Black Silk (23 page)

Getting Submit to Netham turned out to be not nearly so difficult as Graham had imagined: Tate brought her.

At the beginning of September, Graham was in London, tying up the last of the loose ends regarding the legal status of his new little ward. While there, he went by Tate’s chambers to make sure there was nothing the counselor might add, nothing that Graham’s solicitors might have overlooked. He and Tate had ended up talking about what seemed to be a magnet topic of interest for them both, the “unhealthy and reclusive aloofness” of the lovely Widow Channing-Downes. Graham had mentioned in passing that he had invited Submit to visit his summer estate.

He could only speculate as to how this notion took root in Tate’s mind, matured, then yielded fruit. But Submit arrived at Netham a week later, escorted by the barrister, Graham suspected, quite possibly for the unaltruistic motive of wanting a place to take her that would be removed from circles that included
Mrs.
Tate.

Graham knew the attorney to be taking a great deal of personal interest in the young widow. Besides Tate’s preoccupation with her “remoteness,” Graham suspected he was handling her court proceedings as a “favor to her husband,” that is to say, for little or no material compensation. Graham knew Tate had taken her to dinner once in London then sent his own doctor to the inn the next day, because the widow had developed a chill and sneezed. (Ah, the tight circles of London. Tate’s doctor was also Graham’s own, taking care of the remaining little twin, who had developed diarrhea. The doctor was staying at Netham Hall for the week
end.) It seemed that Arnold Tate was in full magnetic attraction to the widow’s latent charms.

And he must have been feeling the pull rather strongly, for he descended his little carriage that morning with a look of marked imbalance—the discomposure of a person whose feet, now sliding uncertainly, had been planted wholly in his own self-righteousness. Arnold Tate, it occurred to Graham, was coming to know that sin had less to do with moral pitfalls than clay feet, and he seemed shaken by the knowledge. For, as he squinted against the sunlight, offering his hand toward the open carriage door, his eyes rose disconcertedly up the high chimneys of Netham Hall. Then a white hand settled into his, and the widow appeared. Stepping down beside him, she looked serene, the picture of unassailable peace—a madonna. Perhaps that was part of Tate’s problem. Next to Submit, anyone looked a sinner.

Whether or not Submit liked Tate’s attention, she seemed to put up with it with a stoic patience that Graham suspected came from a history of obliging mentoring old men. She allowed him to think she would be put wherever he guided her. And that September afternoon, he guided her by the elbow up the steps of Netham Hall.

By coincidence, Gerald Schild was leaving at the same time. Graham, as he had come to be in the habit of doing, was seeing that he did. (Only by hiding Rosalyn and presenting the bold face of Graham alone could Schild ever be brought to leave.) The four of them, Tate, Submit, Graham, and Schild, all stopped outside the front door, as if surprised by the strangeness of fate in providing such accidental groupings.

An almost irresistible temptation called to Graham as he made introductions:
This is my lawyer for a false paternity suit. This is my mistress’s husband. And here, my dead
guardian’s wife, a woman for whom I would give both testes in toto for the pleasure of sleeping with for just one night.

After more decent amenities, Tate shook the American’s offered hand, while further mumblings conveyed that introductions between Submit and Schild were unnecessary. They had met before in London, at Schild’s own house. Graham knew a horrible jealous pang of a moment before he realized that, of course, Rosalyn’s house in London was also Gerald’s, and that he had met the widow there on one of his brief, shadowy visits to his wife. The two of them nodded at this connection.

Still, there was something less easily dismissed that passed between Gerald Schild and Submit, Graham thought. Even before they had attached faces and names to place and reason for familiarity, there was a recognition: two privateers hailing each other in passing. They were both outsiders to everything on the inside of this house. They each knew it and acknowledged it in the other, making the nod and the connection into something more. Then Submit was ascending the front stairs on Tate’s arm (Tate, the flagship now leading his pinnace to foreign harbor).

“An interesting woman,” Schild said as they disappeared inside.

He spoke this not as an observation but as a suggestion. Perhaps he noted Graham’s overlong stares at the widow. Then Schild walked down the steps and heaved himself into his carriage. Once inside, he looked at Graham. “An interesting woman,” he repeated.

The message was clear, and anything but heroic—a crass invitation to heal his own sorrow at the expense of his wife’s. He might as well have said, “Please take up with her. If I could be of any help—”

Of course, he could have been. Graham was left wanting to call a shot back, wishing for the man he had fervently
wanted out of his house a moment ago now to reconsider, to stay and help deceive the deceiving wife.

Schild leaned out his window and added, “But then, no one loves where interest might logically guide them.” He paused for a moment more. “If you only knew how I love her—” he finally said. Then he pulled back into the carriage and, with a lurch, it rolled down the drive.

Graham was glad he was gone. There was something exceedingly foolish about a balding, middle-aged man who spoke so earnestly of love. Graham understood the word only in the context of the wise and worldly: cynicism. Worse still, the “love” Schild spoke of was blandly, unromantically his wife, the object of unconjugal obsession, a woman who did not return even a fraction of the feeling, but gave it blatantly, prodigally elsewhere, where he himself could not understand or tread, except as the gauchest foreigner.

It was this, Graham realized, that gave Gerald Schild his poignant, ambiguous nobility. For Schild knew his circumstance and bore up under it. He was a fool without the delusions that might have saved him from seeing himself as such. A self-informed fool; it was atrocious. And the man kept going anyway, speaking his feelings with the most inadequate, unoriginal of words, knowing this was all he had—the blurred and smudged reflection of something powerful, ennobling. Heroic. All this in the name of love.

Of one thing Graham was sure as he watched Gerald Schild’s carriage disappear that day. It became all at once so clear, so evident, he could hardly believe he had entertained notions of anything else: He himself did not love Rosalyn. Not romantically. Not even a little.

Graham Wessit’s country house was a harmonious construction of reddish stone with patterns of yellow-red brick up the corners, around the windows and doors. The build
ing was centered about a large, rotunda-sized tower, whose crenelations overlooked all other points of the houses’ roofs. This towerlike structure was set symmetrically into the center of the architecture, dividing the left half (rising to three stories plus an attic of windows and chimneys) from the right (a story lower, scattered with taller outlets for fireplace smoke). It could have had the feel of a hodgepodge, not an uncommon English problem with old buildings built in pieces through centuries of differing tastes. But it did not. The arches of the high, paned east windows, the central tower’s vertical succession of round windows, a low line of square, westerly windows, as well as the fanlights and sidelights of the double doors were painted in a unifying, crisp white. All this was nestled in trees and decorated with climbers and flower beds. It was a lovely house.

As she and Arnold had driven up, Submit had been surprised by the size of the house. It was smaller than she had expected. Motmarche by comparison was a city unto itself. And the estate was more quiet. At first, no one seemed to be about. The side croquet lawn was vacant. There was the usual sort of rural buildings beyond that, a poultry, what looked like dovecotes. On the other side of the house there was a small orchard. Twisting, grey-trunked apple trees ran in neat rows within ten feet of the building itself. She and Arnold had stepped out of the carriage into the driveway of a peaceful little manor house.

Then the front door had opened onto the awkward, somewhat embarrassing reunion on the front steps. Graham had seemed taken aback to see her, but not unpleasantly so. Submit had felt a rush of guilt at turning up on his doorstep after so curt a refusal only two weeks before. But Graham had seemed gracious, just as Arnold had assured her he would be. Then Submit had felt her embarrassment turn into something else: warm pleasure at seeing someone—a friend, she could not deny—to whom she had spoken of
feelings, Henry, life, everything, anything that might come up; her confidant from Morrow Fields. Despite the prickly memories of their disagreements and some of their more-than-simply-pointed remarks, she found herself liking that she had come face to face with Graham Wessit again, liking it surprisingly much. She entered his house with unpredicted ease. The most puzzling thing, on reflection, was that her host and Gerald Schild appeared to be on very cordial terms.

Inside, she and Arnold waited for a housekeeper whom Graham had mentioned but who didn’t materialize. Arnold pulled the bell cord again. He stood at the side of the room, more or less at a loss. Submit wandered. The house itself felt almost familiar, welcoming, as if she had been to Netham Hall before. It reminded her very much of the disorganized, unself-conscious man who had come to visit her at the inn.

A little entry passage gave onto a reception room, which, like the rotunda that housed it, was round. It was informal, a room people lived in. A scallop of bay windows along the back of it lit the room with unexpectedly vivid and gentle light. Wallpaper of willows and roses met dark wainscoting. A dark wood table, pushed against this, had garden roses sitting on it overflowing from a huge bowl. The room was a contrast of rich color and dark wood. There were bookcases lined with bright and dark spines, oak flooring peeking out from under a worn Persian rug, and a chest in the corner beside a chintz-covered sofa and chair. Neither the patterns nor the colors on the sofa and chairs and wallpaper quite matched, though mysteriously they harmonized. An ancient boot remover with an abandoned pair of muddy boots stood beside a brass umbrella stand full of walking sticks, not umbrellas. An insouciant, speckled setter looked them over, then went back to sleep in a basket under the stairs. He could have been out of an eighteenth-century painting—an English setter in an English gentleman’s parlor. There were
real Gainsboroughs on the wall. The staircase over the dog rose dramatically, circumvolving half the room on its way to the next floor. It led the eye up to a high ceiling, perhaps forty feet in the air. The room had all the charm of old aristocracy held together with the careless aplomb of a country gentleman, a provincial lack of fuss.

Submit frowned. The staircase, the dog,
something
made a sense of familiarity creep over her again, but not in so pleasant a way. She felt an odd kind of preknowledge of this house. She opened a drawer in a small morning desk and knew before she saw that it was filled with a collection of pens and loose change. Pennies, shillings, and gold nibs winked up at her. Submit couldn’t understand how she knew. Her heart gave an erratic beat. The pleasant, pretty room began to feel a little eerie. Though of course, she tried to explain to herself, the desk drawer was the logical place to keep these things—

“Going through my drawers?” Graham Wessit walked quickly into the room, full of energy, all smiles.

“I wasn’t—”

“I hope you were.” His smile became personal, warm. “I would love to be a matter of riveting curiosity to you.”

Submit closed the drawer, frowning.

He took her shawl and her hat, as well as Arnold’s. “How very nice to see you again.” He threw Arnold a glance. “Both of you.” He tossed their things on a chair. “Would you like to go upstairs and freshen up?”

“No,” Submit answered a little awkwardly. “We’re fine.”

“How long can you stay?’

Arnold interjected, “Just the weekend. If you don’t mind.”

“No, no, I’m delighted. Stay longer if you like. Come with me; I’ll take you outside. Everyone is in the back.”

They went out into a garden, a florid display of color. Opening buds bloomed beside full-blown flowers, along
with drooping, unclipped roses with half their petals blown off. Graham said to Submit, “I didn’t expect to see you at all the rest of the summer, after your last rather abrupt note.”

She was caught off guard by his seemingly sincere pleasure that she’d come. Her last letter, despite the circumstances and high feelings that had engendered it, seemed all at once rude. “I—I thought better of it, I suppose.”

“I’m terribly glad you did.” He smiled a wide, ingenuous smile. Submit felt herself being wooed by the infamous Netham charm.

Arnold came up beside them as they walked. “It was at my insistence she came,” he said. They walked three abreast, Submit in the middle. “I thought, after talking to you in London, it was best if someone browbeat her into coming out to the country for a few days. For her own good.”

“Ah.” Graham left a pause, then asked, “And how is Mrs. Tate?”

Arnold made a misstep over a loose stone in the path. “Fine.”

“The children? Your oldest is at Oxford now, isn’t he?”

Arnold’s face grew dour. “Yes.” He stared at his own feet tramping along the path.

“And you, my dear cousin?” Graham asked Submit.
My dear cousin
. It was the form of address he had found in the letters. It put him somehow uncomfortably near, a figurative equivalent to finding herself without three feet of hoops.

“I am doing well—”

“She’s not,” Arnold broke in. “She’s working too hard, seeing nary a soul, getting thinner and paler by the day—”

“I disagree.” Graham smiled at her as she passed under his arm—he held back a particularly brambly cane that bounced loose across the path. He came up beside her again just as the path turned and narrowed. Arnold was left to walk a few feet behind.