Cashelmara (60 page)

Thank God, I thought, and began to pine for the new year as a convict in prison might pine for the day of his release.

“Sarah,” said Edith at the beginning of October, “I wonder if I might speak to you for a moment.”

Edith wore an olive-green handkerchief dress, very fashionable, and a multitude of fussy carnation-red trimmings which matched her rouged cheeks. At first I thought she had been daring enough to revive the bustle, but then I realized she was merely ill-corseted.

“Yes, of course, Edith,” I said, pausing in my letter to Charles. Edith and I had succeeded in avoiding each other with greater success than I had dared hope for that summer, and I had even forgotten when we had last had “words.”

Edith sat down. We were upstairs in the room I had converted into a little boudoir, or sitting room, for myself. I had felt the need for a private retreat of my own, and although I had expected Patrick to object he had approved of the idea and had even told me I could refurnish the room if I wished. But I hadn’t wanted to be extravagant. I had merely brought some old furniture down from the attics and ordered the reupholstering of the Grecian sofa and chairs and the refinishing of the Carlton House writing table. I had sufficiently tired of the exotic tastes of the Prince Regent to judge them decadent, but Cashelmara had influenced me subtly again, and just as I no longer found the house ugly, so I now found the turn-of-the-century furnishings more attractive than the efforts of modern craftsmen and their machines.

“I have some important news to tell you,” Edith was saying.

“Oh? How exciting! Do tell me.” I thought perhaps she might have had an invitation to spend Christmas with Clara. They had patched up their quarrel and were corresponding regularly again.

“I’m going to be married,” said Edith.

There was a silence. I looked at the fire in the grate and the mist beyond the window and my unfinished letter to Charles before me oil the writing table.

“But how lovely, Edith!” I said. But it wasn’t lovely at all. I saw my coming freedom vanish and my jailer no longer in retreat but stationed permanently outside my prison cell. “And who is the gentleman I must congratulate?”

She told me. I tried to think of something to say.

“The
younger
Mr. MacGowan, of course,” said Edith, smiling as I groped for words.

“Of course,” I said, and all the time I was wondering how much she knew and whether there was any chance of making her change her mind.

“We’ll he married in the new year. Clonagh Court will be ready by then, and I dare say Hugh will have made it comfortable. However,” said Edith, giving me another smile, “I expect we shall be often at Cashelmara.”

I said nothing. There was a pause.

“I can see you think I’ll be marrying beneath me,” said Edith, but she didn’t sound dismayed.

“Of course I think you’re marrying beneath you,” I said. “Hugh MacGowan’s hardly a man of your own class.”

“Ah well,” said Edith, very coolly, “if he’s good enough for Patrick, he should be good enough for me, don’t you think?”

There was another silence.

Edith was still smiling, and as I realized how intensely she disliked me a series of vistas into the future, each more appalling than the last, began to flash before my eyes.

“Please don’t worry, Sarah,” said Edith. “I declare I shall be a positive paragon of discretion. Of course I shall expect one or two little favors now and then but nothing you can’t easily manage. For example, I shall expect to have regular invitations to Cashelmara, and I shall expect to move in your social set. Patrick tells me you’re full of plans for the future because you’re anxious for the children to move in the right circles.” She paused. “Oh, come, Sarah, don’t be difficult about this! You can’t cut me after I’m married, you know. Hugh wouldn’t like that at all. In fact he thinks it’s a very good thing that I’ll be living so near you. He thinks you need a companion of your own age—someone to cheer you up when you feel low-spirited, someone to … well, someone to keep an eye on you. So thoughtful of him, don’t you think?”

I put down my pen. Watching the flames in the grate, I said, “Edith, I don’t think there’s anything else we need say to each other at present If you’ll excuse me, I would like to finish this letter to my brother.”

“Dear me,” said Edith. “We’re rather uppity all of a sudden, aren’t we? Hoity-toity!”

“Edith, I can’t believe you really want to marry a man like that”

“Why not? I’m tired of being left out, passed over, pitied and forgotten! And I like Hugh. He’s the only man who’s ever given me credit for any intelligence. ‘I need a clever, exceptional wife,’ he said, ‘a woman capable of handling an unusual situation with the maximum of efficiency and discretion. I want a partner,’ he said, ‘someone I can trust, someone who can share my ambitions.’”

“He’s marrying you simply to conceal his relationship with Patrick,” I said.

“You’re quite wrong. He likes me just as much as I like him.”

“I should think it’s the idea of a rich wife that he likes. Your money would compensate him for the tedium of being obliged to share a house with you.”

“How dare you say such a thing!”

“Why not? It’s true. It
is
tedious to have to share a house with you. My God, I should know!”

“You wicked, evil-tongued slut!” shouted Edith. She was red in the face, and her protuberant eyes glittered with rage. “You’ll be sorry you said that!”

“And you’ll be sorry you didn’t stay a spinster,” I said. “God only knows what kind of a marriage you’ll have.”

She didn’t answer. She had already stormed out of the room, and as the door slammed behind her I began to tremble at the thought of her complaining to MacGowan.

“That really wasn’t very sensible of you, Sarah,” he said. He entered the room without knocking, and the shock of seeing him so suddenly jerked me to my feet. The fashion magazine that had arrived that morning slipped through my hands to the floor, but I made no attempt to pick it up.

“Sit down,” he said.

I sat down on the edge of the window seat and stared at him mutely.

“If you want me to treat you with the minimum of courtesy,” he said, “you’d better mend your manners toward Edith.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“So you should be. You can apologize to Edith in the drawing room before dinner tonight, but don’t do it before Patrick and I join you. I want to hear your apologies for myself.”

“Yes.”

“And if you ever make the mistake of being so rude to Edith again …”

“I won’t.”

The door closed. He was gone, the unspoken threat lingering behind him. At last when I had stopped shivering I went to my bedroom, took a shawl from the chest and drew the folds tightly around me before I tiptoed downstairs. Patrick was in the garden. He had spent so many summer days there that the sun had lightened his hair, and in a moment of irony I realized that although he had always been a handsome man he was even more striking now at thirty-five than when he had proposed to me twelve years earlier. The change lay not merely in the fact that his physique was enhanced by his obvious good health and that his eyes seemed unusually blue in contrast to his sunburned skin. The difference ran deeper than that. He seemed to have a new self-assurance, and as I watched him working rhythmically his movements seemed not only graceful but full of the purpose he had lacked when he had been no more than an ingenuous and idle young man about town.

He was wearing his gardening clothes—old trousers and boots, a faded tweed jacket—and in his hands was a twig broom he was using to sweep the autumn leaves from the weedless expanse of lawn. Ned and John, each equipped with little twig brooms, were busy helping him, and on the stone seat on the far side of the lawn Nanny was knitting beside Eleanor’s perambulator.

“Patrick,” I said, “may I have a word with you, please?”

“Of course.” He was smiling at Ned, who was staggering across to the wheelbarrow with his arms full of leaves. “What is it?”

“A word without the children.”

“Papa, is it time to light the bonfire yet?”

“In a minute. I’m just going to show Mama the new sundial in the Italian Garden. You stay with John and make sure he doesn’t toss all the leaves out of the wheelbarrow.”

We crossed the lawn, and he led me up a path to a new clearing in the woods where stone balustrades enclosed a long deep pit that would eventually be filled with water. At the far end in the center of a paved square stood the block of stone that he had transformed into a sundial.

“What’s the matter?” he said, pausing to run his fingers over the familiar stone, and in that casual gesture I saw how calm he was, how relaxed and unconcerned. I was clasping my shawl around me so tightly that my fingers ached, and the air was so dank in the woods that I had begun to shiver again. The fallen leaves bore the faint, moist scent of autumn, and above us the sun was already sinking in the late-afternoon sky.

“Edith has told me about her engagement,” I said. I had to be very careful, since every word I said would be repeated to MacGowan. “I’m glad for her, since she’s so anxious to be married, and I hope she’ll find this marriage will give her what she wants. But, Patrick, you know Edith and I have never got along. Why, you yourself have said at least a dozen times how difficult she is! Yet now she’s talking of seeing a great deal of me after she’s married, and I just don’t know what I’m going to do. How am I ever to avoid quarreling with her? We’re so unsuited to be friends. I think perhaps Hugh doesn’t quite realize how unsuited we are.”

“Hm,” said Patrick, still fingering the sundial. I noticed a button was missing from his tweed jacket. “Well, you’d better do as Hugh says.”

“I know, but …” I stopped, kept calm, tried again. “Patrick, I’m being put in a very difficult position, can’t you see that?”

“Well, why don’t you talk to Hugh about it?”

“Because …” The nails dug into the palms of my hands. “Patrick, I’m terrified of Hugh. I think one day he’s going to seize on some excuse to hurt me, and I’m afraid he’s going to find the excuse he needs in my behavior toward Edith. I shall try as hard as I can to be civil to her, but … supposing I made a mistake—gave her offense, Patrick, you wouldn’t let Hugh hurt me, would you? I mean … you don’t hate me enough for that?”

“Of course I don’t hate you!” he said, astonished, and laid a gentle, comforting hand on my arm. “And I don’t see why you should be so worried about Hugh. He wouldn’t hurt you unless you deserved it. He’s very fair and just, and … well, I trust him to do whatever’s right. He’s awfully sharp, you know, and not at all the kind of person who makes mistakes.”

“We all make mistakes,” I said. I was beginning to feel ill. I had to lean against the sundial to support myself.

“Oh, if only you weren’t so prejudiced against Hugh!” he exclaimed with a mixture of irritation and impatience. “If only you could see him as he really is! He’s so clever and interesting—and he loves the land, just as I do, although he doesn’t know much about flowers. Trees are his great interest, and he’s made some marvelous suggestions for my topiary. In fact, he’s the only person who’s ever really understood about my garden. We talk about it for hours and hours, and … Sarah, you’re not listening.”

“I must sit down for a moment.”

“But why can’t you understand that your view of Hugh is distorted? Why can’t you admit it? It’s foolish to be so obstinate!”

“You’re the expert in obstinacy,” I heard myself say, but he did not answer, and presently when my dizziness had passed I looked up and found I was alone.

It was very quiet.

After a long time I went back to the lawn. Nanny had taken John and Eleanor indoors, but Ned was helping Patrick stoke the bonfire. I watched them, and when Ned waved I thought, What am I to do? But there was no answer, only Ned’s bright smile and the acrid tang of smoke, and at last, seeing no alternative, I returned to my room to dress for dinner.

IN DECEMBER THOMAS AND DAVID
arrived to spend Christmas with us, but since they had problems of their own, neither of them noticed immediately that anything was wrong. Thomas wanted to leave Oxford and study medicine in London, and David, who was eighteen, wanted Patrick’s permission to visit the famous opera houses of the Continent. After that he would go up to Cambridge and write librettos while he studied English literature.

“But, David, librettos—the stage—is it really suitable?” I asked, worried, but Patrick said firmly, “I should do exactly as you wish, David, and if your librettos ever match the standard of W. S. Gilbert, I’d be awfully proud of you. Have you ever thought of translating the Johann Strauss operas into decent English?”

“But he’s so difficult to translate! How do you translate a song where all the characters simply stand around singing ‘Dui-du’?”

“Good God!” exclaimed Thomas fervently. “Thank heavens I at least have had the sense to choose a practical profession!”

“But, Thomas—medicine!” I could not help saying anxiously. “It’s hardly very aristocratic. What would your mother have said?”

“I think she would have been very pleased,” said Thomas. “She always encouraged my interest in anatomy and pathology. I know medicine is a middle-class profession, but I don’t care, and as for leaving Oxford without a degree, I don’t care about that either. What’s the point of giving up two more years of my life to obtain a piece of paper which will be worthless to me? I must study either at London or at Edinburgh. Oxford’s no use to me. It’s too old-fashioned.”

“I loathed Oxford,” said Patrick sympathetically.

“Then may I leave?”

“Why not? Do whatever you feel is best. I say, maybe Hugh knows about the medical school in Edinburgh. Why don’t you ask him about it?”

But Thomas never asked. After their personal problems had been so happily resolved he and David became more observant of the situation at Cashelmara and soon began to regard MacGowan with suspicion.

“You don’t really like him, do you, Sarah?” demanded Thomas.

I shrugged. “He’s Patrick’s best friend, so I must do my utmost to try.”