They took numerous wrong turns and had to retrace their steps in order to try a different direction. But eventually, after a great deal of conflicting opinions and laughter, they found their way to the center of the maze, where a couple of wooden seats awaited them and offered repose.
“I suppose,” he said after she had seated herself and he took his place beside her, “we ought to have come armed with a mountain of handkerchiefs to drop at strategic intervals along the way. Do you know the way out?”
“No.” She laughed.
“We must be thankful, I suppose,” he said, taking her hand in his again, “that there is no seven-headed monster or its like awaiting us here.”
In the silence at the middle of the maze with Sydney Gardens stretching beyond it, it was very easy to forget the world outside, the inevitable passing of time, the ephemeral nature of the friendship between a man and a woman. It was very easy to believe in the perfection of the moment.
They must have sat for all of five minutes—perhaps ten—without speaking. But sometimes, as they had discovered during the summer, conversation was unnecessary. Communication was made at an altogether deeper level.
Her shoulder, Susanna realized after a while, was leaning against his. Their outer thighs were lightly touching. And somehow—she could not remember its happening—her right glove lay in her lap and his left glove in his, and their bare hands were clasped warmly together.
She heard him draw a deep breath at last and release it slowly.
“I wish I had insisted upon being less protected when I was a boy,” he said. “CouldI have insisted, I wonder? Did I have that power? I wish I had at least tried to know you better. I knew your father but not you. If Ihadknown you, if Ihadinsisted upon knowing what was going on in my home and neighborhood even while I was away at school, perhaps I could have been there for you when your father died. Though I do not suppose I could have offered much by way of comfort.”
No,especiallynot him.
“All people must suffer bereavements,” she said, “even children. I managed.”
“Susanna.” He pulled off his other glove with his teeth, transferred her hand from his left hand to his right, and set his left arm about her shoulders. “I spoke with Theo Markham while I was at home. I know about your father.”
She almost broke free of him and jumped to her feet. She remained very still instead. What else had Theodore Markham told him?
“I do not believe it was a mortal sin,” she said quickly. “I do not care what the church has to say on the question or how much it forbids Christian burial to those who take their own life. It would be a very unfair and uncompassionate God who would condemn forever a man who was driven to ending his own life by people who can live on and repent and redeem themselves. If that were what God is like, I would be a determined atheist.”
“You believe that someone else drove him into doing it, then?” he asked.
She waited for him to say more, but he did not.
“Who knows?” she said. “He kept his secrets both before and after his death. It does not matter any longer, does it? He has found his peace. At least, Ihopehe has.”
Though there were times even now she was an adult when she knew she had still not forgiven him for choosing peace over her.
“I am so terribly sorry,” he said. “I liked him. He used to do things with me and Theo. I cannot even imagine how you must have suffered at his loss.”
He could not know, of course, the pang his words had caused her. She had always believed that her father would have preferred a son to a daughter. He had never been actively unkind to her. Indeed, he had always shown her unfailing affection whenever they were together. But he had very rarely offered to do things with her.
The thought flashed suddenly through her mind that perhaps it was an unconscious memory of his neglect that had helped her to say no last evening. She knew very well what it was like not to have the fully committed love of a man she adored—and a man upon whom she was dependent and to whom she owed allegiance and obedience.
“You do not need to imagine it,” she said as he brought her hand up to his lips and then held the back of it against his cheek. “You do not need to bear other people’s burdens. Only the person concerned can do that. I bore my own burden, and I am still here. I have survived—and rather well, I believe.”
He closed his eyes and bowed his head, their clasped hands back on her lap, his other arm still hugging her close to him.
“Why did you run away?” he asked.
“They would not let me see him,” she said, “and they were going to bury him outside the churchyard. They did not know what to do with me. I was a burden to them. I did not belong to them, after all—or to anyone else for that matter. They were going to send me away. I preferred to go without waiting. I preferred to have some control over my own fate.”
“What makes you believe,” he asked her, “that they would have turned you away, that they saw you as a burden?”
“IheardLady Markham say so,” she said. “I did not mishear and I did not misunderstand. A burden is simply that—an unwanted load. And that is what she called me. She said I could not stay there.”
“And yet,” he said, “they searched and searched for you long after you had vanished.”
“Is that what Theodore told you?” she asked him.
“Theo was away at school,” he said, “as I was. It was Lady Markham herself who told me, and Edith. This morning.”
