Redemption - Leon Uris [181]
I am risking your wrath for I can no longer bear witness to a magnificent rose withering and dying for want of a kind word from her son.
I believe in neither heaven nor hell, except for what we make for ourselves here on earth. You have created your private hell in the manner you handled Molly O’Rafferty. You have done a wretched deed and have then gone and branded yourself with a white-hot iron, flayed your flesh with whips, soaked your bereavement in gin-thank God, decent gin.
Your brother, Christopher, who I think is an ass, has written that you have begun to show a spark of life. That means you are starting to forgive yourself. The ability of a man to atone, here on earth, has always been the most remarkable of human features. No sin, and certainly not even one as grave as yours, cannot be redeemed. It appears to all here, you have punished yourself sufficiently.
Had you read Caroline’s letters, you would realize that she has forgiven her father and cares for him deeply and tenderly. She has likewise forgiven her husband to the point of being civil with him.
My dear Jeremy, she has forgiven you and longs for you with a longing that will surely kill her if you continue to punish her and yourself with your silence.
Life hinges on many factors we cannot control. Two of the most important factors, we can control. We can manage our relationships—and what is life but a series of relationships?—and we can correct our mistakes, here on earth within our life span. Bad relationships and mistakes are all a normal part of the game of life. Who are you, who has been forgiven, to continue to inflict pain upon a woman who adores you and grieves for your smile, your touch, your word?
Do you want to lay on Caroline what you have laid on Molly? Will that make things right? If you go into battle and, God forbid, are numbered with the slain, you must take her to a far more bitter death.
Her eyes well with tears when she speaks of your beauty, your sweetness, and of the absence of meanness that probably pushed you into your mistake.
Please, Jeremy, if there be any manliness in you at all, then you must make a gesture that you and she are on the mend.
Your devoted enemy,
Gorman Galloway
Jeremy opened the lid of his chest and took out the bundle of letters that lay on the top, tied with a ribbon and softly scented of his mother’s perfume. He had agonized for the courage to take the moment to answer her. The time had come.
Mother dearest,
Please tell Gorman Galloway he is not the enemy. But you already know how fortunate you are to have one such beloved friend. I once had one and have recently gone to his grave to find guidance.
Gorman Galloway repeated to me what Conor Larkin tried to teach me: Mistakes are part of life and they need not be fatal to the moral man. Mistakes are crutches for cowards and I have used mine to further inflict pain on the people dear to me.
Mother dearest, I’ve swilled the bottle dry and I’ve wallowed at the bottom of a greasy pit of shame and guilt and self-pity and self-hatred for enough years.
It is time for Jeremy to quit his whimpering. As we gained distance from Ireland, the air itself took on a different scent and taste. It no longer suffocated me when I breathed.
I am going to get well, Mother. Perhaps, I’ll be well for the first time in my infamous life as a rotten and useless peer. I am going to spend the balance of my days as a good and decent man.
The sorrow of Molly O’Rafferty will never leave me, nor do I want it to, nor will I let it pull me under, any longer. I shall follow every trail that might find her and our child.
If I fail to find her, if she has made a new and good life, if she is no longer alive, I will never go back to what I once was.
The rage of my father will also never leave me. I am disgusted with my cowardice in yielding to him and am in disgust of him for what he will do to keep his cursed kingdom.
What was once so important in my life, what I so dreaded