Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [63]
He glances again in the direction of the knitting woman, who is now unraveling her progress. He takes Olympia’s elbow and guides her down the steps. She willingly follows his lead. They walk around to the back of the hotel and stop at a small enclosure. There is a bench, a bicycle leaning against it. They are alone, though still visible from the hotel. They sit on the bench.
He trails his fingers along her skirt from her knee to her hip and lets them linger at the top of her thigh. She puts her hand over his. A chambermaid walks by the opening of the enclosure.
“This is madness,” he says, reluctantly removing his fingers. For a time they sit in silence. After a few moments, he remembers the note from her father.
“What is this about a gala?” he asks, taking the note from his pocket. “It is your birthday?”
“Not that day,” she says.
He reads the note through again, and then puts it away. She thinks he does not want to be reminded just then of her age.
“Of course, you cannot . . . ,” Olympia says.
“But I will have to tell Catherine of this, for she will hear of it anyway,” he says. “She will want to come. There will be many instances perhaps . . .”
“It is too far away,” Olympia says. “I cannot think about it now. Your cottage will be completed, my father says.”
He nods.
“I should like one day to see its progress.”
He looks at her in a strange manner. “I cannot speak of normal things with you, Olympia, not in the normal way. It is as though I have lost the habit of normality overnight. The only subject I wish to think about and speak about is you. And why should we remind ourselves of a house in which I will have to live without you?”
“Because it is real,” she says. “Because it will happen.”
And he seems surprised that already she has thought of the end. “If I had any honor, I would send you away. If I cared for your honor.”
His statement rattles her. “What does honor matter in the face of this?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “Nothing, nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all. You amaze me, Olympia.”
She looks away. A fog is rolling in along the back lawn.
“I have written a letter,” Haskell says. “I did this for myself yesterday afternoon. It was not written for you to see. And it is not finished yet, it is merely scribblings. I never thought to give it to you, but now I want to, however imperfect it is.”
He reaches into his satchel and removes an envelope. He holds it a minute and then hands it to her. He looks at his watch. “I have to leave you now. I am due at the clinic.”
A boy comes into the enclosure and shyly deposits his bicycle. He must be a busboy, Olympia thinks, or a stable hand. Perhaps this is the employees’ garden.
Haskell stands abruptly. “I wish it were not this way, Olympia,” he says heatedly. “I wish it were I who could come to you.”
Olympia stands with him.
“It is not worth wishing for what we cannot have,” she says.
• • •
Olympia walks with deliberately slow steps along the waterline and through the fog, which is thickening, to her house. She slips as quietly as she can up to her room. But once inside the door, she tears the envelope open. In years to come, she will remember this moment as a somewhat comical scene: her sitting on the bed in a heap, her hat not yet removed, tearing the envelope to bits.
She reads:
14 July 1899
My dearest Olympia,
If ever a man felt his spirit dissolve and meld into another’s, it was with you this morning. Why that should be so, I cannot say. This affair we have begun is disastrous for more reasons than I can even begin to enumerate. You are so young, and I am not. You have your entire life ahead of you, which I know that I have damaged irreparably. Forgive