The Reckoning (43 page)

When the door opened softly, she knew who it was. This, of
all rooms in the house, was one that Minnie would never
enter of her own accord. The hair rose on the back of her neck, as though an icy draught had touched it. She turned
and watched him walk across the room to her, allowed him to
take the candle from her impassive fingers and put it down.
She lifted her eyes to his without protest, and only shuddered
when he took her in his arms and buried his face in the hollow
of her neck.

‘
Oh God! My love, my darling!' he groaned, muffled by her
flesh.

She said nothing, feeling as though everything in her had
been numbed by the creeping dampness of this house; unable
to react or resist, she submitted to the growing frenzy of his
embrace, her eyes fixed unseeing on the shadows over his
shoulder. He nuzzled her neck and ear and cheek, and sought
her lips, and then she shuddered, responding at last, help
lessly, as he held her face in both his hands and kissed and
kissed her, pressing his body against hers avidly.

At last, though, she dragged her mouth away from his, and
turned her face away, pushing him back from her.

‘
Don't, Harvey. No more,' she said.

He stared at her a little wildly, still panting from the viol
ence of his passion. 'What is it? Why do you push me away
every time? God, Polly, don't you know what I'm feeling, how
much I need you? Don't you feel anything for me?'

‘
You know what I feel,' she said in a low, pained voice.

‘
I thought I did,' he said harshly. 'Now I begin to wonder if
I was right. I thought you loved me –'

‘
I do love you,' she said, adding unhappily, 'God help me.’

‘
Well, then,' he began eagerly, reaching for her. 'If you love
me, why won't you –?'

‘No,' she said, pushing his hands away. 'Oh God, this is an intolerable situation!'

‘
Yes, it is,' he agreed bitterly.

‘
No, not in the way you mean. We can't go on like this. We
must stop, before it's too late.'

‘
Stop what? There's nothing to stop!' he snapped cruelly, and then instantly relented. 'Oh Polly, my own darling, why
won't you let me love you? Would it be so wrong?'

‘You know it would. You are a married man —'

‘Married against my will!’

It was a thing he often said, and it always angered her. He
had been a grown man with a small but independent income
when he had taken Minnie instead of her to wife. The situa
tion had been far more his to control than it had ever been
hers. In his position, she felt, she would not so tamely have submitted to his father's and elder brother's will; in his posi
tion, she would have fought for her love. Yet now he seemed to look to her to make things right — or as right as they ever
could be.

But that sort of 'right' was wrong as far as she was
concerned. No matter how she struggled, no matter which
way she turned, it was still wrong.

‘Nevertheless,' she said, 'you have a wife —'

‘
To the Devil with her!' he cried, shocking her. 'I don't care
— I feel nothing for her. You know that. I care only for you.
Oh Polly, come away with me — let me live with you! I must
have you — it's driving me to distraction!' He gathered her
again in his arms, and she struggled, but without great deter
mination. She ached for him, too, yearned for love, for his
arms and his lips, longed to be swept away heedlessly by
passion, so that she no longer heard that nagging voice of
conscience. She wanted happiness. Why should she be denied
it?

‘
Why must you torture me?' she moaned between his
frantic kisses. 'Harvey, Harvey!’

He felt her desire, believed himself to be winning. He
released her mouth and imprinted his kisses on her white
neck and the upper curve of her breasts. 'You torture your
self,' he murmured. 'Don't hold back from me. It's what we
both want. Let me take you away from here. I'll take care of you, I swear it. You shall have whatever you want. Only let
me love you. I'll give you your own place, clothes, servants, a
carriage — everything you could want —'

‘
Except my peace of mind,' she said, putting him from her
gently, but so firmly that he dropped his arms and stood
looking at her, puzzled and afraid.

‘
Does it give you so much peace now?’

She looked away from him with a sigh. 'No,' she said into
the shadows of the room.

‘
Then give in to me. Let me make you happy. Let me make
us happy. You know that I could. You were my lover once —
or have you managed to forget that?'

‘
No, I haven't forgotten. It tortures me to remember, but I
do. I was weak, I did wrong, and I'm being punished for it.
But you, Harvey —' She turned to face him, looking up at him
with wide, opaque eyes. 'Don't you remember the promise
you made me — that if I would only stay, you would never ask anything of me?'

‘
Yes, I remember,' he said desperately. 'But I didn't know
what I was saying. How could I have promised anything so
impossible to perform? You know how much I love you —
want you — need you! How long must I wait for you? How
long can a man wait?'

‘For ever, if need be.'

‘
But I love you, only you! I'll divorce her — or let her
divorce me, it makes no difference. She'll be well taken care
of —'

‘We would be outcasts.'

‘We could go abroad to live.'

‘
But still we couldn't marry. It's no use, Harvey. You have
a wife, and while she lives you can never have another.' There
was a silence. He seemed to have no answer for that. Polly
resumed, her voice weary with the impossibility of it all. 'But anyway, I promised her I wouldn't leave her. And what about
the children?’

He clenched his fists. 'Oh don't! Don't go on! The children!
Useless brats, my brother calls them, because they're girls —but he hasn't seen them. So small and soft, so pretty — God,
how they tear at my heart! If only they were yours, Polly,
yours and mine —'

‘
Don't,' she said. In her heart she added, they could have
been, if you had only stood firm. 'It's useless to talk like that.'

‘
But you don't know what it's like to be trapped by a
woman you never cared for, and two useless brats. I want
you, Polly! I must have you! If you keep denying me, you'll
drive me to madness.'

‘
Don't talk like that.'

‘
I mean it! I'm close to it now. Why do you think I've
stayed away so much? Because I'm afraid if I see you like this
and can't have you I'll do something desperate.' He clenched
his teeth, and his eyes were bright and unseeing. 'What have I
got to lose?' he went on, almost to himself. 'Sometimes, by
God, I feel as though I could —'

‘
Sshh!' Polly said suddenly, staring towards the door.

‘
What is it?' The silence was profound, not even a ticking
clock in the book-room to disturb it. He left her side and went
silently to the door. It was not completely closed, and he
snatched the handle and flung it open. Nothing. A dark and
empty passage mocked his melodrama. He walked back to
Polly's side, but the interruption had broken the mood. His
anger had dissipated. He seemed now only weary.

‘
There's no-one there.' He took her hands, and spoke
quietly, without force, like a rational man. 'Polly, do you tell
me that you will never do what I ask — never love me again?’

It was harder for her to resist his sadness than his passion.
‘I do love you,' she said, 'but I can't do what you ask. I can't
be your wife, and I won't be your mistress.'

‘
Why not? Who would it hurt?'

‘
Me. Myself. I do enough wrong in loving you in my heart,
but I can't seem to change that. I won't shame myself and
break Minnie's heart. And now I'm going back to the
drawing-room. She must be wondering where I am.’

She drew her hands out from his, and turned away, leaving
him there in the half-lit room, feeling his unhappiness like a
weight on the back of her neck, and her own like a cold stone
inside her. Who would it hurt, indeed? Who cared for her or
her reputation? It would be easier, so much easier to give in to
him, as she had that one time, when she had spent three days
with him in London, in the anonymous lodging in Bab Mae's
Street.

But then, it had not been so easy, had it? Long in the
planning, long in the aftermath; and the three days them
selves, though burning in her memory for the consummation
of their passion, had been as full of misery as of love. The
secrecy, the shabbiness, the sense of degradation, the fear of
being discovered, the sneaking about in disguise like a thief,
hiding from all eyes — these had clouded the joy she ought to
have felt at being at last in Harvey's arms.

And then afterwards, when she had returned to Stainton,
there had followed weeks of unhappiness and guilt: missing
him so dreadfully, worrying about what the consequences
might be; having to sustain a lie, having to bear Minnie's joy
at having her back again; hating Minnie, and hating herself
for hating. No, giving in would not really be easier than
resisting. She wanted most of all to run away, to escape from
both of them with their stifling, ennervating demands, but
she couldn't even do that, having given her word to both of
them to stay. She was trapped in a situation only partly of her
own making, and she could see no way out of it. She must
simply endure, and hope that somehow, somehow it would be
resolved.

As she walked through the drawing-room door, she realised
that she had forgotten to bring a book, and cursed her
unreadiness. She was not cut out 'to be a conspirator. Minnie
would be sure to notice — interested as she was in every tiny
thing Polly did or said. But even as she began framing an
excuse in her head, she saw that there was no need — Flaminia
was not there. Her chair was empty, her embroidery-frame
was pushed aside, and only the innocent, crackling fire
greeted her as she entered.