Less than two months after the marriage my mother told me that she was going to have a child. I was horrified, although I suppose it was natural enough. She was thirty-six years of age, young enough to bear a child; but the fact that she should so soon be fruitful seemed to me an insult to my father and I was disgusted. How she had changed. She seemed to me simpering and foolish, pretending to be as a young wife might have been with her first child.
Simon Caseman was delighted. He seemed to regard it as a personal triumph. He knew that my father had longed for a family and he had only been able to get one girl who lived; whereas he, married but two months, had already given evidence of his virility.
I knew now that I wanted to go away and I decided I would write to Kate and ask if I might stay with her for a while.
Simon cornered me one day in the garden and he said: “Why, Damask, I see so little of you. I might think that you deliberately avoid me.”
“You might well think it,” I said.
“Have I offended you in some way?”
“In many ways,” I replied.
“I am sorry.”
“You appear to be far from that.”
“Damask, we must accept circumstances, you know, even when they go against us. You know that I have always been fond of you.”
“I know that you offered me marriage.”
“And you are a little hurt that I married another.”
“Not on my own account—only on that other’s.”
“She seems well content.”
“She is perhaps easily content.”
“I’ll venture to say that she was never more content than now.”
“You venture too far.”
“It does me good to speak to you.”
“I don’t reap a like benefit,” I retorted.
“I am sorry that I have taken that which should be yours.”
“You lie, sir. You are very happy to have what you always wanted.”
“I did not get all that I wanted.”
“Did you not? It is a fair house; the land is good. And you do not talk like a good husband?”
“I hear that you wish to go to your cousin.”
“Don’t tell me that you propose forbidding me to do so.”
“I would not presume to do that.”
“I am glad because it would have been useless.”
“Let us be good friends, Damask,” he said. “I want to tell you that you are welcome here as long as you care to stay.”
“It is a very gracious gesture to allow me to remain as a guest in my own house.”
“You know that it is mine.”
“I know you took it.”
“It was bestowed on me.”
“Why on you? Could you tell me that? It is a question on which I have long pondered.”
“You can guess, can you not? Because I was capable of managing it. It had been my home for some years. I was ready to marry the widow of the previous owner which would relieve the family hardship considerably. It seemed a good arrangement.”
“For you, yes.” I walked off and left him.
Rupert asked me to walk with him in the nuttery. It used to be a favorite place of mine but since the hut in which my father had hidden Amos Carmen was there, it had become too painful a reminder of all that had happened.
He slipped his arm through mine. “Damask,” he said, “I must talk to you very seriously.”
“Yes, Rupert.”
“I am going away. Lord Remus has offered me a farm. I shall manage it and in a short time it will be my own. Kate has prevailed on him.”
“Her marriage was a great blessing not only to her but to you.”
“Damask, you are growing bitter.”
“Circumstances change us all, doubtless.”
“There is still much that is good in life.”
“I see little at this time.”
“Well, it is a dark period through which we are passing. But it won’t always be so. The world we knew has gone. It is for us to build a new life.”
“You may well do that with your new farm. You will go away from here and forget us.”
“I shall never forget you. But my surroundings will be different. The problems of the present will, I know, impose themselves on the past.”
“It is easy for you.”
“I loved your father, Damask, and I love you.”
“I was his daughter. Do you think your love can be compared with mine?”
“Still it was love.”
I took his hand and pressed it. “I shall never forget what you risked to bring his head to me,” I said. The tears were on my cheeks and he drew me to him and kissed them gently.
Suddenly I knew that if I could not find the great ecstasy I had dreamed of with Rupert, at least I could find comfort. I could leave this house. It would mean a great deal to me not to see my mother and Simon Caseman together. To leave this house…I had never thought to do it. I had dreamed of myself growing old in it, my children playing in these gardens as I had done; my father delighting in his grandchildren. That dream could never become a reality. But Rupert was offering me consolation. He was telling me that although I should mourn my father forever, I could start to make a new life for myself.
He said: “The farm is not far from here. Between these lands and Remus’s estate—not far from Hampton. I shall be between you and Kate. We can meet often…if you decided not to come altogether. But I hope you will because I know, Damask, that I can look after you.”
“Rupert,” I answered emotionally, “you are a good man. How I wish that I could love you as a husband should be loved.”
“It would come, Damask. In time it would come.”
I shook my head. “And if it did not? You would be cheated, Rupert.”
“You could never cheat anyone.”
“Perhaps you do not know me, for I sometimes feel I do not know myself. To leave here….Oh, Rupert, I had never thought of it. I visit my father’s grave…frequently.”
“I know and I do not care for you to be wandering about the Abbey grounds alone.”
“You fear that there is some evil lurking there?”
“I fear desperate men might be lurking there.”
“Monks perhaps returning to their old home, or the spirits of murdered men?”
“I fear for you to go there. Damask, we could remove your father’s remains. We could take them with us. We could make a sanctuary in our new home and there you could have that precious box with you always. You could make a shrine to his memory.”
“Oh, Rupert,” I cried, “I think you understand me as no one ever did…since Father.”
“Then come with me, Damask. Come away from this house which is no longer your home, come away from a situation which has become distasteful to you.”
It seemed that I must. Yet I hesitated. It was not as I had always thought it should be. Was life always to be a compromise? I thought of Kate’s marrying Lord Remus for what he could give her. Should I be doing the same if I married Rupert? Lord Remus gave Kate jewels, riches, a place at Court, and I had despised her for her mercenary motives. But if I married Rupert because he could take me away from a situation which had become intolerable to me was I not in like case?
“I am so unsure,” I said. “I do not know what I should do. Be patient with me, Rupert.”
He pressed my hand gently. I could sense his elation. I knew he would always be patient.
“Think on it,” he said. “You know I would not wish you to do anything which was distasteful to you. Remember too that it was his wish.”
I did remember it and it weighed greatly with me.