Possession (74 page)

“I do not know what to say, Ellen. I do not expect to see her—Miss LaMotte again. We were agreed that—that this one summer must see the end—of—the end. And even if that were not so—she has vanished, she has gone away—”

She had heard the pain in that, had noted it, had said nothing.

“I cannot explain, Ellen, but I can tell you—”

“No more. No more. We will not speak of it again.”

“You must be angry—distressed—”

“I don’t know. Not angry. I don’t want to know any more. Let us not talk of it again. Randolph—it is not
between us.”

Had she done well, or ill? She had done what was in her nature, which was profoundly implicated in not knowing, in silence, in avoidance, she said to herself, in harsher moments.

She had never read his letters. She had never, that is, gone through his papers out of curiosity, idle or directed, she had never even sorted or pigeon-holed. She had answered letters for him, letters from readers, admirers, translators, loving women who had never met him.

One day, during that last month, she went upstairs, her two letters, open and unopened, in her pocket, and looked through his desk. This filled her with a superstitious bodily fear. His workroom had a cold light, in the daytime, because of a skylight, which now at night showed a few stars and a running smoky cloud, but on that day had been clear blue and blank.

So many scraps of poetry. So many heaps of ends of leaves of paper. She pushed away the thought that she would be responsible for all this. She was not, now. Not yet.

When she found the unfinished letter, it was as though she had been guided to it. It was tucked away, at the back of a drawer full of bills and invitations, and should have taken hours to find and not the few minutes in fact needed.

My dear
,

I write each year, round about All Souls, because I must, although I know—I was about to say, although I know that you will not answer, although I know no such thing with certainty; I
must hope;
you may remember, or forget, it is all one, enough to feel able to write to me, to enlighten me a little, to take away some of the black weight I labour under
.

I ask your forgiveness freely for some things, of which I stand accused, both by your silence, your obdurate silence, and by my own conscience. I ask
forgiveness for my rashness and precipitance in hurrying to Kernemet, on the suppositious chance that you might be there, and without ascertaining whether or not I had your permission to go there. I ask your forgiveness, above all, for the degree of duplicity with which, on my return, I insinuated myself into the confidence of Mrs Lees, and so disastrously surprised you. You have punished me since, as you must know, I am punished daily
.

But have you sufficiently considered the state of mind which drove me to these actions? I feel I stand accused, also, by your actions, of having loved you at all, as though my love was an act of brutal forcing, as though I were a heartless ravisher out of some trumpery Romance, from whom you had to flee, despoiled and ruined. Yet if you examine your memories truthfully—if you can be truthful—you must know that it was not so—think over what we did together and ask, where was the cruelty, where the coercion, where, Christabel, the lack of love and respect for you, alike as woman and as intellectual being? That we could not honourably continue as lovers after that summer was, I think, agreed by both—but was this a reason for a sudden pulling down of a dark blanket, nay, a curtain of sheet steel, between one day and the next? I loved you entirely
then;
I will not say now, I love you, for that would indeed be
romance,
and a matter at best of hope—we are both psychologists of no mean order—love goes out, you know, like a candle in one of Humphry Davy’s jars, if not fed with air to breathe, if deliberately starved and stifled. Yet

And perhaps I say that only for the pleasure of the aptness in quoting. That would have made you smile. Ah, Christabel, Christabel, I force out these careful sentences, asking for your consideration, and remember that we heard each other’s thoughts, so quick, so quick, that there was no need of ending speeches—

There is something I
must know
and you know what that is. I say “I must know” and sound peremptory. But I am in your hands and must beg you to tell me. What became of my child? Did he live? How can I ask, not knowing? How can I not ask, not knowing? I spoke at length to your cousin Sabine who told me what all at Kernemet knew—which was the fact only—no certainty of outcome—

You must know I went there, to Brittany, in love, and care, and anxiety,
for you, for your health—I went eager to care for you, to
make all well
as far as could be—Why did you turn away from me? Out of pride, out of fear, out of independence, out of sudden hatred, at the injustice of the different fates of men and women?

Yet a man who knows he has or had a child and does not know more deserves a little pity
.

How can I say this?
Whatever became of that child,
I say in advance
, whatever it is,
I shall understand, if I may only know, the worst is already imagined and put behind me—so to speak—

You see, I cannot write it, so I cannot post you these letters, I end by writing others, less direct, more glancing, which you do not answer, my dear demon, my tormentor … I am prohibited
.

How can I ever forget that terrible sentence cried out at the ghastly spirit-summoning
.

“You have made a murderess of me,” was said, blaming me, and cannot be unsaid; I hear it daily
.

“There is no child” came through that silly woman’s mouth, in a great groan, in what mixture of cunning, involuntary exclamation, genuine telepathy, how can I tell? I tell you, Christabel—you who will never read this letter, like so many others, for it has passed the limit of possible communication—I tell you, what with disgust, and terror, and responsibility, and the coiling vestiges of love gripping my heart, I was like to have made a murderer of myself in good earnest—

She took this letter gingerly by its corner, now, as though it were a stunned biting creature, wasp or scorpion. She made a little fire in Randolph’s attic gate, and burned the letter, turning it with the poker until it was black flakes. She took the sealed letter and turned it over, thinking of adding it, but allowed the flames to die down. She was quite sure that neither he nor she would have wanted his own letter to persist; nor would Christabel LaMotte, with its implicit accusations—of what? Better not to think.

She made a little fire, for warmth, with wood and a few coals, and huddled over it in her nightgown, waiting for the light to catch and the warmth to rise.

My life, she thought, has been built round a lie, a house to hold a lie.

She had always believed, stolidly, doggedly, that her avoidances, her approximations, her whole
charade
as she at times saw it, were, if not justified, at least held in check, neutralised, by her rigorous requirement that she be truthful with herself.

Randolph had been complicit. She had no idea how the story of their lives looked to him. It was not a matter they discussed.

But if she did not
know
, and occasionally look at, the truth, she had a sense that she was standing on shifting shale, sliding down into some pit.

She thought of her sense of the unspoken truths of things in terms of a most beautiful passage from Sir Charles Lyell’s
Principles of Geology
, which she had read out one evening to Randolph, who had been excited by the passage immediately preceding it, about the Plutonian theory of the formation of rocks.

She had written it down.

Ellen liked the idea of these hard, crystalline things, which were formed in intense heat beneath the “habitable surface” of the earth, and were not primeval monuments but “part of the living language of nature.”

I am no ordinary or hysterical self-deceiver, she more or less said to herself. I keep faith with the fire and the crystals, I do not pretend
the habitable surface
is all
and so I am not a destroyer nor cast into outer darkness.

A few flames made their sinuous way upwards. She remembered her honeymoon, as she did, from time to time, and deliberately.

She did not remember it in words. There were no words attached to it, that was part of the horror. She had never spoken of it to anyone, not even to Randolph, precisely not to Randolph.

She remembered it in images. A window, in the south, all hung about with vines and creepers, with the hot summer sun fading.

The nightdress embroidered for these nights, white cambric, all spattered with lovers’ knots and forget-me-nots and roses, white on white.

A thin white animal, herself, trembling.

A complex thing, the naked male, curly hairs and shining wet, at once bovine and dolphin-like, its scent feral and overwhelming.

A large hand, held out in kindness, not once, but many times, slapped away, pushed away, slapped away.

A running creature, crouching and cowering in the corner of the room, its teeth chattering, its veins clamped in spasms, its breath shallow and fluttering. Herself.

A respite, generously agreed, glasses of golden wine, a few days of Edenic picnics, a laughing woman perched on a rock in pale blue poplin skirts, a handsome man in his whiskers, lifting her, quoting Petrarch.

An attempt. A hand not pushed away. Tendons like steel, teeth in pain, clenched, clenched.

The approach, the locked gateway, the panic, the whimpering flight.

Not once, but over and over and over.

When did he begin to know that however gentle he was, however patient, it was no good, it would never be any good?

She did not like to remember his face in those days, but did, for truthfulness, the puzzled brow, the questioning tender look, the largeness of it, convicted of its brutality, rejected in its closeness.

The eagerness, the terrible love, with which she had made it up to him, his abstinence, making him a thousand small comforts, cakes and tidbits. She became his slave. Quivering at every word.
He had accepted her love
.

She had loved him for it.

He had loved her.

She turned over Christabel’s letter.

She howled. “What shall I be without you?” She put her hand over her mouth. If they came, her time to reflect was gone or lost. She had lied to them too, to her sisters, implied a lie in her bashful assertions that they were supremely happy, that they had simply had no good fortune with children.…

That other woman was in one sense his true wife. Mother, at least briefly, of his child, it seemed.

She found she did not want to know what was in the letter. That, too, was better simply avoided. Not known, not spoken about, not an instrument of useless torture, as it would be if seen, whether its contents were good or bad.

She took the black japanned specimen box, with its oiled silk pocket in its glass lining, and put the letter in it. She added the hair bracelet—here, in white age, they were intertwined—and curled the long, thick thread—it was no more—of the blonde plait from his watch, inside the bracelet. She put in the tied bundles of their love-letters.

A young girl of twenty-four should not be made to wait for marriage until she is thirty-six and her flowering long over.