Joan Smith (21 page)

Raventhorpe was apologizing for having doubted my Arabella’s love. “My darling girl, I have been wrestling my demons over what you told me this evening. I find I must believe you, because sacrificing yourself for me is exactly what you
would
do. What can I say, what can I do to make up for centuries of mistrust? How you must despise me! You surrendered your life for me, and I a very Judas.”

“But I am not Arabella,” I murmured, to ease my conscience.

“Then I am not Raventhorpe.” He smiled, disbelieving. “Is it not time we two strangers knew one another more intimately?” he said softly. I let the hushed silence be my answer. If he took it for permission...

The lips seeking mine were no strangers. The past was past, yet lived again in us. This love was unquenchable. It had not died, but like some forgotten, primitive seed, had survived in the bosom of the earth, waiting its season to swell and burst forth. I could not hold myself back; I was drawn into the vortex of his passion by an elemental force of nature. The paramount force, overriding all others, to ensure man’s survival. Sun and earth and dew swelled the seed of desire within me, in that sunless chamber. Alexander had wandered the universe until he found me, and I must now be with him. Our time had come. It was more than a lover; it was love itself that lay with me.

I wrapped my arms tightly around his insubstantial body. It was not quite of solid, human substance, yet it seemed to have some density now. There was more than the enveloping warmth; there was a demanding pressure against my flesh. But really the physical details were less important than the tide of pure love that raged about us, inundating mere rational thought. I felt Arabella’s spirit was inhabiting me, and I gladly surrendered my body to her for these few brief moments, for which she had waited several lifetimes. Her lonely wanderings in the meadow would be rewarded at last.

“Say you don’t despise me, my love. Say you forgive me,” he urged.

“No, no. I don’t despise you. I love you, Alexander. I have always loved you. I was so sorry I hadn’t gone to Gretna Green with you. I should have. I wanted so much to tell you how much I loved you that last night, but I dared not, with Sir Giles at my back with a pistol. I gladly died rather than have to marry William.” There, I had said it, I had fulfilled her dying wish.

“My dear heart.” His fevered lips traced nibbling arabesques on my throat; his voice was drugged with passion. The same feelings raged within me. “I am humbled by your love, but I wish you had not done it. My survival was no pleasure. It was hell on earth.”

“But you knew a great many women!” I reminded him.

“I tried to fathom your treachery through a great many women. Hundreds of them, women without counting, but all with your face, when I closed my eyes. I wanted to hurt you, Belle, as you hurt me, and knew that violating our love was the way to do it. I regret every abandoned moment of that life, my own dear love. Most of all I regret that I scribbled it all down to mock you, and me, and make us infamous. What I really wanted was just to have you back as we used to be. So happy, and we didn’t even know it.” Regret echoed in his soft voice.

“We’ll be happy again,” I promised rashly.

Hungry kisses were rained on my eyes, my nose, my lips. In my ear he softly whispered, “You should have let me die with you, and we would have been together forever. I shouldn’t mind eternity, if I could spend it with you.”

“We are together now, my own dear heart,” I breathed on a trembling sigh.

When he replied, his voice was hoarse with emotion. “They’ll never tear us apart again,” he said, then gave me his lips, and I claimed them for my own in a kiss that healed the age-old wounds that went beyond mere jealousy to touch the very depths of despair, and quicken it with hope.

I was suffocated with a delirium of passion. Blood pounded mercilessly in my ears as his warm fingers explored the intimate corners of my being, awakening me to unknown raptures. His warm hands measured the swells of my hips, then brushed higher to palm my breasts. His head lowered, and I felt the smooth roughness of his cheeks pressing into their yielding softness, as if he would like to drown there. Surges of pleasure washed through me. I folded him in my arms, savoring the strength of his stretching muscles, curving around me.

I had found the other half of myself—no! My other self had found me, and now we would be one. From all the tractless infinity of time and space he had found me. Like the shark drawn by the atomy of blood, he had sensed I was here, at this place, at this time, and had kept a rendezvous with destiny. For one brief hour, we outwitted Fate, and were together.

Our love gave meaning to the chaos that was life. We were the reason for it as well as the means. This was why so many dark nights had been endured, so many tears shed, so much blood spilt—for this brief instant of perfection. We were not of this world, but a spark to light the skies of eternity. From the vertiginous heights of the heavens I looked down on Belle Savage. Seeing her with my heart, I could only pity the hollowness that had been her existence.

My whole body was pierced with an ephemeral, shuddering joy, even while I knew it could not last. Its very brevity made it more precious. Such raging fires were not meant to endure. They burn themselves out like a dying star in one great convulsive streak across the sky, then scatter their sparks, which turn to ash as they settle on the ground. But to have known such a moment of glory—who could deny herself the miracle?

After the fullness of love, we lay back exhausted, still in each other’s arms. “It was hell to come here.” He smiled a drugged smile of satisfaction. “But it was worth it, my Belle. A never-to-be-forgotten night, a night to turn the gods green with envy.”

I gazed on his beloved face, trying to penetrate to his mind as he chatted on. “I have traveled a long way, not quite knowing why, but believing it had to do with revenge. But when I saw you that first night by the weir—remember? I knew it was not hatred that drove me. It was wanting to regain your love. Through you, I have achieved the miracle of a second innocence, sweeter than the first for knowing the hell I have escaped. Without darkness, there is no light. And without the bitterness, who can savor the sweet?

“When I boarded the ship at Bournemouth, the skies poured down a stygian pitch. I stood on deck, lifting my face to let the rain wash my tears. It would have been a relief to know you were already dead. That is how wretched I was that night. Hate filled my heart. I stood at the railing, trying to gather courage to plunge in and end it all. I did not think life could hold more horrors for me, but I was wrong. I made it worse by becoming a dissolute wretch, wallowing in debauchery. That was me, without you, Belle. You were my better half. Now I can be at rest. For if you, whom I wronged, can forgive me, who shall say me nay? You
do
forgive me? Say you do! Let me be shrived of this burden I carry.”

I had often sensed that ineffable sadness in him. I felt guilty that I could not assuage it, but how could I mislead him? This was infinity, the great intelligence of the universe we were dealing with, and the whole truth must be told. “I am not Arabella,” I said. “She was a relative. I feel she was here tonight; I am sure she forgives you.

He shook his head in tolerant amusement. “Oh, my poor vain jewel! Not Arabella? Would
I
be mistaken about such a thing? The hair, the face, are slightly different in this body, but you are you. It is mainly the soul I see; the soul has not changed. How can you doubt it?” My doubts faded at his words, and a glowing euphoria filled me with wonder. “Some part of you recognized me from the first moment, as I recognized you,” he continued. “I have carried on this charade until you came to accept the truth, for I knew you would flee if you knew the whole. You tried to run away the first—no, the second time I found you. I had to—handle the phone.”

“With a poltergeist. Who was he?”

“That was no poltergeist. In the passion of the moment—the dread that you would leave—some benevolent God allowed me an instant’s power to stop you. You were more yielding by the weir, but then it is fraught with memories for us.”

I gazed on him in wonder, with a joy radiating through me. I was not a mere impostor. I was Arabella, his Arabella. And as the beautiful truth took hold, he began to fade. He smiled at me lovingly, with ineffable sorrow, as if for the last time. I tried to hold on to him, but as I reached for him with a sobbing gasp, I found myself alone. A howl of outrage rose in my throat. I lacked the strength to utter it. I threw myself back on the pillows in despair.

It could not have been a dream! It was real, the most real thing that had ever happened to me. I felt it was the only real thing I had ever known, the only thing that mattered, that I was Arabella Comstock, that Raventhorpe loved me, and I him. How could I go on alone? After such knowledge, how was I to endure the dregs of life without him? It was the loss of my parents all over again, magnified a thousand times.

I lay alone in that bed, still warm with love, remembering, reliving those golden moments. Why had he tortured me with this glimpse of what might have been, if he only meant to desert me?

But it was unfair to blame Alexander. He had moved heaven and bent earth to find me. And now he was at peace. He would be taken to that heaven where the fulfilled spirits go for their reward, and I was bound in this mortal coil for another half century. It was intolerable! Everyone I loved was gone. What had I to live for?

I would not let the malice of time rob me of Alexander again. I should have let him die with me, he had said, and he was right. What had remained for him was only degradation on earth, and torment in the hereafter. And nothing remained for me without him. We could have been together all those years; we could be together now. It was only this body of mine that kept us apart. A single step kept me from joining him. Death would give us life together.

I rose up from the bed, knowing what I must do. I would go to him; he would be waiting for me at the weir, as he had waited times out of mind. The wind would be rustling the leaves of the willow trees, and stir the serrated tops of towering pines, silhouetted in ebony against the silver sky. The crescent moon would ride high over the roof of Chêne Bay, and in May, the ground under the fruit trees would be white with fallen petals. “Spring snow,” Alexander called them. The old excitement invaded me, warming my cheeks and sending the hot blood coursing through my veins.

He would open his arms, and I would run to them, to my beloved, there by the cascading water that threw its silver droplets into the air. We would admire it one last time, then together, hand in hand and unafraid, we would plunge into the depths of the cold, black water. Our spirits would rise from it like a phoenix, together at last, forever.

I went in a fever of excitement to snatch up a shawl, the same white one I wore when he came to me last night. Was it only hours ago? What if he was not there? What if he had already gone to his eternal rest? I must hurry; before heaven claimed him. What if he did not recognize me? Ah, but he would recognize my soul. I was his dear Arabella. It was weakness to hesitate. I picked up the shawl and tossed it about my shoulders. It fell to the floor. I picked it up again, and was aware of a fierce tugging at the other end, as if an invisible hand pulled it away.

He was here, and I spoke, although I could not see him. “I am going with you, Alexander. Wait for me at the weir.”

The shawl was hurled to the floor. A wild gust of wind invaded the closed room, blowing the curtains and lifting the counterpane. Its force sent me reeling against a chair. It was the same skirling blast with which he had arrived at the séance, and changed my life forever. He had shown me I was Arabella, and his presence had recalled to me that long-ago story. But since I was Arabella, I was already dead, so what did it matter?

“I
will
go! I
will!
Don’t try to stop me!”

I left the shawl and ran to the door. It banged shut as I reached it. I took the knob in my fingers and wrenched with all my might, but it would not budge. It seemed the benevolent gods were on Alexander’s side once more, lending him power. The closet door blew open, hitting the wall behind it with a violent force.

“You don’t love me!” I shouted into the empty room. “You don’t want me to go to you. I hate you, Alexander.” Tears streamed down my face, and I threw myself, sobbing, on the bed. I felt warm fingers stroking my hair, as if I were a baby. The echo of unspoken crooning sounds filled my head. When the tears had subsided I said, or perhaps only thought, “I don’t know what you want of me. Why did you come back, if we are not to be together?”

“In the fullness of time, my Belle. Not like this. Human life is precious; live out your allotted span. I will be waiting for you, as I have waited all these years.” I sensed that suicide would prevent me from joining him, who had gained peace. I was doomed to another lifetime of waiting.

I rose up from the bed and picked up the shawl. The room was quiet, but I knew that he was with me yet awhile, watching over me. He was leaving, but he was not gone yet. The closet door began to vibrate almost imperceptibly, but my awareness was preternaturally alert to any sign. I took the shawl to the closet and hung it up slowly, waiting for a further sign.

Alexander was there, close by, leading me to some discovery. I glanced about the room until my eyes met Arabella’s toilet table. I went to it and drew open the drawers, one by one, The upper right drawer came out only partway, like her desk. I turned the porcelain knob, and the fake back fell forward, revealing a small book, bound in white kid. On the front in gold lettering were the words
Sonnets to a Lady

I took it back to the bed and opened it. On the flyleaf was the inscription: “To Arabella from Alexander, with love—
toujours.”
I turned the page. The sonnets were familiar, but as I read them with Arabella’s eyes and heart, their meaning grew and expanded, and filled me with peace. A theme of waiting for love ran through them. It was only the interval to her sixteenth birthday that he wrote of, but the words suggested a much longer wait, since every hour apart had seemed like months. They were full of love, and asked for patience, for a love that is worth having is worth waiting for, though Time itself seemed to stand still. It would come, in the fullness of time. The bright promise would find fulfillment, or why had God made the promise?