That was the last time I saw John Gabriel. We parted in anger in Zagrade and did not meet again.
With some difficulty I made the arrangements which permitted Isabella’s body to be brought home to England.
She was buried in the small churchyard by the sea at St Loo where the other members of her family are buried. After the funeral, I went back with the three old ladies to the little Victorian house and was thanked by them for bringing Isabella home …
They had aged terribly in the last two years. Lady St Loo was more like an eagle than ever, her flesh stretched tightly over her bones. She looked so frail that I thought she might die any moment. Actually, though, she lived for many years after that. Lady Tressilian was stouter and very asthmatic. She told me in a whisper that they all liked Rupert’s wife very much.
‘Such a practical girl and so bright. I’m sure they’ll be happy. Of course it isn’t what we once dreamed of …’
The tears came into her eyes. She murmured, ‘Oh why – why did this have to happen?’
It was an echo of what had never ceased to reiterate in my own brain.
‘That wicked – wicked man …’ she went on.
We were united, three old ladies and myself, in our sorrow for a dead girl and our hatred of John Gabriel.
Mrs Bigham Charteris was more leathery than ever. She said as I finally bid them goodbye, ‘Do you remember little Mrs Burt?’
‘Yes, of course. What’s happened to her?’
Mrs Bigham Charteris shook her head.
‘I’m sadly afraid she’s going to make a fool of herself. You know what happened to Burt?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Upset into a ditch one night when he’d had one over the eight. Struck his head on a stone. Killed him.’
‘So she’s a widow?’
‘Yes. And I hear from my friends in Sussex that she’s taken up with one of the farmers near there. Going to marry him. Man has a bad reputation. Drinks. Bit of a bully, too.’
So Milly Burt, I thought, was repeating her pattern …
Did anyone ever profit by having a second chance …?
I wondered more than ever when I was on my way to London the following day. I had boarded the train at Penzance and taken a ticket for first lunch. As I sat there waiting for the soup to be served, I thought about Jennifer.
I had had news of her from time to time from Caro Strangeways. Jennifer, Caro had told me, was very unhappy. She had complicated her life in an incredible fashion, but she was being very plucky over it. One couldn’t, Caro said, help admiring her.
I smiled a little to myself, thinking of Jennifer. Jennifer was rather a darling. But I felt no urge to see her – no real interest.
One doesn’t care for hearing the same record too often …
So I came at last to Teresa’s house in London and Teresa let me talk …
She heard my bitter diatribes against John Gabriel. I described the happenings in Zagrade to her and ended with the account of Isabella’s grave in St Loo.
Then I was silent for a moment, hearing the noise of the Atlantic breakers against the rocks and seeing the outline of St Loo Castle against the sky …
‘I suppose I ought to feel that I’ve left her there in peace – but I don’t, Teresa. I’m full of rebellion. She died before her time. She said to me once that she hoped she would live to be a very old woman. She could have lived to be old. She was very strong. I think that’s what I find so unendurable – that her life was cut short …’
Teresa stirred a little against the background of a large painted screen. She said:
‘You’re going by Time. But Time doesn’t mean anything at all. Five minutes and a thousand years are equally significant.’ She quoted softly, ‘The moment of the Rose and the moment of the Yew Tree are of equal duration …’
(A dark red rose embroidered on faded grey silk …)
Teresa went on, ‘You will insist on making your own design for life, Hugh, and trying to fit other people into it. But they’ve got their own design. Everyone has got their own design – that’s what makes life so confusing. Because the designs are interlaced – superimposed.
‘Just a few people are born clear-eyed enough to know their own design. I think Isabella was one of them … She was difficult to understand – for us to understand – not because she was complex but because she was simple – almost terrifyingly simple. She recognized nothing but essentials.
‘You persist in seeing Isabella’s life as a thing cut short, twisted out of shape, broken off … But I have a strong suspicion that it was a thing complete in itself …’
‘The moment of the rose?’
‘If you like to call it that.’ She added softly, ‘You’re very lucky, Hugh.’
‘Lucky?’ I stared at her.
‘Yes, because you loved her.’
‘I suppose I did love her. And yet I never was able to do anything for her … I didn’t even try to stop her going away with Gabriel …’
‘No,’ said Teresa, ‘because you really loved her. You loved her enough to leave her alone.’
Almost unwillingly I accepted Teresa’s definition of love. Pity has always, perhaps, been my undoing. It has been my cherished indulgence. By pity, the facile easy going of pity, I have lived and warmed my heart.
But Isabella, at least, I had kept free of pity. I had never tried to serve her, to make her path easy for her, to carry her burdens. In her short life she was completely and perfectly herself. Pity is an emotion she neither needed, nor would have understood. As Teresa said, I had loved her enough to leave her alone …
‘Dear Hugh,’ said Teresa gently, ‘of course you loved her. And you’ve been very happy loving her.’
‘Yes,’ I said, a little surprised. ‘Yes, I’ve been very happy.’
Then anger swept over me.
‘But,’ I said, ‘I still hope that John Gabriel will suffer the tortures of the damned in this world and the next!’
‘I don’t know about the next,’ said Teresa, ‘but in this world I should say that you had got your wish. John Gabriel is the most unhappy man I have ever known …’
‘I suppose you’re sorry for him, but I can tell you –’
Teresa interrupted. She said she wasn’t exactly sorry for him. She said it went deeper than that.
‘I don’t know what you mean. If you’d seen him in Zagrade – he did nothing but talk about himself – he wasn’t even broken up by Isabella’s death.’
‘You don’t know. I don’t suppose you even looked at him properly. You never do look at people.’
It struck me when she said that, that I had never really looked properly at Teresa. I have not even described her in this story.
I looked at her and it seemed to me that I was, perhaps, seeing her for the first time … seeing the high cheekbones and the upward sweep of black hair that seemed to need a mantilla and a big Spanish comb. Seeing that her head was set on her neck very proudly like her Castilian greatgrandmother’s.
Looking at her, it seemed to me just for a moment that I saw exactly what Teresa must have been like as a young girl. Eager, passionate, stepping adventurously forward into life.
I did not know in the least what she had found there …
‘Why are you staring at me, Hugh?’
I said slowly, ‘I was thinking that I had never looked at you properly.’
‘No, I don’t think you have.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Well, what do you see?’
There was irony in her smile and laughter in her voice and something in her eyes that I could not fathom.
‘You have been very good to me always, Teresa,’ I said slowly. ‘But I don’t really know anything about you …’
‘No, Hugh. You know nothing at all.’
She got up brusquely and pulled the curtain that was letting in too much sun.
‘As to John Gabriel –’ I began.
Teresa said in her deep voice, ‘Leave him to God, Hugh.’
‘That’s an odd thing to say, Teresa.’
‘No, I think it’s the right thing to say. I’ve always thought so.’
She added, ‘One day – perhaps you’ll know what I mean.’