by Tim Jeal
The pallor of her face, her silvery hair, and slender hands moving restlessly in the candlelight gave an impression of such ghostly fragility, that Magnus found it hard to take in her words, coming, it seemed, from an alien world in which she had no place: a world of crude exchange and ill-considered pledges, savagely redeemed.
‘Can you not try one more season?’ he asked.
‘Why one? Three or four might be better; but who will pay? And will Aunt Warren be ready to drag me from ball to soirée so I may run through my accomplishments yet again? You know her age and disposition.’ She tilted back the mirror, so she could no longer see herself. ‘George is too much influenced by his father, but I can wean him from it. He is rich, good-natured and loves me.’ She looked up at his sad face and reached out for his hand. ‘If I stay here I shall go mad; not all at once, only a little at a time. Not next year, nor the year after, but every day a little more, for ten, fifteen, twenty years in this house. Ministries may fall, armies perish, the Nile’s source be found, while I remain the same. Is that your wish?’ With sudden violence she ripped the chatelaine from her waist and flung it at his feet. ‘Would it please you to see that chain about my waist and hear me prattle about my housekeeping duties? Then you might ask yourself why I never married George. But I will be too busy to remember, too concerned whether a parlour-maid is dishonest or the butler watering Charles’s best claret.’ She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself, but her eyes were still brilliant and her lips trembling. ‘No,’ she cried. ‘I refuse that empty life. Because you think me pure and innocent, must I sacrifice myself to save your illusions? Time didn’t stand still because you were away. You might like to, but we can’t return to what we were when mother was alive. Would you have ruined yourself at Oxford, if she’d shielded you less? Even cossetted children must grow up. So don’t make her mistake with me. I don’t want your protection.’
She had spoken so rapidly that he had found himself snatching at isolated words, aware of her eyes all the time and compelled to silence by them, though he longed to stop her. To his surprise she now seemed absorbed in thought, as though trying to remember something, but then she roused herself and laughed unexpectedly.
‘I never meant to say anything of the sort. I wanted to be calm and quiet, I … I can’t remember what I planned to say.’ She frowned and raised a hand to her forehead, before suddenly brightening. ‘Of course I can’t remember … it doesn’t matter, you see, because I said what I really thought. There.’ She smiled and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Now we can be friends. I told you what you asked for.’
Magnus was so startled by this change of mood that he merely nodded. Only when she had gone, did he see that nothing had changed. He picked up the chatelaine and examined its tiny silver pencil and ivory note pad. She had used it cleverly to prove her point but the choice had not been a real one. George was not the last man alive. She would have other chances. Yet to try to convince her of that would be hopeless. He sat down absently at the davenport and looked at the mess of sealing wax. She had thought of the matter only from her own point of view, but her justification did not make a jot of difference to what the Braithwaites were, to Joseph’s power-seeking and George’s acquiescence, to the violence which would inevitably grow worse. While she had been speaking, Catherine had overwhelmed him, but now he saw his way clearly. If he could not persuade Catherine, then he would try with George. He would see what that young man was made of soon enough, and afterwards … maybe Joseph Braithwaite himself. He recognised the same blend of fear and excitement he had known riding through the silent countryside after the riot. In any struggle with the Braithwaites, far more would be at stake than Catherine’s future. Charles thought him a coward for leaving Ceylon. Perhaps, before the election was over, he would have to revise that estimate.
When Magnus had snuffed out the candles it was not only the wind rattling the panes in their leaden frames, or the strangeness of being home, which kept him awake so long.
4
In the small market town of Slaithworth, two miles north of the junction of the Rigton Bridge turnpike with the Oldham to Manchester road, the grocer’s daughter and the butcher’s boy stopped gossiping and stared up the street, past the saddler’s and the smithy towards the pond and the church. A resplendently turned-out travelling chariot thundered into view, forcing the carrier’s waggon against the churchyard wall, and, without slackening speed, scattering some pigs being driven to the market square. On each of the two near-side horses rode an immaculately dressed postillion in white ‘leathers’, tight scarlet jackets and tall narrow brimmed beaver hats. Each man held a whip of plaited leather with half-a-dozen polished silver bands between ferrule and thong. By the time the draper and his white-aproned assistant had come out to watch, the black and yellow chariot with its crested panels had passed the Star Inn and was speeding towards Gibbet Hill leaving a swirling cloud of dust in its wake.
Two hours later the same carriage, proceeding at a more sedate pace, entered the small gravel sweep in front of a modern mansion in a genteel Manchester suburb. Helen Goodchild looked out of the chariot’s window at the new red brick house with its stone window casings, many chimney pots, and tall flight of steps leading up to a heavily studded door with a small brass plate in the centre. For a visit to her own doctor Helen would have chosen an unostentatious brougham but for a meeting with Dr Carstairs she had wished to emphasise her position; for this purpose the emblazoned chariot with its four bay horses and two postillions could not be bettered.
Since Charles’s visit Helen had agonised for several days about whether to accept his help, but in the end had decided not to expose herself to complicated future obligations. If Charles could frighten a provincial doctor, she could do the same. It was for her to force her husband to a settlement and not for any outsider, whoever he might be. After enduring the humiliation of sending away Strickland, her fears and apprehension had given way to angry resentment and this was still her dominant mood. Without informing her husband, she had ordered the reluctant steward to open his books to her and had threatened him with dismissal unless he answered certain questions about any unrecorded payments her husband might have made to a Manchester physician. The sums paid to a Dr James Carstairs had fully confirmed Charles’s claims.
Helen’s lady’s maid got down from the rumble seat and rang the bell. The door was opened by a grey-haired housekeeper, who was joined a moment later by a bald manservant wearing striped trousers and a black tail-coat. After a brief conversation the lady’s maid came back down the steps and opened the carriage door.
‘Dr Carstairs is with a patient, your ladyship.’
‘Tell his people to inform him that if he is with the Queen’s uncle I will still be admitted.’
After further discussion, the maid returned and told one of the postillions to let down the carriage steps.
Carstairs had spent an absorbing morning in his attic laboratory, examining under a microscope organisms in the evacuations of three cholera victims, and comparing them with organic matter in samples of drinking water taken from neighbouring stand-pipes. During the past six months, only his passionate desire to discover how the disease was transmitted had given him the strength to endure the disruption of his domestic life caused by his wife’s infatuation with Lord Goodchild. A clever man, Carstairs owed his large and fashionable practice to his successful use of modern treatments. He had been the first doctor in the town to employ ether during surgery and to use chloroform to assist mothers in difficult child-birth. More recently he had gained a reputation for curing muscular pains with charges from galvanic batteries. He was still bent over his microscope when his housekeeper came in with the painfully unwelcome news that Lady Goodchild’s coach-and-four was at present standing in front of the house. His first reaction was to delay seeing her by claiming he was with a patient, but that could only be a temporary expedient.
He crossed the room to a small zinc basin and washed his hands. Of course he co
uld affect complete ignorance of his wife’s adultery and feign shock and blazing anger; but then instant action would be expected, and that was a course to which he was entirely opposed. The woman herself might be ignorant of the situation: a prospect in its way even more horrifying. But on reflection he doubted whether she had come as a bona fide patient. But what could she possibly hope to gain by confronting him? This time it was his valet who came up to tell him that her ladyship would not wait. Carstairs ran a hand through his thinning hair and put on his silver-rimmed pince-nez. Then with a sigh he rolled down his shirtsleeves and put on a grey frock-coat over his black waistcoat. Whatever her intentions, her ladyship could be relied upon, with the rest of her caste, to look down on him as a ‘sawbones’ or jumped-up apothecary.
When he received her in his consulting room, Carstairs felt still more confused. That Goodchild should have preferred Dolly to the woman who now stood in front of the shelves of glass jars and bottles beside the door seemed fantastic to him. Dolly was so much plumper, with features coarse and blunt by comparison, and without any of Lady Goodchild’s evident dignity. But perhaps it was this very lack of hauteur and reserve which the peer found attractive. There was no mistaking Dolly’s bubbling laughter and her zest for all life’s pleasures, however questionable some of them might be considered for a woman. Lady Goodchild with her ivory smooth skin and black mantle edged with astrakhan looked elegantly graceful in a way which Mrs Carstairs could never hope to emulate, whoever her dressmaker might be.
‘Your ladyship, I am sorry to have been prevented from seeing you sooner,’ said Carstairs, rising from his chair behind an imposing mahogany desk and indicating with a nod an upright leather chair beside the red curtain which hid his examination couch.
‘You have no need to apologise, doctor. I came without warning.’ She sat stiffly on the edge of the chair and glanced hesitantly down at her gloved hands. ‘I have come to speak of matters painful to both of us.’ She looked up and fixed his eye with unblushing directness. ‘You know of my husband’s adultery with your wife?’
‘I do, madam,’ he returned quietly, disturbed by the forthrightness of her question. Without dropping her gaze, she said sternly:
‘And do you not intend to remind your wife of her duty to you?’
‘I have done so, ma’am,’ he replied with a flicker of resentment in his eyes. Helen understood his feelings but did not soften her manner.
‘May I ask with what result?’
‘None, I fear, your ladyship. Mrs Carstairs is of an independent frame of mind. I am afraid that talk of duty amuses rather than chastens her.’ Carstairs was surprised to see that instead of angering his visitor, his remark had made her smile.
‘Wives may be spirited, doctor, but never independent. By law even her property belongs to you.’ Her smile died on her lips. ‘Perhaps that fact might amuse her less than notions of duty.’
Unlike most of his patients, Carstairs was never distressed by a woman’s assumption of intellectual equality. He removed his pince-nez and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
‘By law, Lady Goodchild, I might imprison her in this house, but I doubt whether it would be conducive to my happiness or peace of mind.’
While Helen admired the ease with which he had turned her attack to his own advantage, she had no intention of showing him anything other than a formal superiority. Charles, she recalled, had supposed that Carstairs had genuinely wished to begin divorce proceedings and had only been dissuaded by her husband’s bribery. Now it seemed that the doctor had merely given this impression to extort money. She said harshly:
‘You may be ready to tolerate ignominy and humiliation, Dr Carstairs, I am not.’
‘I envy your security, but my own freedom is circumscribed. If I bring an action against your husband, I endanger my livelihood. The rich entrust their souls to a parson and their bodies to a physician, and from both they expect unimpeachable domestic lives. Like a sensible tradesman, I must provide what my customers desire, and never disappoint them for quixotic personal considerations.’ He opened a black instrument case and held up a small scalpel. He caught her concealed alarm and smiled. ‘If my morality is not as bright and spotless as this knife, I might as well turn it on myself.’ He made a feint with it towards his throat, making her raise both hands to her mouth. Then he replaced it carefully in its proper compartment. ‘I might take physical measures to prevent my wife seeing your husband, but then I would run the risk of her eloping. Lord Goodchild, I daresay, has adequate means to place her in a villa and to supply her other needs. This would be as detrimental to my professional interests as any “crim con” proceedings. I prefer what you call humiliation to ruin.’
Helen was angry with herself for showing her fear when he had taken out the scalpel, and was also mortified not to have disposed of the argument, to which he had just treated her, before he could use it.
‘You are being less than honest with me, sir. My husband is buying your silence.’
The scorn in her voice stung him into replying with a raised voice:
‘I must contradict that. Your husband’s sensuality could end my career. He owes me compensation.’
She shot him a glance of disdainful incredulity and said with an impatient toss of the head:
‘Lord Goodchild would never pay a man a farthing as charity … compensation – call it what you will – unless he believed himself forced to it to prevent public scandal.’
‘I am sure he would suffer far less than I in such an event.’
‘You are evidently unfamiliar with men of my husband’s standing. He would never consider a provincial doctor’s inconveniences anything but trifling when set beside his own. A king who falls from a mountain feels little sympathy for a peasant who stumbles from a mole-hill.’
‘Is that your ladyship’s view?’ asked Carstairs with a wry smile at the arrogance of her comparison.
‘You give me small credit for thought, doctor. I understand very well that a landowner needs no public approval to keep his land, but a physician must have it to retain his patients.’
Carstairs nodded with grateful approval.
‘I am glad your ladyship understands my reluctance to act.’
‘Certainly I understand it, but I think you are entirely mistaken in supposing that Lord Goodchild will never realise it too. His payments will cease but not his attentions to your wife. You would do better to tell him you intend to bring an action.’
‘And if he still sees Mrs Carstairs and refuses to believe I am in earnest?’
‘Why, bring your action, of course,’ she replied as if amazed by his obtuseness. She gave him a smile of sympathetic encouragement. ‘Your fears are groundless. Will anyone think less of you for refusing to be humiliated by an aristocratic philanderer? People will admire your pluck rather than deride you – you deserve their derision now. Manufacturers, I believe, have little love for landowners. You will gain more patients than you lose, and the scandal-lovers and tuft-hunters will beg to be treated by the man whose wife was once the object of a peer’s amorous attentions.’
‘My lady is doubtless a philanthropist,’ he remarked drily, ‘but perhaps her gains from such proceedings would be more certain.’
‘I am sure you are an excellent physician, doctor, but I would hardly have come for the pleasure of your acquaintance.’ She stared past him at the naked trees in the garden, which looked, she thought, appropriately like the diagram of the body’s veins and blood vessels on the wall behind him. Without altering the direction of her gaze, she went on in a soft and distant voice: ‘If you do nothing, it will be my painful conclusion that my husband’s payments are responsible for your inactivity.’ She switched her attention to the carvings on the legs of his desk. ‘I will of course see that the payments are stopped, and also if need be inform your professional superiors that you are receiving money for unprofessional services.’ She faced him and said, with a gentleness completely at variance with her words: ‘You have your licence
from the Royal College of Physicians, if your door-plate is correct. Such licences can be revoked.’
Carstairs looked down at some papers on his desk and sighed.
‘Your ladyship may take it that I shall begin proceedings against your husband as soon as the matter of witnesses has been suitably arranged.’
‘I am most relieved, doctor. I bear you no ill will, but I cannot allow an intolerable and shameful situation to continue.’ The passion with which she had said this, left Carstairs in no doubt about her sincerity and determination. She inclined her head a little and frowned. ‘If you use the next few days to warn Lord Goodchild, I will not take it kindly; and should there be a sudden cooling of his ardour, I will think the coincidence too singular to be credible.’
He bowed his head more in resignation than in deference and murmured:
‘I shall endeavour to please you, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, doctor.’
Carstairs accompanied her to the hall and watched a liveried postillion leap forward to open the carriage door and check the firmness of the steps. As Helen got in her maid lifted her skirt to see that it did not catch on anything. An industrious physician, even in a great city like Manchester, might labour night and day for years and never own such a vehicle, which she so casually accepted as her right. Surrounded by her obsequious and retiring servants no wonder she felt that she could dictate to all those living in other circumstances. Only when seated once more at his microscope did he feel composed again. The tiny moving shapes under the glass could teach equality and humility even to the proudest woman alive.
Leaving the city, Helen drew down the blinds of her carriage and tore off her bonnet. She wanted to talk to a friend, but could think of nobody in whom to confide. Charles would censure her for going in person and would see her action as a deliberate rejection. All her other friends in the north, and these were not numerous, were shared with her husband. Whatever her son’s love for her, no thirteen-year-old boy could understand her fears or contradictory emotions, nor give her advice and support. She thought of the large and empty house and felt weak with loneliness. An empty house? Better by far that it should be empty. For all her servants, was she a whit less isolated? Always the deferential masquerade must be observed unless familiarity should breed, as all the world knows, contempt. Only the proper frigid reserve and distance could command respectful and attentive service. She wondered suddenly whether, if by chance she passed a servant out of her uniform in Rigton Bridge, she would recognise her. Probably not, and yet she might be the same housemaid who had dusted her dressing table for a year. What did they think or talk about? What was their opinion of her? Two feet behind her, muffled up to the ears, was Lucy, her lady’s maid, perched on the open rumble seat shivering with cold. Did she feel resentment? Lucy bathed her, dressed her, warmed her body linen before the fire and combed her hair. They talked of fashions and Lucy’s family. But what, what did Lucy think? Helen buried her head in her hands and wept. She heard a refined voice, like her own, saying: As though it matters what they think. Let them think what they like provided they know their place and are prompt and respectful. Her husband doesn’t care about her, so now for the first time in her life she wonders whether her servants like her or say unkind things behind her back; not, mark you, because she cares a jot for them. Helen thought with horror of the conversation she would soon have to have with her husband. Possibly the steward had already told his master about her questions.
