Gwendolen

by Diana Souhami

  Brackenshaw Castle, built of limestone, was set high on a hill among beech and fir trees, and its park spread far into the valley. On that June day some of Lord Brackenshaw’s tenants and their families were allowed into the white arcaded archery hall to watch the competition.

  Klesmer was in the Arrowpoints’ party. Gesticulating, animated, out of place in this most English of gatherings, with his mane of hair and chimney-pot hat, bowing at the ladies, his hand on his heart, he looked like Genius in an allegory. Catherine, in a gold dress, looked like Wealth. “What extreme guys these artistic fellows are,” Clintock said to me.

  I was the most beautiful woman there. In perfect surroundings, with admiring eyes on me, I felt exhilarated, less in awe of Klesmer, less wounded. I loved sport and I excelled at this. Luck came into it but it required skill. Though I was a newcomer, my prowess astounded participants and guests. I promised to get one of the best scores. Among those superior people with their money, titles, and airs, I so wanted to win the golden arrow—to be better than them or at least on a par. Catherine Arrowpoint had won it the previous year.

  Brackenshaw took out his watch and said Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt was late. He added that he was always late and quite probably would not appear at all because he cared nothing for archery.

  I did not want to hear that. Whatever Mr. Grandcourt’s failings, I wanted him to appear and admire and desire me over and above Miss Arrowpoint. That was part of the competition, part of the day.

  I assiduously avoided looking toward him when he arrived. I concentrated on the shooting, and, unlike when I subsequently met you, consciousness of his presence spurred me to win. Your presence made me vulnerable; his, at first, made me bold. There was applause when I scored three hits running in the gold contest. I was awash with compliments. Lady Brackenshaw pinned the gold arrow to the shoulder of my dress. I needed such triumph and for Klesmer to see it.

  Then Lord Brackenshaw came up to me and said, “Miss Harleth, here is a gentleman who is not willing to wait any longer. Will you allow me to introduce Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt?”

  It was as if my fate was decided; a smooth beginning to what would change my life from hopefulness to despair.

  Mama had given permission for the introduction. I knew in her mind she was farther along than that. We all were: Mama, Uncle, Grandcourt, and, I have to admit, myself. Our momentous decisions are made on impulse. We decide in seconds and repent with our lives.

  Face-to-face with Grandcourt, I was flustered, I blushed, resented my confusion, and struggled to correct it. He was unlike my expectation, though I had no clear preconceived image. He was handsome in the English manner; his complexion was fair; his features were proportioned and chiseled. He was bald with a fringe of reddish hair. His hands were elegant, his fingers tapered. He was an inch or so taller than I. Our eyes were on a level; his, long, narrow, and gray, expressed … I don’t know what, indifference perhaps or calculation. There was no hint of self-consciousness or unease in his bearing. He raised his hat and scrutinized me, a confident appraisal, but he did not smile.

  That was how I perceived him. Before every bit of him became hideous to me. Before I hated him with a force stronger than my love for you.

  He told me, with a smooth compliment that seemed bleached of intention, that he thought archery a bore until he saw me shooting. He drawled when he spoke, with a pause between each utterance. His gestures were as languid as his voice. He intrigued me. He gave nothing away. He asked if I liked danger. Such a non sequitur startled and thrilled me, though now I see I should have viewed it as the threat it undoubtedly was. I told him I was never happier than when on horseback, galloping, thinking of nothing, and that then I felt myself strong and free. (I wondered if he might give me a faster horse than Twilight.)

  He said I might like tiger hunting and pig sticking, that he had done such things but now they bored him. His manner and demeanor suggested that all there was to do he had done, all there was to be killed he had killed, and that anything he wanted he might have, including me, but that at heart he wanted nothing. He affected boredom with everything. I told him I was bored with this neighborhood, for there was so little to do in it. “You have clearly made yourself queen of it,” he said, and I protested that if so, I was queen of an insignificant kingdom.

  When the contest was over, Mama asked him if we might meet again in the ballroom. Yes, he replied in his bored, laconic way.

  “You can’t find anything ridiculous about Mr. Grandcourt’s appearance and manner,” Mama said as a coachman drove her and me the short distance to the Castle. I replied I was sure I could if I tried but that as yet I did not want to.

  * * *

  AT THE CASTLE, at Lord Brackenshaw’s ruling, women dined separately. He liked to quote Byron’s opinion that a woman should never be seen eating, unless the meal was of lobster salad and champagne, the only acceptable feminine viands. I was scornful of this segregation: the lesser room, the smaller chairs, and the assumption of lesser conversation.

  I told the assembled women Lord Byron was mad, and in order to be thin ate only hard biscuits, or potatoes drenched in vinegar, and drank only soda water. The women thought me sharp-tongued. Only Catherine Arrowpoint talked to me in a friendly way as if she understood my predicament and was herself in rebellion at a woman’s lot.

  We moved to the ballroom. The chandeliers glittered; the perfume of jasmine and lilies wafted from the conservatory. I loudly informed Mama I would dance only the quadrille and not waltz or polka with anyone. The ladies viewed this as attention seeking, and the dancing men, who all wanted me as their partner, thought me deliberately cruel. But the truth was I could not bear being held close by any man; I hated their breath on my face, the feel of their rough clothing against me, the proprietorial sense of being led in a dance.

  Grandcourt, I noticed, positioned himself so he could see me. Klesmer commented on it: “Mr. Grandcourt is a man of taste,” he said to me. “He likes to see you dancing.”

  “Perhaps he likes to look at what is against his taste,” I said, mindful of Klesmer’s insult about liking to see me sing. “He may be so tired of admiring that he chooses disgust by way of variety.”

  Klesmer chastised me for impertinence, which he said ill-fitted my beauty. I explained it was a joke, but Klesmer was worse than ponderous over the weighty business of jokes.

  My attention was then caught by a fat man with a florid face and bulbous eyes staring at me with an expression that made me recoil as if a slimy reptile had crawled all over my skin. I asked Klesmer if he was a friend of his; he told me no, but that he had met him socially. He was Grandcourt’s factotum, and his name was Lush. He dismissed him as an amateur, “too fond of the mechanical-dramatic, too fond of Meyerbeer and Eugène Scribe.” I did not understand the reference, but it was clear that as Klesmer thought him unworthy, he must be so.

  I took refuge with dear Mama. Suddenly, Grandcourt was at my side. He asked me to dance the next or another quadrille. I looked at my card. Every quadrille was booked. I was glad to be obliged to refuse. “I am unfortunate in being too late,” he said without a smile. I said I thought he did not care for dancing, that it was one more thing to bore him.

  “Yes, but I have not begun to dance with you,” he drawled. “You make dancing a new thing. As you make archery.” It was another of his considered utterances—between pauses as if in parenthesis, a cool compliment.

  I asked if novelty was always agreeable to him.

  “No, not always.”

  “Then I don’t know whether to feel flattered or not. When you once had danced with me, there would be no more novelty in it.”

  “On the contrary,” Grandcourt said. “There would probably be much more.”

  “That is deep.”

  “It is difficult to make Miss Harleth understand her power,” he said to Mama, who smiled at me and replied, “She does not generally strike people as slow to understand.”

  “Mama,” I said with self
-deprecating delight, “I am adorably stupid and want everything explained to me when the meaning is pleasant.”

  “If you are stupid, I admit stupidity is adorable,” Grandcourt rejoindered.

  * * *

  SUCH WAS OUR pretty exchange. What a light flirtation. Interest shown, conquest achieved. Grandcourt’s stamp of purchase was put upon me. I saw delight in Mama’s face. And then, in one of those chance happenings we view at least as serendipity, at most as fate, I had space on my card for the next quadrille. Lady Brackenshaw came up to say Clintock was au désespoir, but his father, the archdeacon, had called him home on some all-important matter.

  Grandcourt walked the quadrille, eyed me gravely, and did not touch me. His seeming reticence so suited me. I did not know, I could not read, that his cool charm and flattery were as false and dangerous as the bright flies fishermen use to deceive their catch.

  Grandcourt was my crowning triumph on that winning day. Among all the contenders, I was prized to walk on his arm. He promised wide horizons, good fortune, jewels, luxury, and servants. But there was a shadow: Lush lurked nearby, like Iago, watching, listening, scheming.

  Catherine Arrowpoint approached Grandcourt and me to give us details of the next archery meeting, a roving outdoor affair in three weeks’ time, followed by a picnic at sunset en plein air at Cardell Chase, a pretty place of glades and elms which, Miss Arrowpoint said, would feel more poetic than a formal dinner under chandeliers. Lush interrupted her to inform Grandcourt that Diplow was more suitable for such a gathering: “between the oaks toward the north gate,” he said, and I realized with revulsion that he was entirely familiar with Grandcourt and his residences, and in his confidence. While Grandcourt provided me with pleasant anticipation, Lush, fat, bulging-eyed Lush, with his oily voice and scheming manner, seemed to forebode harm.

  To be freed from Lush’s proximity, I told Grandcourt I should like to view the conservatory. The grounds were lit by Chinese lamps, the scent of flowers was in the evening air, and we walked in silence. Grandcourt asked if I liked “this kind of thing.” I replied yes, not knowing quite to what he referred.

  When we returned, Mama was talking to the slimy Lush. “Gwendolen, dear,” she said. “Let me present Mr. Lush to you.” I turned my back, moved to my seat, and said I wanted to put on my cape. Lush swept it up and held it out. “No thank you,” I said. Grandcourt took it, slipped it over my shoulders and asked permission from Mama to call at Offendene the next day.

  * * *

  AND SO IT began: life-changing decisions made by sudden inclinations, vanity, and rash daring. Had Grandcourt vanished at that point, I would have forgotten him within a week. I did not stop to consider what it meant truly to know another person or myself. I knew nothing of the world beyond the drawing rooms of Pennicote and the bewildering nowhere places of my childhood travels: nothing of the war in America, the struggles of the suffragists, the suffering of the workhouse, the customs and mores of other societies. And nothing whatsoever of the motivations of men or of qualities that might matter, beyond chandeliers, paddocks, and diamonds, when choosing a husband.

  Within a minute of seeing me Grandcourt decided I should be his wife. I believe he thought, I shall have that. Or I shall break that.

  Even his name, and certainly his manner, suggested stately homes, servants, fine carriages, and Mediterranean yachts. I saw his coolness as a haven. He implied boundaries, reserve, and distance from intimacy. I could not face my own terror of intimacy, its roots and implications. I had not so much as kissed a man or held a man’s hand. Over the next fortnight, by some arrangement or other I saw him almost every day. Mama and Uncle viewed the marriage as made.

  We looked splendid together; both tall, I beautiful, he haughty and understated. He had a habit—how I grew to loathe it—of lightly stroking his mustache. He said little and exuded self-importance. I anticipated that he would make few demands on me, allow me anything I wanted, indulge my caprices, love my follies, grant me freedom. I thought he would be proud to be seen with me on his arm in high Society: in London, Paris, and Cannes. I would sparkle and be impulsive, witty, and independent. I would take singing lessons, enroll in classes to study acting and dance.

  Grandcourt arranged a lunch party for Mama and me at Diplow. His cousin Mrs. Torrington, a steel-eyed woman with a slight limp, was in charge of preparations. Before lunch we all toured the grounds. By the lake Grandcourt’s spaniel, Fetch, amused us by plunging into the water, bringing a waterlily to the bank, and dropping it at his master’s feet, like the spaniel Beau in William Cowper’s poem “The Dog and the Water Lily.”

  Grandcourt then invited me to walk with him to a hilly part of the garden. When we were alone together, he said he thought Offendene too somber for me and asked what sort of place I liked. I told him of my restless resentment that I could not go up in a hot-air balloon, meet unusual people, or travel to Africa or in search of the Nile. I swept my hand toward the herbaceous borders. “Women must stay where we grow,” I said, “or where the gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers to look as pretty as we can, and to be dull without complaining. My notion about the plants is they are often bored and that is the reason why some of them have got poisonous.”

  He looked inscrutable and asked if I was as uncertain about myself as I made others be about me. “I am quite uncertain about myself,” I said. “I don’t know how uncertain others may be.”

  “And you wish them to understand that you don’t care,” he asked.

  “I did not say that,” I replied, and ran off, back to Mama.

  * * *

  WHAT DID I feel? Anxious, exhilarated, flattered, hopeful, confused? All of those things. I hoped I had not been so capricious as to deter Grandcourt from this courtship. He appeared in thrall to me: he fixed on me and sought me out. I wanted the dignity and luxury I thought marriage to him would bring: the power to do as I liked, hats and finery and outings to the opera with Mama. I thought I could manage such a cool, undemanding husband, a husband restrained and free from absurdities. Rex was a boy, Grandcourt a man. I did not wonder about Grandcourt’s life of thirty-six years, I had no curiosity about him beyond his interest in me. He told me he had traveled and hunted the tiger. I did not consider whether he had ever been romantically involved.

  After lunch he suggested he and I go for a ride. He offered me a horse, Criterion, a beautiful chestnut. Mama followed in a carriage. It was a quintessential English landscape of peace and permanence: midharvest time—a light breeze rippled through the corn, the fields were bordered by poppies, and in green pastures cattle rested under wide oak trees. I felt happy. I had almost made up my mind to say yes when he proposed.

  We passed a wide brook, and I said I would like to gallop and jump it. He encouraged my daring and suggested we both take it. I told him Mama would be ill with worry if she saw me take such a leap.

  “But Mrs. Davilow knows I shall take care of you,” he said.

  “Yes, but she would think of you as having to take care of my broken neck.”

  Then he said, “I should like to have the right always to take care of you.” I felt myself blush then go cold. I heard myself say, “Oh, I am not sure that I want to be taken care of; if I choose to risk breaking my neck, I should like to be at liberty to do it.” I did not intend to be flippant. I was nervous. I did not want to lose him. He was an enigma to me. His manners concealed, he gave nothing away.

  * * *

  I WAS TO learn how he controlled his responses: when to withhold, when to unleash. But at first I saw no trace of that. While courting, he treated me with attentive restraint. I was undisturbed by the cool graze of his lips on my hand as he greeted me or bade me farewell. I did not dwell on vows to be made at the altar about bodily worship, or let my thoughts travel to what might happen when the ceremony was done, the confetti thrown, the guests dispersed, and he and I alone in the marital bed. My hatred of being made love to; I did not stop to think of the manner in which it
might be breached.

  That evening Mama quizzed me anxiously: Had Grandcourt proposed? Did I approve of him? Would I accept him when he did? I teased and evaded. I told her he was quiet and distingué and had all the qualities that would make a husband tolerable: “battlement, veranda, stables, et cetera, and no grins and no glass eye.”

  Mama, used to my mischief, was untroubled by it. Uncle, who was visiting Offendene, asked to see me alone in the drawing room; he wanted to speak to me as if he were my father on a subject “more momentous than any” as far as my welfare was concerned. His concern amused and pleased me; it almost gave me a sense of a family wherein I belonged.

  We sat facing each other on the rosewood chairs. “Had I discouraged Mr. Grandcourt’s advances?” Uncle asked.

  I admitted that when Grandcourt began to make advances I turned the conversation.

  “Will you confide in me so far as to tell me your reasons?” Uncle asked.

  “I am not sure I had reasons, Uncle,” I said.

  He became stern and lectured me on my duty to myself and to my family. This, he said, was an opportunity that would probably not occur again. Had I heard anything disagreeable about Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt? he asked. I said I had heard nothing about him other than that he was a great match, which affected me very agreeably. I did not at that point know of the worse than disagreeable rumors about this potential husband, which Uncle had heard but chose not to impart to me.

  Uncle reiterated my responsibility to my family and told me he would regard me with “severe disapprobation” if, as he phrased it, through coquetry and folly I put Grandcourt off. Men, he informed me, did not like their attachments trifled with, and such good fortune as this rarely happened to a girl in my circumstances. I must stop being capricious. His advice, he said, was meant in kindness.