Fairfax – Chapter 1

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

The sweltering heat of a West Indian summer was not conducive to leaving the vicinity of the large fans and cool drinks of the hotel salon just now; nor was the mode of the day indulgent to the doffing of one's shirtwaist, cravat or waistcoat. The one alluring thing about this damnable climate was my lovely one. Those words, written so plainly now, after years of suffering and hopeless abandon seem alien to me. How I could attribute such a description to… but I have not even written a page and am already digressing and spoiling this history with my current musings. I must seek the idiot pup I was in youth and write his thoughts, not my own, twisted and mutilated as they became with age.

Bertha Antoinette Mason, my betrothed, stood amongst other young whelps who vied for her attentions, but her eyes bent only on my person with their seething, animalistic want which tore at me. For that gaze would I yearn, would I beg, grovel. No one looked at me that way. Nor did she, had I but known, for it was not the man but the money she lusted after. Even as a boy, the words, "what a handsome fellow" never came upon my hearing. Tall and broad was I, strong in body and morose in manner with manic flights into talkative musings that defied the most cunning of communicators, my square visage held nothing of common beauty, and all of common beastliness.

Bertha flattered me, lying even as she ushered me through hell's gates which masqueraded as a church altar. Father knew. Roland knew. I was the one dupe in this process. Well, perhaps not. Dick knew little of this. Ten years my junior he was a mere boy when I wed his sister. He knew only hero's worship and dog-like loyalty for me. Yet unjaded by the world to which he was bound, he saw nothing untoward in the deportment of his family. His mother he knew had a temper, but his knowledge was unsullied by further information. His sister was all graces in company, and he never knew her but that she doted on him. I flattered myself, even, that my own attachment to the lad contributed to the connection between his sister and myself—love me, love my brother seemed to be her motto, and as such, I thought it endeared me to her brilliant self.

Bertha… her family and even I, in the beginning, caller her Antoinette, for that was a graceful name unlike the former which called images of obese, languishing dowagers to mind. So Antoinette she was then in my fevered mind, flirting her fan and making eyes of secrets in my direction. Her black eyes and sun-darkened skin hailed my soul into my throat and I became aware of the baseness of my own body in a way that nothing in my preceding nineteen years had done.

Toward me she gazed, unaware of the fops surrounding her, toward me she glided in her serpentine way, her skirts swishing seductively along the marble floor. "Shall we take a turn, Fairfax?" she asked, the spice of Kingston thick in her studied English. As I'd said before, there was no possibility of taking a walk that day… but for her I would e'en cross the Sahara or the sun.

It was her father's doting, "Not just now, my pet," that stayed us then. I'd had hopes of liaisons buried deep in the exotic flora in the evening beyond our salon, tasting—as I thought—the spice of her voice on her tongue. Alas, it was not to be that night. Approaching us smoothly, her father commanded well the situation, and handed me an expensive cigar. "It is time for supper, darling," said Mr. Mason, "And Rochester's constitution is not yet up to this damned hell of a night." Mr. Mason always called me Rochester, and nothing more. He slapped me on the back as I inhaled Havana, then gestured toward the supper table, laden with fruits and meats carefully prepared for our last supper before wedded bliss.

Thinking back, once more, I see how apropos a Last Supper it was. I had yet to face my blood sweat of Gethsemane, my scourge, and my walk toward Golgotha. Still I curse myself for not knowing that she with whom I shared my meal would transform into the Judas of my downfall.

OoOoOoOoO

The day of the wedding was equally as sweltering as the night previous, but I cared little for it. Soon I would behold my lovely one, she and I unencumbered by these constrictive stitches of fabric, exploring a new and different heat. The ceremony and toasts, wedding luncheon and dancing were all prelude and formality, the true wedding was yet to come. I smiled and jested, and Antoinette laughed merrily, now touching my arm gently, now whispering some promise in my burning ear, now rushing off in gay color to kiss her father or dance with her young brother Dick as my own heart pounded within. I barely knew her, but my heart was lost in the stupid, youthful way of the primal idiocy of inexperience. What new secrets would I know, with what heretofore forbidden pleasures would I become acquainted in a few short hours? The very thought intoxicated me like no wine, filled me like no meat, and had I but realized, poisoned me and ripped from me the innocent passion which was robbed from me.

When festivities were ended, I found myself in our honeymoon chamber, shy and eager, and she, almost… bored. The heat from her eyes that I had witnessed before cooled in an instant, and instead of the hesitating, excited and blushing virginal girl, she became businesslike in the sealing of our marriage. Marriage! That word as a descriptive between two such people is blasphemy and utter mockery. No harlot was ever so cruel, no woman of ill repute ever used a man so mercilessly. Certainly, I found at some point in the night the peak of ecstasy—how could one not, in such experienced hands? But that experience, which even I in my ignorance knew she had in spades, undid my innocent passion, unraveled my poorly-weaved love in an instant. I was not this woman's first lover, nor would I be her last, though God had joined us.

She had not even the sense of decency to feign ignorance of carnal knowledge, or use phrases such as, "I've heard it said…" or "some of the other women have told me…" Her words were blunt, honest, and painful to the ears. "Fairfax, now really," she laughed, "When I had young Roger and his brother, they were younger than you, and they were not nearly as… clumsy." Such commentary I lived with all night, by now so drunk with need and hope and fear that I did not allow myself to believe her words.

I must abridge, for this recollection sickens me. It is enough to say that, by the morrow, I had the knowledge I'd lacked, and far more than I'd desired or bargained for. Her turning was that sudden, her unchastity so quickly and shamelessly revealed that my heart was torn to pieces.

OoOoOoOoO

I woke in mind before I did so in body, becoming aware of my surroundings and circumstance. I was wed. I had tasted of the connubial bed. I had found in it poison. Her conduct and crass words, confessions of past lovers in her proud way, her relentless mocking of my inexperience; all flooded a mind drowning. Another thought passed me then; an ephemeral, shadowy thing which brought to mind an image of a land far off where rain drenched moors and downy heather grew wild; of my own distant England. A wailing infant came to my imaginings, newly hatched and corded still to its mother. A simple, honest name was spoken over the child, loving parents who were halfway in their own graves smiling in pain at their progeny. Why such a vision should come to me then, when my own mind was racked with incredulity I could not then tell. Was it a reminder that, were my own bride to conceive, I could not readily assess whether the child she bore were truly mine? Somehow that vision had nothing and everything to do with my present circumstance, and it seemed to me then that the Almighty spoke the words, "Why did you not wait?"

Shaking these words and pictures from my head, reluctantly my eyelids pulled themselves open to the brightness of our chamber and my heart and body ached. Carefully I glanced to the side, expecting Antoinette's form in deep slumber beside me, but only cushions and mussed coverlets met my eyes. Where had she gone? I jerked to a sitting position then, wildly searching, my eyes soon landing on her figure by a window, sitting calm and placid in her dressing gown with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes trained on the sea view not far off. I cleared my throat, her head turned mechanically toward me, here eyes seeing without recognition, then turning toward the sea once more.

"Antoinette," I ventured, but she did not glance at me again. "Bertha," I said, more loudly, her form remained stagnant. Frustration welled within me as I rose from the bed and ambled toward her, my legs and back unsteady, my muscles spent. "Let us talk, at least," I said, reigning in my ire with the insufficient patience of my young years. Bertha said not a word. From that moment such would be her name to me, even with her still-lovely outer form, her inner self had become repugnant and unshapely. Still she ignored me. Hastily I donned my own garments and left our chamber, in search of I knew not what, perhaps merely vent to my rage in order that I would not spend it upon her.