I slumped down upon that cold, hard floor and cried my heart out. I cannot tell you how much time passed before I finally forced myself up and slunk back to my room. All of a sudden I was unbearably weary. I hardly had the strength to move my feet. I walked straight past the maid gathering up my clothes from the floor where I had left them the night before, and crawled onto my bed. I just wanted to sleep. It was the only way I could think of to escape. I wanted to believe it was all a nightmare that I could, and would, wake up from. Downstairs, no doubt, the servants would be gossiping about “what a slugabed the mistress is” and ruminating on the slack and lazy ways of American girls. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to be left alone.
I prayed for sleep, but it wouldn’t come. I couldn’t stop thinking about the contents of that cabinet wreaking their horrible destruction upon my husband’s vulnerable innards. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw dead rats, the still tiny black bodies of houseflies done to death by arsenic flypapers, and Jim taking out his little silver box, sprinkling the white powder onto his porridge. My mind whirled with melodramas I had seen in which arsenic played a prominent part and accounts of murder trials I had shuddered over before quickly turning to the next page in the penny papers. But those people were bent upon working malice upon another, killing annoying pests, relatives, husbands, and rivals, not destroying their own stomachs!
When Jim came home I was still lying there in my rumpled nightgown and lace peignoir, one satin slipper on, the other fallen to the floor beside the bed, my eyes bloodshot and swollen red with tears. He ran to me and caught me up in his arms and began stroking the golden mess of my hair, his voice frantic with concern.
“Bunny, what’s wrong? Are you ill? Shall I call a doctor? Can I get you something . . . ?”
“From your medicine cabinet?”
I blurted out, violet accusation blazing from my eyes. “I’m sure there’s nothing a doctor can give me that you don’t already have to cure me of everything from singing ears to snakebite!”
Jim abruptly let go of me, recoiling as though I had slapped him. He stood beside the bed, staring down at me as though he had never seen me before. For a moment, I didn’t recognize my own husband; he had suddenly become a stranger, a chilly, dangerous stranger who made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“
That
is none of your business,” he said. “It is something you are too young and inexperienced to understand.”
“It
is
my business!” I shouted.
Kneeling on the bed, I reached out for him, trying to draw him close, to relax that sudden steeliness of manner and spine. All I wanted to do was banish that cold stranger and bring my beloved back to me. “And I’m not too young. I’m your wife, Jim, I love you, and you’re doing yourself no good taking all that poison. I’m afraid you’ll end by
killing
yourself! You
must
wean yourself off it at once! I’ll help you! I’ll write to my brother; I’m sure he’ll kn—”
I didn’t get to finish. Jim hit me. The honeymoon was over. I didn’t even see the blow coming. It was one more thing I had never expected from him. First, a cabinet full of poison, then, an even crueler blow.
Oh God, don’t let there be any more horrors lurking undisclosed!
One moment I was sitting up on my knees hugging my husband,
pleading
with him to save himself, the person I loved best; the next I was lying sprawled across the bed, with my head dangling over the side, bleeding from my nose and lips. My ears were ringing, and I was seeing what I thought for a moment was fireworks erupting against the ceiling. I heard a woman crying. It took me several moments to realize that it was me.
“
Bunny!
God help me, what have I done?” Jim rushed to gather me in his arms. He cradled me against his chest. “I’m
so
sorry! I didn’t mean to. I swear, I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never raised my hand against a woman before! My brothers will tell you I am the gentlest man God ever made! Edwin jokes that I won’t even suffer the servants to use flypapers! It will
never
happen again, I swear, as God is my witness!
Please,
Bunny,
forgive me!
”
I heard his voice as though I were underwater even though his lips were right against my face. I cringed and winced away from the thousand kisses he seemed intent on giving me to atone for that one blow.
I closed my eyes and told myself it was all a bad dream and when I opened them my world would be all right.
Tomorrow will be better,
I chanted inside my head, over and over again, like a prayer.
Like a possum playing dead, I pretended to swoon. I was glad when Jim laid me back against the pillows and, after a few lingering caresses to my hair, covered me and quietly left. I didn’t know what else to do. There was nowhere, and no one, to run to. I couldn’t go dashing off to Paris at the first sign of matrimonial discord and throw myself weeping into Mama’s arms. I couldn’t let all those people who had disapproved of our marrying nod and say,
I told you so!
My pride couldn’t bear it. And maybe it really was the first and last time it would ever happen. Lots of people make a mistake and never repeat it; they learn from it and turn out the better for it. Time would tell, I assured myself, and if it
ever
happened again I could always swallow my pride, pack my bags, and go back to Mama. But that
wouldn’t
happen; everything
would
be all right! Tomorrow really would be better; I just had to get through tonight!
And somehow I did. Jim left me alone. A maid brought me my supper on a tray, but I didn’t eat a bite. For the first time since we had been married we slept apart, only I couldn’t sleep. I wondered if Jim was suffering as much as I was. We were meant to be happy
together,
not remorseful and regretting apart. Countless times I quietly rose and crept to his door, I cupped the bronze knob in my hand, I caressed it longingly, the way Jim always did my breast, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn it. As much as I wanted to, I just couldn’t turn that knob. Each time, with tears in my eyes, I returned to my lonely bed.
The next morning I rose early and morosely endured the maid May’s ministrations, performed with all the diligence and precision of a military exercise. She didn’t utter a single friendly word as she yanked my corset strings so hard it made my waist feel like a chicken having its neck wrung. It didn’t really matter, I told myself. I was in no mood for conversation anyway. So I stood in gloomy, self-conscious silence and let her lace me into a flowing morning gown of lilac chiffon with lavender satin ribbon trim that flowed beautifully over my bustle and crown my coiled and braided hair with a pretty frilled white breakfast cap with a spray of silk violets and dangling loops of ribbon. Neither of us mentioned my bruised and swollen face, not even when she stood directly in front of me pinning a corsage of silk violets to my breast.
With a stalwart air, I descended the stairs, bravely determined to ignore the stares and whispers of the servants, and took my place at the breakfast table in the conservatory, surrounded by leafy palms and gilt pagoda birdcages filled with canaries and finches. I had no choice but to show my naked face. I had never had cause to paint my face before. I still had the lustrous glow of youth about me, so I hadn’t yet acquired the accoutrements, much less learned what creams, rouges, and powders to buy to best hide the bruises, or how to apply them, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to send May out to buy them, then devote a hasty half hour to attempting to master the art. I could just imagine myself descending the stairs, head held high, face painted like an inept circus clown’s, and the servants tittering that only harlots, actresses, and fast American girls painted their faces; my stomach turned somersaults at the very idea. Having Bessie stare so that she almost overflowed my teacup was better than suffering through that.
Jim came in whistling one of Michael’s nautical ditties and lightly kissed my cheek. Feigning blindness to the livid purple-red plum of a bruise blooming there, ignoring how even the featherlight touch of his lips made me wince, he told me how beautiful I looked. I smiled bravely at him across the breakfast table and watched as he took the familiar silver box from his breast pocket and liberally sprinkled the white powder I now knew was arsenic onto his porridge and into his tea.
Jim smiled and reached for my hand. “I daresay you would be horrified, my darling Bunny, if you knew that right now I am taking enough arsenic to kill you.”
He was right. I couldn’t hide it; I was
horrified
. I wanted to leap up and overturn the breakfast table. Death was floating in his teacup, dangling from his spoon; how could he make a jest of it?
He took a sip of his tea and smiled at me. “Yes, I can see by your face you are.” He took a heaping spoonful of his porridge. “But you mustn’t worry; I know what I am doing, better, I daresay, than most doctors. My medicine makes me stronger, and I am a better man for it.”
I nodded wanly and forced a fragile smile and, like a dutiful wife, offered my husband some marmalade for his toast, while expecting that at any moment he would gasp, clutch his chest, and fall over dead before I could even scream for help. But I was afraid to speak up. I couldn’t shake the memory of the blow he had struck me. Privately I didn’t think anything used to poison rats could be good for a human being to ingest, but I bit my tongue and strained my trembling lips into what I hoped was a convincing smile. The truth was I wanted the fairy tale back, to don a smiling mask and dance through the days as if in a giddy masquerade. I didn’t want the ugly truth to write his name on my dance card. I had already begun running. I disliked confrontations. I didn’t know how to be brave. I was never what you would call an assertive person; my spine was more like a licorice whip than a steel rod.
After Jim had gone I sat down at my lovely little Louis XV writing desk, with its drawers inlaid with sky-blue-stained mother-of-pearl, and wrote a long letter to Mama. When I was finished, I rang for the maid and gave it to her to mail.
A few moments later Mrs. Grant, the housekeeper, returned with my letter. It was then that I discovered that before departing for his office Jim had instructed that no letter of mine was to be dispatched without his first having read it. It was for my own good, Mrs. Grant explained, lest I write anything hasty I might regret in the heated aftermath of a marital spat. I was a young bride, and a highly emotional one at that, and might not realize how easily these things were blown out of all proportion.
“All couples quarrel, and the first tiff feels like the end of the world, if I may take the liberty of saying so, ma’am,” Mrs. Grant, cool as a cucumber and sour as a pickle, volunteered.
Fighting to hold back my anger, I snatched my letter and dismissed her.
With furious fingers I shredded it, ripping it until not even one word could be read, before tossing the fragments like snowflakes onto the fire; the flames, it seemed, were the only ones I could confide in and trust to keep my secrets safe and private.
I was trapped, like a wild animal caged in a zoo, and I didn’t like it. I kept to my room all day, pacing, imagining the walls closing in on me, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I’m afraid I spoke rather sharply to the maid when she knocked and offered luncheon.
When Jim came home he had a surprise for me. He was carrying an object draped in a sky-blue blanket. He sat it on the floor and, like a magician, whisked off the blanket to reveal a basket in which a fluffy white kitten with a blue satin bow tied around her neck lay curled in a nervous little ball. I squealed with delight. I had always
adored
cats, and now I had a little beauty of my very own.
“Oh, Jim!” I cried as I knelt and gathered her tenderly against my breast as Jim explained, in words similar to Mrs. Grant’s, why he had felt compelled to
temporarily
—how curious that Mrs. Grant had left that word out!—censor my correspondence.
“Of course you may write to your mother, my angel,” he said. “I only wanted to prevent your dashing off something in haste that you might later regret, words that might lead to this unfortunate, ugly incident being endlessly dredged up instead of being laid to rest and buried as it deserves.”
The way he explained it made perfect sense. I felt my anger evaporating. Here was my own dear, kind, sweet, gentle Jim; how could I
ever
have been frightened of him? Last night suddenly seemed all a bad dream. I was ever so glad I hadn’t sent that letter; it might have changed forever how Mama regarded Jim. My hasty words had painted him as a monster. I had actually called him “a great bully” and “a brute,” it shamed me now to remember. And if Mama had carelessly left the letter lying about and someone else had read it . . . Oh! I shuddered as I realized the horrific consequences that might have resulted from one impetuous letter! No wonder people spoke about the pen being mightier than the sword; for the first time in my life I actually understood what they meant. Jim had been so right and I so wrong! I
must
learn to think before I acted. I really was an impulsive, emotional creature, all heart, no head, sometimes, and I
needed
a husband like Jim to be the voice of reason and keep my head out of the clouds and my feet on the ground.
“All is forgiven?” Jim asked as he knelt beside me.
“All is forgiven.” I smiled up at him.
He gathered me in his arms, and while I cradled my kitten he gently, patiently, explained that the way I had blurted out my reference to his medicine cabinet, in such an accusing manner, had wounded him to the core and he had struck out blindly. He had been unforgivably hasty with his fists when he should have used words, and
only
words, patient, gentle, loving words like he was using now. He had been raised to always consider appearances and how others might perceive things, so he knew quite well what his cluttered medicine cabinet might suggest. The way I had spoken and looked at him had struck a nerve, like sugar on a bad tooth. I had made him feel like some degenerate opium fiend, lazing his life away with a pipe in some smoke-hazy den, instead of a respectable, upstanding English businessman who had been “perhaps a tad overzealous” about the preservation of his health since his bout with malaria.