Then she kissed me. Then my wife reached up to me and kissed me.
“Come to bed,” she said.
I did. But first, I leaned to blow the candle out. It was not needed anymore.
I knew that all was well.
VIII
I was a younger man when I first met her in our house in Riddell’s Close—though I should tell you in all fairness that was not the first time I had ever seen her, for her face had lived within my mind and memory from the moment I dropped through that window into the Bells’ kitchen, turned, and found her looking at me through her tears.
I was a younger man…
I promised I would tell the story as I felt it should be told, and if you’ve read this closely you will find I’ve sought to tell the truth.
My study is a quiet room, but these past days it has seemed lively with the ghosts of those long gone, who’ve wished to come and visit me—Captain Gordon, always with a gift tucked in his pocket and his coat well brushed, and Walter, with his dreams and hopes and arguments, and when the evening’s drawing in, my mother, Barbara, with her lovely face and eyes that find mine in the firelight.
These shades, and others, have been welcome visitors of late, and yet no human guests could have been more demanding.
“Tell them this,” they’ve seemed to say, or “you can surely not forget that part.” And so I’ve labored on, to write the whole of Lily’s tale, and mine, that you may judge the truth of it against the rumors that still rise.
Two of these phantoms in my study have been strangers—Colonel Graeme and his son—although I met the colonel long ago, when as a lad I was imprisoned in the Tolbooth. He showed kindness to me then. He gave a blanket to me, and advised me I would walk a better road if I kept better company. I have imagined that his son would have the same kind eyes.
In my life, the thing I most regret is leaving Lily on the pier that day in Leith. I should have stayed. I should have listened to her, trusted her, and not let my own feelings of inadequacy blind me to the truth that she would never have betrayed me with another man—but when I saw her standing with James Graeme by the windmill, after what I’d seen the day before, and Lily saying she no longer wished for us to marry right away, I thought the worst, and…well, that is not true. I did not think at all. I acted purely out of pain, and impulse.
Though she has forgiven me, I know that my apology could not erase the moment, nor the harm it caused, and I have had to live with that.
But I regret, too, that by leaving then, I lost the chance to meet James Graeme, who’d been so important in her life—a man I would have liked. A man I would have counted myself fortunate to know.
So it has been a pleasure, and a kind of benediction, to have had the chance to meet him in the writing of this tale. And in the evenings when I sit beside my fire, my whisky in my hand, my thoughts drifting, I have found it easy, if I change the angle of my head and let my eyes half close, to picture Jamie sitting in the chair that faces mine, an old companion—as he might indeed have been, had he but lived.
But those are shades.
Beside that chair right now, the cat is lying with her kittens in her basket. It seems only yesterday they were too small and helpless to do anything without her, but today they’re tumbling out onto the carpet. Henry’s granddaughter will be beside herself when she does come to visit us with all the family at the weekend, from Cross Harbor.
Henry takes great pride in all his grandchildren. They mind him not only of his own bairns, but of the children he did teach for so long at our school here in the town—so many he can barely cross the street these days but someone stops him for a conversation. Still, although he holds no favorites, he does play a little softer with his granddaughter, the only lass among so many lads. And I’d be lying if I said it did not soften my heart, too, the day I watched her climb into his lap, so he could sit awhile and read to her, and Henry laughed and asked, “What book this time?”
But there is only one book that she loves: The History of the Most Renowned Don Quixote of La Mancha: And His Trusty Squire Sancho Panza.
It is a family weakness.
Maggie read it to her, also, when she and Simon came to see us this past spring. It was their second visit to America. I hope it will not be their last.
She writes with regularity, as do Marion Bell and her husband, and if Maggie’s letters do not come as often as we’d like them to, we can rely upon those sent by Richard Gilroy, who has been a steadfast friend and from his rising vantage point has kept watch over both Maggie and Simon.