And pay no worship to the garish sun..."
He stands in his long nightshirt and cap; a tear glitters in his left eye. Effie emerges in her voluminous nightgown and comes up close to him. "So beautiful," he murmurs. "So beautiful, that image of the stars, and all the sharp little ' t's in the third line." He reaches out his hand and undoes Effie's plait now, reverently unwinding the three thick loops that encircle her head. She arches her neck like a cat. "My dear," he says, halting, "would you put your veil on again for a moment, as you promised? I barely saw it during the ceremony, in your parents' drawing room; I had my eyes shut almost throughout."
She laughs a little, and goes to fetch it from her case. "There," she says, turning with a flourish.
"Oh, Effie. Oh, my love," he murmurs, beckoning her to him and pressing his mouth to the fine white lace that lies against her eyelids. "If I look any longer I may die of joy..."
She shivers.
"But what am I thinking of, letting you catch a chill?"
Obedient, she plucks the veil off, folds it away, and scurries to the high bed. She has to climb up two mahogany steps. John gives his nose a final wipe and gets in the other side. They stare at each other like children, laughing under their breath. John starts to say something, then hushes, reaches out towards the ribbon at her neck.
But Effie, gathering all her nerve, pulls the nightgown up and over her head in one long rush, and lays herself entirely bare.
A pause, and then John moves close, very slowly, close enough to see her, smell her, drink her in. Effie feels her cheeks scald with shame and pleasure. She squeezes her eyes shut.
Nothing happens. Nothing stirs in the room, and she opens her eyes again.
Something has checked him. His reddened eyes are wary, puzzled.
"What is it, John?" Effie's voice is a squeak. "What is wrong?"
"Nothing, my dear."
The cold is dimpling her skin, sharpening her nipples now. "Was I immodest? I only wanted—"
"That's not it." His Adam's apple moves as he swallows. "This is such a ... an unfamiliar situation, would you not say?"
"Oh. Yes."
"You are..."
"What? What am I?"
"So different from the statues." He produces an uncertain little smile.
"Different," she repeats. And then, after a long moment, "In what way, different from the statues?"
He assumes a jovial tone. "Having all your arms, I suppose I mean, and your head on too!"
She stares at him like a forest creature disturbed on a road.
John gets down from the bed and walks over to the window. The boards creak. The backs of his legs are hairy below the nightshirt. He divides the curtains an inch or two, to look out. "There appears to be a light on Tulach Hill; perhaps a bonfire," he remarks softly.
Effie says nothing. She has pulled up the blankets, and wrapped her arms around her nakedness till nothing can be seen but her white face, her spilling hair.
He turns at last, decisive. "My dearest," he says, sitting on the edge of the bed and crossing his legs, "what do you know about the relations of married people?"
She stares at him. "Their parents, you mean? And brothers and sisters?"
"No, no—" and he smiles a little twistedly. "I'm referring to ... marital relations. Has your mother explained anything to you of such matters, by any chance?"
She shakes her head, looks down at the counterpane.
"What few ideas you have on the subject must come entirely from literature, then."
"I suppose so," she mutters, her cheeks dark with embarrassment.
"What worries me," says John thoughtfully, "is that you may not realise the risks entailed."
"Risks?"
"Marital life, in this special sense, is not to be entered into lightly. You are so very young—not yet twenty—and your system has been subjected to such anxiety about your father's monetary troubles—and it occurs to me now that the gentlemanly thing to do might be to postpone the whole business."
"Postpone it?" she repeats. "But I wouldn't mind—I mean, I am prepared to take any risks that, that need be taken—"
He interrupts, tapping the counterpane. "Also, I dread that any ill health on your part might disrupt our expedition to the Alps with my parents. The double excitement of travel and marital relations could prove too much for you, Effie, as it often has for women of stronger constitutions. And then if there were to be any immediate consequence—"
She blinks at him.
"A child, I mean," he says gently. "Why, we might not get to cross the sea again for ten years!"
Her mouth turns down at the edges; her crimson lip is trembling.
"Believe me, my sweet, if I am willing to control myself, it is for your own good."
"Yes," she says through her teeth. "But John—"
"Oh, my love," he interrupts, "I am asking you to trust me to decide this, as your husband. But of course, if at any time in the future your views depart from my own—if you at any point find that you wish consummation to occur without further delay, for the sake of your own health or happiness—all you have to do is tell me."
"Tell you that I wish it?"
"Yes. Truly, Effie. For instance, I would do it this very night if I felt it was your wish," he says eagerly. "Is it?"
"No," she says, looking away to the edge of the candlelight, "no, of course not, John."
He grins at her. "I think you're somewhat relieved, isn't that so?"
"Perhaps," she whispers.
"The more I think about it, Effie, the more I see that our marriage should be based on the soundest spiritual principles, not mere passion." His voice rises in enthusiasm, as if he is lecturing on art; his cold seems to be gone. "And in the fullness of time, my dear, when I make you my wife in that special sense, I think we will both be glad that we showed forbearance tonight."
"Perhaps so."
"It's a bargain, then. Our little secret bargain." John holds out his hand, and she puts hers into it, and he presses his hot mouth to the backs of her fingers.
Then he picks up her discarded nightgown as easily as a nurse, holds it high so that Effie can slip her arms in. He plants a kiss on her pale forehead. "Sleep in my arms, now, my darling."
She edges down into the blankets, into his heavy embrace.
"You'll need all your strength for tomorrow's early start, and the long drive to Aberfeldy. Good night, my love."
"Good night," she whispers.
But after the candle is out, he and she both lie awake in the smoky darkness.
Note
"Come, Gentle Night" is about the wedding night of Euphemia "Effie" Chalmers Gray (1828–97) and the art critic John Raskin (1819–96). They met in 1840, when she was only twelve, and were married less than eight years later at her parents' house at Bowerswell, near Perth, on 10 April 1848. My sources for this story are family Utters and legal documents included and discussed in Mary Lutyens's books Effie in Venice (1965), Millais and the Ruskins (1967), and The Ruskins and the Grays (1972), as well as other biographies of Ruskin.
In 1854 Effie ran away from her husband and had their marriage annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. A year later she married the painter John Everett Millais, with whom she had eight children.
Salvage
The Cottage Ladies were breakfasting when word came.
Cousin Anna slid into her self-propelling chair and got as far as the front door.
"Wait!" cried Cousin Sarah. She took hold of the padded handles of the chair and bumped Anna carefully down the steps. On the path, Anna wheeled herself along with frantic thrusts of her hands. Sarah had to jog to keep up with her cousin; she lifted her skirt in both hands. The rain was over, but the October wind cut at Sarah's ankles and neck like a willow switch; she wished she'd thought to bring her Kashmir shawl.
When they reached the beach, the damp brown sand clogged the great wheels of Anna's chair, and she slowed to a grinding crawl. Sarah caught up with her, then, and s
tarted pulling the chair along backwards. Anna stared over her shoulder across the half-mile of pale Norfolk strand, across the dark splintered waters, to the ship. The two of them breathed in gasps. They didn't need to say a word.
The main mast was down, Sarah saw; the old red brig was keeling over sideways, as if drunk, or poisoned. On its side was a word in strange, angular letters. The wreck held to the invisible rocks under the hard gray water. Small oil-skinned figures could be seen here and there, roped to the rails. As the ladies came to a standstill and watched, a wave reared up foaming and bit the deck.
"Poor souls," said Sarah, but the wind ate up her words.
Her cousin's eyes were narrowed against the spray, like chisel marks in her wide Nordic face. "You there!" Anna cried, pushing a strand of rogue hair back into her cap. "Ned Sylvester!"
One fisherman left the little knot of men and ran over, hands folded respectfully. "Miss Anna. Miss Sarah," he added, with a sideways nod. "She's a Ruskie, seems like."
"Never mind where the ship's from. Why aren't you using the Apparatus?"
Sarah looked past the fishermen and there it was on a hand-barrow, the Patent Life Saving Apparatus, on which she and Anna had spent half their savings. According to the advertisement in the Times, it could shoot a rope across the sea twice a minute with the greatest degree of precision. But its iron curves bore traces of salty rust already.
"She's too far out for that," said Ned Sylvester, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "No hope for much but salvage this time, we all reckon."
"Don't say that." Anna's cheeks bore two red marks.
"Well, Miss," said Sylvester uncomfortably, his eyes shifting back to the shore.
"Have you so much as tried the thing yet?"
He shook his head, not looking at her.
"Come along, then." Anna jerked her head at her cousin to wheel her down the wet sand to where the other fishermen stood staring out at the wreck. "Exert yourselves, men!" she shouted. "Send for the Life Boat, and set up the Apparatus."
Sarah stood beside one of the fishermen's wives. She realised she was shivering; the wind off the sea was colder than she'd realised. "Has word been sent to Air. Fowell Buxton up at the Hall?" she asked at last. Her voice was too faint; she had to repeat the question.
The woman nodded, never taking her eyes off the listing ship.
Sarah watched her cousin, who was directing half a dozen fishermen to fire off the Apparatus. Anyone would think their forebears—Anna's and hers—had been naval heroes, not Quaker wool merchants. How well this particular spirit would have hounded Bonaparte's fleet, Sarah thought, if it hadn't had the ill luck to be lodged in the body of a crippled female.
She'd mentioned that one evening, while they were toasting muffins at the fire. But Anna would have none of it. "What earthly use are what ifs?" she'd asked, pulling a golden muffin off her long fork and reaching for the honey. "I was born in the body allotted to me. Of course, if I hadn't been dropped on the stairs at two months, I might have been an elegant dancer today at twenty-seven years old." Her mouth curled up to show Sarah how little that vision impressed her. "But I get by. I may be a crippled old hulk, but I get enough breeze to fill my sail. I can swim and shoot as well as Cousin Fowell, can't I?"
Sarah nodded obediently.
"I can wheel myself to our carriage and go to Meeting"—Anna counted these feats on her fingers—"I can grub around in the literatures of several ancient nations, I can mount petitions on behalf of the emancipation of the slaves, and someday, Sarah"—she threatened her cousin with the blackened fork—"someday before we die, you and I will journey to the Baltic Sea."
Sarah had smiled back at her, foolishly glad.
But today what faced them was not the Baltic Sea but the English Channel, a steely monster that was clawing the foreign ship to bits. Sarah heard a muffled bang from the Apparatus now, and the first rocket went off; the thin woven-hide line snaked out of the basket as the mortar carried its tail high in the sky like a kite. The powder left an after-scorch on the chilly air. Another bang followed, then another—like fireworks on Midsummer Eve, except without the splashes of coloured light. Some of the foreign seamen were waving, Sarah saw; one was at the rail, locked on with one elbow, straining to grab the flying rope so he could make it fast and pull himself in to shore, hand over hand. She felt his panic in her bowels, and had to look away for fear of letting out a moan. She squinted into the gray howling morning, but couldn't see where the mortars had landed. "Did it work?" she called to her cousin.
No answer: evidently not. The men were reeling the mortars back in now, like leaden fish. Anna was almost at the water's edge, her wheels deep in the scored sand, her frantic arms over her head, signalling orders. The wordless fishermen put their backs to the Apparatus and ploughed it right down to where the waves covered their boots. Ah yes, Sarah saw it now with a thrill, that would get the ropes ten yards closer to the seamen. Not much of a distance, except that it might mean life rather than death. Another flash, and this time Sarah could see a mortar soar across the sea maybe three hundred yards—but fall just short of the ship. Twenty-four pounds of iron, dropping like a clay pigeon.
This time when the men hauled the ropes in, two of the lines came all in a rush; their mortars were missing. Ned Sylvester examined one frayed end; Miss Anna waved her fìnger in his face like a desperate schoolmistress. "I told you to soak the ropes at Easter, didn't I? Didn't I warn you they'd break if they were allowed to diy out?"
It seemed to Sarah now that there was an awful slowness to everything, because there was nothing left to do. The little soaked figures on the deck had stopped moving. They were no longer individuals, about to catch the lifeline thrown to them, but a body of strangers watching for their death in every wave.
Next time she looked away from the ship, she saw Anna's chair stranded in half a foot of water, the rim of her skirt dark with water. "What were you thinking?" Sarah scolded her cousin, hauling her back up the beach.
"I was thinking of the seamen," said Anna shortly, her eyes locked onto the ship. "Thousands of souls choke to death on salt water on British shores every year, and all for lack of equipment and readiness."
"I know," said Sarah, her throat sore.
The men were in a little huddle over the Apparatus. Anna squinted up the beach. "They told me the Boat had been sent for, but where is it?" She let out a harsh sigh, and pushed her shoulders back. "We can't expect much of the poor. It's up to people of property to organise matters and set an example of courage. Those who can, I mean," she added bitterly.
Sarah stared at Anna, whose forehead wore its old badge of pain: three lines across, one down. "Cousin," she said, halting. "My dear. You've saved many lives."
"Vicariously," came the answer, very crisp.
"What difference—"
"The difference is this," said Anna, twisting round in her chair to face Sarah, "that in my library I can act for myself but here on the shore, when lives hang in the balance, I'm shackled to this chair, as feeble as an infant. As trapped as a rabbit in its hutch. Besides," she added, cutting Sarah off, "I've saved no one today, have I?"
Their eyes turned back to the ship. A gigantic wave smacked it from behind and there was a terrible groaning of old wood.
"She's breaking up," said Anna through her teeth.
"No," said Sarah, but only because she couldn't bear it, not because she didn't believe it. After a minute, she added, "I sometimes wonder..."
"What?"
She spoke with some diffidence. "What sort of God lets these things happen."
"These things, meaning wrecks?" asked Anna harshly.
"Yes," said Sarah, "and other things," her eyes on her cousin's motionless knees, skinny as a dog's under their blanket.
Anna kept staring out at the splintering ship. "The same God who made the seas for us to sail on," she said finally.
"But—"
"We can't have it both ways," snapped her cousin. "Either we're free, or we're saf
e; take your pick."
But Sarah hadn't picked, it occurred to her now. There had never been a moment where her life had forked like a pair of paths in front of her. She'd come to the Cottage as a child to do lessons with her Cousin Anna, and she'd never left, that was all; she'd been content to let her life happen to her, like weather. Perhaps she lacked a sailing spirit.
A yelp went up now from one of the fishermen, and turning, Sarah saw Fowell come loping down the beach. His servants behind him toiled to drag the little wooden Life Boat.
"Cousin Fowell, at last!" called Anna.
He was breathless, red-faced; his neckerchief hung dishevelled on his broad chest. He opened his mouth to speak to the ladies, but there was a terrible ripping in the air, and they all stood and stared as the foreign ship broke apart. Tiny figures slid, disappeared into the dark cave in the waters. Sarah thought it almost obscene to watch, but couldn't turn away. She seemed to feel the water in her own lungs.
"All lost," wheezed Fowell.
But Anna pointed mutely.
"What?" asked Sarah.
"There," said Anna, "among the wreckage. I'm sure I saw a head."
Sarah looked at her cousin's red-edged eyes and pitied her as she was never usually allowed to pity her; pitied her more than she pitied the drowning seamen, though she couldn't have said why.
"My dear—" began Fowell kindly.
Anna let out a scream. "There! Two of them, holding to the mast!"
And then for a second they could all see the foreigners, the two dark, minute heads, the bodies dragging along behind the broken mast as it heaved and dropped on the waves.
"The tide is washing them this way. Get the Life Boat into the water."
"It's too rough, Anna," Fowell told her. "The men won't risk it."
"Poltroons! I'd go in myself if I had the strength."
At that he turned his back, as if offended, but he was heading for the Life Boat, Sarah saw; he was beckoning to the servants to drag it down to the slashing edge of the waves. The wreckage had drifted in another twenty yards on the tide. Sarah's mouth was diy with excitement.
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories Page 9