Dorothy Eden

by Vines of Yarrabee

  ‘Wait, we must hear Addie out. Now, Addie.’

  Adelaide’s tears had dried, and now, with an impulsive change of mood, her face was literally shining.

  ‘Then you will not object, Papa, to my marrying Jem?’

  ‘On the contrary, it has been an event I didn’t dare to hope for, for fear it wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘Oh, Papa! How wonderful you are. I told Jem you would be. But Mamma—’ Adelaide dared to glance at her mother’s face and what she saw made her bite her lips.

  ‘Jem is a fine man,’ Gilbert said. ‘In my opinion you couldn’t have a better husband. What’s more, he will want to carry on the vineyard—’

  ‘The vineyard!’ Eugenia cried at last in a shaking voice. ‘I believe you two have made this up between you to protect the vineyard now that Kit has gone.’ She flung down her napkin and rose. ‘This is the very last unendurable straw. Our trip to England is not only ruined on the very eve of departure but I am now to have a convict as a son-in-law. It is exactly what I might have expected from the moment I set foot in this country.’

  ‘M-Mamma!’ Lucy stuttered as Eugenia, stiff-backed, walked to the door.

  She could scarcely believe her ears when her mother, unkind for the first time in her life, said curtly, ‘You may well cry, Lucy, since this is the country where you are to remain for the rest of your life.’

  Chapter XXXI

  BUT IT SEEMED THAT LUCY actually wanted to remain here. She had been secretly reluctant to go on such a long journey and meet so many strange people. She would no doubt have been thought exceedingly dull. The idea of curtseying to the Queen had petrified her.

  To Eugenia, this was the hardest blow of all.

  ‘But, Lucy, my darling, England would have been like home to you. Your cousins are not strangers. You’ve heard so much about Lichfield Court. What is there for you here? Will you be content to marry like Adelaide and Kit?’

  ‘Rosie and Jem are just Australians, Mamma. The same as Kit and Addie and me.’ Seeing the pain in her mother’s beloved face, she went on quickly, ‘I don’t mind if I never marry.’

  ‘And what will you do instead?’

  ‘I’ll stay with you and Papa. I’ll have the garden. I thought Obadiah and I might plant snowdrops and lilies of the valley for next spring. English snowdrops, Mamma.’

  ‘In this dried-up red dust?’

  ‘It isn’t dried up in the spring. You know that we have plenty of rain then. After all, you made a garden here, Mamma. I don’t really see how you can bear to leave it.’

  That thought had sometimes come to Eugenia. She had wondered whether in England, she would have longed for her antipodean garden and perhaps boasted about the brilliant colours of the native flowers. And wondered whether Gilbert ever walked in at dusk, as he frequently did now, in her company.

  Her voice was softer when she answered Lucy. ‘You should have told us long ago that you preferred to stay at home. It would have saved us all a great deal of trouble.’

  And there had to be another letter of apology to Sarah.

  ‘It seems that my headstrong eldest daughter has been dying of love, and only concealed the fact for fear of disappointing me too much in my plans. But the truth had to come out, and now a wedding is much more imperative to Adelaide than a visit to England. Jem, to Gilbert’s great satisfaction, is a most promising vigneron. So Yarrabee and the vineyard will be kept in the family after all, even though Kit will not be the heir. But I must tell you that Kit has had the good luck to find a gold nugget for which the bank has paid him five hundred pounds. He and Rosie are going to travel through Victoria, and perhaps continue all the way to South Australia where there is a flourishing colony. It is true that this country is full of adventure for the young…’

  ‘If you’re going to stay home you must begin to look happier.’ It was no use trying to resist Gilbert when he wheedled.

  ‘Adelaide is the person who has to look happy. At least we won’t need to have clothes made for the wedding. So all is not lost. Adelaide can wear the gown she was intended to wear to Court, and Lucy as her attendant can do the same. And I shall be in difficulty to decide which of several gowns is best suited for myself as the bride’s mother.’

  ‘My darling, you will look charming, as always, in any of them.’

  His words were spoken automatically. She had caught the sudden look of pain that had crossed his face.

  ‘Why did you wince as you said that?’

  ‘Did I? My back hurts. I must have strained it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. A few weeks ago, perhaps.’

  ‘A few weeks ago and it hasn’t got better! You must see a doctor.’

  ‘Nonsense. A bit of rheumatism. I’m getting old.’

  ‘So am I, but I don’t wince when I move. I’ll call on Doctor Wilson when I’m in town this afternoon and ask him to come out.’

  She was looking at him clearly for the first time since her great disappointment. She wondered how she could not have noticed sooner the look of quenched tiredness in his eyes. His allegory about the withering vine came back to her mind. A pain twisted in her heart.

  ‘You will let the doctor examine you, Gilbert? What about those ulcers on your arm? Have they improved?’

  ‘They’re nothing.’

  Something in his voice made her heart jump.

  ‘Are there more?’

  ‘One or two. For goodness’ sake, I’ve had them for years. I’m not sick. I’ve never been sick in my life.’

  ‘And you would have let me leave you for a whole year without telling me this?’

  ‘That I had a backache? You’re surely not turning that into something important as well.’

  ‘But you will see Doctor Wilson?’

  ‘That old woman! Oh, very well, if it pleases you.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Don’t mind too much about Addie. She and Jem will be happy. They’re much better matched than you think. They’re members of the same new race. They’ll make their own social conventions. How could this polyglot lot of people live with one another if they allowed themselves to be weighted down by all those stuffy English traditions? Who’s going to care in a hundred years, in fifty years even, that Jem McDougal came out in a convict ship?’

  ‘I, for one, care now,’ Eugenia said stubbornly.

  ‘Well, don’t go on brooding about it.’

  ‘Oh, I shall hold up my head at the wedding. You don’t need to be afraid of that.’

  But it was not to be a grand wedding after all.

  Doctor Wilson drove out in his buggy behind his smart grey mare to see Gilbert. After being closeted with his patient for a long time he emerged from the bedroom with Gilbert, buttoning his jacket, following him and shouting in a highly irascible voice.

  ‘Get Phil Noakes to come down, Eugenia.’

  Eugenia was alarmed.

  ‘But why? You’re not seriously ill, are you? What is the matter with my husband, doctor?’

  The doctor, with his little pointed beard in the air, walked down the stairs, leaving Eugenia to follow. He was too mannered and foppish for an Australian town. She might have known Gilbert would have little patience with him.

  In the hall he answered Eugenia’s question.

  ‘I can’t be sure yet. I’d welcome Doctor Noakes’ opinion. Make your husband rest more, Mrs Massingham.’

  ‘But is that all you can say?’

  ‘My dear lady, don’t look so anxious. It may be something perfectly simple. A touch of lumbago. I don’t fancy it has anything to do with the skin condition, though I can’t be certain.’

  The chill settled round Eugenia’s heart.

  ‘Doctor, what are you afraid of?’

  The little beard lowered itself an inch or two. The man was human after all. His eyes were kind.

  ‘Loss of weight, lack of appetite, severe pain in the lumbar region—classic symptoms of a tumour, Mrs Massingham. But the diagnosis is by no means confirmed. Your husband h
as been a fairly heavy wine drinker for a long time. This may merely be some aspect of liver trouble. Give him a nourishing light diet and make him rest. You might do me the goodness to inform me of Doctor Noakes’ diagnosis. Good day to you, Mrs Massingham.’

  ‘Old fool,’ was all Gilbert would say. ‘Why didn’t he stay in London and prey on rich women? I’ll take my oath there’s a shady story in his past.’

  ‘You have to rest more,’ Eugenia said. ‘Please, Gilbert. For my sake.’

  ‘Are you turning me into an old man?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. You’re tired. And tired people rest. If they’re not quite lunatic.’

  ‘Well, I am lunatic. You know that already.’ He shook her hand off his arm. ‘Don’t fuss. Oh, very well, for the sake of peace I’ll rest until Phil Noakes comes. Not a day longer.’

  Actually, after that protest, he seemed to enjoy sitting in the rocking chair on the verandah in the sparkling autumn sun. He even displayed an interest in Eugenia’s garden.

  ‘What’s the name of those fiery red things?’

  ‘Salvia bonfire.’

  The name pleased him. He nodded his head in a considering way.

  ‘And they flower in the autumn. A brave flame before the frosts. Where are you going?’

  ‘Just indoors to get my needlework.’

  ‘Bring it out here.’

  He didn’t like to be left alone. He was resting to please her, so she could oblige by giving him her company. He liked to have Addie at his side, too. But Lucy had always been too nervous of him. He preferred her at a distance, working in the garden. Her slender figure kneeling over the colourful borders looked like her mother’s.

  The other person who appeared more frequently than was necessary was Mrs Jarvis. Her movements and her face were quiet, as always, but she was beginning to look old. The servants knew that she was anxious about the master. ‘And no wonder,’ Ellen muttered spitefully. But Ellen had had a mysterious grudge against Mrs Jarvis for some time.

  None of these faithful attendants on the sick man knew about his most recent visit to the isolated bedroom beyond the kitchen.

  It was mid-afternoon and Molly had not expected to see him. She sprang up agitatedly from the armchair where she had been taking a brief rest.

  ‘What are you doing here at this time of day?’

  His eyes had the quizzical look she loved.

  ‘It seems a perfectly good time of day to me. A good time to say thank you.’

  ‘For what?’ she cried.

  ‘Don’t look so forbidding. Can’t I thank you civilly for all these years? I don’t believe I’ve ever had the decency to do so before.’

  She couldn’t hide the desolation in her eyes.

  ‘You won’t be coming again.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  He evaded answering. ‘There no time like the present for paying a compliment.’

  She flung herself into his arms, her own flung tightly round him. She was not crying, although her deep hard breaths sounded like sobs.

  ‘Bless you, Molly. I’ll never know what I would have done without you.’

  ‘Nor me without you.’

  He raised her face that now showed its marks of age so clearly.

  ‘You’re a strange creature. Have you never wanted anything more?’

  ‘Only your child. And then I would have had to leave Yarrabee. So, no, love, I’ve never wanted anything more.’

  ‘Your daughter has my son. That’s something.’

  ‘I never encouraged it!’

  ‘No, but it pleased you. To tell the truth, it pleased me, too. It’s a kind of permanence for us, in its way. If anyone wants permanence. Molly, don’t turn your head away. I’m not dying, you know. Me! I’m as strong as an old man kangaroo.’ He gave her his straight aggressive look. ‘Do you think I’m dying?’

  She made herself sustain his gaze without flinching.

  ‘I only remember that you once asked me if I’d die for you. Well, I still would. Gladly.’

  His face tightened. He pushed her away roughly.

  ‘Get on with you. I’ll do my own dying. When the time comes. And that’s a long way off. And Molly—’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘It’s true I won’t be coming again.’

  She looked up in anguish. He rubbed his hand over his eyes.

  ‘I believe I was too optimistic when I thought I could keep two women happy. It wasn’t the simple thing I thought it was. I couldn’t go to Eugenia after you. That was the trouble. And it seems she minded. And never said so.’

  ‘Has she said so now?’

  ‘Of course she hasn’t. Eugenia! She’s much too subtle. I have to guess what she’s thinking. I haven’t been trying very hard for a long time.’

  ‘Gilbert, you’re a good man!’ Molly cried, as she had once before.

  He smiled faintly.

  ‘What a wonderful direct uncomplicated nature you have. If Eugenia had one like that—but then I wouldn’t find her so fascinating. I have to make amends a little, Molly. Can you understand?’

  She nodded. She understood all too well.

  This was a familiar situation, being the one on the outside, the one with nothing…

  Eugenia looked into Philip Noakes’ face and winced away from the compassion in it.

  ‘How long?’ she managed to say.

  ‘Six months. Nine. Perhaps a year. He’s such a devil of a fighter.’

  ‘Let him have one more vintage,’ she begged, her throat aching.

  ‘We’ll see. But don’t pray for it, Eugenia. Don’t try to keep him alive. It wouldn’t be kind.’

  ‘What a blessing you didn’t go to England, Eugenia,’ said Marion. Marion with her yellow face, like seamed pigskin, her tragic eyes.

  ‘I know. How can I help him now? He won’t give in, you know. He’ll pretend until the end.’

  ‘I’d say be with him as much as you can. For all his ranting and roaring, he’s just as much in love with you now as he was the day you arrived. I’ll never forget that day. He couldn’t wait to sight your ship coming through the heads. He was out with a telescope from dawn.’

  Eugenia’s face had twisted in pain.

  ‘I wish you were speaking the truth. But you’re not. Gilbert hasn’t loved me for a long time.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Marion exclaimed. ‘He worships the ground you walk on. You only have to see his eyes following you.’

  ‘Oh, he admires me,’ Eugenia admitted. ‘I am a sort of perfect doll woman. At the beginning I didn’t know how to be a satisfactory wife. I was young and much too virginal. Then—something happened—and Gilbert didn’t care for me in that way any more.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have overcome it?’ Marion asked softly.

  ‘Could you?’ Now Eugenia had to finish her bleak confession. ‘With a husband who suddenly preferred separate bedrooms, who only came to you from duty or necessity or courtesy, or whatever word he liked to use, who was relieved when he was told that there mustn’t be another child, because that gave him an excuse to stay away! Could you have overcome that situation? I couldn’t. It froze me, inside. I could never go where I was not wanted,’ she added miserably.

  Marion, not wanting Eugenia to read her thoughts, lowered her eyes. Gilbert Massingham, the sensual devil! Who had he been visiting secretly? She supposed that this was the inevitable way a marriage of this kind must turn out.

  Yet it was far from being unsuccessful, so long as Gilbert found his satisfaction elsewhere and Eugenia hadn’t any volcanoes of passion beneath her coolness.

  Marion, looking into those beautiful haunted eyes, was, all at once, not so sure about Eugenia’s legendary coolness. What was the mysterious happening which she insisted had turned Gilbert from her? Surely it couldn’t have been that old gossip about the Irish artist. But that hadn’t been a real scandal. Or had it? Had Eugenia, with her morbidly acute sensitivity, been pining away for years with a guilty conscience ?

  ‘I
lost him,’ Eugenia was confessing sadly. ‘And it was my own fault.’

  ‘Lost him be damned.’ Marion had picked up too much colonial coarseness in her language. ‘He’s always loved you. There are plenty of ways to love. Why don’t you try showing him yours? It isn’t too late.’

  But how did one express that long-held-back emotion to a man who was permanently angry? Gilbert’s blue eyes burned with bitter resentment against the fate that he wouldn’t admit. He could not endure sympathetic looks or thoughtfulness for his growing weakness. He insisted on supervising work in the vineyard and swore without apology at anyone who tried to prevent him. He even swore at Jem, accusing him of neglect in the cellar. Jem hadn’t turned the bottles in the bins frequently enough, or kept records up to date. He went about declaring that if he were not there Yarrabee would fall to pieces. But thank God that day had not yet come.

  ‘It’s God he’s angry with, not me,’ Jem said to a bitterly weeping Adelaide.

  ‘So am I,’ Adelaide sobbed. ‘I’ve stopped saying my prayers.’

  ‘Now, love. You must say them for the master.’

  Even with Eugenia, Gilbert had moments of intense irritability, although he constantly wanted her company.

  ‘Why don’t you answer me back when I’m rude? Why must you be so saintly?’

  ‘I’ll be far from saintly if I find you getting up in the middle of the night again to look for frost.’

  ‘But surely you’ve been the wife of a vigneron long enough to realize the danger of frost at this time of year.’

  ‘I only realize that if there is one Jem and Tom will attend to it. From tonight you’re coming back into our bed.’

  He gave her a quick look.

  ‘You said our bed.’

  ‘So I did, and so it is. Or have you forgotten?’

  He shook his head slowly.

  ‘No. But I’m afraid I’ll keep you awake, Genia. I haven’t slept very well lately.’

  ‘Neither have I. We can talk.’

  That was the beginning of another phase in their lives, the whispered confidences that came easily in the dark.

  ‘I’ve wondered lately—was I too clumsy with you at the beginning, Genia?’

  The question gave Eugenia an almost overpowering compulsion to confess her long-kept secret. She had to bite her tongue to stop herself easing her conscience at the expense of destroying Gilbert’s treasured image of her.