Then She Fled Me

by Sara Seale

  His train was late, and Sarah chatted nervously to Pat Murphy the porter until it arrived.

  She saw Adrian at once, and thought how unmistakably English he looked in that small, excitable crowd. She had forgotten how tall he was, and the confident angle at which he wore his hat, but his face bore its familiar coldly impassive expression as he unhurriedly scanned the platform for her.

  “Here I am,” she said, and was suddenly seized with a most unfamiliar shyness.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve kept you waiting. The train’s late.”

  “The trains are always late,” she said, trying to regain her confidence. “And the last time you had to wait an hour and I never turned up at all.”

  “So I did.” His grey eyes surveyed her coolly, then he smiled. “Have I got to start as a stranger all over again, Sarah? You’re looking at me as if I’m a new arrival and you aren’t quite sure if you like the look of me.”

  “Oh, Adrian!” she said, flushing a little. “I like the look of you very much and—and I’m really very pleased to see you.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” He grinned suddenly. “I believe you’re shy,” he said. “By heavens, you are! That must be quite a record for Miss Riordan of Dun Rury. Do I chalk it up as one to me?”

  She laughed and all at once her embarrassment left her. Listening to the clipped English voice again, hearing the familiar little bite to his teasing, she was at home with him once more and the gap was bridged.

  On the way home she told him all the small happenings of the past few weeks; of the calf that had been born to the red cow, the quarrel Nolan had with Willie-the-Post, the clock without a mainspring which Aunt Em had bought at a sale, the fight Danny had with one of the Mulligan boys. The handles of the push-cart dug Adrian between the shoulders, the springs of the old car made their familiar protest over the bumps on the south road, and the chicks peeped wildly as Sarah took the bends and corners with blithe unconcern.

  “Now I know I’m back in Ireland,” he said, removing his hat as it struck the roof of the car.

  She laughed and slowed down, telling him excitedly that spring was nearly here and wasn’t it a grand day to be returning to the west?

  “What was England like?” she asked.

  “Cold. How does Dun Rury look?”

  “A little sad,” she said. “So much needs doing. I tried to coax a bit more money out of Uncle B., but he wouldn’t play.”

  “Dun Rury is still your Golden Calf, then?”

  She looked puzzled.

  “People worshipped the Golden Calf, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. It brought them no good, either.”

  “I don’t think I worship Dun Rury.”

  “Don’t you, Sarah? I think you came pretty near to it.”

  “Not any more.”

  He gave her a speculative glance.

  “Beginning to find at last that stone and mortar aren’t quite enough?”

  “Dun Rury could never be just stone and mortar to me, but—” She sighed and did not finish the sentence. She did not ask him questions about his business in England. He would, she knew, tell her when he was ready.

  He did not enquire after Kathy, and she said:

  “We’ve all missed you, Adrian. It’s funny how different it is when there’s a man about the place. Nonie says a house without a master is like an egg without salt. There was the same kind of emptiness when you went as there was after my father died.”

  “Was there, Sarah?”

  “Yes,” she said, “there was. Oh, Adrian, I’m so glad to have you back. I must have missed you terribly.”

  “Your delight at my return is very flattering,” he said with his old asperity. “But you’ll have us in the lough if you don’t drive more carefully.”

  Kathy came running out of the house to meet them. She had changed her frock and done her hair a new way and she greeted Adrian with fluttering solicitude.

  “Are you very tired? Would you like me to bring tea up to the nursery? Have you good news from your doctor?”

  “I’m not in the least tired,” he said briskly, “and I didn’t go to London to see doctors. I was out of their hands long ago. I’ll have tea in the snug with all of you, if I may.”

  During the days that followed, Sarah watched her sister a little anxiously. Adrian was evidently taking a firm line from the start. He was always gentle with her, but he avoided personalities, found excuses not to be alone with her, and always arranged to avoid a direct snub when she tried to engage his interest in her romantic notions. Sarah had to admit that he was very skilful. He behaved with the utmost kindness and courtesy, but at the same time he made it delicately plain that he had no interest in her. It was difficult to tell whether Kathy was hurt by his attitude. She had always possessed a disconcerting trick of refusing to recognize something which she did not want to see, but she began to complain more frequently of Joe’s neglect and she started writing to him again.

  “It’s all working out as you said it would,” she told Adrian, with a sigh of relief. “You are very clever with her, Adrian. I—I hope she isn’t unhappy.”

  They were sitting on the terrace in the afternoon sunshine and it seemed to Sarah that now he belonged to Dun Rury and it was impossible to think that he must go.

  “Things will work out, Sarah,” he told her with a smile. “They always do, you know, if you don’t fight the inevitable.”

  She looked at him swiftly.

  “They have for you, haven’t they?”

  “Yes, they have for me.”

  “After all, I think you’ve changed. Perhaps we all have. Have you—how did you put it—come to terms with life?”

  “I’ve come to terms with myself, which is far more important,” he answered. “And that’s what you must do, Sarah. Come to terms with yourself.”

  “How does one do it?”

  “One knows when the time comes.”

  “Yes, you are different,” she said and took one of his hands, flexing the fingers gently. “These don’t worry you any more. You’ve lost your resentment.”

  “I’ve stopped fighting,” he said, watching her gravely. “One day you’ll stop fighting, too.”

  “Yes,” she said and got up and went into the house.

  At the snug door she paused, uncertain what to do with the rest of the afternoon, but at a stifled sound from inside, she pushed open the door and looked in. Kathy was lying in a crumpled heap on the sofa, with her face buried in a cushion.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sarah ran across the room.

  “Kathy, darling, what’s the matter?” she asked with concern, and tried to take the older girl in her arms, but Kathy pushed her away.

  “Go away!” she sobbed. “You’re hateful—wicked and hateful. I never want to speak to you again!”

  “Why, why? What have I done?”

  “You’ve gone behind my back, that’s what you’ve done ... Discussing me with strangers ... laughing at me...”

  “I’ve never discussed any of us with strangers,” Sarah said sternly. “Who’s been making mischief? Tell me, Kathy, tell me at once.”

  “You have,” said Kathy, suddenly sitting upright on the sofa. “I heard you—you and Adrian sitting on the terrace...”

  Sarah glanced at the open window. How often had Adrian warned her before that she had a carrying voice? Even from the nursery voices on the terrace could be heard distinctly.

  “Oh darling, I’m sorry you heard,” she said helplessly. “I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world—you know that.”

  “You were laughing at me! ‘You’ve been very clever with her, Adrian,’ you said. ‘It’s all working out as you said it would,’ you said. Did you tell him before he went that I was in love with him? Is that why he stopped away so long, because you had said don’t let little Kathy make a fool of herself?”

  Sarah’s face was white. This was bad, worse even, than giving your heart to someone who did not want it.
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br />   “Kathy, will you listen to me?” she pleaded. “I did give you away to Adrian, but it was through a misunderstanding. I thought—well, anyway I had an idea then he might be fond of you himself and I—I stupidly said the wrong thing. I would never have let him know what you felt if I’d realized he—he didn’t feel the same. You must believe me, Kathy—I was thinking only of you. I didn’t want you to be hurt.”

  “If you’d let us alone, he might have ... I might not have ... Why do you always have to interfere? With me and Joe and now with Adrian ... I suppose you laughed together and compared notes on poor, love-sick Kathy.”

  “Kathy, how can you! You know neither of us would want to laugh over something that mattered to you so much. Adrian was only sorry you had misunderstood his little attentions. Kathy, darling, you’re such a child. Don’t you understand that you read too much into just ordinary civilities and that though you are so exquisite, every man who pays you a compliment isn’t necessarily in love, with you?”

  “What do you know about love?” demanded Kathy.

  “Not much,” Sarah replied humbly. “But enough to guess that what you felt for Adrian wasn’t real, Kathy. You made a dream round him, darling. Don’t you see that it was all a make-believe—a game you played with yourself that began to come true?”

  Kathy sat looking at her with her hyacinth blue eyes drowned in tears. Would she, wondered Sarah anxiously, take this way out? Would she have the sense to salvage her hurt pride with a realization of the truth?

  “You were playing a game,” she said again. “You were having us on—me and Joe and Adrian, weren’t you?”

  Kathy gave a long sigh.

  “Yes,” she said at last, “that must have been it. I was playing a game with you all, and I have such a strong imagination that I almost believed it true. Will you tell Adrian that?”

  “He knows it already, darling. He never took you seriously.”

  “And I never took him really seriously.” Two bright spots of color came into Kathy’s cheeks. Her tears had dried. “He’s intelligent, cultured, but he’ll never do for me. He’s too cold, too wrapped up in himself. It was because he was the Adrian Flint that I felt—well, privileged to know him. I thought we had a common basis in music, but that’s over for him and now—well, he’s just a man like anyone else—he’s just the Flinty One.”

  “Oh, Kathy!” Sarah suddenly wanted to cry. How little her sister could understand a man like Adrian, but it was best that way, perhaps. “Yes, darling,” she said gently. “He’s just the Flinty One. I knew you’d understand.”

  Kathy did not appear for supper and Aunt Em told Adrian she had gone to bed with a headache. Sarah did not meet his eyes, but when later on in the evening he found an opportunity to say to her “You’re the one who looks as if she’s got a headache. Is anything wrong?” she answered guiltily:

  “Oh, Adrian, she heard us. She was in the snug and heard us on the terrace.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said quietly. “But it may do good in the long run, you know. Clear the whole matter up once and for all.”

  “You do like things cut and dried, don’t you?”

  “I dislike loose ends. Did she take it badly?”

  “At first it was awful. I felt a perfect swine. But later she began to come round to your view of make-believe. I told her she’d been playing a game with herself and having us on. She seemed pleased with the idea.”

  “She’ll cling to that until she really believes it,” he said with a smile. ‘There’s a lot to be said for Kathy’s mentality.”

  “You’ve never had much opinion of Kathy, have you?” Sarah said wonderingly, and he replied:

  “My dear, your sister has an exquisite face but a great deal of stupidity.”

  “She’s just an inexperienced child.”

  “She’s two years older than you, may I remind you, Miss Riordan. You’re something of an inexperienced child yourself.”

  “I’m far older than Kathy. I always have been.”

  “Well, Kathy hasn’t got much beyond the schoolgirl stage, as far as I can see, and I wouldn’t mind betting she never does. I find these perpetual Peter Pans rather tiresome, I’m afraid. Sarah—-don’t look at me like that! You don’t imagine I’m putting you in that category, do you?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “you make such sweeping statements and I—I get confused. We can’t help being young and inexperienced, Kathy and I.”

  They were in the nursery. She had come up as usual to fetch his tray and had stayed to talk. He reached up a hand and pulled her down to the rug beside his chair.

  “You, my darling child, are quite different,” he said a little roughly. “Sometimes your youth is touching and sad and quite defeats me, but that is another matter altogether. Sarah, so often I want only to be gentle with you and I find myself being harsh, superficial. Don’t ever think I confuse you with someone like Kathy.”

  “You were always gentle with Kathy,” she said, unsure of what he really meant. “She thought that was a sign you were fond of her. Lovers, she said, are always gentle.”

  “Shows what a lot she knows!” he observed with humor. “Lovers are not gentle, my dear, they are often touchy, passionate creatures with a desire to possess all of the loved one and bite when they feel shut out.”

  She looked up at him, wrinkling her forehead, uncertain of him in this mood.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Adrian?” she asked.

  He smoothed the lines from her forehead with a gentle thumb and forefinger.

  “Nothing as yet, perhaps,” he said. “Do you remember me telling you to think things over while I was away?”

  “Yes, but I got so confused round about that time. I told you it was like when my father died.”

  “Still confusing me with your father’s memory?”

  “Not exactly. It’s so difficult to explain. The feeling started that night you found me in the snow, I think. You did the things I would always have liked him to have done. You made me feel safe and—and cared for. It sounds rather silly, doesn’t it?”

  He drew her head back against his knee and his fingers smoothed the soft fringe on her forehead.

  “No, I think it sounds rather pathetic,” he said. “Go on confusing me if you must, Sarah. It will work out.”

  There was a light knock on the door and Kathy looked in.

  “Aunt Em wants to know—” she began, then she looked at Sarah sitting on the floor, at Adrian’s hand on her hair, and her color rose. “Aunt Em wants to know where you put the key of the bureau,” she said sharply. “You’d better come down and find it yourself. You’ve been up here quite long enough, and Nonie wants the tray.”

  Sarah scrambled to her feet and ran out of the room, and Kathy picked up the tray.

  “Just a minute,” Adrian said.

  “Well?” She stood holding the tray, the color mounting still higher in her cheeks.

  “Can’t you forget your annoyance with me?” he said. “Try and remember I’m only the lodger—you’ll find that will help a lot.”

  “I do,” she said. “I’ve no grudge against you, Adrian. After tonight I understand a lot better.”

  Do you? And what do you understand?”

  “I understand my sister very much better than I did before.”

  “I don’t think you do,” he said gravely. “And I shouldn’t jump to too many conclusions if I were you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Nonie wants the tray. Goodnight.”

  “I mean, don’t take it out on Sarah, will you?” he said gently.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she replied, and tears trembled on her long lashes.

  “I think you have,” he said. “Goodnight.”

  Danny had gone to bed and only Aunt Em was in the snug when Kathy came down.

  “Where’s Sarah?” she demanded.

  Her aunt looked up at the unfamiliar bite in her voice. “She’s findi
ng the key, dear. Is anything the matter?” she said.

  “Oh, Aunt Em!” Kathy suddenly burst into tears and ran across the room to bury her face in her aunt’s lap. “You’re the only one who’s ever understood me since Father died—you and Joe. My own sister whom I trusted, plotting and scheming with that—that snake up there. Aunt Em, I’m so wretched...”

  Her aunt put her arms round her and held her closely. She did not understand what she was being told, but that did not matter. Here was her beloved child seeking comfort in her arms, as the young Kathleen used to do so long ago, and the denial of the years engulfed her as she held the weeping girl. Thus would she have held her own child, had not her sister and then her sister’s child taken toll of her love and affection, and the strange thought passed through her mind that the young Sarah must not waste her life for an ideal as she had done.

  “Hush, now my darling ... hush now, my lovely...” she said. “Tell me what’s the matter, child.”

  But Kathy only sobbed:

  “I must go away ... Aunt Em, I must go away.”

  “But where, dear child?”

  “I don’t know. We have no friends in Dublin now. I’ll go to Uncle B.—to Uncle B. and Joe in Knockferry. Yes, that’s what I’ll do—I’ll go and keep house for Uncle B. for a while.”

  Quickly her tears were ceasing, and she lifted a face already bright with the dawn of fresh plans.

  “Well, I’m sure Brian and Joe would love to have you for a bit,” Aunt Em said, looking a little bewildered. “But won’t you be rather lonely during the day, dear, when they’re away at the office?”

  “No lonelier than I am shut up in this prison of a house,” she cried. “No, I won’t be lonely, Aunt Em, I won’t be lonely at all with the streets and the shops and the lights, and Joe coming home each evening. I’ll go tomorrow.”

  “But you must give them a little notice, child. They won’t be prepared for a visitor.”