by Karen Joyce
“My darling, please, settle your mind. Do not be troubled. You must know that ever since our engagement, I have turned him away. Why, just now, in fact, he called upon the house and I desperately tried to refuse him, but you know how obstinate he can be and he has, after all, been so kind. Perhaps there may have been a time when my heart was receptive toward him, but that is only because I believed you cared only for Lady Delphinia. Now that I know how you care for me…Lincoln, it is you to whom my heart is loyal. I have always loved you and I could never love him, nor any other, the way I do you.” Her words caused Lincoln to turn from her. “Lincoln, darling, please do not be angry with me. I promise I shall never see him again if that is your wish.” Lincoln wasn’t listening, he was remembering the last words Percival had spoken to him: You shall reap what you sow…
“Madeline, what did you and Percival speak about?” he asked, his voice heavy from the nausea that churned within the pit of his stomach.
“Why, nothing of importance,” she replied, as she walked away from him and sat down to work on her embroidery. “Let me see, he congratulated me on the wedding. Oh, that’s right. He told me he had called upon you this morning and you two shared in an early celebration,” she said, smiling at him. “I have to admit, Lincoln. I was much dismayed to hear that you were drinking at such an early hour, but I was comforted to hear of how excited you are for our union. So, I will forgive you on this occasion.” Lincoln turned to see her needling the thread of her embroidery pattern and began to grow increasingly frustrated with her offhand manner and her failure to understand the significance of their exchange.
“What else, Madeline. What else did you two discuss?”
“I told you Lincoln, he was barely here for more than ten minutes or so. Why we scarcely exchanged more than a few words,” she said, as she rose bored from her cross stitch and walked over to the fireplace and lifted a small case off the mantelpiece embroidered with a paisley design and engraved with her initials. Lincoln couldn’t control himself any longer. With an urgency borne out of a deep fear, he rushed over to her and took her firmly by the wrists.
“Madeline, did you speak about Lady Delphinia?” She was frightened by his action, but she was more incredulous at his inquiry.
“Lady Delphinia? What concern is it of yours if we did?” Lincoln held her tighter and was close to shaking her.
“Please, Madeline. Please tell me you didn’t tell him where she could be found.” Lady Madeline looked into his eyes and what she saw, she wished could be unseen. Those eyes spoke to her the way his words never could. They were the eyes of a madman whose heart belonged to another.
“Please, Lincoln, let me go. You’re frightening me.” Lincoln released her. Lady Madeline opened the case and took out a cigarette and she fished inside a small box for a match, as her abrupt laughter neared on hysteria.
“Dear, sweet, Lady Delphinia. Does your candle still burn for her?” she asked, as she drew on her cigarette and went to the carafes tray to pour herself a glass of sherry.
“Please, Madeline, don’t do this, not now” he asked, as he lowered his head. Lady Madeline was incensed and a fury rose from the jagged pieces of her broken heart, the smoke fuming from her mouth as if she were climbing toward a destructive climax like lava erupting from a volcano ready to spill forth the ashes of his betrayal.
“Poor, dear, Lincoln, can you not see that she does not return your affections. She will never love you. She is not capable of the love you seek. She is too broken” Lincoln was disheartened by her words, but he knew she didn’t understand what had transpired only days before. His silence caused her anger to subside and the pain rushed over her thick and fast like burning lava. “Why can you not love me the way you do her? What must I do to win your heart? Am I not worthy of your affections? I love her too, Lincoln. I love her dearly and I understand why you must care for her too,” she said softly now, as she stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray and walked closer toward him, bringing her hand to his cheek.
“She is like a frail bird with a broken wing, but there is nothing you can do for her. You cannot fix her. No matter how hard you try. No one can. She will never fly again.” Lincoln could no longer bear to hear her speak of Lady Delphinia this way. He wanted to confess the truth of her; of what she had done, but he could not.
“You have so much compassion for her.”
“My compassion is the least of what she deserves,” she said, as she moved her hand away and turned to sit down upon the lounge.
“Madeline, you have been so kind. There is nothing more you could possibly do for her. You must not burden yourself with the choices she has made,” he said, as he walked closer to her. Though neither of them understood what was being spoken, they continued on lost to the memories of another time.
“What choice was there for her? She never had a choice,” she whispered, playing with a loose thread that had begun to unravel from the seam of her long sleeve.
“Death never gives us a choice, but the loss of her parents does not justify the life that she chose to lead in their memory.”
“Lincoln, you don’t know what you’re saying. Whatever choices she had were made for her that first godless night when she entered Montague Manor,” she said, as she looked before her to an image that had until this moment been buried deep in the past and as if she were clearing the cobwebs that time had grown in the path that lay before that image, she slowly went on, as she found her way.
“Madeline, when did you find out?” he said, as he sat beside her upon the lounge, but she wasn’t hearing his words, she was no longer in the room.
“…and I did nothing, nothing while she cried in the night, as she lay up there locked away inside that dark, cold attic with the stains of his wickedness upon her. The bruises of his lust upon her skin; the mark of his brutality. All those years and I never said a word. All those years…”
“Madeline, what are you saying?”
“She was only a child. A small, defenceless child. She used to be so beautiful and gay whenever she came to visit with her parents, but after their death, she was inconsolable. No one saw her when she arrived at the Manor during the small hours of the night. When she was led up the steps and into that attic. When she was still just a child in mourning and the grief over her parent’s death so raw within her poor, young desolate heart. No one saw when he took her up to that attic like she was an old, forgotten doll and locked her inside or when he stole away during the night to lay with her again and again, year after year. My poor, sweet Delphinia.”
“How old, Madeline? How old was she?” he asked, shaking her violently. Lady Madeline’s glazed eyes came into focus falling upon his face.
“Eight…Eight years old…when it began. After her parent’s sudden death from Tuberculosis. Even though my mother protested vehemently, my father was adamant that we should take her in. She was family after all, but he was ashamed of her because you see, she was the child of his half-brother who was the illegitimate son of his mother’s adultery. He was afraid if anyone learnt of Lady Delphinia’s presence they would know the truth of his mother’s sin.”
“But I saw her at the Manor when I was a child.”
“My brother and his wife were always having financial difficulties and they came to my house many times to beg my father for his help. My father gave them what he could, but after a while, he was afraid of how it would reflect upon him if anyone found out who they were. So, on their last visit, he paid them a handsome sum, and in return, he asked them to never return to the Manor again. But what he did to Delphinia after they passed away, I never understood. Until I heard him one night speaking to my mother about my grandmother. When I heard his hatred for her, for his own mother, I understood. He was punishing Delphinia for her mistake.” Lincoln released her and stood up, stepping back from her, away from her revelation. Bringing his hand to his head; shaking it in disbelief.
“She was just a child,” he whispered, and then it came upon him. He rememb
ered the ghost stories of Montague Manor and what he had said to her that day. It all came crashing upon him. He had called her his mistress. He had spoken to her as if she had welcomed this incestuous molestation. He had called her a monster, but it had been the Duke who was the monster. He understood now how she could have done such a thing. She had no choice. She was defending herself. After everything that she had endured, he had turned from her when he should have gone to her. When he should have held her in his arms…”You said you’d come back for me.” He understood now what she had meant in those words. He had failed her. Failed to protect her when she had needed him the most. And he had failed her again. For all those years, the Duke had been using her like a rag doll against her will. He had taken her again and again. That was the sadness he had seen within her. The prison that she kept herself locked up within. Her heart had dried and withered from the love that had been withheld from her and from the abuse that had taken its place. Her parent’s death, being taken in by the only family she had left in all the world, only for the Duke to take his liberty with her while she was just an innocent child. What it must have taken to open her heart to him; to trust again and he had turned his back on her. How he had spoken to her so regretfully. He felt so ashamed.
“How could you and your mother allow this unspeakable thing to happen to her? To allow it to go on as long as it did? Surely there was a way you could have helped her?”
“You don’t understand what it was like to live under that roof with him. No one knows what he was really like. Though he loved me as a father loves a child, we feared him just the same as she. You have to remember that I too was just a child but I tried, Lincoln. Many a night and day over the years when my father was away on business, I would sneak her out and we would sit for hours playing the piano and running through the Evergreens.”
“And your mother? What possible justification could there be for her to allow this to go on for as long as it did?”
“You could never understand, Lincoln, what it is to be a woman. We may have not been kept behind lock and key the way Delphinia was, but we were not free and my mother had no choice. She could never go against him. She was too afraid of what would happen to her. For she knew he would have thrown her out on the streets and then what would have become of me? Don’t you see, she was afraid that he would come for me and she needed to protect me from him and as time went by she was afraid of how Delphinia would destroy my father’s name if she were ever freed from there. When he passed, she could no longer allow her to be kept locked away, but my mother was still afraid that Delphinia would speak the truth of what my father did to her, so she tried to buy her silence by bringing her into our world, but she could never belong here with us. I always knew that when my father was gone, it wouldn’t be long before she would return home, but, then you came along, and I feared that you would give her the love that belonged to me. And you cannot imagine my joy when that did not come to pass.”
“Lady Madeline, an urgent missive has arrived addressed to you,” interrupted the voice of her butler who was standing in the doorway. Lady Madeline rose from the lounge and walked to him. Taking the note in her hand she opened the envelope and pulled out a small letter that lay inside. As she read the letter, Lincoln saw as the colour upon her face turned to white.
“No, it cannot be. She is innocent. It is I who is the guilty party, not she,” she said, as her words fell from her mouth in stops and starts.
“Madeline, what has happened?” Lincoln asked, as he rose and went to her, grabbing hold of her as she fainted in his arms. Carrying her to the lounge he laid her down, and then turned to where the letter had fallen upon the ground. Walking toward it, he bent over and picked it up. Reading those words for the first time, he did not comprehend them. He had to read them over before his heart could understand the meaning they conveyed. Percival, what have you done? They say that in that moment when your life hangs in that delicate balance between life and death the entire summation of your existence flashes before your eyes. This was how Lincoln experienced this moment. Except instead of his entire life, it was her. Every moment, every touch, every word. Every emotion that she had ever evoked within him. All of her: her voice, her laughter, her eyes, her tears that had fallen by the river; each time the quickening of her beating heart had caused her chest to rise and fall, each time her eyes had unlocked his heart. He saw it all and it broke him. This man was finally broken, kneeling upon the floor unable to stand any longer against the insurmountable trials and tribulations of this world; the letter falling from his grasp. Lady Delphinia had been arrested. How could he have spoken a word of what he knew to another soul? How could he have betrayed her this way? Every moment had been leading him so blindly to this one. How could he not have seen it? How could he have lost faith in her so easily? She was all the good that was left within the world and when he had turned his back on her, he had turned his back on all the good that was left within him. God hadn’t taken her. He had tested fate. He had taken the love and beauty that all this world would ever offer him and had discarded it like the dirt that would fall upon her grave. This was his punishment. Her death was by his hand.
“Madeline,” he said, as he summoned the strength to rise from the floor, “Madeline, it’s not too late for her and it’s not too late for you to find the redemption that you seek for all those years that you remained silent.”
“My poor, dear cousin,” she whispered, as if she were standing before her that very moment.
“Madeline, I know you love her dearly and you do not want her to meet this cruel fate.”
“Yes,” she nodded, “I do love her, very much.”
“Then you know what you must do.”
“What I must do?”
“You must help her.”
“No Lincoln, there is nothing I can do for her now.”
“Yes, Madeline, this is your chance for redemption. This time you must not turn your back on her. This time you can help her.”
“You don’t understand what it was like then. You don’t know how it broke my heart to see the way my father treated her. To know the things he did to her. How I wanted to go to her and help her out of that hell.”
“And this is your chance, Madeline. This time he can’t stop you.”
“Oh, Lincoln. Don’t you see why my heart yearns for you so? You have always been so noble, so kind. She is not the only one who needs you. I need you too, because you are all that I am not. Even now you see things as if they were so simple, but, they are not. It is too late for both of us.”
“No, Madeline, you don’t know what you’re saying. It’s not too late. You must go to the police and tell them what she has endured.”
“Even if I did they would never release her for her crime,”
“Then you must testify in her defence when she is brought to pay for what she has done and make them understand that she had no other choice.”
“Lincoln,” she cried, “Think what you are asking of me. No one can ever know the truth of what my father has done.”
“Madeline, your father is gone, dead and buried. You don’t need to be afraid of him anymore. You must think of her.”
“And what about me? What of my reputation, my family name. We would be ruined. Society would turn its back on us.”
“How can you speak of society and reputation when your very own cousin sits in prison and will be condemned to her death? You must do this, Madeline. You are the only one who can save her.”
“I don’t expect you to understand, Lincoln. You have always been so brave, but I am not like you. I wish I could do what you are asking of me, but I will not destroy my life for her.” Lincoln released her hands in disbelief and began frantically shaking his head in denial.
“You have no heart, no soul.”
“Please, Lincoln, do not say such things of me. Please,” she pleaded, as she reached out to take his hands and began kissing them with desperation, her cowardice falling from her eyes. “I love you Li
ncoln, with all of my heart. Please, you must forget her and think about us and our future.” Though he felt her kisses shower upon him, his heart had turned to stone and when he spoke before leaving her there alone with only her guilt, his words were as cold as ice.
“I never want to see you again.”
XXI
Hitherto he had greatly suffered Lady Delphinia’s absence but there had always been the incandescence of her light shining somewhere out there within the world, giving life to the fading promise of their life together and now that epochal time within his life was hastening to an unequivocal and inconceivable end. An end that reawakened the deep wound within him, causing an ineffable suffering within Lincoln’s heart that echoed the agonising weight of where her footsteps had now been led by Percival’s treachery and the longing for where they would no longer travel. If only his damn pride had not refused her for now he would have been moulded into the man that would have been shaped by her love for him. If only he had listened to the enduring language of her heart that had bowed down before him like autumn yellow leaves falling at his feet. For never again would another look upon him with such infinite sorrow, as she had that day in their final moment when she had understood that he was lost to her. Never again would he know another whose unwavering loyalty was faithful even to the haunting of his memory. The essence of his being had been conceived within her love. She was now the only law he knew and he was her willing and obedient slave. And so, fate had brought him here, to that measure of time that one looks back upon with the deep sorrow that only regretful nostalgia can know when we have reached the denouement of our long and tiresome narrative. Where we will one day lie on the verge of the aurora of a new life that will follow the one left behind in death when we are free to return to the womb ordained by the gods in heaven of everlasting eternal life ever after. Could it be that she would perish? Her candle snuffed out so prematurely before the burning out of her natural life. If she were to perish, than so would he and there would be nothing left keeping him here but the punishment of her death and a world bereft of her. A promise never to be kept. A vow to never be honoured. She would forever remain a secret he would never know.