Part 35 (1/2)
”Parks? Really? There are trees?”
”Ma.s.ses of them. And Ireland, where I've a small piece of property, has still more. A plenitude of trees. A positive welter of trees. You'd very much like Ireland, I think.”
She smiled. ”I'd love to see it one day.”
Once again Oscar felt as though he were hovering at the brink of a precipice.
And once again he leaped. ”Then you must permit me to show it to you.”
She turned to him again. She laughed. ”I don't think I'd be able to persuade Horace to take a trip to Ireland.”
Oscar smiled. ”Well, naturally, the invitation doesn't extend to Horace.”
Her smile became quizzical.
Oscar said, ”Elizabeth, since the first moment we met I've known that you and I were destined for something grand. There are some souls so finely attuned to one another that instantly, when they meet, they fuse. They become a single ent.i.ty. I've known, since I saw you that first night, that we were such souls. I flatter myself that you've known this as well.”
Now the smile was pleased-no, delighted. She put her hand along his thigh. ”It has been grand, hasn't it?”
”And it will be grander still. You'll love London, I know you will. The galleries, the shops, the. restaurants, the parks, the homes. We'll find ourselves something modest at the start-” He laughed. ”Which will no doubt astound everyone who knows me. But this modest little haven of ours, Elizabeth, together we'll transform it into something wonderful, something so stylish it shall become the envy of the entire city. And that shall be, as I say, only at the start, only for a year or so, perhaps. I have great prospects, Elizabeth. Glorious prospects. Soon my play will be produced in New York. Afterward, it's certain to be produced in London. And then, as soon as possible, we'll move into something still more suitable.”
Her smile had gone from pleased to quizzical again, and then it had simply gone. ”Oscar,” she said, ”Horace and I are going to get married.”
He put her hand over hers. ”I understand how you must feel. He seems a good man-a bit limited, of course, but essentially good-and I know how it must trouble you, the idea of bringing him any pain or distress. But you needn't worry, Elizabeth. I'll speak with him myself. I accept the responsibility, and I accept it gladly. Once he learns what's pa.s.sed between us, what we've become to one another, I'm certain that he'll free you from any promises you may've made. It's what any decent chap would do.”
”He already knows what's pa.s.sed between us.”
Oscar looked off. ”Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, ”perhaps it's not a matter of our becoming something. Perhaps we were conjoined even before we met. Perhaps the Hindu sages are right-perhaps through countless lives, countless millennia, you and I-” He turned to her. ”What? What did you say?”
”He already knows what's pa.s.sed between us.”
He frowned. ”You've told him, you mean?”
”Of course.”
He smiled, hugely pleased. ”But that's splendid! He knows, then. He understands. And surely he'll set you free? He wouldn't stand in the way of your happiness?”
Her hand was still lying on his thigh, his own still lying atop it. Now she used hers to push lightly at him, once, twice, like a gentle mother trying to rouse a sleeping child. ”Oscar, Horace and I are getting married.”
”But Elizabeth, haven't you heard what I've been saying? There's no need for you to marry Tabor. I shall provide for you. Admittedly not on quite the lavish-one might almost say extravagant-scale that Tabor does. As I mentioned, for a short time, possibly for as little as a month or two, we shall be forced to live perhaps a shade more modestly than either of us would like.” Perhaps a shade more modestly than a beggar would like. But he would sell his prints and his Meissen pottery. They were all such beautiful things, all so carefully selected, each in its own way a small masterpiece. But no sacrifice, finally, was too great.
Still, it was a pity about the Meissens.
”But afterward,” he said, ”once the play is produced, I'll be rich, Elizabeth. We'll find exactly the sort of house we both deserve, and we'll furnish it with the most lovely furniture in London.” New prints, new Meissens! ”We'll travel to Paris and we'll buy art. There are some brilliant artists working now in Paris. We'll travel to Italy for tapestries. We'll-”
”Oscar,” she said forcefully. Her beautiful face as rigid as a mask, she spoke to him slowly, deliberately: ”I am not going with you to London. Horace and I are engaged. As soon as he gets his divorce, we're going to get married. Don't you understand? I love him.”
”You love him? Elizabeth, that's quite impossible. The man's a gnome!”
”He's the richest man between here and San Francisco.”
”The richest man?” Why did he keep repeating, like some buffoon, everything she said? ”What on earth does money have to do with love? Elizabeth, what we have, you and I, is something that no amount of money can buy. The union of two exquisite souls, the joining of two poetic temperaments-this isn't a thing that can be purchased.”
Her face softened. ”Oscar,” she said, and again she placed her hand on his thigh. ”I'm extremely fond of you-”
”Fond!” He was doing it again; he could not stop himself.
”And the time we've spent together has been a tremendous amount of fun-”
”Fun!”
”But I love him, Oscar. You have to understand. Before I met Horace, I didn't have a dime to my name. All my life, from the time I was a little girl in Minnesota, I've had to scrimp and save just to get by. I've cleaned other people's houses. I've taken in laundry. I've spent the whole afternoon sweating like a pig while I was boiled dirty s.h.i.+rts and stinking underwear. I've worked until the blisters on my hands split open and I left b.l.o.o.d.y fingerprints on everything I touched. Horace has saved me from all that. For the first time in my life I'm free. I can go where I want, do what I want. I can be what I want.”
”But I'm trying to tell you, Elizabeth, that very soon, in a matter of weeks, I'll be rich myself. Not so rich-I admit it-as Tabor, but rich enough to support you with style and grace and comfort.”
She smiled, shook her head. ”Oscar, I love him. He lets me be myself.”
Wounded now, he snapped, ”And who else, pray, could you possibly be?”
”He gives me complete freedom. He knows who I am, and he loves who I am. He lets me be, Oscar. How many men are like that? How many men are strong enough to give their women complete freedom?” She smiled suddenly. ”How many men would let their women carry on an affair with a handsome young poet?”
He stared at her, aghast. ”He knows? You're saying that he knows?”
”Of course he knows.”
”Of course,” he repeated stupidly. ”Wait, yes, you said before ... You told him?”
She nodded. ”We have no secrets.”
”About us? About everything? You told him about everything? Our time together? At the house? And the other night, at the place with the Chinese person?”
She nodded.
Oscar was dizzy with shock. All the secrets of his soul, the heights and depths of his existence, the crus.h.i.+ng pains and the ineffable transports of childhood-he had told her everything. He had emptied himself, disemboweled himself, into her slender white hands-and she had danced off to Tabor and the two of them had picked over the entrails. To Tabor! To that insufferable swine, that boar, that bore, that boor!
”How?” he said, and he heard his voice crack. ”How could you do it? How could you betray me like that?”
She smiled softly, patiently. ”Oscar, I didn't betray you. I never told him what we said, what we talked about. And I never went into any details about what we did.”
”Details? Good Lord, woman, it's not something that requires details.”
”Oscar, Horace knew that night, the night we met you, that I'd be making love to you the next day. We talked about it.”
”You talked about it?” Perhaps he was going mad. Perhaps for the rest of his life he was doomed to repeat everything that was said to him.
”I told you, Horace lets me do what I want. He could see that I was attracted to you. He knows I love him, and he knows that I'll never leave him. So we discussed it. He promised not to return to the house until late the next day.”
”My G.o.d! The two of you sat there talking about this? Like some dreary shopkeeper and his wife planning a holiday in Brighton?”
”Oscar, why are you so upset? Nothing has changed. We still have time to spend with each other. We have this morning and we have this evening in Leadville, after your lecture.”