Love and Fury

by Samantha Silva

  “I find the hero a bit moody,” said Ogle.

  “What if moods aren’t a symptom of weakness, but greatness?” I said. “I would certainly be relieved to know my aches and inner torments aren’t for naught.”

  “‘Aches and inner torments’? We are made for each other,” he said. “Honestly, I find women far more sensible, on the whole, than men. Even Rousseau’s poor Sophia.”

  “Who matters not at all except as she exists to be desired, attract, and charm, no real thoughts of her own, no autonomy of any kind.”

  “How would you have written her?”

  “My heroine would have thinking powers. And not be governed by fear.”

  “No weeping and sighing, then?”

  “Just enough. As I weep and sigh, just enough.”

  We put our heads close and laughed. “I hope you do write it. You ought to.”

  Having seen our tête-à-tête, Lady K insinuated herself between us, irritated at our easy intercourse.

  “I’m so pleased you’ve discovered each other. Isn’t Mary novel in her … plainness?”

  “I find her novel in mind and spirit, actually,” he said, not taking his eyes off me. “Frankly, I thought this evening might be dull, so I congratulate you, Lady Kingsborough, for your good taste in guests.”

  “She’s not a guest, she’s our governess!”

  “Well-chosen all around, then. Excuse me, ladies.”

  “I thought you would be a wallflower,” she said to me in the carriage home. “Not thrusting yourself into the arms of men who are far above your station.”

  “I take it you’ve chosen George Ogle for your flirt of the moment?”

  “It’s harmless, after all. I relish his good looks, his strong shoulders.”

  “I’m sure. For I doubt you’re able to relish his depth and humanity.”

  For the first time I saw hurt on her face. But she turned up her nose and didn’t speak to me for a week. For that I was thankful.

  When we moved house to Dublin in anticipation of summer, I felt some movement inside me, some change of season for myself. I had better apartments, a proper schoolroom, and the use of a private drawing room where I could receive visitors. I glimpsed a new form of life. Like daffodils pushing up through softened ground, ideas burst open inside me, so many I could scarcely arrange them. I read whenever I could, metaphysical sermons and philosophical lectures, and began to write the very novel Ogle and I had discussed, loosely based on my own life.

  One night Lady K took me to a concert where we ran into George Ogle and his wife, an unexpected treat for me. I was surprised to find Elizabeth Ogle open and warm, almost proud of her husband’s own acute sensibility. It seemed she was not the source of his melancholy, nor did she believe it needed curing. She liked me simply because he did, with no jealousy at all. But seeing us in deep conversation, Lady K pounced at once. Now that I was something between her show toy and her rival, she couldn’t bear any intimacy between us, insisting the Ogles come around to visit her. Instead, separately and together, they visited me often, trying to arrange it when Lady K was on her social rounds. Occasionally I supped at their house for a lively hour or two of wit and rational conversation, and could hardly pull myself away. I liked his great faults, and her little ones. It was a place to air my heart, to express my sometimes crumbling yet grasping faith, my attraction to my own demise.

  “Speaking of demise, how fares your Gothic heroine?” George Ogle asked of my novel in progress.

  “Well, I’ve decided, after some deliberation, to call her Mary.”

  “Your life is just like a novel!” said Mrs. Ogle. “Why, the pages of your life seem to turn themselves.”

  “And I’ve given her a mother not unlike Lady K.”

  “Mmm. A revenge well-deserved,” she said.

  We three found communion in railing at her flaws, laughing at her puerility. Condemned her for wanting the patina of high-mindedness and the flush of deep feeling without any of the effort. But even as I said the words, new sympathies started up inside me.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “I’m tied to my fellow creatures by our shared weaknesses. Do you know that once I walked into her steward’s closet, and felt something like envy, touching her silks, taffetas, and crêpes, the ribbons and feathers, spangles and pearls, let them glide through my fingers, and burst my eyes with their bouquets of color. It was a feast of sensation, and I felt the cost of my chosen plainness.”

  “’Tis these whims that render you interesting, Miss Wollstonecraft,” George Ogle said. “These ups that tumble into downs, and the downs that rise to ups.”

  “And still I own that I dislike her.”

  “As we all do,” said Mrs. Ogle, with a supportive pat on the knee.

  Then one day I found Lady K in a taffeta puddle on the drawing room floor, tears like rivulets through her powder and rouge, her hair half falling down from its tower.

  “What is it?” I asked, helping her to her feet. “What’s happened?”

  She pulled a paper from the bust of her dress. “This!” she said, poking the air with it. “I intercepted it from our former governess. The one before you. A letter to my own husband, after I banished her from our house!”

  She handed it to me. I scanned it quickly. “An annuity of fifty pounds? But that’s more than I will make—”

  “And for doing nothing at all!”

  Lady K plucked the letter from my hand and melted into a chair, trying to breathe. I had never seen her so distraught.

  “How could he do this to me?”

  “Has she had some injury to her reputation that makes it impossible for her to … find another position?”

  “Injury to her reputation? What about my reputation? What about his betrayal of me?” She splayed her knees, all decorum disappeared, put her head in her hands, and wept, real tears.

  I knelt in front of her, feeling her pain genuinely. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was insensitive of me. But you must know I am ever aware of the plight of a woman who has nothing, no options, no choices. And you, Lady K, you have everything.”

  She looked at me, defeated. “Yes,” she said, “I have everything you do not. And nothing that you do.”

  As the makeup washed away, I could see her more clearly, her pretty oval face, large, slanted eyes, creamy lids.

  “I was only fifteen years old when I was presented with my future husband, only one year older than I was. Our pairing made us the largest landowners, the wealthiest people in the country. But we were children, Mary, terrified children, forced into each other’s arms, and beds, with no regard, no real desire—I could have been a post for all he cared. I was well pregnant by the time we were married, bore him three children before I was nineteen, without love, or sincere affection of any kind, while he has dalliances with whomever he pleases, wherever he likes—even under our own roof. All I have is my money, and the occasional attentions of good-looking men, who at least are acknowledged to be clever, so that their light might reflect on me, though it is harder and harder to get them to flock—”

  “You have your children,” I said.

  “Who do not love me.”

  “Maybe they don’t know how to love.”

  “How could they know? I was never loved one day of my life. Except by my dogs, who need me, lick my face, sleep in my arms like little angels, and follow me everywhere.”

  “It needn’t be that way.”

  “But it is. This is my life.”

  “And you think mine is better?”

  “I know what you think of me, Mary. That my femininity is factitious, my intellect blunted, my heart stupid. While you wear what you want, think what you like, say what’s on your mind.”

  “You overestimate my freedom. I cannot move about in the world as a woman alone. My options are … circumscribed.”

  “As are mine, Mary. As are mine.”

  She wiped a tear, gathered her skirts, and stood. She walked to the door, unsteady, pulling her sh
oulders back, as if to remind her head to stay high. When she got to the door, she turned to me.

  “I’m not an idiot. I know that George Ogle visits you when I’m away.”

  “And sometimes his wife.”

  “Yes, I think they’re both quite in love with you.” She made a pouty face, like the fifteen-year-old girl she must have been. “But why not with me?”

  I tossed through the night, wondering if I’d misjudged her, but the next day she greeted me in the hallway as if the day before had never happened. She had the light of an idea in her eyes, and fresh rouge on her cheeks.

  “Mary, when I woke this morning, I knew precisely what would cheer me, what would cheer us all. I’m to host a ball—in honor of my own Margaret. It will be her coming-out!”

  I stuttered at first, unprepared for this turn. “I do not think Margaret wishes to come out, not yet.”

  “I am her mother, and I deem her sufficiently accomplished, thanks to your efforts, in the skills she will need to be an asset to a husband.”

  “At fifteen you would send her off to market? When you yourself just yesterday decried your deep unhappiness—”

  “Oh, that was me being self-pitying. I’ve had a think on the pillow, and reminded myself that we Kingsborough women are not made for happiness, but breeding.”

  “Why not wait until she’s sixteen, at least?”

  “Because Caroline is prettier! Much prettier! It will take time to find a suitor for Margaret. We cannot risk Caroline being spotted first.”

  Margaret was desperate when she found out. She buried her face in my collar and wept like a squall. “I don’t even like boys. Why would I wed one? Please, Mary, can’t you stop this?”

  “I’m afraid she’s quite determined.”

  “Why can’t Caroline go first? She’s prettier; everyone says so. I want to be a spinster, like you.”

  “‘Spinster’ is a cruel word, said in that way. I choose not to marry.”

  “Then why can’t I?”

  Margaret had become like a daughter to me, my favorite of the girls, the one most like me, every bit as headstrong. But there was no way to stop the ball, planned with all the precision of a military campaign. The week before, even the kitchen maid and I were drawn into the important business of preparing wreaths of roses for Margaret’s dress, stitching her fate prick by prick. We had no time for our morning walks, our lessons. Margaret and Caroline were consumed with dancing, singing, and piano lessons, all in preparation for the grand event. I expected Margaret to become more adamant and fiery as the day approached, but instead she was taciturn, almost tame, and I worried that she felt I’d betrayed her.

  She made me promise I’d attend her coming-out. I had refused all of Lady K’s invitations to balls and masquerades of the season, arguing I could afford neither the expense of a gown nor the hairdressing, Dubliners being expert in the fashions of Paris and London. But when Lady K offered me a present of a poplin gown and a petticoat, I couldn’t refuse. Margaret needed me, if only to bear witness to her public humiliation.

  On the evening of the ball, I visited Margaret in her bedroom. She was suffering through the finishings, the tying of her corset, her hair being tightly curled.

  “I cannot breathe, Mary. How can I be expected to dance? To speak?”

  She looked at herself in the mirror, lamenting her fate. I put a hand on her shoulder and assured her that her suffering would soon be over.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, putting her hand on mine, “this is where my suffering begins.”

  When guests began arriving to the new Dublin Assembly Rooms at quarter past ten, Lady K, decked out like a wedding cake, took her position at the entrance to the ballroom to greet them, but Margaret had not yet appeared. It was required in a coming-out that she stand by her mother’s side to welcome guests, and take their compliments. Lady K grabbed my elbow and commanded me to go find her at once. But as I turned to take the flight of marble stairs, I heard a collective gasp rise behind me. I looked up to see Margaret on the landing above, posing like a statue, head in profile, nose turned to the ceiling, shoulders thrust back, a hand on one hip. Her hair was braided in a queue, tied with a simple black ribbon. And instead of her dress, she wore her older brother’s fancy suit of breeches, waistcoat and frock coat in blue damask moire, a cravat at her neck, and a frill of sleeve at her wrist.

  Margaret King had arrived.

  * * *

  When we returned to Mitchelstown abruptly the next day, Margaret was banished to her room for a month—no walks, no lessons, no books, no company, and gruel for each of her meals. She could look out the window if she liked, but only because Lady K believed it would punctuate her isolation. The cruelty of it was hard for me to bear. Of course Lady K blamed me, accused me of plotting with Margaret to ruin the ball, which was the same as ruining her future prospects, which, she said, was my clear intent from the start.

  “She has a mind of her own that is not mine at all,” I said.

  “But you have taught that her mind is her own to make up, in contradiction to everything her family stands for.”

  Lady K barely spoke to me or looked at me for the first two weeks of her daughter’s exile. I took the opportunity to finish my book, little by little each night, after I’d finished pinning up Caroline’s and Mary’s hair, and washing them in the customary milk of roses. We had been told we weren’t allowed to speak Margaret’s name. The girls were desperate to know whether their sister would survive her ordeal, but terrified to disobey their mother. Instead I invented a governess named Mrs. Mason who had the sole care of two young girls, an amalgamation of the three King sisters, but the eldest most like Margaret in curiosity and temperament.

  “But what about their parents?” asked little Mary.

  “Oh, no parents,” I said, making a sorry face. “Both dead.”

  “So Mrs. Mason, then, she can do whatever she wants with them?” said Caroline. “Teach them all sorts of things, have adventures outside, and never has to worry that they will be struck with a switch or shut up in their rooms eating gruel for an entire month?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Mason is not that sort of person, no. She believes in kindness and patience above all.”

  With that, Mary climbed into my lap, and Caroline looped her arms about my neck. I told them stories inspired by our life together, about learning not to stomp on snails, who are God’s creatures, too, or kill a spider, who might be the only friend a prisoner has, how the prettiest girl visits a poor family and takes money from her purse and the scarf around her neck to give to them, as Caroline had. I never mentioned Margaret’s name. But we all knew, and were soothed by remembering what we had learned together. I felt the warmth of motherhood for the first time in my life.

  Being forbidden to see each other was awful for me and, I knew, the worst part of Margaret’s imprisonment. I also knew that she visited my room while I was with her sisters for our nighttime storytelling. Sometimes things on my desk had been moved, or there would be a little gift of a stone or a seashell, maybe a note under my pillow. She’d sign her own name to it, in clear, strong letters.

  In the final week it seemed that Lady K was softening. She invited me to the drawing room two or three times, tried hard to be civil and temperate, even invited me to another concert. I think she was surprised Margaret hadn’t buckled, hadn’t come to her begging for forgiveness. I wondered if some part of her even missed her daughter. Perhaps she saw me as at least a tenuous connection to her, even as she asked for reassurance that I had stayed true to my word.

  “I have not gone to her, not set eyes on her, as I promised. But perhaps you would go to her.”

  “I will not.”

  “Do you not miss her?”

  “Miss her disobedience? Her disregard? Her unkindness toward me?”

  “Margaret—”

  “Do not speak her name to me, or to anyone. That, too, you have promised.”

  “Your daughter is more than those things, just as yo
u might be more than she assumes of you. If only you’d show her. That is how children learn, by seeing. By feeling. You try to govern with a rod, when she responds best to the simple touch of a loving hand.”

  “I am resolved,” she said, looking away from me. We spoke of it no more.

  I wrote the last pages of my novel late that night. It had been a catharsis to conduct my heroine through a disappointing world, where none but the doomed or dying, like my Fanny, are fully worthy of love. Perhaps I couldn’t save Margaret from marriage, but I could save my Mary by killing her off to hasten her to a better world where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage. I stacked the pages, tied them with a string, and put the whole of it in a drawer.

  Two days later, on the eve of Margaret’s release, I was called from my rooms to attend to Lady K in her bedroom. I found her pacing the room in a dressing gown, hair down, the dogs reclining on their cushions, watching her, back and forth. Her face was crimson, eyes livid, holding pages of some sort in her quaking hand. As soon as I stepped into the room, she read from it aloud, without looking at me.

  “‘She bestowed on her dogs, but never her children, the warmest caresses!… It proceeded from vanity!… Lisping out the prettiest French expressions of ecstatic fondness!’”

  I took a step toward her, furious and mortified at once. I could see now that my entire manuscript was strewn across the bottom of her bed.

  “‘In accents that had never been attuned by tenderness—’”

  “You went through my things?”

  “‘Her voice was but a shadow of a sound, and she had, to complete her delicacy, so relaxed her nerves that she became a mere nothing.…’” Lady K threw the pages at me. “How could you do this to me, write these horrid things? Make me so … ridiculous. A laughingstock!”

  I knelt down and gathered the scattered pages. “How dare you go into my rooms! This is my private writing! Not for your eyes, not for anyone’s. It is my right!”