It was late in the morning when he came to me. I had packed a few necessities and planned to leave on the afternoon train. That was at four o’clock.
For a moment we just stood looking at each other. Then I saw his lips curl and my heart sank. He was in a truculent mood and that cold dislike in his eyes which always alarmed me, was apparent.
“Well,” he said, ‘what have you to say? “
“I am leaving.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Is that all?”
“It is enough.”
“You were not very polite. Bursting in like that… uninvited … and then making off without a word.”
“What words did you expect me to say?”
“Being you … so calm, so restrained … none, of course. Why don’t you throw aside your inhibitions? Why don’t you join us? I can promise you excitement … such as you have never dreamed of.”
“You must be mad.”
“It’s the most thrilling thing I ever knew.”
“You are under the influence of drugs. You are not normal. I would rather not discuss that. I am leaving this afternoon.”
“But want to discuss it. Do you know, when I married you I thought you were a woman of spirit … I didn’t think you would be so afraid of life.”p>
“I am not afraid.”
“Oh yes you are. You are conventional, straitlaced, a prude. I knew my mistake very soon after I married you. I was going to make you enjoy what I enjoyed. I thought it would be interesting to watch you change. But I soon discovered that you could never throw off all the shibboleths of your upbringing.” He laughed wildly.
“There were times during those few weeks in Venice when I thought I might join you … become what you believed I was. I must have been crazy. I suppose I was really in love with you … then. But I need excitement. I couldn’t live … conventionally … not since I knew what could be had …”
I said: “Well, now we understand each other perfectly. We have both made the worst mistake two people can make. Still, even that is not irrevocable. You take opium … smoke it or take it in some other form. What does it matter how? Perhaps there are other pernicious drugs too. I know of your affair with the nursery maid. I know of what goes on in that appalling place and I want to put myself as far from all that as I possibly can.”
“If you were the virtuous woman you make yourself out to be, you would obey your husband. That is a wife’s first duty.”
“In such circumstances? I do not think so. My duty is to get away from this place and take my child with me.”
He looked at me sardonically.
“Oh Susanna,” he said, “I admire you in a way. So confident… so big. If you had only been prepared to make a little experiment …”
“Experiment? Do you mean become like you and your depraved friends?”
He said: “I wonder …” His face softened a little and I think he was recalling those first weeks in Venice. I realize now that he had not been pretending then; he had genuinely shared my delight in them. I have grown older now and I understand what I did not at that time, that one cannot divide people neatly into categories the good and the bad. The worst have good impulses sometimes; and the better ones act unworthily. But I was young; I was headstrong; and I was frightened. I was a mother whose first thought was for her child; and I saw Aubrey as a weak man who had formed dangerous, degrading habits and was ruining his life as well as ours because he had not the strength to fight against his obsession. I despised him.
Any love I had had for him had died. It had begun to on that night in Venice. Perhaps it had always been a frail thing. Perhaps that is how young people often are. They fall in love or think they are in love with the first attractive man who is interested in them. They want to be loved; it is a delightful adventure: marriage, children, they are the foundation of the ideal existence. I was seeing it all clearly now. My love for Aubrey had been superficial; if it had been stronger I should have wanted to stay and help him fight this terrible affliction.
No, I did not love Aubrey; but at least I had learned the true meaning of one kind of love when my child was born.
The moment passed.
“At least,” said Aubrey, ‘there is no longer need for secrecy. “
“That night,” I said, ‘that terrible night in Venice . “
He laughed.
“The night of revelation … when I realized I had married a prude a woman with fixed ideas, a woman steeped in conventionality, who would never come with me where I wanted to go. And you knew you had married a monster.”
“You were aware of everything,” I accused him.
“You pretended it was due to a blow on the head, that you had been attacked. You had been with the Freelings.”
“You are beginning to see a little daylight, aren’t you? Of course I wasn’t attacked. Seeing that man brought out of the canal gave me the idea. You found my purse, didn’t you? That was careless of me. It was imperceptive of you not to realize then.”
“You met the Freelings. You went into one of your sessions with them.
I understand all that clearly. You didn’t care about my anxiety, waiting at the palazzo imagining all sorts of horrors which might have befallen you. “
“One doesn’t think about anything at such times. You really should cast aside your inhibitions, you should try …”
I shook my head fiercely.
“And your devilish Dr. Damien was present most likely. He brought you home, didn’t he? That story about being in the hut and his rescuing you … False! All false! The Freelings had to leave India because of all this. My ayah tried to warn me. How I wish that she had never gone to the Freelings … and I had never met you.”
“I wonder how many disappointed wives have said that to their husbands, or vice versa come to that. You should have stayed last night. We would have initiated you into the mysteries and excitement of my Hell-Fire Club. What did you think of it? You stumbled across it before, didn’t you? You found the door but it was locked. Do you remember that day in the gallery when I told you about Harry St. Clare?
I sometimes think I’m Harry born again. I’m just like him. You like stories of the past, don’t you? You like to know the history of the house. Well, that temple under the hillock was built by Harry. I discovered it when I was a boy. There was a reference to it in some old document. I forced open the door. I had a new lock made for it when I was at the university. There was a circle of us there. Well, Sir Francis Dashwood built his temple at Medmenham. Harry saw no reason why he shouldn’t build his here. Just imagine . a hundred years ago Harry and his circle were doing more or less what we are doing here now. History repeating itself. Always interesting, don’t you think? You see, there is nothing new about all this. Perhaps we have advanced a little on the drugs. Harry had his, though. It’s exciting. When you are under the influence, there is nothing, simply nothing, you cannot do. I could tell you . “
“Please don’t. I have no desire to hear.” I looked at him intently. I said: “And what of Amelia’s baby?”
He stared at me.
“You said you met her in the town. Why? So that you could drive her back … and have a little upset… nothing to hurt the carriage much but to destroy her baby … or try to.”
He was silent. I saw a glimpse then of the Aubrey I had known in the beginning. There was a look of contrition in his eyes.
“I might have known,” I said.
“It happened,” he said quickly.
“These things happen. I had no intention …”
“Why did you go to meet her? They were to take the trap. You must have arranged it.”
“She lost her babies .. all of them… the least little thing.”