The Wedding Day (continued)
We returned home—the chapel lies opposite the pasture along a stone path—and went to our respective rooms to change. I was planning to spend the afternoon with Pamela when a messenger arrived.
Charles Hargrave was bringing two of his friends to dine. It is a sign of how much I’d reformed that I didn’t kill the messenger.
Instead, I stomped into the back parlor where Pamela was sitting with Mrs. Jewkes. “Charles and his friends are like huge snowballs,” I complained, “rolling up companions as they gallop about the countryside.”
Pamela produced a half-smile. She was pale again, and I frowned. When we were together, she was comfortable and relaxed. Apart, I couldn’t imagine what she was dreading or envisioning.
“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll get rid of them.”
I heard Charles and his companions before I saw them. They blew a bugle at the gate and then again in the courtyard while snapping their whips.
“Hullo, hullo, hullo,” Charles said. “All better from your accident, eh? I told your sister you’d be fine!” He was off his horse by then, slapping my back and motioning to his friends to dismount.
“I have an engagement this evening,” I said. “You can’t stay long.”
“We only wanted to see you before going on to Nottingham. Oh,” Charles said, slapping his forehead, “I know what I wanted to ask you—Did you kidnap one of your maids?”
I scowled at him. “No—that is, who told you that?”
“Your sister.”
My sister. My sister was doing my reputation more damage than Williams had ever done.
Charles and his companions—Sedley and Floyd—were in the long parlor by then. Floyd said, “Let’s fetch the fair prisoner,” and Sedley said, “We’ll search the house!”
“You’ll do no such thing,” I barked, and they stared at me, great-eyed.
“If you sit,” I said, “I’ll arrange for some food.”
They were more subdued after that, but I could only get them away by agreeing to drive with them as far as Thorney.
The trip was tedious, to say the least. Charles and the others circled the carriage, hallooing and hooting at each other’s riding tricks. I felt incredibly old and wished they would all break their necks in a ditch.
“I think you must be serious about this serving wench,” Charles said when we parted at Thorney and I'd refused (several times) to go on with them to Nottingham.
“She isn’t a serving wench,” I said brusquely and left them.
I was glad to head home, but I found myself growing uneasy. During our engagement, Pamela had never, I swear, complained about my kisses or caresses. Our wedding night was, admittedly, different and for Pamela, entirely new.
I confess, Mrs. Jewkes is not the best person to put an innocent at ease.
As the carriage entered the road leading to the house, I saw Pamela and Mrs. Jewkes standing at the stile to the pasture. I rapped on the roof, got out, and sent the carriage on. When I turned back, Pamela was alone. I went and put my arms around her, and she relaxed against me with a little sigh.
“How can I deserve all this?” she said, and I remembered what she’d said in the chapel about her unworthiness.
“If I set my riches against your fine qualities, Pamela, I would owe you.”
She laughed into my shoulder. “I will be less serious,” she said, leaning back to look into my face, and I kissed her.
We entered the house together.
We ate supper and talked, then Pamela went to her room—to write, I assumed. I was grateful since writing usually calmed her. Near eleven, I sent a message that I would attend her shortly. She asked me to come in a quarter of an hour. And I went.
Cross-Examination
Mr. B stopped speaking. There was a long silence.
Gary said pettishly, “Well? Aren’t you going to regale us with a detailed description of your wedding night?”
“What’s your prurient interest?” Lonquist said, and Gary bristled.
Mr. Hatch said, “I would like reassurances that Pamela’s wedding night was a non-traumatic event.”
“If he told you so, would you believe him?”
“If she is as sincerely religious as Mr. B claims,” Gary proclaimed, “I can’t imagine it was anything but traumatic.”
Mr. B and Mr. Shorter looked confused. Leslie Quinn threw up her hands, and Lonquist sighed.
Judge Hardcastle said, “Are you suggesting that religious people do not enjoy good sexual relations with their spouses?”
Mr. B actually sniggered, then coughed when the judge raised his brows. He said, “My wife is a righteous woman, not a dead one.”
“Augustine,” Lonquist said. “Separation of body and spirit. Bad body. Good spirit. That’s where they are coming from.”
“I know, but Pamela was no Augustinian.”
“She had Puritanical attitudes,” Dr. Matchel said, trying to make the most of Gary’s assertion. “She was very conservative.”
“Puritans actually had good sex,” Leslie Quinn said. “As do many modern-day fundamentalists.”
Mr. B waved a hand. “Pamela was modest. But once we married, sexual congress was no longer a disgrace. It really is that simple.”
“She enjoyed her wedding night, in fact?” the judge queried.
“Yes. So did I, by the way.”
“I do not want a chapter out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but I am afraid that some detail will be necessary. Can you oblige?”
Mr. B sighed and ran a hand over his face. “I can provide more detail than Pamela does. There are twenty-four hours missing from her account. But not enough to satisfy the prurient moralists,” jerking his head towards the CLF table.
“I am not a prurient moralist, Mr. B. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Mr. B’s Testimony Corresponding to The Wedding Night
 |
| Pamela's dressing gown. |
Pamela was seated on the edge of the bed in a grey moiré dressing gown. I stood by the door and watched her. She’d let down her hair; it had been cut where she was struck by the bricks, and the short strands fluttered about her face, which was serene, remote, wholly contemplative.
I said, “I would rather not put off this evening, Pamela, but if you need time—”
She looked up, focusing on me, and I waited, hardly breathing. She smiled then, shyly, and I went to her and took her hands.
“Are you thinking of the night I tried to ravish you?” I said.
She looked surprised. “No,” she said. “I was considering what a strange path I’ve taken that has deposited me here.”
“Not an entirely happy path.”
“I suppose not. But I don’t remember it with reluctance. Only,” she studied me gravely, “I wonder if I will please you.”
I laughed and sat beside her. “I am not the libertine you have imagined, Pamela. There were indiscretions, a few liaisons, and some poor behavior, but I was never profligate. Wild behavior in young men does not always follow the same path. I have no diseases.”
She nodded, her head against my shoulder.
“You’ve enjoyed my kisses,” I pointed out; in the dim candlelight, I saw her blush.
“Even in my mother’s house,” I added boldly and waited for expostulation.
She slid off the bed then and faced me.
“You were very naughty there,” she said, and her lips twitched.
I pulled her between my knees and gave her a kiss, not the type of kiss I’d given her before but a kiss more frank and full. The tip of my tongue ended on the inside of her bottom lip. I settled my hands on the faint swell beneath the dip in her tailbone. There was a brief moment when Pamela neither approached nor retreated—she must considered everything—and then she was there, in my arms, all of her with no restraint.
There is no need to detail our lovemaking. I know Pamela was grateful for my lack of ribaldry. It frankly never occurred to me to make jokes. I was wholly concentrated on her body, her expressions, her curiosity.
For she returned my fascination. Once the laws of man, God, and society permitted her full expression, Pamela expressed herself. Anyone who has read her writings should know how easily that would come to her.
I woke towards morning. Faint light from the sash windows showed me Pamela’s outline. She was seated cross-legged beside me, her back against my thigh. I wondered for a moment if she was writing her parents about our wedding night and if they would thank her for such a letter, but the room was too dark for writing.
I reached out and touched her arm. “Do you have any pain?”
She turned and groped for my hand. “No. I was thinking about the marriage service.”
Trust Pamela to revert to theological considerations after a bout of more than satisfying sex.
She said. “A man is supposed to love his wife like his own body.”
“‘With my body, I thee worship.’“
“Yes. We are one flesh.”
“Like my goods.” I yawned.
“Yes. Which means,” Pamela said, “that your body is my property.”
That woke me up.
“And,” she went on with legal precision, “I have rights to it.”
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Which she did.
Cross-Examination
Mr. B stopped and looked at Judge Hardcastle, brows lifted.
“That seems enough.” The judge glanced at the CLF table.
Gary sniffed. “You want us to believe she was really that assertive?”
“Pamela’s own words bear me out. She was embarrassed the next morning but not uneasy. We were sleeping in the same room by Saturday night. I’ve rarely slept apart from her since—until now. When may I see her?”
The judge harrumphed. “More patience, Mr. B.”
“I’ve defended my courtship of Pamela and my marriage. Within the context of the novel, the romance, whatever you want to call it, we are happy.”
“A marriage built on kidnapping and near rape.”
“We’ve covered all of that,” Mr. B shouted at Dr. Matchel.
The judge snapped, “No shouting,” and Mr. B retreated, pressing a hand to his head. “Stupid, stupid,” he muttered.
Mr. Hatch said, “She is adjusting remarkably well to Herland. The question is what is best for her.”
“You think Pamela would be better away from me?”
“I think that possibility should be explored.”
Mr. B scowled at the windows. “She wants to come back to me.”
“You wish,” Gary muttered.
“I think she probably does,” Deborah said. “It’s not like the Herland characters hate men.”
Leslie Quinn said, “I thought the Herland women poured scorn on the idea of heterosexual marriage.”
“You’re probably thinking of that Russ short story about the planet with no men and lesbian marriages. Gilman had a different objective from Russ. Herland women worry more about being pregnant all the time than male-female relationships. I mean, Gilman invented birth control before birth control really existed.”
Mr. Shorter looked bewildered. Mr. B laid his head on the table. The judge glanced at him, at the clock, and sighed.
“I think we should break for today. Tomorrow, nine a.m.”
