Katherine Keenum (42 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Need

B
ack at his apartment, Edward took half an ounce of laudanum, not a high dose for a heavy user, but as much as he ever took at one time. Even with its aid, he could not wholly escape horror. He took another dose before going to bed. When he awoke nauseated on Tuesday morning, he took still more, the first time he had started a day with opium since he had left Cincinnati. He carried the tincture with him to the laboratory. All day long, a drug-induced indifference contended with his underlying despair. He skipped lunch. He was costive. He shrank from any thought of going to the Rue du Fleurus. In the evening, he sat with a letter from Jeanette unopened.

After posting the letter Tuesday morning, Jeanette had gone to class. All through October, working among Carolus’s chosen few had countered her worries about the portrait, about herself, about Edward. But it was no refuge that day. In the afternoon, she fretted, worrying aloud about whether Dr. Murer had made it home safely, whether he was ill, what would happen if he took too much laudanum. For once, Effie’s virginal encounters with the darker sides of life offered no perspective or comfort. “Oh, my. Poor man,” she kept saying. “This does change things.”

“It changes nothing!” insisted Jeanette. She kept her most nagging fear to herself: that he would simply desert her, that he already had.

On Wednesday, she sent another note and wondered what else she could do to reach him.
Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love
, Amy was fond of quoting to the lovelorn.
Nor will you, my girl
, she generally added.
Get to work.
What would Amy know? Jeanette went on to Carolus’s class with a tightened stomach; she only half attended to balancing masses and shadows, to getting the tones right. Her mind wandered. Once she found herself on the verge of tears. If a milksop like Abigail McLeod could elope, she angrily told herself, the least she could do was track down Edward, compel him to speak to her, feel his touch again. Her mind flew back again and again to overblown imaginary scenes. Impulsively, after class, she walked to the Parc Monceau. The building with his address checked her by its suave anonymity. She could hardly loiter on the doorstep. When she realized a man had noticed her on her second pass along the block, she left.

*   *   *

On Friday, when Edward awoke yet again to physical nausea and moral disgust, he lay with his eyes closed. He had failed to obey Jeanette’s summons; he had been unable to read her letter; he could not even remember on which day he had gone to pieces. His stupidity all fall haunted him. He had just enough grit left to bare his teeth at the snarling black dog. A nerve specialist was what he needed.

He had met a man named Latour at the Renicks’ house in June and gone to hear him lecture. One lecture only, after which Edward shunned further talk of madmen and illness. Now he would ask for an appointment as a patient. He would seek out Jeanette. He lay in his darkness, not doubting his path but lacking the will to rouse himself until, finally, a spasm of nausea drove him to sit up for at least a low dose of laudanum. Once up, he rang for strong coffee and a roll. He forced himself to eat breakfast and, somewhat to his own surprise, actually wrote Dr. Latour. His second thoughts after dispatching the request didn’t matter; it was on its way. At midday, Jeanette found him waiting for her on the Passage Stanislas.

He had never looked more forbidding, more hollow-eyed, more withdrawn. Her joy at sight of him was tinged by fright. As she came toward him, her face moved him as little else could in his present despondency.

“Is there somewhere we could go for lunch?” he asked.

“Père Cagniard’s,” said Miss Reade, stopping beside them. Edward mechanically lifted his hat. “If you join a throng, it’s the same as a chaperon, Palmer. Follow me.” She gave them a knowing look. “Take your time.”

Jeanette colored a little. “It’s the neighborhood café. All of Carolus’s students go there, even the girls at lunch sometimes. Will that do?”

“I’d be pleased to see you in your world.”

It was the kind of thing Edward said, but he sounded so abstracted that Jeanette doubted that he meant it this time. “We won’t really be able to talk.”

“I don’t have a lot to say.”

Actually, you’ve got a lot to explain, she thought, suddenly rebellious to the point of anger now that she had him back.

The restaurant was noisy; artists’ gear propped against chair legs could trip the unwary. By the time they entered, Miss Reade had allowed her table to fill. With a restaurateur’s quick appraisal of what a new customer required, M. Cagniard found them a small table for two in the back room. He recommended the
plat du jour
, promised to bring some good wine, and left them to themselves.

“Am I allowed to ask where have you been?” asked Jeanette.

“Doping.”

She shrank down and bit the inside of her lower lip. “Edward . . .”

Père Cagniard reappeared with two glasses and a bottle, which he uncorked. Edward took the ritual sip and approved. “Unless you would rather have lemonade?” he asked, belatedly, after the
patron
had left.

“In this crowd?” Jeanette tried to joke.

“Very well, then—
santé
.”

“Santé.”
Their glasses
tinked
, and Jeanette added, hesitantly, “To the recovery of your very good health, Edward.”

“I’m going to try, Jeanette.”

On his way over, Edward had wondered what he hoped to accomplish by seeking her out. Now, for a moment, he felt that contentment might simply be a matter of beholding her face across from him. If she had been in a lovestruck trance, it might have been, for a while. But as hard as she tried to meet his gaze steadily, she was filled with uncertainties and questions. His chin sank. With delicate fingertips pushing its base, he turned his wineglass on the tablecloth. There was still precision in his movements.

Jeanette waited. Around them, conversation hummed in the jovial, chivying tones of clever young people taking a break from work. Nobody noticed the silence at Jeanette and Edward’s obscure table, not even the waitress who slapped down a basket of bread in passing. Jeanette tore off a piece.

“Bread?” she asked, nudging the basket toward Edward. He glanced up as if startled, then shook his head. She took a bite; she was hungry. “Is there something . . . ?” She did not know how to finish her question: on your mind? that I can do?

“I had been planning to ask you to marry me.”

She stopped chewing. “And now you are not.”

“How can I?”

Tears of chagrin filled Jeanette’s eyes. “And how can I ask, why not?” she choked out. “It wouldn’t be ladylike!” She grasped the edge of the table to push her chair back and flee.

“Jeanette!” Leaning forward, he clutched at her hand before she could rise. “Don’t go yet. Please, not yet.”

“Why should I stay?” she demanded in a shaken voice.

For answer, Edward could only gaze at her. “I can’t think of a single reason.” His bleakness had told Cornelia Renick much, but not all. It told Jeanette nothing that she could have put into words, but enough. Little by little, her spine relaxed, her shoulders dropped.

“I’m no bargain,” said Edward, “but thank you.”

“Leaving me out of it, Edward, what is it you need?”

“If we leave you out of it, there’s nothing left.”

The tears in the corner of her eyes flooded again. “Then what can I do?”

His hands went back to the wineglass. He hung his head. “I hated breaking down in front of you the other day.”

“It was hard on both of us. But, Edward, it was worse for me when you just disappeared again, so much worse.”

“Was it?”

“Of course, it was! I didn’t know what had happened. I imagined, oh,
dire
things and—” Her voice became small. “I thought maybe you just didn’t want to see or hear from me.”

“Always I want to see you, Jeanette, always—except that sometimes now I can’t desire a thing, not a single damn thing. And when my mind is clear at all, it’s full of shame.”

“I worried that you had taken too much laudanum, Edward. Doctors prescribe opium for pain and nerves, I know that; but I also know that too much can kill you.”

“And you would mind that?”

“Oh, how can you ask?”

*   *   *

Unsure until he got there whether he would keep his appointment with the nerve specialist, Edward went. At the end of the initial consultation, Dr. Latour told him to come back and prescribed a regimen of laudanum sufficient to maintain his equilibrium while they probed further. A few sessions later, he offered the opinion that Edward was neither degenerate nor insane but cautioned that a return to full health would take time. He warned against solitude and recommended a gradual reduction of the drug on a fixed schedule. Edward dutifully cut his dosage by small increments and tried to believe that past failures to follow exactly this course at his own initiative implied nothing about the chance of success under supervision.

After the first, lost week of neglect, he did not disappear again. With Dr. Latour’s approval, he adjusted the timing of his daily intake of laudanum to be at his most calm and alert in the late afternoon, which was the best time for him to fence or to pay the social calls that were intended to keep him from brooding too much. Effie knew always to be at home by four thirty, when he was likely to stop in. She had wrestled with her conscience, wondering whether she should discourage the attachment; but Christian compassion, her romantic heart, and a disinclination to take strong actions in almost any circumstance held her in check. If any of Jeanette’s friends were visiting, Edward was soon gone; but when the two ladies were alone, he might join them at the Duval restaurant for supper. Compared to Cincinnati eateries, it was gourmet dining, he said. Sometimes he remembered to ask them to go with him to a better restaurant, which took up more time. Seeing Jeanette was the filament holding him together, he believed—until it no longer sufficed.

In the wet gloom of November evenings, he shivered. More than once as he sneaked an extra dose, he caught himself thinking that if only he could reach Sophie’s kindly hands—! If only—then what? Half-felt longing was not even an emotion, much less a prescription for what might help, yet the shadow of memory held a clue. He knew that the one thing he could still be said wholeheartedly to enjoy was a steaming shower and a massage from Ahmed after one of the rounds he doggedly pursued at M. Artaud’s
salle d’armes
.

Toward the end of the month, he raised the question of a rest cure. Dr. Latour agreed it might be helpful and recommended a private hospital outside Paris. No, said Edward; he needed the sun. Dr. Latour tapped his pen thoughtfully. In that case, he had a suggestion: a colleague, who like himself had studied medicine at Montpellier, Dr. Leon Aubanel. Aubanel was deeply interested in the workings of the mind and took a few residential patients into his care at a small sanatorium beside a thermal spring in the town of L’Estaque, west of Marseilles. Latour would make inquiries about an opening.

Edward, too, made inquiries. Little by little, Cornelia had surmised a great deal about his condition without ever pressing; now he asked her whether she had ever chanced to hear of Dr. Aubanel when she was in Provence. She had not but set Marius to checking. In a few days a report came back: somewhat idiosyncratic, but respected, no quack. If his health required such a place, Cornelia advised him to go.

*   *   *

Toward the end of the month, Effie brought word from the McAll Mission that Mr. Winkham, whose studies ended in December, had been offered a post at the Royal London Hospital, starting in January.

“Oh, no,” said Jeanette. “I mean, it’s good for him, but . . .” She seldom saw him but thought of him as a friend. His departure would leave a hole in her Paris. She and Effie invited him for tea on the last day of November, a Sunday, and asked Amy, Sonja, and the Reade sisters to join them to make it more festive, along with Edward and a few other men to keep Winkie from feeling engulfed by women. Rather to Jeanette’s surprise, Edward accepted.

He went early to settle into obscurity before the room filled. When Winkie came over to his corner to shake hands, Edward could practically see his train of thought as he connected constricted pupils to their discussion of Miss Dolson. With a slight jerk of his head, Edward blinked confirmation.

Before he had need to say any more, Jeanette and Amy joined them, laughing.

“Winkie,” said Jeanette, “Amy has had an idea. When I told her I didn’t have so much as a sketch of you to remember you by—”

“I proposed Round Robin. Now, don’t look skeptical, lad,” said Amy. “All you have to do is pose at your ease.” She turned to the rest of the room. “Pencils out, everyone! Round Robin.”

The game involved sitting in a circle, passing sketchbooks around in one direction and changing seats in the other. Played at a fast pace, it elicited much noise, scrambling, and rapid drawing.

“You can sit it out with Cousin Effie,” said Jeanette, in a low voice to Edward, “but please stay.”