Heart of the Lonely Exile

by BJ Hoff

  Through a long sleeping,

  In the heart of age

  A child woke weeping….

  The darkness thickened

  Upon him creeping,

  In the heart of age

  A child lay weeping.

  GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (A.E.) (1867–1935)

  Annie sat up, vaguely aware of the noise that awakened her. A peculiar noise, something not quite…right.

  When Sandemon hadn’t returned after more than an hour, she had fallen asleep, a book still in her hand. Now, glancing around the dimly lit bedroom, she pushed the book aside, waiting for her eyes to focus.

  The candles had burned low. Outside she heard the rumbling of distant thunder, the soft patter of rain.

  Was that what she’d heard, then? Only an approaching storm?

  Still drowsy, she lay unmoving, listening. She thought there had been a crash—had it been thunder?—just before she’d awakened.

  Perhaps she had a dream. Rolling over, she lay listening to the rain. She had always found it a mournful sound, the falling rain, and yet it lulled her, like a sad song that would not be ignored.

  There came a muffled cry, like someone weeping. Annie sat up. Then she heard a thud. Inside the house, or out? She could not tell.

  Now a banging—louder this time. Outside, she thought.

  Leaping from the bed, she ran to the window, pushed the draperies roughly aside. The window was swollen, and she had to force it open.

  On the rain-heavy wind came a loud neighing and the scream of a terrified horse. Something was wrong in the stables! Sandemon! Sandemon and pilgrim!

  Leaving the window open, Annie ran from the room. In the hall, she stopped, frowning. Strange sounds were coming from the Fitzgerald’s bedroom. Muffled noises, like someone talking to himself. Then a loud thump, and still another.

  Annie’s eyes darted from hallway to the stairs, then back to the Seanchai’s room. She had promised Sandemon to stay near, in case the Seanchai needed help. She must see to him first!

  Sprinting down the hall, she charged into the Seanchai’s bedroom. With her hand still gripping the doorknob, she stopped, her eyes widening in horror.

  The room reeked of whiskey. The Seanchai was on the floor, crouched and trying to pull himself up into the wheelchair. A pool of whiskey and broken glass spread across the carpet in front of the desk.

  With both hands braced on the seat of the wheelchair, the Seanchai stared at her from the floor. His eyes were red, his copper hair wild, his clothes disheveled.

  “Annie!” He gave a short laugh of surprise. “Thanks be! Help me, lass! Hold the chair so I can get into it!”

  He was drunk!

  Annie’s legs seemed sunk in lead. She could not move, could only gape at the man on the floor in growing terror. He was sprawled between bed and chair like a common drunk!

  Like Tully!

  “Annie? It’s all right, lass; just hold the chair. I didn’t fall, I was just—”

  Drunk…drunk, like Tully…his clothes in disarray. She couldn’t go near him…he was drunk…he would hurt her.…Repulsed by the sight of him clawing at the wheelchair, sickened by the familiar sweet and smoky smell of the whiskey, Annie fled from the room, screaming.

  The Seanchai’s cries for help echoed behind her as she went flying down the stairs and out of the house.

  “Annie! Come back! Come back, Annie!”

  She ran as hard as she could to the stables, screaming all the way across the grounds. A cold rain pelted against her face, and a bolt of lightning lit up the sky with an eerie blue light.

  “Sand-Man!” She must find Sandemon! He would help her! He would keep the drunken Seanchai away from her!

  Tearing into the stable, she saw Pilgrim first. The big red stallion was carrying on something fierce, screaming and pounding the floor of his stall in a fury.

  She shushed him, but didn’t tarry. Her eyes went to the empty stall where Old Scratch was supposed to be.

  He was gone! Heading toward the stall, Annie stopped, frozen by the sight of Sandemon lying on the floor of the stable.

  Annie screamed his name and pitched toward him. Dropping down on her knees, she began to shake him. The black man’s eyes were closed. A trickle of blood wound its way down the side of his face.

  Sobbing, Annie continued to shake him, calling his name. “Sand-Man! Wake up! Wake up, Sand-Man! I need you!”

  Somebody was shaking him, screaming his name. Groaning, Sandemon opened his eyes. The world was spinning crazily. He put out a hand to stop the spinning. “Sand-Man!”

  The child was screeching at him, crying and tugging at his arm. “Oh, Sand-Man! You’re not dead! Thanks be to God…you’re not dead at all!”

  He moaned, squeezed his eyes shut against the noise of frightened horses and the child’s shrill cries.

  “Hush, child! Of course, I’m not dead! Hush, now, or I will die from all the racket!” He caught her hand. “And stop shaking me, foolish child!”

  Sandemon’s eyes began to focus. The spinning slowed. His ribs hurt with each breath, and his head felt as if it might explode. He tried to push himself up, but the stable tilted in front of him.

  Staring at the girl, he put a hand to his head. “What is wrong with you, child? Stop that screeching! I’m all right, didn’t I tell you? At least I will be, once my head clears.”

  She was sobbing uncontrollably, gripping his arm. “What happened to you, Sand-Man? I thought you were dead! Old Scratch is gone, and Pilgrim was in a panic! And the Seanchai is drunk, and—”

  Sandemon caught her by the forearm. “What about the Seanchai? What are you saying, child? Is he all right?”

  She stared at him, then wailed, “He’s drunk! On the floor! He tried to make me help him, but I couldn’t—”

  Sandemon stared at the child with rising dread. “On the floor—” Rolling to his side, he grasped her arm. “Help me up!” Clambering to his feet, he swayed, ducked his head down until he was steady.

  “We must get to the house at once! Come, child! Hurry!”

  In his room, Morgan had finally managed to get himself into the wheelchair. Avoiding the broken glass and the pool of whiskey, he was wheeling toward the door when it crashed open.

  Sandemon stood framed in the dim light of the hallway. But a different Sandemon, this. His face streaked with dirt and sweat, a cut over one eye, his purple shirt smudged with dust.

  “Are you all right, Seanchai?” The black man’s gaze jerked from Morgan to the breakage on the floor. “What happened?”

  “Bit of an accident, is all!” Morgan snapped. “What’s wrong with you? What’s all the commotion?” He stopped, seeing Annie lurking behind him. She was staring at Morgan, her eyes filled with fear and disgust.

  “Annie?” Morgan reached out a hand to her. “Come here, lass. What’s gotten into you?”

  The child hung back, dark eyes flashing.

  “You’re not hurt, Seanchai?” asked Sandemon.

  Morgan looked at him, “Hurt? No, I’m not hurt, why—” Morgan’s gaze went back to the child, and understanding began to dawn. “I was trying to get back into the chair when she found me. It must have frightened her, seeing me so…” He let his words drift off, unfinished in his humiliation.

  Sandemon scrutinized him for a moment. “You’re not drunk,” he murmured, then blinked, his eyes taking on a hooded expression as if he knew he had spoken out of turn.

  “No, I am not drunk!” Morgan shot back. “I haven’t even had a drink!”

  He followed the black man’s gaze as it traveled to the broken glass and the whiskey on the floor.

  “I threw it!” Morgan snarled.

  “You threw it?” Sandemon repeated skeptically.

  “Aye, I threw it,” Morgan repeated, softening his tone. Sagging in the chair, he added, “I’ll not have it in the house any longer.”

  Looking up, he saw something glint in the black man’s eyes.

  The two men exchanged a long look
. Then Sandemon gave a nod and turned to the girl for a moment. “Go back to your room, child,” he said softly. “I will come to you as soon as I have cleaned up in here.”

  Annie didn’t move. Her dark eyes went from Sandemon to Morgan, then back to the black man.

  “Go with her,” Morgan said quickly. “You can clean this up later.”

  “Seanchai—”

  Morgan shook his head, made a dismissing motion with his hand. “It’s all right. Take care of the child.”

  Sandemon gave a nod, then put an arm around Annie’s shoulder. “Come, child,” he said gently. “Everything will be all right now. Come with Sandemon. You must rest.”

  After bandaging the cut over his eye, Sandemon returned. He started right in cleaning up the whiskey and broken glass.

  “Is she all right?” Morgan asked tightly, staring out the window into the rain-veiled night.

  “She will be. She was almost asleep when I left her.” Sandemon’s voice was muffled by a drumroll of thunder.

  Lightning streaked over the stables and bounced toward the stream. Morgan wheeled the chair around from the window and sat watching Sandemon.

  “What happened—why did she tear out of here as she did? She seemed frightened out of her wits!”

  Sandemon, poised on one knee with rag in hand, looked up. Finally, he gave a weary sigh and got to his feet. “This will wait, I suppose. First I will tell you about Annie. I should have told you sooner.” He paused, giving Morgan a hard look. “Perhaps then you will tell me why you threw the whiskey across the room instead of drinking it, hmm?”

  They talked for a long time. After Morgan had heard the story about Annie’s drunken stepfather and uncaring mother, he held his head between his hands, grieved beyond words.

  “No wonder she ran…no wonder.” He looked up at the black man, who now sat at the desk across from him. “I have been the great fool, Sandemon. And not for the first time in my life.”

  Sandemon stood and walked to the window. With his back to Morgan, he stared out on the night. Outside, the storm had subsided, but a steady rain continued to fall. “All men are fools at times, Seanchai,” he said quietly. “There is no escaping that part of our nature, I think.”

  Morgan looked at the broad back, the regal head. “I can’t imagine you ever playing the fool, my friend.”

  The black man turned, regarding Morgan with a look of great sadness. “I was the greatest fool of all, Seanchai. I confess to you that no greater fool ever walked.”

  Morgan regarded him with curiosity. “What is your story, Sandemon?” he asked softly. “You involve yourself in the lives of others—and I mean that kindly—you live out your days doing for others, taking care of them. But you speak not at all of yourself. Why is that?”

  “Perhaps my past is a hurtful thing, Seanchai. More to the point, it would serve no purpose to share it.”

  Unwilling to infringe upon the solitary man’s privacy, Morgan remained silent. But he wondered. He knew he would always wonder.

  “I want to see the child,” he said. “Will you go with me?”

  “She may be sleeping,” Sandemon cautioned.

  Morgan gave a nod. “It doesn’t matter. I need to be with her. But I don’t want to frighten her again. You’d best go with me.”

  “It was only a momentary thing, Seanchai,” Sandemon offered. “It will be forgotten by the morning sun.”

  “Not by me,” Morgan said, his voice low. “I will not forget this night, I promise you.”

  When they entered the bedroom, they found the child sleeping. Wheeling up beside her, the Seanchai sat staring at the thin, elfin face, the thatch of dark, tousled hair, the long eyelashes brushing her cheeks as she slept.

  For an instant, the man in the wheelchair met Sandemon’s eyes across the bed. Carefully, then, he took the child’s hand, enfolded it in his own much larger one, and brought it to his lips.

  “I will make it up to you, Annie,” he murmured. “If you will but forgive me for my foolishness, I promise I will make it up to you. The pain of your past…my neglect…everything. You will never have to be afraid—not of this great fool, not of anything. You have my word, child.”

  The girl sighed in her sleep, and the Seanchai leaned over to brush an unruly strand of dark hair away from her forehead.

  Still holding her hand, he leaned back in the wheelchair and looked at Sandemon. “I am going to need your help,” he said wearily. “Giving up the drink—and becoming a father for the first time: a formidable task for any man.”

  Sandemon gave a wry smile. “I will count it all joy, Seanchai.”

  He left the two of them alone then. Closing the door quietly behind him, he paused in the hallway. After a moment the Seanchai’s soft voice could be heard, singing gently in the language of the Irish.

  Sandemon smiled and went on. He did not have to speak the tongue to recognize a lullaby when he heard it.

  42

  Wedding Gifts

  Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

  Enwrought with golden and silver light,

  The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

  Of night and light and the half-light,

  I would spread the cloths under your feet:

  But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

  I have spread my dreams under your feet.

  W. B. YEATS (1865–1939)

  New York City

  May

  Evan’s father and aunt did not arrive in New York until the day before the wedding.

  Waiting on the dock with Evan and Lewis Farmington, Nora could not say what rattled her more—the thought that today she would meet Evan’s family or the fact that tomorrow she would be his wife.

  Added to the turbulence of her emotions were the memories called up by New York Harbor. It was largely as she remembered it from her own arrival—teeming with immigrants, clamoring with the press of bodies. A veritable riot of alien languages, a profusion of color, the flags of nations. Ships disembarking or setting sail. Crying children, frightened mothers, the bewildered elderly. Laughter and wailing, terror and confusion.

  It had been almost a year since she had first stepped off the Green Flag to be met by Sara Farmington, then a stranger to them all. The thought of everything that had happened since then set Nora’s mind to spinning. Illness and death. Tragedy and happiness. New friends. Love. And soon—a marriage!

  Many a change had awaited them in this new land, yet today Nora could say in all truth, “Thanks be to God, for He is good.” In the midst of it all, He had been there, loving them through the worst and the best of it.

  Now she stood bracing herself for yet another new experience—meeting Evan’s family. She prayed they would not despise her entirely. What must they think, after all, of his marrying an Irish widow he’d met aboard ship?

  Even with her future husband on one side of her and Mr. Farmington on the other, Nora felt fearfully exposed, vulnerable. Nervously she smoothed her hair, then fidgeted with the bow at her throat.

  “Nora? Why, you’re t-trembling!”

  She looked at Evan to find him watching her with a concerned frown.

  “You mustn’t be f-frightened, dear! I’ve t-told you, my father is a kind, quiet m-man. And you’ll love Aunt Winnie—everyone d-does.”

  Nora managed a weak smile. How many times during the past week had poor Evan attempted to soothe her nerves? “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice low. “I simply can’t help it, Evan! I want them to like me!”

  “Of c-course, they’ll like you, N-Nora! They will love you—how can they h-help themselves? Now then,” he said firmly, “I insist you stop f-fretting. You’ll m-make yourself ill.”

  “He’s quite right, you know, Nora,” Lewis Farmington put in from her other side. “You’ll charm them at once! Just see if you don’t.”

  “Here they are now!” Evan cried, urging Nora forward, through the teeming crowds on the dock. “F-Father! Aunt Winnie! Over here!”

  Swa
llowing down her apprehension, Nora allowed Evan and Mr. Farmington to draw her through the crush of people milling about the dock, near the gangplank. At the sound of Evan’s voice, an elderly silver-haired man lifted a hand, while the extraordinarily attractive woman at his side broke into a near run, tugging the man along with one hand while she waved broadly with the other.

  Evan gave a strangled cry. Nora stopped, tears burning her eyes, as she watched him close the distance between him and his family. His aunt, a diminutive flurry of pink and white, came flying, flinging her arms around Evan, sobbing and laughing all at the same time. Then Evan turned to his father, and Nora lost her breath at the look that passed between them.

  Evan’s father, a slight, slender man much like Evan, looked a good deal older than his sixty-nine years. As he stood staring at his son with tear-glazed eyes, a tide of emotion seemed to flood his thin, deeply lined features. His gaze rested only briefly on Evan’s empty sleeve before he opened his arms to his son with a choked cry.

  Lewis Farmington took Nora’s arm, and they stood watching the two men embrace. Again, Nora whispered, “Thanks be to God.”

  Beside her, her employer added a quiet, “Amen.”

  By now Evan’s aunt was fairly dancing about the two men as they continued to cling fiercely to each other. After a moment, Evan turned, his eyes searching for Nora. By the time she and Mr. Farmington joined the others, there was scarcely a dry eye among them.

  Except for Lewis Farmington’s gaze, which, Nora noted, seemed fixed in place on the petite and vivacious Aunt Winifred.

  That evening, Lewis Farmington hosted a lavish dinner for the wedding party at the mansion. Sara observed with interest that, while she was at one side of her father, Winifred Whittaker Coates had been conveniently seated at the other. With even greater interest, she observed the almost instant rapport between her father and Evan’s aunt.

  Considering the attractive widow more closely, Sara was impressed. Evan had indicated that his aunt was in her late fifties, but she could have easily passed for a much younger woman, with her dancing blue eyes, blonde coiffure gently threaded with silver, and an almost maidenly figure. At the moment, she and Sara’s father were debating the comforts and discomforts of shipboard travel. Father’s intent expression, Sara thought with amusement, seemed to indicate he found the widow’s every word a veritable treasure.