Grahame, Lucia

by The Painted Lady

  I leaned my head back against the doors and felt something pass out of me like a pain or a fever. When it was gone, it left me harder—and emptier—than before. I straightened my spine and looked directly into my husband’s eyes.

  “I have often wondered why you married me,” he was saying quietly. “You wasted no time in revealing your lack of desire. For a long while, I supposed that your passions had been somehow repressed. I thought that perhaps your late husband was not as gentle with you as he might have been. Or that it was a reaction to your… unfortunate antecedents. Now the mystery has been explained.”

  The scathing reference to my “antecedents” rankled. So, after all, he was his mother’s son.

  “If it’s passion you want,” I said in a scornful, brittle tone, of which even an hour ago I would never have dreamed myself capable, “or at least a fair imitation of it, perhaps you ought to take a mistress.”

  Something flickered in his eyes. He might have been furious. He might as easily have been enjoying himself. It was impossible to tell.

  “Why should I continue to squander a fortune upon my mistresses,” he asked, “when I have such a wanton under my own roof, and one who’s cost me more than all of them together?”

  Nothing in his steady voice revealed what emotions lay beneath his cool self-possession.

  I managed to keep my face expressionless, but my throat tightened at the implication. I had expected the paintings to scandalize him, but never that they might spur him to resume those forays beneath my bedclothes. He must have sensed my revulsion.

  “Oh, you need not fear that I will hold you in a loveless marriage,” he said. “But I will put a small price on your freedom.”

  “Oh? And what is the ransom you have set?”

  “These paintings of which you are so fond,” he said, “suggest that you have far greater talent and enthusiasm for the… business of love… than you have ever given me reason to suspect. I’d like to see more evidence of it.”

  “Love isn’t a business,” I said.

  “So I once thought, but it seems that it is. And in that spirit, let me state the terms on which I’ll set you free. There are five paintings. You may buy each one of them back from me—in kind. If you are cooperative and really exert yourself to please me, you will leave here with enough money to live very comfortably for the rest of your life.”

  I know my composure must have failed me then. I could scarcely imagine anything more odious than being forced to perform for this man-—who had astonishingly begun to inspire real fear and real hatred in me.

  “You seem less than avid,” he observed. “Perhaps my offer doesn’t entice you. That’s all right. If you prefer, we can go along as we are. Of course,” he added, his voice hardening, “I ought to warn you straight out that I will assert my rights far more… vigorously than I have done in the past.”

  For an instant, then, as he was speaking, I glimpsed the fury that underlay his calm demeanor. The cobra had lifted his hood.

  “And if I should agree to your proposal,” I asked, “how long will this farce go on?”

  “Not long. No more than a few months, I should think. I haven’t found a mistress yet who can hold my interest longer. Of course, I would expect you to provide me with more amusement than most. You were a great disappointment the first time out, but I see now that all you lacked was the proper motivation.”

  I felt as helpless as a fish twisting in a net. My gaze skipped around the room. On the small table to my right a pensive little nymph fashioned in bronze sat cradled between the horns of a crescent moon. My fingers twitched. I longed to hurl that graceful objet through the mullioned window behind my husband. I longed to shatter his restraint and, with it, the civilized, deadly peacefulness of my splendid prison.

  Perhaps my husband’s fair head offered an even better target. That he could be capable of such casual cruelty, and worse, that he could actually take pleasure in it, made me long more than ever to break free of him at almost any price. But not at the price of hanging for his murder.

  Therefore I was obliged to weigh his proposal.

  Well, what would it cost me really? A month or two of deadening my sensibilities. This was a skill I had perfected; surely I could withstand a few more of my husband’s uninspiring assaults.

  So I replied in an easier tone, “You give me little choice. No one would dispute that a few months of bondage is preferable to a lifetime of it.”

  “Surely not.” He smiled. “So we’re agreed.”

  My silence was my assent. He understood.

  “Well,” said he, sounding very pleased with the outcome. “I think such a bargain demands evidence of good faith. Why don’t you come here and demonstrate your readiness to gratify my every wish.”

  A sickly wave, first cold, then hot, surged through me. I inched toward him guardedly. When I was perhaps a foot or two away, he stepped toward me and took my hot face between his cool palms. There was no affection in the kiss which followed. It was the purest assertion of power. I understood what he wanted of me. Only once had I ever opened my lips to him when we kissed. But the danger it had formerly posed was gone.

  Now, as an emblem of defeat, I parted my Hps enough to permit the unwelcome invasion. But the heat of his mouth and the careless assurance with which he took possession of mine still stirred me faintly and perversely. Already his new indifference to my own hungers—or, more accurately, to my lack of them—had begun to release me from my burden of guilt; the effect was curious and not entirely unpleasant.

  Nevertheless, I pushed him away.

  “That was delicious,” he said, “although somewhat more grudging than I will expect from you in the future.”

  His eyes were full of an even greater scorn than I had seen in them previously, as if he despised me for having yielded. Feeling slightly ashamed, I wondered what he might have done if I had not.

  “I don’t know why you are looking so wretched,” he said, as if mistaking hatred for misery. “After all, five nights of obedience and unstinting generosity is a very small price to pay. If you satisfy me in that respect, I’ll consider your debt paid. And I think you’ll find the next few months tolerable, since we shall see so little of each other. I may visit you here on occasion, but I will not live in this house again until you are gone from it forever. And meanwhile, you are not to leave it unless I send for you. Beyond that, all I require is that when we are apart you do nothing to disgrace yourself, and that when we are together you will accommodate my wishes in every respect. If you can manage that, you have my word that you will be well provided for when you leave, so long as you never show me your face again. Do you understand?”

  “Well enough,” I said.

  He laughed. “Won’t this make an interesting change,” he remarked, and then added, “Come into the study.”

  I remained where I stood.

  Coming around behind me, he gripped me by the shoulders and pushed me toward the study door. He was stronger than he had ever given me reason to suppose, and his fingers, pressing into my flesh, made me feel weaker than even I had ever imagined myself to be. He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked the door with one hand while still holding me tightly with the other.

  “You had better start learning to do as you are told,” he whispered in my ear as he forced me across the threshold, “if you’re set on earning your freedom.”

  My indiscretions were lined up on the floor against one wall. I could not bring myself to look at them—not here. Yet I knew each one. Odalisque. Artist and Model. Knave and Harlot. Nymph and Satyr. Dancer and Drinkers.

  “Look at them well,” said my husband, “so that you’ll remember what is expected of you.”

  From a drawer within his writing table, he produced a slim silver paper knife and used it as a pointer.

  “Note, for example, the expression of desire on the female’s face,” he directed me, indicating the closed eyes and parted lips of the transported nymph. My face. “I’ll want you
to replicate that precisely.”

  “That can’t be feigned,” I whispered.

  “Oh, I don’t expect an imitation,” he replied. “From the trappings in these paintings”—now the paper knife lightly tapped the golden fetters on the wrists and ankles of the odalisque—“it looks to me as if you can be stimulated to… the real thing. So that was the secret of your blissful marriage.”

  I leaned against the writing table and crushed a sob back into my chest. My husband stroked the blade of the paper knife absently with his fingers as he gazed with hard, unflinching eyes at my painted selves.

  “I could never feel passion without love,” I told him when I was sure my voice was steady.

  He turned.

  “I’ll teach you otherwise,” he said in a voice like a velvet glove. “I’ll give you such a taste for loveless passion that, when I’m through with you, you won’t be able to survive without it. And then what will become of the cast-off Lady Camwell? Believe me, when this marriage is over, your punishment will have just begun.”

  This absurd prediction struck me as so ludicrous that, as miserable as I was, I had to leave the room to prevent myself from laughing hysterically in his face.

  He did not stop me.

  Once I had attained the relative safety of my bedroom, an even stranger thought flickered through my mind: If only he could make me feel again.

  But there was no danger of that.

  I did not leave my bedroom again that day. Nor could I eat the meal that was brought to me that evening. All night long I lay awake, listening for the sound of footsteps at my door, dreading his first assault. Only as the sky outside my windows began to lighten did I fall into an uneasy sleep.

  I remained sequestered for all of the following day as well and sent my untouched breakfast tray back to the kitchen. A housemaid, Ellen, brought lunch to me, as she had been directed to do, she said, by Sir Anthony. When she returned to collect this second untouched meal, I told her that she might as well bring dinner to my room that evening. Perhaps by that time I would be hungry enough to choke something down.

  As the clock struck the dinner hour, there was a tap upon my door. “You may enter,” I called, expecting to see Ellen and a tray. But this time it was my husband. I drew my dressing gown more closely around me as he approached the bed.

  “You are ill,” he said with a searching look. There was no kindness in it.

  “I did not sleep well,” I replied.

  “I hope you sleep better tonight,” he said. “We shall go to London a few days from now, and I’ll be displeased if you are not well rested and in the best of health.”

  I shuddered, Ellen arrived with my dinner, and my husband left the room.

  For the next several days, I kept to my room and my husband continued to leave me blessedly alone. I supposed he was occupying himself with the arrangements necessary to complete his change of residence. I even hoped that by venting some of his rage in making his threats he had dissipated the will to carry them out. Perhaps he had come to his senses and was even now planning to release me into a comfortable separation without exacting his merciless price.

  But this was not at all what my husband had in mind. And when he departed for London, I was at his side.

  We barely spoke during the railway journey or after our arrival. But my husband did not come to my room that night, although again I lay awake for most of it, fearful that he would. Every creak of the great old house as it settled into its own slumber destroyed any hope of mine.

  In consequence of that unrestful night, I rose very late the following morning. I was glad of it, too. It happened that my husband had an early caller, and I would not have been up to the exigencies of playing hostess. But the faint, occasional gusts of masculine laughter that drifted upward from below filled me with resentment, not because they had broken my sleep but because it galled me to be reminded that my husband could be so content with his own lot while I submitted so unhappily to mine. This new merriment on his part, under the present circumstances, struck me as unfeeling and shockingly inappropriate.

  That he could now be carelessly trading jokes with some light-minded acquaintance told me, beyond any doubt—in spite of what I’d imagined had been in his eyes at Fontainebleau and in spite of all his old gentleness and patience— that he had never really loved me at all.

  I was glad to know this—it made the guilt I could no longer feel seem superfluous anyway. But it wounded my pride.

  His visitor had gone by the time I dressed and descended. Luncheon was about to be served. Having eaten no breakfast and scarcely any dinner the night before, I was rather hungry. But my appetite flew out the window when my husband announced that we would be going out as soon as the meal was over.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “We are going to have a look at your new wardrobe,” he replied.

  I fell silent, uncomfortably aware of how worn my dress was. I did not want to subject it to the ill-concealed contempt of a fashionable modiste.

  “Then I must change my gown,” I announced, rising from the table.

  “There isn’t time for that,” said my husband. “Your first toilette took you half the day, although the results are”—he surveyed my attire with distaste—“not impressive. However, if you considered that good enough for my eyes, surely it is good enough for the rest of the world’s.”

  Although I now preferred to avoid his gaze, the untempered arrogance of this declaration wrung a quick, sidelong glance from me. I saw a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. Yes, there could be no doubt; my husband was thoroughly enjoying himself.

  I therefore resolved immediately to adopt an attitude of passive acquiescence, which I trusted would afford him less entertainment than any resistance or protest might.

  I expected his carriage to deposit us among the fashionable shops of Regent Street. Instead, it came to a stop in Maida Vale, on a quiet little street, well shaded by trees and lined with pretty houses. My husband escorted me across the pavement toward one of these.

  “What is this place?” I asked uneasily.

  “This is where I dress my mistresses,” he said. “I took the liberty of ordering some garments for you when I returned from Paris. Now we will see how they fit.”

  I stopped dead.

  “Please,” I said, hating myself for using the word almost as much as I hated him for bringing me to the point where I must. “You know that I have been unwell. I am far too weak to subject myself to hours of standing to be fitted.” Or to anything else, I thought, that may be in store for me in that low establishment.

  “Oh, I think you’ll manage,” he said. His hand grasped my arm. “It can’t be any more taxing than holding a pose,” he added, “and you can always lean on me if you are… overcome.”

  I wrenched my arm out of his grip and turned to face him. My face had reddened. His, too, had colored. But before I could give voice to any of the bitterness his words had provoked, I realized that a rosy-cheeked elderly lady proceeding along the pavement toward us from one direction was well within earshot, as were the two gentlemen who were approaching from the other.

  Already I felt hideously conspicuous, standing outside this undoubtedly infamous house; I would not make a public scene for anything. My only recourse was to rely on my practiced skill of suppressing every feeling.

  I walked up to the door like a convict to the scaffold. My husband sounded the brass knocker, and we were admitted.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The door was opened by a young woman with blue eyes, yellow hair, and an ingratiating smile. “Good afternoon, Hélène,” said my husband. “Good afternoon, Sir Anthony,” she replied, smirking up at him. “Madame is expecting you.”

  She led us to an inner sanctum, where a buxom, auburn-haired Frenchwoman, just approaching middle age, gave my husband a very cordial welcome. Her greeting to me was a warm one as well, although considerably more formal. How delighted she was that Lady Camwell would deign to honor her
establishment, etc., etc., etc.

  I gave this woman, whom my husband introduced as Madame Rullier, a chilling look, but she chattered on.

  “Sir Anthony’s tastes are most particular,” she concluded, lifting a silver-thimbled finger to my husband’s face and tapping him playfully upon the cheek. As she was short and he was tall, it was a stretch. “Your whims will cost you dearly, my friend,” she said with evident satisfaction. “But you have never objected to that.”

  “I am fortunate,” replied my husband pleasantly, “that I can afford them.”

  Madame met this with a gay little laugh, and then proceeded to wax even more garrulous, this time on the subject of my husband’s attire. She admired the intricate stitching of his gloves and the pattern of his tie, and interrogated him boldly as to where he had obtained these articles and what they had cost him. He answered all her questions good-naturedly, while I grew ever more irritated by their peculiar camaraderie.

  At last my husband drew Madame back to the matter at hand by asking her how many hours she expected my fitting to consume. She replied that, at the very least, it would take the entire afternoon—perhaps longer, if many alterations were required. Ought she send a message to his club when all was ready?

  “Oh no,” replied my husband. “I intend to oversee this business personally.”

  Madame appeared to be as pleased at this news as I was displeased.

  “I can see why you would take such an interest,” she murmured to him, as she conducted us to a large room hung all around with long mirrors. A fire burned in the corner grate, which was flanked by an armchair on one side and a large sofa on the other. My husband settled himself upon the latter, an audience of one. “How delightful it will be,” continued Madame, “to watch the transformation of this little—”

  She stopped abruptly, as if she had suddenly remembered who I was. In the meantime, I had grown more stiff-backed than ever, if possible. How dared she speak of me so slightingly? Had I not once been considered one of the great beauties of the most fashionable city in Europe!