Again he shook his head and again he said, “There’s been no one else.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. I was trembling. I could feel my self-control slipping out of my reach, and the next moment before I could stop myself I was saying terrible things, cruel things, calling him warped and depraved and disgusting, but all the while I shouted at him he stood quietly, not saying a word in his own defense, until his passive acceptance of my abuse infuriated me even more than an outburst of temper. At last I stopped. There was nothing else I could say, and in the silence that followed I felt no longer enraged but baffled, humiliated by that passiveness I now recognized as dignity. I wanted to cry but the tears refused to come. I wanted to understand why I should feel so annihilated, but all I understood was my isolation, my helplessness and my overwhelming sense of failure.
After a while I managed to say, “If I were being rejected for another woman I could begin to look for reasons, I could fight, try to change myself, try to win you back. But this … there’s nothing I can do. I’m rejected for being something I can’t help and can never change.”
“You are what you are,” he said, “and I am what I am. And I discovered a little while ago that I would rather be what I am than pretend to be something I’m not.”
“But—”
“Oh, you needn’t worry. I’ll act the right part to the rest of the world, but I’m not acting parts to myself any more, that’s all. That’s finished.”
The pain had spread to the front of my head. I tried to think clearly, but it was too difficult.
“Listen, Sarah,” he said. He had drawn up the stool from the dressing table and was sitting facing me. His eyes were very blue. “Don’t let’s deceive ourselves any more. Our marriage was finished long before this. We’ve made each other very unhappy very often and you know that as well as I do. If it weren’t for the children we could think of our marriage as eleven wasted years, but the children make up for almost everything, don’t they, all those quarrels, all those fights, all that bickering. Now, there’s no question of divorce, we both know that, and there’s no question but that for the children’s sake we must go on living under the same roof like any other married couple, but the time has come when we have to acknowledge to each other that we’re entitled to our separate private lives. I shan’t mind if you have lovers. I shall only mind if you fail to be as discreet as I intend to be with Hugh.”
I said so quickly that I stumbled over my words, “You can’t mean you’re going to continue seeing Hugh.”
He looked at me as if I were mad. “But of course I am,” he said, amazed. “What did you think?”
“But you can’t … you wouldn’t …”
“We won’t embarrass you. No one will ever know.”
“Of course they’ll know! They’ll find out!” I was so appalled that again I had difficulty in speaking. “Patrick, if you continue to live with that man—”
“Sarah, he means all the world to me. I’m not letting him go.”
“Then I’ll leave,” I said. I felt strong suddenly. I stood up. “I’ll take the children. I’ll divorce you.”
“Don’t be a fool.” He stood up too. He was losing his quiet passiveness at last, and his mouth was set in a stubborn angry line. “Do you think I’d ever let those children go?”
“You’re not fit to bring up children!” I began to walk toward the door.
“Sarah, listen to me.” He caught my arm and spun me around to face him, but I wrenched myself free.
“Let me go!” I grabbed wildly at the door handle. I was gasping for breath, my eyes blinded by tears.
“No … wait …” He gripped my wrist again, but he was too late. The handle turned, the door swung wide.
And there on the threshold stood Hugh MacGowan.
II
There was no time to scream. There was hardly time to gasp. Patrick exclaimed in relief, “Thank God you’re here! Why didn’t you come straight in?” And I heard MacGowan say in his pleasant, even voice, “I thought Lady de Salis should at least be given the chance to see reason without undue persuasion.”
He was closing the door, turning the key in the lock. I took one pace back from him, then another, but it wasn’t until he turned to look at me again that I realized I was terrified.
“Please sit down, Lady de Salis,” he said. We were always so polite to each other, he addressing me with the formality appropriate for his employer’s wife, I addressing him with the cordiality due to a friend of my husband’s. It was true I had thought of him privately as “Hugh,” but it wasn’t until that day, when I became obliged to use his Christian name, that my private thoughts labeled him simply “MacGowan.”
“I think it’s time you and I had a talk together,” he was saying, and backing my way to the bed, I sat down on the edge.
He watched me. His gray eyes were intent, his head tilted slightly to one side, as if he were making some complex calculation. I noticed that his arms didn’t hang loosely but were stiff at his sides, while his fingers curled toward the palms of his hands.
“First of all,” he said, “I’m going to tell you what you’re going to do. Then I’m going to tell you why you’re going to do it—or, in other words, I’m going to explain to you what will happen if you don’t do exactly as you’re told.”
I managed to look at Patrick. He was standing by the window and examining his thumbnail. The early-afternoon sunlight, slanting into the room, made his hair seem fairer than it was.
“Are you listening to me, Sarah?” said Hugh MacGowan.
Anger gave me courage. “How dare you address me as Sarah!” I said furiously, “and how dare you tell me what to do!”
“Be quiet” He never raised his voice, but I saw his knuckles shine white in the dim light by the door. “Talk to Patrick as you wish, but never make the mistake of thinking you can treat me as you treat him.”
There was a silence before he moved slowly to the foot of the bed. My fingers closed on a fold of the bedspread and held it tightly.
“There’s going to be no scandal,” he said at last. “Do you understand that, Sarah? No scandal. And that means no divorce. We’re all going to come to an arrangement. It’s going to be a very civilized arrangement, Sarah, and if you behave sensibly there’s no reason why you should find it intolerable. Quite the contrary. You’ll continue to be mistress of Cashelmara and you’ll continue to live with your children—and what else do you want? Not, surely, a loving husband insisting on his marital rights—or a lover insisting on sharing your bed. Of course, as Patrick has already said, you can have a lover if you want one, but let’s not be hypocritical, Sarah. Since we’re all being so honest with one another let’s admit that you have your deficiencies as a woman and that you’re unlikely to suffer a broken heart merely because you sleep alone every night.”
He stopped. I felt sick. I felt the color stain my neck, and all I could think in an agony of humiliation was that he knew, Patrick had told him; he knew what a failure I was and despised me for it.
“Of course we shall all have to make our little sacrifices to ensure that the arrangement works well,” he was saying, “but on the whole I think Patrick and I will have to sacrifice more, in the name of discretion, than you’ll have to sacrifice. You’ll merely have to sacrifice your pride, Sarah, and considering you really have so little to be proud of, I don’t think that’s asking too much of you.”
There was a pause. He relaxed slightly, unclenching one of his fists and tracing a pattern with his finger on the post at the foot of the bed.
“Do you understand me so far, Sarah? Good. Now let me explain what will happen if you should be misguided enough to try to undermine our arrangement. For instance, if you should complain to your sister-in-law Miss de Salis, or Patrick’s brothers, or even your own brother in New York—or, worse still, if you should try to leave with the children or seek legal advice or take any step that would result in scandal—well, that really wouldn’t be at all advisable, S
arah. Believe me, that would be most foolish. You should always remember that Cashelmara is very … remote. Unpleasant things can happen in remote places, particularly to people who break their word or go back on a bargain—and there’s going to be a bargain, Sarah, make no mistake about that. You’re going to give us your word that you’ll do everything possible to preserve the status quo. You’ve no choice. The cards are stacked against you, and if by some extraordinary chance you managed to reach the divorce court you’d soon find out that you’d be the one who suffered most. A deserting wife, perhaps a little manufactured evidence of adultery, and what would you say to the judge? ‘Please, my lord, my husband’s indulging in unmentionable vices with another man’? Who’s going to believe that? There’s not a soul in England or Ireland who can testify that Patrick has previously indulged himself in this way, and as for myself … well, I intend to marry once I’ve moved to Clonagh Court—that’s one of the sacrifices I shall make to sustain this arrangement of ours—and a judge will think twice then before believing any hysterical accusations you might be foolish enough to make. But you wouldn’t be so foolish, would you, Sarah? I do give you credit for some intelligence, and besides, I should be so angry if you broke your part of the bargain. You do understand that, Sarah, don’t you? I should be so very angry.”
He was standing over me. I was staring blindly at the carpet, but I was aware of nothing but his right fist clenched six inches from my face.
“We mustn’t have any scandal, must we, Sarah?”
“No,” I said.
“It would be so bad for all of us. Particularly for the children.”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m glad we’re in agreement. Now give me your word you’ll do everything possible to preserve our arrangement”
“I … give you my word—”
“Go on.”
“—to do everything possible to … preserve the arrangement.”
“You’ll ostensibly continue to be a devoted wife to Patrick. You’ll make no complaints.”
“Yes.”
“I want your word, Sarah. I want to hear you promise.”
“I promise.”
“Yes?”
“Devoted wife … no complaints.”
“Very well.” He touched me. I cried out with the shock, and when he saw my terror he smiled. “That’s better,” he said, tilting my chin up so that I was forced to look him in the eyes. “I like a woman to be meek and submissive.” His fingers tightened on my face. I would have cried out again, but I could barely breathe. “Now listen to me,” he said, his smile vanished, his voice low. “You keep your promises, for I swear to God that if you break them I’ll hurt you in places where not even your maid would think to look.”
He released me. I fell back on the bed and the room spun dizzily before my eyes.
“Is there anything you want to say to her, Patrick?”
There was a silence, the silence of Cashelmara, intense, empty and cruel. “Very well, we’ll go. Goodbye, Sarah. Remember what I’ve said.”
I remembered. I remembered night after night and day after day, and as I tried in despair to see some way of escape from the locked strait-jacket of my marriage, the nightmare of MacGowan’s “arrangement” stretched ahead of me as far as the eye could see.
III
A week passed. They left me well alone, and whenever I did see MacGowan he was always so scrupulously polite to me that I could almost believe I had imagined the scene in my room. At last when I could think of the situation dispassionately I even found myself agreeing with him that there should be no scandal that would affect the children’s future. I had decided after Marguerite’s death that the children’s future was to be my future also, and it seemed increasingly important to me not to put that future in jeopardy. The children were all I had, my one success amidst many failures, so they must, whatever happened, come first. What did Patrick’s private life and my own humiliation matter when weighed against the children’s welfare? It was vital for the children to have two parents who were outwardly on good terms with each other. Any hint of divorce, with all its implications about unnatural vice … No, it was unthinkable. Better MacGowan’s arrangement than that, and besides once MacGowan moved to Clonagh Court I would hardly see him.
Perhaps the arrangement wouldn’t be as bad as I had feared. My humiliation would exist, but at least no one would know about it.
Ned wouldn’t know. Ned with his bright hair and eyes, his boisterous, inexhaustible energy so different from John’s timid liveliness. People said it was strange that John spoke so little, but he could talk, I knew he could, and he was so affectionate, quite different from Ned, who was always dashing off on some expedition and never had time for more than a passing hug. All John needed was time. Marguerite had understood, telling me those stories of how late David had been in walking.
I did so miss Marguerite.
“Baby’s coming along nicely, my lady,” said Nanny as I helped Eleanor stagger across the nursery floor. “I think she’ll walk before she’s a year old.” Eleanor looked like Ned because of her bright hair and eyes. She was going to be so pretty, and I could hardly wait for her to grow a little older so that I could order lots of dresses for her, silk and muslin and organdy, and hats, lovely straw hats with pink streamers and little bonnets for the Sunday services at the chapel. I could so clearly see us all strolling up the Azalea Walk, my fingers resting lightly on Patrick’s arm, the children hand in hand—and no one would ever know.
In September MacGowan arranged for work to begin on Clonagh Court and announced that he intended to move there in the new year.
Thank God, I thought, and began to pine for the new year as a convict in prison might pine for the day of his release.
“Sarah,” said Edith at the beginning of October, “I wonder if I might speak to you for a moment.”
Edith wore an olive-green handkerchief dress, very fashionable, and a multitude of fussy carnation-red trimmings which matched her rouged cheeks. At first I thought she had been daring enough to revive the bustle, but then I realized she was merely ill-corseted.
“Yes, of course, Edith,” I said, pausing in my letter to Charles. Edith and I had succeeded in avoiding each other with greater success than I had dared hope for that summer, and I had even forgotten when we had last had “words.”
Edith sat down. We were upstairs in the room I had converted into a little boudoir, or sitting room, for myself. I had felt the need for a private retreat of my own, and although I had expected Patrick to object he had approved of the idea and had even told me I could refurnish the room if I wished. But I hadn’t wanted to be extravagant. I had merely brought some old furniture down from the attics and ordered the reupholstering of the Grecian sofa and chairs and the refinishing of the Carlton House writing table. I had sufficiently tired of the exotic tastes of the Prince Regent to judge them decadent, but Cashelmara had influenced me subtly again, and just as I no longer found the house ugly, so I now found the turn-of-the-century furnishings more attractive than the efforts of modern craftsmen and their machines.
“I have some important news to tell you,” Edith was saying.
“Oh? How exciting! Do tell me.” I thought perhaps she might have had an invitation to spend Christmas with Clara. They had patched up their quarrel and were corresponding regularly again.
“I’m going to be married,” said Edith.
There was a silence. I looked at the fire in the grate and the mist beyond the window and my unfinished letter to Charles before me oil the writing table.
“But how lovely, Edith!” I said. But it wasn’t lovely at all. I saw my coming freedom vanish and my jailer no longer in retreat but stationed permanently outside my prison cell. “And who is the gentleman I must congratulate?”
She told me. I tried to think of something to say.
“The younger Mr. MacGowan, of course,” said Edith, smiling as I groped for words.
“Of course,” I said, and all th
e time I was wondering how much she knew and whether there was any chance of making her change her mind.
“We’ll he married in the new year. Clonagh Court will be ready by then, and I dare say Hugh will have made it comfortable. However,” said Edith, giving me another smile, “I expect we shall be often at Cashelmara.”
I said nothing. There was a pause.
“I can see you think I’ll be marrying beneath me,” said Edith, but she didn’t sound dismayed.
“Of course I think you’re marrying beneath you,” I said. “Hugh MacGowan’s hardly a man of your own class.”
“Ah well,” said Edith, very coolly, “if he’s good enough for Patrick, he should be good enough for me, don’t you think?”
There was another silence.
Edith was still smiling, and as I realized how intensely she disliked me a series of vistas into the future, each more appalling than the last, began to flash before my eyes.
“Please don’t worry, Sarah,” said Edith. “I declare I shall be a positive paragon of discretion. Of course I shall expect one or two little favors now and then but nothing you can’t easily manage. For example, I shall expect to have regular invitations to Cashelmara, and I shall expect to move in your social set. Patrick tells me you’re full of plans for the future because you’re anxious for the children to move in the right circles.” She paused. “Oh, come, Sarah, don’t be difficult about this! You can’t cut me after I’m married, you know. Hugh wouldn’t like that at all. In fact he thinks it’s a very good thing that I’ll be living so near you. He thinks you need a companion of your own age—someone to cheer you up when you feel low-spirited, someone to … well, someone to keep an eye on you. So thoughtful of him, don’t you think?”
I put down my pen. Watching the flames in the grate, I said, “Edith, I don’t think there’s anything else we need say to each other at present If you’ll excuse me, I would like to finish this letter to my brother.”
“Dear me,” said Edith. “We’re rather uppity all of a sudden, aren’t we? Hoity-toity!”
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