The Wayward Muse (18 page)

“My presence would spoil it,” protested Jane.

“Nonsense,” said Rossetti. “The contrast in your looks is marvelous.”

“The compliment is yours, Jane,” said Lizzie. “And the reproof mine.”

“Nonsense,” said Rossetti again. “Neither side of the coin is superior to the other. The dark must have the light, the strong the weak, the sharp angle the soft curve.” He guided Jane to a place next to Lizzie on the chaise and went to his easel.

Lizzie closed her eyes. “As soon as the child has come, I will resume my drawing,” she said. Rossetti and Jane exchanged a look. Neither of them had thought otherwise.

“I’m composing a new poem,” said Rossetti. “For the book of verse I hope to publish next year. It is called ‘Genius in Beauty.’” He paused expectantly.

“Will you recite it to us?” asked Jane dutifully.

“With pleasure,” he said.

When Jane left Lizzie pressed her hand. “Send your irritating, overly attentive husband to visit me,” she said. “I’m sure I can find some use for him.”

The next time Jane visited, she found Lizzie lying on the sofa, her face white and her eyes wide with panic.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, the words making her fear concrete. Tears welling, she was frantically pressing her distended belly here and there.

Jane was alarmed. “What is it?” she said.

“It’s not moving,” Lizzie said. “It hasn’t moved since yesterday. I’ve been lying here listening and feeling for it, but there’s nothing.”

“Perhaps it’s gone to sleep,” said Jane. “They do that, you know, just like babies.”

“No,” sobbed Lizzie.

“Should I call the doctor?” asked Jane.

Lizzie could not speak but she nodded.

Jane ran into the hall and wrote two notes, which she gave to the maid to deliver: one to the doctor, one to Rossetti at his club.

The doctor came and listened. He, too, suspected that something was very wrong. “There’s nothing to be done,” he said. “We must wait and see.”

Jane could hardly bear to look at Lizzie. Rossetti, too, stood at the window looking out, as if he could not face the scene inside.

“So I am to carry a dead baby around inside me?” Her voice was very low and calm now but her eyes were anguished. Then she began to moan, a throbbing, pounding sound that got louder and louder and wracked her entire body. Jane looked at the doctor pleadingly. The doctor’s face was impassive.

“You must calm her down,” he said to Rossetti. “The hysteria will only make it worse.” He gave Rossetti a prescription for laudanum and left the house.

“Shall I go?” asked Jane, feeling that she was intruding on a moment that should be between a woman and her husband. But Rossetti grabbed her arm.

“Stay with her, please,” he said. “I’ll go fill this.” And he ran from the room with the prescription, leaving Jane with the wailing Lizzie.

“My baby’s dead,” she sobbed.

“You don’t know that,” said Jane, who felt sure it was true and wished that she, too, could cry. It was agony to sit there with her friend, but she couldn’t leave her alone. When Rossetti returned they gave Lizzie the laudanum and soon she was asleep.

Lizzie waited out the next few weeks in a drug-induced stupor. When at last she went into labor, it was very difficult. Jane and Emma Brown held her hands as she screamed. When it was over, it was as everyone expected. The baby was dead, the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Jane went to tell Rossetti.

“Is she going to die?” he asked, stumbling toward Jane and nearly falling into her arms. He was very drunk. Jane caught him by the shoulders and stood him upright.

“She’s not,” said Jane doubtfully. “She’s stronger than you think.”

“I know she’s going to die,” Rossetti said. “Everyone I love is being taken from me, and I deserve it.” He put his head in his hands and slid slowly to the floor.

Jane would never forget the dead child, perfectly formed, that the doctor brought to Rossetti wrapped in a blanket. Except for a strange bluish cast to its skin it looked as if it were merely sleeping.

“Your daughter,” the doctor said. Rossetti groaned and turned away, refusing to take the bundle. Jane led him to a chair and he fell into it.

“My wife?” he asked with dread.

“I’ve given her a sleeping draft,” said the doctor. “She’ll sleep for eight or ten hours.” He spoke as much to Jane as to Rossetti. “After that, watch for heavy bleeding or signs of fever.”

Rossetti began to cry.

“Pull yourself together, man,” said the doctor. “For your wife’s sake if not your own.” He went over the procedures. Rossetti had to sign a form. Then he left.

“What will I say to her when she wakes up?” Rossetti asked Jane desperately.

“I don’t suppose you have to say anything,” said Jane. “Just sit with her, that’s enough.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m frightened. I’m frightened of my own wife.” So it was Jane who went in to Lizzie. Jane was not sure how much of the ordeal her friend remembered. She took Lizzie’s hand.

“How do you feel?” Jane asked. Lizzie turned her sad golden eyes to Jane.

“Is the baby dead?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jane said. She felt tears welling up but tried to control them, telling herself that it would not help Lizzie. “It was a little girl.”

“Where is she?” Lizzie asked. “I want to see her.”

“The doctor took her away,” said Jane. At this Lizzie began to howl. Jane heard the door to the next room shut; Rossetti had left, unable to listen to his wife’s screams.

“I want to see my baby,” she sobbed. “Bring her to me.”

Jane told her that it was better, that it would only hurt her to see the dead baby, but in her heart she was not so sure. She thought that if it had been her dead baby, she would want to see it, too.

The doctor returned the next day. Considering what she’d just gone through, physically Lizzie was better than he expected. Her skin was cool and the bleeding minimal. However, the hand he took to feel her pulse was limp. The eyes he looked into were glassy and unfocused.

“You’re young,” said the doctor impatiently. “You’ll have another child.”

Lizzie said nothing.

“Many a woman has gone through it,” he said, but Lizzie did not seem to hear him. She was staring out of the window, her face turned away.

“You must reason with her,” the doctor said to Rossetti. “You must make her want to recover. You artists are so dramatic and self-indulgent. This isn’t the end of the world.”

There was no funeral. The body was discreetly disposed of. It was as if she had never been.

When Jane came to visit her, Lizzie was always sitting in the same chair, staring out of the window. Her face was expressionless, but Jane could not bear to look into her eyes.

“Beatrice,” she said dully. “We were going to name her Beatrice.”

“It’s better not to speak of it,” said Jane miserably. That was what the doctor had said.

“How can it be better?” cried Lizzie. “How can it be better to pretend that she never was?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane. Being there with her friend was agony, but there was no one else who could visit and nowhere else the Rossettis could go. Georgie was pregnant now, too, and Emma Brown had three little ones. Lizzie could not come to Red House because Jenny was there.

On her next visit Lizzie was in her usual place, but she was rocking her heavy chair back and forth.

“Hush,” she said when Jane came in. “You’ll wake the baby.”

Jane was horrified. She did not know what to say. Had Lizzie lost her mind?

A
FTER
the loss of the baby, Jane did not see Rossetti for several weeks. She knew that he wasn’t painting and was spending most of his time walking along the Thames and drinking at his club. Jane thought this brooding was unhealthy, so she was relieved when, one afternoon, more than a month after the baby’s death, she got a note asking her to come and model for him. His latest project was a triptych entitled
The Seed of David,
and he had no one to pose for the Virgin. Jane wondered why Lizzie was not sitting for him, but supposed she was still too physically fragile to sit for long periods. It had been some time since Jane had modeled. She had assumed that once she was married, she would not do it again.

“Is it all right if I sit for Rossetti tomorrow?” she asked Morris in bed that night. She half-expected him to voice some objection, tell her it wasn’t proper.

“Why not?” Morris said. “If you’d like to. But perhaps you don’t want to be away from Jenny?”

“The nurse can manage her for a few hours,” said Jane.

“It will be good for you to get out,” said Morris. “You should walk to the station. The air and exercise will brighten your spirits.” He set his book down and began to massage her shoulders. “Poor Jane,” he said. “I know how much you feel the loss of Lizzie’s baby.”

Jane sighed. There was nothing to do but let him comfort her.

The day Jane came Lizzie was out, visiting her mother. Rossetti draped a gauzy scarf over Jane’s head and stretched her neck out in the pose he most liked her in.

Since her marriage Jane had tried hard not to think of Rossetti, and she had mostly succeeded. But now the artist’s guiding touch on her throat made her catch her breath. She had forgotten how soft his hands were, how sensual his touch.

“How is Lizzie?” she asked, to keep herself from thinking such things.

Rossetti sighed. “Not very well,” he said. “The hallucinations have stopped, thank God, but her spirits are very low. She doesn’t sleep at night and then she is listless all day.”

“You must try to have another baby,” said Jane, practically. It was what everyone had been thinking but was too delicate to say.

“Dr. Branwell thinks so, too,” said Rossetti. “When she is feeling better, perhaps.”

“She may never feel better unless she has another baby,” said Jane. “You shouldn’t wait.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Rossetti. He stopped drawing and closed his eyes for a moment. “The subject is a melancholy one, do you mind if we change it? What is your ridiculous husband up to these days?”

She could not tell him that the confident way Morris played with Jenny made her feel horribly inadequate. She could not tell him that there were days when she wanted to throw the soup tureen at his head, to get him to shut up about stained glass. She could not tell him that the night before, her husband had made love to her and that she had swallowed her disgust at his increasing girth.

“He is designing wallpaper,” she said instead.

“I imagine he will be good at it,” said Rossetti, “unless he tries one of those Chinese wallpapers with figures moving across the landscape.”

“He’s drawing flowers,” she said. “Daisies, climbing roses, sunflowers. And fruit. He says that the wallpapers today are too geometric and stiff, that he wants to be reminded of the outdoors when he looks at them.” It was not so much that she objected to his making wallpaper, or that she thought his ideas were wrong. Mainly she resented his preoccupation. It was obvious not only that he was quite happy and content but that he had no idea how miserable she was.

“So much industry!” Rossetti said. “The man has more energy than three other men. And yet less inspiration than almost anyone.”

It was just what Jane felt, and she was relieved to hear Rossetti say it. But Jane knew she was being disloyal and tried not to give in to the temptation to speak ill of her husband.

“Why is Lizzie not modeling for the Virgin?” Jane asked instead.

“I’m going to use her for the adoring angels, but I’m working from old sketches. She has no interest in sitting for me. That would involve spending time with me.” Rossetti sounded petulant and hurt.

“You must be patient with her,” said Jane. “Think of what she’s been through”

“That is just what I can’t allow myself to think of. When I do I want to throw myself in the river. It is all my fault.”

“You are too hard on yourself,” said Jane.

“Besides,” said Rossetti, “you have a more earthy quality, which is what I need for Mary, and more Semitic coloring. Despite what the Renaissance painters did, we both know that Mary wasn’t blond.”

“But the angels were,” said Jane.

“Aren’t the angels and the gods always blond?” said Rossetti.

The Firm was going to move its headquarters from Red Lion Square to Red House. Georgie and Ned had agreed to come and live with Jane and William. Georgie had just had a little boy, Philip, and Jane was already expecting another child. The two women could watch the children together, or take turns to give the other some leisure time.

“It will be such a relief,” said Georgie. “For Ned’s health, I mean,” she added quickly. Since the day she had broken down, she had not so much as hinted at the affair.

“Yes, our husbands will be very happy,” said Jane wryly. Georgie’s reticence was very frustrating because Jane longed to unburden herself to her friend, to confide her feelings about her husband. But even if she could, Jane knew that Georgie would be shocked and grieved to hear how Jane felt. She would counsel patience, and forgiveness, and she would make Jane feel horribly guilty. If Georgie would only admit the troubles in her marriage, Jane felt that she would be more understanding.

“I only wish that Lizzie could have the benefit as well, but Rossetti refuses to leave London,” said Georgie, with a little frown.

Lizzie looked tired and worn when Jane went to see her. “Our arguments are terrible,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the things I find myself saying. You don’t think I’m a horrid person, do you?”

“Of course not,” said Jane reluctantly. She wished she could think Lizzie a horrid person; it would make everything so much easier.

“Because I really am horrid to him,” Lizzie said.

“Are you working again?” asked Jane, knowing that talking about drawing was the one thing that made Lizzie smile.

“No,” said Lizzie. “I’m still forbidden. I think if he would let me draw again, I could stop hating him for what happened.”

“When your health is better,” said Jane. Each time she visited, she hoped Lizzie would tell her she was expecting again, but she never did.

“My health won’t be better until I start drawing again,” said Lizzie. She glanced over at Jane and her eyes lit up with an artist’s delight in beauty.

“The way the light is hitting your face, you look like a goddess in some Roman wall painting. No wonder my husband loves to paint you!”

“He loves to paint you, too,” Jane said.

“I’ve been usurped, in art and in life,” Lizzie said sardonically. “The only thing for me now is a lingering and romantic death by consumption.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lizzie,” said Jane. She turned the conversation toward Roman wall paintings. She knew little about them, but it was a much safer subject.

A week later Jane and Morris were awakened by the insistent ring of the bell. Hastily they threw on their dressing gowns and went downstairs. It was a telegram from London. Jane waited with dread while Morris paid the messenger and scanned the message.

“We’re wanted at Rossetti’s,” Morris read. His face was grim.

“What is it?” said Jane fearfully. She realized that she couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Rossetti.

“It’s Lizzie,” said Morris. “She’s not expected to live until the morning.”

Jane was not supposed to be seen in public so visibly pregnant, but she went back upstairs and began to dress. Morris did not try to stop her, but found a loose coat for her to wear.

On the way to the train station, Jane tried to think what could have happened. Lizzie had been ill much of the time she had known her, it was true, but it had never seemed life threatening. She was thin, and her lungs were weak, but she had muddled along with that for years. Was it a pregnancy, perhaps such an early one that they had not told their friends of it yet? Had there been some horrible complication?

I just saw her, thought Jane in anguish. She was perfectly well. But then she thought of the fights with Rossetti, and Lizzie’s tone when she spoke of being usurped, and her heart lurched.

“Poor Rossetti,” said Morris, and with horror Jane thought of him. How must he be feeling now?

Maybe she’ll live, thought Jane. Maybe it’s not as bad as the telegram made it sound.

When they arrived at the house, Rossetti’s brother William was there. The doctor had just left. Ford Madox Brown had been sitting with Rossetti but had gone to alert the Burne-Joneses.

William Rossetti shook his head in response to their anxious, questioning looks. “The doctor said there’s nothing more to be done. He’s injected her stomach with water, but if enough of the stuff is already in her blood…we must wait and see.”

Jane went into the room where Lizzie lay. Jane’s eye immediately went to the vials on the bedside table, eight or nine of them, lined up in a row. Rossetti sat at Lizzie’s bedside, holding her hand. There was a stain on the front of her dress, which the meticulous Lizzie would never have allowed. Otherwise she did not look as if she were dying, only as if she were asleep.

“Feel how cold her hand is,” said Rossetti.

Jane sat across the bed from him and took Lizzie’s other hand. It was indeed ice-cold.

“She breathes very seldom,” said Rossetti. “I think she’s gone and then I’ll see the faintest movement. It’s been like this for hours.”

“What happened?” asked Jane. She thought she knew, now, at least in part, but wanted to be sure. Rossetti dropped Lizzie’s hand and buried his head in the bedclothes.

“I murdered her,” he said.

Jane gasped. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“We went out to dinner. She was very tired. And then in the carriage home we quarreled,” Rossetti said. “I went out. I was angry. I didn’t come home until very late. And I found her like this”—he pointed to the unconscious Lizzie—“with empty bottles of laudanum everywhere.”

Jane, who had been imagining Rossetti imprisoned in gaol, where he was chained to a wall and where his hair grew long and gray and his body became filthy and wasted, sighed with relief. Whatever else he was, Rossetti was no murderer.

“How did you come to have so much of it in the house?” Jane asked, not able to completely conceal her shock at the number of bottles.

“The doctor gave it to her,” said Rossetti, “to help her sleep. Lately she’d been taking more and more of it. But she never had any trouble.”

“It must have been an accident,” said Jane.

“She did it to punish me,” said Rossetti.

When Jane left Lizzie and Rossetti and went back into the sitting room, she found her husband deep in conversation with William Rossetti.

“My God,” she heard her husband say, “this can’t be known.”

“What is it?” she asked.

Morris held out a scrap of paper to Jane. “When he arrived home tonight, Gabriel found this.”

It can’t go on,
the note read:

So it was true. Jane folded the note and handed it back to her husband. She hardly knew what to think or feel.

“But to destroy it,” said William Rossetti. “It’s so disrespectful.”

“It’s the only way. It’s Lizzie I’m thinking of. If there’s no saving her life, we must at least save her reputation. She must have a Christian burial. And Gabriel…”

“It would ruin his life, if it got out,” said William Rossetti.

“Exactly.”

Bolstered by Morris’s opinion, William Rossetti burned the note that Lizzie had written to his brother.

The shops were opening when Lizzie took her last breath. The doctor agreed to ascribe her death to accidental laudanum poisoning. Suicide was a cause of death to be avoided at all costs. And as she had left no note, who was to say that it wasn’t an accident?

Lizzie looked very beautiful in the mahogany casket lined with white silk. Her hair still glowed like a precious metal. She wore the lace dress in which Rossetti had married her, and a locket he had given her. Jane looked into Lizzie’s empty marble face for some clue as to where she was now, but there was none. Her expression was neutral. Wherever she was, it was far away from her body and her friends. Jane saw that Rossetti’s knees were buckling as he walked toward the casket. He would have fallen if his brother had not been supporting him. She saw that he held a sheaf of papers in his hand and she could not think what they were. Then, in horror, she realized what he was going to do. She wanted to stand up and scream at him to stop, but it was already too late. The papers fell from his hand and into the casket.