New World, New Love (17 page)

Blanche undertook many of the lighter chores, as with any other farmer’s wife. Yet not once had Delphine offered to help her hostess, even ignoring Louise’s suggestion that she could at least collect the eggs or feed the hens. Instead, while Louise churned butter or gave their hostess a hand making cheese, skimming milk or tending the herb garden, Delphine went off on walks by herself, often staying away for hours. At first her lengthy absences had caused alarm, but it soon became apparent that it was only solitude that she sought. In the end it was George, who all unwittingly was instrumental in instigating her recovery.

She was coming back to the farmhouse one afternoon when she paused by the stables to take some grit out of her shoe. George, who was in charge of the horses among his other tasks, happened to see her as she was putting it on again. He came out of the tack room with Blanche’s saddle, which he had been polishing.

‘You ride like the other ladies, don’t you, Miss Delphine? I ask, ’cause Mrs de Clement’s mare, Séraphine, hasn’t been ridden for several days and needs some exercise.’

Delphine was on the point of refusing abruptly, although she had always loved horses and riding, perhaps even more than Louise. Then she thought how much farther she could get away from the house if she rode, and all else it might do for her. ‘Yes, I’ll take her out for a while.’

As soon as she was in the saddle, Delphine experienced again the almost forgotten pleasure of being able to set off on a splendid horse to ride wherever she wished. Séraphine was frisky at first, being as glad to be out as Delphine was to have charge of her. They went off at a canter, the glossy brown mare and the thin rider, whose almost claw-like hands held the reins expertly, but as if they were a lifeline.

Every day Delphine went riding and became as fond of Séraphine as she had been of her own horse, which she had ridden so often through the French countryside. Blanche was pleased that her horse had given the girl some interest, and both she and Louise noticed how her appetite improved. Soon Delphine regained her lost weight and even put on a little more. She had begun conversing again and during dinner in the evenings she told what she had seen and where she had been that day. Once she had ridden into Troy and bought some hair ribbons, and another time she had followed for several miles the travellers’ road that led to Albany and beyond, saying how some soldiers, drinking outside a tavern, had cheered her as she went by.

Louise felt that Delphine’s recovery was surely complete when she heard her playing her flute on the veranda, where Henrietta and Betsy, not minding that Delphine always ignored them, sat side by side on a step listening to her.

Louise decided that it was getting close to the time when she and Delphine must draw their stay to an end. Blanche happened to overhear her asking Alexandre’s advice about her idea of settling in Washington.

‘You can’t go yet, Louise!’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘It’s far too soon. At least stay the rest of the summer! In fact, I don’t think you have a choice.’

‘I wish you would stay,’ Alexandre endorsed. ‘It’s like old times, with the three of us being together, and the extra time should prepare Delphine fully for taking up her life again.’

‘I’m easily persuaded,’ Louise admitted gratefully. ‘Until the end of the summer, then. It will give me time to write some letters of enquiry and finalize my plans.’

Delphine came into the house soon afterwards. She had been galloping Séraphine across the pastures and had jumped three high fence rails that had stood in their way. Blanche had seen her from the window, not for the first time, and met her in the hall to express concern.

‘I don’t want to spoil your pleasure in riding Séraphine,’ she said gently, ‘but I’d like you to ride her at an easier pace. I’m so afraid you will take a bad fall if she suddenly baulks at a fence or if you fell together and were both injured.’

Delphine’s face twisted with misery. ‘If that’s how little you think of my riding ability, I won’t ride her ever again!’

Even as Blanche protested that she had no wish to ban her from the saddle, Delphine bolted to her room. In spite of entreaties outside her locked door, she did not appear for dinner, replying that she was not hungry. In the morning she slipped out of the house while the others were at breakfast and went walking alone as before.

Blanche wept. ‘I’ve undone all the good that’s been achieved. But I was only considering her well-being. I haven’t mentioned it to you before, Louise, because I kept hoping I was mistaken, but I think Delphine is pregnant.’

Louise caught her breath. ‘Can it be?’

‘Just think about it,’ Blanche advised, her face distressed. ‘Was Delphine’s wretchedness due entirely to heartache or was it more? Then there’s the extra weight she has gained. What’s more, I fear all the recent galloping and jumping has been to cause a miscarriage.’

‘But she’s had no morning sickness!’

‘She could have gone in and out of her veranda door unseen and none of us would have heard her in the outside privy.’

‘How blind I’ve been!’ Louise paced the floor, a hand to her forehead. ‘Why ever didn’t I grasp the situation? So that’s the reason you said I really had no choice when you spoke of us staying on here?’

Blanche nodded. ‘It’s so fortunate that you are both staying with us at this time. Delphine can have the baby here without any outsider knowing about it. All scandal can be avoided. You’ve already planned on starting afresh in a new place and, as an émigré, Delphine can appear to be a young widow with her baby. There will be nothing to sully her good name.’

‘You have thought everything out, Blanche.’ Louise, although still uncertain, was deeply touched by her friend’s wish to protect Delphine. She knew Blanche hated subterfuge as much as she, but Delphine as a single girl with a baby would be shunned everywhere. All her dreams of marrying well would be at an end, quite apart from the stigma of illegitimacy her innocent child would bear all through life. The future would be bleak for both. ‘I’ll talk to Delphine when she comes back later.’

That afternoon Louise and Blanche were busy in the dairy when Maria suddenly burst through the door. ‘Come quickly, ma’am! You too, Madame Louise! I just came back from the wash house with the laundry and found Miss Delphine lying in a faint on the kitchen floor!’

Louise was first out of the dairy, kicking off the wooden pattens that kept her feet above the damp stone floor, and ran out into the sunshine, up towards the house. Blanche, who had been about to skim a bowl of cream, dropped it accidentally in her alarm, but kicked it heedlessly out of her way, splashing cream everywhere and leaving her pattens in her wake as she followed Louise at speed. Both of them feared they would find Delphine miscarrying.

Sensibly, Maria had kept the children out of the way and Louise and Blanche were alone as they flung themselves down on their knees beside the unconscious girl. There was no sign of blood, but a strong smell of alcohol. Louise, raising Delphine’s head on her arm, looked at Blanche in bewilderment.

‘She’s drunk! Completely senseless!’

Blanche reached under the kitchen table and brought out an empty bottle of her husband’s home-distilled spirit. ‘Look at this! Not a drop left. We’d better get her to bed quickly. She’s going to feel very ill indeed when she comes round.’

It was late evening when Delphine began to moan as she recovered consciousness. Louise, sitting by the bed, grabbed a bowl and held it for her just in time as she vomited violently over and over again. On the opposite side of the bed Blanche watched her with pity before summoning Maria, who took away the used bowl and left a spare one in case it should be needed. Delphine fell back again on to the pillows, her face drained white. Louise took a damp cloth and wiped her sister’s trembling mouth.

‘We know you’re pregnant, Delphine,’ Louise said quietly.

She groaned. ‘Haven’t I lost the baby?’

‘No. Did you suppose an excess of alcohol would do it when galloping Séraphine and taking fences with her failed to work?’

‘It’s what I hoped,’ Delphine answered in a weak voice. ‘I remembered one of the assistants in the millinery workshop telling of her sister drinking gin and jumping off the kitchen table for a miscarriage.’

‘Is that what you did?’ Blanche asked, aghast.

‘I couldn’t find any gin, but I knew Alexandre’s spirit was very strong, so I took a swig of it between jumps.’ Then Delphine gulped noisily. ‘I’m going to vomit again!’

Both Louise and Blanche tended to her until eventually she fell into a deep sleep. They had not questioned her again. Throughout the night, Louise went to see that Delphine was all right, once giving her a drink of water.

‘I want to tell you about Pieter,’ Delphine muttered, bleary-eyed.

‘In the morning,’ Louise said quietly. ‘Go back to sleep now.’

Throughout the following day Delphine felt too ill to talk or rise from her bed, but the following evening, in the last rays of the evening sun, she and Louise sat down side by side in wicker chairs on the veranda. Then out came the account of the stolen Saturday evenings, the hectic parties, the gambling and, after Pieter had given her the ring and sworn to marry her, how she had finally surrendered to him. It was here that Delphine closed her eyes on private memories, seeming to feel again his exploring fingers and travelling lips that had awakened her naked body to such ecstasy.

Louise had listened without comment, looking ahead at the descending darkness of the night, which came so quickly on this side of the world. All the time she was wondering why she had been so foolish as to put such trust in her sister’s declaration that she would allow no pre-marital intimacies. She remembered her doubts about Pieter and recalled Daniel’s words, which had been a warning after all.

A veranda lantern, which had been lit earlier, took on life and shed its glow over the sisters where they sat between the golden squares of the lighted windows. Louise finally turned and looked at her sister. ‘I can understand how it all happened. Blanche has thought out a way to save this situation.’

Delphine, whose head was lowered, listened without comment to all that her sister had to say. Then slowly she looked up again, her eyes dark and tragic. ‘I loved Pieter as I’ll never love anyone else again. I had no fear when I threw myself into the water, because I wanted to drown. I didn’t know then that I might be pregnant. It was because I could not face the future without him.’

‘This will sound like a platitude, but it’s still early days to get over such a love as you felt for Pieter.’

Delphine, shaking her head, looked at her sister almost in pity. ‘You don’t understand. Pieter drained away all my capacity for loving when he deserted me in that cowardly way. If he had told me the truth, terrible though it would have been, I could probably have come through it without any harm to my heart in the end. Now he’s left me hating him as much as I once loved him.’ She thumped her fists on the chair arms. ‘I don’t want his horrible baby! I wish I could cut it out of me!’

Louise reached out and stilled the pounding fists, speaking sharply. ‘Don’t say that about the baby!’ She realized that Delphine’s misery had been festering away inside her ever since the Dutchman’s betrayal, changing her vibrant enthusiasm for life into a dangerously embittered outlook. ‘Your child didn’t ask to be conceived and has a right to love and care. I’ll do everything in my power to help you.’

Delphine jumped to her feet as if all her patience was lost and she set her teeth as she glared down at Louise. ‘I shall loathe this baby as much as I loathe its father!’

Then she flounced into the house, banging the door after her.

Louise sat on for a few minutes, deeply distressed. Delphine had always been highly emotional, needing love as much as she needed air to breathe, and as yet it was impossible to estimate just how much damage had been done to the balance of her mind.

When Blanche talked to Delphine a few days later, she was unaware that she did no better in softening the girl’s attitude to the coming baby. Intensely maternal herself, she found it impossible not to find joy in the prospect, whatever the circumstances, especially as she felt she had mapped out a way for Delphine to make an unblemished future for herself and the child.

‘If you don’t want to face the outside world under the pretence of widowhood,’ she said kindly, ‘you are welcome to stay on here and make your home with us.’ She patted Delphine’s hand encouragingly. ‘Think about it.’

She failed to notice Delphine’s shudder at such a future.

‘I believe I persuaded Delphine to think more kindly about the baby,’ she said to Louise afterwards. ‘It’s a beginning, and once she has the infant in her arms, she’ll forget all the animosity towards it that plagues her now.’

Louise tried to be as optimistic, but failed to be convinced. In some ways Delphine had become a stranger and it was no longer possible to assess anything about her.

S
urprisingly, Delphine became more placid as the summer months passed. She no longer went far afield, but kept within sight of the farmhouse. She would wander by the hay fields, where the grass had grown almost man-high, and through the vast cornfields, which were turning harvest-gold. It was as if she had resigned herself to the situation in a way that delighted Blanche, who was busy making baby clothes and new bed covers for the cradle that Alexandre had brought down from the loft. She might have been the expectant mother herself, the pleasure she was taking in getting the layette ready. Delphine, out of boredom, embroidered some of the little garments and Blanche took this to be another good sign.

Delphine did not go to the barn for the harvest supper, but unbeknown to the others, she sat on the veranda with her flute and picked up the lively tunes that were being played for the dancing. All the time she hugged her secret plan to herself. It made the time she was spending at the farm just bearable.

A cold north wind had stripped the last of the autumn leaves from the trees and thick ice had formed on the river before intense black clouds heralded the first snow. It descended ceaselessly for several days and after that the frozen river became the highway, sledges passing to and fro as normal life resumed.