The Women of Eden

by Marilyn Harris

  Andrew was listening closely, not to the merit of the words, which sounded like every cliche he'd ever heard; rather he watched the reaction they seemed to be having on the others. Every face bore the circumflex eyebrows of sympathetic understanding.

  Abruptly John sat up in a new burst of energy, as though a splendid idea had just occurred. He retrieved his glass of port from the table, a warm smile on his face. "Will you all accompany me to the Library where, before the Alma-Tadema painting of 'The Women of Eden,' we will toast my Lila and thank her for the brief Joy she brought to all our lives? That"—he smiled—"would be a proper mourning."

  The proposal caught on instantly, a splendid idea in the opinion of all who struggled to their feet, glasses in hand, the general movement leading to the door where John already stood.

  Still desperate to deliver his message, knowing now that there would never be an appropriate time, and realizing that in a few days the reaction of John Murrey Eden would be a matter of monumental indifference to him, Andrew stood and raised his voice to full strength in an attempt to cut through the scraping of chairs, and pronounced loudly and clearly enough for all to hear, "My wife and I will remain behind, if you please. We have paid our respects to Lila and now we have much to do before we depart in a few days for Canada."

  The silence seemed to whistle about his ears, and he heard his own voice in echo. Good Lord—I'd not intended to shout it! He was then aware of Dhari rising to stand beside him, willing to bear her share of the shock waves which seemed to be battering the large dining hall.

  Elizabeth spoke first, drawing back to the table. "I—beg your pardon?" she stammered. "What did you—say?"

  Eagerly Andrew repeated himself, all the time keeping his eyes away from the man who stood at the most distant point in the room. "I said that on the twenty-third of December, Dhari and I were married. And on the second of January we sail for Canada."

  There! There was no way he could make it any clearer, and now he concentrated on Elizabeth's changing face. The shock had vanished and he saw the beginnings of a warm smile, as she hurried around the table and clasped Dhari in her arms. "Oh, I'm so happy for you both. Married! My goodness. Why didn't you tell me? How I would have loved to—"

  Though Andrew's inclination was to join the chattering group behind him, Elizabeth admiring the ring which Dhari had brought forth from her pocket, still he knew that for all that had been said, nothing had been said, and there was no reaction in the room as powerful as the lack of reaction coming from the Dining Hall door.

  With the thought of seeing it through to its conclusion, Andrew turned to where John was standing, glass in hand, where he'd been halted on his way to toast his dead wife.

  He appeared to study the port in his glass. With his head still bowed, he commenced walking back toward the table. "Married," he whispered to the glass of port and placed it on the table as though it had displeased him.

  "Yes," Andrew confirmed. "I wanted to tell you earlier, but—"

  "When?"

  "A few days ago, on the twenty-third."

  John leaned back in the chair, a smile on his face. "So that's where you were on that day. I had need of you. I even sent Alex around."

  If the words were unclear, the tone was not. They were being made to feel like misbehaving children. "How could you have looked for me, John?" Andrew inquired pohtely. "You left for Eden on the twenty-second."

  Too late, Andrew realized his mistake.

  "Twenty-second, twenty-third," John snapped, "what difference? You have seldom of late been where I needed you."

  "I'm sorry. I assumed that with your departure—"

  Suddenly John leaned up in his chair. "Why did you do it behind my back?" he demanded.

  Be tactful, Andrew counseled himself, and patient. "It wasn't a matter of doing anything behind your back, John. We merely wanted it to be small and private, and we didn't think that you would be—"

  "Interested?" John demanded. "Not interested in the marriage of my mistress with my solicitor?" His voice was rising, the words ugly. "What effective ammunition you've given my enemies to use against me, both of you," he accused. "As if the recent farce of a hearing wasn't enough, now you have made it possible for me to become the laughing stock of every public house and private club in London."

  "We did not think," Andrew began, "that it would be—"

  "No, you did not think," John mimicked. Abruptly he pushed back with such violence that the chair almost overturned, and strode angrily to the fireplace.

  Elizabeth tried to intercede. "John, please. They have a right to—"

  "To deceive me? To be disloyal to me?"

  "It was not our intention to deceive," Andrew said.

  "Then what was your intention? To simply disappear one day with her on your arm and send back word from—wherever in hell it is you are going?"

  "Canada."

  "Canada!" John retorted, hands on hips, his anger full-blown and still increasing. "What precisely do you think you'll find in Canada?"

  "A new life."

  "And what's the matter with this one?"

  Andrew hesitated. "It's grown stale."

  "England? Stale?" John parroted and slapped his forehead and turned away, as though he could not bear to face such stupidity. "Just the greatest empire the world has ever known," he said to the fire. "Just the only place in the world where a man can seize a future for himself beyond his wildest dreams."

  "I'm not interested in seizing the future, John. I just want a peaceful present, that's all."

  Slowly John looked back at him. "No, you never have been interested in the future, have you, Andrew? Your ambitions have always been limited to the moment. I would say, offhand, that it has always been the central bone of contention between us."

  Andrew nodded. "Our visions are different."

  "Indeed they are. Yours, limited."

  Andrew closed his eyes.

  It was while his eyes were closed that John's attack took an uglier turn. "Why in hell did you marry her?" he muttered. "She's used goods, Andrew, surely you knew that. Well used even before I took her on."

  'That's enough, John," Andrew warned, tightening his grip on Dhari's hand where she seemed to lean softly against him.

  "Well, it's true," John replied innocently. "She's not the kind of woman you marry, Andrew. I thought you knew that. You take her to bed. You see she is well cared for, but you do not marry her."

  The offensive words seemed to echo in Andrew's head. In a battle of fisticuffs he would lose, for John's physical strength was superior. But if he continued to speak, Andrew would be forced to find some way to shut his mouth.

  Determined to end the encounter while he still was capable of a degree of civility, Andrew turned away and sheltered Dhari beneath his arm. "If you will excuse us," he murmured, and had just commenced leading Dhari toward the door when John spoke again, his voice strangely hoarse.

  "Where are you going?" he demanded.

  "To pack," Andrew replied. "We will be leaving tonight."

  Elizabeth offered a whispered protest. "Oh, no, please stay a while longer. We'll never see you again."

  "Let them go," John muttered. "I'm sick to death of the sight of them. They deserve that barbaric wilderness toward which they are headed. I predict in a year they will come running back to the security of England and Eden. Oh, you'll see them again, make no mistake of that!"

  Throughout this tirade, Andrew and Dhari continued the length of the Dining Hall. Of greater concern to Andrew than the insane voice raging behind him was Dhari. She clung to him, her humiliation doubly tragic because she could not defend herself.

  No, it was very important that Andrew not stop once in that seemingly endless journey to the door. He must take Dhari beyond the reach of John's voice, which still pursued them, the man's words incoherent now, a confusion of accusation and betrayal, of threat and

  revenge. . r n •

  All at once, when Andrew was least expecting it, the
voice fell silent. At the door he paused, trying to interpret the silence without looking back. But he couldn't.

  Then he heard it, that same voice speaking his name, "Andrew—** the two syllables weighted with grief.

  Although he had vowed not to look back, the cry struck something deep within him, the place where memory resided, the good memories, the times they had spent together as young men prowling the streets of London, enduring their apprenticeships at Thomas Bras-sey's. All this and more conspired against him and caused him momentarily to abandon Dhari and gave him the strength to look back at the most remarkable man he'd ever known in his life, a man who was capable of transforming the world, yet who could not transform himself.

  The splintered need he saw on that face was awesome, the pain of regret, his expression suggesting to Andrew that he, too, had suffered the same backward excursion into memory.

  Breathing heavily from his recent rage, John stood alone by the fire, the red glow shimmering in the prespiration on his brow. ^'Are you—really leaving?" he whispered, a moving, childlike quality to his voice.

  Andrew nodded, for he did not trust himself to speak. At the first invitation he would have been willing to retrace his steps back to that suffering man and clasp him in his arms one last time.

  But the invitation never came. "Then I—wish you well," John said. Abruptly he turned away, grasping the mantel with both hands.

  Was he weeping? Andrew couldn't be certain and now discovered that his own strength was rapidly diminishing. It was over. He had made his announcement and his wife was awaiting him.

  In a final shifting of loyalties, he turned his back on John Murrey Eden, placed his arm about Dhari and walked slowly through the door.

  He did not look back again, and no one stopped him.

  Richard knew.

  He was the only one in that Dining Hall who knew precisely what had happened this night. A friend had been lost and, in spite of his own pain that had persisted since Bertie's death, he was the first to recognize and respond to the grieving man leaning heavily against the mantel.

  Feeling his first selfless instinct since Bertie's funeral, Richard rose slowly and looked about at the faces frozen in shock.

  A cross is no longer a cross when there is no longer a self to suffer its weight.

  John needed him, but first he must clear the room. "Alex," Richard whispered, "would you please take EKzabeth to her chambers? And Aslam, why don't you go and tell your mother goodbye? I'm certain she would appreciate it."

  Amazed at how effectively the blind could lead the blind, Richard watched, grateful as everyone followed his directions. Unfortunately, long before he was ready for it, he found himself alone with John, and wondered briefly how he could offer solace when he was in such need himself. As though to further weaken his resolve, he suffered a clear image of Bertie's face, not distorted as he'd found him in death but whole and clear and full of love.

  Grasping the table for support, he walked toward the man by the fire and placed an arm about his shoulders. "Come, John," he murmured. "We're alone now and I'm with you as I've always been with you. Come, sit. We'll talk for a while as we used to when we were boys. Do you remember?"

  Though he was pleased with John's submission, he was most alarmed by his face. He continued to lend him the support of his arm until he was seated. Then he withdrew his handkerchief and commenced wiping John's brow, aware from his own experience with death and loss that the first step was to distract the mind.

  "You've done this often enough for me in the past," Richard said, his voice gentle. "Herr Snyder used to say that you were better than Clara Jenkins when it came to playing nursemaid."

  In the hope that the two references to their shared childhood would provide the necessary distraction, Richard continued to wipe the moisture from John's face, finding healing for himself by ministering to another.

  Experiencing relief for the first time in many weeks, Richard drew a chair close and placed the handkerchief in John's hand. "Here, you do it. Remember, that's what you used to tell me. After you had cleaned me up and set me on the straight and narrow, you alwaj^ said, *A man must be responsible for himself.' Remember?"

  To Richard's pleasure John took the handkerchief, his eyes fixed upon the table. "Herr Snyder," he murmured, and shook his head, recalling the old German tutor who had kept them both on the straight and narrow. "Were we—ever that—young?" he asked.

  "Of course we were."

  Suddenly John looked up and Richard saw something he had never seen before in that face, a massive self-doubt, as though destiny were on the verge of defeating him. "Fm afraid, Richard," John confessed, "I no longer—see the point—to any of it."

  It might have been his own thoughts of the last few weeks coming back at him. Stalling in a search for more than platitudes, Richard pushed back in the chair. The music coming from the pianoforte had started again. When had it ceased?

  Abruptly John stood, tossing the handkerchief on the table as though to put that stage of his grief behind him. "My God, what a muddle," he muttered, striding past Richard.

  Relieved that he was at least speaking and moving again, Richard closed his eyes. He was far from ready to oflfer significant solace to anyone. "We've lived through muddles before," he said quietly to the man pacing behind him.

  "Who would have thought it?" John went on. "Canadal" he repeated, his mood now one of bewilderment.

  Richard nodded. "I must confess I was as surprised—"

  "It's madness!"

  "To us. To Andrew it makes—"

  "And what am I to do?" John demanded, reappearing on the opposite side of the table. "Andrew knows more about the John Murrey Firm than I do myself. He is the only one who is intimately acquainted with all the projects in progress as well as—"

  It seemed a weak argument, and Richard said as much. "You have a large staff of solicitors, John. Surely one will be able to—"

  "No! No! He will leave a vacuum that it will be impossible to fill" —he faltered—"in more ways than one."

  There it was again, that uncharacteristic helplessness. Richard looked up at the man who was leaning heavily over the back of the chair where Andrew had been sitting. His face was disconsolate. "Oh, how I shall miss him. What would I do without you, Richard?" John whispered. "All my life, what would I have done without you?"

  Because the moment required it, Richard found himself in John's arms, the two boys inside the grown men brushing aside their manhood and clinging to each other, children again, trapped in a world of grown-up terrors.

  At the end of the embrace, John lifted his glass, half filled with

  port, and carried it back to the fire. "To our good memories." He smiled.

  He drained the glass and seemed to study the empty crystal for a moment. "I—am so sorry for what I said earlier, to Andrew, to Dhari."

  Richard nodded. "I think it would help all of you if you made a point to see them before they left, to wish them well."

  "I will," John agreed. "I most certainly will."

  "As for your business affairs, I'm certain that there are capable men who can fill Andrew's shoes. After all, you have Aslam now, and he's very gifted."

  Then a small mystery occurred to Richard. He remembered how eagerly both he and Bertie had been awaiting John's arrival in Cambridge. But of course the visit had never materialized. Obviously John had come to Cambridge to fetch Aslam, but it was equally obvious that he had not lingered.

  Richard looked up at John, who had again taken refuge by the fire. "Bertie and I had hoped for the pleasure of your company a few weeks ago. In Cambridge, I mean. We had quite a feast prepared."

  Slowly John stood erect. He glanced once at Richard, then looked again into the fire. "I had—planned to stop," he said, "but I'm afraid that time did not permit it. I had lingered too long in Cheltenham seeing to Mary's well-being, and I had pressing business awaiting me in London."

  "I understand," Richard murmured.

  "Will you
be going back to Cambridge, Richard?"

  An easy question, an easier answer. "No, not for a while."

  "Your duties there?"

  "I asked for an indefinite leave, and it was granted."

  There was silence between them, a silence altered only by the soft strains of the pianoforte coming from the Great Hall. As though the music reminded him of the musician, the new look of restoration on John's face faded. "Dear Lord, what will I do with her?" he moaned.

  For the first time, Richard found himself ill-equipped to offer assistance. Trying not to be too blunt, he posed a blunt question. "Why did you invite her, John? You knew this would be a difficult time, in mourning for Lila and—"

  "I invited Lady Eleanor here out of Christian charity, Richard," he explained, "for her sake as well as ours. I know her parents well, particularly her father. He was one of the few men in London who

  was land to me after my return from India. Of course, he was in the process of systematically losing the remains of his inheritance. The old man has absolutely no business sense," he added critically.

  "So, in exchange for certain introductions I tried to rally his fortunes and did to a certain extent. But unfortunately he has a son who has a talent for accumulating gambling debts."

  He gestured toward the distant refrain coming from the pianoforte. "She always struck me as having had such a lonely childhood. Born late in life, she seemed more the granddaughter than the daughter—"

  Abruptly he dismissed what he was saying. "But none of these are valid reasons, are they, for thrusting her into this household at this time. No, the truth now." He smiled wearily. "I invited her for a very special reason. I knew better than anyone the condition of Eden, the fresh grave—" His voice broke. "Lila gone, Mary absent. I thought it would be good for all of us to witness youth and beauty and warmth. I'm sorry. I was wrong."

  "No need for apologies," Richard begged. "Not with me at any rate. I understand now and I agree. Your intentions matched your needs."

  "No," John disagreed. "I had no right. It isn't fair to her or the family. No one here is capable of maintaining the charade of society. No," he said again, "I'll go this minute and apologize to her and kindly suggest that she—"