tell by his eyes. They took in the sparkle of the place; the water’s vastness, the cove’s closure. It was impossible not to be impressed. The only land and water he had ever known were the banks that met the Thames or the river Cam. She felt she had given him something; she had shown him the ocean. Smiling, she took their picnic basket from his hand.

  A bottle of old port had been bestowed on them by one of the neighboring squires. Like fealty, Henry had observed wryly. In town, they had found some Stilton and walnuts and pears. They had packed these things together into a picnic meal, a kind of celebration that life continued, even for her father. As Submit spread their little banquet out over a flat dry area, she began to hum. The little cove was charged for her, with memory, excitement, anticipation, joy. She was glad to be here, glad to be able to share this with an astute and interesting man.

  On her knees, as Submit pinned the final corner of their picnic cloth down with a rock, what could only be described as a sense of place compelled her to her feet. She kicked off her shoes and peeled off her stockings, then yanked up her skirts and untied her crinoline from about her waist. It collapsed into a twist of horsehair and wired hoops. Then she grabbed up her formless skirts in an armload and b
urst toward the water.

  She screeched at the temperature. It was a painful, achy cold that instantly numbed. She shrieked and yelled this information back to Henry, enjoying doing so. Henry sat back at their picnic cloth, waving her on. She started to come toward him.

  “No, go back.” He flapped his arms and laughed.

  “But you,” she complained.

  “For goodness’ sake, I’m not going anywhere. Go on.”

  She did, holding the lovely skirts high. Then as a wave receded, she lost her balance and fell. She was taken out a foot or two, into a shallow pit of the rocky bottom. When she got up, the water was about her hips, floating her dress, weightless. The dress swam in the salt water, ruined, but Submit was nearly giddy. It seemed a perfect way to ruin it. On the ebb, however, she stopped laughing. As the water receded, she was leaden. She couldn’t move in all the wet weight of drenched wool. She was stuck in her pit just feet from the shore.

  “Oh, Henry. Help me,” she wailed.

  “Take it off, you ninny. You can’t get out like that.” He seemed angry in a way she didn’t understand.

  After a few minutes of fruitless struggle, she slipped the dress off and returned, under her own power, to the beach and Henry. In just her wet corsetry and pantaloons, she came up to the picnic cloth, dragging the dress in the rocks and sand. She laid the poor thing out to dry, then with Henry’s help wrapped the rock-warmed table linen about her shoulders. Her teeth chattered for a short time, but quickly she grew warm.

  Henry would not speak through any of this. Not through the rubbing of her feet and her hands. Not through the pears and port. Finally, she did.

  “It was my dress. And if I don’t mind—” She waited. “I can still put it back on for the trip to the house.”

  But it wasn’t the dress or her modesty. Something else had been ruined in the fine day.