“I am sorry,” Henry said the second afternoon of her visit. “I can see things are bad for you. I wish you’d tell me how I can help.”
“You help just by being here,” said Libby. “I can’t believe how quickly you came.”
“Oh, that was nothing,” said Henry. “Mr. Pye arranged all that. England is just across the sea. A hop across the pond.” She smiled mischievously.
“What about you?” asked Libby. “How are you doing?”
“Well, I’m out of work. I’ve been fired,” said Henry.
“Fired!” Libby exclaimed and sank back in her seat, amazed.
“I wrote about the blacklisted,” said Henry, “and I refused to stop writing about them. You’ve heard about the House Un-American Activities Committee, I hope.”
Libby nodded.
“Someday I hope everyone will know. There are dozens of heroes and heroines back home, standing up for what’s right, and we’re not to write about any of them. Do you know who I got fired over?”
Libby shook her head.
“Lucille Ball! Who would have believed it? The red-haired comedienne. I admire her tremendously. I’ll tell you, despotism brings out the worst in people—and the best. I can’t begin to tell you how ignorant I was about the world, before I came here. And the worst of it is, I thought I knew everything about it.”
“What will you do now?” asked Libby.
Henry shrugged. “Mr. Pye has me writing for a few of the English papers. Socialist papers, mostly.” She smiled wickedly. “My mother is in hiding, back home.”
“I can imagine,” said Libby.
Henry crossed one long leg over the other and sat forward. “Mr. Pye has asked me to marry him,” she said.
“He has?” said Libby. She had the sense that the whole world had been turned upside down and shaken. Henry fired! Henry on the verge of marriage to a foreigner!
“I feel at home with him,” Henry said simply. “I have since the day we met. And I can’t imagine feeling at home anywhere else.”
“Then that’s clear,” said Libby, smiling.
“Yes, that’s clear,” answered Henry.
“I’m so happy for you,” said Libby. She crossed the room to kiss her friend, but Henry hung onto her friend’s hand a moment longer, to keep her close.
“And what about you?” demanded Henry, looking up at her.
“What about me?”
“Yes. What am I to do about you, and your cousin? I’m here to help.”
“I’m afraid my cousin is beyond your help,” said Libby gently disengaging her hand. “And so am I.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You must believe me if you’re to help at all,” said Libby. “I have come to the end of many things.”
“But I am an incurable optimist,” answered Henry. “That’s how I am most stubbornly American.”
“Just stay here in Ireland till it’s over,” said Libby.
“Then will you come back to England with me?”
“I can’t,” said Libby. “There are things back home I must take care of first.”
“Shall I go with you?” offered Henry.
“No. These I must do alone. It may end badly.”
“I don’t believe that, either.”
“You know,” said Libby, with a rare, radiant smile. “I find your disbelief very comforting.”
The embrace that the cousins shared when she wept in his arms turned out to be their last embrace. After that, Lazarus lay patiently in bed, each day growing thinner and quieter. He allowed Libby to offer him soup or pudding from a spoon. He accepted the glass she held near his lips, with the straw bent toward him. His sentences were like telegraphs. “Thanks . . . enough.” “Rest now.” “No fun. Sorry.”
Libby had lost her fear of the sick. She wondered why she had ever been afraid. She knew now there were worse things than death. One afternoon Lazarus didn’t speak the whole hour she visited, though he never took his burning eyes from her face. Then, as if he’d been storing up his strength, he rasped, “Pill bottle, top drawer.” She went and fetched it for him. His eyes asked her to open it, so she did. His long hand closed around the pill bottle, and his eyes closed too, his lashes as long and beautiful as a girl’s. He was quiet so long she thought he’d fallen asleep. But he forced himself to speak.
“Third drawer.” Again she fetched a bottle and opened it. The flat yellow tablets inside were identical to the first. He held one open bottle loosely in each hand. Her eyes asked a question, but she said nothing. He smiled apologetically. When the nurse came into the room he made both bottles disappear momentarily—a return of his old magician’s tricks.
“Are you uncomfortable?” she asked, after the nurse had gone. She could call the nurse back if need be. She was tempted to do so, and to disclose the secret of the two pill bottles. But something made her hold her tongue.
“Will you have some soup?” she asked.
He grimaced and swallowed. His eyelids fluttered closed, then open, and his gaze was in that instant clear. He looked like himself again. His light hair fell over his forehead like snow. He studied her with his wide eyes. He leaned forward. “Adored,” he said softly.
Libby woke in the middle of the night, coming awake all at once. She felt a presence in the room at the foot of her bed. She could make out her cousin’s crooked outline. It did not occur to her to wonder how he had gotten the strength to drag himself out of bed and down the long hall to her room. She heard the soft, hoarse sound of his breathing, and even in the darkness, his familiar white-gold hair lit that corner of the room, so that she could have found her way by its shining. The figure sat there regarding her, his head cocked. Then he rose to his feet, sparkling, and disappeared like mist.
Libby threw on her robe and slippers and made her way down to her cousin’s bedroom. The night nurse was just leaving, looking grave.
Her aunt sat beside her son, holding his thin hand without moving, without even looking up when Libby entered, as if she’d been struck blind.
When she spoke, her voice was dry and harsh. “Go,” she said. “And thank God you have no son.”
The funeral was small, but Lord Warburton attended with his sisters and his brother, the vicar, who looked dignified for the occasion and who conducted the service in Latin.
“It doesn’t matter that we are Jewish,” said her aunt Sachs. “At times like these, none of that matters. The nearest rabbi lives thirty miles off and never knew Lazarus.”
About the manner of his dying, her aunt only said, “I don’t know how he got the strength.” Then, later, “I am not angry, you know. I’m only sorry he didn’t ask me for the pills. I’d have done the same.”
After the service, Libby found Lord Warburton alone, lingering for a moment in the corner of the drawing room. He seemed to want to say something, but she sensed his embarrassment.
“Thank you so much for everything,” she said.
He regarded her with red-rimmed eyes.
“I understand congratulations are in order,” she said, putting out her hand. She had heard about his engagement almost immediately upon her arrival, from the maid Margaret. She wasn’t sure Margaret would ever forgive her for not marrying Lord Warburton.
“Yes,” he answered with a sad, shy look. He gazed out over her head—but that was on account of his height. It was a habit with him, a way of hiding his expression. “It’s odd, the way that life surprises you. I was so sure I could never.”
“And I was so sure you could,” she said. It was the first time either had smiled all day, and they felt the relief of it.
Then the large man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I will miss him all my life,” he said.
“So will I.”
“I don’t make friends easily,” he confessed. “But when I do—well, it sticks.”
“Yes,” she said. “I remember.”
“If you ever need anything at all, you may count upon me—and my future wife. Janet. I
hope you know that too.”
“I do,” she said, and then both of Lord Warburton’s sisters came rushing into the room to comfort Libby, one taking each side, with looks first of anxiety, then of relief, at their elder brother as well.
Libby and her aunt held shivah as if they had been Orthodox Jews. They sat on low boxes placed on the floor and covered the Gardencourt mirrors with black cloths. Aunt Sachs tore the lapel of her best black jacket, and she took out a pair of scissors and cut a jagged line in Libby’s black blouse as well.
“It comes back from childhood,” she said.
The house filled with their Irish neighbors, bearing puddings and cakes and urns of coffee and tea. Henry bustled around, making herself useful. By midafternoon, most of them had already come and gone, and her aunt excused herself with a headache, over which the friends and neighbors murmured sympathetically, offering to return with remedies the next day. It was late spring, and there was light glowing in the deep-blue sky. There was another knock on the door, and Margaret went to answer it, and stood with a stranger at her side, standing tall and erect, his hat in his hands. It was Caspar Lockwood.
He was at Libby’s side in two quick strides. “I didn’t think,” he said. “I just came.”
Libby could not speak. His appearance surprised her almost more than the airy spectral appearance of her late cousin. Yet she felt as if she had summoned him. Caspar stood there with his tobacco-Indian profile, the sharply cut nose, and his lips, unsmiling and yet sympathetic. She turned to Henry, who threw up her hands in self-defense.
“I didn’t ask him to come!” she cried. Then she stepped forward and shook both his hands. “But I’m glad you are here,” Henry added. “I’m not ashamed to say so.”
Libby could not speak. She was thinking that no one in her life had ever looked straight into her the way that this man was doing, as if her life were one long hallway and he hurried down it, intent, never losing sight of her for an instant. That look of his did not pierce but encompassed her, like sunlight around a helpless object. She had never understood it, never appreciated it till she had known its absence—until it was too late to accept it. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she was the more ashamed because they were selfish tears.
He drew her into his arms and held her. “You are very unhappy,” he said simply.
When they could decently excuse themselves from the others, they walked a little way onto the grounds of Gardencourt. It looked much as it had when Libby first arrived, with the vast green velvety lawn spread out as if encouraging her forward. But its two most beloved figures were gone, Lazarus and her uncle Sachs. She bowed her head. The soft air seemed to be holding her down. She could be forgiven for grieving, she thought. She could be forgiven, even, the black sin of despair, today.
“I can see why you loved this place,” said Caspar, gazing around.
“It is very beautiful,” she said. It surprised her how in his company her voice could still sound calm and clear.
“I can imagine being happy here,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and walking ahead. She had forgotten how broad his shoulders were, inside the black jacket he wore. How dark and straight his hair.
“Can you?” she asked. He looked so foreign in this lush Irish landscape.
“I can imagine being happy anywhere you love,” he said. “Anywhere that you are.”
“Come with me a moment,” she said suddenly, decisively, as if she knew exactly where to lead him. But she did not. She walked in and out of the dappled shade of trees, and after a while she took his hand and held it as they walked farther. She thought they must come to the Lough eventually, but instead they walked deeper into the gray-green canopy of leafy trees. She dropped his hand at last and looked around her in confusion. The fuchsias had begun to blossom, pink and white, in patches by the woods.
Caspar stood looking at her again—that impossible, deep look. His face was rugged and kind. This was what she had sacrificed. This was what she had thought of no use! Perhaps if she said nothing at all. If she held still here, close to him, but allowed not a single sound, not even the sound of her breath. She would not speak what was in her to say. Then it would be permissible to stand in his presence. His hair was short and sleek, like an otter’s. He always smelled clean, of nothing but soap and himself. She held absolutely still for another instant, drawing the last possible comfort from his nearness, from the simple fact of his existence. Then words leaped from her as if of their own accord.
“If I ask you to come to me . . . ,” she began. “If, someday a long time from now, I call—”
“Yes,” he said.
“But I haven’t told . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
She let herself look him full in the face. She knew that she was memorizing his features, strengthening herself for the long difficult journey ahead. Had she always loved him? she wondered. How many lives must we ruin, she thought, before we stumble on the truth?
“Your cousin told me, ‘Do all you can for her; do everything she’ll let you,’” he said. “Let me help you now. Come close to me. The world lies all before us—it’s a vast place. I know something about that.”
“The world is also very small,” she said. After a moment she added, “People will say I’ve run from my husband to another man. They will say vicious things. And it would make life hard for my stepdaughter as well.”
“What do we care for the bottomless stupidity of the world!” he exclaimed.
Her head was swimming; the trees themselves seemed to be swimming around her, in eerie gray-green shadow and dappled sunlight.
“You have always loved me,” he said. “And I have never for an instant stopped loving you.”
Instead of stepping back, she moved forward. She knew later that she was the one who first reached out for him. “Be mine. Be mine as I am yours!” she cried—as if she had thrown away all other words.
Then his arms went around her and his mouth, his hard, unsmiling mouth, came crushing down against hers in a kiss like white lightning. It was a kiss that obliterated everything—it blotted out the sun and the landscape. His heart was pounding massively against hers—she feared for him, it was pounding so that her arms tightened around him to keep him safe. She too was held in the terrifying brightness of their embrace, in his muscles and sinews and bones, and his body seemed to encompass her for an instant, to surround her as if something had shattered, scalding both of them. But when darkness returned she was free. She ran from the spot, ran as she hadn’t since she was a young girl in Rochester; and she didn’t look behind her. She saw nothing. She felt her purse hanging from her arm and banging against her side and then she was back at Gardencourt where the other guests still gathered, and she stepped in white sunlight through the doors as if the gates of heaven had swung open. She had not known where to go, or which way to turn, but now she did. Now there was a path.
Chapter Eighteen
Libby flew back to Rome in early May, a May as sultry as the Augusts she remembered from her childhood. The heat was intense; it swallowed everything in its path.
She didn’t see her husband; she didn’t know where he went, and he had left no explanation for his absence. Wherever he had gone, he had taken the manservant with him. Viola was still away; nothing remained. The salons had all been canceled; Libby was alone. It seemed not just a foreign country but another world. She felt like a stranger in the villa, someone poised at the edge of a chair, waiting for the chance to move. The Italian legal system was intricate and contradictory, like a long spiral staircase that never reached a destination. Still she persisted. She must have definite answers, she declared, but she might as well have been talking to herself. The lawyers skillfully evaded her questions. No one ever came calling, except, once, the Countess Gemini.
“I’m surprised you’re still here,” said her sister-in-law. “I had hoped you would free yourself.”
“I won’t be in this place for long,” responded Libby.
>
“I’m glad I got to say goodbye then,” said the Countess. “And I’m sorry for your troubles.”
“I’ve brought them all on myself,” said Libby. “If I’m unhappy, it’s no more than I deserved.”
The Countess regarded her with her dark eyes. “Not quite all,” she said. “Perhaps you blame yourself too much.”
Libby did not answer. She crossed her arms over her thin chest, as if she felt a sudden chill. If only a breeze would blow! But there were no cooling breezes in Rome this time of year. You went out early in the morning, or late at night, when the air was almost bearable, and in between you sat and held still, waiting.
“Let me see if I can make this easier for you,” said the Countess. “Madame Merle has gone to visit Viola at the convent, on some pretext of passing through. Oh yes,” she added. “I keep my ear to the ground. I hear what the ants are saying to the grasses.”
“Why should she go to Viola now?” asked Libby.
“Why indeed?” said the Countess. “I suppose she is pretending to console the girl. But she is only trying to reconcile her to her fate. To make sure she accepts it.”
“She has no right to do that,” said Libby.
“We agree, then. I love my niece. From the first time I laid eyes on her, after her birth . . . such a tiny, helpless thing, and my heart opened. I can’t do anything to help her—but I love her all the same.” The Countess turned her intense, clever gaze on Libby’s face. Her eyes reminded Libby again of a squirrel’s, or some other wild woodland creature—hard, quick, and bright. She seemed to be looking for some recognition in Libby’s answering look, and failing to see it, she shrugged and tried again, making a wry face.
“Let me start again,” she said. She fanned herself with a magazine. She looked at the covers, front and back. She hesitated an instant. “Listen to me, Libby. My brother’s wife had no children.”
Libby looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
“Just that,” said the Countess, a touch maliciously. “My brother’s wife had no children of her own. She died young. And childless.”