Not a Gentleman
by Tintinnabula
Chapter 19
The Quarrel
"Margaret?" John leaned against the locked door and whispered his wife's name urgently. Of course, there was no reply.
It wouldn't do to raise his voice or rattle the doorknob. He knew Margaret well enough to know this would have no effect, and only serve to awaken the neighboring guests, or worse, Jane.
No, Margaret was likely burrowed in bed, pillow covering her head, doing her very best to ignore him after running away. It was at times like this that their difference in age was thrown into stark relief. It was easy to forget how very young and innocent she was.
John crossed the room and sank into one of the two wing chairs flanking the dying fire as he pondered his next move. Going downstairs to the lobby to inquire for another key was out of the question, as he was dressed only in his drawers. He had stoked the fire just before retiring, and as the fireplace was quite close to the bed and the bedclothes many, a nightshirt had seemed superfluous. But even drawers plus nightshirt would be inappropriate attire for wandering the halls of a first-class hotel.
John eyed the needlepoint bell pull that hung to the right of the fireplace. Ringing for a maid—assuming any were awake at this late hour— was likewise out of the question. The poor girl would probably faint to see a man so under-attired. And if a porter came instead, how would John be able to hold his head high? It would be obvious to anyone except the most dimwitted that his own wife had locked him out of their shared bed chamber. It would be a humiliation to ask another man's help in gaining re-admittance. And what if Margaret reacted poorly when the door was opened? He needed no witnesses to their marital spat.
That left two possibilities that John could see, as far as the next few hours were concerned. He could wait until he was sure Margaret was asleep and try to find a way into the bedroom, or he could spend the night in this room. But there was no couch here to serve as ersatz bed, as the upholstered furnishings were limited to the aforementioned wing chairs and a dainty settee. To sleep in the sitting room would therefore require bedding down on the carpet before the fire. John's back complained at the very thought of this, and his vexation grew exponentially as he considered the situation. It was unlikely that he would sleep deeply under such circumstances, but he must sleep lightly this night, to be aware of the sounds of Jane stirring in the room beyond. He would need to rise before her, and hope that Margaret rose just as early so that she might let him back into his own bedroom before the servant began her morning duties. Gossip would ensue otherwise. Jane was a font of it. John's eyes rolled heavenward at the thought of the stories the servant might bring back to the mill house.
And of course they would gossip: the situation was patently ridiculous. A wife should not be excluding her husband from their bedroom, no matter what she might think he'd done.
And he'd done nothing wrong. John reached for a brass-handled poker, and stirred the dying embers of the fire as he contemplated his perceived transgression.
Those idiot lithographs.
They were just engravings, the published imaginings of one man's mind. But how was Margaret to know that was was printing in ink was nothing like his own imaginings? These had none of the lithe grace that suffused every fantasy he had of his own love. They were crude depictions describing only the functioning of the act that joined man and woman.
What she must think of him.
He had not so much as looked at those images since the night before their wedding. He had not needed to do so. Why would he, when reality was so much more vivid, so much enchanting than some second-rate artist's depiction?
Even in these past weeks, when she'd been ill, there had been no reason to resort to them. When not filled with worry, John's mind was filled with private, self-painted portraits of his wife's nubile curves, with memories of hours they'd spent together learning each others most intimate pleasures, with moving images of her ecstatic responses to his touch. It was always this way.
John stabbed viciously at the embers and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch as a glowing coal broke into small pieces.
That look on her face.
Her eyes had been round as saucers when he entered the room. She was focused so intently at the engraving of posture 6 that she had not even noticed him at first. Instead she'd turned the print of Bacchus and Ariadne this way and that, just as he had on first inspection of the image. She seemed perplexed at first, then... disgusted.
She must think him an animal.
No, worse. She'd grown up in the country and seen animals rutting. None of them rutted like that.
It wasn't fair. How could Margaret possibly think he might prefer such a coarse and shallow representation of lovemaking to what they had?
He should have burned the lithographs the night he received them. Damn them, and damn Adam Bell and his droll sense of humor that always seemed to come at another's expense.
John ran his hands through his hair, in a familiar gesture of frustration. Why had Margaret even been awake at two in the morning? She should have been in bed— in their bed-sleeping. Heavens knew she needed the rest after a long day on her feet. It was more than obvious that she had overdone things at the Crystal Palace, and this was his fault. He should not have allowed it, but he'd been thrilled at the prospect of a day alone with his wife.
And why had she been going through his bag at two in the morning?
John smiled ruefully as he remembered a hurried conversation with his mother only a few weeks prior. It had taken place while Margaret was hemorrhaging. He'd mentioned there were no secrets between himself and his wife. His mother had laughed, almost sardonically. He hadn't time to query her: too much was going on. But now he understood. Husbands and wives needed some boundaries. Each needed a modicum of private space. Margaret preferred to keep things relating to her monthly cycle from him: that was quite reasonable. Likewise, she should not have gone into his Gladstone bag.
Of course, they had never discussed such boundaries. But they must. John was not looking forward to the quarrel he knew must follow. It would be like the meeting of two gale-force winds.
They would talk tonight- the sooner the better. John nodded as he realized the importance of doing so. It was Mr. Coleridge, the draper, who had impressed upon John the necessity of resolving marital issues as quickly as possible. His wife was a handful, easily as passionate as Margaret, and Mr. Coleridge himself was known for his red hair and concomitant temper. But despite their many backroom arguments, there was a depth of understanding between the couple that John had not witnessed between his own parents. He had hoped to emulate it some day.
"What is the opposite of love?" the draper had asked his 15-year-old assistant one afternoon, after John had overheard one particularly pernicious blow up.
"Why, hatred, of course," John had answered, with a sophomoric certainty that made the older man laugh uproariously.
"No, no. You might think that, but consider how both are so full of emotion. How can they be opposites when they are so similar? No, my young man, the opposite of love is apathy. Never, never let the love you feel for someone turn to that. Better hatred than that."
John hadn't understood, not immediately. But Mr. Coleridge continued to drop the occasional hint, intuiting that the teenager needed an apprenticeship in manhood as much as the one provided as draper. "Never go to bed angry," he said on numerous occasions. "It can only breed indifference."
So, yes, John thought now, he would wake Margaret, if necessary. He would not let her sleep on her anger. That would only widen the gulf between them.
John glanced at the mantelpiece clock and wondered if his wife was asleep. But as she was as much a brooder as he, he decided the answer was, "no." She was probably lying in bed, stewing.
The room was cold, he realized. John knelt by the fire and used tongs to remove coal from the overly ornate container that stood by the equally ornate fireplace set. He carefully rebuilt the fire and used a brass-embellished bellows to breathe life into it, bending low to focus the stream of air at the base of the coals. As he did so, his eyes lit on several half-charred pieces of paper near the fireback. He pulled the scraps from the fire with the tongs. Here was his answer: she'd been writing a letter.
John let the scraps cool on the tiled hearth as he contemplated their significance. Whom would Margaret find important enough to write to in the middle of the night? He would soon find out.
Then John glanced at his Gladstone bag and realized his own hypocrisy. He was angry that she'd invaded his privacy, yet here he was ready to invade hers.
John tossed the folded papers back into the fire, and watched as the fire eagerly consumed them.
He sat for a while, eyes closed, in the luxuriant heat of the fire, as he considered possible ways to access the bedroom. It was only when his chin hit his chest that he realized he had nodded off. But in his half-sleep an idea had presented itself, fully formed.
John shook himself awake, and turned from the fire. His bag was nearby: he rummaged inside for the two items he needed: a penknife and quill. He found them quickly. He used the knife to remove the sharpened nib from the quill, cutting it bluntly, instead. Next, he sliced a small square of paper from his copy of The Economist and rolled it into a tight cylinder, which he wedged inside the quill. He carried quill, tabloid and candle to the door.
John knelt in front of the keyhole, held the candle before it, and attempted to peer through the opening. As he suspected, the key was still engaged in the other side of the lock. But it shouldn't be difficult to use the quill to push the key out of the lock. He would just need something to catch the key, so that he could then pull it back to his side of the door. John removed several pages from The Economist, neatly bundled them together, and slid them halfway under the door.
To his consternation, the pages disappeared. Rustling of pages, was followed by a considerable silence, then more rustling.
"Margaret?" he whispered.
Metal rubbed against metal and the door sprang open with a click.
John found Margaret sitting on the floor, knees tucked up to her chin, hair cascading over her shoulders, eyes red. In the glow of the candle standing next to her, she seemed much younger than her nineteen years.
Margaret read aloud from the newspaper in her hand, brow furrowed. "'Cotton Crop of the United States. The New York Shipping and Commercial List, for September 10, publishes the following statement of the Cotton Crop for the year ending 31st of August, 1851.' I don't understand. Is this a peace offering of some kind? Is it in code?"
John wanted to kick himself. If he'd known that a simple "I love you," or "Forgive me," slipped under the door would have opened it so easily, he would have written the words a hundred times.
"You've been sitting here this whole time?" He said, instead. "You've let the fire go out. The floor is cold. Margaret, you'll have made yourself sick. What were you thinking?" He touched her hand only for a moment, as she shrank away, but this was long enough for him to recognize that she was ice cold.
His wife stood, any trace of childishness fully dispelled in a sudden display of hauteur. "I don't want to argue." She retrieved the candlestick and moved toward the bed.
"We need to talk. Get in bed. I'll see to the fire."
"Is it not obvious that this was exactly what I was doing, John? Do not treat me like I am a child."
He moved towards her quickly and grabbed her hand. "Do not act like one, and we shall not have the issue in the first place." Her stricken expression made him regret his words immediately.
"It's at least half past three. We can talk in the morning."
His voice was more emphatic, and more harsh than he intended. "We need to talk now."
"We do not. Anything we have to say to each other can be said in the morning." Margaret attempted to pull away from him, but John held fast.
"We will not go to bed while we are angry at each other."
"I am not angry, John." Her blue-green eyes gazed into his, and he saw only disappointment written in their depths.
"Margaret—"
"I am tired."
He let her go. He left the room, but not before removing the key from the lock. He knew his wife well enough to realize she might engage the bolt once more.
John returned immediately, bearing the shovel from the fireplace set, a smoldering coal balanced on its blade. Two envelopes— those bearing the lithographs— were tucked firmly under his arm. He set them on the bedside table before getting to work on the fire. Margaret, already installed in the bed, did her best to ignore him. She blew out the candle she'd carried to the bed, and rolled onto her side so that her back faced him.
"Please stay awake, Margaret. We have much to talk about."
He joined her once he was satisfied the room would stay warm for the next few hours. "May I explain to you the circumstances of earlier this evening? Things are not as they appear."
"Tomorrow, John." Her voice was as cool as autumn rain.
"Why tomorrow?"
"I have already told you. I am tired. You are the one who has said I must rest. Well then, let me rest."
"You are not angry?"
His wife sighed. "I have told you I am not."
John smiled in the dark, at the realization that he'd outmaneuvered her. "Then may I have a kiss, at least?"
There was a very long pause. "Of course." She rolled onto her back and lay statue still, as though a poisoned spindle had pricked her finger.
John's kiss was feather light, but luxuriant, and it had the effect he intended. His wife's lips parted, and she sighed. But this sigh was different in tone and substance to the one just moments before. It was filled with longing.
John pressed his lips against hers again, ever so lightly, and earned the smallest of moans for his efforts. He teased her, giving her only the slightest taste of what they both desired.
She shuddered as his lips moved to her ear lobe, to the silken flesh of the column of her neck, to her glorious and bountiful decolletage. Her tissue-thin gown (Was it silk? He'd not seen it before.) gathered itself above her thighs and he found himself nestled deliciously between them.
How he'd missed this. How he'd missed her.
"Stop."
John lifted his head, incredulous.
Her lips were red, her eyes dilated, her breath ragged.
"You want this," he murmured. He kissed her again, more urgently. She responded passionately—she always did— but then she pushed him away.
"I said, 'Stop.'"
He obeyed. "Tell me why," he said with as much calm as he could muster, as he retreated to his side of the bed. The blood was pounding in his head. And elsewhere.
The woman was driving him mad.
His woman. His obstinate, obdurate woman.
Her chin was jutted out in that particular way of hers, jaw set tightly. "You made your preference clear, John. Why would you wish to change it now?"
"My preference?" he nearly shouted. "What do you know of my preference?"
"I see what you choose to purchase. What you choose to view. And I know what I saw."
"And what did you see, Margaret?"
"I saw pictures... of men and women."
"Yes?"
"Must I elaborate?"
"I think so. Tell me what you saw."
"I saw... empty eyes."
That was not what he expected to hear.
"There was no love. What they were doing is not what we do. At least, that is not my conception..." Her voice trailed off.
"No. You are right." John reached tentatively for his wife's hand and to his surprise she allowed it. "Would you allow me to explain?" he asked quietly.
She nodded.
"Before we wed, the other masters threw a party."
"Yes, I've heard of such things."
"There was lewd talk and lewd gifts."
"I see. And these gifts appealed to you."
"Must you think the worst of me? Actually, Margaret, I threw the gifts on the nearest rubbish pile on my walk back home. They were obscene. This particular gift was waiting for me when I returned to the mill."
"Someone left these prints where anyone could find them? Where your mother might come across them?" Margaret turned toward John, her attention fully captured.
"No, they were in a locked box. I was given the key during the party." He stared at the ceiling for a moment. "I considered burning them, but I was worried."
"Worried?" Margaret propped herself on her elbow as she looked and listened intently.
John willed himself to stop blushing, ineffectually. "I never had any instruction, you see. About men and women... and love. I was concerned about our wedding night."
A small smile crept across his wife's face. "You had nothing to worry about." She paused. "But I don't see how those prints would have helped. They don't seem..."
"Realistic?" John laughed. "No."
"You look somewhat like those men, but I don't look like those women. Is that how I should look?"
John chuckled as he considered the figures shown in the Sixteen Pleasures. Those women had not an ounce of fat upon them, apart from breasts dolloped upon them like scoops of mashed potatoes. Likely they were drawn by someone with no appreciation for the feminine. "You are perfect, Margaret. Glorious. You look the way a woman should look. They do not." He grimaced as he considered the misfortune those images had brought him. "I should have burned them."
"Then do it now." His wife looked at him evenly.
John picked up the packet of prints from the bedside table, and threw them onto the fire. He was glad to be rid of them. The flames shot up as they consumed the paper, lighting the room briefly.
Margaret's triumphant half-smile disappeared as her eyes traveled from the fire to the bedside table, where she noticed the second envelope in the sudden glow emanating from the fireplace.
"There are more?" Her look of dismay was crushing.
Margaret rose and pulled the coverlet from the bed. Her intent was obvious.
"I will tell Jane I had a headache and needed to be alone. She will understand."
John leaped from the bed and blocked her way.
"No, Margaret. Stay."
She was crying, and fought him as he pulled her into his arms. John held her close until she calmed, then led her back to the bed. He propped pillows against the headboard and sat back against it, pulling her close beside him.
"You think I am an animal," he stated matter-of-factly. She did not disagree.
He handed her the second packet. "Look, and tell me what you think." He lit a candle and held it close to the images.
Margaret examined these lithographs carefully, as carefully as he'd seen her looking at the first set, hours earlier. But this time, her eyes were not round as saucers. After a time, she visibly relaxed.
"They are in love," she said, finally. "These are not like the others. I daresay they are... beautiful."
John noticed a blush had crept across her cheeks.
"What is it?" he prompted, gently.
She pointed to one print. "What is he doing to her?"
"Would you like to find out?" her husband asked.
The pale rose tint of her cheeks intensified. "I couldn't!"
"I could. If you'd let me."
John nearly laughed aloud at the words that tumbled out next.
"Well," his wife said in that ever-so-practical tone of hers, "I think I might allow that, if you'd allow me this." She pointed to another lithograph, one very much analogous to the first.
He might have died and gone to heaven.
"You would do that for me?"
"It seems very much the same thing, John."
"Margaret..."
"Yes, John?"
"I think we should spend the day in bed. What say you to that?"
"What will we do with Jane?"
"Surely you have some errands she can run. Enough to take all day? You'll need fabric for your visit to the dressmaker. And I'm sure there are numerous drapers in the vicinity."
"Yes, Edith had quite a few she was fond of."
"Well, then."
"Well, then."
She tumbled into his arms, and they began their reconciliation in earnest.
He could not have imagined a better end to their quarrel.
Author notes:
To domineofspades, nancyjeanne, Arwen Elizabeth, Lorilie James, KylieKyotie, everykindofcat, jackiewi2002, Lubelula, fis, C, hh, Bet, Drsuebee, Babelvr54, EyreGirl, gramasherry, LE Henley, Hi, tgo62, as well as the several people who left notes as "guests": Thank you so much for your support and kind words of encouragement over the past couple of weeks. It's hard to put into words how your words have affected me. To know that I have people in my corner who want to see this story continue makes me want to continue, despite naysayers. So I will. :) As for my cold- it was a bad one, but I am pretty much over it, except for a lingering cough. I am happy to say that I am ready to get back to a regular writing schedule. However, as I have been sick three times since Thanksgiving, I need to pay better attention to my health, and perhaps scale back on the all-night writing sessions. That might mean updating every two weeks- we shall see. Proposal season is almost over, so work should be less of an issue, too. And my supervisor's supervisor actually got called on the carpet for all the stress and unhappiness she has been causing, which is very good news. So I think things are looking up. :) (Knock on wood!)
I hope I captured the intensity of feeling between John and Margaret in this chapter, and the passion of a lovers' quarrel.
On to the research: This time I focused on hotels, and what a hotel visit would be like in 1851. Today we take for granted that when we visit a hotel there will be a front desk, and that at a certain level of hotel there will be a revolving door, a concierge, a doorman or porter, a lift or elevator, etc. And of course, we take for granted that you can communicate easily with the front desk just by picking up the phone next to your bed. Brown's would not have had a revolving door- I am fairly certain the first one in London would have been seen on the Midland Grand Hotel (see below); however Brown's would have had a porter.
As for communication, hotels used bell pulls at least until the 1880s. I found an photograph of a board of bells used by one hotel in 1835 as its call bell system, and an article from a 1922 issue of Hotel Monthly discussing changes in communication devices since 1880, indicating that bell pulls were still in use at that late date. (Incidentally, that article would be very useful for anyone writing a story set in a hotel from the 1880s to the 1920s, as it goes into fair detail about the different devices used to communicate with front desk during that time range. Pretty interesting!) I am therefore confident Brown's would have used bell pulls for communication. The bell system used by hotels was not so different from that seen during the opening credits of Downton Abbey. However, there were many more rooms to keep track of. In a home, the bells could be made of different metals and of different sizes so that they would each have different rings that a servant could listen for. However, in a hotel with over 100 beds this would not be feasible. Instead, the bells were numbered, and the coil attached to each bell vibrated for an extended period. This way, the servant would have enough time to look up at the board to figure out which room had rung. The pull itself was attached to the bell with a wire and a series of pulleys held within the walls between the bedroom and the basement servants' room.
About the lock: I grew up in a house that was built in 1800 and had locks with skeleton keys. My siblings and I sometimes did the trick I described, but using a wooden skewer or knitting needle instead of the quill. I think a quill would work, though.
Margaret is reading from the September 27, 1851 issue of The Economist. Wow, it is seriously boring. The modern Economist is a lot more interesting.
I have been a bit concerned that I have might missed some key research regarding bathrooms in the 1850s. I know, I seem to be stuck on this topic. Perhaps this is because my family does a lot of camping, and I find the outhouses at primitive campsites to be absolutely repellent, but if I had lived in a time of privies and commodes and a new technology like flush-toilets was invented, I would have absolutely clamored for it. I'd have happily gone into debt! But perhaps someone who lived in that time would feel differently, particularly if she had servants to do the dirty work. I read back issues of The Builder magazine from the late 1840s and early 1850s and did find several designs for primitive water-closets discussed during this era. However, until 1851 (after the Exposition) those described were not flush toilets: one would have to have to pour in water using a pitcher to get the toilet to activate. Still, to my mind that is still far superior to carrying a nasty slop pail around the house. But again, carrying slops is something a servant would do, not the woman of the house. I am not thinking like a 19th century lady!
In 1851, at the time that the Exposition was going on, would Brown's Hotel have had anywater-closets, even of the primitive type I mentioned above? The very first hotel to have water-closets of any type was the Tremont Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, designed in 1829, and like Brown's, considered a luxury hotel. (Dickens stayed there.) It also had bath rooms (rooms with fixed bathtubs) with cold running water and a heater to warm the water for the tubs. However, the water closets were on the ground floor, and the bathrooms were in the basement, meaning that guests would have to traipse from their rooms down to the lowest floor of the hotel, the location where the servants were usually found. I would guess that quite a few of the guests preferred the familiarity of the commodes in their dressing rooms to a hike to the ground floor. I also found a sales listing for the Inns of Court Hotel at Lincoln Field, a hotel that was built in Holborn, London in 1867, sixteen years after this story takes place. It describes 112 beds, plus bath rooms, and water-closets on the samefloor as the bedrooms. (Now we're getting somewhere!) This suggests that hotels might have had several shared water-closets per floor by this time. (I have stayed at a couple of historic hotels with this setup.) These were installed with new construction, however. I don't think Brown's would have done a retrofit the same year as the Great Exposition- they would have had to close down to do so, and there was too much money to be made in staying open for guests visiting the Crystal Palace.
I also found information about another luxury hotel, The Midland Grand Hotel at St. Pancras Station (now the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel), which opened in 1873 as a result of a design competition, and which was the one of the most innovative hotels of its time. It had revolving doors and a hydraulic lift, but even at this time, twenty-two years after this story, none of its rooms had en suite bathrooms or water-closets. (I would hope there were water closets on each floor, as at the Inns of Court Hotel, but I could not find any information to confirm this.) In fact, one of the reasons the hotel closed, years later was because of the expense involved in needing an army of servants to carry slop pails, and bring water and tubs to and from rooms for bathing. As I mentioned last chapter, Brown's Hotel describes installing en suite bathrooms/water-closets in 1882, claiming to be the first to provide them to every room. But doesn't 30 years seem like a very long time to wait for such a very necessary convenience as a private bath and toilet?
But maybe I am looking at this the wrong way, as I have never had a staff of servants to wait on me hand and foot. A portable bathtub set up in ones dressing room is private, after all. It's just not permanent. If you have a servant to take care of filling it and emptying it, I suppose it is not much different from a fixed bath tub, where the servant turns on the tap for you and drains it when you are finished (heaven forbid you do that yourself!). And, as I mentioned a while back, in the early Victorian era, there were some commodes that had a reservoir that allowed flushing. So to a person using it, this would not seem so much different from a water-closet. That is, the only person who was inconvenienced by its use was the servant, who had to empty the slop pail. Maybe this lack of inconvenience explains why it took so long for en suite bathrooms to catch on. As long as there was staff to invisibly do the dirty work, no one really saw the need for a technology to do the dirty work more efficiently.
I am glad I live in the 21st century, even without servants. :)
Thank you again for reading, for your support (I so appreciate it!) and for putting up with my historical tangents! Tintin