Chapter 19: Misadventure

Berkshire, England, January 1866

Sleep did not come easily to Priscilla Marsden-Smith in that New Year's night. For the first time in years she allowed her thoughts to stray into the past, into those two years when she and Jim Tremayne had been engaged. Jim had been a shy young man, conscious of his position as second son, and he courted her with reverence. He always seemed awed by her acceptance and she vividly remembered the deep love in his eyes when she consented to the engagement.

Lucius Marsden-Smith coveted her, too, but more as a thing he wanted to possess. This was why Priscilla spurned him and why she preferred Jim Tremayne. Lucius would never let up though, not being used to not getting what he wanted.

Then Priscilla's father had met that woman, a dancer from Italy, and he had become infatuated with her to the point of obsession. She was charming, she was beautiful, and she incited feelings in the widower that he had never known. He fell in love head over heels.

Aware of the competition for her favours, he bought her expensive presents. It took him three months and more than his entire fortune to find out that she gladly exchanged favours for gifts with all her suitors. His heart broken, and feeling like a fool, he was overwhelmed with the need to pay off the outrageous debt he had accumulated in the three months of his benightedness. His main creditor was his neighbour, August Marsden-Smith.

In this situation Lucius' father had made his offer to forgive the debt if Priscilla married his son. Twenty-year-old Priscilla was quite unprepared for making decisions of that magnitude. Breaking the engagement with Jim Tremayne ran against her feelings. It also ran against her concept of decency since Jim was away with his regiment to fight the war in far away Russia. Yet, refusing August Marsden-Smith's offer would mean ruin for her father. It would also mean that no dowry or inheritance for her would come forth and that, she feared, would end the engagement with Jim anyway.

Those thoughts might not have swayed her, but her father, mortally afraid of the bankruptcy, besieged her day and night to accept Lucius' courtship. After two months of constant pressure, the young girl relented, sending off the letter to Jim that he never received. She thought it her duty to inform his parents, but she was mortified by the abject anger shown by Jim's father. He called her every bad name he knew, and a few he obviously invented for the occasion, and she was in tears when she left Hamden Gardens that day.

The Tremaynes were not the only ones to express their disapproval: whatever common friends she and Jim had had, they sided with him. Then the newspapers came out with the shocking reports of the Attack of the Light Brigade. Those were gruesome depictions of the battle and of the high fatality numbers among the regiments involved, and they were a shock to everybody she knew.

Priscilla did not dare to show her face anymore in public nor did she want to. She did not sleep for days, realising that Jim might have died, might even have sought death in the terrible battle knowing that she had betrayed him. In her deep desperation, she went to see his parents to learn of his fate, but his father was beside himself in his own anxiety and did not allow her in. Then, when fatality lists were published, she learned that Jim was listed as severely wounded, but it was weeks before news emerged that he had survived his wounds.

Others had not been that fortunate. There was a memorial service for Major Reginald Pryce from Jim's regiment. Knowing his widow Siobhan Pryce as a childhood friend, Priscilla attended the service together with her new fiancé. It was a frog-march for them under the scathing comments of neighbours, relatives, and fellow officers. Somebody opined openly that Reginald Pryce had been lucky at least inasmuch as he had known the love of a worthy woman. Priscilla waited in vain for Lucius to defend her. He showed his true colours for the first time pretending not to hear the insults. For weeks thereafter, Priscilla rarely ventured outside her father's house.

In the meantime, Lucius had purchased the patent of Major Penniworth, an elderly officer in the regiment who wanted to retire. That was further fuel for malignant rumours, but Lucius and Priscilla's fathers used this to point out that Lucius had far better prospects than a mere captain who might return an invalid. All through the winter they hammered into her that she had merely decided for the better man. In the end she almost believed it.

At least, she pretended to believe it when she saw Jim Tremayne one last time. Lucius had bragged that he would certainly finish off Tremayne and make it clear once and for all who was the better man. In her dread over the mortal peril Jim faced, she had gone for a last attempt to forestall the duel, but the hostile reception made her say things that she regretted for years to come.

She awaited the following morning in absolute misery, believing that Jim Tremayne would perish and that she was to blame for it. Instead, the word spread by midday how Major Marsden-Smith had twice fled the sword of his opponent and had been saved only by spraining his ankle. Within days, Lucius was the laugh of the county while Jim Tremayne was praised as a true hero who proved his mettle even suffering from barely healed battle wounds. During the following days, Priscilla watched on with incredulity as Lucius refused to renew the duel, resting his thickly bandaged foot on a chair and complaining about the excruciating pain in his ankle. This went so far that even his own seconds ended their office in protest and reported his questionable conduct to the regimental headquarters. Lucius was the only person who was surprised when Lt.Col. Caldwell tentatively suspended his patent.

Meanwhile, Jim Tremayne had taken passage on a ship bound for Boston, and Lucius had missed the chance to clear his name against the accusation of cowardice. Strangely, Lucius showed no dismay over that. On the contrary, he seemed relieved that he did not have to face Jim Tremayne again. He could not understand why Priscilla asked for their engagement to be resolved. This was her final, pitiful attempt at rebellion. On the very next day her father was taken to debtor's prison, and August Marsden-Smith made it clear that her father would stay in prison forever if Priscilla did not marry Lucius. Facing complete destitution and being left without a friend, she gave in.

Her father was released from prison on the very morning of her wedding, and all she remembered of the ceremony was the hatred that she felt against her father, the Marsden-Smiths, and against the world as a whole. Strangely, it was that last episode that lifted the public condemnation from her. The bald-faced coercion had been noticed by the neighbours, and they finally understood Priscilla's dilemma. Even Robert Tremayne approached her after Sunday service and apologised for judging her so harshly.

This forgiveness did not extend to Lucius Marsden-Smith. With the regiment returning from the Crimea, Lucius' position became untenable. Col. Payden was livid over Major Marsden-Smith's conduct and his fellow officers stood against him as a man. Jim Tremayne had fought bravely at their side and they felt no sympathy for a man who had stayed behind to poach on their wives and fiancés. The resentment against him was so severe that Lucius Marsden-Smith saw no choice but to offer his commission for sale. Even then, there were no takers, for the officers of the 13th refused the tainted commission. In the end, Lucius had to relinquish it with a loss of over £5,000.

Using his contacts with the East India Company, August Marsden-Smith was able to procure another patent for his son in one of the native regiments in India. Thus, Major Marsden-Smith and his wife embarked on a passage to Bombay. Lucius' regiment, the 13th Rajputs, was stationed in Lucknow but it was decided that Priscilla would stay in Bombay until Lucius could set up a household. When the Sepoys revolted against the British in May 1857, Priscilla was still waiting in the relative safety of Bombay.

Lucius was already serving with his regiment, and on June 30 he was sent to reconnoiter to the north of Lucknow. It being a hot day and with insufficient supplies of clean water available, he seemed to have quenched his thirst with Brandy from his hip flask. With no enemy showing yet, he rode over to a house of ill repute that he frequented. The combination of heat and alcohol was his undoing. Not watching the path as he should, he allowed his horse to step into a rodent burrough. The charger stumbled and broke its leg. Lucius was thrown and hit a tree stump causing a spinal cord injury that left him paralysed from the hips downward. He was rushed back to Lucknow while the loyal men of his regiment fought off the attacking Sepoys.

All through the five-month siege, Lucius was confined to a stretcher with no other treatment but opium fumes, and when the siege was finally lifted, he was transported to Bombay for shipment to England. Priscilla, who had been without news from him for over nine months, was overwhelmed with the need to care for a man who had not only lost the use of his legs but also his pride and self-respect.

The passage back to England brought some improvement. Lucius went through opium withdrawal since the ship's surgeon refused him the drug. He was of clear mind and in upbeat spirits when they arrived in London. This was mostly owed to the fact that the other passengers had treated him as a wounded hero, as a man who had survived the gruesome Siege of Lucknow. In the first months back in England this treatment continued and Priscilla – herself ignorant of the truth – was even a little proud of her husband. However, in late 1858, another officer of the Lucknow garrison burst that bubble telling everybody who wanted to hear – many people indeed – that Lucius had fallen off his horse in a state of drunkenness while heading for a whorehouse.

While Priscilla had to face the fallout of that revelation in her daily life, Lucius found solace for his misfortunes in the accursed opium tincture, Laudanum. In her terrible situation the only satisfaction came to her when August Marsden-Smith apologised to her for forcing her to marry his 'unworthy offspring'. The old man never lived down the shame his son had brought down on the family, and he died of a simple cold in early 1859.

In the meantime, Priscilla's own father had recovered from his ill-fated infatuation, both mentally and financially. He was mortified over his daughter's misfortune which he rightly saw as his fault. He supported her as best he could but he, too, died in late 1859. He showed his love by leaving his estate in a trust. The trustee, Lord Lambert, would dole out the interest directly to Priscilla, thus preventing Lucius from getting his hands on the small fortune.

Soon, the monthly payments from the trust were the only money she could use for groceries and their servants' pay. Lucius controlled what income came from his father's estate and he used it for his own vices. Now, seven years after his father's death, Lucius income did not cover the costs for his habits and vices anymore and he had started to sell off his lands, further reducing the income. Two caretakers had resigned and the estate had fallen into dissolution.

Seeing Jim Tremayne at High Matchem had made Priscilla realise the depth of the misery that constituted her life. Rose Tremayne had been right, of course. Had Jim continued his career in the regiment they would never have become rich. He would have been a husband to be proud of nevertheless, and for Priscilla that would have been enough. He would have never met the red-haired beauty from the American wilderness and he would be the devoted, loving husband of Priscilla Tremayne. Priscilla knew without a doubt that she would be happy with him. She would have children from him and live the life for which she had hoped a decade ago.

She barely slept that night, and when she answered the call for breakfast from their old housekeeper, her long-suppressed, deep-sitting resentment against her husband was nearing the boiling point. Sure enough, when she joined him at the breakfast table he was already nursing on that accursed medicine bottle. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. With newly found resolution Priscilla snatched the bottle from his hands.

"That's enough! You are drinking away your estate and our livelihood. As of this morning one bottle will have to last you two days, one glass every six hours. That is what Dr. Claxton prescribed."

"Give me back my medicine, woman!" Lucius snarled.

"No! You have no pain, all you have is a craving for this poison! From now on you will get what you need and nothing more."

Lucius switched to whining. "But Pris, I need my medicine. The pain kills me!"

"That's nonsense! What pain? You claim to have no feeling in your legs. How can you have pain then?"

"You would not say that if you knew how much my open skin hurts."

"Yes, so you had better control your bladder! I know that you can do it. You wet yourself out of spite and that's what causes the sores. This will end, too! Every time you wet yourself you will forfeit the next dose of Laudanum."

When pleading did not work, Lucius reverted to cussing. "Damned woman, this is still my house! As long as you put your feet under this table and eat the food I buy..."

Priscilla interrupted him with an angry snort. "When did you last buy food with your money? I pay for the food from my inheritance, I pay the servants, and I pay for clothing. Since I pay for everything it is time that I decide, too. No more Laudanum!"

"Are you out of your mind, woman? I'll have you whipped! I'll have you thrown out of my house!"

Priscilla looked at him, surprised at her own calmness. "Just how do you propose to do that? Nobody visits you. Dr. Claxton will not come for another month. The servants will side with me because I do not wet myself every night. They will side with me because I pay them. They will side with me because they despise you and hate you. You have embarrassed me for the last time."

"Oh, it's because of that," he crowed, suddenly upbeat again. "Your old sweetheart saw you with your crippled husband. How did you like his red-haired hussy? He's forgotten you in her arms, believe me. She is far better looking than you are. Maybe I should take her away from him, too?"

Priscilla laughed for the first time on this morning. It was a laugh so full of disdain that Lucius cowered a little before her.

"How will that work out? She is married to an able-bodied, rich man. A man, I may add, who is a perfect gentleman and well-respected for his bravery. How do you think you will win her? Your father is not alive anymore to blackmail her. Do you think your crazy ramblings will endear you to any woman? Do you believe that a woman who enjoys the loving touch of her manly husband will leave him for a man who wets himself every night? You are but a shadow of the man you used to be, Lucius, but even when you were a man you could not hold a candle to James Tremayne."

He cackled madly. "That got your dander up! Hah! You're stuck with me and all the loving touches will come from my cane! You are mine and you will knuckle under."

"Oh, will I? Just you watch me, Lucius!"

With determination, Priscilla left the room and went into Lucius bedroom. She returned with the wooden crate that held his stock of Laudanum bottles. She picked up one and smashed it against the back of the fireplace.

"Stop that, you crazy bitch!" Lucius shrieked, unable to mask the panic he felt.

The next bottle crashed inside the fireplace, the contents sizzling on the glowing logs.

"Stop that! Pris, please! My pain!"

"Will you agree to my rules?"

"I can't, Pris! I need my med ... Stop! I'll do it. I accept."

Priscilla lowered the next bottle and put it back into the crate. "I shall lock this in my room. Mrs. Buller or I shall give you your doses. Remember: one slip, and the next dose is forfeit.

"Now we shall wash you and we shall cut your hair and beard. You will keep a civil tongue with the servants and thank them each time they help you. You will also eat this porridge. Do it!"

Priscilla felt utterly drained when she left the breakfast room. Their housekeeper, Mrs. Buller, intercepted her.

"Bless you, Mrs. Marsden-Smith! It was high time to put a stop to his madness, beg your pardon. You're doing the right thing, and I'll back you up all the way."

"Thank you, Mrs. Buller. I was hoping that I could count on you."

"Mr. Travis from Brompton Abbey lost both his legs at Sebastopol. Look at how he handles his life! He's serving as a councilman and on the church board, and how lovingly he treats his doting wife! They did a bad thing when they gave your husband all that accursed opium, but then again he was weak before. I cannot count the number of times when we had to carry him upstairs when he was still with the regiment."

"I shall consult Dr. Claxton today to ask about the best way to rid him of the habit."

"Throwing those accursed bottles on the dung heap sounds like a good start," Mrs. Buller stated.

Priscilla found Dr. Claxton at home. He asked her in and offered her a tea which she accepted.

"Dr. Claxton, I came about my husband. His Laudanum habit has grown into a problem that may be our ruin, to say nothing of his mental state. Do you know of a way to rid him of his craving?"

Claxton looked at her over his half-glasses. "Are you serious about this, Mrs. Marsden?"

"Dead-serious, Doctor."

"There is but one way: complete refusal of the drug. Laudanum contains opium, and it is highly addictive. Anything but a complete cessation of intake is useless. The results will be dramatic in the beginning. He will be rabid. You will have to tie him down and be careful lest he might bite you. This will take at least three to five days before he will calm down eventually. If he ever has another dose of Laudanum you will have to start over again. Can you handle that or should I have him confined to an asylum for as long as it takes to wean him off the poison?"