Grahame, Lucia (32 page)

On the following day, the rain stopped and the gray clouds parted
to permit a few hours of watery sunshine. My husband left very early for
London, and when the house was at last free of his oppressive, disturbing
presence and I was able to think more clearly, I ventured boldly into his room.
But the photographic equipment had vanished.

So there was no way to prevent him from carrying out his evil
design. Still I knew I could not endure another moment in his company. How to
escape? I owed him two more nights of fealty before he would be honorbound to
set me free. It made me queasy, now, even to think of them. Was there no way
out?

And then it came to me.

The diamond collar.

If he was truly determined to display that dreadful photograph to
Poncet and, worse still, to have it reproduced in paint, there was little I
could do to stop him. I could only pray that no one besides those two devils
and the artist— oh God, what if it were someone I knew?—-would ever see it.

But I would not suffer any further degradation at his hands, not
for anything. It was even possible that if I fled, depriving him of the
opportunity to savor the rigors of my intended humiliation, his wretched plan
might lose its allure.

That fabulously expensive diamond collar would keep me
indefinitely from destitution: I could leave at any time—I might have done so
long ago.

But even as I considered this, I felt an uneasy premonition. I
raced up the stairway, along the gallery to my chambers and into my dressing
room. There lay the jewelry case in its usual place on top of a chest of
drawers. I approached it slowly, my heart pounding. There was a key to it
somewhere, but the staff at Charingworth had an air of such incorruptibility
that I had never felt the need to use it. I lifted the cover.

The diamonds were indeed gone; in their place lay the broken
chains of cheap little white-brass bells.

I withdrew into my bedroom and sank onto the bed. I hardly knew
whether to laugh or to weep at my stupidity. He had told me he intended to have
the clasp replaced, and
still
I had been as passive as a sleepwalker.

My grandmother would be turning in her grave. None of the
self-protective instincts that she had labored so hard and so thanklessly to
instill in me had been able to take root in the stony soil of my youthful
foolishness. Now it was too late.

I thought of the way she had left her Italian count, fleeing his
dilapidated palazzo in the middle of the night to go to her new lover, carrying
with her all the jewelry the poor count had lavished upon her.

The image of my grandmother's ignominious departure from the one
man who had truly cherished her, needed her —the man whom she was far too proud
to go back to on her knees, pregnant, desperate, and remorseful—had always been
repugnant to me. Was that why I had ignored, until too late, the glittering avenue
to freedom which my far-sighted husband had just sealed?

There were, of course, many other small objects of inestimable
value at Charingworth, but something in me resisted even the idea of taking
them. Perhaps it was the unpleasant thought of branding myself as a thief on
top of everything else. Perhaps it was merely the fatalistic inertia that for
so much of my life since the death of my child had held me in so cruel a grip.

The days that followed were not pleasant ones. The fear that at
any moment my husband might attempt to carry out his threat poisoned my waking
hours and skulked through my dreams.

He remained in Grosvenor Square for nearly two weeks, and during
his absence I wrote a brief letter to Marguerite. I told her only that the
business with my husband had gone badly, that he had adopted a cruel and
vengeful attitude of injured self-righteousness and was making me horribly
unhappy.

My husband returned to Charingworth very late on a Friday in
May—long after I had retired for the night. But I heard his arrival and did not
sleep.

At breakfast the next morning, he announced that he wanted me to
come to London the following week. This made me distraught, for during my
sleepless night, my dread had increased. From London, no doubt, we would go on
to Paris....

I excused myself from the table. I felt very ill and hoped that I
might reach the stairway in the great hall before he could destroy my composure
any further. But as I began to climb the stairs, a wave of nausea gripped me.
The walls grew shadowy and began to spin. I clutched the newel post and swayed,
shivering.

The next thing I knew, I was in my husband's arms.

"Are you ill, Fleur?" he asked, and I could have sworn
that for an instant there was a note of stark concern in his voice.

"It's nothing, nothing," I said, clinging to him as if
he had been my savior rather than my tormentor.

He lifted me easily and carried me up the broad stairs and along
the gallery to my bedroom.

"You
are
ill," he announced after he had laid me
upon the bed, removed my shoes, and drawn the counterpane over me. "I'll
send for Doctor Blount."

"No!" I insisted miserably. "I don't need a doctor.
I tell you, it is nothing."

I could not bear the thought of Dr. Blount's solemn examination,
which would surely culminate in a portentous announcement to my husband that I
must be suffering from an attack of nerves, a diagnosis which I was certain
would provide my husband with no end of amused satisfaction.

Now he studied me in silence, his face growing ever paler and more
perturbed.

Finally he said, "Are you with child?" His voice fairly
shook: He sounded thoroughly alarmed.

"No!" I said.

"Are you
quite
certain?"

"Of course." There was no doubt of it.

"That would be unfortunate," he said at last.

"It would, indeed," I agreed bitterly. It was not a turn
of events to which I had given much thought, since there seemed so little
likelihood of my bearing a child, but at his chilly dismissal of the
possibility as "unfortunate," I felt an unexpected surge of fierce
protectiveness. Any child unlucky enough to come into the world as the result
of the death throes of this marriage would need all the love I could lavish
upon it. It could hardly hope to claim any affection from its father. But it
didn't matter. There would be no child.

"Well, if you are not ill and you are not expecting, how do
you account for your condition?" he asked, now with a hint of impatience.

I sank back among the pillows and closed my eyes.

"Just go away," I whispered. "Please. Just leave
me."

"If you are not improved by this evening, I
will
send
for the doctor," said my husband. He hesitated a few seconds longer, but
at last, to my relief, I heard the door close behind him.

He had beef tea and blancmange delivered to me at intervals during
the day, and by evening I had gathered enough strength to force myself to join
him for dinner, thereby putting to rest the possibility that he might seek
medical advice for what I knew too well was only a disease of the spirit.

We dined before the library fire.

At the end of the meal, when we were alone, he said to me,
"As I mentioned this morning, you will be joining me in London for a few
days at the end of the week."

I was now certain this was what I had feared. But I had given the
matter some thought during the day.

"Perhaps
you
will be in London," I said.
"But
I
will not."

"I think you will," he said. "That is, if you still
wish to be free of this marriage."

"There's no need for me to dance to your tunes in order to
get free of you," I replied. "I can as easily seek a divorce."

"Now
that
is an interesting possibility," he
said. "What grounds do you intend to use?"

"Adultery and cruelty will be sufficient," I said. I
knew my case was a weak one, but I wanted to test him.

He leaned toward me across the table.

"I think not," he said gently. "I haven't taken a
second wife. I haven't slept with my mother or with any of the farm animals. I
haven't sodomized you." He paused, eyeing me thoughtfully. "Although,
if I should," he continued slowly, "I hardly think you will find it
cruel."

I felt a small, unsettling stab of desire, mingled with dis- taste
and curiosity. How could the suggestion of something which I knew from my
grandmother to be extremely unpleasant and which I was fortunate enough never
to have experienced, how could such a suggestion from the man I hated have
quickened my blood, if ever so slightly?

"And if I decide to give you that pleasure," he
continued, his expression making it apparent that it would be a pleasure for
him, as well as for me, "are you naive enough to believe that the scrutiny
to which you'll be subjected, should you attempt to use that to divorce me,
will be easier to bear than the little courtesies I require of you?"

"Courtesies!" I repeated with a laugh. "Is
that
what
you call them?"

"I did not guess you found them so unpleasant," he
replied. "From the eagerness with which you have begun to extend them, I
had supposed the opposite. I'm curious— what is it, precisely, that you find so
disagreeable?"

I ought to have ignored the question rather than rising to the
bait. It was here that I made my great mistake, believing that I was dealing
him a crushing blow rather than opening myself up to an even more devastating
one.

"There is no feeling in them," I said.

"True," he said placidly. "But
that
is what
makes them so amusing. You are proving to be rather gifted at your true
vocation. I have no doubt you will improve remarkably with a little more
practice."

I rose from the table. I felt as if he had knifed me in the heart.

"And such an accomplished actress, as well," he
continued. "I have never seen a more convincing portrait of a refined and
delicate woman than the performance you put on for me at the outset of our
marriage. Really, I have the greatest respect for
all
your
talents."

I put my hands on the edge of the table to steady myself. I don't
know why I felt so deeply wounded. What he had said was no worse than I might
have expected from him. But each word cut to the bone, and rather than reveal
this, I chose to retaliate.

"You bloody hypocrite," I said. "Since we're
critiquing performances, shall we talk about the one
you
gave during
those same interminably dull months? The perfect English gentleman, all
chivalry and politesse. Who would have guessed that such a vengeful, sadistic
nature lay behind that mask of civility?"

But my shaft missed its mark.

"I don't know why you complain of that," he replied.
"It's obvious which you prefer—at least between the sheets. Things are not
quite so dull for you now, are they?"

I ought to have let that be the coup de grace, but I was unable to
retreat from the battlefield. I knew I had lost, but now, far from a desire to
strike back, I felt only sadness. I reached back into my memories for some
recollection of love with which to console myself, but the now betrayed and
accusatory shade of my darling Frederick sulkily refused to come to my aid, and
instead I found myself thinking, very strangely, of the man who had led me into
the magical forest of Fontainebleau.

"You were not always so unfeeling," I said at last.
"Is your hunger for revenge so great that it has completely destroyed your
better nature?"

Unfortunately, these words sounded melodramatic even to my ears,
and the laugh with which he greeted them suggested that he found them so too.

"What you call my 'unfeelingness' is no part of my
revenge," he told me candidly.
"That
is merely the result of
disappointment and of my wish not to be deceived again. I will
never
believe
anything you say, Fleur. However, that is not to detract from your recent
performances, which have been perfectly delightful. If in a somewhat uninspired
and mechanical way."

My cheeks flamed. If he had been vain enough to suppose that he
had ever wrested a genuinely inspired and unstudied response from me, I could
have summoned battalions of stinging words with which to undeceive him. But
nevertheless, for him to dismiss my admittedly unloving, yet ultimately
passionate, response as uninspired and mechanical was peculiarly irksome.

"I see," I said, and turned to leave the room.

"Wait, Fleur," said my husband.

But I did not want to hear any more. No matter what the justice of
his case might be, the supercilious air with which he made it had routed my
last, brief impulse to try to bridge the chasm between us. The short-lived
concern I had heard in his voice on the stairway earlier in the day had touched
me powerfully for an instant—until it was proven to have sprung only from his
dread of fathering a child on me. I did not want to risk being undone once
again.