The Honeymoon (37 page)

The next day, going through the drawers in his study, she found all the letters she’d ever written to him, not many, for they’d rarely been separated. He kept them in a tooled leather box with a brass clasp. She pulled the chair up to the fire and read each one over, then threw it into the flames and watched them lap at the pages, the paper shriveling and disintegrating into black. She thought of the Hindu rite of cremation, intended to release the soul from its mortal prison. His body had been put into the earth, encased in a coffin to stay its disintegration. They said it took a year for the flesh to vanish, except for the tendons clinging here and there to the skeleton. Then, in forty to fifty years the bones become dust …

Outside now, the London spring was in a blaze of glory, the ground was covered in pink azalea petals, there were masses of bluebells under the trees. Through the open window came the smell of water from the canal on the breeze.

Johnnie arrived at the house in a burst of color. He’d ceased wearing his mourning black and now he had on a different-colored suit each time he came, cream or beige or blue, with brightly colored silk waistcoats and cravats. He was always elegantly dressed, a young man who cared about clothes. Perhaps it wasn’t really petty vanity; perhaps he was aware of his fine form and thought it should be dressed
appropriately. He was a man at ease in his own body; all of its shapes and angles were perfectly, evenly balanced. Completely different from her own dear man, that scruffy little person with his hair all awry, wearing the same clothes year after year until she noticed the holes in them and made him get new ones. She’d loved that total lack of vanity in George. But in Johnnie, there was also something to admire his God-given beauty — and it came with kindness.

She wanted to create a memorial, a George Henry Lewes Studentship in Physiology, at Cambridge perhaps, to enable young men to get training in those subjects that George had been interested in. Johnnie helped her set it up.

“A brilliant idea,” she said.

“All will be done,” he said.

Another letter came from Blackwood, asking once more about her new book,
Theophrastus
. When might she get a chance to go over the proofs, he asked, so they could go ahead with publication?

She knew the book wasn’t very good. It would never sell, her readers were expecting a novel — but George would have insisted on her publishing it. And he’d be reminding her that she was always worried and depressed about every new book, no matter how successful the last one had been.

It took only a week for her to go over the proofs. Finally, the thing was done.

At last she let Herbert Spencer in. He swept eagerly into the parlor, like a dog finally allowed back into the house after being banished for some misdeed. He was more stooped now, balder, with long, gray side-whiskers.

“Marian, I am so sorry,” he said, bending down and kissing her awkwardly. He seldom looked at one directly. For a brief moment, he studied her and his face was unchar​acteri​stically awakened into curiosity about her, the other person. His best friend had died and the man’s widow was there before him. Hastily he looked around the room as if he didn’t know what to do next.

She indicated the chair across from her. “Do sit,” she said. He obeyed, crossing his long legs tightly, winding one calf around the other, then locking them together, hunched over, his arms wrapped around his body.

His eyes wandered around the room. His theories of “social evolution” had made him the most important philosopher of the age. He’d never married, giving the excuse that he was “too much given to fault finding” to find the right woman.

“Shall I have Brett bring us some tea?” she asked. “I could use some of Mrs. Dowling’s lemon biscuits.” Their tart sweetness would give her strength for this.

“Oh, no, no.” He seemed, as always, rather miserable.

“I had a chance to read
The Data of Ethics
.” In the midst of her mourning, he had delivered a copy of the new book to the house with a note saying he’d like her opinion of it.

He looked directly at her. “Yes?” he asked, hopefully.

“I thought it was very commendable,” she said. “But I disagree with you on one point. You say the best government is the least government, that human behavior will evolve naturally because maladaptive traits such as aggression won’t be reinforced. But this so-called social evolution is a long way off. Until then, there has to be government, people have to have laws.”

He seemed chagrined.

“I believe in the rule of law,” she said. “I can’t escape that. Turmoil frightens me.” She was still, in so many ways, her father’s daughter, a conservative, a child of the Tory Midlands.

“But if you have less rule,” he said, “when people behave badly they’re punished, and inevitably their behavior withers.” He was animated now, since they were talking about his book.

She shrugged. “I’ve said my piece.” A sudden exhaustion descended over her. She didn’t care about his book. She’d made her stab at friendship. She had no energy for anything more.

Then, as if having dispensed with the proper condolences, he could get down to his real purpose. “I’ve actually been eager to speak to you. I was waiting until you were recovered. I wanted to ask your advice about my autobiography. You know I’m writing my autobiography, of course?” Indeed, he’d been writing it for years. He continued, “As I said, the book is supposed to be a sort of natural history of myself.”

“As you said.”

“I want to be candid about my faults.”

“That’s very courageous of you.” She smiled — she couldn’t help it. It was all you could do with him at times. He usually failed to notice the reactions of other people.

“Yes, I do have many faults,” he said now. “And I think I owe it to the reader to own up to them.”

“Why not?” she said. It was rather fun to egg him on a bit, a distraction.

“For instance, I’m writing a passage now about my tendency to criticize.”

“I’ve seen that in you,” she said.

“I thought I’d use my criticism of saltcellars as an example. I warrant I’m a bit silly on the subject. But, nonetheless …”

She let out a little giggle, but put her hand in front of her mouth just in time and he didn’t notice it. She couldn’t resist encouraging him. “And —?”

“Well, when I was a boy, saltcellars were made in the shape of either ellipses or parallelograms. Thus, the salt spoon always remained in place on the edge of the saltcellar.”

“I see …”

“Nowadays,” he said, “saltcellars are all circular, and the result is, the spoon falls onto the tablecloth.” He said this with a straight face and no apparent self-consciousness.

In the past, she would have let him go on, amused by his eccentricities. But suddenly exhaustion was enveloping her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m still very tired —”

He looked up at her, startled. “Yes. Of course …,” he said, again as if he’d realized, for a moment, that one wasn’t supposed to go and on about one’s own troubles to exhausted and grieving widows.

“I think that you should probably go,” she said, as if he might miss the point. “No single night’s sleep is ever enough.”

“Of course.” He stood up, shook himself off, and looked at her worriedly. Perhaps it occurred to him now that he should have talked about something else, perhaps about George and his great accomplishments, or asked if there was anything she needed. “I’ll go then,” he said. “But I’ll come again.”

On his way out of the parlor, he stopped and for a moment focused on her again. “I did want to say something. I wanted to say —” He hesitated. “I wanted to say that … I think that you are the most forgiving person I’ve ever met.”

And with that, abashed, he quickly pulled on his coat and hurried out the front door, as if embarrassed by his own words.

So, she thought, he did remember that he’d once broken her heart.

After he left, she thought of what she and George would say now, how they would’ve laughed, but not unkindly, at the poor man, at his strangeness, his utter self-centeredness.

That evening, she wrote to Johnnie and invited him to tea the next day. He would bring relief from the gloom, from the musty, lingering presence of Spencer.

The following afternoon, when he came, she said, “I would like to read the Dante with you. I think it would help me too.”

His face lit. “I’d love that. I’ve been struggling.”

“Where are you up to?”

“Only the first ten lines. I’m having trouble concentrating. It would help so much to have someone else doing it with me.”

“Why don’t you come on Monday?” she said. “And then we’ll start again from the beginning.”

So he began coming to the Priory with his Dante and his Carlyle. They sat side by side on the settee, a foot or two apart, each with a copy of the Italian.

“Why don’t you put away the Carlyle,” she said, “and try it on your own?”

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita …,”
he read, in his Scottish-American accent, with its flat
a
’s and round
r
’s.
“Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.”
His accent was a travesty, but the earnestness of a big, grown man struggling like this was touching.

“ ‘In the middle —’ ” he translated.

“Go on.”

“ ‘In the middle of our life …’ ” He stumbled along next to her like a beginning schoolboy, every now and then looking up for her approval. She smiled indulgently.

She prodded him. “Yes?”

“ ‘I was in … I was in a …,’ ” looking up again for guidance.

“No,” she said. “ ‘I found myself in a dark wood …’ ”

“ ‘I found myself in a dark wood …,’ ” he repeated.

“Very good. Now, continue.” As she waited for him to come up with the words, she studied him. She realized that she was observing him more closely than she ever had. He wore his dark red curls slightly long, his hair was colored a deep red, rich and shining with health. His eyelashes were dark brown and unusually long and curly for a man. His skin was pale, still downy above the line of his beard.

She was in a familiar and reassuring position, as a teacher of young men, all those young men who came to their “Sundays,” seeking her wisdom.

He was saying, “
Chè la diritta via era smarrita …
, ‘I had lost …’ something or other …”

“ ‘I had lost the straight path,’ ” she told him, touching his hand to guide him. He went on, following the Italian with his fingertip.

She withdrew her hand.