Ophelia's Muse

by Rita Cameron

  She has had some accident, he thought; she tripped in the dark, as I did. He hurried back to her side and lifted her up in one quick movement. Her skin was cool and damp, and her eyes were half-closed, with a slight glimmer just visible beneath her heavy lids. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.

  “Lizzie!” he cried, shouting. He shook her, hard, but there was no reply. He carried her to the bed, and it was then that he saw the note, pinned to her dress.

  He stared at it. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. He thought, or hoped, that if he remained completely still, he could prevent the terrible scene from playing out.

  But he had to know. He reached out and tore the note from her dress. As he did so, he saw her eyelids flutter, ever so slightly.

  Was it his imagination? He put his ear to her chest. At first he heard nothing but the frantic beating of his own heart, his pulse throbbing with fear. He took several deep breaths and listened again. He thought that he could hear her heart beating. It was faint, but it was there. She was still alive. He was saved.

  He shook her again, willing her to consciousness. He screamed her name, but she was insensible to his cries. He was reaching for a glass of water when he saw the empty laudanum bottle lying on the table. He was sure that it was half full when he left. It was then that he noticed the strong scent of laudanum on the air. Lizzie had taken it all.

  He ran out onto the landing and called loudly for help. His cries woke the landlady, and she came running up the stairs in her nightdress.

  “It’s my wife,” he said, his fear nearly choking him. “She’s dying! Please, I need a doctor immediately.”

  The landlady took one look at Rossetti and rushed back downstairs to send a boy out for the nearest doctor. Rossetti went back to the bedroom and lay down next to Lizzie. He held her tightly, as if he could prevent her soul from slipping away with the strength of his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over, burying his face in her hair. He could form no other words, and Lizzie’s silence was its own reproach. His mind shied away from the enormity of his trespass. How could he have left her?

  He played the night over and over in his head, feeling that if he could just understand what had happened, he could somehow change it. It was impossible that she could die. She must live. What if he could no longer paint without her?

  The doctor arrived and examined Lizzie, taking her pulse and listening to her heart. Rossetti hovered at his shoulder, watching for any sign of recovery. At length the doctor looked at Rossetti and shook his head. The room stank with the smell of laudanum, and he had seen enough cases to know that the patient did not have many hours to live.

  He put his hand on Rossetti’s shoulder and tried to prepare him for the worst. “It appears to be a very large dose, and there’s little I can do other than trying to flush the system. She’s in God’s hands now.”

  “Please,” Rossetti begged. “You must save her.”

  The doctor sent the landlady for buckets of water and propped up Lizzie’s still form on a pile of pillows. As he loosened her dress, he saw the pin with a scrap of paper still stuck to it. He looked at Rossetti. “Was the lady distraught?”

  The guilt sickened him more than the smell of the laudanum. She had been distraught, and there was only one person to blame. “She, she,” he stuttered, unable to form the words. He sighed. “She was very ill. She just lost a child.”

  The doctor’s expression softened. “Then she was normally in the habit of taking laudanum?” Suicide was a very serious accusation, and doctors always hesitated to suggest it in the case of a lady, if there were any other possible explanation.

  “Yes. She often took it. She could neither sleep, nor take food, without it.”

  The doctor nodded. “Her regular doctor should be called. In the meantime, I’ll try to pump her stomach. I’ll just step out of the room while I prepare my instruments.”

  He gave Rossetti a meaningful look and went out into the studio. Rossetti unfastened the pin from Lizzie’s dress and slipped it into his pocket. He realized with a start that he hadn’t yet read the note. He pulled it from his pocket and read it through twice. The hand was shaky and the words made little sense, but he didn’t need Lizzie’s accusation against him to be spelled out clearly. He knew it too well in his own heart.

  The doctor returned with the landlady, and together they attended to Lizzie. Rossetti could hardly watch as the doctor pumped Lizzie’s stomach, passing a tube into her throat and administering quarts of water to try to cleanse the laudanum from her body. Lizzie choked and shuddered, but showed no other signs of life. The pumping went on for over an hour, as the landlady held Lizzie and leaned her over each time she vomited.

  The violence of the remedy unnerved Rossetti, and he begged them to stop. The doctor took pity on him. “You would make yourself most useful,” he said, “by going out to fetch Mrs. Rossetti’s regular doctor.”

  Rossetti was terrified to leave, but neither could he stay. He raced down the stairs and out onto the street, which blinded him with its light and bustle. He went first to Dr. Hutchinson’s house, where he left word with Mrs. Hutchinson that the doctor should come with utmost speed. Then, almost without thinking, he made his way across town to Ford Madox Brown’s house.

  He banged loudly upon the door, crying out, “Ford! Ford! For God’s sake, open up!” He leaned heavily against the door, and almost fell into Emma’s arms as she opened it.

  “Dante!” she cried, helping him into a chair. “What’s wrong?”

  He opened his mouth, but he could not confess to Emma. His shame silenced him. It crowded out all other thoughts, and weighed on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. He couldn’t tolerate the blame that he knew he would find in her eyes. “Get Ford,” he said, and Emma, frightened, ran to find her husband.

  Ford came and Rossetti told Emma to leave them. He stared at Ford for a moment and then reached into his pocket and handed him the note. “I think I’ve killed her.”

  Ford read the note and looked up at Rossetti with a white face. “What’s happened? What have you done?”

  “I’ve killed her,” Rossetti repeated, relishing the sting of his own words. “Last night, I never should have left her. She wasn’t well. She took too much.” Then, seeing Ford’s horror, he added, “The doctor is with her now, but I’m afraid she’s past all help. I’ll have her death upon my conscience, and I don’t know what will become of me.”

  Ford shook his head, and Rossetti remembered how surprised Ford was when he returned to the restaurant last night. Rossetti hoped that Ford could put his disgust aside. He needed his help.

  “Steady, man,” Ford said, standing up and pulling Rossetti to his feet. “The doctor is with her? Then there’s still hope.” He paused and glanced down at the note. “Did he—did he see this note?”

  “No. But he suspects. Oh, God, if she dies, I won’t even be able to bury her properly. Her spirit will never let me rest. And I deserve it. I deserve it.”

  Ford turned to the fire and threw the note into the flames.

  “What have you done?” Rossetti asked, aghast.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Ford said in a harsh whisper. “That note was obviously written by a very ill woman. It’s a private matter, and if, God forbid, anything happens, it’s imperative that it not be put up for public scrutiny.” He paused as Rossetti cringed at his words, and then said, more gently, “You must do what is best for Lizzie now, and for yourself. Mention it to no one, and nor shall I. Now come, we mustn’t waste any more time. Emma! I’m afraid Lizzie is very ill. I’ll go back to Chatham Place with Dante. Stay with the children, and I’ll send word when I can.”

  Ford led the dazed Rossetti to the door, and Emma helped Ford into his coat. Her eyes were red-rimmed; she’d been listening. She stared at Rossetti with a strange mixture of sympathy and loathing.

  “I’m sorry,” Rossetti whispered lamely. “I’m so sorry.”

  Dr. Hutchinson was already
at Chatham Place when Rossetti and Ford arrived. Rossetti expected to find him still pumping Lizzie’s stomach, but he was just sitting by the bed, his hands in his lap. The landlady had cleaned Lizzie up the best that she could, and a blanket was tucked over her still form.

  “How is she?” Rossetti asked. “Is she awake? Has the laudanum been flushed out?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Dr. Hutchinson said. “She’s gone.”

  “No! No, she’s only sleeping!” Rossetti ran to the bed and tried to pull Lizzie up to sitting. He cradled her head in his arms and stared at her, as if the intensity of his longing could bring her back. “Please, doctor, check again, I’m sure she’s still alive!” Dr. Hutchinson looked at him with pity, but didn’t move.

  “No, no. It can’t be, not like this. There must be some mistake.” He repeated these words over and over, holding Lizzie to him and rocking her body in his arms. “She looks no different than when I left!”

  Finally Dr. Hutchinson came forward and pulled him away. “I’ll check again.” The doctor glanced over at Ford, who came forward and took Rossetti’s arm and led him away from the bed. The two friends stood staring at each other, waiting for the doctor’s pronouncement. When Dr. Hutchinson at last said, “No, there is no heartbeat,” Rossetti collapsed into Ford’s arms.

  “She was an angel on earth,” he muttered, nearly insensible. “And now I am cursed. I have killed her, and I am cursed.”

  The days leading up to Lizzie’s funeral were marked by a thousand heartbreaks. They endured the bureaucratic horror of the inquest, and the jury, either out of conviction or delicacy, ruled the death accidental and saved the families from scandal. Lizzie could be buried in consecrated ground. But despite the official pronouncement, doubt and rumors swirled among the friends who came to pay their respects at Chatham Place, where Lizzie was laid out. They murmured their sympathies to Rossetti, who nonetheless could sense their curiosity and condemnation, real and imagined.

  Ford never left his side. It was clear that Rossetti was not in his right mind, and Ford must have feared that if he were to leave his friend for even a moment, another tragedy might occur.

  Rossetti became childlike in his grief. He was convinced, more than once, that Lizzie was merely sleeping. Momentarily animated by hope, he would send for the doctor, only to suffer a crushing blow when Lizzie was once again pronounced dead. Lizzie did indeed look beautiful, but it was the beauty of a corpse: pale and peaceful. More peaceful, the mourners whispered, than she had ever looked in life.

  Just before they closed the coffin, Rossetti took a small leather-bound journal from his pocket and nestled it into the red hair that had first caught his eye, and which still shone bright, even in death.

  “Her Bible?” Ford asked.

  “My poems. I have no need of them now. I’ll never write poetry again.”

  “There is no other copy?” Ford asked. “Surely, in time . . .”

  “No. I was often working at those poems when Lizzie was ill and suffering, and I might have been attending to her. Now they shall go.”

  Ford begged him to reconsider, but Rossetti was adamant. “She was my wife,” he said. “And now she’s gone. I am no use without her.”

  Ruskin overheard them arguing and put an end to it. “Well, the feeling does him honor, at least. Let him do as he likes; it’s the least that he can do.”

  They buried her at Highgate, on a cold day that took pity on the mourners by shielding them from the sun with a dense gray fog. The Rossetti family plot was in a quiet corner of the cemetery, and the small band of friends and family shuffled down a damp path to gather at the foot of a modest grave. They laid Lizzie in the shade of an ash tree, under the benevolent eyes of a dozen stone angels, who perched atop the surrounding tombstones, handmaidens to the dead.

  The vicar led them in the Lord’s Prayer, and the mourners bowed their heads and said amen, and at last the coffin was lowered, slowly and finally, into the ground.

  Rossetti, who had been kept on his feet mainly by Ford’s and Ruskin’s steadying arms, dropped to his knees as the coffin was lowered. Behind him, he heard Mrs. Siddal begin to sob, and then the rustle of skirts as she was led away by Lydia and Emma Brown. No one from Lizzie’s family had spoken more than a few perfunctory words to him since her death. The service ended, and the last mourners threw dirt into the grave, muttering, “dust to dust.”

  Rossetti peered into the grave, overcome by the suffocating feeling that Lizzie was being buried alive. He turned to Ford and implored him, one last time: “Are you sure? Are you quite sure that she’s dead?” But he didn’t seem to expect an answer, and Ford just shook his head, saying, “Dante, she’s at peace now.”

  Ford stood by his side for another moment, and then, seeing that his friend needed a few moments alone, said, “I’ll wait for you by the carriages.”

  “And I?” Rossetti asked, once he was alone. “What peace am I to have?”

  But the graves were as silent as the dead whom they marked, and not even a breeze to rustle the ivy broke the quiet. The sky grew dark, and Rossetti felt the shadows gather around his heart. He couldn’t bring himself to throw dirt into the grave, and so he picked a poppy from the base of a nearby tomb and threw that instead.

  “Goodbye, my dove, my life, my love.” He turned and walked back to the road, each step leading him away from a grave that he carried with him just as surely as if she had been buried in the dark reaches of his own broken heart.

  EPILOGUE

  The house at Cheyne Walk was particularly gloomy at dusk, and Rossetti had neglected to light any lamps in his studio. It made little difference, he told himself, for his eyesight was failing, and he could paint in only the brightest daylight. He preferred the dimness, in any case, and the shadowy visitors that haunted the corners and whispered behind the drapes. She seemed closer that way, as if he could almost reach out and touch her.

  There was a knock at the door, and Fanny entered, carrying a tray. She placed it on his desk: a bottle of gin and two glasses. “Charles Howell is here.”

  “Send him in. And then go make yourself useful elsewhere.”

  Howell entered and sat down across the desk. He helped himself to a glass of gin and looked at Rossetti, who shook his head no. He’d taken a large dose of chloral to steady his nerves, and had no taste for drink.

  Howell leaned back in his chair and studied Rossetti through narrow, wolflike eyes. Rossetti felt himself shrink under Howell’s gaze. He shuddered, and then asked, warily, “Well, did you get it?”

  Howell straightened up and cleared his throat. He smiled blandly, getting down to business. “Yes. The Home Secretary has granted all the required permissions. He agreed that it was unnecessary to secure your mother’s signature, as owner of the plot, due to the very delicate nature of the proceedings, and the need for secrecy.”

  Rossetti nodded. Then they would go ahead with it, after all. “You’ve found men to help you?”

  “You may leave everything to me. Your presence, of course, will be absolutely unnecessary. I’ve consulted a doctor, who assures me that, in all likelihood, the body will be perfectly preserved.”

  Rossetti shuddered again. “I must insist on absolute secrecy. If people were to discover what I’ve done, I’d be ruined.”

  “It will all be very discreet,” Howell assured him. “We’ll go tonight, after dark, so as not to attract attention.”

  “Tonight?” Rossetti changed his mind and poured himself a glass of gin. “Well, why not, I suppose. There’s no point in putting it off. Lizzie herself would have been the first to approve, I think.” He nodded his head, as if he was convinced.

  He could see no other way. With his eyesight failing, he was desperate for the return of the poems that he had thrown into Lizzie’s grave. He needed them to round out a very thin volume that he was preparing for publication. “Art, after all, was the only thing that she ever felt for very seriously,” he went on dreamily. “I really think that if her ghost could
have returned those poems to me, I would have found them on my pillow the night that she was buried.”

  “I’ve no doubt,” Howell murmured, looking away. Then he stood. Before he left, he cleared his throat once more. “There is one last matter. As your agent, I am, of course, at your service for any small favor such as this. But the men must be paid, and there’s a fee for the consultation with the doctor.”

  “Yes, of course.” Rossetti snapped out of his reverie. “Pay them as you see fit. You may apply to my banker. As for yourself, if you are successful, I shall do a portrait of your wife, if you like, or any other drawing that suits your fancy.”

  Once again the gleam returned to Howell’s eyes. He glanced at a half-finished painting in the far corner of the studio. “And that one? Is she spoken for?”

  Rossetti followed his eyes and turned slightly paler.

  “Beata Beatrix, Beautiful Beatrice,” he whispered. “Lizzie.” And then, louder, “No. Not that one. Any other painting, but not that one.” He added, sheepishly, “I can’t seem to finish it anyway. I’m afraid it’s a failure.”

  “I see.” Howell had never met Lizzie, and did not recognize her in the half-finished painting. “Well then, I’ll report back to you when we’re finished.”

  In the blaze of a great fire, four men drove their shovels into the earth, each flinty strike bringing them closer to their morbid goal. Above them, the stone angels watched in silent protest. The men, no strangers to the lowest sort of work, were quiet tonight, with none of their usual banter to break the eerie silence. When they finally struck the coffin and hauled it up onto the grass, they crossed themselves and stared at the ground, unable to meet each other’s eyes.

  Charles Howell, who had been sitting on a nearby gravestone, came forward with a crowbar and began to pry the coffin open. With a great grunt, he brought his foot down on the crowbar and the coffin popped open. For a moment, everything was still. Then, with a sighing sound, a cloud of dust rose from the coffin.