One day, the great American thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the founder of transcendentalism, on a lecture tour of England and Scotland, came calling.
Emerson was forty years old, tall, spare, hooked-nosed, but his voice was surprisingly gentle and sweet. When Charles introduced them, he told her he’d been reading Indian philosophy and it had had a great effect on him. He asked what the most important book she had read was, and she said Rousseau’s Confessions. “It was the same for me,” he told her. Later, when she and Charles were alone, he mentioned that Emerson had praised her. “ ‘Your friend has such a calm, serious soul,’ he said.”
Another visitor to Rosehill was Edward Noel, a cousin of Lord Byron’s. Noel was a short-haired man with a wide, warm smile. He owned an estate on a Greek island where he was instituting the latest agricultural reforms and trying to improve relations between peasants and landowners. He’d built stone houses for his laborers to replace their hovels. Noel also had a home in Devonshire, in Bishops Teignton. His wife, Fanny, had consumption. He came to Rosehill alone with his three children or by himself. Marian noticed that he seemed especially close to Cara, and when the children arrived she always ran to greet them and made a fuss over them. She also noticed Cara and Noel were often alone in a corner of the drawing room in intense conversation, or strolling together in the garden.
When the weather grew warmer, the guests gathered under the huge acacia tree, talking and debating and laughing, and Hannah, the cook, a full-breasted girl with a complexion as soft and pink as a peach, prepared delicious picnics for them all of salmon and cold chicken and champagne.
At the center of it all was Charles, the sun around whom the entire household revolved.
One day, none other than Charles Hennell himself arrived. He was frail, melancholy-looking, with long, corkscrew curls, heavy-lidded, sensual eyes, rimless glasses, and cupid lips. Marian sat down beside him. “Your book’s been very important to me,” she told him. “Especially your conclusion that just because the Scriptures are myths doesn’t mean that they don’t have a beneficial influence.”
Hennell’s face lit up. “I’m very flattered,” he said. “I seldom meet anyone who’s even read the thing. I’m afraid it hasn’t sold very many copies, though a few of my coreligionists have taken me to task, saying it’s better to abandon Jesus altogether than to question the authority of the Bible.”
There was a swirl of young men around her now, young men unlike any she’d ever known, brilliant people, people who, like her, read different languages, and knew philosophy, mathematics, and science. They seemed fascinated by her learning, so unusual for a woman, and by the way she fearlessly challenged them. She was conscious that she made her voice low and musical. She felt herself opening up to them in a slow, almost painful way, as if she were a bud whose petals were being inexorably forced apart by sunlight and warmth. What did it mean that these men loved to talk to her? Were they drawn to her as a woman? Or was she simply like another man to them?
Charles Hennell came again to Rosehill and joined them in their musical evenings, playing the viola while she and Cara alternated on the piano. She was moved by him, by his delicate looks, his sensual eyes and mouth, and by the courage it must have taken him, an ordinary man, not a scholar, to question the Bible, and still to reaffirm Christian belief. She tried to make herself pretty for him, to comb her hair neatly, though it always escaped her efforts to tame it. She put on a little coral necklace that she’d inherited from her mother. Perhaps he liked her? She couldn’t tell. He was always warm, and grateful to discuss his book. When they played music, his wan features flushed as he sawed away merrily on his viola.
Then, a young woman with astonishing long, red hair arrived at Rosehill. She entered the room filling it with her presence, a cynosure. Her name was Rufa Brabant.
Marian asked, politely, the natural question, “How did you come by your name, ‘Rufa’?”
“My real name’s Rebecca,” she said. “But my father was a friend of Coleridge and he gave me the nickname because of my hair,” she said, tossing her mane about her shoulders, perfectly aware, Marian thought, of her beauty. “I knew him when I was little. Actually, he used my name twice in his poems. She laughed. “From Rufa’s eye sly Cupid shot his dart,” she recited. “And left it sticking in Sangarado’s heart. / No quiet from that moment has he known, / And peaceful sleep has from his eyelids flown.”
This Rufa was not only stunning and had known Coleridge himself, but she was obviously learned too. “I’m translating Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu for Mr. Hennell,” she told Marian. David Friedrich Strauss was one of a group of German theologians who, like Charles Hennell, had begun questioning the historical truth of the Bible and the divinity of Jesus. “Mr. Hennell doesn’t read German but he’s heard about the book and asked me to do it.”
Marian could feel herself disliking this beautiful creature.
Later Cara told her, “My poor brother, Charles, is completely in love with Rufa, but her father’s forbidden the marriage. He’s a doctor and he insisted on giving him a physical examination and discovered he’s got weak lungs.”
Then, the next day, Charles Hennell himself drove up to the house. He walked right past Marian and went immediately to Rufa, took both her hands in his, and they went outside into the garden. Marian, watching them from the French window, saw them walking down the hill, their heads bent closely together.
Disappointment settled over her like a dull wave.
Meanwhile, Charles Bray told her enthusiastically, “You’ve got the temperament of genius. You’re the most delightful companion I’ve ever known.” She’d utter an idea and Charles would praise it as if it were the most brilliant thing in the world. He was writing a book about religion, he said, and he’d been reading Spinoza, about his ideas on the nature of God. But he didn’t know enough Latin to translate it properly. “I have a little Latin,” she told him. “From church. Perhaps I could help you.” And she rendered some of Spinoza’s Latin phrases into readable English for him.
Sometimes they argued violently. Charles insisted that all religion was simply superstition.
“But you can’t say that!” she insisted, even though she herself had given up on organized religion. “People would just kill each other if it weren’t for religion.”
As they argued, Charles would look deep into her face and smile amusedly, infuriating her. But then the next day, they’d make up.
They talked constantly about the turmoil in the city below, the devastating effect on the workers of the constant fluctuation in ribbon prices. In the winter months, work was at a virtual standstill, families were cold and hungry, and parents couldn’t afford to send their children to school. Charles believed in the necessity of a fundamental change in the very nature of society.
But she’d seen what change could do when it came too quickly, that time, when she was thirteen and had ridden into Nuneaton that day with her father and seen the workingmen rioting over the Reform Act, and the Scots Greys riding through the crowd and bludgeoning them. She was still her father’s daughter, she realized; the conservative ways of the countryside had their hold on her. “Change can’t be too abrupt,” she said to Charles. “All those old rural virtues, people’s sense of obligation toward one another, the rhythms of the harvest and tenancy, those are ancient ties that bind people.”
“That’s called serfdom,” Charles said.
As they walked arm in arm, she could feel his elbow pressed against the side of her breast. He made no attempt to pull it away, and she didn’t move away either, because if she did, it would be an acknowledgment that his arm shouldn’t be there, and that she’d noticed it. And besides, she liked it there, his closeness to her.
One summer evening, as they sat apart in the darkness of the garden, Charles told her, “Cara and I have a special arrangement. We believe our marriage bond is so strong that nothing can break it. From the beginning, we’ve said that if we were drawn to other people, our love could wit
hstand it.”
“Drawn to other people?” What did he mean? Did he mean sexually?
She could feel him, in the darkness, scrutinizing her for her reaction.
“You mean —” she said, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“We’re free to be intimate with other people.”
“That’s awful!” she said.
“Not at all. Cara’s developed an attachment to Edward Noel.”
She remembered Cara’s solicitousness toward Noel and his children. Noel’s wife, Fanny, was increasingly ill, and Cara had been going to Bishops Teignton for days at a time to help Noel nurse her.
But how could Charles bear the thought of Cara intimate with someone else? And did he have someone for himself?
She found herself watching Cara and Charles in a new way, trying to understand. How could they love each other if they were taking other people as lovers? How could they not be jealous of each other? Why would they be married if not because they’d committed themselves wholly to each other?
She sensed there was significance in Charles’s telling her about his and Cara’s “arrangement.” But could it really be that he was saying he wanted her? Not possible. He wasn’t attracted to her at all, except that he loved to talk to her.
A week later, it was a stiflingly hot day, the height of the summer heat in July, the intense heat that came only once or twice each year. Her father was resting in his room at Bird Grove and Marian made her way through the fields to Rosehill, the meadows dry, the grass golden brown, the insects buzzing around her.
As she rang the bell of the house, it seemed unusually quiet. The maid said that Mrs. Bray had gone to Bishops Teignton to see Mr. Noel, and the servants had retired to their quarters, driven in by the heat. Mr. Bray was in his study.
She knocked on the study door and from within came his answering call. As she entered, the room was dark, the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun. He was sitting in the shadows behind his desk. There was a green velvet divan on which he took his afternoon rest, an oriental rug thrown over it, and great, soft pillows piled upon it. His books were stacked untidily on the shelves and newspapers piled on the floor around him. Behind the desk, a great, stuffed owl was mounted on a pedestal, and there was a marble bust of a Greek maiden, the tip of her nose broken off, her neck long and graceful, her hair curling in tendrils about her face.
“Ah — there she is!” cried Charles, rising to greet her. “My soul mate. Do you know, I believe I have an affinity with you unlike any I have ever had with another person.”
She felt a sudden danger in the rush of his words, in his naked declaration in the isolation of the room, at this new closeness to him. “Thank you,” she said warily. It was true that it sometimes seemed, in the excitement of their mutual understanding and in the intensity of their conversation, as if there were no boundaries between them.
She stood across the room from him, dwarfed by the high ceiling. He came closer. They were several feet apart. He studied her, taking her in from head to foot in a way he never had before. Then he came forward, reached out suddenly, took her in his arms, embraced her, and kissed her.
His full lips were on hers, his body against hers, and she felt a fierce sensation shoot up through her from her legs to her breast.
She tried to extricate herself, but he said, “No,” and kissed her again.
At first when he made love to her, it hurt, and she cried out and he withdrew. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t want to hurt you.” But she let him enter her again.
What happened next occurred so quickly that there was no thought involved, only urgency. It was her first taste of this pleasure, and once that taste had been taken and that boundary crossed, there was no going back.
Afterward she cried with shame at what she’d done, and he held her. “It’s your first time,” he said, and she nodded through her tears. “Thank you,” he said, “for that gift.”
As he pulled on his clothes, she asked, “But what will we tell Cara? She and I, we’re so close. I love Cara. She’s like my sister.”
He sat down beside her on the divan and put his arm around her shoulder. “You don’t have to tell Cara. She already knows.”
“But how could she know? This is the first —”
“Cara sees everything. And you know that I have her permission. It’s the same for her with Edward.”
Cara was scheduled to return that evening from Bishops Teignton. The next day and the day after, Marian didn’t go to Rosehill.
Then a note came to Bird Grove from Cara. “I miss you, dear friend. Where have you been? Why have you deserted us? We are having a party with music on Saturday and we want you to play the piano.” Cara missed her! She was inviting her to play the piano. Marian was afraid to face her, but by not going she would be bringing out into the open what had happened.
On Saturday, she walked slowly through the summer evening to Rosehill. She walked along the canal, across the bridge, the night sounds of frogs and crickets vivid around her. She could see the house ahead of her all lit up. From the open windows came voices and music and the tinkling of glass. As she entered the drawing room amidst the other arriving guests, Cara caught sight of her and looked at her for a long moment. Then she smiled and moved to greet her. Standing before Marian, she looked into her face. Cara’s eyes were the warmest, deepest blue, so full of wisdom and kindness. In them was a look of reassurance and acceptance, a pledge not to censure her, a promise communicated that their own love couldn’t be broken.
Perhaps Cara countenanced her new ties to Charles because it gave her permission to love Edward Noel. Now that Cara knew about herself and Charles, she could continue with Edward without doubt, without guilt.
Cara reached out her arms, embraced Marian, and held her. She could feel Cara’s tiny body warm against her, her curls brushing her face.
And so the darkened study with its soft privacy, the green velvet divan, the door quietly latched against the servants, became the place where she and Charles met, discreetly, when Cara was out, as if to observe the formalities, the appearances, so as not to challenge too obviously the rules of others. And Cara was still her beloved “sister,” and Charles was now her lover, and she and Cara never spoke of it.
Charles was tender and kind, but afterward the guilt and shame overwhelmed her. Still, she always came back. No matter how often she resolved not to, she couldn’t give him up, the affection that came from him, this new pleasure that expanded and grew each time.
And Charles, though loving toward her, was still the husband of Cara. He loved Cara, he said, with all his heart, though he loved her, Marian, as well. And, she wondered again, did he have others? And who could they be? Was he still intimate with Cara? As these questions arose in her mind, she banished them.
She knew that he could never be hers alone. No man would ever give himself entirely to her, neither Charles Bray nor Charles Hennell, who had been so sweetly grateful to her for her appreciation of his book, but who loved only Rufa Brabant. She must take what was given.
In July Charles and Cara invited her to go on holiday with them to Tenby in Wales. Charles Hennell and Rufa Brabant were to come. Rufa’s father, Dr. Brabant, no longer opposed their marriage. Rufa had inherited a small sum and Charles Hennell had found a job as manager of an iron company. Perhaps Dr. Brabant realized he couldn’t stop them. Marian asked her father’s permission to go with them; she would be carefully chaperoned, she pointed out. He grumpily assented.
In Tenby, they took long walks to Moonstone Point and bathed in the bathing machines, wooden carts with canvas awnings that rolled into the sea and enabled ladies, especially, to change and bathe modestly in the water without being seen. At low tide in the evening, they walked out to St. Catherine’s Island and explored the caves, stirring the tidal pools into phosphorescence with pieces of driftwood. Charles and Cara had separate bedrooms, and Charles came to Marian’s room at night. No one spoke of it. It was as if no one
knew about it, or, if they did, they accepted the arrangement. She tried not to think about it, the possibility that Charles and Cara might still be together too. Charles belonged to everyone, in his warmth, his outgoingness, but she had no sense that he was with anyone but her, Marian.
As they played and laughed together, she came to like the vivacious Rufa Brabant. Pale, ethereal Charles Hennell loved Rufa, but Marian had her own lover to hold her now at night.
The party traveled on to Swansea. Rufa’s father, Dr. Brabant, joined them. He was a small, ebullient figure with a corona of white hair around his well-shaped head, clean shaven, with muttonchop sideburns, high cheekbones, thin-lipped. He had watchful light blue eyes, taking everything in, observing everything, and when he looked at you it was as if he had a special relationship, a secret, with you.
On one of their rambles on the beach, he walked alongside Marian apart from the rest of the group, and he told her about his friendship with Coleridge, who’d just died. He and Coleridge were quite close, he said, with a modest smile, and Coleridge had sent him an excerpt of his revised Biographia Literaria, asking for his opinion. Coleridge had also confided to him, he said, his awful struggles with opium. He’d tried to help him but had failed and the great man had died, profoundly depressed, his life in ruins.
Dr. Brabant was no longer practicing medicine, he said, but was writing a book on theology. It would be a very long work, he said. He was friends with the theologian David Friedrich Strauss. His book would be on the same lines as Strauss and his future son-in-law Charles Hennell’s work, questioning the facts of Jesus’s life as presented in the Gospels. “I think it will be epoch-making,” he said, “the final destroyer of all theological dogma.” She’d read some Strauss herself, she told him, as her German was quite good now. She was looking forward very much to reading his work.
A few weeks after they returned from Tenby, one autumn morning, when the first frost covered the ground, she arrived at Rosehill to find Charles looking unusually serious. “I’ve got some news, Marian,” he said. He drew her into his study and shut the door behind them.
The Honeymoon Page 8