Chapter Text
Mrs Clara Holmwood, Lady Godalming, settled into bed one evening with her favorite book. It was something she had enjoyed since early childhood, and though her mother despaired of her reading by such low light (for she was sure to wrinkle her face with straining!), she had never been able to rid herself of the habit.
Her husband did not seem to mind it, though of course there were nights where she had forsaken her books in favor of more physical pleasures. Arthur had been very wonderful to her in the few months that they had been married, and a great deal of things had indeed been pleasing to the both of them.
As Arthur got into bed himself, he leaned over to give her his customary goodnight kiss, and Clara tilted her cheek up to meet his lips in anticipation. But it did not come. Instead he stopped about halfway through the motion, and she heard a sharp intake of breath as though something had struck him suddenly across the face.
“What are you reading?”
Clara looked up in surprise. His voice was terribly odd, and he was sitting very still in a half-leaned-over position.
“It is Carmilla,” she told him, moving the book so he could see the cover, though she was certain he had already read the title for himself.
“The vampire!”
Arthur’s face went red and then terribly pale. He looked absolutely wild, and for a moment she thought he might shout out again, but he only stared at her as if urging her to go on.
“Yes, she is,” Clara said, trying to speak calmly but at the same time being filled with the sinking feeling that she was leading herself into a trap by confirming it. “It tells the story of a young lady who was visited by a vampire once as a child, and is later plagued by nightmares of a large beast that comes to her at night. She does not know it was Carmilla all along, stealing into her room to drink her blood. It has long been a favorite of mine, but I will put it away if you do not like it,” she finished uncertainly, for he really was alarming her. She had not thought him to be the kind of man who did not believe women should be reading novels, and this one really was perfectly decent, not a tawdry bit of trash at all.
Her mother had always cautioned her that the way a man presented himself when he was courting a young lady was not always the way he was when the ring was securely on her finger, but she had really never seen him behave like this for any other thing. He had been as kind and courteous as he was when they first met, until this very moment.
Or perhaps that was not it at all. He clearly was disturbed to a length which no mere belief could produce. His eyes were wild with—something, she could not tell. Fear? Disgust? Revulsion? Any of those or some other terrible emotion had swelled up inside him, draining his lips of their color and causing his hands to clench around their bedclothes.
A silence fell in their bedroom as Clara stared at him. He did not move a muscle and he had not said one word since the name of the fanciful creature passed his lips. It was only when she slowly moved towards her beside table to put the book away that he reacted in any way.
“No, no,” he hastened to reassure her, though his face still went white and red in turns. “You may do as you like. I only thought of—no! It is no matter.”
“Really, if you have an objection, I—”
“No! The fault is mine, I must—”
“Arthur!”
She called his name, but it made no difference, for he had already thrown himself out of bed and hurried through the door. Now she was as frozen in place as he had been moments before, knuckles white around the cover of the offending novel.
Slowly, carefully, as if it were a live wire, she placed it in the top drawer of her bedside table and slid it shut. The slight chafe of wood against wood was terribly loud in the room that had turned as silently oppressive as a tomb.
Clara felt that she had done something horribly wrong, but she hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. Should she run out after him, wait here until he returned, or go to sleep immediately so they would not have to face each other again tonight? Her mother had prepared her for a great deal of things in marriage, but her husband fleeing their bed in assumed terror after seeing her with her favorite book was not one of them.
Drawing her knees up to her chin, she floundered amid the confusion of her mind. What had she done wrong? Or if she had not done wrong, what was Arthur’s objection to her behavior? And was that not a wrongdoing on her part anyway, since a woman should always obey her husband and be ever pliant to his whims?
She still could not decide whether to run out after him, even though she did not know to which room he had fled. A terrible notion briefly fluttered through her mind, that she might go out in search of him only for him to return to her in the interim and then would have to sneak back into bed like a disobedient child. No, better to remain where she was. It was a wife’s duty to stay in her marriage bed, and if he really wished to avoid her, he could sleep in his dressing room.
That thought frightened her even more, for it seemed to be the first straw placed upon the camel’s back which over time might be loaded up and break under the weight of many small mistakes. But could a happy marriage really be placed on the path to destruction by a wife’s single thoughtless error? Clara hoped it could not, but of course she had never been married before.
She sat there, building herself up into a frenzy of ever-multiplying worries, but it was all for naught. Arthur came back half an hour later. His face had returned to its normal color, and when he came into their bed again he touched her arm carefully and then kissed her on the temple when she did not draw away from him.
“Please forgive me. Read whatever you like. It will not happen again.”
So he promised, but Clara noticed that he still stiffened up and went all pale-faced when she brought the book out before bed. He said nothing about it, but she took to reading it in the daytime instead and locking it in the bottom drawer of the desk in her sitting room when she did not have it in her hands. She did not want to disobey her husband’s wishes on the matter, even when he had not made a direct request and had in fact given her leave to do the exact opposite, for his aversion was clearly evident.
She could think of no reason why that novel in particular would be so offensive to him, for since the incident she had carefully tested him with the cheapest piece of tawdry trash she could send her maid to buy. Half-afraid to provoke him again, she had instead been left more confused than ever when he commented jovially on the title and asked if he could borrow the little volume when she had finished.
Emboldened by this, strange as it was, she went further. The Godalming library had not been expanded since the death of Arthur’s father, but under her watchful eye it grew exponentially. Plays of the widest variety, French novels of the most sentimental romance, thick tomes of philosophy which were not her style at all but seemed important to include in her experiment. When she told her maid to buy a newspaper, the girl’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates, but she did as her lady instructed. Arthur came upon her reading it in the sitting room, her heart pounding like a trip-hammer, but he gave no sign that he had noticed and only took up the papers he sought before dropping a kiss on her lips and leaving the room. A newspaper! His wife was reading a newspaper before his very eyes, and he said nothing about it at all!
Clearly she could read anything she wished, except for just one thing. It was completely baffling; there was no earthly reason for it.