An Inconvenient Wife Part 25

William squatted down beside me and kissed me lightly on the head, while I suppressed a shudder, and then he looked at Victor. "Why, h.e.l.lo, Victor. I see you managed to tear yourself away from the city."

Victor smiled at him. "A pity you can't do the same."

"Yes, well, most of us must work during the week. How lucky you are that your work is here." William threw a glance at me.

"You've a charming home," Victor said.

"Enjoying yourself, are you?"

"Immensely."

"The weather to your taste?"

"It's been clear every day."

"I a.s.sume Lucy has been seeing to your needs adequately."

I could not look at him. Or at Victor. I squinted at the clouds in the sky, trying to find a shape, but they were frayed and loose and would not coalesce into anything I recognized.

Victor laughed. "To be honest, William, it's the other way around. I'm at her beck and call, as is so often the case with patients. But she's doing better these days. I a.s.sume you've seen the difference."

"Oh yes," William said. I could not decide if there was sarcasm in his tone. "No more fits, no more moods. Cook has finally decided to stay-she was threatening to quit twice a week. You've worked wonders with her, Victor."

"I am sitting right here," I said. "There's no need to talk about me as if I were some piece of horseflesh."

"You see? Delightful." William looked to me. "What have you been doing this week, my dear? Busy planning parties and such?"

"So few people are here yet," I said. "And I've spent quite a bit of time with Victor, of course."

"Still the hypnosis?" William asked.

Victor said, "It's best to continue the suggestion until it's firmly planted in the unconscious."

"Is that so? How long must this 'planting' continue? Do we expect a harvest anytime soon?"

"Not before the summer is over, I would think," Victor said.

"That long, then? Nine months? A child takes as much time." William squeezed my shoulder. I stiffened.

"Victor tells me there are some patients who must be treated for years," I put in.

"Oh, I should hope not," William said. "Surely not that long."

"Lucy is making great strides, but the mind is an impossible thing to predict. We don't understand it fully even now."

"Yes, yes, so you've said." William was impatient. "But we're not talking of just any mind, we're talking of a woman's. Lucy's. How complex can it be?"

I began to rise. "I think I'll see about tea."

"Thus far, I've seen little real evidence that a female brain is simple," Victor said.

"But certainly more primitive, isn't it?"

Victor shrugged. "Perhaps. Certainly they don't seem capable of specialization in the same way as a man."

"You see?"

"Yes," I said wryly. "I'll just see about the primitive necessity of food."

"Call Sadie," William said. "Where's the bell?"

"The bell? I haven't used it since we've been here."

"How are you calling the servants, then?"

"I've been walking into the house to find them," I said. "Really, William. The bell seems so insensitive, don't you think?"

He looked at me as if I had fallen into a fit before him. "You're the lady of the house," he said. "Their job is to serve you."

"Yes, but it seems so ludicrous when it's just as easy for me to-"

"Sadie!" he called. "Sadie!"

Victor was watching us with interest, and I was embarra.s.sed. "Please, William."

"Sadie!"

She came hurrying onto the porch, fl.u.s.tered. "Yes sir, Mr. Carelton? Is there something you're needing?"

"The service bell, for one thing," William snapped. "Mrs. Carelton is not to rouse herself. She is your mistress."

"Please, William, there's no need for this."

He ignored me. "Where is the bell?"

"On the piano, sir, where it's been since last fall."

"Bring it to me."

Sadie began to turn back into the house.

"No," I said. I spoke more sternly than I had intended.

Sadie stopped. William looked at me in surprise. "What?"

"I don't want the bell. Sadie, please leave it where it belongs." I turned to my husband. "I'm not an invalid, and I won't be treated like one. If my mind is so primitive, William, my body is not. I can walk. I can skip and jump too, if I care to. I won't be catered to like some delicate flower."

Under William's eyes, I felt as if I were some oddity in Barnum's museum-a two-headed calf, a dried mermaid. "As you wish," he said finally. Then he said to Victor, "What the h.e.l.l are you smiling about?" before he turned on his heel and strode angrily away.

Sadie lingered on the porch, confused.

"We'll have tea on the porch, Sadie," I said gently, and she nodded and hurried into the house as if she were relieved.

Only then did I look at Victor.

He was sitting up, and slowly, quietly, he clapped his hands. "That was magnificent," he whispered. Then he dipped his head and smiled, turning back to his ledger, to his endless writing.

That night I lay in bed, waiting in dread for William to come to our room. He and Victor had gone to the porch after supper, to smoke their cigars and drink port. I could not bear the tension of it any longer and left them to themselves. I tried to read, but I could not concentrate, and when at last I heard the closing of the door and footsteps on the stairs, I blew out the candle and closed my eyes and pretended to sleep while I listened to Victor's low "Good night," and his footsteps pa.s.sing my door on the way to his room, his infinitesimal hesitation.

It was some minutes before I heard William's heavy step on the stairs. I turned on my side and evened my breathing, but I could not relax. When he opened the door and paused, letting his eyes grow used to the light, I knew he wasn't fooled.

"Asleep already, darling?" he whispered. "Such a pity. Not even a welcome for your husband after all these days without me?"

I did not answer. I heard him fumble on the tabletop beside the door, the strike of a match, the lighting of another candle. He closed the door and came to my side of the bed, where he stood, s.h.i.+ning the candlelight on me so I could no longer pretend. I opened my eyes.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Looking at you," he said. "Wondering whose spirit has taken over my sweet wife."

"Don't be silly, William."

"Does he tell you what to say?"

"No, of course not."

"What does he tell you then?"

"Nothing. He's helped me, William-even you must see that."

"Yes." He sounded confused. "You do seem better, but-"

"But what?"

He paused. "Nothing," he said, and then, "I went to the house before I came here today. It's progressing rapidly, Lucy."

"Is it?"

"McKim is certain we'll be able to move in by mid-September. I've told him I want to hold a ball to open it at the start of October. The sixth, to be precise."

I rolled onto my back, s.h.i.+elding my eyes from the light. "I can't possibly have everything ready by then."

"You will," he said easily. "I've ordered the invitations. Three hundred of them. They should be done in a few weeks. I'll have them sent here, and you will address them and have them delivered."

"But William-"

"I don't ask much of you, Lucy, but on this I must insist. This is the start of our new life. I want nothing to go wrong."

I could not imagine it. That life seemed so far away.

William stood there holding the light, wavering. I closed my eyes. "I'm tired, William. Put out the light."

He sighed. "You know, Lucy, I do love you."

"Yes, I know," I whispered.

"We'll be so happy there." He remained a moment longer, and then he went to his side of the bed and set the candle down. I heard him undress, and then the sputter as he blew out the candle and crawled in beside me. The bed sank beneath his weight, and I stiffened to keep from rolling into the valley between us. My breath came shallow as he turned toward me and put his arm around me, pulling me to him.

"I'm tired, William," I said.

He released me.

"Yes, of course," he said, rolling onto his back again, and his voice was so resigned it ached within me. "Forgive me."

In the morning he was out of bed before I woke, but I heard him talking downstairs, and I smelled the heavy, greasy scents of bacon and potatoes and eggs. Sadie had remembered William's favorites. I rose and went to the window, pulling aside the drapes. I heard the front door open and close, and then I saw William stepping onto the lawn, walking toward the rocky seawall. He was alone.

I quickly put on my dressing gown, opened the bedroom door as quietly as I could, and hurried down the hall to Victor's room. The door was closed; he wasn't up yet. I tapped on it lightly, and before he could answer, I cracked it and peeked in.

He was still abed but awake, staring out the windows. He wore only his union suit, and he looked sleepless and weary, but his face lit when he saw me.

"William's gone down to the beach," I whispered. "But I've only a minute. He hates the sand."

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, and he lifted his hand. "Come here," he said. I went to him, sitting on the edge of the bed, letting him wrap me in his arms, breathing deep his scent. He kissed my jaw, my ear. "How are you this morning, my darling? Do you still belong to me?"

I was so enraptured by the endearment that I barely heard the rest. I was breathless with his affection, with the words he'd never used before. "Yes," I said. "Oh yes. Always. Tell me to leave him, Victor. Tell me and I will. I swear I will."

But he did not say the words, and soon I forgot I had asked him to.

Notes from the Journal of Victor Leonard Seth Re: Eve C.

June 22, 1885 I have retired to Newport Beach with Eve, as her personal doctor. At this critical stage of her treatment, it is preferable that I be with her as often as possible. Here, where she is at her most naturalistic, where she feels an affinity for the endless ocean, her mind is at its most accepting. In the city her newfound self might crumble beneath the onslaught of social habit and the control of her husband. Removed from all of that, under my constant influence, she is becoming a truly marvelous creature.

While her husband is away in the city during the week, Eve is mine to manage without interference. We have spent nearly every moment together, and although one's environment is uncontrollable and I cannot completely protect her from those who would come between us, I am confident that I have strengthened our bond. She is a strong and vibrant woman, one I have fas.h.i.+oned from whole cloth; one I have improved from a submissive, tentative, neurasthenic woman groping for some way to drug herself into pa.s.sivity. I continue to be amazed at my success and preoccupied with her every nuance. She belongs to me in a way that no human being has ever belonged to another.

I have had another letter from Hall. He cautions me to temper my enthusiasm. He says I am spending far too much time with a married woman, and that such far-reaching exploration of her s.e.xual being is too dangerous-he believes it can have only disastrous consequences-such hypocrisy from the man who counseled that interrupted coitus and suppressed pa.s.sion may be a leading factor in her unhappiness, which I have proved to be true. I had quoted Aristotle, "All men by nature desire to know," and his answer was to accuse me of sophistry: "With your emphasis on the development of the self at the cost of everything else, what then is individualism truly but selfishness? In this poor woman, who has a life beyond yours, who must return to it with a soul that has since known a freedom she cannot hope to grasp again, have you not simply destined someone to be unhappy? To be a pariah? She is a woman, meant to serve others, to live within a certain prescribed world. You have not thought of her life but only of your own scientific inquiries. Is it your right to ask those sacrifices? Is it your right to play G.o.d with this poor woman's mind? Your goal, my friend, should have been to teach her to find happiness in her role, to teach her to be happy within her femininity, and not to urge her to seek pleasure and fulfillment in a world she is not allowed access to. She is not, after all, a man."

He misses the point: that I have created someone; that hypnosis and other aspects of treatment have forged a new soul. The idea that it can even be done is remarkable, and yet he dares to question me on the grounds of morality. What is morality but another way humans hold one another in bondage? Should science and truth be held in thrall to such a manufactured thing?

Hall is wrong; I find no agreement with the Sophists and their beliefs that absolute truths are unknowable. Socrates said that through rational thinking and logic one can find universal truth, and that is what I believe, that is what I have found in Eve. I have proved that the will is not only knowable but pliable. She is on her way to becoming the kind of woman I have never before seen. I must continue on, I cannot rest, I am full of her. When Hall and the others see what I have done, they will understand. Until then she belongs to me.

Chapter 21.