The Wayward Muse (21 page)

The next week she went to Rossetti’s to sit for him. She wore a new dress of aubergine wool. Her belt was a thick piece of geranium pink dupioni silk with an orange chrysanthemum pinned to it. One glance in the mirror as she left the house told her that if she had lost her looks, they had returned. Her eyes were clear and bright and her skin had a golden sheen.

Rossetti greeted her at the door in his dressing gown and carpet slippers, something no other man would have dared to do. He seemed not to be the least bit self-conscious.

“My dear!” he said, taking both of her hands. “That is a wonder of a dress. The colors are magnificent on you.”

Jane smiled. She had been nervous about seeing him again after the party, but she realized she needn’t have worried. Being with Rossetti always put Jane at ease. “I’m glad you like it,” she said.

“Like it!” he said. “I adore it.” He led her by the hand through the sitting room. “Let’s have tea in the garden. I must tell you about the séance I attended Wednesday night.”

The table was laid with a Syrian printed cotton cloth and blue Chinese porcelain vases filled with pink peonies. There was hardly room enough for the faience cups and plates and the silver trays of scones and sandwiches.

“You must try the plum jam,” Rossetti said. “Someone or another’s mother made it. Swinburne, I think. It’s very tasty.” He handed her the scallop-edged, gold-painted bowl and Jane thought, not for the first time, that Rossetti had exquisite, almost feminine taste. Morris would have smashed such a piece within minutes.

“How was your husband after the party?” he asked lightly. Though his tone was unconcerned, Jane knew he was asking if Morris had noticed anything.

“Preoccupied,” she said. “Something about fonts.” Jane did not particularly want to talk about her husband, though she preferred the topic to hearing about the séance. Rossetti was sure to bring up Lizzie, and Jane did not want hear about her.

“Baptismal?” asked Rossetti teasingly. He cut a piece of apricot tart and put it on a plate for her. “I thought your husband had lost his faith.”

“Typographical,” she said.

“Ah,” said Rossetti. “He has replaced his faith in God with his faith in script, has he?”

“Copperplate Gothic,” said Jane. “That’s his religion now. That and Bookman and Caslon old face and Garamond.”

“Does he believe it is wise to bore his lovely young wife with such esoterica?”

“He doesn’t care,” said Jane flatly. “If someone were to spirit me away, I doubt he’d even notice.”

Rossetti smiled—Jane could not guess the meaning of the smile—and then returned to the subject of the séance.

“I know what you think of these things, but I really think you would have changed your mind if you had been there. I truly felt Lizzie’s presence.”

Jane surrendered reluctantly to the tale.

“It was held at Mrs. Gorham’s. Frightful house, stuffy and close, all lace curtains and smelling of rose petals and orange peel. The old lady still in weeds for her daughter who died six years ago.”

“In childbirth,” recalled Jane.

“Yes. But she was very cordial. Meredith went with me; he’s a complete skeptic, found it hard to keep a straight face, at least at first. We all gathered in the dining room; there were five or six others there; I didn’t know them. A Mr. and Mrs. Paul, young couple whose son drowned, two silly young ladies who seemed to be there for the thrill of it, and an old fellow wanting to speak with his wife. And the medium, of course. Not so much of a crone as you would expect. Middle-aged, no nonsense, more like a governess than a mystic. She had us hold hands and close our eyes.”

“And did the spirits come?” asked Jane wryly.

Rossetti ignored her tone.

“Not at first. She had Mrs. Gorham put out the lamps and open the windows. It was a chilly night and quite uncomfortable. Then she had us all concentrate our minds on the person we wanted to communicate with. After a bit there was a series of raps on the table, which the medium interpreted. The first visitor was the little drowned boy. Mrs. Paul fainted when the medium told her that little Robert was safe and well in heaven. Mr. Paul had to carry her out. That distracted us all for a few minutes.”

“And then did Lizzie come next?”

“No, one of the silly girls had a brother who died in the Crimea and he came next. Then Lydia Fitzwilliam, Mrs. Gorham’s daughter. Then Lizzie. The taps were a little different with each one. Lizzie’s were quite peremptory.”

“What did she say?” asked Jane.

“Just that she was happy, that she was in heaven, that she hoped I would forgive her and myself and be happy again.”

Jane did not think that sounded much like Lizzie, but she did not say so.

“And you say you felt her?”

“It was the strangest sensation. I felt something lightly touch my shoulder, and then it was if she passed through me. I’m not ashamed to say I cried like a baby.”

“And the others?”

“The brother said not to worry, that he hadn’t been in much pain when he was shot, and Lydia Fitzwilliam said the baby was with her in heaven and was the most darling baby anyone could want.”

“So they all appeared,” said Jane.

“Not the old fellow’s wife,” said Rossetti. “The window opened and shut of its own accord, and the medium said that she was trying to speak. She expressed great hope that the next time Molly would talk.”

Thereby necessitating another séance, thought Jane. “Will you go again?” she asked.

“I think I’ll have one here,” he mused. “I imagine her presence would be even stronger in a place filled with things she loved.”

“Perhaps I’ll come,” said Jane, thinking that if it gave Rossetti comfort, it did not much matter if the medium was a fraud or not.

The lemur dropped onto the table from the tree above and snatched the scone off Rossetti’s plate.

“I’m thinking of getting an elephant,” he said gaily. “I shall teach it to wash windows and when people pass by and see the elephant, they will ask, ‘Who lives in that house?’ and when they find out it is Rossetti, the painter, they will say, ‘I should like to buy one of that man’s pictures.’”

“Won’t it be expensive?” said Jane. “And how will it fit in the garden?”

“It will be a very small elephant,” said Rossetti. “They have a pygmy variety in Africa that a friend of mine is going to bring back for me. Hardly bigger than a draft horse. There will be plenty of room.”

Jane smiled at the ridiculous image of Rossetti riding around his garden on a horse-size elephant. “Will you paint me on it?” she asked.

“Most certainly,” he said. “Though my next painting of you is to be
La Pia de Tolomei,
from Dante.”

“The pious wife?” asked Jane.

“Imprisoned by her cruel husband,” added Rossetti significantly. “You must come and sit every day. The photographs aren’t enough. I need you here.”

I
’
VE
noticed you seem preoccupied lately,” said Morris one evening during a typically quiet supper. “Is something wrong?”

Jane could not believe what she was hearing. After all this time it had occurred to him to notice her mood. “I seem preoccupied?” she sputtered. “Preoccupied is hardly the word for it.”

Morris seemed surprised by the anger in her voice. “Distant, then. As if your mind is far away.”

“That’s very funny, coming from you. The only time you even glance in my direction is when the children are with me.”

“I’ve been working very hard,” Morris said reproachfully. “You know how important it is that the business become a success. I don’t do it for my own pleasure, you know. It’s for you and Jenny and May, your security, your future.”

“You know that’s a lie,” hissed Jane. “You do love the work, the drawing and the dyeing and the glass blowing. You love it much more than you have ever loved me.” She knew she was being petulant but she couldn’t help herself.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Morris stiffly. “I will try to do better.”

Jane realized that she didn’t want to reconcile with Morris. She didn’t want him to pledge to do better, to try harder. She wanted to be the wronged wife and to feel sorry for herself and feel justified in her grievances.

“You should never have married him,” Rossetti said when she confided in him. “But he had the audacity to think that a grace could become his wife. You were meant to serve as man’s inspiration, not fetch his dinner.”

Rossetti was sketching Jane as La Pia and she was looking down at the floor, her head tilted in an uncomfortable way. He didn’t see her eyes narrow with irritation.

“That’s all very well,” she said, “but I couldn’t serve as an inspiration if I was working as a chambermaid, now could I?”

“I would never have allowed that to happen,” said Rossetti, gallantly and falsely. They seldom alluded to their meeting or the weeks that followed, and it seemed Rossetti had almost come to believe that it was he and not Morris who had rescued her. “You were always meant to shine on the great stage of life. Already yours is the most famous face in London, and I will make it the most famous face in the world.”

“I owe him a great debt,” said Jane, feeling a twinge of remorse.

“And haven’t you repaid it a thousand times over?” said Rossetti. “You have borne his children and kept his house and listened to his endless monologues. You have been a pattern wife in every way. It’s time for you to think of yourself.”

“Perhaps,” said Jane, uncomfortably. She didn’t know whether Rossetti was speaking generally or referring to something specific. After the admission he had made following Lizzie’s death, she was careful not to expect too much from him.

“This composition is gorgeous,” said Rossetti, stepping back from his paper and eyeing it with satisfaction. “The curve of your jaw, the length of your neck…but in the full-scale painting you should wear a smock, like an altar boy. Silver white silk, with a purple sash. Can you sew something like that?”

“I know just what fabric to use,” Jane said. “I’ll bring it with me the next time I come.”

When the drawing was finished, Jane thought it was the best likeness of her that anyone had ever made. He had captured the pain in her eyes, the melancholy that enveloped her. Though it was only siena and umber chalks on paper, it was the most herself she had ever looked.

When Jane arrived for the painting’s third sitting, she found Rossetti in a black mood. He was silent through tea and she was afraid he might be angry with her. When they were finished, she put on the smock and sat as she had for the drawing of La Pia, head tilted, hands folded together. She was careful to weave her fingers exactly as they had been the day before. They worked in silence for some time, until finally Jane couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Gabriel, what’s wrong?” she asked.

Rossetti scowled. “Ruskin’s been hounding me,” he said. “He says my work has become monotonous.”

Jane’s heart plummeted. “Is it me?” she asked.

“I told him that you are all that I am interested in painting, and that you have as many shades and moods and expressions as a thousand women, but he said it was bad for me to focus so exclusively on one person.”

“Perhaps he’s right,” said Jane reluctantly. “You must think of your patrons, and your livelihood.”

“Livelihood be damned!” said Rossetti, throwing down his pencil. “Don’t you know that you are the only thing that matters to me in the world?”

Jane broke her pose and looked at him. His expression told her that the moment had come.

“You’ve never painted better,” she said, in case she was mistaken.

He came and kneeled beside her. “I’m not talking of painting,” he said, disentangling her hands and holding her right one to his heart. “And you know I’m not. I can only hope that you feel the same.”

“You know that I do,” breathed Jane. Their lips met, and any doubts Jane had about Rossetti’s feelings or her own fled completely. They had to be together. There was nothing else to be done. She clutched at his coat as if she were drowning.

“I’ve imagined this moment so many times,” he murmured into her hair. “Even before Lizzie died; I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t help it.”

He kissed her slowly and deliberately, lingering over each part of her. He kissed her eyelids, her nose, her neck. He unfastened her smock and pulled it over her head. He unpinned her amethyst brooch and pulled her linen collar free.

Jane had imagined herself back with Rossetti on the scaffolding of the Oxford Union so many times it had come to seem like a dream, or an especially lovely story whispered late one night at Red House. Now he was there, real and warm, and it was the last nine years that were the dream, and being with Rossetti was her life. She forgot that she had had two babies and that perhaps her body was not what it had been. She forgot the unsatisfying gropings of her husband. She forgot everything but Rossetti.

While he kissed her he fumbled with the buttons on the back of her dress until Jane couldn’t wait any longer. She ripped the dress open and threw it aside. Her shoes, stockings, chemise, and crinoline were gone in seconds. Then she began to strip Rossetti. She surprised both of them with her ardor.

Rossetti was suddenly uncertain. “Should we…someone might come in?”

“Everyone knows not to disturb you here,” said Jane.

When they were undressed, their bodies tightly bound by heat and sweat and years of waiting, neither of them could speak, but only move. He teased her, flicking her breasts with his tongue, running his hands over her body, breathing in her ear. When he finally entered her, the sensation was of lightning striking her down and she was overcome.

When they were finished they lay stunned and panting on the cool silk carpet. Jane thought that she should be ashamed, ashamed to have broken her marriage vows, ashamed to have experienced so much pleasure, to have lost control. But she found that she was not.

Jane turned to look at Rossetti and found that he was crying.

“This is the most wonderful moment of my life,” he said.