The Honeymoon (40 page)

“At the moment, it does say ‘male,’ ” she admitted.

“But you can’t do that,” Barbara said. “How can you?”

“You know how confused I am about the whole thing.”

“Confused?” Barbara said. “How can you be confused about it, knowing me?”

“I signed the women’s property rights petition because the law is so obviously unjust. And I did contribute money for Girton. But as I’ve said, I worry about the effects of all these changes.” As they spoke, Johnnie looked from one to
the other smiling, as if in awe of them. She felt self-conscious at his unreserved worship, his open adoration.

“But you have to change the studentship to allow women,” Barbara said. “You know that George would have wanted it.”

“I’ll look into it. I promise,” she said.

“You’d better,” Barbara said. “I’m going to keep at you till you do.”

“I know you will,” Marian replied, with a smile.

The next day they went for a ride in the trap. “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?” Barbara said, smiling at her, as they drove along the Surrey lanes.

“I’m always better in the country.”

“I’m so grateful you’ve got Johnnie Cross. It makes me happy to know he’s watching over you.”

“Yes.” Her face reddened.

Barbara stared at her. “Are you actually blushing, Marian?”

“He’s over twenty years younger than me.”

“There’re plenty of men who’ve fallen in love with older women. Look at Annie Thackeray and young Richmond Ritchie. By the way, I hear she’s
enceinte
again too.” Two years before, Thackeray’s daughter, Annie, had married her cousin, a man who was eighteen years younger than she. And they’d had a child, a daughter.

“Obviously, Johnnie wants to look after you,” Barbara said. “He could have plenty of other women. He’s certainly good-looking enough. You’re not holding him prisoner, are you?”

“Really, Barbara.”

“Marian, I knew George. I’d swear with my full heart that he always wanted you to be taken care of. He loved Johnnie.”

“But … I’m an old woman.”

She groaned. “You’ve always said that sort of thing about yourself. No one who loves you agrees with you. You’ve got a lovely figure, the figure of a much younger woman.”

“A figure that’s aging rapidly … I’m ill all the time.”

“You’re ill because you’re still grieving. When you give it up, then your life will be restored. Give the poor boy a chance.” She went on. “Sometimes, young men want something more than just … physical satisfaction. They’re searching for spiritual fulfillment too. They want something other than a stupid, pretty face. Marian, be kind to the poor man. You’re going to lose him.”

Lose him? And then what? Then she’d be alone. How would she manage? She had a vision of the coming winter in London, the cold, the silence of the Priory walls, no voices but the occasional sound of the servants, all those days to fill, trying to work, without love, without encouragement.

Johnnie announced that he was going up to London.

“Must you?” But she had no claim on his company.

“I’ve got business I simply have to attend to.”

That night, after he left, for the first time, she was afraid here in the countryside, though Brett and Mrs. Dowling and the other servants were in their rooms. She saw herself, a small figure in the great dark space of the house, all those
empty, unused rooms, the woods beyond. Who knew what lurked there?

She wondered what he was really doing in the city. He said he was staying at the Devonshire. But did he have some other life up there she didn’t know about? That was silly.

While he was in London, she continued working on the new book. When she was finished for the day, she drifted restlessly about the huge house. She tried to read, but she could only read so much.

A kind of madness overtook her and she wrote to him at his club.
“Best loved and loving one,”
she said,
“the sun it shines so cold, so cold, when there are no eyes to look love on me …”

He didn’t know anything about Hebrew verbs,
“or the history of metaphysics or the position of Kepler in science, but thou knowest best things of another sort, such as belong to the manly heart — secrets of lovingness and rectitude —”
She hesitated, then signed it “
Beatrice
.” “Beatrice” — that was what he called her, what he wanted her to be. As she sealed it, she realized it was a love letter.

At the beginning of November, in London for the season, he took her about to galleries and concerts and on long, brisk walks through Regent’s Park. He came up with new ways to occupy and distract her, just as he’d done in the old days with her and George.

They went to the Grosvenor Gallery to see Whistler’s scandalous
Nocturne in Black and Gold
, the subject of Ruskin’s scathing review. It was a painting of a fireworks display in an industrial park, with a dense, foggy night sky,
a mass of black and gray, and flashes of light, nearly indistinguishable from anything real except for a few crudely drawn human figures watching the festivities.

Johnnie asked, “Do you agree with Ruskin?”

“I rather venerate him. I’ve tried hard in my own work to follow his theories about truth and nobility in art.” She nodded at the painting. “I think it’s a dreadful mess.”

As they went about, she was conscious of what they must look like to the world, the tall, striking young man with the older woman, her head bent, her face shaded by a mantilla.

Perhaps people thought he was just one of her many acolytes, escorting the widowed celebrity. Perhaps they thought he was her son. He seemed to have a kind of dazed, beaming pride at being with her, as if her fame gave importance and meaning to his life.

One evening, as they were leaving the theater, a young woman stopped her, went down on her knees in front of her, and clutched at her skirts. “George Eliot! Oh, the wisdom in your books!”

Embarrassed, Marian bent down to the woman and tried to extricate herself. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve met, have we?” She looked to Johnnie for help.

“What are you doing?” Johnnie said to the woman. “Please! Mrs. Lewes is in a hurry.” He sounded a bit proprietary, she thought, guarding his exclusive access to her.

But she didn’t begrudge him that. He’d made himself her protector, her encourager, and she needed him now. He was an ornament on her arm, he had such fine carriage, he walked with pride, conscious of his good looks and expensive clothes. He was at her beck and call. She, who’d been such a plain young woman and had never been
sought after by any handsome man, now had the handsomest man of all.

He came to supper almost every night. Afterward they sat in the drawing room by the fire, reading aloud, just as she and George would do. They finished Dante and went on to Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wordsworth, none of whose works he really knew. It was strange to be with someone who’d read so little, or remembered so little of what he’d read, but she was touched by his desire to learn. Again, it was like having a son. Brett would come in and say good night, and seeing them together, would smile benignly at them.

She read:
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream …”

He:
“The earth, and every common sight / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light …”

They read in rhythm, as if they were playing chamber music. Saying the words to each other was the romance, the basic declaration unspoken.

The days grew shorter, winter came, their walks through Regent’s Park were curtailed by the cold. The rains began and the fog made the days even darker. The shop windows were lit even in the afternoon. There were reports of hansom cabs crashing into one another in the miasma.

She sensed the coming sorrow in her bones, the anniversary of George’s death. She asked Johnnie not to visit that day.

The week before Christmas, Johnnie left London to see his sister, Emily. Emily and Frank Otter had resolved whatever their mysterious quarrel was that day long ago in
Weybridge, when Frank had seemed to be angry at Emily and made her cry. Marian had never discovered what their argument was about. But Emily and Frank had married now and were ensconced at their estate in Lincolnshire.

On Christmas Eve, Charley and Gertrude and little Blanche and Maud and Elinor came to lunch and she gave them their presents, including a big doll house, completely fitted out with furniture and miniature paintings and china. She played with them for an hour, lost in their little world. When Gertrude told the girls it was time to leave, Blanche, who was seven, asked politely, “Can we take it home with us?”

“I want to take it home!” Maud cried.

Baby Elinor, sensing her sisters’ discontent, started to cry.

“I’ll tell you what,” Marian said. “I’ll have it delivered to your house, but I’ll get another one just like it for here so we can always play together when you come. Is that all right?” And the little girls nodded solemnly.

Outside the window the gaslights glowed faintly in the yellow darkness. She wrote to Johnnie, calling him her
Bester Man
, and told him that she’d be alone on Christmas Day, smelling the servants’ goose cooking, but she was well and content. She didn’t want him to think she was lonely for him so that he’d feel burdened by her.

But, she asked, could he come to supper on Tuesday if he was back in town? If not then, Wednesday?

He did come, and she played the piano for him, Schubert sonatas. He sat apart from her on the settee, watching her from afar with an elated expression on his face. And at the end of the evening, he drew her to him. She raised her face
to him and instinctively closed her eyes, expecting him to kiss her on the lips. For a moment, she wanted him to, she was giving him permission. Instead, he pressed his lips to her forehead.

She felt a question, another moment of disappointment. But, of course, she’d been the one to insist she didn’t want a physical relationship. He was observing her prohibition, respecting her fear. She was relieved it hadn’t come to that, that he hadn’t taken that further step. Who knew where it might have led? To a frightening place, to his realizing the truth of what she really was, the truth of her old body. Then he would flee and she would lose him forever.

He took up his coat and hat, went out into the foggy night, and left her in the empty house.

She was alone, and the sadness was renewed, like a rock in her heart, unyielding as ever, the incomprehensibility of George’s absence.

When morning came, she continued on the new novel. The work was reassuring. She had her hero, her impoverished inventor, Cyril Ambrose, desperate for money to feed his family. He wants to sell a weapon he’s invented to the government to earn money.

But how exactly to make that happen? Maybe Cyril could unwittingly sell the weapon to a double agent for the French? Who would the double agent be?
“We should presume the strongest case against him,”
she wrote.
“He travels in the interludes when war allows as an agent for a great Museum or other institution …”
She had to give the man a name. What about “Rastin”? Good name for a villain, echoes of “Rat.”