Read Online The Ladies by Doris Grumbach - Free Book Online Page B

was amiss. Perhaps it was the absence of Sarah from her usual haunts on the stone benches at the far recesses of the garden that made him wonder. His suspicion that she was avoiding him brought him one late morning unannounced to her door. There was no time for Eleanor to enter the cupboard. They were discovered together, reading a volume of letters by Madame de Sévigné to her daughter.
    Puzzled by what to do about Lady Eleanor’s presence in her house, Lady Betty responded in the only way she knew, by inviting her to dinner. Eleanor accepted, hungry for a hot dinner, but sat at the table in stony silence, her eyes averted from the despised Sir William. He recognized her coldness by going to his study immediately after supper and writing to Lord Butler. He asked him to come and remove his daughter.
    Five terrible days of uncertainty and fears passed at Woodstock. Then a messenger, the solicitor Edward Parke of Kilkenny (nephew to Sarah’s school mistress), brought word from Eleanor’s father: Lord Butler now acknowledged the inevitable. Eleanor could leave and go where she wished as long as she did not settle in Ireland. She could take the convent monies with her. He would send a small annuity when she was settled and could provide an address. There was one unalterable condition: she was never to seek to visit any member of the family or to communicate with them so long as she should live. Eleanor bowed her head at the absoluteness of the decree, and agreed.
    Lady Betty tried one final appeal to Sarah, for her conscience would not allow her to go off unwarned. While Eleanor rested one afternoon, she sought a private conference with her niece:
    â€˜Your friend has a debauched mind,’ she told her. ‘You will never both be able to agree if you live together. Friendship needs to be based on virtue. Yours has no such foundation and will not, I am certain, last.’
    Sarah listened and made no reply.
    Lady Betty wrote to her daughter: ‘Anything said against Miss Butler is death to Sarah.’ And when Lady Betty retired in tears to her bedroom one evening, and Eleanor said she would take her evening walk, Sir William detained Sarah and tried one last time to make a difference in her decision. Awkwardly, heavily, he fell to his knees, his Bible in one hand. With the other he grabbed Sarah’s hand:
    â€˜I will never more offend you. I will double the thirty-pound allowance you now receive, if you give up this mad enterprise. Oh Sarah’—he held out his Bible—‘I will never more offend you. I am sorry to have angered you, but I swear on this Holy Writ that it was not meant as you have taken it and understood it.’
    â€˜Please, Uncle, please rise.’
    â€˜It was my gallantry that you read as an annoyance.’ He did not get up.
    Sarah was silent. She withdrew her hand and left Sir William still on his knees. She went upstairs, where she found Eleanor, who was too concerned at Sarah’s being left alone with Sir William to walk very far from the house. Eleanor took Sarah into her arms. Sarah buried her face in the rough cloth of Eleanor’s riding jacket (for she had worn these clothes every day in expectation of their second flight) and cried.
    â€˜If the whole world kneeled to me as Sir William has just done, I would not alter my intention to live and die with you,’ she said. Eleanor stroked Sarah’s hair from her wet face and kissed her on the mouth, sealing their mutual decision in a sacrament she knew the world would surely withhold from them.
    The Woodstock opposition could not withstand the surrender of the castle or the two women’s soundless but adamant resolution. More confused than convinced, the Fowneses gave in, made a promise to send £50 yearly to Sarah, and then retired to their rooms, upset and routed.
    To her daughter Lady Betty sent her daily note: ‘It is most extraordinary. God knows how it could be. Or how they will