The Turquoise

by Anya Seton

  He jumped up, starting to go to her, to gather her up against him, and already on his feet he checked himself. And she checked her tears. They looked at each other and, while her jaw tightened and her mobile face became controlled, the resemblance between them was strong.

  The muscles of his legs relaxed, he sank back into his chair. They were silent. From the kitchen they could hear Lucita’s voice calling to Rachel, and the distant clatter of saucepans. Ewen’s neglected daffodils made a splotch of tender gold on the rough pine table by the head of the sofa. Fey picked them up and held them softly against her breast. In this there was no coquetry, but they both understood. Their eyes met again in poignant affirmation, then relinquished each other.

  ‘Tell me about Scotland,’ said Fey, after a moment. ‘Always for me it has been the land beyond the horizon—it seemed that I felt it in my blood, the mists over the gray waters of Loch Fyne, the purple shadows on the fairy Isle of Skye, the smell of the heather and the gorse and the peat smoke. As a child I longed and longed to go there—then I forgot.’

  ‘You will go,’ he said quickly. ‘You will.’

  Her lips curved in a faint smile. ‘Once I might have gone with you——’

  He blackened, and a sudden anger seized him. ‘It was the De’il’s own doing that I did not find you! Stupid savage Fate!’ A heavy curtain fell sharply across her mind. Her eyes went blank. ‘Tell me about your house in Inveraray, Ewen. Is it big? Is it near the Loch? Can you see the moors? ’

  He told her a little about his home, and she listened, her eyes half-closed and fixed on the reflections from the river, while she breathed in the scent of the daffodils.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  FOUR DAYS LATER, Fey had grown strong enough to stand the dual expedition—to Thaddeus Webster’s office and to the Tombs.

  When Ewen called for her at two, she was ready, dressed as he had never seen her, as a rich and fashionable woman. She wore her one suit, bought three years ago, but even this out-ofdate spring costume—gray moire banded in taupe velvet—was unmistakably luxurious, and it changed her. She appeared older and more remote, and at the same time the touches of cream lace at throat and wrists, the perfumed rustle of her skirt, the sleekness of her black hair beneath the plumed gray hat, and the coral salve on her lips, all combined to give her a sophisticated beauty which he had not suspected. Her manner confirmed her appearance; it, too, was cool and remote. She sat beside him in the hackney and answered his efforts at reassuring conversation with polite monosyllables, beneath which he felt a guardedness, almost the earlier hostility.

  When they reached the lawyer’s building, she preceded Ewen through the indicated doors and greeted Webster in the same remote manner.

  After brief civilities, she sat down, drew off her long gray gloves, and, laying them across her lap, sat composedly waiting.

  ‘Now—Mrs. Tower—just tell me the whole—story, as you know it. The main facts—that is—I don’t want you to fatigue yourself.’ The thick, sighing voice soothed and coaxed, but the little eyes were watchful.

  ‘I am anxious to do everything I can to help my poor husband. Everything! ’

  The sudden throb of emotion in her voice moved both men. She raised her eyes to the lawyer’s face, caressing eyes full of troubled appeal, and his own lost their sharpness. Fey looked down again at her hands and the thick gold wedding ring.

  ‘Mr. Dillon forced his way back into our lives on Saint Valentine’s night,’ she said. ‘We were giving a ball...’

  She rehearsed the facts exactly as she had told them to Rachel. The meetings in the park, her remorse at having allowed Terry to see Lucita, and his own encounter with the little girl and Miss Pringle. She told of the note she had sent him, explaining that she had still foolishly thought that an appeal from her might bring him to reason. All that she told was the strictest truth, and in the minds of her listeners there developed a picture of a suffering, persecuted woman who had made brave efforts to handle a disagreeable situation without distressing a touchy husband.

  Ewen saw that she had won the lawyer, who had been suspicious. Webster’s chivalry was roused. More than chivalry, perhaps. For his questions now were softened by a protective tenderness, and once, when she leaned toward him, the fat small hand moved slowly on the desk, toward her arm.

  She can’t help it, thought Ewen, instantly denying anger at this atmosphere of sexual magnetism which did not include him. It’s entirely unconscious, she’s but appealing to him for help as a child would. At Webster’s next remark, he realized that the lawyer was not so bemused as to forget the point at issue.

  ‘It clarifies—dear Mrs. Tower—yes, it clarifies—but will it help Tower’s defense—materially? That is what we must consider— If possible—we must spare you the—the embarrassment of having the divorce—the—ah—somewhat equivocal divorce, I’m afraid—become public.’

  ‘You can’t!’ cut in Ewen. ‘Dillon’s identity must be brought out. It explains the blackmail. Mrs. Tower understands that.’

  Fey threw him a quick look, then her eyes returned to Webster’s face. ‘Of course,’she agreed. ‘ It doesn’t matter what the public thinks of me. We must save Simeon. And I have been very much to blame. I must share in the—the punishment.’ Her voice wavered as she finished and Ewen saw her hands clench on the gray gloves.

  ‘Indeed, you are not to blame!’ cried Webster warmly. ‘You were the innocent victim of two men. You may safely—trust me—to imbue—the jury with my own admiration and pity—for you.’

  Fey’s hands unclenched. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and she gave Webster a smile in which he saw only a tremulous sweetness. Ewen, anxiously watching, saw more. He would not let himself doubt her; he had felt from the beginning her essential honesty, yet he was uneasy.

  This she partly dispelled after they had left the lawyer’s office and were driving uptown to the Tombs. ‘All that I told him was the truth, Ewen,’ she said, breaking a long silence.

  He answered with relief the implication. ‘But there was some further circumstance you did not tell? ’

  ‘It has no bearing. It concerns nobody now.’ She turned her head and gave him the same look of feminine appeal she had given Webster. Ewen put his hand over hers. ‘If you’re sure of that, there’s no reason to fret about it. It isn’t good to fall into a bog of self-questioning and doubts. Even in a tragedy like this we must have common sense.’

  She looked down at this thin sensitive hand as it lay reassuringly over her gloved one. ‘I’ve always been very truthful,’ she said. ‘Simeon used to laugh at me. Even Doctor Rachel. We did have to tell some lies at the time of our marriage, but Simeon thought——’ She stopped.

  ‘To be sure,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s but natural for a true woman to follow her husband’s lead,’ and he smiled, adding on a lower, earnest note—‘Dinna fash yoursel’, Fey——’

  She let out her breath in a long shaking sigh. ‘ My father used to say that——’ She swayed toward him, looking up into his face, and her lips moved in a whisper—‘Ewen—I need you so——

  He made an inarticulate sound, and gathered her to him.

  For them both a thousand lamps were lit. The wideness of enchanted seas flowed through the stuffy carriage. The April winds blew, and the two in the carriage, listening to the ecstatic song, felt themselves timeless and set free.

  ‘My own Fey,’ he whispered—‘we will go together. To Scotland. As soon as——’ He kissed her shut eyelids. ‘Ah, my love—my love ! You’ve suffered enough. It’s nearly over—we can be together as the Lord meant it.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ She clung to him with a greater urgency. ‘We will go. It’s not too late. This other—it isn’t real. It doesn’t touch me. Nothing has touched me until now. I can hide in your love until it’s over.’

  His arms tightened. He held her exultantly and with defiance. ‘We will do everything we can—in justice, in decency. And then—whatever the outcome— you shall be free.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes,’ she whispered again. ‘Free and forget——’

  The rhythmic clop of the horse’s hoofs diminished and stopped. The carriage drew up at the entrance of the Tombs. Neither of them was aware of the dingy pseudo-Egyptian façade. They mounted the narrow steps littered with droppings from the innumerable pigeons circling amongst the eaves or perched on the crude lotus capitals of the thick columns. They entered through the heavy iron door past the first guard, and then, as they had previously arranged, Ewen left Fey in the central hall, while he went off to interview the warden and obtain permission for the surprise visit to Simeon.

  Fey, still moving in the timeless dream, was oblivious to the guards’ curious stares, nor for a moment, after she had seated herself on a dirty wooden bench at the far side of the hall, was she aware of the barred wall near her. Behind the bars in shadow was the receiving pen, where newly admitted prisoners awaited allocation. They were quiet, as Fey sat down, gaping with an animal-like intensity. Little by little the whispers began again. The mass shifted. The stench of whiskey and sour sweat and vomit assailed her.

  She looked at them now, quickly, and from a great distance. They were disgusting, sub-human, a hydra-like beast joined into one body of filth and corruption.

  She drew her skirts tight around her, and moved as far along the bench as possible.

  Five minutes passed, and the prisoners, seeing that the guards were all busy at the other end of the hall, became noisier. There were muted guffaws, snatches of song, hoarse bawdy comments on Fey. Her revulsion increased, and her loathing. And now the atmosphere stifled her. It is unendurable, she thought, and with this came its corollary, why should I endure it? I’ve done nothing. Her muscles tensed for escape. She felt them in her knees, her thighs, her stomach, stiffening, propelling, urging her to rush through the iron door into the sunshine, back into the April wind. And she could not move. Her hands grew cold as the damp cement wall beside her, her breath came shallow and rapid and her chest constricted under the viselike pressure of anticipation. Fear again! A paralysis of nameless fear as it had been during her illness.

  In the pen an altercation had started. There were two voices, one accusatory and one apologetic and maudlin. Both were drunken. Of these two voices Fey had distinguished nothing, accompanied as they were by a dozen other noises, the distant shouting of the guards, the monotonous cooing of the pigeons outside, the flapping of a newspaper, the uneasy, disconnected sounds from the pen. And then a phrase, no louder than the rest, exploded in Fey’s consciousness.

  It was the lighter, whining voice. ‘Gawd,’ it said, ‘I wisht I could go back. Start over. I kin look back all right. But I can’t go back.’

  The detonation shattered through her mind with the violence of physical agony. Her blood vessels pounded and a lightning pain filled them. Together her body and mind resisted, lashing out with denial. Then all pain ceased. She became a void into which there seeped a bitter resignation. So it has come at last, she thought, I can no longer hide. But as yet there was no meaning. She leaned her head back against the wall and waited.

  The prison faded and vanished, her consciousness gathered itself into a small flame, infinitely detached. From its steady center she watched a scene unroll. She saw herself on the starlit hillside at Raton Pass, and the dark figure of Natanay outlined against the sky. She heard again the words to which she had not then listened. ‘Pobrecita——’ and the melodious Spanish continued sadly, inflexibly: ‘A few are born for true greatness, and when these stubbornly deny the voice of the Spirit, it is their punishment that later they must look back and see the wrong turnings when they can no longer go back——’

  The Raton hillside shimmered and changed into a smaller, more familiar mountain which gave off a white light. Against this cold, relentless light scenes like living tableaux gleamed sharply and replaced each other in swift progression. Fey saw herself and Terry that first day on the plaza in Santa Fe, she saw them in Wootton’s cabin. She saw the Arcadia Concert Hall and the first glimpse of Simeon. As she watched helplessly, the detachment lessened and a horrified intensity began to reach out toward her. She saw herself in Simeon’s office and the proffering of the turquoise. She saw the interview with Pansy Miggs. The scenes accelerated and ran together through the Valentine Ball and Terry’s return, the meetings in the park. Then there was an instant of blankness, and the final picture glided into place—the Turkish Room at Schultz’s Hotel.

  The white light was extinguished, there were no more scenes, but their full significance penetrated her consciousness with annihilating truth. You, are responsible, you! All denials, all justification, had been wrenched away by that moment of vision, and she saw them naked at last—the swathed and secret purposes. It was she, primarily, who had been responsible for the elopement with Terry, and when that train of misborn consequences reached inevitable extinction, it was she who had initiated the new one with Simeon. When Terry returned, it had been she who held him and by carelessness and weakness impelled them all to the final tragedy.

  At every step, every moment of choice, there had been warning to which she had been deaf. The other path had always been there.

  I can’t bear it! she cried. I’m not strong enough to bear it. But there was no pity. In the interior darkness the realization continued. She saw that she must accept the moral onus for Pansy’s death, for Terry’s—and so nearly for Simeon’s. Heavy and solid as granite she saw them embedded in her soul, the motives which she had never turned to examine •—the stubborn materialistic self-seeking, the lust, and—largest and most menacing of all— the continual compromise with hypocrisy.

  It’s not fair! she cried to the accuser. The others were to blame, too. The guilt is not all mine. And the accuser answered, You are not asked to be responsible for more than your share. But your guilt is greater because your strength was greater. And you were partly aware. They were not.

  She listened and knew at last. She bowed her head and the desolate waters of humility flowed through her soul.

  She sat there motionless, on the visitors’ bench in the Tombs, and the prisoners forgot about her. Their four-o’clock supper had arrived. A tin bucket of coffee with a dipper—loaves of bread. They fell upon them gluttonously and became quiet.

  Fey raised her head and gazed toward them. She got up and walked to the bars. They looked up from their food, some resentful, some amorously inviting. But even the stupidest of them grew silent as she stood there. Hydra-headed beast, yes, but the body is not corruption. The single heart that beats through them is mine, too. One heart for us all, and its lifeblood is charity.

  After a moment she walked away, back to the bench, and the little man whose words had been the instrument of realization was the last to munch his bread again.

  ‘Gawd!’ he said plaintively, ‘that one’s got the saddest face I ever seed in my born days. What call’s she got to look so sad?’

  Nobody answered him.

  As Fey reached the bench, Ewen hurried up. ‘ I had quite an argument, but I finally convinced-Fey! what is it? You look ill.’

  ‘I’m all right. Is that the pass?’ she added, as he started to lead the way toward the stairs. ‘No, wait for me, please. I must go alone.’

  He watched anxiously while she mounted the winding iron stairs.

  At the second tier she presented her pass to the guard, who looked dubious. ‘He won’t see no one, that Tower. Ornery cuss.’

  ‘Yes. I know. Kindly show me to the cell.’

  The guard got off his stool with involuntary alacrity. Fey followed him down the open corridor past other cells and other visitors. The four tiers of cell blocks were built around a narrow enclosed quadrangle, and lit from the roof by inadequate skylights. Above each barred cell door hung a little slate with the prisoner’s name and number inscribed on it in chalk.

  They reached the far end of ‘Murderers’ Row’ and cell Number 6. Simeon in trousers and shirt was lying as he usually was on the cot. He showed no interest in the so
und of the guard's key in the lock. ‘Leddy to see you, now be’ave yourself,’ said the guard. He swung the bars open.

  Simeon sat up, and looked at Fey. His dull expression changed. It became the face of her premonition on the Christmas Eve so long ago—haggard, defeated, and the bleared eyes staring at her with an accusing hatred. ‘Get out!’ he said, lying down. ‘I never want to see you again.’

  ‘I told you, mum,’ said the guard. ‘ Carnt do nothing with 'im.’

  ‘Leave us alone.’ Fey opened her pocketbook.

  ‘I’ll give you ten minutes,’ he growled. ‘Watch yourself. He’s a bad un.’ The barred gate clanged shut.

  She stood at the end of the little cell, looking down at Simeon. He had turned his face to the wall, and, despite the new gray ia his hair, there was a childishness in his crouched position. And he had grown so thin. Beneath his shirt she could see the angle of his shoulder-blades.

  She walked to the cot and knelt down beside it. She stretched out her arms and pulled his stiff body wordlessly against her. For an instant she felt the resistance give, then he pushed her violently away. ‘ Get out! I told you to get out! ’

  ‘Simeon, look at me!’ she cried. At first he would not, and then he slowly, compulsively obeyed. And she knew. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she whispered. ‘ Forgive me.’

  He drew a harsh breath and an ugly line thinned his mouth. In his eyes she saw the look which she had once cured, but stripped now of all defense. ‘

  ‘Get out!’he repeated. ‘Let me alone.’

  Panic caught her. There was death in his face. Desire for death weighted the stagnant cell. She fought against it with the blunted weapons of terror and despair and knew that they could not conquer.

  Then she saw his hands. They were gripped on a fold of the prison blanket, but as she looked at them, they trembled. Her panic vanished like night in a flood of protective love. Love such as she had never felt, impersonal force, freed from self and needing no outward response to augment its steady glow. And while she knelt beside the cot, as motionless as he was, the long forgotten certainty came back to her. The awareness, and the first shimmer of the annunciatory light. On the prison blanket near his hands, a scene began to form. Not the retrospective vision of the past which had come to her below in the hall, but the true sight which she had used to have.