“What is wrong with Hill House?” Perhaps Clementine was pressing too hard, but she could not shake the feeling that they were on the precipice of revelation. That everything was about to make sense.
“Nothing!”
“Then why don’t you want to go?” she pressed gently.
“Because I’m tired of country life!” Olive cried. “Because I want to go back to London where I belong!”
A month ago, Clementine would have heard the words her sister said, and observed the petulant tone in which they were delivered, and dismissed the outburst as childish. She would have silently judged Olive for yearning for the shallow trappings of society.
She had not understood that sometimes self-protection can look like ill humor.
She laid her hand on her sister’s back. One more try, then she would leave it alone. “Olive, love, won’t you tell me what is troubling you?”
Olive didn’t look at Clementine. She didn’t look anywhere, just bowed her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t like being at Hill House because Ralph is dead.”
“You and Ralph were very good friends.” Clementine repeated her earlier assessment, hoping this time Olive would hear the meaning behind it.
“No. Yes. We were . . .” Olive exhaled shakily.
“You were more than friends? Is that it? You loved him, and now he’s gone and you can’t mourn him because no one knew what he was to you?”
Olive did meet Clementine’s gaze then, her eyes devastated and leaking tears.
“Oh, my sister, my love. I am sorry. So very sorry.” She opened her arms, and Olive stepped into them. They stood there for a long time while Olive cried. Clementine didn’t try to shush her. She didn’t say anything; any words she could think of would only sound hollow.
Eventually, Olive spoke, but she did not move out of Clementine’s embrace, so her words were muffled. “I was going to marry him when he came home from Canada. He’d asked me before, but I said no. I was afraid.”
“Of what?” Clementine asked gently.
“I don’t know!” Olive cried, wrenching free from Clementine’s arms as if she’d been confined there against her will. “Of Father, I suppose. Of society. It was fine for Ralph and I to be friends when we were young, when we were at the country house where the usual rules were relaxed. But can you imagine if I’d announced I was marrying the surgeon’s son?”
“Yes. I see.” Clementine wondered if perhaps there would have been a way to make Father come around. While Mr. Scully hadn’t been a physician, which would have meant he was received in society, he’d been respected in Chiddington, where therewasno physician. Clementine remembered one occasion when Father had been thrown from a horse and Mr. Smith had been out to tend to him. He’d been invited to dine with the family instead of the servants.
She didn’t say anything on the topic, though, for she suspected Olive knew all that. Olive had probably been flagellating herself for some time. Clementine reached for words of comfort. “If you’d married him before he joined the army, it wouldn’t have changed anything. He would still be dead.”
“You’re wrong. It would have changed everything.” Olive swiped her tears away almost angrily. “I would have claimed him. He would haveknownI’d claimed him.” Clementine had never heard Olive speaking so passionately before. “Instead”—Olive’s voice rose—“Ralph went to his death thinking he wasn’t good enough for me, when really it’s the reverse.”
“Oh, Olive. Ralph loved you.”
“Ralph was such a comfort to me when Mother died. I want to be that for his mother now that he’s dead. I want to be able to comfort her, and for her to comfort me. But it can never be.”
“I see.” Clementine didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound like she was being dismissive. So she didn’t say anything. Just looked into her sister’s devasted blue eyes and tried to witness her pain and regret. Toseeher. Archie had taught her that sometimes, having someone to witness your pain, even if they couldn’t do anything about it, was a kind of balm.
“I want to show you something when we get back to the castle,” Olive said.
“Of course. Anything you want to show me, I want to see.”
* * *
“Good God, man, will you just let the damn thing go?”
“I’m afraid I have to concur with Simon,” Effie said, clomping through the scrub that lined the shores of a small river that ran through Doveborough. “The ladies are bound to be back soon, ifthey aren’t already, and they will wonder what happened to us.”
“Right, yes.” Archie turned to see Simon approaching, too. The boys had been waiting for him on a bridge that spanned the river but were now headed determinedly toward him as if they were parents come to collect a wayward child. He wondered how long he’d been standing lost in thought. “It’s just that I was trying to find the ideal place in which to set Hermes on his way,” he explained as they arrived at his side. “Do you think Hermes will like it here?” He had chosen this spot because the river sloshed gently over its banks, and Archie reasoned that if he set Hermes loose where water met land, he could decide for himself where he wanted to be.
“I think,” Simon said archly, “that Hermes is a turtle.”
“Yes, but he’s aprizewinningturtle,” Archie said. “He’s earned a happy retirement.”
