IX. Rotting Cherries and a Cruel Reception

Mary’s nerves were frazzled: she drank a glass of ass’s milk and lay back on the sofa with a copy of Candide. She sent Dulcie out to the cookhouse for a mutton chop and a Yorkshire pudding; she had Annie fan her. She had felt ill for over a week now; she had missed the latest gathering at the publisher’s. Joseph had sent over a cake and a bottle of stout, along with a renewed invitation to come stay with him. “Bring the girl with you,” he’d insisted in a note. “Mrs Murphy will see to her.”

But Mary couldn’t move. The onslaught of accidents had quite undone her. It had flattened her out to a silhouette of her former self. She couldn’t write a word on any of her projects. She could only lie back on the sofa, read, munch on grapes, and prepare for a slow death.

Annie said: “Why do I have to fan you when it’s freezing cold in here?” The girl was sitting back on her heels, humming loudly (as usual), a new book—courtesy of Mr Johnson—in one hand, fan in the other. The book was Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews—inappropriate reading for a child, although Mary herself had found it to be delightful. But Mary had given up scolding. Let the child have her way: it was easier than trying to discipline her. At least she was reading.

“It is not freezing cold. I am burning up,” Mary said.

The girl put her hand on Mary’s forehead. “I don’t feel a fever. You’re cool as a wet sponge.”

“It’s all inside.” Mary put a hand on her breast and closed her eyes. “I had another nightmare last night about my sister’s dead baby. Someone killed Isobel Frothingham and now wants to kill me. But there is nothing left to kill. My heart is in ashes.”

“Go on,” said the girl, who despite her vivid imagination could be quite literal. “Nobody’s heart is in ashes till the flesh burns. And your flesh is pink as roses. I can see you breathing big as life. You wouldn’t be talking if you was dead, would you?”

“Were dead,” Mary said. “And keep fanning.” Hearing a knock, she added: “But first, answer the door. No, wait,” she said when the girl groaned. “First, look out the window and see who’s there. It might be a tradesman.” It might be Mr Ashcroft, she thought—or worse, Alfred de Charpentier, who had sent her a profuse apology—she had “accepted the invitation to ride,” and so he had “assumed...” et cetera, et cetera. She had torn it up.

“You’re giving me too many firsts. Which first comes first?”

“The window, the window! See who’s knocking.”

The girl moved slowly to the window. “It’s a man with white hair and bulgy eyes. He has a picture with him. A picture of a horse.”

“Henry Fuseli!” Mary cried, and leapt up. She combed her fingers through her tangled hair, pinched her cheeks, and smoothed out her blue dress, which was wrinkled from lying so many hours on the sofa. Why had he not sent a note to warn of his coming? Henry was not thoughtful that way.

But he was already in. He flashed a painting of a stallion rearing up on its back legs, revealing its private parts—he loved to shock. He said the painting was to cheer her up; she found it depressing. Annie said, “Disgusting,” and went back to her book. The cat purred beside her.

“I heard,” Henry said, striding to Mary’s side, snatching up her hand, pulling her back down on the sofa beside him. He put a gentle finger on the bruise that nine days later still coloured her cheek. “Who did this? Who marred this lovely complexion?”

She wanted to tell him, but she was afraid he would run right out and skewer the French count; accuse him of being in league with Peale to steal the painting. Henry was altogether too impulsive. “Act before you think” was his maxim. That it was often her maxim, too, she did not want to think—not today.

“A man, a perfect stranger,” she lied. “He offered a ride and accosted me. I jumped out of the carriage and hit my head. That is all.”

Henry was astonished. His right hand was a trembling leaf. “You accepted a ride with a perfect stranger? Have you gone mad, woman? Sometimes I wonder about you, mad-Mary. Ladies do not—”

“I know, I know. But it was raining. I was cold, I wanted to be home. I’d had that other accident as well.”

Now she’d said it. He had to hear all the details, so she gave up and fed him. That first injury was from a stranger, it was true. Or was it?

He reached for her hand: his eyes were like lighted candles. She was afraid he might embrace her, right in front of the girl. Where was the girl? Ah, eyes on the book but ears wide open. Taking in everything: listening, watching—a little sentinel. Mary tried to pull away but Henry had her in steely fingers. “It all fits together,” he said. “The stolen painting. Isobel Frothingham’s murder, the note about bluestockings. But the woman in my painting was modeled on my wife, Sophia. She is not a bluestocking.”

“But who knows that, if they haven’t met her? Does she read at all?”

“Don’t be naughty,” he said. “Of course she reads. She reads The Lady’s Magazine cover to cover, every issue.”

“Ha. But I don’t think the stranger’s assault has anything to do with a murder. Or a theft. I’m convinced now that the earlier accident on my street was just that: an accident. As for the other—you were right: I should never have accepted a ride with a stranger.”

“It was Peale,” he said, sitting upright, his eyes widening as though he’d had a sudden revelation. “That’s who your so-called stranger was—the man who assaulted you. Peale is a psychopath, my girl, did you not recognize him? Or was he in disguise... Ja, ja, of course, he was in disguise.” Grabbing her hands, he forced her to look into his huge, shiny eyes. His brows resembled a pair of snowy hedgerows. “What did the fellow look like? What was he wearing? Where did he accost you the first time? Did he touch you here—or here?” He put a finger on her thigh, then her breast. “Where was his carriage? What colour was it? How many horses? Was it that faux-artist?”

Mary’s hands flew up for peace. “It was not Peale, I can tell you that. I know Mr Peale, I’d know him even in disguise. If he were free, he’d have come to see Mrs Guilfoy, and I can tell you with certainty he has not been to see her.” She took his hands in hers and looked pointedly at him. “The poor woman is in despair, not hearing from him. She is sure he’s held captive somewhere.”

Henry freed her hands and jumped up. “He is back in London—an escape artist. He is trying to sell my painting on the underground market. Soon he will leave for the Continent: he will try to sell it there. He will try in Switzerland, my native country. Just to flout me. He has a wicked mind. Wicked!” She could hear him grind his teeth.

Henry should be the novelist, she thought, with his flagrant imagination. “Think what you like,” she told him coolly, “and pray sit down. It was not Mr Peale.”

“I have men on the outlook.” He pulled up a stool; then, adjusting the back flaps of his coat, sat with dramatic flair. “A justice in every village. We will find Peale, I assure you, we will spare no expense. He will hang, ja, he will hang. No punishment too lenient for that scoundrel. Nein!”

Mary gave up the argument. She was too unnerved. Now he was squeezing her hands again. She was only thirty-two—oh dear, thirty-three this spring, April 27—but she needed to see a physician to gain back her health. Annie was humming loudly again, trying for attention—though Mary was fond of the girl, in spite of all. Annie was taking the place of her pupil, Margaret King—married and already pregnant, she’d written—another fertile mind wasted.

“Don’t ever marry,” she’d told Annie, and the girl said, “Why would I?”

“I want him found, I want him drawn limb to limb,” Henry was ranting on like an overwrought actor. “I want him—”

“Leave me, Mr Fuseli,” she said. “I cannot hear any more of this hyperbolic talk. Come again when you’re over this mad obsession with Roger Peale.”

He was up again, a jack-in-the-box. Standing over her like a stern teacher. “First, madam, answer my questions. Tell me where and when and what about that man who accosted you. Tell every detail. Do not hold back. Quick! I am all ears.” He cupped his ears. He had small, delicate ears—a surprise, where everything else about his face was outsized.

So she told the story again—embellishing a detail or two to placate him. This time Annie made no pretense of reading. She watched round-eyed, her mouth open like a noon flower.

“Details, I said. Speak.”

She gave what details she could about “the abduction”—without mentioning the count. Then “Leave me be,” she said. But smiled at his concern as she spoke. And changed the subject before he could rant on. He did worry about her, did he not? “You’ll be at Joseph’s breakfast tomorrow?” she asked.

“If you are there, my dear, how could I not be? I think I need to keep a closer eye on you—to keep you out of trouble.” Bowing, smiling, he kissed her hands fervently, as though they were keys to the taking of Roger Peale.

Then he turned his gaze on Annie. “Resembles Isobel, does she not?” he said. Mary shushed him, but he kept on. “The curve of the brows, the bow-shaped lips. The pea-soup eyes.” He was gazing tenderly at the girl. Yes, there was a gentle side to Henry, but it needed nurturing. If he and she could spend more time together, she thought—not as lovers, no. But as, well, friends, soulmates... A platonic relationship. A cerebral ménage à trois. She would immerse herself in books and Henry’s mind; let the wife mend her stockings in a corner of the room.

Beyond the window she saw a grey tomcat mount a tabby. The female crouched, docile, accepting. Mary was fascinated.

The cats parted and ran off in different directions, and she turned back to watch the artist pull on his greatcoat and hat, smooth out his soft grey gloves, and with a quick wave, bang out the door. There was nothing quiet or reserved about Henry Fuseli: he wore his passions and prejudices on his sleeve. Was that a good thing or not?

“She was my mother, wasn’t she, that Isobel,” Annie said, jumping up, eyes flashing sea-green—her mother’s eyes. “Don’t deny it now. I know she was.” Annie fingered the gold locket she still wore around her neck and refused to take off, even for bathing (when Mary forced her to bath).

Mary sighed. There was no use hiding the fact any longer. “I believe—she might have been.” When the eyes flashed again: “Yes, she was your mother, she was.”

“Then we must find out who killed her,” said the girl, crossing her arms over her thin chest. “What are you laying about for?”

“Lying. Lying about,” said Mary absently. “And I’ll be up and off soon.” She turned away to the window. But not to find any killer. No, she was going after Mr Fuseli. He had said he wanted to keep an eye on her. And if she didn’t act at once on her dreams they would die, unrealized. It was time. She would make the long dreamed-of proposal to Henry and his wife: to move in with them. She would have greater influence with him, then, would she not? She would soften his heart on all accounts. On Roger Peale’s account.

She patted Annie’s head, and fluffed up her hair. Annie said, “Oww. Stop it.” Mary laughed, and went up to her bedchamber to prepare. The Fuselis had a large house with maidservants, footmen, cooks. Annie could have her own spacious room instead of the cubicle she slept in now. Mary would bring Dulcie along as her personal maid.

She threw the three dresses she owned out on the bed: the black muslin, the black wool, the new jade-green muslin with a white fichu crossed at the breasts, slyly revealing—yes, she would wear the green, and the scarlet stockings Henry admired. She would wear them evenings while Sophia was doing needlework. Mary would be with Henry, talking books, art, philosophy, and Sophia would see that Mary was not a rival for his bed, but for his mind and spirit, something the childish blonde could never give him.

If Sophia was a model for his painting, Mary would be his muse.

Though she would not mind his painting her portrait—fully clothed, of course, in her scarlet stockings. She did have a reputation to uphold.

In the interim, she thought, as she dressed her hair with the fringe he had complimented, she would make him realize how futile, how cruel was all this hunting down of a poor young artist. How many goals would be gained by their mutual habitation, how many lives saved! And what safer place for her (she would tell him—though it wasn’t his protection she wanted) than to live in his establishment? If he worried about her as he said, he would have to understand this.

On impulse, she stuck a sprig of hollyberries in her hair, just over the ear—she could still wear her hat. She might even put a touch of rouge on her cheeks, though they would heat up, no doubt, with what she had to say.

She squinted into the looking glass. Her hair was not at its best: she had a cowlick in the back that would not flatten out. She would have to keep her hat on. But her complexion was clear today: a little powder would remove the shine from her nose and cover the bruise on her cheek. She looked quite well; if she were to meet herself on the street she might turn her head and say, “Now there is a worthy woman.”

When Dulcie returned with the mutton chop (divided in three, they would each have little more than a bite), Mary sent her running with a shilling to find a sedan chair—there was an unseasonable chill in the air. She put pattens over her shoes to save them from the dung, donned her new blue cloak, and let one of the men hand her into the chair. She stretched out her legs on the footwarmer, lifted her chin, and repeated to herself that the course she was about to take was the right one, that it would fulfill a need for all three of them. Would not Sophia be ultimately abandoned without Mary to keep her husband intellectually satisfied?

“Take me to Queen Anne Street. And quickly,” she told the chairmen. Before I change my mind, she thought. She pulled up a deep breath and felt altogether delirious. When a girl in a shabby gown ran up to the chair with her hand out, she tossed out a sixpence, and laughed out loud when the girl blew her a kiss.

Lillian Guilfoy opened the door to a girl of sixteen or seventeen, wrapped in a woolen shawl over a blue print gown patched at the hem. Her shoes were broken at the heels as though she had already walked to all the destinations of her short life.

“Is this the home of Missus Guilfoy, known to a painter called Peale?” the girl asked in a shrill voice.

Lillian cried out at the name Peale. Her stomach leapt to her throat. She clasped her hands to her breasts.

“Well, are you?” said the girl. “I can’t stay. I’d a turrible time findin’ you. He give me the address but he had no money. I had to pay for the coach to London and then beg for a biscuit to eat. He said you’d pay me.”

“You’ve seen him? You’ve spoken to him!” But then Lillian hesitated. Who was this girl? Who had sent her? Someone who was holding her Roger hostage? Already three persons had come forward claiming to have seen him, and all had proved false, wanting only money. This one, too, held out a rough palm, her fingers twitching.

“It come to three shillings. Took half me wages I saved. Said he painted you with cherries. Like these.” She pulled out a paper full of rotting cherries from under her grubby cape. “He said that’s how you’d know I come from him. Couldn’t come hisself, you know, locked up like he is.”

Lillian’s vision dimmed. She dropped into a chair. The girl might have been addressing her from miles away.

“Would I come all this way if I was goin’ lie to you?” The girl was standing over her, her arms akimbo.

Lillian made a brave effort to sit up. It was no time to be swooning. She staggered out of the chair and motioned the girl toward the portrait of herself, holding cherries. She put a hand against the wall to support her weakened body. She had to hold herself together. The girl was pressing the cherries into her hand.

Locked up, the girl had said?

“You don’t know how devilish hard ’twas to find these. Cherries don’t come out this soon. I said that to him, but he kep’ on. Cherries he said, find cherries. So I did. Granny Sopworth put ’em up last May. She made me work a full day to get ’em.”

“I’ll repay you. Don’t you worry. Here’s his painting. Look! He did it last spring, when we were first betrothed.”

“Laws,” the girl said. “’Tis a beauty aright, that painting. But he’s in no condition to do one now. He’s in a madhouse, he is, miss.”

“A madhouse!” Lillian cried. The word struck her like a hurled rock. She felt as though her insides were bleeding. “What would he be doing in a madhouse? Why, he’s as sane as I. Who put him there? He hasn’t—” she felt the blood drain out of her head “—lost his mind?” But no, he’d remembered the cherries. Someone had abducted him, put him in that place against his will. “Where is he? Take me to him at once.”

“No, miss, I can’t do that. They’d know who told. I have to go back on me own. This is me one day off, Sunday. Me friend’s meetin’ me here—he had a delivery. We’ll go back in his waggon. Anyway, miss, you can’t get your man out. Not you alone. They got dogs. Big black ones. You got to make a plan.”

“A plan,” Lillian said. “What kind of a plan?” She was leaning against the wall. The floor was rising up to meet her eyes.

“That’s up to you, miss. I got to go now.” She held out a hand. “You said you’d pay the coach. Cherries, too, miss. Come to four shillings, sure. I need the money, I worked a whole day for them cherries. You ought to get him out, he’s a young man. Nice lookin’, too. Or was—when he first come.”

Lillian stumbled to her desk to find the money. She took out four shillings. It meant no meat tomorrow for her and the boy. But if it would bring Roger to her...

“Tell me exactly where this place is. What town? Make me a map.” She would hold back the money until the girl told her.

“Slinfold,” the girl said, sounding impatient. “I don’t know how to make no map. ’Tis just a village. Go to the public house and ask somebody for Madhouse Lane. Go to the end and turn left, down a cow path. The house be at the end. The dogs is mean when they gets loose. So’s the folk what runs it.”

The girl pocketed the coins, took one last look at the portrait with the cherries, and ran out. The door banged twice behind her. When Lillian went to the window the girl was already running up the street and around the corner.

Dogs, Lillian thought, a madhouse. She had once been to Bedlam, seen women in coarse white shifts, chained to the walls; men in strait-coats, urinating in their straw; folk shrieking and moaning, crying out, “Save me. Help me!”

A madhouse, she thought again. Unbelievable!

“Allô in there!” It was Jacques St Pierre banging through the door with a bottle of wine. She had not heard him knock. “Who was that girl? What did she want with you?” She watched him uncork the wine, and told him about the visit. He looked up, shocked, and then was quiet for a time. He said he couldn’t believe what he’d heard about a madhouse. He pooh-poohed the integrity of the girl. “Someone else taking advantage, wanting money,” he said, and poured the wine into two glasses.

She took a sip. For a time she believed Jacques’s words. She had been duped by that girl. When he took her hand and looked hungrily into her face, she let him kiss her cheek.

But then she remembered the cherries. It had to be Roger. Only Roger knew about the significance of the cherries: where they had found them.

“No. I have to believe her.” She pushed him away with her free hand. “He’s in a madhouse—where? Yes, the village of Slinfold, the girl said. Slinfold. We must go there, seek it out—wherever it is. It was Henry Fuseli had him put there, I’ve no doubt of it. Can you find out where Slinfold is?”

Jacques sighed, and nodded. He drank his wine in a gulp, as though he needed the drink. He was a good man, Jacques; he loved her. He honoured her situation. He kept his distance.

“You will help me to find him. You will help to free him?” She put a hand on his arm, and let him place his hand over hers. “There are nasty dogs, the girl said.”

Jacques was leery of dogs: he had been bitten once, he’d told her; he almost died. But he would do anything for her, would he not? His hand was trembling on her hand. “I will try,” he said, “I will do my best. But if his poor mind is broken—”

“It is not broken,” she said. “He remembered the cherries.”

“Ah. But I cannot do it alone. I will need help. You must give me time.”

She nodded. Time was all she could give him. And if he couldn’t help, she would appeal to Mary Wollstonecraft—although the latter had seemed particularly abstracted of late. She withdrew her hand. Even if Roger were truly mad—and she was certain he was not—she would not be able to love Jacques, not in the way he wanted. Jacques was a friend. He could never be her lover.

Her scheme would work, Mary told herself as the chair bobbed and swung through the crowded streets. The truth was, Mary could no longer bear to live separately. She must see Henry every day. He had his faults, like this maniacal pursuit of young Roger Peale, but he had a superior mind; she could soften, bring about a change in him, couldn’t she? And didn’t her Vindication promote open friendship between men and women? Boys and girls in the same schools? And had not her hero Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived in a ménage à trois with his mistress Madame de Warens and another lover? Had he not written about a triangular relationship in his novel, Julie? In that novel, Mary recalled, Julie’s friend Claire asks the tantalizing question: “Does the soul have a sex?”

No, Mary decided, it does not. The soul is androgynous. So her hopes were not unprecedented. And she was asking only for an intellectual intimacy.

Henry’s carriage was in front of the house on Queen Anne Street—he was home. She stood on the steps, taking deep, ragged breaths. She ran her fingers through her wind-swept hair and pinched her cheeks. But her stomach was bloated; her feet stood frozen to the top step that was still damp from a rain shower. Overhead the sun came out for a moment and she was emboldened. She rapped the door knocker. No one appeared. She knocked louder and the door swung open; she nearly fell in. The maidservant caught her; she looked blankly at Mary, raised her eyebrows, and waited for Mary to speak.

“I am Mary Wollstonecraft, an authoress friend of Mr Fuseli,” Mary said, and gained an inch with her foot. “I have come to see both Mr and Mrs Fuseli.” The maid, a tall angular woman shaped like a bucket that someone had dented, did not move or seemingly care that an authoress was at the door. “Wait,” she said, and put an outsized foot forward as if to say: the line is drawn here.

Mary waited; she rehearsed the speech she had prepared. The hallway was hung with Henry’s paintings: a man in red contemplating a dead woman in white at his feet; portraits of Mrs Fuseli in curls and cap, her eyes discreetly down. Mrs Fuseli sleeping, in a black bonnet; an expressionless Mrs Fuseli warming her back at the fireplace; Mrs Fuseli with a switch, her breasts bare. In a corner, two paintings of nude madwomen: wild-eyed, wind and rain swirling about their heads—Mary felt herself to be one of them.

When Sophia Fuseli came out of a nearby door, Mary drew back.

“Yes?” The woman barely acknowledged her presence; Mary might have been a tradesperson, bearing smelly cheese or herring. She looked beyond for Henry, but he was nowhere to be seen. The words she had rehearsed went blank. She would have to improvise. “I have come,” she stammered, “to make an offer. I—I wish to become an inmate of this house. I will be forthright. As I am above deceit, it is right to say that this proposal arises from the sincere affection which I have for your husband. For I find that I cannot live without—without the satisfaction of seeing and conversing with him daily.”

When the wife made a guttural sound, Mary’s voice rose: “I do not try to supplant your position as the legal wife of the flesh—not at all! I would be united to Henry by a mental affinity, a spiritual union. We—we have been friends. I am sure he would—yes!—he would approve this arrangement. If you would read Rousseau...” She stopped, feeling giddy—she put a hand on the wall to support herself.

Sophia Fuseli stood perfectly still, as though held hostage; her mouth hung open. Then she opened it wider to scream: a scream that penetrated Mary to the bone. She shouted towards the stairs: “Mr Fuseli! Who is this woman? What does she want?”

Mary widened her stance for balance. The woman was more obtuse than she had thought. “You know perfectly well who I am, Mrs Fuseli. We have met on numerous occasions. And I have just explained what it is I want. I would help with the rent. We could travel together, to France—the three of us, to witness the Revolution. I have been invited by the Marquis de Condorcet to consult with him about female education. I would need your husband’s help. I would need your help as hostess for the artists who would come to our soirées. I would—”

“My God!” cried Sophia Fuseli, holding on to the door handle. “What is this woman who would presume to enter my household? I am speechless.” (She was decidedly not speechless, Mary noted.) “Leave. Get out of my house at once!” She pointed a tremulous finger at the front entrance. Her tight yellow curls shook with her indignation. Her breasts, Mary noted, drooped inside her pink dressing gown.

“Let me speak to your husband. He will understand. Henry Fuseli, where are you? I know you’re here!” Mary cried. She ran towards the staircase. “Pray explain to your wife what I am asking, why—”

“You will not speak to my husband. You will not be part of my household. What? A spiritual union? Union?” the woman screeched, a lacy arm making dizzy circles in the air. “You will have no union. Now go. Annette?” she shouted at the maid, who was lurking by the entrance. “Show this arrogant woman out. And you, Miss Vindication,” she bawled, pointing a finger at Mary. “Do not return. Never again! Never!”

The maidservant threw open the door and a gust of rain blew in. “Henry Fuseli,” Mary cried, for there he was at the top of the stairs: “Pray explain to your wife, sir, why I’m here. Make her understand!”

But Henry turned away with a face the colour of a ripe raspberry; an upstairs door slammed. Slowly Mary’s mind cleared and she understood that he was not going to help her. He was not going to interfere with his wife’s decision. It was a betrayal of the most humiliating kind. When Mary had meant well, oh yes, she had meant well, had she not?

Outside the house, she stood on the top step, dazed. Behind her the door latched. Her legs and arms were logs. She could not move a foot or lift a finger. The wind blew off her blue hat and she watched it sail down the street as though it were herself being blown far, far from this house—out of London, out of England...

Henry had heard. He had heard everything and he had not come forward.

Her thoughts turned to the river. She felt herself divided, her heart at war with her reason. She was a compound of weakness and resolution. In her mind’s eye, her feet moved down Regent Street, by Whitehall, past the Privy Gardens. She would go on and on, pushing against folk in her way—shops, carriages, horses, dogs, all a blur. She stumbled down Bridge Street, pausing only to put stones in her pocket. Poised on the edge, she stared a long time into the river depths.

Her life till now drifted through her head: her weaver grandfather, the six siblings, the pious mother, the abusing father. Her beloved Fanny, dead in Portugal; then the inhumane captain she’d forced to rescue the drowning French sailors. The frenzied flight from her sister’s husband. The men who had betrayed her: Joshua Waterhouse, Neptune Blood, the poet George Ogle in Ireland. Henry Fuseli. Henry Fuseli. Henry Fuseli.

He would be glad to see her drown, would he not? “Out of my house!” his wife had said, and he allowed her to say it. He stood there like a pillar of salt and let her say it!

Should Mary give him the satisfaction of drowning herself?

Roger Peale’s sensitive face glimmered in the shadows. Lillian Guilfoy’s pleading eyes. Peale wronged, falsely accused, a victim like herself. With her gone, who would intercede for him? Who would help her sisters carry on with their lives and find posts as governesses? Take care of your siblings, her mother said on her deathbed, and Mary had done so.

No, she would not drown. She would not throw herself in front of a horse. She would not let Henry Fuseli persecute the young artist. She would not let him triumph over her. How many times had he mocked her work, her quest for the rights of woman? When a woman’s life had as much value as a man’s. Yes, by God!

Mocked. Ah. That was the word. And she had tolerated it.

She opened her eyes, wide. She would live. She would thwart Henry Fuseli. She would be dependent on no man. Why, she had almost lost herself, had she not? She would find Roger Peale. Precisely how, she did not know, but she would find him. She would enlist the help of her Dissenting friends. She would make Lillian Guilfoy pluck up her courage. She would pluck up her own courage. She would move forward until the end, be it bright or bitter.

She looked down at her feet where they stood, as if planted, still on the brick step of her betrayer’s house. Slowly she moved one, then the other. She wiggled her fingers and thrust out her elbows. Then her whole body came alive and she ran down the steps, down the street to retrieve her blue hat where it was lodged in the crook of a tree limb. She slapped it back on her head and pinned it firmly on. When the hollyberry spray came free, she tossed it into a bush. She could feel the nerves coming alive in her neck, in her head.

She moved briskly towards home. She did not take a sedan chair. She did not care if her gown got muddy. She did not care if she stepped in dung.

She did not look back.