She'd left the book for him with the page marked with a slip of paper on which she'd written "When I read this, I looked for Sybil, all day I expected to find her. Perhaps the words will give you some ease, even as they gave me pause—Mary." It was a finely bound volume and Tom wondered where she'd found it, if she had bought it or Matthew. Had she always meant to give it to him? Since he'd lost Sybil, he'd found her more in her sisters but it was more surprising in Lady Mary, whom he'd always thought so removed, almost like an anchorite to her station, her great house. Since she'd married, there'd been a change but he hadn't seen as much of her and life had blurred around him since Sybbie was born and Sybil died and now the Lady Mary whom he met had Sybil's look in her dark eyes. She held the baby the way Sybil had, that one afternoon, and the line of her jaw and her nose was familiar to him from watching Sybil sleep at night beside him. Edith had Sybil's same hands, passing him things at the table, and once he held hers too long, almost forgot and brought her wrist to his mouth to kiss. Edith had, for him alone, Sybil's easy forgiveness, and she rose from her chair in the same way.
He read the poem again and again. It hurt because it was so like her and because he could hear himself reciting it to her, a poem meant to carry the echo of Gaelic, the rhythm of his home, the men he knew, each secretly a bard, unleashed by a woman or drink or the light on the Muir Éireann. She would have loved it and asked for him to read it, would have laughed when he brushed the loose hair from her face as he said the words, nestled into his arm if she could. Now, the words sat in his mouth like stones to choke him, "When you are old and grey" as she would never be, his beautiful lost girl and he wondered at how the beauty of it and the anguish could be a consolation and how Mary had known it. He asked her, a week later, when they were alone in the library; his hands still felt the rise and fall of his daughter's sleeping breath and it has loosened something in him or perhaps the baby made it more reasonable to ask his wife's sister any question.
"How did you know? That I should read it?" he asked without a preamble.
"Well, I didn't ask Matthew, if that's what you wonder," she replied, elegant and guarded, the general Mary she showed to the world, the default.
"No, I didn't. I knew you hadn't."
"Who else could it be for? It… caught me, it made me wish for so much and yet, I could accept it a little," she said, oblique because she must be, not because she sought to keep him away; he heard it in her tone and he saw it in her dark eyes, grief that was hers alone.
"I remember, you see, when I thought I would lose Matthew, when he was gone…what the nights were like. He doesn't have that memory of me, but I do, of him. And you know now, you know even more than I do. The poem is only for those like us, 'among the crowd of stars,'" she added.
"She'd laugh at us, wouldn't she? Sentimental fools," he said and it was like Sybil was just beyond the door, ready to come in and smile, beam at them together, so glad to see Mary talking to him like this.
"No, well, maybe a little. But she'd be happy, that we're friends, that we were sitting together talking about Yeats and not motor-cars or the estate," Mary said, the only one who was so easy with him this way, talking about what Sybil would be like if she hadn't gone, if she had been spared. "She'd wink at Matthew and if Granny were here, she'd scold Sybil for winking, some remark none of us could ever match."
"Thank you, Mary," he said, tired suddenly, wishing he could sleep like his baby did, with his baby tucked up against him in a white bed, the way Sybil would have after nursing their daughter. He was tired and heartsore and Sybil's sister was his friend, a terrible relief.
"I still love her. Every day. Not for Sybbie, not for anyone but herself. Sybil," Mary said, looking at him as directly as she ever had, that same way Sybil had had, that he'd fallen in love with.
"I know," Tom said. It was like the poem, this exchange, every word careful, right, perfect preceding and following, the grief of love. Mary had a way of being still Sybil had never wanted, never mastered, but now he found, without Sybil, it was what he needed and she gave it to him, understanding, a woman he had never imagined.