The Turnbulls

by Taylor Caldwell

  Mr. Wilkins lowered the window of his carriage. Anthony had just reached the steps of the house, when he heard a soft and urgent voice: “Mr. Bollister!”

  He wheeled swiftly. He had not seen the carriage before. But at the sight of its dark bulk in the shadow, his heart sprang up in his throat. He rushed towards it, grasped the sill of the window, peered within, swaying with exhaustion.

  “Adelaide?” he cried. “Are you there, Adelaide?”

  He was streaming with water. Somewhere, he had lost his hat. His thick sandy hair was wet and drenched, and stood up on his head like a crest.

  Mr. Wilkins pressed his fingers firmly on the clutching hands on the window-sill.

  “No, Mr. Bollister, it ain’t Addy. It’s Mr. Wilkins.”

  Anthony started. He tried to tear away his hand. His face involuntarily took on a look of disgust, profound disappointment and despair.

  “What do you want here, Wilkins?” he exclaimed.

  “Hush,” said Mr. Wilkins, softly. “I’ve got news of Addy. There, now, calm yourself. The little lass is safe. But none’s to know. Look ye, go into the house and change your clothing. I’ll wait. But hurry. And when you come out, I’ll take you to Addy.”

  “You’ve got Adelaide? You know where she is?” The joy and the agony of relief on the young man’s face was quite piteous to see. “Take me to her at once!”

  “No, sir, you’ll get your death. One invalid’s enough on Bob Wilkins’ hands. I’ll wait. Just you change.”

  Without another word, Anthony swung about, raced up the stairs, fumbled for his keys, and rushed into the house. Mr. Wilkins leaned back and smiled to himself.

  Within an incredibly short space of time Anthony reappeared, dragging on a dry coat over his fresh clothing. He plunged into the carriage, hurtling over Mr. Wilkins. He fell on the seat. Mr. Wilkins could feel his trembling, his pent emotions.

  The carriage rolled away, and there was a silence. Then, gently, slowly, Mr. Wilkins began to speak. Before they had arrived at his own home, Anthony was very white and still.

  “And so,” concluded Mr. Wilkins, pressing his hand on Anthony’s knee, “that’s ’ow it all is. You can see, Mr. Bollister, sir, that you and I ’ave got work to do, together.”

  During this’ last half hour, Anthony experienced most of the rage and hatred and fury and vengefulness he was ever to feel in his whole life. He was exalted with his passions. “My God, my God!” he said, over and over, aloud.

  They entered the warm brightness of Mr. Wilkins’ pleasant house, and mounted up the polished stairs to a narrow white bedroom on the second floor. There, in the gay little room, all firelight and soft lamplight, in a ruffled white bed with a canopy, lay Adelaide. As Mr. Wilkins and Anthony entered, there was a harsh rustle near the fireplace, and a tall harridan of an elderly lady rose primly, and advanced towards them.

  “She is resting quite comfortably, Mr. Wilkins,” she said. She turned regally, to be introduced formally to Anthony Bollister, but he had darted away to the bedside, and was now kneeling beside it.

  Adelaide was half sleeping, half delirious. She moaned softly in her throat, struggling feebly for breath. Her long shining brown hair was lying in braids over the gay quilts and the white sheets. She had been propped up on ruffled pillows, in order to ease her breathing. Her face was very dwindled and small, child-like in its simplicity of pain and hovering death. When Anthony took her hand, its tremulous heat startled and horrified him. He bent over her, whispering her name.

  “I wouldn’t advise that, sir,” said Miss Beardsley, severely. “She has only just fallen asleep. She needs much rest to gather strength for the crisis, which we expect in a few days.”

  But a quickened look of listening alertness had come to Adelaide’s pinched and pallid cheeks. Her eyelids fluttered. She drew in a breath, and held it. Her lips parted. Slowly, the lashes lifted and her eyes, feverish and glazed, peered out helplessly seeking from between them.

  Anthony bent closely over her. “Adelaide, my dear, my dearest,” he whispered. “It’s I. Tony. Do you hear me, darling?”

  His heart was swelling. His eyes were dazzled with the first tears he had shed since his boyhood. He pressed his lips against her hot cheek as if to infuse into them his own life and strength. Miss Beardsley was much affected. She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and swayed so alarmingly that Mr. Wilkins was compelled, with generous gallantry, to put his arm about her waist. She leaned against him.

  Adelaide slowly turned her head to her young husband. The glazed look in her eyes remained for some moments. Then it was suddenly dissipated in the clear shining of her consciousness and awareness. She moved a little towards him.

  “Tony,” she whispered, hoarsely. Her other hand lifted. He caught it up and pressed it warmly in his palms, with the first one.

  “Yes, dear, yes, my sweet,” he said. There was a thickness in his throat. “Everything is well, my love. Just sleep. Just rest. I won’t leave you.”

  But now wild anxiety darkened the light of her eyes.

  “Papa?” she groaned. “Papa?”

  Mr. Wilkins advanced to the bed, and beamed down upon her. He wagged a loving finger at her.

  “There, now, my little lass, we’ve not to be agitated. We’ve to sleep. We’ve to get well. We mustn’t worry about our Papa. Everything is in good order. We’ve to trust our Uncle Bob.”

  She smiled again, closed her eyes. Still holding to Anthony’s hands, she fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 57

  Lavinia and Louisa sat near their mother as she lay silently, in a stuporous half-sleep, on their father’s bed. It was there that John had laid his wife when she had suddenly collapsed, and it was he, now, who undressed her, comforted her, drew the sheets and silken quilts over her, with a tenderness that had been given him in such full measure. She had allowed him to do all this; but she had not been really aware, obeying, not resisting, in a kind of heavy and languid stupor. She had listened to his voice as he soothed her and promised her, her eyes fixed upon his face, their blueness filmed over and glazed, her mouth sagging. When finally, before leaving on the search for Adelaide, he had bent over and kissed her cold dry lips, she had not stirred, but had continued to gaze at him emptily.

  He had looked down at her for a moment, and had cried out to her from the deepest wretchedness of his heart.

  “Lily, my dear! It’s not too late, Lily? We’ll find Adelaide. But for us, Lily—tell me it isn’t too late?”

  But she had looked at him speechlessly, in her unmoving misery, as if she had died, or become dumb. It was as if the outpourings of her vehement denunciations of him had entered her own consciousness, and she could not speak for its stupefied horror. She had finally closed her eyes wearily, sighing deeply, and had turned away her head. Her rumpled but still gleaming masses of auburn hair lay spread over pillows where they had never lain before, and her big tired hands curled upwards on the satin quilt. He saw her profile, fat, large and fallen, and her expression, full of dreary resignation, pain and hopelessness. With a shaking hand he smoothed her hair; one curl of it lifted a little and wound itself over his fingers. He bent and kissed it.

  He sent for his daughters, and told them to watch their mother until he and their husbands returned after their search for Adelaide.

  “How tiresome, how dramatic, of Adelaide,” said Louisa, pettishly, then immediately resumed her automatic sweet smile. “And on such a night, too. Really, it is a silly play. No doubt she has told everybody that you drove her out, Papa, into the night.”

  “I did,” said John, quietly.

  Louisa laughed gently. “Now, Papa, you know you did not. You merely told the chit to get out of your sight. It is just a play of words, and means nothing.”

  But Lavinia looked steadily at her father and was silent. Her florid colouring had paled. Her mouth was tight and bluish, and there was an uncontrollable twitching about her black eyes as if tears urged to be released.

  “And how thoughtl
ess and selfish of her to create a scandal,” resumed Louisa. “She has so few friends, thank heavens. But friends gossip and exaggerate. Whatever can she have told people? I always knew that Adelaide was vengeful; she will take advantage of this little situation to make a frightful hullabaloo.”

  “You are a liar, Louisa,” said Lavinia, softly. Now she looked sick and stricken. But her eyes were ablaze. She turned to John. “We’ll stay with Mama.” She hesitated, then clasped her hands impulsively over her father’s arm, and gazed up at him. “Papa, bring Adelaide home. We’ve a lot to do to reconcile her to us. We all know it. We needed this to happen to us. Bring her home to Mama. For her sake. For our sake, too.”

  “How absurd,” murmured Louisa. But she eyed her sister reflectively. Was Lavinia going to be ridiculous, obstructive, now that matters were shaping themselves so satisfactorily? It was a mercy that she was married to Rufus, rather than to her own unpredictable Patrick. What weaklings those two were! Weaklings, for all their bluster and noise and expressions of violence. Louisa had long ago discerned that the relentless plotter, the truly intellectual schemer and manipulator, was never noisy, but moved on velvet feet and struck in silence. She thought suddenly of Rufus, and her blue eyes shone like hard sapphires under her golden lashes. She could trust Rufus; they understood each other. But one could never trust the stormy of temperament, the clamorous. There was a weak and rotten spot in them.

  She was much annoyed at the vigil at her mother’s bed in her father’s rooms. She had already retired for the night. One must guard herself when in a delicate condition. Tomorrow, she would have quite a headache, and be indisposed all day, and her colour would be dull. It was perfectly all right for Lavinia, the robust and vulgar. Nothing ever impaired the brilliance of her vitality.

  Too, she, Louisa, rather dreaded that vigil with her sister. Lavinia had a cruel and wounding tongue. No doubt she would be full of rumbling and incoherent reproaches when alone with Louisa. Louisa sighed petulantly. She was in no mood to combat disordered words and vehement gestures.

  She sat down near her mother, and yawned delicately, touching her lips with her fingers. Her yellow hair lay richly on the shoulders of her blue peignoir. She leaned back in the chair, and indicated, by her closed eyes, that she was very weary, and she would thank Lavinia not to disturb her.

  But, to her surprise, Lavinia did not speak at all. She sat near her sister and fixed her eyes on her mother’s vast and empty face. She appeared to have forgotten Louisa entirely; she was alone with Lilybelle.

  The fire was burning briskly on the hearth, throwing up shafts of orange light, to touch, with restless spear-heads, the ceiling, the walls, the polished wood of the furniture. A lamp was burning dimly near the great ponderous bed. The heavy folds of the curtains were drawn over the windows. Lilybelle lay as the dead lie, not moving, the sound of her breathing not to be heard even in the deep silence. She-had withdrawn into some sick far vortex of her own, no longer caring for those she loved, occupied with an agony that was crushing and numbing. Lavinia saw the bulging curve of the cheek on the pillow, the bronze lashes catching little gleams of light from the fire, the sturdy large hands quiet now with a dreadful and resigned quietness. Lavinia pressed her eyelids closely together, and shook her head slightly.

  Then Lilybelle sighed. The bulk of her body trembled on the bed; her mountainous breasts heaved piteously. Lavinia rose and bent over her. But Lilybelle, after that one convulsion of sufferings, was still again, unconscious of her daughter. Louisa watched all this from under her lashes. She pretended to sleep.

  Why did not Lavinia speak? There was something ominous in her silence. She sat in her chair again, tall, plump, already giving evidence of becoming like her mother in figure. Her crimson velvet peignoir stretched over her body, eloquent of the new life beneath it. Louisa peered at her sister. How sombre and grim and changed was her face! Its expression was heavy and meditative. She stared before her with the strangest look. I really must speak to Rufus, thought Louisa. Lavinia is becoming too dangerous.

  An hour went by, slowly, weighted with silence. And still Lavinia sat there, sometimes glancing at her mother, sometimes leaning back wearily in her chair. Louisa’s uneasiness increased. How unlike Lavinia, this motionless grim woman! What were her thoughts? The thoughts of the violent, when they are speechless, are quite terrible, reflected Louisa. She felt the impact of Lavinia’s thoughts like blows upon her keen sensibilities. She darted a furtive glance at her sister. Lavinia’s profile had assumed an iron and rigid quality, full of threat. Her colour had not returned. Her thick black curls were disordered about her neck and shoulders.

  Then Louisa dozed. She awoke with a start. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece chimed a delicate one. The room had cooled. Sighing, Louisa rose and poked at the dying embers on the hearth. Lavinia had not moved. She appeared as unconscious of her mother. Louisa would have thought she slept, except that her black eyes were still open, staring unblinkingly at the bed. Why had she not stirred the fire, the fool?

  The thoughts she had thought were like scattered and broken stones all through the large and silent room. Louisa had an impression that something had changed, had been broken down, and that there were jagged and shattered fragments thrown everywhere. How like Lavinia to make the very air disorderly and untidy! To strew the psychic atmosphere with the evidence of her hasty sorting and throwing-over. And now the smell of danger was everywhere, like a gas.

  Louisa heard the opening and shutting of the door downstairs, and the distant rumble of men’s voices. They had returned, and had, no doubt, brought that wicked nasty little creature with them. How very tedious, indeed, all this was. Lavinia rose quickly; her pale face deeply lined and hard. The two young women glanced at each other, then softly left the room, together. They had reached the landing, when they saw their father and their husbands ascending. One glance at their faces assured Louisa that they had not found Adelaide. John was climbing the stairway, slowly, like an old man, holding to the balustrade. Rufus wore a tight and impatient look. But Patrick’s face resembled Lavinia’s in its close grimness.

  John looked up and saw his waiting daughters. His expression changed, dissolved, and then his features took on an aspect of deathly despair and exhaustion. He shook his head.

  “Now, ladies, no hysterics, please,” said Rufus in a low and peremptory tone. His green eyes glittered up at the young women, and his foxlike countenance narrowed wamingly. “We’ll find the girl in the morning. We’ve been to the police. We’ve talked to the Chief of Police, himself, and he has his men searching every corner of the city.”

  The men reached the landing. John turned to Lavinia. “Your mother?” he muttered.

  Lavinia put her hand on his arm. Now her sombre mouth shook. “She is still asleep. You aren’t going to wake her and tell her, Papa?”

  “No, my dear.” He seemed to see her for the first time, and now she saw a desperate appeal in his eyes, and a dark anguish. He patted the hand on his arm. “Go to bed now, my darlings. We can do nothing more until morning.”

  Patrick did not speak. He walked away to his own bedchamber and closed the door firmly. John entered his room, and went directly to his bed to see Lilybelle, and to sit near the window where he could watch her.

  Rufus and the two young women were alone together in the dim hall.

  He spoke softly, glancing swiftly at the closed doors all about them.

  “Look here, there has been a remarkable development. Your gay little sister married Anthony Bollister yesterday morning.” His face was suffused with malevolent mirth. “What do you think about that?”

  “No!” exclaimed Louisa, in her hushed sweet voice. Her eyes became alive and unpleasant. “That’s incredible! I can’t believe it!” She indicated, by the look of her mouth and dilated nostrils, that this was most disagreeable and disconcerting news. “What a little sneak! And Tony Bollister! Every girl in town has been after him. How could she have inveigled him into marriage? And witho
ut telling us, too.” She paused, then added delicately: “I hope there was no scandal—?”

  “On the contrary. It seems rather sudden, and suddenness is always suspect, isn’t it? They’ve met less than half a dozen times, Bollister told me tonight. He said,” and Rufus coughed thinly, as if to suppress a vicious laugh, “that he had decided to marry her when she was eight years old!”

  Lavinia seized his arm urgently. “Rufe! Could it be Adelaide is with him?”

  “No,” he answered, impatiently, trying to withdraw from her vulgar and robust grasp. “He came here, looking for her. It seems that she first went to him, after her melodramatic flight, but he was not at home. After that, she simply vanished into thin air. We’ve been all over. I assure you,” he added with nasty significance, “that her dear friends will talk. The town will have a delicious morsel to eat with its breakfast. A very nice situation for all of us.”

  “Tony Bollister!” repeated Louisa, with incredulous amazement, and outrage. “What possessed him? Really! I thought he had wit and discrimination.”

  “He did,” said Lavinia, with great quietness. Then tears filled her large dry eyes, and she turned and walked to her own apartments, leaving Rufus and Louisa alone together.

  Louisa was silent. Her face, caught off guard by her astonishment and annoyance, was not a nice thing to see. Rufus watched her, as her thoughts whirled. He smiled tightly, the corners of his thin mouth sinking inwards, his nose sharpening.

  “So, we’ve got the enemy of the family for a brother, now,” he said, in a light, hushed tone. “What a contretemps! What an anti-climax! You should have seen your dear Papa’s face when Bollister burst in upon us, shouting for his little child-wife. And what a confusion all this is going to make! I’d like to see what Tony’s elegant Papa is going to say this morning, when the glad tidings are made manifest to him.” He coughed delicately. “And Tony’s most distinguished and aloof Mama.”