Redemption - Leon Uris [148]
After the lawn party, the crowd of guests dissolved and the lads of the brigade invaded the township’s pubs. Caroline retired to her apartment at Gweedloe House only to find Roger already there.
“Sorry about this,” Roger said, “there’s a manservant’s room behind the pantry. It will do me quite well.”
“We’ll manage,” Caroline said. “Actually we have a number of things that have been on hold. This might be a good time for it.”
“Except for the chance rally or dinner, it’s been two years. I think you’ve done a remarkable job with old Freddie. I say, he appears to be pleased with the marriage.”
“Chris and Hester appear to be well suited to what they were bred and cultivated to do, like good horses. I hope Hester has the hips for it,” Caroline said.
Roger grunted. Humor, however dark, was welcomed. “Colonel Brodhead is very happy with Christopher’s progress in the Rifles.”
“Chris has been a splendid officer since he was three years old,” she retorted.
Roger contained his ire. Caroline lifted the phone and was put through to her father’s room. Good, he was taking his rest. For a moment she was afraid he might have tippled just a bit too much and could have been off to the races. “He’s like a little boy,” she said.
“Caroline,” Roger blurted. “I feel terribly awkward. Might I relax?”
“Yes, of course.”
He unbuttoned his vest, doffed his shoes, and settled into a chair near her. Roger was immersed in deep concern and his face showed some hurt, she thought. Or was Roger doing up a little game? They had waited for this encounter for a long time. It came suddenly, but certainly each had rehearsed the lines and also rehearsed the other’s answers…but the answers were never as one thought they ought to be.
“As soon as you realized,” she said, “that Jeremy was going to make Jeremy’s Last Stand, you drew up a short list, blindfolded Chris, and let him pick a name from a hat—a Coleraine Rifle dress hat—and the winner is Hester Glyn Gobbins.”
“Guilty,” Roger answered.
“And in the next chapter we shall see how sweet and innocent Hester Glyn Gobbins deals with the ghosts of Hubble Manor.”
“Hubble Manor is a tomb, not for its lack of magnificence, but for the lack of its mistress. I’m having Ballystorrs redone for them.”
“Well, it’s nice to know one is appreciated,” Caroline said. “Did it ever occur to you that both a mistress and an heir might be alive and wandering about out there someplace?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never stopped looking for them,” Caroline said abruptly.
Roger almost came to the point of making an inquiry. Was Molly yet alive? Did she have a son or daughter? Any clues as to where they may be? He did not ask and, in not asking, Roger answered all the questions she did not ask. Bedrock.
The oriel window with its aged thick beveled glass allowed in a sudden rainbow of elongated dots. She studied Roger in his slouch and for an instant seemed to be taken with pity.
“Old Jolly Roger is still old Jolly Roger,” he said in monotone. “The monster of Foyle, installed in me at my birth, is still alive and well, thank you. You look surprised, Caroline.”
“Actually, I am.”
“I’ve known the monster was there from the beginning and it never performed so well as when I put my father on the dole and took what was mine. We’ve done right well together, the monster and I. When I came to realize that the monster was going to make all my decisions for me, I said to myself, ‘Well, this is what good monsters do.’ I never have to choose between right and wrong. Wrong is what is bad for the earldom. There is no evil; I’m powerless. What is right for the earldom are profits, power, and continuity. Oh yes, I have despised and wondered about my heartlessness all my life, but when one accepts that the monster knows best, one learns to live with it. I cannot control what controls me.”
“What game are you playing, Roger? At the moment you appear to control all the functioning cocks in the family, although I wouldn’t count old Freddie out. So, you want