TWENTY-EIGHT

Will you be requiring anything more at the moment, ladies?”

I was in Sommers Tea Room with Hettie Larwood, the coral wallpaper, overcrowded with French flowers and scrolls, giving me the start of a headache Hettie would no doubt finish. Our table was situated by a window, so if the conversation lagged at least I would be amused watching the world go by. It was already cool enough outside that my proximity to the glass gave me a chill, but it was somehow comforting to see autumn had reliably come, other people were still capable of getting themselves from here to there. Sometimes, it seemed not a wonder there was so much violence in the world, but that there was so little.

Tea and cakes had just been placed before us. I knew Hettie would never touch the cakes, and I, my mind nearly wholly preoccupied with imaginary events not in the room around me, imagining myself walking outside that window with Chance’s hand in mine, was equally disinclined.

Hettie looked down her long nose at the tray of fruit tarts, macaroons, and fairy cakes, as if they were dangerous enemies against the Crown.

“Have you heard any news of Maeve lately?” I asked, hoping to avert one of Hettie’s diatribes relating consumption to religion and the betterment of mankind.

“I did, as a matter of fact, just yesterday. I am sorry to report she is not looking well at all. Surprising, since she has had so much experience.”

For once, I could not hold my tongue. “Perhaps it is that repeated experience that has tired her out. I do not think any of us would like to go through what she has. It is, after all is said and done, still her body.”

“Why, what a peculiar idea!”

“Sometimes, it just seems as though we should have more say.”

She looked at me piercingly. “You have very strange ideas. Still, if you must give voice to them, it is probably best that you do so with me. You would not wish the wrong people to hear you.”

Before I could respond, she leaned forward, eyes unnaturally bright. When she did speak, despite her excitement, she kept her voice low.

“Did you not hear what happened at the Biltmores’ the other night?”

I did know that some members of our mutual acquaintance had dined there Saturday last, but John and I, although invited, had not been among their number. Perhaps I should have forced myself to attend, given my concerns for Constance; and it was certainly a rare enough thing to be asked there. But Weston had been mildly feverish and I had pleaded off going. The real truth of the matter was that there were times when the continual social whirl became too tiresome for words. Now that there was Chance, I took such society to be a rude disruption of the interior world I shared with him.

“No, I have heard nothing,” I said.

If a whisper could squeal with delight, Hettie somehow succeeded at it with her next utterance. “Constance got carried away!”

“How do you mean?”

“She did not eat enough at supper; I fear the wine went straight to her head.”

I did not say anything at this. Maeve’s tendency to overindulge may have been marked and yet gone unremarked, but this was the first I had heard of Constance traversing a similarly dangerous row.

“And that’s not all,” Hettie added. “After the men rejoined us, she was actually seen flirting with Captain Brimley!”

Captain Brimley? He was so feminine, that hardly seemed notable.

“I do not think Charles liked it one bit,” Hettie continued. “In fact, I happen to know he did not.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he rather roughly hurried her from the room. I do not know that anyone else heard, but I happened to be leaving the room myself at that point, and heading in generally the same direction, and I overheard Constance say she did not care if Captain Brimley was not well thought of by the men; to her, his company was superior.”

“And Charles?”

“Oh, I never saw him so furious before.” Then she shrugged mildly, returning her attention to the teacup as though a stage curtain had abruptly been pulled on a performance.

“What did he do?” I demanded.

“Do? Why, nothing.” She stirred a cup that no longer needed stirring. “He saw me then, didn’t he? Dropped his grip on her wrist just as quick as you please.” More useless stirring. “But I’ll tell you what.”

And here she leaned forward again, gleam back full force.

“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Constance found herself on the way to the country very soon…nor if she stayed there a very long time.”

I removed my cloak, took the ceramic pin out of my hat, tossed all three items onto the bench in the entry hall. Looking in the mirror above the bench, I attempted to set my unruly hair to rights. Glancing at the door, I saw the door text I’d made for our home, as was my duty as lady of the house, so many years before: “Thou, God, Seest Me.”

On the way home, I had thought about how unfair Constance’s fate seemed. Would we be invited out to visit after a certain amount of time? It would be good if we were.

An unfair fate, yes; and yet I cannot say it surprised me. After all, what else, I wondered ruefully, was there for a decent husband to do with a wife who had grown unruly? The Brontës might have shoved her away in some attic. At least, where Charles was taking her, she’d enjoy the fresh air.

I tried to tell myself that, at any rate.

And yet I could not help but feel a sense of uneasy guilt. If I had tried harder to talk to her. If I had somehow tried harder to get her to talk to me…

“Emma,” said John, coming upon me, “I see you are back.”

Still thinking of Constance, my answer was somewhat absent: “Yes.”

“Did you enjoy Hettie’s company?”

Hettie had previously been a joke between us, as married couples everywhere join forces to use the common thread of low-thinking about others to strengthen the bond between them. Knowing I had not been the best of company for him of late, seeing the lifeline of Hettie, I grabbed it.

“You know as well as I do,” I said, “that ‘Hettie’ and ‘enjoy’ are two words that have never belonged in the same sentence together.”

His smile made evident that after all these years he appreciated my wit.

He led me toward his library. “Come and talk with me for a moment.”

This invitation was like something from our past. It seemed it had been a long time since he had casually sought out my conversation, a long time since I felt open to him. There had been a time, a once upon a time that now seemed so long ago, when it felt as though we talked of everything.

The somberness of thinking how just one small misstep had cost Constance her freedom made me realize how close by disaster always walked. And yet, I would not say it was fear that made me respond to my husband so. Rather, it was a wistful longing for a simpler time. And, in longing for it, somehow feeling freed to give in to it.

“Is there something in particular you wish to discuss?” I asked, with an earnest cheerfulness that should have triggered any trained ear into knowing that much of my tone of the past months had been false.

“Tell me, what gossip had Hettie today?”

I took a seat on a velvet sofa in the corner. “Surely, that cannot be what you wish to discuss!”

“Oh, but it is!” he answered, taking a seat across from me and leaning forward with no small show of eagerness, elbows on knees. “Tell me, what awful things had she to say about our mutual friends?”

“But this is so unlike you! And Hettie was too mean-spirited; her words do not bear repeating,”—I held up a hand to forestall any further pressure—“not even to you.” Before he could speak again, I carried on. “Now you must tell me something: What has gotten into you?”

“Oh but this is like me now, my dear Emma. This is the new me.”

“The new you?”

“Yes. And, as always, it is all your doing.”

“My doing?”

He cocked a hand behind one ear. “Do we now have an echo in here? Yes, your doing. You did say I should start on a new novel, did you not?”

“Well, several weeks ago, I did say—”

“Yes, and it was excellent advice.”

“Why then did you not heed it right away?”

“Because, my dear, sometimes it takes even a man of my superior intelligence a while to catch on to the sheer brilliance of an idea.”

“‘Sheer brilliance’? I must say I do like that. But what does this all have to do with gossip and dreadful Hettie Larwood?”

“It is simply this.”

Enchanted by his enthusiasm, as I waited in the midst of his dramatic pause, I was momentarily transported back to that earlier time in our relationship, a time when the future seemed all possibility and hope.

“I have selected the topic of my next book,” he said, “and am ready to proceed. It is very different from anything I have done before.”

“And what,” I asked, still twinkling in the past, “is to be the topic?”

“Why, gossip, of course. I’m going to do a novel of social gossip.”

I settled back in my seat, deflated. “If that is what you wish to do…” I was flabbergasted. “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

“Because it will be different? Because it will be a challenge unlike those I’ve set for myself before?” He shrugged, as if perhaps even he did not know his own mind. “I suppose it is that with the previous books, I have taken on single issues—war; prison reform—but this will offer me the chance to take things apart that are part of a far bigger canvas.”

“Yes, I’m sure another novel of social gossip is exactly what the world needs.”

“Oh, do not look so disappointed, Emma. It is a capital idea, as I’m sure you’ll come to see in time. It was that serial of Harry Baldwin’s in the paper that put me in mind of it.”

I looked at the fish in the aquarium. Despite their comfortable surroundings, they looked to be doing none too well.

“How so?” I asked.

“I have been doing some thinking. You had said perhaps Baldwin was trying to write his own novel of prison reform, to rival mine, but I have concluded that is not the case.”

“Oh?”

“I believe Baldwin is doing something about gossip, using the epistolary form as his device. And it is my intention, my dear, to get there first.”