Then she turned to him of her own free will; and her face held an open astonishment. "But you heard me! Could anyone have prayed more fervently?"
It took him a long moment to digest her words, for he could not believe their literal implication. "And…that is all?" he asked. "You really believe that is sufficient?" He searched her face in vain for some sign of understanding.
"Why…yes," was all she said. She looked warily into his eyes, like one who seeks for motive rather than for meaning.
He took away his hand. "And you have lived in a rural parish for eighteen years!" he marvelled. "How do you imagine gilts get in pig or heifers in calf?"
She looked away again, this time in impatience.
"Do you not know?" he pressed.
Her impatience deepened. "Well, of course I do. But what, pray, has that to do with…"
"How?"
"The farmer puts them to a boar or a bull, of course!" She spoke with finality, as if to dismiss a red herring.
"And," he persisted. "What then?"
"The beasts copulate, to be sure." She spoke less petulantly now, for a terrible realization had begun to dawn on her.
"You leave me speechless!" He lay back, limp again, and searched among the cracks of the ceiling for inspiration.
"But dearest," she said, shocked at his ignorance. "They are beasts. They have no souls. They cannot pray for…for offspring with souls. Piglets have no souls. Calves have no souls!"
"So," he said, not really believing that this was her conclusion, "humans do not copulate?"
"With humans, because they have souls, it is called fornication, and it is an abomination in God's sight. Papa has often said so. Many and many a time." Her self assurance was boundless. "As to fornication—I wish it were true that humans did not fornicate, for I am sure the world would then be much happier. The poor, I am afraid, are very prone to it—which goes far to explain why most of them are so very wretched."
"I don't believe it!" He laughed feebly and sighed out his bafflement. "I cannot believe my ears. You…sincerely believe that prayer will bring you children. Prayer alone?"
"Us, dearest. Not just me. Yes, to be sure. Now that we are married."
"And no further action on our part is necessary?"
"Oh, Walter!" She laughed to raise her own courage. "I think you're teasing!" She devoutly hoped he was; she wanted him to edge back from those horrid things he seemed to hint at. "Of course we must act. We must strive in all ways to be pious and chaste and honourable."
Surely he would see that, she thought; how good and inviting it sounded when she said it with such joy.
Poor Walter was now in a turmoil. Her rejection of him and her serene piety had, if anything, refined his longing for her. He did not now want her as a man might want any pretty girl, but rather as a great connoisseur might sacrifice the whole world of beautiful things for the one treasure that surpassed them all. If by some magic he were transported to a garden of delight, waited on by a whole harem of beautiful wantons, his only thought would be to fight his way out and back to Arabella. But she had to accept him willingly—hesitantly, perhaps, but ready to be startled into joy. And how could he do that when she recoiled from him with such disgust at every little intimacy?
He felt no anger for her, nor even impatience. It was her father who stirred his wrath. How dare that old lecher so warp his daughter's mind! To be sure—to be fair—it was difficult; these matters were difficult. Quite obviously the old man could not tell her the complete truth—in any case, it was a husband's task to complete a girl's education in these things—when the knowledge she gained would be less dangerous. But there had been no need for that old goat to bend her so far the other way. A girl left in partial ignorance, her fancies adorned by some charming myths and half-truths, was like a fallow field ready to spring into joyful fruit. But a girl fed such claptrap as Arabella had been forced to devour—she was like a field of poisoned earth. Yes! That was cause enough for anger.
Arabella, at first puzzled by his silence, grew increasingly alarmed. She felt sure he was thinking of some other way to broach again those horrid thoughts. She had to stop him. She had to say it, to bring the nastiness out into the open, where he would see it and be disgusted, too. "I thought…" she managed before courage failed her. "It's impossible…" How her heart pounded! "Oh—I'm so confused…it must be the wine…I thought you were suggesting that we should… behave like beasts!"
There! She had said it! She felt crimson with the shame.
"Beasts!" Walter's anger at her father now erupted. "Like man and wife! And I am not hinting it. I am asserting it. It is a fact of nature. And if you have thought otherwise all your life, you have been seriously deluded. Misled. Sent a-straying. I tell you in the plainest terms…"
But he never told her. Shock and distress led her to do what she would otherwise never have done: She stopped his mouth with her fingers—an urgent, pleading gesture. All she could say was: "No—I'm sure it is wrong, I am sure, I am sure, I am sure!"
The touch of her fingers melted his anger. Gently he pulled her hand away and gently he squeezed it to reassure her. For a while he did not speak, and when at last he did, it was in the mildest tone.
"Dearest, you are deluded. How can I…?" He sighed. Then an idea occurred to him. "You have heard of marriages that were annulled on the grounds that they were not consummated?"
"Yes." She was again wary.
"What do you think that means?"
"That they were childless, of course. Children are the consummation of a marriage."
Again he sighed, more heavily; she took it as a sign of exasperation. "But it is," she insisted. "It is so! I asked Papa when there was that couple two or three years ago…the…what were their names? In St. Albans. Oh what were they called? Papa told me then. It meant they had no children."
Papa again! Walter fought back the return of his anger. "But you were only fifteen then. He spoke euphemistically, not to say eupheuistically. He meant that they made no efforts to beget any children. Otherwise…" he thought now that he would make the argument unanswerable, "why do not all childless couples annul their marriages?"
Panic began again to seize her, as with an animal at the moment it realizes it is being manoeuvred toward a trap. She knew that she must be guided by Walter. It was his place to correct her. But surely that was only in those areas where she was ignorant still—not in such a matter as this, where her certainties practically came from God. No, it was unthinkable.
"No, Walter, dearest Walter, you must be…" she caught herself almost saying "wrong." "That cannot quite be so. The Parrys in the village are still childless and Papa says it is because God has not seen fit to bless them."
Again that man! "That's very bad luck for the Parrys…" Walter managed before she interrupted again.
"So it can have nothing to do with…whether they…you know…fornicate or not. So…that simply proves it. It must be divine and not…bestial." She felt so rash at contradicting her husband that her voice gained an unaccustomed tremble. Also perhaps within her an unconscious tactician was aware that her argument had not been the most brilliant. At all events, she was very close to tears as she concluded: "The last thing I expected on my wedding night was to lie in bed, with my dearest husband at my side, and talk of annulment…and… performing beastly acts!"
"Sentiments I may fervently echo," he answered, unmoved by her descent toward tears. "What you are saying is that all pious ladies have their children by virgin birth. Yes? Pray tell me then—why is the Virgin Mary considered so unique if the wife of every Bishop Backwater and Parson Limbo has done the same?"
What could she answer! She could frame no answer. Her panic mounted still further. Perhaps the unthinkable, the unimaginable, was true after all. Perhaps the noises from her parents' bedchamber were one and the same with the shivering, bronchitic breath of bulls and boars at stand. Of course it was impossible. Yet, when Walter said that the alternative was as good as claiming to b
e the equal of the Blessed Virgin—one had to match one kind of impossibility against another.
And while she fought thus for her soul, Walter, creeping once more into her embrace, began a soft litany of encouragement: "Come now, dearest…I am right…you shall see…be easy rest easy…it is no great calamity…no terror… there! It is the greatest, greatest joy. Come…I shall be gentle with you…there… there…"
Again he touched her breast and again she stiffened; but now he did not stop. Instead, bathing her in that gentle rain of encouragement, he caressed her with ever greater fervour.
And, indeed, she found the strangest transformation overtaking her. A powerful langour, never felt before, consumed her muscles. And in the lower part of her stomach, below her navel, a warm thrill, almost a pain, began.
Her mind still recoiled at these events; but there was nothing it could do. It was a feeble, paralytic, little thing, prisoner of a body whose functions had acquired a will and mastery of their own. And when Walter moved to raise her nightdress, she felt her astonished arms move in concert to assist. She felt them caress him, his arms, his waist, the strange hard stick of flesh that pressed upon her abdomen and that was hot and that beat like a second heart.
She felt her lips seek and close on his as if they had been fruit. The disgusted little censor in her mind lay unmoved by the fire and ice that surged through every vein. And it was silently dumbfounded that, when Walter moved upon her, her thighs parted wide and her hands went down to guide him home.
Walter had been well instructed. An old, fat woman, abbess of a brothel back in Manchester, had recently told him how to break a maidenhead with little or no pain. And that he now did, following the old crone's directions to the letter. So Arabella, not even knowing that it should be painful, was spared all but the lightest twinge. And what ecstasies followed! Heat like a living thing pressed itself upon her chest and thighs and the small of her back. Sweat poured from her. She wished more of him could unite with her and she clasped him with a passion whose very existence she had never suspected. Her heart beat as if it had developed resounding walls of oak. That, and the disorder of her innards, and the weight of him upon her, made her fight for breath.
And then, when she thought no pleasure could be more supreme, the whole of her erupted into a very storm of ecstasy. Waves of it rippled through her, sending her muscles into spasm quite at random. For an age she lay drowned in this floodtide liberation of her senses. Even the little censor was, at last, inundated and obscured. Even Walter had vanished—united in substance and person with her in one great carnal riot.
Nothing now could make it stop. Surely not. They were over the mountain and on to the uplands beyond. It was peace. It was the natural place for them to live. It was a land. A world. A new universe of peace. It was the purpose of life. It was a celestial harmony. It was the ultimate secret. It was…it was…it was wrong!
The little censor was back. Unmoved. Unpersuaded. It was eighteen years and unknown pious generations old. Arabella of the senses was but a newborn babe—strong and lusty, to be sure, and with an astonishing will of its own, but one to be tamed and crushed like any other baby. Next time the contest would be more equal.
Deep in their slumber, neither heard the bay gelding make its final plunge from the toils of sanity. First it kicked its stall to bits and then, staggering round and round in its meaningless liberation, demolished half the rest before the ostler came. Other horses shied and screamed in fear until, at length, when nothing would restrain it, a gun was fetched and the mad one shot. Through all the commotion, which wakened most of Earlestown, Walter and Arabella slumbered on.
Chapter 14
Health is a negative sort of thing; one notices its absence more than its presence. But when Arabella awoke the following morning, she felt the profoundest sense of wellbeing—like a spirit in her veins. Through the lightly billowing curtains she could see the garden smiling in the sun. Apples hung green and heavy on their boughs. And nothing stirred. What was that land out there?
All this she perceived in an instant. The events of the previous night still lay beyond recall. Even the realization that, of course, they were in Earlestown— and, of course, Walter was beside her—did not at once bring them back. The Walter she remembered still had all his armour, gleaming with the prolonged purity of their courtship. She stretched and sighed, ready to turn to him with the smile she had lavished on that phantom every waking morning for the last three years.
Walter had awakened several minutes earlier; but, for fear of disturbing her, had lain still, exploring with his eyes the tangle of her golden hair, the pink, cherubic curve of her ear, and the soft nape of her neck, whose down was haloed in silver where it turned toward the window. Not since schooldays had he woken in a bed warmed by another body; he was aware of her now like a mild furnace, inches from him. He longed to reach out his hands and cradle parts of her again. "The very minute she stirs," he promised himself, and the thought of it excited him. The moderate pain of his erection reminded him of all they had done the night before, and a great gladness filled him. His wife had proved to be a natural lover, responsive without being dissolute, inventive without being wanton. No man in all the kingdom could be happier.
So when Arabella moved, he moved even faster. Before she even began to turn, he was at her back, his arms around her, once more flesh upon flesh. But the whores who had taught him all he knew had omitted the most basic lesson of all—the slower arousal of a real woman; so he felt rejected when she did not instantly respond. She would not move her thighs and he had to draw back for relief. And when he cupped her breasts they remained two dull, loose bits of softness, almost unconnected with her.
This time the shock did not last long in Arabella. She stiffened only momentarily and then fell into a state of total relaxation. Her mind, the little moral censor, was fascinated at this lack of response within her. The hard thing pressing at the back of her thighs might as well have been the muzzle of an importunate dog for all it meant to her. And the hands that caressed her could as well have been her own for all their power to arouse her. These remote things happened to her; and she observed them.
She was not so foolish as to imagine that the lusts of the night before would never again overwhelm her, but now she had the directest kind of proof that they were not invincible. So Walter's caresses filled her, after all, with pleasure—a vast moral delight. She welcomed his advances precisely because they had no effect upon her. Unwittingly he was forging the armour in which she would later vanquish him—or whatever it was possessed him. She began to revel in her frigidity.
Disappointed, he stopped and pulled away his hands. Dismayed, she caught them and put them back, sighing with a satisfaction he did not understand. Now she tried something more daring. She raised her uppermost thigh to let him draw as close to her as he obviously wanted. Again…nothing! Not a ripple. Not a twinge. The Lord was speaking to her, she decided as her heart soared with joy. God moves in mysterious ways indeed, praised be His name!
"No?" he asked, baffled by the friendliness that she coupled with such total lack of response.
"Well then, breakfast!" He pulled away, patted her lightly through the bedclothes, and went across to wash.
She lay a good while longer, smiling at the new, miraculous power God had given her, just when she stood (as her prayer last night had said) in direst need.
After a stout breakfast they returned to the station, this time in the pony cart. Their surprise at hearing of the death of the horse in the night occasioned many smirks and nudges; though everyone agreed it was lucky the beast had not gone mad between the shafts.
Arabella saw how people looked at her, stealing glances when they thought she wasn't looking, glancing hastily at distant windows and uninteresting ceilings when they found she was. Now that she knew what they were all imagining, she burned for shame: Imagine herself, in their minds, doing that!
But the shame evaporated when she and Walter left the place; with
in herself she was a fortress of calm. What had happened in bed last night, she decided, had been a challenge. The Lord was about to test her. Had the pleasure been but slight, the test would have been small and the profit to her soul insignificant. But by making the pleasure greater than anything she had ever known, greater than she had ever dreamed it possible for delight to reach, by overwhelming her in such ecstasy, He had left her no doubt of the size of the challenge He intended her to face.
Thus, she repaired the damaged pages in her moral guidebook to the world. But one solitary rift stubbornly refused to mend: Walter's question about the Virgin Mary. She must write to ask her father about that. He would certainly be able to reconcile the conflict between faith and practicality.
Chapter 15
Dear, dirty Preston!"
The man Walter had guessed to be a doctor spoke at last. He had come from the Liverpool train to Earlestown, and then had taken the same connection north as Walter and Arabella. For most of the journey, he had read what, to judge by the illustrations, was a medical work. He was a short, rubicund man, powerfully built but running to fat. Seeing his squat hands gripping the book, fingering the page corners, turning the leaves, firming them down, Walter could easily imagine the scalpels, knives, and other weird implements of modern surgery in their unhesitant grasp.
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