The Adultress (16 page)

I was to leave early on the following day. The grooms had said that we should start just after dawn, which would enable us to get a fair distance on the first day when we would stop at the inn we had used on the journey to Eversleigh.

I said I would retire early. I had said good-bye to Uncle Carl for I did not want to disturb him in the morning: Jessie had said she would be up to see me off with Evalina.

My bags were packed. I was ready.

I had said good-bye to Gerard that afternoon. He had not tried to persuade me and seemed to have realized at last the futility of it.

I was about to get into bed when I heard a scratching at my window.

I went there and to my amazement and overwhelming joy there was Gerard. He had climbed up with the help of the creeper and was urging me to let him in.

I opened the window and in a few seconds I was in his arms.

“You didn’t think I was not going to be with you, did you?” he demanded.

That night was one of bitter sweetness for me. The unexpected joy of being with him, the heartbreaking knowledge that it would be the last time, made it different from any of those times we had spent together.

There was a frenzy in our passion; it was the ultimate joy mingled with the abject sorrow. I felt that in every gesture he was begging me to abandon everything and go with him.

We lay side by side listening to the gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the trees; the light of a half moon shone into the room. I wanted to preserve every moment as I used to press rose petals in my Bible at home and look at them afterward and recall the day I had picked them.

“You can’t let me go alone,” he said.

But I only shook my head in sorrow.

At dawn I must rise. I must prepare myself to station my journey … away from ecstasy to the long dreary years ahead, remembering, almost regretting, living with my terrible guilt. I wondered how well I would do that; whether I should be able to keep my guilty secret from them. Would Jean-Louis guess something tremendous had happened to me? I would be different, I was sure. My mother and Sabrina … No. When I came to think of it they had put me aside as some cherished object that was in safekeeping. Their anxieties and plans were all for Dickon.

“Don’t go away from me,” whispered Gerard. He knew me so well that he read my thoughts and he knew they had strayed from him to the people I should have to face at Clavering.

Then he kissed me and held me and we were as one.

We lay together, hands clasped, talking in whispers.

He said: “When you go back … if you go back … you will realize how desolate you are without me. … You will see that we
must
be together. …”

“I shall be desolate. I shall so desperately want to be with you … but I know I must be with my husband.”

“You cannot look into the future. You don’t know what will happen. I am going to give you the address of my chateau in France. I have written it for you. You will always be able to find me there.”

I felt a certain lifting of my gloom. When I rode out tomorrow I should not have entirely lost him.

“Always there will be the hope,” he said. “Every day I shall to myself say perhaps today there will be news of her. …”

I answered: “I must stay with my husband while he needs me … but if it should come to pass …”

And as we talked I thought I heard a movement. The creak of a board, the sudden rather uncanny awareness that someone is close by. I sat up in bed, listening.

“What is it?” said Gerard.

I put my fingers to my lips and went to the door. Fortunately I had locked it. I knew that someone was on the other side of that door … listening. I thought I heard a quick intake of breath.

Then I knew. I heard the creaking of a board once more. Someone was stealthily making her … or his … way along the corridor.

Gerard was looking at me questioningly.

As I went back to bed I said: “Someone was out there. Whoever it was would have heard our talking.”

“We spoke in whispers.”

“Nevertheless, someone in this house knows that there is someone in my room.”

“The amorous housekeeper? She can’t talk.”

“I don’t know.”

But the experience had made me uneasy.

Dawn came all too quickly. I had to be up and away. Gerard held me fast, made one last entreaty. I felt better now that I had his address.

Most reluctantly he left me, coming back to me several times and holding me fast again and again as though he refused to let me go.

And at length, because the minutes were racing by, he went out by the window. I watched him lower himself to the ground with the help of the jutting window decorations and the creeper.

He stood there looking at me and I could not take my eyes from him. I wanted that last sight of him to be etched forever in my mind.

Dawn was in the sky and I was ready. The grooms were waiting. I had said good-bye to my uncle the previous night so, I had remarked, I could slip away without disturbing him.

But Jessie and Evalina were there to see me go.

They both watched me … slyly, I thought, and I detected a certain speculation in their eyes and I guessed that it was one of them who had listened outside my door last night. One of them knew that I had had a lover in my room.

The journey back was uneventful. I scarcely noticed the places through which we passed. My thoughts were back with Gerard. My heart was heavy; I believed that I could never again know any happiness. I saw before me a life of dreary acceptance.

A great welcome was awaiting me, and when Jean-Louis came toward me—walking with a stick—my conscience smote me so fiercely that I was almost in tears. He thought my emotion was due to our reunion and I could see that he was happily gratified.

“It’s seemed so long,” he cried. “Oh, I’m so happy that you are back.”

“And how are you, Jean-Louis?” I said. “I was so distressed. What is this about your spine?”

“Nothing much. I think they’re making a fuss. I just get a sort of crick in my back if I walk too fast.”

I looked into his dear face and I knew that he was making light of his ailment. His first thought would be that he didn’t want to worry me. I felt mean, besmirched … wicked.

My mother with Sabrina and Dickon were waiting for me.

They embraced me lovingly. Dickon was dancing round. “What was it like?” he cried. “Tell us about Eversleigh. When are you going to have it?”

“Not for years and years, I hope,” I said. “Uncle Carl … I call him uncle because we couldn’t quite work out the relationship … is going to live for a long time.”

“How do you know?” asked Dickon, narrowing his eyes.

“Because, Dickon, I called in the doctor and he gave a good report.”

“A doctor?” said Sabrina “Is he ill then?”

“No … no, but I thought in the circumstances it was a good thing.”

My mother was laughing. “You’ve clearly had an interesting time,” she said.

“Yes … yes, very.”

“You must tell us
all
about it.”

Oh, not all, not all! I thought.

So I was back. It was like stepping into a world of reality after having visited some fantastic planet.

I listened to their account of all that had happened while I was away. It seemed very tame and expected.

“It was like years,” Jean-Louis told me.

My mother came to my room when I was alone there. Clearly she wanted confidences.

“Jean Louis?” I asked anxiously.

“Oh, it was sad that you weren’t here when we discovered this thing. Some damage to his spine. They don’t know what. Poor Jean-Louis, he is so brave … pretends it is nothing much, but I am sure there is some pain. Don’t look so sad, dear. It’ll be better now you’re home. He missed you so much. I think he was terribly worried. He got it into his head that something might happen and he’d lose you. All these tales about highwaymen. I think they’re rather exaggerated.”

“Of course they are. We don’t hear about the thousands of people who make safe journeys … only those who come to grief.”

“That’s what I told him. But he seemed to get it into his mind that something might go wrong. I expect he was feeling low about all this. Now you’re back, darling, everything will be all right.”

How could I ever have deserted them! I had always known in my heart that I never could.

So I resumed my quiet life. I discovered that Jean-Louis’s trouble was more than he would have us believe. I was sure that often he felt pain although he did not mention it. He was so pleased that I was home and nothing could have been more apparent.

There must have been a change in my attitude. I was more tender, more thoughtful than I had been before. He noticed it and thought it was due to his disability; he must have no suspicion, I told myself, of the terrible remorse from which I felt I would never escape.

Sometimes during the night I thought of Gerard, dreamed of him. Poor Jean-Louis, with whom I had never quite attained the heights of passion, had been a tender lover, thoughtful always—and still was, but my mind was filled with erotic imaginings of my experiences with my lost lover.

I suppose it was inevitable. I was, it appeared, able to bear children, the fault—if that was what it could be called—lay with Jean-Louis; and after my careless abandon, the frequency of our lovemaking, it would have been strange if—my partner being a normal potent man—I did not conceive.

And this, of course, was exactly what had happened.

A few weeks after my return I knew for sure that I was pregnant and I was equally sure who was the father of my child.

Here was a dilemma. It had not occurred to me that this would happen because I had always thought of myself as a barren woman. Why is it that when a couple are not fruitful it is always assumed that the deficiency is with the woman? It was clearly not so in my case.

There was only one course open to me for our sanity, for our happiness. Jean-Louis must believe that the child was his. This would be a perfectly reasonable assumption, particularly as he and my mother—the entire family—would never believe that I would break my marriage vows.

Then it should not be difficult. I had been away from home for three weeks. What if I had conceived a short time before I had left, which was possible? No one could question the time of the child’s arrival.

The first suspicion had shocked me a little and then I began to glory in the knowledge. I was to have a child. I had longed to be a mother. The fact that I was to become one would lift me out of that terrible depression which parting with Gerard had given me. I knew that if Jean-Louis was aware that he was to become a father he would be so excited that he too would benefit from the news. As for my mother and Sabrina, they would be overjoyed. In their opinion the one flaw in my marriage had been that it was childless.

I should be the only one who would see this as a result of my sin. I had been brazen, shameless … and now there was to be a result—a child of that illicit union to keep the memory of it green throughout the years.

I had fallen deeper into deceit, and although this news would bring great joy to all my family, I should be constantly reminded of those three ecstatic weeks when I had stepped aside from morality, virtue and all the principles which I had been brought up to revere.

Suppose I confessed what I had done? Suppose I told them who was the father of my child? I would only create unhappiness. No, I must go on living with my deceit for ever and the child would be a living reminder of it.

When I told Jean-Louis he was overcome with emotion.

I said: “I know it is what you have always wanted … what we have always wanted.”

“You are wonderful,” he said. “I think always my happiness has depended on you … and now this. …”

I felt the knife turning in the wound which was my conscience.

My mother and Sabrina were delighted. There was nothing that could please them more than a child in the family.

Dickon shrugged his shoulders and feigned indifference. “Babies can be a terrible nuisance,” he declared. “They cry and have to be watched.”

“Oh, Dickon, darling,” cried Sabrina, “you were a baby once.”

“Well, I grew out of it.”

“So do we all,” Sabrina reminded him.

“Sometimes they get stillborn,” he said, “which means they die being born. Some people used to put them out on the hillside to toughen them up. I think it was the Romans or the Stoics or somebody like that. It was good for them. The weak ones died and those that were really strong lived.”

“My baby will not be put on the hillside,” I said. “He … or she … will toughen up very satisfactorily in the nursery.”

Dickon glowered. He had never forgiven me for my discovery about the burned barn. That, I remembered, had been the cause of Jean-Louis’s trouble. No one had ever mentioned it in that connection. It was the sort of thing Sabrina and my mother would be very anxious to keep from stressing.

The preparations for the baby helped me considerably. I was saved from brooding as I was sure I should have done if I had not had this great event to look forward to.

Often I thought of Gerard, of course. I went over and over our meeting—the strangeness of finding him in the haunted patch and the manner in which he had risen from the ground. Almost uncanny. … It was as though he had been sent for the purpose of … what, destroying me? No, never that. Giving me a glimpse of the ecstasy two people could find in each other … giving me my child.

Then I would think of Uncle Carl sitting there watching me shrewdly, calling me Carlotta. Had he really been wandering in his mind? Did he really see that long-dead girl in me?

Sometimes my fancy wandered on. I let myself believe that I had been possessed. Uncle Carl had said: “She was cut off’ when she was young … she never lived out her life … and she was so full of life.” What a fantasy! Suppose she had come back and entered my body … and suppose Gerard was a reincarnation of that lover whom she had met at Enderby!

It was excuses, really. I was trying to say Yes. I met him, I loved him, I gave way abandonedly. I did so. … But it was not really sensible Zipporah, it was long-dead passionate Carlotta.