“That’s a lie!” Edward was ashen.
“It’s the truth! All your boasts about a happy marriage—what a sham! All your grief after she died—what hypocrisy!”
“I loved her—”
“Yes—and it was your example of a husband’s love that made me decide I never wanted a husband! I didn’t want to be a victim like my mother!”
“You don’t even remember your mother as she was! You were only six when she had her nervous collapse after Louis died.”
“And for the next six years I had to watch her sinking to the grave as the result of your carnal excesses! No, don’t interrupt me. We’ll say nothing more about it, because whatever we said would be irrelevant. With God’s help I’ve long since learned to forgive you, but please, if you wish me to keep a civil tongue in my head, be good enough not to fling my mother’s name in my face in that fashion. Now, if you have nothing else you can profitably say to me, I shall leave your house and pursue my calling as a nurse.”
“Pursue what you want, but don’t expect me to give you one penny of my money! After what you’ve just said you can beg in the streets for all I care!”
“I doubt if that will be necessary,” said Madeleine, “since the order will provide me with the essentials of life. Good day, Papa.”
“Wait!” I cried, quite unable to stop myself by that time even though I knew it was foolish of me to interfere. “Madeleine … Edward …” I groped for words, tried to find some solution. “Edward, nursing does have a new respectability nowadays. Would it really not be better if Madeleine had a little money so that she could pursue her vocation at its most respectable level?”
“My dear,” said Edward in a voice of steel, “you would oblige me considerably if you would refrain from comment in the circumstances. If the scene is distressing to you, you have my permission to withdraw.”
I stumbled out of the room.
Later after Madeleine had left the house with the shabby bag that contained her meager possessions, he said a great many things to me. He said he realized I had meant well and had thought I was acting for the best; he said he was aware of the time and trouble I had spent befriending his daughters; he said he was neither ungrateful nor unappreciative. But when I took sides in a family argument and showed beyond any doubt that I was not in agreement with him I was doing a grave disservice to our marriage.
“I’m not saying you should be hypocritical,” he said. “I’m not asking you to voice opinions you don’t hold. I’m simply asking you to be silent when there’s a conflict between myself and Eleanor’s children. You complain loudly enough about England’s poor show of neutrality in your civil war, Marguerite, but you’re very far from excelling in neutrality yourself! And you should be neutral on these occasions. I don’t want my second marriage to be tainted with echoes from the first.”
His argument was persuasive, yet I could not wholly accept it. However, I said nothing further for fear the discussion might become too acrimonious, and anyway it was impossible for me to remain angry with him for long. That autumn he took me abroad again, this time to the south of Europe, and we spent two months traveling around the Greek islands. We had planned to spend part of that time in Italy, but Rome was still echoing with Garibaldi’s revolutionary rhetoric, and Edward thought it wiser to avoid territories that were so politically unstable. I did have a brief glimpse of Venice, where we took the boat to Athens, but beyond the enthusiastic decision that I would return there one day, my journal is sparse in recording my impressions of that gorgeous fairy-tale city. I devoted pages to Greece (now all contained in my red leather journal, Volume III, entitled “Sojourn in the Islands of Greece, 1862”), and on rereading my account, I can see that I soon recovered from my reluctance to leave the boys for such a long time in order not to disappoint Edward.
I was right to go with him. We were very happy, and in our intimacy with each other far from the distractions of our everyday life I came closer than I had ever come before to understanding the complexity of his character. It occurred to me for the first time that he was not truly suited to be a family man; he was far too restless and independent to welcome the ties of home life, and although he was happy enough to be married, he was happiest of all when his wife was more of a mistress than a domestic partner. I thought then of what Madeleine had said about conforming to the dictates of society, and it seemed to me that despite the lip service Edward paid to such rules he was at heart a very nonconforming person indeed. Whenever he was obliged to be conventional—in the role of paterfamilias, for example—he was at his least attractive and at his most ill at ease. He was at his best when he was free of all the trappings his position had cast upon him. I had seen him at his best in New York, when he was a foreigner outside his normal surroundings, and I saw him at his best now when we were alone together far from home.
It was then that I at last began to understand what Eleanor had meant to him. She too had liked to travel; she had shared all his interests, certainly far more of them than I did. Perhaps she too had been at her best in a world beyond the structure of her daily life. She would have been the companion Edward needed, a true kindred spirit to share his adventures, and once he had found her neither of them would have had any need for anyone else. A son to inherit the title, of course, perhaps a daughter to look after them in old age. But no one else. Anyone else would have been an intrusion.
“But I love you just as much as I ever loved Eleanor, Marguerite,” he said, “and sometimes so much more.”
All quarrels seemed very far away when he said that. In fact by the time we returned to England I was firmly of the opinion that we could not quarrel again for as long as we lived, but Edward decided that we should spend Christmas in Ireland, and it was then, on my second visit to Cashelmara, that I first became acquainted with his ward Derry Stranahan.
III
I took a great fancy to Derry. He was nearly twenty-one, just as I was, and good-looking in a dark, lithe, graceful manner that was very attractive. He had a curious accent, Irish with strong English overtones, which he must have acquired from Patrick, enough charm to lure a dozen birds from any bush and a needle-sharp wit. It never occurred to me not to like him, and, besides, I was secretly intrigued by the manner in which he had sown his wild oats. Women do tend to look twice at a man with a colorful romantic past, and I was no exception.
That Christmas he came home from Frankfurt after his years of banishment and was permitted by Edward to spend a month at Cashelmara before he went to Dublin to read for the Irish bar.
“I’m honored to meet the lady of the house at last,” he said, bowing very low to me, and it was hard to believe he had ever been a peasant’s son living in some smoky cabin along the road to Clonareen.
I saw little of him at first. I was too busy making arrangements for the Christmas celebrations, and he was out most of the day with Patrick on some adventure or other. He did not spend Christmas with us. Edward insisted he visit his kin at Maam’s Cross, and he departed gloomily on Christmas Eve—”to sleep under the one bed with the pigs, the hens and six of the youngest children, I shouldn’t wonder,” he remarked, but Edward said it was his duty to visit his family at Christmas, even if they were only cousins, and Derry knew better by this time than to incur Edward’s disapproval.
After his return on Boxing Day he soon reduced Patrick and myself to tears of laughter with an account of his experiences, and since all my Christmas calls had been paid and received I fancied he sought my company more often. This made me nervous, for Edward was always quick to spot any young man who paid me the most innocent attention, but eventually realized with relief that Derry’s interest was not in me but in my constant companion, Katherine.
Katherine liked Derry too. She had not seen him since before her marriage, when he had been no more than a boy, so it was as if she, like myself, were meeting him for the first time. Of course she did not say she liked him—she was far too reserved for that—but I noticed how often she smiled i
n his presence and how she never rebuffed him when he made deliberate efforts to charm her.
I was secretly delighted. There seemed no reason not to be; I was always reading romantic novels in which two such people fell in love as a matter of course. Katherine had been widowed for two years now; she was wealthy, beautiful and eligible. Derry was far below her by birth, but he was thoroughly presentable and his prospects were excellent. Also he knew how to circumvent Katherine’s shyness, and Katherine in her turn was the perfect audience he needed for his witty stories. The one would complement the other and vice versa. Surely nothing could have been more suitable.
To make matters even more interesting from a romantic viewpoint, it soon became clear that Katherine had a second suitor. After Christmas Edward’s friend Lord Duneden visited us from Duneden Castle, which lay eighty miles east of Cashelmara, and having been mildly attentive to Katherine since the earliest days of her widowhood, he now became more attentive than ever. As Katherine was an expert at not betraying her emotions, poor Derry was soon in a terrible taking.
“To be sure Lord Duneden’s a great nobleman,” he said, confiding in me despairingly at last, “and he has such wealth and position as I could never lay my hands on in a thousand years, but, Lady de Salis, I do have some advantages he has not. Do you think Miss Katherine—Lady Rokeby, I should say—is quite unaware of them?”
He had cornered me at the top of the stairs, and we were standing in the gallery that enclosed the circular hall. I had just returned from a second call at Clonagh Court to see Annabel but had still not managed to meet the elusive Alfred, who always seemed to be away from home either buying or selling a horse. But Annabel and I had spent a civil half hour together, and I fancied that next year she might even bring herself to spend Christmas with us if we returned to Cashelmara for the occasion.
“What do you think, my lady?” said Derry earnestly, his dark eyes febrile with anxiety, and because I was in a good mood and his attraction for Katherine was so romantically pleasing to me, I could not help but say, “Why, Mr. Stranahan, I’m sure your advantages are every bit as telling as Lord Duneden’s.”
“You don’t believe she cares for him?” he said with a passion that I could only regard as thrilling, and added, just like the hero in one of my novels, “You think I might dare to cherish a little hope?”
“Well, Mr. Stranahan,” I said, “that is really not for me to answer.” But of course I answered him with a smile and made sure he was left with the understanding that Katherine favored his suit.
I was so excited about this fully-fledged romance I had nurtured so carefully that I could not resist dropping a hint of my excitement to Edward.
We had descended from the nurseries, I remember, after saying good night to the children, and were walking down the corridor to our apartments to change for dinner. His nephew George was journeying from Letterturk to dine with us that night, and I was so absorbed in wondering if I had been too rash in putting curry on the menu (God alone knew how the Irish cooked curry) that I barely listened to Edward grumbling about his other protégé, Maxwell Drummond. Young Mr. Drummond had offended him very deeply. After only a brief attendance at the Agricultural College he had run off with the daughter of one of the masters and had brought her back to the valley as his wife. Seemingly unaware of how monstrously he had repaid Edward’s charity, he had called that morning to ask if he could rent the ruined Stranahan farm, Derry’s old home, which adjoined his property. Edward had promised to rent it to him for a nominal sum after he had completed a year at the Agricultural College, and Mr. Drummond, despite everything, still expected him to make good his promise.
“Insolent young fool!” growled Edward for at least the tenth time. “If he rents the Stranahan property he’ll pay me a fair rent for it. That’ll teach him not to ruin his prospects in future! I’m only surprised that the girl hasn’t already left him now that she knows she’s been reduced to a peasant! Imagine a young man like that marrying a schoolmaster’s daughter! Absurd!”
“But so romantic!” I sighed, wrenching my thoughts away from the curry at last. “Of course it would help if they had money—I do realize that. But, Edward, supposing they did have money. Supposing Mr. Drummond could somehow keep his wife in suitable style. Would a slight difference in social station be truly significant?”
“Marguerite, I don’t know how such matters are in America, but I assure you that here the difference in rank between Mr. and Mrs. Drummond is very far from being slight.”
“But supposing the difference was between someone like Derry Stranahan and … and Katherine?”
We were in our apartments by this time. He had been about to tug the bell rope to summon his valet, but he stopped with his hand in mid-air.
“Derry?” he said slowly. “And Katherine?”
“Oh, Edward!” I said happily. “It’s so exciting. I’m sure they’re dreadfully in love! Of course Derry is a little younger than she is, and I know by birth he’s far inferior to her, but he’s been well educated and shows such promise and after all he is your ward.”
“He is not my ward,” said Edward. “I have never accepted him as a member of my family and I certainly never intend to. He’s an Irish peasant’s son to whom I have exercised a certain amount of charity—often greatly against my better judgment—and if that has given him ideas far above his station I’m afraid he’s about to face a considerable disappointment.”
I was dumfounded. “But …”
“Marguerite, have you encouraged this fancy of his?”
“I … well, no—that is to say, at least not in any particular manner.”
“Have you encouraged Katherine to think of this boy as a possible suitor?”
I swallowed. “Not exactly, but …”
“Can you conceivably have been so foolish as to think that I could ever approve of such a match?”
“Well, I … I thought Derry was your ward. I did not realize—I did not quite understand …”
“No,” he said, and I realized with fright that he was very angry. “You did not understand. You knew that I had been obliged to send Derry abroad because of certain immoralities which I have no intention of describing to you in detail, and you knew that I have in the past disapproved of his influence over Patrick. You knew too that it was only out of kindness that I permitted him to spend this month at Cashelmara before his departure for Dublin. You knew all this and yet you assume I would welcome Katherine forming an attachment for him! And worse than that you have the effrontery to say you ‘did not understand’ that I would disapprove of the match!”
I said, stiff-lipped, “I did know of Derry’s past misbehavior, of course, but I thought that was all forgiven and forgotten. And since he’s so sincerely attached to Katherine …”
“I doubt that very much,” said Edward. “He’s merely anxious to get his hands on her money so that he won’t have to earn his daily bread.”
“I can’t help thinking you’re being a little cynical, Edward.”
“And I can’t help thinking you’ve been unbelievably naïve!” he cried, losing his temper. “And worse than that, you have as usual succeeded in meddling in my children’s affairs and taking their part in direct contradiction to my wishes!”
“I didn’t know this time I was contradicting your wishes,” I faltered, “but if I’ve given you offense I’m very sorry. It won’t happen again.” And before he could hurl another angry word at me I fled from the room. I wept as I ran down the corridor and I wept as I scrambled up the nursery stairs, but I did. I had to pause to compose myself before I tiptoed into the night nursery to be alone with the children.
Thomas was already asleep, his red hair tousled and his snub nose pressed sideways upon the sheet, but David was awake and cooing softly to himself as he watched the flicker of the nightlight. He smiled serenely as he saw me. I picked him up. He gurgled, pulled my hair lovingly and lay, fat and placid, in my arms.
“Dearest Baby,” I said, “you’re r
eally much too stout.” Then I wept over him so emotionally that I thought in alarm that I must surely be pregnant again, but afterward I felt better, very calm and self-possessed.
Replacing David gently in his cradle, I tiptoed out of the nursery and went resolutely downstairs in search of Katherine.
IV
“Pray don’t be so distressed, Marguerite,” said Katherine. “Naturally you could not be expected to know Papa’s feelings on the subject. I too thought he regarded Derry as a ward.”
“I should never have encouraged you if I’d dreamt—”
“I don’t think you did encourage me particularly. Anyway,” said Katherine calmly, “it hardly signifies now. Naturally I would never consider a marriage that would distress Papa.”
“Oh, but …” I said and bit my tongue.
“In a way this simplifies the situation,” said Katherine. “I shall marry Lord Duneden. He is not very handsome, but as you once remarked, he’s charming and kind and I expect I shall be quite happy.”
“But, Katherine,” I said, so horrified that I found I had to speak after all, “you mustn’t marry someone you don’t love! Why should you marry Lord Duneden—or anyone else—just now? Wait a little longer. There’ll surely be other suitors before long, and I’m certain at least one of them will appeal to you just as much as Derry.”
“I doubt if any of them would be so suitable as Duneden. Papa thinks so highly of him and they’re such old friends. Duneden has an Irish estate, just as Papa has, and a house in London, and he too is active in parliamentary matters. Papa would be very pleased if I married Duneden.”
I could not let this pass. I tried to, but it was beyond my powers of self-restraint. “Katherine,” I said. “You’re a widow. You’re your own mistress. You’ve already married once to please your father—but that was when you were eighteen and knew no better. You’ve admitted to me you weren’t happily married. Why must you make the same mistake again when this time there’s absolutely no need for you to please anyone but yourself?”
Cashelmara Page 18
