Dorothy Eden (6 page)

Katharine shivered at that. They looked at one another and the sun was shining on their faces and suddenly they both laughed. His words were not prophetic. They were merely another bit of Celtic extravagance. His mother might be American and his father Anglo-Irish, but he, in his thought and speech and emotions, was entirely Irish. So of course he used poetic melancholy.

And anyway he grew younger all the time he was with her. He admitted, reluctantly, that he sometimes suffered from poor health, but now he had never felt so fit.

“You’re good for me, Kate. How I wish you could always be with me.”

She couldn’t tell him how much she was beginning to wish the same thing. When she was with him Willie, dear Aunt Ben, even her children, to her shame, were shadows. She told herself that his magnetic personality, used with such effect in the House and on platforms throughout Ireland, was affecting and overpowering her too.

But it was more than that. Their only embrace had been his hand laid over hers, yet she felt weak and dizzy with the sweetness of it. Once, when he smiled with particular tenderness, tears came into her eyes. When he left her his tall elegant form with its proudly held head remained printed on her sight for minutes afterwards. She knew, soberly and sadly, that she had never been in love before. Indeed she was learning to know herself for she was also fully aware that she had something of his single-minded dedication that counted no cost. Only hers was to a man, not to a country.

Could all this have happened in such a short time? It had happened, she knew with illogical certainty, in that one moment when he had stooped to pick up the rose that had fallen from her bosom.

Anna was giving a party. She wondered if Katharine would persuade Mr. Parnell to come to it.

He agreed when he knew that she was to be there. Their private meetings were of necessity brief and infrequent. He never saw nearly enough of her, and meeting her in public now had a special titillation. Their polite words hid all their secret thoughts. He could say, “I hear you are devoted to living in the country, Mrs. O’Shea,” while his eyes met hers with a scarcely repressed twinkle. Besides, he enjoyed seeing her dressed for a party. He looked at her bare shoulders with frank admiration. He said, in full hearing of everybody, “May I compliment you on your dress, Mrs. O’Shea?” He himself was meticulously dressed, and made a favourable impression on the ladies. They had heard he was unsociable and uncouth, but instead he was quite charming. And so good-looking.

“Be careful. You are going to be in great demand,” Katharine whispered under cover of her fan.

“Am I?” His look of alarm made her laugh merrily. “Then I must display my boorish side at once.”

“There’s no need for that. I’ll rescue you. I must leave early to catch my train. Will you drive with me to the station?”

Since Willie was not there—poor Mrs. O’Shea so often had to go out alone—no one thought it anything but good manners on the part of Mr. Parnell to offer to accompany her to her train. Charing Cross was on his way home, anyway. He would drive on to Cannon Street where he was at present staying.

As it turned out the brief drive, to which she had looked forward all evening, turned out to be much longer. For on arrival at Charing Cross she found that she had missed her train.

“Then we’ll drive down to Eltham. What did you say the distance was? About eight miles? That’s nothing to a good horse. Let’s pick the best horse on the rank.”

Laughing with merriment, they earnestly studied the merits of each horse, until Charles settled on the glossy over-fed one at the end of the rank.

“He’ll be a little slow, he’s much too fat, but we don’t want to hurry, do we?”

After a short discussion, he arranged a fare with the cabbie, and handed Katharine into the dim slightly odorous interior of the hansom cab. The driver whipped up the stout horse, and with bells jingling merrily, they set forth.

Even then, the drive was too brief. As Wonersh Lodge in all its ornamented ugliness loomed in sight, Katharine realised that they had hardly said a word the entire way. They had sat in the most complete dreamy happiness, their hands touching, her head not quite on his shoulder. Now they were there, and he faced a lonely journey back to London.

Moonlight shone on the fields and hedgerows. The air smelt sweetly of clover blossom and new-cut grass. There were no lights in the house. It was after one o’clock and everyone would be in bed.

Katharine let Charles help her out of the cab. He told the cabbie to rest his horse a few minutes, he would not be long. “So this is where you live. Now I will be able to think of it.”

She led him down a side path, saying that she liked to go in through the conservatory door when she arrived home late, so as not to disturb anyone. They felt their way beneath hanging creepers to the door. On the doorstep they were out of sight of the road, in a sweet-smelling cave of leafy branches.

Suddenly he took both her hands.

“Let me stay.”

Before she could answer he had taken her in his arms and kissed her. It was a long kiss. When it ended there were tears on her cheeks and he was saying, “If you knew how I have longed to do that.”

She pushed him from her, gently but firmly.

“No, Charles, you can’t stay. I’m sorry, but the children, the servants—”

“I would leave before daylight.”

“It won’t be long until daylight. No, it’s too big a risk for you to take. Besides, Miss Glennister has ears like a faithful hound.”

“Who is Miss Glennister?”

“She’s the children’s governess. I’m not sure I could trust her. She admires Willie.” She laughed unsteadily. “I think she might have a secret passion for him. Anyway—you must go.”

He took her face in his hands, holding it up so that the moonlight fell on it.

“I’ve fallen in love with you.”

All laughter had left her. “I’ve wanted to hear you say that, and yet it frightens me. What are we to do?”

“I don’t know, Kate. I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I won’t be content to live on scraps.”

“But you must know that is all we can ever have. It’s not only my children, it’s your career. What would your party say if they knew what you were doing?”

“Let them say what they choose.”

“No, no, that’s just moonlight madness. You’ll see sense in the morning. You’re not going to throw away the whole good of your country for a woman. And a woman you can’t marry, at that.”

“If it came to the test—” he muttered. He suddenly shivered violently. He lifted his head and his face, in the dim light, was all at once austere and curiously pure.

“Somehow the one half of me must be made to meet the other,” he said, as if to himself. The bells jingled on the waiting horse. The cabman was getting impatient. Charles gave a small, courtly bow, not attempting to touch her again.

“Then will you have tea with me tomorrow? If you come up on the four o-clock train I’ll meet it.”

She nodded, feeling that already she had a reprieve, something to make her feel better about the long drive he must take alone. She wondered how she was going to live if she were going to worry about him every moment he was out of her sight.

But perhaps it would get better, easier, more acceptable. It never occurred to her to have the good sense to bring a dangerous friendship to an end.

She knew at once, the next day, that something was wrong. He greeted her almost abstractedly, his gaze brooding.

“I had meant to ask you to stay up to dinner,” he said, “but I have to catch the night mail to Ireland.”

“Has something happened?”

“There’s trouble. An innocent woman has been killed. And on her way to church! Her husband was shot at, but the bullet hit his wife sitting beside him instead.”

“Oh, Charles! How terrible!”

He looked very pale, his lips set.

“And I shall be blamed, of course. This crime was committed by one of my followers. I must keep them in control.” He smacked his clenched fists together. “I won’t have violence. The objects of the Land League are to protect, not to kill.” He repeated, “Not to kill,” in a whisper.

He had led her off the station platform, and beckoned to a cab driver.

“I’m sorry, Kate. Don’t let this spoil our tea together. We’ll go back to my hotel.”

Before they reached Cannon Street he had made an attempt to shake off his gloom.

“You’re looking lovely, Katie. And after such a late night, too. Did you have to spend the morning with your aunt?”

“Oh, yes, darling Aunt Ben. She was so understanding when I yawned and dropped things. She said she was glad to see I wasn’t wasting too much of my youth in sleep. There was plenty of time to sleep when I reached her age.”

“And what is that?”

“Nearly ninety, bless her.”

“I shall adore you when you’re ninety.”

They were both laughing when they reached the hotel. Katharine had thought they would sit in the lounge having tea quietly in a secluded corner, but as soon as they entered another contretemps occurred. There were several tweed-clad gentlemen sitting in a corner drinking stout, smoking, and talking.

Charles, giving a brief look in their direction, took Katharine’s elbow and quickly steered her towards the stairs.

“Members of my party,” he muttered. “I won’t have them staring at you. We’ll go to my room.”

There was no opportunity to protest. Did she want to? It was so much nicer to be completely alone with no anxiety as to who was watching them. One could face the implications later.

Charles rang for a maid, and asked that tea be sent up. Then at last he relaxed, taking her in his arms, and pressing his face into her shoulder.

“Kate! You don’t know how much you’re beginning to mean to me.”

And he to her, she thought silently, her fingers in his thick smooth hair. His half-packed bag on the floor, the bed bearing the faint impress of his form—he must have been resting before he came to meet her—his silk dressing-gown hanging from a hook on the door, his brushes and toilet equipment on the dressing-table gave her a feeling of greater intimacy than she had ever had.

“I won’t have Healy and Dillon and the rest staring at you. Papists! They have rigid cast-iron consciences. Kate?”

“Yes, love.” The endearment came naturally and sweetly to her tongue.

“There’s something I must ask you.”

“Of course.”

“I can’t help it, I’m beginning to think of you as mine. But you have to live with your husband.” She could feel the rigidity of his form and answered the question he had not put into words.

“He doesn’t touch me. Even before we met, I no longer loved him. I’m like the wife in a melodrama—I lock my bedroom door.” She looked serenely into his tormented eyes. “I’m not being facetious. You don’t need to fear.”

His fingers pressed cruelly into her shoulders.

“You can’t go on with a marriage like that.”

“Divorce?” She tested the word. “That would ruin you.”

There was a knock on the door and abruptly he released her.

“Come in.”

A waiter came in with the tray of tea. He set it down, paused to look curiously at Katharine, and left.

Katharine sat down composedly at the table.

“Let us have tea and talk quietly. What time does your train go?”

“Six o’clock.”

“Then we have only an hour: And you have to finish packing. This is too big a question to discuss in an hour. In any case, there’s nothing to discuss. You’re the leader of your country. They say that you’re called the uncrowned king of Ireland.”

“Celtic extravagance!”

“Perhaps. But the people worship you, isn’t that true? They look to you as their saviour.”

“Sometimes that’s an impossible burden.”

“I’m sure it must be, but it would also be impossible to have it ruined by a woman. You would hate me. And I’m no Helen of Troy. I don’t intend to be a woman who changes the history of a country. Because that would happen. I believe in you that much.”

“You’re too intelligent, Kate.”

“Apart from that, we’re wasting time even discussing this subject. Willie is a Roman Catholic. He would never tolerate divorce any more than those papists, as you call them, downstairs.”

She poured the tea, her hand miraculously steady.

“There. Drink that. Thank goodness tea is one thing the English and Irish have in common.”

He smiled faintly, and obediently sipped the tea. She thought he looked a little less drawn though his face was still tormented.

“Charles, already you’re a man of history. If you never did anything else, you would be that. But you’re going to do so much more. How could I have it on my conscience to stop you? So let us postpone this conversation for a year or two.”

“It will be a bitter road this way,” he said soberly. “Do you realise how bitter?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t you want to leave me now?”

The tears rushed to her eyes.

“No. Oh, no.”

“You said you didn’t want any scandal for your children.”

“Neither do I, but even that I have to risk.”

He smiled at last.

“Then why are we even speaking of it? Ah Kate! All at once I feel better. You do that for me, you see. You banish nightmares.”

“I hope I will always be able to do that.”

“You will, never fear.” He looked at his watch.

“The devil take it. I must pack.”

“How long will you be away?”

“A week. Perhaps two. May I write to you?”

“Oh, please.”

“And will you promise to answer my letter. Address it to Avondale. Will you wait now and drive to the station with me? Or do you hate railway stations?”

“I hate being left standing on them alone.”

“I told you it would be a bitter road.”

“I know,” she said sadly.

She was alone even before the train had left. His body was beside her, certainly, but his mind was far away, his eyes shadowed with the tragedy of another newly-dug grave in a country with far too many graves already. She wanted to pull him back to her by telling him that she was wretched, too, it wasn’t only in Ireland that people could be unhappy.

Then she was ashamed of her weakness. If she were to deserve his love she must be as strong as he was. She must smile as the train pulled out of the station. His last memory of her must never be one of a lonely woman in tears.