He stood back a few paces. “I am your stepfather,” he said. “I have a responsibility toward you. It is my duty to take charge of you.”
“As you took charge of my father’s possessions?”
“You ungrateful slut! Where would you have been if I had not allowed you to stay here? If I had not come here….”
The words slipped out: “Perhaps my father would be free now.”
He was taken aback, and I thought: I believe it’s true. I believe he betrayed him.
Loathing for him swept over me. He was about to speak but he changed his mind. It was as though he were trying to pretend he had not understood the significance of my words.
There was a silence while we looked at each other. I knew my suspicion of him showed in my face; in his a certain hatred mingling with his lust.
He said: “I have tried to be a father to you.”
“When you were rejected as a husband!”
“I was fond of you, Damask.”
“You were fond of my inheritance…that which is now yours and should have been mine.”
“It fell to me when your father…lost it. How fortunate for you that it came to me and not to some stranger. Think what would have happened to you and your mother if I had not been here to take care of you.”
“I am thinking of what would have happened if my father had never taken you into his office. I am thinking of what would have happened if he had never given you a home here.”
“You would have lost a good friend.”
“It is we ourselves who decide the value of our friends.”
“You are a wicked, ungrateful girl.” He was recovering from the shock of my veiled accusation. “Good God,” he cried. “I have the feelings of a father toward you. I have tried to cherish you. I have thought highly of you and I find that you are but a willing wench who will surrender her virtue for the sake of frolic in the grass when all decent folk are in their beds.”
In sudden fury I slapped him across the ear and this time he was too late to prevent me. I hated him not so much because his crude words and sly hints were besmirching my exalted experience, but because I felt more sure than I ever had that he was the man who had informed against my father. If I had been entirely convinced I would have wanted to kill him.
The strength of my blow sent him reeling against the banister. He fell down two or three steps. I heard him groan as I hurried up the stairs and went along to my room.
I sat in a chair and watched the sunrise. I lived through the night—my union with the man I loved; my encounter with the man I hated. Sacred and profane! I thought.
I sat there dreaming and it occurred to me that there was one quality they had in common! A love of power.
I dozed a little and dreamed of them and in my dreams I was lying with Bruno on the grass; he was bending over me and suddenly his face changed to that of Simon Caseman. Love and lust—so close in a way and yet so far apart.
It was dawn. A fresh day. I was full of excitement, wondering what it would bring forth.
In the morning my mother came to me.
“Your father has sprained his ankle,” she said. “He fell on the stairs last night.”
“How did he do that?” I asked.
“He slipped. He will keep to his chamber today. In fact I have insisted that he rest.”
She looked important. For once she was insisting; but I guessed that he had chosen to stay in his room because he did not wish to see me.
“I must see that the fomentations are put on,” she said. “There is nothing like them for easing a sprain. Alternate hot and cold. Dear me. I thank God I have my chamomile lotion ready. That will ease the pain; and I think I shall give him a little poppy juice. Sleep is always good.”
I said: “The man has merely sprained his ankle, Mother. You talk as though he is sickening for the plague.”
“Don’t say such things,” she scolded, looking over her shoulder.
And I marveled that this man should have brought a happiness to her which my saintly father had failed to give her.
I wanted to be alone to dream of my future. What next, I asked myself? Shall I see him again tonight? Will he send a messenger for me? The day seemed long and irksome. Every time I heard a step on the stair I hoped it would be one of the maids come to tell me that Bruno was waiting for me.
That afternoon my mother came to my room. I felt sick with disappointment. I had thought the step on the stair was that of one of the maids bringing a message from Bruno.
My mother looked excited.
“The new people are at the Abbey. Oh, dear, your stepfather is not going to be pleased. He always hoped nothing would come of it. I do hope they will be good neighbors. It is pleasant to have good neighbors. I wonder if the lady of the house is interested in gardens. There is so much land there. I believe she could be very successful.”
“A rival, Mother, perhaps,” I said. “Shall you like it if she produces better roses than yours?”
“I am always ready to learn improvements. I do wonder what they will do there. All those useless buildings. I suppose they will pull them down and do some rebuilding. That was what your stepfather planned to do.”
“And now he will have to abandon his plans and we shall have him nursing a grievance as well as a sprained ankle.”
“You are always so ungrateful to him, Damask. I don’t know what has happened to you lately.”
She went on talking about the Abbey. She was very disappointed by my assumed lack of interest.
I waited to hear from him. There were so many questions I would have asked him. A terrible fear had come to me. What if I should never see him again? I had had the impression that our vows and even our lovemaking had been a kind of ritual. I had had the impression that all the time he was trying to prove to me the fact that he was no ordinary human being. Even when he spoke of love it was in a mysterious fashion. It occurred to me then that he needed to believe himself to be apart. He was proud, I know, and the fact that Keziah had claimed him as her son humiliated him so deeply that he refused to accept it.
I was trying to attach human motives to his actions. But was he after all superhuman?
I was alternately exultant and apprehensive. I kept to my room. I did not wish to see Rupert nor my stepfather. As for my mother, her chatter irritated me. I could only long for Bruno to come to me.
It was three days after that night when Bruno and I had made our vows, Simon Caseman had remained in his room ever since nursing his ankle, which I suspected was not as incapacitating as he made it out to be.
I was in my room when one of the maids came out and told me that there was a visitor in the winter parlor. My mother was there and had sent for me to join them.
I was unprepared for what was waiting me.
As I reached the winter parlor my mother came to the door. Her face was a study of perplexity.
“The new owner of the Abbey is here,” she stuttered.
I went in. Bruno rose from his chair to greet me.
Events had taken such a strange turn that I felt I could believe anything, however fantastic. Bruno, the child of the Abbey, turned adrift into poverty, who only a few nights previously had asked me to share a life of hardship with him, was the owner of the Abbey!
At first I thought it was some joke. How could it be possible?
As I stood facing him in the winter parlor I said something like this. He smiled at me then.
“Is it true then that you doubt me, Damask?” he had said reproachfully.
And I knew that he meant doubt his ability to rise above all other men, doubt his special powers.
Fortunately my mother’s inborn habits and her insistence on the correct manner in which to receive guests got the better of all else. She would ring for her elderberry wine to be brought.