One Night On The Davenport
Why always a davenport specifically, my beloved readers and reviewers must wonder... Well, the last radio-drama I listened to before getting so involved in creating my own was "Vic & Sade". It's wonderful, it's fluffy and they discuss their davenport a lot. Wadsworth could easily make this available to our loving couple in the starvation of their love.
One thing about "Vic & Sade" I was so happy about and learned later is it was a major favourite of Mr. Rogers. Yes... he adored "Vic & Sade". What is left of the original episodes I really feel speaks to past times, and I implore my fluffy Dark Shadows fans to find those remaining recordings and enjoy them. Like L.M. Montgomery, they are an eye-opener to a kind of history that has almost nothing to do with war. And as my gentle readers understand... that's what we all want for our Josette & Barnabas, isn't it?
My bride so filled with our child in this love affair had laid her back upon my lap. We were upon the davenport sideways from the fireplace and I continued to look for ways of how I could make her more comfortable. At this point her size was so enormous it overwhelmed her at times. I was so proud of her taking this burden upon herself regardless of how many women before her had endured so much in growing another being inside them. This one was mine, hers, ours, and a beloved recreation. I would not betoken it with triviality. No. This drew so much more importance to what we had strived to become.
The fire crackled nearby and I looked down on her smooth features, her hand in mine, and stroking her face with the other, wanting to bless her with ease and contentment as her body continued to feed the growth inside of her.
"You look at me so adoringly... my demon..." she smiled up at me.
"Ah, saying it in English, Josette? How could I not look on you with adoration?"
"I understand," she breathed, the darkness of her eyes perplexing me with so intricate a love as they looked into mine, "and I felt it was important to tell you how I feel now. You are my demon, but not the worst of them. Mindful, filled with manners, just grown rough in spots from all you've gone through... to find... me."
And how odd it was as I looked back now with my tortures, our fights in my kidnapping and forcing her to become less than she was worth... Josette only? No. I was foul and I was wrong. This woman of many lives was meant to be for me and I'd refused to understand that; kept trying to fit her into a design unworthy of her very soul, who had been through so much for me. Not that I knew. No. I was a ruination of myself on top of everything else, and she was a glory I refused to understand then.
"What position will work best for you, Josette?" I offered.
Her breathing gave her some conflict.
"Doux demón, no woman in my condition... can become satisfied in how she feels in any position... by this time. Keep holding my hand."
I clutched around her palm lovingly and she pressed my fingers in hers, "Perhaps we can think of something together, Maggie. We have that power now to blend our thoughts and live elsewhere from our hearts and minds..."
"That's good, Barnabas," she stated, "I've been enjoying that... as well as how I've dressed you."
Ah, yes. Kitty was the dominant one now in what I wore. Much came from that Victorian time. I'd wanted to conform to more current attire but my bride detests this appeasement to the modern by saying, "Ah... you've already shown yourself to be different. The only thing that the attire of the late 1890's will prove you to be is slightly eccentric. That is all. Wear your long coats and your cravats and let the rest of the town be damned if they don't like it... for you know... I do."
"And you dress me very well, my sweet," I persisted.
She shifted on her back and over my legs in her swelling and stroked our daughter in her womb with a sense of uneasiness.
"How are you doing, both of you?" I questioned.
She exhaled, "Getting tired... of sharing space with each other, I think."
Can we speak to her again, I wondered in my mind. Maggie heard this.
"No," she told me, "she's too secure in this body now and so restless. We need to think of something else to pass the time, Barnabas. What can we think of? Please, come up with something."
I already knew, "Our dances?"
"Mmm," she asserted, "yes, which can we come up with? Let us go there."
"That strange melody you favoured at The Blue Whale, Maggie. No modern music truly touched me before that."
I could hear her mind attempt to conceal her gratitude that the music I mentioned was not from her music box... nor from the music box she had given me either. *
"Mmm," she said, "let's go back to that tango. You were so pursuant of me then."
Have I ever been otherwise?
Reaching down to her in my lap, I held her neck and kissed her lips as deeply as I could. Our minds went back to that evening we were all but alone minus an undemanding barkeep who had seen enough trouble not to encourage a night of enchantment. I could hear Maggie's thought in return to mine, "Yes, Mr. Andrews. A gentleman, indeed."
The delight in reliving that dance, as I drew away from her lips and we stared into each other's eyes, had its own beauty even in its awkwardness. We'd been reaching for each other across time, and she knew so much more of now than I. I had no idea what a steel guitar was that concocted those oddest sounds. And what fascinated me more was when she later told me the title was, "Sleepwalk". Ah, weren't we sleep-walking, though? Now and then?
Enchanting as the scene was, we remembered together our talk of simple things at the table afterward. She was detailing the governess position for David, she spoke of the mystery between us we didn't know, but my butler did, though he would never explain it to me. He knew I had to reach that understanding on my own and let this all unfold. As I have told him; he doesn't know enough, he knows too much.
Through this, another backdrop bled into being between us: the promenade to our matrimony. Music glided through us from the reception of our Wedding Day. Its memory wielded a finer passion of anticipation: Lining up in pairs, altering partners diagonally, striving to speak to each other with our minds before we'd mastered it. A dance of olden times we'd lived through together. But the evening was heavy on our minds. In one moment as we searched to re-couple in this dance, the violins eased that grace of music to our steps, our hands met and Maggie raised an eyebrow of humourous regard. She brought me to worry about what she was thinking, but pleasantly so.
She'd seen what I'd been speculating... I had undressed her in my mind.
Having to give a downcast expression, I glimpsed our feet so as not to trip in this mixture of frolic and blush, apprehending the coming evening. I was abashed, but still... I was smiling... as... was... She.
There was an Old World politeness we'd brought from our pasts keeping us coyly inhibited amongst our family and friends. They'd studied these dances of our time thoroughly to enjoy this with us, and we would not disappoint them by stumbling ourselves; too rich would be our lives now in this blend of past and present.
To this memory we shared, echoes of our want and desire stretched out, and in the now our hands clutched, while in that remembrance of our wedding day thoughts flowed smoothly of things we'd yearned toward each other but could not hear.
"The cake was too heavy," spoke my Josette.
I had to grin as we sat there, marvelling at this trivial pleasure of complaint.
"Yes it was, wasn't it?" I admitted, with amusement, "Usually something light is preferred for days like this. Was it too much chocolate?"
As that afternoon swelled in our shared enjoyment of the reception and this dance, she answered, "I never wanted chocolate... I only wanted you."
The smile I was wearing, as we sat in the recollection of dancing together, began to fall as I puzzled in our state now, anxious over how our offspring would turn out when she entered this world we had strived to make as safe as possible. Would Sarah be mortal or would she be monster? A tear formed at my eye, "And I never wanted blood," I expressed to my bride in thought, "I only wanted you."
Josette's face formed a saddened glow, but one of loving appreciation, "We had to have that, mon demón... we had to have that to have each other... for as long as this need spills forward, for as long as we need each other. Our lives endure and perhaps never-endingly. We will be put to the test as we have been each glorious night. So far what we are has been worth waiting for, worth struggling and fighting for... worth the people who pit us against each other only to combine again and again... in spirit and now... in flesh. Don't fear what our daughter will be, Barnabas. Whether she is like us or not, she will be what she wants to be... as We are... together."
The encapsulation of our wedding day and of our dance, broke away and our minds harkened back into the present; of two hands held together, us two reposing upon the renewal we'd created for Sarah. Her back was still resting along my lap, and all our hearts were beating as one. We'd concentrated our love-making for this union between the three of us, to right the wrongs, and bring the hope of change; the reason I always adored my bride of what she could, would and has done to create for our home. This was the purpose of choosing her among all other women; an alteration from gloom... to pleasure.
"Josette never begged for anything," I'd told her as Maggie alone, before I knew she was both.
"No I didn't," said Maggie, the renewal of Josette Dupres, and in this new fitting name, in all of its length... but what of that name? Margaret? That last syllable told me more than was contemplated on. She was Maggie and she was Josette... to me she was Margarette.
"Josette had a vase of flowers in every room of the house. She wanted life, the beauty of living surrounding her wherever she went." I had told Maggie in my filthy past of tormenting her.
"Yes, I did... and so I do now. You know that. You know how it hurt me to work all those hours from my home long ago and not be able to provide that for... Papa..."
Of course, if only she'd collected that habit again, and not lost it in the need to provide for her home and shelter. Her mouth curved as Maggie sent me the reminder that the habit of providing more flowers had been revisited all around us.
I lost her gaze to look about the room. There were peach blossoms clipped shortly in a small vase on my desk. Their upturned pinkish-purple petals curved around a range of white pistils that drew me in whenever I turned away from my work. But the message in this flower now came to me in her placement of them: "I am your captive."
How had I not seen this? And how, after all we'd been through, could she make that confession? It could not be for guilt toward what I'd done to her. No, she wouldn't do that to me now.
Her bygone portrait was over the hearth in the downstairs parlour again, where it always should have stayed. She was the princess of this house and always would be. On the mantle beneath that portrait was a container of Honeysuckle, like white gloves forming their fingers into a peaceful arc above the stamens: "Generous and devoted affection."
She had always been that to me and I to her.
My eyes lit to the small table nearest the stairway. There stood an ornate drinking glass of cobalt blue French crystal and coming out of its waters were Lilies of The Valley, tenderly bending leftward in their bell-like hanging blossoms: "Return of Happiness." Of course! This was where I'd carried her up the stairs to conceive our child: a return of happiness. Maggie had been placing these flowers there once a month and I had never compiled the knowledge of her meaning... until this moment. Why hadn't I?
She heard this and answered in thought, "You and I speak to each other in many and varied ways; celestial, physical, bemused... there are no methods to count them in total. Our destinies are one. But we are split to find all the variety of what we love in ourselves. That is the blessing of being together but separate. Combining we grow in new ways with each passing of the sun and the moon above, the days, the nights, the wind, the rain... and of our heartbeats uniting as one... our starlight over the dome of our world. Only the forming of clouds can recognize our loss and our love, when they drift apart and rejoin, as we do in our marriage. It's our journey, Barnabas. No one else's."
I breathed in and out, holding the hand that held hers to touch her sweet face. This gesture reminded me and committed to me all the amour she'd presaged back in our olden days, as I tried to protect her with my absence after what I'd become.
"And yet," I told her, "you've wanted that journey for others, Josette. You've wanted all happiness for others, haven't you?"
"I have wished it," she confessed, stroking the largeness of her middle with a look of grace and affection, "but," this with the heartiest gaze back at me, "if I can't manage it for everyone, allow me the selfishness to be happy that all I have done is created it for us."
I barely heard the cushions shift as I reached down to fervently kiss her for this request. Granted, easily, swiftly, without question, my Margarette. She was all that was sacred to me, all that I held dear, all that I could allow myself to be one with. In spirit she protected us and corporeally we protected each other with sanctuary.
That was when the deep echo of familiar steps gradually drew away our channelled connection of heart and mind.
"Sir," a deep voice spoke, his accent by now having influenced my own, "Madam... moiselle?"
My bride turned her head and asked, "Yes, Wadsworth? Is something wrong?"
He was kneeling before us, his hands prepared for attendance to some need we didn't know of yet.
"I'm afraid so, or perhaps very right, Madame Dupres. As you are aware we've been keeping many towels beneath you... just in case."
"Oh," she smiled, "I have been very comfortable for that."
"I suppose you could be," he admitted, an eyebrow slowly raising, "but perhaps Madame did not notice in her current concentration of this evening. Those towels you lie on have likely proven their need."
The lovely smile faded from my bride and she leaned up in an attempt to gaze over the roundness of her bulk. I looked myself and saw that her dress was soiled.
Maggie's inhale was sharp as our stalwart butler informed us, "I'm afraid Madame's water has broken."
*I have been planning for months that Josette should have a music box as a wedding present to Barnabas stowed away in that crate they found in -The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows-. I looked over an old classical tune with moonlight in the title but it was a bit after 1795. My husband said, "Use it anyway." And I agreed, "Sure, it could be an early demo by that composer."
However, I cannot remember what classical tune I chose for Barnabas' music box from Josette. I'm sure I'll remember when the time comes.
Positive insight, enjoyment or reflection welcomed on this chapter, as always.
Namaste.