The Wayward Muse (26 page)

“I think it’s going to rain,” said Jane.

“So much the better,” said Rossetti. “The fish bite better in the rain.”

“Is that true?” asked Jenny skeptically.

Rossetti raised his hand. “I swear it is.”

When they reached the appointed spot, it was indeed drizzling. Jane passed out the mackintoshes and helped May put her worms on the hook. Rossetti helped Jenny. Then Rossetti baited his own hook and they tossed the three lines into the water.

“Don’t you like to fish, Mama?” asked May.

“I never did,” admitted Jane. “Though my brother was expert at it and my sister Bessie once caught a trout as big as you are.”

“Now that’s a fishy tale,” said Rossetti. Jane splashed him with water until he begged her to stop.

They caught eight gudgeon, small bony fish that were good only for soup, but Jenny caught a perch and Rossetti an enormous pike. He made a great show of difficulty with it, rocking back and forth and threatening to tip over the boat, pulling at his line with all of his strength.

“His eyes are very big,” observed May. “Is he looking at us?”

“I don’t think he can see out of the water,” said Rossetti.

“How shall we cook him?” Jane asked the girls.

“Oh, we can’t,” said May, beginning to cry.

“The best way is to fry him,” said Rossetti. “With potatoes and salad.”

“Doesn’t that sound delicious?” said Jane, and even May had to admit that it did.

T
HAT
afternoon the light rain became a downpour. It rained all through the night and all the next day. The girls looked forlornly out the window, but there was no going out that day. Rossetti watched their disappointed faces.

“We should put on a play,” he said. Jenny and May turned away from the window in surprise.

“A play?” said Jenny doubtfully. “We don’t know how to put on a play.”

“We could do Shakespeare,” said Rossetti, undaunted.
“The Tempest
would be appropriate.”

“I thought I saw a
Plays for Children
on a shelf somewhere,” said Jane.

The book was found and Rossetti and the girls pored over it until they found a play they all liked and that did not have too many parts for their small company. It was an adaptation of “The Franklin’s Tale.” Jenny was to be both the husband Arveragus and the suitor Aurelius. May was to be the faithful wife Dorigen and Aurelius’s brother.

“And I suppose I will have to be the sorcerer,” said Rossetti.

“How appropriate,” smiled Jane.

“Now, Jenny,” continued Rossetti, “as you are the better seamstress, I think you should be in charge of costumes. May will be in charge of props. I will help you both with the scenery this afternoon, after you have learned your lines and can say them perfectly without the book. We’ll rehearse tonight and put on a show for your mother tomorrow evening at eight.”

“Where is our theater to be?” asked May.

Rossetti thought for a moment. “In the parlor, in front of the fireplace,” he said finally. “We can move all of the furniture back to create an open space. Now off you go.”

The girls went off to their room to learn their lines, excited about their new project.

It was fortunate that Rossetti had thought of putting on a play, because the rain did not let up all day, and without their new pastime Jenny and May would have been very bored. On the other hand, Rossetti got no work of his own done that day. By covering some small tables with pillows and draping them in tan cotton velvet, he managed to create a couple of plausible horses. He moved the dining room table into the parlor and gathered up mismatched china from the pantry. The “pilgrims”—pillows tied together with string and dressed in Jane’s and Rossetti’s clothes—would gather for their meal and to hear the tale.

“We need a castle,” said Rossetti, “and some rocks. This empty space next to the pilgrims will do for the castle. We can put one of the carved armchairs in there and drape some velvet on the wall. For the rocks we can arrange some pillows. They will be easy to move when they have to disappear.”

“What about the sorcerer’s house?” asked Jenny.

“We’ll build a tent,” said Rossetti. “Out of blankets. And we’ll make a red paper shade for the lamp. It will look very eerie.”

“Jenny needs breeches and a coat for Arveragus,” said Jane, turning to the problems of costume.

“Yes, of plum velvet!” said Rossetti. “And a hat with a plume. I wonder if we can figure out how to make chain mail for Aurelius?”

“What about me?” asked May.

“I will pin a dress of mine for you,” said Jane.

In the afternoon Rossetti heard the girls’ lines and helped them block out the play. He would not let Jane in to watch.

“This is all to be a surprise for you,” he said. “You can’t see it in its rudimentary form.”

Instead Jane sat in her room, pretending to read but really just watching the rain. The garden had become completely saturated and pools had formed everywhere. She observed that many of the smaller pools were being absorbed into the bigger ones, threatening to turn the entire garden into one large lake. I wonder if it will ever stop, she thought.

Thoughts of Morris came to her unbidden. What was he doing now? Iceland was hazy in her mind; she only saw stone cliffs and black, forbidding skies, but it was easy enough to imagine Morris in such a landscape, frying sausages and sharpening his pencils with a knife.

The next day they had a dress rehearsal in the morning. Jane brought the costumes she had been working on and went to the kitchen to check on things. She found the cook in a bit of a panic because no one had been able to go to town to do the shopping in three days. They were low on meat and vegetables. And now a thunderstorm was raging outside, making a trip to town even more forbidding. Jane told her not to worry, that they would eat anything, toast and cheese or stewed apples, and the cook said grudgingly that she thought she could put together a chicken stew.

It was hard for the girls to be heard over the claps of thunder. Rossetti said it was good practice in teaching them how to project their voices. Each time they saw lightning, they were apt to jump and shriek, but Rossetti commanded them to concentrate, and soon they paid no attention to the storm. By nightfall the thunder and lightning had passed, but the rain had not.

“We should have done a biblical play,” said Rossetti, as he sat next to Jane and waited for the performance to begin. “It certainly feels like the Flood.”

Rossetti had covered Jenny’s chin and cheeks with bootblack. Jane had sacrificed a velvet cape to make the duke’s suit, and given her one of Morris’s swords to carry. Rossetti had taught her to affect a rolling swagger and Jane was amazed by how much she resembled an arrogant nobleman. May wore rouge and lipstick and her hair was piled on top of her head. Her crying and lamenting were very realistic. When Jenny, as Aurelius, arrived to woo her sister, wearing a coat of chicken wire, carrying a box of chocolates and a bouquet of peonies, Jane laughed until she choked.

Rossetti made a very sinister sorcerer. When he waved his wand with a flourish, Jenny held a sheet in front of the rocks and there was scurrying behind it. When Rossetti lowered his wand, and Jenny lowered the sheet, May was still carrying pillows into the hall.

When Aurelius had renounced Dorigen and the sorcerer had released him from his financial obligation, Jenny and May bowed to their mother, who rose from her seat and clapped as loudly as she could.

“Wonderful,” said Jane.

“And though it was written four hundred years ago, it’s still a timely tale,” said Rossetti. “ ‘Love is a thing as any spirit free; Women by nature love their liberty, And not to be constrained like any thrall, And so do men, if say the truth I shall?’”

“I thought the play was about faithfulness,” said Jenny innocently.

“It’s very late,” said Jane. “Help May out of her costume, and into bed with both of you.”

The next morning Jane awoke to find that the Thames had completely flooded its banks, and was seeping toward the house. By midmorning the water submerged the garden; by midafternoon it was up to the front step.

“What shall we do?” said Jane.

“Make the best of it, I suppose,” said Rossetti. “Roll up the downstairs carpets and put things of value up on the second floor. I’ll take the girls out in the punt and we’ll see what’s what.”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” asked Jane.

“Oh, Mama, please,” begged Jenny. “It is no fun being inside when everything out there is underwater.”

“All right,” said Jane. “Though if it goes on much longer, I wonder what we will eat.”

“We’ll try to make it to town,” said Rossetti. “We’ll see if any shops are open.”

When they returned they were soaking wet and Rossetti was carrying the neighbor’s dog.

“I found it clinging to a large tree branch,” he explained. “I managed to steer the boat toward him and pull him into it, but he sprayed us all with water and then bit me. I’m beginning to regret rescuing him.”

“Were the shops closed?” asked Jane.

“We never found the shops,” said Rossetti with a grin. “With everything underwater there were no landmarks. You would think that would have occurred to me, wouldn’t you? We got lost immediately.”

“It was very exciting,” said Jenny. “To see all that floated by.”

“Yes, we saw fence posts, and road signs, furniture, even a wagon.”

“Why are you crying, May?” asked Jane, taking the child into her arms.

“Drowned chickens,” said Rossetti.

“Poor things,” said Jane.

That afternoon the baker came by in a boat and tossed three loaves into the second-story window with his pitchfork. The postman delivered their mail by boat as well. Four days later the water had receded enough for them to go downstairs and begin to clean up. Jane hoped it would never happen again, the mud and debris made such a mess, but the girls considered the flood one of the best things that had ever happened to them and referred to it for years.

Rossetti was lying on his stomach on the rug in front of the fire, reading Browning. Jane was in her chair, sewing a nun’s habit for Jenny, who had written a play about an Italian convent and was to be Mother Superior. Occasionally she would stop her work and gaze fondly at the boyish figure on the floor. Sometimes he would catch her and smile. At one of these pauses he spoke.

“Don’t go back to London,” he said, looking up at her soulfully.

“We still have three weeks,” Jane reminded him.

“You know that’s not enough,” Rossetti said. “You know we have to be together. You can’t go back to Morris.”

“You know I have to,” she said. Still, her heart was beating wildly.

“I can’t get along without you,” said Rossetti. “I know you think I’m being dramatic when I say it, but I’m not. Without you I will go mad.”

“Don’t say things like that, Gabriel,” said Jane.

“I mean it,” he said. “Stay here with me.”

“You mean divorce?” asked Jane. She hated even saying the word. “Would you and I marry?”

“I don’t care,” said Rossetti. “Divorce or not, marry or not. Imagine, Jane, if we could be like this all of the time, with no Morris, no scolding gossip in the papers, no enemies. If we could live alone, together, just the two of us.”

“Enemies?” said Jane. “ “You mean Buchanan? He’s a nuisance, but I’m not sure he’s sinister enough to be an enemy.”

“Oh, but he is,” said Rossetti solemnly. “He’s been intercepting my letters, you know. When they come to me, the seals are already broken.”

“Really?” said Jane. “I’m sure it’s just one of the girls trying to be helpful.”

“The birds jeer at me,” he said darkly. “I hear them when I’m out walking. ‘Sinner!’ they caw. ‘Sordid sensualist! Sorry sap! Your poetry is trash. Trash! Trash! Trash!’” His voice rose to a piercing shriek.

There was a pit opening up before Jane’s eyes and she would not look into it, she would not. “You’ve had too much to drink,” she said. “Perhaps you should go to bed.”

“Say you’ll think about going away with me,” said Rossetti. “And then I will be your obedient boy and trot off to sleep.”

Jane slid off her chair and crawled along the floor into Rossetti’s arms. “I will think about it,” she said.

“Say you will,” said Rossetti.

“I will,” she said, tears running down her face.

Jane folded the letter and put it back into its envelope. She uncorked her ink bottle and took out a sheet of thin stationery, but for a long time she sat at her desk without raising her pen. She had no idea what to say to her husband. She could not tell him that she hadn’t thought of him in weeks, or that she feared Rossetti might be losing his mind. She could not write that Rossetti had asked her to run away with him and that she had told him she would, or mention that sometimes when the post came, the children were enjoying Rossetti’s company so much that they did not look up. Even describing the flood necessitated naming Rossetti. He had taken the girls out in the boat and he had dreamed up the idea of the play. He had taught Jenny to play chess, he had put a poultice on May’s sprained ankle. That very day he had matched in oil paint the exact color of the azure sky and had joined the girls on the roof and fallen into the yew, sustaining minor injuries.