by James Tipton
Earth lived in one great presence of the spring.
Life turn’d the meanest of her implements
Before his eyes to price above gold,
The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine...
“Now here are the new lines, which it took walking outside to compose. Remember, this is about two lovers who are separated by—”
“I don’t want to know how it ends; please continue.”
Her chamber window did surpass in glory
The portals of the East, all paradise
Could by the simple opening of a door
Let itself in upon him...
“That’s as far as I got, but I wanted to share it with you.”
“‘All paradise...by the simple opening of a door’?” I said. “I’m glad I opened it.”
“I’m just telling a story that I heard—”
“It’s beautiful. Thank you.” And I leaned over and blew out his candle and drew him to me. “Tout le paradis, All paradise?” I said.
A few shadows intermingled on the ceiling. I had never bothered to close the bed curtains. He lay still now, with an arm enwrapping me, and I felt as if I had come home, after a long absence. He was so quiet, I thought he was asleep. Then he suddenly sat up, leaning on his left elbow beside me.
“Is this how it is regularly done in France?”
“How?”
“Without clothes.”
“It’s good to feel the skin, do you not agree? But you still have your long shirt on.” I tugged at his linen sleeve, and he grabbed my wrist.
“I have never seen anyone more beautiful than you,” he said.
“Before you have only seen clothes.”
“No, even if...”
“What do you mean anyone?”
“Anyone.”
“Where? Who?”
“In England.”
“You have not known any French girls?”
He shrugged and said, “They laugh when I speak.”
“I do not laugh when you speak, and I do not laugh when you do not speak.” I pulled at his shirt. “Where in England?”
“Cambridge; I do not know.”
“With clothes? And clumsy movements? What do you mean, anyone? Where else?” I was teasing him and loving to tease. I think he knew it did not matter what he said.
“At a country dance.”
“This sounds more serious. During the dance?”
“No, afterward. You know how dances are.”
“No.”
“In the country. Everyone mingling.”
“And where do you do it at the country dances, hidden in the hedgerows?”
“In England we do not talk of such things.”
“And you wear clothes. The bodies must touch. From head to toe.
It is no good touching clothes. You miss so much.” I rolled over and started to pull his shirt over his shoulders. He pushed my arms down.
Then I wrestled the shirt over his head.
“Now you are faceless. Flesh and facelessness.”
“You are wicked.”
I pulled the shirt over his head and threw it off the bed.
“See how beautiful you are. Just like a baby.”
I swung myself over him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Shhh,” I said.
I moved slowly, and my face was close to his, then I sat up and could feel my spine very straight as I looked down at him. Then I slowly moved and kept looking at him and thinking how nice he was and that I should keep myself from falling in love with him, and my back straightened more. I felt taut like a bowstring pulled fully back, and everything was very still again. Then I let myself go, and I felt a heat beat in me, and I shook. Monsieur William held on to my hips as I was shaking. I finally let myself collapse on top of him.
“Is this good for us?” I asked.
“It’s very good.”
Then I raised myself slightly. His face was in shadow beneath me.
“Should I keep myself from falling in love with you?”
He looked at me in silence, then said, “I have already loved you more than I have ever loved anyone.”
I collapsed back on him and kissed his neck.
“Have you ever known an anyone?” he said.
“Once, long ago, but I was mistaken, and he was a no one.”
We paused, and I waited in the dark to hear Monsieur Williams’s reaction.
“I said it,” he said. “And I will say it again. I love you, Mademoiselle Vallon.”
“You may use my Chris tian name now, and I love you, Monsieur William Englishman with the unpronounceable name.”
“Besides, keeping oneself from loving someone would not be very healthy, would it?”
“That is good use of the conditional tense.”
“You are a good teacher.” Then, “I must be going soon.”
“No servants are up this early. You can stay a bit longer.”
And I lay now curled at Monsieur William’s side in the warm darkness of our world. “Give me those lines again,” I said. “The ones about the shrine and the door.” And he softly said them. “‘All paradise,’” I said. “It’s true,” I said. “It’s true.”
I slept late that day, and found, slid under my door, a folded paper that contained the lines he had translated for me the night before, and a request that he might call on me that evening again at chez Vincent.
At my breakfast, almost at the midday dinnertime, my sister said that Monsieur William was a very nice man. She liked him, the children liked him, and he was welcome any time at chez Vincent. “I am very happy for you, Annette. Are you happy?”
“I am.”
“My only concern,” she said, “is that he is foreign. It is bad enough, all the Frenchmen with different ideas and hating each other. God knows what could come of—having such a friendship with an Englishman. You could leave me like the Varaches, but your loss I could not accustom myself to. Ah, but I jump to conclusions. Please make him feel free to come here. You see, I have worried about you for so long. You have been too alone.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I know. You’re the independent one. But it’s the independent ones that one worries about. What a pair you are. You like each other and don’t care about what the world thinks. He comes to a foreign country in the midst of a revolution, all on his own, with only poems in his pockets. Yes, a fine pair, but I’m happy for you.”
“You haven’t heard him sing, Marguerite.”
“He sings too?”
“Ancient ballads about separated lovers who die for love.”
“Oh, my.”
“He ’ll sing them in English, so no one knows how sad they are.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. Just don’t you go learning English. It’s a horrid language.”
Tightly Twined
The next day Marguerite and I joined Monsieur William and his friend from his lodgings, Captain Beaupuy, dressed in his beautiful uniform, for a promenade by the river. I liked the captain. He was exactly like one of the men Maman always wanted me to marry—rich, charming, from an old aristocratic family; the only difference was that Captain Beaupuy had given up all his privilege to help usher in the glorious new age. He genuinely believed in that, and his and my friend’s idealism together knew no bounds. Michel Beaupuy introduced Monsieur William to the Friends of the Constitution, the new patriotic club of Blois, where they spent hours together.
We had been walking by the bridge when Monsieur William softly said to me most extraordinary words: words that cannot be taken back and, once having been let loose, change one’s life forever. “I’ve thought about this thoroughly,” he said. “I have stayed up most of last night thinking about it. I have discussed it with the captain.” He paused, and I could hear a wagon, coming fast, at our backs. I could hear the river rushing against the foundation of the bridge. “Would you join me, now,” he said, “in the holy sacrament of ma
rriage?” I’m afraid I laughed at first—what did he mean, now? Where? How? It was insane. But then I saw his face. He’s in dead earnest, I thought.
“Yes,” I said hastily. “Of course. But isn’t the future tense usually used for such a proposal? I cannot marry you in the conditional tense.”
He apologized and rephrased it. I again answered in the affirmative.
Marguerite stopped and turned her head. “What?” she said.
“Monsieur William asked me to marry him,” I said. The captain was smiling.
“I heard him,” my sister said. “When? Where? My God—”
“Monsieur William has thought about this thoroughly,” I said, and waited. The wagon hastened by us with the creak of its wheels. We were beyond the bridge, on the quai Saint-Jean.
“Madame Vincent and Mademoiselle Vallon,” my English lover said, “as you know, we live in changing times. I’m sure that you would agree that priests have become mere civil servants. I want the world and God to recognize our union. For the world, we have two honorable witnesses. For God, I ask you, where does He dwell? In a cathedral, which is now a function of the state? Does he not dwell where he has always dwelt, in nature?”
My sister and I had nothing to say. It seemed that Monsieur William had prepared a most sincere speech.
“Therefore, I ask you, what better place to perform the holy sacrament than by the river itself?”
“But Monsieur William, it would not be blessed unless it were performed by a priest,” Marguerite said. She was taking him seriously too.
“I’m afraid, Madame,” he said, “that Mademoiselle Vallon would not want to be married by a constitutional priest, and I cannot be married by a priest in any case, as I am not of your religion. But I believe in the sacrament. And I believe in the holiness of Almighty Nature.”
“So do I,” I said.
“Annette, is this what you want?” Marguerite said. “It’s all too much like something out of Rousseau, but then it’s you—”
I nodded. I believed in Monsieur William’s sincerity.
My sister threw up her hands. “What would Maman say? Well, I suppose you’re thinking she need never know. What would Papa say?” She saw my smile. “Ah, you think Papa would approve, do you? Well, I’ve said you’re a pair. You’re certainly a pair. I just hope you can find a proper priest, either in your religion or ours, Monsieur William, when these changes, as you call them, are over. Very well, then. And who will perform the holy sacrament in nature?”
“I will, Madame,” Captain Beaupuy said. “I was an altar boy. I witnessed many weddings. I know the most important words, in Latin.
And I am a captain. ” He smiled a disarming smile.
“And the holy vows are not a game, Captain?”
“No, indeed, Madame.” He was not smiling now.
“Well, don’t use all the words you know,” Marguerite said. “It would probably be blasphemous. And you, Annette, getting married in your walking dress. We must all do this properly,” she said again.
“In good time.”
“In good time,” I said.
“Where are the rings?” she said, and sighed. “Here, you may use Grandmère’s,” she said to me. She was taking off the ring from her right hand and putting it in her pocket. “You can’t get married without a ring.”
My groom went dashing suddenly to the banks, where, amid the sand and slush of melting ice and snow, he plucked a long reed and braided it around his own finger, took it off, gave it to the captain, and said, Please hand this to me at the right moment.
We all walked down to the sand, now, where one could hear the river flowing, just a few feet from where we stood.
It was lovely. I am sorry I cannot present you with any grand cathedral wedding, with ancient bells tolling over the blue slate roofs and narrow, steep streets of Blois, but a river, still high from winter rain and snow, with sunlight glinting off patches of blue, and the air smelling cool and fresh and laden with the presence of the heavily moving water, and the music of lumbering carts and harness bells, and the litanies of cart drivers complaining to each other on the bridge nearby, and Marguerite and I getting the hems of our skirts muddy and finally laughing at our state, and Monsieur William all the time very serious, and the captain speaking in Latin and joining our hands: all of this natural and human beauty will have to do.
At that moment, just as we were finishing the ceremony, a heron flew by, its wings spread unbelievably wide and whitish blue as it skimmed the banks. Then it flew over the bridge and downriver and was gone.
Marguerite reached into the deep pockets of her skirt and gave the ring to me. Captain Beaupuy delicately took the twisted reed from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to my groom, and we slipped the rings on each other’s fingers. Grandmère’s ring, of course, only fit on his little finger, but that was no matter, as it was understood that everything, from our location to a kind of church we had built around us—not just the rings—was symbolic; but isn’t a grand cathedral itself still only a symbol?
After we exchanged the rings, Monsieur William’s fingers lay lightly on mine. Then he held both my hands by the fingers, lightly and firmly, and as he did so, all the sensations of sound and sight about us merged into an absolute stillness. I felt his firm, light touch, and nothing else. I could have wept, standing in the mud by the river, but I was beyond weeping. I was not even by the river, with the captain and Marguerite nearby, in that moment. We kissed before our witnesses. Marguerite and the captain softly applauded, and the world flooded gently back. “The river is so loud,” I said in William’s ear.
“I’ve never heard it so loud.”
“It’s the longest river in France,” William answered, “and we were married right beside it. I can put you in my pocket and take you back to England now. You can hear the Derwent River—”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t.” And now I began to weep.
“Don’t what, my dear?”
“Don’t make any more promises. This is enough for today.”
Marguerite and I took the men’s arms as they led us back to the quai, and people looked at us. Some even pointed to our skirts, and the captain bowed scornfully to them, his sword at his side, and silenced them. I had to say good-bye to William, as he and the captain departed to their lodgings. I would not see him now until dinner in two nights’ time. As a foreigner, he did not want to be seen coming too often to chez Vincent. It could be imprudent for the Vincents.
As the Austrians and Prussians were threatening France, and Great Britain was grumbling at her, foreigners were often looked on with suspicion.
He knelt and brushed the mud from the hem of my skirt, and that simple deed moved me so that I could not speak to tell him thank you or to say good-bye. He told me to wait, and took off down to the riverbank again. I saw him bending over the water, and when he returned, breathless, he had in his hand another reed, which he had already made into a circle. He gave Marguerite back Grandmère’s ring and gave her the reed and nodded. On the quai, with a wagon of firewood passing, I placed the reed around his finger. “Now we ’re equal,” he said, “both bound to each other through the river itself.”
He bowed and kissed my fingers. As he rose he looked astonished.
“What shall I call you now?” he said. “Between us, Mademoiselle Vallon will no longer do.”
“You are Monsieur William,” I said. “You may call me Madame Williams. You said once that is a real English name, is it not?”
“Welsh, actually, but that will do fine.”
And I added softly, “And I am simply your Annette.”
“Until tomorrow evening, Madame Williams,” he said. “Until tomorrow, Annette.”
I liked him saying it. I liked hearing it. My husband vanished behind a cart loaded with coal, and I could just see the top of his tall head and Captain Beaupuy’s black hat as they walked briskly away.
“Did you see that big bird?” I said to Marguerite.
“Yes,
I saw it,” she said, and smiled. “You don’t usually see them this far inland. It flew over just at the right time. It was a blessing, if you choose to believe that.”
“I choose,” I said, and closed my right hand over my left and felt on my finger the thin, tightly twined reed.
The Window
While the National Assembly ruled France, with the King as their puppet, two sinister developments stirred that winter: Committees of Surveillance, with virtually unlimited power to investigate and arrest anyone they thought was counter-revolutionary, and the rise of Maximilien de Robespierre and his friends, who, because they always sat on the highest benches of the assembly, were called the “Mountain Men.” Among them were Georges Couthon, the crippled lawyer, Georges Jacques Danton, of the silver tongue and the oversize head, and Louis Antoine Saint-Just, who, long before the trial of the King was even discussed, demanded the execution of the King without a trial. Their ally was Jean-Paul Marat and his hysterical journalism: Marat of the yellow face and the skin disease; Marat who, through the virulent hatred expressed in his paper, earned the undying love of the people of Paris; Marat who, when he was later murdered in his bath by a young woman, trying to keep him from denouncing more innocent people, was called a god, his heart embalmed and hung in an urn from the rafters of his club.
And Marat himself now looked up to Maximilien de Robespierre.
Robespierre was thought so absolute in his devotion to the Revolution, so pure in his lofty idealism, so above common human appetites, he was called The Incorruptible, though soon enough some used the title ironically, and I myself thought it was the human emotion of compassion that he was so icily above, from which he was so incorruptible.
But William at this time, and his newfound brother Michel Beaupuy, could not hear of anything but praise for the direction France was taking. They were always jolly.
“France is leading the world in the quest for freedom,” the captain announced to me.
“What about the United States?” I asked.
“Well, they have slavery, don’t they?” he said. “Even Britain, languishing with a tyrannical monarch, doesn’t have slavery on its shores, does it, William?”