Grahame, Lucia (37 page)

That was my answer.

After a very long time, my husband said coolly, "There is one
other thing for which I owe you the deepest apology. About this
evening..."

My heart seemed to lift, but it sank back to its usual depths as
he continued, "I would never have been so unmannerly as to intrude myself
into a private conversation, were it not for my fear that you had somehow
fallen back into Poncet's power. I could not imagine why you were making such
secretive arrangements. Then I recalled your last visit to Paris, and it
occurred to me that perhaps he had somehow managed to gain yet another hold
over you. I knew very well that, if that
were
the case, you would never
confide your troubles to me, so I thought it would be best to uncover any
intrigue that might already be underway."

"And once you realized that that was not the case," I
replied, "you might have allowed me to speak with Madame Mansard
privately."

He laughed.

"Oh? You think I ought to have slunk away, leaving the two of
you to gossip about me, as if I were ashamed?"

"Aren't
you ashamed?"

"No," he said. "Not in the least. Why would I be
ashamed?"

"But you think
I
should be ashamed of my
misdeeds."

"Oh yes. Absolutely."

I understood his own violent longings then. I yearned to push him
from the bridge so forcefully that his proud neck would snap as his head struck
the river bottom.

Instead, I said, "You lied to me."

He stared at me in apparent confusion.

Finally, he said, "Aside from those empty threats, I have
never lied to you, Fleur."

I gasped with incredulous laughter.

"You told me you were faithful to me."

"I never did. In fact, I believe I indicated quite the
opposite."

"I thought it was an idle boast. And you confirmed that when
you told me you had
not
been unfaithful."

His eyes widened with undisguised bewilderment.

"I never told you any such thing, I swear it. I don't know
what you can be thinking of."

"Have you forgotten so quickly? 'Remember,' you said, 'it was
not
I
who was unfaithful to
you.'
But you were."

The puzzlement faded from my husband's face.

"Oh, that," he said.

"Yes, that. There you stood, chiding me for
my
bad
faith, while avowing your own fidelity!"

"You are mistaken," said my husband. "You have
distorted both my words and their meaning. Let me refresh your memory. What I
said to you was, 'It was not my faithlessness which brought you to this.' I
never said that I had been faithful. I merely said that my faithlessness was
not the source of your troubles. How could it be? But you misunderstood me, of
course, and took it as a slight against you."

"Wasn't it?"

He did not answer.

I leaned into the parapet. Finally, I said slowly, "If it
wasn't to slight me, then what
did
you mean?"

Instead of answering, he said with a laugh, "I value my life
too much to answer that. You already look as if you would dearly love to cut my
heart out. Why is that? Why have you never asked yourself where all your anger
rightfully belongs?"

"I suppose
you
think I ought to have gone to Poncet
and stabbed him in his bath, like Charlotte Corday!"

"Not at all. If I believed he lay at the root of your
suffering, or that his death would end it, I would have done the deed myself.
With pleasure."

Instead of being flattered by the heroic assertion that he would
have braved the guillotine for me, I said, "I think you are the most
corrupt hypocrite on the face of the earth."

He laughed again. "Perhaps. But at least I cannot claim to
have corrupted my high-minded wife. I am not the one who deserves the credit
for
that."

Then I began to understand him. He was wise to fear for his life.

"I was completely faithful to Frederick," I said.
"As he was to me. I loved him. I could never love anyone else. Yes, I
modeled for those paintings you despise, it's true, but everything else about
them is pure invention.
He
was an artist, thank God, not a prig and a
whoremonger. He had an artist's imagination. I loved it. He was everything I
ever wanted."

"I have no doubt of that," returned my husband placidly,
to my surprise. "But your irreproachable behavior in your perfectly
idyllic marriage to St. Frederick of Montmartre has very little bearing upon
this one. I did not make you what you chose to become by marrying me, and my
conscience certainly doesn't trouble me on
that
score."

"Hal" I said, focusing with bitter satisfaction on his
belittling reference to Frederick. "There it is! I knew it! You've always
envied Frederick. He was everything you could never be."

"You're quite mistaken," said my husband. "I have
never in my life wished that I might trade places with Frederick Brooks. Except
once, perhaps," he added after a pause.

"He had everything," I persisted unkindly, "that
all your wealth, all your noble connections could never give you.
He
had
talent. He created masterpieces.
You
could only buy them. He had
vitality, zest. He lived life to the hilt. And I loved him. Everyone did."

"You are utterly mistaken," repeated my husband calmly,
after a long, alarming silence that almost made me regret my cruel words.
"He was very talented, and fortunate in many ways. But I can tell you
this: I would not change places with him for the world."

"That's easy to say—now that he's dead."

"And just
why
is he dead?" retorted my husband
swiftly.

That brought my tongue to a halt. I knew the answer too well. He
was dead because of me. It would have been kinder had I put a gun to his head,
rather than sapping his vitality, his talent, by wallowing in my useless, vain
despair.

"He is dead because he sold the woman he claimed to love and
then drowned himself in absinthe to avoid having to think about what he had
done," stated my husband brutally. "How could I envy a man like
that?"

I floundered with shock.

"He loved me," I whispered.

"No doubt," said my husband dryly. "And it's plain
to see how great a love this man of genius had for you, isn't it?"

I gasped. I felt as if he had kicked me in the stomach. I wanted
to rip his eyes out. But I couldn't allow him to think such things of
Frederick, so I pulled myself together and said in a cold and steady voice,
"What do you know? You have no idea what it is to be poor. You don't know
what it is to have creditors banging at your door, to fear being seen in the
streets, having to duck down alleyways to avoid running into someone to whom
you owe money."

Oh, how sordid it sounded! No wonder my husband's haughty and
privileged patrician features gleamed with contempt!

"You are right, of course," he said disdainfully.
"I have no idea what
that
might be like. But I know myself. And I
know what I would have done, had I been your husband and had I believed that
selling those paintings was the only way out of my difficulties."

"What
would
you have done?" I challenged.
"Do
tell me, what would you, one of the richest men in England, do if you woke
up tomorrow to find you had nothing left—no money, no friends to whom you were
not up to your ears in debt, nothing? Can you even
imagine
being so
desperate! I think not."

He was silent.

I shivered and waited.

My husband seemed to be fighting with himself. After a very long
time, he said quietly, almost gently, "it is clear to me that Brooks's
views on love and marriage were somewhat different from my own. His apparently
satisfied
your
tastes, mine do not. It really makes no difference, now,
what I might have done had I found myself in his shoes. If you knew me better,
you would be able to answer the question yourself."

"Oh, that's really low," I said. "To judge him so
glibly— you, who have never tasted poverty! And you can't even say what
you'd
have done differently!"

"Call it whatever you like," said my husband equably.
"If ours were the kind of marriage I dreamed of when I proposed to you,
and if you had loved me at all"—for an instant his voice seemed to
resonate with passion—"you would know instantly what I would have done
differently. As it is, it hardly matters. You seem to approve of the way he
handled the situation."

"He had no choice."

"Oh?" said my husband, and went on as if the words were
breaking out in spite of his efforts to hold them back. "This man of so
much vision and
imagination
had no choice?"

"Poverty gives people very few choices."

"I hope I have never condemned anyone for being poor nor for
doing whatever they must to keep body and soul together," said my husband
with frosty pride. "How could I presume to do that? It would be the very
height of arrogance."

"Then you must exonerate Frederick. I know you despise him
for being a wastrel and for leaving me penniless. But his only crime was that
he liked fine things, as you do, and that he bought absinthe instead of women
when he wished to forget his disappointments, and—oh yes, his worst crime— he
had no hellish collieries and starving tenants to support his tastes, and
therefore had to sell his paintings."

"It never crossed my mind to think of him as a wastrel,"
protested my husband, laughing. "Until I learned precisely what he had
done to you. When did
you
learn of it, by the way? Poncet led me to
believe it came as something of a surprise to you. I merely thought he was a
brilliant artist who had succumbed to a tragic weakness. As for me, I am afraid
I haven't got any hellish collieries—my soft-hearted father divested himself of
that sort of thing, much to my mother's dismay—and if you see even so much as a
starving dog on the lands over which I am fortunate enough to have stewardship,
I hope you will tell me so."

I was still nearly choking on my fury. I could not have answered
him to save my life.

"If you'd like to know where the money comes from that
protected your reputation and now keeps you clothed and housed and fed,"
continued my husband calmly, "I am more than willing to review my
investments with you. My father put his money where it wouldn't prick his
tender conscience too painfully, and I have tried to honor his wishes in that
respect, but—wouldn't you know—the returns have been embarrassingly great.
However, if you find I have some particularly odious source of income that
offends your sensibilities, I'll shed myself of it posthaste. Since my
ill-gotten gains will be supporting you for the rest of your life, I would hate
to have you feel they were too tainted for you to fully enjoy whatever you may
spend them on."

To be honest, it was some of the places where his money had
gone—far more than whence it had come—that troubled me the most, but I was
still in a retaliatory vein.

"You surprise me," I said. "I was beginning to
think you took real pleasure in holding the whip."

"Oh, I do," he agreed readily. "I like it better
than anything. I don't think you can imagine how much pleasure it gives me to
make others bend to my will. But it is a dis- agreeable trait, I fear, and one
that I have struggled rather hard to overcome." He paused and threw me a
sidewise glance; he now wore the cheerful countenance of a man whose conscience
had never given him an uneasy night. "It's a thankless task to try to
alter one's tastes, however; I suppose I ought to be grateful that your bad
behavior has provided me with such a pleasant excuse to indulge them."

I knew this was a cut, but I did not rise to it; I was rather
intrigued, in spite of myself, by the notion of my lofty husband wrestling with
anything that he could deem a weakness. Even at his most superficially
diffident, he generally conducted himself with an air of such underlying aplomb
that I could never have suspected him of finding himself seriously wanting in
any respect. And that, given his position in society, he would regard a lust
for domination as a weakness to be resisted rather than as an appetite to be
indiscriminately sated touched me in a curious way.

"Perhaps it is not so much a deficiency of character as it is
a double-edged sword," I remarked pensively.

"I don't know why you would think so," said my husband
in a tone of perfect indifference. He paused, then added, "The wind is
rising, and it is becoming uncomfortably cold here. Shall we turn back?"

As we left the bridge and began to retrace our steps along the
river, my husband appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. But suddenly he
broke his silence. "You seem to feel that I have condemned you for what I
believed took place in your previous marriage. Do you actually regard me as
such a sanctimonious hypocrite?"

I laughed. "Of course, I do! Especially after tonight. What
else can I think?"