The adulteress (41 page)

vivid would the dream be that I would get out of bed, light my candle and open the secret drawer. The key was always there. "It's only a dream," I would say—and how many times did I say it during that long winter!

"He'll be better when the spring comes," I used to say; but in my heart I knew that his condition had nothing to do with the weather.

Later I was to blame the strain for what happened. I remembered how on another occasion I was ready to blame something other than the needs of my own nature. Then I had tried to convince myself that a long-dead ancestor had taken possession of me. What nonsense! It was I who had lain in that bed with Gerard and listened to the strains of music coming from the fair as I made passionate love with a man not my husband.

Now I said: "It is the tension . . . the strain . . . the fact that I have to watch Jean-Louis—whom I love—deteriorating.

One night I heard him move. I was like a woman with her baby. If he stirred I was usually awakened out of my sleep.

He was sitting out of bed in his chair ... I was amazed. His hands covered his face and his shoulders were shaking.

"Jean-Louis," I cried running to him, "what are you doing?"

"Oh ... I have awakened you. I tried to be so quiet."

"I hear every movement."

"It is selfish of me."

"I want to hear," I cried. "I want to be with you if you need me. What is it? Is it the pain?"

He shook his head.

"It's . . . the uselessness," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"It's obvious, isn't it? I lie in bed ... or sit in this chair and think: What use am I? They'd be better off without me."

"Don't dare say such a thing," I cried.

"Isn't it true? I am a constant anxiety to you. You admit you cannot sleep deeply. You are with me all the time ... I am useless in every way."

"Jean-Louis," I said, "it hurts me when you talk like that."

I knelt beside him and buried my face in his dressing gown. I couldn't stop thinking of how I had deceived him.

I cried out: "I want to look after you. Don't you understand? That is my life. It's what I want."

"Oh, Zipporah, Zipporah," he murmured.

"Please understand, Jean-Louis."

"I would always understand," he said. "No matter what ... I would always understand."

What did he mean? Had he some second sight? Did he know of that passionate love between me and Gerard? Could he possibly suspect that Lottie was not his child? I felt a sudden urge to open my heart to him, to tell him what had happened.

I stopped myself just in time. Suppose he had no suspicion? What would the discovery do to him in his condition?

He said: "I have seen the pain in your eyes . . . when I have an attack. It hurts me, Zipporah . . . more than the pain of my body."

"Oh, dearest, of course I suffer. I wish that I could take over some of the pain. I wish that we could share that together."

"Bless you, my darling," he said. "You have given me everything . . . you and your mother. In the past I often thought of what might have happened to me if she had not kept me. My own mother did not want me. I wanted to stay."

"Yes, I remember hearing how you refused to get up in the morning and would not let your nanny out of your sight."

"I came to look on you as my charge . . . and it's been like that ever since. It's been a happy time together, hasn't it, Zipporah?"

"Yes," I said. "Oh yes."

"Thank you. Thank you. I want you to have happy memories. That's why I am afraid."

"What are you afraid of?"

"That there might be unhappy ones if this goes on. I have sometimes thought . . . suppose I doubled the dose . . . trebled it . . . What would it be like? Sleep! Blessed sleep! When I have one dose you can't imagine the relief. It makes me sleep, doesn't it? Sometimes I feel that I would like to sleep and sleep . . . and never wake up to pain."

"Oh, Jean-Louis, you must not talk like that. It's as though you want to leave us."

He stroked my hair very tenderly. "Only because I cannot bear to see you suffer, my dearest one."

"And do you think I should not if you . . . went into that deep, deep sleep?"

"For a while. Then you could be happy again."

I shook my head.

"Oh yes," he said. "Oh yes."

"I will not listen to such talk."

"You make me feel . . . wanted," he said.

"How could you ever feel otherwise?"

"Because I am ungrateful. I am surrounded by loving care . . . and why should that be given to mel I am useless . . . whichever way you look, Zipporah ... I am useless."

"Please stop such talk immediately. I will not have it. If you can get the better of this wretched pain you can enjoy so much ... all the worthwhile things. And the longer we can keep the pain at bay the more chance you have of strengthening yourself. Isn't that what Dr. Forster says?"

"You're right, Zipporah. But if it should ever be that it is hopeless . . . and there is nothing left to me but pain . . . well, who would blame me . . . ? Zipporah, would you help me, if the pain gets too bad?"

"Oh, please don't talk of such things."

"I think of them. Escape is in that bottle. ... If it became unbearable ... a little help . . ."

"Let me help you to bed. Let me lie beside you and hold your hand. Let me try to make you understand all you mean to me."

I stayed with him for the rest of the night lying beside him, holding his hand until he fell into a peaceful sleep.

There was a letter from my mother. We corresponded regularly for she was eager to hear of Jean-Louis's condition.

"I know that you cannot come to us and leave Jean-Louis," she wrote, "and if we come to you that disturbs the household, but why should not Lottie visit us? That nice sensible Miss Carter could come with her. We do so long to see her."

When Lottie heard she was eager to go. Dear child, I think she was beginning to be affected by Jean-Louis's illness. I thought it would be a good idea for her to get away for a while.

So she left at the end of June.

I watched her leave in the company of Miss Carter and six grooms and I gave them instructions that they were to send

the grooms back the day after they arrived so that I should know they had reached their destination safely.

Then I went back to Jean-Louis.

He was lying in bed. He smiled when he saw me.

"I'm glad she's gone," he said.

"Oh, come," I answered, "you hate to lose her."

"I miss her," he said. "But it's good for her not to have to see me."

"Don't talk like that, Jean-Louis," I begged.

"It's true," he said, a little harshly. There was a faint irritation in his voice—so unlike him, but I knew that it was the herald of pain.

"We must face the truth," he said. "I'm a depressing object."

"Nonsense. Do you feel like a game of chess?"

"And you . . ." he went on, "you should be going with them."

"I prefer Eversleigh. I have no desire to go to Clavering. You know how I dislike Dickon. And as for my mother and his, they talk Dickon all the time."

"I hope Lottie won't get tired of the subject."

"She has her lessons. Madeleine Carter will never allow her to evade them . . . much as she might like to."

"Madeleine Carter is a stern taskmaster—or, I should say, mistress."

"I hope not too stern. I think she does preach a little hell fire to poor Lottie now and then. I don't want the child thinking her immortal soul's in peril because she commits some little peccadillo."

"Is Madeleine so upright then?"

"Completely so. She lives by a set of rules all laid down in her interpretation of the Bible. It makes life easy."

"Perhaps she has never had the temptation to be other than good?"

"Well, let's accept her for the good woman she is. I don't suppose Lottie will be any the worse for her discipline. I'll get the chessboard."

It was when we were in the middle of the game that the attack began. I hastened in to the dressing room and took out the bottle and gave him a dose with a shaking hand. His talk had unnerved me. I put the bottle on a table and made him lie down. The effect was miraculous. He opened his eyes and smiled on me and then I saw his gaze rest on the bottle.

"Try to sleep," I said. "I shall sit here until you do."

He was soon sleeping peacefully under the influence of the laudanum.

I picked up the bottle, and seeing that there was very little left, I decided that I would go straight over to Charles and get more.

We must not be without it.

I locked the bottle in the cupboard, put the key in the secret drawer and, putting on my riding habit, I went to the stable, saddled my horse and rode into town.

I was relieved to find Charles at home. He took me into his sitting room and I told him why I had come.

"I gave him a dose before I came out," I explained. "He is sleeping peacefully now."

"He will do so until the morning."

He was looking at me intently. "You look worn out," he said.

I raised my eyes to his. The compassion and tenderness I saw there unnerved me. I turned away but he was beside me, gripping my shoulders, turning me round to face him.

"Oh, Zipporah . . ." he said; and I was lying against him and his arms were round me. He was kissing my hair.

"I can't bear it," I said. "It gets worse."

"It's inevitable."

"Is there nothing . . . nothing . . ."

"Only what we are doing. There is nothing wrong with him organically. Constitutionally he is strong."

"I don't think he can bear these violent attacks of pain."

"It's tragic. I would do anything . . . anything . . ."

"I know," I said. "I know."

"You know I love you."

I was silent. I did know it. I had known it for some time. Did he know that I loved him, too?

I stammered: "You have been so good."

"If there were only something I could do."

"You have sustained me with your care of him . . . and for me. Oh, Charles, how long can it go on?"

He was silent.

Then he said: "I've told you at last. If only . . . you were free. ... If only . . .

"Come and sit down. We are alone here, Zipporah. Mrs. Ellis is out."

I felt my heart beating fast. I was elated in a way and at the same time horribly depressed. To be loved by such a man, whom I admired above all others, could not help but bring me joy; and on the other hand Jean-Louis was uppermost in my mind, his dependence on me, his abiding devotion.

I said I should go. "Give me the medicine and I will leave."

"I want to talk to you first," he replied. "It is no use shutting our eyes to what is and cannot be denied. I love you and you love me. I believe that to be so."

"And if it is . . . we must forget it."

"Forget it? You cannot push aside the truth and forget it."

"There is nothing we can do about it."

His hand closed over mine and gripped it tightly.

"We can be together," he said.

"And we shall know that the other is there, caring."

"Waiting," he said.

"Waiting."

"One day you and I will be together, Zipporah. It must be so."

I was silent. I couldn't bear it. It was talking of the time when Jean-Louis would no longer be there. It was like waiting for him to die . . . hoping he would.

I said: "I could never be happy. If Jean-Louis . . . died I would remember him forever and that I had not been true to him."

"These things pass," he said.

"Do they? Does one ever forget?"

"No, you're right. We can forget for periods at a time and then our guilty secrets raise their heads when we least expect them and we are caught unawares to discover how vulnerable we are."

"I must go," I said. "Give me the laudanum and I will leave. It is better so."

He shook his head. "What harm is done by your staying awhile? Jean-Louis is sleeping. He would not know if you returned. Stay awhile with me, Zipporah."

He came toward me but I held him off. I was afraid of my emotions. I felt again that familiar desire which I had known with Gerard. It was there, I knew, ready to flare up and consume my resolutions. I knew that if I were not on guard all the

296

time I should be swept away into the overwhelming need to slake my passion as I had done before.

There could not have been two men more unlike than Gerard and Charles and yet they both had this effect on me, this demanding, seering passion which I had never felt with Jean-Louis. Gerard had been so lighthearted, so ready to laugh, treating life as a joke. Charles was somber, weighed down by secrets, a man of deep passions when they were aroused, I was sure. Gerard's I fancied could be easily aroused but Charles would give long consideration to such matters and would not lightly fall in love.

I must be careful. I could not believe that I would be caught up in a whirlwind of passion while Jean-Louis lay ill—and yet thinking about over the years I could feel the same irresistible impulses.

I was in love with Charles. I had been in love with Gerard. I loved Jean-Louis, too; I was weak, I realized that. So I must tread very carefully.

He said: "I want to talk to you. I have never felt for anyone before what I do for you. I had a wife once. You knew that, did you?"

I shook my head.

"I thought perhaps Isabel had told you."

"Isabel has talked of you a good deal . . . but she never really told me anything about you which I did not know."

"Zipporah, I want you to know about this part of my life. Come and sit down. I've wanted to talk to you so often. I've wanted to tell you ... to explain why these moods come upon me at times. I can never, never escape from my guilt. Whatever I do . . . it is there. I want you to know everything about me, Zipporah ... I want to take you into those secret hiding places because I want you to know me for what I am. There must be no secrets between us."

I sat down beside him.

He went on: "It happened a long time ago . . . ten years to be exact. I was young and ambitious then . . . rather different from what I am now. Events change us more than time, perhaps. I was a doctor in fashionable London. My patients were among the rich; my reputation was growing, and then I met Dorinda. It was at the theater. She was a passionate theatergoer, and so was I. I was constantly at the Haymarket Theater and Drury Lane or Covent Garden. It was during a

performance of King Lear, with Garrick magnificent in the leading role, that I was introduced to Dorinda.

"She was very beautiful—fair-haired, blue-eyed like an animated doll. She was high-spirited, full of vitality. I was completely enchanted. She enjoyed the company of actors and as I discovered later helped many of them financially. She had inherited a large fortune from her father, who had doted on her during his lifetime. Her mother had died soon after her birth.

"You can imagine what happened. I must have seemed something of an oddity to her. I was serious, the ambitious doctor; her life had been spent among stage people or those who never worked but were intent on the pursuit of pleasure.

"I could not understand why she accepted me, but she did. I think it was a sort of novelty. It was only after our marriage that I discovered my wife was one of the greatest heiresses in the country and her upbringing had made her highly unsuitable to be the wife of a doctor. She could not understand my desire to work. There was no need to work, she declared. She had never thought of money. It was something which was just there. As for work . . . My patients, she said, were all malingerers. They fancied being ill for a while and thought it made them rather interesting. She found my absorption rather a bore.

"I realized within a month or so that I had made a great mistake. I used to go for long walks in the evenings into the poorer districts. That was when I went into Whitefriars. I told you about that. I had the feeling then that I wanted to get away from my work in fashionable London. I wanted to do something worthwhile.

"I tried to explain to Dorinda. She was skeptical. I had been noticing for some time strange things about her. And there came one night ... I had been out looking after a poor woman . . . one of the servants of a wealthy family who had called me in. The woman was suffering from an incurable disease and I had been with her some time so that I was too late for the theater performance to which we had arranged to go.