“Do you love him?”
She made a rapid impatient gesture, and took out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “What is love? Two or three diverse things. I don’t love him as I as I … But I love him in the sense that he is worthy of respect, of admiration, of help, of service. Until now I have found satisfaction, a new sort of life, in helping him, in being beside him while he worked.”
“Did it never occur to you that I might still be alive?”
“When I first heard, the news was that you were dead. It was not until later that I heard how you had disappeared. By then I couldn’t bring myself even to hope. That too is a weakness, I know. I have this fault of seeing things blackly. Often in my life I have hoped and prayed and the hope has never come.”
“Does your husband know about us?”
“No. He thinks I’m just of a melancholic nature which may be true but not to the extent that he thinks.”
“And what are we to do now?”
“What is there to do? I’m married.”
“If we told him the truth, would he not understand?”
“Maugan, I could not. I entered into my marriage in good faith as he did.”
“You still love me?”
She passed near a candle and the flame eddied in the air with the movement her body made. I felt I was like that candle, as much subject to her, as little capable of stability when she was near.
“I must go and see if Mrs Lavelis needs met’
“She’s asleep.”
“The old are always dozing and waking. Come with me. From her bedroom you can see across the fields. It might be as well to look once more before darkness falls.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tamblyn returned about eleven. He said the master was safe more villagers had drifted back but none had ventured down into Mousehole.
Sue slept in the guest bedroom next to that of Mrs Lavelis. Tamblyn and I took it in turns to keep watch from a little turret room which commanded an excellent view to south and east. Tamblyn took the first watch from twelve until three, while I slept on one of the beds in the room next to the hall. In spite of everything I went to sleep quickly and being wakened at three was like being dragged out of a pit.
I went up, took the rug still warm from Tamblyn and wrapped it round. The chair gave a view from both windows and I settled down in it. The stars had disappeared, and a Spanish army could creep up on such a night.
I sat there holding Mrs Lavelis’s musket and began to think about Sue.
My heart was sick and my mind full of fancies. I sat there for a full hour thinking about her, with sleep pricking at my eyelids and my will not quite in control. It was the deepest part of the night when dying men die and the living have their darkest thoughts.
I suppose it must have been near four when I found myself beginning to wake up. There was no longer any struggle with lids or limbs. Yet though I woke I woke not from my thoughts.
I thought of Sue.
I got up and peered out of the windows. A low wind was sighing in the trees. I went downstairs and opened the door into the room beside the hall. Tamblyn’s deep regular breathing greeted me.
I went upstairs again, passed Mrs Lavelis’s door and listened. There was no sound. I went on to Sue’s door and gently opened it. There was no sound here either, and it was not until I was half way to the bed that I caught her quiet breathing.
She was sleeping with the bed curtains drawn back and woke the instant I touched her hand.
“Who is it?”
“Maugan. I thought to see if you were safe.”
“Is there anything wrong? What time is it?”
“Near four. No, all’s quiet.”
“Then …”
“I came to be with you.”
“Maugan, you should not!”
“Should I not? Have I not that right?”
“Oh, between ourselves, perhaps; but “
“It’s only between ourselves.”
“That can’t be, my love.”
“You’d call me that and yet deny me?”
“I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have said it. It’s the shock of waking like this. You surprise words out of me.”
“Love is the only word I have surprised …”
I sat there for a time beside her without speaking. In the accustomed dark my eyes could see the oval of her face, and the shape of her shoulders. She had reared up from the pillows but now lay back, only her head lifted. I took her hand. It was warm and a little moist. I turned it up and kissed the palm.
The hand contracted, tried to free itself, though not violently.
I said: “To whom did you first swear your love?”
“To you.”
“That oath to me was binding, a betrothal. For it I forsook all others.”
“I thought you were dead! I’ve told you, Maugan!”
“If a woman marries a man and then, mistakenly thinking him dead, marries a second man, to whom is she rightly married? “
“Oh, yes, I know. But we were not married. It was a “
“It was a betrothal, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes but “
“A betrothal is as binding as a marriage ceremony, Ask any one.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t so now in law.”
“Can you be more cruel than that?”
She sat up again. “Maugan, what can I say to you? When I saw you yesterday I thought my heart would stop. Since then I have tried, tried so hard! “
“You have tried so hard to defeat your true feelings. You say you’re weak. I think I am weak. You are far too strong
We looked at each other and I put my hand up to her neck. I pulled her towards me. She resisted, pushing at my chest, but it was the resistance of one far gone in some illness or trial of strength. It was as if she had burned herself up inwardly during the day and now had no reserves left.
I think if it had not been for my experiences with Meg I should not have gone into Sue’s room that night. Yet to say that the knowledge of one woman breeds confidence with the next is to state a truism that puts too base a value on it. I was not going from one light creature to another but from a simple romantic scullery maid with whom I had learned all I knew to the girl who should have been my wife.
The first dawn light picking out the gap in the bed curtains showed up Sue’s face pale and drowned against my arm. Her hair lay like seaweed over the pillow.
I said: “But I don’t understand …”
Her eyes flickered but she did not open them.
“You have been married how long?” I said. “If “
She said sulkily: “It is not that sort of a marriage. I tried to explain.”
“Then what sort in God’s name “
“Before we married, Philip made it clear he sought nothing of me but companionship. He feels that a relationship of the body between a man of fifty and a girl of seventeen is unnatural and wrong. I believe he loves me. I know he does in the fullest way, but he’s a principled man and has never attempted to amend his views as we have grown closer in friendship … So you have found me as I am.”
I drew her closer to me. Her body was slighter than Meg’s, less rounded, the bones small but more noticeable. I was enamoured and enraptured with her out of my senses. We lay for a time unspeaking.
At last she said: “It’s getting light.”
I reached up and pulled the curtains closer.
“Maugan, you must go.”
I stopped her mouth in the only way. And in that way our rational minds ceased to work. I knew that first light was the most likely time to be surprised by the Spaniards. I knew that Tamblyn might get up and find me no longer in the turret room and raise the alarm. It was possible that Philip Reskymer might come over at dawn. But my brain was submerged; nothing mattered.