Winter Is Past

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  He turned on his heel, leaving the empty room, ignoring the call of his heart.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning Simon got up and shaved. He gazed at his reflection in the mirror, feeling the smoothness of his jaw. Unwittingly, he had observed that part of the Jewish ritual, remaining unshaven during the period of shiv’ah. He descended to the library, where he was able to sit down at his desk and do some work for the first time. He had decided last night to draw a definite line between his present and his past.

  In the early afternoon, Giles announced that Lady Stanton-Lewis had come to see him.

  “Show her into the sitting room. And bring some tea.”

  Giles bowed his head silently.

  Eugenia sat in the settee, a perfect picture of health and beauty. She was a welcome sight to his weary eyes.

  “I haven’t seen you since the funeral, so I thought I’d better come and see what hole you were digging yourself into.”

  “Good afternoon, Eugenia.” He bent over her hand, its skin white and soft. “How have you been? And Lord Stanton-Lewis?”

  “I’m fine, he’s fine. Sends you his condolences. You looked awfully peaked at the funeral and you don’t look much better now.”

  “Thank you,” he answered wryly, seating himself on a chair beside her.

  “Don’t wallow in self-pity. We all know what you’ve been through. The thing is to get through it. That’s what your friends are here for.”

  Harry brought in the tea. After he’d left, Eugenia poured and handed Simon his cup.

  “What are your plans, Simon?” she asked when they’d each taken a sip.

  He gave her a sidelong glance. “Plans? I haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Why don’t you get away for a while?”

  The idea had an immediate appeal. If he spent another night wandering the empty corridors and rooms of his house, there was no telling what he would do next. “What did you have in mind?”

  She gave a rich, throaty laugh. “Scotland.” At his look of interest, she continued. “Griff and I have a place on the moors. We always go there for the grouse shooting. The season is just commencing. Why don’t you come along with us now? There will be only a small group on our estate, a very select few. You can see them or not, as you choose. It’s quite isolated. You may mourn your daughter in peace. It’s the ideal place for long walks and contemplation. It will do you a world of good.” Her eyes brightened. “You may also work on your book. You’ll find yourself much more productive up there, I’ll warrant.”

  He pondered it, looking at the clear cinnamon hue of his tea. The more he thought about it, the better the prospect tempted him.

  When he didn’t speak right away, Eugenia put down her cup and saucer and leaned toward him. She laid a hand on his arm. “Simon, you and I are two lost souls.”

  He met her clear-eyed gaze. God, but she was beautiful: wide, pale green eyes, flawless ivory complexion with just a hint of rose in each cheek, pale blond hair curled about her head. Her words drew him.

  “Lost souls?”

  “You know what I mean. We know the hopelessness of the situation. That’s all the more reason to grasp all we can today.” Her eyes widened, imploring him. “Come away with me and let us be damned together.”

  He would go. After all, wasn’t he damned already?

  The next day as he was leaving the house, he spotted Althea walking towards it. He stopped short, wondering for a moment if he had conjured her up from his thoughts the other night. He quickly recovered, however, when he noticed she didn’t even see him, but turned toward the service entrance, her steps never hesitating.

  Abruptly he hailed her. She started, and then stood as if unsure what to do.

  He approached her, feeling annoyed with himself. He looked at her with no smile of greeting. She looked so dowdy, like someone’s charwoman reporting for duty. “You disappeared,” he accused.

  She reddened and looked down. She was wearing an ugly-looking bonnet and drab brown gown. He couldn’t help contrasting her looks to Eugenia’s fashion-plate appearance.

  “I was no longer needed,” she answered simply.

  It angered him even further that she didn’t even apologize for not saying goodbye. “Where are you headed?”

  “I—Just to see Mrs. Bentwood and Mrs. Coates. I had promised them to stop and visit them.”

  To visit the servants, and not him? He felt as if she had slapped him in the face. And to think he’d been yearning for those evening conversations with her. What would he have done? Poured out his heart to her?

  He only nodded. “Well, I still owe you your wages.” He felt contempt for his weakness even as he found himself saying the words. “Can you spare a few minutes and step into the library?”

  “I—That’s all right. You don’t have to pay me.”

  That angered him even further. Was she refusing his money? “You disdain to accept your wages?” He kept his voice deliberately cool. “You mean you cannot even use them at the mission—or have your patrons grown so rich, you can refuse a small donation?”

  She reddened even more. “Of course not. I thank you. Very well, I can accompany you to the library, unless you are on the point of going out?”

  “It can wait. Come.”

  He held the front door open for her. The two were silent until they reached the library, where he beckoned her to a seat. He shoved aside a stack of papers.

  “How is—is your book coming?” came the timid question as she removed her bonnet and pushed aside her windblown hair. Her cheeks were flushed.

  He swallowed, realizing how wrong he’d been. She was beautiful.

  “I’m sorry,” she was saying, “I suppose you haven’t been able to work on it lately.”

  He looked at her from under his brows as he unlocked a side drawer of his desk. “You are correct. I haven’t made much headway on it lately.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated quietly, her hands holding her bonnet and reticule in her lap.

  He counted out the coins, aware of her sitting there, as serene as always. It annoyed him. Didn’t she care?

  He pushed the coins to the edge of the desk and sat back, watching as she opened her brown reticule and dropped them in without counting them.

  When he said nothing more, she hesitated, then stood. Suddenly Simon panicked. Was she leaving already? She’d walk out that door and he’d never see her again. How could she turn her back on him and his household so easily?

  Pride kept him from saying anything as she thanked him for the money.

  “Don’t thank me. They’re your wages,” he answered shortly.

  She licked her lips. “Well, thank you…I’m much obliged to you. I…I can make my way downstairs,” she said quietly.

  As she turned, remorse filled him. God, what had gotten into him? None of this was her fault. She was probably just as much a pawn as the rest of them. She’d only tried her best to help. And what a help she’d been to Rebecca all those months.

  She was halfway out of the library when he called out, “Please, Miss Breton, can you stay a moment? I—I have something I’d like to say to you.”

  She stopped and looked at him. He walked to her and motioned to the chairs in front of the fireplace. When they were both seated, he didn’t know exactly where to begin. He sat with his hands on his knees and cleared his throat. “Miss Breton, I’d like to thank you for all you did for Rebecca. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

  When she tried to interrupt, he stopped her. “Please, let me finish. You were always there for her. I didn’t really appreciate it at the time. I’d like to apologize if I neglected you during the funeral and those days following—I wasn’t quite myself.”

  “Oh, Mr. Aguilar, please don’t trouble yourself. I didn’t expect you to act in any other way. I mean, I understood your grief—”

  His lips twisted. “No, I don’t think you quite did, but that is not the point. I merely wanted to apologize for
any unkind words or treatment while you were in my employ.”

  He stood, too restless to sit, wishing now, as the other night, that he could really say what was in his heart, but not knowing where to begin. She seemed to sense he hadn’t finished, because she remained seated, for which he was grateful. He didn’t know what he would do if she scurried off, as she had seemed to want to do earlier. He leaned his arm against the mantelpiece, staring down at the empty grate.

  “I have grown so tired of being surrounded by death—it seems to have stalked me of late. I sometimes wonder whether I even hastened Rebecca’s death with my attitude. I sometimes just wanted it to bring down its scaffold and be done—then I’d be horrified with myself. But it seems it’s been there, looming over my entire adult life.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he turned to her testily. “Why don’t you ever say anything? You just look at me with those soulful eyes as if you had the answers but are not sharing them.”

  To his surprise, she answered right away, “I suppose it makes all the difference when you think in terms of eternity. Jesus said, ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’”

  Simon made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Words! All words! Eternity. What is that? Does it make up for the hell on earth we are required to partake of in our short sojourn here? Does it justify being cut down in one’s infancy or youth in the here and now? Why are we given someone to love in the flesh if they are only to be torn from us and we are expected to be satisfied with the poor consolation of the promise of some hereafter in some shadowy spirit realm?”

  “It is not like that—”

  But he was too wound up to let her speak. He began to pace in front of her, the thoughts he’d agonized over finally spilling out. “Am I to be content watching first my wife, and now my daughter, being buried in some pit, to know the worms will be eating up their bodies, and that mine will end up the same? That they are waiting in some eternal ‘rest’? Or worse, but much more likely, that they have ceased to exist altogether?

  “And that pit—What did Rebecca do to deserve that? Why couldn’t she live a normal life span?” He continued railing at her God, her beliefs, his father’s, the bitterness he’d kept in check finally pouring out.

  Althea watched, knowing she could offer no solace but to listen. Oh, Lord, she prayed, give him the answers he needs. He finally came and sank down on one of the chairs, his head in his hands, his voice breaking.

  “Oh, Simon, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, moving toward him immediately and crouching beside him. She reached out her hand and touched his head. He seemed completely unaware of her in his grief. As his angry tears fell, his body shook. All she could do was offer him the comfort he had once given her when she had broken down. She patted his shaking back, wondering all the while whether this was the time to tell him about Rebecca’s vision. Would it comfort him or would it be like pouring salt on his wounds?

  Finally, as he calmed and silence once more reigned in the room, she began to speak. She spoke in a near whisper, her hand smoothing the unruly curls on his bent head. She spoke as she would to a child who had skinned its knee. She told him all that Rebecca had related to her, only refraining from mentioning the part about the Lord leaving someone to look after him. She wasn’t even sure if he heard her. She kept up the steady motion of her hands as she spoke softly to him.

  “Oh, Simon, if you had seen her joy, her radiance when she woke up, you wouldn’t look at that pit as her resting place. You would understand the angel’s words when he stood at the tomb of Jesus, telling Mary and the disciples, ‘He is not here…he is risen!’”

  His hair was so soft and springy under her hand; it reminded her sharply of all the times she had brushed Rebecca’s, and she wished she could tell him how much she missed his little girl, too. Finally, Althea stood. When he made no movement, she removed her hand. Slowly, hesitantly, she bent down and planted a kiss on the crown of his head.

  She straightened before moving away, quietly letting herself out of the library, afraid that when he returned to himself, he would be ashamed of his display of grief to her. She feared it would be as the last time when he had expressed himself to her. She couldn’t bear to experience his cold formality once again, especially as this time it would concern the Lord. He could reject her as a woman, but she didn’t want to endure his rejection of the Lord.

  A month later she heard from her brother that Simon had gone away to Scotland at the invitation of Lord and Lady Stanton-Lewis. Althea hid her grief from her brother, and threw herself more deeply into her work at the mission.

  Simon tramped over the fields of autumn heather, too tired to keep up the pace, but knowing he must if he wanted to return. These daily walks over the moors were always a chore; he did them only to weary his body physically, but they did not offer solace to his mind.

  Sleep eluded him. It seemed as if his thoughts, which were in a near-somnolent state throughout the day, chose the night hours to awaken. His mind became a busy beehive, then. During the daylight hours, he found it a difficult task to focus on what people were saying, much less form a coherent reply, but as soon as he got into bed, his mind became razor sharp.

  He had tried to use those hours after midnight, when everyone else had finally gone to bed, to work on his book, but his body was too tired to allow him to concentrate on labor laws, tariffs and universal suffrage. As soon as he blew out his candle, however, and rested his head on the pillows, the thoughts would begin and he found himself wide-eyed in the darkness.

  He tried to marshal the thoughts and use them constructively, thinking over all that had been said that day, going over the outline for his book, preparing for the next day’s direction, but his thoughts refused to obey him, going off in too many directions, but always returning to Rebecca.

  Where was she? Where was his darling baby? The tiny bundle he had held in his arms? The little toddler who had stumbled over to grasp his legs? The clever little girl who’d been so quick to learn her alphabet? The laughing girl who’d wanted to know everything he was doing, everywhere he was going, and had managed to guess even when he didn’t tell her?

  Was she in some resting place awaiting the resurrection, as his people believed? Was she at Abraham’s bosom? He couldn’t escape the image of her in some bottomless pit without a glimmer of light or hope. Or worse, was she burning in the flames? He knew from his study of the Scriptures that God’s wrath was expressed in flames. He knew his people’s tradition taught a way to Heaven by good deeds. A person could help his departed loved one into Heaven by saying the correct prayers over them.

  He had spurned participating in all those traditions, considering them superstitions, but now the doubts assailed him. Was his daughter now paying for his negligence? Was her grandmother’s piety enough to ensure Rebecca’s entry into Heaven? Or would her father’s sins be visited on her? What about her grandfather’s sin? After all, the God they served said the sins of the fathers would be visited on the children to the third and fourth generation.

  Simon’s father had lived a life of ignoring the religious precepts that were inconvenient to him, and making up for breaking the Law by giving more generously to the synagogue. With every new mill opened, he would give enough to erect a hospital ward or establish an orphanage. When the rabbi had objected to his having Simon baptized in the Church of England, Leon Aguilar had donated enough to build a new synagogue and found himself a rabbi who would turn a blind eye to his business dealings.

  Would the good outweigh the bad in the Aguilars’ balance sheet? During the day, Simon’s rational mind took over and he managed to dismiss these fearful thoughts, but in the wee hours of the morning, they came alive in all their gruesome possibilities. Was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that fearsome God that demanded an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, now extracting His payment from the Aguilar family? Was that righteous, Holy God, which had sent a plague upon the children of Israel when they had built themselve
s a golden calf, now laying His curse upon Simon’s offspring?

  When Simon would finally drift off into a light sleep, he’d awake with a start in a cold sweat, seeming to hear his daughter’s cries from the burning pit. He covered his ears, thinking he’d go mad.

  He tried putting off the moment of retiring to his bedchamber until everyone else had gone to bed. He’d sit for hours over the coffee and brandy with the poets and philosophers Eugenia had permitted around her table. They would get deeper and deeper into their cups, but Simon refused that escape. They even offered him opium, encouraging him to find relief from pain in the mind-dulling smoke. They would sit in their numb state and spout the greatest inanities as if they were revealing to him the secrets of the universe.

  He refused these aids, having an even deeper dread of losing all control and seeing what he had only dimly imagined, in all its horrifying clarity. If he was under the influence of a drug he might not be able to return from that deep, bottomless pit. If his natural imagination could vividly present him with a taste of hell and damnation, what would the enhanced image of a mind inflamed by alcohol and opium be like? So, he drank sparingly and remained with them only because he didn’t want to face the solitude of his bedchamber.

  In the mornings, he rarely rose from bed before mid-morning, more often than not lying there till noon. No one else bestirred himself before that hour.

  Eugenia was as good as her promise; she left him to his own devices during most of the day, but always made her presence and availability known to him in various subtle ways. Her unspoken message to him was crystal clear. Whenever he wanted her, she would give herself to him.

  So, why didn’t he seek that solace? At least it would mean not having to sleep alone at night, he thought cynically to himself.

  Lady Eugenia Stanton-Lewis was beautiful, intelligent, charming and accomplished in every way. Though past the first flush of youth, she was nevertheless still in her prime, perhaps even more beautiful because of her sophistication.