Oh, Jane! I am the Happiest of Creatures! Alastar is beside himself with Joy, as are his parents, who are being so gracious and attentive. I trust that you are enjoying yourself in Murano and wish that you would leave off your work and come join us right away, because I know how long travel takes and it will be a month before you receive this and another month before you could possibly arrive, but I should very much like for you to be here. My confinement is not until February but you know I should be easier to have you close by. You are such a steadying influence.
I include an anniversary gift for you from a Favourite Author of mine, although I understand that she passed away this year, which is Decidedly Tragic, still her volumes remind me of us at times more than I am entirely comfortable with, but I do so enjoy them. For your Vincent, I have something as well, but it shall not travel so nicely, so you both must come to collect it. There, if that does not tempt you, I do not know what will!
With all my fondness and a heart overflowing with joy, I remain your loving sister
Melody
(Mrs. O’Brien)
This was why they had heard nothing from her parents. They had never received the letters.
Vincent sank upon the window ledge. He leaned forward and put his face in his hands. “That is wonderful news, for your sister and Mr. O’Brien.”
“Yes. It is hard to imagine her being a mother.” It would be no hardship for her of course—with Mr. O’Brien’s fortune, they could have as many children as they wished. Jane recoiled at the petty jealousy in her own thoughts. She had never desired a child before, so had no cause to envy her sister. Indeed, given Jane’s history she had more reason to fear for her. A February confinement meant that Melody was six months along now.
Jane sat beside Vincent and looked at the letter again: Seventh of October. She counted the days to see how far Melody had been when she had written the letter and grew a little colder. It had taken over a month for the letter to arrive, and the roads would be worse now.
“Please include my regards when you write back.” By the leaden weight in his voice, it was clear that Vincent’s mind had already leapt ahead of hers. There would be no quick relief of their circumstances from that quarter.
“Of course.” As much as she had wished for a book earlier that day, now Jane stared at the novel as if doing so would cause it to be something different. Even if they sent a reply today, they could not expect to hear from her family until January.
Fourteen
A Matter of Perspective
November in Murano was typified by heavy rains without any of the charm of snow. Even the incessant pigeons crowded under stone pilings and huddled in windows to avoid the rain. Their fat grey bodies seemed like cobblestones piled in every damp corner.
Jane had been caught by such a shower on her way home, though speaking of their single room as “home” was dispiriting even without the rain. She pulled her heavy woollen shawl, a gift from the nuns, over her head and ran down the street. Without pattens to lift her above the walk, the hem of her skirt quickly became heavy and damp with rain. Jane ducked into a small grocer close to their lodgings as the downpour increased too much to ignore. Other passers-by crowded into a café across the street to pass the time with a cup of coffee and a pastry.
The more wealthy simply rode through the rain in sedan chairs or upon the water in gondolas, leaving the task of getting wet to their drivers. In that moment, Jane would have been happy just to be able to afford an umbrella. Wanting even that, she must wait out the heaviest part of the downpour in the shelter of this small shop. Happily, she had some purchases to make for their dinner, so the time need not be a total waste.
Jane eyed the brace of ducks hanging from the ceiling with some longing, though she had not the slightest idea of how to prepare them. Simply the thought of warm duck, roasted perhaps, was enough to make her mouth water. She turned away from them, and from the rabbits hung beside them, and slipped past another customer to the dried cannellini beans. They already had rice and some onions in their room. She measured the beans into a small burlap bag and thought that she might go to the butcher and get a little rasher of pork fat to add to the beans for flavour. Vinegar, too. They were nearly out.
The thought gave her pause, that they had been here long enough to empty a bottle of vinegar. She almost had not purchased it, thinking that they would not be here more than a few weeks. She now suspected that they would have to spend the winter in Murano.
“You have to pay for that directly.” The woman who ran the shop, a matronly widow with her hair pulled back into a severe bun, stood with her arms crossed.
“Thank you for the reminder, Signora Rotolo.” Jane put the beans on the counter.
The woman said this every time Jane came in. Her son was a gondola driver and had received the notice from the capo about Jane and Vincent’s travel restriction. He had passed the notice to his mother, and she, in a show of benevolent mistrust, reminded Jane of her want of funds every time she came into the shop. If her prices were not so good, Jane would have gone elsewhere.
“No credit.”
“Have I ever asked for credit?” Jane’s exhaustion spoke for her. “Have I ever short-changed you, or asked for any special consideration? Have I even questioned your prices? Do you, perhaps, think that I have forgotten that I am poor?”
Signora Rotolo’s mouth hung open, and she rocked back a little upon her heels.
Jane realized that she had raised her voice and that the low hum of conversation from the other patrons in the shop had died away. Cheeks burning, Jane pointed to the bars of soap behind the counter. “A bar of the lavender soap, please.”
It was absurd. She did not need the soap; she knew she did not. They had a small pot of soft soap that she had been given by the convent. But in that moment she felt that if she did not have a small treat, she would go mad. It had been so long since she had washed her face without it burning from the lye afterwards that she just wanted something nice.
And she wanted something that a poor person would not buy. She should not buy the soap.
The chandler put it on the counter and the herbal sweetness rose above the other scents in the shop. The square of soap in its neat, printed paper seemed unreal. Signora Rotolo put the beans on the scale, without looking at Jane any further. “That is lira sottile of beans. Sixteen centesimi.”
“Thank you.” Jane counted out the coins from the little change purse that one of the girls had given her. The soap cost four times the price of the beans. She should not buy it. “I am sorry that I raised my voice.”
“We get thieves in. Not you.” Signora Rotolo picked up the coins. “Times are hard. I shouldn’t have … You used to be a lady, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Jane bit the word off and felt that she might choke on it. She tucked her purchase into her shopping basket. “I used to be.”
Heedless of the rain, Jane stepped outside, unable to stand another minute in the shop with everyone staring at her. She used to be a lady. Could Signora Rotolo have made Jane’s humiliation more complete? The phrase—“used to be a lady”—as though she were a fallen woman. As though any of this were her fault.
But it was. That was the thing that burned, and that Jane struggled to accept or ignore or simply live with. As much as she had tried to pretend that this was simply an adventure that they would get past, the fact was that all of it was her fault for trusting Signor Sanuto. Vincent had been ill at first, and then later she had talked him into staying.
Why had she bought the soap? To prove that she was still a lady?
Jane ran through the streets, dashing from doorway to doorway through the rain. The long galleries that were so popular in the region gave her a respite for a few hundred feet in some places, but by the time she arrived at their door, she was wet through. Jane paused in their doorway to wring the worst of the water out of her skirt and shawl. The heavy wool had kept most of it off her shoulders, but it stank of sheep now.
S
he climbed the stairs with her skirt clinging to her legs. The way up had never seemed so long.
The room was dark when she got in, and she was grateful that Vincent was out. What a foolish, foolish woman she was. Jane closed her eyes and tried to govern her emotions. The change in their circumstances did not materially change her. She was still a lady, though her peers might not recognise her current way of life. She was a lady and an artist.
“Should I light a candle?”
Jane shrieked and dropped the basket. Pressing her hand against her bosom, she peered into the gloom for her husband. As much as she was startled, she was embarrassed to have jumped like a schoolgirl. But still. He had been sitting in the dark. “Did I wake you?”
“No.” His voice came not from the bed but from the window. He rose, and she could just make out his silhouette against the rain-splashed glass. “I just had not noticed that it had grown dark.”
A match flared on the hearth, and he held his hand around the flame as he lit the candle. The warm light played around his face, making the shadows under his eyes more pronounced and catching on the grey hairs in his beard. Vincent had always looked older than his years, but emerging out of the dark, he seemed ancient. His shirt hung open and untucked. He wore his buckskin trousers, which were ill suited to the rain.
Jane glanced at the row of pegs in the wall. His other pair of trousers hung there, completely dry. “Have you been out today?”
“It is too wet for any tourists.”
She realized that he had not gone out the day prior, either, or the day before that. Jane set her basket on the table and moved to stand in front of the fire, which Vincent had raked so that it provided almost no warmth. She pulled off her shawl and hung it on one of the pegs. Jane fumbled with the ties on her dress, which had drawn tight with the damp. “May I ask you to build up the fire?”
“Of course.” He knelt by the hearth and began laying pieces of wood on the embers. Jane was unaccountably annoyed that she had needed to ask him. She knew that his spirits were low, but it would take little exertion to have the apartment warm for her when she got home.
“We can afford for you to have a fire, you know.” Jane got the knots free and peeled the soaked fabric away.
He shrugged. “I was comfortable.”
Comfortable? He had not noticed that he was sitting in the dark. Did he note that it was cold, or was he as insensible to that as well?
Jane’s petticoat, too, was wet, so she pulled that over her head and hung it on the peg by the fire. Shivering, she took down her other petticoat, a torn one from the convent’s rag bin. After mending, it served well enough. Jane pulled on the petticoat and her second dress as quickly as she could. There was a time when her wardrobe had a dozen or more dresses. Now she had two. But then, she used to be a lady. Now she had no need for more than one dress to wear and one to wash.
Washing. She was going to be completely self-indulgent and wash her face with warm water before she started cooking. Jane filled their one pot with water from the pitcher and hung it over the fire to heat. She walked back to the basket and fished out the soap she had purchased. The paper had become damp, which made the aroma of the soap more intense. “I bought some soap today.”
“Soap.”
“Lavender.” She undid the spot of paste holding the paper closed, trying not to tear it.
“We have soap.”
“We have soft soap.” The smooth bar felt like silk, and it had been dyed to match its scent. “I needed a treat.”
“I wish you had consulted with me first.”
Jane raised her head in disbelief. Vincent still crouched by the hearth, coaxing flames from the wood. “I do not consult you on the other shopping I do.”
“Those are not luxuries. We are supposed to be limiting our expenditures.”
“I am aware of that. I walked home in the rain because we cannot afford a sedan chair or even an umbrella. I am wearing a mended petticoat. I know that we need to save.”
“Then why spend money on a luxury?”
The fact that he so closely echoed Jane’s own thoughts about the soap caused her anger at herself to boil upwards. It was only with great difficulty that she held it in. “It is a bar of soap, Vincent.”
“But we have soap.”
“I had a difficult day. I wanted something nice. I bought a bar of soap. With, I might add, money that I earned.”
“Of course.” He stood and dusted his hands, staring at the embers. If he had raised his voice, she would have felt perversely better, but it remained flat. It reminded her of nothing so much as when they had met, and he had seemed wholly composed of tightly controlled anger. “Of course, it is your right to spend your wages as you see fit.”
“Yes. It is. And while we are on the subject, would it be too much to ask that you help with the household tasks when you are not working?”
“I do help. I take out the chamber pot, build the fire, and report our continued presence to the capo di polizia.”
“And I cook, clean, and do the laundry and the mending, and then you rebuke me for buying a bar of soap. With money I earned.”
His face became stiff, like a leather Carnevale mask. “Thank you for the reminder. I had forgotten what little use I was.”
“Vincent, please. You are bringing in as much as—”
“I was. But now I am not, so we need to retrench, which is why the soap is something that I wish you had discussed with me before purchasing.”
The argument had shifted while she was focused on her own hurt feelings. It was not the soap that was at issue, but the fact that she had earned the money. Vincent was not arguing with her, but with himself. Jane tried to calm him. “The rain will stop.”
“It is November. Who is going to stand in the cold to watch a street performer?”
“But you are not just any street performer. You are brilliant and—”
“Brilliant?” His voice rose. “I stand there and no one cares.” Vincent snatched a fold of glamour and divided it into five flames, which he tossed from hand to hand like a juggler. It was a prodigiously complicated weave. “Do you know why they came? Because I fainted one day and they were waiting to see if I would do it again. It does not matter how good I am, or how clever my illusions are. I cannot even support my wife.”
This was the heart of it—the point around which Vincent kept circling. “But you do not need to support me.”
“I know!” He took a shuddering breath and lowered his voice, still juggling the flames. “I know. You are well able to provide for yourself.”
“For both of us. We share in this. There have been many times when you provided for me.” The image of him sitting in the dark rose again before her. “It might help if you had some occupation to distract you.”
“What do you think I have been trying to do? No one will hire me!”
“Not work, but something to occupy your time. To distract you.”
Vincent laughed, a raw, angry sound. He added a sixth ball to those he juggled. “Like drawing? Or shall I take up needlework?”
“Why not? It helps with my understanding of knots. And you did offer, not so long ago, to stay at home if we had a child.”
“It was a jest! Letting you support me is no different from those gamesters who burn through their wife’s dowry and then live off her parents’ pity and generosity.”
“It is different in every way. We are in this situation not by choice, but by a misfortune of chance.”
“And how is that different from gambling?” He dragged his fingers through the glamour, clawing the flames into a red haze. “My father was right.”
“He was not. He would have you waste your talents—”
“Oh, and they are so useful. I am in perfect health now and what good does it do.”
“Even if we have to abide the winter, my parents will eventually get my letters.”
“What a conversation that is to look forward to. ‘Good evening, Mr. Ellsworth. Would you mind p
aying two thousand pounds to get us out of debt? Oh, and by the way, we have pawned your daughter’s wedding ring because without it we would be on the street. Could you pay for that as well?’ God!” With his hand balled into a fist, Vincent turned and swung at the wall.
He checked the movement before the impact. Breathing harshly, he held rigid. Then he swore, twisted a fold of glamour, and vanished. A moment later, the sound of his breath cut off.
Jane stared at the spot where her husband had been, as though she could see through the Sphère Obscurcie he had woven. She still held the bar of soap in one hand. Trembling, Jane set it down on the table. He had never hidden from her like this. A very great part of her wanted to take up her shawl and walk out of the room to give him privacy. The other, larger part wanted to step forward and into the Sphère. Jane stared at the soap, willing herself to calm down and her breathing to slow. Soap.
And yet that was not what they had been discussing. Not at all.
Vincent was not angry at her. That was clear, in spite of his words. She had known that he was masking his distress, but had not realized how deeply it upset him to have her support them. Jane wet her lips and took another breath to steady herself. She walked forward, waiting for the moment when she passed within the Sphère’s influence.
She saw him before she could hear him. Vincent had slid down the wall to sit at its base with his knees drawn up in front of him. His head was bowed forward with his arms wrapped around it. When she stepped within the Sphère, his hands tightened into fists.
Valour and Vanity Page 17