Johnny stirred, half opened his mouth, licked his lips.
‘You need a drink, old fellow,’ said Willie.
Willie waited while Johnny moved to a better position. Johnny sipped, then lay back, before asking what day it was. Willie said it was Friday.
‘Good to see you,’ said Johnny. A bleak look came into his eyes, which grew. Johnny moaned and shook his head. Willie took his hand. ‘Stop, stop —’
‘Does he need chloral?’
At the sound of Marian’s voice, Johnny held on to Willie’s hand more tightly. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he whispered.
‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, old fellow. See here,’ — Willie pulled out from his pocket a packet of cigars, selected one, reached into his pocket for clippers, cut it; lit it — ‘Just bought these round in St Mark’s. A very well-appointed shop — how’s the head?’
‘Banging a bit.’
‘Where?’
Johnny indicated the base of his skull.
‘Willie,’ said Johnny in a voice close to a whisper, ‘don’t go.’
‘I won’t.’
Willie puffed away. Marian came in to the room, asking how the patient was. A look of distress appeared on Johnny’s face. Willie ignored Johnny’s appeals, and let Marian sit in his place. ‘Are you feeling better?’ she asked.
‘Please don’t look at me in that way.’
‘I am — waiting for you, to be — to come back.’
Johnny had averted his eyes, was examining his arm. Marian begged him to look at her again, and he asked, ‘Why?’ She said she loved him. But if she were not mistaken, his lip was curling. In a sort of sneer.
‘I don’t know why you look like that,’ she cried.
‘I still find you intolerable,’ he said, in the same thoughtful voice. He tapped the wood of the side table. ‘The words are as real as this wood.’ His face was gaunt and sombre.
Willie appeared, Marian left. ‘Thank God,’ said Johnny, as Willie shut the door behind him.
‘Now look, J, you’ve got to do better. She says you say unspeakable things to her.’
Johnny was making two fists with his hands, raised in front of him, the knuckles bleaching white, and staring at them. ‘I broke through.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
The room was filling with Willie’s blue cigar smoke. Johnny was reminded of Lewes. He noted his brother’s face. Willie had always been a scamp. In fact, it did Johnny good to see him. Even now, Willie was tut-tutting but he had a lightness, there was a shred of amusement in his eyes. ‘Can’t you see?’ said Willie, in an undertone. ‘You’re putting her in a very difficult position. You can’t just say you don’t like the woman. You’re just married. You’ve lost a lot of weight,’ he added.
‘See here Willie — what can I do?’
Johnny had no desire to live.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ said Willie. ‘Come on, J. I’m pouring out money into these many-fingered hands for people to keep their mouths shut. It’s all good at home. Chelsea’s coming along. Armitage is a rum character, but he’ll do something fine.’
Willie looked at his brother with asperity. When he had arrived, Johnny had been out from the chloral: an almost unrecognisably sunburnt face, gaunt, mouth hanging open; within ten minutes Johnny had said the words ‘foul’ and ‘desecration’. Amateurishly, Willie was contemplating these words as if they were pieces in a jigsaw, whose completion would yield understanding.
A day later, they were seated outside the Hotel Europa at a table, drinking spremuta di limone, though Willie had ordered a mezzo of white wine. Marian asked Johnny if his head were better.
Johnny closed his eyes.
‘Answer, J, for pity’s sake,’ urged Willie, as he dipped his head deftly in the sunlight to light his cigar. His eye was half on Johnny and half on the waiter. He kept hoping the waiter would materialise with a plate of salty ham and piquant anchovies, as he had when he first arrived. Johnny said in a cold voice that nothing had changed and it was better the pretence was ended.
‘The pretence?’ queried Willie.
Johnny motioned his head callously in Marian’s direction.
‘My dear fellow, you can’t be like this,’ protested Willie in an undertone that was perfectly audible to Marian. Willie left, Johnny’s face was sombre and cold.
‘I can’t understand you,’ said Marian, tremblingly. ‘What has happened to you?’
Johnny picked up his cream linen napkin, monogrammed with a curling HE, and dropped it on the ground, like a naughty child. At the sight of a spark of anger in Marian’s face he smiled. ‘The pretense is at an end, Mrs Cross,’ he said, bowing his head. It was all so terrible he might as well scrape amusement where he could. She went away. Johnny was on his own. It was the first time in seventy-two hours that he had been left unsupervised.
8
Willie had agreed with Marian that it was a bad business. Privately he thought the marriage was finished. Marian did not cry. ‘We had hopes,’ she admitted at lunch, when it just the two of them. She pursed her lips together tight, and looked grimly ahead of her. He had persuaded her to have a glass of the white. Johnny was now safely knocked out with chloral.
‘It is a strain for you,’ said Willie. He was not especially given to sympathy, and he found himself mildly alienated by her daily, frantic enquiries about the activity of the press. He knew for a fact that it had been written up in at least three local papers, but he had been liberal with the lire, especially to Corradini, who had helped fish poor Johnny out, and whom he didn’t trust an inch. ‘Please tell me the truth. How many times has Johnny — how — prone is he to being —’
She did not know how to describe it. He seemed not like a human being. He was cruel. It was clear that it was hateful for him to look at her, be near her, listen to her, or touch her. What sense was left?
Willie, whose heart was buoyant and rather closed, considered what to say. ‘He has had one episode before, with the Jay girl. Not like this, but not easy. I think … was he under strain with the wedding preparations?’ He spoke carefully. His sisters, especially Nelly and Flo, in the awful flurry of the news of Johnny, in England before Willie left, were adamant Johnny had been pushed too hard, having to keep everything secret, while also having to get everything done. Willie sipped his wine, tried to enjoy the sound of the birds, of water slapping gently against the gondolas moored some feet away.
At the same time he was worried about the cost of staying too long at this excruciatingly expensive hotel, with its pink stone veneer and gothic-eastern pediments. He was constantly hungry. Johnny had no appetite at all, Marian little. Willie had a pronounced taste for Italian food, and he found himself wondering if he couldn’t stay somewhere more modest, where he could slip out to the odd restaurant for luncheon; tantalising smells of roasting meat, garlic, tomatoes were in the air intensely from noon onwards. Each time he descended the stairs, the uniformed servants were looking at him as if they expected a large tip, for nothing. It was costing the earth to stay here, time was moving on.
Johnny was awake. Willie came down to see Marian, and suggested they all three venture out. Marian said it would be good to walk, there was even a freshness in the air. But Johnny would not want to see the inside of a church.
Willie did not understand quite what this had to do with it. Confused, he said: ‘He does not want to see churches?’
‘I think not.’ (Crisp.)
‘But you do.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s bring him along,’ said Willie. ‘Safest plan.’
They ventured along the Zattere, avoiding St Mark’s, as too public; along the Riva degli Schiavoni, in the direction of the Bunneys’ apartment; then turned northwards into the city. After going up and down several small bridges, led by Marian, they continued along a high walled street
, narrow as an alley, arriving at a tiny piazzetta, and a stone white church. Away from the lagoon, Willie realised that it was in fact spectacularly hot. The air was mist-thin and motionless. The city felt as if it had no skin, it lay unpeeled to the elements. Marian turned to speak in a low voice to Willie. This was the Dalmatian church favoured by Ruskin (the last part sunk to a total whisper). ‘Do you not want J. to come in?’ replied Willie, under his breath, frowning and sweating. He didn’t quite understand what the problem was, but it was too hot standing out here. ‘He might dislike the idea,’ said Marian, her set face unmoving. She opened her scarlet fan, the colour of which matched her face as she used it. Willie found the fan’s movement compelling.
Johnny had sat down on the step.
‘Would it be simpler if we just all walked on?’ asked Willie, polite. The business of visiting a church was obviously a problem.
It was strange, though. In a crisis you got to know someone in a new way. Willie had seen Marian effortfully moulding herself to circumstances she had never anticipated, even her face was altered, as if this new blow delivered by life had made her jaw larger and more set. Willie, never prone to sentiment, the brusque, canny, spry maverick of the family, was beginning to be slightly moved by her. She stepped closer to him. ‘Ruskin values the Carpaccio here highly,’ she said, in a low, deliberate tone. ‘You shall not find another piece of work quite the like of that little piece of work, for supreme, serene, unassuming, unfaltering sweetness of painter’s perfect art.’
Her voice and lips were trembling now, Willie had a dim notion she was clinging to a raft. ‘I will take Johnny on, we will return this way,’ said Willie hastily. He did so, unable to resist glancing back at Marian, who had followed her purpose — he saw the back of her linen skirt billow briefly as the church door closed. He walked on with Johnny over yet another small bridge, up, down, through the alley, and into a small triangular opening where there was a place to have refreshment in the shade outside. Their faces were wet with sweat. Willie thought of the tremendous expense of each day at the Hotel Europa; of how much richer these two poor devils were than he.
It was a bad situation. They must pack and leave as soon as possible.
They left the next morning. They went to Verona. Then they travelled northwards into the mountains, the Alps. The heat was less, the air fresher. Having had breakfast with Willie, Marian returned to her room, shortly there was a knock on her door. It was Johnny. He had a puzzled look. ‘I wanted to say good morning,’ he said. Marian stood where she was. His arms were by his side. She had little hope left for him. In the last days, she had made herself try to imagine their future life together; the prospect was frightful. They stood there, the silence went on between them. ‘It has been terrible,’ he said. He looked dazed. She examined him with her eyes, she had become hard and suspicious. He came in, sat on the chair that was near the door. ‘I have said terrible things,’ he admitted, but in bewilderment. He sat in silence, staring ahead, as if absorbed by what was in his mind. One or two silent tears had begun to go down his cheeks. Soberly, she got up, and sat by him. Her own tears were beginning to go down her own cheeks, also scarce and silent. The sadness and terror of the last days were stirred up by the fragment of hope she couldn’t help feeling, at his face, where the eyes were no longer cold. She could bear it no longer, and she sobbed, her heart too full, putting her face in her hands.
9
The journey home was made in stages. The first two days in Innsbruck it rained and they could not see the mountains: the town was clothed in mist. The sky cleared on the third day; the sight was a tonic, hot fresh sunshine, coolness coming fast in the evening, and the high Austrian Alps in view. ‘Venice was a hell,’ announced Willie, lighting a cigar. Johnny was eating better; to Willie’s satisfaction, they were all eating better. He noted the quiet, careful affection between the couple. Curious, he thought to himself. In Munich, they went to the Glyptothek and the Alte Pinakothek.
The train was going noisily northwards. Marian thought of her last meeting with Mr Bunney. A kind man. She had admitted to him that in the previous week she had had to put out efforts and powers she had never been accustomed to use before and did not think she possessed. She trusted Mr Bunney. Now, on the train, she reflected how queer it was that she had told so much to a man she hardly knew. In a small way, it was so with Willie, and with Dr Ricchetti. Dr Ricchetti had said that any resumption of what he called conjugal relations was dangerous to Johnny, who had a ‘delicate nervous system’.
In England, they went straight to Witley. The sight of the English countryside, the copses, low hedges, the small enclosed fields in the mild English sun, was dear. Gradually their life resumed. She had written to friends that Johnny had become ill in Venice owing to the heat and the unhealthy air and drains.
They went to stay at Weybridge, with Johnny’s family. They dined with Florence and Eleanor. Sometimes Johnny saw his episode, as he called it, as a lost part of his life, as other people viewed blackouts when they had been drinking. The memory made him afraid. Marian watched his health carefully. He quickly became tired.
They saw all his extended family, including Henry Bullock-Hall in his large estate at Six Mile Bottom in Cambridgeshire. Marian and Johnny went to stay. Gently, they were reviving their social life. As Henry showed them the library he had built for the tenants on his estate — he had long ago remarried since Zibbie’s death — Marian found herself wondering what he had heard of Johnny’s illness. She wondered if the truth in any form had reached him. Assuredly it would leak out, this she knew. It always did.
They were staying until Monday, and on Sunday night they gathered with guests in the great drawing room, under the beams. It was a gracious setting: through the windows in the early September evening light, she could see the smooth green lawn, in which was a small weeping tree, surrounded by a circle of uncut grass. Marian talked to Henry Sidgwick, one of the trustees of the Lewes scholarship, they discussed the current scholar. Their chat was broken by the arrival of Richard Claverhouse Jebb, the classicist. Some time after that she was approached by Mrs Jebb, whose slender elegance had already caught Marian’s eye. She knew something of Mrs Jebb’s interesting history. ‘It’s an honour to meet you,’ Mrs Jebb was saying, smiling.
‘You are from America, are you not?’ enquired Marian. ‘I am a little acquainted with your husband.’
Mrs Jebb was, she knew, married for the second time, having been widowed at the age of twenty-eight. Marian’s sympathetic eye was already alerted.
‘It is one of my most significant memories from before we were wed,’ cried Caroline Jebb, warmly. She was pretty and shapely in deep grey satin; neck encircled by pearls. ‘He always remembers talking about Sophocles with you; it is a pleasure now to meet you in person.’
‘Thank you,’ Marian said, earnestly. ‘It was, in fact, an essay by your husband that woke me to Sophocles —’
‘The delineation of the first primitive emotions,’ said Caroline Jebb, smiling.
‘You remember the phrase,’ said Marian, also smiling.
‘The moment stayed in the memory,’ said Caroline Jebb, simply.
They dined in the great hall, around the long oak table, which would not have been out of place in a monk’s refectory. Later, in the bedroom, unlacing her stays, Marian remembered Mrs Jebb with quiet pleasure.
She must have slept for an hour, when she woke with a ferocious thirst. Sir Paget had said that with her complaint, she could expect to be thirsty. The drinking jug was empty. In the other bed, Johnny was sleeping. She lit her candle, it was not long after midnight; she would take her cup to the new bathing room Henry had installed. Stepping out of the bedroom, it was completely dark: she held out her candle — it shed a small circle of light. Walking carefully down the dark corridor she noticed low sounds from the room on her right; thought nothing of them; but suddenly she stopped, a soft uneasy thrill passing through her. A
voice was rising clearly from the blur of sound, that sounded like Caroline Jebb.
‘… felt sad for her! … has done everything to look young …’
There followed the low tone of a man, presumably Richard Jebb. Marian held her breath. Then the woman, sounding irritated, or sad, but strangely emphatic: ‘ … will suffer for what she has done … not a person in the room, Mr Cross included, whose mother she might not have been.’
Silence, the indistinct low sound of the man. Caroline Jebb again, wise: ‘… obviously hurt her to have him talk so much to me … has never heartily liked a pretty woman, everyone knows …’
Marian didn’t move for some seconds. She was suddenly very cold.
She returned the way she came, noiselessly. Her entry, or her absence, seemed to have woken Johnny. ‘Are you all right?’ came his voice, soft in the dark.
Saying she was, she blew out the candle, which was shaky in her hand. In bed, her heart was beating. The words kept coming, repeating, penetrating her like needles. She lay, breathing quickly. No, she could not sleep. After some time she got up, drew a curtain. The moon was silver: the garden faintly illuminated, unearthly, still-looking, the weeping tree visible in the circle of long grass. She sat, finally returned to bed.
Lying there, she tried to settle herself. It was only what she knew, after all. She had had a small glimpse, outside her purview. It was not afforded to most people. She was awake for more than an hour, then her thoughts began sliding and weaving into dream, and then strangely, The Mill on the Floss. She hadn’t thought of it for a long time. She would find that passage tomorrow.
The following day, back home, Johnny was pacing around, notebook in hand, planning the removal of books and furniture to Cheyne Walk. Watching him, Caroline Jebb’s words echoed in Marian’s mind. Not a person in the room, Mr Cross included, whose mother she might not have been … Of course she was seen like this. She was her own great puzzle. She had known this when she married him.
In Love with George Eliot Page 33
