Janet Quin-Harkin Read online

  “I dare say,” Hugh said dryly.

  “But don’t you want to go home? I thought you’d dreamed of it.”

  “But not like this,” Hugh said with a sigh. “How can I go home like this, Libby? A total failure, completely dependent on my father-in-law for my bread and butter and a roof over my head.”

  “Father knows that poets don’t become famous overnight. He understands that,” Libby said. “All great literary figures had patrons, even Shakespeare.”

  “Yes, but they did manage to publish a few pieces occasionally to prove that they weren’t taking their food under false pretenses,” Hugh said hopelessly. “What do I have to show for my entire time in America, except for a couple of minor verses in very minor magazines?”

  “You have me and the children,” Libby said. “I should say we are accomplishments of the highest order.”

  She had thought Hugh would laugh at this, or ruffle her hair and tell her that he prized her above gold, but he turned his face away from her, staring at the bedroom wall. “One goes to America to make one’s fortune, Libby,” he said. “If I return home with nothing, how can I ever hold up my head? They’ll whisper about me, saying there goes the man who would have let his wife and children starve if it hadn’t been for his father-in-law.”

  “You’ve done your best, Hugh,” Libby said quietly. “You weren’t meant for an ordinary job, I understood that. And one day you’ll show them all. You’ll write the great poem you have inside you and they’ll all claim that they never doubted you for a moment.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” Hugh said quietly. “Sometimes I wonder if I am deceiving myself. Maybe I’m not the great creative genius that I’ve always thought myself to be. But I do know one thing. I’m not going crawling back to my brother’s charity.”

  “So you’re turning down his offer?” Libby demanded. “Our one chance for a home of our own and you’re turning it down?”

  “Don’t raise your voice, Libby,” Hugh warned, putting his finger to his lips. “We don’t want them to hear this, do we?”

  Libby sighed and sank back against the pillows.

  “I’m not going home a pauper,” Hugh said. “If I could think of any way that I could face my brother as an equal, with my head held high, then I would take us on the first boat out of here. But I can’t, short of writing another Paradise Lost overnight.”

  “But Hugh,” Libby began.

  “I really don’t wish to discuss this any further,” Hugh said and rolled over, away from her.

  Libby lay awake staring at the pattern of shadow branches on the ceiling, dancing in the night wind. How differently it had all turned out from the way she thought it would.

  She turned over cautiously in bed and looked at Hugh, who was giving a good imitation of being asleep. His breath was slow and rhythmic and one long, white hand was draped over the coverlet.

  Oh, Hugh, she thought, what am I going to do with you? and then, surprising even herself, how much longer can this go on?

  She slid across to him and wrapped her arm over his body. The fact that he did not stir convinced her that he was either sound asleep or wanted her to think that he was. He was very good at pretending to be asleep. Libby remembered her conversation with Katherine that day. She had not told Katherine the truth. Hugh’s concern for her youthful figure veiled his lack of enthusiasm for the act of making love. After Eden, their first child, was born, he confessed that he was “more a creature of the spirit than of the flesh.” Libby, unfortunately, discovered that she was very much a creature of the flesh. Night after night she would lie awake yearning for fulfillment as he slept beside her.

  Libby tightened her arm around him and moved her body closer but got no reaction. He probably was asleep, she thought. Hugh had a remarkable ability for shutting out anything unpleasant. They could have an argument, be faced with creditors or a sick child and two minutes later Hugh would be sleeping while Libby lay awake worrying for both of them. One of us has to be the realist, she knew, although for once it seemed that their roles were reversed. She was the one eager to take their chance at a new life and Hugh was the one suddenly squeamish about their financial failure. She had not realized before how much the break with his family had wounded him.

  Our own country house, she thought wistfully. It would be square and gray with a fireplace big enough to roast an ox and there would be a long dining table where they would entertain, good company, laughter, drinking toasts in the firelight. Libby smiled to herself at such an impractical dream as she drifted off to sleep.

  When she woke in the morning, Hugh had gone.

  CHAPTER 2

  AT FIRST LIBBY was not too worried by Hugh’s disappearance. She suspected that he wanted to get away to think. He had done this before, wandering for hours along the Charles River when he was grappling with a poem that would not come to him or when her father had just given him another of his make-something-of-yourself lectures. She made an excuse for him at breakfast and lunch. When he had not appeared by the time the sun was setting, she began to feel concerned and instinctively checked his closet. Some of his clothes were gone—not enough to suggest that he had left for good, but enough for more than a night or two.

  “Where’s Papa?” seven-year-old Eden asked as Libby went to kiss the girls good night.

  “He’ll be back shortly,” Libby said, tucking in the covers tightly the way Eden liked them.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep until Papa kisses me,” four-year-old Bliss declared. She was headstrong like Libby and used to getting her own way. “I shall stay awake all night until he comes.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Libby said shortly. “Papa might not be back for a few days. His business might keep him away from home for a while. You don’t want to stay awake for a week, do you?”

  “I don’t mind,” Bliss said. “I like staying awake.”

  “Where’s he gone, Mama?” Eden demanded. “He didn’t say goodbye. He always says goodbye when he is going away. I hope nothing bad has happened to him.”

  “Nothing bad has happened. Go to sleep,” Libby said, patting her hand firmly. If Bliss had inherited her mother’s spirit, then Eden had inherited her tendency to worry. Even at seven the child was developing two frown lines between the eyes. Overheard quarrels about money would make her physically sick and when her little sister had chickenpox, Eden ended up being by far the sicker of the two, having sat by her sister’s bedside for three nights.

  Libby stood in the doorway, looking down tenderly at the children. She thought them both quite perfect and was amazed that her body could have produced two such miracles. Eden, dark and wide-eyed like her father and Bliss not, thank goodness, red-headed like her mother, but a picture-perfect blond like a china doll. “Don’t worry,” Libby said. “Everything will be just fine.”

  She managed to conceal her own worry from her parents as they went in to dinner that night. Her parents entertained often and there was a lively party around the dinner table. The party should have been of twelve, but there was an empty place across from Libby, for which she apologized.

  “Hugh might have business to attend to,” she mentioned to her father as they waited for the guests to arrive.

  “Business? What sort of business?” her father asked skeptically. “He’s been here eight years without showing the least modicum of interest in business.”

  “He’s just received news from England,” Libby said. “It appears he might have inherited a property.”

  “A property, where?” her mother asked eagerly.

  “We’ll know when he comes back,” Libby said, “which probably won’t be tonight.”

  “How inconvenient not to have known this earlier,” her mother twittered. “Then I could have invited Mr. Bellows to make the numbers even.”

  “Mr. Bellows is a bore, Mother. We’re better off without him,” Libby said smoothly.

  The party went on late and Libby’s mouth felt as if it were fixed into a false smile. Every time
she heard footsteps across the marble hallway she looked up, half expecting to see Hugh creeping in. A young lawyer friend of the family, Edward Percival Knotts, was telling her a long and involved story about a Harvard prank he had witnessed. “And then they hitched the dogs to the carriage,” he went on, laughing in anticipation, “and away it went. Can you imagine how he felt when he woke up, in full evening dress, in the middle of a cabbage patch?”

  Libby smiled politely.

  Edward rose to his feet. “Would you care to take a stroll in the garden, Mrs. Grenville? It is uncommonly mild for April and I can smell the jasmine from in here.”

  Libby could hardly refuse the offered arm. She walked beside Edward down the narrow path between flowering shrubs.

  “Now,” he said when they were sufficiently far from the house. “Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Libby asked. “What should be wrong?”

  Edward smiled. He had a fair, boyish face, even though he now parted his hair severely in the middle, as was befitting a a lawyer. “Libby, I’ve known you since you whipped me with seaweed on the beach at Cape Cod. I’ve watched you grow up. Your face is composed, but your eyes give you away. You’re as jumpy as a kitten, and you haven’t listened to a word I’ve been saying.”

  “I’m sorry, Edward. I apologize,” Libby said. “I’ve been poor company tonight.”

  “Please don’t apologize,” he said. “I wondered if I could be of help in your dilemma. A worry shared is a worry halved, so they say.”

  Libby smiled and shook her head. “In this case I don’t think . . .” she began.

  “It’s a marital tiff then, that I should stay well away from,” Edward said, smiling.

  “There was no tiff, as you put it,” Libby said shortly. “It’s just that Hugh’s. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yes, where is old Hugh, by the way?” he asked.

  “I wish I knew,” Libby admitted with a sigh. She laid her hand lightly on Edward’s arm. “Edward, I am worried about him. He was gone this morning without any message, and he’s taken some of his clothes.”

  Edward raised an eyebrow. “Any indication where he was headed?” he asked. “No, er, other lady in the picture?”

  “Nothing like that,” Libby said. “He was very despondent last night over a letter from England.”

  “You think he’s gone to England?”

  Libby shook her head. “I think not,” she said. “His brother has asked him to come home, but he refused to consider it at the moment. He talked about his family and how he couldn’t face them as a failure. Edward, I worry that he could have decided to end it all.”

  Edward patted the hand that still clasped his arm. “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” he said. “If he had wanted to end it all, would he have bothered to select and pack some clothing?”

  “Well, no,” Libby said hesitantly, “unless he wanted us to think he was going away. . . .”

  “But he worships you,” Edward said grudgingly. “He would surely have left you a parting note. He is, after all, an English gentleman. He’d be correct to the last.”

  Libby thought this over and nodded. “I believe you’re right. Hugh is always correct, which makes this so troubling.”

  “Have courage, my dear,” Edward said, still patting her hand. “It’s my belief that Hugh has decided to do something you would not approve of. He therefore wants to get it finished before he presents it to you. What it is, I can’t surmise, but I’m sure, before the week’s out, that he’ll be back on your doorstep, grinning like a little boy who played truant and is now back home.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Libby said. “Thank you, Edward. You’re a good friend.”

  She started to walk back toward the house.

  “I’ll always be here when you need me, Libby. Remember that,” Edward called after her.

  No news came for two weeks and each day Libby half expected to hear that Hugh’s body had been found in the river. She said nothing to her parents but they both speculated wildly about where he was. Her mother’s main theme was that Hugh had gone back to England without Libby, where he would probably claim to be a bachelor and marry the daughter of some earl or duke. Her father thought that he was probably engaged in a shady business deal that had gone sour and didn’t dare show his face again in Boston for a while. Libby was amused by both of these speculations, which she knew to be very unlike Hugh, but she could come up with no better answer.

  Then on May sixth, she received a letter from him. Luckily, she was just crossing the hall when the mail arrived and was able to remove her letter from the silver tray which the maid was about to carry through to her parents in the morning room. She ran straight upstairs with it and shut herself in the bathroom, which had a solid lock on the door.

  My dearest wife, my dearest children, Hugh had written, Can you ever forgive me for the worry and heartache I have certainly caused you? When you hear what I am embarked upon, I hope you will find it in your hearts to forgive and understand. Once I made up my mind to try my luck I knew that I had to leave without telling you, as you or your parents, possibly both, would have certainly tried to dissuade me. And you know my weakness, Libby. I should probably have allowed myself to be dissuaded.

  You will no doubt be amazed when you hear that your good-for-nothing husband has gone to make his fortune. Libby, I am off to be a Forty-Niner, to make my fortune in the gold fields of California. You have not been around the Boston waterfront much of late, but I can assure you that all the talk there is of great wealth in California gold, lying at the feet, waiting to be picked up by those who get there first. There was no time to be lost, Libby. I am afraid I took out what little money we had in the bank to buy my ticket to the Wild West, but it will be repaid many times over.

  Think about it, my darling girl. Men are making fortunes in weeks, real fortunes of thousands and thousands of dollars. When I return we can take the children to England and live in that house as country gentlefolk should with enough for fine horses and lavish entertaining and ballgowns to make you and my lovely daughters the most talked-of women in England.

  So be patient, my darling. I promise I will return as soon as I have made my “pile” as they so crudely put it here. 1 am at present in Independence, Missouri, which is the setting off point for the great adventure and I fear we have left civilization behind us already. It is a world of men and of crudity. I feel like a fish out of water, but cannot let them see that I am lily-livered, as they would put it. Of course I am afraid, but I am driven by the desire and opportunity to succeed for the first time in my miserable life.

  Think of me, my darling. Kiss those adorable pink faces for me and remind them often of their papa. I am consoled by the fact that you will be well looked after by your parents. Many of the men have left their wives to manage farms alone, with precious little cash, so I feel myself fortunate that I do not have that additional worry about your future.

  I will try to return in the fall, my knapsack bulging with gold. What a celebration we’ll have then, won’t we?

  Your devoted husband,

  Hugh Grenville.

  Libby stood looking at the letter.

  “Oh, Hugh, you idiot!” she said out loud, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “How do you think you can ever survive in the wilds of California!” She gazed up at the black and white tiled walls and the black and white shapes swam in her unfocussed gaze. “We’ll have to send someone after him before it’s too late. He’ll need rescuing by now. He’ll probably head out in the wrong direction for California or something.” She laughed before she remembered how serious it all was. The question was whom could she send. If she had had brothers or cousins, it would have been the sort of job she could entrust to one of them. But she had no brothers and her only relatives were elderly aunts and uncles. Family friends like Edward Knotts crossed her mind, but she dismissed them instantly. “I can’t send someone to bring him home in disgrace, like a little
child,” she said. “That would be utter humiliation for him. He doesn’t deserve that. It’s very brave of him to attempt such a crazy undertaking—-just the sort of mad, foolish thing he would do. Poor Hugh, he really must have felt desperate.”

  She felt guilty as if she had been responsible for driving him to this. In a way she was. If she hadn’t persuaded him to marry her, he’d never have been stuck here in Boston with two children to support. He wasn’t the sort of man who was meant to be tied down.

  With a sigh, Libby unlocked the bathroom door and tiptoed across to her own bedroom. The windows were open and lacy curtains were fluttering in a gentle April breeze. The bed was piled high with white lacy quilts and pillows. From the window she could glimpse distant green countryside over the rooftops. Libby had always loved that view, and the way you could see a tiny piece of the Charles River between rooftops, if you leaned right out. Now, as she stood taking in all that was familiar and dear to her, a disturbing thought crept into her mind. Hugh could not possibly survive alone among the rigors and dangers of the Wild West. She could ask nobody to rescue him; therefore she would have to go to him herself.

  Having made up her mind, she wasted no time and went downstairs.

  Her parents were sitting together in the morning room, her father reading the paper as he usually did after breakfast. Her mother was going through the day’s mail, seated on the red velvet chaise by the window, while her husband always sat in the leather armchair by the fireplace, even though there was no fire alight in it. It always amused Libby that they both carried on independent commentaries on what they were reading, to which the other paid no attention. She could hear them as she crossed the entrance hall and pushed open the door.

  “Oh, how nice, Sophie’s having a new dress made for the ball. Dark green velvet . . .”