Grahame, Lucia

by The Painted Lady

  “If only you could show him your love,” said Marguerite, “I think he would forgive you anything.”

  “Love!” I cried, shaken. “Surely you don’t believe that I have fallen in love with my husband!”

  Marguerite regarded me with a dubious smile and said at last, “Look at yourself, Fleur! You are as lovesick as he is!”

  But I continued to protest her unsettling diagnosis until at last she said, “Eh him, my friend. And how does this latest folly of yours require my assistance?”

  “Well, you see,” I said, “Anthony has promised that he will support me once I am gone. But I am beginning to think that I cannot take his money.”

  “By all the blessed saints, Fleur, you are an utter fool! First, you scorn the man! Then this house! And now the money! What can you be thinking of?”

  “I must leave before things get any worse!”

  Lately I had been haunted by a vision of the welcome I might have been tempted to give my husband were he to visit Charingworth and find me there alone. I saw myself in tears at his feet begging for his forgiveness and for his love. I saw him, having steeled his resolve and sated his physical appetites with other women, turning away from me with a chilly and ironic smile, savoring his ultimate victory: my wanting him when he no longer wanted me. Then your punishment will have only just begun.

  “I cannot take his money, Marguerite. That would put me on the same level as the coldest fortune hunter! Yes, I married Anthony to save my reputation. My reputation has been saved. Voilà. To take anything more from him would be to compound the wrong I did him.”

  “So you wish to restore his good opinion of you?”

  “In whatever small way I can,” I acknowledged humbly. “And not to sink any farther in my own eyes.”

  “I see,” said Marguerite. “And, of course, you cannot retrieve your self-respect except by plunging yourself into abject poverty. Really, Fleur, living in England seems to have made you very dim. I do not know why you cannot simply say to him that you are very sorry for what has happened in the past and would like to start anew.”

  “It is impossible,” I said.

  “I don’t see why. All you need do is say, ‘I’m sorry, Tony. If you can forgive me, I would like to—’”

  “You don’t understand,” I cried. “We cannot stay together under any circumstances.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He absolutely does not want children,” I said, surrendering up nearly the last of my secrets.

  “Really? I declare, the man has no vanity at all! And you?”

  “I do! More than anything.”

  “You don’t mean to say you would marry someone else!” cried Marguerite.

  “Oh never!” I cried rather too ardently, and then added in a stiff and far more rational tone, “I merely wish to escape from a situation where I am daily reminded of the difference between how things are and how they might have been.”

  “Well,” said my friend with a sigh, “I will do whatever I can to help you, Fleur. How sad it is…. I wish there were another way. But never mind. Tell me what I must do.”

  “I am afraid I will need to borrow a little money,” I said. It nearly killed me. How Frederick had had the stomach to make such a request, not once, but repeatedly, of the people he had called his friends was incomprehensible. I would do almost anything, I thought, to ensure that I would never find myself in so mortifying a position again.

  “But of course,” said Marguerite. “How much?”

  “Only enough for me to get to London and for a night or two at a hotel.”

  “Why, that is nothing,” said Marguerite. But she was looking at me rather strangely. I recognized the look; I had often seen it in my grandmother’s eyes. She was appraising what my dress must have cost, and my shoes.

  “Yes, I know,” I said, fingering the satin rosettes at the wrists of my gown. “Anthony pays for my clothes.” I was becoming nearly tongue-tied with embarrassment. “I… I haven’t a penny to call my own.”

  “Oh, my dear!” cried Marguerite, turning white. All her heart was in her voice. “How dreadful! He has really pinned you to the wall, hasn’t he! But has it never occurred to you to nick the silver? And I recall seeing some very fine gold plate in the dining room!”

  “Yes, but that would make the nobility of my intentions rather suspect, wouldn’t it!” I said with a choked little laugh. “No, my grandmother left me a little jewelry, which I keep in a bank in London. If I can get there, I can sell it. It should raise more than enough money to keep me until I can find work.”

  “What sort of work?”

  “Whatever I can.”

  “You shall come to Paris,” ordained Marguerite. “You may as well come back with me. You can stay with us for as long as you like. Théo will be delighted.”

  “Oh no,” I protested weakly. “That would be a terrible imposition! And if Anthony is Théo’s patron—”

  “What of that!” cried Marguerite. “He may be Théo’s friend, but you are mine! Besides, if you are so foolishly in love with your husband that you are willing to endure poverty to prove your honor, I hardly think Tony will blame us for wanting to be sure you do not starve! My house is large —it will be delightful to have your company until you both have sorted things out.”

  I knew that day would never come, but her warmhearted assurances and intermittent scoldings finally persuaded me to accept her offer. However, I did not return to Paris with her. I told her I would follow in a fortnight. I wanted time to make my farewells to Charingworth. I was pretty certain, now, that my husband would not intrude upon them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I spent hours out of doors, riding through the countryside or sitting with my sketchbook in a hedgerow or a woodland glade, struggling, now that my time there was running out, to capture the beauties of Charingworth, so that I might carry a record of them with me into the future.

  A morning came when I reached the last page of my sketchbook.

  I closed the book and gazed at the bright ripples of the little stream I had come to draw. It was time to leave. I knew it. Already I had lingered too long; I felt weaker, not stronger, at the prospect of departure.

  If only I could have been as clear, as transparent with my husband as that unpolluted stream. But I was not transparent—not even to myself.

  I recalled Marguerite’s advice: All you have to do is say… What could I lose by speaking to my husband? Were our differences—even those regarding the propagation of little Camwells—beyond even the realm of discussion? The mere idea of initiating so open and fearless a conversation made me shrink; but the prospect of swallowing my unarticulated desires and burying my vague hopes was more painful still.

  I stood up at last and climbed into the saddle, still musing on these matters.

  I was far from the house but close to a copse that lay on the border of my husband’s lands and the neighboring estate. As Andromeda carried me across the stream where I had loitered for most of the morning, a shot rang out. Andromeda whinnied and fell to her knees. I lost my seat and landed in the water, striking my right shoulder on the sharp edge of a large rock.

  “Hold your fire, you idiot!” I cried as I clambered toward Andromeda. But no one answered. At first I feared that my horse had been hit, but she was quickly back on her feet and showed no signs of harm. Her hoof must have slipped on one of the slick stones in the streambed when the shot had startled her.

  I led her back to the house, sick with guilt. If only I had not been so preoccupied with my own thoughts, I would have found a less treacherous place to cross the stream. As for the shots, I had often heard gunfire on Lord Sparling’s property, but never so close.

  We reached the stables. I told Watkins what had happened.

  “It’s that Sparling brat again,” he muttered, shaking his head. He inspected Andromeda carefully and assured me that she had suffered no injury. Then he asked me whether I’d been hurt.

  “Oh, not at all!” I lie
d. My shoulder was throbbing violently, but I was too proud to complain. Even when I went to my room to change from my sodden habit, I didn’t ring for Marie to help me. I was embarrassed that I’d been thrown; I didn’t want to explain the livid bruise.

  No sooner had I changed into one of my old dresses than Mrs. Phillips asked if she might speak with me; she wanted my approval for the arrangements she had made for dinner that night, in honor of my husband’s return.

  “Sir Anthony is here?” I gasped, forgetting to conceal my surprise.

  “No, my lady. He arrives on the three o’clock train from London,” said Mrs. Phillips.

  “Ah yes,” I said, pretending that I had forgotten, although my heart was pounding with a mixture of anxiety and joy. I examined the menu carefully, and for the first time in the entire history of my life at Charingworth, I hesitantly suggested some small alterations, which I hoped might please my husband’s tastes, and then proceeded with the same diffidence to offer some other suggestions as to the flowers which would grace the dinner table. Mrs. Phillips, although she could be faulted in no other respect, was somewhat conservative about mixing colors, and I thought a bolder floral display than we usually enjoyed might delight my husband’s eye.

  “Very good, my lady,” she said with a happier expression than she had been accustomed to wear of late.

  When she had gone, I surveyed my collection of dresses thoughtfully.

  During my last visit to London, my wardrobe had been further replenished by Madame Rullier, although my husband had not remained with us to monitor the fittings. Now I selected what I believed was one of the prettiest of all her creations, an afternoon dress of vibrant amber silk, with a few vertical green satin ribbons extending from shoulder to hem and along the sleeves, which were puffed at the shoulder and tightly fitted down the lower arm to the wrist.

  After luncheon, I visited Andromeda to assure myself yet again that she was unharmed. Then I stopped by the kitchens to review the dinner menu once again, this time with Monsieur Borchet, my husband’s chef.

  After that, I changed into the amber silk and wandered through the gardens. When the hands on the face of the old clock which surveyed the gabled roof stood at a half past two, I was seized by yet another whim. I thought of all the times I had returned to Charingworth alone, to be met only by the coachman, and of how disheartening I always found it not to receive a warmer welcome at the end of a journey.

  I returned to the stables and learned that my husband had arranged for one of the undergrooms to meet him at the railway station with the dogcart.

  “No,” I announced to the undergroom. “I shall meet him myself.”

  My nerves were as tightly strung as piano wire when I drove the dogcart down the avenue to reach the station five minutes before the train did.

  And then, shrieking and hissing, it arrived.

  I stood upon the platform, waiting with an unfamiliar flutter in my heart for my husband to appear. When a young gentleman leaped flamboyantly from the train, I scarcely noticed; never in a million years would my husband have broken into a run.

  But the impetuous figure was rushing toward me, and a once familiar voice was crying, “Fleur Brooks!”

  It was my long lost friend, Guy.

  Now I was flying toward him. We both stopped awkwardly, just short of an embrace.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my husband step down from the train. He was looking straight at me. For an instant, it seemed to me, his face wore a stricken expression. But if it had been there at all, it was gone in a moment.

  “Come,” I said, seizing Guy by the hand. “Let me introduce you to my husband.”

  We walked slowly across the platform toward my husband, who was approaching us with his usual calm dignity.

  “Good afternoon, Fleur,” said my husband.

  “Welcome home, Anthony,” I stammered. He must have thought it a very odd welcome to find his wife all but in the arms of another man. “Let me introduce a very old and dear friend of mine, Guy Hazelton. Guy, my husband, Anthony Camwell.”

  They greeted each other amicably.

  “But what brings you here?” I asked Guy. “I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw you.”

  Even as I spoke I half feared my husband would regard this as a spur-of-the-moment invention.

  “Nor I mine,” said Guy. “I’m on my way—well, I was on my way, and my luggage still is—to spend the weekend at Lincroft with the Kendalls when I saw you from the train. What could I do but jump off? It is so lovely to see you, Fleur, after all these years. You’re looking marvelous—radiant!”

  I thought this must be a gallant exaggeration. As Guy spoke, I felt my husband’s curious, piercing glance upon me once again.

  “You’ve captured a real prize,” declared Guy to my husband with the unstudied charm I had always found so endearing in him, although at this juncture it embarrassed me sorely. “I would not have believed that any man on earth could have beguiled Fleur away from Paris.”

  My husband smiled.

  “Why don’t you come back to Charingworth and have tea with Fleur?” he said. By not saying “tea with us,” he had rather delicately indicated he would give Guy and me the opportunity to talk alone. “You must have a great deal to tell each other after so long. My carriage can take you to Lincroft later on, if you like. It is not far at all.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of putting you to the trouble,” said Guy. “There’ll be another train along in an hour or so. I’ll just telegraph the Kendalls to let them know that my luggage and I will be arriving separately.”

  “Really, it would be no trouble,” said my husband.

  But Guy was firm in his refusal.

  “Perhaps you’d like to wait here, then, and give yourselves a little time to talk,” said my husband to me. And then, as Guy dashed off to send his telegram, my husband added, “I’ll leave the dogcart for you. It’s such a fine day—I shan’t mind the walk at all.”

  “Oh, I’ll walk!” I said quickly. “You must be tired after your journey. Take the dogcart—I brought it for you. It is such a lovely day that I’m afraid I rescinded your orders and came to meet you myself.”

  “That was thoughtful of you,” he said. I realized with a pang that I had rarely given him much opportunity to speak of me thus. “But I insist upon walking.”

  “Have you no luggage?”

  “None,” he said. Then, with another long look, he added, “Everything I could ever want is here.”

  I felt my cheeks color as I looked at him until he turned away and left.

  “He’s very gracious,” said Guy, returning, “and so good-looking. But he seemed, oh, slightly upset…. Is he the jealous sort?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling dazed. I watched my husband’s straight back disappear round the corner of the livery stable.

  “You don’t know!” exclaimed Guy. “You don’t know whether your own husband is subject to fits of jealousy! Believe me, Fleur, if anyone married to you had a jealous bone in his body, you’d have found it out long ago.”

  I thought again of the terrible things my husband had implied about Frederick, but I thought too of how long he had held his peace before breaking out with them.

  “But I don’t know,” I repeated. “We have never been close. I’m afraid ours has not been a happy marriage, Guy. In fact, we are about to separate.”

  “I am so sorry,” said Guy politely. He looked thoroughly perplexed. “But why?” he finally demanded. “It’s obvious that he adores you.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said in the brittlest voice I could manage. “We must be rather good at putting up a false front. I’m surprised it fooled you, however. You were once so perceptive.”

  “And you care for him,” persisted my friend. “It was written all over your face.”

  I lifted my hands to my cheeks.

  “I do,” I whispered at last.

  Then I lapsed into silence again, until Guy took my hand and led me to
the bench against the station wall.

  We sat down.

  “But enough of this,” I said with forced briskness. “Tell me, how is Harry?”

  “Very well. He is at Lincroft.”

  “I am glad you are happy,” I remarked, with a touch of envy.

  “Oh, Fleur,” said Guy as if he’d caught my thoughts, “do you think that I have achieved happiness without a struggle?”

  “What struggle? You love Harry, he loves you. It seems to me your happiness was inevitable.”

  “You know better than that, Fleur!” exclaimed Guy. “Nothing is inevitable. Look at my life in England. It was an absolute hell of duplicity and deception. I ended that only by resolving to return to Paris—with Harry or without him. When I left for France, I left alone.”

  “But… why are you here?” I stammered.

  “Because Harry has made his choice. He is at Lincroft because, before leaving for France, he chose to tell his favorite sister—she is Mrs. Kendall—the truth about why he is going away. He half feared she would never speak to him again. But in point of fact she responded by inviting both of us to Lincroft before Harry returns to France with me.”

  “What an excellent woman she must be.”

  “And as for you, your troubles are not so different from anyone else’s,” continued Guy rather brutally. “Just because love was so effortless with Frederick…” I barely heard the rest of what he said.

  Had love really been so effortless with Frederick? Yes, there was something endearingly feckless about him—it invited love. He was so cheerfully unashamed of his need to be shielded from all the inartistic, tedious business of daily life! He was so openly, charmingly helpless about everything he regarded as unpleasant, unaesthetic, and therefore beneath him. He was never imperious—he didn’t have to be. He exerted his will with sunny gaiety and cajoling compliments, making resistance seem surly, making resentments seem mean-spirited and carping. I could never have voiced them!

  Yes, I loved him! Yes, I would have raised him from the dead! But the Frederick of my cherished memories—the Frederick I yearned to have restored to me—had been altered greatly from the flesh-and-blood Frederick of our last years together. I did not yearn for drunken kisses, for scattered piles of dirty clothing, for empty bottles and overturned glasses, for the litter of crumbling sticks of charcoal lying about everywhere, for the filthy paintbrushes it was my thankless job to clean, or for the mountain of debts I had not incurred….