Lisa

by Joan Van Every Frost

  “What’s so amusing?” he asked indignantly.

  “Oh, only a vision came to my mind of the dignified Dr. Jarrell drunk in a tavern in Burresford with a whore on each knee. Every time I want to kill you, Eric Jarrell, you end up making me laugh instead.”

  He grinned. “I must admit, you’ve got a point.” Then he sobered suddenly. “Lisa, let’s go away together — now, tonight. Things are breaking up here, dreadful things are coming, I know it. Come with me, please.” His grip on her hand tightened so much it hurt her, his grey eyes had gone black.

  “Eric, you know I can’t do that. And I wouldn’t if I could. What happened to your idea that we shouldn’t see much of each other for a while?”

  His expression was sad. “You’re right. We’re all so bound up with each other we’re like Laocoon’s statue — you’ve seen pictures of it surely, the one where the old man and his sons are trying to get free of the serpent’s coils? Well, my whole life had been like that, becoming entangled with people I shouldn’t. And you, the one I should get entangled with, I can’t.” He paused, so openly wondering if he should go on that Lisa said nothing. “Whatever happens, don’t think too badly of me. Remember that I’ve loved you as much as I was able.”

  He kissed her mouth briefly and was gone. When Lisa looked up toward the house, she could see Cynthia standing in her window, but it was too far away to tell what her expression was. “Not a pleasant one, I imagine,” she remarked to Tommy, who had taken Eric’s place on the bench and was licking his paw. Was it true that it was she and she alone who had stirred up all of the crosscurrents that were taking over the house?

  That evening she told Teddy more stories and found herself very sorry that he would be leaving the next day. When his parents had kissed him goodnight and retired, she turned off the lamps and read for a while by candlelight. After a while she doused that as well, and lay there thinking more about what she should do. The recent lack of exercise when she was used to riding daily had made sleep elusive, and she got up finally and looked out the window toward the stables, sorry that she couldn’t get Toby and go for a run. The moonlight fell strong across the garden in the foreground, silvering the green turf and bright flowers into a moon landscape where there was no color at all, only light and shadow. At the edge of one of the shadows she saw something move, a moving figure whose red gold hair was also shorn of color. He took someone in his arms and put his head down to her shadowed face for a long, long time. Then slowly they moved back into the shadows and disappeared for good. A small spark sputtering deep within that Lisa hadn’t even been aware of, made its presence known only by dying entirely.

  In every life there are crossroads: times when a decision one way or another will determine a whole course of living; a decision to marry or not to marry a particular person, a decision to accept work in one place or another, a decision to leave home or to stay there. The Burresford crossroad of Lisa’s life was interrupted by her being run down by Eric’s horse, which led to another crossroad: Hartsite. Relentlessly her decisions were being limited to those that drove her away from her beloved moor and heath country. The flame-colored rider of her dream had galloped past and disappeared into the distance, leaving nothing to keep her here. She was sure now that if she went to Burresford with Toby, she could either find a place with Teddy’s parents or else with someone they knew; Burresford had its share of middle class families in manufacturing. Though she hated the town, she had sense enough to know that the Burresford of Teddy’s family was a far different place from the Burresford of Henry’s and Tatty’s shop.

  Should Carrie Stephens miraculously be carted off to London somehow, Lisa would go to nursing school, and her life would take a completely different turn. Whether she had the calling Jarrell spoke of, she didn’t know, but somehow she knew she could be good at easing those in need. She should have felt happy and secure to have these alternatives; girls with no money and no family seldom did, not to mention her physical deformity. There was really nothing left for her here, yet the idea of leaving for a new life made her heart turn to lead. Was this country bred so thoroughly into the very marrow of her bones? She stared unseeing at the now empty pattern of light and shadow under the trees below.

  The next morning after breakfast and the painful episode of changing Teddy’s dressings, the Lawtons made ready to leave. Lisa helped them get their things together while reassuring Teddy that she would surely come to see him soon.

  “You promised, you promised,” he kept reminding her, as if the promise would somehow keep them from being separated at all.

  “Yes, I promise,” she would answer, tousling his hair.

  At last the carriage was all loaded, the bay horses stamping impatiently in their harness. Lisa reached up and kissed Teddy, hugging him close for a moment.

  “Remember,” Mrs. Lawton told her, “come to us first if you should ever change your mind about nursing. Dr. Jarrell gave you a really outstanding recommendation.”

  Lisa looked at Jarrell in surprise, but he was bidding Mrs. Lawton goodbye. He shook Teddy’s hand solemnly. “Be a big boy and do your exercises, Teddy. I’ll expect to see you and Jester doing point to points soon.” His face held such an open tender look that Lisa could not bear to go on watching him.

  “Goodbye! Goodbye!” And they were gone, down the drive and onto the Dunwiddleston road, the bays stepping out eagerly after their three day rest and everyone waving until they were out of sight. Lisa felt a sudden letdown, the rest of the day to get through and nothing to do with it. She turned, drooping a little, and would have mounted the steps to the front door.

  Jarrell put a hand on her arm. “I feel the same. Come riding and we’ll cheer each other up.”

  She was going to say no, still raw after all this time from the thought of a dead child and a betrayed childlike woman. But she heard then the double clatter of hoofs, and past them cantered Cynthia on her new sidesaddle she said was so much more ladylike than riding astride. She looked smug as a cat that has just licked cream from its whiskers. Eric was on Christian, the big red stallion dwarfing little Twinkle, who had to scurry to keep even with Christian’s canter. They waved gaily at the two standing on the front steps and swept on out the drive.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” muttered Jarrell, watching them go.

  “Yes, doctor, I’d like to go riding,” Lisa said slowly, also watching them out of sight.

  When they reached the stables later, Toby was taking advantage of the horses’ absence to clean out Twinkle’s and Christian’s stalls. The stalls used by the Lawtons’ visiting horses were already cleaned and raked, the used straw piled in the wagon drawn by a bored Samson. He swung a last forkful from Christian’s stall up on the wagon and leaned the pitchfork against the wall prior to saddling their horses.

  “ ’Appen Master Jarrell lost ’is cufflink,” Toby said, handing the gold link with tiny bright green stones set in a circle to Jarrell.

  “That’s strange. I never noticed him with any like these. Dreadful taste,” Jarrell said, looking at the cufflink. It was rather garish. “Where did you find it?”

  “In Christian’s stall yonder. Master Jarrell often do be in there making up ter the horse.”

  Jarrell carelessly dropped it into his pocket. “I’ll see he gets it. Thank you, Toby.”

  Without discussing it, they both turned away from the house and rode down the valley behind the stables, passing the pool made from the dammed up little stream.

  “Do you ever bathe in the pool?” she asked. Right now it looked rather inviting, with the summer sunlight striking down into its green depths. She thought of how she and Toby used to wallow and splash about in the rain pools and smiled.

  Jarrell gave a mock shiver. “It’s ice cold, even in summer. If I’m going to freeze to death in the water, it’ll be the ocean where there are waves to dive through and beaches to walk on and tidepools to look at. Eric used to swim here, though. He claimed it was good for the circulation.”


  “It’s a shame Hartsite isn’t nearer the sea. You love it, don’t you?”

  “I’ve all but forgotten. We used to take a house by the sea in Cornwall during the summers when I was growing up. But when my father died, we didn’t anymore. My stepmother hated the isolation, and Carrie hated the water, as she did so many things. Strange that she and Eric were so close and yet so apart in what they liked.”

  “What else does she hate?” She made Dancer put his nose up to a bush he had just shied at.

  “Dogs, for one. That’s why we don’t have any. I can’t say I blame her for that, though. She was rather badly bitten when she was a child. The owner was in a rage when my father told him he’d killed the dog — he said Carrie had been teasing it through the fence with a pointed stick, and the animal had finally managed to leap the fence to get at her. That was in Cornwall, too.”

  Lisa changed the subject. “Dr. Jarrell, if I leave in September to go into nursing, what’s to prevent more trouble with Toby?”

  “Me,” he said grimly.

  “But you won’t be here all the time.”

  “If I go to London, she will have to go, too.” Neither of them called her by name.

  “That’s quite a bit of trouble you go to for a simpleminded boy.”

  “I wouldn’t go to it only I agree with you that Carrie should be in London. We’ve all sulked in our tents long enough.”

  “Why did you believe me and not your own sister?”

  “I didn’t necessarily disbelieve her. Toby might well have tried to make love to her, but wittingly or unwittingly she led him to it. As for you, I saw you with him. That was a child you were comforting, not a lover. What did Carrie mean by you and Toby going out on the moor at night?”

  “Just what I said. Ever since we were children, we’ve run on the moor. We used to snare rabbits and shoot birds with slings for our families’ tables. When we were here, we would go out at night betimes because we both had things we had to do during the day.” Her voice softened. “Once we saw the rabbits dancing in the moonlight — I wouldn’t let Toby kill any of them.”

  Jarrell laughed fondly. “Lisa, you’re an incurable romanticist. I hope nothing ever disillusions you.”

  “Perhaps that’s why I lose my memory, to preserve my vision of the world,” she said slowly, thinking hard. “It must be a cold and lonely way to go, always to see the ugliness and cruelty so clearly that you forget there is love and warmth and kindness and help for pain.”

  “That last is Matthew Arnold’s phrase:

  ... the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”

  “How can one believe that and go on living?” she demanded.

  “Oh, one goes on living, all right,” he said, “but with rage and bitterness. There was a time when I believed as you do, but that was a long, long time ago, so very long ago it seems like a dream I once had.”

  “So you’ve given up, have you? Well, perhaps you’ll never be hurt or disappointed again, doctor, but you’ll never know joy again, either. A strange kind of love you must have had, that left you weaker, not stronger, to face hurt.”

  “You know nothing about it, you little fool,” he snapped, stung in spite of himself. “You’ve never been really hurt; you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I haven’t, it’s true, but I’ve lived with those who have. Aunt Sarah buried seven of eight children and the eighth ran off when he was just a lad. The women who came into the shop wanting something to abort them, their husbands they had loved so much as handsome lads now besotted, violent monsters, their children working in the mill, don’t you think they knew what hurt was? Yet few of them were bitter. They took the days one by one and squeezed out what laughter they could find, never whining. The poor are usually brave; they have learned to expect so little.”

  Jarrell looked at her thoughtfully. “We shall never reconcile our differing views, shall we?”

  “Never is a long time.”

  “You’re right, it is.” He put Cleo into a canter and turned suddenly toward one of the woven heather fences that abounded on the lower slopes. She gathered and sailed over it easily.

  Lisa followed close behind. She felt Dancer bunch and then the glorious powerful thrust as he left the ground. But something was wrong, he was falling sideways — no, not he, she was, saddle and all. “Lisa!” She heard Jarrell’s shocked cry and then felt herself hit the heather barrier and bounce off onto the hard ground with a physical shock that numbed her briefly. She was still half on the saddle, her wind knocked completely out of her. She started to try to struggle to her feet, but Jarrell’s hands held her firmly down.

  “Lie still, Lisa. I want to see if anything’s broken. Do you hurt anywhere?” The dark, gold-flecked eyes near her face showed concern.

  When she could get her breath, she said, “All over, that’s where I hurt.”

  Gently he brushed some dirt from her cheek. “Just a scrape.” He felt her arms and looked carefully at the healing hand, also dirty and scraped, but unhurt. Then he carefully lifted the saddle away from her and felt her legs. “Can you move them?” She obediently raised first one and then the other. “Thank God, you got away with a few scrapes and bruises. I saw you go off and I — ” He broke off and stood, but not before she had seen a tremor in his hands as he closed them into fists.

  “What happened?” she asked, as he helped her up.

  “I can’t think. The whole saddle came off.” He turned the saddle over and examined the cinch, which was fastened to the saddle by two sturdy leather straps and buckles. Both straps had been torn across, leaving the pieces still fastened in the buckles. “Now why would they both give at once? They must have gotten cracked; old leather sometimes does that. I’ll have Toby’s head for not checking the equipment when he cleans it.”

  “No, look,” and she turned up the leather where the straps had parted. The break was clean, the lighter color of the break just as thick across as the cut ends. “If it had been cracked, this would have been thinner here at the break and discolored.”

  “It was cut,” he said in an unbelieving voice. “Deliberately cut. If you hadn’t had your fall broken by that fence, if the fence had been a wall, you might have been killed ... ”

  They stood looking at each other speechless while wild surmises flickered through their minds.

  When they returned, Lisa riding bareback and Jarrell carrying the ailing saddle, Toby was grooming Pearl in the stable yard, combing out her long mane and braiding it up in rosettes. Jarrell threw the saddle to him without a word. Toby stood holding it helplessly for a moment, then as if he didn’t want to see what he was going to look for, he reluctantly picked up the end of the cinch and looked at the broken ends of strap still in the buckles.

  “It broke?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, Toby,” Jarrell told him, “it was cut. What do you know about it? Who’s been down here at the stables lately?”

  Toby’s worried blue eyes turned to Lisa. “Go on, Toby,” she encouraged him gently. “Tell him.”

  He pointed first at Jarrell. “ ’Im.” then he recited slowly, “Master Jarrell, Mrs. Jarrell, and Fred.”

  “Fred?” Jarrell asked, puzzled.

  “Yessir.’E do be getting manure fer the garden.”

  “How about Mrs. Stephens?” Lisa asked.

  Toby got a wild, trapped look on his face. “No’m, she no be ’ere since — since — ” His voice limped to a halt.

  “Since she used to come to see you,” she finished for him.

  He nodded miserably.

  “Could anyone else have come?” Jarrell persisted.

  Toby shrugged.

  “Anyone could have come, doctor,” Lisa said. “They had only to wait until he was schooling Pearl or asleep, and an army could have come.
That’s what happens when you have no dogs,” she added unkindly.

  “Well, don’t say anything, either of you,” Jarrell commanded. “The only chance we have of finding who did it is to pretend we think it was an accident.”

  Dinner that night was an ordeal for Lisa. Jarrell brooded at the head of the table, and she found herself watching all of them, hoping to get a hint. The talk flurried around the accident, Carrie Stephens commenting acidly that they ought to fire Toby for negligence, and Cynthia and Eric grinning at each other sickeningly and recounting anecdotes of people they had heard of in the past who had had similar accidents.

  “So there she was with the horse running away with her, the hounds fooled by a doubled scent a mile or so back, an enormous hedge and gate coming up, and the fox practically under the horse’s hoofs.” Eric took a quick swallow of wine and went on, “The horse suddenly refused at the last minute, the saddle girth broke, and Mrs. Ponsonby and her sidesaddle both took the jump without the horse and landed squarely on the poor fox. By unanimous acclaim, they gave her the whole fox, brush and all, for mounting as a trophy of an unforgettable hunt.”

  Cynthia giggled, a little tiddly on the wine as well as on Eric, Carrie Stephens and Mrs. Lewis laughed, and Lisa and Jarrell smiled. Had Eric been the one to cut the girth, it seemed impossible that he could joke like this.

  “Oh, Eric, tell them the one you told me about the French count and the steeplechase.” Cynthia was positively simpering, and Lisa wondered how Eric could stand her; she was beginning to understand Jarrell’s feeling. Cynthia was, however, evidently an appreciative audience for Eric’s stories, and perhaps she had proven a sympathetic one for Jarrell’s surgical histories in an earlier time. Mrs. Lewis caught Lisa’s eye and rolled hers up humorously. Lisa knew perfectly well that Mrs. Lewis was saying, “What did I tell you? He never stays with one girl long.”

  “By the way, Eric,” Jarrell broke in before the story could proceed, “Here’s a cufflink of yours Toby found down at the stables.” He held out the gold and green piece of jewelry.

  “But that’s not mine,” Eric protested.