Ban looked at me, his expression hard and glittering in the candlelight. Then he kicked away the footstool and wordlessly retired to our bedchamber, opening the armoire.
He began to pack his bags.
“Where are you headed?” I asked him.
“To Liverpool. My mother is dying.”
I knew about Jane Tarleton’s will. “She has left you a generous bequest to settle your debts of honor, several of which remain undischarged. Is it not honorable to tender your lover of nearly fifteen years some reimbursement or compensation for her financial sacrifices on your behalf?”
Ban demurred.
I despaired of sounding like a fishwife.
“I never asked you to support me, Mary.”
“Nor did you even once reject my assistance. My purse was always open to you, as was my heart. I do truly believe you should make amends from your inheritance.”
“Are you mad, woman?” Ban thundered, the old war-horse emerging from the now stocky, graying parliamentarian. “You cannot wrap me like a skein of silk about your fingers; no one can manipulate Banastre Tarleton—not even you!”
“Are you saying that you refuse to offer me the merest shilling in restitution?”
“I thought you gave of your own free will, Mary. I never obliged you to pay my bills. Tell me true, did I ever compel you to spend a single penny on my behalf? You cannot answer that, can you? You cannot say you gave me aught for any other reason than your love for me. And now that my mother is at death’s door, you have the temerity to insinuate that all this time your seeming munificence has been a loan?”
“You are cruel indeed, with a heart of adamant, and the conscience of an adder!” I shouted. “I ask you to review the situation from my eyes; to acknowledge that much of it is of your own making. Have you no decency, sir? Would you see me utterly penniless, and idly stand by? How could you be so ungrateful?”
“Mary, I have reached the end of my wits with you,” exclaimed Ban. “Fifteen years of my life, and all you can demand of me is my mother’s money.”
“That is not all—good heavens, how you twist my words! I demand only that you behave with honor, conduct to which I know you are no stranger.”
Ban shook his head. So, he refused to help me. “I cannot endure this anymore,” he said crisply.
How could a man be so tender at times and yet so cruel at others? He was indeed a bloody butcher, as the American colonists had tagged him. For he had sliced my heart and guts to ribbons and then stamped brutally upon the steaming entrails.
“I should have done this long ago,” Ban declared, and donned his hat. “Our connexion is at an end, Mary. I can assure you, no matter how plaintive your poetry, I will not return. This time, Mrs. Robinson, I mean it.”
He left the room, slamming the door with ferocity. I took a generous draught of laudanum and crawled under the counterpane, my face wet with tears. The boudoir echoed with my hysterical, heaving sobs. My throat soon burned from wailing.
It was April 1796, and I had loved Ban and no other man on earth since the spring of 1782. Now I had lost him forever.
Who was nobody now?
Act Five
In Polish’d Form of Well-Ref ined Pen
Twenty-eight
Mightier Than the Sword
1796…age thirty-eight
When next I woke, Maria suggested that a change of scene might be welcome. Wearily, I agreed, and we set out for Bath, always one of my favorite places for rest and recuperation. But I fell ill along the journey, and made it to town more dead than alive. As I lay delirious with fever, Ban haunted my every thought; my mind could fix on nothing else but the events of the decade and a half I had devoted to him. And now he was lost to me forever—all the more reason to despair. What a curse is memory to those who have outlived the sustaining power of hope! Why are we destined to retrace the paths of pleasure, in imagination, while our weary footsteps tread on the thorns of disappointment?
“Mark you, I seek no pity,” I sniffled to Maria.
“Fear not; you shan’t receive any from me.”
For many moments, I gazed at her in silence. My daughter. The only person in my life who had never betrayed me. My rock. My shoal. My anchor. She was indeed strikingly attractive in a way that was entirely devoid of artifice: tall and willowy with soft brown hair, cut short now, in the modern fashion; and a pair of gray eyes that conveyed volumes of intellect and astuteness behind them. Her countenance was always open and agreeable, belying her capacity to be quite judgmental when it suited her. She’s old for her tender years, I thought, realizing she would turn twenty-two in October. “You’re a grown woman now, Maria. You can choose your own path. Perhaps we should begin looking out for a husband for you.”
“Why should we look when I do not wish to locate one?” my daughter replied, her manner calm but direct. “My life is here with you. That is the path I choose. I see neither shame nor harm in being your happy acolyte, and find such a decision immensely preferable to any other. I have more dignity and autonomy as your daughter than ever I would have as any man’s wife.” Her pointed look demanded no further
