“Yes.”
Her voice is clipped and English, somewhat timid. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I arrived on the train this evening, and I didn’t know where else to go.”
I stand there, blinking at her. Holding the knob of a chair for support. Pulse knocking in my neck like a woodpecker. An expression of concern takes over the woman’s face, which is dainty and worn, empty of any cosmetics, a sad, dear, old-fashioned, elegant little face. One I feel I should recognize.
“I say. Are you quite all right?” She glances at my right shoulder. “Has something happened? Was that Samuel a moment ago? I’m afraid I’d fallen asleep in a chair. Such a long voyage, and then the train.”
“I—I beg your pardon. Should I know you?”
“Know me? Why, don’t you remember? Although I suppose we only met once, and not under the kindest of circumstances.” She holds out her hand. “I’m Clara. Simon’s sister. Just arrived from England.”
February 28, 1922
Dearest V,
The time has come to confess my sins, I think. You may think I should have done this sooner, and perhaps you’re right, but in admitting my own culpability I must necessarily deal in the culpability of others, and I suppose I still retain too much of my childhood sense of fair play. Only a bounder tells tales on his comrades.
But I have undertaken a rather uncertain project, you see, and above all I should hate to die without any hope of your one day knowing the truth, and perhaps excusing me in some small measure for the faults of my own hand. Your father has asked me to watch over you and Evelyn, in the event of calamity, and I will stand ready to obey him. Rather than returning his generous gift, which he sent to my bank without first seeking my approval, I have applied this sum to the mortgage I raised on Maitland three years ago, in order to fund the rejuvenation of my Florida enterprises. This fortune, therefore, redounds to you and Evelyn, who will inherit the plantation in the event of my misadventure. But the choice to rejoin me—to rejoin this marriage—remains yours. I can only hope that the events that follow will lure you in my direction, so that I may one day have the chance, if not the certainty, of winning you back, and allowing me the privilege of sharing in your future and that of our daughter.
Of course, I may not survive the trial of the next few months, in which case your choice will be a simple one.
Now to the confession. My first sin is fornication, which I suppose, since it occurred before we first met and resulted in no living issue, ought to be an affair that lies only between me and God. But as the effects of this act may illuminate what follows, and because I want no secrets left between us, I feel you should know of it. You see, in my great weakness, and to my even greater shame, I allowed myself to be seduced by Lydia in that fateful autumn of 1914, though I knew, even as I yielded, that I was violating what ought to have been a sacred trust—that of brotherhood—as well as God’s own law.
I won’t say any more about the act itself, because I don’t wish to wound you with details, except to assure you that it occurred only once, in extreme grief and confusion of mind—we had just received the War Office telegram, reporting my brother missing in action and presumed killed—and, I’m sorry to say, though of course this is no excuse, under the influence of a great deal of drink. So great, indeed, that I remember almost nothing of the moment itself, or its aftermath, and was therefore stunned when Lydia came to me a short while later to announce that she was expecting a baby.
As a physician, I naturally doubted that a pregnancy discovered so early could be any fault of mine, but I accepted my own responsibility to her—the fiancée of a brother I thought dead—and forbore to question her honor in the matter. We married at Christmas, as I told you, remaining chaste by mutual consent, and when she gave birth to Sammy six months later, I knew with certainty that a newborn of such size could not possibly belong to me; moreover, since my brother had departed for France fully ten months earlier, I had my doubts on that score, as well. Still I guarded her secret and loved the babe for his own sake—what else could I do, after all? The poor boy could not help the circumstances of his conception—and so I told you what I did about Sammy’s origins. I acknowledge that this account was not wholly true, but at the time I had no wish to betray Lydia, who had suffered so much, and moreover I was afraid, deathly afraid, that to admit any intimacy with her might mean losing you entirely.
I will add, however, that I had no idea I had been so cleverly manipulated until much later, which brings me to a second (and less worthy) deception, made for much the same reason as before: because I was afraid of losing you, who had, by then, become so necessary to my existence.
When I went to Lydia in September of 1917—my next leave after our time together in Paris, which sealed me to you forever—and asked her for a divorce, she surprised me by refusing. By the terms of the settlement, she reminded me, her father’s fortune would go to the two of us only if we remained married. If our union dissolved, the shipping company and all his other assets would revert back to him, to be divided upon his death between his two natural daughters. One of them, as I already told you, is Portia Bertram.
The other is my sister, Clara, whom he sired in Borneo.