“Hope, and a will to work,” he answered. “To work all day and as much of the night as one could stay awake. They spoke a hundred different languages. .”
“Babel,” the old lady said distinctly.
“Absolutely,” he agreed with a smile towards her. Then he looked again at Caroline. “But it is amazing how much you can understand what people mean when you share the same emotions. We all feel hope and fear, hunger sometimes, exhilaration, the sense of being miles away from anything familiar-”
“I thought you were born there!” the old lady said.
“I was,” he agreed. “But for my mother it was a terrible wrench to leave all that she was used to and begin again, with nothing, and among strangers.”
Mariah could have kicked herself. How incredibly stupid of her? She had found a dangerous situation and turned it into a disaster. Ice gripped her stomach. She gulped as fear overcame her. Did her face show it? Did he know?
He looked as perfectly smug and bland as usual. She did not want to meet his eyes.
Caroline was talking. For once, the old lady was glad of it.
“I cannot say how much I admire her courage,” Caroline said warmly. “It is both frightening and uplifting at once to hear of such people. I admit it makes me feel as if I have done very little.”
Dear Caroline! How dare she be so perceptive? How dare she put so exquisitely into words the compassion between Alys and other women, Alys and Mariah herself.
The room seemed to blur around her. Her face was hot, her hands and stomach cold.
“Thank you,” Samuel said softly, his eyes on Caroline’s face. “I think she was marvelous. I always thought so. . but then I loved her.” He blinked quickly. “But I’m sure much happened here that was
extraordinary and exciting too. I seem to have talked endlessly about myself.” He shook his head a little. “Please tell me something about England in all these years. I daresay your news of us was more than ours of you. We tend to be rather absorbed in our own affairs. I am American by birth. . just. . and by upbringing, but I’m English by heritage.” He leaned back in his chair and turned to face Mrs. Ellison. “What was it like here at the heart of things when I was growing up in New York, out on the edge of the world?”
He was waiting for her to answer. She must do so, take control of the conversation. Remember all the things that were going on outside in the city, in the country. Think of nothing in the house, nothing of history. That should be easy enough.
She told him all manner of things as the memories came to her. He listened with apparent interest.
“Actually, it was the year before the old king died and the new one was crowned,” she resumed with an effort. “And the Duke of Wellington resigned.”
“I didn’t know dukes could resign,” he said. “I thought it was for life.”
“Not as duke,” she said contemptuously. “As prime minister!”
Samuel colored. “Oh. . yes, of course. Wasn’t he the general who fought at Waterloo?”
“Certainly he was,” she agreed. She made herself smile. This, after all, was as safe a subject as possible. “Most people alive now have never known war,” she boasted. It was a staggering thought. She found herself smiling, lifting her chin a little.
Samuel was watching her, his face alight with interest, waiting for her to go on.
But that was her youth, a time it was painful to think of. It was another life, another person, when she had been a girl full of hope and an innocence which was unbearable to look back on, knowing what came after. It had not occurred to her until this moment to wonder what secrets too awful to touch lay in other women’s lives, behind their composed outward faces. Maybe none. Maybe she was as alone as she felt. The silence grew heavy. She became aware of outside sounds, beyond the windows, horses in the street. It was Caroline who broke the tension.
“All I know of the reign of William IV was to do with the Irish. Tens of thousands of people left Ireland for America. You will have known some of them, I daresay.”
There was a sharp compassion in his eyes. “Of course. I couldn’t count how many of them fetched up in New York, haggard faced, their clothes hanging off them as if they were made of sticks underneath, their eyes full of weariness, trying to hope, and yet not hope too much, and homesick.”
“Your mother must have felt like that too,” Caroline said gently, and it was clear in her face how vividly she was imagining how that unknown woman felt, trying to put herself in her place and understand.
Samuel must have seen it. His smile was touched with grief.
Mariah tried to imagine it. She knew nothing of Alys, except that she had gone. Edmund had never described her. Mariah did not know if she had been beautiful or homely, fair or dark, slender or buxom. She knew nothing of her personality or tastes.
But Alys had gone. That was the one thing that rose like a mountain in her mind, and it made her as different from Mariah as if she had been of another species. That was why she had hated Alys all these years, and envied her, why it choked in her throat to say she admired her, because it was the truth.
Did she want to know more about her? Did she want to be able to see her in the mind’s eye as a real woman, flesh and blood, laughter and pain, as vulnerable as anyone else? No-because then she would have to stop hating her. She would be forced to think of the differences between them and ask herself why she had stayed.
Samuel was talking about her. Caroline had asked him. Of course-Caroline-it was always Caroline!
“. . I suppose a little taller than average,” he was saying. “Fair brown hair.” He smiled a little self- consciously. “I know I am prejudiced, but I was far from the only one who thought she was beautiful. There was a grace about her, a kind of inner repose, as if she never doubted what she held dearest, and she’d fight like a tiger to protect it. She could get terribly angry, but I never heard her raise her voice. I think she taught me more than anybody else what it means to be a gentleman.”
There was nothing to say that sounded appropriate, and Caroline held her peace.
Mariah knew the familiar bitterness that rose up inside her. How could Alys have been such a perfect lady? Wasn’t she broken inside as well, broken and crying like a hurt child, alone in the dark? Why was her anger only a fleeting thing, acted upon and then forgotten, so that she kept her temper and behaved with such sublime dignity. . and was loved? Mariah’s anger was deep, inward, lacerating until there was no dignity left, and she seldom ever tried to keep her temper these days. What had made Alys so golden, so bright and brave? Was she just a better woman? Was it as simple as that? What had given her the courage?
“. . but I want to know more about all of you,” Samuel was saying, looking earnestly at Caroline, then at Mrs. Ellison.
“It is you I really care about. Where did you live? What happened to you? Where did you go and what did you do? What did you talk about to each other? You are my only link with a father I never knew. Perhaps I need to know more of him to understand myself?”
Mariah drew in her breath sharply, and it caught in her throat, making her choke. It was several moments before she could speak.
“Nonsense!” She coughed violently. Caroline was staring at her. “What I mean. .” She tried again: “. . is that you are who you are, regardless of your father.” This was terrible. She must say something that would not make him suspicious. Her mind raced futilely.
Caroline came to the rescue.
“Papa-in-law was very charming,” she said gently, as if she thought the old lady’s coughing were to hide emotion-as it was-she thought of grief, not cold, gripping fear. “He was tall, about the height you are, I should think,” she went on. “And he dressed beautifully. He had a gold watch, and he wore the chain across his waistcoat. He liked very good boots, and always had them perfectly polished till you could see your reflection in them.” There was a faraway look in her eyes. “He did not smile very often, but he had a way of listening that gave you his complete attention. You never felt as if he were merely waiting for you to stop so he could say something, without being rude.”
It was all true. Mariah could picture Edmund as Caroline was speaking. She could almost hear his voice. It surprised her that after all this time she could recall it so perfectly. In her mind she imagined his step across the hall, brisk and firm. Whenever she smelled snuff she thought of him, or felt the faint scratch of good tweed. He used to stand in front of the fire, warming himself and keeping the heat from other people. Edward had done just the same. She wondered if Caroline had noticed it as she had, and if it had annoyed her as much. She had never said so, but then one did not.
