Chapter 5 #2
On the second of June 1888, his liver failed.
I was present, holding his hand, my expression arranged in the particular configuration of anguished love that I had perfected at Arthur's bedside six years before.
He died at seven-fourteen in the morning, and I wept with a restraint and precision that those who witnessed it later described as the most dignified display of grief they had ever seen.
The digitalis, in the lower jar, had served a different purpose.
I had used it on Arthur, my first husband, who had suffered from a weak heart, diagnosed angina pectoris, and whose nightly cordial I had prepared with the same wifely devotion I would later bring to Richard's brandy.
Digitalis, derived from the foxglove plant, is a cardiac stimulant that, in controlled doses, can strengthen the heartbeat and improve circulation, but in larger doses, or when administered to a patient with an existing cardiac condition, it can provoke acute episodes of palpitation, shortness of breath, and chest pain that are indistinguishable from the natural progression of angina.
The progression of Arthur's decline, as documented by his physician, had been noted as somewhat rapid for a man of his age and condition, but not, in the physician's professional judgment, impossible.
I had kept the digitalis compound as a reserve, a tool available should future circumstances require it, and it rested in its jar beside the arsenic, inert and patient, waiting for the occasion of its use.
The strychnine I kept for similar reasons, though I had never employed it and did not expect to.
Strychnine was too dramatic for my purposes.
It produced convulsions, facial grimacing, and arching of the back that were unmistakable and impossible to attribute to natural causes.
Its value was as a deterrent, a reminder that the range of options available to me extended beyond the two compounds I had actually employed.
I closed the cabinet, slid the shelf back into position, and locked it.
The key returned to the chain at my throat, and the chain settled against my skin with its familiar weight, a small, constant reminder of the distance between the woman who moved through the drawing rooms of Mayfair and the woman who moved through the stillrooms in the hours before dawn.
I returned upstairs. The house was still quiet, the grey light of approaching dawn seeping through the curtains of the landing windows, and the air was cold and dense with the smell of coal smoke and beeswax.
In my bedroom, I removed my nightgown and prepared for the day, selecting my clothes with the same precision I applied to every other decision.
A morning dress of dark violet, suitable for half-mourning.
My hair arranged in a loose chignon, less severe than the tight knots of full mourning but still restrained.
Jet earrings, a touch of powder on my nose, a faint suggestion of colour on my lips, the minimum concession to the conventions of female appearance that my position required.
By the time I descended to the breakfast room, Edmund was already seated at the table, his attention fixed on a plate of toast and marmalade with the concentrated seriousness he brought to every activity.
He was wearing the clothes Dorothea had laid out for him, a dark jacket and waistcoat over a white shirt, the collar slightly askew as always, because Edmund had never mastered the art of dressing himself and Dorothea, for all her competence, could not be present at every moment to correct his errors.
His auburn hair, which he refused to allow anyone to cut shorter than was fashionable, fell across his forehead in a manner that was simultaneously charming and untidy, and his hands, those perpetually busy hands, were engaged in the task of spreading marmalade on his toast with a thoroughness that was consuming more of the marmalade than the toast.
"Good morning, Edmund."
He looked up, and his face brightened with the immediate, uncomplicated pleasure that was his most characteristic response to my presence. "Good morning, Cecilia. The toast is very good today. Mrs. Branwell makes good toast."
"She does. Will you have tea or chocolate?"
"Tea, please. With two sugars."
I poured the tea and placed it before him, adding the two sugars he always requested and that I always reduced to one when he was not watching, because Edmund's enthusiasm for sugar exceeded what his digestion could comfortably manage, and managing his diet was one of the many small responsibilities I had assumed for him that no one else was competent to discharge.
He drank his tea without noticing the deficiency, his attention having moved on to a second piece of toast, and I sat across from him and watched him eat with the possessive attention that I brought to every aspect of his care.
Edmund's mornings followed a schedule that I had designed and maintained with the precision of a railway timetable.
He rose at seven, was dressed and breakfasted by eight, and at nine he began his lessons with Miss Hale, the young woman I had engaged as his tutor eighteen months ago.
Miss Hale was patient, gentle, and possessed of a docility that I had identified during her interview as her most valuable quality.
She was not, by any rigorous standard, well-educated, but she was kind, and she understood Edmund's limitations without being condescending toward them, and she had accepted the salary I offered, which was modest, without negotiation because she was grateful for the position and did not recognise that her gratitude made her controllable.
The lessons occupied Edmund until noon, after which he had luncheon, a rest period, and then the afternoon was given over to whatever activity I had determined was appropriate.
A walk in the garden, weather permitting.
A visit to the British Museum, where the Egyptian mummies held him in a state of fascination that never diminished.
A quiet hour with his drawing materials, because Edmund drew with a naive skill that I found, in its way, more accomplished than the most technically proficient painting, not because it was skilful but because it was honest, and honesty, in my experience, was the rarest and most undervalued of human qualities.
I managed Edmund's social interactions with the same attention I brought to his schedule.
He saw very few people outside the household, a restriction that I maintained not out of cruelty but out of the understanding that the world, as presently constituted, was not designed to accommodate a young man who asked strangers whether they were nice and who could not be relied upon to refrain from saying whatever came into his mind.
The potential for embarrassment was considerable, and embarrassment, in the social world I inhabited, was a contagion that spread from the individual to the family to the household to everyone connected with it.
Edmund's innocence was a liability, and I managed it accordingly.
I did not discuss these calculations with Edmund.
He would not have understood them, and even if he had, he would not have been troubled by them, because Edmund's trust in me was absolute and uncritical, the trust of a child for a parent, and it had never occurred to him to question whether the decisions I made on his behalf were in his interest or mine.
They were, in most cases, both, and I saw no contradiction in this.
The management of Edmund's life served his interests because his interests and mine were, by any rational assessment, identical.
He was safe, comfortable, well-fed, well-clothed, and attended by people who were, if not devoted to him, at least kind.
What more could he want? What more could anyone provide?
After breakfast, I retired to my study to attend to correspondence.
The morning post brought a letter from Sir William Hartwell, acknowledging receipt of my previous communication with the careful formality of a man who understands that he is being reminded of his obligations.
His response was a model of professional evasion, a paragraph of condolences followed by a paragraph of reassurances followed by a paragraph of legalistic non-commitment that managed to say nothing of substance while creating the impression of complete cooperation.
I read the letter twice and set it aside.
Hartwell was a problem, but not an urgent one.
He knew, or suspected, enough to be dangerous, but his knowledge was useless without the courage to act upon it, and courage was a quality that Hartwell had exhausted, if he had ever possessed it, somewhere in the early years of his legal career.
He was a man who had looked away from uncomfortable truths for so long that the looking had become habitual, a reflex as automatic as breathing, and I calculated that the probability of his developing a conscience at this late stage was vanishingly small.
I would monitor him, as I monitored everything, and if the need arose, I would address it.
For the present, the letter went into the drawer of my desk with the others, a small archive of complicity that might, in different circumstances, prove useful.