Of Moths and Butterflies

CHAPTER thirty-nine





March 1882



HARLIE WAS QUITE soon wholly himself, and though Imogen might have wished him to rest a little longer, he was determined to be absolutely well. The doctor, when he came again, pronounced his own declaration that the boy was certainly well enough to go home, and so Imogen had no further reason, outside of her selfish ones, to detain him.

“I want you to do something for me, Charlie” she said to him when they had accomplished the greater part of the distance between the Abbey and his home.

“Anything, Miss Gina.”

“I want you to take this.” She handed to him a pouch containing her quarter’s pin money.

He looked at it and shook his head.

“But Charlie, you said—”

“I can’t take money from you, Miss Gina.”

“Why ever not?”

“It isn’t gentlemanly to take money from a lady. Nor anyone I think, but especially a lady.”

“Think though, Charlie. Will it help your mother? Will it help you? I have no use for it. If it means your mother can rest one night a week rather than taking in extra work, wouldn’t you give her that?”

“She won’t take it. Not for a better reason than that. She might take it from Sir Edmund, or from…”

“Yes, Charlie?”

“She won’t take charity. Not from you. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s not charity,” Imogen said as if he had been utterly mistaken. “It is reasonable recompense for damages suffered. Your mother has not had your help while you’ve been at the Abbey. Sir Edmund often pays you, does he not?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then we shall say it is for damages. Especially as we’re returning you rather worse than we found you. You may not be well enough for a few days yet to be truly helpful, after all. This will make it up to her.”

He appeared doubtful.

“And I did tell her, when she came, that I would help her if I could. She said she would hold me to my promise, and so here it is.”

“Truly?”

“Yes, Charlie. Please take it.”

At last, reluctantly, he took it from her and placed it in his pocket.

“Is she spoiling you already, Charlie?” came a voice.

Imogen turned to see Archer’s cousin, Miles Wyndham. His sudden appearance unnerved her, but she was determined not to let it show.

“I wasn’t spoiling him, Mr. Wyndham,” she answered. “I was merely trying what little I might to make up for some ill-use he received at the Abbey this week.”

Wyndham looked at Charlie suspiciously, and with a hand placed on the top of the boy’s head, he examined him. And then he saw the plaster.

“Good heaven! How did this happen?”

Imogen answered, explaining the case in such a way as to preserve the young fellow’s ego.

Wyndham released Charlie, and the boy, with a half menacing glance, strode on ahead a few paces, though not so far as to be beyond their sight or hearing.

“I understand I’m to congratulate you,” Wyndham said, examining her next. “You are now the fortunate mistress of Wrencross Abbey. Well, well.”

She did not feel it necessary to answer him. His too familiar manner made it impossible she should.

“Or am I to understand from your silence that it has not the lustre you had once expected?”

“Now you are being impertinent, Mr. Wyndham.”

“One doesn’t often see a servant rise as successfully—or as quickly—as you have done. Not that they don’t try, mind. One or two have done before, but it usually works contrary to their efforts.”

“Do you mean Charlie’s mother, Mr. Wyndham?”

He did not answer this, and turned to face the road, and the boy, ahead of them. “Don’t get me wrong,” he went on at last. “Your redeeming qualities are quite apparent, but why these alone should be enough to recommend you for something so lofty as marriage...”

“I can assure you, sir, I’m as astonished as you are.”

This answer seemed to impress him. “You did not have to work too hard for the distinction, then?”

“I did not have to work for it at all.”

He suddenly grew serious again, contemplating. “It is not an illustrious connection. Not for Hamilton, at any rate.”

Was he ignorant of the bald facts of the matter? Though her marriage had clearly been made known to him, perhaps the details had been omitted. Just how much did he know?

“No. I should think not,” she said in an effort to find him out. “Though I daresay it has its advantages.”

“I have no doubt of it!” The look he gave her then made her squirm, though his answer told her nothing. “Forgive me for observing that you do not look quite the blissful bride. Your circumstances are improved, of course, but perhaps they are not so improved as you had hoped they might be.”

“I don’t know what you can mean, Mr. Wyndham.”

“You married him for love, then? Is that what you want me to believe?”

So he didn’t know of the money. It was a relief, but it also cast his insinuations, in a rather paltry light.

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“That, of course, can change.”

Imogen stopped. Accompanied or no, she would not go another step in this man’s presence. “Do you mean to follow us?” she demanded of him.

Wyndham, too, stopped and looked at her a long time. “No,” he said at last, and, squinting toward the horizon, he surveyed the boy who had now turned to see what had caused the delay. “I mean to take him myself and spare you the trouble.”

Without another word, without even waiting for her consent, or Charlie’s, he walked on. Catching up to him, he nudged the boy along rather more roughly than was necessary. And Imogen, though reluctant to leave Charlie in Wyndham’s care, gratefully returned to the house.

* * *

Sir Edmund’s bedchamber had once been a large and spacious library. It was so again, though now the books were piled in boxes, the boxes stacked one atop another, and all and sundry placed haphazardly and without much thought, in any nook, cranny, or pigeonhole that could quickly be found by a careless company of removers. The confusion, among other things, provided for Sir Edmund’s unusually foul mood.

“So the boy has gone home, has he?” he said, looking up from his desk, now awkwardly perched in one corner of the room, and pushed against the large bank of windows that had once been part of the upper cloisters. He was standing beside it and had, a moment ago, been looking over the plans for Imogen’s improvements. He was looking out the window now.

Archer followed his uncle’s gaze, then stood from the deal table at which he’d been working to look without. Imogen could just be seen returning. Appreciatively, he watched her—as his uncle watched him.

“I expect matters will progress now. Rather more quickly than otherwise. Now the boy is out of the way.”

Archer regretted the answer he must give. “She may be returning to her room, but the fact of the matter is a locked door stands between us.”

“Yes, but you have the key, do you not?”

“I gave it to her,” Archer answered plainly.

“How can you be such a dolt?” Sir Edmund said, throwing open his desk drawer and producing another key. “I certainly hope this is the greatest of your impediments.” He tossed the hard, cold object onto the desk, where Archer retrieved and then pocketed it without a word.

He prepared then to leave the room, but stopped and turned at the doorway. “I had thought,” he began and faltered. “I had thought that my having agreed to this would have won me a little more consideration.”

“You think this is all about you, do you? This is about a legacy. This is about preserving what is rightly ours. What will one day be yours, if you’ll only take some necessary pains to preserve it. When we are restored to respectable society, when all our debts are paid—to the loan agents, to the banks, to Society and the world—when you produce an heir, that’s when we’ll start talking about consideration and respect.”

Archer remained, silent, inwardly seething. His uncle went on.

“My father’s ruin was my ruin. We’ve held onto the Abbey only by the greatest of efforts and sacrifices. It’s all that’s left. And now, at last, we have the opportunity of restoring it all. Of restoring ourselves.”

“Thanks to her.”

“It will be, if she can manage it. I have my doubts. She’s a selfish, self-centred little thing, and she’d best learn her place and to be grateful in it.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“You heard me. Your wife has a responsibility now. You have a responsibility. If she does not learn her place, and live up to it, then it is up to you to see that she does. Put her in it if you must, but quit prevaricating around duty. If you were a man at all—

“Sir!”

A long silence followed.

“So I am to understand,” Archer began at last, and struggling for composure, “that my marriage did not only restore us to some semblance of prosperity, but was also meant to restore virtue and respectability to our name? To your name? She’s to make a house a home, to charm and woo Society to our door, to restore us in fortune as well as reputation?”

“And to secure it.”

“The image though. I presume you do not mean the reality.”

“You give her too much credit if you think her capable of so much as that.”

“Were she given leave to do it, I would think her capable of anything—were it the reality you wanted and not just the façade—were you willing to make some effort yourself.”

Sir Edmund gave him a warning look for this.

“So it is all on her?”

“As I said, I have my doubts.”

“You refer to her history. You know it then. Will you tell me?”

Sir Edmund turned back to his work.

“Sir?”

“Some things are best left alone, Archer. Sleeping dogs and all that.”

The same old answer. Archer opened the door to leave, but it was his uncle who stopped him this time.

“An heir, Archer! I want someone to leave my legacy to. Do you hear me?”

Archer stepped back inside and shut the door.

“I’m afraid it’s going to take time for that, sir. I’ll not be making any unreasonable demands of her. I promised to provide for her happiness, and I mean at least to try to keep that promise.”

“You’re a fool! I’ve no delusions she can be made happy under any circumstances,” Sir Edmund answered, becoming more irate as the conversation continued. “Even your mother was desperately unhappy. For all the efforts made for her, nothing could change that.”

Archer cringed to hear his mother spoken of so unfeelingly. And to think that Gina was next to receive his censure. Perhaps he had been wrong to think he could make her happy under such conditions.

“You can dash your brains out in the effort, but I’m telling you it’s to no purpose. If the house looks well, if she remembers her place—and keeps it—that’s good enough for me. But neither can she neglect her duty forever. And she won’t. You’ll attend to your responsibilities, you’ll provide me an heir, or I’ll find another.

Archer, livid, approached his uncle’s desk. “I won’t stand for this. I won’t listen to you speak of her as if she were little more than baggage acquired, some inconvenience set upon your doorstep with no thoughts or feelings of her own worth considering.”

“And if that’s what she is?”

“You’re the one who designed this. You’re the one who brought her here.”

“No! You did that. You agreed to the terms, remember. All of them. And you knew what this marriage was meant to do for us. To raise us. To rescue us. To make us what we ought to be.”

“Yes,” Archer said pointedly.

Sir Edmund seemed to consider the duality in this simple reply, and, at last grasping it, offered clarification. “The money, Archer, was what I meant.”

“Yes. I understood you. And she has so far been reminded every day since she’s returned that that was and is her greatest value to you, and consequently to me.”

“You have tried to convince her otherwise, I presume?”

“For me it is otherwise. You know that very well. In fact you counted on it. But she must be made to know it too.”

“Exactly so! So why do you shrink still from the responsibility you know you must take?”

Archer, breathless, answered in frustration. “Because that is not the way.”

“But you want it. I can see by the way you look at her that it’s all you think of. What are you waiting for?”

Archer simply stared at his uncle.

“Do you think she respects you for your forbearance?”

“She will. I believe she will.”

“More likely she’s laughing at you in your ineptitude. You’re not a man at all, are you, son?”

“Don’t call me that,” Archer said, turning away in disgust and approaching the door once more.

“Go to her, boy. Go to her and take some initiative for once in your sorry life.”

Archer could stand no more. He turned on his heel and left, though for where he was not quite certain. Perhaps another long walk was in order, or better, a long hard ride. He left the house, but stopped within the courtyard and turned back. What was he to do? There had to be a way to navigate between his uncle’s unreasonable demands and her reluctance to believe in him. If she would, if he could somehow prove himself, he knew, to the very centre of his soul, that all might be saved. And though he wanted to be away from the Abbey, to find some time to think, more than anything—more than food or air or life—he wanted her. He turned back toward the house.

* * *

In his old room Archer found his wife, predictably occupied in packing up his old things that she might prepare the room for a good cleaning, and for that which would shortly follow. For Charlie.

“Did the boy make it home all right?” he asked upon entering.

She glanced up at him. “Oh, yes,” she said. “That is, I think so.”

“You’re uncertain?”

“I met Mr. Wyndham on the way.”

That she had not met him before now had been a relief. Still, this news, though it ought not to have come as a surprise, did make Archer a trifle uneasy. “Oh?”

“He offered to take Charlie home, and I let him,” she said. “I hope it wasn’t unwise of me.

“No,” he answered, leaning against the doorway. “Wyndham will see him home safe, you need have no worries in that regard.”

She answered with a relieved though cautious smile. He continued to watch her, and to want her. She was here in his room, after all, where he had first learned of her presence in his house. He had been disappointed then. Disappointed that she had been beyond his reach. Far below it in fact. And here she was now. His, if only in name.

“Did he speak to you?” he asked her.

The silence that answered this did nothing to alleviate his anxiety. He approached her. “Will you tell me what he said to you?”

“Nothing of consequence, really.” Her manner, too dismissive, made him all the more anxious to know.

“He wasn’t disrespectful, I hope?”

“Does it really matter?”

“I think it does. Tell me.” This time it was more of a demand than a request.

“He asked me about the boy of course, and I told him,” she began, hesitantly, but then with apparent frustration, added, “He offered his congratulations… And he asked all manner of questions regarding our marriage: how it had come to be, what it was exactly that should recommend me where others had not been so fortunate...if I were happy.” Looking up, the merest glance, she added. “All of which I refused to answer.”

“You needn’t have.”

“It’s rather funny, actually.” She smiled, but he found nothing reassuring in the gesture.

“Why should his foul impertinence amuse you?”

“I’m not sure it does, in itself. But he seems to think I married you for your money rather than the other way around.”

“You didn’t enlighten him?”

“No. The illusion was apparently created, or maintained, I suppose, for a reason. I really could not care less what he believes. In fact I’d much rather preserve his misconception, though I cannot understand what it serves. Better he think me an avaricious mercenary than something to be bought and sold. I know very well I have been.”

Her hands, which had been busily folding some ragged and well-worn shirts, stilled as he placed his own upon them.

She met his gaze once more. The look in her eyes was one of shame and regret, induced by her own self-loathing, which had been adequately encouraged by the bare facts of the circumstances. The facts only moments before repeated in a room not far from this one.

Archer could think of nothing to say. Certainly nothing she was likely to believe, and eventually she drew away from him to stand at a nearby table, whereon she had been sorting through yet more clothes and books and odd remnants of a forgotten and half-lived childhood.

“Do you mind me packing up your old things?” she asked him, at last breaking the dreadful silence.

“No.”

“You do not mind Charlie having your room?”

“No. I only hope you won’t be disappointed by how seldom he’ll have the opportunity to use it.”

“Why shouldn’t he use it?”

“He has a home of his own. A family of his own.”

“A mother.”

“Yes.”

“But no father.”

Archer drew in a breath and came once more to stand beside her. “I’ve answered the question, Gina. And I’ve done it truthfully.”

“Who then? Can you tell me that?”

“No.”

“Why? It’s not because you don’t know.”

“Because it’s not my secret to tell.”

“Ah,” she said and turned back to her work.

“If you won’t believe me, no answer can matter.” He watched her a moment longer, her colour high, tingeing her cheek, her ears, her neck… “I think you’re afraid to trust me.”

She stood straight and did not look at him. “You’ve taught me that I ought not to do it.”

He raised a hand and gently touched her neck, that delicate, intimate place usually hidden by a cascade of dark curls. She turned from him, back to the chest of drawers where she continued the work just begun, removing from it its contents, shirts and waistcoats, ties and handkerchiefs. She opened another drawer to find nightshirts and undergarments, and shut it again with a slam.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked. The idea had occurred to him before. He was nearly certain of it now, and it troubled him greatly. “Are you?”

“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, perhaps.”

“Would you mind telling me why?”

Again, she was silent.

“I cannot fix this if you will not talk to me.”

“Can you fix it at all?” she answered, suddenly angry. “I’m not wanted here. I can see that. I’m a glorified servant. Nothing more.”

The enduring self-deprecation enraged him. Archer took her arm and turned her to face him.

“If you insist on lowering yourself, I cannot change that. But neither can I make you happy if you refuse to try. If you refuse to let me try. All I can do will never be enough if you don’t make some effort.”

She tore his arm from his grasp. “I’m not making an effort? Every day that I don’t scream with rage and frustration is a day you can be assured I have exercised every effort.”

“That’s what this marriage is to you?”

“I don’t know what it is yet. And I don’t believe you do, either.”

“I know what it could be. I know what I would like it to be.”

A long, thick silence descended between them. Her mouth opened and closed again.

“Say what you have to say.”

She hesitated a moment more. “You need an heir.”

She had veritably blurted it out, and the force of it, the accuracy of it, fairly levelled him. “What?”

“You need an heir. I heard Sir Edmund from his room when I returned this afternoon. I could not fathom the reasons for your persistence and then—”

“My reasons? What can you mean?”

“You had to marry money. I understand that. But I am alternately left to my own devices and accosted by your importuning. I could find no explanation for it, and then—”

“I thought you wanted some time to yourself. I’ve tried to respect that.”

“And yet you leer at me through windows—”

“What?”

“From doorways you watch me come and go, never a word, just watching, as though I had been placed here for your occasional entertainment.”

“Is that what you think? You truly believe that’s the extent of my regard?”

“Is that why you’ve come to me now? If you obey your uncle in all things, why not in this?” She thrust forth her hand, palm side up, her fingers fisted.

“What is this?”

“If that’s what you want, take it! Take me and—”

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him. Hard. “And what?” he said, his own emotion threatening to choke him as he saw the fear in her eyes. He waited for her answer.

It came, though it was little more than a whisper. “–and leave me alone.”

What she was asking was impossible. Neither was it possible she meant it. Tentatively she tried to reclaim her hand. He let it go and she took a step back from him.

He approached her once more to hold her head between his hands. He looked at her. Really looked. At her flushed face, her chest that heaved with each breath, the contours of her neck. Those lips, the bottom slightly fuller than the top. Her perfect nose.

Her eyes, flashing and darting, betrayed her uncertainty. She was afraid and yet… She made no effort now to free herself. But he had tried this before, to little effect. To ill effect. Everything in him wanted her at that moment, to have her near him, against him, in his arms. He wanted to love her and to be loved by her. And though she had said the words, though she was there within his reach, under his power should he wish to exert it, he was helpless to gain from her what he really wanted.

He had nothing to say, no reassurances to give. To attempt it now would be pointless. He released her and left the room and soon the house as well. On his way to who knew where. But he must be away. He had made her a promise. If he was to keep it, he simply had to put some distance between himself and the Abbey.

* * *

Imogen, after Archer’s hasty flight, found herself unable to hold together any longer. She sank down onto the floor and with her face buried in one of his old shirts—one that vaguely smelled of him—she released the tears of sorrow and anger, frustration and fear.

Yes, she was afraid of him, though not in the way she had feared others. Neither did she wish for him to take what she would not freely give. But the truth was, that whatever his right as her husband, she could not give what had already been taken. It was safer, far better to be that numb impenetrable woman she had determined to be. But he was equally determined to tear down her defences. Tear them down and leave. And he would leave again, for good, when he learned the truth. And he would learn it. One way or another.