“Ofttimes, it feels as if I am but a character for you to take out and play with when the urge strikes. Or perhaps the better metaphor is a doll. I am pretty and amusing and good for a laugh—until you tire of me. Then you may put me back on the shelf until next time.”
She tried to object, but he spoke over her, which was unheard of from the usually solicitous Effie.
“I have twisted myself trying to be that doll. Trying to be what I thought you would like. Initially, it was my pleasure to do it. It would have remained so had I felt we were building something. An alliance, a partnership. I would never have forced you into marriage, butsomething. It wouldn’t havebeentwisting, in that case. It would have been something more like . . . bending.
“You once remarked on how biddable I was, how I always seemed to know exactly what you wanted to do, or to hear. I should have listened better when you said that. I thought I was being gentlemanly. I thought making you happy would make me happy—and it did.
“But that only works if you want me as much as I wanted you.”
Wanted. Past tense. Julianna blinked rapidly so that she would not cry. She had cried enough tears in recent weeks that she could no longer credibly claim she was not a crier, but she still found herself resisting.
“You have this idea about who I am,” Effie said. “An aristocrat.”
“Youarean aristocrat,” she could not resist pointing out.
“Yes, and I used to wish I could change that.” He smiled. “Ironically, perhaps I can, in a way.”
She had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t have an opening to ask, because he kept going, the pace of his speech pickingup.
“I understand I can’t make you want me—truly want me, for something enduring, for something more than once or twice a year—and so I’ve got to stop trying. It’s a small revelation, in the scheme of things, but it’s a rather large one for me personally.”
“Effie,” Julianna said, unable to disguise the anguish in her voice. “I am so very sorry. I never meant to make you feel unappreciated. I never wanted you to twist yourself to please me. And Ineverthought of you as a doll.”
“I know,” he said quietly, sadly. “But does it matter what you meant, what you thought? Or does it matter what youdid?”
Oh, dear heavens. Julianna had never experienced such misery, not even the day Father died. Her body felt heavy with it.
She wanted to ask why this was all coming out now. Why hadn’t he told her any of this before, back when she could have modified her behavior?
“I had the dream again,” he said, “and this time it worked differently.”
“You were able to control it?” she asked, struggling to adjust to the change in topic but understanding, somehow, that he was answering her unarticulated question about what had prompted him to make that devastating speech.
“In a manner of speaking. It wasn’t as you said—as Aristotle says. I had no awareness that I was dreaming while I was dreaming. But there was a voice in the dream. A voice that had never been there before. It guided me up and out of the wardrobe.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said, and meant it. “Whose voice was it, do you think?”
“I did consider that perhaps it was yours, because after I got out of the wardrobe, I went for a swim, and you were the one who suggested that.”
Something inside Julianna lurched toward him. She wanted the voice to have been hers. She wanted to be the one helping Effie in his time of need, the one who appeared in his dreams.
“But as I was floating in the waves—which was curious because it was December in the dream, yet the water was warm—I realized the voice wasmine.
“You think I’m a specific kind of man. The kind who will try to control you, or your magazine, which I sometimes think you care about more than yourself.
“I can’t make you see that I’m different.” He unsteepled his fingers and sat back again. “Or perhaps I’m not different; perhaps to think so is only self-flattery. It matters not. The point is, I cannot go to the seaside with you and give you everything and then come back and withdraw everything because you only want me in certain circumstances.”
He stood. She, having been struck dumb—again—by his speech, stood, too. It was all she could think to do.
“I will write the February Mrs. Landers letters, but after that you should find someone else to do it.”
The sob was beating at the door of her chest. She swallowed it. “Will you still send me poems for consideration?” She couldn’t bear it if Effie stopped sending her poems.
He smiled—a little sadly, she thought. “No. I will send myself poems.”
She didn’t know what that meant, but she was too desperate to query him further, for she understood that he was saying goodbye—he was carrying himself toward the door. “You can’t even be my friend. My correspondent?” She heard the desperation in her tone but could not do anything about it.
He must have heard it too, for he turned with his hand on the door, his expression exquisitely gentle. How the tables had turned. “No. I am sorry. I know I contradict myself. I know I was the one who suggested we keep up our correspondence even as we set aside our affair. I came here today in that spirit, to pay a friendly visit. But I didn’t understand.”
