Lament for a lost lover

To have faced death once more and this time being saved only by Jethro’s miracle gave me a strangely exalted feeling. I suppose my mind was wandering and I was unaware that I was lying on my bed. Sally had sent for the doctor. I had suffered no Burns, only a scorching of the skin of one hand. It was the smoke which had come near to suffocating me. Not more than a few minutes could have lapsed between the time Charlotte set the arbour alight and Jethro got me out. He had been watching us. It seemed that he had spent many hours of his days watching and praying at the arbour.

He had seen Charlotte lock me in; he had seen her throw inflammable oil on the bracken about the arbour and on its walls and ignite the place. Then he had come straight in and got me out. He was like a man possessed. He had prayed for a sign that his t father was forgiven and taken into Heaven, and this he was sure e was it. His father had taken a life and he had been given the chance to save one. T “Praise God in His Heaven’ he cried.

I was deeply shocked, said the doctor. I must lie quietly. I must d take care. And indeed I had every reason to be shocked. Within a short g time murder had been twice attempted and I its victim. No one - except Sally-could say that my miscarriage was due to anything L. but natural misfortune, but that there had been two attempts on my life was obvious. When Carleton returned to the house he came at once to my room. When I saw his face I asked myself how I could ever have been so foolish as to have doubted him. If ever I needed proof that he loved me, it was there in his eyes for me to read.

He knelt by my bed. He took my hand, the one which was not bandaged, and kissed it.

“My dearest, what is going on? Is this a madhouse?”

“I think there is madness in it,” I said.

He knew that I had been shut in the arbour but when he heard that Charlotte had locked me in, he was astounded.

“Where in God’s name is she?” he asked. “We must find her. She will do someone an injury. She must have gone completely mad.”

But Charlotte had disappeared.

They searched for her but they could not find her. Carleton stayed by my bedside.

He made me tell him everything that had happened. I could hold nothing back now. It all came tumbling out, my doubts, my suspicions, my fears, and as I talked and he listened there came to us a revelation and that was that we had been brought face to face with ourselves. We loved each other; no one had ever or could ever mean the same to us. Edwin had not really died in the arbour; he had lived on to stand between us. We had both of us built up our own image of Edwin and his importance in our life. I had convinced myself that I had truly loved him and that because he had deceived me I would never trust anyone again. Carleton had believed that I would never let him take that place which had been Edwin’s. I think we saw then how foolish we had been. How we had allowed a false conception to corrode our marriage. Lying there in my bed with Carleton sitting beside me while we talked to each other in low, intense voices, laying bare our innermost thoughts, the revelation came to us. It was a chance to begin again, free from our shackles, to live again to find our happiness together.

One of the servants going into the library early next morning found a letter which was addressed to me.

My hands shook as I opened it, for I saw that it was in Charlotte’s handwriting.

“How did you get this?” I demanded.

“It was in the library, mistress,” was the answer, “propped up against the books on one of the shelves.”

I opened it and read:

“Dear Arabella,

I owe you an explanation. When I had set fire to the arbour I came into the house and watched from one of the windows. When I saw Young Jethro carry you out I knew that was the n end for me. Do you remember when you came with Edwin and Harriet you hid in that secret cavity in the library? Few people knew about it. It has been kept like that for family ‘ emergencies... I went and hid myself there. I took paper r” and pen there and I am writing this to you now. I hate anything to be unfinished. So I don’t just want to disappear. If I s did it would create one of those mysteries about which people speculate and make up all sorts of legends.