Authors: The Painted Lady
As usual, my husband's absence only made me feel my loneliness and
isolation more keenly than ever.
From time to time, I forced myself to reflect upon Marguerite's
advice. In my heart, I knew that she was right. Yet, when I tried mentally to
rehearse the words I might use to present my husband with the awful truth, I
could not imagine finding the courage to speak them.
On the day he was to return to Charingworth, I took Andromeda out
for a long ride. It had rained during the night, but now the late March air was
clear and fresh. As I rode between the wooded hillsides and the rolling
meadows, with their hedgerows about to come into leaf, I began to feel stronger
and more hopeful. The world had a clean and polished look. I had the swift urge
to do some spiritual housecleaning myself, whatever the consequence might be.
Perhaps I
could
face my husband with the truth.
For a long time I wrestled with my pride, but there was no
avoiding the fact that there was only one high road open to me. My husband had
been right. Marguerite had been right. Nothing would do but honesty.
So, at last, I began to frame the words by which I would confess
to my husband simply and fully all that had driven me to marry him and by which
I would admit that my claims to love him had been no more than desperate lies.
I could only imagine the pain this would cause him, but certainly
my inept deceptions had not spared him much pain. I remembered the unspoken
sadness I had felt the first night that I had lain in his arms. My confession
would deal the death blow to any illusions he might still cherish about me, but
the fatal illness had taken hold the day he gave me his name.
There was no longer any way to sustain the fraud. The one
honorable thing I could do now was to let him hear the truth from my lips—not
Poncet's.
I knew that I still had time to act. No dreaded envelope from
France had yet arrived by post for him: I had been keeping a careful watch.
But when I turned Andromeda's head back toward the house, my
resolve began to waver. The whole business made me feel small and unworthy. Was
that
perhaps the real source of my antipathy toward my husband—that his
incorruptible goodness made me feel so shabby? It took all my will to maintain
my sense of purpose. Could I cling to it until his return?
"Oh, my lady," said Mrs. Phillips, rushing up to me as
soon as I came through the doorway. "Sir Anthony has come home and wishes
to speak with you in the library."
I thought this very odd. We had grown so far apart that it was
remarkable now for my husband to request my presence anywhere.
I felt a clutch of apprehension. It gripped me even tighter as,
after having changed from my riding clothes into a dreary little gown, I
descended the stairway to welcome my husband home.
My husband was standing, staring out of the library windows. He
turned slowly as I entered the room. He looked amused. I shut the doors behind
me. He held up a brown envelope bearing a French stamp. "I suppose you
know what this is," he said.
How had it arrived without my seeing it! I wavered in confusion
for a moment, then steadied my resolve.
"I will explain it to you, Anthony," I said in a low
voice. "Why trouble yourself now?" he responded carelessly.
"This invitation to a private viewing arrived at Grosvenor Square over a
fortnight ago. As you may imagine, it took me immediately to France."
I closed my eyes.
"And as a result," continued my husband in the same
pleasant tone, "I have acquired a remarkable collection of paintings. Come
and have a look—I'd like to know what you think of them."
"I am sure you know what I think of them," I said. My back
was against the doors; they were all that kept me upright.
"Well, yes," said he agreeably, "I suppose I do.
After all, you've advanced a considerable amount of money for them. Not that
it's spared me from paying the extortionist's price."
I brought my eyes to his and nearly reeled under the disdain I saw
expressed there. The kindly concern I had taken for granted for so long had
vanished, but not his customary dispassionate, exasperating calm.
"I thought you were a woman of... delicate
sensibilities," he went on with a little laugh. "I've been
deceived."
The coldness of his laugh hit me like a slap.
Was this my patient, tender husband?
I had not forgotten his remarks about casting the first stone. I
had consoled myself with them all that morning; they had given me courage. But
now those high-minded sentiments were proving to be so lightly anchored that
they had gone adrift in the first hard breeze. Perhaps, being virtually without
sin himself, he did not feel enjoined by the Biblical precept. But to think
that he would have the sanctimonious arrogance to condemn me for those
paintings, for having loved Frederick enough to sit for them! I had always
behaved as if I thought this must be true, but nevertheless it was a shock to
look at his face now and to see there the contempt, the stern, puritanical,
ungenerous judgment.
I leaned my head back against the doors and felt something pass
out of me like a pain or a fever. When it was gone, it left me harder—and
emptier—than before. I straightened my spine and looked directly into my
husband's eyes.
"I have often wondered why you married me," he was
saying quietly. "You wasted no time in revealing your lack of desire. For
a long while, I supposed that your passions had been somehow repressed. I
thought that perhaps your late husband was not as gentle with you as he might
have been. Or that it was a reaction to your... unfortunate antecedents. Now
the mystery has been explained."
The scathing reference to my "antecedents" rankled. So,
after all, he was his mother's son.
"If it's passion you want," I said in a scornful,
brittle tone, of which even an hour ago I would never have dreamed myself
capable, "or at least a fair imitation of it, perhaps you ought to take a
mistress."
Something flickered in his eyes. He might have been furious. He
might as easily have been enjoying himself. It was impossible to tell.
"Why should I continue to squander a fortune upon my
mistresses," he asked, "when I have such a wanton under my own roof,
and one who's cost me more than all of them together?"
Nothing in his steady voice revealed what emotions lay beneath his
cool self-possession.
I managed to keep my face expressionless, but my throat tightened
at the implication. I had expected the paintings to scandalize him, but never
that they might spur him to resume those forays beneath my bedclothes. He must
have sensed my revulsion.
"Oh, you need not fear that I will hold you in a loveless
marriage," he said. "But I
will
put a small price on your
freedom."
"Oh? And what is the ransom you have set?"
"These paintings of which you are so fond," he said,
"suggest that you have far greater talent and enthusiasm for the...
business of love... than you have ever given me reason to suspect. I'd like to
see more evidence of it."
"Love isn't a business," I said.
"So I once thought, but it seems that it is. And in that
spirit, let me state the terms on which I'll set you free. There are five
paintings. You may buy each one of them back from me—in kind. If you are
cooperative and really exert yourself to please me, you will leave here with
enough money to live very comfortably for the rest of your life."
I know my composure must have failed me then. I could scarcely
imagine anything more odious than being forced to perform for this man-—who had
astonishingly begun to inspire real fear and real hatred in me.
"You seem less than avid," he observed. "Perhaps my
offer doesn't entice you. That's all right. If you prefer, we can go along as
we are. Of course," he added, his voice hardening, "I ought to warn
you straight out that I will assert my rights far more... vigorously than I
have done in the past."
For an instant, then, as he was speaking, I glimpsed the fury that
underlay his calm demeanor. The cobra had lifted his hood.
"And if I should agree to your proposal," I asked,
"how long will this farce go on?"
"Not long. No more than a few months, I should think. I
haven't found a mistress yet who can hold my interest longer. Of course, I
would expect you to provide me with more amusement than most. You were a great
disappointment the first time out, but I see now that all you lacked was the
proper motivation."
I felt as helpless as a fish twisting in a net. My gaze skipped
around the room. On the small table to my right a pensive little nymph
fashioned in bronze sat cradled between the horns of a crescent moon. My
fingers twitched. I longed to hurl that graceful
objet
through the
mullioned window behind my husband. I longed to shatter his restraint and, with
it, the civilized, deadly peacefulness of my splendid prison.
Perhaps my husband's fair head offered an even better target. That
he could be capable of such casual cruelty, and worse, that he could actually
take pleasure in it, made me long more than ever to break free of him at almost
any price. But not at the price of hanging for his murder.
Therefore I was obliged to weigh his proposal.
Well, what would it cost me really? A month or two of deadening my
sensibilities. This was a skill I had perfected; surely I could withstand a few
more of my husband's uninspiring assaults.
So I replied in an easier tone, "You give me little choice.
No one would dispute that a few months of bondage is preferable to a lifetime
of it."
"Surely not." He smiled. "So we're agreed."
My silence was my assent. He understood.
"Well," said he, sounding very pleased with the outcome.
"I think such a bargain demands evidence of good faith. Why don't you come
here and demonstrate your readiness to gratify my every wish."
A sickly wave, first cold, then hot, surged through me. I inched
toward him guardedly. When I was perhaps a foot or two away, he stepped toward
me and took my hot face between his cool palms. There was no affection in the
kiss which followed. It was the purest assertion of power. I understood what he
wanted of me. Only once had I ever opened my lips to him when we kissed. But
the danger it had formerly posed was gone.
Now, as an emblem of defeat, I parted my Hps enough to permit the
unwelcome invasion. But the heat of his mouth and the careless assurance with
which he took possession of mine still stirred me faintly and perversely.
Already his new indifference to my own hungers—or, more accurately, to my lack
of them—had begun to release me from my burden of guilt; the effect was curious
and not entirely unpleasant.
Nevertheless, I pushed him away.
"That was delicious," he said, "although somewhat
more grudging than I will expect from you in the future."
His eyes were full of an even greater scorn than I had seen in
them previously, as if he despised me for having yielded. Feeling slightly
ashamed, I wondered what he might have done if I had not.
"I don't know why you are looking so wretched," he said,
as if mistaking hatred for misery. "After all, five nights of obedience
and unstinting generosity is a very small price to pay. If you satisfy me in
that respect, I'll consider your debt paid. And I think you'll find the next
few months tolerable, since we shall see so little of each other. I may visit
you here on occasion, but I will not live in this house again until you are
gone from it forever. And meanwhile,
you
are not to leave it unless I
send for you. Beyond that, all I require is that when we are apart you do
nothing to disgrace yourself, and that when we are together you will
accommodate my wishes in
every
respect. If you can manage that, you have
my word that you will be well provided for when you leave, so long as you never
show me your face again. Do you understand?"
"Well enough," I said.
He laughed. "Won't this make an interesting change," he
remarked, and then added, "Come into the study."
I remained where I stood.
Coming around behind me, he gripped me by the shoulders and pushed
me toward the study door. He was stronger than he had ever given me reason to
suppose, and his fingers, pressing into my flesh, made me feel weaker than even
I had ever imagined myself to be. He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked
the door with one hand while still holding me tightly with the other.
"You had better start learning to do as you are told,"
he whispered in my ear as he forced me across the threshold, "if you're
set on earning your freedom."
My indiscretions were lined up on the floor against one wall. I
could not bring myself to look at them—not here. Yet I knew each one.
Odalisque.
Artist and Model. Knave and Harlot. Nymph and Satyr. Dancer and Drinkers.
"Look at them well," said my husband, "so that
you'll remember what is expected of you."
From a drawer within his writing table, he produced a slim silver
paper knife and used it as a pointer.