Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [65]
I cannot write about this.
I meant to describe to you, you to whom I wish to tell everything, how it was I came to love Catherine, to want her to be my wife. I had occasion to observe her often in the role of caretaker to her nieces, whose mother, Gertrude, had died at an early age from tuberculosis. I admired the way Catherine was with the children, and I saw she would be an excellent mother to her own. You will think this opportunistic, and I fancy it was; but she, too, must have thought me a good prospect as well, for I do not think she loved me in any grand way when we married — rather in a cheerful and pleasant way, which makes for a good wife and a good marriage. And I hope I have not been a disappointment to her.
(Although I shall be now. I shall wish her you. Every minute. And for this reason, as well as for the secret in my heart, I dread her return on Friday evening. I am not of a nature to enjoy deceit.)
Why, I ask myself, is passion, when it occurs in circumstances outside of marriage, so absolutely wrong? This is a question that vexes me. How can something that feels so true and honest and pure, which is how I must describe my feelings for you, and I do declare them love, which I had not thought possible after so short a time (and how deluded I was again), be so ugly as to cause such pain? And more vexing still, have no happy conclusion? None . . . None . . .
I cannot deny that I have known Catherine in all the ways possible to a man and that she has been generous. So why — why? — has this not been enough? Why? I seek a rational answer when reason is not wanted. I seek a scientific answer where science is not invited.
Or is it possible that such a union as I have begun now with you has for its origins a science of its own? Its own physical laws and formulae? Might we one day be able to detect this blinding thing called passion and quantify it and thus save ourselves from this helpless agony?
And yet, could I wish for that? Could I, in truth, wish this elation, this mystery, quantified and thus tamed?
I must stop now, for these are all delusions, dangerous delusions which exhaust me.
I am not a writer, but a man of medicine, infected with an illness so subversive, the patient wishes not for his own cure.
Olympia drops the pages of the letter onto the floor. She covers her face with the skirt of her dress. She sits in that posture for some time.
Never has she read such a letter. Never. Nor understood so well its meaning, nor felt that she might, apart from its specific history, have written it herself.
She releases her skirt. With an impatient tug, she unties the sashes of her bonnet.
My God, she thinks. What have we done?
There can be no doubt now that she has set in motion a series of events that cannot be recalled, that she has trespassed unforgivably upon a man and his family, upon a father’s trust and a woman’s kindness. The only remedy is to cause Haskell to forget her, so as to blunt the edges of this madness. A derangement she herself feels and for which she must now hold herself accountable.
She will never see the man again, she vows, nor permit him to see her. And if he comes to her house, she will absent herself.
How reckless she has been, how selfish, caring only for her own happiness when the greatest possible consequences were at stake. She knows that she would lose her father forever were he to discover her clandestine actions, that never again would he trust her.
She lies back upon the bed and digs the heels of her hands into her eyes. She lies looking at the ceiling for some time, and perhaps because she is exhausted, she sleeps.
She wakes with a start and sits up. She walks over to a table where there are a basin and a pitcher of water kept at the ready. She pours water over her head and face, soaking her hair. She dries her face and scrutinizes herself