The Chymical Wedding

by Lindsay Clarke

  “With patience.”

  “As I must suffer the judgement you have passed on me?”

  “Emilia, I have passed no judgement…”

  “Have you not said you find me contrary and tiresome?”

  “Were we not to speak of that?”

  “I cannot bear your silence.”

  “It is you who have imposed it.”

  “See, there is hatred even in your voice.”

  “No,” Frere hotly exclaimed. “What you take for hatred is despair.”

  “Then you despair of me?”

  “Emilia… I think that this will drive me…”

  “Yes, what will it do? Come, out with it, sir. Let us see the selfish heart that lies beneath your parson’s vestments.”

  “Emilia,” he pleaded, “we were never so…”

  “In Cambridge?”

  “…before…”

  “We were not here before. In this dreadful place where there is not a soul that truly cares for me. How dare you seek relief in protestations of a coming madness? You have played that game before, sir. It is done. Yours is not now the need. If anyone shall go mad here, it is I.”

  “Emilia…”

  “I am your prisoner here. You are less my husband now than judge and jailer. You shackle me in a pretence of care and tell me I must bear all patiently while secretly you rejoice to see me suffer.”

  “Dear God, it is not so.”

  “Then take me away. Take me away from this barren wilderness.”

  Frere’s hand was clutching at his hair. Was he again to abandon his mission, to collapse in ignominious defeat as once in India? To turn tail and run, become again a worthless shadow of himself? Did the woman know what she was asking? Was she, in cold deliberation, unpicking every thread that held his life together? O God forgive him, for she was right – he had, in truth, begun to hate her.

  “I cannot do that,” he said. “I cannot do that.”

  Hopelessly he looked across at her and saw only a stone mask. For a hideous moment it merged with the features of the abominable idol on his church. Here was the dreadful shadow that had always hung across his ministry. Here was the admission with no exit. He remembered the hollow thud with which the first shovelfuls of earth had fallen on Will Yaxley’s coffin. Sweet Christ, was there no escape from this?

  “You would rather see me suffer?” she demanded. Frere looked up at her in desperation. “You leave me no room to breathe…”

  “Oh come, sir, enough of this. It is I, not you, who lack air, scope… meaning in my days. Have you forgotten how you pranced about the ice while I lay bleeding? How you continued to spread sweetness and light through other homes while I lay in that darkened room alone upstairs? How you fobbed me off with that rude beast of a physician, and even conspired with my own sister to free yourself of me? And now you bid me hold my peace and suffer patiently the insults that you heap upon my family. You are unkind, sir. I have kinder friends elsewhere.”

  “Then be gone to them, damn you,” Frere shouted from his frustration, his misery and rage. “If I have failed you so utterly, be gone, for I am at my wit’s end with your wretchedness…”

  He fled, heart pounding, uncoated, into the pitch-black night outside.

  Louisa put down her pen and read what she had written:

  So confident now the vigour of our ingenuity, so beguiling its productions, that we scarcely pause to wonder how the Science with which we so excite ourselves has added not a jot to, nor subtracted any portion from, the Wisdom of Antiquity. Of another order, of another world even, that Wisdom patiently abides, and by its light the science of our age – investigative of, dependent on, the contingencies of the external world – appears a dark lantern indeed. Our earthly power, our speed, our comforts and the satisfaction of our mortal appetites – all these things increase. Yet ever the dreadful question rises: to what end? What profits all our ingenuity if this, the fundamental challenge, stands unanswered and unsearched?

  As the very name attests, the ancient Doctors of Philosophy loved Wisdom, and Wisdom is in no manner to be found amongst externals. Wisdom’s Law, writ plain upon the temple wall at Delphi, has but a single clause: it is to know thyself. Yet if the proper study of mankind is man, we have neglected it. Not so the alchemist; for Man, we boldly now affirm, is the true laboratory of the Hermetic Art. He is its subject, he the alembick, he the Stone; and true Self-knowledge is the motive, mode and object of the Work.

  She sighed, pinched her eyes, then thrust the paper aside. Too densely writ. At once too abstract and too explicit. Neither allusive nor provocative enough. It would not do.

  And who was she to speak of Wisdom – she whose thoughts ran ever counter to her argument? How had she ever dared to dream herself the equal of this task?

  Once more she tried to summon her glorious ancestor to her aid. What would he have to say to her now in this pass? She imagined a hand at her shoulder, that gentle voice saying, “Come, sweet chuck, plague not thy mind with doubt. You have but wrought yourself unto the pitch of weariness, which ever was the way with us philosophers.” But it was to the modern age that she must speak, not one long past. And the tone she had adopted in this passage was too Olympian for that. Her words must speak personally or they would have only the same effect as any general admonition: precious little. But when she wrote directly, person to person, there was only one face that with increasing frequency presented itself for audience; and, when she looked on him, all objectivity was gone. She erred, back from the symbolic plane to the literal. At the thought of him, forbidden though that thought was, she no longer wanted to say these things; she wanted to be them.

  All error arises, she strove to remind herself, when the worker works not with the proper substance. And where should that be found except in venerable Nature? She had been too long in this chair. How long was it since she had been out to observe the motions of the light across the lake? Far too long.

  Louisa tidied away the papers on her desk and went out into the day.

  A sprightly breeze teased the surface of the lake, and though there was a frostiness to the blue against which a gull bent crisp white wings, at her own less exalted altitude the air was not so chill as to make her shiver. There was, rather, a surprising warmth to the afternoon sunlight, for the year had been unfolding while she worked indoors, and so exclusive had been her concentration, so absorbing each feature of the terrain on which her introspective thoughts had opened, she had failed to observe the alterations of the light, the comings and goings of the rooks and the way – this day at least – all things were breathing easily. If the fresh, delectable smell that cleansed her senses now was not quite yet of spring, it might soon, she thought, be made to answer for its promises.

  Reflecting on the evident elation of the trees, one ought – she felt – to experience a responsive lightness of heart, yet she did not. She was too wistful for that, and though the emotion was accompanied by an almost pleasurable sensation, it was not enough to mitigate a suddenly oppressive solitude. Restlessness, which vented itself in small, intermittent and unoccasioned sighs, came between her and peace, and, strangely, for there were no censorious eyes about her, she was troubled by the thought of her appearance. She had been less fastidious of late than was her wont, and was weary of this dress which she had worn for three – or was it four? – days now. In a previous life such negligence would have been unthinkable. And there was a waxiness to her complexion which her fingertips detected, even if she had given the mirror no more than a passing critical glance. She was becoming dull. Even her powers of speech might have rusted from long silence.

  What, she wondered, did this long work profit her if at the end of it she was no more than a shadow of her former self? After the final sentence was written and the last page blotted, she could conceive only of a great emptiness in which she would be for ever at a loss for things to do. Time itself must prove a tiresome condition. She would fret among its opportunities like a returned traveller in t
he certainty that nothing in the familiar scheme of things could equal the intensities she had experienced here. For a man such as her father the satisfactions of the inward realm might be enough, but for a woman – at least, for one such as she knew herself to be – true vitality resided in confluence with energies outside herself, and she would no longer be able to content herself with the old, almost juvenile connections. The revelation of her powers had brought with it the desire that those appetites be met and matched by the equivalent enthusiasms of a kindred spirit, and completion – it seemed to her now – was not merely a matter of singularity: it must inhere between.

  Yet such reflections returned her, as did so much else, into the insubstantial theatre of dream, which was the only world in which those yearnings could be explored and given form, and the price of that, on return to circumambient reality, was this vexatious restlessness. And, deeper – she must learn to reconcile herself to this – a sadness which was finally unrequitable.

  For some time Louisa stood at the jetty, gazing out across the water but not towards the Hall. Her eyes were fixed in a more northerly direction, west of the Mount, to the tree-line which concealed the village of Munding. The breeze tugged at the skirts of her dress and disarrayed her hair. It seemed to carry on its breath no answer. She shook her head, then turned, her attention caught by the wings of a heron flagging slowly across the lake towards the distant heronry. She was so rapt at the sight that only after it was gone did she become aware that she too was observed. She turned, alert, then smiled to see Tilly standing arms akimbo on the lawn outside the Lodge.

  “So this is how they deal with pressin’ business this side the lake?”

  “Tilly, dearest. You have found me longing for company.”

  “I thought that were time you had some fresh greens here… and a delicacy or two. And I did fancy a walk, though I had forgot how far a turn it is round the lake.”

  “Then you must put up your feet and I shall serve you tea, and we shall talk and talk before I row you back the easy way.”

  “Don’t hold with boats,” said Tilly dubiously. “What with the drownin’ in the Bure ’n’ all.”

  “I promise I shan’t let you drown. Not at least till I have all your news.”

  Relieved that Louisa no longer looked quite so fraught and bleached as she had expected to find her, Mrs Tillotson smiled. Gossip was indeed on her mind – she had missed her occasional hour of mardle with the mistress – and as she sat down in the Lodge, tutting silently at its spartan comforts, she was pleased enough to embark on a long excursion into parish tattle. There was Will Yaxley’s death to shake one’s head over… and who was to keep a proper watch on that young scamp Sam now that Will was gone? Though he’d been an evil-tempered sot, the man had always kept a weather eye out for the boy. Then there was the brawl in Shippenhall Crown last Friday night, with two men bleeding and the constable called out, and one of the injured Sarah Pye’s young man. He were a wild’n that Jim Haycock – Tilly had grown tired of telling Sarah so, but would the innocent mawther listen? She would not. One might as well talk to the wall. Also Louisa would be relieved to hear that the boy Wharton was now making fish eyes at Fanny Hethersett, the solicitor’s daughter in Saxburgh, who was turning out a fine young madam with nothing more certain on her mind than the making of a handsome match.

  Tilly saved for the last her prize piece of intelligence – after all, she was not a one to spread mere gossip, though what else could one do with it? Nevertheless she had heard – though she couldn’t for gospel-sure swear on it, because who knew what Mrs Bostock wouldn’t say? – but her maid had heard Mrs B. tell Liza Waters that all was far from well at Munding Rectory.

  It took a little time to establish the credentials of this information (it had come from the vegetable-hawker who was sweet on the housemaid at the Rectory) before Tilly came to the point. “Now I don’t say as it is so, but the talk is of Mrs Frere packin’ her bags and makin’ off her way for Cambridge. And that poor Mr Frere – why, such a gentle soul, wouldn’t you think? – but there have been raised voices thereabouts and the parson driven to bad language by the woman’s mobbin’ him so.”

  Louisa returned her eyes to the kettle where it hissed on the hob. “I fear she has never settled here in Munding. After her misfortune…”

  “Which she have made a stick to beat the parson’s back with, if I may make so bold. To my way of thinkin’ there’s a hard woman lie behind that fussin’ ’n’ faintin’. If she be high-tailin’ it for Cambridge then it’s ’cos she wills it so.”

  Louisa strove to inject into her tone no more than the appropriate concern. “And Mr Frere? How is he coping with this distress?”

  A little surprised not to have been berated for dealing in rumour, Tilly shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Not half the man he were before that black day on the lake. He walk about like a soul stark-dazed. That’s not a happy business, you can be sure. I’m told there’s two beds slept in there at nights. And now there’s a hard Lent lie afore that man.”

  Louisa poured more tea. The cup chattered a little to the saucer as she handed it to Tilly. “Has no one befriended him?”

  “Why now, no one like to interfere. That’s hardly anybody’s place to come between a parson and his wife.”

  Louisa was obliged to agree, and then fell silent. For the moment Tilly herself had nothing more to say, and both women might have been meditating on the woe that is in marriage, but one of them was not. Eventually Louisa looked up and stilled her breath. “And is it certain that Mrs Frere will leave?”

  “All I know for sure,” Tilly answered, “is that there’s letters come and gone ’twixt Munding and Cambridge, and that there’s talk of it. As to the rest, the good Lord only know.”

  That last remark of Tilly’s was not quite accurate. Even as she made it, Mary, the parlour maid at the Rectory, had her ear pressed to the panelled door of the drawing room where Frere and his wife were coldly agreeing that things could not continue so.

  “I think it best,” Frere said, “that you take advantage of Hattie’s invitation now. You seem to be quite strong enough for the journey.”

  “Is that what you wish?” his wife replied.

  Frere paused before answering. Steady as his voice had been, he could scarcely believe that he was saying this. He knew that more than a temporary remission was imminent in his wife’s departure. Who could say now where this would end? They had hurt one another badly, and forgiveness was no longer a simple gesture. Everything remained too hot and murky for that, and if it might cool with this separation, it might also freeze over.

  There was a sense in which Frere was already alone, and in bidding his wife leave for a time he was merely actualizing that solitude. Yet, frankly, the prospect unnerved him. Since his desperate return from India, he and Emilia had rarely been apart. She had been the agent of his recovery, the guarantor of his continued well-being. Alone again, in this great Rectory which now housed such unhappy memories, who knew what shadows might return? Yet life was presently impossible. There appeared to be no choice between a sham solitude and the real.

  “It is plainly what you desire,” he said. “I shall not stand in your way.”

  “You will not accompany me?”

  To what end? Why must she complicate things so?

  Such was his impatient thought. He said: “We must pray that a time away from here will alter your present perspective on our life together, and allow you to return in a more affirmative spirit.”

  “Then I am dismissed?”

  “Dear God, Emilia, I would not have chosen this.”

  “But you do. By placing your parish over me you have always done so. It seems I have no choice other than to comply.”

  “I cannot believe,” Frere exclaimed, “that there can be any prolonged and deep-seated conflict between love and Christian duty. I pray that in your absence you will come to agree.”

  Emilia Frere, tight-lipped, conceded nothing.

&nbs
p; “You will return for Easter, I presume?” he said.

  “If you wish it. If you find my presence tolerable by then.”

  “Emilia, is not this hard enough that you must injure me so?”

  “Is that what you will tell the parish – that I have injured you? I see I shall have a cold reception on my return.”

  “The parish shall know nothing other than that you are on an extended visit with your family.”

  “Do you imagine that your hang-dog look does not already speak volumes more?”

  “You have not been alone in suffering.”

  Emilia sighed – perhaps in impatience, perhaps in belated recognition that all this profited nothing. “Well I, at least,” she said, “have some consideration for others than myself. How will you manage in my absence? I know you are less firm of purpose than you would have me believe. You made a poor showing the last time you were alone.”

  What had he done that she should come to despise him so completely? He looked away, trembling. “I shall have a care for myself.”

  “You will need help.”

  “I have my work.”

  “You had your work before. It was not enough.”

  Was this, he wondered, some further cunning effort to unman him? Dear God, how well this woman knew his weaknesses, how completely he was delivered up into her hands! Had she preserved him from those demons only now to loose them back on him?

  She saw her advantage in his frailty, and could afford now to soften her tones. “You will accept a word of counsel?” she enquired.

  Dumbly he waited.

  “The good Lord knows there are few enough compassionate hearts in this parish,” she said. “However, should you have need for comfort – and I greatly fear you will – it has been my experience that Miss Agnew is not without charity. If you are in difficulties, you must approach her.”

  “I would not seek to…”

  “You must promise me that, or I swear I could not in good conscience leave at all.”

  Frere weighed his present choices with a heavy heart. “I shall remember,” he murmured, “…should occasion arise.”