Dragonwyck (27 page)

'Come,' he said.

Color drained from her face and her throat grew dry as sand.

They mounted the stairs through the quiet house; he threw open a door on the landing and led her into the room he had prepared for her.

He had had it redecorated in the Empire style: the finest woods both gilded and inlaid, azure satin draperies embroidered in rose. She saw nothing of this. It was the perfume of a hundred flowers that assailed her at the threshold, white roses and lilies which stood in porcelain vases upon the tables and shone with luminous whiteness in the light of long wax tapers. Two of these tapers had been placed in golden candlesticks, one on either side the bed. Her eyes slowly focused on these, moved to the masses of bridal flowers.

'Nicholas—no,' she whispered, throwing out her hands with a convulsive and imploring gesture. 'Oh, don't you see—the flowers and those candles by the bed—Don't you remember—'

She gave a cry as he turned on her, his eyes blazing. She thought he was going to strike her and she recoiled against the wall.

He did not strike her. He walked to the two tapers and blew them out. Then he came back to her.

'No—' she cried. 'No, no, please—'

He picked her up and threw her across the darkened bed.

At five o'clock the bells of Saint Mark's, half a block away, rang the hour through a cold and misty dawn. A faint light stole between the blue draperies at the window. She had been waiting for this, her aching, tearless eyes fixed on the windows, as they had been for hours.

She moved her body cautiously an inch at a time away from that other who slept beside her. With infinite care she raised her head, straining through the gloom to discover the things which she must put on. If she could assemble them, there must be some place that she could dress, some way to slip out. Though she had no money, her desperation would persuade someone, a teamster, or peddler, to take her along the road.

The light strengthened and she moved again nearer the edge. She raised herself on one elbow, and on the white skin of her arms and breasts were livid marks. She moved her head farther, calculating how she might slide from the bed in one silent motion; but her long flowing hair impeded her. She reached in back of her head and tried to loosen her hair, but she could not. She heard the difference in the quality of the breathing behind her, and she held her own breath.

Saint Mark's bell clanged once for the half-hour, and a chorus of chitterings arose from starlings who nested in the pear tree outside the window. She heard a distant cry on the street in front of the house. 'Milk, ho! Come buy my nice fresh milk!' The town was awakening. She must hurry, hurry, hurry—

She dug her fingernails into her palms. Stealthily as if it moved without her knowledge, her head turned and she looked down at the figure beside her.

Her terror ebbed in diminishing waves, leaving amazement. This was not the same man who had inflicted on her the lurid-streaked blackness of those hours just past, who had violated without pity her soul as well as her body. This was not the aristocratic lord of Dragonwyck, nor even the charming and responsive companion she had known once or twice. This was the sleeping face of a young and defenseless man; almost a boy he looked with his black hair rumpled as she had never seen it and the cruel lines about his mouth smoothed away.

He sighed a little as she stared down at him, and moved his hand. She saw then that his cheek and his right hand lay on her hair, and her throat tightened, for his unconscious position and movement were unmistakable. It was as though he turned in appeal, blindly seeking comfort in the soft masses of gold that lay outspread on the pillow.

His eyes opened and he looked up at her. She braced herself for the change to the expression she knew so well, the cold intensity that held no kindness. But he gazed at her quietly seeing the sharp inrush of fear in her face.

'Miranda—' he whispered, with pleading.

Still she hesitated, her body curved and poised for flight.

His lips twisted into the shadow of a smile, a smile tinged with sadness. 'You can't leave me,' he said. 'Don't you know that? Nothing but death will ever separate us.'

'No,' she whispered. 'I don't know. I'm afraid.' Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

He raised his arms and pulled her gently down to him. Her taut body relaxed. This is the way he really is, she thought. I must never forget that no matter what he does or says, he's really good and he does love me. It was the beginning of a long and painfully maintained self-deception, for the precise type of goodness and love for which her heart yearned had not existed in Nicholas since he was twelve, and his mother died.

THE FIRST WEEKS OF MIRANDA'S MARRIAGE WERE happy. Nicholas, during that period, was usually the husband she had dreamed of—tender and indulgent. The horror of her wedding night faded, for Nicholas showed her no more violence. She forgot her fears, and began to bloom with a softer and maturer loveliness. Her arms, her bosom, and her throat filled out, all sharpness disappeared from her face. Her beauty, no longer ethereal, became seductive, and was enhanced by the magnificent wardrobe which Nicholas provided for her. Some of this wardrobe she found ready waiting in the closets of her dressing-room. It had been made by Madame Duclos from the old measurements. But Nicholas also furnished her with a list of other shops, mantua makers and milliners, directing her to buy whatever she liked. She spent many hours reveling in the fairy-tale unreality of ordering not one but six leghorn or satin bonnets trimmed with
point d'esprit,
imported French flowers or the finest ostrich plumes. In her excitement she bought far more than she could hope to wear, even if she changed her whole costume five times a day, and she made some mistakes. She wasn't able to resist a vermilion taffeta dress which darkened her hair and dulled her complexion But on the whole her natural clothes sense guided her Nicholas put no curb on her buying orgy,saying: 'I want you to be well dressed, Miranda, as befits your position as my wife. Soon we'll begin to entertain a little; you must learn to take your proper place in society.'

This prospect frightened her, for Nicholas expected a great deal. She must be beautiful, cultured, and witty and she must be a brilliant hostess, so that the Van Ryn reputation for discriminating hospitality might not only be maintained but acquire added luster.

During Johanna's lifetime this hospitality had been largely Nicholas' concern; the first Lady of the Manor had had no interest in anyone who did not belong to the river families, and to all other guests had shown a passive indifference.

But from Miranda he demanded active co-operation. She must understand current topics: the stormy Oregon question, the annexation of Texas as a slave state, the immediate probability, in view of President Polk's attitude, of a war with Mexico. She must be able to discuss Mr. and Mrs. Kean's Shakespearean productions, the singing of Madame Borghese at Castle Garden, or Donizetti's new music for Sir Walter Scott's 'The Bride of Lammermoor.' She must be able to express an opinion on the remarkable results of mesmerism.

She must above all take an intelligent interest in the new books which were appearing from England: Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's strange romance, 'Zanoni,' a Mr. Thackeray's 'Notes from Cornhill to Cairo,' Mr. Dickens' scandalous treatment of America in 'Martin Chuzzlewit.'

Miranda raced through these as Nicholas gave them to her, paying dutiful attention to the passages he marked, for each morning after breakfast they went to the little study off the drawing-room for an hour of concentrated instruction.

He was a good teacher, stern over any negligence in her study, but gifted with the ability to make a subject vivid. She slipped easily into the pupil-teacher relationship with him at these times, and was grateful as she began to appreciate the completeness of her former ignorance.

She had little intellectual curiosity and she accepted all Nicholas' pronouncements without question. He said that Walter Scott's historical romances were overrated, and that Dickens' novels were vulgar, so she must waste little time in reading them. He was enthusiastic about Emerson's Essays; their militant individualism agreed perfectly with Nicholas' own conviction. He required that she learn by heart certain passages from 'Self-Reliance.'

'Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me....A true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things....Let a man then know his own worth and keep things under his feet.'

This she accepted without question as applying to Nicholas or perhaps any man; it never occurred to her to make application to herself. But there was one sentence from the same essay which shocked her. 'As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.'

'Oh, Nicholas—' she cried when she read this. 'What a dreadful thing to say! Doesn't the man believe in God?'

He looked up from the book and regarded her with tolerant amusement. 'My dear child, no intelligent person believes in God. Only the immature and ignorant need a prop from without; there is no god but one's self.'

'I don't believe it!' she cried indignantly. It was true that the family prayers and incessant Bible reading had sometimes bored her, and that in church her mind often wandered, but she had guiltily recognized these derelictions as faults in herself; they had nothing to do with the eternal verities, Heaven, salvation, and God. 'You can't really mean that,' she persisted, thoroughly aroused. 'It's wicked, Nicholas, and if you aren't a true believer why do you go to church?'

His amusement deepened. He had never before seen her spirited and indignant. It became her. Her long eyes flashed hazel fire, her pouting mouth was mutinous. He shut the book, leaned back and crossed his legs.

'I go to church at Dragonwyck simply as an example to my tenants. The lower classes need idolatry, it steadies them.'

For the first time she felt resentment at this calm superiority which she had always admired. 'And what about me?' she said hotly. 'I believe in religion, is that because I've come from the "lower classes"?'

He shrugged his shoulders and stood up. 'Very likely, my dear one. But you'll get over it. I'll see that you do.'

'No—' she cried, 'never!'

He stood quiet looking at her averted head. She felt the changing quality of the silence.

'Come here, Miranda—' he said softly.

I won't, she thought, I won't go to him or look at him. She felt the power of his will beating on her. Her head turned. Slowly she raised her eyelids.

He sketched a brief motion with his arms, and while her mind still resisted, her body obeyed him. He embraced her with a roughness he had not shown her since the first night. But now his violence gave her a dark pleasure. She clung to him, yielding. At once he released her, withdrawing his arms so abruptly that she lost her balance and swayed against the table. He gave a short laugh.

'Arrange your dress, my dear, the servants might come in.'

She flushed scarlet, pulling up the shoulder of her blue morning gown. Even her humiliation was overshadowed by a sense of being degraded, of having lost part of her integrity. She turned from him and went to the window, staring blindly at the passers-by on the sidewalk outside the gate.

He watched her bent head, the white neck with its tendrils of gold curls, and his gaze softened.

'This afternoon, we might visit the American Museum,' he said. 'It's a pity that the theater season is over.'

She pressed her cheek against the window pane, not moving. I'm not a child, she thought, to be shamed one minute, and offered a treat the next. But she knew that Nicholas was making an extraordinary concession. She had longed to see Mr. Barnum's collection of marvels, whose fame had long ago reached Greenwich, but Nicholas had refused to take her. Such exhibitions were cheap and fit only for yokels.

Except for her drives in the closed carriage to the dressmaker, she had seen nothing of New York. Society had left them to the conventional seclusion of the honeymoon period; no one would call on the bride until signaled to do so by receiving invitations to a party.

She turned at last from the window and Nicholas met her with one of his astonishing changes of mood.

'Shall we pass the remainder of the day exactly as you'd like to?' he asked, smiling. You shall see whatever sights you want, and I'll not object, I promise.'

I'll never understand him, never, she thought, staring at his smile, which was frank, open, and almost gay. Impossible to believe that an hour ago he had been the impersonal schoolmaster, or that half an hour ago he had treated her to a brutal passion followed by indifference.

'Come, my dear one,' he said. 'What shall it be? Barnum's freaks? The minstrel show? The pantomime at Niblo's Gardens? Or all of them?'

'Oh, Nicholas, could we?' she cried, dazzled out of her resentment by this catalogue of amusements which she had longed to see.

He jerked the bell-pull. 'I'll order the carriage. You change to a walking costume, not too elegant, for I don't want you to be conspicuous.'

She chose a simple sapphire-colored cashmere with a modified hoop, black gloves and shawl, and a black satin bonnet trimmed with sapphire ribbons. She found when she joined Nicholas on the stoop that he was also dressed in a subdued manner—slate-colored suit, plain white shirt, and buff cravat.

'You look most charming for our democratic expedition,' he greeted her. He was then still interested and eager to please her. He had even ordered the open victoria, to which he usually objected because he disliked curious stares.

The May day was warm and brilliant; along Lafayette Street the budding elms and maples were tipped with fresh tender green. Geraniums bloomed in window boxes and reflected rose on the faces of the passers-by, who walked alertly, buoyed by the electric sparkle of the New York air in spring.

Miranda, basking in the sunlight, excited by the people, the motion of the carriage, and anticipation, pressed her gloved hands tight together in the old childish gesture of delight. The day was perfect. If only Nicholas doesn't—if only he—she thought, unwilling to be more specific. It would be foolish to spoil this pleasure by dread of the moods which transformed him between one minute and the next.