Grahame, Lucia (20 page)

As I walked toward the stables, I saw my husband and Watkins so
deep in conversation that at first neither of them was aware of my approach. My
husband was leaning against the door frame, his hands in his pockets.
Everything in his demeanor was relaxed, except for the intensity of his expression
as he listened to the words of his ancient groom. His head was bent, his eyes
narrowed, and a little smile that gave his face a look of mingled regret and
amusement played across his handsome features. There seemed something so
intimate about the conversation that, had the groom not been so very old and
had his rough clothes not contrasted so greatly with those of my polished
husband, they might almost have been father and son.

But now Watkins had observed my presence, and as I came within
earshot, I heard him say, as if to seal the discussion, "Well, you know
what I think. She's a sound little filly all right, but she needs a touch of
the crop to soften her."

My husband looked startled, then lifted his head and broke into
laughter. The late autumn sunlight gleamed on his hair and his teeth flashed. I
felt a sharp, poignant thrust, as I realized suddenly that he was still a very
young man. Ordinarily his youthfulness was concealed by his air of cool
dignity.

My husband saw me, and his easy laughter and the charm of his
expression faded. I felt a momentary envy of the humble Watkins, who seemed
able to evoke that vanished aspect of the man I had married.

"I hardly think that's called for," said my husband in
response to Watkins's remark. Then he glanced again in my direction and the now
unfamiliar sparkle returned to his eyes. "Although, I must say, the idea
has
got a certain appeal."

My nerves tingled. I ignored the curious sensation.

"How dare you speak of my horse that way!" I exclaimed.
Andromeda was the only filly in our stable. Their presumptuous discussion of
her outraged me.

I saw Watkins give my husband a piercing, knowing look.

"I assure you, my dear," said my husband, now with his
customary grave politeness, "we were not speaking of Andromeda. Are you
taking her out?"

"Yes, it's too lovely a day to waste indoors," I said,
slightly embarrassed by my furious outburst. I supposed my husband must be
thinking of buying another horse. Apparently the two men had been discussing
the strengths and weaknesses of the animal which had caught his eye.

"Well, enjoy your ride."

With that, my husband turned his attention back to the groom.

Upon joining such a respectable English family, I had supposed
that I must become a dutiful churchgoer. Frederick had held fashionably
agnostic views, and I—having witnessed a little religious hypocrisy during my
youth in England and having learned a great deal more about it from my
grandmother—was an even greater skeptic. But sometimes, when I was out in the
countryside astride Andromeda, I would be swept with a restrained but powerful
pantheistic fervor.

Nor was my husband particularly devout; it seemed that he attended
our village church primarily to maintain his connections to the community, and
with what I considered ostentatious humility, he did not even take his seat in
the Camwell family's special pew.

I regarded my husband's attendance at the services he did not find
particularly instructive or uplifting as silly and hypocritical. I implied this
in a comment I made the first time I accompanied him to the little stone church.
I had gone chiefly because I was bored. Once or twice the sermon nearly made me
giggle, but more often than not the platitudes had me gritting my teeth.

"I can't imagine why you bother to attend," I said
afterward. "You don't take it any more seriously than I do. You really go
only to polish that upright image of yours, don't you?"

"Not entirely," replied my husband calmly. He could
never be provoked to rise to the bait on the rare occasions when I yielded to
an unkind urge to needle him. "It's true that I put little faith in
conventional dogma, but I do find much to admire in Christianity. The sermons,
I'll grant you, tend to be dull and disappointingly shallow—I'm always
astonished that a gentleman of such limited imagination would choose what
surely ought to be the most challenging and demanding of professions. But it's
a living, of course." He smiled wryly at his own slight joke. "And I
do believe that, in certain ways at least, the Christian faith has had both a
radical and a civilizing influence."

"Civilizing!" I exclaimed. "What
can
you be
thinking of? The bloody Inquisition? The Crusades? The persecutions of the
Jews? The slave trade? Or was it the burning of witches that you had in
mind?"

"Not at all," he replied in his unruffled way. "But
surely you'll admit that, whatever the failings of its practitioners may be,
Christianity's original precepts are quite remarkable. If you doubt that, try
to imagine a time when retribution was the only law. Then think how utterly
revolutionary it must have been to suggest that only someone without sin ought
to cast the first stone. Isn't that the very essence of a compassionate
morality?"

I laughed. "Do you know anyone in England who lives by that
code?"

"Don't
you?"
he asked, and I fell into silence.

In spite of such exchanges, I was not often unkind to my husband.
Generally, I lashed out only when I felt he was pushing me to display some
emotion I could not feel or to make some response when I wished only to be left
alone.

But most of the time I felt saddened when I thought of his empty,
joyless life, so earnestly and responsibly conducted—and I tried very hard to
behave well. Before our marriage I had supposed that once we were in England
the ties of family and society would compensate my husband at least in part for
my own limitations. But he had no close family ties other than to Neville Marsden,
whom we rarely saw anymore, for, to my enormous regret, some slight coldness
seemed to have arisen between the cousins.

Moreover, my husband cared as little for country society as I did.
He had taken the unrest in Ireland and the agricultural depression in England
seriously enough to slash his tenants' rents, which was a major cause of the
bad blood between him and the rack-rent Sparlings.

His interest in agriculture I thought very dull. Although we both
shared a passion for the outdoors, it did not provide much common ground. Mine
was a romantic love of Nature; his, a practical concern with science and
natural history.

But still he was always kind to me, and except for my little
flare-ups, which were very few and far between, I managed to curb the tongue
which guilt and depression had begun to hone to a razor edge.

There was the matter of the camera, for example.

If there was one invention that I detested, it was the camera. In
my hierarchy, the medium of paint and canvas soared far above that of the soulless,
treated plates that merely absorb whatever image the lens admits.

This had become one of my small, private objections to my husband.
I would have preferred that he have no artistic impulses at all, but he had the
very worst—he was an amateur photographer.

I did not discover this, however, until I came to Charingworth, at
which point I concluded that it was by far the silliest of all his interests
and thanked heaven that he never insisted, after my earliest refusals, on
attempting to capture
my
image.

He once showed me two or three examples of what he regarded as his
best efforts: one was a portrait of Watkins that bespoke the man's character
better than any words I could write here; another was a stunningly natural
picture of one of the village boys proudly holding a catapult. And how had he
coaxed his restless subject into remaining so patient and cheerful during the
long exposure? By promising the child the portrait as a present for his mother,
and by answering all his questions about the camera's workings.

We had been married for nearly seven months, our amiable
estrangement deepening daily, when, one evening in March, I arrived at the
dinner table to find a small package, beautifully wrapped and tied, at my
place. I opened the card.

"To Fleur. With my love, which is as constant and enduring as
these. Anthony," I read.

Oh, was there really no end to it! He had stopped proclaiming his
love for me months ago, and I no longer needed it—I had cured myself of
that
by keeping my distance and by focusing on the inevitable final separation.
We did not share a bed and often did not even sleep under the same roof.

Why had he chosen this moment to shame me with such a reminder,
however subtle and well meant, of an emotion which I'd dared to hope had faded
to mere affection?

"Won't you open it?" he said.

Uneasily, I removed the wrappings and lifted the cover of the
green velvet jeweler's case within. There lay a spectacular diamond necklace,
made in the dog-collar style, like the ones Princess Alexandra wore to cover a
scar on her throat, a style that had been instantly adopted by virtually every
lady of fashion.

I appraised it with my grandmother's eye and reeled at the thought
of what it must have cost him.

"It's very lovely," I said, closing the box and trying
to force some warmth into my voice. "Thank you, Anthony."

My husband arose from his chair and came to where I sat. He opened
the velvet case once again, lifted out the jewels, and fastened them around my
neck. They lay there heavily, like ice against my skin, a blatant symbol of
possession.

As soon as I was able to retire to my room, I did so, on the
grounds that my head ached. An hour or so later there was a tap at my door, so
soft that it would not have awakened me had I been sleeping. It was my husband,
who had not come to my room for months. Leaving the door open to admit the
light from the passage, he entered.

"How do you feel?" he asked me softly. "Is there
anything I can do for you?"

"No, thank you. My head is no better. When it aches like
this, sleep is the only help for it."

"And how are you otherwise?"

"I beg your pardon?"

I saw his slender black silhouette merge with that of an armchair
which stood near the foot of my bed.

"You are not well, Fleur. You grow thinner every day. If this
goes on, soon you will not even cast a shadow."

"Don't be ridiculous, Anthony. I have always been thin."

"And have you always been so wretchedly unhappy?" he
asked.

I was so astounded by the forthrightness I thought I had long ago
discouraged forever that I did not know how to answer. Fortunately, he spared
me.

"I have tried to respect your delicacy, Fleur," he said,
"your disinclination to unburden your heart to me. But I cannot remain
silent any longer. It will not do. My hesitation to insist upon confronting
your difficulties—whatever they may be—has already driven us apart. Perhaps
that
can never be mended. But something continues to eat away at you before my
very eyes. I cannot simply watch and do nothing."

I remained speechless.

"I know that I have wronged you," he continued
preposterously. "I have no right to ask for your forgiveness and your
trust. But I do. I would do anything to restore your happiness; I would make
any sacrifice."

"You
have wronged me?" I finally managed
to articulate in a whisper.

"Most assuredly I have wronged you. I know it. You must know
it, too. I was too hasty, too eager to make you mine. You were not an unhappy
woman when I knew you in Paris, Fleur. But I pressed my suit too quickly and
carried you away—perhaps before you were ready to close that chapter of your
life. I think..." Here he stumbled, but then went on. "I think that
you confused an affection which might have developed into love, under more
favorable conditions, with love itself."

I felt as if he had knocked the wind out of me.

"You are mistaken, Anthony," I choked out.

"Tell me how."

I tried to say more, but my breath was too ragged.

"My head hurts far too much to have such a conversation
now," I whispered at last, hoping the evil moment might be postponed
forever.

"But you must have it soon. If not with me, then with
someone
in whom you have faith and confidence. I fear for you, Fleur. Few things
can destroy you so long as you face them bravely. Bring your dragons out into
the light and stare them down in the open—with someone at your side. It's the
only hope. If you go slinking after them into their murky caves, they'll eat
you alive. I ought to have said this months ago, but I've been reluctant to
impose my own convictions on you. As a result, I've let you suffer far too long
—I am ashamed of my cowardice. Now I am begging you to open your heart. Surely
you know you have nothing to fear from me."