To Loveand To Cherish

by Patricia Gaffney

  XX

  Dearest Anne,

  By now I should know what to say to you. After two days, I should have precise thoughts to convey, orderly sentiments, a plan. It can’t be that I haven’t pondered the situation deeply enough. No, I assure you it can’t be that. And picture this, Anne: the very Reverend Christian Morrell, swilling port wine all alone at his desk, until he passes out cold on top of an old sermon. Perfect, isn’t it? How you’d have laughed at me last night for my one ludicrous attempt at debauchery. I’m a little drunk now, to tell you the truth. Mrs. Ludd is quite beside herself. I’ve had to lock the door so she can’t keep fluttering in and gibbering at me. But it’s wearing off, I can feel it. No matter; it wasn’t a very effective anesthetic anyway.

  One thing that’s come to me clearly—relative to anything else, I mean—is the unlikelihood of my remaining in the ministry. I don’t see how I can keep on with it. I can’t picture it, cannot imagine myself continuing in the role. “Role” is a revealing word here, isn’t it? I used to dream quite often that I wasn’t a real priest but an imposter, and that I’d been found out. And now it’s come true. It seems to have come true. But I don’t know for certain. I don’t really know anything at all.

  Except that I must stop rambling. You can see how my wretched sermons got out of hand, can’t you? Only with them, I couldn’t even blame it on an excess of drink.

  Anne, I keep seeing you, your face and your bitter tears, the way you couldn’t even look at me. There’s so much pain in me now, but I swear I would take yours too if I could. I swear it. But I can’t do anything for you. None of my numberless other failures weighs on me as heavily as this one. This is the one that’s driven me to drink. And despair.

  God is punishing us, you said. I don’t want to believe that, but I wonder if you’re right. It feels true. The evidence points to it. You said there was never any hope for us, it was always a dream. If it was, it was a pure, blameless dream from the start. A God who would punish lovers—punish you, Anne, for the generosity of your heart—my spirit recoils from that God. He’s too hard to love, and I’ve failed at it. I can’t serve him.

  But what am I if I’m not a priest? Believe it or not, even now I find myself praying. I break off in anger—but then there’s truly nothing, no alternative to sustain me. You’re stronger than I am. You’ve never claimed to have faith, and yet you lead a “Christian” life in every way that matters. For me, nothing makes sense anymore, none of the verities and absolutes I used to believe in help me. I’ve lost my way. And when I think of the pieties I once would have offered as consolation to anyone suffering the same desolation I feel, I want to smash things with my fists and shout blasphemies in God’s face.

  I’ve been thinking about my father, and how his faith never deserted him even when he lost everything—his wife, his health, finally the work he loved. He was deeply spiritual, the gentlest man I’ve ever known. I wanted to be like him, Anne. I’m in despair when I measure how far I’ve fallen from that goal. I can’t help anyone, I’m as hollow as an empty box inside. I would stay here, I swear I would stay if I thought I could help you in any way, be any kind of legitimate friend to you. But I’m afraid I’d hurt you more. God knows there’s nothing I can do for Geoffrey. And I don’t believe I can go on for long pretending I don’t love you. Anne, it’s best if I go. If you don’t agree now, only think of how it was between us when we were together last. Remember that pain. And now I’ll risk your scorn and recommend Reverend Woodworth to you if a time should come when you need—don’t laugh, my darling—guidance of a spiritual nature. He’s a good man, and he has the advantage of me now: he believes in his own counsel.

  I’m afraid Geoffrey is very ill. He’s unstable as well, emotionally chaotic, and yet I don’t really think he’s a danger to anyone—you, I mean. If I thought otherwise, nothing could make me leave you. But if anything should happen, if you ever need advice, help, even sanctuary, Robert Polwin is not only a friend I trust but also a man of judgment, means, and discretion. I’ve spoken of him before—he’s the rector of St. Stephen’s church in Tavistock; I’ll add a note with his address at the end of this letter. Please, Anne, do not hesitate to call on him for anything, if ever the need should arise.

  Two days ago you didn’t want to hear that I love you. You must read it now. It’s the last time I’ll be able to tell you. I wish I could see you, hear your voice, hold you close. I don’t regret anything we did. I’ll always love you, always believe you were my salvation. If I could think of a way for us—

  But I can’t, not an honorable one. And despite what you said, I know you wouldn’t choose any other, not in the end. So we’re both cursed, equally. Again. My dearest love, once I’d have said I’ll pray for you. Now I can only say I’ll never forget you. Or stop loving you.

  Christy

  ***

  TIME TO LIGHT a candle. She couldn’t remember what she’d just written in her journal, and the room had grown too dim to read the words. Was it that late? No, now she remembered—it was raining. Everything was a cold shade of gray. Inside and out, no color, and no sound but the dripping gutters and the wind. She was startled by the sound of the match striking, blinded a little by the dazzle of the flame. She blew the match out and set it in the base of the candleholder, moving the candle closer to her journal.

  It seems incredible now; my stupidity embarrasses me, it was so complete. I honestly thought I was free, and that I had been allowed to have some happiness. I’m choked with chagrin at my arrogance. Christy Morrell was off-bounds to me from the beginning, but I defied the laws of God, man, nature, who knows what, and took him for my own. I’m suffering for my dangerous, God-insulting presumption. I must be made to pay.

  She took a swallow of sherry and tried to remember if this was her second or her third glass. “Third, if you can’t remember.” The gruff, barely recognizable sound of her own voice jolted her. Shuddering, she set the glass down and pushed it to the edge of the table, out of reach. She took up her pen again.

  If only I could leave Geoffrey. But I can’t. He’s sick, and I’m cursed with a conscience, surely the cruelest “gift” God ever distributed in his fun-loving omniscience. Oh, thank you, Lord; how can I repay you? With my life? Will that satisfy you? No? Too bad, and to hell with you. I despise your gifts, your ubiquitousness and your omnipotence, all that nonsensical claptrap I came so close to swallowing. So close! Oh, poor Christy—to think I envied him his faith! I wonder if he’ll realize it before I have a chance to tell him—that God is a very sad, very distasteful joke on us all.

  She looked up, arrested by a sound—footsteps on the stairs. Susan again, on another of her mercy calls. Can’t I get anything for you, m’lady? Sure you don’t need yer shawl? What about a nice hot cup o’tea? Anne couldn’t even make herself smile anymore.

  But no—the tread was light, but it wasn’t Susan’s; too slow. Violet’s? She closed her journal, using her pen to mark her place. Before his head bobbed above the top stair, she knew it was Geoffrey.

  He’d come here only one other time. The memory of that violent encounter had her pushing her chair back and getting to her feet. The room spun once before it steadied. Too much sherry, she chided herself; too little food. The candle on her little writing table wavered in the rippling air currents her movements made, and Geoffrey made when he came in the room. He had a piece of paper in his hand. An envelope?

  In three days, she hadn’t gotten used to his physical appearance. She’d seen him ill before, once she’d even thought he was dying, but she’d never seen him like this. The stairs had winded him. He leaned in the threshold of the doorway and leveled his flat black stare on her while he caught his breath. She found she couldn’t speak to him. Couldn’t say anything.

  “What are you doing? Hm? Writing a letter?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m not . . .” It was so hard to talk. “I was just sitting here. I’m
not doing anything.”

  He moved closer to the candle. His face looked like a skull. “Look what I’ve got.” He waggled his envelope at her. “Don’t you want to see it? It’s a letter.”

  “What is it?”

  “A letter, I said. It’s to you. Want it?”

  She was afraid to look at the white square in his hand. His face was ghastly, but she kept her eyes on it. Something was happening. Something awful was unraveling.

  He threw the envelope on the table in front of her. “Take it.” His voice, suddenly violent, made her jump. “Come, you’ll want to read it. I know I did. When I realized who it was from, I couldn’t wait.”

  Her skin froze; her blood felt like icy slush in her veins. She stared down at her own name in Christy’s straightforward handwriting, honest and undisguised, and the heartbreakingly trusting “Personal” he’d scrawled in the corner.

  “Open it!”

  Geoffrey had already opened it; the plain red seal was broken, the angular flap gaping loosely. Her body felt numb, but her hands were shaking badly as she pulled two sheets of Christy’s cream-colored vellum out of the envelope. The words swam; her eyes skimmed the pages wildly. “Dearest Anne”—“the unlikelihood of my remaining in the ministry”— “your face and your bitter tears”—“I want to smash things with my fists and shout blasphemies in God’s face”—“I’ll always love you, always believe you were my”—

  Geoffrey grabbed the letter out of her hands. She screamed when he began to tear and rip at it, shredding it to pieces. He stamped on the jagged scraps fluttering to the floor. His face turned a vivid scarlet. She slipped into the old fear of him, began to back away toward the window. Spewing curses, he came at her.

  If she hadn’t been so frightened, if he hadn’t been so angry, she might have fought him off, because he was weak, ill, uncoordinated. She saw the hand he raised to hit her in time to dodge or turn away—but he struck her in the face with all his strength, and the force of it slammed her head against the wall. Her legs buckled. She slumped to the floor, and prayed it was over.

  It wasn’t. On his knees beside her, he muttered, “Bitch, oh, you rutting bitch,” and shook his fists at her. She threw her hands up for a shield, but he batted them aside and grabbed at handfuls of her dress, pulling her down, away from the wall, until he had her flat on her back. His teeth were bared; the fetid smell of his breath brought her close to retching. His hurtful fingers pulled and shoved at her clothes until he had her breasts bared, and then he sprawled on top of her, kicking her legs apart with his knees. “I’ll make you like me,” he panted, trying to kiss her. “You’ll be just like me. Anne, Anne, Anne.” He brought his open mouth to her throat and bit down while he struggled with her skirts, yanking at the cloth and hauling it over her knees. He had her arms pinned between them. She freed one and pulled his head back by the hair. Tears were spilling down his cheeks. He stopped cursing her. She heard him say, “I’ll make you love me,” while he mashed her breasts with his hands.

  The fight went out of her. He was fumbling at the front of his trousers. Her legs trembled, but she let him press her thighs apart. He wasn’t hard yet; he had to use his own hand to get his erection. When he pushed into her, they both cried out, a harrowing sound she knew she would never forget. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he rasped, with his face buried in her hair. “Oh, God, I’m so cold.”

  She put her hands on his shuddering shoulders and held him. He was weeping, hardly able to get his breath. He couldn’t climax; his painful thrusts quickened, but he began to pound the floor with his fist, vicious blows full of pain and rage. His full weight was suffocating her. “Stop, Geoffrey. Stop it now.” She took his face between her hands and lifted his head. The dark, unimaginable suffering in his eyes defeated her. They rolled to their sides together, and she held him while he sobbed against her breast.

  When he calmed, the rain beating against the window became the only sound in the dark room. I ought to feel more, thought Anne. More than this coldness. At least Christy’s God would be satisfied now, for she’d gotten what she deserved. After all the years of coldness and rejection, Geoffrey’s disease and his defilement were to be her punishment. Her just deserts. Everything was gone now, her last hope finished. Then why couldn’t she feel anything?

  Geoffrey had begun to shudder uncontrollably. He pulled her to a sitting position and began trying to fasten her dress and brush her skirts down over her legs. She held still, waiting, numbed into a weird state of bemusement, while he pulled her wild hair back from her face with his shaking fingers, gentle now, almost loving. He moaned when he got to his feet. Her shawl lay across the table; he brought it back, with the sherry decanter and her half-finished glass, and tucked it carefully around her shoulders. He offered her the sherry next. She was close to vomiting; she shook her head. He drank it himself, and another glass after that.

  “You can’t get it, you know.”

  She stared at him blankly. His cheeks were a hectic pink; he was holding the glass in both hands to steady it. “What?”

  “You can’t get the pox from me.” His chattering teeth clacked together like bones. “I’m not contagious any longer, I’ve gone—I’ve gone—beyond that stage.” He must have seen skepticism in her face. “It’s true. I swear it. If you don’t believe me, ask the army doctor who threw me out of Fareham.”

  She sank against the wall behind her, waiting to feel relief, but she didn’t feel anything. The peculiar numbness wouldn’t go away.

  Geoffrey set the glass on the floor and reached for one of her hands. His shook so hard, she covered it with her other one and squeezed it tight. He smiled at that, looking down at their clasped hands. “So. Do you love Christy? Do you? You can tell me.”

  She whispered, “I love him. I’m sorry. We thought you were dead.”

  He took a long, slow breath. With nothing but gentleness in his voice, he said, “I am dying. The doctor said a year or two, but it’s going to be less. It’s going to be considerably less.”

  She whispered, “Oh, God,” exactly like a prayer. Oh, hopeless, hopeless.

  He bent his head and put a soft kiss on the back of her left hand, then her right. He laid his cheek against her palm. She reached up to stroke his hair, but he sat back before she could touch him and staggered to his feet, stifling another groan.

  “Don’t go.”

  He turned in the doorway. They looked at each other in astonishment, as if neither could credit what she’d said. Geoffrey put his hand over his heart and made her a short, unsteady bow. “I thank you for that, darling,” he said in a parody of his old voice, the ironic one. “Do you know, that’s going to make it ever so much easier.”

  After he was gone, she shut her eyes and listened to the rain. The strange detachment persisted; she floated in it for a time, thankful for the painless, neutral hum in her head. Her body ached, but even that was filtered through some kind of stuffing around her, an extra layer of skin, keeping her at a safe, kindly distance from the too-real.

  It didn’t last. Do you know, he’d said, that’s going to make it ever so much easier, and finally the import of that began to penetrate the friendly fog. Ever so much easier. That’s going to make it.

  Make it easier.

  Oh, dear Jesus.

  She got up too fast; she had to hang on to the window ledge while the vertigo subsided. Holding her head, her fingers found the tender swelling in back, where she’d hit the wall. Not serious, just a bump, but she needed the table’s support to cross the room, and the banister’s to get down the narrow servants’ stairs to the second floor.

  He wasn’t in his room. She met Violet on the first floor landing. “Where is he?” she demanded. The maid looked at her stupidly. “My husband, where is he? Have you seen him?”

  “I saw ’im go out. Had his guns, ’e were goin’ huntin’”

  “Hunting!”

  “
Now that is peculiar, in’t it, this rain an’ all—”

  With an oath, Anne pushed past her and took the steps at a run. In the front hall, she called back, “Which way did he go? Which door?” and Violet pointed, wide-eyed, to the formal, seldom-used front door at Anne’s back.

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle. The river flew past in a torrent under the stone arch of the bridge, the rush of the water drowning out every other sound. Geoffrey was nowhere. She called his name, but only once; the roaring Wyck made her voice useless as a whisper. Snatching up her skirts, she made a run for the stables.

  She saw Collie Horrocks through the misty rain, crossing the stable yard toward her, huddled under his mackintosh. When he saw her, his pudgy face registered surprise. He had his hand on the dripping brim of his hat when the boom of a gunshot made him leap into the air. Anne didn’t scream. Collie whirled around, staring at the black, gaping doorway to the stables. She reached him before he could move. “Get William! Go and get him!” she shouted in his face. Too stunned to speak, the groom spun away and bolted toward the house.

  A lamp was burning at the far end of the passage that ran the length of the stables. Deep dread made her heart pound, her skin go clammy-cold with fear, but she put one foot before the other and forced herself to walk past all the stalls to the last one—Devil’s. As she neared it, a shadowy form rose from the straw-covered floor. Stark terror froze the scream in her throat.

  Geoffrey jolted when he saw her. He threw his rifle down and pulled a pistol from his belt. Behind him, the black stallion lay on its sleek side, not breathing, a bloody hole through its temple.

  Shock and relief made her light-headed. “Dear God. Geoffrey, what have you done?” She stumbled toward him, reaching out for the wooden gate that separated them.