Grahame, Lucia (24 page)

"Whatever are you waiting for?" she asked.

I stared at her.

"Hurry and get out of that ugly dress," she commanded.

My husband had fallen back into his lounging attitude upon the
sofa and was gazing moodily at the carpet with his chin on his hand. Now he
lifted his head.

"Lady Camwell is accustomed to dressing and undressing with
the help of a maid," he said. "Perhaps you could send for
Hélène."

"Oh no!" I cried instantly.

"Well then?" he said, and extended his hand toward me in
a small, imperious gesture that told me to do as Madame had ordered. And so I
did.

Madame Rullier embarked upon her mission to transform me into a
charming blossom by energetically tightening the laces of my white corset.
Vanity prevented me from protesting—it piqued me to think my waist was not
small enough to suit the fashionable Madame Rullier. In the end, feeling
extremely weak and ill used, for I had had no breakfast and very little lunch
and was now to be deprived even of the sustenance of air, I could not quite
repress a pathetic little sob as she gave the strings one final vigorous jerk
before preparing to knot them.

"For God's sake, Aurore, don't hurt her!" exclaimed my
husband sharply, starting to rise.

Madame Rullier bridled, dropped the laces, and turned to him with
an exasperated sigh.

"You
told
me the effect you wanted," she reproved
him.

I took a huge, thirsty breath as the whalebone released my rib
cage.

"Yes, but that is hardly any reason to bind her so
cruelly," said my husband, leaning back. His voice was placid now, and yet
I sensed that he was still highly displeased. "Her waist is already
smaller than I like them, and her back is very straight. You might as well
dispense with the corset altogether."

"Shall I, then?" said Madame, as if she regarded this as
a most interesting commission.

"Certainly not," I interposed quickly. "Only do be
good enough to leave me a little room to breathe."

Madame Rullier, however, was not about to take her instructions
from me. She looked to my husband; he nodded.

She tied the laces then, without yanking on them any further. Next
she produced a tape from the sewing box at her feet and began to measure me.

"Your estimates were nearly perfect," she told my
husband approvingly when at last she had finished. "I shall have to make
only the smallest alterations."

He must have had my measurements from the maker of my riding
habits, but nevertheless his expression suggested that he was rather pleased
with himself.

"That's a man of science for you," I said. "He has
an eye like a caliper."

My husband fixed that cold eye on me.

"I fear I waited rather too long to take
your
measure," he said.

Madame looked with disapproval from one of us to the other. I had
an uneasy premonition that she was about to take us both to task for our
charmlessness.

As Madame Rullier was completing her alterations to my new
wardrobe, my husband inquired about some other items he had ordered and which
he hoped were now ready.

"Hélène will show them to you," said Madame Rullier out
of one side of her mouth—the other was full of pins.

My husband rose and left us. As soon as he was away, Madame Rullier's
manner toward me grew curt.

"Voil
à
,"
she said with no
enthusiasm as she cut the last thread and turned me toward one of the mirrors I
had been studiously avoiding.

"Well, have you nothing to say?" she demanded, after
taking the pins from her mouth. If I had been expecting her to tell me how
magnificent I looked, I would have been sorely disappointed. If she had been
waiting for me to express my gratitude for the miracle she had wrought, she
must have been equally so.

"You do not like me," I heard myself say, although I had
never intended to voice this conviction.

"And what of it? I am only a poor dressmaker." I thought
her humility extremely specious. "And"—she gestured toward the
looking glass—"as you can see, I do not allow my prejudices to interfere
with my work. Had I loved you with all my heart," she concluded with
another burst of the appalling candor she seemed to find so difficult to curb,
"I could not have dressed you more beautifully."

"But you like my husband," I persisted, to my own astonishment.

She tilted her head and our eyes met in the glass. Hers were
narrowed. She pressed her lips together.

Finally she said in a most unrevealing tone, "What kind of
woman would not?"

I shifted my gaze.

Madame bent and began returning her needle packet, her pincushion,
and her spools of thread to her meticulously arranged sewing basket.

At this moment my husband returned. The trace of a sparkle
lingered in his eye, as if he had witnessed something delightful.

"Were you pleased with what Hélène showed you?" inquired
Madame Rullier eagerly, lavishing upon him all the warmth she had withheld from
me.

"Oh very," he assured her.

But then he cast a critical gaze in my direction, and his
expression grew frosty.

"Do you not like it?" asked Madame.

"I like it very well," said my husband. "It is most
becoming. Perhaps not quite as dazzling as some of the others, but I think that
may make the transition from drabness a little less trying for her."

I was wearing a mustard-colored jacket and skirt, made of blended
silk and mohair; they were trimmed with black braid and cut with almost brutal
simplicity. It was, in fact, precisely the severity of the cut which made this
costume, as well as all the others, so striking. They were perfectly
unobjectionable and the very height of fashion, and yet I felt almost queasy
with self-consciousness at the thought of going anywhere in them.

The garments I now wore could certainly be numbered among the more
subdued of my new habiliments. Most of the others were even more spectacular:
suits and dresses of indigo, magenta, myrtle, cerise, and marigold; blouses of
goldenrod, quince, mignonette, peach, and rose. Even the most brilliant tones
could not be faulted; they could have been achieved only by means of the very
richest vegetable dyes, for they had none of the gaudiness of aniline.

I started to remove the jacket.

"Leave it on," said my husband.

I eased it back over my shoulders obediently as he continued with
a laugh, "Surely you were not about to insult Madame Rullier by exchanging
her splendid creation for
this!"

With his back to me, he picked up my ancient dress from the chair
where it had been lying. For a second I thought I saw his reflected image press
it to his lips, but in the next instant he had turned and was holding it out at
arm's length.

"Shall I have that wrapped with the others?" asked
Madame Rullier in a mocking tone.

"You may burn it, for all I care," said my husband,
letting it fall.

I felt a pang. It was, after all, my dress. It had shaped itself
to my very flesh and—as I had not used perfume for years—was faintly imbued
with my natural scent. No one could defend it as pretty, but it was sturdy and
had served me well.

"No," I said. I bent to retrieve the forsaken gown from
the floor. "It is mine and I am fond of it, even if you are not."

My husband shrugged.

"Have it wrapped with the others then," he told Madame
Rullier.

She wrinkled her nose at the feel of the fabric as she took it
from my hands.

"What is the thing made of—haircloth?" she muttered to
herself.

"If it were," remarked my husband in barely audible
tones when we were alone, "I'd
make
you wear it. Day—and
night."

Rather than dwelling on the curious little frisson triggered by
this unpleasant suggestion, I merely let my face express how disagreeable I
found it. Then I looked unhappily at my image in the looking glass. I might
have been wearing haircloth already: I could hardly bear to think how
conspicuous I would feel the instant I left the fitting room.

I had never disliked attracting attention and admiration as
Frederick's wife. Despite my air of reserve, I had enjoyed it. But now I shrank
from the interest of strangers. Surely any eyes I might draw would easily
discern both from my mien and from the obvious constraint between me and my
husband that not for love had I become Lady Camwell. To dress boldly and
expensively, I considered, would be to flaunt my price tag like a banner.

Oh, how my grandmother would have loved my new costumes, I
reflected suddenly with bitterness. Yes, that was what I hated about them: they
were so relentlessly a la mode. They made me look like a prized and haughty
courtisane,
so well kept and so well appointed as to outshine respectable ladies in
tastefulness as well as splendor.

"Shall we go," said my husband, making a statement of
it, not a question.

But I did not obey. Overcome by exhaustion, I sank into the
armchair where my old, scorned gown had lately lain. Even as I rested my
burning forehead on my palm, a glimpse into one of the mirrors told me that my
handsome apparel had given my attitude more panache than pathos. I could expect
little sympathy from my husband.

"Well?" he prodded me.

I lifted my head.

"You
do
look rather faint," he said.
"Perhaps you need air. No—don't try to stand."

He opened a window; it gave out upon a pretty walled garden that
lay under an overcast sky. The damp, cool breeze that drifted in carried on it
that rich odor so redolent of spring, the scent of moist and fecund earth that
proclaims the thaw, the end of winter, the promise of new life. A greenfinch
caroled joyfully among the bud-tipped branches of a fruit tree.

"I am better now," I said, getting to my feet after a
moment or two. "It's only that—" I stopped. I was famished now, but I
disliked expressing to my husband even the simplest physical need.

"Well?" he demanded.

As I hesitated, my stomach decided that it could wait no longer
for my reluctant lips to voice its desires. It issued its own unmistakable
complaint.

My husband began to laugh.

"It
does
seem that it is now your fate to have your
appetites declare themselves however much you try to deny them," he said.
"Let us hope this state of affairs will continue."

I glared at him hatefully.

"Come," he said, offering me his arm. "There is a
very pleasant tearoom not far from here."

I left the fitting room with mingled feelings. I was grateful for
his arm and for the prospect of nourishment, furious at the implication of his
remark about my appetites, and both puzzled and faintly alarmed at how well the
new tenor of our relationship seemed to agree with him.

As we were about to depart from Madame Rullier's establishment,
Hélène scampered up with a large parcel and breathlessly inquired of my husband
what he wished her to do with it. She was unnervingly pretty.

"Why, have it sent along with the others, of course," my
husband told her, shaking his head with a smile. "Just as I told you
earlier."

Hélène blushed and twinkled.

In the tearoom, when I was certain that no one could overhear us
and once the edge of my hunger had been dulled, I asked, "So. Was that one
of your mistresses?"

"Who?" my husband responded in a disbelieving tone,
"Madame Rullier?" And then, more softly and with a smile, "Or
her lovely niece? And why on earth do
you
want to know?"

"It was an idle question," I said. "It's nothing to
me
where you go crawling."

He gave me a hard stare, then leaned toward me and said very
softly, "I hope that I would never be so unkind to a lover as to require
her to attend upon my high-minded wife. I
will
tell you, however, that I
cannot promise the opposite."