The Grays of Truth, page 22
“Merry Christmas, my love,” Scott said, handing her a snifter of brandy as he came into the room.
Jane looked up from her reading and smiled.
“And a happy Christmas to you, General,” she said, and took the glass.
“’Twas a good supper,” he said. “And I appreciate your kind words to my son. It was important that he hear from you the need to find someone else to fill the void in his life.”
“It breaks my heart to see him still grieving so. I guess I hadn’t appreciated the love that he shared with Mary Louise.”
Scott set his glass on the table.
“Speaking of love,” he said, and pulled a small box from his pocket. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. “I have a gift for you.”
“I wasn’t expecting that we would exchange gifts,” Jane said, surprised and a bit embarrassed, as she hadn’t thought to get him anything.
“I was going to wait until your birthday in February but decided that tonight was right. Please. Open it.”
Jane took the package and untied the string. Under the wrapping was an enameled box.
“Go on,” he urged, smiling.
Jane lifted the lid. Inside was a sizable sapphire ring with cushion-cut diamonds on either side mounted in a coronet setting of etched gold. When the facets of the stones caught the firelight, the sapphire seemed to glow purple.
“It’s beautiful,” Jane said. “And the color.”
“It’s a violet sapphire. I thought of your ancestral home in Virginia—Violet Bank—and knew it was right for you.”
Jane kissed him on the cheek. “I will cherish it always. Thank you.”
“Here, let me see it on you.” Scott took the ring from the box and reached for her left hand. He brought his eyes to the wedding ring that she still wore. “You’ll need to remove that first.”
“People will think we are engaged.”
“I don’t rightly care what people think.” He brought a hand to her face and stroked her cheek. “Do you love me, Lady Jane?”
Jane felt the tears coming again as she always did when he became sentimental.
“You know I do.”
“Then wear my ring on the finger that it was meant for.”
Jane looked down at her hand and the filigree gold band Ned had placed there decades before. Removing it was the last physical sign that she had once been his wife. It was time, she thought. She pulled the band off and placed it in the box.
Scott smiled at her as he slid the sapphire ring onto her finger.
“We belong to each other now.”
1870
Evil is a consequence of good, out of joy is sorrow born.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 42
Saturday, March 12, 1870,
Wharton Residence, Washington, DC
“What’s this?” Jane asked, picking up the ivory envelope that Scott had laid on the table when he came in. She was dressed in a long-sleeved maroon velvet gown with full skirts and an elongated V-shaped bodice cut low on the bosom. Her hair was in a hairnet with a few flowing curls around her face and a matching velvet rose by her left ear. Scott was standing at the bar cart in a tuxedo: a deep-burgundy tailed coat, gray paisley vest, and charcoal trousers. Tonight they were going to the opera.
“A wedding invitation,” he said, pouring himself a drink from the crystal decanter. “Do you want a nip, darling?”
“I’ll pass for now, or else I’ll fall asleep halfway through the performance,” she said as she took a seat in a chair across from the sofa.
“And what’s wrong with that?” He chuckled, picking up his glass and joining her. “You look lovely tonight. I like the hair. A nice change.” He kissed her on the cheek and took the chair next to her.
“Whose wedding?” Jane asked, looking down at the envelope still in her hand.
“I would have thought you received one. I suppose they know we will come together, and only bothered to send one invitation.”
“Who?” Jane asked again.
“Your nephew, Lieutenant Clifton Wharton, and that pretty little brunette that we met at the races last year. Getting married in Georgia on May Day. Figured I’d take you to Savannah afterward and we’d make a week of it.”
“While I think the world of Clifton, I am not going to that wedding.”
“What do you mean you aren’t going?”
“First, I wasn’t invited, and second, I want nothing to do with Ellen Wharton.”
“You aren’t going to be spending the week with Ellen Wharton,” Scott said, agitation in his tone. “You’ll be spending it with me.”
“This has nothing to do with you, Scott,” she said, trying to explain.
“It has everything to do with me,” he said, cutting her off. “You’re defying my wishes.”
Jane could tell that Scott was becoming angry.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot go.”
“Come now, you’re my woman, Jane Gray.”
“But I’m not your wife,” she said, her own temper rising.
“If you were, you would have no choice in the matter.”
Jane’s anger exploded. She stood from the chair, fear and ire mixing in a tumultuous roar inside her. She threw the invitation at him and stormed from the room, flying upstairs to her bedroom and slamming the door. How dare he!
She placed her hand on her bosom, willing herself to breathe as scenes of her exchanges with Ned, his contempt-filled eyes, his menacing words—“. . . if you spent more time being my wife!” played in her mind.
The bang of the front door interrupted the commotion in her head. She rushed to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and watched Scott stomp up K Street toward his house two blocks over.
“Oh God, what have I done?” she said, and threw herself on the bed. Too angry to cry and too afraid to follow him, she lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering if she would ever escape her marriage to Ned.
• • •
Scott didn’t show up to walk her to church the next evening. Jane didn’t see him at the service either. In recent months, he would stop by her house on his way to the War Department and share tea with her each morning, and together they would catch the trolley on Fifteenth Street as they made their way to their respective offices. But not this week. Jane didn’t see him on the trolley, and she didn’t see him on the street. On the following Saturday, Esther came to visit.
“You and I have been friends a long time,” Esther said as she and Jane settled in around the tea table. “I want you to know that I am here as much as your friend as I am here as Scott’s sister. Ben and I love you both, and we can’t stand seeing what this row is doing to you.”
“I’m fine. Really,” Jane said, doing her best to hide her torment.
“Well, Scott isn’t. He’s a wreck. Ben says he hasn’t been at work but for a couple of hours in the mornings, then disappears.”
“Where does he go?”
“Most likely to the officers’ club to drink. Or to the fights to gamble.”
Jane sighed. “I’m sorry that he is reacting so poorly to this. Just because I don’t want to go to this wedding doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with him. He’s blowing this all out of proportion.”
“You love him, yes?”
“Of course, I do.”
“Then can’t you put your differences with Ellen Wharton aside for just the day of the wedding and go with him to Georgia? He asks so little of you. Do this one thing for him.”
“I can’t understand why attending this wedding is so important to him.”
“So many of his colleagues will be in attendance, and Scott will have difficulty explaining why his wife isn’t with him,” Esther explained. “It will reflect poorly on him if you aren’t at his side.”
“I’m not his wife.”
“To him, you are.” Esther brought her gaze to the violet-sapphire ring Jane was wearing. “In Scott’s mind, you became his bride the night he put that on your finger.”
• • •
After Esther left, Jane went to her greenhouse to garden and to think.
You’re my woman. She repeated Scott’s words in her mind as she put on an apron.
“God, how he sounded like Ned when he said that!”
But he’s not Ned.
Jane looked at the spot from where the voice came.
“Since when did you become a fan?” Jane said, picking up a trowel. “Go away. I don’t need you confusing me any more than I already am.”
With trowel in hand, Jane walked over to a row of potted plants. The implication that Scott could force her to do something, anything, against her will brought forward all her latent fears from where she had buried them. She didn’t want to be the good wife ever again. But she wanted to be good to Scott. And good for him. So, how was being a good companion different from being a good wife? She pushed the trowel into a pot of soil.
Making a sacrifice for a man because you want to is different than sacrificing because you have no choice.
Jane stopped her digging and thought.
“You’re right,” she said after a minute. Ned, through intimidation and brutality, had coerced her sacrifice. Scott, on the other hand, hadn’t made her do anything against her will.
“But he threatened to,” she said.
Esther told you why.
Jane furrowed her brow as the conversation with Esther played in her head.
“Because that’s how he was made!” she exclaimed when it occurred to her. “Just as we women are molded for obedience, men are molded for authority.” Jane marveled at the revelation. It was so simple, yet had made her life so miserable.
If you want the love between you to survive, you must confess the truth.
Jane looked at the apparition.
“Truth?”
Tell him why you are so afraid.
• • •
“I owe you an apology,” Jane said as Scott opened the door. His face was more gaunt than usual, and he looked tired.
“Please, come inside,” he said, and invited her in. He took her coat and umbrella and walked her into the drawing room of the house that he had once shared with Rebecca.
“I’ve been a damned stubborn fool,” he said, taking a seat beside her on the sofa, unable to look at her. “If you won’t go to the wedding, then I won’t either.”
She smiled at him and reached for his hand. “I’m not here to talk about the wedding, although we will get to it eventually. I’m here to apologize for not telling you the truth.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, the lines on his forehead furrowing deeper. “When did you lie to me?”
“It’s more an act of omission rather than commission. I haven’t told you my truth. And I think, when you hear it, you will understand me and what happened last Saturday.”
“What truth, Jane?”
Jane closed her eyes for a moment. She had held the secret for so long, so afraid of the repercussions if she told, that she didn’t know where to start. Finding courage from deep within, she opened her eyes.
“When Ned Wharton proposed to me all those years ago, he insisted that I sign a contract agreeing to the terms and conditions of his idea of marriage. In this contract, the husband had total authority, and the wife had to obey his every command. As you know, my marriage to Ned was arranged by our fathers, so I had no say in the agreement. After learning the terms of Ned’s contract, I promptly left Walnut Grove and walked into the Delaware River. Fortunately I was spared death, but I was sent to an asylum to regain my sanity, then married off to Ned within weeks of my release. But this is not what I need to tell you—although it does explain my brothers’ concern over my mental state.” She smiled at him again, taking in his bewildered expression. “Don’t worry, darling, I am not suicidal and haven’t felt that desperate in nearly thirty years.”
“It’s not the suicide attempt that has me baffled,” Scott said. “It’s this contract.”
“Yes, the contract.” She took a deep breath. “The mechanism Ned used to enforce the contract was ‘chastisement,’ as he called it. If I were to question him, disobey him, or challenge his authority in any manner, he found it disrespectful and a cause for discipline.
“The first time it happened, we were on our honeymoon. We were having dinner at the hotel, discussing where we wanted to settle. I suggested we move to the farm in Virginia that I would later inherit, but Ned wanted to live up north. He made some disparaging comments about farming and farmers, and I took offense and told him what an ignorant thing he had said. I could see from his face that he was angry, but he feigned a smile and said nothing further on the subject. After dinner, I found out just how angry he was.
“When we retired to our suite, Ned sat down in a chair and told me to undress. At first, I thought that watching me disrobe aroused him in some way. But there was wrath in his eyes, which I didn’t understand at the time. So I stood before him and removed my clothing. When I was naked, he removed his belt from his trousers. Thinking he wanted intimacy, I suggested that we move to the bed. That’s when he told me I was too insolent, and that I needed a lesson in respect first. His words were ugly and filled with hate. I remember being suddenly very frightened as he looped the belt and held it in his fist. When I bent to pick up my dress, he grabbed me, ratcheted my arm behind my back, and forced me over his lap. He had twisted my arm so high between my shoulder blades that the pain paralyzed me, rendering me incapable of moving or fighting back. When I cried out for him to let me go, he struck me across my backside with the strap. I cried out again, begging him to release me. He told me that the louder I screamed, the harsher the discipline would be, and he struck me again, this time much harder. He hit me over and over until my backside burned like fire. I begged him to stop, but my pleading only seemed to infuriate him more. So I lay there, over his knees, trying not to cry as he beat me.” Jane fought to keep the emotion from her voice, but the memory of that afternoon still hurt.
“When Ned was finished, he dragged me to the bed and forced himself on me, telling me it was for my own good and for the betterment of the marriage.
“That was the first chastisement. Some were worse, some not as bad. The last time was the day after my father’s funeral.”
Jane avoided looking at Scott as she spoke, fearful she would lose her resolve to tell her story if she saw his reaction. When she finished, she brought her gaze to his. Tears were gathering in the corners of his eyes.
“Come here, darling.” Scott pulled her into his arms, holding her tighter than he had ever held her before. “My sweet Jane Gray,” he whispered and stroked her hair. “If he were alive, I’d kill him and gladly hang for it. I swear to Christ Almighty. I’d make him suffer like he made you suffer, and then I’d kill him dead.”
Placing her hands on his shoulders, she pushed from him just enough so she could look at him. “That is not why I told you this. I don’t want you to carry anger that isn’t yours. He’s dead, and I buried my resentment when I buried him. I want you to understand why I react the way I do and for us to understand how our experiences affect one another.
“Society tells us that men are powerful and in authority, and that women are weak and must obey. It is baked into each of us from the day we are born. Ned took those conventions to the extreme. Because I had been subjected to the extreme, I overreacted last weekend. My reluctance to comply with your request enraged you. What I’m asking is for us both to be sensitive to the other. I can’t always obey. And you can’t always be in authority. And we both need to accept this.”
Scott looked down at the floor, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. After a long moment, he lifted his gaze.
“There is something I need to share with you, as well,” he said with a heavy sigh. “You knew both my wives. When Nancy died, I thought my heart would never recover. Her parents sent Rebecca to me as a replacement—not only as my wife but as mother to the infant that Nancy had left behind. Not long after Rebecca and I exchanged vows, the child died, and poor Rebecca was married to a man still grieving her sister.”
Jane knew this, of course, as Rebecca’s story was much the same as Jane’s. Both women had been forced into surrogate marriages.
“At the beginning, it was obvious Rebecca was unhappy. Once we moved from Tallahassee to Arkansas, her mood improved. She gave me a son, and she seemed content. But when we left Fort Smith, she became melancholy again. Yes, there were times when she appeared happy, but those moments were few and far between. I thought if I loved her enough, she would find it in her heart to love me, too. But in the end, I realized the truth.” Scott glanced away, struggling with his words. “Rebecca didn’t want me. She was in love with someone else.” Water was welling in his eyes again.
Jane reached for him, not knowing what to say. While Rebecca was initially unenthusiastic about her father’s arrangement, she had given Jane the impression that she had come to care deeply for the general and that they were happy together. But now, Jane was beginning to think that she really hadn’t known Rebecca at all.
“I’m so sorry, Scott,” Jane said. “Surely you are mistaken. I was her closest friend, and she never said anything about anyone else.”
“As difficult as it is to believe, it’s true,” Scott said. “She confessed it to Daniel.”
Jane sat back and looked at him, shocked. Tears were now rolling over the hollows of his cheeks. “Why would she confess something like that to Danny?”
