Dorothy Eden (14 page)

“I expect you will hear your country calling.”

His face tightened and she wished she hadn’t made that quip. She hadn’t meant to be flippant.

“Will you believe me if I tell you I’m trying to shut my ears?” he asked.

“Yes, I believe you.” (For now, she thought privately. For this evening and perhaps tomorrow.) “But let me warn you, you’re mine now and I can be very possessive. I won’t always behave well.”

“Darling Kate, I will adore you when you are bad.”

“You must know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know. You’re a brave and beautiful woman, and I now regard you as my wife.” His voice had a low vehemence. “So I won’t always behave well either. But we must do as well as we can.” He held her hands tightly. “I want to tell you—what happened last night—I hadn’t intended it when I proposed coming here.”

“Oh, I wanted it to happen,” she said, with honesty. “Now I suppose I’m an adulterous woman.”

“Kate!
Never
say that!” His eyes blazed. “You’re my wife, and never think anything else.”

“That isn’t what the world would think.”

“The world won’t know.” He continued to look so angry, that she said challengingly, “Are you sorry, then?”

“Sorry! Presently I will show you how sorry I am.”

She had picked up a knife from their supper plates. “I would kill you if you were.”

“I believe you would. You’re a very dangerous woman.”

She began to laugh, her face merry in the firelight.

“What are we doing, loving or hating each other?”

“I know what I’m doing,” he said soberly. “But you’ve put me in front of everyone, Katie, even your children. How can I keep you happy?”

“Just by never stopping loving me.”

“As easy as that?”

“You don’t believe that would make me happy?”

“I think you would be superhuman if it did. Oh, my darling—” he held her in his arms, putting his head against her breast, “—if I could forget—” He stopped, and said, “Oh, my darling,” again, and was silent.

“If you could forget all the goodbyes and separations?” She said. “Well, who knows whether there are to be any more. We have tonight, and tomorrow night and the next night. I do believe,” she said, searching his face, “that you’re a pessimist.”

“Perhaps I am. But not tonight. As you say.” He was feeling for the fastenings of her gown. “Can I see the firelight shining on you? Will you be cold?”

“In spite of what you say—” Her voice was as fierce as the flames that beat on her bared skin, “—as long as you love me I will be happy.”

The next day Anna came.

“Kate, what’s this about you being ill? Does Willie know?”

“No, and you’re not to tell him. I won’t have him coming home because I’ve decided to be lazy for a week or two.”

“It’s not like you to be lazy.” Anna’s eyes had grown sharp in the last few years. She was very good-looking, very smart in her green velvet costume with the neatly fitted waist and flowing skirt. But she had a restless dissatisfied look. The kind of look Katharine supposed she herself must have had before meeting Charles, and even up until last night. Poor Anna, she thought, and all the other deluded nice women who thought that sex was to be endured, not enjoyed, who didn’t know about making love with firelight playing warmly on one’s body, who stiffened and closed their eyes when their husbands approached.

“Kate, what are you smiling about? You look like a cat full of cream.”

“Was I smiling? I suppose I feel rather guilty lying here when I’m not really ill. But I was dreadfully tired. I haven’t had a rest for longer than I can remember.”

“Then why didn’t you pack up and take the children to Brighton for some bracing sea air?”

“In February? Don’t be ridiculous. I prefer to rest in my own bedroom. Did you come here to criticise me?”

“No, but I took the trouble to drive out from town when I heard you were ill. I must say you hardly look ill at all, and Ellen says you’re eating much better than you do when you come downstairs.”

“So you see there’s no need to worry about me,” Katharine said smoothly. “Ring the bell, and ask Ellen to send up tea. Must you hurry back to town?”

“Yes, I must. I have a dinner party tonight. John expects me to do more and more entertaining. I declare I’m the one who needs a rest. You’re lucky Willie leaves you alone so much.”

“Am I?”

“Well, you don’t look too unhappy for a neglected wife,” Anna said waspishly. “If you ask me, Willie’s mad to be away at a time like this if he wants to make a name for himself. The Irish party is in a mess. Did you know that Mr. Parnell is to be arrested when he is found?”

“Why can’t he be found?”

“Don’t ask me. The man’s wily as a fox. Anyway I thought he was your friend. Hasn’t he told you where he was going to lie low?”

“Would he trust a woman with a secret like that!” Katharine said. “Anyway, I think the whole thing is scandalous. How can the Government put itself in such disrepute as to arrest one of its own members?”

“It
is
for sedition,” Anna said. “I must say if I were the Prime Minister I would want to suppress someone like Parnell, too.”

“I thought freedom of speech was one of our privileges.”

“Oh Kate, now you’re just being superior. You won’t be drawn because Mr. Parnell is your friend. I do agree that he has a most romantic melancholy air. I wonder why he doesn’t marry. He would do so much better with a wife, only she would have to be in sympathy with his cause otherwise she’d die of loneliness.”

Dear Aunt Ben sent to enquire each day how Katharine was, and made Katharine weep a little when the baskets of fresh fruit, oranges and bananas and hothouse grapes kept arriving. She sent some of them down to the nursery, but kept a good supply for those midnight meals by the blazing fire.

By the end of a week Charles looked immensely better. He said he had slept so much he had quite overcome his tiredness. Now his brain was active again, and he was beginning to formulate new plans. Soon he would have to leave.

It was an idyll that could not have gone on for ever. They were lucky that it had gone on successfully at all. Katharine, by a supreme effort of will, hid her grief at the thought of the coming separation.

“Must you really go? Will it be safe?”

“I think so, Forster will have simmered down by now. There’ll have been too much of an outcry for his liking.”

“But won’t this state of affairs happen again?”

“Very likely. Later it might be useful to be arrested. But not now. I have too much to do. Could you get me some writing materials, Kate? I must begin to work. I promise to be very quiet about it.”

So the misty green and turbulent country across the sea came into her peaceful boudoir, and haunted their last evenings by the fire. It was the shadow behind them all the time, and she could not send it away or she would send half of this man she loved with it. It was reflected in his eyes all the time now, making his expression troubled, absent, sad.

Once he said, “It’s a pity Mick Davitt couldn’t have had as comfortable a prison as I have.”

He was working on his principles for Home Rule. The new Land Act, he said, might be a better one than they had expected. He had reason to believe that Gladstone was growing sympathetic towards their cause. But even if it were a good Act, he had to oppose it, with his objective the much more important one of Home Rule. He could not afford to admit that anything the Government did was entirely good.

He also had reason to believe that Gladstone would welcome some form of negotiation with the Irish party, so long as it were kept secret.

“After I’ve gone I want you to call on him at Downing Street. Wait a few days and then send a note asking him to see you. Will you do that for me?”

“Supposing he refuses to see me?”

“That’s a risk you will have to take—as you took one that day when you came to Palace Yard. Do you remember?” His eyes were twinkling and she had to smile.

“Mr. Gladstone is over seventy. One can hardly expect him to be so susceptible to a message from a strange woman.”

“And let us hope that strange woman is not so susceptible to Mr. Gladstone.”

“When do you want to go, Charles? And where?”

“If I speak the truth, I don’t
want
to go at all. But I must. On Monday, I think. I shall take a train to Harwich and go to France. I can return to Dublin from there. It’s much safer to be thought I was hiding in France than in England.”

“But what a long journey!”

He stroked her hair. “It will give me time to get used to being alone again.”

“Charles—another thing I had thought of—supposing I—supposing we were to have a child.”

His fingers in her hair were still.

“I had thought of that, too.”

She looked up fiercely.

“I should want to have it.”

There was a long silence. Too long.

“Dear Katie. So should I.”

All the things it would mean must have flashed through his head, disgrace, ruin, the sacrifice of his ambitions, the betrayal of his people.

“Don’t worry about it,” she cried swiftly. “I should manage.”

He looked at her, his question unspoken.

“It would have to be Willie’s, of course,” she said calmly.

“There would only be one way to arrange that!”

“Yes. That’s what I’m telling you.”

He looked so outraged, so stricken, that she had to speak briskly, almost coldly.

“You make plenty of other sacrifices for your country. This would be just one more.”

“But this is
you
, Kate. And you’re mine.”

He pulled her to him so savagely that she exclaimed in pain.

“It hasn’t happened yet. It’s only hypothetical. But this had to be said. And now, whether you like it or not,” she struggled in his cruel grip, “I’m going to pray to have your child.”

His hands slackened. She saw his tormented face.

“One has to be practical,” she said.

But when the tears shone in his eyes, making them black with pain, she wavered and lost her aggressive self-control.

“I want something, too,” she whispered.

“You have me.”

“I share you with three million other people.” She smoothed back his hair, seeing his high bony forehead, his beautiful brows. “We have so little time left. Let’s be happy every minute of it. But Charles—”

“Yes, my darling?”

Her voice was low, stubborn. “I’ll still hope for a baby.”

He kissed her forehead. “Then so shall I.”

The whole plan had been astonishingly successful. There was only one problem left, and that was how to get him safely away.

In the bitter cold just before dawn he stood in his overcoat and muffler, his bag in his hand.

“I’m off now.”

They might have said goodbye a hundred times in the bitter early dawn, they behaved so casually, not even touching hands. It had been arranged that he should walk to the station and wait for a train. The important thing was to leave the house unobserved.

“I’ll come down,” she said.

“No, stay where you are, I can let myself out.”

“And bump into a hundred things en route? I’ll go first. For heaven’s sake be careful not to make a noise.”

The journey down the stairs was safely accomplished. In the sitting room Katharine thought it safe to light a candle to guide him through the conservatory.

“Are you sure you have enough clothes? Is your overcoat heavy enough?”

“I’ll be fine. Just let me out.”

The wind that blew in their faces when she opened the door leading into the garden was icy, the dawn a faint grey light over the lowering sky. It was dismal beyond words. Katharine was shivering violently. The candle in her hand had blown out.

If she had wanted to have a long sentimental farewell they would have frozen to death.

“Charles, take care.”

“And you, Katie. Go and see Gladstone next week. Write and ask for an appointment.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve told you, you can always reach me at Morison’s Hotel in Dublin.” He pulled his muffler closer. “It’s like the north pole. Don’t catch cold.”

“Nor you …” But he was gone, striding towards the gate, his long dark form melting into the grey of the winter.

The idyll was over.

T
HE HOUSE CAME TO
life when the mistress was up and about again. To her distress, Katharine found Carmen peaky and thin. She had been only picking at her food, Miss Glennister said. She had really been very difficult and had had to be punished on two occasions.

“She thought you were going to die, Mamma,” Norah said, and Carmen rushed to bury her face in Katharine’s skirts.

“But what nonsense! I was only tired. I only wanted to be very quiet. Norah understands that. Why didn’t you, my angel?”

She lifted the child’s face, anguished and wet with tears. It was so young, and yet too old in its apprehension of grief. She could hardly bear to look at it, thinking of what she had done.

Aunt Ben was another matter. She said querulously that Mr. Meredith had had a cold, and she wouldn’t allow him near her, sneezing his germs about. And she had gone driving and caught her servants doffing their caps to that woman who lived on the other side of the park.

“I’ve told them I’ll dismiss them on the spot if I catch them doing that again. I remember the Peninsular War and Waterloo.” She set her mouth grimly. “My dearest friend, Annie March, lost her husband at Waterloo, and I could name several others. It was a terrible time. And all caused by that mad Corsican who should have been shot rather than allowed to start a royal line.” Her querulous eyes rested on Katharine. “Surely you know who I’m talking about?”

“Yes, the Empress Eugenie. I’ve seen her out driving occasionally.”

“Empress indeed! She’s nothing but an ambitious Spaniard. Widow of an upstart. He didn’t even make any memorable history. I can forgive a man who makes history. He is entitled to foibles, eccentricities, what you will.”

What was going on in her remarkably shrewd mind? The dim blue eyes looked at Katharine with nothing but peevishness.

“You don’t find me in the best of tempers, I’m afraid. I’ve only been outdoors once this week, and I’ve had no one but the servants to talk to. Conversation with them only makes me feel that I or they are suffering from rapidly failing minds. I’m glad you’re better, Katharine. Stand in a good light so that I can look at you. Anna tells me you were just being self-indulgent.” Katharine waited nervously for the result of the long scrutiny. But Aunt Ben seemed satisfied with what she saw, for she said, “You look a bit delicate, I believe. Anna tells me you don’t manage your husband well, letting him go off without you so much.”