“I am going to omit several sentences here, McCandless,” said Baxter, “for they are hideously over-written, even by Wedderburn’s standards. All they tell us is that he and our Bella spent the night as they had spent it on the train, except that shortly before 7 a.m. he begged her to let him sleep. I will read on from that point.”
“Why?” she asked. “You can sleep all you like after breakfast. I’ve told the management here that you are an invalid, and they’re very sympathetic.”
“I don’t want to spend my whole honeymoon in the Midland railway terminal hotel,” I sobbed, forgetting in my anguish that we had never married, “I had meant us to go abroad.”
“Whoopee!” she said, “I love abroad. Which bit of it first?”
In Glasgow (which now seemed years ago) I had planned to enjoy her in some quiet little inn of a lonely Breton fishing village, but now the thought of being in a lonely place with Bella chilled me to the soul. I muttered, “Amsterdam,” and fell asleep.
She woke me at ten, having gone to the Thomas Cook agency with my wallet, arranged for us to catch an afternoon boat to the Hague, paid our hotel bill, packed our bags and taken them to the foyer. Only my dressing-case and a fresh suit of clothes remained.
“I’m hungry and sleepy! I want my breakfast in bed!” I cried.
“Don’t worry poor lad,” she said soothingly. “Breakfast will be downstairs for us in another ten minutes, then you can sleep all you like on the cab, the train, the boat, the other train and the other cab.”
Now you know the pattern of my existence as we fled across Europe and round the Mediterranean. My strenuous waking hours were all at night in bed with a woman who never slept, so during the day I was either dozing or being guided about in a daze. I foresaw this likelihood before leaving London, and on the boat to the Hague decided to prevent it by EXHAUSTING Bella! I can almost hear the yells of fiendish laughter erupting from your hideous throat at the folly of the idea. By an iron exertion of will-power and continual cups of strong black coffee I rushed her daily by train, riverboat and cab to and in and out of the most tumultuous hotels, theatres, museums, racecourses and alas alas gambling casinos on the Continent, covering four nations in a single week. She enjoyed every minute of it, and with bright glances and light caresses promised she would soon show her gratitude in private acts of love. My one hope became this: that though the public transports and giddy whirl of the day did not reduce her to unconsciousness when she got to bed, they might do it for me. Vain hope! Between Bella and the natural Wedderburn — the lowest part of Wedderburn — was a sympathetic bond which my poor tortured brain COULD NOT stupefy or resist. Again and again I fell into bed as into the sleep of death and woke soon after to find I was pleasuring her. Like a victim of vertigo flinging himself FORWARD over a precipice instead of backward away from it, I CONSCIOUSLY embraced the dance of love with groans of ecstasy and despair until gleams of light through the shutters showed I was entering the purgatory of yet another day. In Venice I collapsed, rolled down the steps of San Giorgio Maggiore into the lagoon, thought I was drowning and thanked God for it. I woke up in bed with Bella again. I was seasick. We were in a first-class cabin of a ship cruising the Mediterranean.
“Poor Wedder, you have been forcing the pace!” she said. “No more casinos and café dansants for you! I am your doctor now and I order complete rest, except when we are cosy together, like now.”
From then on until the day I escaped I was a man of straw and her helpless plaything. But by staying prone whenever possible during daytime I at last began to slowly recover some strength.
Yet I still thought her kind! GUFFAW! GUFFAW!! GUFFAW!!! Yes, you damnable Baxter, let the violence of your laughter split your damnable sides! I still believed my Angelic Fiend was kind! When she raised my head with her arm to put forkfuls of food into my mouth, tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. When she steered me into British banks in the ports we touched, told the clerk that her poor man was not very well and steered my hand to sign a cheque or money order, tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. One glittering blue day we two lay side by side and hand in hand on deck-chairs, steaming down the Bosphorus with all Asia to port of us and Europe to starboard, or vice versa.
“You are only good for one thing, Wedder,” she said thoughtfully, “but you are very good at it indeed, a true grandee monarch magnifico excellency emperor lord-high-paramount president principal provost bobby-dazzler and boss at it.”
Tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. I was so dependent and dilapidated that I still kept begging her hopelessly to marry me. My eyes were not even opened by the events in Gibraltar.
We left the ship and stayed there for a time while I arranged to sell my Scottish Widows and Orphans shares14, a transaction which could not be hurried. I remember a bank manager saying in an insistent way which made my head ache, “Are you sure you know what you are doing, Mr. Wedderburn?” so I looked at Bella who said simply, “We need money Wedder, and we are not the only ones.” I signed a document. She led me out of the bank and through the Alameda Gardens toward the South Bastion, where we had lodgings. Suddenly Bella was confronted by a stout, stately, well-dressed woman who said, “How astonishing to see you Lady Blessington, when did you arrive? Why did you not call on us at once? Do you not remember me? Surely we were introduced four years ago, at Cowes, on board the Prince of Wales’ yacht?”
“How wonderful!” cried Bella. “But most folk call me Bell Baxter when I’m not with my Wedderburn.”
“But surely — surely you are the wife of General Blessington who I met at Cowes?”
“Oo I hope so! Though God says I was in South America four years ago. What is my husband like? Handsomer than droopy old Wedders here? Taller? Stronger? Richer?”
“There is obviously some mistake,” said the lady coldly, “though your appearance and voice are remarkably similar.”
She bowed and walked on.
“I saw that woman bowling along in an open carriage yesterday,” said Bella broodingly, “and someone said she was the wife of an old admiral who governs this great big Rock. She never answered one of my questions. Can I crash in on her and ask them again? Why should I not have a spare military husband somewhere, and more than the few names I already have, and go for sails on royal yachts?”
It was thus I learned that my Awful Mistress had no memories of her life before the shock which made that strangely regular crack which circles her skull under the hair — IF CRACK IT BE, Mr. Baxter! But YOU know, and I NOW KNOW what it REALLY is—
“Baxter,” I groaned, “has Wedderburn deduced everything?”
“Wedderburn has deduced nothing sensible, McCandless. His flimsy brain has never recovered from his breakdown in Venice. Listen.”
YOU know, and I NOW KNOW what it REALLY is — a witch mark. Yes! The female equivalent of the mark of Cain, branding its owner as a lemur, vampire, succubus and thing unclean.
“I will now skip six pages of superstitious drivel and resume on the second last page where he describes Bella bringing him to Paris by overnight train. They are again short of money so do not want to pay for a cab. They stroll through not-yet-crowded streets where the huge returning wagons of the night-soil collectors are the only vehicles. The sky is milky grey, the air fresh, sparrows audible. Bell gazes with eager pleasure at all she sees, though carrying their luggage in two heavy cases, one on each shoulder. Wedderburn carries nothing. He has recovered most of his physical strength but dare not admit it to Bella lest (I quote) she drain me once more of all manhood. Listen.”