Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (4 page)

   "Jane and I were too open this summer. I saw Grandmama's face. But I was not going to press Jane for a vow yet. I thought—perhaps in a few years—I might have something more to offer her. I should have known. Grandmama—Mother—would have other plans."

   "What do you mean?" She felt like crying. Betrayal. By Grandmama, of all people.

   "This rotting branch of the Tamworths must be saved. Mother has plans…witness the petition, the stamping out of any hope between Jane and me. If I were destined to be a poor relation, happy on my mortgaged property or some piece of land a rich relative might rent me, worrying over my harvests, excited with my yearly trip to London, Jane would be a good helpmeet. But a future viscount—particularly an impoverished one—must look higher or at least at someone with some real money."

She flinched at the tone in his voice. He minded the disgrace, the lack of money, so much more than she had imagined.

   "And do you know what makes it all so much more amusing—or do I mean sad? Underneath my grief"—how self-mocking his words were!—"I feel a faint sense of relief. They say Italy is beautiful beyond words."

   There was nothing to reply. The bitterness, the yearning, the self–disgust in his words were more than she could understand. She felt exhausted suddenly, unable to form the simplest response to him. As if he felt her withdrawal from him, he said, "Do you know what it is like to go to London and see my cousins living like kings, and know
we
have nothing because of someone else's stupidity? I would be as stupid as he if I insisted on marrying Jane. Do you understand that?" She refused to speak.

   Groping in the darkness, his hand found her hair. He smoothed a long curl.

   "Poor baby," he said softly. "Still believing in dreams."

   She pulled away from his hand. Yes, she believed. And she always would. She was not some weak, cynical human being to allow others to dictate to her. She had her own thoughts and feelings and no one, no one could change them!

   "You despise me," he said.

   She sighed. Poor Harry, he was drunk. Half of what he said was the brandy. She crawled over and sat close to him. They put their arms around each other and she leaned her cheek against his. It was wet. He did care; he did love Jane; his heart was broken.

   "I love you, Harry."

   They were silent for a long time, content to sit together closely in the darkness, weakness and temper forgiven, as they always were. She must have dozed a little because she thought she was somehow standing in front of Annie, trying to explain away the burned hole in her sheet. "It just fell," she kept trying to say but Annie was shaking her…and shaking her….

   "Bab! Wake up!" Harry's sour breath was in her face. She was lying down. "I must leave."

   "Not yet!" she said, still confused. "There was something I had to tell you—"

   "Later!" He squeezed her hands. "Write to me—promise." She was pulled roughly into his arms. "I love you," he whispered. "Tell Jane…" but she never knew what he meant her to say because he did not finish. Instead, he kissed her hair and pulled the covers up over her, and she heard his boots against the floor and the door shutting with a final sound. I will get up, she thought, and go to him and tell him…but the bed was so warm and soft and she felt so very tired. Too much…Harry, Jane, divorce, Grandmama, the hole in the sheet… Annie would be so angry…she would pray for Harry and then get up…Dear Lord, patch the hole in the sheet…No!…that was not what she meant to say…but before she could straighten out her thoughts, she was asleep.

* * *

   They gathered in the courtyard to say good-bye to Harry: Barbara, her grandmother, Diana, Kit, Charlotte, Anne. The morning around them was bright and clear, shattering in its coldness. The wind rustled through the lime trees that stood like sentinels on each side of the avenue that led to the road away from Tamworth, through the village, past the town of Maidstone, up toward London, to the banks of the Thames, where Harry would catch a ship somewhere along its marshy, salt–kissed banks.

   Harry, his face set and still, took cold, formal leave of his grandmother, who had tears in her eyes. He said nothing at all to Diana, only nodded his head shortly to her. Diana was shivering, impatient to go back inside and stand by a fire. When he embraced Barbara, she felt his body trembling, and in spite of herself, she began to cry. Little Anne, who was four and had a fat, rosy face and loved Harry best of all after Barbara, kept saying, "But why is Harry going away again? Why is he going again?" until Barbara thought she would scream. Diana sharply ordered for the child to be taken away. Even normally brash Kit, who was ten and considered himself almost grown, was subdued. He had his more than likely dirty hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, and his face, which was fair like Barbara's, had the set, still look of Harry's. Charlotte, who was seven and thin and serious, cried quietly. She had been crying since they had assembled in the forecourt, and her face was swollen. Barbara took her in her arms to shush her before Diana became even more irritated.

   "Is Harry going? You will not go, too, will you? I love Harry!"

   The impatient horses' hooves pawed the gravel. Each time they snorted, their breath rose in cool, gray vapors. At a nod from Diana, Meres opened the coach door for Harry, who climbed inside silently, his face averted.

   "Hush, darling," Barbara whispered, her eyes on her brother. "You make Harry's leaving harder. He is going on a journey, a wonderful journey. There is no reason to be sad."

   "That is a lie!" said Charlotte. "You are sad! Why is everyone lying?"

   The coach lumbered off with a jerk, and Charlotte sobbed. "Everything is different, Bab. I do not like it."

* * *

   Barbara waited for Jane in the apple orchard. The apples were picked. She and her brothers and sisters had been in the midst of the harvest. She could climb a tree as nimbly as any boy in the village, even better than Kit. She loved to scramble as high as she could among the branches and feel the sun shining on her through the leaves. All the bad apples lay rotting on the ground, food for the squirrels and birds and small animals in the woods. The good ones had been set carefully on marble shelves built especially for their keeping so that they should not touch one another. Or they now resided in dry glazed jars whose bottoms were covered in stones. The village carpenter each year carved new tops of wood that fit each jar exactly. When the jar was filled with apples, the wooden lid was inserted and fresh mortar spread over it. What a pleasure it was to watch Cook wedge open the top and shake the apples and stones out and know that soon an apple tart would be cooking, filling the house with its warmth and smell of cinnamon and sugar, while outside wind and snow beat against the windows. She and Jane had walked through the orchard during harvest, laughing and whispering. All around them, men and women and children gathered apples into big baskets. She picked the juiciest off the top and sat under a tree with Jane. She carefully peeled Jane's apple with a sharp knife. Jane clutched the dangling peel to her heart, closed her eyes, then threw it over her shoulder. The letter the peel formed was supposed to be the initial of her future husband. Barbara ran to it. It had made no letter she could recognize, but she told Jane it was an H and then laughed at her friend's blushes. If you stuck two apple seeds to your cheeks, and named two suitors, the seed that stuck the longest was the suitor who loved you the most. But Jane refused to play that game, and Barbara had no suitors, so they were content to eat their apples and talk. She knew Jane would come here, if she could get away. This spot had been their meeting place as children and had become the trysting spot for Harry and Jane as they began to care for each other. Poor Jane. She would run all the way expecting to see Harry. Barbara stamped her feet to dissipate some of the afternoon's bone-chilling cold.

   Yes, there was Jane now, running breathlessly through the evenly spaced rows of trees, her breath coming out in little puffs of white. She looked wretched, her face swollen from crying, her nose red. She had never been pretty anyway; her lashes and brows were so light they faded into nothing; her hair was wispy; her nose snub. But she had a lovely smile that radiated the beauty she possessed inside. She was loyal and resourceful, and in her own timid way, brave. Before Jane and Harry had fallen in love, when the three of them were still running wild together, Jane had always been the one to think of the most convincing lie after they had done something bad. She and Harry had grown to rely on Jane's creative mind even though they could not always rely on her joining them in their misdeeds. And she never tattled on them. Never.

   Jane stopped, her slight breasts heaving under her cloak, and looked around. She bit her lip and glanced at Barbara with red–rimmed eyes. He has not come, she thought, the fact taking her heart and squeezing it. It is truly over.

   Abruptly, as if something inside had broken, she sat down on the ground, her arms clasped around her legs. "Oh, Bab!" she croaked. "I have cried so hard, so long, that I did not think I had any tears left. But I do!" She rocked to and fro, oblivious of dignity in her grief. Barbara knelt down and put her arms around her and rocked with her. When Jane finally quieted, she gasped out, "Thank you for c–coming. Harry is—"

   "Gone. Mother sent him off this morning. He is to go to Italy for a while."

   "Oh, God," Jane sobbed. "I cannot bear it!" She lay back against the ground and covered her face with her arms. Except for the sound of the wind stirring the branches of the trees, only her sobs broke the silence. Dusk was coming. Some of the day's bright sun had lessened. Barbara felt it, through the increased cold, rather than actually saw it. Today had been glorious. Clear, cold, sunny. One of the most beautiful days of the entire autumn. A leaf detached itself from a tree and slowly drifted down. Barbara opened her hand and caught it. Annie said catching a falling leaf meant a day of good luck. Did it still mean luck when it fell into your hand of its own volition or did you have to grab for it? Bah! Annie was a bag of old woman's nonsense, she also said blackberries were poison on Michaelmas Day because the Devil put his foot on them the night before. But when Barbara dared to eat every blackberry she could find two years ago on Michaelmas Day, she had gotten nothing more than a tongue lashing from her grandmother for being greedy.

   Jane's sobs settled into tiny whimpers, and without looking at her, Barbara leaned her head back against the trunk of the tree and looked up into the sky, as Jane was doing. What dreams did Jane see in those fleecy, starched white clouds? For a moment, their two profiles were etched against the sky; one, swollen, disfigured from grief, the other, sharp, strong, untouched.

   "I never imagined he would love me," Jane said. "I loved him so amazingly for years. Ever since we were children. I cannot believe it is finished."

"What will you do?"

   Her mouth was grim. "I shall marry Augustus Cromwell, of course, as I always knew I would. And I shall try to be a good wife to him. I shall even try to love him."

   "Do not do it!" Barbara said quickly. "Tell your parents no. Wait. Wait, and perhaps things will change."

   "How can they change? Harry is gone. I do not know for how long. I am contracted to my cousin. They are crying the banns this Sunday! I should have been stronger, my mother told me. I was wrong to sneak and promise myself to someone else. I looked at her and said, 'Did you never love, Mother? Have you no heart at all?' And she began to cry with me. Imagine my being so brave! Of course, I have no real courage, not like you, Bab. I always do my duty. Do you think in the end everyone does so? Forgets the loves, the passions of his youth and does his duty? My mother says so, but I can hardly believe it's true." Her face was bleak, her tone bitter and discouraged. As Harry's had been last night. How easily they gave up, Barbara thought. I would fight—and then she remembered her fear before her mother the night before, the power and tradition her mother represented, power and tradition which commanded that a well–bred girl do as her parents proposed in all things.

   I would have married whomever she chose, she thought defiantly, but if I did not love him, one day I would have had Roger as my lover. Even if it were only for one hour, I swear I would have had him for my lover. And to Jane, she said, knowing her words would shock and horrify her friend, but feeling angry at the sense of hopelessness she had encountered in both Harry and Jane, "I would have had his baby…so we would have to marry…if I loved someone so much."

   Jane was too distraught even to gasp. "You might," she said wearily. "But I have not the courage." She looked up at Barbara. At the clean, strong bones of her face, such a lovely face with its heart shape and the fine, wide blue eyes. And the beautiful, abundant hair, red–gold, curling, thick. She was a duke's granddaughter. Yes, thought Jane, without bitterness. You might, as your mother did before you. But I am a country knight's daughter, and such ways are not for me.

   Barbara shivered from the cold and from pity for her friend. The afternoon was now twilight. In a far–off field, a tenant farmer unhitched his oxen and began the walk home. Cattle, grazing in the fields, lowed to one another. Children ran to them, herding them toward the warmth of barns and stalls.

"I am to go to London," she told Jane. At the last minute, she could not tell her the whole of her joy, just as she had been unable to tell Harry. But she said, "My mother is taking me there to see if I can catch a husband. Jane, do not marry this Augustus. Wait. And if I marry well enough, my husband will find Harry a position, money somewhere. And then you may marry. Wait and see. Please." She said this in spite of Harry's words of the night before, some stubbornness in her insisting it was the brandy that had spoken longingly of Italy.

   Jane sat up and pulled leaves and twigs from her cloak. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. Finally she said, slowly, choosing her words with care, "Thank you for the offer, my dear, dear Bab…but what if your mother cannot—I mean, my father says that—forgive me, Bab, but he says no decent person would associate with her. There might not be a husband as easily found as—" she looked at Barbara's face, and what she saw there made her say quickly, "Though, of course, I know you will find one with your beauty. I know that, Bab. I do. But I cannot wait. I am afraid. And it is promised, already binding me. If I were to wait, as you suggest, and then something went wrong—why, I would be without a husband at all. Who would have a woman who had broken her vow to marry? And if I do not marry, I will have nothing—no children, no home of my own—"