by Anya Seton
How were they to tell her that her husband was dead? There was much that Abigail did not understand. During her hours of delirium, Miranda had muttered many incomprehensible words. There had been gibberish about a tower room, and an attic and flowers—oleanders. All this the mother put down to light-head-edness. But there was a dreadful ring of reality to the anguished desire for escape which accompanied all the other nonsense. Over and over the high strained voice repeated the same sentence: 'I've got to get away. Get away. But God won't let me. My fault too. I sinned.' And at no time did she mention Nicholas' name.
Neither Peggy, who understood the reason behind some of dais, nor Jeff, who understood it all, enlightened Abigail.
On the afternoon of the day which marked Miranda's turn toward recovery, Doctor Francis and Jeff came downstairs after examining their patient, and at the latter's request they went into the morning room.
'I've got to talk to you, sir,' said Jeff. 'Got to.'
The old doctor was amused at Jeff's distraught air. 'The girl's all right. She'll do now. Healthy young wench. Nothing to worry about. She's had good doctors—and mighty good nursing, which is far more important than doctors in a lung congestion.'
'Yes, I know. It's not Miranda's health I'm worried about now, except that—' Jeff paused, biting his lips.
'You mean how's she going to take the news that she's widowed? Oh, she'll rally soon. She's very young. Besides, she can deify his memory, hero's death, saved her life—all very comforting to the bereaved.'
Francis spoke with deliberate flippancy. He thought that Jeffs trouble came from his obvious attachment to the sick girl upstairs.
'It's about Van Ryn I want to talk to you, sir. I've muddled and stewed over the thing until I can't think. I've got to get it off my chest.'
'Fire away, my boy,' said Doctor Francis, and eased himself into a chair. 'Now, what about Van Ryn?'
Jeff gave a harsh laugh. ' "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,"' he quoted bitterly. 'You asked me once what the first Mrs. Van Ryn died of. And now I'm going to tell you.'
But before he could begin there was a tap on the door and Peggy appeared. 'The missis wants you, Doctor,' she said to Jeff. 'She wants to see you alone. No,' added the little maid in answer to Jeff's anxious frown, 'she's not feeling bad. 'Tis something else.'
Miranda was propped up on three pillows, and above the blue counterpane her face looked wan and pinched. But her eyes, huge now between the shadowed lids, held steadily to Jeff's.
'You look fine,' he said, smiling. 'Rather like a charming boy with that cropped head. Wasn't it the fashion in France at the turn of the century? You might set another fashion here, though of course it'll soon grow again.'
She paid no attention to his attempted lightness.
'Jeff,' she said quietly, 'Nicholas is dead, isn't he.' But it was not a question.
There was only one answer and Jeff nodded.
'Tell me what happened, Jeff.'
'He rescued you and a Mrs. Edwards and her little boy. He went back into the water again to help others. He overestimated his strength, I suppose, for he was never seen again.'
'No,' she said. 'He didn't overestimate his strength. He didn't mean to come back. He said to me—that last second on the burning boat—'
She paused, then repeated in a toneless voice,' "You shall see that I can save life as well as destroy it!"'
So he died as he lived, proving to himself and others that he was master after all thought Jeff wearily. The ship's disaster had provided the ultimate opportunity for self-glorification.
Yes,' said Miranda, as though he had spoken. You see we were all wrong about Nicholas, as wrong as he was himself. He wasn't strong. He was weak. The weakest thing in the world. A man who lives only for himself.'
He stared at her in amazement. For he saw that in that tired little voice she had pronounced a profound truth and the key to Nicholas' baffling character. Not strength but weakness or a fear of weakness had driven him to crime and the ruthless exploitation of others. Egomania, thought Jeff, that term he had read in the translation of a new book from Germany. And what incalculable harm to many innocent people could be done by one supreme egotist.
'Jeff,' she whispered, 'how soon will I be able to leave here? I want to go home to the farm.'
'Not for some time, dear. You must get well first.'
She lifted her hand from the counterpane. The gold ring on her finger shone dully as she gazed at it. She thrust the hand from sight beneath the sheet. 'I can't stay here,' she said. 'Surely you see that, Jeff.'
'This house is yours now,' he answered gently. 'All the Van Ryn possessions are yours.' He didn't know how much to say at present. Some days ago, after it had become certain that Nicholas' body would never be found, Bronck had come to Stuyvesant Street and had had a talk with the young doctor. The agent knew the provisions of Nicholas' will, for he had helped draw them, moreover, they were extremely simple.
Nicholas had never changed the will drawn in the summer of 1846 before the coming of the baby. In it he left everything of which he was possessed to his male issue, Katrine having been previously provided for by the settlement of a large sum. Bronck had tried to persuade him that this was inadequate and risky. But Nicholas would not listen to the agent's timid suggesion that there might after all be no male issue.
And now, in the absence of other heirs, all the property went to Miranda. She would be a very rich woman.
Jeff explained this to her, trying to conquer his own sadness at the thought of the wealth which seemed to separate them nearly as effectually as had Nicholas.
'Do you imagine that I would take it?' she cried with anger. 'All the Van Ryn property belongs to Johanna's child, Katrine. I'll deed it over to her—except for one thing. Dragonwyck. And that shall be razed to the ground stone by stone until there is nothing left to show where stood that place of evil and misery.'
'And the land?' asked Jeff after a startled moment.
'The land shall go to the farmers, the workers. It's only the workers who have a right to things.'
'My dear girl!' protested Jeff, smiling. He did not believe that she meant it. He thought her to be suffering a natural reaction to the horror. It seemed impossible to him that she might see Nicholas' spiritual isolation, his total lack of kinship with his fellows, as responsible for the tragedy. The man and his way of living had been a deviation from the main line of growth. The growth of humanity and of the nation. Thank God he's dead, thought Jeff.
'I mean it,' she said gravely. 'I was afraid of work. I wanted things easy and soft. The evil in me brought out and abetted the evil in Nicholas.' She turned her head on the pillow.
He saw slow tears slip down her thin cheeks.
'Miranda, don't!' he cried. 'Don't blame and torture yourself.'
She didn't answer him, and after a minute he left her quiet, and went down to Doctor Francis, who still sat in the morning room. The old man was sipping a glass of sherry. He looked up as Jeff entered and waved the glass.
'Excellent stuff,' he said. 'Van Ryn cellars are famous. All Miranda's now,' he added, struck. 'She'll be a mighty rich young woman.'
'I don't think so,' answered Jeff slowly. 'She doesn't want it.'
'Want what?'
'The money, or anything that belonged to Van Ryn.'
'Fiddlesticks!' snorted Doctor Francis. 'Childish nonsense. She's the widow and has a right to the property. Or have you been filling her up with your own transcendental ideas?' he added suspiciously. 'Brook Farm communal-living trash?'
'No,' said Jeff with a faint smile. 'There's a real reason. Listen, sir, and I'll tell you what I started to before.'
Jeff talked for an hour, and after the first sentences the old man's expression of indulgence changed to startled intensity. He put down the sherry glass, leaned forward in his chair and listened. Nor did he utter a sound until Jeff had finished. Then he said, 'Suffering cats!' fished out his red pocket handkerchief and mopped his face
. 'Were it not you, Jeff, I'd not believe a word of it.'
'I know.'
'It's a good thing you never reached the Governor in Albany that day. He'd have thought you mad, especially now that Van Ryn's a hero.'
'Yes,' said Jeff. 'He actually saved three lives in place of the two he deliberately murdered, Johanna and that boy in Astor Place. And whether it was a grim attempt at restitution or not I don't know. But come to that, the whole steamboat disaster was indirectly his doing, Bronck seems to think.'
The old man nodded. 'I guess every disaster, every tragedy in the world, my lad, is caused by someone's selfishness and refusal to recognize the rights of others. But thank God, there aren't many like Van Ryn.'
Both men were silent. Then Doctor Francis looked up and asked quietly, 'D'you still want the girl, Jeff?'
'More than anything else in the world, if she'll have me.'
'She'll have you, all right; just give her time,' said the old doctor.
In December his prophecy became a fact.
Jeff and Miranda were married two days before Christmas—married before the holly-wreathed pulpit in the Second Congregational Church by the new but already beloved pastor, Doctor Joel Linsley.
How different, praise God, is this marriage from t'other one, thought Abigail, as she stood beside Ephraim in the front pew. She put her hand on his arm and he grunted affectionately. He knew nothing except the bare outline of his daughter's marriage to Van Ryn. He had jibed a bit when he found that she had renounced all her property, for his Yankee practicality was upset. But he soon accepted Abigail's explanation that Miranda's life with Nicholas had been unhappy. There was little more than this that the mother herself knew or wanted to know.
When Ephraim was told that Miranda and Jeff wished to be married, he was pleased. 'Pity she didn't do it in the first place, but the girl was always flighty,' was his only comment.
Miranda was no longer flighty; even her father admitted that. She had developed a quiet strength and a seriousness of purpose in everything she did. She had dropped back into farm life without a murmur, relieving her mother of the most distasteful tasks. And look, thought Ephraim, turning his eyes on Peggy, who stood behind her mistress weeping into a pocket handkerchief—look what she did for that girl!
In July, Jeff had operated on Peggy's leg in the kitchen of the farmhouse on Stanwich Road. And it had been Miranda—white as the sheet which covered the little body on the scrubbed table—who had held the ether cone, steadily pouring the merciful drops in obedience to Jeff's terse orders. The operation had been a brilliant success. The dragging limp was gone, and now, on Miranda's wedding day, Peggy had followed her mistress proudly down the aisle with only the slightest hesitation in her gait to show where the trouble had been.
It was during the weeks after the operation, when Jeff and Miranda had fought the infection and fever which were considered the inevitable result, that they had discovered what their future life was to be. And it was she who broached it.
They had wandered out into a lovely summer afternoon, leaving Abigail in charge of the sick-room. They walked, as they often did, through the meadow to the apple orchard, and sat down on the stone wall by the little burying-ground. They sat in peaceful silence, soothed by the soft breeze, which smelled of apples and hay. Then Miranda spoke.
'Could you leave Hudson, Jeff? For good, I mean.'
He turned to look at her, wondering what she meant by the question. She seemed to him more beautiful than she had ever been, though she was thin, and her hair, grown out to shoulder length and confined in a net, was no longer brightly blond, but a warm chestnut. There was now about her an integrity and a sweetness, the unmistakable stamp of one who has suffered and emerged at last to complete awareness of the soul.
'I can go anywhere, if you'll go with me,' he said. 'I want nothing but you.'
'And your work?'
'Yes. And my work.'
She smiled at him. 'I've been thinking, Jeff, I could help you. In California they need doctors. Need them desperately. I—' she hesitated, went on in that mature, controlled voice which still surprised him, 'I never want to go up-river again. I couldn't bear it. Though that's perhaps foolish.'
'No, my darling. It's not foolish.' He thought of the site of Dragonwyck as he had seen it a week ago. Her orders had been carried out, quixotic as they seemed to the surrounding countryside. All the furnishings had been sold at auction, everything, including Miranda's own wardrobe. The proceeds had gone in an anonymous gift to the city hospitals, and a large sum to an astounded little parish priest in Killarney with directions to send Peggy's family at once to the States. And use the rest in any way you see fit.'
Peggy was to marry her Hans Klopberg in the spring, and Miranda had already arranged the wedding present, though the little maid did not know it. The fertile acres where Nicholas had grown his exotic trees and where the greenhouses were situated, these would belong to Peggy and her descendants forever. But the manor house at Dragonwyck had been demolished. Its site was now nothing but a filled-in patch of raw earth on which the wild grasses were already beginning to grow.
'No,' said Jeff. 'You must never go back. And you must never look back, Miranda. If you want to go West, we'll go.'
He put his arm around her drawing her gently against him, but he felt her body stiffen and saw with dismay that she turned her head from him.
'Never look back.' Words whose measured tolling mingled with the small wind that sighed through the elms above the burying ground. She looked down at the quiet row of headstones. So peaceful they rested under the September sun—so safe ... While he in the cold darkness ... lying forever fathoms below the warmth and green of recurring summer, lying alone, as he had always been.
She made a choked sound, and Jeff felt a corroding jealousy as he saw the scalding tears gather in her eyes.
Will there always be this between us? Jeff thought.—Is she not yet free from him?
But then she turned suddenly and read his face and his heart.
'No, Jeff—' she said. 'It's not that. It's just that he was—so—so terribly alone.'
They were both silent, gazing out together across the fields toward the setting sun. Understanding came to him. She's right, he thought; all cruelty and passion must burn away at last to leave behind them only pity.
She slipped her hand into his, secure in the welcoming strong response. She shut her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder.
END