How a Wife Should Be

S. R. Gabriels

She should never recognize or appreciate his deeds in any way that a lady should not. That a wife should never scorn her husband’s rewards even as they teetered upon the wobbly pedestals of fortune and bankruptcy was a concept she should never grasp. His love was laid in a shallow grave that echoed like from a deep pit; he hated her. He whispered to the looking glass through thin lips that he should never have married such a villain. These secrets were scribbled on moldy pages in moldy books and stored in the creased shelves of his brow which grew deeper each time he thought, dreamt, spoke, and flickered his eyes from her to the nearest door or window. These secrets, she thought, were as black and white as the evening paper he pinched between his forefinger and thumb.

He cleared his throat, an idiosyncratic convulsion he maintained as of late. Once after entering the library, twice after sitting, another after swallowing his tea; he made his presence known through rapid and decrepit barks. Rosamond was not concerned; this was Tertius—this was her husband, the physician. The physician who successfully diagnosed three cases of gout and four cases of cholera last month in London alone, and, in the process, maintained old patients and safely secured two new ones, including an agreeable old gentleman who claimed to be the third cousin to that of Mr. Brooke. She should think of Tertius as the town’s liaison between breath and bed, and thus, the night began the same as others.

Lydgate sat with her tête-à-tête and began in a fit of coughing. He told her himself she should let him clear his throat; for it was an irritation; a mild, late-onset asthmatic ailment primed yet surely soon surmounted in age.

“Tertius,” sighed Rosamond, bothered more with the disturbance in the quiet than with the source of the interruption himself. “Tertius,” she began again, but he did not cease.

She turned to speak his name again but noticed something quite odd about her husband. Gently pressing the palm of her hand along the fleshy part of his neck beneath his ear, she attempted to examine the strange forms resting beneath her touch. He winced under the soft caress.

“Tertius,” she started once more. She looked to his face, wondering why his eyes seemed so glassy. His profile was warped and discolored—he was a bloated pink salmon, floating in the shallows, the sun roasting his scales and swelling his gills. And as the orange light lapped behind them in the fireplace, strange shadows flickered over his jawline as ghastly silhouettes of past acquaintances which neither should dare to name aloud. She touched the warm lumps under his ear again and followed the path of raised skin to his chin, making him cough and rebuke her more.

“Mr. Hargreave must be called,” she spoke simply. She folded her hands in her lap.

“No,” he coughed. “I am…a physician.”

“An ailing one,” she muttered.

“Do not rebuke my state. The cough will clear itself soon, I have no doubt, and Mr. Farebrother asks of my assistance tomorrow morning. He tells me his Meredith seems lethargic and feverish.”

“This is the third time this month he has called for you, and nothing has been the matter with little Meredith—you have said so yourself. He is a father; fathers worry for their children. Perhaps Mr. Farebrother can call for another. There is that new child’s physician—oh, but what is his name? It does not matter. I am sure Mr. Farebrother can afford a different pair of eyes.”

“My eyes are quite adequate enough,” said Lydgate in a deep voice. “My perspective does not waver because of a small case of catarrh.”

Rosamond did not know if she favored her husband’s health or rank more—a lively physician procured a lasting societal grin upon both himself and his woman, but a long reign also called for a woman’s extended stint as a physician’s wife. Though, she was determined to prevent his authority from overshadowing her own. This, as always, she accomplished through clear words and a calm façade.

“Tertius Lydgate, you are a man before a physician. Mr. Hargreave is nearly four and sixty, and is, I am sure, more knowledgeable in fields where a man’s eyes could not see beneath his own nose.”

There, she thought. She commented on his pride. She was the one who dismantled his hard work; she was the one who stole it from his grasp, grinded it beneath her heel, and embraced the fine powder. She mixed the grains of his vanity into his tea, she thought, and swirled it round until it disappeared. Sweeter than sugar. A diagnosis of indifference; a prescription of this placebic brew was sure to bring the roof to ash before his knee to floorboard. And he should hate her for it.

“I am in no need of assistance. My own work,” he coughed, “precedes me.”

But should she say again that his health preceded his work? It was commonplace that a wife should make a happy living for her husband, and if she were in the mind to abandon this evidential spousal code, how much worse, then, would he regard her? She said he should rest, though she knew he would reject the premise.

“An increase in my doses will do me fine. Do not trouble me with inadequate cures to ailments you do not understand,” Lydgate croaked. “I do not need rest.”

Another violent fit of coughing overcame him. He should always refuse her care. Though it was no secret between her husband and herself of the enmity with which they shared for the other, Rosamond kept this from everyone, including her children; especially her little Katherine, who, not so little any longer, was a budding young lady. She reminded Rosamond of herself—a perfect cherub with flouncing blond curls that looped near and framed her darling blue eyes. Rosamond was never ashamed to esteem Katherine as her favorite, for she did not have her father’s look.

“You are unlike most men, then, I am sure of it,” she said expressionless.

“Most men, I should hope. What would a man be if he were perpetually tangled in another man’s profession? Let a physician be a physician, a banker be a banker, a barrister be a barrister…why, a saint a saint, a Sir a Sir, a fool a fool, a Lady a Lady,” he continued with rasp.

“A fool a fool?” Rosamond asked quietly. “I see. And let mistakes gleam, lies prevail, and fire spread. Such divine words men do speak, but not all things should be their nature without cease. Pray, at least one to end some. Fitting is the man who follows the saint, and deserving is the lady who chases at the fool’s heel—”

“You speak to me of foolishness and women?” asked Lydgate, his voice suddenly clear and strict.

“How deep your spite must run for me,” sighed Rosamond.

“Well, I hope for you to understand something apart from your frocks and gloves,” he said. “But I am unsure of that. The purest of gold which holds my jewels upon your fingers you find a way to tarnish. Even purpled cloaks succumb to the moth’s taste, but you sit and let the creature gnaw.” He cleared his throat. “And your rudimentary call for a physician in a physician’s home… Well, you are gravely mistaken. Make no such utterances, no such—”

He began coughing again. He had taken to his feet at the time of foolishness and women, but sat once more, for it alleviated his pain.

“Promise me not to intervene in my own health,” he muttered.

“Do not you trust me with it?” asked Rosamond.

“I trust your perseverance,” he responded. “Make no such inquiries of my health to anyone but myself. Do you understand this? Can you do this?” She quietly nodded, an act she had perfected.

Mr. Hargreave was early to their estate the next morning. Unable to present the same hostility toward a stranger as he afforded his wife, Lydgate met the gentleman inside. He was a proper practitioner himself, boomed Lydgate upon introduction. But what should have taken minutes had taken Mr. Hargreave an hour. What could present itself in an hour’s time? Rosamond did not wish to recount Dorothea’s ghostly namesake.

“Not well,” were Mr. Hargreave’s words. “Not well ’tall,” he said. When Rosamond pressed further, Mr. Hargreave merely huffed.

“Well, the cough is jus’ the first bit, ’tis. First bit of a long’n, I reckon. More ’an medicine is needed, I am ’fraid. More ’an medicine, I reckon, is always needed in cases like these.”

“Is it that serious?” asked Rosamond. Katherine laid her cheek against her mother’s arm, shifting her eyes from her resting hands to the large window facing the terrace. The light from the early morning rushed in and around only half the room; the reflection through the panes framed the tips of Rosamond’s fine golden hair in an ominous yet even glow.

“Indeed,” Mr. Hargreave said. “Indeed, worse ’an most I have seen. Diphtheria can be a nasty one, I am ’fraid.”

“Diphtheria?” asked Katherine, her eyes shining in sudden understanding. “Father was only at Sir Gregory Peak’s one sennight past!”

“Was Sir Gregory Peak exhibitin’ any signs o’ fever? Irregularity or swollenness ’bout the jowls?” asked Hargreave, tilting his head up and tapping the sides of his chin with his forefingers.

“Well, I am sure of it—that is what father said,” continued Katherine, now standing between her mother and the window’s light. “But more than that, you must know?” she asked, suddenly nervous that a man of medicine remained unaware of those whom medicine could not save.

“Katherine, your sister needs help with her ribbons… Come on, off you go—apples and pears,” said Rosamond. Quietly, Katherine immediately ascended the stairs. “All she means, Mr. Hargreave, is that Sir Gregory Peak’s fever took him two days after my husband’s visit.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Hargreave. “And was your husband not the same when he ‘turned home? His fever has risen since this morning a’ least, I reckon.”

“Tertius, was the same,” sighed Rosamond. “But he has changed rapidly over the last evening and through this morning as you have said,” she continued. “Is there a thing to do?”

“My good lady—no,” Hargreave said. “Not this late.”

Hargreave spoke with Rosamond of symptoms that would soon appear in a violent and rapid succession and that she should be lucky not to be named a widow in three days’ time. Rest and fluids, rest and fluids, chanted Hargreave. But what were rest and fluids to a stubborn physician with more patients than emotions? Lydgate should not listen. No, not to her.

A shame. The two words rang through the square quicker than children’s chatter nearing Michaelmas. “The only decent thing he will have ever surrendered in this life is his to hers, his to hers, his to hers, hers to—no, his to hers,” chuckled Mr. Vincy upon hearing the news. “Your little spendthrift’s eyes will not hesitate to strike after the grim, I am sure, Lucy.”

“Oh, Walter,” sighed Mrs. Vincy. “Be at ease. Your daughter is to lose her husband; her children—your grandchildren—fatherless.”

What they spoke of next is of no importance, but I would be cross in failing to note that it was indeed interesting. Am I to determine a word’s worth over imminent loss? Conversation is no cure in the mind of a lax wife with nothing to offer her opposite. Rosamond willingly substituted her mother’s pity with her father’s pocketbook when she could not wring her husband’s first. And her gaze was always so still, so flat. Lydgate only knew the coals of her eyes and the dark, ashy mines that hung beneath his own. But let it be known that nothing glimmered in the rough for either. Especially on the final night.

“You tree,” began Lydgate in a daze. “You bring me buds for spring…shade for summer…leaves for the autumn breeze…” His rasp fell listlessly past Rosamond’s bedside ears. He welcomed a slight grin across his blank face.

“Am I a tree?” she asked rather childlike in his delirium. “Are you now a botanist or a poet?”

“You are my tree. So still,” he spoke. “How deep your roots planted. So still. A fine sapling. So still, so still.”

“Still? But pray, I hope, I blossomed fully?” she asked sweetly.

“Oh, my dear Rosy,” he exhaled. “Oh, my dear basil plant.” His brow tightened.

“Am I now no majestic cypress?” she asked of her sudden change in epithet.

“So still,” responded Lydgate; his wide eyes faced the ceiling, and his fingers grasped the blankets. “You are my basil plant—my basil plant.” This last utterance came through a painful groan; dismay that had churned for decades.

“And what do you mean to say?” Rosamond asked in a hushed tone.

“Basil flourishes wonderfully on a murdered man’s brains,” Lydgate whispered, his grin still present.

“I have been that terrible to you?” she asked, not caring for a response. She didn’t get one either; the physician only smiled.

“Why, then, did you choose me?” Rosamond asked, leaning in. “Plenty have offered you better. Plenty,” she paused, “have blossomed more beautifully than I.” He peered into her eyes, but she bore through his. She understood.

Coughing, Lydgate’s hands flung to his eyes, seemingly to claw a certain visage from them. Whimpering, his torn fingernails flung to his throat, surely to push the swollenness down with brute force or perhaps to trap words barricaded deep in his gullet. Rosamond did not scamper back at the sudden commotion but instead came closer.

“I understand,” she whispered, softly kissing the now still physician’s brow.

No sooner than three months had passed when Mrs. Hargreave went away from London, taking her children along with her. A revered lady. Lovely children. These phrases preceded her in Whitby now. Dissolve, she told herself. Vanish. Tea is no good with stray lumps of sugar. Holy Rosamond Hargreave, London called after her. Oh, how a wife should be, it sang.

She knew the knell well.