Sir Sigefrith comprehends his own cruelty

Sir Sigefrith put courtesy aside for a moment when no one answered his knock, and he peered through the window like a vulgar little peasant child. The kitchen fire was out, the table was bare, and—most chilling of all—the little mother’s chair was empty.

And yet, he reminded himself, he had seen smoke in the chimney on his way up the hill, so he concluded that the upstairs fire must have been lit. He knocked again and waited.

This time the door swung open, and he was face-​to-​face with Wynflaed. The suddenness of their meeting seemed to startle both of them.

“Wynsome! I—I’m sorry I haven’t—”

“I know you’ve been—”

“My baby has been—”

“Father Brandt told us—”

“She’s quite better now!”

“I’m glad!”

Sigefrith grinned at her, and she gave him a pale smile, as if she were ill herself, or in pain.

“Won’t you come in?” she asked, remembering her manners.

“Where’s your little mother hiding?”

“Oh, she’s upstairs in her room. Won’t you come up?” She darted for the stairs.

“Wait!”

He snatched at her arm and stopped her. It was the first time he had been alone with her since Mouse had quit them briefly while they were saying their farewells last July. He would not let this opportunity slip.

She stopped and turned back to him, but she leaned away from him with her body even after he had released her arm. He saw that he had frightened her, and he was ashamed.

“I only want to speak to you a moment,” he said softly, partly so that her mother could not hear, and partly to calm her, as one spoke softly to an anxious animal. “I only want to ask you about your little mother.”

She seemed to relax, though her face wore that pained look again. “She’s been very tired these last days,” she murmured.

“She has been worsening, has she not? While I was away, and then since I returned?”

It seemed that she could not answer for fear of breaking into tears.

“Come, sit down,” he said.

He coaxed her into a chair. He thought it would give her a chance to compose herself in the bustle of sitting, and also allow him to even out their heights somewhat by sitting himself.

“You may tell me,” he said softly. “You must be very worried, and if I know you, you won’t have told your worries to anyone else. It’s a heavy burden to bear, and like any burden, it will be lightened if it is shared.”

He didn’t know what he was saying. He spoke more to soothe her with his voice than with his words, as one spoke to a frightened animal.

“Don’t you remember?” he continued. “You promised me once that you would come to me with your worries and let me help you, and I don’t believe you have kept your promise. I hope you didn’t do it to spare me. I hope you didn’t do it because you think your worries beneath me, or too great for me.”

Though he did not think about what he was saying, he said nothing that he had not already thought. Her family and her troubles had been constantly in his mind for months, but more so the past week, for then all of his own little cares and troubles had evaporated in the face of the one great fear that he supposed they shared, at least for that week of time.

He had held his baby daughter through the long nights of her fever so that Hilda could get some rest, though as a rule he hated watching through the night. He hated the long loneliness of an empty house and a sleeping world, hated the long darkness that the candle scarcely eased, hated the long silence that let him hear the ringing in his own ears.

He was a young man who loved company, sunlight, conversation and laughter, and it had always mystified him that these things seemed almost unbearable to Wynflaed. But through those nights, as he grew familiar with the long dark and the lonely silence, he began to understand that they were old acquaintances of hers.

Yet she was no melancholy poet like the Duke. He thought she loved the night no more than he did. Perhaps the silence and the solitude were all her frail little body could bear, or perhaps it was that she was so often forced to bear them that she had no strength remaining for the gayer burdens of sunlight and friendship. Or perhaps, he admitted, her troubles were more than his narrow mind could comprehend.

Still, with his characteristic stubbornness, he was certain he knew what she needed. She needed someone who would watch through the night for her and let her get some rest, as he had done for Hilda—someone strong enough to bear the silence and the loneliness and the fear, and still have sufficient strength to laugh and welcome sunlight and company in the morning. And if she could not sleep, then she needed someone who would hold her through the long night, as he had held baby Blithe—as he had held her once, in his dream.

She had been staring up at the window as he spoke. Her face was lovely in the golden light of afternoon, but also, with her pouting lips and worried brows and tragic eyes, the very image of suffering. He was growing desperate. He felt—and feared—he would have to try something more than words if she would not speak. He was not clever enough to say what he meant with words.

But she spoke. “I think—” she gasped, and then she fell silent again.

“Tell me,” he coaxed after a while. He had begun to feel time pressing on him as well. The little mother would wonder where Wynflaed had gone. “Don’t you trust me?” he finally asked, a little petulantly.

“I trust you more than anyone besides my mother, and my sister and brothers,” she said, easily enough that he was able to believe it.

“But you don’t trust anyone enough to tell them your troubles.”

“I told my father,” she whispered.

“Because he was stronger than you?”

She nodded.

“So am I,” he said.

She turned her tragic eyes on him. She had her father’s face, he thought. She also had her father’s stubborn will, and only her mother’s tiny, frail body to bear it.

“Do you remember the roots we planted in the autumn?” she asked. Her voice was strained by the imminent sob pressing on it from beneath.

“Of course,” he smiled. They had planted them together—he and Wynflaed and Mouse. It was the only afternoon of his life he had ever spent gardening, though he had seldom been happier.

“Sometimes I think—” She paused again, and this time he waited in silence. “I think I shall hate them when they bloom. Because—because she won’t see them!” She pounded her little fist on the table in a gesture worthy of her father, and then she let her head fall forward onto her arms and sobbed.

If she had merely told him that her mother would die before the spring, he would have known what to do. He would have laid an arm over her shoulders, perhaps, and found the right things to say.

But he saw that his gift to her had turned into a source of pain, and so he did not dare. It had been thoughtlessly cruel. He was beginning to see that he so often was. The cruel ending to the little song they had loved, and that he had thoughtlessly spoiled for them… the cruelty of a gift that would arrive too late… and the countless tiny cruelties that his mere presence imposed on her, and which he could guess by the panicked pleading of her eyes when he tried to be alone with her, or only looked at her too long.

He saw that he had hurt her, and he was ashamed.

“No!” she cried suddenly, and lifted her head. Her golden face was wet, and her eyes were more green than bronze, because they were also red. “We shall lay them on her grave.”

His own eyes went wide in surprise at her brazen statement. She looked at him expectantly, but he could find nothing to say.

“No!” she cried again, and slammed her fist down hard enough to startle him. She leapt up and ran for the door. “I shall tell Mouse and Os you’re here!” she said as she went out.

He did not dare run after her, nor did he think he could have. He could only sit at the table, overwhelmed. It seemed that she and her troubles were more than his narrow mind could comprehend.