Grahame, Lucia

by The Painted Lady

  Now he studied me in silence, his face growing ever paler and more perturbed.

  Finally he said, “Are you with child?” His voice fairly shook: He sounded thoroughly alarmed.

  “No!” I said.

  “Are you quite certain?”

  “Of course.” There was no doubt of it.

  “That would be unfortunate,” he said at last.

  “It would, indeed,” I agreed bitterly. It was not a turn of events to which I had given much thought, since there seemed so little likelihood of my bearing a child, but at his chilly dismissal of the possibility as “unfortunate,” I felt an unexpected surge of fierce protectiveness. Any child unlucky enough to come into the world as the result of the death throes of this marriage would need all the love I could lavish upon it. It could hardly hope to claim any affection from its father. But it didn’t matter. There would be no child.

  “Well, if you are not ill and you are not expecting, how do you account for your condition?” he asked, now with a hint of impatience.

  I sank back among the pillows and closed my eyes.

  “Just go away,” I whispered. “Please. Just leave me.”

  “If you are not improved by this evening, I will send for the doctor,” said my husband. He hesitated a few seconds longer, but at last, to my relief, I heard the door close behind him.

  He had beef tea and blancmange delivered to me at intervals during the day, and by evening I had gathered enough strength to force myself to join him for dinner, thereby putting to rest the possibility that he might seek medical advice for what I knew too well was only a disease of the spirit.

  We dined before the library fire.

  At the end of the meal, when we were alone, he said to me, “As I mentioned this morning, you will be joining me in London for a few days at the end of the week.”

  I was now certain this was what I had feared. But I had given the matter some thought during the day.

  “Perhaps you will be in London,” I said. “But I will not.”

  “I think you will,” he said. “That is, if you still wish to be free of this marriage.”

  “There’s no need for me to dance to your tunes in order to get free of you,” I replied. “I can as easily seek a divorce.”

  “Now that is an interesting possibility,” he said. “What grounds do you intend to use?”

  “Adultery and cruelty will be sufficient,” I said. I knew my case was a weak one, but I wanted to test him.

  He leaned toward me across the table.

  “I think not,” he said gently. “I haven’t taken a second wife. I haven’t slept with my mother or with any of the farm animals. I haven’t sodomized you.” He paused, eyeing me thoughtfully. “Although, if I should,” he continued slowly, “I hardly think you will find it cruel.”

  I felt a small, unsettling stab of desire, mingled with distaste and curiosity. How could the suggestion of something which I knew from my grandmother to be extremely unpleasant and which I was fortunate enough never to have experienced, how could such a suggestion from the man I hated have quickened my blood, if ever so slightly?

  “And if I decide to give you that pleasure,” he continued, his expression making it apparent that it would be a pleasure for him, as well as for me, “are you naive enough to believe that the scrutiny to which you’ll be subjected, should you attempt to use that to divorce me, will be easier to bear than the little courtesies I require of you?”

  “Courtesies!” I repeated with a laugh. “Is that what you call them?”

  “I did not guess you found them so unpleasant,” he replied. “From the eagerness with which you have begun to extend them, I had supposed the opposite. I’m curious— what is it, precisely, that you find so disagreeable?”

  I ought to have ignored the question rather than rising to the bait. It was here that I made my great mistake, believing that I was dealing him a crushing blow rather than opening myself up to an even more devastating one.

  “There is no feeling in them,” I said.

  “True,” he said placidly. “But that is what makes them so amusing. You are proving to be rather gifted at your true vocation. I have no doubt you will improve remarkably with a little more practice.”

  I rose from the table. I felt as if he had knifed me in the heart.

  “And such an accomplished actress, as well,” he continued. “I have never seen a more convincing portrait of a refined and delicate woman than the performance you put on for me at the outset of our marriage. Really, I have the greatest respect for all your talents.”

  I put my hands on the edge of the table to steady myself. I don’t know why I felt so deeply wounded. What he had said was no worse than I might have expected from him. But each word cut to the bone, and rather than reveal this, I chose to retaliate.

  “You bloody hypocrite,” I said. “Since we’re critiquing performances, shall we talk about the one you gave during those same interminably dull months? The perfect English gentleman, all chivalry and politesse. Who would have guessed that such a vengeful, sadistic nature lay behind that mask of civility?”

  But my shaft missed its mark.

  “I don’t know why you complain of that,” he replied. “It’s obvious which you prefer—at least between the sheets. Things are not quite so dull for you now, are they?”

  I ought to have let that be the coup de grace, but I was unable to retreat from the battlefield. I knew I had lost, but now, far from a desire to strike back, I felt only sadness. I reached back into my memories for some recollection of love with which to console myself, but the now betrayed and accusatory shade of my darling Frederick sulkily refused to come to my aid, and instead I found myself thinking, very strangely, of the man who had led me into the magical forest of Fontainebleau.

  “You were not always so unfeeling,” I said at last. “Is your hunger for revenge so great that it has completely destroyed your better nature?”

  Unfortunately, these words sounded melodramatic even to my ears, and the laugh with which he greeted them suggested that he found them so too.

  “What you call my ‘unfeelingness’ is no part of my revenge,” he told me candidly. “That is merely the result of disappointment and of my wish not to be deceived again. I will never believe anything you say, Fleur. However, that is not to detract from your recent performances, which have been perfectly delightful. If in a somewhat uninspired and mechanical way.”

  My cheeks flamed. If he had been vain enough to suppose that he had ever wrested a genuinely inspired and unstudied response from me, I could have summoned battalions of stinging words with which to undeceive him. But nevertheless, for him to dismiss my admittedly unloving, yet ultimately passionate, response as uninspired and mechanical was peculiarly irksome.

  “I see,” I said, and turned to leave the room.

  “Wait, Fleur,” said my husband.

  But I did not want to hear any more. No matter what the justice of his case might be, the supercilious air with which he made it had routed my last, brief impulse to try to bridge the chasm between us. The short-lived concern I had heard in his voice on the stairway earlier in the day had touched me powerfully for an instant—until it was proven to have sprung only from his dread of fathering a child on me. I did not want to risk being undone once again.

  “If you have anything left to say to me,” I told him, turning back and only half masking a contrived yawn with my hand, “I hope you will make it brief and worth listening to, for once. All this ranting so quickly becomes tiresome.”

  “Very well then.” His voice, which a moment earlier had been full of half-suppressed laughter, now became matter-of-fact. “There is one thing you ought to bear in mind— tiresome though it may be. If you should ever consider seeking a divorce, or even a separation, before my hand is played out, remember that I still have the paintings: And I won’t hesitate to use them if that’s what it takes to hold you to our bargain. I’m sure our friend Marcel can auction them as easily tomorrow as h
e might have in March. And I wouldn’t mind recouping what they’ve cost me. So I advise you not to entertain the notion of leaving me before I am through with you. It won’t be long—that I can promise you.”

  Although I could not imagine what worse threats he might make, I thought it would be reckless to incite him further. I left him, then, without another word.

  When the coachman drove me to the railway station on the following Friday, I no longer felt that sick dread, but only the same terrible lassitude of my last years with Frederick.

  Except for his luxuriously appointed bedroom, with its trappings of velvet, silk, and marble, and that ultramarine carpet so thick that one could drown in it, my husband’s London home was furnished with a beauty that was almost stark in its simplicity.

  Charingworth was the repository of priceless ancestral treasures, but in Grosvenor Square my husband had indulged his personal taste. He had restored the house to its original spare and classic lines, having stripped away the ostentatious embellishments favored by previous generations of Camwells. The clear, sunny colors he had selected for the interior offset what might have otherwise been an austere effect.

  He was not at home when I arrived. I dined alone and went directly to my bedroom afterward. It was very late when I heard him return. He did not come to my room and left the house before breakfast the following morning.

  Shortly after my solitary luncheon, I had an unexpected caller. I was in my sitting room, where I felt safe from any possibility of an accidental encounter with my husband should he return from whatever business or diversions had called him away, when a housemaid announced that Lord Marsden was downstairs.

  I received him in one of the smaller drawing rooms, reminding myself that I must now call him Neville, which I found difficult. To me, he would always be Lord Marsden, Frederick’s dazzling patron. Despite his air of genial, relaxed urbanity, today I thought he seemed faintly discomfited.

  “I ran into Tony at my tailor’s this morning,” he told me. “He seems vastly improved, I am happy to say. When I last saw him, he looked so wretched that if he had been a dog, I’d have been tempted to put him out of his misery.”

  “When was that?” I asked uneasily. My husband was never ill.

  “Oh, it was a chance encounter in Victoria Station. In March, I believe. Shortly after you returned from your visit to the charming Madame Sorrel. By the by, I hope that she has recovered completely.”

  “She is quite well now.”

  “I am glad of that. I was surprised when Tony mentioned to me that she had been ill, for I had attended a performance of hers the very night before you left for France, and she appeared to be in excellent health.” I did not reply.

  “Well, that’s a great actress for you,” said Lord Marsden, extricating us from the awkwardness of silence. “But, as I was saying, Tony’s spirits seem to have improved dramatically. He was alarmingly cheerful this morning. I haven’t seen him glitter quite so dangerously since he embarked upon his campaign to throw his mother out of her own home.”

  “He threw her out?” I echoed faintly.

  “Well, perhaps not in so many words. But it amounted to the same thing, really. It was when she still lived at Charingworth, you see, and he didn’t want her there any longer. He began to assume such domineering airs that she couldn’t continue to live under his roof. He made her life thoroughly disagreeable. It surprised her, I think, to discover that he can outdo her at her own pitiless games—when he chooses.”

  “I have no doubt of it,” I murmured.

  “Yes,” continued Lord Marsden, leaning back in his chair. “It wasn’t long after he’d come down from Cambridge. She’d lamed her hunter, so she took his favorite horse— without even asking him, I regret to say—and shattered its leg. He had to shoot it—he insisted on doing it himself, though any one of the grooms would have spared him that agony, and he did it cleanly, I must say, although it nearly killed him. I still remember the tears running down his face. Up until then, he’d always tolerated her high-handedness with astonishing good humor. I shouldn’t have put up with it for a week. Still, you know Tony—he’s slow to anger. But when he’s pushed to it, he’s completely unforgiving.”

  I couldn’t help noticing how keenly Lord Marsden eyed me as he related this unhappy tale, although his tone was casual. I was reminded of the look on Watkins’s face when he had told me, long ago, not to be deceived by the fact that my husband used a light rein. Too late had I learned the significance of that veiled warning. As I handed Lord Marsden his tea, the spoon tinkled on the saucer.

  There was a long silence while he sipped his tea. I did not fill my own cup. I could see, looking down, that my hands were still unsteady. I had become, I knew, the heir apparent to all the scorn my husband and his cousin shared for the infamous Lady Whitstone.

  “I notice that you are not looking at all well yourself, my dear,” Lord Marsden observed.

  “I am perfectly well,” I said tightly.

  “I’m glad to hear that. I was concerned that perhaps whatever ailment seems to have afflicted your near and dear had communicated itself to you.”

  I was silent.

  “Well, perhaps I’m imagining things. I tend to worry about you. That lovely painting of Hermione always reminds me of how you once looked. The contrast distresses me.”

  “Really, Neville,” I said in a weak attempt at archness. “That is not very flattering. Everyone must grow older, and I am afraid that some of us age less attractively than others.”

  “In your case, that is nonsense,” he retorted. “You are no more than a girl.”

  Oh, but I felt old. How long it had been since I had tasted the easy delights of youth! I shuddered inwardly as I remembered that recent night when I had momentarily forgotten my cares and my guilt and resentments, when I had drunk and laughed and kissed—and damned myself anew.

  Lord Marsden set down his cup and leaned forward in his chair.

  “Forgive me for speaking plainly,” he said. “I have told myself repeatedly that I must not interfere, but to see two people for whom I care so much looking so miserable, each in their own fashion, compels me to greater candor than is my habit. I am sorry if this is difficult for you. I’m rather uncomfortable myself.”

  I was supremely uncomfortable and wished that I had had the foresight to have sent the housemaid back downstairs with the message that I was “not at home.”

  “I strongly advised Tony against marrying you,” he said. “I thought it was a grave mistake.”

  I was glad, then, that I had not been holding a teacup, for it would surely have fallen to the floor at the astonishing revelation that he had campaigned against my marriage. I would have thought him my staunchest advocate.

  “I did not believe you were in love with him,” stated Lord Marsden bluntly. “I had known you as Brooks’s wife. The difference in your manner toward Tony was painfully obvious to me. Of course, since he had not been acquainted with you then, and was so infatuated anyway, he could not see that—or much else.”

  “And you told him that!” I exclaimed.

  “Oh, good heavens, no. As I have indicated, I find it difficult to speak as frankly as perhaps I sometimes ought. No, I merely remarked that it was much too soon after Brooks’s unfortunate death for you to be able to give your heart to anyone. And that such a terrible loss can leave one so desolate and lonely that one is eager to clutch at any straw. I know.”

  His eyes, astoundingly, were full of sympathy. I remembered that my husband had once told me something about his cousin’s devotion to his wife, who had died nearly a decade earlier.

  “And in your case,” he continued, “the emotional loss must have been aggravated by your other difficulties. I imagine you were feeling extremely vulnerable.”

  I flushed guiltily.

  “That was my mistake,” said Lord Marsden. “Up until then, Tony had discussed his intentions with me, but never with you. You see, he did respect your loss. But when I reminded him
of your rather desperate circumstances and of how they might cloud your judgment, he seemed to fix upon that as a justification for advancing his untimely proposal rather than delaying it. He is rarely so incautious.

  “Everyone knew that Brooks had been hounded by his creditors to the very hour of his death and that he had left you without a farthing. And when Tony fell so desperately in love with you, the temptation to play the hero and to rescue you from hardship proved irresistible. It made him wild to think of your having to pinch pennies while he lived in ease and comfort. Besides, he has always had such absolute faith in his abilities to master—through the sheer force of his will—any problem he sets himself to solve that he never doubted he could win your love. He admired you tremendously. I did, too.”

  I had always valued Lord Marsden’s good opinion of me. The realization that I had forfeited this distressed me far more than had his earlier intimation of my husband’s suffering—against him my heart was hardened. But I knew how well Lord Marsden loved his young cousin and where his strongest loyalties must lie, despite the compassion he had shown for me.

  “Of course, when I realized that you were as determined as he to go ahead with the marriage after all, I made up my mind to voice no further reservations. It wasn’t my affair. And it still is not. But I ought to have spoken out, even so. I see that only too clearly now. To fail to offer you whatever help I can at this juncture would only be to compound my error.”

  “You want to help me?” I whispered.

  “But of course. It is easy to see who is most at fault in this unhappy contretemps and who has suffered the most. Tony has a knack, no matter how deeply he has been wounded, for shaking the dust off his heels and distancing himself completely from painful memories. I do not think that you have that happy faculty, my dear. Not only do you feel every cut—and I imagine that you have tasted a good many of those lately—but you assume that you deserve them, that all the guilt and all the responsibility are yours.”