The Adultress (42 page)

“You’re right. Zipporah. But if it should ever be that it is hopeless … and there is nothing left to me but pain … well, who would blame me … ? Zipporah, would you help me, if the pain gets too bad?”

“Oh, please don’t talk of such things.”

“I think of them. Escape is in that bottle. … If it became unbearable … a little help …”

“Let me help you to bed. Let me lie beside you and hold your hand. Let me try to make you understand all you mean to me.”

I stayed with him for the rest of the night lying beside him, holding his hand until he fell into a peaceful sleep.

There was a letter from my mother. We corresponded regularly for she was eager to hear of Jean-Louis’s condition.

“I know that you cannot come to us and leave Jean-Louis.” she wrote, “and if we come to you that disturbs the household, but why should not Lottie visit us? That nice sensible Miss Carter could come with her. We do so long to see her.”

When Lottie heard she was eager to go. Dear child. I think she was beginning to be affected by Jean-Louis’s illness. I thought it would be a good idea for her to get away for a while.

So she left at the end of June.

I watched her leave in the company of Miss Carter and six grooms and I gave them instructions that they were to send the grooms back the day after they arrived so that I should know they had reached their destination safely.

Then I went back to Jean-Louis.

He was lying in bed. He smiled when he saw me.

“I’m glad she’s gone,” he said.

“Oh, come,” I answered, “you hate to lose her.”

“I miss her,” he said. “But it’s good for her not to have to see me.”

“Don’t talk like that, Jean-Louis,” I begged.

“It’s true,” he said, a little harshly. There was a faint irritation in his voice—so unlike him, but I knew that it was the herald of pain.

“We must face the truth,” he said. “I’m a depressing object.”

“Nonsense. Do you feel like a game of chess?”

“And you …” he went on, “you should be going with them.”

“I prefer Eversleigh. I have no desire to go to Clavering. You know how I dislike Dickon. And as for my mother and his, they talk Dickon all the time.”

“I hope Lottie won’t get tired of the subject.”

“She has her lessons. Madeleine Carter will never allow her to evade them … much as she might like to.”

“Madeleine Carter is a stern taskmaster—or, I should say, mistress.”

“I hope not too stern. I think she does preach a little hell fire to poor Lottie now and then. I don’t want the child thinking her immortal soul’s in peril because she commits some little peccadillo.”

“Is Madeleine so upright then?”

“Completely so. She lives by a set of rules all laid down in her interpretation of the Bible. It makes life easy.”

“Perhaps she has never had the temptation to be other than good?”

“Well, let’s accept her for the good woman she is. I don’t suppose Lottie will be any the worse for her discipline. I’ll get the chessboard.”

It was when we were in the middle of the game that the attack began. I hastened in to the dressing room and took out the bottle and gave him a dose with a shaking hand. His talk had unnerved me. I put the bottle on a table and made him lie down. The effect was miraculous. He opened his eyes and smiled on me and then I saw his gaze rest on the bottle.

“Try to sleep,” I said. “I shall sit here until you do.”

He was soon sleeping peacefully under the influence of the laudanum.

I picked up the bottle, and seeing that there was very little left, I decided that I would go straight over to Charles and get more.

We must not be without it.

I locked the bottle in the cupboard, put the key in the secret drawer and, putting on my riding habit, I went to the stable, saddled my horse and rode into town.

I was relieved to find Charles at home. He took me into his sitting room and I told him why I had come.

“I gave him a dose before I came out,” I explained. “He is sleeping peacefully now.”

“He will do so until morning.”

He was looking at me intently. “You look worn out,” he said.

I raised my eyes to his. The compassion and tenderness I saw there unnerved me. I turned away but he was beside me, gripping my shoulders, turning me round to face him.

“Oh, Zipporah …” he said; and I was lying against him and his arms were round me. He was kissing my hair.

“I can’t bear it,” I said. “It gets worse.”

“It’s inevitable.”

“Is there nothing … nothing …”

“Only what we are doing. There is nothing wrong with him organically. Constitutionally he is strong.”

“I don’t think he can bear these violent attacks of pain.”

“It’s tragic. I would do anything … anything …”

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

“You know I love you.”

I was silent. I did know it. I had known it for some time. Did he know that I loved him, too?

I stammered: “You have been so good.”

“If there were only something I could do.”

“You have sustained me with your care of him … and for me. Oh, Charles, how long can it go on?”

He was silent.

Then he said: “I’ve told you at last. If only … you were free … If only …

“Come and sit down. We are alone here, Zipporah. Mrs. Ellis is out.”

I felt my heart beating fast. I was elated in a way and at the same time horribly depressed. To be loved by such a man, whom I admired above all others, could not help but bring me joy; and on the other hand Jean-Louis was uppermost in my mind, his dependence on me, his abiding devotion.

I said I should go. “Give me the medicine and I will leave.”

“I want to talk to you first,” he replied. “It is no use shutting our eyes to what is and cannot be denied. I love you and you love me. I believe that to be so.”

“And if it is … we must forget it.”

“Forget it? You cannot push aside the truth and forget it.”

“There is nothing we can do about it.”

His hand closed over mine and gripped it tightly.

“We can be together,” he said.

“And we shall know that the other is there, caring.”

“Waiting,” he said.

“Waiting.”

“One day you and I will be together, Zipporah. It must be so.”

I was silent. I couldn’t bear it. It was talking of the time when Jean-Louis would no longer be there. It was like waiting for him to die … hoping he would.

I said: “I could never be happy. If Jean-Louis… died I would remember him forever and that I had not been true to him.”

“These things pass,” he said.

“Do they? Does one ever forget?”

“No, you’re right. We can forget for periods at a time and then our guilty secrets raise their heads when we least expect them and we are caught unawares to discover how vulnerable we are.”

“I must go,” I said. “Give me the laudanum and I will leave. It is better so.”

He shook his head. “What harm is done by your staying awhile? Jean-Louis is sleeping. He would not know if you returned. Stay awhile with me, Zipporah.”

He came toward me but I held him off. I was afraid of my emotions. I felt again that familiar desire which I had known with Gerard. It was there,
I
knew, ready to flare up and consume my resolutions. I knew that if I were not on guard all the time I should be swept away into the overwhelming need to slake my passion as I had done before.

There could not have been two men more unlike than Gerard and Charles and yet they both had this effect on me, this demanding, seering passion which I had never felt with Jean-Louis. Gerard had been so lighthearted, so ready to laugh, treating life as a joke. Charles was somber, weighed down by secrets, a man of deep passions when they were aroused, I was sure. Gerard’s I fancied could be easily aroused but Charles would give long consideration to such matters and would not lightly fall in love.

I must be careful. I could not believe that I would be caught up in a whirlwind of passion while Jean-Louis lay ill—and yet thinking about it over the years I could feel the same irresistible impulses.

I was in love with Charles. I had been in love with Gerard. I loved Jean-Louis, too; I was weak, I realized that. So I must tread very carefully.

He said: “I want to talk to you. I have never felt for anyone before what I do for you. I had a wife once. You knew that, did you?”

I shook my head.

“I thought perhaps Isabel had told you.”

“Isabel has talked of you a good deal … but she never really told me anything about you which I did not know.”

“Zipporah, I want you to know about this part of my life. Come and sit down. I’ve wanted to talk to you so often. I’ve wanted to tell you … to explain why these moods come upon me at times. I can never, never escape from my guilt. Whatever I do … it is there. I want you to know everything about me. Zipporah … I want to take you into those secret hiding places because I want you to know me for what I am. There must be no secrets between us.”

I sat down beside him.

He went on: “It happened a long time ago … ten years to be exact. I was young and ambitious then … rather different from what I am now. Events change us more than time, perhaps. I was a doctor in fashionable London. My patients were among the rich; my reputation was growing, and then I met Dorinda. It was at the theater. She was a passionate theatergoer, and so was I. I was constantly at the Haymarket Theater and Dairy Lane or Covent Garden. It was during a performance of
King Lear
, with Garrick magnificent in the leading role, that I was introduced to Dorinda.

“She was very beautiful—fair-haired, blue-eyed like an animated doll. She was high-spirited, full of vitality. I was completely enchanted. She enjoyed the company of actors and as I discovered later helped many of them financially. She had inherited a large fortune from her father, who had doted on her during his lifetime. Her mother had died soon after her birth.

“You can imagine what happened. I must have seemed something of an oddity to her. I was serious, the ambitious doctor; her life had been spent among stage people or those who never worked but were intent on the pursuit of pleasure.

“I could not understand why she accepted me, but she did. I think it was a sort of novelty. It was only after our marriage that I discovered my wife was one of the greatest heiresses in the country and her upbringing had made her highly unsuitable to be the wife of a doctor. She could not understand my desire to work. There was no need to work, she declared. She had never thought of money. It was something which was just there. As for work … My patients, she said, were all malingerers. They fancied being ill for a while and thought it made them rather interesting. She found my absorption rather a bore.

“I realized within a month or so that I had made a great mistake. I used to go for long walks in the evenings into the poorer districts. That was when I went into Whitefriars. I told you about that. I had the feeling then that I wanted to get away from my work in fashionable London. I wanted to do something worthwhile.

“I tried to explain to Dorinda. She was skeptical. I had been noticing for some time strange things about her. And there came one night … I had been out looking after a poor woman … one of the servants of a wealthy family who had called me in. The woman was suffering from an incurable disease and I had been with her some time so that I was too late for the theater performance to which we had arranged to go.

“When Dorinda came back that evening she was in a bad mood and it was then that I had the first real glimpse of the violence in her nature. She abused me in a loud and hectoring manner. Then she threw a statuette at me. It missed and went into a mirror. I can still hear the sound of cracking glass as the splinters fell over the carpet. Then she picked up a paper knife and came at me. It was not a sharp weapon but there was murder in her eyes. She could have killed me. I was stronger than she was and managed to get the weapon away. She collapsed suddenly and I gave her a sedative.

“I was so disturbed that I went to a cousin of hers—her nearest relation—and he told me that I would have to take care. Her mother had had to be, as he said, “put away.” There was madness in the family. Her grandmother had committed murder. There was a long tradition of insanity which seemed to be passed down through the women. They had hoped Dorinda had escaped because the violence had not begun to show in her until she came into her teens and then the attacks were not frequent. They had thought marriage would cure her.

“I said: ‘Why did no one warn me?’”

“The cousin was silent. I think they had wanted someone to take the responsibility from them. Dorinda had a large fortune and I think they believed that that would be the compensation.

“You can imagine my feelings. I had already begun to know that my marriage was a great mistake. What I had felt for Dorinda was infatuation and I was not experienced enough to recognize it for what it was. And now to learn that I was married to a mad woman was the greatest blow imaginable.

“‘You are a doctor,’ the cousin had said. ‘We had thought that marriage with you was the very best thing that could happen to Dorinda. We thought you would be able to treat her and she would be under your constant supervision.’

“I cannot tell you the terrible depression I suffered at that time. I saw myself as a prisoner bound to this woman … this mad woman … for the rest of my life. Then I was presented with the most fearful dilemma. Dorinda was going to have a child. I pondered this; I spent sleepless nights asking myself what I should do. If Dorinda bore a girl that baby would be tainted … doomed to madness if the pattern persisted as it had for generations.

“I was a doctor. I had it in my power to terminate Dorinda’s pregnancy. I wrestled with myself. It was in a way taking a life, but surely that was better than allowing some maimed creature to come into the world. What was I to do? I had means at my disposal. I knew how. …The right dose of a certain medicine and the chances were that I could bring about a miscarriage.

“Well, I made the choice. I terminated the pregnancy … but I must have made a mistake for, at the same time, I terminated Dorinda’s life.