“Nazareth? Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you, Father.”
“Have you anything to say?”
“As you said,” she began, cautiously, so cautiously, “he is a nice man. He’s been very helpful. Not like having a real backup, of course, but still it gives me a break now and then. A hard worker.”
“He had a rather disturbing story to tell me, Nazareth,” Thomas said.
“Oh? He did? Did something go wrong? Nobody spoke to me about it, Father — I didn’t know.”
“It had nothing to do with your professional functions.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing at all.” Thomas poured himself some wine and looked at her over the top of the glass, handing the bottle on to Aaron. “According to Shannontry, you ended your working day today by accosting him in the hall — in public! — and blurting into his ear that you ‘loved him very very much’. And then bolting like a badly trained horse.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Oh.”
“ ‘Oh?’ Is that all you have to say? I assume Shannontry would not make up such a wild hairy tale — but you are my daughter. I’ll listen to you if you care to deny it.”
He watched her, and when she said nothing, stunned into total silence and as unable to move as if she’d been fast-frozen, he went on.
“I thought as much. He was completely at a loss, inasmuch as he is a respectable married man with numerous children, and you are alleged to be a respectable married woman, etc. And inasmuch as he cannot conceive of what made you take such a bizarre notion.”
Finally Nazareth could speak, although the hoarse words were not in a voice she recognized as hers.
“He told you… He actually came here, to this house, and he told you!”
Thomas raised his eyebrows, and Aaron looked even more delighted.
“Certainly,” said Thomas. “What would you have expected the poor man to do?”
“I believe, Thomas,” her husband suggested, “that she thought he’d come climbing up a ladder to her window — figuratively speaking, of course, since what he’d have to do is come down through a tunnel — perhaps with a band of strolling musicians warbling lovesongs. Or send a messenger with a note begging her to flee with him to… oh, to Massachusetts at least.”
“Is that what you expected, Nazareth?” asked Thomas gravely. “Are you that much of a fool?”
She bit her lip and hoped she would die, and he kept on.
“Certainly he came here and told me, and I would have been most surprised if he hadn’t! He is well aware of his obligations as a gentleman — and when something as idiotic as this happens, it is a gentleman’s duty to go tell the female’s father of her ridiculous behavior. In his place, any man of breeding would have done precisely what he did. Did you think he would just ignore it, you utter ninny?”
“I didn’t think he would… tattle!”
Thomas sighed, and exchanged a long look with his son-in-law.
“My dear child,” he said, “that is not a very well-chosen word.”
“It seems to me to be exactly the right word.”
“Well, that’s not bright of you. When a young woman misbehaves in the manner that you took it upon yourself to misbehave this afternoon — and I must tell you, Nazareth that I was very surprised — some responsible person witnessing the incident has to inform the family, so that they can decide what to do about the situation. Since Shannontry was, thank God, the only person who knew precisely what you had done, he had no choice but to tell us himself. And I’m certain it wasn’t pleasant for him.”
“He came here,” Nazareth repeated dully, through the fog of his words, “and he told you, and he told Aaron — ”
“Of course not! God, girl, you leap from one stupidity to another like a goat! He came here and he told me, because I am your father, and the Head of this Household. He did not tell your husband; as is quite proper, he left that unpleasant duty to me.”
Thomas had told Aaron! Her own father! The room wavered and twitched before her eyes like a comset screen with interference; things took on the look of flat cardboard cutouts; she stared fixedly at a point behind Thomas’ head. In her ears a single high tone keened unbearably on and on… This world, she thought. This world. Only a male god could have created this repulsive, abominable world.
“Nazareth!”
She didn’t answer, but the vicious slap of the word caught her attention sufficiently that she raised her head a little and looked at her father; it seemed to her that Aaron’s grin had spread all around her like spilled syrup on a steep floor. It came at her from everywhere.
“Nazareth, Jordan gave me his word, as a gentleman and as a man of the Lines, that he had never given you any reason to assume that he was interested in you other than to the extremely limited extent necessary to allow you to function together in the course of your professional duties. He was shocked, and very saddened to find that a woman of your heritage and alleged good breeding would read improper advances into simple courtesy.”
He gave me a rose, Nazareth thought. He said that my throat was lovely… and he gave me a rose. But she did not tell them that. Perhaps he had not told them that.
“I am equally shocked, Nazareth, and equally saddened. I value the reputation and the honor of this house highly, and it is not pleasant to know that you have no concern for either. To have a Chornyak daughter thrust herself upon a man like a common whore… Nazareth, it leaves me speechless.”
AND WHY DO YOU GO ON TALKING, THEN? It was a scream, but it was silent.
“You must realize that you put a fine man — a fine Christian man — in a most awkward position. You repaid his courtesy to you and to this Household with insult, and you shamed us all. And you laid upon Jordan Shannontry a distasteful obligation — which, to his credit, he carried out at once. If I were cruel enough to tell your mother how you have betrayed your upbringing, it would break her heart — she is a decent God-fearing woman, Nazareth Chornyak Adiness! As we are decent God-fearing people one and all beneath this roof! What, in the name of all that’s holy, could you have been thinking of?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Aaron spoke then, still grinning, hugely pleased. “She’s telling the truth, Thomas,” he said. “She really doesn’t know. You have my word for that, and I am in a position to guarantee its accuracy. Her ignorance is impenetrable, in every sense of the word.”
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO ME?
It was all she could think of. What would they do to her? Take her away from her children? Make up some story? Put her in an institution as they had poor Belle-Anne, and only last month Adam’s troublesome Gillian? She was too old to whip, and she had no money or privilege to be taken away — what would they do? What could they do? And Aaron… he was the injured husband here, when was he going to begin telling her what filth she was?
Thomas must have been thinking the same thing; he said, “Aaron, do you have anything to say to this fool I seem to have married you to?”
Aaron chuckled, and had some more wine. The bottle was empty.
“Your husband is taking this with remarkable calm, I should mention,” Thomas told her. “I know very few men who would have seen it as he does. And I want him to know that I am impressed by his good sense.”
“Well…” Aaron made a deprecating gesture. “Thomas, you’ll have to admit, it’s really funny.”
FUNNY?
“I’m not sure I see that, son.”