Goldcrest

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

She had left later in fear and be wildered pain; next day, she found she could neither stand nor walk without difficulty, and, evading Kitty's sharp eye and questioning, she stayed in bed, with some tale to her mother of delayed courses. 

These remained suspended and as the days passed Miriam came to realise that the queasy, changed young person who was herself had something physically far wrong. In due course, pale, red-eyed and subdued, she came again to Si Kasparian. He turned his head coldly. "What is it?" he asked her. "Why are you here again?" She burst into tears. "You frightened me," she sobbed.

"That in the shed-you were so unkind, so-so brutal. I think I'm pregnant, oh, oh, oh," and she collapsed into wail ing.

"Not by me," said Si Kasparian, and stood up from where he had been seated by the wall. He could sense, rather than know, of Miriam's mouth dropped witlessly open, as she stared at him from where she stood. He made himself be hard with her, of full intent; to be rid of her for all time was a less un thinkable alternative to having her with him always.

"It was Samson who got you pregnant," he told her. "The child however may not be black." He smiled, and reached for his staff, ready to take himself off. "It may be a quadroon, a little coffee-and-milk coloured creature, quite charming in fact; but, even so, my dear, will Godfrey be pleased?"

He had grasped his staff, and was feeling his way along the wall with it. He knew the Mains less well than Malvie, and must go carefully. His concentration, however, was not so close as to prevent him from hearing Miriam's departure. She had begun to emit shrill cries of fear, horror and disgust; he heard her run away down the path that led to Malvie.

Miriam went home and tried to kill herself. There was, lying in the garden-shed, a new substance Godfrey had had sent from Kew, made mainly of arsenic to prevent rats eating plants, Kitty and Tessa had returned from their evening stroll and were about to change for supper before they found Miriam: she was lying on the floor of her bedchamber vomiting blood, the empty container of chemical nearby. They sent for the physician, who when he could be found came and worked knowledgeably on Miriam, with milk possets, enemas, finally a rival mild emetic. In the end, when he had saved her, he made a certain examination. The facts, as he could later tell them to Kitty Bowes, should have remained veiled; but the poor woman had hysterics, the truth leaked out, and the girl's brother at least, by devious ways, heard it. Miriam had been with a man; but there had been more, much more, was evident also in course of the poor child's delirium, when she raved a good deal. 

At last, between renewed vomiting and purges, this time for a different reason, the embryo Samson had lodged in her was voided, which was the best anyone could do for her. Miriam after all was alive, and, though it was probable she would be affected mentally, no longer preg nant. She was removed shortly, and Kitty accompanied her meantime, for a prolonged stay at Maddon, to help Cecily with the children.

Godfrey grieved for his young half-sister, whom almost alone among everyone, he had loved. Love to him was a well spring in himself, abundant, to be given freely. He never fully recovered from the episode of Miriam's disgrace; weakened and discouraged to an extent which only those who believe that the mind has an influence on the body can understand, he withdrew into himself, growing steadily less accessible after Miriam had left Malvie. The pain in his chest recurred more often; but he still took no action against Si Kasparian Doon, or demanded that he should find other living-quarters, though Tessa constantly urged that this should be done.

Fear had come to Malvie; it ate and slept with them. Anna bel herself felt it, aware that, no matter what must follow as a result, she herself could do nothing to avert the triumph of fear. By night she would feel fear choke her, like a miasma from the nearby sea; after an hour or two of sleepless tossing on her bed, she would get up and go to the casement, and open it and feel the night wind blow her hair, the stone of the sill strike her flesh, as she had once done long ago when Si Kasparian stood below her window, at Mains, ready to come up.

 She had no lover now; her flesh was hungry, thin and dry with desire; at times she would writhe uselessly against the stone. At other times she would go back to bed and try sleep, and wake screaming that he pressed upon her. And always the sea sounded, sounded in her ears, as it had done when both she and Si Kasparian had been born; both she and Si Kasparian.

GODFREY's health improved with the clear, cold weather they had that spring, and by the end of April he was again able to be lifted into his calèche and to drive it about the grounds a little, to see to his gardens.

It was his pride to have Sybilla with him, now that the child had learned to master her second pony; when she was a toddling thing she had used to sit by him in the carriage, pretending to guide the reins; now she rode alongside him. He was, however, compelled to go too slowly for a spirited young rider on her mount, and lately had encouraged Sybilla and Tessa to ride out together, gallop to stretch the ponies' legs along the bridle paths in the planted forest, and return. later, when if it was fine enough they would all three break fast al fresco on food out of a hamper Godfrey brought, packed by the kitchens.

This year, he was anxious to see his larches.

The slopes where they now grew had always been roughly wooded, with thorns and other wild low-growing trees swept always by the off-shore wind, so that they grew with a list to landward. Godfrey had had windbreaks planted, quick-grow ing fir and poplar; then five years ago had set, on the cleared dug land, the new light-green conifers from Scandinavia, scarcely known anywhere in Scotland as yet. Their pale feathery appearance was, he understood, very beautiful, the red trunks contrasting with the springlike foliage. By now they should be at their best.