The Wayward Muse (24 page)

W
HEN
they returned from Germany, Jane did not feel much better, but she tried to pretend that she did. Morris worked furiously to finish the second and third volumes of
The Earthly Paradise,
and one day Jane found a brand-new copy of the second installment on the table in her sitting room. She opened it and began to read:

It was too painful to go on. So he was still writing poetry about her, just a different kind. Nearly every verse was about her and the loss of her love.

Yet that evening she had to return to the book. Her husband was at a meeting with the other partners of the Firm, but when he got home, he would want to know what she thought.

Jane fell asleep with these reproachful words still echoing in her ears.

She woke in the night to find Morris out of bed, sitting at the window.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You can’t help it,” he said, “any more than I can help still loving you.”

The next morning, in a deceptively cheerful voice, he told her that he was moving his things into the spare bedroom.

But not everything was so bad. His book was selling well and receiving critical praise. He was becoming known as a poet.

“I have something to tell you,” Rossetti said nervously one afternoon at tea. “I fear that you will think me horrible, but I can’t keep things from you. You have to know what I am thinking of.”

“Whatever it is cannot be as horrible as you’re making it sound,” said Jane. “Just tell me.”

“Well, as you know, I buried my poems with Lizzie,” began Rossetti.

“A foolish thing to do,” said Jane. “I’m sure you regret it now.”

Rossetti nodded. “My volume of poetry is almost finished, but it is incomplete without those poems. So I’m going to have them dug up.”

Jane nearly choked on her toast. “Have Lizzie exhumed?” she said, her horror growing as it dawned on her fully what he meant to do.

Rossetti would not look at her. “It’s gruesome, I know, but it’s the only way. Those poems must be in this volume. I can’t reconstruct them, I’ve tried. Jane, you must understand.”

Jane shuddered. “How is such a thing done?” she whispered. She had a sudden, terrible vision of Rossetti clawing at the dirt with his bare hands. Of opening the casket and finding—she didn’t want to imagine, but her mind went on anyway. Rotted lace, crawling with parasites. Golden hair hanging from a delicate skull. Dust, desiccated flesh and bone.

Rossetti grabbed her hand beseechingly. “My brother is handling it, as he handles everything. The coroner will do it, I imagine. I don’t know if the pages will be salvageable. Who knows what has become of them while underground?”

Jane drew her hand away.

“You won’t tell your husband?” pleaded Rossetti. “I know he will judge me for it.”

“Of course I won’t tell him,” said Jane.

But word reached Morris through other channels. He mentioned it to his wife the very next evening.

“It’s ghoulish,” said Morris. “And after making such a show of burying them with her, to change his mind and decide he wants them back. So like him.” He waited a moment for Jane’s reaction.

“You don’t seem very shocked,” he said.

“It’s horrible,” said Jane unconvincingly. “Shocking.”

“You knew!” said Morris, standing up and coming toward her. For a terrifying moment Jane thought he was going to hit her. “He told you!”

“Yes,” Jane admitted. “He asked me not to say anything to you, for fear you would judge him.”

“He was right to fear it,” said Morris, and he left the room without another word. Jane was left with the uneasy feeling that Morris had discovered more than she would have liked about her relationship with Rossetti.

Rossetti’s poems were published to fair acclaim. Of course it was true that his friends wrote most of the reviews that appeared, and they were uniformly generous. Rossetti’s public profile rose. He was invited to more and better parties. His name appeared in the newspaper frequently. Patrons who had shown no interest in him before were suddenly eager to come to his studio. And when they did, they invariably found a tall, dark-haired woman with him. She did not say much, but the prospective buyers got the impression that she was very much at home there. People had begun to talk of Rosetti’s fixation on Mrs. William Morris. For there were now many parties where the two of them were observed in a dark corner, their heads very close together. They were seen walking together along the Thames, giggling like schoolchildren.

Georgie took Jane with her to George Eliot’s one Sunday afternoon. Jane had wanted to meet the novelist for years, but Eliot was very cautious with people she didn’t know. However, she was very fond of Georgie and respected her opinion. If she approved of Jane Morris, then Jane Morris could be received.

The woman who took her hand was not as ugly as Jane had imagined. She was dressed very well, in gray striped silk, and a lace mantilla covered her face. It was only when she drew it back to greet Jane that she saw Eliot’s hooked nose and pointed chin. The two curved toward each other in a most witchlike way.

“I am honored to meet you,” said Jane, recovering herself. “I admired
Felix Holt
very much.”

“And I am honored to meet you. I have heard tales of your beauty, and you can imagine how that piqued my interest, since it’s something I know nothing about.”

“Jane is also a talented seamstress,” said Georgie. “She has designed many beautiful articles for the decorative arts collective.”

“Indeed,” said Eliot, in a way that made it clear she did not think Jane’s talents were worth much. “You are a fine specimen of comeliness, aren’t you? Sit by me and tell me about your life.”

“I am going to play your adorable piano and let you two get acquainted,” said Georgie. “Is there something you would like to hear?”

“Berlioz,” said Eliot. “Did you ever see him? Such a brilliant man. He died too soon.”

Jane perched herself on the corner of the pink chaise where the author held court. Eliot fixed her with a gaze of terrifying intensity.

“Tell me about your husband,” Eliot said. “I admire his poetry very much.”

Jane shrugged helplessly. “He is very industrious,” was all she could think to say.

Eliot rapped the table in front of her with impatience. “Come now, you can do better than that,” she said. “Is he amusing to live with? Does he slurp his soup? Do you have terrible disagreements with regard to salvation by works versus faith?”

Jane found herself telling the novelist everything. Eliot was not a warm, sympathetic listener, but her keen interest was irresistible. When Jane began to speak of the failure of her marriage and her love for Rossetti, the other woman stopped her.

“I am not against marriage, contrary to popular opinion,” said Eliot. “In fact, I consider myself married to Mr. Lewes in every way that matters. No, if you came to me expecting me to sanction leaving your marriage, you were wrong. Marriage is a sacred commitment.”

“But in your case—,” began Jane.

“In my case,” said Eliot icily, “Mr. Lewes’s wife left him for another man.”

“But if they had been free to divorce, then you could marry.”

“These laws are in place for a reason. Imagine the social upheaval if everyone had leave to divorce at will.”

“What about love?” said Jane desperately.

“Love is for poetry,” said Eliot. “Love is for children and for pets. We are grown women and we live in society. Love is a luxury we cannot afford.”

Jane looked around the room and saw that except for herself and Georgie, the company was composed entirely of men. Ladies who called upon George Eliot were still risking their own reputations. It must be a very lonely life, thought Jane.

J
ANE
noticed that Morris had asked the cook to prepare his meals separately and have them sent to the study. When she asked him about it, he replied blandly, but without looking her in the eye, that his translation work was grueling. He hoped to finish
The Volsung Sagas
by the spring, which meant he must translate many pages a day. In fact, he almost never left the study now when he was at home. When Jane cleaned it one day while he was in the workshop, she realized from the blankets piled on the divan that he had been sleeping there.

He knew.

That night Jane lay awake, counting the hours as the grandfather clock in the hall beat them out. She couldn’t sleep knowing that Morris was downstairs, tossing and turning on the uncomfortable sofa, torturing himself with thoughts of her with Rossetti. She got up, put on her dressing gown, and went downstairs.

Morris was sitting at his desk, his back to the door. He did not appear to hear her. In his hand, she saw with horror, was a pistol. It gleamed in the yellow lamplight. She saw an empty box of shells next to it and realized that Morris had just loaded it. Perhaps he was going to leave the house, go to Rossetti’s, and shoot him. At least as likely was that he was going to shoot himself. The third possibility, she realized with dread, was that the bullets might be meant for her. If that were his intention, her best course of action would have been to turn and leave before he noticed her. But her instinct compelled her to try and get the gun away from him. If he meant to shoot anyone, she must stop him.

“William,” she said. He nearly leaped from the chair. It was a miracle, she reflected, that his hand was steady enough not to inadvertently fire the weapon. Inwardly she cursed herself for startling him.

“What are you doing up?” he said, not turning around. She observed with relief that he placed the gun in his desk drawer.

“Why are you sleeping in the study?” she said. “If it’s to avoid me, that’s silly, you have your own room.”

“I can’t be that near you,” he said in a choked voice. “On the same floor, just a few steps away. Even being in the same house is like torture to me. At least here I don’t feel as if my skin is turning inside out. I don’t sleep, but at least my mind is a little bit quieter here.”

“Why do you have a pistol?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I bought it at a pawnshop. The gentleman there said it had been Colonel Fawcett’s. He used it in the duel against Lieutenant Monro. Of course, he was killed. I would have been better off buying Monro’s pistol, but I assume he still has it.”

“Were you planning on dueling?” Jane asked.

“It had occurred to me,” said Morris. “Though I was never much of a shot. I used to hunt squirrels as a child, but I so loathed killing them that I usually missed on purpose.”

“Whom were you going to duel?” asked Jane, though of course she knew.

“The blackguard, my former friend, whom I loved like a brother.” At this Morris laid his head on the desk and his shoulders began to shake. Jane walked over to the desk and put her hand on his head. Violently he shook her away.

“I know you never loved me,” he said. “I always knew you loved him. I know that you married me to have a better life and that you were grateful but that your feelings never extended beyond that.”

“William…,” she cried.

“Don’t try to deny it,” he said. “I always hoped that as the years passed and we made a life together your feelings would deepen, but I see now how naive that was. Your choices were intolerable and I was the least onerous of them, but that’s not the same as making a free choice.”

“I do love you, William,” she said.

Morris laughed bitterly. “I am so dear to you, I know. So dear that you have made a cuckold of me before all of London. And if you could, you would leave me and live with Rossetti as his mistress.”

“I don’t know what I would do if I could,” said Jane, in anguish. “As you said, I’ve never been free.”

“Get out,” he said. “I have to think.”

“What will you do?” she asked.

“That is for me to decide. When I have made up my mind, I will call for you.” He stood up and shut and locked the door behind her.

Jane longed to go to Rossetti and tell him of the situation, but she didn’t dare. Such a flagrant provocation might inflame an already volatile situation.

So she waited. She wrote Rossetti a cursory note, telling him that she was ill and unable to sit for the foreseeable future. The note she received in return was so kind and solicitous that it made her cry. She found being confined to the house nearly intolerable. She had not realized how many hours of her day had been spent with Rossetti. Though her own house was enlivened by two pretty little girls and their games, Jane could hardly look at them without crying. Morris could choose to send her away from them, not let her see them at all. She didn’t know if he was angry enough to do it. Her thoughts were agitated and she couldn’t read, or sew; all she could do was pace from room to room, looking at her things, wondering if she would be leaving them soon.

In the afternoon Morris came into her room. He was very calm, though he still could not look at her.

“This could ruin us, you know,” he said.

Jane nodded.

“I don’t think you would be happy with Mrs. Lewes’s life, though that is of course for you to decide. But there are the children to think of.”

“Don’t take them from me,” she begged.

“I have no intention of doing such a thing,” said Morris disdainfully. “But we need a plan. I will tell you what I am thinking, and you tell me if it is acceptable.”

Morris outlined a strategy that would save all of them. Jane could not believe what she was hearing.

“It’s more generous than I deserve,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” said Morris, “and certainly better than what Gabriel deserves, but it’s all I can think to do. Does it meet with your approval?”

Jane assented.

“Then I’ll write Rossetti a note and ask him to come to my office.”

“I thought it was about the business,” said Rossetti. He stroked her hair and she felt her breathing slow. Being with him could always calm her. “How could I have known? I thought he looked tired, and he was very terse when he greeted me, but I attributed it to the ridiculous hours that he works. Another man would turn over day-to-day operations to someone else and return to the life of a gentleman of leisure.”

“He doesn’t want to,” said Jane. “There’s nothing he would rather do than supervise the design and installation of stained glass in a new church, or attempt to learn the old ways of weaving.”

“It’s his calling, I know, he has a laborer’s heart. Anyway, I thought he might have a commission for me, a piece of painted furniture or a sketch for a tapestry. But then he said he called me to talk about you. ‘I called you here to discuss my wife, Jane,’ he said. When he called you his wife, I knew that he knew. I scanned the room and noted with alarm that he was between me and the door. It would have been the most ridiculous melodrama if Morris were to kill me, and most unlike him, but such things have happened.”

“Don’t joke, Gabriel,” Jane said.

“It’s no joke, I assure you. I did not want to lose my life in such a humiliating and sordid way. So I tried to keep my tone light and pretend that I didn’t know anything. Then he said that it had come to his attention that you no longer loved him, and that you love me.”

Jane touched the hand that was at her forehead. “And then?”

“Well, I was struck dumb. His candor took me completely aback. It was as if he was discussing a business transaction, he was so matter-of-fact. I wasn’t sure if I should deny the statement or agree with it, so I waited. He laid out the options: divorce, separation, and why neither of them suits him.”

“You know I can’t,” said Jane. “Because of Jenny and May.”

“I don’t see why,” said Rossetti peevishly. “Why should you lose all right to them?”

“It’s the law,” Jane said.

“Damn the law,” said Rossetti. “We could go to Italy for a year or so, until people have stopped talking. I could show you Florence, and Venice. Then we could quietly return to London. You could live with me at Tudor House. Or, if you prefer, we could take another house, one that we both like. I could paint and you could do just as you pleased.”

“And the children?” she asked.

“I’m sure Morris would let you see them when you returned.”

“I couldn’t be away from them for a year,” Jane said.

“Then we’ll take them with us,” said Rossetti carelessly. “I’m sure it would be educational.”

“I didn’t like to agree not to see you as much in London,” sighed Jane.

“Well, he wants to avoid a scandal, and I suppose he’s right. It wouldn’t be good for business, either for him or for me. The papers would be merciless. But leasing a house in the countryside is the perfect solution.”

“I can’t believe he proposed it,” said Jane.

“Neither can I,” said Rossetti. “In his place I wouldn’t be nearly so magnanimous. I asked him why he was doing it and he said it was for you, because he wants you to be happy. So I agreed. Just think, we can be alone together, away from gossiping tongues and prying eyes.”