71 Love Comes West Page 11

  “That is true enough,” Adam agreed. “The hardship the men endure would be intolerable if they had not some sort of amusement.”

  “Just as you would find it!”

  “Of course!” he agreed.

  ‘That is what I would be for him,’ Roberta thought to herself. ‘But I don’t want to be an ‘amusement’ that he can throw away when he is tired of me, just as Papa rid himself of the ladies from France and Italy as soon as he was bored with them.’

  Thinking of her father she must have stiffened for Adam said,

  “I don’t want you to think of anything unpleasant. I want you to be happy and never again do I want to see that worried expression in your eyes that you had when you first came here.”

  “I was very worried in case Danny and I should have to sleep under a tree for the night with only Columbus to look after us.”

  “I will look after you.”

  There was silence for a little while.

  Then he said,

  “Did he really mean so much to you?”

  “Who?”

  “Your husband, of course.”

  Roberta hesitated.

  She did not want to lie. In fact she hated lying, especially to somebody she loved.

  He was waiting for her answer and, after what seemed a long pause, she said,

  “I-I don’t want to – talk about him.”

  “Nor do I,” Adam said. “It makes me fiercely jealous to think that any man has ever touched you or kissed you. You are mine, Roberta, mine completely! I will murder any man in the future who comes near you!”

  He spoke with a violence that surprised her.

  At the same time she felt as if her whole heart leapt towards him because being near him made the world no longer a frightening place where she and Danny were alone.

  It flashed across her mind that perhaps the people from Blue River were looking for Danny, feeling that it was their duty to do so, because his parents had been killed near their village.

  Then she was sure that she was frightening herself unnecessarily and anyway as long as she was with Adam he would protect them and somehow make sure that Danny was not taken from her.

  His lips moved from her forehead and he kissed her eyes and the softness of her cheeks.

  She wanted him to kiss her lips and she was ready, lifting her face towards his, wanting him because it was impossible not to respond to his touch.

  Instead he ran his fingers along the line of her chin and gently encircled her neck with his hand.

  It gave her a strange feeling that was somehow different from what she had felt before and she could feel her heart beginning to beat in a tempestuous manner.

  She knew too that his heart was beating in the same way.

  Then gently, so gently she could hardly believe it was happening, he moved her down sideways onto the sofa and lifted her feet up onto it.

  Then he was lying beside her and their bodies were touching.

  His lips became more passionate, more demanding and, although she felt that she must struggle against him, somehow it was impossible to move.

  He kissed her mouth, then he was kissing the little pulse beating in her neck and again sensations that she had never dreamt existed seemed to be beating through her breast.

  He held her closer and still closer and now she could feel her heart beating against his. She knew that he was growing more and more excited and she could not stop him engendering the same excitement within herself.

  “I want you! God, how I want you!” Adam muttered.

  Now his lips seemed to be burning with a strange fire and her body responded with flames that burnt their way through her until she felt as if they were both consumed by their intense heat.

  Then, as she felt Adam’s hand on her breast, she was aware of the danger she was in, not only from him, but from herself and her longing for him.

  It was with a superhuman effort that she pushed him away from her and somehow, as he loosened his hold on her, he slipped off the sofa onto the floor.

  “No! No! No!” she quavered, as if she was replying to something he had asked her.

  He did not speak, but sat where she had pushed him, leaning on one hand and looking at her with burning eyes.

  Slowly she rose from the couch.

  Then she said in a voice that broke,

  “I – cannot! Oh – Adam – I – cannot do it!”

  Although she was free, she could think of nothing but her need of him and moved slowly, almost as if she was sleepwalking, across the sitting room and into her bedroom.

  As she closed the door, she felt as if she was shutting herself out from a Paradise she would never find again and her whole body cried out as if it was a crime against her love.

  Slowly she undressed and, only when she was in bed, did she turn her face into the pillow to cry herself to sleep.

  *

  Roberta heard Adam moving about the sitting room early the next morning.

  Danny was still sleeping, but Columbus lying by the couch had his head raised and his curly tail was thumping softly on the ground.

  Roberta lay still, listening to Adam’s movements, longing to join him, to be beside him.

  But she felt limp and defeated from the storm that had shaken her after she had gone to bed last night, her lips were dry and she felt sure that her eyes were still swollen.

  ‘How can I be so foolish?’ she asked herself. ‘Why do I not do as he wants?’

  But she knew that, while she loved him until he filled the whole earth, the sea and the sky, she could not bear to throw aside all the principles her mother had brought her up on.

  Because she had been so young, they had not spoken of anything that concerned sexual immorality between men and women.

  But she had known from the time she could first think that everything about her mother was good and that the women who consoled her father after her death, even the lovely Lady Bingham, were very different in character.

  Roberta was sure that her mother, however much she was attracted by another man, would never have left her husband or given up the social position in which she set an example to the people on her husband’s estate and those whom he employed.

  “You must always remember,” her mother had said once, “that whatever we do has an influence on others.”

  Roberta had been quite young, but she had tried to understand.

  “Just as when we are cross or disagreeable we affect those around us,” her mother had gone on, “or if we do things that are wrong, this can affect someone else’s life, even though we are not aware of it.”

  She had seen Roberta look bewildered as she explained,

  “The children in the village admire you and I am sure that if they heard that you were naughty and did things that upset your father and me, they would feel that they could behave in the same way.”

  Thinking about it now, Roberta thought that there was nobody here in America she ought to set an example to or whom she could influence for right or wrong.

  Then she remembered Danny.

  Danny was young, but very perceptive.

  How could she let him think that the aunt whom he thought his mother had sent to him from Heaven was no better than the dancing girls who picked the pockets of the gold miners?

  ‘I have to be good,’ she thought and knew that it would be the hardest thing she had ever done in her whole life.

  When she was dressed, she went into the sitting room and found as she expected that Adam had set up his easel and was painting feverishly a vase of flowers which he had arranged on a small table in front of one of the windows.

  She could not help smiling as she realised that it was a very traditional-looking arrangement of wild flowers, but it included some exotic orchids and lilies that were growing in the garden.

  She had been surprised when she saw them and had asked,

  “Did you plant those, Adam, or were they the choice of some previous tenant?”

  “There has
been no previous tenant.” Adam replied. “My father gave me this house when I was at College, complaining that the noise my friends made when I was at home distracted him.”

  “What a lovely present!” Roberta exclaimed.

  “That is what I thought when he gave it to me, because I liked bathing and boating on the sea. Then after I had been to Paris I realised that it was exactly what I needed as a studio!”

  “You did not paint before you went to France?”

  “I had always enjoyed drawing and trying my hand first with watercolours and with oils. After I left college, I was determined to see something of the world and I went first to London and then to Paris.”

  “And what did you think of Paris?”

  “It was a revelation! I knew then that while I had been experimenting on my own and attempting to paint light, the Impressionists had already found a way to do so.”

  “And you have been painting ever since.”

  “I spent some time making up my mind,” Adam replied, “but now I intend to do nothing else!”

  There was a hard note in his voice that made Roberta suspect that it had not been an easy decision.

  She did not, however, like to ask him too many questions, in case he should in turn question her.

  She appreciated all the more the comfort of the house not only because it was his but because it was his taste that made it so attractive and so comfortable.

  Now, as she walked across the soft brightly coloured rugs, he did not turn to greet her as she expected, but only said in a somewhat sour voice,

  “As you see, I am earning my bread and butter and let’s hope there is plenty of the latter.”

  She looked at the canvas and said,

  “You will not believe me, but I think that is going to be a very attractive picture.”

  “For those who like it!”

  “Exactly. I am one of them.”

  Adam made a derisive noise as she walked into the kitchen.

  He was rather silent at breakfast and she had the feeling that he was not looking at her directly.

  She realised that she had offended him last night.

  At the same time there was nothing she could do about it and, because it was the only way she could make amends, she suggested,

  “If you want a break from what you are doing, I will sit for you.”

  “I had better finish the damned thing and get it over,” Adam replied. “I am going to San Diego tomorrow. I will leave early and be back before nightfall. Then we can spend the money on riotous living!”

  “I shall enjoy that!”

  He did not smile at her as she had hoped, but went back to his easel and continued to paint.

  She could see that he was doing it very skilfully and she knew that it would be quite easy if he wished to make a lot of money for him to paint the sort of pictures that people wanted.

  She knew it was almost universal for elderly women to like flower paintings.

  Her grandmother had several in her drawing room, and her Aunt Emily painstakingly made tapestry covers for the dining room chairs in floral designs.

  Looking at Adam’s handsome profile without his being aware of it, Roberta knew that his lips were set in a hard line and there was a cynical expression in his eyes.

  ‘It is very difficult to be a revolutionary against the accepted order,’ she thought and knew that in a different way he was very like her father.

  But at least her father, having run away from everything that was conventional, had been rich enough to do it without any real discomfort to himself.

  Adam was poor and it was therefore more difficult for him to paint the pictures that appealed to him, while in order to live he had to, as he thought, prostitute his art.

  Nevertheless when by dinnertime, the picture was finished, Roberta could admire it with complete sincerity.

  “It’s very attractive!” she said. “You must see that.”

  “I see nothing but a lot of flowers stuck stiffly into a vase, when they would look far better growing in the soil!”

  Roberta laughed.

  “Now you are being difficult and please, stop punishing me because you are too proud and stuck-up to accept my humble offering of a few dollars!”

  Adam looked at her and then quite suddenly he laughed.

  “All right,” he conceded, “you win! I will sell this picture and, when we have spent all the money, but all of it, I will allow you to contribute your widow’s mite to keep us all from starvation.”

  “That is the most sensible thing you have said for a long time,” Roberta smiled, “and when you get back from San Diego, I will have a delicious and most expensive dinner waiting for you!”

  “To which I will contribute a bottle of champagne, if it is available. If not, the finest Californian wine you have ever tasted!”

  “That is a promise and a date!” Roberta exclaimed.

  They laughed together and he put his arm around her as she walked back to the kitchen to finish cooking the supper.

  Because the black mood he had been enveloped in all day was now past, they were closer together than they had been before and Danny joined in their laughter while surreptitiously feeding Columbus with titbits under the table.

  Since he had been properly fed, he looked a different dog from when Roberta had first seen him.

  Now his coat was silky and shining and he no longer winced away in fear if anybody approached him.

  ‘He is happy,’ Roberta thought, ‘just as I am.’

  Then, as she saw Adam looking at her and saw the expression in his eyes, she was afraid, not of him, but of herself.

  How was it going to be possible to go on resisting him, she asked, when not only her body but her heart and soul cried out for him?

  She wanted him in the same way that he wanted her.

  Chapter Six

  “Why do we have to leave, Aunt Roberta?” Danny asked plaintively for about the sixth time.

  Carrying her grip in her hand and holding Danny by the other, Roberta took a minute or two to answer.

  Then she said,

  “I explained to you that we have to go to San Francisco, Danny.”

  “I don’t want to go to San Francisco,” Danny said crossly. “I want to stay by the sea with Uncle Adam and swim.”

  That was what she wished too, Roberta thought, but it was impossible to explain to the child that she knew there was nothing she could do but leave Adam.

  It was frightening to think that she had nowhere to go and nobody to look after her.

  But she knew that she was doing the right thing and however much it hurt there could be no argument about it.

  Yesterday, when she was recovering from her tears and her unhappiness because she had upset Adam, she had only been thinking of herself.

  Then last night after Danny had gone to bed she had known that it was much more important that she should think about him.

  She had been nervous that perhaps when he kissed her they would start the same argument all over again and she would spend another night weeping bitterly into her pillow.

  When she came from the bedroom closing the door behind her, Adam had said,

  “I want to talk to you, Roberta.”

  She had stood for a few moments irresolute, wondering if she would be wiser to go back into the bedroom and stay there alone.

  Then, as if he read her thoughts, he said,

  “I will not frighten you and I will not touch you. Just sit down and listen to what I have to say.”

  Because he spoke in a calm gentle voice, she obeyed him and sat down on the edge of the sofa leaving a wide space between them.

  She saw that he had lit the fire although it was not really necessary.

  He stared into it for some minutes before he said,

  “I am ashamed that I frightened you last night by being so uncontrolled.”

  “It – is all – right,” Roberta murmured hastily.

  “It is not all right,” he corrected. “
I behaved very badly and I am aware of it, but my only excuse is that you made me lose my head, just as I have already lost my heart.”

  Now there was a note in his voice that made her quiver, but he did not look at her.

  “I feel that I have a great deal of explaining to do,” he went on, “but because you are very intelligent, I think you will understand.”

  “There is no reason for you to explain anything,” Roberta said quickly. “I forced myself and Danny upon you and I am sure that the best thing would be for us to go away.”

  “How could I let that happen,” Adam asked, “when you are everything I have longed for and was quite certain in my mind did not exist?”

  There was a little pause.

  Then he added,

  “When I first lived here, I used to sit in front of the fire which I had lit because I felt it kept me company and prevented me from feeling lonely.”

  He sounded so pathetic that Roberta wanted to put out her hands towards him, but she knew that it would be a mistake and she clasped them firmly in her lap.

  Then she leaned back in the corner of the sofa, as far away from him as she possibly could.

  “I came here,” Adam said after a moment, “to prove that I was capable of keeping myself by my painting.”

  He drew in his breath before he went on,

  “It means everything to me and to continue painting I would lie, cheat, steal and even risk my life rather than give it up.”

  He spoke in a way that would have sounded hysterical if he had raised his voice.

  Instead, speaking quietly and calmly, he was expressing Roberta knew, a dedication to an ideal as he added,

  “I thought if I should fail I would no longer wish to go on living.”

  “But you will not fail,” Roberta said softly. “I am sure of it!”

  “That is what I want you to say,” Adam replied. “At the same time, now that you have come into my life, now that you are here, I know that you are not only a distraction but a rival to my work.”

  “I-I am sorry,” Roberta said humbly.

  “You know I don’t mean it like that!” Adam said sharply. “I love you until you fill my whole world! You are indivisibly part of the beauty, the light that I am trying to depict on canvas and I could no more sever you from me than I could cut off my own arm!”