Cashelmara (22 page)

Katherine became huffy, but I told her not to be so silly; she was not in the least interested in babies, and I knew I was boring company for her at that time.

“But I cannot think why you should be such friends with Madeleine,” said Katherine, jealous as ever, and added despairingly as if she were a small child, “I’ve never had a true friend before and Madeleine has always had so many!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Katherine!” I said crossly. “Why on earth can’t I be friends with both of you?”

There was no answer she could possibly make to this, of course, and presently she did become more sensible, but I thought it was sad she and Madeleine should be indifferent to each other when there was only a year between them in age. I thought nostalgically of Blanche. That spring she had married a rich young man whose family had an estate near Philadelphia, but although she wrote ecstatic letters describing him, I thought he sounded dull, and when she sent me a picture I saw that he was barely half as handsome as Edward. However, since she seemed happy enough I found it easy to be happy for her—and when Francis wrote to say it was not quite the brilliant match he had wanted for Blanche I could not help but feel happier still. I loved Blanche dearly and was certainly no longer jealous of her, but I am, after all, only human.

“I do hope they’ll be happy,” I said to Edward on Blanche’s wedding day. “I hope they’ll be as happy as we are.”

“I hope they’ll be half as happy as we are,” said Edward, whose hostility toward Blanche had mellowed with the years, “and even that is wishing them exceedingly well.”

Edward was especially kind to me at the end of my pregnancies because he knew how much I hated the last days of stoutness, weariness and general immobility.

“If only David would come!” I said, sighing, but David was late, and when at last he did arrive I wished he had been later still.

Thomas’s birth had been so easy and I had been so excited by his entry into the world that I could say with truth afterward that I had enjoyed the experience. I had even thought at the time what a fuss some women made about nothing. I did realize I had been fortunate, but in all the months before David’s birth it had never occurred to me that I would not be equally fortunate a second time. In my ignorance I had had no idea that one woman can have two totally different experiences of bringing a baby into the world.

David was a breech birth. Had it not been for the fact that I was attended by the best doctor and midwife in London, he would probably have been born dead. Maybe I would have died too. I certainly thought I was dying. Madeleine stayed with me throughout—no one wanted her to be there, but she was willing and I was insistent—and at the end I believe I even asked her for the last rites of the Roman Church. Instead she gave me her rosary beads to bite on—a far more sensible gesture—and I knew then that she would make a perfect nurse.

I fainted soon after that, and although I regained consciousness before the birth, the doctor administered the controversial drug chloroform, which brought me the most miraculous relief from pain. In fact later I was angry that he had not used it sooner, but doctors are wary of interfering with the natural process of childbirth, and he told me to be glad he had resorted to the drug at all.

David was much larger than Thomas and looked quite different from his brother. Directly after he was born I felt no desire to see someone who had caused me so much trouble, and even when I did see him I might have felt indifferent if he had been a mere red-faced bundle of bones in a swaddling cloth. But David, fortunately for us both, was a beautiful infant, pink, white and serene, and within a day or two I could no longer find it in my heart to blame him for his agonizing entry into the world.

Naturally it took me some time to recover. For several weeks I spent my days either in bed or else reclining on a chaise longue, but I was in good spirits. I read copiously, wrote to my family in enormous detail, began a new volume of my journal and tried to catch up with current events. I never had the slightest interest in current events during pregnancy, but now I busied myself in studying the progress of the dreadful war again and working myself into a rage about England’s dismal attempts to remain neutral. How can a country be neutral when it builds warships for the side it secretly favors? I thought it was very poor behavior on England’s part, and I said so to Edward during one of our numerous discussions on the subject.

But the war was not the only subject we discussed. When I was well again we became concerned with a more personal matter, and before we went to Woodhammer for the autumn Edward said to me, “I’m sure you’ll want more children later despite this unfortunate experience with David, but might it not be best for the sake of your health to postpone your next pregnancy for a while?”

“Postpone it forever if you wish,” I said with a shudder, trying not to remember the smell of chloroform and the crunching of Madeleine’s rosary beads between my teeth. “I’m perfectly satisfied with my two boys.”

He was careful not to comment, but I sensed his relief.

“What do I have to do?” I said in curiosity, my mind roaming among solutions that ranged from chastity belts to black magic.

“Good God, nothing at all,” he said as if I had made some shocking suggestion. “I shall do what has to be done.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s not necessary for us to discuss it further,” he said. “It’s not a subject on which a woman needs to be well informed.”

No promise of black magic could have alarmed me more, and in fact when I was finally enlightened I did not care for the innovation and had to remind myself severely that the alternative lay with chloroform and rosary beads. However, presently I became accustomed to the change, and after a while I thought nothing of it—which just goes to prove one can reconcile oneself to an inconvenience if one has a strong enough incentive.

Madeleine would not go with us to Woodhammer. I begged her to come, but she said she had postponed the pursuit of her vocation for long enough, and now that I was well again she had no further excuse to stay with me.

“But I can’t bear to think of you working yourself to the bone in a horrible hospital in the worst part of London!” I cried in despair and added like a true New Yorker, “And you won’t even receive any money for it, only your board and lodging! It’s so unfair!”

“It’s not unfair at all,” said Madeleine, serene as ever. “I shall be learning while I work.”

“But if you could only study at the Nightingale Training School, how much more suitable it would be! I know you have no money, but I could lend—”

“Marguerite, you know Papa would never permit it, and I won’t have you quarreling with him. I only hope I can leave here without quarreling with him myself.”

She could not. She announced her intention of leaving, and when Edward tried to stop her they began to argue. Madeleine was sweet, demure and utterly implacable, while Edward became in rapid succession irritable, angry and absolutely livid.

“Thank God your mother isn’t alive to see this!” he shouted at last.

“Please, Papa,” said Madeleine, “don’t you think it would be wiser not to bring up the subject of my mother? I might become too angry.”

“Is this the prelude to some fanciful accusation?”

“Certainly not. I’ve no intention of pointing out to you what you already know—that you treated my mother abominably and ruined her health with your disgusting and selfish demands.”

“That’s a lie!” Edward was ashen.

“It’s the truth! All your boasts about a happy marriage—what a sham! All your grief after she died—what hypocrisy!”

“I loved her—”

“Yes—and it was your example of a husband’s love that made me decide I never wanted a husband! I didn’t want to be a victim like my mother!”

“You don’t even remember your mother as she was! You were only six when she had her nervous collapse after Louis died.”

“And for the next six years I had to watch her sinking to the grave as the result of your carnal excesses! No, don’t interrupt me. We’ll say nothing more about it, because whatever we said would be irrelevant. With God’s help I’ve long since learned to forgive you, but please, if you wish me to keep a civil tongue in my head, be good enough not to fling my mother’s name in my face in that fashion. Now, if you have nothing else you can profitably say to me, I shall leave your house and pursue my calling as a nurse.”

“Pursue what you want, but don’t expect me to give you one penny of my money! After what you’ve just said you can beg in the streets for all I care!”

“I doubt if that will be necessary,” said Madeleine, “since the order will provide me with the essentials of life. Good day, Papa.”

“Wait!” I cried, quite unable to stop myself by that time even though I knew it was foolish of me to interfere. “Madeleine … Edward …” I groped for words, tried to find some solution. “Edward, nursing does have a new respectability nowadays. Would it really not be better if Madeleine had a little money so that she could pursue her vocation at its most respectable level?”

“My dear,” said Edward in a voice of steel, “you would oblige me considerably if you would refrain from comment in the circumstances. If the scene is distressing to you, you have my permission to withdraw.”

I stumbled out of the room.

Later after Madeleine had left the house with the shabby bag that contained her meager possessions, he said a great many things to me. He said he realized I had meant well and had thought I was acting for the best; he said he was aware of the time and trouble I had spent befriending his daughters; he said he was neither ungrateful nor unappreciative. But when I took sides in a family argument and showed beyond any doubt that I was not in agreement with him I was doing a grave disservice to our marriage.

“I’m not saying you should be hypocritical,” he said. “I’m not asking you to voice opinions you don’t hold. I’m simply asking you to be silent when there’s a conflict between myself and Eleanor’s children. You complain loudly enough about England’s poor show of neutrality in your civil war, Marguerite, but you’re very far from excelling in neutrality yourself! And you should be neutral on these occasions. I don’t want my second marriage to be tainted with echoes from the first.”

His argument was persuasive, yet I could not wholly accept it. However, I said nothing further for fear the discussion might become too acrimonious, and anyway it was impossible for me to remain angry with him for long. That autumn he took me abroad again, this time to the south of Europe, and we spent two months traveling around the Greek islands. We had planned to spend part of that time in Italy, but Rome was still echoing with Garibaldi’s revolutionary rhetoric, and Edward thought it wiser to avoid territories that were so politically unstable. I did have a brief glimpse of Venice, where we took the boat to Athens, but beyond the enthusiastic decision that I would return there one day, my journal is sparse in recording my impressions of that gorgeous fairy-tale city. I devoted pages to Greece (now all contained in my red leather journal, Volume III, entitled “Sojourn in the Islands of Greece, 1862”), and on rereading my account, I can see that I soon recovered from my reluctance to leave the boys for such a long time in order not to disappoint Edward.

I was right to go with him. We were very happy, and in our intimacy with each other far from the distractions of our everyday life I came closer than I had ever come before to understanding the complexity of his character. It occurred to me for the first time that he was not truly suited to be a family man; he was far too restless and independent to welcome the ties of home life, and although he was happy enough to be married, he was happiest of all when his wife was more of a mistress than a domestic partner. I thought then of what Madeleine had said about conforming to the dictates of society, and it seemed to me that despite the lip service Edward paid to such rules he was at heart a very nonconforming person indeed. Whenever he was obliged to be conventional—in the role of paterfamilias, for example—he was at his least attractive and at his most ill at ease. He was at his best when he was free of all the trappings his position had cast upon him. I had seen him at his best in New York, when he was a foreigner outside his normal surroundings, and I saw him at his best now when we were alone together far from home.

It was then that I at last began to understand what Eleanor had meant to him. She too had liked to travel; she had shared all his interests, certainly far more of them than I did. Perhaps she too had been at her best in a world beyond the structure of her daily life. She would have been the companion Edward needed, a true kindred spirit to share his adventures, and once he had found her neither of them would have had any need for anyone else. A son to inherit the title, of course, perhaps a daughter to look after them in old age. But no one else. Anyone else would have been an intrusion.

“But I love you just as much as I ever loved Eleanor, Marguerite,” he said, “and sometimes so much more.”

All quarrels seemed very far away when he said that. In fact by the time we returned to England I was firmly of the opinion that we could not quarrel again for as long as we lived, but Edward decided that we should spend Christmas in Ireland, and it was then, on my second visit to Cashelmara, that I first became acquainted with his ward Derry Stranahan.

I took a great fancy to Derry. He was nearly twenty-one, just as I was, and good-looking in a dark, lithe, graceful manner that was very attractive. He had a curious accent, Irish with strong English overtones, which he must have acquired from Patrick, enough charm to lure a dozen birds from any bush and a needle-sharp wit. It never occurred to me not to like him, and, besides, I was secretly intrigued by the manner in which he had sown his wild oats. Women do tend to look twice at a man with a colorful romantic past, and I was no exception.

That Christmas he came home from Frankfurt after his years of banishment and was permitted by Edward to spend a month at Cashelmara before he went to Dublin to read for the Irish bar.

“I’m honored to meet the lady of the house at last,” he said, bowing very low to me, and it was hard to believe he had ever been a peasant’s son living in some smoky cabin along the road to Clonareen.