What the Heart Keeps

by Rosalind Laker

  She nodded. “I’d never been kissed with love before.”

  His eyes smiled at her. “I did guess that. Then what are these fears? Maybe if we discussed them together, you could put them away and forget them forever.”

  She shook her head quickly, not altogether sure how she had been drawn into this conversation and wishing to end it. “Let’s pretend I never mentioned them.”

  He was not to be brushed aside and became lovingly and endearingly persuasive to her. “If we do, they’ll always be there between us. Come, my sweet, tell me. Let’s set the pattern of our future, always able to talk and open our hearts to each other.”

  He thought he was to hear of ill treatment at the orphanage. She had related enough of events throughout her days there for him to gather that she had had a cheerless childhood, and he knew how difficult it was for those persistently shut out to accept affection spontaneously in later life. Never once did he expect to hear anything of a sexual nature. Encouragingly, he enfolded her in his arms, drawing her to lean against him with her head resting on his shoulder. For a few moments she closed her eyes, savouring his nearness and the feeling of being cosseted and protected against all things. Then she began to recount how she had run away and everything that had been entailed until she came, shudderingly, to the assault upon her, giving minimum details, but enough to convey the horror she had endured. Her heart became marvellously light after all was said. She nestled closer to him, knowing that through his listening he had swept away the last barrier between them.

  There was a silence. Then he spoke harshly. “Payment for your supper, was it?”

  She felt her blood freeze. Drawing back, she looked into his face which had a strained, angry expression. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s obvious. You were hungry and the farmer’s son arranged that you should have food in return for a certain favour in the barn.”

  “No!” She sprang to her feet, clutching her bodice together. He looked up at her in torment. “I’m not blaming you. It must be terrible to be nigh to starving.”

  “But I wasn’t starving. Not then. I had a piece of bread and cheese that I’d bought with some money a gentleman gave me.” She saw his eyes narrow and cried out defensively: “I opened a gate for him, that’s all!”

  His elbows were resting on his updrawn knees and he dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders slumped. “I don’t doubt you,” he said with desolate bitterness. “I’m speaking out of my own jealousy.”

  He was consumed by it. Its effect was all the more devastating because it was something he had never experienced before. The thought of another man laying hands on her nakedness and possessing her was a knife blow he did not know how to survive. Everything about her had led him to believe she was physically innocent, the kind of girl he had always expected to marry. The worldliness and broadmindedness that had come to him through his travels and new environs, fell away from him like a cloak. He had reverted completely to his early prejudices. His background, his upbringing, and his culture had instilled in him the rule that any self-respecting man chose a virgin to be his bride. How else could the steadfastness of his home and the health and well-being of his children be ensured? The conviction was linked to the importance of heirs and the entailing of land over many generations and, although in his case it had no immediate relevance, he was powerless to go against his conditioning in his present, seething state. Logic and reason had been swept away by her shattering disclosure.

  She was watching him in an agony of apprehension. “There’s no need to be jealous,” she cried out, her mouth tremulous, her throat tight. “It was hateful and loathsome. I thought I should never be able to face marriage. You changed everything for me.”

  He believed her. The trouble was that believing her made no difference. He loved her too much, which paradoxically made it impossible for him to remove the blame from her for having allowed the circumstances to come about in the first place. Rising to his feet, he gave vent to retaliation out of his own raging jealousy. “I can’t say I noticed it. You lay shaking on the grass as if inviting rape. How do I know it was not like that before?”

  Anger gushed through her. With a cry of outrage she struck him hard across the face. His head snapped back after the stinging impact and his eyes were flinty in his temper at her action. Her bodice had fallen once more into disarray and the almost unbearable beauty of her breasts was revealed again to him. Stunned by what she had done, she placed her spread fingers lightly over her parted lips and took a step backwards, to stand drained of rage and touchingly forlorn, forgetful of her half-nakedness.

  He reached for his jacket, which earlier he had suspended from a branch, and put it on. “You had better tidy yourself,” he advised without expression, his lips thin and a pulse leaping in his temple. “It’s time to leave.”

  She turned away to fasten her buttons, unable to see them for the tears that had begun to cloud her vision. Her stockings were twisted as she pulled them on, but nothing seemed to matter anymore. When she had pinned up her hair and secured her hat, she turned to see him looking out towards the lake, his back towards her, the empty picnic box under his arm.

  They walked in silence. He tossed the box into a trash-basket before they went on board the ferry. As before they stood at the rails. She saw nothing. Now that they had lapsed into silence, neither of them could find a way out of it. The gulf between them was getting wider and wider.

  They stepped from the ferry back into the noisy bustle of Toronto’s early evening. Originally they had both assumed that she would wait while he took the horses on board and after-wards they would have the last minutes together before he sailed. That was now out of the question. Neither wished to prolong their mutual anguish.

  “Goodbye, Peter,” she managed to say unfalteringly with her chin high, although to add anything else was beyond her.

  “Goodbye, Lisa.” His face had a white look and his cheeks were hollowed.

  She turned quickly and hurried away, her spine and shoulders very straight. He wished he could have called her back, but the fit of choking temper that had immobilised his vocal cords all the way from the glade continued to throttle him and brought a new anger.

  One by one he led the horses aboard the waiting train. Some gave him a little trouble, but he soothed and patted them as he urged them forward and eventually all sixteen were safely in their places in readiness for the journey to Buffalo. He took his watch from his pocket. Five minutes left before departure time.

  He prowled restlessly about the platform. Beyond the railway station Toronto was a city of lights beneath the stars. He lit a cheroot, smoked it for half a minute and then threw it down to crush it underfoot. Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Her name rang through his brain, his jealousy unabated, but his fury fast subsiding.

  “All aboard!”

  He hesitated. In a flash of enlightenment he knew that to step aboard the train was the last thing he wanted to do. How could he ever have thought of leaving Lisa? Why had he let her go from him in anger and with words that should never have been said. The foolhardiness of what he had done began to sink in with an awful finality, the pain of loss driving him back to reason. Through petty jealousy, the basest of human emotions, he had turned away from the only girl he had loved or ever wanted to love. He must have been mad! His selfish disappointment had been such that he had failed to see how much greater was her anguish. He had encouraged her to disclose her secret and then rejected her through his own crass stupidity.

  He saw then that if they had had more time together without the imminence of his departure, their lovers’ quarrel could have been resolved. God! What a fool he had been. He couldn’t live without her. He thought of everything he loved about her. Her liveliness, her beauty, her courage and her unaffected joy in all the fun they had shared. She had looked to him to erase through love the darkness of the past for her and he had failed her.

  The train was ready for departure. All doors were slamming. For a moment he was prepa
red to let it go without him but he could not desert the horses. There would be no one else to look after them throughout the long journey. With reluctance he boarded the train, deciding he would send Lisa a wire from Buffalo. Then as the wheels began to turn common sense prevailed. He queried how he could convey the regret that assailed him for all he had said to her or tell her of his longing for her to put her arms around his neck and show her forgiveness. For he was sure she would forgive him. With her warm and generous nature she would accept his apology and never hold back from him what he wanted to hear from her. She would wipe out the terrible quarrel that was of his instigation, knowing that the like of it would never occur again.

  He knew what he would do. As soon as he reached Buffalo and had delivered the horses, he would return to her. If time off was refused by his employer, he would quit the job. Nothing was going to stop his reunion with Lisa. When all was well between them again, he would ask her to share his somewhat uncertain future, for he would not risk losing her a second time while he gathered some money into his bank balance, which had been his original intention before asking her to marry him. With what he knew of her character, she would not mind facing hardships at his side. One day he would buy her silk dresses and a shining new automobile to ride in, and in the meantime they would get along somehow. The train was gathering speed. The last lights of Toronto twinkled out of sight like a dying spark.

  Lisa rose from the seat in the railway station where she had been sitting. Right up until the last minute she had hoped that Peter would realise she would not go far from him all the time there was still a chance that he might find a way back to her. She loved him. Nothing had changed that and, strangely, she understood that it was the depth of his feelings for her that had created the awful impasse. If he had not loved her, he would not have cared about any previous incidents in her life. That was why she had hoped right up to the last minute that he would come looking for her and rush her onto the train with him. It had proved to be a foolish dream. Yet she would have gone anywhere with him. Anywhere at all.

  Five

  When Lisa entered the house she saw that Miss Drayton’s study door was open. In the room the desk was a litter of papers and entry books as if Miss Lapthorne had been turning out everything, the drawers left open. Lisa, who had expected to be met by a reproach and was not sure how she would endure an upbraiding for lateness in the depth of her own sorrow, decided she had better find out what was happening.

  There was no sign of Miss Lapthorne anywhere downstairs. Upstairs she found her lying drunk across the bed, an emptied brandy bottle and a fallen glass on the floor. Lisa removed the woman’s shoes, put a quilt over her, and left her for the night.

  Lisa, found it impossible to sleep herself. She had learned a bitter lesson. There were some secrets that should never be told, although if Peter had carried through his obvious intention to make love to her, he would have known anyway that she was not as he had supposed her to be. His reaction would have been the same.

  Through the night hours she sat up in bed, hugging her knees through her nightgown, and rocking sometimes in her misery. Maybe it would have been better if he had found out that way. At least for a brief, halcyon time she would have known his love and his loving body, a memory to cherish and hold, no matter what came afterwards.

  By dawn she was up and dressed again. She set about her house-cleaning chores, cast down by her own listlessness. Normally she went vigorously about her tasks, but today everything was a burden. Her thoughts dwelt on Peter all the time and there was a drumming awareness in her of a new yearning he had created that made her ache for his arms and his nearness. She had glimpsed how it might have been between them and it made the agony of losing him all the greater. For the first time she began to suspect how passionate she might have become in meeting his love-making if only everything had not gone awry.

  At the study door she hesitated. She was never in there alone. Miss Lapthorne unlocked it and remained in the room while she swept and polished, but with Miss Drayton due back in Toronto any day, it would not do for dust to be lying there when she arrived. Entering, Lisa set about her work. When it was done, she looked at the desk. Usually that was dusted, too. It would be impossible to attempt to sort the papers, which were no concern of hers anyway, but at least she could shut the drawers and polish all around it.

  She had given a good shine to most of the carved woodwork and was about to push in the last drawer when she caught sight of her own name on a postmarked letter in it. She recognised Alice’s writing, and it had been posted in Raymond over two months ago, which was shortly after Miss Drayton had last left for England. That meant that Miss Lapthorne had kept and concealed it.

  With a rush of anger, Lisa picked out the letter and saw that there was another addressed to her underneath it. And another below that. All three were unopened, but that was no commendation. It was obvious that they were being kept for Miss Dray-ton’s perusal and censure and her ultimate destruction of them. It certainly explained to Lisa why correspondence had been so sparse over the years. The post was caught in a closed box when it came through the door. It could only be unlocked by a key that Miss Lapthorne kept on a ring. Lisa had never considered this to be unusual, for it had been the same at the orphanage, and she understood that in many strict households the husband kept the key in order to keep check on whatever mail came aimed for his sons and daughters. On the two occasions when she had been handed a letter by Miss Lapthorne, it was when she had happened to be working close at hand, and no doubt the woman was not going to risk her having glimpsed her name. No wonder they had vanished again from her drawer afterwards. She had been wrong to think it was anyone other than Miss Lapthorne who had removed them.

  Footsteps were shuffling down the stairs. Lisa went to lean against the desk and face the door with the three letters displayed in her hand in a fan shape. Miss Lapthorne, appearing in a silk kimono and slippers, was already so pale and sickly-looking that her reaction at seeing the discovered letters made little difference to her haggard expression.

  “Oh dear,” she said weakly, sitting down in the nearest chair. “I have always been afraid you’d find out one day.” She peered in disbelief at the desk. “Did I really leave everything in such a mess? I couldn’t remember whether or not I had locked up again, which is why I came straight down here.”

  Lisa shook the letters angrily. “Why did you withhold my mail?”

  Miss Lapthorne pressed fingertips to her throbbing temples. “I was only obeying rules. Miss Drayton discourages correspondence for her girls’ own good. If one wrote of discontent it could upset others unnecessarily.”

  “Particularly if they should write of being sent out West primarily as brides, having had no previous notification! Some of the girls are only fourteen and fifteen!”

  Miss Lapthorne clapped her hands over her ears. “Mrs. Grant is entrusted to put the younger ones with families.”

  “You have no proof that she does that,” Lisa retorted.

  “Don’t let us talk about it any more now,” the woman implored. “My head is splitting in twain. Please fetch me a nice cup of tea and one of my headache pills.”

  While Lisa was waiting for the kettle to boil she opened her letters. Alice wrote that she was expecting a second child and was full of praise for her husband who cared for her first-born as if the boy were his own. The other two letters were from young women whom she had never met, both having passed through the Distribution Home a long time before she had come to Canada. Each had been given her name by a former companion of hers from the Leeds orphanage, who had heard indirectly that she was still at Sherbourne Street. The girl in question was Teresa Dutton, with whom Lisa had grown up and whom she had always liked, although they had never been close friends. She recalled that Teresa had been the only one to give her a helping hand with the young children in organising games on the ship’s deck, and more than once on the train journey had taken over in keeping them amused to give her a rest. F
rom the letters it appeared that Teresa was now living in Calgary, Alberta, and since both correspondents travelled a great deal she had offered her address and would forward Lisa’s replies on to them. Both young women, although they had probably conferred, had written independently to put the same request to Lisa. As their letters to Miss Drayton and Miss Lapthorne had gone unanswered, they wanted to know if she had access to the files and could give them any guide at all to the present whereabouts of their sisters, from whom they had been parted through the Herbert Drayton Memorial Society. The names were enclosed, and each writer, in spite of the poor writing and ill spelling, conveyed a desperate longing to find her own kin again. One was a twin, and it was easy to discern that the cruel separation had left a scar.

  Lisa carried the tea and the headache pills into the study. Miss Lapthorne was seated at the desk, making an effort to tidy up the papers into order and put them away. As she closed an entry book to lift it from the desk, Lisa startled her by slamming a hand down on it and holding it under pressure.

  “How far does that book go back, Miss Lapthorne?” she demanded furiously. “Ten years? Twelve? Does it record where Miss Drayton sent a twin named Esther Hastings or the whereabouts of the five Hamilton sisters ruthlessly separated from the eldest, who still seeks for news of them?”

  The woman groaned faintly in exasperation and made a dismissive gesture. “Is that what your letters were about? Silly girls bother us sometimes with inquiries about their families, wanting to know if their parents are still alive or if we know where their brothers and sisters are to be found and so forth. Often those placed in this country by other charities write to us—grown women with children of their own—all with this mad desire to trace kith and kin.”

  “I consider it perfectly natural.”

  “Do you?” It was said with sarcasm. “Your opinion is not rated very highly in this house. Every Home child is given a new chance in life in this country and hankering for past associations is not to be encouraged. Letters of that kind are thrown away.” She reached out for her tea, which was on the desk, but Lisa stayed her wrist, determined to see this issue through.