The Chymical Wedding

by Lindsay Clarke

  Then the tone of the letter changed. This was a voice he recognized from their early days – winsome and thoughtful only for his welfare – a voice he had ever found impossible to refuse. She knew how very hard it must be for him alone. She was sure that those regrettable moments of bitterness were occasioned only by mutual distress. They had been right to believe that a separation would rekindle a more feeling apprehension of one another, for this had certainly been the case with her. If she asked now for a longer leave of absence, he would understand that it cost her quite as much in grief as must be the case for him. With her loyalties divided so, she hardly knew which way to turn. Would Edwin not remove at least one anxiety by acquiescing in another’s greater need? If her heart could find an easier way, she would not ask it, for she was always his affectionate and obedient wife.

  Frere read the letter and was ashamed. He had woken in shame and this had deepened it. Immediately, without pause for selfish reflection, he reached for his writing case and penned an understanding answer.

  At the Decoy Lodge, Louisa put down her pen, blotted the page, and stretched her slender arms widely away from her shoulders. Aches and cramps unwrinkled as she splayed her fingers in the air, playing a trill on an impossibly wide and high piano. It was done. The last word of the first draft was penned. She had achieved the end.

  She perused the final paragraphs once more:

  This then is the secret entrance to the shut palace of the king of which great Irenaeus spoke. This is the sixth celebratory day of the Chymical Wedding, and the seventh glorious action which transpires in the eighth chamber of the tower, from which, like Rosenkreutz, we had thought ourselves for ever excluded. Here may Christian and Pagan, Mahometan and Jew stand reconciled to hear the Warden of the Tower inform us that “no man never knoweth how well God intendeth him”.

  For here is the final key of Eudoxus, the last great act of the Hermetic Mystery, and those who have attained to this Perfection of the Stone speak always with a single voice. However shrouded in darkness their rich store of metaphor; however bewildering each gesture of their Art; and however fraught with inconsistency the legion of their volumes may appear to be, here is light unto our darkness, an end to all perplexity and the reconciliation of those contraries which give the human heart no peace. Here in the wedding of the Red King and the White Queen, of our Sulphur and our Mercury, of Sun and Moon, here is the grave and lovely celebration of true union which is the desire of every heart.

  It is the present author’s earnest wish that all who must now judge with what sincerity it is offered will accept this humble invitation to attend.

  Did she need that second “here” in the penultimate sentence, she wondered. Well, for the moment, let it stand. There was much in any case that must be revised, and it would take time, but that was secondary work, the fettling of her stone. The main burden was lifted now, the long ground covered, her truth told.

  She put the last page with the others, got up from her desk, and stepped out of the door of the Lodge. It was a clear, sharp day. She could hear the coarse bustle of the rooks among the elms. The crisp Norfolk air lucidly revealed all things.

  Louisa was at peace with herself and very tired. She would sleep long and let her mind lie fallow before returning with fresh vigour to completion of her task. In the meantime she was sure her father would be pleased by her achievement. Sure too that the other for whom, of late, the book had secretly been written would soon find comfort there.

  It was impossible to think of him without a smile, though the smile was wistful, touched with sadness, for the brief meeting in the porch had brought her gently back to earth. It had returned him from her dreams to where he belonged in the waking world. It declared him rector of the parish, married man and friend.

  Not for a moment did the realization diminish her devotion, but that too was returned to its proper place within the secrecy of her soul. That was where it had first struck root, and so covertly she had scarce been aware of it herself, but it had grown there and sustained her as she worked alone. It had heartened in the knowledge of what was truly possible between a woman and a man, and no more than she would question the generality of that knowledge could she deny its source in the particular individual who had inspired it. But in his living presence that day at the church – his unconscious living presence – Louisa saw how she had allowed herself to confuse the possible and the inevitable. Desire, bred of her own solitude, had occasioned that confusion. It was her wilderness-temptation, and she had withstood it.

  She had done more than that: she had converted its energy to the enrichment of her book. It flowed through the pages like an underground stream, though none but she would ever divine it there. Without that flow she would have accomplished no more than a stimulating but finally arid tract, and if it was fecund now then the harvest was entirely due to his unconscious presence in her heart. If no more than a word of polite affection might ever pass between them in the waking world, she lived now in the modest hope that the world would profit from the words they had exchanged in dream. And if, in consequence, she must seem to invite the world to a wedding where there was, for her, no actual bride, no actual groom, then this was the price exacted of her. She would not shrink from payment.

  Somewhere she had always known her destiny a lonely one, and she would be less than human if the heart failed to ache at its acceptance, but from the very moment of her birth, life had gifted her with privilege. This one shall be fortunate, it said, for though she will know the pangs of solitude, she will find riches there, and prosper in the sharing of its joys. And what she might openly share with him was solace in his loneliness, and the promise of great meaning in the trials he endured. It would be bound there in the pages of her book. He would open it between his hands and there he would discover himself.

  Standing on the jetty, Louisa Agnew looked into the waters of the lake. No, this was no dead sea, though tideless now and lonely, and in this moment there was nothing to be seen there but her own reflection shaking like a banner in the wind.

  Darkness inhabited the mind of Edwin Frere. The impulse of tender regret with which he had answered his wife’s last approach had not long survived the arrival of another letter from Cambridge.

  It came from a college friend who had encountered Emilia at a soirée in the Frogmore house. He was writing to express his sympathies that the Munding living had proved so ill-starred. Though the loss of the child was a great sadness, it must be patiently borne, but that Norfolk had proved so singularly dismal did not greatly surprise the writer. Had he not expressed his own reservations at the time? Yet it must be duller even than he feared if Edwin was considering the abrogation of his well-known views against absentee incumbency. Nevertheless, he was sure that the appointment of a curate was the wisest course. He was relieved to hear of it, for Edwin’s excellent mind would be better employed in Cambridge circles and, as far as this correspondent was concerned, he had been sorely missed. Could he look forward to an early resumption of their encounters over the chessboard? It had certainly given him much pleasure to play the rattle with Emilia again.

  Frere stared at the letter aghast. So that was what she was about! He had been beguiled. At this very moment perhaps Emilia was smiling over his contrite response to her last letter, satisfied that her hidden – how long-laid? – plans were proceeding apace. She had abandoned him here in cold deliberation, knowing that sooner or later his will must weaken, and that, if she held out long enough in her Cambridge fastness, he would join her there with his tail between his legs. Well, she was wrong. His affectionate and obedient wife must be taught a lesson.

  Yet could he write again so soon, countermanding the ignorant act of generosity and insisting upon her immediate return? To what end? To resume hostilities again? To have her sour the atmosphere of the house? To play upon his guilt by harping on her father’s need? It would be intolerable. No, now that he was apprised of the facts, he too must be cunning. He must stay his hand, allow her s
ufficient rope whereby she would eventually be embarrassed by the long separation. And then, in his own good time, he would draw her back.

  As to the friend’s letter, let it go unanswered. If truth were told, he had never greatly cared for the fellow. He suspected that the man quietly smirked to see Frere once again turn tail. He should not be given the satisfaction. Let them both stew in their juice.

  Yet Frere’s was not a calculating spirit. The energy required for silent intrigue demoralized him. He had been compromised out of character by anger and circumstance, and fretted uneasily, for there was no constancy in him. When he considered how even his own good nature had proved treacherous, he recoiled from righteous anger into gloom. What a vacillating mind was his, how unstable the motions of his heart!

  Beyond the sham of his public appearances he was now immensely lonely. His wife was more than a few score miles away – she inhabited a different world. He felt deeply abandoned, and there was a self-regarding sensuality to his loneliness which left him increasingly distraught, for once he had opened the door of his bedchamber upon demons, it would not close again. There too he had been beguiled. With what charms, what consolatory allure, the first of them had come into him! Such a harmless creature to dally with! But she had friends, and they were not so harmless. He knew because he had encountered them before in India.

  Yet like the host of a party sliding from control, he seemed powerless to eject them. They were too subtle for him. Even when he opened his Bible, he found himself drawn to the rapturous verses of that Song of Songs which is Solomon’s. Try as he might, he could no longer persuade himself that its sensual hymn was to be taken only as a metaphor of Christ’s love for his bride, the Church. He could not truly believe it. No more than he could believe his own restless stirrings a displaced desire for spiritual union with his parishioners – with Mrs Bostock, with Eliza Waters, even – God help him – with his own absent wife.

  When he turned from this profanation of the Scriptures, it was to seek solace in what had long been a secret love and vice – his affection for the verses of Catullus. They seemed to answer the passion of his soul. They gave voice both to his frustrated tenderness and to the obverse rancour of his spleen. Yet he was terrified by the dreadful plea at the end of the Attis, and could cry out with the poet that madness be kept from his door.

  Night after night he was compromised by the treason of his dreams, though not all those dreams were vile. There were moments when he sensed the possibility of an innocent nakedness again, a stripping away of all that had fouled the appetite for life. Briefly the sense of a separate self dissolved. One luxuriated in sunlit exuberance, like the leaves and tendrils of some exotic vine. It was a condition where one made no demands, for there were no demands to make. One experienced no lust, for all that was needful was there, available, unresisting. In that realm nothing was calculated, and the only speech was sensual speech. But they were moments only. When one woke, it was into yearning again, and loneliness.

  His greatest need was simply to be touched. Physically touched. For weeks, months now, his body had inhabited a sensory vacuum in which he touched no one and no one touched him. Even in the sacring of the mass there was no immediate contact save through the medium of the wafer and the communion chalice. There were times when his heart longed for the restitution of that ancient sacrament, the kiss of peace, but it was not to be, and in his daily life no more than a brief handshake actualized his membership of the human race. In the house the servants skirted round him, considerate enough, but keeping their distant station. His body wilted in long quarantine, and it was for that reason that the gentle momentary press of Amy Larner’s hand lingered in his memory. In a world devoid of touch, its impact had been devastatingly sexual.

  Yet how innocent was his need, and how perverse the consequences of its frustration. Amy’s touch had felt like transgression, and it opened the door on darker transgressions. He was intoxicated on his own loneliness. He crowded it with phantoms – a dissolute concubinage of dreams from which he woke in shame and despair. It was despicable, this reeling between appetite and disgust. Humiliating, for his narrow sin was worse in its way than Matthew Stukely’s. At least the old reprobate had not lacked the courage to act on his desire; in taking Amy Larner to his bed there had been some gesture of relationship. Frere made love to no one but himself.

  He had hoped that this temporary separation would restore his integrity. He had hoped to cleanse himself of resentment, to recover his singularity so that he might rededicate himself to his marriage. It was not happening. Each night, and sometimes now by day, a throng of lechers revelled in his brain. His virtue was exhausted by them. The secret knowledge of it vitiated every word he spoke.

  A third letter came in answer:

  My dearest Edwin,

  You will be sensible how great my relief to receive your last most welcome reply. I wish you also to know how abundant my joy to hear you speak as your noble self again. Surely this restoration of tenderness must justify events? Though indeed, could you see how my dear father prospers in my care, no other vindication of our sacrifice would be needed.

  He remains, however, frail. In all good conscience I dare not yet set a date on my return. It is a consolation to know that you are well, and that you have been strengthened in your understanding of the need for this unanticipated prolongation of our time apart.

  Be assured that every night you are remembered in my prayers as I know I am in yours, and trust that in all things I remain,

  your affectionate and obedient wife,

  Emilia

  Frere read the letter twice, and scrumpled it.

  Even as the days began to lengthen into spring, his nights grew darker. He was tempted once – just once – to seek some comfort in Amy Larner’s embrace. He had wondered whether a note might not be sent by that same hand which had once delivered one. It might be phrased innocently enough – a regret that he had seemed a little brusque on their last meeting… an interest to hear more about her progress…

  He was reaching for his writing case when he recoiled in revulsion. Great God, what was he thinking of? But it required no more than a moment’s self-scrutiny to recognize this hasty scurrying for virtue as mere sham. His revulsion was not moral – it was aesthetic. Amy Larner with her dumpy figure and crabapple cheeks was not the Shulamite of his dreams. And even as that bleak thought crossed his mind, he saw an ironic demon grin at his distress.

  He was contemptible, and there was no one to whom he could open his heart. Even were someone by, his tongue would scald in his mouth before it could utter his degradation. It was this knowledge which prevented him from seeking counsel through his fellow clergymen. Cuthbert of Thrandeston would merely remind him of the fires of hell; Jackman at Shippenhall had time for no one’s cares but his own; and the meek heart of Canon Ivory would quail at the first word.

  George Herbert might have understood – he must himself have experienced such inward clamours to speak of them so aptly. But George Herbert was long dead, and his little book had become for Frere no more than a rebuke to his failure. He was alone.

  Of late he had found himself washing obsessively, as if soap and water could cleanse a soul that wallowed nightly in the sensual mire. Yet the ablutions had been performed almost unconsciously, and when he woke to the futility of the thing, despair renewed itself. He was a whited sepulchre. He was abomination, for he knew that if Christ himself stood before him now saying, “Go thy way and sin no more,” he could not do it.

  He despaired, and despaired at his own despair. And that too was indulgence. The circles of this hell were endless, for each time he thought he must have plummeted the depths, a further twist appeared. Then he hit upon a desperate remedy – to be athletic in his viciousness in the hope that it might be exhausted. If the demons would come whether he willed them or not, then let them come. He would dance on their pitchforks, willingly embrace their petticoats of flame.

  On those terms they would not play.
He was merely observing himself trying to be sinful. For a brief elated moment he thought he had banished them and won; then he saw that only a kind of mortal coldness had come from his effort at acceptance.

  These days his words rang emptily. Service after service was conducted without reverence or feeling. He might as well have recited the logarithmic tables as read the liturgy. He made use of sermons not of his own composition, and whatever meaning they may have held for their composers, they held none for him. And none, he suspected, for the grave white faces staring up at him. This was service that was no service. He served nothing. Alone he was without meaning, yet he dreaded, each Sunday at the church door, that someone might invite him into their company. In particular he found the troubled smile and gentle enquiries of Miss Agnew scarcely possible to bear.

  Prowling his study one night, he saw that this sham must cease. The secret war with Emilia must end. He must write to her, not in anger or rebuke, but plainly begging her immediate return.

  And if she would not come? If she used his sincere confession of disarray as a further weapon in her campaign to bring him back to Cambridge, what then?

  Dear God forbid it, but she might in the end be right. It might be necessary once more to concede defeat. But not yet, not yet. With his wife beside him again he might yet win through. At least he must try.

  He took out his writing case from the desk drawer and stared down at the blank sheet. Each sentence he rehearsed in his mind was a lie. Any sentiment that did not rankle with bitterness was a lie. Finally, with a strict, despairing pang of honesty, he saw that it was because he did not truly wish her back.

  There could be no comfort in her. No more than Amy Larner was Emilia now the lady of his dreams. She was barely even the wife of his bosom. She would bring nothing but sedition back from Cambridge with her. If he took her to his bed, their bones would rattle together. She would repine beneath him like an invalid. He would never dare to unlock the secret of his heart and it would burn and fester there, for neither of them dared address the truth. They would lie together as they lay together, effigies on the catafalque of their marriage. Better to burn alone. He would not beg for what he did not desire.