The black swan (102 page)

"But you'll come back? I—I would like to know you better, Dulcie. I misjudged you badly. I'm sure there is something we can do. After all, what chance has a man against his wife and his father?" Rod asked with false cheer.

Dulcie managed a smile. "What chance indeed." ^

Dulcie asked the carriage driver to take her through Central Park. She was pale and abstracted, muttering to herself, "I didn't know. God forgive me. God forgive me. God—God—God—"

By the time she reached home, she had no recollection of having ridden through the park or anything else that occurred after she left Rod's office. Nothing was important now. Nothing. No one. Her mind was blank. She entered the house, spoke to Fred, and went directly to her bedroom. After staring out at the slushy street for a long while, she sat down at her desk and took up a steel-tipped pen. Dipping it occasionally into the ink bottle, she wrote a few short letters, one to her aunt and uncle, one each to her parents.

Last of all she began a page

My dearest Adam,

Perhaps you will never see this, but it will ease my heart to write it. I have just seen your father and from him learned of the abysmal wrong I have done you all unknowing. Although it is far too late to beg your forgiveness, I will need it if my soul is to rest anywhere except in purgatory. Be assured I have loved you dearly, beyond all circumstances of parting and misunderstandings, and that my love for you will surround you even beyond death.

I cannot tell anyone save yourself the things I am about to reveal. Read them carefully, my dear one, and try not to judge me too harshly. I have wanted to live, to find you again, and so I have done many things which were repulsive to me and contrary to my nature. I make no apology for myself. These acts had to be done, and by me, and I did them.

I first became conscious, after the Independence went down, in the hut of Mam'bo Luz, a voodoo priestess.

Dulcie went on for page after page, telling Adam of her year on Andros, not leaving out Justin or the drums that echoed in the two locked rooms. She told him of meeting Edmund and of giving up hope after hearing Claudine's name mentioned with his death. She conveyed as well as she could the shock of seeing him again only to be parted, and the worse blow from Roderick Courtland.

She concluded

My love, I wish you a happiness in the future that you and I were never destined to know. Try to understand me, and judge my circumstances along with my actions. Do not be bitter, my dearest one, for I am not. Think of me kindly if you can.

Yours throughout eternity, Dulcie Tremain

She sealed the letter and propped it up with the others on her desk. She cleaned the pen and laid it straight. She had left her kid gloves out; she straightened the fingers and put them away. Everything else was neat.

Dulcie went into the bathroom and ran the deep lavatory nearly full of hot water. Rolling back her sleeves, she plunged her hands in up over her wrists, and kept them there until they were quite hot. She reached into the medicine chest and took out Jem's razor and let it warm in the water. Perhaps when she used it, it would not hurt so much.

It did not. She scarcely felt the cuts across her wrists. She stood there dreamily, feeling the water grow colder, watching it turn quickly from pinkish to brilliant red.

It was late in the afternoon. Mad and Patricia were laughing when they came in the door. "Ah decleah. Mad, Ah'm chilled to the bone. Ah'm goin' to change mah clothes befo' Ah make mahself sick. Wheah's Miss Dulcie, Fred?"

"Upstairs, ma'am. She's been in her room since before lunch."

"Oh, that po' chil', Ah wish Ah could think o' somethin' to amuse her. Evah since she saw Adam, she's just gone fathah an' fathah into a de-cline."

The bathroom door was closed, but there was no answer

to Patricia's knock. She pushed the door, but it was stuck. She shoved hard until it gave slightly, and peered around the edge. She saw the deep marble lavatory filled with blood and the straight razor. Dulcie lay on the blue and white tiled floor, blood all around her. Patricia began to scream.

Mad, with Fred following, dashed up the stairs. Patricia clung to the doorframe. "In theah—on the floah."

Fred managed to push open the door, and Mad slid in behind him. "Mother of God," she knelt by Dulcie, her knee in a pool of blood. "Where is it all comin' from?" She took Dulcie's hand, and more blood flowed. Mad saw the cuts. "Oh, no!" Frantically she tried to stem the bleeding with her hands. Dulcie's blood flowed over Mad's fingers.

"Mah baby—" Patricia began.

"The other wrist too, ma'am," Fred said applying pressure on the cut.

"Trish, don't you dare faint!" Mad commanded. "Dulcie'U die if you do! Get into the linen chest and give us towels—quick! Move!"

"Make a pad, Fred," Mad told him. "Fold it and press it right on the spot." He moved as quickly and calmly as she did. The towels soon became soaked with blood. "More towels!" Mad said.

"We should look at her throat, ma'am."

Patricia gagged. They turned Dulcie over and were relieved to find no other wounds. They continued to apply pressure. There was little else they could do. "Patricia, send Marie for the doctor and then for Jem and Oliver."

Dulcie's chest rose and fell shallowly; sometimes it seemed not to move at all.

By the end of another hour the doctor had arrived. They moved Dulcie to the bed where the doctor could work better. He showed Mad and Fred the pressure point inside her upper arm, so that he could stitch the cuts unimpeded. He dressed the wounds. The bleeding had almost stopped. He examined her, listening to her heart, noting the sweaty pallor of her skin and the inside of her lips and the bluish tinge of the whites of her eyes.

"It will be a near thing," he said. "A very near thing. She is extremely weak and debilitated. You'll need to keep her warm. If^she regains consciousness, begin giving her

liquids. If there is any change during the night, send for me. I'll come past early tomorrow morning."

"Is there anythin' else we can do for her, doctor?" Mad asked.

"Say your prayers, Mrs. Raymer."

Patricia sat beside her daughter. Dulcie's breathing was very light. Occasionally she would take a single long breath and let it out with a semblance of a moan. Her eyelids stayed shut, not even fluttering. Around her mouth were faintly blue lines. Patricia prayed, Please, Lord .. . she has so much to live fo'.

Mad went downstairs with the doctor and met Jem coming in.

"Doctor! Is she—?" His face puckered.

"Your daughter is alive, Mr. Moran. There is always hope."

Jem wrung the doctor's hand effusively while tears coursed down his cheeks. Then he went up to see Dulcie.

Patricia reached out to him. Holding hands, they watched the weak motions of their daughter's breathing. "Ah want to stay by her, touchin' her all night. If Ah've got any strength in me, Ah want to give it ail to mah baby."

Jem, choked, gripped her hand and swallowed tears. "We'll . . . both . . ."

Oliver came in to find Mad, her skirt stiff with blood, lying on the horsehair chaise-longue. Fred was bathing her forehead with cold cloths. "She just fainted, sir."

"Dulcie?"

"Alive, Mr. Raymer. The doctor's been and done all he could."

"I'll go up. Stay with Mrs. Raymer, just as you're doing. I won't be gone long."

Oliver saw the envelopes first. Quietly he gripped Jem's shoulder and kissed Patricia's cheek. He kissed Dulcie, whispering, "You're going to make it, Dulcie, do you hear me? You're going to be fine." He straightened up, not looking at anyone and stood with his back to them for some time.

Dulcie took in another long fluttering breath and let it go.

Oliver picked up the envelope addressed to himself and Mad. He lifted Adam's, weighed it in his palm. He turned

to Jem. "Whatever happens, I think Adam should get this letter—intact. It's between them, don't you agree?"

Jem nodded. Oliver placed the letter in the desk drawer.

Then he left the house. He sent multiple telegraph messages to Adam Tremain, Smithville, and others in care of Confederate agents in Wilmington. All read: DULCIE TREMAIN HAS ATTEMPTED SUICIDE STOP DO NOT KNOW IF SHE WILL LIVE STOP FOR GODS SAKE COME IMMEDIATELY SIGNED OLIVER RAYMER.

Chapter Fifteen

The trip from Long Island seemed endless. Adam was silent and pensive. He hadn't felt as he did now since he'd first seen Satan's Keep. Then he had believed every moment he was unable to find Dulcie was one moment less she had to survive. But she had survived—somehow, by some means, and without him. She had returned to New York showing no ill effects. If anything she had been better off than he. She hadn't needed him then, nor did it appear she had wanted him. Quickly he shut his eyes against the memory of the flashing emerald-green and diamond-white stones on her hand.

But this was now. Both his father and Oliver had asked him to return to her as quickly as he could. Neither man would bring him back to New York if Dulcie were with Edmund Revanche. Surely not his own father. Rod had written only of her love for Adam. Nothing more. Yet it was still too late.

Oliver's message had brought different news. Dulcie had attempted to take her own life. Why? He cried inside himself and then shrank from the memory of Dulcie on her knees in the mud, her hands raised in supplication as she begged him to listen. He hadn't. He had run from her.

And now what would he find? A woman? A funeral? An end to everything? All the loving gone? All the longing, the bitterness, the disappointment locked in time with her death?

Tense and straight-backed, Adam continued his silent

brooding. Each strip of road brougiit back vanished days with Dulcie. Precious few days by which he valued his life, a slender line of time that told him who he was. His life was wrapped tightly, bound like swaddling in that young girl, that small red-haired creature who had looked at him from eyes of liquid gold, who had taunted him and every man with her smile and so seldom understood the invitations she offered. So easily she had become a part of him, yet he'd had her for so short a time, and she had never truly been his. He knew that now. Dulcie belonged to the moment, never to him.

It was dark when he finally pulled up in front of the Raymer house.

Oliver answered Adam's knock. "Adam, thank God you have come."

Adam grasped his arm. "Sir, Dulcie—is she—?"

"She's alive," Oliver said quickly.

"Will she see me?"

"Oh, I'm sure she will—but first Mad wished to speak to you."

"May I see Dulcie first? Please. I know you must be wary of granting me anything, but since you telegraphed I hoped you'd accept my apology for my behavior the last time I was here."

"Oh, it's not that at all. Mad wants to talk to you before you see Dulcie. Tell you— Oh, damn and blast, this is not . . . I—I am quite at a loss."'

"There is something—you said Dulcie is alive!?"

"She's written a letter—left it to you, I mean. Mad and I think you should read it before you see her."

Adam looked at the long staircase, listened for a moment to the sound of footsteps in the upper hall, the soft murmur of voices around a sick room. Reluctantly he followed Oliver into Mad's sitting room.

Mad hurried across the room. "You came! I knew you would! I just knew it!" She hugged him close and planted a perfumed kiss on his cheek. "I told OUie I couldn't be wrong about you! And I wasn't—was I, Adam?"

He looked at her for a long moment, unwilling to have this woman know him so readily. "You weren't wrong. How is she? Does she know you sent for me?"

"We thought it best not to tell her."

"In case I didn't come."

"We never doubted you, dear. The telegram might have

gotten lost. They do so often these days. You might not have been in Smithville to receive it. So many things might have gone wrong."

"May I see her now?"

With a hrrumphing sound deep in his throat Oliver handed Mad the thick envelope, then excused himself and left the room.

"Sit down, Adam." Mad poured each of them a demi-tasse, trying to sort out what she should say. "You must know that I care a great deal for Dulcie. Often I've envied my sister her child. You must promise me, dear, when you do go upstairs, that you'll be kind. Don't see her unless you can go lovingly, Adam." Mad looked at him expectantly. "Dulcie has told me a little about her experiences after the shipwreck, and they were horrify in'. But I know nothin' of what happened to you, Adam. What I have counted on is that the love I saw between you beforfe that awful time is still strong enough to overcome all that has happened to you. You are here, and that must be a good sign."

"I don't want her to die, Mrs. Raymer," he replied softly.

"Is that all—the only reason you came?"

"No, that is not all, but it is all I can be sure of. Dulcie is going to be married shortly, and . . . and I—"

"Bosh! You know as well as I that as soon as she set eyes on you, there was never any question of another marriage."

"It isn't that simple."

"It is! And I might point out that you've made no arrangements for a divorce. Or did you expect she might commit bigamy?"

"I'll give her a divorce if she wants it," Adam said, scowling.

Mad set her cup down with a decisive click. "Young people are as unyielding as granite, I swear. Neither you nor Dulcie has given the other a minute to explain. That much you would grant to the most unruly of your crewmen. Can't you accord the same kindness to your wife?"

Adam stood up. "May I see her now, Mrs. Raymer?"

"No, you may not!" Mad picked up the letter. "Dulcie wrote this to you the day she—that day. She would demand it be destroyed if she knew I had it, but she doesn't know." Mad walked slowly away from him. "Dulcie is every bit as stubborn and proud as you are. Perhaps I am

doin' her a grievous wrong by givin' this to you. Perhaps I'm disfavorin' both of you. I don't know what she wrote, but it must be the truth. She never thought she'd be alive to see you again after you had read it. I think you should, but I won't force you to do so. You may see Dulcie."