Lisa noted that Eric assumed nothing had come from Jarrell himself. “Very little, Eric. Only that she was forced by her parents to marry Jarrell, evidently because she was already pregnant. I can’t say I think much of how he has kept his side of the bargain. Why, is there something worse?”
Eric rubbed his face and yawned compulsively. “Isn’t that bad enough?” he asked. “All right, yes I’ll marry you — even if you aren’t pregnant. How’s that?”
“How romantic!” Lisa exclaimed mockingly. “I’ll treasure your proposal always.”
“Oh hell, Lisa, you know what I meant. And yes, I do want to marry you. God knows I haven’t been any angel, but I never said I wanted to marry anyone before. If I have to marry you to have you, then marry you I will.”
“And if you hadn’t had to marry me in order to have me?” Her eyes glinted dangerously.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Eric said desperately. “Look, I’m tired and still a little drunk. This is no time to discuss anything, least of all marriage.”
“Well, there is something you ought to know before we do get around to discussing marriage or anything else. I may be a farm girl, but farm girls have feelings, too. And they can also say no. I was delighted but also very surprised that you seemed as seriously attracted to me as I was to you. Farm girls and gentlemen don’t fall in love with each other, and they certainly don’t get married. I’ll be honest and tell you that I don’t know how I feel about you anymore. I know that nothing could make me kiss you right now since I know only too well where your lips have been the last several days.”
“Do you now?” He laughed mirthlessly. “Listen to me, Lisa. You’re just as hot blooded as I am, I know that. But you’re a woman, and a woman doesn’t have a man’s needs.”
“That’s the second time today I’ve heard that excuse for you, and I was skeptical even the first time. Dr. Jarrell doesn’t seem to have to go haring off to Burresford all the time.”
“Mark is a cold fish, he always was. But speaking of Mark, I didn’t have to marry Cynthia because she was pregnant. Would you have preferred that?” Eric was getting angry.
“If you can’t see anything wrong in going to Burresford, then we have little to say to each other. I wouldn’t want to marry you, knowing who I had to share you with, and you would hardly want to be tied down to one woman.”
“You women are all the same, you want exclusive ownership. Well, I won’t be owned by anyone. I told you and I mean it that one day I would find a woman who wanted to live as much as I do, and a woman like that wouldn’t even care about marriage. I thought perhaps you might be someone I wanted to share everything with just because you weren’t a mealy-mouthed gentlewoman, but I see you’re like all the others. I don’t suppose I could expect a girl from a farm to be any different. Even the whores in Burresford squabble over the favors of certain clients,” he added rather cruelly.
“And I’ve no doubt that you are one of those favored clients who get squabbled over,” Lisa snapped.
“Well at least they are honest,” Eric retorted. “To a woman, getting married means that she is trading her fair body for being taken care of the rest of her life. The whores admit what they are trading their bodies for.”
“I never said I’d marry you or would ever think of marrying you.” Lisa was furious. “I’m not interested in trading my fair body for anything you could offer me.”
“Good!” Eric snapped. “Then at least we can agree on something. Because I wouldn’t have you now if you begged me.”
“I wonder if you know how much of yourself you’re revealing, Eric. I can see that you have a wonderful vision of me on my knees begging you to forgive me. Have you had many girls who did that?”
“When I think how close I came to chaining myself to an ill-tempered vixen like you, it makes my blood run cold.” Eric was standing again, apparently revived by the heat of the quarrel.
“No colder than mine when I think of what life would have been like with a — a womanizer like you. I suppose every time we had a disagreement, you would be off to Burresford.”
“I know many men who keep mistresses instead, often for years. They’re the greatest argument against getting married I can think of.”
“Well, I’d just as soon be a mistress myself as be a slave to some lout who would treat me like dirt.”
Unaccountably Eric began to laugh, his laughter growing until he had to sit down again and wipe his eyes. “So what are we quarrelling about?” he said at last. “You be my mistress, darling, and we’ll be together for always.” Lisa stifled a giggle, then couldn’t help herself and burst out laughing as well. “And will you keep me in a love nest, as the newspapers say, and drape me with jewelry and furs, and shock everyone by taking me to the opera?”
“We’ll go to Monte Carlo, where you’ll bring me luck at baccarat, and I promise at least once a week to drink champagne out of your slipper.”
“We’ll have a steam yacht and invite the Prince of Wales, who’ll come incognito with us to the south of Spain.”
“We’ll have a permanent luxury suite on the Great Eastern, and hunt tigers with the Rajah.”
They were holding hands and laughing together. “We’ll explore Africa with Stanley, and they’ll name a waterfall for you.”
“We’ll make a balloon flight to China.”
“And take a troika to Siberia.”
“And ride camels to see the Sphinx in Egypt.”
A voice of authority intruded on their joking. “Dammit, I don’t care where you go, but I want to go to sleep.” Jarrell sounded very out of sorts.
With a final giggle, they tiptoed up the stairs and went to their separate rooms. Cynthia was snoring gently, but Tommy came up to her and rubbed against her legs. She patted him absently and went over to lean on the window sill. The moon cast a cold, brilliant light on the little valley below the stables and the steep slopes beyond. The laughing was well enough and good, she thought, but she was afraid now to trust herself to him. Like a child, always like a child, he greedily reached out for whatever he wanted. She wondered if he was awake, thinking of her and perhaps regretting having made up the quarrel. No, in his condition he would have been lucky even just to have gotten undressed before getting to bed.
She wondered if the rabbits were dancing tonight in the moonlit clearing, and wished she were out running with Toby again, leaving all these emotional tumults behind.
9
February gave way to March and March to April. Lisa began to feel as if she had always lived at Hartsite. Eric had taken to treating her like another sister except for sporadic, almost dutiful attempts at seduction that were easy to turn aside. Jarrell had all but ceased trying to nag her memory back, convinced as he was that Uncle Henry’s attempt on her virtue had caused the block, in which case only coincidence had led to her fleeing the shop at that particular time. Cynthia had not only managed to teach Toby to handle money reliably, but by means of some illustrated school books had taught him rudimentary reading as well. She had dropped from somewhere like seventeen stone to twelve, which left her too heavy by far, but no longer a freak. Lisa thought that if she ever got down to her proper weight, she would be a very handsome woman. Nothing had been heard from the police at all.
“Today is the day,” Lisa said to Cynthia. “You’ll have your first ride on a horse in years.”
“Do you really think I can? What if I fall off? I never rode much before, you know. Oh, I’m sure I’m not going to like it.” She dithered on and on, growing more nervous by the minute.
“Do Toby and I have to haul you down the stairs again the way we used to? Do come on, Cynthia, or it’ll be dinner time before you’re even started.”
On the way down to the stables Lisa marvelled anew at the miracle that had been wrought on the garden by spring and Hallie’s boy Fred under the supervision of Mrs. Stephens. The new lawn stretched smoothly green in the back of the house down to clumps of late blooming jonquils and daffodils, as
ters, azaleas, and yellow day lilies. The rose garden flourished with an astounding display of blooms of every hue of red and pink and white and yellow. There had been nearly two weeks of almost solid cold rain, but for three days the weather had decided to turn to spring, and the air was soft and warm as fresh milk. Birds of all kinds winged from the two giant oaks to the elm and back, many of them carrying bits of sticks and moss for their nests. The hills beyond were tinged with the pale green of new growth on the heather, and the gorse blazed yellow on the nearer hills.
Down at the stables, Toby was just finishing saddling Twinkle. He gave a final haul at the cinch, handed the reins to Lisa, and led out his own Samson, already saddled. The large draft horse made a pigmy of little Twinkle, and it hardly seemed fair that both horses would be carrying almost the same weight. Next Toby brought a box, which he set down near the stirrup on Twinkle’s near side.
“All right, Cynthia,” Lisa said, “here you go.”
She half-pushed Cynthia up to stand on the box, then held Twinkle’s head by the bit while Toby helped Cynthia on. He went over and hopped on Samson. Lisa snapped a lead rein on Twinkle’s bridle and handed it to Toby.
“A half hour will do for a beginning, Toby. It’s not fair to Mrs. Jarrell or Twinkle, either, to make it longer.”
“You mean you’re not coming with us?” Cynthia asked, alarmed.
“Of course not,” Lisa replied cheerfully. “Toby’s a better rider than I am, and this is really tit for tat, you know. You taught him his numbers and letters, and now it’s his turn to teach you to ride.”
Toby clucked at Samson, and they set off across the stable yard and up the drive toward the house, Cynthia wailing, “I’m going to fall off, I know I am! Toby, please go slower,” though they were barely going at a walk.
“Will wonders never cease?” came Jarrell’s voice from beside her as they watched the mismatched pair disappear around the side of the house. “I’m leaving for London this afternoon, and I want to talk to you before I go.”
“All right,” Lisa said. “Where do you want to talk?”
“Let’s go to my study where we won’t be interrupted.” As they walked up toward the house, Lisa said, “There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time. Why is your sister being so nice to me now? I don’t know that any more than I know why she disliked me so in the beginning.”
“You’ve got to understand that Carrie has had a very disappointing life. Her husband drinking and then committing suicide were terrible blows to her. Eric has been all she’s had to hang onto, and then it began to look as if you and he were going to get married!”
“But to hang onto your brother for seven and more years? Surely that’s not natural?”
“After the terrible experience she had, she is to say what is or isn’t natural? Now that Eric doesn’t seem to be serious about you, she doesn’t feel threatened anymore.”
“That can’t be good for her, though, to be locked up in this house with her only real company a brother who spends half his time in Burresford.”
“Good or not, it’s what she’s chosen. A few years back I tried to introduce her to some eligible men, but she would have none of them. One day the scars will heal and she’ll be off to London like a shot.”
They walked into the study, and Lisa looked around her curiously. The study was considered Jarrell’s private territory, to be entered only by Mrs. Lewis. Jarrell had even been picking out Lisa’s books for her rather than letting her browse through the floor-to-ceiling book cases that contained a bewildering array of titles, from novels to history to medical texts.
“Before I forget,” he said as they entered, “here are a few books to tide you and Cynthia over until I get back. Herodotus is one of the most entertaining liars I know of, and I’d forgotten that Ellen even had Castle of Otranto, which ought to please Cynthia no end.”
“Don’t you think Cynthia’s coming along splendidly?” Lisa asked hopefully. “You know, in a month or so she’ll start being a very pretty woman.”
“Pretty, maybe, but spoiled and mindless. But I didn’t get you in here to talk about Cynthia.”
Lisa sighed. Perhaps she was being too optimistic about a possible change of heart on Jarrell’s part. It was the first time he had mentioned his first wife. Obviously she liked romantic novels, too, but Lisa wagered he didn’t think of her as mindless. What did he have against Cynthia? He’d cared enough about her once to marry her, for somehow the idea of Jarrell’s being forced into a marriage under any circumstances didn’t ring true.
“What I wanted to discuss with you was the operation on your hand.”
Involuntarily Lisa thrust it into the folds of her dress.
“No, don’t hide it. Remember? You weren’t going to do that anymore.”
“Wh — when are you going to operate?”
“I’m going to London to get my instruments and some other things I’ll need. We can set up a temporary operating room upstairs, and Mrs. Lewis will of course be here to assist. I should be back in a month or two. On the way through Burresford I’ll stop off and see that inspector. What was his name? Wren?”
Lisa nodded. The idea of the operation had been all right as long as it was in some distant future. She wanted to tell Jarrell to forget it, that she didn’t care if she could pick up things with her hand or not. And yet she knew what it meant to him, to decide to do it after hiding all this time. She wondered if surgeons grew rusty with disuse, and shuddered.
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know how much I can do until I free the fingers and find out what damage the burn really did, how deep it went. Your thumb I can almost assure you will be usable — your fingers we’ll have to see. What I hope to do at first is to free your thumb and fingers from the adhesions caused by the burned flesh growing together. That way you’ll at least be able to hold and pick up most things. From there on, whatever extension we can get on the fingers by exercise will be all to the good, but L don’t think there will be much. It was criminal to let that hand go like that.”
“Dr. Jarrell, I want you to know how much I appreciate what you’re doing — but I’m scared to death,” she confessed.
His face softened and he took her bad hand in both of his. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done for this household, I wonder? We were all in our own way sulking because things had gone wrong with us. They’re far from right yet and perhaps never will be, but you’ve given Cynthia and me — and because of me Mrs. Lewis — hope. You even got beneath Eric’s tough hide for a while at least.
“Before Cynthia even had the baby, I begged her to move to London, and told her I would pay willingly for any reasonable expenses she would have there. At least she could have found a lover and led a more normal life. But she refused, and preferred to try to make everyone here sorry for her.”
“I just get to thinking you’re human, and then all of a sudden you come out with something incredibly callous. Take a lover indeed! You act as if she could turn her affections on and off like a faucet, that all she needs is some male in bed with her and she’ll live happily ever after.”
“I was only being practical,” he protested, then smiled. “But now that you’re angry, you aren’t frightened anymore, are you?”
“You’re hateful! I read in the newspaper that some famous doctor said all surgeons were sadists, and now I believe it.”
Jarrell was amused. “I can assure you that was said by an internist, not a surgeon. In any event, I’m taking that long in London because I want to do some operating again. If I find I’ve really forgotten how, I’ll take you to London and see that the operation is done by someone good.”
“You sound as if you’re quite sure you won’t have to.”
He looked her straight in the eyes and said with an intensity she had never seen in him before, “I can no longer imagine it possible that I cannot operate well, or I would never have gone this far. I didn’t bring my instruments with me when I quit because I was afraid I
might cut my throat with them. Every time I pick up a knife or fork, I suffer because it isn’t a scalpel. Every time I think of all the maimed people in the world, I ache because I am no longer attempting to make the impossible possible for them. A good surgeon has to have a calling as for the priesthood, and the only thing that could ever have made me stop was doubting that I was good enough. Well, I’ll be good enough again or — ” He stopped, frowning.
“Or what?”
“I was going to say, or die in the attempt, but that sounds a bit dramatic, doesn’t it?”
She put a hand on his arm. “You’re still up there with the best of them; I know it.” For a moment before he turned away and put the desk between them, she thought she felt his arm tremble like a horse that wants to run but is held.
“I hope you’re right,” he said in a strangled voice and began to stack papers lying on the desk.
She was up in Cynthia’s room straightening up for her return from the riding lesson when Mrs. Stephens walked in without knocking.
“I wanted to ask you, my dear, if there isn’t something we can bring you from London.” Her face was bland, the grey eyes giving away nothing.
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Lisa replied, surprised. “I would like another divided skirt to ride in, and three dresses for country wear, a pair of riding boots, and a warm cloak. I’ll make a list for you and give you the dress I wore when I came to measure by. I can pay you from the money Dr. Jarrell gave me from the sale of the farm animals.”
“Give me some color preferences as well, if you like,” Mrs. Stephens added. “We are all so grateful for what you’re doing for Cynthia. We all thought that she was beyond redemption. I am sorry that things didn’t work out with Eric, but really for your sake it’s better this way.”
She didn’t sound at all sorry, Lisa thought, but she had to admit that it was kind of her to offer to take the trouble to buy what she needed. “I do thank you,” she said, ignoring the remark about Eric. “I should give you an old dress of Cynthia’s as well. She still has lots of clothes from when she was thin, but I’m afraid she might think them terribly out of style. But of course that’s up to Dr. Jarrell, isn’t it?” she added.
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