The Women of Eden (85 page)

Stunned by this outburst, incapable of response, Elizabeth moved back. Dear God, help us both. As she walked away, needing time and distance, her eye caught on one specific face in the painting, beautiful Lila. "It wasn't—Lila you saw, John," she said. "The physician had given you something to help you sleep. You only thought that-"

"No!" The rejection came again, stronger than before, agitation covering that previously lifeless face. "It was her; I swear it. I saw her. I won't go back, not until she returns to her grave where she belongs."

She saw him shivering. In the lapses between his words she tried to understand. What had he seen, and why had his mind been incapable of dealing with it? And why his fierce concentration on the painting, his face covered with bewilderment, as though he didn't understand anything he saw.

She took a few additional moments to still her own accelerated pulse, then drew a straight-backed chair close and sat, wanting only to accomplish what she'd been sent to accomplish and leave.

"John, Alex wanted me to ask you when you would be ready to return to London. He says—"

She broke off speaking, aware that he wasn't listening to her. "John, please look at me. It will serve no purpose for you to stay here. All those women are gone now. Lila to her grave, Dhari to Canada, Mary with her husband—"

When she was least expecting it, he smiled. His manner changed, became arrogant as he shifted in the chair, sitting upright, as though the images in the painting were enemies which must be confronted. "They will come back," he said patly. "It's only a matter of time. All of them will come back."

Where only moments before she'd felt pity for this man, now she felt anger. "I think not," she countered. "WTiy should they?"

"Then you think wrong. They all will come back because of me." He leaned closer. "They need me, you see. I created them all, lifted them out of their inferiorities and elevated them to positions of supremacy."

He sat on the edge of the chair, excited by his own words. "Look at the painting," he commanded. 'Tou see that all four females are looking for someone, waiting for the arrival of someone, someone who is very important to them."

"And who would that be?" she asked quietly, knowing the answer, but curious to see if he had the nerve to speak it.

He did. "Me," he said brightly. Broadly he shook his head. "Oh, no, it's only a matter of time. They all will come back, begging for my forgiveness. And, of course, I'll give it, because I do love them, you see."

"I'm sorry, John," she said kindly, though firmly, "but they won't come back. Before I left London I received a letter from Andrew and Dhari, a letter in which every line revealed blissful happiness. They've settled in Toronto. Andrew is building a good practice"—she paused—"a baby is expected in late summer."

It was as she'd expected. The last information had been the deadliest. With unblinking eyes he continued to stare at the painting, though she saw a pulse in his temple.

"No, John," she repeated, "Dhari and Andrew will not be back, nor will Lila, except perhaps in that tortured state in which you recently saw her, an unhappy ghost, seeking in death the love and understanding that you denied her in life."

"I—loved her," came the whispered reply.

"You did not," Elizabeth countered firmly. 'Tou loved only your own will."

"Then Mary," he argued. "Mary, more than all of you, loves and needs me. And I'll forgive her betrayal. She carries with her all the hopes of Eden."

"Then pity Eden"—Elizabeth smiled—"for shortly those hopes will be sailing across the Atlantic for America, where they shall be devoted to her new husband."

"No!"

"Yes!" Elizabeth replied with matching strength. "She's gone, John, and you might as well face it."

He covered his face with his hands. From behind this mufHed barrier she heard him mutter, "Then it's up to Richard."

She debated the wisdom of sharing with him Richard's last letter from Forbes Hall. Why not? Perhaps true healing could take place only under the cleansing influence of truth. "Richard may move the line forward, John, but he will not do it at Eden. He sent his regrets last week concerning Mary's wedding and told me in private that as long as you were here he would not be returning to Eden."

It was a harsh message, and momentarily she regretted having spoken it. Never had she seen such desolation on a human face. He leaned forward in the chair, his hands still obscuring his features, and for one terrible moment she thought he was weeping.

What she heard next was that voice, as arrogant as ever. "Then let them all go, and again I say, good riddance." Abruptly he reached for her hand. "You'll stay with me, I know, good Elizabeth, the only true mother I've ever known."

Abruptly he leaned back in the chair again, his eyes lifted to the ceiling. "Yes, just the two of us. That's how it should be; that's how if s been from the beginning. Good, loyal Elizabeth"—he smiled at the ceiling—"how I love you; how I've always loved you."

She had no words, no outlet, and felt an insufferable weight. No! Her days of servitude to this man were over. Although she had no clear-cut view of the future, her clarity of vision for the past more than made up for it. If she didn't know where she was going, at least she knew where she'd been, and knew that it was a landscape she could not pass through again and survive.

"No," she said simply and charted the shock on his face as he lowered his eyes from the ceiling and focused on her.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"What I said. I think for both our sakes we should not see each other again."

Abruptly the shock on his face altered. He laughed once. Then came a second laugh, then a third, until he was speaking over his laughter, a sputtering incoherent sound, a thin stream of spittle running down from the corner of his mouth. "Not see each other again?" he repeated. "\Vhat nonsense! And where are you going?" he added, a heavier tone of sarcasm in his voice. "Has one of your lovers offered to become your husband?"

"No."

"Then what? Where would you go? Who would have you, an aging well-worn whore—" He waved his hand in the air as though to erase the ughness of his last remark. "Forgive me, Elizabeth, but we

belong together. We—understand each other," he added, slyly, "the needs of the flesh, if you know what I mean."

No, she didn't know and was in no mood to try to understand. Wise enough to realize that if she stayed they both would say far too much, she stood abruptly, ready to leave the room, except that he reached out and grabbed her hand and held her fast.

"Of course, you'll stay with me, Elizabeth," he begged.

With only minor effort she wrenched her hand free and confronted him, shocked that she should detest those features that once she'd loved.

"I'm going to France, John," she announced.

"France? What in the name of God are you going to do in France?"

"I've been invited."

"By whom?"

"You wouldn't know her."

"Her!" He settled back, a mocking expression on his face. "Well, variety is good for the soul, though I'd be surprised if it satisfied you for long."

She bowed her head in an effort to hold her tongue. She wasn't certain what it was that welled up within her, some ancient need to justify herself, to erase the humiliation of her past. "I'm going to France with Lydia Becker," she said. "We have been invited by Louise Michels to observe the French feminists—"

"I don't believe it," he interrupted. "Wasn't your last mortification enough? Do you and your—friends enjoy being the laughingstock of London?"

"Goodbye, John," she said, backing away.

"You don't even speak French," he shouted up at her.

"I can learn."

"And Bradlaugh will be going with you, no doubt. For all your rhetoric you still enjoy a good English cock, don't you?"

"Whether I go alone or not, I'm still going."

"Then you'll be the laughingstock of Paris as well as London."

"Perhaps."

"And what am I to do?"

As she circled the chair, he dragged himself forward, his voice, manner, words totally incoherent now. "You can't just leave me!" he cried out.

"I'm doing it." She smiled, deriving enjoyment from his disintegration,

"You're a whore, and that's all you'll ever be. Without my protection you cannot survive."

"We'll see."

"ElizabethlWait!"

The pathos of this last cry caused her to halt, and she looked back to see him clinging to the back of the chair, his face glistening with tears or perspiration, she couldn't tell which.

"What—do you want?" he whispered, on diminishing breath. Slowly he turned about and sank heavily into the chair. "What did any of you want that I was not prepared and willing to give you?" he muttered, staring at "The Women of Eden."

Elizabeth looked back at him, stunned by this wholly naive and ingenuous question coming from what had been the most brilliant mind in London.

Although she had vowed never to look upon him again, she retraced her steps until she was standing beside him, seeing him precisely as she'd first seen him, slumped in the chair, his eyes on the painting.

"What do we want?" she repeated, looking down on him, still amazed by the question. "What do you want?" she asked, pleased that she'd recovered so rapidly from his earlier abuse. Obviously he no longer had the power to hurt her.

"What have you always wanted, from the very beginning, John," she went on, "even when you were a little boy?" Failing to elicit a response, she provided him with one.

"Freedom, dignity, the right to pursue your own destiny, the opportunity to make those decisions that affect and influence your spirit and soul and body." She paused. "We are no different from you, John. Oh, our physiology is diflFerent, but that's all. And the difference does nothing to alter our hearts or our minds or our needs. For years, centuries, we've tried to convince each other that it does. But it doesn't, not in any fundamental or profound way."

Momentarily lost in her own thoughts, she forced her attention back down on the man who sat as though transfixed by four painted images. "John?" she said, hoping that he would respond in some way to what she had said.

But he did not. In fact, if anything the pain on his face seemed to have increased, his focus on the painting even more intense, as

though he saw in it all the world's mysteries combined into one. If he'd understood a word she'd said, he gave no indication of it.

Then it was over. There was nothing more to stay for. She looked down on him a final time, amazed to see not one resemblance to his father, Edward Eden. Once they had been mirror-image reflections, the only difference residing in their souls. Now that difference had surfaced with a vengeance, annihilating even their physical similarities. What chance did mere flesh have against the power of the soul?

"Goodbye, John," she said, and vidthout a backward look left the room.

Two hours later, with her luggage loaded and secured atop her carriage, she stood in the inner courtyard and took a final look at Eden Castle. How it had intimidated her once! But never again. In fact, she had good reason to believe that nothing would ever intimidate her again as long as she lived.

Before she climbed into the carriage she looked back toward the Great Hall, thinking briefly on two pieces of unfinished business. After she'd left John she'd gone in search of Alex, had found him quite drunk in the Kitchen Court. Perhaps it was just as well. She had no message for him, no instructions. He would have to find his own way, as would John. The April air was ripe for liberation, but the effort would have to be theirs.

Then she'd gone immediately to Harriet's chambers to say her goodbyes, only to be greeted in the corridor by a weeping Peggy, who had informed her that her mistress had slid the bolt from within; the ancient imprisonment had commenced immediately following Mary's departure. Again, though regretful, there was nothing Elizabeth could do about it. Perhaps for Harriet, with her ruined face and sightiess eyes, the greatest freedom came with imprisonment.

Now there was absolutely nothing more to stay for, and accordingly she climbed aboard her carriage, took a last look at Eden Cas-tie, then turned her vision toward the broad, unbroken horizon line.

She would find a future for herself somewhere. She was certain of it, as confident as she'd ever been in her entire life.

May 3, 1871

Burke looked out over the crowded dock, and in this moment of inactivity made two fervent wishes: one, that he had made the right decision to return to America, and, two, that the crossing would allow them the degree of privacy that had consistently eluded them during these last hectic weeks.

He'd never gone through such days, and hoped that he never would again—the dismantling of the house in Mayfair, the transfer of funds, the complex task of booking passage for fourteen. All the servants had leaped at the opportunity to return "home." Home. There was a nagging anxiety.

He had tried repeatedly to warn them that the home they had left over ten years ago would not be the one to which they would be returning. His reports coming out of the South had been sketchy, but none of them had been good. Corruption and greed apparently were flourishing, the victorious Yankee 'liberators" exploiting the Negroes in ways that would make Southern paternalism pale in comparison. Still, nothing he had said had dissuaded them, and the eagerness with which they had hurled themselves into preparations for departure suggested to Burke that perhaps they had not been blissfully happy on free English soil. Home-As the confusion and mystery of that small word pressed dovm upon him, he altered his line of vision, turned slightly to the left and saw John Thadeus Delane with his arm around Mary's shoulder, pointing up at the immense steamship. The City of Paris, clearly an expert on ships as he was on everything else.

Enjoying a good reflective moment for a change, Burke leaned against the wooden shed where he was awaiting the army of porters with their luggage to clear Customs, and lovingly studied the two about thirty yards ahead.