Dorothy Eden (41 page)

Katharine had not expected him home that day, and was delighted to see him. But her delight changed to alarm when she saw that he was ill. It seemed as if he had had only sufficient strength to get to the doorstep, and now was on the verge of collapse.

“It’s only a chill,” he managed to say. “I stopped in London to take a Turkish bath. Perhaps that was foolish. It has made me feel extremely weak.”

Katharine helped him off with his coat. Fortunately the fire in the drawing room had been lit an hour ago, and the room was warm and cosy. Charles eased himself, with a sigh, into a chair drawn up close to the blaze.

“It’s my confounded rheumatism again. At times I can hardly move. Getting wet through in Creggs didn’t help. I had three days in Dublin when I was almost incapacitated.”

“That miserable Irish rain!” Katharine burst out. She had to vent her anger and fear on something. She had never seen him look so ill.

He gave a half-smile, a barely visible lift of his shoulders.

“Yes, it’s as uncontrollable as the British Government.”

Grouse, an old dog now and almost as stiff as his master, had come to wag his tail and sniff at the remembered hand. Then he stretched at his master’s feet contentedly. Katharine shovelled more coal on the fire, and knelt to unlace Charles’ boots.

“No, love. I’ll do that.”

“You’ll sit quite still. I’m going to the kitchen to make you a hot drink.”

“I couldn’t drink it. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

She looked up at him, trying not to show her fear.

“What did Doctor Kenny prescribe?”

“Champagne.”

“Then I’ll open a bottle.”

His fingers were in her hair. “Not now. Later. Stay where you are. I like to feel you there.”

So she sat in her familiar place on the hearthrug with her head against his knee. She couldn’t relax. There were more practical things she could be doing for his illness. But this was what he wanted. Perhaps he was right, for he seemed to doze, although at intervals his fingers stroked her hair as if to reassure himself that she was there.

Norah looked in and stopped short. Katharine signalled to her to go, and she went at once, quietly closing the door. Grouse shuddered and whimpered in his sleep, and the other sleeper stirred and murmured something about famished children. “Hungry. In rags. And it’s raining. Winter’s begun. Must do more for them …”

Katharine stood up and gently shook his shoulder.

“Darling, you’re falling asleep. You must come to bed.”

When he opened his eyes there was no light at all in them. They were dark extinguished hollows that struck a chill in her.

“I’ll help you. Can you get up?”

He moved painfully. “If I could travel down from London, surely I can climb the stairs to bed.”

But he had to grip her arm, and at the stairs she had to call to Norah to come and take his other arm.

Norah was alarmed, and wanted to know if she should go for the doctor, but Charles answered her himself.

“No, no, I don’t need a doctor. It’s only cursed rheumatism. A day or two of rest will put me right.”

When he was undressed and in bed Katharine made him drink a glass of champagne, and prayed that it would make him sleep. She lit a night light and turned out the gas. But he moved restlessly and said that he would not sleep until she was beside him.

She went downstairs to reassure Norah and the servants.

“He’ll be better by morning, I hope. If he isn’t we must send for Doctor Jowers whether he likes it or not. Now I’m going up to stay with him.”

“But, ma’am, your dinner!” Ellen protested.

“If I want anything I’ll come down in the night. I’ll probably be making hot drinks for Mr. Parnell.”

“Mamma, you will call if you need me?” Norah asked.

“Of course, darling. Don’t look so alarmed. This illness isn’t serious.”

She spoke firmly, the statement almost reassuring herself as well. But during the night her fears mounted.

For Charles talked continually through the long hours. The dimly-lit room seemed full of the spectres of Irish peasants who had died of famine, for they haunted him unceasingly.

His weak voice went on and on about the poverty, the potato blight, the half naked and shivering children who must have learned to hate the world before they were five years old, the dark damp cabins, the evictions, the old people who died in open fields with the rain falling on their faces, the humiliating queues for a crust of bread or a bowl of lukewarm cabbage water, the long degradation of poverty that finally conquered their spirit.

“They suffer in silence,” the weak angry voice beside Katharine said. “That’s the terrible thing. When an Irishman loses his gift of speech he’s lost everything. They’re a nation of song-makers and story-tellers. They have the proudest heritage of learning and poetry in Europe. It’s being crushed out of them. Their voice is being killed. I’ve got to save it, Kate. I’ve got to loose the stifling grip of England. This great powerful country with its mean little vice of keeping Ireland down …”

“Forget it now,” Katharine urged. “Try to sleep.”

“Hold me in your arms.”

But even when she did so his wandering voice went on:

“I see their white dumb faces. They look up at me with their sad pleading eyes. A mother holds out her baby to show me. It’s too weak to cry. It’s wrapped in a bit of old shawl. Their hands pluck at me. They ask so much. They need so much. I have to try to give it to them. They’re suffering. Their pain never ceases.”

He was half-delirious. She realised that these starving faces were in front of his eyes. The pain he spoke of was his own physical pain transmitted to them.

“Charles darling, you’re here with me.”

“Thank God for you, Kate. Don’t leave me.”

By morning, to her intense disappointment, his fever had not gone down. On the contrary it seemed to have risen. He was flushed and his eyes were now much too bright and glittering. He scarcely dared move for the pain in his limbs.

Thoroughly alarmed, Katharine wanted to send to London for the Harley Street specialist, Sir Henry Thompson. But the idea seemed to worry Charles too much. He said if there must be a doctor old Jowers would do. Surely he would be perfectly capable of treating a chill.

Doctor Jowers came, diagnosed a severe rheumatic chill, and said that little could be done that Katharine was not already doing. Rest, warmth, plenty of liquids and above all no worry.

“Make him relax his mind, Mrs. Parnell. He suffers very much from an over-active mind. The fever must run its course. It’s likely to get worse before it gets better. I’ll look in again this evening.”

The long anxious day went by, and by evening Charles did seem a little better. A saner quieter look had come into his face. When Grouse clambered on to his bed and settled down he would not allow the dog to be removed.

“Let him stay.” He moved his painfully stiff hand to pat Grouse’s head, then felt for Katharine’s hand.

“My friends,” he said.

He slept a little better that night although his body beside hers was burningly hot. When he woke in the morning she would give him a sponge bath in an attempt to bring his temperature down. He must also take some of the chicken broth Ellen had made. All day yesterday Ellen had been preparing beef tea, beaten up eggs in milk, and barley broth in the hope of tempting the invalid’s appetite. Katharine found the faithful old creature in tears when her offerings were rejected.

“Ma’am, he’s got to get a drop past his lips if he’s not to starve to death like all those peasants he’s forever fretting about.”

“Yes, Ellen, tomorrow he will. Tomorrow he’ll be better.”

But by the next morning the alarming temperature was higher than ever. Doctor Jowers hummed and hawed, said it looked as if an improvement could not be hoped for for a day or two, but there was not yet cause for serious alarm. The patient would presently begin to respond.

It was raining that day, the sea lead-grey, the fields denuded of their summer harvest turning into the quenched beige of winter. The wind lifted spray and flung it against the windows so that the panes were continually weeping. It was difficult to shut out the damp and draughts.

It had perhaps been a mistake to buy a house so close to the sea, Katharine thought. If Charles’ rheumatism persisted they had better plan to move inland. They no longer had to evade curious stares and gossip. They could take plenty of time finding a house in the most attractive surroundings. In all her married life she had never had a house of her own to furnish as she wished. It would be a labour of love.

She made herself dream of this while the slow hours ticked by. She had to fill her mind with hopeful thoughts of the future, otherwise Charles, who was sleeping more today, might wake to find her weeping. She refused to leave the bedside although Norah was getting worried about her look of exhaustion.

“You’ll be ill, too, Mamma,” she whispered, but Katharine merely shook her head and signalled to her to go away.

Once there was a subdued scuffling outside the door, and she opened it to see the large-eyed faces of Clare and Katie. They stood there in their white pinafores and their buttoned boots saying that they wanted to see Papa and wish him to get well.

Katharine shook her head.

“Not today, my darlings. Papa’s asleep and we must let him go on sleeping. Tomorrow he’ll be able to talk to you.”

They went away obediently, their two dark heads so like the one in the bed that Katharine couldn’t stop her tears. She was so intensely lonely. The form in the bed might have left her, too, it was so uncommunicative, so remote.

She stood in front of the mirror smoothing her hair, and putting on a freshly starched fichu. She had been shocked by her haggard and dishevelled appearance. Charles must not see her like that when he woke.

In the early evening Doctor Jowers came again. This time he shook his head portentously and ventured the opinion that if Sir Henry Thompson would consent to come down it might be a good idea to have a second opinion. If the fever did not drop soon the strain on the heart might become serious.

“Then he must be sent for at once,” Katharine said agitatedly.

“Don’t be too alarmed, Mrs. Parnell. The morning may tell a different story.” He added that if it didn’t she must engage a nurse. Otherwise she would be in danger of collapse herself.

Katharine didn’t waste time arguing about that. She had no intention whatever of leaving her husband’s bedside until all danger was over.

It occurred to her to wonder what Charles’ precious political friends who had deserted him would think if they could see him now. She wished that they could. It would do them good to suffer some remorse. For they had put him on this sickbed. They with their ears turned to their priests. And other people, too, such as the cruel old eagle Gladstone with his non-conformist conscience, and Chamberlain who had betrayed him long ago, and Willie, the go-between, the dupe, who had turned so meanly vindictive. And herself, too. For the simple fact of her existence. For the terrible strain this man had borne for so long, torn between the woman he loved and the country he loved.

She put out her hand to grope under the covers for his, and he stirred and miraculously opened aware and intelligent eyes.

“Kate,” he said with pleasure.

“Is the pain better?”

“A little, I think.”

“Could you take something? A spoonful of broth?”

He turned his head feebly.

“Come and lie beside me. That’s all I want.”

She had to stir the sleeping Grouse who reluctantly got off the bed and ambled to the fire. She lay beside Charles and took his hand in hers. Its heat frightened her, but her clasp was returned. His fingers lay in hers as they had done so often, every time they sat side by side, at every farewell.

She made herself smile at him calmly and lovingly, and his lips moved in response.

“Kiss me,” he said. “Then I will try to sleep.”

She did so very gently. His eyelids closed, the long dark feminine lashes lying on his sunken cheeks. He breathed very quietly. She wasn’t sure whether he slept or whether he had slipped back into a coma. She didn’t even hear when his breathing stopped. She only felt the clasp of his fingers loosen, his hand fall away.

She sat up with infinite care, afraid of disturbing him, totally unable to believe that the last separation had begun.

S
O THEY HAD COME
to her at last, those dour implacable men with their stubborn grief-stricken Celtic faces. This was Kitty O’Shea, the woman they had maligned and hated. After all, she was no scheming strumpet, no wicked sorceress, but a middle-aged woman worn with weeping and defenceless.

They realised then that she had always been defenceless. If she were the unwitting cause of Ireland’s rights being delayed for many years, if she was to have a great deal of bloodshed and violence on her conscience, she was still curiously innocent.

They would have liked to say this to her now, for they were Irish gentlemen. But it was too late for remorse. They could only tell her clumsily what Mr. Gladstone had said that day that one of the very noblest hearts in England had ceased to beat.

And make the blunt announcement, without apology, that they had come to take their dead chief home.

He had promised he would be back in Ireland on Saturday, they said with merciless logic. He had always kept promises. She, of all people, must have known that.

So she had to stand by the white calm face, so familiar and yet now so strange, and say her farewell. The envelope containing a withered white rose dropped long ago in Palace Yard lay on his breast, the ring with its intertwined K and C was on his finger. Those two things, and her heart, he would take with him on this last journey he would ever make across the Irish Sea. She wished he could have known that she had capitulated at last, that she was letting Ireland have him. The Irish earth would cover him gently, and she would never lie beside him again …

How did I come to write this book? I wanted to write a Victorian
cause célèbre,
but when the story of Parnell and Kitty O’Shea was suggested I thought it just another story of rather sordid intrigue and put it out of my mind.