The Pool of St. Branok (33 page)

“Oh yes,” he said. “Oh, Angelet, I want it to be over … I long for our son to be born.”

“It may not be a son.”

“No, I hope it will but what I want is for Morwenna to be all right. If she comes through this I shall think very seriously about taking her and the child home.”

“I think it may be in Gervaise’s mind too,” I said.

“You are always hoping … Next day will come the big find … and if you went back for the rest of your life you’d be thinking, ‘What did I miss?’ ”

“I know. But you could go on through your life thinking of missed opportunities.”

“It’s true. But when the child is born … I shall seriously think of leaving. I feel this is not the place in which a child should be brought up. Do you agree, Angelet?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“And all that housework you and Morwenna do … It is not what you are accustomed to.”

“We are getting accustomed.”

He was thoughtful. Then he said: “If this works out, I’ll go and do something. I’ll change, Angelet, I will, I will.”

I looked at him questioningly. He saw my intentness and he laughed suddenly. “I’m a bit overwrought,” he said. “I’m worried about Morwenna. Angelet, promise me you will be with her.”

“All the time … if they’ll let me. Don’t worry, Justin. Babies have been born in places like this before.”

“I know.”

“The sooner we get her to Ben’s house, the better.”

“It is good of him.”

“We owe a great deal to him, Justin. It would have been even more primitive without him.”

“Yes … we owe a lot to him.”

“Don’t worry. Morwenna is so happy. You have made her happy, Justin. And this baby … well, it just means that with you both she will have everything she wants.”

He stood up abruptly.

“I’m afraid I’ve talked too much.”

“Of course not. I’m glad you came. She has good friends around her, Justin.”

He nodded agreement and gave me a rather uncertain smile as he went out.

I thought a good deal about how fervently he wanted a son. Most men did. He really cared for Morwenna. I felt my distrust of him slipping away and I realized that I had not before been aware how deep that distrust went.

Mrs. Bowles had predicted the time the baby was due to arrive. Ben suggested that a week before we should move into Golden Hall where rooms had been prepared for us.

I was very glad for Morwenna was experiencing the usual discomforts and a little luxury was what she needed.

Meg was delighted at the prospect of having a baby in the house even though it would be only a temporary arrangement. Gervaise and Justin would go back to the shacks after their day’s work, change there and come on to Golden Hall to dine.

This seemed to work well.

“This is the life,” said Gervaise. “What a good thing it is to have friends in high places.”

He was not envious. That was not in Gervaise’s nature. In fact he was a very good man. If only he had not had that one overwhelming weakness, how different our lives would have been!

The day which had been calculated for the baby’s arrival came and went. Morwenna seemed quite well but there was no indication that the baby was ready.

Two days passed and when the third came we began to get anxious.

Mrs. Bowles said: “Nothing to worry about … yet. Babies are funny things. No use telling them to hurry. They come in their own good time.”

Morwenna was very tired. She was longing for the ordeal to be over. She slept a good deal.

One afternoon when I was by her bed and she was dozing, there was a gentle knock on the door. I went out to find Ben standing outside. He drew me into the corridor.

“Angel, you ought to get out for a while. Come now.”

“Suppose it happens while I’m away?”

“There’s no sign. Meg’s here. She’ll send Jacob for Mrs. Bowles. I’ll warn her. Come on. You need a little change or you will be ill. Just for an hour or so.”

I looked at Morwenna. She was sleeping.

“All right,” I said. “But we must put Meg on the alert.”

“We’ll tell her.”

“Perhaps she could come up and sit here.”

“All right. She shall.”

Meg was only too delighted.

“I’ll see she’s all right … and at the first sign Jacob or Thomas will be off. You get out, Mrs. Mandeville. You’ll be the one who’s ill if you don’t. You look as if you need a bit of fresh air.”

So I rode out on Foxey, with Ben beside me.

We came to that spot where we had sat before. It was quite pleasant. One could see the flat land right to the horizon. We tied our horses to a bush and sat watching the dappled sunlight in the creek close by.

Ben said: “I worry about you, Angel.”

“About me? Whatever for?”

“This life out here. This township … Those little shacks. … You’re nothing but a housemaid.”

“It’s no different for me than for any of the others here.”

“You must long for home.”

I was silent. I couldn’t deny it.

“How long can you stand it, Angel?”

“I suppose for as long as it has to be.”

“You’re a stoic.”

“No. I am very impatient sometimes.”

“Morwenna ought not to be here either.”

“You don’t think anything will go wrong?”

“I wasn’t thinking of that. But this is no place for women.”

“Nor for men either.”

“Tell them that and they won’t believe you.”

“You live comfortably enough.”

“When I first came out here I lived the same as the rest of them.”

“But you found your way out of it.”

“I do find my way out of difficult situations. Some people are like that. I find it a little uncomfortable to live here as I do … so close to the others and yet different.”

“Well, your place is a refuge to those in need … like Morwenna at the moment.”

“And you, Angel?”

“I am sharing in the luxury.”

“I wish you would share it … always.”

I was startled yet not really surprised. I had tried to hide from myself my feelings which were becoming more and more difficult to suppress. I loved Gervaise, I kept telling myself; but something had happened on our honeymoon. I had thought so often of Madame Bougerie sitting at her reception desk … trusting us … liking us … and then he had been able to go off like that without a great deal of compunction. He had said he was going to pay later, but would he have done so? Yes, that was when my feelings for him had begun to change.

And then … seeing that feverish look in his eyes … that need always to gamble … irritated me and made me impatient. It was like a disease.

I tried to pass it off lightly. “I shall enjoy it while it lasts,” I said.

“I should never have come here in the first place,” he went on. “I should have gone back to Cornwall. Perhaps I should have stayed there … had an estate nearby. We should have seen each other … often.”

“Well, that would have been very pleasant, I am sure.”

He took my hand suddenly and gripped it hard. “It ought to have worked out that way. It might … but for …”

“The man in the pool?” I said.

“You were so ill. They said it was fever. I knew it was due to all that … They were afraid you were going to die. I came to see you lying there … flushed. You looked so vulnerable lying there with your cropped hair and eyes wild and you looked at me and you cried, ‘No … no.’ They thought my visits disturbed you and they sent me away. I knew that I should always remind you … and you couldn’t get better while you were reminded. So as soon as I convinced myself that you were beginning to recover I went away.”

“Everything would have been different if I hadn’t gone to the pool that day. That’s life, isn’t it? One little incident can spark off a train of events … changing people’s lives for generations. It’s an awesome thought.”

“
I’d
like to change the course of my life, Angel.”

“Most of us would.”

“What I mean is I don’t want events to push me this way and that, because I believe I am the master of my own life. I will push aside those things that threaten me … I will go where I want to. But if only I could live that particular time of my life again …”

“It’s an old complaint, Ben. But when something happens it is there indelibly … forever.”

“It is too late … all those wasted years too late, but I love you, Angel, and I shall never love anyone else as I love you.”

“Please don’t say that, Ben.”

“Why not? It’s the truth. Do you believe me?”

“I am not sure.”

“Do you
want
to believe me?”

I was silent. I was not sure, and I thought: Yes, I do. Because I love you, too.

Neither of us spoke after that for some little time. I listened to the murmur of the light breeze … ruffling the grass near the creek.

Then at length he said: “Tell me truthfully, Angel. Are you happy?”

“Well … I think I could be if I were at home. Everything seemed all right there.”

“With Gervaise, you mean?”

“Gervaise is one of the kindest people I have ever met.”

He nodded. “I know about the debts. He told me himself. He’s indebted to my grandfather. I understand that.”

“It doesn’t seem so bad as it is Uncle Peter. We know he won’t suddenly descend on us and demand payment or else face the consequences.”

“If he found gold …”

“We could go home.”

“He might want to stay for more.”

“As you did.”

“It would be different. I vowed I would not return until I had my fortune. I found some wealth and it gave me this … But it was not what I had set out for. I couldn’t settle for less. It would be weakness and to a certain extent failure.”

“And you could not be seen to be weak. You have found enough to come home and perhaps start some enterprise. But you vowed to come back immensely rich … because that was the task you set yourself.”

“I do not care to be beaten, Angel.”

“So you will stay here until your goal has been reached … and if you do not hit the target that will be forever.”

“There are two things I want, Angel. That fortune, you know of. I want to find it in my mine. I want to have one of those discoveries which men had in the beginning which brought them out here in the hundreds. That is one thing. But what I want more than that is you.”

“I wish you would not talk in that way.”

“I want to be absolutely frank with you.”

“It is impossible, Ben. I am married to Gervaise.”

“And you don’t love him.”

“I do.”

“Not entirely. He has disappointed you. I can see that.”

He had turned to me and I was in his arms. He kissed me wildly. I was so taken aback that I could not think clearly. All I knew was that I wanted to stay with him, close … like this. I was accepting that which I had refused to face for some time … ever since I had seen Ben again.

Gervaise had been good to me, a kind and tender husband. I had thought I was in love with him. I had been too young and inexperienced to know my true feelings. I had not really known Gervaise. I had only begun to on our honeymoon when I had first discovered his weakness—not only his obsession with gambling, but a certain amoral attitude to life which could allow him to go off without paying the money he owed to people who trusted him, and gambling with money which was not really his.

I was closely bound to Ben. I always should be because of what we had endured together. I began to think about what might have been but for that man in the pool. It all came back to that. I had thought of it ever since it happened as the most momentous event in my life; and I saw now that it had certainly been so. But for it everything would have been very different.

I withdrew myself.

“We must not meet like this, Ben,” I said.

“We must,” he replied, “often. I must have something of you, Angel.”

“No,” I said.

He looked at me intently and replied: “Yes.”

“What good can it do?”

“It can make me happy for a while. You too perhaps.”

I shook my head.

“You love me,” he said. It was a statement rather than a question.

“Ben, I have not seen you for years … and then I come out here …”

“And you knew at once. Don’t let’s waste time denying the truth, Angel. Let’s think what we can do.”

“There is nothing. We shall go away from here. You will stay in your comfortable house until you have made that vast fortune. It will probably take years and years and then we shall both be old enough and wise enough to laugh at this folly.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“What else?”

“I never accept defeat.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“I am in love with you and you with me. You are married to a nice decent man. He’s a gambler. He’s a loser, Angel. I know one when I see one. Your life with him will be a continual running away from creditors. You feel you can live with that now. It has brought you to this primitive society because you had to run away. Leave him now. I shall be waiting for you.”

“You can’t really mean that.”

“What I mean is that we should not sit down meekly and accept what life deals out. You have married this man. I admit he has charm. He is gracious and courteous, the perfect English gentleman. But I will tell you what your life with him will be. I can see it clearly. I know men. He’s a loser, I tell you. He’s different from your friend Justin Cartwright.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is a man who knows how to win.”

“To win?”

“I’ve heard things. He has good luck at the table. Every time he plays he walks off with some winnings. He’s more likely to make his fortune at the tables than in the mines.”

“How do you know this?”

“They play at the saloon. Old Featherstone runs a profitable business with his saloon. He’s one of those who has a way of making money and isn’t winding up the windlasses either. There are all sorts of ways to fortune and your friend Justin is not too bad at one of them.”

“Perhaps he’ll want to go home. He is worried about Morwenna.”

“I think that’s likely. The London clubs would be more profitable than a township in the outback. Prospecting for gold by day and winning at the tables by night … well, it’s a pity for Gervaise’s sake that a little of Justin’s luck doesn’t rub off on him. Angel, you’ve got to leave him. Tell him. If we talked to him and told him how things were he would understand. He is that sort.”