The object of his concern, however, received these unwonted demonstrations of partiality with little outward show of satisfaction; indeed, she appeared to regard them with an increasing irritation that seemed likely to throw into disarray the state of peace and equilibrium that had latterly been established between them. This did not in the least deflect her husband from his purpose, but it produced an uncomfortable atmosphere in which my cousin doggedly, and with unusual patience, sought even more ways of expressing his care for his wife’s condition, whilst she became peevish and captious, brushing off his well-meant enquiries with a brusqueness that I fear he did not deserve. Once, when I was about to knock at the door of the Yellow Parlour as usual one morning, I heard her telling him sharply that she did not want to be molly-coddled so by him, that she neither desired it nor deserved it. I reflected afterwards on her words, concluding that some residual action of guilt for having abandoned her husband was responsible, in concert with the natural anxieties of impending motherhood, for her peppery behaviour.
So things went on until the 17th of November, in the year ’22, when, at a little after three o’clock in the afternoon, my Lady gave birth to a son. The boy, who would be christened Henry Hereward, was a hale and hearty creature from the first; but his mother, grievously weakened by the exertion of bringing him into the world, sank into a deep decline that lasted several days. She lay, hardly breathing, lingering between life and death, in the great curtained bed, fashioned to a fantastic design by du Cerceau,* that had been brought to Evenwood by Lady Constantia Silk on her marriage to Lord Tansor’s father. Gradually, she began to revive, take a little food, and sit up. A week to the day after the birth of her son, her husband, accompanied by the wet-nurse, brought the child to her for the first time; but she would not look at it. Propped up in the heavy-curtained bed, she closed her eyes and said only that she wished to sleep. My cousin remonstrated gently that she ought to make the acquaintance of their fine son and heir; but, with her eyes still shut, she told him, in a barely audible whisper, that she had no wish to see him.
‘I have done my duty,’ was all she would say when pressed by her husband to open her eyes just a little and look upon her son’s face for the first time. She would not even consent to attend the boy’s christening, which had been held off until she should have recovered sufficiently.
So Lord Tansor left her alone, and did not return. Thenceforth, he devoted himself to the nurture of his son, where formerly his wife had been his only care.
II
Friday, 21st October 1853 (continued)
The winter of 1822 came on, damp and raw. Her Ladyship left her bed, but refused to dress, sitting instead wrapped up in a shawl in an arm-chair before the fire, which burned night and day, and sometimes falling asleep there until her maid came in to draw back the window-curtains in the morning. The weeks passed, but still she would not see her son or quit her apartments. Her reply, when urged by friends to rouse herself and take up the duties of motherhood, was always the same: ‘I have done my duty. The debt is paid. There is no need to do more.’
One by one, she cut herself off from all visitors, even my late dear wife, of whom she had been particularly fond. Only her companion, Miss Julia Eames, was permitted to stay with her in the gloomy panelled chamber in which she spent most of her days. My cousin did not quite approve of Miss Eames, and had often questioned the necessity of her remaining in his house when his wife enjoyed such a wide acquaintance, both in the country and in town. But my Lady, alas, as was often the case, would not accede to his wishes, and it became a regular source of friction between them that she angrily refused to give up her companion.
It was to Miss Eames, and to her alone, that my Lady turned for comfort and companionship in the weeks and months following the birth of her son. I became particularly aware of the intimacy that existed between them when, one day, in the late spring of 1823, my Lady sent word that she wished me to bring up a copy of Felltham’s Resolves from the Library. It pleased me a great deal to receive the request, thinking it betokened the beginning of a return to her former habits; for my Lady, though she had been a great one for dresses and jewels and other fripperies, had always been an earnest and discriminating reader – unlike my cousin, whose literary tastes were somewhat rudimentary and who, in this as in so many other aspects of my Lady’s character and inclinations, found his wife’s fondness for poetry and philosophy incomprehensible.
When I took the volume she had requested up to my Lady’s sitting-room, I discovered her in close conversation with Miss Eames, heads together, talking with quiet intensity, their chairs drawn round a small work-table on which, open to view, was an ebony writing-box containing a considerable number of letters and other papers. On seeing me enter, Lady Tansor slowly closed the box and sat back in her chair, whilst Miss Eames stood up and walked towards me, holding her hand out to receive the book that I had brought, though it seemed to me that her action had also been intended to prevent me from drawing too close to the writing-box and its contents.
The incident may seem trifling, but it was to gain in significance retrospectively, as I shall shortly record.
And so to continue my deposition, and to conclude it as quickly as I may.
Still my Lady could not be persuaded to give up her self-imposed exile from society, and she absolutely refused to quit her apartment under any circumstance. But then, as the summer days began to shorten, her spirits gradually revived, and one bright cold day, at the beginning of October 1823, bundled up in her furs, she finally left her rooms, for the first time since the birth of her son – I observed her myself from the window of the Muniments Room taking the air on the Library Terrace, walking slowly up and down, arm in arm with Miss Eames. The next morning, Master Henry was brought by his nurse to be dandled for a minute or two on his mamma’s knee; the following morning, she began to take her breakfast again with her husband in the Yellow Parlour.
My cousin treated her return to domestic life with cold civility; for her part, she regarded him with utter indifference, though she ate her meals with him and sat with him of an evening, neither of them speaking the whole time, until each retired without a word of good-night to their own bedchambers at opposite ends of the house. She showed not much more interest in her son, though she raised no objection when my cousin brought up Sir Thomas Lawrence to paint the family portrait that now adorns the vestibule at Evenwood.
But then my Lady began to exhibit worrying signs of a severe nervous affection, slight at first, but increasing in frequency and intensity. In November 1823, as I noted in my journal, she repeatedly expressed a strong and intemperate desire to go and see the old friend she had previously visited on the south coast. Her husband sensibly prohibited such a thing; but her Ladyship contrived a means of leaving Evenwood when Lord Tansor was required to be in town on business. On her return, angry words were spoken; whereupon she locked herself in her room for two days and refused to come out, even when begged to do so by Miss Eames, until at last my cousin was obliged to order that the door be broken down. When his Lordship entered the apartment, to satisfy himself that she had not harmed herself in any way, she thrust a piece of paper into his hand, on which was a passage she had copied out of the edition of Felltham’s Resolves that I had taken up to her some months before. This was what she had written:When thou shalt see the body put on death’s sad and ashy countenance, in the dead age of night, when silent darkness does encompass the dim light of thy glimmering taper, and thou hearest a solemn bell tolled, to tell the world of it; which now, as it were, with this sound, is struck into a dumb attention: tell me if thou canst then find a thought of thine devoting thee to pleasure, and the fugitive toys of life.*