Sir Anthony's father had told his son many times about how he met Anthony's mother at that ball and fell in love with her just by looking at her for a while. How he had managed to dance with her all evening without getting to know her name. And how he had gone visiting the morning after, looking for her, trying to find out who she was. How he had happened to go to Anthony's uncle Henrik's house, were Anthony's mother was staying, and almost managed to go away from there without seeing her.
"Your uncle just kept talking about horses, you see. I simply grew tired of it", his father had said.
He was silent for a while, looking into his son's blue eyes, thinking about how very much little Anthony took after his mother.
"But your uncle's library is the place were I kissed your mother for the first time", he continued with a wry smile. "So it is a very important place, you understand. I was so happy to have found her again, so when your uncle left us alone there, I just couldn't keep my hands off her."
"You will understand that when you get a little older", he finished this confession to his four-year-old son, sensing that this wasn't really the right thing to tell a small child.
But little Anthony had no problems understanding that part of the story. He loved his tall, beautiful mother, more than he loved anybody else in the whole wide world. Even a little more - but only a very little more - than he loved his very kind and funny and boisterous father, who enjoyed so much to play with him and always made him laugh. Anthony himself liked very much to kiss or be kissed by his mother, although it was most often on the cheek or the head. And he also had difficulties keeping his hands off her when he sat by her side or on her lap, talking or listening to a fairy tale. So he thought he understood exactly how his father had felt.
There were a few other things that Anthony had wondered about in that story though, once he got a little older. One was that his father hadn't understood that his uncle Henrik and his mother were brother and sister. There was an obvious likeness between the two of them, everyone thought so. Neither had Anthony ever noticed that uncle Henrik had any particular interest in horses. Another strange thing was that his father had been so determined to find his mother, even though he hardly knew her. Had it really been like that? Had he been so sure? Or was it just a story, a story to show his son how much he loved the boy's mother?
...
Sir Anthony himself was very seldom that sure about things. Like marrying Lady Edith tomorrow, was it the right thing to do? Or wasn't it?
Everything was ready for their wedding night. The room across the dressing room from his own bedroom was made up with new furniture and bedding. Edith had chosen the things and he had bought them. There was to be flowers and candles placed there tomorrow. He had a brand new pyjama with white and blue stripes waiting for him in a drawer. And his own bedroom was also tidier than it normally was. The sheets in this room were going to be changed tomorrow, although he very much doubted he would sleep here that night, after getting married to Edith. And in the morning after their wedding they were leaving for their honeymoon in Italy.
He was in his bed now and he simply couldn't sleep. This was his third consecutive night without or almost without any sleep. He was worrying about marrying Edith, it was so obvious that her father didn't approve. How could he think he was the right man for this beautiful and exuberant young girl with her whole life in front of her? How could he even imagine that it could be a good thing for her to be married to him and bedded by him? An old man who had only one functioning arm, a man who couldn't even hold her in the proper way when they were going to make love? Yes, he loved Edith, he loved her much more than he had thought it at all possible to love a woman. But wasn't that the best reason of all to give her up? To give her the chance to live a better life than the one he could offer her?
She was such a wonderful person, so beautiful, so intelligent, so friendly and so funny. He could really think of nothing better for him than to marry her and go on a honeymoon with her. Travelling with her, kissing her, talking to her, making love to her, laughing with her. It was such a wonderful idea. If only he had been fifteen or even ten years younger. If only he hadn't lost the use of his arm. If only he hadn't felt so unsuitable. So old and so crippled.
...
Next morning, when he finally was waiting for his bride in church, he hadn't slept at all. He wasn't feeling well, his head was spinning and he was very close to fainting.
"He looks as if he's waiting for a beating from the headmaster", he heard Lady Violet say. He would have resented very much more to hear her say that, if it hadn't been so accurate. Because that was exactly how he felt. Like if something bad was going to happen to him, and he was forced to wait for it, without a chance to get away.
He was going to marry Edith, and everybody would hate him for it. Even Edith herself, maybe already this evening, when she would find out how inadequate he was as a husband and a lover. She wanted children, he knew that, and she was also a young woman with physical needs. So there was no getting around this aspect of married life. Not that he would want to, he was very much in love with her and very much attracted to her, that part was not the problem. But he knew he would be clumsy, and have to ask her to help in ways he rather not. He didn't want to be a nuisance to her, in bed or anywhere else.
Then he heard Reverend Travis and Lady Grantham talk again. Saying something about him having been there before. Something about the late Lady Strallan, about Maud.
Could they really have said what he thought he had heard? That "Maybe the late Lady Strallan was a hard act to follow. Or maybe a hard act to repeat."
How dared they talk like that about Maud?
And how could they even think he would compare Edith to Maud! He had never done that, and he was sure he would never do that. Because they were two very different women. But mostly because he himself had been a very different man, when he married Maud.
It had been a very unhappy time of Sir Anthony's life when he met Maud. He was only twenty years old and had just lost his father, his mother had died less than a year earlier. Losing his wife had been a too hard blow for Anthony's father to take, he had just crumbled away after that.
Maud had been a friend of Anthony's ten years older sister Emilia and even a year older than her. Maud had been a widow for almost a year when the two of them had found each other in their mutual grief. Anthony's grief for his wonderful parents, Maud's for her late husband.
That mutual feeling of grief hadn't been the only thing that Anthony and Maud had in common. They had also shared an unusual sense of humor and an interest in books and opera music and many other things. But most important had of course been their mutual physical attraction.
Maud had tried to fight her attraction to Anthony. She had considered herself much too old for a young man like him. But Anthony had persisted, and finally managed to make her change her mind.
Their marriage had turned out to be a remarkably happy one. He had no experience at all of the physical side of love, but she had been very patient when she taught him how to do to make it good for her as well as himself. He knew that Maud's first marriage had also been very happy, but he never felt any jealousy. How can you be jealous of a person who is dead? Besides, he himself had only been twelve years old when Maud had married Herbert, so what was there really to be jealous of?
The tragedy of their marriage was the many miscarriages. They both longed very much to have children. But when Maud finally gave birth to a living baby boy, she herself died. And the little boy's life didn't last many hours.
After that Sir Anthony was determined never to marry again. But time heals wounds, and many years had passed by since Maud died. The pain was not so acute any longer.
But hearing Reverend Travis and Lady Violet joke in that heartless way about his late wife and the new marriage he was going to enter into, was simply more than Sir Anthony could take in his exhausted condition. He just couldn't let them make fun of Maud in that horrible way. And what would they say about Edith, once she was married to him?
At that moment he knew for certain that he couldn't possibly go through with this.
