An Inconvenient Wife Part 16

I knew Millicent heard the lie in my voice. "Lucy, you have a husband who adores you. William would do anything for you; you've the funds and the position to have anything you desire. To turn elsewhere for happiness is foolish."

I stared at her, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"You must be careful," she said. "Your behavior was acceptable as long as it was simply a fit now and then, or headaches. There isn't a one of us who hasn't felt the same. But no one will tolerate what you've been doing. You haven't had your calling day for weeks. Daisy Hadden said she saw you drawing in Washington Square, and when she spoke to you, you looked right through her."

"Daisy Hadden? I don't remember that at all."

Millie leaned close. "Tell me you didn't leave Julia Breckenwood's entertainment to sketch a picture of her garden, even when there was nothing there but vines and dirt."

"Well, yes, I did that, but-"

"Good Lord, Lucy, you must see how unacceptable that is. What is wrong with you? Ask Seth-or whoever your doctor is-to prescribe something else. Take the laudanum again if you must. After tonight the season is over. You have weeks before Newport. As your friend, I feel I must warn you: Take some rest, or whatever you must do to be yourself again. You know this. Clara Morris and Mamie Fish and the others will have nothing better to do in Newport than make you the summer's sport. They'll ruin you without compunction. The Van Berckel name will be no help to you then." She squeezed my arm. "Please, Lucy. Be careful. You must be careful."

She gave me a final pleading look, and then she left me standing there alone. I was afraid. I felt as if my friends stared at me when I pa.s.sed. I imagined them turning to one another, I imagined their words.

The room wavered around me. I clutched my skirt in my hand and went searching for air, but the crush was such that I could not get through.

"Lucy."

It was as if I imagined his voice, coming as it did so strongly into my head. I stopped and turned to search for him, and he was there. He held two gla.s.ses of champagne, and he smiled and pressed one into my hand, tapping the bottom of the stem with his finger, urging me to drink it. I did, caught-as I always was-by his eyes.

The champagne eased the tightness in my throat. I curled my fingers around the stem and held it close to my lips.

"Breathe," he whispered, and I did. "Now," he said, "do you feel better?"

He seemed to read my mind, and the thought made me ner-vous. I laughed a little giddily and said, "How did you know?"

He nodded toward the doors that were closed against the night. "You were making a beeline for the window."

"You were watching me."

"That is my job."

"Yes," I said, taking refuge in the champagne. "Yes, of course."

"Come, let's get some air." He put his hand on my bare arm, urging me forward, but I did not move. He looked down at me with a little smile and said, "What is it, Lucy?"

Suddenly I understood. I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before this moment. The memory of that image he'd suggested to me so long ago-the walk in the woods, the bird-came back to me. "You knew," I whispered. "You've done this to me."

"Done what?"

"Changed me."

"Changed you?" He gave me a distracted smile and said, "Of course I have. It's what you wanted. You're having fewer fits. Aren't you happier?"

"Yes," I said. "No. I- There are so many strange things."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, tonight. This costume. You knew what I would wear tonight. That William and I were coming as Julius Caesar and Cleopatra."

"How would I know that?"

"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps I told you when I was asleep."

"You were never asleep."

"Whatever it was. That's what happened, isn't it? I told you I was coming as Cleopatra."

"If you did, I wouldn't have expected this kind of costume," he said. "I would have expected something a bit more . . . elaborate. How could I possibly know that you would choose this?"

That stopped me, but there was something wrong with his logic. His eyes were dark; was that truth I read in them? "I suppose that's true," I said reluctantly.

"Come," he said. "Let's talk about this outside." He urged me forward again. His hand had been on my arm all this time. I felt a flutter of fear, and of pleasure too. I could not deny the plea-sure, and that frightened me more than anything else.

I told myself that I went with him only to be away from watching eyes. We went out onto the pavilion that at the beginning of the season would be lit by lanterns and candles, with the doors open to extend the ballroom into cool autumn nights. Dr. Seth closed the doors behind us, and the music turned faint and whispering, the steady hum of talk disappeared. Now there was only the night, and the two of us alone together.

As we often were, I reminded myself. It was all quite innocent. I pulled away from his hold and walked to the edge of the pavilion, where the marbled floor ended at the narrow lawn overlooking the Astor mansion next door. All the lights in that house were dim; I had seen Caroline Astor earlier that evening, holding court in Malva Fitzgerald's ballroom as if she owned it.

Seth's voice came to me across the darkness, nearly disembodied. "What is it that bothers you tonight, Lucy?"

"I don't understand myself," I said. "I've been doing things, saying things. People are beginning to talk."

"What are they saying?"

"That I'm drinking. Or worse."

"You aren't drinking."

"But they don't know that. Or they wouldn't believe it."

"Why do you care what they think?"

I turned to look at him. He stood near the door, haloed in the light coming through the windows. He could have been a G.o.d. "It matters to me what they think."

"You don't need friends like that."

I said disbelievingly, "How can you say such a thing? I want them to be my friends. To have them talk like this, they could ruin me. They will ruin William."

"What did he think of your costume tonight?"

The abrupt change of subject fl.u.s.tered me. "He was unhappy with me."

"Because of what you chose to wear? Or because of what your choice shows you to be?"

I crossed my arms; the air was freezing on my bare skin. I felt the rise of gooseflesh. "I don't understand."

"It's simple enough," he said. "You look unfettered tonight. Free. Like a woman of pa.s.sion. Don't you feel so?"

I shivered. Did I feel pleasure or fear at his words? "I am not a woman of pa.s.sion. I don't want to be one."

"Why is that?"

I laughed bitterly. "Look around you, Doctor. This is the world I live in. Would you have me live outside of it?"

"That's not up to me, Lucy," he said. He stepped closer. "My goal is only to help you find happiness."

"Yes. So you've said."

"Aren't you happier?" He was in front of me, only a few steps away. I felt his warmth. "In this costume, don't you feel more free? Since you've been drawing again? The truth, now."

"Yes," I said. "Yes, of course. But-"

"But there's so much more," he said. He stroked my cheek, and the touch made me uncomfortable, but I did not pull away. "Can you live within these constraints, Lucy? Think about the way you used to feel. When you read poetry. When you painted. Can you live without feeling that pa.s.sion again?"

"I don't want to feel it." I heard my own voice as the merest of whispers.

"Yes, you do," he said quietly. "I understand you, Lucy. Look at me: You know it's true. I know what you want." His eyes were burning in the near-darkness. His hand was a comfort, and in that moment, I felt it was the only comfort available, the one I should take. His eyes urged it; I yearned for it.

I heard the pull of the latch, the sc.r.a.pe of the door. Seth's hand dropped. I jerked from him and saw William stepping from the shadows of the door.

"There you are," he said. "What are you doing out here? I've been searching for you."

"Lucy needed some air," Seth said mildly. "I was just bringing her in."

William nodded. "Thank you for seeing to her. It's time to come to dinner, Lucy. The first course has nearly started."

"Yes," I said, stepping around Seth to my husband, acquiescing when he took my arm possessively.

Notes from the Journal of Victor Leonard Seth Re: Eve C.

March 17, 1885 I have ceased making suggestions that Eve be calm; I no longer try to safeguard her unconscious with suggestions that she refrain from fits. My hope has been that with every suggestion I make that leads her closer to her pa.s.sionate inner life, her hysteria will naturally cease, and I have found that to be the case. I have encouraged her drawing and made several suggestions during trance that she put aside the ostentation and social obligations that so obviously frustrate and constrain her. I have encouraged her to test the limits of the cage she finds herself in.

I have written to William James regarding my discovery and my experimentation, and have had a letter back from him and G. Stanley Hall urging caution. Hall in particular accuses me of attempting to play G.o.d. Yet what else is G.o.d but a manifestation of our will? What is a soul but the melding of our conscious and unconscious minds? I intend to prove that our will can be molded, that a "soul" can be created. I am creating a new woman-and succeeding beyond my greatest expectations. To have such astounding results through the use of hypnosis is something I could not have imagined. This is the kind of experimentation and research I had only dreamed of, those days in Nancy. I have come an even greater distance from my colleagues who still hold dear their insistence on the centrality of the somatic. In Eve there is a compelling argument for Beard's theory of mental therapeutics-that the will rules the body. Eve desires no children; therefore she becomes physically unable to have them. She denies her s.e.xuality and therefore becomes pa.s.sionless. But I must go even further. I believe that the will itself is controlled by the unconscious mind. Eve's hysteria is proof of that. When her unconscious mind could no longer accept its subjugation to her will, it rebelled and caused her great illness. Now that I have allowed it power, her hysteria is gone.

The only question that remains is whether or not these changes will be permanent. If I can take her even further-if I can create in her the need to be free, rather than a vague and simple longing-she may sustain them. She is still constrained by society's measure, and by her husband. These artificial chains must somehow be thrown off. How to do so?

It has not escaped my notice that Eve has recently become quite attached to me. This is quite common in patients of all types. At Nancy there were several women in the laboratory who desired a s.e.xual relationship with their doctors. There forms a great attachment between patient and doctor, as is inevitable when one divulges one's greatest secrets. Hypnosis-especially for those who achieve trance through touch-can be quite seductive: putting oneself into the hands of another person, surrendering completely. This is the root of the fear my colleagues hold against hypnosis, and there is a compelling aspect to such power. It can also be difficult to detach from such a relationship, though in my experience, it has seldom lasted long and is rarely completely satisfactory.

Yet I wonder. If I were to utilize this attachment, to show Eve what true satisfaction can be, to lead her ever further into the sublimity of the experience that her upbringing has kept from her- The idea is tempting. Perhaps even intoxicating. To be able to mold her pa.s.sion, to watch her come alive-I must admit to feeling a certain headiness over the possibilities.

Chapter 13.

Once the season ended, I wanted to leave the city, to go somewhere-away from Seth, away from expectation. Away.

My friends were leaving; Millicent and her husband had gone to the Breckenwoods' country home for a month; the Villiards had departed for the continent, the Goelings to the South, to visit relatives. I had thought William would insist on attending one of these country affairs. In spite of the fact that he could not leave his work for long, we often spent the months after Easter visiting. But this year he refused to do so.

"There's the house," he told me, "and I cannot afford to leave just now."

So I spent my days drawing and longing for paints. I wanted to show William my sketches, but I remembered too well Papa's admonitions and my husband's solid acceptance of them. So I brought my sketches to Dr. Seth.

I had a case full of my work-studies I had made of the garden or the park. I drew these out and handed them to him one by one, sitting on the edge of my chair to hear his opinion, wanting his approval so much it was like a fever.

He said nothing. He leafed through them one after another, with little expression in his face. When he was done, he handed them back to me, and my heart sank.

"You don't like them," I said, stuffing them blindly back into the case.

"On the contrary," he said. "I like them very much."

"You do?"

"Yes."

"Oh." I couldn't help my smile. "Do you think them good, then?"

He steepled his fingers before him. "What do you suppose William would think of them?"

"William? Why, he would hate them."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because he would. I know it. He'd rather I was spending my days shopping for trinkets and carpets and curtains. I tell you, I hate curtains. If I could, I'd have every window bare."

Seth looked thoughtful. "Why?"

"So I could see the outside. The sky, the trees . . ."

"If you cannot be among them, then you can at least see them."

"Yes, that's it exactly!"

"It's more than a longing to be outside, isn't it?"

I frowned.

"You can see it in your sketches," he went on, motioning to my case. "Every stroke of your pencil is in motion, every scene is open. There are no houses or windows. No dark places. I think you're right. I think William wouldn't like them. I think he would find them threatening."

"Threatening?"

Dr. Seth leaned forward, and his face filled my vision. "Every page shows your longing, Lucy. For freedom. For pa.s.sion. Just think of what you could be if William encouraged you, if he wanted your pa.s.sion." His hand dropped to cover mine, settling on my knee. "Just think of it."