The Adultress Read Free

heard Sabrina say to my mother: “At least Zipporah has never given you a moment’s anxiety, and I’ll be ready to swear never will.” At first I was delighted to hear this but later it made me ponder.
    Then I was of age and there were dances and at one of these Jean-Louis showed himself capable of jealousy because he thought I was too interested in one of the sons of a neighboring squire. Then we decided we would marry, but Jean-Louis didn’t want to do it while he was still under my mother’s roof. He was proud and independent. He was working on the estate and doing well. Tom Staples said he didn’t know how he’d manage without him; then Tom Staples suddenly had a heart attack and died. The estate manager’s job and house became vacant, so Jean-Louis stepped into his shoes. He managed the estate and took over the house which went with the post, and there was no reason then why we shouldn’t be married right away.
    That had happened more than ten years ago in the fatal year of ’45. Drama touched us then in the return of the love of my mother’s youth who had been transported to Virginia thirty years before for his part in the ’15 rebellion. I was so immersed in my own marriage at the time that I only vaguely realized what was happening and that the returning Dickon was the young lover of whom my mother had dreamed all through her life—even when she was married to that most desirable of men, my father. Alas, for her, the lover of her youth fell in love with Sabrina, married her, and young Dickon was the result.
    My poor mother! I realize her sufferings far more now than I did then. Sabrina came back to my mother after Culloden. Then Dickon was born—that was ten years ago—and Sabrina and my mother lived together in Clavering Hall, and I know now—understanding people’s emotions so much more than I did before my own adventure—that they saw in him the Dickon they had both lost. Perhaps that brought them some consolation. But I was beginning to believe that it was having an adverse effect on Dickon’s character.
    So Jean-Louis and I were married, and he was a good husband to me; ours was the typical country existence; we went on, untroubled by outside events; there might be wars in Europe in which the country was involved but they affected us very little. We went from season to season, from Good Friday gloom to Easter rejoicing, to summer church fêtes on the lawn if the weather was good and in our vaulted hall if it were bad, to harvest festivals when everyone vied to produce the finest fruits and vegetables for display, to Christmas and all its rejoicing. That was our life.
    Until this day when we had the message from Eversleigh Court.
    My mother was pleased to see us as she always was.
    “I’m so glad you could come today,” she said. “I do want to talk to you about poor old Carl. Sabrina has given you an inkling, hasn’t she? I am so sorry for him. He sounds so pathetic in his letter.”
    She slipped one arm through mine and the other through that of Jean-Louis.
    “I thought just a family party so that we could really talk. Just Sabrina, myself and the two of you. Jean-Louis, dear, I do hope you will be able to manage to go with Zipporah.”
    Jean-Louis then began to launch into a description of the problems of the estate. He loved talking about them because they were of such paramount importance to him. He glowed with enthusiasm and I knew it would be a great sacrifice for him to spare time from it.
    We went into the hall—which was very fine and, as usual in such buildings, the central feature of the house. It was a large house—meant for a big family. My mother would have liked Sabrina to marry again and live there with her children; I am sure she would have liked Jean-Louis and me to come there and have a family. That was what she wanted to be, the center of a big family; and all we had was Dickon.
    It seemed now that Sabrina would never marry again. My mother might have done so too