Grahame, Lucia (47 page)

I straightened the coverlet and the pillows, to erase any evidence
of my visit to my husband's room, and left.

It was Théo who found me the position in Geneva. He had a cousin
who ran a girls' school there. The English mistress had been called away
suddenly by a family crisis, and Théo's cousin needed a temporary replacement
until Christmas.

"If I recommend you," Théo told me,
"Elisabeth—Madame Vignon—will take you on in a second. She'll work you
like a dog, of course, but she's very decent."

The luster of success was becoming to Théo; he was more amiable
and less volatile than I remembered. He and Marguerite would have extended
their hospitality indefinitely. But I was eager to supplement the tiny nest egg
I had gained by selling the last of my grandmother's jewelry. I kept only one
poor little emerald necklace with which I could not bear to part.

"The only thing is," Théo went on, "my cousin is
anxious to protect the school's reputation and to avoid anything that might
bring it notoriety. So it would be best if you were to use an assumed
name."

That was how I became, once again, Caroline Flora Hastings. Only
Théo, Marguerite, and Guy knew where I had gone and the name I had taken. I did
not attempt to communicate with my husband, who had said he wanted nothing more
to do with me.

During the few months I would be at the Vignon School, I was sure
my secret would be safe. No one could mistake a plainly dressed, respectably
widowed schoolmistress for the infamous Lady Camwell, that parvenue who'd
scandalized English society by bolting her marriage, throwing over both her
handsome husband and his immense fortune—and for what? Or, as some people
whispered, for whom? The behavior of the abandoned husband provided no answers:
He had neither opened his lips to illuminate the mystery nor taken action
against his errant wife.

The sensible thing would have been to forget him. It was
impossible. Although Madame Vignon, the endless demands of her pupils, and the
almost unquenchable flow of idle conversation from the sewing mistress,
Mademoiselle Hubert, with whom I shared a tiny attic room, commandeered most of
my attention during my waking hours, my estranged husband was my first thought
when I awoke in the morning, my last as I fell asleep at night. It was useless
to think of forgetting.

I tried to harden my heart against him: What could be said for a
man who, motivated by vengefulness and hatred, had deliberately awakened a
woman's sleeping passions and slaked his own merely so that he might then enjoy
the crueler satisfaction of casting her aside?

I swore he would never learn from any action of mine how well he
had succeeded in exacting the revenge he'd forecast with such coldness and held
to with such determination.

Or had he?

When I felt my implacability faltering, I would sternly remind
myself of his infidelities. Or I'd think of the joyless, virtually silent meals
we had shared, when it seemed that we could find nothing to say to each other,
even as the sham of our marriage was collapsing about our heads.

But my thoughts kicked over the traces; they persisted in
wandering back to the moment he had turned to me in the darkened carriage and
gently invited me to talk about my daughter.

There was little point, however, in dwelling upon the past when my
future was so uncertain.

Madame Vignon expressed great satisfaction with my work, but it
went without saying that I would be redundant once the regular English mistress
returned after the New Year.

Marguerite, although she scorned my lowly ambitions, acknowledged
that with Madame Vignon's recommendation, she might be able to help me find
employment as a governess in theatrical and artistic homes where my identity,
which could probably not be concealed for long, might not be as severe a
handicap as it would be elsewhere. She agreed to try to arrange several
interviews for me in Paris during the Christmas holidays.

In early October, she wrote, "I saw Guy and Harry at the
Opera last week. Guy seemed dismayed to hear of your plans for the future.
Nevertheless, he knows so many people, I asked him please to keep you in mind
should he learn of any position which might suit you, and he has promised to
apply himself to that.

"I must tell you that I have seen Anthony," she added to
my chagrin. "I don't think he can be sleeping well—he was as haggard as a
ghost
and begged for news of you. I kept your secret, however—though I had to
bite my tongue, I felt so sorry for him!—and did nothing more than assure him
that you were safe and well. That seemed to ease his mind somewhat, but I think
he is far from happy. His
apparent
composure is beginning to wear
very
thin."

Of all the girls at Vignon, I was particularly fond of Nina
Lewingdon, the moody, precocious, and often wildly dramatic daughter of a
London solicitor. Unfortunately for Nina, the dirt and congestion of the sooty
metropolis where her family made its home had proven too much for Nina's
fragile respiratory system, and, upon the advice of the family doctor, she had
been sent away to the wholesome shores of Lac Leman. She was desperately
homesick, and she was lonely: Having just turned thirteen, she was the youngest
girl in the school.

There was nothing meek, however, about the poor little misfit. She
had an impudent tongue and clashed endlessly with Mademoiselle Hubert, who
disapproved of Nina's undisciplined stitches. But she quickly developed a
strong attachment to me. This concerned me a little; my tenure at Vignon would
end at Christmas, and I sometimes worried that Nina might then be lonelier than
ever. I raised the subject with her once.

"Oh, I shall miss you fearfully," replied Nina
offhandedly. "But I shall never surrender to despair! You see, you
have
taught me something!"

"I can't think what you are talking about," I said with
a laugh.

"You set such an example," declared Nina. "Here you
are, all alone in the world, your adored husband dead—"

The adoration was a pure flight of fantasy on her part; I had
never discussed my "adored husband" with Nina Lewingdon or with
anyone else at Vignon!

"—no relatives to take you to their bosom and to give you a
home where you are cherished and beloved. Forced to work for a living, and
worse, to share a room with that gargoyle Hubert, which I would consider a fate
worse than being thrown down the oubliettes at Chillon!" declared the
extravagant Miss Lewingdon. "But you are always cheerful and kind, and no
one has ever heard you grouse or get in a wax about anything."

"No one is always cheerful, Nina! But I do consider myself
very lucky to be here."

"I wish I did! But I like it better than I did at first. If
only La Hubert were leaving, instead of you, I might be entirely happy. You
ought to hear how she talks about you! I don't know how you bear it! She finds
you unduly mysterious and speculates about you constantly. She thinks you are
hiding something! It's your own fault though, for being so tight-lipped."

Perhaps it was true. At Vignon, I had revealed as little as was
humanly possible of the details of my life.

"For example," pursued Miss Lewingdon, "where were
you born?"

I hesitated.

"Oh, you needn't worry, I won't betray your confidences to
Hubert. But we
are
friends, aren't we?" she concluded plaintively.

Oh, what harm could it do?

"In Brighton," I said.

"Brighton!" she repeated happily. "I was there one
summer. It is so very sad, the condition of the Royal Pavilion. It must have
been beautiful once, but the Queen doesn't keep it up at all! If
I
am
ever rich, I shall restore it and live there. Is Brighton where you grew
up?"

"No, I grew up in a little village in Kent."

"What was it called?"

"Holwich," I said. I was not enjoying the innocent
interrogation at all, but neither did I wish to fabricate a history or to seem
"unduly mysterious."

"And your parents, do they still live there?"

"My mother died when I was born, and my father went to
America."

"Oh, my goodness! Were you sent to an orphanage, like Oliver
Twist? No wonder you think yourself lucky to be at Vignon!"

"My grandmother raised me," I said. "You will be
relieved to know that she was not at all like Mr. Bumble. And
that
is
the last such question I intend to answer today."

How strange that Nina should regard me as an example of courage in
the face of misfortune just as I was coming to the humbling conclusion that I
had never shown any courage at all! It was true that at Vignon I had managed to
rise above self-pity. But as the weeks passed and my bitterness toward my
husband relaxed, I began to look back upon both my marriages with new eyes.

I thought of how my idyllic romance with Frederick had cracked
under the first real strain. It had seemed so easy to love, but what could be
said of "love" that was nothing more than a feeling? Was it possible
that I had never loved Frederick until the day I had dragged myself—too late—
out of my self-imposed, despairing isolation, had committed myself to try to
reverse the disastrous course our lives had taken, and had asked him for his
help?

I burned inwardly as I dared even to consider that the great
romance of my life had been little more than a case of passion without love, a
passion that had survived, thanks to a happy compatibility of temperaments and
inclinations, until circumstances demanded more of it. And even if I had
managed to rise to the challenge, had Frederick?

As I entertained the searing possibility that perhaps Frederick
had
not
been able to fully return my love, and that my isolation had
not
been entirely self-imposed, I was consumed with a mixture of anguish and
pity.

Later I went on to contemplate not only the sad events that had
led to Frederick's death but those that had followed it as well. Had they
perhaps been, not simply the result of fate and unhappy circumstances, but the
inevitable consequences of choices made—not only Frederick's but my own.

I had chosen fear over love.

I had chosen not to put my faith in the love I had glimpsed in my
suitor's eyes at Fontainebleau.

I had chosen to turn away from my husband every time he had come
to me and begged me to open my heart to him.

He'd sworn he would make me feel passion without love —what mortal
being has such power to engineer another's feelings! And if he
had
possessed
such remarkable abilities,
was
it passion without love that he'd have
chosen to make me feel? If that was all that I felt, perhaps it was because
that was all I had wanted or dared to feel.

And when my heart had begun to move past fear, past indifference
and resentment and hatred and blind desire, to feel that strange blend of
admiration and compassion— love?—for my husband, I had barely expressed my
softer impulses. I had bowed without resistance to the separation my husband
imposed.

Which one of us had chosen that final estrangement? Was it my
husband's choice, simply because he had initiated it? Or was it more truly my
own? Had I yielded too readily to his decree? Had I wilted under the lash of a
few petty rejections merely because I lacked courage—or the motivation to
challenge them? I could not avoid comparing my behavior to that of my husband,
who had exposed himself to rejection over and over again during the first
months of our marriage, as he'd sought the way to reach my heart.

I had chosen to believe him when he said he would never forgive
me, because it was easier than asking for forgiveness that might come slowly
and painfully, or not at all. It was easier than trying to express feelings for
which I had no words.

Each night, as I slipped between the cool sheets of my narrow bed,
I thought of these things. I yearned to bridge the gulf between my husband and
myself. But I could not imagine where or how to begin, nor could I even have
said what outcome I desired.

By mid-November, thanks to the efforts of my friends, I had four
prospects for a new position. Madame Vignon took an active interest in them.

"How many children are there?" she demanded, when I
received a letter from the secretary to a Mr. Henry Blake, an Englishman
dwelling in France who wanted a governess for his children and who had obtained
my name from Guy Hazelton. Mr. Blake would be in Geneva in December and wished
to meet with me then. "And what are their ages?"