The Wayward Muse (17 page)

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Do you need a place to hide?”

“Yes,” he said. “Is there room in there with you?”

“Not really. Try over there with the apples,” she said.

Instead he came closer. He knelt down and she felt his hand grope her sleeve. Then his breath on her neck. Then he was kissing her, passionately, pawing through her hair and tearing at her clothes.

“Oh, Guinevere,” he breathed.

She did not like to admit to herself how wonderful it felt. She pushed him away.

“Gabriel, no,” she said. He tried to kiss her again, but he was off balance and fell backward into the canned fruits. Several jars smashed. For a moment they sat there, listening to their own breath.

“I think I have cherry jam on my trousers,” Rossetti finally said.

Jane laughed, a little hysterically. “Let’s go to the kitchen,” she said, “and clean you up.”

They didn’t speak as Jane blotted his pants with a wet rag. What was there to say? When they emerged they discovered that the game had been over for five minutes and everyone was wondering where they were. Rossetti made everyone laugh with the story of his clumsiness.

T
HEY
retired very late: Georgie, Lizzie, and Jane to the Morrises’ bedroom, the Browns to the downstairs guest room, and the other five men to the floor of the dining room.

“I wish we didn’t have to leave tomorrow,” said Georgie as she snuggled into Jane’s goose down comforter. “Ned is gone all day, and then when he gets home, he begins directly to work on his painting. I bring him a cheese sandwich for dinner and that’s the only time I see him all day.”

“Of course you can stay on,” said Jane impulsively. “William will be in London every day this week. He leaves early and returns late, so I will be lonely without any company.”

“Will you stay, too, Lizzie?” asked Georgie.

“Dinner with Ruskin on Tuesday,” groaned Lizzie.

“Another time, then,” said Jane.

“Are you sure it will be all right for me to stay?” asked Georgie. “I’d hate to impose.”

“Of course it’s all right,” said Jane, beginning to be excited. “We’ll have such a good time, you’ll see.”

On Monday, after Morris had gone and breakfast had been cleared away, Jane asked the groom to hitch up the cart. As of yet they had only one horse, but he was placid and strong, and Jane was sure she’d have no trouble driving. But Georgie surprised her.

“Oh, let me drive,” she begged. “I’ve always wanted to, but the smallest, youngest person never gets to do anything.”

“Are you sure you’re strong enough?” asked Jane warily.

“I’m not nearly as delicate as I look,” said Georgie, hopping up onto the seat.

Jane soon found that Georgie was right, and they both enjoyed the drive. They got lost following country lanes to even smaller, more remote roads, but neither of them cared. The area was filled with orchards, and as far as the eye could see the landscape was white with apple blossoms. The air was scented with their delicate fragrance.

“It’s like heaven, isn’t it?” said Georgie rapturously, stopping the cart at the top of a hill to admire the view. “Or how I always imagined heaven. Do you think one of these farmers would mind if we took a few branches home? Apple blossoms are one of my favorite flowers in the world.”

“I suppose they won’t mind if they don’t know,” said Jane.

“Is it very wicked?” asked Georgie. “They have so many, and we have none.” She pulled a penknife from the pocket of her dress. “We’ll just take these branches that lean into the road. They’ll have to be pruned back anyway.” She filled the back of the cart with the pale pink flowers on their woody stems.

“We’d better turn back then,” said Jane. “Those won’t last long without water.”

“We’ll just have to go out driving again tomorrow,” said Georgie. “We can follow the trees’ daily progress. I can’t think of a more lovely occupation than watching the blossoms get pinker and the little leaves begin to show.”

“And in the fall we’ll have apples,” said Jane.

“We must learn to make cider,” said Georgie.

On subsequent drives they went to the weekday markets and the local churches. After only a few days, the local farmers recognized them and bowed as they passed. They often packed a picnic lunch so they could travel farther and farther afield, often not returning to Red House until dusk.

The evenings they devoted to their musical pursuits. For her birthday Morris had given Jane a book,
Popular Music of Olden Time.
She and Georgie soon learned to sing and play many of the songs. Georgie’s alto was surprisingly loud and robust. Jane was momentarily shocked the first time she heard the voice, which seemed to come from a person much larger and wilder than Georgie: a banshee, perhaps, or a bushwoman. How could a person so shy unleash a voice like that?

Georgie soon convinced Jane to join in, and Jane was surprised to find that their voices blended nicely. Together they prepared songs to sing to Morris at night after dinner.

The men came down on the weekend and the work of decorating Red House continued. Jane sewed embroidered panels illustrating Chaucer’s “Legend of Good Women.” Georgie taught herself how to cut woodblocks. Lizzie continued to work on the painting in the bedroom.

At night they stayed up late drinking wine. Jane was too shy to say much, but she enjoyed the lively conversation.

“We are very talented, if I do say so myself,” slurred Faulkner one evening. “This house looks good.”

“No thanks to you,” said Morris, gingerly touching the black eye Faulkner had accidentally given him earlier in the day. “Frolicking all day, hitting people in the face with apples, being a general layabout.”

“Poor thing,” said Lizzie sympathetically. “You’re lucky you didn’t lose that eye.”

“In my defense,” said Faulkner, “you really were lined up perfectly in the doorway. I couldn’t not hit you.”

“It’s true,” affirmed Rossetti. “I saw the bull’s-eye on your head.”

“It’s so much nicer to work among friends,” said Morris wryly. “You never have to wonder if your colleagues have it in for you. You already know they do.”

“I don’t remember when I’ve had so much fun,” said Rossetti, reaching for the bottle on the table and discovering it to be empty. “We need more wine.”

“I’ll get it,” said Georgie, rising from the floor near the fireplace where she and Jane were lounging.

“Your injury doesn’t seem to have adversely affected the painting on the hall settle,” said Burne-Jones.

“Launcelot’s castle is the best thing I’ve done in years,” admitted Morris ruefully. “But having you here isn’t good for my health, and not just because of Faulkner’s deadly aim. My coat is too tight again.”

Muffled laughter was heard around the table.

“I’m fat!” moaned Morris. “And you laugh!”

“Should we tell him?” asked Faulkner, winking at the others.

“Tell me what?”

“Faulkner sewed a tuck into your waistcoat,” explained Rossetti.

“What!” exploded Morris. “Are you trying to kill me?” Faulkner ran from the table and hid under the stairs. “Don’t hurt me,” he begged, sliding to the floor. “You know I love you, dear Topsy.” He dissolved into a fit of giggles. “You have to admit it’s a good joke, though.”

“A good joke, when I’ve denied myself dessert for a week because of it!”

Conversation ceased while Morris dragged Faulkner back into the dining room. The men stood at the sides of the room as if they were at a boxing match. Jane and Lizzie dashed about, gathering plates and glasses so they wouldn’t be smashed in the scuffle.

“Pummel him until he apologizes!” shouted Burne-Jones.

“Never!” gasped Faulkner; Morris had his arm bent around his friend’s neck.

“Flip him, Topsy!” cried Brown.

Faulkner was too drunk to put up much of a fight, and in five minutes Morris was sitting on his chest. He admitted that it had been a very mean trick to play on a friend and that he would never, ever do anything like it again.

“Faulkner is right, though,” said Rossetti when Morris had released his friend and everyone had returned to their places. “We’re good at this. We could make money at it.”

“How?” asked Burne-Jones. “Some sort of decorating business?”

“Yes!” shouted Morris, leaping to his feet. “A decorative-arts collective.”

“It would be a chance to put our beliefs into practice,” mused Burne-Jones. “We could paint furniture, make stained glass, weaving, all sorts of things.”

“I don’t want to work with Topsy,” said Faulkner, rubbing his neck. “His temper is too short.”

“I don’t want to work with you either, you scapegrace,” snarled Morris.

“It’s true,” said Rossetti, “that we would all have to work closely together and there would be disagreements. Some of us might have to refrain from teasing and some of us might have to learn to count to ten.”

“It would be a way to support our families without having to work as clerks,” said Brown sensibly. “I know it’s not a problem for you, Morris, but some of the rest of us would benefit from the extra income.”

“Amen to that,” affirmed Burne-Jones.

“All in favor of starting a decorative-arts collective say aye,” said Morris.

“What about us?” asked Lizzie. “Will there be work for the ladies of the circle?”

“Everyone should contribute,” said Morris. “You can draw, Jane can sew, Georgie and Emma can do whatever they like.”

“But where will we get the money to do it?” asked Rossetti, pleased that his idea met with such favor but alarmed by the prospect of the work involved.

Morris took out a pound note and laid it on the table. “Everyone put in one pound,” he said. “That will be our initial investment.” The men did as he asked.

“Now everyone put in their hand and we’ll make a solemn vow,” said Rossetti excitedly. Jane and Lizzie watched as the men stood with their hands joined in the center of the table.

Just then Georgie walked in with a bottle of wine under each arm. “What is this?” she asked. “The oath of the Horatii?”

With the enthusiastic participation of Morris’s friend P. P. Marshall, who had worked with him at Street’s office, the fledgling business began as Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, Fine Art Workmen in Painting, Carving, Furniture and the Metals. Rossetti asked that his name not be used.

“I don’t have much time or much money to contribute,” he said. “And we don’t want to prejudice anyone against us with a foreign-sounding name. I’ll just be one of the company.”

They decided to focus at first on stained glass for churches. Morris was hired to manage the firm and receive a salary. The others were to contribute artistically and be paid accordingly.

Now they had to find a space in London to serve as their workshop and write an advertisement that would appear in the papers. Morris put Rossetti in charge of that.

“You’re the most glib,” he said. “I’ve no doubt it will be easy for you.”

After a consultation with Jane, Morris invited Ned and Georgie to come to Red House to live. They would build the other wing immediately to make room for them. It would make work on the business easier in addition to being personally gratifying. Ned promised to think about it. Morris also told Jane that because he was contributing the money to start the business, they would have to economize until it was up and running. Jane didn’t mind. She was excited by the idea that their friends would come to live at Red House. She would never be lonely.

J
ANE
was going to have a baby. She did not tell Morris at first, not sure how to broach the topic. He was so engrossed in the new business. They had found a workshop and storefront in Red Lion Square and Morris went to London almost every day to oversee things there. Summer turned to fall and Jane’s belly grew. Suddenly it dawned on her husband what was happening.

One day at breakfast he looked at her rounded shape and then into her eyes questioningly.

“Yes,” she said.

He came to her chair and dropped to his knees, his head on her skirts. “My dear,” he said. She thought he was crying. “When?”

“January,” she said.

They did not speak of it again.

“Lizzie won’t be coming,” announced Georgie one day in September as she arrived for a week with Jane.

“What is wrong?” asked Jane, concerned. “Is it her lungs, or something else?”

“I only saw her for a moment,” said Georgie. “She looked a little pale, a little languid, but otherwise she seemed herself. She said it was a cough, but I suspect…” She let her sentence trail away, but Jane knew what she thought. Perhaps Lizzie was going to have a baby, too.

“Rossetti should take her away again,” said Jane. “To the coast, perhaps.”

“She doesn’t want to go,” said Georgie. “Doesn’t want to be away from her work.”

Jane wondered if Ruskin was right, if the work was keeping Lizzie from getting better. Maybe it would be better for Lizzie to have a complete rest. At the least so that Rossetti would not look so tired and worried when he came.

Georgie left Jane lying on the sofa in her sitting room and went to fetch her a cup of tea. When she returned, she sat opposite Jane in the big wooden chair, which Morris had painted. Her tiny frame was lost in it. She fixed her pale blue eyes on Jane.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Cumbersome,” said Jane. “And very tired.”

“You needn’t exert yourself at all while I’m here,” said Georgie. “You know I can manage the kitchen, the servants, anything you need.”

“You’re such a help to me,” said Jane gratefully, reaching out to take Georgie’s hand. Georgie’s eyes misted.

“You would do the same for me,” she said.

Jane wondered if Georgie talked about it with Burne-Jones or whether he was as reticent on the subject as Morris, but she was too delicate to ask such a question. It was hard to imagine the shy couple speaking frankly to each other, but Georgie could be so surprising. What if it turned out that Georgie and Burne-Jones shared their thoughts in an intimate way? Then Jane could not blame marriage, or the unbridgeable divide between men and women, for the silence between her and her husband.

“How is Ned?” asked Jane, pushing thoughts of Morris aside.

Georgie turned pale and the expression on her face was terrified. She seemed to shrink into her clothes and huddled against the arm of her chair.

“What’s wrong, Georgie?” asked Jane in alarm. She could not think what could make her friend look so. “Is Ned ill?”

Georgie shook her head. “The air in London isn’t good for him,” she said at last, “and I wish he wouldn’t work so hard.”

“Has he made up his mind to accept William’s offer?” asked Jane. “Are you coming to live at Red House with us?”

Georgie burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, her face hidden in her hands. “I don’t mean to burden you, especially now. It’s just that…I suspect, I mean, I’ve seen things, and I don’t know. It’s just nerves, I’m sure. Let’s not speak of it.”

Jane sat up. “What? What are we not to speak of?”

“Maria Zambaco,” sobbed Georgie, pronouncing the hateful name.

“Ned is having an affair,” Jane said to her husband that night after Georgie had gone to bed. She was embroidering one of the dining room panels while Morris made sketches for the decoration of St. Michael’s Church in Brighton.

He looked up in surprise. “How do you know that?” he said. “Has Georgie said something?”

“I would have thought you’d have told me,” said Jane.

“It’s not the kind of happy secret one wants to share,” said Morris. “I’ve been trying to convince him to break it off, but he’s obsessed. It’s making him ill, poor man.”

Jane’s eyes blazed. “Poor man? What about Georgie? It’s killing her, but I don’t suppose you care about that.”

“Of course I do,” retorted Morris. “Why do you think I’ve been trying to get him to end it? I was hoping I could do it before she found out.”

Jane sighed. “They seemed so happy.”

“And they will be again,” said Morris grimly. “It’s a temporary insanity, it has to be.”

Jane put down her sewing and went to her husband. She looked down at the drawing he was working on. It was of an angel with its wings unfurled like a peacock’s tail. The figure was turned awkwardly to squeeze into an arch.

“It’s not easy,” Morris said, as if he could read her thoughts. “It has to fit into the space and yet look like there are no constraints, that he is out in the open. And all of the elements—his hands, his face, his symbols—have to read from far away. And then we have to do it in glass!”

Jane thought she might cry. Her heart was heavy for her troubled friend, and she wanted her husband to comfort her but did not know how to tell him. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?” she finally asked. “What Ned has done?”

“Never,” vowed Morris, but he did not look up. Jane waited and watched the pencil moving across the paper. She wanted to wrench it from his fingers and fling it into the fireplace.

The only sound in the room was the rasp of the lead pencil against thick stock.

“Who is this supposed to be?” asked Jane when she had to say something, anything, to break the silence.

“Saint Raphael,” said Morris. “The theme is archangels. Each window will be a single figure, which in addition to being relatively uncomplicated for us to make will be striking visually. No muddled Nativity scenes with sheep that look like rocks and camels that look like dogs. No confusing crowds or Giotto-like cityscapes. Very clear and simple and powerful.”

“My back aches,” said Jane. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

Morris did stop working then, and insisted on helping her up the stairs and into bed. He procured a hot water bottle and extra pillows and held her hand until she fell asleep.

In January Bessie came to Red House to help. Jane did not want her mother. Most women might be grateful to have their mother there at such a moment, but Jane thought it better if Mrs. Burden stayed away. She wrote a very diplomatic letter explaining that the baby would be more attractive and amusing if they came to Oxford in the summer instead, and Mrs. Burden replied that the summer would be plenty soon enough to see a squalling infant. Mrs. Morris came and Bessie was almost entirely occupied with waiting on her. After a week Mrs. Morris departed, the baby still unborn, saying that the air in Kent was deleterious to her sciatica.

When her time came Jane was frightened; she had seen a girl not much older than herself die in childbirth on Holywell Street. But Georgie was there, and Bessie, and the best doctor in Kent. The delivery was painful but uncomplicated and at the end of it, she had a baby girl named Jenny.

Jenny had a velvety head and bone-white arms and legs. She had round blue eyes and a perpetually worried expression. She sniffed and snorted and rooted at Jane’s breast like a little truffle pig.

“She has the Morris coloring,” said Bessie, picking the child up from the cradle to inspect her. “But the Burden chin, poor thing.” She handed the baby to Jane to nurse.

“I think she’s perfectly lovely,” said Georgie loyally. “She looks as if she’s conducting an opera,” she said as Jenny waved her arms while at the breast.

“Yes,” said Bessie doubtfully.

“Perhaps she’ll be a musician,” said Georgie.

“Or a sorceress,” said Jane. “I think she looks like she’s waving a wand.”

“I just hope she’ll live,” said Bessie. “There’s scarlet fever in the village.”

“Bessie!” cried Georgie, shooting her a reproachful look.

“Better to be prepared,” intoned Bessie. “There isn’t a woman in Holywell Street who hasn’t lost a baby. Mrs. Ward lost nine, you know, all before their first birthday.”

“She will not die,” said Jane fiercely.

Having a baby was not what Jane expected. She had not known that the baby would gaze at her with such admiration, as if she was the most important person in the world. And to Jenny, Jane realized, she was. Most of the time she enjoyed the sensation. Sometimes, however, she couldn’t stand to have the little thing touching her. It made her want to scream the way it grabbed at her sore breasts and clung to her dress and hair. The way it cried in the night, demanding that she come. Jane hadn’t thought she’d be so tired. She hadn’t known that one minute she would want to throw Jenny against a wall, and the next minute she would want to hold her and make faces at her. It was very strange. She longed to be away from Jenny but when she was, all she wanted was to return to her.

Morris neglected the office to hang around the nursery, but he could not entirely banish work from his thoughts.

“The Saint Raphael you saw me working on turned out marvelously,” he said to Jane, sitting in the rocking chair while she paced with a screaming Jenny. “Rossetti drew the figure and of course did much better than I could have. The angel’s hair is as gold as Lizzie’s. I drew the face and I realized when I saw it in the window that I’d inadvertently copied it from Rossetti. You know, the heavy-lidded eyes, the small pursed lips. It’s strange that as skillful a draftsman as Rossetti makes such disparate women look alike. Clearly he is altering them to suit some fantasy of his own. I wasn’t doing that, of course. I just don’t have the skill to do better.

“Brown did Saint Michael and it’s even better than Saint Raphael. I particularly admire the fish-scaled sword handle and the patterns on his cape and stockings. Above the two in the roundel is another Saint Michael bravely slaying a fire-breathing dragon. All the windows look medieval. Someone who didn’t know might think the glass had been there four hundred years.”

Jane tried to listen, but her mind could not focus on anything her husband said. For the last several months, he had been working constantly, and it had been difficult to get his attention. Now she saw that when he was there he was just a nuisance. She wished he would go back to work and leave her alone.

“How are you feeling?” he asked solicitously.

“How do you think?” she snapped.

“You should eat a bloody steak,” he said. “It will help you to regain your strength.”

“But I don’t want a bloody steak,” protested Jane.

“I will tell the cook to make one for you tonight,” said Morris. “You must think of the baby. Jenny wants a strong mother.”

Lizzie laughed uproariously when Jane recounted the scene to her. As Georgie and Jane had suspected, she, too, was expecting.

“Perhaps we should exchange husbands,” she said, with a devilish smirk. “I think that sounds heavenly.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you had been forced to choke down half a pound of dripping meat,” said Jane. “I nearly gagged at the table. And all the while he smiled encouragingly to me as he stuffed himself with the onion pudding and the carrot soufflé, just the things I most wanted!”

“Poor girl,” commiserated Lizzie. “I’ll be sure to have some of each the next time you come.”

“How are you feeling?” Jane asked sympathetically.

“I’ve fainted a couple of times, and can’t seem to eat anything. Gabriel had the doctor here and he said under no circumstances may I draw, or exert my mind in any way. So here I sit, like a chicken in a coop. I’m glad you’ve come.”

“If I had known I would have come sooner,” said Jane.

“I didn’t want to disturb you in these first weeks,” said Lizzie. “But tell me all about the little one.”

When the topics of Jenny’s eating and sleeping had been exhausted, Lizzie sighed and pulled the blue paisley blanket up to her chin and lay back against the pillows of her chaise.

“I envy you, Jane,” she said. “You came through the birth without difficulty and now you’re well enough to come all this way on the train. I’m terribly worried I’ll be too weak to have the baby.”

Jane, too, had worried about Lizzie’s strength, but it wouldn’t help her to say so.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Georgie will come and help you as she did me, and Gabriel will be there with the doctor, and you’ll get through it.”

“Gabriel said he wanted to have a child, and he promised to take care of me while I was having it, but I think every aspect of it terrifies him,” said Lizzie. “He’s pulling away already.”

“He will rise to the occasion,” Jane assured her. “When it happens you will be amazed by what a comfort he is to you.”

Just then Rossetti came in. “Janey,” he said, greeting her with evident pleasure. “I was going to immortalize Lizzie with my chalks, but now you must grace the tableau as well.” He sat down on the chair next to hers and they gazed at the expectant Lizzie. Her agate-colored eyes were very large and glowing in her thin, colorless face. She looked restful, serene, and wise.