Stella Bain (13 page)
As for you, Dr. Bridge, my gratitude is enormous. I have come to trust you in a way I doubt I shall ever trust anyone again. You gave me attention when you could ill afford the time to do it. Had it not been for you, I wouldn’t have been prepared for the moment when I realized I was not who I thought I was.
Regarding our treatment sessions, I am sorry to report that the ailments that plagued me have not entirely gone away. The pains in my legs have returned on two separate occasions, which no one witnessed. Their return upsets me even more now than it did before, for I fear there will never be a cure. I’m wondering if I ought to seek out the advice of a doctor when I arrive in America. I rely on you to tell me what to do.
I hope you will not think me too bold, but I feel that it is only fair to you to explain the history behind the drawings you spent so much time studying. The man I drew on the blanket with the telescope is, in fact, the very same Captain Samuel Asher you met at the Admiralty. It was he who said my name. He and I were young lovers. Eventually, he married and left Exeter, New Hampshire, for Toronto, where his wife’s family lived and where he taught physics. Whatever was between us ended quite some time ago, and he was nothing but kind to me while I resided with his sister.
The drawing of the man in the bed is of my husband, Nicholas Van Tassel, a man I never loved. On one occasion in August of 1915, he attacked me, which was the prime reason I left the country soon afterward.
Phillip Asher, younger brother of Samuel, is the half face I drew. A driver with the ambulance corps, he was a good friend to me when I served in Camiers. On March 11 of last year, he was horribly injured. He is still undergoing surgeries to repair his face. Phillip had been a visiting academic in Thrupp, where I lived with my husband, also a professor. In competition with Phillip for the post of dean of Thrupp College, my husband managed to ruin Phillip’s distinguished reputation and create the most heinous of scandals around him. Phillip left America and immediately joined the war in France. I tried to find him there and persuade him to return to America. After I saw Phillip’s injured face in the hospital tent in Camiers, I fled into the fields, believing that my family, specifically my husband, had caused this second ruination of a decent man. That is all I remember until I woke two days later in a hospital in Marne. You know the rest.
You will perhaps have guessed by now that the garden I drew represented the one I had at home in Thrupp, New Hampshire, and that the presence I felt in it was my children, Clara, now sixteen, and Nicky, now eight. And as for the cottage I drew with the menacing trees outside the windows, it remained for a time a secret oasis that I purchased without my husband’s knowledge. It was there that I began sketching in earnest.
The terrible thing I once confessed to you I felt I had done was my abandonment of my children when I was not in my right mind. I go now to find them again.
Though I left in haste, I have never stopped thinking of you and your gift to me.
With great affection,
Etna
En route to America, February 20, 1917
Dear Samuel, I want to say again how grateful I am to you and your sister for taking me in and arranging passage to America. I will, as soon as I have employment, pay you in full for the ticket.
I appreciated your silence on the matter of our earlier romance—I can think of no other way to put it. The several days I spent with Elinor were fragile ones for me, and I had all I could do to sort out my nearer past.
I cannot pretend to know your thoughts, but if you have felt the tiniest distress about the way our earlier relationship ended, you must not. My time with you remains a sweet memory. I used to think I would hold on to my feelings for you forever, but the years and the difficult experiences I have had since then have muted them as if they were voices from my childhood.
I wish you well in your further responsibilities. It is rumored that America will soon enter the war. We all hope for a speedy end to that terrible conflict.
With gratitude,
Etna
Bryanston Square, London, England
19 March 1917
Dear Etna, I was greatly relieved to receive your letter. I did know that you had set sail for America because I went round to Captain Asher’s office and spoke with him, and though I was, I confess, hurt that you had not said good-bye to me and Lily (I can see from your letter that you could not), I was glad to know that you were en route to your children, and even happier when later I received a marconigram from Asher telling me that you had safely reached your destination.
The hospital where Phillip Asher resides is also a nursing home where he can live with other men with similar injuries. Phillip is progressing well, I am told.
Lily is thriving and gives you her best wishes for a happy reunion with your children.
May I just say that witnessing your physical transformation at the Admiralty when you learned of your identity was one of the most astonishing sights of my life. Though you were highly distressed, your back straightened and the features of your face became more defined, as if the prescription of my spectacles had been changed. It was clear that Stella Bain had gone and Etna Bliss had come alive.
I think often of Stella Bain, the woman who struggled with so much.
Fondly, as always, August Bridge
Gainesville, Florida March 20, 1917
Dear August, I write to tell you that I have been reunited with my daughter, Clara. The reunion requires a long letter, which I will try to write before the end of the week. I will soon travel to New Hampshire to see my son, Nicky. I face a battle ahead, for I will fight for custody of them, but I wanted you especially to know this happy news, which I hope you will share with Lily.
With affection, Etna
Bryanston Square London, England
9 June 1917
Dear Etna, I must give you the sad news that Lily died yesterday at nine twenty-three in the morning. Despite the best efforts of the surgeon and the midwife, Lily bled to death as a result of her labor having begun too early, thus rupturing the placenta before emergency procedures could begin. I was, however, able to save the infant, a boy, whom I will call Sebastian.
I cannot say any more.
August
Gainesville, Florida June 21, 1917
Dear August, Your news about Lily has left me in mourning for her lovely person, for the life that might have been, and for the life that once was yours.
That you should spend your days as a firsthand witness to such destruction and death and then have to suffer the loss of your wife in a place where she was meant to be safe is too bitter an irony to bear. My constant sympathy is with you.
I know that you and Sebastian will find joy in each other.
With the greatest sorrow and affection, Etna
Bryanston Square London, England
21 July 1917
Dear Etna, It has been more than a month since Lily died, and I have been unable to write or to read a word until today. Lily was buried in her family plot in Greenwich. I refuse the Victorian method of grieving and the over-sanctifying of death. It is with us; it is a part of life. Though I, a physician, should have been prepared, I thought the universe—at least at home—to be a kinder one. I think of the thousands of mothers and wives whose clock has stopped in 1917. Mine has, too.
Though I have hired a nanny, I spend as much time as I am able with Sebastian every day. I love to hold him in my arms.
I continue to take my daily stroll through the Bryanston Square garden. That and my time with Sebastian are my only diversions. That the world should go about its cycles—the garden is awash in roses—strikes me this year as not the miracle I have always felt it to be, but rather an insult to those of us who still reside in a place called winter.
As ever, August
S
o there is to be a trial.
“I hope you will not mind my saying this, Mrs. Van Tassel, but you have a difficult case before you.”
“I understand.”
Averill Hastings is the third lawyer Etna has consulted. The first two, after investigating her petition, refused her.
“As I wrote to you, the judge has agreed to go forward with your petition, even though your husband will not divorce you. Indeed, it is because of Mr. Van Tassel’s obstinacy that the judge sees no other way to ensure your right to be a parent to your son. There is precedent for this.”
“I am most grateful.”
If this is not Mr. Hastings’s first trial, it must surely be his second. The new lawyer, painfully thin, cannot be older than twenty-five. His suit hangs on narrow shoulders, and his fingers tremble as he writes in a notebook. His pinched mouth and his close-set eyes do not add to his handsomeness, and she fears he will not be a robust presence in front of the judge.
“Will Mr. Van Tassel be present in the courtroom?” Etna asks, noting the apprehension in her voice, an apprehension she will have to rid herself of before the hearing.
“It is hard to say at this time. Some courts favor the presence of the Respondent. Others do not. If you do not mind, Mrs. Van Tassel, I have some questions I should like to ask you. These are so I may be prepared as best I can.”
“Yes, certainly,” Etna says.
“Where were you born?”
“In Exeter, New Hampshire.”
“In what year.”
“In 1876.”
“So you are…”
“Forty-one. Forty-two in August.”
“And how old were you when you met and married Nicholas Van Tassel?”
“I was twenty-three when I met him and twenty-four when I married him.”
“At twenty-three years of age, how were you keeping yourself?”
“I had, some months before coming to Thrupp to stay with my aunt and uncle, lost whatever means I might have had from the family estate upon the death of my mother. My sister, Miriam, and her husband gained control not only of the house but also of whatever funds remained.”
“And you were left with nothing?”
“Does this have bearing on the case at hand?” Etna asks.
“It may,” Mr. Hastings responds, regarding her carefully. “If you were penniless at the time you agreed to marry Mr. Van Tassel, it may help to explain why you entered into a marriage with a man who was perhaps not best suited for you.”
Maybe Averill Hastings is shrewder than Etna has previously given him credit for.
“You and your husband lived together for fifteen years.”
“Yes.”
“And how would you characterize this marriage?”
How is she to answer this question? The marriage was different minute to minute, as are all marriages, she suspects, and yet maddeningly the same day after day. Until the end. Until the unbearable end.
“We had respect for one another,” she says, deciding even as she answers him that she must tell the lawyer the truth about the marriage if he is to properly represent her. “But there was great unhappiness on my part. You see, I married Mr. Van Tassel because I had sympathy for him, not because I loved him.” And that was the original sin, she thinks now, from which came all that happened later.
“Can you explain?”
“In 1899, he became, I suppose you would say, obsessed with me. If that sounds overly self-regarding, I apologize. I suspected that one day he would propose to me, and when he did, I turned him down, as I did not love him.”
“If you did not love him, how was the man encouraged to propose to you? I assume you had walked out with him?”
“Yes,” Etna says, remembering the stifling atmosphere of her aunt and uncle’s house in Thrupp, her desperate desire to be out of doors, even on the coldest of days, and how she happened to meet Professor Van Tassel during a hotel fire. He offered her the very thing she craved: a chance to be away from the house. What irony that she should have been with him so that she could breathe, and yet she was always short of breath in his presence. “I suppose you could say that I used him to get away from rather stifling living conditions.”
“No, you will not say that,” Mr. Hastings quickly informs her. “You will not say that you used him. And I am quite certain that you are misstating the case. You have mentioned that he pursued you in an obsessive fashion.”
“Yes.”
“And that you refused to marry him.”
“Yes. After that refusal, I left Thrupp to go live with my sister and her husband in Exeter.”
“In what used to be your own home.”
“Yes.”
“And what was your position in your sister’s house?”
“I went to visit so that I might get away from Mr. Van Tassel, but it soon became clear to me that I had my room and board in exchange for being governess to my sister’s children.”
“Indeed. Did that strike you as degrading or attractive?”
“Not necessarily degrading, but it was not a life I wanted for myself.”
“So if you accepted that proposition, you would have again entrapped yourself?”
“My sister and I were never close.”
“Mr. Van Tassel must have approached you again about marriage.”
“Yes. He came to Exeter some weeks after I had arrived there. When we had an opportunity to speak alone, I saw genuine love and hope and promise in his face, and in that moment, I pitied him.”
“You pitied him.”
“Yes. I agreed to his proposal.”