CHAPTER FOUR #2
It appeared that her brother could only be here a few days, for he had informed his father that he was going on a visit to an old school friend in order to exchange Christmas greetings.
They settled it that he should take a room at the New Inn close by, but spend his days with them, Mrs Peverill extracting his promise to remain at least until Friday when she might show him off at the Lower Rooms.
Over breakfast, of which Adam partook, he was persuaded by Mrs Peverill to give an account of what had transpired after their removal.
“I’m afraid we continued fighting until the two of us were incapable of anything further. We had drawn the entire domestic staff out upon us by then. None of them dared to interfere, but at the last Papa demanded his valet and they staggered away together.”
“Did he not say anything — about us, I mean?” asked Verena.
“Not a word. So I did not either. The servants were left to make what they might of the whole incident. You had set it about that Mama was gone to the seaside for her health, Verena, but I don’t think they long believed that. Not after the way Papa was carrying on.”
Mrs Peverill’s eyes widened. “Carrying on? What do you mean, dearest?”
“Was he drinking?” asked Verena.
Adam nodded. “Heavily, I’m afraid. That was after he rushed around searching for you. I found out from the grooms where he went — all over the south coast, I think. For some obscure reason, he seemed to be convinced that you must be in Little Hampton, Mama.”
“Little Hampton!” repeated Mrs Peverill on an odd note.
“Yes, is it not the strangest thing?”
But Verena thought Mama looked a little conscious. What could there be in that name to bring such a reaction? A moment later she had forgotten it, however, for as her brother resumed, a more horrible possibility reared its head.
“Has he been very miserable?” asked Mrs Peverill.
Adam laid down the cup from which he had been sipping chocolate, and looked at her. “Mama, he is a changed man.”
She clasped her hands together, resting her fingertips against her lips. “Tell me.”
Her son shrugged. “I don’t quite know how to describe him. He has gone quiet — despairing almost, as if the life has gone out of him. He is drinking, yes, but he remains quite sober. I believe —” He paused, glancing at his sister’s face.
Verena placed her knife and fork to one side of her empty plate. “Say what you wish to, Adam. I had rather you did so in my presence than that you saved it for Mama’s private ear so that she felt obliged to keep it from me.”
“Don’t say that, my love. There will be no more secrets between us, I promise you. Come, Adam. Verena will hear it with patience, and I must hear it. What do you believe?”
Adam drew a breath. “That he is missing you dreadfully, Mama. If you could but see him. He has lost flesh, his eyes are constantly shadowed — I suspect he is not sleeping. He — he mutters over his glass. We do not converse, you see, apart from what must be said. He has not forgiven me, that is sure. But what I truly think, Mama, is that he cannot now forgive himself. He has had a salutary lesson, which he will not readily forget.”
“No, for he will not be permitted to forget it,” stated Verena in a hard voice, seeing the evidence in Mama’s eyes of her tender heart melting already. “It is a lesson he will remain at, though he rue the day lifelong.”
Adam’s gaze came around to her, and he frowned in perplexity. “I have never heard you speak so harshly, Verena. I know you hate him, but have you no compassion?”
“None at all,” returned Verena, adding on a bitter note, “and I wonder at it that you can have any either.”
Mrs Peverill intervened. “But I have, Verena. I do not like to imagine him in such a state as Adam describes. Perhaps I should think of going back.”
“Going back!”
Verena’s heart sank. This was just what she feared.
To have Nathaniel insinuate himself back into Mama’s heart in spite of all.
Oh, she could scream with frustration. Now she must use all her arts to persuade Mama against so ruinous a course.
She must speak to Adam in private. He must stop painting this pitiful picture — a picture that only served to harden her own heart.
If Nathaniel was suffering and remorseful, so much the better.
It was some little time before she could find a moment to get Adam to herself, but at last Mrs Peverill’s tiredness overcame her and Verena called out for Betsey to take her up to her bed to sleep for a while.
There was silence for a short time after the two elder women left the room. Adam, his slim fingers playing a fidgety rhythm on his thigh as he moved restlessly about the parlour, cast his sister an uneasy glance where she stood at the door she had closed behind Mama.
Verena turned to look at him. “Oh, Adam,” she sighed, and crossed the room to embrace him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
The young man hugged her close, and then took her shoulders and drew her back a little so that he might look into her face.
Verena was above average height, but Adam, for all his slight build, had a little the advantage of her.
His features were of a more severe cast than his age warranted, already set with lines edging shadows under his eyes — an effect accentuated by the hereditary overhang of his brow that gave to both his father’s orbs and his own a hooded appearance.
In Nathaniel, it was almost sinister. In Adam, Verena found it touching for the loss of the boy he should still have been.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
Verena’s eyes misted at the sorrow in his own. She reached up and took his thin cheeks between both her own.
“Darling Adam.”
He clasped the hands and held them tight, bringing them down to hold at his chest. “How are you managing?”
She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug and smiled. “Well enough.”
“No, I mean, here — this place.” His glance travelled about the parlour in a disparaging way. “You can’t mean to live like this for ever.”
Verena withdrew her hands, reserve entering her voice. “It may not be what we are used to, but it is what we can afford on my grandpapa’s money.”
Adam frowned. “Papa ought to make you an allowance.”
“For that he must needs know where we are, Adam, and that he must not.” She grimaced. “It must be hell for you, alone with him.”
Her brother shrugged. “He doesn’t notice me. He never did.”
“Except when you would try to save Mama.”
“I couldn’t stand for it. I know Mama hated me to intervene, but —”
“I know, Adam.” Verena drew a breath. Now was her opportunity. She must make him see reason, that he would cease to speak to Mama of a return. “And you must also know that nothing has changed.”
“Yes, but —”
“Adam! He may be as remorseful as you please. I have seen him so before this, many times. I have heard him make his promises to Mama, promises made with tears streaming down his face. But did that prevent him, the very next time he chose to suppose himself jealously injured by some imaginary slight, from raising his hand to her again? You know it did not.”
“But that was in the past,” her brother protested, releasing her fingers and pacing away. “That was before he knew I might retaliate on her behalf. If she returned —”
“She will never return!”
“But if she did, Verena, I swear I would never permit him to touch her.”
“How could you prevent him?” demanded his sister, moving to stand in his path, forcing him to face her.
It was evident that he missed them both, that he wanted Mama home.
But he must be made to see how impossible it was.
“How, Adam? Oh, I believe you are sincere, my dear, but think a little. Could you be with her day and night, guard her incessantly?”
“You are,” he countered. “I dare say there is scarce a moment when you are not together.”
“But we are living in lodgings. Besides, I am a woman. What, will you stand sentry by her bed, preventing his entry there?”
“Verena!” he gasped, shocked.
“Let us have no mealy-mouthed pretences about this, Adam. You know as well as I that it is precisely in those circumstances — in her very bed — that these hideous beatings begin. That is just how he managed to conceal the matter from so many eyes — even ours, Adam — for so long. Come, how old were you when you knew of it first? How old was I?”
“Nine, ten — I don’t know,” he uttered, his voice ragged with distress.
“Well, I know,” Verena told him with deliberation. “I was eight years old before I knew why my mother was so often indisposed. Why we were kept from her presence for so many days together, why everyone was excluded — except Betsey.”
Adam shifted away, moving to stand before the big bay window, looking out with unseeing eyes. She knew why. He could never bear to speak of these matters, even when she had tried to discuss them with him at home.
“You need not recite to me all the circumstances,” he said bitterly. “I know them well enough.”
“Yes, you know them, Adam. So don’t talk to me of her going back to that life.”
He swung round. “But she does not look any the better for being here, Verena. I swear to you, I was shocked at her appearance.”
Pricked in her vulnerable spot, Verena turned away, putting up an agitated hand to smooth at her own honeyed tresses, which she had left loose in her haste this morning.
“That is because she had a bad night. It is no use expecting her to recover from a lifetime of torture all in a minute. She is bound to suffer bouts of distress.”
Glancing back at her brother, she saw a frown across his brows, heightening the hooded look.
Desperately, she added, “Adam, she is worn down with years of suffering and dread. She is only forty years old, but she looks ten years older than that. She — she needs time, that is all. Time to rest, to heal, to forget. She will bloom again. She will, Adam.”