The Eden Passion (30 page)

When he first heard the library door opening, he thought how accurate Morley Johnson had been, for about a half hour had passed.

He moved to the center of the Great Hall, ready to greet her, to receive from her lips the nature of the private report. But from that distance, he saw her only in outline, the glare of sun coming in through the library windows behind her obscuring her features, though not obscuring her stance, a peculiar one, head down, both hands grasping the door frame, as though she were on the verge of collapse.

He tried to peer around her to catch sight of Johnson and Hills. But they apparently were lingering in the recesses of the library.

Still she stood as though afraid to let go of the support of the door frame. Something was wrong. She appeared physically weakened.

"Harriet?"

Though he'd spoken her name, he knew that she had not heard. The distance between them was still too great. He moved forward, placed himself in her direct path.

"Harriet. . ."

Though he called again, louder this time, still she gave no indication of having heard him, and continued to walk in that blind fashion.

At last he hurried toward her, fearful that without his support she would collapse.

Apparently in spite of her blind walk, she'd heard him drawing near, and now she stopped, a frozen stance, both hands lifting as though to hold him at bay, a fierce gesture, warning him, without words, not to come any nearer.

Then slowly she was moving again, her step seeming to gather strength, as though relieved to be beyond him.

He watched her torturous progress across the Great Hall, heading apparently toward the Banqueting Hall, his bewilderment and anger rising. What had he to do with it? Whatever the nature of the re-

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port delivered by the two jackals, how did it concern him? And why had she taken it out on him as though he were a conspirator against her instead of a loving ally?

He glanced back toward the library door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the messengers who had delivered such a dark message. But he saw nothing and wondered if they too had been undone by their own words.

Again he looked toward the Banqueting Hall, seeking her out, that slim bent figure feeling her way along like a blind woman.

He would give her a moment, confident that sooner or later she would summon him to her and share with him this new weight of agony. Still he heard distant chatter coming from the far end of the Banqueting Hall, the children and maids apparently unaware of the corpselike woman who had just joined them.

From where he stood, he could see her moving toward the table. How rigidly she sat upon her chair.

He closed his eyes a moment to rest them from the unhappy vision, and vowed to go to her, regardless of her rejection of him. She appeared ill. One forgave an invalid for not knowing what she was saying.

Then he saw her make a curious move, a glint of silver grasped in her fists, her head lifting at last in a rapid reflexive movement, then both her fists thrusting upward into her eyes, a single sharp outcry escaping her lips, her head thrown back, someone screaming as again she drove her fists into her eyes, her whole body seeming to recoil. She did it yet a third time, something dark running down the sides of her face, though not a sound was to be heard coming from the Banqueting Hall now, all screams silenced in an apprehension of terror.

At last John was running, shouting her name as though he hoped to bring a halt to the bizarre violence with the mere force of his voice.

The screams had commenced again. Still John was running. Why could the distance not be bridged? Over the screams and the play of sun and shadow in the Banqueting Hall, he prayed, "God, help . . ." and at last approached her and dropped to his knees beside her and put his arm beneath her head and turned her toward him.

At first his mind refused to record anything. Then he felt as though an ax had been lowered against the back of his neck. The powerful impact seemed to push him forward as he bent low over her.

Dear God, would the screams and weeping never cease? He needed neither screams nor weeping. There were screams enough inside his head, and an insistent vision which forced him to look down on her face, scarcely recognizable as a human face now, resembling more a butchered animal left half-dead in a slaughter pen, the specific wounds obscured by the flow of blood, the instruments of her mutilation still clutched in her fists, two silver forks, fragments of tissue and blood coating the sharp prongs.

Something inside his head was screaming at him, informing him that the boy who had run, too late, to her aid, was as mutilated as she, that whoever it was now holding her, his sleeve soaked with her blood would arise a very different man. In spite of the voice, he managed to lift his head and cry, "Fetch the surgeon!"

Looking up, he saw Richard and Mary less than five feet away, their young faces drawn in terror.

"Get them out of there," he shouted to the sobbing Clara, who stood nearby. Though the storm was still raging within him, he heard steps and knew without looking up that his command was being obeyed. He reached out for a linen napkin and tried to stanch the two wells of blood that once had been her eyes. But within seconds the linen was red.

In the next instant he heard a familiar strong voice and saw the voluminous black skirts of Aggie Fletcher. When the old woman caught her first glimpse of the self-inflicted damage, she seemed to withdraw a step. "Sweet Jesus. . ."

"Help her," John begged.

Within the instant the woman took over, stooped down and lifted Harriet effortlessly into her arms, shouting at the top of her voice for various items. "Fresh water, linens, and camphor," and at last echoing John's initial command, "and bring the surgeon."

Still on his knees, John watched as Aggie carried her across the Banqueting Hall, a parade of weeping servants following behind, both children blessedly gone, removed to some position of safety, John left alone in his foolish kneeling position, the abandoned forks lying innocently in red pools.

Suddenly he reached out and lifted both utensils and hurled them the length of the table. Then he heard something else, footsteps in the distance, the two jackals who had delivered some message that had plunged her into total darkness, and plunged him as well.

He stared at them, both keeping to the safety of the small library door, as though too cowardly to step forward.

He rose from his kneeling position, the boy within him safely buried, the man in control as he retraced his steps, though twice a fit of trembling took him, and still he continued in a measured tread, wanting first explication, and then revenge.

Though the young man was still a distance away, Morley Johnson sensed his mood and tried to speak calmly to him. "I say," he called out, "did she faint?"

Then the young man was close enough for Morley to see him clearly, a fearful apparition, his face blood-smudged and deranged, his garments from his shirtwaist to the front of his trousers soaked with blood.

"I say, sir, would you be so kind as to . . ."

But there was nothing of kindness in the force with which the young man grasped Morley's shoulders and shoved him violently back into the library, where he collided with Humphrey Hills, who had pushed close to the door behind him.

"Sir, I beg you," Morley gasped, "inform us as to the nature of—"

"No! You inform me!"

Clearly the young man was not in his right mind, an observation which compounded Morley's apprehension and sent him backward into a retreat similar to that of Humphrey Hills.

So! This was him, the offspring of Lady Harriet. Then Morley's observations came to a halt as he saw the young man steadily approaching. "What did you tell her?" he demanded.

"I told her the . . . truth," Morley began. "She had sent me on an errand of considerable importance, and in my travels I discovered the truth and I thought it would please her."

If only Morley could lift his eyes from that blood-soaked apparition. "Please," he began gently. "Would you be so kind as to speak first? Your . . . appearance demands an explanation. If her ladyship is in any way injured . . ."

At that, the young man seemed to falter. Morley felt relief. "Please, sir," he began again, feeling that perhaps the man was coming to his senses. "Here, let me pour you a sherry. A good deep swallow will clear the head and put everything to rights again."

He was just offering the young man a glass, confident that they could sit and talk calmly, like gentlemen. Thus he was in no way prepared for the young man's sudden movement, his hand reaching out like a piston and knocking the glass aside, where it crashed to the floor, that same hand now moving toward Morley himself, where it

grasped his neck and pushed him backward against the window seat, the man whispering fiercely, "What did you tell her? What did you tell her?"

Physically Morley was no match for him. All he could do was talk, as fast and as hard as he'd ever talked in his life. "I brought her a message, sir, I did, nothing more, a message and a messenger which I thought would bring her great happiness. I still don't understand, but Mr. Hills there, he's the one to tell it. I beg you, sir, speak to him. I'm merely the go-between, nothing more."

Flattened on the window seat, the hand still gripping his throat, Morley had taken the only course open to him, and had passed the responsibility on to someone else, to the little man lurking in the recesses of the room.

"You!" John called out.

Hills stepped forward, drew back a near chair from the table and sat. "I am the messenger," he began, a sense of pride filling his voice. "The one Mr. Johnson spoke of."

"What was your message?" the young man demanded again.

Morley listened halfheartedly to the now familiar tale, detecting a slight change in the performance taking place at the center of the room. When Hills had told the tale to Lady Harriet, he'd been much more delicate, never mentioning the word "bastard" once. There was in his attitude now a witless attempt to make the tale as grim as possible, a foolish tactic, Morley thought, for the young man was not to be trifled with. The outrage still was present He was simply holding it at bay.

"So when the old Swedish midwife confirmed my suspicions," Hills went on, "I made her an offer for the babe, provided of course it was delivered safe and sound with ten fingers and toes, if you know what I mean."

Humphrey stopped talking for the first time and leaned back in his chair, clearly assessing the infant grown to manhood. Then he reached the climax of his tale, the very information that had sent Lady Harriet out of the room locked in that fearful silence. "But fate conspired against me that night," he went on. "Cruel fate that arranged for a Mr. Edward Eden to be a guest in my inn, and his old manservant by the name of John Murrey."

From where Morley sat, he thought he saw the young man step back as though to avoid the information.

"And those two undid me, beat me, left me for dead and kidnapped the bastard babe who was rightfully mine."

There was no sound in the library save for the newly risen breeze off the channel. From where Morley sat, the young man's reaction was almost identical to that of Lady Harriet, his head inclining forward, his hands reaching quickly out for the support of the table. And the expression on Hills's face was the same as before, one of enormous self-satisfaction, as though a score had been settled, a debt paid.

At last the young man stirred. "I. . . don't believe you."

Challenged, Humphrey Hills rose to meet it. He stood from his chair and pointed at the young man. "If I may be so personal," he began, "may I ask if you bear a small scar on your chest?"

Morley saw the young man push away from the table.

"Only a small scar it would be." Humphrey smiled. "In the shape of the letter B, if I remember correctly." His manner changed. "It was, I believe, a birth injury of some sort," he stammered uncomfortably.

All at once the young man turned away.

Hills concluded, "If you still bear the scar, then I must inform you that you are indeed Lady Harriet's bastard."

So engrossed was Morley in Hills's strutting manner that he did not at first notice the young man, his eyes lifting to Hills, his hands reaching out and finally the violent lunge forward, his whole frame seeming to shiver as he effortlessly grasped Hills's throat, in the process pushing him back and down, a single shriek leaving Hills's lips, his own defense as useless as Morley's had been against the superior strength of the boy.

The two of them stood upright for a moment, then crashed backward, Hills's head striking the round mahogany table with a fearful blow, the pupils of his eyes rolling upward, the boy atop him now, both on the floor, while Morley tried to encircle the thrashing turmoil of arms and legs, shouting, "Don't, I beg you, Mr. Eden. Release himl"

But still the young man pinned the now motionless Hills, his hands planted about his throat, channeling such awesome strength down into his fingers that his shoulders shook.

In rising desperation, Morley pushed roughly though ineffectively against the young man. "Let him go. You must let him go. You are doing murder."

But apparently that was precisely the young man's intention. Morley watched for as long as he could, and was just starting toward the door to issue a cry for help when at last he saw those hands lift from

that throat, saw the boy on his knees straddling Humphrey Hills, saw Hills himself, his tongue slung grotesquely to one side of his mouth, a blue tint to his skin, his eyes white ovals, and a small spreading stain of red seeping out beneath his head.

From the door, Morley took in the scene, his pulse racing, fearful that the young man's murderous instincts had not been satiated and now he would turn on him.

But he didn't. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The boy lifted his hands and looked imploringly at Morley, as though at last the commanding voice which had ordered him to murder had ceased, leaving him alone with the sprawled lifeless body beneath him.

Still Morley kept to the door, not faring so well himself. That Humphrey Hills was dead, there was no doubt. That John Murrey Eden had committed murder, there was even less doubt.