Grahame, Lucia (36 page)

"Disgracefully? Are those the morals your father taught
you?" interrupted my husband with faint scorn.

"It is what my conscience tells me," retorted Madame
Mansard. "Perhaps you would do well to listen to your own more often. Cast
your mind back to that villa in St. John's Wood? Was not
that
a
disgrace?"

"I'm afraid I am not certain of which one you are speaking.
There have been several."

"The one where the three sisters lived."

A fond expression stole over my husband's face.

"Oh, that one! What delightful young ladies they were. I used
to call them the Three Graces. But I cannot think of anything, with respect to
them, that
I
would term '
dis
graceful.' Certainly not."

"And those notorious billiard games at Mrs. Hawkes's house?
The players were very agile, to say the least, and the rules altered beyond
belief!"

"Ah yes. The billiard games," murmured my husband. His lips
seemed to be fighting a smile, and he had a faraway look in his eyes.

"Is that the worst of it?" I asked quickly, when I had managed
to steady my breath.

"Oh, it's merely typical. No worse or better than the rest.
Of course, there is the matter of the money he squandered on these women. There
was one who had her nipples pierced to signify her devotion to him—"

"That was her idea, not mine," said my husband. "I
forbade it, in fact, but she had a mind of her own—it was one of her greatest
charms. And I will admit that, once the deed was done, I found the results
utterly bewitching."

"And gave her those gold rings set with diamonds to wear in
them—"

"That's right, I did," reflected my husband cheerfully.
"I had forgotten about the diamonds. The rubies, although not as costly,
were so much more becoming. They were my favorites."

"—while you left your
wife
to languish alone in the
country, dressed in rags," pressed his relentless prosecutor.

My husband whitened as if he had been struck.

"I think I have learned as much as I wish to know," I
interposed hastily. "There is only one other thing, a small thing, really.
When did it start? Or have these always been his habits?"

"They were once—before he began courting you," said
Madame Mansard. "After that—and even after the honeymoon, for a week or
two—he led an exemplary life. But it appears to have been one of those sad
cases of the leopard who cannot change his spots."

The leopard, having recovered himself, still leaned against the
window, now looking as if he had been richly entertained.

"Thank you, madame," I whispered through stiff lips.

"Well then, if there is nothing more to be said on the
subject, I will leave you," announced Poncet's daughter, getting to her
feet.

I pulled myself to mine.

"Thank you so much," I said, forcing myself to show greater
warmth as I followed her into my bedroom, where she collected her things.
"It was kind and generous of you to offer me your help. If there is
anything I can ever do for you—"

"I hate what my father did to you," she said bluntly.
"And he's no better—" She jerked her chin in the direction of the
room we had left. "But what a cool one! How can these men be such
hypocrites!"

Unfortunately, as soon as she had gone, my facade began to
crumble. My throat felt knotted, my eyes burned.

"Well, I can't imagine what the point of that was,"
declared my husband airily, once I had closed the door on the astonishing
visitor. "A very admirable young woman. Who would have dreamed that that
worm-eaten old tree could have produced such wholesome fruit? But it's not as
if she told you anything I had not already told you myself."

"Yes, what a pity. I was rather hoping there might be
something about your mother or a sheep."

"No such luck, I'm afraid. Even
my
tastes aren't
that
wide-ranging."

"And you never
did
tell me everything!" I cried
stupidly. "Billiards, for God's sake!
I've
never seen you go
near
a billiard table!"

He started to laugh.

"Once I would have dearly loved to teach
you
my way of
playing billiards," he said. "But, sad to say, you have never
displayed the smallest enthusiasm for such pastimes." I opened my mouth to
protest that he had never broached the subject with me, but I closed it again
when he added, in withering tones, "Until recently, of course." He
threw me a meaningful smile, but it faded quickly as he demanded,
"Whatever are you doing now?"

"I'm going out. This room is an inferno."

"Let me open the windows. You can't possibly think of going
outside. The air is very damp, and I believe it has begun to rain."

"Oh, what do I care!" I cried, throwing my coat over my
shoulders.

"Then I will go with you," said my husband.

"What is the point of that?"

"You do not look well," he replied, "and I don't
think much of your walking about alone at this hour—not in the state you appear
to be in."

"Oh, do what you will," I said. "But if you must
follow me about like a gaoler, at least be good enough not to talk."

He took his umbrella, and we made our exit.

I walked blindly along the Jardin des Tuileries to the Place de la
Concorde, where I turned toward the river. A fine rain was falling, like a balm
to my blazing cheeks. I did not take shelter under my husband's umbrella, nor
did he press himself upon me; at length he closed the umbrella. The soft,
vaporous rain now fell upon his uncovered head —for in his haste to follow me,
he'd left his hat behind—as he continued to walk silently beside me.

I could not unravel my tangled emotions. The help I had been
secretly hoping for from Poncet's daughter—some scandal so far beyond mere
adultery that I
could
petition for a divorce—had not been forthcoming;
surely that was the reason for my misery. But would my turmoil have been less
if she
bad
told of some truly depraved act, such as I had spoken of to
my husband after she had left us. No. In truth, i was relieved that at least she'd
had nothing of quite
that
turpitude to relate.

But that meant, of course, that I was still bound to him. My husband
had taken the slight little weapon Madame Mansard had handed me, and he had
snapped it across his knee. Far from being embarrassed or chagrined enough by
her account of his misdeeds to recognize the hypocrisy of punishing me for
mine, he had relished each charming memory as it was rekindled.

And I, too vain and self-absorbed to have dreamed that he had
flung himself into such pursuits, was unhappier than ever.

I thought again of his threat to have me painted. Now I
acknowledged at last what I had always known—that he possessed far too much
pride to do any such thing. Perhaps he had developed that hauteur in defense
against his mother's representation that to marry a Camwell, a mere baronet,
had been for her, the daughter of a marquess, an act of enormous condescension.
Certainly I knew of no qualities that particularly distinguished the Camwell
family, other than its old name and its great wealth. I had concluded long ago
that my husband's deceased father must have been a virtual half-wit to have
married so cold and unloving a woman as the present Lady Whitstone.

Perhaps my husband had come to the same conclusion about his
parents' marriage. Perhaps this was why he had managed to blind himself to his
own wife's lovelessness and why he had reacted so violently when the truth
could no longer be denied.

But if he had been as blind as he had appeared, then he had been
idling away the hours in those mysterious villas and enjoying those infamous
games of billiards with his ruby-breasted mistresses even while he yet believed
that I had married him for love.

And he—whose fundamental honesty I had never doubted—had lied to
me.

These bitter thoughts carried me down the Quai des Tuileries,
along the lovely, silent river where Frederick had drowned. A few tears scalded
my cheeks, but they were cooled by the sweet, small rain that still blew softly
down. I walked farther—along the Quai du Louvre, past that immense and dazzling
palace where my husband's courtship had begun, past the Pont des Arts and on to
the Pont-Neuf.

There I stopped and ensconced myself upon the stony bench within
one of the bridge's graceful, curving bays, where lovers linger to whisper and
kiss when the nights are warm and the weather fair. Turning to rest my arms
upon the parapet, I stared up the river toward the Île de la Cité, where the
forbidding walls of the Conciergerie, that severe medieval castle, press so heavily
upon the island's edge.

I gazed for a long, long time at its stark towers, part fairy
tale, part nightmare. And then, oblivious to the glow falling from the lanterns
above me, oblivious to the people and carriages still passing over the bridge,
I buried my face in my arms.

"I think you had better tell me what is troubling you,"
said my husband firmly after some time had passed.

I turned toward him.

"You!" I said. "You and your threats! I had hoped
Poncet's daughter might have some bit of information for me that I could use to
escape this miserable marriage, but it's no use —oh God!"

I looked down, down into the slow-moving water and thought of
Frederick, who had been so warm and bright, and whose bones lay forever still
in the cool, damp earth of a pauper's grave, on which this same soft rain must
now be falling. I thought, too, of my tiny, nameless daughter's fate, and
dropped my face back into the nest of my arms, all but sobbing aloud with an
impossible grief that yet seemed strangely disconnected from those old,
familiar sorrows....

"Threats?" said my husband. "What threats?"

I lifted my head.

"Oh, you wretch, you devil!" I cried, to discharge some
of that excess of emotion. "How can you act so innocent? What threats,
indeed? Why, to have a painting made from that ghastly photograph, of course.
And then to sell those other paintings back to that monster, who would drink my
very blood, if he could!"

My husband sank down upon the hard, rain-slick seat beside me. He
shook his head slowly.

"The photograph!" he exclaimed, staring at me with an
expression of utter astonishment. "Lord love you, Fleur, are you a
complete goose? Surely you know there was no plate in the camera, and even if
there
had
been, there wasn't enough light in the room to capture the faintest
image! I was playing with you that night—I thought you knew that! I even
imagined you were enjoying it. That is, until you turned so nasty the following
morning."

Now it was my turn to go slackjawed.

"No photograph!" I whispered.

"No photograph," he articulated, one syllable at a time.
I tried to clear my spinning head.

"But you took me at my word," he went on in a low,
choked voice. "My God, even if you
are
a complete ignoramus about
cameras, I thought you knew
me
at least
somewhat.
Did you really
imagine that I was capable of anything so vile?" He shook his head once
more in that baffled way. "Well, I suppose you did," he said at last.
"But believe me, Fleur, I still have far too much"—he paused and then
concluded rather stiffly—"regard for myself to do anything quite so
ignoble as what
you
have credited me with."

"Well,
you
made the threats!" I said.
"I
didn't
invent them."

"I
said
those things because it was the only thing I
could think of to do that might stop me from smacking you. Can you possibly
understand that?"

"Oh," I said. I still felt giddy, as if some horrible
weight had been lifted, but it was not a pleasant sort of vertigo— my relief
was tinged with bitterness that I had spent so many nights with fear coiled in
my heart like a serpent, sometimes raising its head, sometimes baring its
fangs, and only occasionally slumbering.

My husband, who had drawn himself up to explain himself to me, was
now leaning forward with his forehead in his hand. Raindrops clung to his hair.
Finally he raised his head and turned toward me. He wore a look of genuine
remorse.

"Truly," he said, "I never meant to cause you so
much
distress."

"I think you did," I whispered.

A yet more shaken expression came over his face as he considered
this, but he looked straight at me.

"Well," he said, still in that very low voice.
"Perhaps I did. In any case, it was inexcusable. I most desperately regret
it."

He paused. I said nothing.

"I don't know how to express how sorry I am," he
concluded. "I never dreamed that I might have caused you any real
suffering. Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you!" I exclaimed. I thought of all I had
endured, I remembered that painful interview with Neville Marsden, my frantic
clutch at the lifeline of Marguerite's friendship, and, most particularly, the
appalling revelations of the past few hours. My throat closed up entirely.