‘SHE WAS COMPLETE’

If Ross understood that he’d blundered, which he did, he now only wished to make amends. In the carriage on the way back to Tite Street from the offices of Dutton & Caldecott, he longed to take Jane’s hand. It came to him that this might be a good moment to offer her the emerald ring, which he believed he had returned to his coat pocket, but reaching for and not finding it, he then remembered that he had forgotten it! It still lay upon the dressing table near the bed in Jane’s room. He cursed himself for this almost as much as for his tactlessness in the solicitors’ office. How could such an important thing have slipped his mind? Once again, he was tempted to blame Jane’s behaviour for his loss of control over his actions, but quickly decided that this was not quite fair. So he began to stammer that he was sorry to have spoken out about the property laws, but had only done so ‘in order that everything should be clear from the outset’.

Jane did not like this word, ‘outset’. For what did it indicate but a terrible ‘setting out’ on a life she now felt she would be unable to bear? She moved herself further away from Ross and said, ‘I suggest we do not talk about it at present. It is too painful to me. And Father, may I ask that you and Doctor Ross return to Bath on the evening train? I am sure you should both be faithful to tomorrow’s patients, and I would like to spend some time alone in what is, for the moment, my house – before it is taken from me.’

Silence fell in the carriage, as it lurched towards Chelsea. Jane was now feeling sick and only longed to arrive in what had always been designated ‘her’ room at Number 2a Tite Street and lie down on her bed and close her eyes. Sir William wished ardently that Clorinda had been by his side, imagining that she would have known – by some soothing Irish means – how to defuse the anguish which was visible on the three faces, rendering them strangely gaunt. But they could only go on like this, unspeaking, with Jane trying to master the nausea which was threatening to overcome her, Ross uttering silent curses upon his own impetuousness, and Sir William yearning to be in Mrs Morrissey’s tea room, with her tender hand stroking his head and the sweet normality of a cream bun set before him on a china plate.

The men did as Jane had begged them to do and set out wearily on the return train to Bath at seven o’clock. Jane had left them long before, to go to her room, giving Valentine Ross no chance to hold her and beg her forgiveness and no moment in which he could have crept upstairs to retrieve his ring. On the journey westwards, he thought with desperation about the fate of this emerald, not knowing what Jane would deduce from finding the jewel suddenly there on her dressing table, but imagining that she might well assume that it belonged to Emmeline – and thus to her now – and could cast it thoughtlessly into a jewel box, among all the other items of value she now possessed.